She’s Setting Her Sights on Al

/
She’s Setting Her Sights on Al

I 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 More

These kids give of themselves

/

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.'

Read More

Fear Gets in the Way of Helping Those in Need

/

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 More

Rest in peace? Not any more

/

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.

Read More

Mother's warning saved her life

/
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.

Read More