The phrase has taken a beating in the last few weeks.
Say the words, "family values" and your commercial value plummets. It's safer to be snide, easier to drag out Ozzie and Harriet and sneer, "Yah, but look what happened to them!" It's far more fashionable to denigrate the notion of family than to think about what family really is.
Family is not Ozzie and Harriet.
Read MoreThis is what my obstetrician said about anesthesia: "Don't worry. When the time comes, I'll take care of you. That's my job," he assured me, back in the days before Lamaze and birthing classes and videotaped births. I was only 22. I was pregnant for the first time. Everything I knew about medicine I'd learned on "Dr. Kildare." I believed my doctor…
Read MoreIt isn't a cloud over her head. Nothing so buoyant, so graceful, so small. It's a weight that she carries. But not like stone. Stone doesn't wrap itself around you; stone doesn't bleed. She carries the weight of a child, her child, 25 pounds, 36 inches, 22 months old.
He had blond hair and a tinkly laugh, and he grew in her womb and even when she was nine months pregnant and heavy, her stomach huge, she felt light compared to how she feels now. Now even her fingernails feel heavy on her hands.
Read MoreThe 21st Century is not a typical newspaper. It isn't full of murders, thefts, fires, scandals, betrayals, bankruptcies and national and international conflicts.
It is instead a kind of journal, an introspective and reflective compilation of essays, stories,letters, poems, reviews, photos and cartoons written and captured by teen-agers throughout New England.
Each month when the paper arrives, I look through it and think: This stuff is good. These kids can write. They can take pictures. They're aware. They think. They worry. They care.
Read More"Take a right when you leave the building," a stranger told her. "That's a right. You don't want to go left. It's not a safe part of town."
Not safe. Not white. The thought is automatic. She turns right, runs along the street, comes to an intersection. Two cars have collided. Three black men are arguing. She thinks: I am going to get caught in crossfire? I am crazy? They are just talking. She continues running, comes to a track. Nearly a dozen people are on the track, all of them black. She joins in.
Read More"Life in the Ghetto" is a non-fiction children's book, written and illustrated by 13-year-old Anika D. Thomas. You read it and you think it's horror fiction. It can't be true. You don't want it to be true.
On the front cover against a background of coloring-book red bricks, is a child's drawing of a girl's face. The girl in the drawing is crying.
On the back cover is a photograph of the author standing in front of her red-brick home. The windows behind her are boarded up. Trash litters the ground. But the steps to her apartment are clean.
Anika is smiling in the picture, but it is fake, a smile-for-the-camera pose. Her arms are folded and her eyes avoid the camera's lens.
Read MoreAll they want is to get their message to the public.
A cop called to the scene of a fatal car crash, who has to knock at yet another door and tell one more mother, father, husband, wife, that their loved one is dead, doesn't want to do this anymore, wouldn't have to do this with such frequency, if only people would wear seat belts.
His message is this: People don't have to die in car crashes. People don't have to be seriously injured.
Read MoreI am writing this 23 hours before my son's college graduation. I am sitting in my office, surrounded by the usual clutter, wondering how it is possible that I am not close to being ready for an event for which I've had 22 years to prepare…
Read MoreNewsweek's cover story this week is about the riots in Los Angeles. There's a two-page picture-spread of the city's destroyed buildings. A couple of pages are dedicated to political analysis. There's a section on race and crime, a page about the ethnic diversity of L.A., a page about welfare, a page highlighting George Bush, another homing in on Peter Ueberroth and three pages which, in Newsweek's own words, offer a "close-up look at life and death on one city block."
Ending the piece, on the final page, is a list of the names and the races of the 54 men, women and children killed in the riots. At the top right corner there's a color photo of DeAndre Harrison, 17, dressed in a white suit, his hands folded in front of him, lying in his coffin.
Read MoreIt has been a long time since I awakened to the sounds of cartoons in my house. Years ago there was always a child up before me, roosting in front of the TV when I came downstairs, watching the "Smurfs" or "Gummy Bears" or some other early morning show.
These days my children sleep as late as they can and the TV remains silent. I haven't seen a cartoon in years.
Read MoreThe 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…
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