This train's got the dismaying railroad blues

/
This train's got the dismaying railroad blues

I spoke - or wrote - too soon. Sunday I praised Amtrak. Today I have to eat my words. Sunday I said my ride to New York late last week was convenient and comfortable and quick. Today I report that my ride back from New York Sunday evening was none of the above. I should have known we were in trouble when we didn't pull out of Penn Station at 4:55 p.m. as scheduled, but started heading south instead. Seems there was a stalled train on our track so we had to take another track. No problem, we'd make up the lost time.

Read More

Retiree stuck with SS error

/
Retiree stuck with SS error

It arrived among her Christmas cards, a dunning letter informing Mary Dowd of Somerville that Social Security had made a mistake, and that she, not Social Security, was going to have to pay for this mistake. "We are writing to give you new information about the retirement benefits which you receive," the letter began, "how we paid you $ 7,874 too much in benefits [and] how you can pay us back. You should refund the overpayment within 30 days."

Read More

Didn't beauty used to come from within?

/
Didn't beauty used to come from within?

Of course I read every word of Boston magazine's cover story, "Do You Need A Facelift?" The question seemed personally addressed to me. I hate the lines on my face and my droopy eyelids and the age spots on my hands and the creeping invisibility that comes with age. And I envy all the women I know who have had surgery. They look young and taut and confident.

Read More

Living 'Angela's Ashes' was more painful than book, movie

/
Living 'Angela's Ashes' was more painful than book, movie

The worst thing about the movie "Angela's Ashes" isn't that it's a bad film. That it's too long and grim and plodding and depressing, and that it's an indictment of the Catholic Church in Ireland and the Irish themselves doesn't matter. It's only a movie. It'll be gone from conversation and the big screen in a few weeks and relegated to video stores a few months later.

Read More

Christmastide's yet to ebb

/
Christmastide's yet to ebb

Two weeks until Valentine's Day and I still have my Christmas decorations up. We're not talking a few decorations, a snowman here and a poinsettia there. We are talking Christmas from head to toe, the creche, the garland, holly, wreaths, the lighted Christmas scene, the collection of Santas. We are talking cards still taped to the walls. Only the fa-la-las are missing.

Read More

There's beauty in sundowns and old age

/
There's beauty in sundowns and old age

JUPITER, Fla. - At a friend's condo, ten stories above the ground, we are transported from winter to summer. The condo is all glass and balcony, the indoors like the outdoors only with comfortable furniture. Our bedroom faces east. The kitchen faces west. For the four days we are here, we wake up early every morning to watch the sun rise and hurry back each evening to see it set.

Read More

Working class works harder to pay more for entertainment

/
Working class works harder to pay more for entertainment

In the words of my good friend Anne King, who owns a hair salon, not a baseball team: "It boggles the mind." Derek Jeter, the 25-year-old Yankee shortstop is about to sign a seven-year $ 118.5 million contract and one can only wonder, has this country gone mad? Money doesn't fall from the sky nor does George Steinbrenner have a printing press in his office cranking out whatever he needs to keep his players happy. There's only so much hard cash in this world and when ballplayers get fat, other people - people with real jobs - get taken.

Read More

Kids know 'The Look' is still around

/

I thought THE LOOK had gone the way of penny candy and flavor straws. "What look?" I expected people to say when I asked about it. But instead there was all this nodding and smiling and instant recognition. "Oh, I know THE LOOK" and "No one could give THE LOOK like my mother." And "You know what? My mother still gives me THE LOOK."

Read More

A light dusting of snow seems to bring out quite a few flakes

/
A light dusting of snow seems to bring out quite a few flakes

God forbid that Conolrad alert is ever for real. Barely a dusting of snow, and civilization as we know it caved Thursday morning. The ground was hardly wet when traffic skidded to a stop. I think we've all gone soft. I counted four abandoned cars on a four-mile stretch of Interstate 95 before 9 a.m. You could see the white lines on the road, there was that little snow. And you could see for a mile. This was not a whiteout. This was snow, pretty white crystals falling from the sky, not fallout from a nuclear bomb.

Read More

Shame's out; only celebrity matters

/

What has happened to shame?

Isn't anyone ashamed anymore? I know embarrassed is still around (see our president). And humiliated (see Peter Blute). And sorry because people (even Jane Swift, finally) are generally sorry when they get caught doing not quite the right thing. (There is, of course, no really wrong thing these days.) As for shame, it's a word so out of use that it will soon have "archaic" next to it in the dictionary. I can imagine a child a few years from now picking up an old book and reading, "He hung his head with shame" and thinking shame must have been some kind of heavy trinket people used to wear in the old days.

Read More

Frankie's snowman built with love

/
Frankie's snowman built with love

Michelle and Victor Clerico speak in whispers because sound hurts their son's ears and they touch him gently because pain comes with even the lightest touch. Frankie is 5 and handsome with thick red hair and smooth pale skin and a heart as big as he is small. He tells his parents that when he dies he's going to Heaven and that God is going to give him wings. He tells his little sister: "Don't be sad. When I'm in heaven you won't be able to see me but I'll keep an eye on you."

Read More

Codman center can celebrate its work, plans

/
Codman center can celebrate its work, plans

I never lived in Codman Square yet in every sense of the phrase, I grew up there. I was 11 and in the seventh grade, a commuter student at St. Mark's in Dorchester and as lonely as I would ever be. That's when I discovered the square and the library that overlooked it. Every day when the neighborhood kids went home to lunch and the other commuters ate their waxed paper-wrapped sandwiches in the gloomy auditorium, I walked up the hill past Girl's Latin to the Codman Square library.

Read More

Reaching 30

/
Reaching 30

He isn't all that old. And neither am I. That's what I've been telling myself. And I'm right, if I compare myself to Mrs. Lamb, who a few months ago flew from New York City, where she lives, to California to help celebrate  her son's 70th birthday.

"Did you dream when you were a little girl playing dolls that you'd ever have a 70-year-old son never mind be around to help him blow out the candles…

Read More

All aboard for yet another all-too-quick holiday season

/
All aboard for yet another all-too-quick holiday season

As if life weren't fast enough. Here it comes. A giant, speeding runaway locomotive, and what do you know? It's playing "Jingle Bells" and heading right toward us. What's our choice? We can stand our ground and get clobbered by the thing. Or we can take a leap, grab on and become human hood ornaments clinging to umpteen tons of metal and steel barreling along a set of tracks that lead directly to . . . Christmas Day. Some choice. How'd we get here, anyway?

Read More

Saying goodbye to childhood

/

I take the trophies off my daughter's bookshelf, earned in dance and gymnastics and softball, and wrap them in newspaper and put them in a box and write on the box in Magic Marker, "Julie's trophies." Then I do the same with the plaques on her wall and the dolls on her dresser and the stuffed animals on her bed and her schoolbooks and notebooks and photographs and Disney figurines.

I am cleaning out my youngest daughter's room, packing away her things because it is time. She doesn't live here anymore. I am converting her bedroom into a sitting room, taking down her posters and repainting the walls, emptying her bureau and desk drawers of all her childhood things to make room for new things.

Read More

There's No Way to Avoid Being a Molly Coddler

/

Here's what happens when I don't pay attention to my dog, Molly. She crawls under the kitchen table and eats paper. Constant attention is what she needs and constant attention is what she demands and since I am only human, I falter sometimes. And she makes me pay for it. Just now, for example, I was at the table reading the paper and thereby ignoring her. So she…

Read More