Loss of pride in work ethic is our nation's No.1 killer

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These things didn't have to happen: a pesticide spill that killed every living thing in California's Sacramento River; a bus crash that took the lives of Girl Scouts; a train derailment that spilled a corrosive chemical onto a California highway; the mass murdersof Jeffrey L. Dahmer; the entire BCCI mess.

Each one of these tragedies was preventable. Each happened solely because someone or a group of someones was not doing his job.

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Two-faced his/her way of life

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He won't recognize himself. Neither will she. That's the tragedy. No one has ever videotaped a day in his life. She has never been tape recorded on the phone, in a crowd, talking to someone at work. Neither one knows how nasty they sound, act, behave, ARE. So they go on undermining friends, castigating co- workers, talking about people they pretend to like, all the while with a smile on their lips, as if other people's intimacies, insecurities, secrets, and problems are fodder for public entertainment. If they could see themselves…

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Where are the celebrations for Cold War's end?

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I never expected it would be like this. I imagined armored cars, tanks, bloodshed, women screaming, men begging, children lined against school walls and shot. Clergy would be tortured, churches burned. Families allowed to live would not be allowed to live together.

Most times I expected worse: The Conelrad alert would sound and be real. Twenty to 30 minutes until death and no time to go home. How would I be brave? How would I not cry in those final moments, not plead for my father and mother?

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What Kids Choose to Remember about Mom

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Home for the summer, my two older children sit and reminisce. Over breakfast, riding together in the car, in the family room late at night, they will be talking about something, anything, and a phrase, a song, a look will trigger a memory and out will come the inevitable, “Remember when?” And then a tale will be told then, a tale I imagined would be sweet and sentimental, in which I, of course, would be the hero. "Remember when you used to get us dismissed…

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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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Vacation on a Houseboat No Picnic

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Vacation on a Houseboat No Picnic

So here we are, two adults, three teenagers and one 11-year-old, two days after leaving Boston, finally at Lake Powell, a crowded place, people scurrying from parking lot to marina with coolers and pillows and cartons of food, looking as diligent as a colony of ants. I am astounded by the crowds of people preparing to go out on the lake, lugging radios and rafts and infinite cases of beer down the long incline to load…

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Watching children grow up is a bittersweet time

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It is too eerily familiar. The exasperation in her voice. The long sighs. The shifting attitude.

"Do you think this looks nice?" she asked me this morning.

She was scrutinizing herself in the mirror, inspecting her white stretch pants and her extra, extra large white T-shirt that she'd covered with a complimenting white sweat shirt that came to her waist.

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