We were all kinder, gentler

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We were all kinder, gentler

It's all going back to the way it was before September 11th. But how can it?

Is this our fate? Court TV and celebrity news and issues we knew four short months ago were a waste of time are still a waste of time.

Thomas Junta has been charged with beating his son's hockey coach, Michael Costin, to death at the Burlington Ice Arena in Reading 18 months ago. This 275-pound man allegedly smashed the head of the 150-pound Costin against the ground until Costin lost consciousness. What more do we need to know?

So why the national coverage? Why the day-to-day dissection of anger gone awry? Why the news updates, the talk-show discussions, the media frenzy about what is indisputably a horrific crime, but not, as some would have it, a trend? Will we be better people for having watched this sideshow?

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A DUI death is no accident

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A DUI death is no accident

He can't talk about it. Not now. The pain is too new. Harry Hewitt saw his wife killed last Saturday night. "I was right there," he says.

Right behind her as she traveled home from a dinner the two had shared.

rRight behind her, driving his car because she had cashiered at Wal-Mart that day and he had met her after and taken her to eat and then dropped her back at her car.d

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Familiarity breeds comfort

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Familiarity breeds comfort

I saw my neighbor, Al, sitting in his driveway, propped up against his wheelbarrow, still as stone. I thought he was dead. Who sits in a driveway? Who puts down his rake or climbs off a ladder or stops mowing his lawn to rest for 10 minutes, to close his eyes and drop his head and let his body go limp and do absolutely nothing? Al does. And he's taught his big black dog Dante to do the same.

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Recognizing the evil men do

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I was thinking Sunday, as I was reading the papers, giving most of my attention to the pile of flashy, color flyers packed with things to buy, things to give, things that promise to make an old-fashioned Christmas - so much more pleasant than the news - that this is what happened to the Jews in Germany. They didn't pay attention, either. They sat among their families, buffered by them, and pushed away the world, deluded into thinking that what was happening outside their doors could never happen to them.

They were preoccupied, as we are, with life, with celebrations, with birthdays, graduations, and holidays. Our personal lives brim with these small, good, wonderful things.

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Everyday life must triumph over terror

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Everyday life must triumph over terror

Before, on a September Sunday, I would be looking at the world in all its beauty and thinking that it's going too fast - the month, the fall, the leaves turning, every day getting shorter than the one before. I would ache to slow it down and be sad when I couldn't. September is always a bittersweet time. Before, on a September Sunday, I would drive to church and see pumpkins for sale at Cassie's and I would think, I have to stop on the way home and get some. And I would pass a nursery full of mums, and think, I need to get mums, too, and cornstalks and hay for the wheelbarrow. And I need to repaint the wheelbarrow.

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Life Goes On, But In a World Forever Changed

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It's hard to know what to do next. Even the essentials seem unessential, showering, dressing, making the bed, making coffee. The gym seems superfluous. A walk feels surreal. Morning is just an extension of the previous day. No need for an alarm. Night and day blend, all the days since Tuesday like time spent in a hospital room waiting to find out what's wrong…

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Sheer luck is all that saved some of us

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Sheer luck is all that saved some of us

It began as such an ordinary morning. At 8:30 my husband and I boarded Continental Airlines Flight 847, wrestled a bag into an overhead, complimented ourselves on securing a coveted emergency exit row seat and settled back for a flight to Puerto Rico, with a connection in Newark. We were headed for a cruise. The first time the captain came over the loudspeaker it was to announce a small mechanical problem…

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A Maine beach helps restore an aching soul

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A Maine beach helps restore an aching soul

I hadn't been back in more than two years to the place that feeds my soul. I went to other places and I thought, this is fine. I don't need one particular plot of earth where the sea meets the sky and I meet God. I found God in people and in landscapes: on my walks with the dog, in my small garden. And I convinced myself that this was enough. I thought I had become wiser. God is everywhere, I said. All I had to do was look and I would see.

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Canton loses Mr. Bright, a selfless citizen

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Of course he had to die sometime. He was 86 and much as we wish it could be, people don't live forever. But it seemed that he would. It seemed as if he would always be sitting in his rocking chair on his front porch, his wife beside him, or making his way down Chapman Street to the L'il White Store, Cassie's now, but always the L'il White to him.

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Landscaped back yard not worth dirty hands

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Landscaped back yard not worth dirty hands

Al was on his roof Tuesday morning, broom in hand, sweeping. Al, my across-the-street neighbor, is hardly a spring chicken. He should not be climbing ladders. He especially should not be climbing a ladder onto his roof because it is the kind of roof a child draws, a steep upside down V. But there he was climbing, then crawling like a crayfish, standing intermittently to out-out-damn-spot, some spot only he could see. Who, in his right mind, sweeps his roof?

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The Pace Slows as Years Grow Shorter for a Much-Loved Dog

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The Pace Slows as Years Grow Shorter for a Much-Loved Dog

She walks more slowly these days. She doesn't bound to the door, she ambles. She doesn't rush at visitors. She saunters. Her bark is as strong as it has always been and her tail remains in overdrive, but her legs buck and stall, old legs suddenly, though Molly's heart is still young. She has such skinny legs for a big dog, legs like a horse, legs that she could always depend on. How many mornings did she lunge up the stairs, hurl herself onto our bed, dance and bark and groan and nudge us awake…

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Sox should remember Sherm

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Sox should remember Sherm

It's a personal thing with Gary Titus. He'll tell you this. Sherm Feller was his friend. How good a friend? Titus and his wife, Sarah, named their son Louis "Sherman" Titus "to keep Sherm in our memory always." Last spring when Titus logged on to the Boston Red Sox Web site and was greeted by his friend's familiar voice, "Ladies and gentlemen - boys and girls," he was thrilled. The voice belonged on the site. Sherm Feller was and always will be the voice of Fenway Park.

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Her heroics were simply a way of life

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Helen McLean died the way she lived, trying not to inconvenience anyone, accepting what she couldn't change. The diagnosis was cancer and the prognosis was bad. But she didn't fight it or the doctors who gave her the news. She simply went ahead and did what she had to do, the way she did what she had to do her whole life. We build statues of men who, under the gun, stand and fight when they could have run. We call them heroes for their valor, and we honor and respect them. Their images adorn our capitals and parks. Their life stories fill our history books. We even write songs about them. The bravery of men is legend…

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Dear Abby misses a beat with answer to 'Trying'

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Dear Abby misses a beat with answer to 'Trying'

I think you've been kidnapped. I think someone from the school of It's All About Me has commandeered your computer. It must be. I've been reading you since I could read, which makes me certain that you could never have written the response to "Trying to Do the Right Thing" in last Friday's paper. Can we talk about this? What's happening in Los Angeles? Are you at the controls or have you been replaced? Or is it that you've been in L.A. so long that the Me, Myself and I culture has finally worn off on you, too?

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Gym rats are born, not made

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Gym rats are born, not made

The new gym rat in the family has been nagging me. He starts even before I open my eyes. "Power Pump is today. You really should go," he says at 5 a.m. The clock radio has just clicked on. The announcer's voice is a whisper because the radio takes time to warm up. Mr. Stretch and Bend doesn't have this problem. I said I'd go to the gym in the spring. Spring has arrived. He has deemed it his duty to get me there…

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