Here's a dad who sets the standard for sharing, caring

/

Ah, yes, the good old days. Dad worked 10, 12, 14 hours, came home, sat down, read the paper, ate dinner, took out the rubbish, shoveled snow in the winter, cut the grass in the summer, and gave the final word in all important decisions.

Your father will be home in 10 minutes. I want you to put your books away, now.

You better watch your step, young man. Don't let your father catch you talking like that.

How different things are now. The monarchy is dead. Democracy rules. Father is no longer a figurehead. Fathers father.

Read More

Victims always pay the price in system that mocks justice

/

Anger is self-destructive. You have to let go of it. You have to get past it. That's what psychiatrists say.

Priests say it, too. And ministers and rabbis. Turn the other cheek. Hate the sin but love the sinner. Forgive.

Ten years ago, I read "Victim" by Gary Kinder. It told the story of Cortney Naisbitt, 16, the youngest son of Carol and Byron Naisbitt, a sophomore at Utah's Ogden High School. On the afternoon of April 22, 1974, Cortney flew solo for the first time. Flying was his passion. Soloing had been the culmination of a dream.

Read More

Crash survivor is living proof that seat belts save lives

/

"19-year-old survives car crash" the headlines should have read, because his not dying miraculous. But it wasn't news. Surviving never is. People walk away from car crashes every day.

But Erickson shouldn't have. He fell asleep at the wheel while driving home from Boston on the VFW Parkway. His Toyota pickup truck careened over an embankment, ploughed into trees, spun around and landed back on the park-way facing the wrong direction. The truck is history. Erickson survived without a scratch.

People say he was lucky. But he was more than lucky. He was smart. He was wearing a seat belt. The seat belt saved his life.

Read More

This play taught its performers joy of harmony

/

There is not even an attempt to keep them quiet. They swarm into Concord's Alcott School auditorium, at 10 o'clock on a Friday morning, all of them happy because they're missing something - arithmetic or social studies or science; most of them chatting, a few of them shouting. The din is festive, chirpy, happy, full of kids' sounds.

Read More

Bush was right: We must revive `family values'

/

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 More

Justice hard to find for DUI victims

/

It 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 More

Special newspaper needs a few pennies for kids' thoughts

/

The 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

Good folks win on a typical day

/

"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

13-year-old's book brings ghetto life into focus

/

"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 More

They just want to save lives - seat belts

/

All 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 More

We are forgetting the true victims of Los Angeles

/

Newsweek'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 More

TV violence becomes the norm in '92

/

It 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 More

Weld policy hurts the elderly

/

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 More

This division can't continue

/

For 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 More

Uplifting book about living tells us to enjoy today

/
Uplifting book about living tells us to enjoy today

William 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 More