Tracey Newhart WILL get into Johnson and Wales. The powers that be will eventually see the light, because the light, in this case, is unflattering and neither the Commonwealth of Massachusetts nor Rhode Island's premier culinary arts school wants to be seen as the bad guy, keeping a young woman who has tried her hardest from fulfilling her dream.
Read MoreThe world goes on without us. In the mountains, where my friend Anne lives, there is the certitude of this. The mountains surround and sustain her. She sees them wherever she goes, in front of her, in her rear view mirror, solid, permanent. She derives peace from them. And a quiet strength...
Read MoreI think you've been kidnapped. I think someone from the school of It's All About Me has commandeered your computer. It must be. I've been reading you since I could read, which makes me certain that you could never have written the response to "Trying to Do the Right Thing" in last Friday's paper. Can we talk about this? What's happening in Los Angeles? Are you at the controls or have you been replaced? Or is it that you've been in L.A. so long that the Me, Myself and I culture has finally worn off on you, too?
Read More"Fred said the world has changed since I left it. Is it true?" Sal asks. Sal has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's Disease. For six years his world has been a hospital room. Every day people bring in news of the world. Every day television supplies images and radio fills in…
Read MoreThe warnings are posted on every piece of gym equipment, at the bottom of a long list of carefully written instructions. They are in clear, dark print and are easy to read: "Attention users: Failure to comply could result in serious injury or even death." Nothing new here. We live in a world full of warnings…
Read MoreWhat makes a child kill? We look for the big reasons: divorce, drugs, a history of being abused, a loaded gun, revenge, despair. But what if there is no big reason? What if it's a thousand little ones?
Read MoreMy sixth-grade teacher, Mr. O'Neil, explained the derivation of the word "salary" way back in 1957, when I didn't make a salary and didn't much care about the salaries of anyone else. He said, out of the blue, the way he said a lot of things, that in Roman times salt was scarce and of such value that Roman soldiers were paid with it. "It was called 'salarium,"' he said. "Salarium became salary."…
Read MoreIt's a story in an old book, not even a story, just a thought for the day kind of thing, written half a century ago, but oh so appropriate for today. "A Needed Reminder" is the title and this is the tale: After the fall of Rome, when conquering generals returned to the city to celebrate their triumph, a slave was assigned to each of them. The sole function of this slave was to crouch in the victorious warrior's chariot and constantly remind the conqueror that the greatest human glory passes quickly…
Read MoreAt 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, two women, one in her 80s, the other half her age, climbed into a maroon Dodge Ram, bowed their heads, asked for God's blessing, then headed over to New England Produce in Chelsea to beg for food. It was a raw, cold morning, and icy underfoot, the mammoth dry dock where vendors sell fruits and vegetables to grocers throughout New England, crowded with men, crates, fork lifts and oversized trucks…
Read MoreThe pretty young woman hobbling out of her apartment, struggling with her crutches and the heavy glass door, put it all in perspective. She was tall, thin and fair with curly brown hair, long legs and her two feet in blue cushioned toeless things that people wear after surgery. She was having a hard time walking, the crutches and the feet things new, the sidewalk slick, the morning cold. I assumed she was a dancer and that tight toe shoes and high-heeled tap shoes were the reason behind whatever had happened to her feet.
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreI 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 MoreIt 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 MoreIn 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 MoreI 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 MoreGod 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 MoreWhat 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 MoreIt's not news that Boston City Councilor Peggy Davis-Mullen is a thorn in the side of Mayor Tom Menino. Their relationship is adversarial. But this isn't a bad thing. In government as in a garden there need to be thorns - prickly someones who don't play a role as in "The Emperor's New Clothes," who aren't always telling the mayor what he wants to hear, who remind him that outside the royal buildings, things are not quite as rich or as rosy as they are inside.
Read MoreMid-winter. Halfway between here and there. Waiting for the snow to fall. Waiting for the snow to disappear. These are strange days. You find things in your refrigerator, cranberry sauce, a few pieces of ham, left over from Christmas. The poinsettias remain in bloom. Christmas wreaths still bedeck more than a few doors. In corners, and under the carpet, stray pine needles hide.
They're props from a play that closed weeks ago. It was a good play, but that was then and this is now. Now it's time to get serious, time for resolutions, for getting focused. Last year is over. A new year has begun.
Read MoreShe doesn't say, "I can't" or "I won't," or "Why me?" She simply doesn't complain. She wakes up in the morning, puts a smile on her face and plays the hand she's been dealt. She has to use a slide board to get from her bed to her wheelchair. The middle-of-the-night transfer is the toughest. It's dark and she's tired and it's a huge effort to shimmy onto the board, position the board onto the wheelchair, ease her body into the chair and wheel out of the bedroom into the bathroom…
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