The memories stay put, even if we don't

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The memories stay put, even if we don't

It occurred to me as I was sitting in the Great Hall in Codman Square, Dorchester Thursday morning, a guest at a breakfast celebrating this treasure's 100th anniversary, that a building really is more than brick and wood and everything it takes to hold it together. And it's not just sentiment that draws us back to a place.

Sure, we come back to places to say, ``This is the house where I grew up.'' Or ``This is my old school.'' Or ``This was my library.'' But usually we come back because there's something of ourselves, and others, that was left behind.

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Personal path is best medicine

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Personal path is best medicine

Her baby was 12 hours old. Her husband had gone home to get his parents. Her parents were in the cafeteria. She was with a teenage cousin when a stranger in street clothes - he never introduced himself, never said "Good afternoon, I'm Dr. So-and-So," walked into her hospital room and over to the bassinet and began inspecting the baby. "What are you doing?" the new mother - my daughter - asked.

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Putting our trust in God is a healthy choice

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"Is Religion Good Medicine?" is the question on Newsweek's cover. "God and Health." Is there a connection?

Some experts say yes. Some say no. Prayer works. Prayer doesn't.

In the end, the article says nothing new. But that's no surprise. We pray for the big things. We want the miracle. "Ask and you shall receive." And when we ask and don't get exactly what we beg for, we think, it didn't work. My prayers weren't answered.

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We were all kinder, gentler

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We were all kinder, gentler

It's all going back to the way it was before September 11th. But how can it?

Is this our fate? Court TV and celebrity news and issues we knew four short months ago were a waste of time are still a waste of time.

Thomas Junta has been charged with beating his son's hockey coach, Michael Costin, to death at the Burlington Ice Arena in Reading 18 months ago. This 275-pound man allegedly smashed the head of the 150-pound Costin against the ground until Costin lost consciousness. What more do we need to know?

So why the national coverage? Why the day-to-day dissection of anger gone awry? Why the news updates, the talk-show discussions, the media frenzy about what is indisputably a horrific crime, but not, as some would have it, a trend? Will we be better people for having watched this sideshow?

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Dear Abby misses a beat with answer to 'Trying'

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Dear Abby misses a beat with answer to 'Trying'

I 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?

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Gym rats are born, not made

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Gym rats are born, not made

The new gym rat in the family has been nagging me. He starts even before I open my eyes. "Power Pump is today. You really should go," he says at 5 a.m. The clock radio has just clicked on. The announcer's voice is a whisper because the radio takes time to warm up. Mr. Stretch and Bend doesn't have this problem. I said I'd go to the gym in the spring. Spring has arrived. He has deemed it his duty to get me there…

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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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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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Tragic, trivial share space, help us cope

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Tragic, trivial share space, help us cope

The tragic shares space with the trivial. It's how we cope. It's how we absorb what is: bitter coffee diluted with cream. "Crisis in Kosovo" the computer reports, right next to "Roof leaking? Bank One - Home equity lines. Apply on-line before the flood." "Kosovo Albanians Forced to Help Lay Mines." "First USA Platinum VISA on AOL only." What to worry about? Life and death or low-interest loans?

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Sometimes the song must end

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Sometimes the song must end

My mother used to sing. Every morning I'd come downstairs and there she'd be standing at the kitchen sink, singing some tune, even if it were winter and dark and the coffee hadn't yet perked. She'd hum as she put on her makeup and sing softly as she dressed, and in the car she would always turn up the radio and sing along with Peggy Lee. She cleaned the house to music, the record player at full volume, as she belted out tunes from "Gypsy" or "Annie Get Your Gun."

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The incredible wonders of life

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'What I wish is that I could do all the things I used to hate to do - cut the grass, wait in line."

That's what he said. And that's what I've thought about since Thursday night when he said it.

The young man was on "48 Hours," a boy from Milford who caught a wave on Martha's Vineyard the wrong way last Labor Day weekend and is now a paraplegic. "48 Hours" filmed his long, slow days of recovery and therapy and adjustment. It was a superb documentary because it didn't gloss over pain.

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Ease up - tourists are people, too

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Ease up - tourists are people, too

It's late July and time, it seems, for tourist-bashing. Last week in this paper, Joe Sciacca got all a-flutter over the Old Town Trolley and Beantown Trolley and the new Duck Tours, which he says are the reason you can't get from point A to point B anywhere in this city. Congestion and gridlock are the fault of trolleys and "lard butts from Nebraska," don't you know?

This week, in Boston's other major daily, columnist Patricia Smith wrote that tourists "clog the Artery, babble over maps in restaurants, snap endless pictures of sunbleached gravestones" (why this would bother anyone puzzles me), and continues on to bemoan their "maddening practice of standing directly in the middle of a downtown sidewalk at 5 p.m., their heads upturned and mouths open, gazing reverently at 'Look, another old building!' while juggling camcorder, bottles of Evian, and several hot squiggling children." Huh?

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Just another day in TV `news'

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Just what we need. This one is called "Now" and airs Wednesday nights. First there was "60 Minutes" Now there are 60 clones.

What's the purpose of all this purported news?

The premiere of "Now" featured an interview with Bette Midler and a report on the case against the Idaho white supremacist, Randy Weaver. No points here for originality - or depth.

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Capital meanness claims a victim

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It has been weeks now since Vincent Foster, President Clinton's boyhood friend, put a loaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

His death rocked Washington.

Few could believe, or wanted to believe, that every-day life in the nation's capital could be so mean-spirited that it would drive a man to suicide.

And so the news stories were speculative, rife with unanswered questions.

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Rating the ratings

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So 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."

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Daughter's `new' clothes show '70s fashions are right on

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Daughter's `new' clothes show '70s fashions are right on

The 21-year-old keeps appearing at my office door in clothes I know I threw away two decades ago.

"What do you think, Mom? Don't you just love this outfit?"

This "outfit," the one she's modeling now, is the worst of the lot. It's a black-and-white polka-dot-one-piece, who-knows-what-to-call it.

"It's three different fashions in one," she explains. "It's a bell-bottom jumpsuit with an empire waist and a halter-top front. Remember those halter tops you used to wear?"

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