And they all forget to ask kids

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The child in me sees things clearly. She watches as I struggle to identify what's wrong with public education. She waits as I read the experts, even allows me to make some vague generalizations studded with silver-dollar words before tapping me on the shoulder and saying: Wait just a minute. Do you really want to know what's wrong with public schools? Do you really want to know how to make things better? Then put your notes down, sit a while and think.

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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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Smashing pumpkins and trust

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I look out my office window and see the giant spider's web, which had filled half the front yard, hanging in pieces. He/she/they didn't totally destroy it this time around. Two weeks ago, on a Sunday morning I opened my front door and the web was gone, just yarn on the ground. My husband wove it again. He took more white yarn and cut two more stakes and strung the wool as a spider would do, carefully, methodically.

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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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Government has no legitimate role in abortion issue

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Here I am in the middle of the road, a solid yellow line going in both directions.

What do I think about abortion?

I try not to think about abortion. It's too complicated, too controversial. I back away from the issue. You don't know a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. Who am I to tell anyone else what she should do? Judge not lest ye be judged. And yet, and yet ...

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So if you were on an island...

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When she was little she clung to me and said, "You're my best friend in the whole wide world." She used to cry when I went away, for a night, for a weekend. "Why can't you take me?" she would ask. And I would explain, "Because this party is for grown-ups. Because this is a business trip. Because you'd be bored." "No I wouldn't, Mommy. I'd never be bored around you."

Such absolute, unconditional love.

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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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Promises are just words, and court orders mean zip

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She called last week, upset, frustrated, furious. Her husband walked out on her 12 years ago leaving her with four children, 10, 9, 6 and 5. He still loved her, he told her then. He was just tired of being married. "But don't worry," he said. "They're my children and I intend to provide for them. Don't you think for a minute that I'm deserting you." Yet that's exactly what he did.

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Today's bigger shops and malls not really better

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Take a simple thing like directory assistance: You dial 411, give the name and address of a person whose phone number you want and an operator asks, "Are you sure you're spelling the last name correctly? We show nothing under that spelling." And before you can say, "I'm sure it's correct," there comes a click followed by a recorded recitation of a wrong number, all for the bargain price of 34 cents. If the recording were a live person, you could interrupt at this point…

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TV sends kids wrong message on sex

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He was a clean-cut, bright, on-his-way to Annapolis kind of guy. She was his female counterpart: pretty, smart, studying to be a reporter. They were just high school kids, but they were mature, sensible kids. No need to worry about them. They were in control. They knew what they were doing. Before they made love, he told her that she was the first girl he had ever been with. He was the first for her, too, and so they weren't worried about something like AIDS. Pregnancy was their only fear and since they were mature and sensible, they were careful - eventually.

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Spiritual poverty & disrespect for life are causes of violence

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I used to think it was congestion that made people mean. People living too close to one another. People squeezed into tiny apartments. People made to share small rooms. But it isn't that at all. People huddle together in tents and rooms and apartments all over the world, and most don't wind up killing one another with guns or with knives, or the way many of us do in small, hurtful ways.

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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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