Baseball, robins, neighbors announce arrival of spring

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Baseball, robins, neighbors announce arrival of spring

It snowed Friday, horrid stuff, and it's a bit chilly today but tomorrow is the first day of spring. And I know it's on its way because Wednesday I saw my first sign: neighbor Al outside with his wheelbarrow, working away. Forget crocuses and robins. There he was, my very own harbinger, across the street in his bright yellow hat (a hard plastic thing he's had since he lived in Quincy, he once explained), light aqua jacket with a little pink trim, (very colorful), blue jeans and sneakers and work gloves, rake in one hand, shovel in the other, scooping up a winter's worth of dead leaves…

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Nephew calls and Milton mom lands in movie

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Nephew calls and Milton mom lands in movie

She is not your typical movie star. She sings in the choir at St. Elizabeth's in Milton, MA. . She works in the advertising department at The Boston Globe. When her husband died at 34, she had four children, aged 1, 5, 7 and 8. The 7-year-old suffered seizures and permanent mental impairment from an inoculation. He died two years later.

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No time to stop to let a funeral drive on by

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No time to stop to let a funeral drive on by

I cut her some slack, the not-so-young woman who gave me the finger and mouthed the companion epithet. I thought, OK, maybe she's from another country and doesn't know the rule about funeral processions having the right of way. Maybe this cortege of cars with headlights on in the middle of a sunny day, funeral flags on each roof, was a new experience for her.

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Love That Grows with Time Carries a Much Sweeter Tune

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I know that if I looked in the plastic storage box under the bed, I'd find Valentine's Day cards I sent to my husband when we were first married. I must have sent him valentines in the beginning.I sent him all kinds of cards back then: "Missing you," "Thinking of you," "There's no one like you."It didn't matter that his birthday was the day before Valentine's Day and that his birthday card and Valentine's Day card would say the same thing.

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This train's got the dismaying railroad blues

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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.

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Retiree stuck with SS error

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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."

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Didn't beauty used to come from within?

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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.

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

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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.

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Christmastide's yet to ebb

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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.

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There's beauty in sundowns and old age

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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.

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Working class works harder to pay more for entertainment

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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.

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Kids know 'The Look' is still around

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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."

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

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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.

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Shame's out; only celebrity matters

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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.

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Frankie's snowman built with love

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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."

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Codman center can celebrate its work, plans

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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.

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