These kids give of themselves

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I open the door expecting to hear laughter and chatter, the usual noises that accompany a group of young people. But they are quiet. Some are sitting in chairs; others are sprawled on the floor. Only a few are talking, and that's in a whisper. After some questions, they loosen up. Still you can feel their apprehension. It's justified. Most have never given blood before.

'I'm a big wimp. I hate needles,' Bob Smith admits. He gave blood last year and passed out. Needles, he says, have that effect on him. 'But anything you can do, you know?' Kerry Jacobs groans that she's 'a baby,' too. Ashley Dizel confesses she's 'a little nervous.' Phaly Walker just smiles and says, 'I'm really not nervous at all.'

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Fear Gets in the Way of Helping Those in Need

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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…

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Rest in peace? Not any more

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Respect 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.

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Mother's warning saved her life

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Mother's warning saved her life

It 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.

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With all we know, how can we let the Bosnia killings continue?

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The 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.

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This Love Goes On and On

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I 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…

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