The facts exclude the faces - old, lined, frightened, weary, faces; gums smooth where teeth used to be; thin hair; knotted hands; parched skin; frail, fragile bodies.
The facts ignore the feelings - feelings of people at the end of their lives, dependent upon others, too poor and too ill to take care of themselves.
The facts are terse and cold.
Read MoreI was driving to Beverly a few weeks ago and listening to a tape I'd borrowed from the library, a book tape. The tape "Joshua" was a religious parable, which I hadn't realized when I'd checked it out. It was preachy and overly dramatic and tacky.
But I was on a long drive in a car with a broken antenna, and it was this tape or nothing, so I listened.
Read MoreFor a moment last Wednesday, possibility hung in the air - the possibility for change, for understanding.
You could feel it, like ozone before a storm.
America gasped - black, white America - and while the country held its breath, we were one nation, unified in our horror and outrage and despair.
Virtually no one who had seen the tape of Rodney King could understand how a jury could acquit the police officers who'd kept beating him when he was down. All of America was stunned. If reason had triumphed over rage, if marches had been opted for instead of mayhem, America might have stayed unified. A bridge might have been spanned.
Read MoreWilliam Safire, the New York Times' resident expert in the use of the English language, made a mistake last week. He wrote: "The last time a dying man ran for president of the U.S. was in 1944." This is not true. Franklin Roosevelt WAS dying when he ran in 1944, but so is every man who is running for president now. We are all dying from the moment we are born. We don't like to think about this, but death is our destiny. None of us knows when or how or where we'll die. We don't come with guarantees or promises. We simply are until we are not. To quote an Elton John’s song, we are all "candles in the wind."
Read MoreThey wanted me to write about them.
I said no because I generally don't. Really, where's the story, I thought?
I go into schools now and then and talk about how I got started as a writer. I tell a couple dozen kids that if you do something long enough, if you try hard enough, you eventually get better at it.
Read MoreThe station is WWOR, Channel 9, from New York, now delivered to us through our cable system.
It's not an x-rated station. We don't subscribe to it. It comes free with our basic package, and like most every other TV station, it's packed full of news and talk shows and re-runs.
Last Thursday at 7 a.m. the station showed "James Bond Jr.," followed by "Widget," "Head of the Class," "It's a Living," "Jenny Jones" and "Nine Broadcast Live."
Nine Broadcast Live is the subject of this column.
Read MoreThe new Victoria's Secret catalog arrived sometime last week, but I haven't been able to get my hands on it until now. The men in my house love the thing. They must have a sixth sense, a kind of male E.S.P. Either that or they secretly phone ahead to find out when the catalog is being shipped, because they always know the moment it's in the mailbox, and grab it the second it arrives.
Read MoreTwo Irish jokes:
What's a well-balanced Irishman? A guy with a chip on each shoulder.
What's Irish Alzheimer's? It's when you never forget everything except the grudges.
It's not nice to tell these jokes, I know. They perpetuate a stereotype and make light of a terrible disease.
But the jokes make a point. I've never met an Irish family where everyone gets along.
Read MoreThe ad has been running in newspapers for more than a month now. "Rediscover the Catholic Church." It isn't a bad ad. The words are all in the right places. The intent is clear.
But the message is strained, because the tone is formal and distancing. "More than anything, we can show you how to rekindle your relationship with God. We can show you an approachable God, a merciful God, a God who gladly welcomes those who come back to Him."
Read MoreShe told me, when my children were babies that once I started picking up after them I would never stop. "If he's old enough to get a toy out of a toy box, then he's old enough to put it back when he's done with it," my mother-in-law said.
And I said, "You're absolutely right.”
But when she wasn't around, I didn't heed her advice. I'd look at the mess on the floor, Fisher Price people everywhere, Legos under…
Read MoreIt was just another breakfast. I didn't want to go.
Eight a.m. is too early for small talk and smiles. I enjoy sitting at my kitchen table, reading the paper in silence, then facing the day.
But Karen Schwartzman from the Bank of Boston called and lured me. She said I'd get a chance to meet Margot Stern Strom, who is not only the executive director of Facing History and Ourselves but one of its two founders.
Read Moret must be a byproduct of age. It must develop like a taste for lobster or pate, or like gray hair, slowly, but inevitably. How else to explain it? When I was young I used to hate working in a garden; now I'm old and I love it. Why?
When I was a child, you couldn't lure me outdoors. My mother tried. She bought me a package of bachelor button seeds and a planter at the five-and-ten and brought in from outdoors a pail full of loam and said, "Here, now you can grow your own garden." She must have believed that once I saw life spring forth from seeds I had personally buried in dirt I would be awed and treasure all life that emerged from the ground. But it didn't work that way. I didn't have any interest in the seeds…
Read More"How come you don't write about Molly anymore? Does she still jump on people? Is she still devouring the back steps? Does she still drool?"
McSoley trains dogs. He sent me his book, "Dog Tales" when we got Molly. I read the book, studied it, memorized it; I even tried to follow it. "Yes, Molly still jumps on people," I told Mr. McSoley. "Yes, she still drools and as for the back steps - no, she doesn't eat them anymore but that's because they're practically gone."…
Read MoreThe discussion is philosophical, conducted over dinner and wine.
"Matthew Rosenberg has paid for his crime. Marilyn Abramofsky is wrong to keep attacking him. Rosenberg is not the same person he was 10 years ago. He's changed. Don't you believe people can change?" my friend asks.
Read MoreI have accepted his words and his love, the way an infant accepts food. I've never wondered at them before. His letters have arrived sometimes in clusters, sometimes separated by weeks. I've relished them all. They are breezy, newsy, funny, warm, full of joy and wonder and life. I've shared them with my husband and children and answered some, but not all.
Read MoreYour column in Wednesday's Globe was impassioned and well-written. You know how to squeeze the most emotion from every word. You're good at what you do. But you don't do much good.
You hate too much. Your words divide. They make the chasm between whites and blacks grow just a little wider. They deviate and they deceive.
Read MoreComplaints about New Medico Health Care System of Lynn, the nation's largest chain of head-injury rehabilitation facilities, have led to investigations by the United State's Attorney's office in Boston, the New York State Health Department and a congressional sub-committee. Adelaide Powers is a patient at Lenox Hill, one of New Medico's 36 facilities.
Her voice is a rasp on the phone. "Can you come?" she whispers. "I have things to tell you."
Read MoreWhy? That's what you want to know. You look at the list of names divided into those killed and those who survived the crash of USAir Flight 405 and you think, why?
Why one person and not another? Why does a man die and his wife survive? Is there something that connects the survivors?
If a woman with tickets for a different flighthadn't insisted that her tickets be exchanged, she and her husband would still be alive. If a couple coming back from a cruise had spent an extra day, even a few extra hours, in Florida, they would be alive. If an Ohio surgeon had sat where his wife sat, he would be alive, but she might not be.
Read More"Some of you are saying to yourselves that there is not much that one person can do. But I tell you that together, we can prevail." - Jerry Brown, Oct. 21, 1991, announcement speech.
Politicians dismissed him. The press disparaged him. The pundits - the self-acclaimed experts who make their living telling us what we've just heard and what we should think - totally disregarded him.
Read MoreThey're in there but you don't know how to reach them. You know it. You believe it. You cling to the fairy tale that a kiss - or something like a kiss - will wake them. You cling to everything.
You bring in a stuffed animal, a favorite thing, and you take it and rub it up and down against a cheek.
"Do you know who this is? Can you smell it? Can you feel it?"
And you pray that they can.
Read More
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