July arrives this week. July. Impossible. March April May June That’s how long we have spent inside obeying the rules. Having our groceries delivered. Washing doorknobs. Disinfecting counters and floors and packages. Staying 6 feet apart from anyone not under our roof. Staying 6 feet apart even from the people we love…
Read More"May I always put the needs of others before my own. May I so love my family, friends, and co-workers that they see only Your goodness in me. May Your love and Your light shine through in everything I do." - A prayer for growing spiritually. Beth Spence Cann may never have said this prayer. It's Catholic and she was Congregationalist. But she lived it. She put the needs of others before her own. It was the best thing about her. And, in the end, it was the worst. She was murdered two weeks ago by a man she tried to save…
Read Moret's eight in the morning and my husband and I are talking about laying stones around the periphery of the garden, big stones, more boulder than brick, in an effort to keep the dirt in and the rabbits out. It's a sensible plan, except for my worry about the little kids who cut through the garden and race down its slope. "Maybe stones are a bad idea," I say to my husband. "What if the kids fall?" "Maybe living near a street is a bad idea," he says, meaning you can't protect children from everything…
Read MoreIt is not a beach book. It is not funny like "Marley & Me" or intriguing like "Beach Road" or trendy like all the Whitey Bulger books now suddenly in print. It is, no doubt about it, totally incompatible with summer and sand and sea air laced with Coppertone and flimsy bathing suits and cups full of lemonade. "Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust" is exactly what you don't want to read on a summer day. Which is why it's not on any summer reading list that I've come across. But here is why it should be.
Read MoreThe mother is calm because she needs her daughter to be. The mother is the leader. She can lead her daughter back to the night that changed their lives, or she can take her hand and walk her toward tomorrow.
She chooses tomorrow.
After the hearing, when the boys who sexually assaulted her then 15-year-old finally admitted what they had done, the mother went to a store and bought her daughter a small box and said, ``Put all your bad memories in here. It was one night of your life. It's not your whole life. You have a choice. To let it ruin you or to let it go.''
Read MoreAll families have their disagreements. This one - between Herald columnist Beverly Beckham and her father Lawrence Curtin, a retired MDC Police officer, over a bill now being considered on Beacon Hill - we think is worth sharing with our readers.
Read MoreI'm looking for someone to blame. If I can blame someone or something, then I can put the death of 13-year-old Samore Vassel out of my head and get on with the pretense that life is manageable, and we can keep the wolves from our doors.
Samore Vassel lived in Dorchester with his father and younger brother and sister. Last week he was in Brooklyn, visiting his mother, when he was shot and killed. The boy had told his mother he was going to a movie with a friend. But he and his buddy went off to meet a couple of girls instead.
Read MoreYou don't have to come to New York to see "Blood Brothers," the hit London musical about twins separated at birth, one raised with money, one raised without. The story's an old, familiar one. It has been playing for centuries in cities and towns all over the world. The chasm between the haves and the have nots has always been the Great Divide.
And the chasm is getting wider.
Read MoreThere is no anger in Virginia Suozzo's voice. There's pain, sorrow, even bewilderment.
But no rage.
Her 25-year-old sister, Dawn, was killed last weekend, shot in the head as she walked into their parent's house with her boyfriend, Mitch, and her 12-year-old nephew, Michael.
Dawn Brown grew up in a nice, safe Wollaston neighborhood with four sisters and a brother. The family remains close. All were at their parent's Royal Street home last weekend because Kimberlee Brown, 23, is getting married in August, and last Saturday was the ritual wedding shower.
Read MoreSo what is the American media telling the American public about the agreement - worked out with Congress - of four major broadcast networks to voluntarily provide warnings prior to violent television shows beginning in the fall?
"The networks' new parental advisories are almost pathetically beside the point," writes Kurt Andersen in "Time."
"All they're doing is applying a Band-Aid. It's just a sham," says Dr. Carole Lieberman, a psychiatrist who heads the National Coalition on Television Violence, in "Newsweek."
