Looking for someone to blame

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t shouldn't have happened. This is an unarguable fact. Julie Tobin, of West Roxbury, should be alive, not dead.

She was killed on Sept. 6, 1987. The 17-year-old had spent the afternoon at a family reunion of a friend held at Norwood Country Club. Shortly after midnight, she left the reunion on foot and was standing in the breakdown lane of Route 1 talking to some friends in a van when she suddenly ran around the front of the van and onto the road. She was hit by a car and died the next day.

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Children are dying of moral neglect

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The juxtaposition is what struck me. On the front page of The Patriot Ledger last week was a photograph of two women comforting a crying child. The child, 5 years old, had been in a Texas elementary school when a student's father, allegedly upset over his son's grades, burst into the school and began shooting.

Next to this photo was a local story headlined "Schools get tough, suspend more kids." The gist of the article was that public schools are failing kids by suspending them from class. Discipline, state officials said, is getting in the way of learning.

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A warped society believes Woody's selfishness is OK

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So now all of a sudden it's Mia who's the bad guy, Mia who has all the problems, Mia who's to blame for the Woody/Mia/Soon-Yi triangle.

This seems to be the latest theory. Why would anynormal woman adopt so many children? Why would any normal woman adopt children with handicaps? Mia Farrow cannot possibly be drawn to these chilren. She cannot possibly enjoy her huge brood. It has to be an act.

Therefore she cannot be what she appears to be.

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Denial only makes it worse

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They don't want to believe it. Or if they believe it, they want to forget.

"Why do you have to keep bringing this up? Why do you continually talk about it? It does no good. It's over. It's in the past. Why can't you just get on with your life?"

They don't understand why at birthdays and holidays and christenings and baptisms, she continues to arrive late - after he's gone. They don't understand why she refuses his gifts, why she's still in therapy, why she has night sweats. They don't understand why sometimes in the middle of the day, when it all comes back to her, she sits and sobs.

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Fathers and daughters: Woody Allen's abuse

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There is no room for sarcasm or double entendres or psychoanalytical babble with this one. Woody Allen is slime. End of story.

If Allen, who is proof positive that long-term analysis is lethal to mental health, had fallen in love with some youngster he met on a playground, it would be one thing. An aberration, perhaps. Distasteful. Definitely irresponsible. But young girls are exploited by old men every day. The world would have yawned at the news.

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Games and delays are finally over for all in tot's death

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The mood was different Thursday. The defense was contrite instead of confrontational. The game was over. No more winning through intimidation. No more delays and distortions. No more referring to the Oct. 16, 1990, death of 22-month-old Todd Slocum as "an incident which is said to have occurred."

Last month, Robert Donahue pleaded guilty in Middlesex Superior Court to manslaughter, motor vehicle homicide, operating under the influence of alcohol and operating to endanger. One would like to believe that Donahue admitted his guilt, however belatedly, to ease his conscience.

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Real life fear is worst of all

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It's the story I hear most often. I will be listening to someone tell me about a day spent at the beach 30 years ago, a glorious day. Everything was perfect until.

And suddenly I will be listening to a different story, a story stained with bewilderment and betrayal and tears. I will be talking to a woman whose husband drinks - he didn't always drink, he used to be a nice guy. You should have known him when.

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America '92: TV, movies make it a tough place

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In 30 years this country has gone from being a place where you could picnic in the woods, walk the streets at night, cut through an alley, sleep without locking your doors, drive without worrying about getting lost and ending up in a neighborhood where people will kill you, drive without worrying about a boulder crashing through your window, or a bullet smashing through your head, send your child to school without fear that someone will take a shot at him on the bus, or beat him up in the school yard, or knife him in class.

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Victims always pay the price in system that mocks justice

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Anger is self-destructive. You have to let go of it. You have to get past it. That's what psychiatrists say.

Priests say it, too. And ministers and rabbis. Turn the other cheek. Hate the sin but love the sinner. Forgive.

Ten years ago, I read "Victim" by Gary Kinder. It told the story of Cortney Naisbitt, 16, the youngest son of Carol and Byron Naisbitt, a sophomore at Utah's Ogden High School. On the afternoon of April 22, 1974, Cortney flew solo for the first time. Flying was his passion. Soloing had been the culmination of a dream.

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Good folks win on a typical day

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"Take a right when you leave the building," a stranger told her. "That's a right. You don't want to go left. It's not a safe part of town."

