Stop the music! It costs too much

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A guy walks into a health club, smelling of onions and cigarettes, a clue that he's not stopping by for a workout, though God knows he could use one. He's also carrying a briefcase, not a gym bag, a sure sign of trouble.

He asks for the owner, opens his briefcase and when the owner appears introduces himself and hands him an attractive brochure, which has on its cover drawings of people dancing, people riding a stationary bike, a set of barbells, a racquet, goggles and racquetballs.

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Ordinary people must end Haiti's extraordinary hell

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This isn't what you want to read on a Sunday morning, or on any morning. It's yet another horror story about suffering people thousands of miles away. We don't want to know about any more suffering people. We've got enough problems: not enough money to make ends meet; not enough jobs to go around.

Cities exploding. Hope imploding. Locked doors in the house, even when you're home. Locked doors in the car, even when you drive. No stopping to help anyone; no looking around. People weird, ready to attack. Trouble in the schools; trouble in the streets; homes aren't havens; church doors are locked; Cancer, AIDS, hurricanes. We don't need more problems!

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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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Kindness can be all around

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Fall River papers didn't cover it, though it happened in their backyard.

It wasn't news. News is about people hurting one another - robbing, lying, beating, killing. News is a health care worker mistreating patients; a doctor overprescribing drugs; a psychiatrist abusing clients. News is about the evil that men do.

But life brims with good, too, and the good far surpasses the evil. If it didn't, people wouldn't have partners, children, friends, pets. No one would nurse, doctor, teach, parent, rescue, feed, guide, inspire, love. No one would lift a finger for others.

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Media `pigs' wallow in mud, meanness

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The reason that pigs wallow in mud is because their skin is fair and thin and the hair covering their bodies is sparse and offers little protection from the sun. During the day, pigs burrow in the ground to keep cool. At night they find a stream or a puddle and clean themselves. There is a purpose for what they do.

What, I wonder, is our purpose?

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What's in a name? Plenty it turns out

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Everyone recognized him but no one knew who he was.

"Well-known Quincy man dies unknown," the headline said in Saturday's Patriot Ledger.

The story that followed told of a man who frequented Wollaston's businesses, who, every weekday bought the $1 breakfast special at Newcomb Farms; who, every weekend sat at O'Brien's bakery and drank coffee and ate pastry; who talked with clerks and nodded at passersby and bought scratch tickets at the Hancock Street Pharmacy and even shared, when he won, part of his $400 with the girl who'd sold him his lucky ticket.

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Ignoring the butchery _ again

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The horror gets lost in the words. We've heard them all so many times before.

A city is under siege.

People are starving.

Children are dying.

Grenades are exploding.

This time the place is Sarajevo, host to the Winter Olympics in 1984, now host to soldiers and snipers. When Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe more than a year ago, Yugoslavia did, too. The result is that this country, once a federation of six socialist republics - Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Serbia - is now a mishmash of newly independent republics enmeshed in fighting which has already cost some 50,000 lives.

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Loving parents can't save child if tragedy strikes

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Already it's old news, last week's headlines, one more tragedy in a line of never-ending ones.

It wasn't even a lead story. So many people die every day; the death of a small child 3,000 miles away is a huge and horrible personal tragedy for his parents and family and friends.

But it barely affects the people who didn't know him. It may stun us. We may feel for the parents, identify with them, weep for them, but only for a moment. Our grief is temporary.

For that's the way life is. We turn the page. We read another story. We are immersed in our own families, children, worries, responsibilities. Our lives go on.

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Today's kids are forced to become adults too early

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You sit and listen to kids talk today and it about breaks your heart because they're not kids anymore. They know too much. They've lived too much. They're only 6 or 8 or 12 or 14 and they have adult worries. Their parents are divorced or their mother's an alcoholic or their father's abusive or has a girlfriend or is never home or is always home because he lost his job two years ago and hasn't worked since.

They spend their days in front of TV watching people cheat and lie - on the news, on soap operas, on sitcoms.

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Court's hate ruling is a crime

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The language is weighty and obtuse. It bewilders. It intimidates.

The whole process intimidates. Nine Supreme Court justices, theoretically the smartest people in the country, unanimously decide that a cross burned on the lawn of one of the first black families to move into a Minnesota neighborhood is merely an exercise of free speech, a right of all Americans. And we, ordinary citizens who don't wear robes, who don't sit on the highest court of the land, are made uncomfortable by the decision but feel that within the body of ponderous words, there must be some truth, some noble justification that we simply don't understand.

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This play taught its performers joy of harmony

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There is not even an attempt to keep them quiet. They swarm into Concord's Alcott School auditorium, at 10 o'clock on a Friday morning, all of them happy because they're missing something - arithmetic or social studies or science; most of them chatting, a few of them shouting. The din is festive, chirpy, happy, full of kids' sounds.

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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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TV violence becomes the norm in '92

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It has been a long time since I awakened to the sounds of cartoons in my house. Years ago there was always a child up before me, roosting in front of the TV when I came downstairs, watching the "Smurfs" or "Gummy Bears" or some other early morning show.

These days my children sleep as late as they can and the TV remains silent. I haven't seen a cartoon in years.

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Weld policy hurts the elderly

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The facts exclude the faces - old, lined, frightened, weary, faces; gums smooth where teeth used to be; thin hair; knotted hands; parched skin; frail, fragile bodies.

The facts ignore the feelings - feelings of people at the end of their lives, dependent upon others, too poor and too ill to take care of themselves.

The facts are terse and cold.

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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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Cable offers new adventures in slime

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The station is WWOR, Channel 9, from New York, now delivered to us through our cable system.

It's not an x-rated station. We don't subscribe to it. It comes free with our basic package, and like most every other TV station, it's packed full of news and talk shows and re-runs.

Last Thursday at 7 a.m. the station showed "James Bond Jr.," followed by "Widget," "Head of the Class," "It's a Living," "Jenny Jones" and "Nine Broadcast Live."

Nine Broadcast Live is the subject of this column.

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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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After the wedding, real life goes on

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OK, so I'm a sucker for sentiment. Plunk me down in front of a carousel on a hot summer day, give me some cotton candy, let me hear the calliope and the yelps of excited children and I get all filled up inside, although I may know no one, although I may be among strangers.

Give me a seat at a recital. Let me hear children sing. Put me behind a school bus and let me watch as the bus stops and the kids spill out, and I get a lump in my throat.

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