My daughter answers the phone, 'Hello? This is the winter of our discontent.’ 'It's from the movie 'Reality Bites,'' she explains. I remember it as an old John Steinbeck novel.
The point is the same. This is the winter of our discontent. Fifteen snowstorms, nearly 90 inches of the rotten stuff; frigid cold, burst pipes, leaky roofs, huge heating bills, snow days…
Read MoreI have to put on my glasses to see out the window these days. It's a sign of age, I know. Snooping probably is, too, but I've always done this. Lately I'm just enjoying it more. That's because Al lives across the street - Al and his wife Katherine. I don't see Katherine all that much. Most days she's at her daughter's, babysitting her granddaughter. Al is the one I see outside, no matter what the season, a whirling dervish powered by…
Read MoreI've saved the clipping for years A minor British stage actress died ages ago while I was visiting London and a newspaper dedicated nearly a quarter of a page to a remembrance of her life. It's a great obituary, so typical of the British. They don't just tell you that someone…
Read MoreA senior in college sends me a story she wrote. What do you think, she asks. Is it good enough? Am I good enough? An 80-year-old mails me an essay. 'I know it needs work. I know it could be better,' he explains. 'What do you think?'
I think that my opinion shouldn't matter…
Read MoreGregory J.P. Godek, Boston's very own love guru, who taught a course in romance at the Boston Center for Adult Education for 10 years and authored "1001 Ways to be Romantic" plus "1001 More Ways to be Romantic," has published yet another romance book - just in time for Valentine's Day.
Read MoreI 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.'
Read MoreDamir Vrankic is 30 years old. He moved into a rented apartment in Allston last week. He has a bed, a table and two chairs. He owns a couple of changes of clothes and a watch someone gave him.
He doesn't have a car or a job. His family and friends live an ocean plus half a continent away. He has met a few people in Boston…
Read MoreThey're 16, sophomores in high school. Last time I saw them they were freshmen. He wore braces. She wore her hair long and loose like a child's. They sat on opposite ends of a long table. She talked about poetry and plays. He talked about school. They hardly noticed each other.
Now they hardly notice anyone else…
Read MoreA 75-year-old New Hampshire woman who jumped out of her car just seconds before a train demolished it last Monday, was quoted as saying, 'All I thought was, thank God. My blood pressure was sky-high. I was shaken and cold, but these things happen…
Read Morehe 22-year-old came home from work sick the other day, collapsed on the family room couch, turned on Maury Povich then yelled for me. 'You've got to come here, Mom. Now. You're not gonna believe this.’
I didn’t.
The subject of the day was phone sex. Phone sex, in case you…
Read MoreShe buys me a package of 'Good and Plenty,' my favorite candy, because she knows I'm blue. 'Here you are,' she says fresh from the outdoors, the cold still clinging to her. 'I thought these would make you feel better.'
And they do. Candy makes me feel like a kid again.
'The doctor will give you a lollipop…
Read MoreI've had 'The Principles of Fighting the Blahs' stick-pinned to the bulletin board above my computer for months. I knew I'd need them some day. I'm looking at them now because 'some day' arrived Wednesday.
Remember Wednesday? More snow…
Read MoreSomeday, when it's a movie of the week or a feature film, the world will finally shed tears for the children of Sarajevo. If the movie were showing now, it might make a difference. The war might stop. Thousands of children might get a chance to grow up without missing limbs. Thousands more might simply get a chance to grow up.
Read MoreThis 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.
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