Not safe. Not white. The thought is automatic. She turns right, runs along the street, comes to an intersection. Two cars have collided. Three black men are arguing. She thinks: I am going to get caught in crossfire? I am crazy? They are just talking. She continues running, comes to a track. Nearly a dozen people are on the track, all of them black. She joins in.

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We are forgetting the true victims of Los Angeles

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Newsweek's cover story this week is about the riots in Los Angeles. There's a two-page picture-spread of the city's destroyed buildings. A couple of pages are dedicated to political analysis. There's a section on race and crime, a page about the ethnic diversity of L.A., a page about welfare, a page highlighting George Bush, another homing in on Peter Ueberroth and three pages which, in Newsweek's own words, offer a "close-up look at life and death on one city block."

Ending the piece, on the final page, is a list of the names and the races of the 54 men, women and children killed in the riots. At the top right corner there's a color photo of DeAndre Harrison, 17, dressed in a white suit, his hands folded in front of him, lying in his coffin.

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This division can't continue

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For a moment last Wednesday, possibility hung in the air - the possibility for change, for understanding.

You could feel it, like ozone before a storm.

America gasped - black, white America - and while the country held its breath, we were one nation, unified in our horror and outrage and despair.

Virtually no one who had seen the tape of Rodney King could understand how a jury could acquit the police officers who'd kept beating him when he was down. All of America was stunned. If reason had triumphed over rage, if marches had been opted for instead of mayhem, America might have stayed unified. A bridge might have been spanned.

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Life full of `little' adjustments

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Let's see if I have this straight. This is how we must live our lives: We must never talk to strangers, must in fact, walk with our eyes down as if we are deep in thought, while we stride purposefully on our way. Purposefully is the key. We want our body to give out the message: don't mess with us. That's what the experts say.

We must walk on brightly lighted streets in groups, never alone in the dark. We must constantly be on guard. Is there someone behind us? Is that someone too close? Quick, cross the street and walk more purposefully. We must walk alone through parks or alleys or even sparse woods.

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It's time we all got involved

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The contrast is everywhere. It's in the newspapers, in the ads for designer clothes and expensive skin creams laid out right next to reports of American children who go to school hungry.

It's in the landscape, in the sagging tenements that line the edge of American highways, where shiny new cars with deluxe audio systems and cruise control speed indifferently past.

It's in our cities and our towns, people in dress coats walking next to people in rags; the privileged hurrying to the theater and to symphony, the underprivileged going nowhere that isn't free.

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Beware of evil, but be aware of the good in life

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There it is. On my bulletin board. Someone sent it to me. The rules for life. "Share everything. Play fair. Put things back where you found them. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Flush."

I always smile when I read this. Most days I marvel at the wisdom in such brevity. But today I think they were rules for a gentler time.

A woman tells me that her father began sexually abusing her when she was 11 years old.

"Do you mind?" he asked her.

"You're my father," she said.

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Gun lovers blind to consequences

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Nine days ago, Jim Brady, the former White House press secretary who was shot in the head and left permanently disabled by an assassin's bullet intended for President Reagan, was booed off the stage at the University of Nevada by opponents of gun control.

He and his wife, Sarah, had traveled to the school to give a speech in support of gun control. The pair have dedicated their lives to this effort, trying to talk sense into people who look at Jim Brady and think, "poor guy; but that could never happen to me."

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Judge teaches kids some slay victims deserve their fate

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In the movies you root for the underdog. You enjoy seeing the bully put down. When Superman comes back to the diner after he has regained his super strength, and punches the man who pummeled and humiliated him when he was just a man, not Superman, you cheer. When the hobbled and shackled writer Paul Sheldon calls his No. 1 torturer Annie Wilkes "sick' and "twisted," then stuffs paper in her mouth and drops a typewriter on her head, you applaud.

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A tragedy of neglect

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They called him Negron in all the news stories and referred to him as a two-year-old boy. The words "Negron" and "boy" made the crime of his death appear less horrible, almost routine. In fact, the boy was just a baby who, until his death two weeks ago, had always been called Angel.

Words are supposed to be tools which dig out the truth, which allow us to understand one another. But the truth in the short and sad life of Angel Negron, whose foster father, Andrew S. Sesselman has been charged with his death, is that words just got in the way.

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