Father John's love welcomed them all

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At the end of the dinner, after hundreds had approached him to shake his hand; after tears and hugs and dozens of "Thank yous" and "We'll miss yous" and "We love yous;" after speeches by colleagues and friends; after joyful applause and a standing ovation; after hearing himself described again and again as good and warm and selfless and kind, he stood at the microphone and looked out over the crowd and smiled and said: "I'm nothing special. It's all you people working together who've made me look good. "I only pray I become something like the priest you good people have described," said the Rev. John Mahoney, pastor of The Family Parish of St. Martha's in Plainville for 18 years, to the crowd of 800 who had come to honor him.

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Her life, like all lives, matters

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We were months away from Christmas when she said it. There was no self-pity in her tone. She was matter-of-fact. "I've never done much of anything with my life. I'm just another face in the crowd. The world would have gotten along just fine without me." She then went on to explain how ordinary she was. She was just a wife, just a mother. She worked in an office with a dozen other people who did the same job she did. There was nothing special about her. She didn't have a great mind or a great talent. Her existence was, she said, not necessary.

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Life's forgotten become family at Pine Street Inn

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I should have counted the steps from the Herald. It couldn't have been many. It was no more than a five-minute walk. And yet the walk took me to the other side of the world. The Pine Street Inn isn't on Pine Street. It's on Harrison Avenue, in an old building that looks like most old buildings in this city, brick on the outside,cinder block on the inside. I arrived there with preconceptions. The homeless are alcoholics, drug users, people who have…

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For `survivors' the pain never ends

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If they walked into the room on crutches or wheeled themselves in chairs; if they had missing arms and legs or wore bandages, or screamed in pain, then they would be noticed. But they do not scream, at least not in public, and if their eyes are red no one knows why. They look like everyone else. The men wear jackets and ties. The women wear dresses or suits and make-up. The kids look like kids anywhere. Nothing appears to be wrong with any of them. And yet everything is.

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Lesson of life is enjoy the journey, focus on the good

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It was Gilda Radner's father's favorite expression: It's always something, he used to say. Radner used these words all the time in her comedy and as a title for her book about her valiant struggle with ovarian cancer. It was a perfect title, because it is always something. That's what life's about. Climbing hills. Meeting challenges. Facing problems. If it's not one thing, it's another. This is fact.

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Courage speaks in a whisper

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I met her last August at a party. My husband knew her husband. They'd golfed together a few times. But I didn't know her at all. We were seated at a table, just the four of us, celebrating a mutual friend's 25th wedding anniversary. But I wasn't in a party mood. I was preoccupied with something, though what I can't recall. My journal shows no entry for that date or for the day before so the details are all forgotten.

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Michael Jackson let himself be used

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There's a lot that's weird about Michael Jackson. But he's been endearingly weird. In 1978, when he made his film debut as the Scarecrow in "The Wiz," he actually had to be coaxed into removing his costume and makeup every day. He has always loved fantasy, has always preferred being someone else to being himself. He admits that he talks to mannequins and that in his mansion, they have their own room.

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Injured son suffers as suspect drives on

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No doubt you read the story, or glanced at it at least.

It was short, buried inside the paper; a tragedy, yes, but there weren't any pictures or sidebars full of family history. Nobody died. It was a small tragedy, comparatively speaking, just another hit-and-run early last month. Two young men, one 17, one 22, were hit by a car while crossing the street in Weymouth. The men were airlifted to Boston hospitals.

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An AIDS sufferer speaks out

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Nothing seems wrong. Midge Foster, 46, a woman with blond hair and a warm smile, answers the door in sweatpants and a shirt, greets her guest, pours two cups of coffee and the pair sit in the living room and talk in normal voices, as if they are talking about normal things. But what they are discussing is not normal. It's something that wasn't supposed to have happened. Three years ago, Foster, who lives in North Attleboro and whose only daughter is grown, joined the convent. Two and half years later, before taking her final vows, she decided to leave.

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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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