You don't expect to return to a place 35 years later and find it better than you remembered. Children create castles of cardboard, make creatures of sand, watch clouds and see parades floating by. Children are naturally fanciful.
Adults glance at a cloud-laden sky and think: Rain.
Read MoreThe reason that pigs wallow in mud is because their skin is fair and thin and the hair covering their bodies is sparse and offers little protection from the sun. During the day, pigs burrow in the ground to keep cool. At night they find a stream or a puddle and clean themselves. There is a purpose for what they do.
What, I wonder, is our purpose?
Read MoreI thought I remembered it exactly: my father taking the ceramic dog-bank down from the chest where it sat every day of the year; my mother shaking quarters and dimes and nickels onto the chenille bedspread in their room; the three of us dividing and piling and counting.
Get a knife, they would tell me when the dog had expelled its final coin. I would run into the kitchen and return with a dull blade and poke it through the slit on the top of the dog's head and dig out dollars that were stuck inside, that could be felt more than heard. When the bank was empty, we held our breath and let our eyes savor the piles that stood like silver volcanos on the spread.
Read MoreHe isn't allowed to talk to the press. The rules forbid it and if he breaks the rules he will lose his job and then where will he be?
But where will he be if he holds his tongue and keeps his job and nothing changes? Will he end updead one night, murdered by one of the punks who murder him now in small ways, who hurl insults at him, who threaten him, spit at him, drop garbage in his lap and sucker-punch him for the thrill of it?
Read MoreEveryone 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.
Read MoreThis 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.
Read MoreI didn't even notice it. I was sitting there watching the summer premiere of "Beverly Hills 90210" with my two daughters, one 15, one 20, when the 20-year-old exploded.
"Did you ever notice how the only ones on this show with a life are the guys? They have jobs. They have interests.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreI used to play this game all the time. I used to excel at it: I can't do this because I don’t have that. For example I used to tell myself, I can’t write because I don't have a typewriter. That was my reasoning when I was 14.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreIt'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.
Read MorePROUT'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.
Read MoreAlready 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.
Read MoreI 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.
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