Read MoreIt is an idea born of frustration, holding parents criminally accountable for their children's violent actions. But Mayor Ray Flynn, fed up with violence, as are we all, is advocating just that: punishing parents who fail to keep guns out of their children's hands.
Last week he ordered Boston Police Commissioner Mickey Roache to convene a task force to draft legislation that would penalize parents whose children carry guns. Should the plan win final approval, it would affect only those living within city limits.
Read MoreTodd was playing in a yard. Kristen was jogging on a country road. Michael was driving to work. Chris was driving home from work. Lisa was getting in her car. Michelle was crossing the street. All of them children. All of them alive one minute, dead or soon to be dead the next.
Christopher Baldwin, 19, back home in Somerset after his first year of college, was rollerblading last Sunday night when he was killed. Police say a 1985 Camaro struck him from behind, pitched him onto the car's roof and hurled him into a stone wall.
Read MoreAnd on it goes. The news in brief. Three stories, six short paragraphs on page 18 last Friday, tell more about life in America today than all the front page headlines combined.
A 19-year-old Roxbury man was hospitalized in serious condition after an unknown gunman fired at least 11 shots at him, striking his chest, stomach, buttocks and both legs. The victim was taken to Boston City Hospital. The gunman fled in a black Camaro.
Read More"Before and After." It's a book I haven't been able to get out of my head.
Before and after. It's how we mark our lives. The befores and afters are turning points. Before we got married. After we got married. Before someone got sick. After she got sick. Before he died. After he died.
Something comes from without, something good or bad, and permanently changes the structure within. And forever after there is a division between then and now.
Read MoreIt's a wonder the news didn't break on the business pages: "Violence Has Miami Tourists Wary. Florida's Top Industry Fears a Deadly Image."
A mark, a yen, a buck, a pound - it's these that make the world go 'round.
Read MoreThey come and they go - the murdered and the murderers. They fill the front page for a day or two. They lead the nightly news. And then they disappear.
The next day brings different faces, but the same story, the same tragedies.
You think, at the time, I will remember this one. I will remember Kimberly Ray Harbor and Charles Serjeant and Melissa Benoit and Robyn Dabrowski for the rest of my life.
Read MoreIt wasn't fear this night. It was more subtle.
It was dark and late and I didn't know the neighborhood. I was in Providence. What did I know about Providence? The walk from the theater to the parking lot was just two blocks, but who knew what lurked on those blocks?
So I asked someone to walk me to my car. I felt foolish making the request. And yet, I wouldn't have walked alone.
Read MoreUsually I read these things and take them for what they are: a warning that once I would have memorized, but that now I just peruse. I don't have little kids anymore. I don't need to worry about toy safety.
But the story was about Fisher Price's Little People and though it has been years since I picked up the cow and put him back in his barn, and arranged the plastic children in their swings, I finished the article because of all the toys my children had, Fisher Price Little People were my favorite. Even the words on a printed page evoke nostalgia.
Read MoreYou have to see this through three sets of eyes.
There's Frankie Rodriguez, 19, hot stuff, a right-handed pitcher last season for the Red Sox' Single-A Carolina League affiliate in Lynchburg, Va. Scouts look at him and see the majors. His career prospects are soaring. He can taste success.
Of course, he attracts fans. Young, pretty girls cheer him on the field and wait for him after the game. He has his choice. On the night of Aug. 24, he gives a pair of girls who've followed him from game to game all summer long, a ride home. One of the girls says she doesn't want to go home, that she'd rather go to Rodriguez's apartment instead. When she gets there, she asks her friend to leave Rodriguez's bedroom so that they can have sex. Afterward, he drives both girls home.
Read MoreI expected him to be angry, furious, out of control. I expected him to be screaming and yelling "Why."
I should have known better. I have never seen him angry. Wounded, puzzled, defeated, yes. But I have never seen hate in his eyes.
Not the first time I met him, shortly after his daughter's death, when I drove to his house and sat on his couch and looked through albums filled with photos of a beautiful, smiling little girl.
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