This was the headline that ran on Page 1 Nov. 18 'Helping stranger cost him his life.'
You might remember the story. Keith Willwerth, 22, of Melrose died of massive head injuries after stopping to help move a drunken stranger off a sidewalk near Faneuil Hall. The young man was carrying flowers for his girlfriend when he was attacked and beaten by a group…
Read MoreRespect the dead. It's an old-fashioned concept, an anachronism, perhaps, in an age where there is so little respect for the living.
And yet it was once a rule, close to a commandment. Honor thy father and thy mother. And honor the dead, too. All the dead.
It was why when hearses drove past followed by cars with their lights on, you stopped in your tracks and said a prayer no matter that you didn't know who had died. There was somebody in that hearse. That's all that counted. Somebody who had lived on this earth and loved and been loved by some other somebody was gone. So you bowed your head and whispered to God to have mercy on his soul.
Read MoreIt's happened again. I should have learned by now. I know this. Nothing is forever. Things change. People change. Parents age. Children grow. People get sick. Friends move. Colleagues switch jobs. Schools that you went to get boarded up. Hotels where you once stayed get torn down. The world is in constant flux. And yet, when something…
Read MoreIt would be nice if just once in a while you ran into some fair, thoughtful, truthful, unbiased news stories. But it's all laced with gossip these days. He said. She said. Overheard. Alleged. According to unnamed sources. Witnesses maintain. Or it's inappropriate cleverness, a.k.a. the Bobbitt and the Michael Jackson stories…
Read MoreIt was a book that alerted me, 'Beyond Belief' by Emlyn Williams. I read it when my youngest child was in nursery school. She had a sweatshirt with her name painted on it. After I finished the book, I tossed the sweatshirt in the trash.
'Beyond Belief' is a true story about a man and woman who kidnapped and killed children in Great Britain in the early 1960s. At a carnival one day, they followed a group of young girls and listened as the girls called each other by name. When one was alone, they raced up to her, used her name and told her that something horrible had happened at her home and that they had been sent to get her.
She went with them, and they killed her.
Read MoreYesterday marked the beginning, once again, of 'Ordinary Times.' I noticed the reappearance of the words in church Sunday, a phrase I pondered last summer when the term leaped out and struck me as if I were hearing it for the first time.
The words startled me, affronted me almost back then, because I…
Read MoreThe photograph by Agence France-Presse no doubt will win a Pulitzer prize. It is the face of war, a 77-year-old man, his white hair wild, his eyes wet with tears, his cheeks and forehead scraped and bloodied from shrapnel, holding up a hand that says, "stop" to the photographer, but that also says "stop" to the world.
Mensur Dragnic, the man in the picture, lost his entire family last Monday: his 68-year-old wife; his 49-year-old son; his 42-year-old daughter; his son-in-law, 41; and his two grandchildren; 16 and 10.
Read More`The Chronicle of the 20th Century" lists only one name under "Births" in January 1935. He stands alone: "Elvis Presley, American Rock and Roll Pioneer."
Imagine, Elvis Presley, a pioneer just like Davey Crockett. I used to have a Davey Crockett hat. I used to know all the words to "Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee."
But Elvis? He never did a thing for me.
Read MoreI have to piece together their love story. I know so little of it. I don't know him, and I hardly know her, for I have been privy to only the briefest outline of her life. And yet she inspires me. She's 90 and still in love with her husband - not just fond of him, or devoted to him, or committed to fulfilling an obligation. She's in love. She says his name and her face softens. She tells stories about him and her eyes shine like a girl’s…
Read MoreI was moaning the other day about people who offer their opinions without being asked, and who inevitably begin their diatribe with some negative phrase like, "The problem with so-and-so is ..." or "How could you ..."
For instance:
Read MoreShe will arrive sometime today, having packed up the van with food and gifts and clothing for a couple of days, having strapped five kids - ages 11, 10, 7, 3 and 7 months - into a vehicle with no radio for a three-hour drive. She will pull into the driveway and the children will spill out, the oldest helping the youngest, and they will all be smiling…
Read MoreWe are trying to keep our sense of humor and our priorities straight. We are trying not to let the little things get us down. We are trying to look on the bright side of life. But . . .It's less than two weeks until Christmas and we are behind…
Read MoreWhat you want when you or someone you love is sick is a caring human being on the other end of a telephone line. You don't want voice-mail. ("Press your party's extension, now.") You don't want to be put on hold. You don't want to be told that the doctor returns all phone calls after 5:00 p.m. and doesn't have an opening until March 13. You want someone to listen to you, to advise you, to treat you as if you matter…
Read MoreIt isn't a flawless movie, but it's powerful. "My Life" is about a man, diagnosed with terminal cancer, who decides to make a video for his unborn child so the child will know his father.
The man, who has about four months to live, sets a camera on a tripod, sits in front of it and talks, hesitantly at first, uncomfortable before the mechanical eye.
After a while, the process gets easier and he begins to record everything. He reads a Dr. Seuss book to his unborn son. He teaches him to shave. He demonstrates the correct way to walk into a room, not self-consciously but with confidence.
Read MoreIt was a small ad that ran in the theater section of the New York Times last Thursday. The graphics were simple; nothing clever stood out. Even the words were old, the promotion a cliche: "Cyrano. The Musical. The Greatest Love Of All." And yet it has stuck with me, nagged at me. “The Greatest Love of All?” Most everyone knows the story of Cyrano de Bergerac, a love-struck young man who pens eloquent, romantic letters to the woman he loves, only in another man's name. Because he is ugly, Cyrano fears rejection. Because he doesn't trust in the power of love, Cyrano hides his identity. And so he writes love letters for a handsome man who uses his words and emotions to woe Roxanne.
Read MoreIt's 10 days after the operation and everything is getting back to normal. The hole that opened in the earth has closed, and falling into it is almost - though not quite - a memory. All's well that ends well is what we say, what we repeat, what we believe. My husband is home. He is healing. Life, as we've known it, returns a little more each day to the way it was, to the way we want it to be. That's the goal, getting back to normal, putting the operation behind…
Read MoreThe pain started last December, but he didn't recognize it as pain. He had a funny feeling in his jaw as he danced and he was breathless. So he stopped dancing and muttered to himself that he was 46 and he was getting old.
It happened two months later, again on a dance floor. This time he registered the discomfort, made the association with dancing and modified his behavior. He gave up dancing and the pain went away.
Read MoreHe's a very busy man - too busy buying cars and busy selling cars. He's busy answering the phone, talking to salespeople, filling out forms. He's busy running his very big, very successful local car dealership.
He's not too busy to explain the intricacies of his trade, however.
Read MoreThe stories make headlines, then go away; you don't think of them for more than a few days because there are other stories to read and other issues to ponder, plus life to live, bills to pay, appointments to keep, children to care for, parents to tend to, and on it goes.
But if you consider that the line in the middle of the road that divides traffic is just a line not a barrier; if you acknowledge that the sidewalks on which your children walk to school, and the yards in which they play are only psychologically removed from the roads on which cars travel; if you realize that highway safety is a personal responsibility and not something the state can actually enforce, then you'd remember the stories and work for and demand stricter anti-drunk driving laws, because you'd know just how vulnerable you and every one of the people you love really are.
Read MoreGod help the teachers. I used to teach, a lifetime ago when kids actually had respect for adults. They learned this respect at home. "You do what your teacher tells you," parents said. If a teacher told you to stand in a corner all day, you did. And if your parents found out, they yelled at you, not at the teacher.
Now, of course, kids challenge everything. They know that teachers have no real authority, so they have little respect for them.
This makes teaching difficult.
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