I bought the book - a small book stuffed with 19th century wisdom on ways to economize - at Sturbridge Village, because when I opened it, there was a suggestion on using ear wax as lip balm and I thought: This is disgusting.
There's got to be a column in it.
And there is, I know. The book would make a great column. But guess what? I can't find it. The book has disappeared.
Read MoreAll they're looking for is courtesy. An acknowledgment that they exist. A polite word. A smile.
"A smile is a frown turned upside down,' went the lyric of a somewhat hokey old song.
Well, hokey or not, the phrase needs resurrecting.
Something needs to be done to make everyday encounters between strangers a little more pleasant.
Read MoreYou sit and listen to kids talk today and it about breaks your heart because they're not kids anymore. They know too much. They've lived too much. They're only 6 or 8 or 12 or 14 and they have adult worries. Their parents are divorced or their mother's an alcoholic or their father's abusive or has a girlfriend or is never home or is always home because he lost his job two years ago and hasn't worked since.
They spend their days in front of TV watching people cheat and lie - on the news, on soap operas, on sitcoms.
Read MoreThe language is weighty and obtuse. It bewilders. It intimidates.
The whole process intimidates. Nine Supreme Court justices, theoretically the smartest people in the country, unanimously decide that a cross burned on the lawn of one of the first black families to move into a Minnesota neighborhood is merely an exercise of free speech, a right of all Americans. And we, ordinary citizens who don't wear robes, who don't sit on the highest court of the land, are made uncomfortable by the decision but feel that within the body of ponderous words, there must be some truth, some noble justification that we simply don't understand.
Read MoreIn 30 years this country has gone from being a place where you could picnic in the woods, walk the streets at night, cut through an alley, sleep without locking your doors, drive without worrying about getting lost and ending up in a neighborhood where people will kill you, drive without worrying about a boulder crashing through your window, or a bullet smashing through your head, send your child to school without fear that someone will take a shot at him on the bus, or beat him up in the school yard, or knife him in class.
Read MoreAh, 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 MoreThe last day of school - summer has begun. No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks.
I wish this were my last day of school. I wish I were 9 or 10 or 11 and had the whole summer off. I want to be bored and hot and suck on ice cubes and read comic books and complain that I have nothing to do.
Read MoreAnger 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"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 MoreYes, there are two sides to every story; and yes, people have problems you'll never know about; and yes, not everyone can walk around wearing a smile.
But really, must these people go into business?
Read MoreThere 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 MoreThe 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.
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