Family joy warms the heart all summer

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Family joy warms the heart all summer

This was the summer of my content, months I will look back on always with gratitude. A time I will miss and wish for every day for the rest of my life, but that I will be thankful I had. This was the summer my family truly celebrated life, not every minute of every day, and not with balloons or parties or prayers, though there were these things, too. But with a keen and constant awareness of all the good moments an ordinary day brings, and of how lucky we were to be having them…

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Song silenced but remembered

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Song silenced but remembered

They would have been married 58 years today. Hard to believe, but not hard to imagine. I imagine they would have been good years.

I remember when they were married for only a decade. I was nine then, my mother 31 and prettier than any mother I knew: tall and thin with dark blond hair, which she claimed was hard to curl but it always looked perfect to me. She wore dresses every day. And high-heeled shoes. And a hat and gloves to church every Sunday.

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Listless dog could be a steal

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Listless dog could be a steal

She said she doesn't love him anymore.

She said, ``I don't feel the way I used to. He annoys me. He won't do what he's told. He whines all the time. And there's the issue of his hair. It's everywhere - all over the rugs, all over the furniture.''

But she still loves him, I know, because when he went missing the other night, she called in a panic and insisted, as only someone blinded by love could, that he wasn't lost but that he had been stolen.

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Lazy August days lie at heart of summer

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Lazy August days lie at heart of summer

Natalie Babbitt created this day. Not intentionally. And not really. She simply pointed out in her wonderful children's book ``Tuck Everlasting'' that ``the first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless and hot.''

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Words won't move us for long

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Words won't move us for long

They invoke God and quote Scripture and past presidents (Lincoln, FDR and Kennedy are the favorites). And include catch phrases like ``My fellow Americans'' and ``My friends.'' And they all talk about getting America back on track.

Democrat or Republican, the acceptance speeches by presidential nominees are the same. They're like milk. Hood or Garelick, who can tell the difference? Only the fat content varies. (Some are so thin you can see right through them.) And delivery. Delivery - with milk or speeches - is key.

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The world's explosive enough

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It was a birthday celebration, a country club throwing itself a fun little party. Nothing unusual about this.

Only a lot of people in Canton, which is 15 miles south of Boston, didn't have a clue about Wampatuck's 100-year birthday bash. It was to most a surprise party.

People were aware of other things, though. They knew that the Democratic National Convention was in town, that the terror-threat level was high, that commuters were being searched, that there was more air traffic than usual and that these were perilous times.

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Dems' hoopla leaves behind a party of unnoticed victims

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There's no doubt that the Democratic National Convention is the big show in town this week, pure theater, players strutting and fretting upon the stage, overstating and overdramatizing. At the Wang, they'd get the hook. At the FleetCenter, they'll get an ovation.

That's politics.

But what's happening offstage is the more important show.

More than 900 pairs of soldier's boots were placed around City Hall last week to represent the American servicemen and women who have been killed in Iraq so far.

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Xena still a moment to cherish

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Xena still a moment to cherish

I'm surprised she still visits. She said she would. She said, ``When I get my license, I'll be able to drive to your house anytime, Beverly.'' But she was 11, then. And 12. And 13.

``I'll never leave you, Mama,'' I said when I was small. And then I did. It happens.

Xena, the cousin from New York who spent so much of her childhood with me playing Spit, walking, talking and planning her adult life, has had her license for two summers now. And she has visited, just as she promised. She's called and said, ``I miss you. Can I come?'' And then driven two-and-a-half hours, away from her family and her boyfriend and her work and her life, to spend time with me.

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Bask in summer glow of friends, family

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Bask in summer glow of friends, family

The grass needs to be cut. It always needs to be cut. The evergreens need to be trimmed. The roses need to be pruned. And there are more weeds than flowers in my front yard.

I see all that needs to be done. But none of this is bothering me this summer. I'm looking beyond all the ``should do's.'' I'm looking at how thick and healthy the grass is, how the bare spots aren't bare anymore. I'm looking at how the impatiens have filled in, how lush the evergreens are, how red the roses, and how close to perfect my tiny, weedy, overgrown world is right now.

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We're right to close the book on reading

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We're right to close the book on reading

Americans are reading less. Never mind Oprah and her book club. Never mind that you can never get a parking space at Barnes & Noble in Braintree, and that there's always a line at the checkout. According to a new survey, ``Reading is in decline among all groups, in every region, at every educational level and within every ethnic group.''

The worst statistic? Only slightly more than half of us read even one book in all of 2002.

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ALS mustn't paralyze us with fear

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ALS mustn't paralyze us with fear

I didn't know him, had never even heard of him until I read about his death in Monday's paper. ``Francis A. Carlson, at 30, of Franklin, ALS activist.''

ALS is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - Lou Gehrig's disease. Of all the diseases you don't want to get, this ought to top the list. It paralyzes the body but leaves the mind intact. People think it's rare, that it strikes only older people. But in the United States alone, 30,000 people have it, 15 people a day die from it and 15 more are, every day, diagnosed with it.

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Yankees' bats pound Sox fan's morale

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Yankees' bats pound Sox fan's morale

He says it's over. Finished. Kaput. Never again. He says he's wasted enough of his time, energy and mind rearranging his life for them, thinking about them, cheering them on and defending them.

He says not any more. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not on your life.

He says this, of course, on a Friday morning, when the Red Sox are sleeping or working out or reading self-help books - doing whatever it is they do when they're not bobbling balls, leaving the bases loaded and breaking their fans' hearts.

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Groundhog daze is daunting

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Groundhog daze is daunting

The rabbit was easy to identify. I saw it a few weeks ago as I pulled into the driveway. It sat on the lawn with its long ears, brownish fur, cute tail, and I've seen it every day since, hop, hop hopping around.

It's definitely a rabbit. No doubt.

Birds are easy to name, too. We have blackbirds, cardinals, sparrows, a pair of blue jays.

They flutter. They tweet. They soar. They're all definitely birds.

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Truth amid Moore's propaganda

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No one I know goes to the movies anymore. My father says he can't sit that long. My daughter says she can't deal with the crowds. My friends say they haven't the time. My neighbors say they can't remember the last movie they saw. Even the guy who came to inject pellets into one of my trees last week said it has been years since he's been to a movie.

I tell them they need to see ``Fahrenheit 9/11.''

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Love, not laundry, makes marriage work

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Love, not laundry, makes marriage work

``You're not doing the job you did when I first married you,'' my husband chides, turning to me with a grin and dangling from his hand a thick tangle of unmatched socks, which he has pulled out of his drawer. They are different textures, different patterns and different lengths. But they are all black. Why are all of his socks black?

On the floor, next to him, in a laundry basket, under a stack of towels, are his golf shirts, five of them, not ironed. Around him, there is more disarray.

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