How does the meanness grow?

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They were walking down the street coming toward each other from opposite directions, carrying books, obviously on their way home from school.

She wore a cotton skirt and a navy blue sweater and a white headband in her dark brown hair. He wore pants and a green-and-white windbreaker and a Little League baseball cap. Both were about 9 or 10 years old and strangers, you could tell, because they didn't hurry toward one another, or wave, or roll their eyes, or smile. But they didn't study the ground or turn away, either.

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Believable Hill ruins good man's solid rep

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All the time Anita Hill was speaking, all the hours she sat calmly, politely answering what I considered to be vicious, personal attacks on her word, I believed her. I believed her because she was unflappable. I believed her because she was well-educated and well-spoken. I believed her becausethere was no apparent reason for her to lie. What did she have to gain? Why would she expose herself to humiliation and inquisition, if she were not telling the truth? Mostly I believed her because I put myself in her place.

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A drunken driver claims another life

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I write words and the words mean nothing, because I write about what's here and not what isn't here. And it's the void, the emptiness, that is the story. A man and a woman sit in the living room of their immaculate suburban home. On a table there are ceramic sneakers. On the couch there is a stuffed dog. Underneath the coffee table there is a real dog, a basset hound. On the walls there are pictures, and on the credenza more pictures. None of these things matters. They are weights which keep the people from floating away. They are props from a play long closed.

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Selfless act on a summer day

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They drove from New York, New Hampshire and Vermont, and from cities and towns all over Massachusetts. They came after soccer games or before football or on their way to the supermarket. Some came directly, on a glorious September weekend, when they could have been anywhere else - visiting friends, golfing, shopping, watching the Red Sox. Dozens came, alone and in pairs, young and old, male and female, to the gymnasium at Brockton High School to fill out a form and wait in a line and have their arm pricked and blood drawn, when they didn't have to, when no one forced them.

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Two-times proves he doesn't care

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Last March, I defended you in this space. You were 16, then, just a kid, and you did a stupid thing: You didn't pull over when police motioned for you to stop. Instead, you hit the gas pedal and led Braintree police on a wild, high-speed chase that resulted in the deaths of two Braintree police officers, Lt. Gregory Principe and Sgt. Ernest DeCross…

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WHY NOT PRESIDENT FLYNN? Flynn may have lost verbal war, but won respect

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What amazes me is how civilized it all is. The way men can stand on a stage in front of a podium within arms reach of their enemies and shout nasty things to them and about them, things you wouldn't even whisper about someone you hate, because you really don't hate anyone that much. Yet there they are, in front of an audience, in front of reporters, screaming, berating and accusing one another of terrible things. Sometimes they yell so hard that the veins in their necks bulge and…

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We're guilty of wanting more

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He told the story earlier this week and he told it well, the way he tells all his stories, because he is Irish and strings his words together with a natural lilt and good humor. He told it matter-of-factly though - it was almost a "by the way." And yet within the tale there was a story-teller's sense of plot and tension and, of course, the inevitable, inescapable moral: There he is on a glorious September Sunday, he says…

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A tale of incest and recovery

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She did it for her children. You listen to her and you know that there is good in people, that the good is innate, a gift from God, because she didn't learn good in her house, she wasn't exposed to it there. There she learned evil and hurt and hate. Her father put her on a pedestal, called her his little princess, bought her party dresses, then he got drunk and sexually abused her…

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A real, live enchanted evening

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This is the way it was supposed to be: The neighbors would be gathered in the driveway and he would appear, his car just polished, and he would step out of it, dressed in a white tuxedo jacket holding roses that he bought for her. He would ring the bell, and her mother would answer and he would walk into the front hall and there she'd be, poised at the top of the steps, a vision in satin and lace. Her beauty would make him shy, suddenly, and he would tremble a little putting the corsage on her wrist…

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There are people who reach out to others just because

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There are people who reach out to others just because

There she is, not his wife, not his daughter, not any blood relation, caring for him, cleaning his house, shopping for his food, taking him back and forth to the doctor, then to the hospital, giving him time she doesn't have. She has two young children and works two jobs. But she does all this not because she has to, but because she wants to…

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Wanting a life back

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Wanting a life back

“I want my old life back.”

That’s what the woman whispered between sobs.

I heard her, though I was just walking by, walking past, trying not to hear, trying not to look, not to see.

“I want my old life back,” she said again, louder this time, and I stopped walking and looked directly at her, a broken, old woman bent and weeping in a wheelchair.It was a Sunday in February ten years ago and I was at Hollywell Nursing Home in Randolph on a mission looking for help for my own mother, who was not so old but just as broken. I had spent the day visiting nursing homes and even then knew with absolute certainty that this was one of the worst days of my life.

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Real friendship can validate our lives

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Real friendship can validate our lives

I wanted to be Rosemary's friend from the moment I met her. I was 7 years old, the new girl in class, and Rosemary already had a best friend, Jean Sullivan, a girl she walked around the schoolyard with, a girl she invited over to her house. I tried to get Rosemary to like me better than she liked Jean, but I was unsuccessful. Then fate intervened, Jean moved and I got my wish.

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