What's in a name? Plenty it turns out

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Everyone recognized him but no one knew who he was.

"Well-known Quincy man dies unknown," the headline said in Saturday's Patriot Ledger.

The story that followed told of a man who frequented Wollaston's businesses, who, every weekday bought the $1 breakfast special at Newcomb Farms; who, every weekend sat at O'Brien's bakery and drank coffee and ate pastry; who talked with clerks and nodded at passersby and bought scratch tickets at the Hancock Street Pharmacy and even shared, when he won, part of his $400 with the girl who'd sold him his lucky ticket.

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At UMass, cowards and sneaks

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At UMass, cowards and sneaks

This is about stealing that has the state's imprimatur, about a state health care worker who offers students abortion pills, about a University of Massachusetts bursar with a yellow streak up his back, about a health facility that should be shut down, about a situation that should have been exposed months ago. But I didn't want to rock the boat then. I didn't want to put my daughter at risk of not getting into the courses she needs to graduate. I didn't want to embarrass her. I still don't.

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Ignoring the butchery _ again

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The horror gets lost in the words. We've heard them all so many times before.

A city is under siege.

People are starving.

Children are dying.

Grenades are exploding.

This time the place is Sarajevo, host to the Winter Olympics in 1984, now host to soldiers and snipers. When Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe more than a year ago, Yugoslavia did, too. The result is that this country, once a federation of six socialist republics - Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Serbia - is now a mishmash of newly independent republics enmeshed in fighting which has already cost some 50,000 lives.

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Games and delays are finally over for all in tot's death

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The mood was different Thursday. The defense was contrite instead of confrontational. The game was over. No more winning through intimidation. No more delays and distortions. No more referring to the Oct. 16, 1990, death of 22-month-old Todd Slocum as "an incident which is said to have occurred."

Last month, Robert Donahue pleaded guilty in Middlesex Superior Court to manslaughter, motor vehicle homicide, operating under the influence of alcohol and operating to endanger. One would like to believe that Donahue admitted his guilt, however belatedly, to ease his conscience.

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Real life fear is worst of all

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It's the story I hear most often. I will be listening to someone tell me about a day spent at the beach 30 years ago, a glorious day. Everything was perfect until.

And suddenly I will be listening to a different story, a story stained with bewilderment and betrayal and tears. I will be talking to a woman whose husband drinks - he didn't always drink, he used to be a nice guy. You should have known him when.

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On Maine's coast, a bit of peace

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PROUT'S NECK, Maine - I will not carry it home with me this time. It cannot be carried or stored or deposited for some later date. Not any more. I wish it could. These days all I take is the memory.

And so I write down the color of the sky - pink, this morning, with swaths of blue - and the roaring, glubbing, flapping sounds of the sea. I memorize the shape of gulls, study them in flight, listen to their squeals and squawks, notice how they return to the ground soundlessly, like paper planes.

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Loving parents can't save child if tragedy strikes

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Already it's old news, last week's headlines, one more tragedy in a line of never-ending ones.

It wasn't even a lead story. So many people die every day; the death of a small child 3,000 miles away is a huge and horrible personal tragedy for his parents and family and friends.

But it barely affects the people who didn't know him. It may stun us. We may feel for the parents, identify with them, weep for them, but only for a moment. Our grief is temporary.

For that's the way life is. We turn the page. We read another story. We are immersed in our own families, children, worries, responsibilities. Our lives go on.

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Let's get organized _ not!

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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.

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Today's kids are forced to become adults too early

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You 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.

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Court's hate ruling is a crime

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The 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.

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America '92: TV, movies make it a tough place

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In 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.

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

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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.

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Victims always pay the price in system that mocks justice

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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.

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Crash survivor is living proof that seat belts save lives

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"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.

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This play taught its performers joy of harmony

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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.

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