The ad has been running in newspapers for more than a month now. "Rediscover the Catholic Church." It isn't a bad ad. The words are all in the right places. The intent is clear.
But the message is strained, because the tone is formal and distancing. "More than anything, we can show you how to rekindle your relationship with God. We can show you an approachable God, a merciful God, a God who gladly welcomes those who come back to Him."
Read MoreComplaints about New Medico Health Care System of Lynn, the nation's largest chain of head-injury rehabilitation facilities, have led to investigations by the United State's Attorney's office in Boston, the New York State Health Department and a congressional sub-committee. Adelaide Powers is a patient at Lenox Hill, one of New Medico's 36 facilities.
Her voice is a rasp on the phone. "Can you come?" she whispers. "I have things to tell you."
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreThe most gentle people I know are gay. A woman who lives with her mother, and takes care of her and anyone else who needs her. A man who lives alone but is never alone because he is always helping someone out. Two men who have been with each other for 17 years. Another man, who is 49, and still hasn't told his parents, because they're old and wouldn't understand and he doesn't want to break their hearts.
The most disgusting people I've seen are gay. Two men having sex with each other in front of a crowd at Mardi Gras last year. Gays throwing condoms at priests' mothers at the priest's ordinations a year before that. Gays defiling the Eucharist at St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Read MoreThere 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.
Read MoreThe Boston Herald
February 28, 1992
BEVERLY BECKHAM
Newsweek's cover story this week is titled "America's Lost Dream" yet it isn't about a lost dream at all.
It's about a dream come true, about a country that grabbed for the gold ring and got it, that got everything it ever wanted, and then some, and now must decide what it wants next.
Since the end of World War II, life in America has improved in countless ways. Jet travel, air conditioning, interstate highways, direct long-distance dialing, television, automatic washers and dryers, antibiotics - all these things have made our lives more comfortable.
Read MoreNine 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."
Read MoreI wasn't all that eager to meet him. His reputation preceded him. He is Mr. Southern California, Mr. Moonbeam, not a person to be taken seriously.
Not that many of the presidential candidates should be taken seriously. With the exception of Paul Tsongas, they are all the same. Same suits. Same smiles. Same empty promises.
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreI don't get sentimental over the closing of stores anymore. Things change. Things change so often and so fast that change itself isn't as dramatic as it used to be. One store pulls down its shades, and a few weeks later another opens its doors, and for the most part, I hardly notice. But I used to. I used to mourn the passing of the places I frequented as a child. I carried a mental picture of the way things were, the way I thought they always would be, and I expected life to honor that picture. I wanted the places I loved to stay just as I remembered, untouched like the room of someone on a vacation, who at any moment may return.
Read MoreThere's Michael Jackson doing his best, singing his heart out, spreading the message that skin color is superfluous, that people are people and "it don't matter if you're black or white."
And it doesn't. That's what most of us start out believing. There are exceptions, of course. Some people teach their children from the day they are born to hate anyone who's different from them. But this isn't about these people. This is about people whose hate is new, whose hate makes them uncomfortable, but whose feelings are born of frustration, anger and fear.
Read MoreHere are a few statistics clipped from Thursday's newspaper: The healthiest people in the United States live in Hawaii and the sickest live in West Virginia. West Virginia has twice as many smokers proportionally as Utah. You're twice as likely to get killed in a car accident in Arkansas than in New Jersey.
Read MoreLast March, I defended you in this space. You were 16, then, just a kid, and you did a stupid thing: You didn't pull over when police motioned for you to stop. Instead, you hit the gas pedal and led Braintree police on a wild, high-speed chase that resulted in the deaths of two Braintree police officers, Lt. Gregory Principe and Sgt. Ernest DeCross…
Read MoreThey 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.
Read MoreThese things didn't have to happen: a pesticide spill that killed every living thing in California's Sacramento River; a bus crash that took the lives of Girl Scouts; a train derailment that spilled a corrosive chemical onto a California highway; the mass murdersof Jeffrey L. Dahmer; the entire BCCI mess.
Each one of these tragedies was preventable. Each happened solely because someone or a group of someones was not doing his job.
Read MoreI never expected it would be like this. I imagined armored cars, tanks, bloodshed, women screaming, men begging, children lined against school walls and shot. Clergy would be tortured, churches burned. Families allowed to live would not be allowed to live together.
Most times I expected worse: The Conelrad alert would sound and be real. Twenty to 30 minutes until death and no time to go home. How would I be brave? How would I not cry in those final moments, not plead for my father and mother?
Read MoreIn the town where I grew up in the 1960s, there was a priest, a young, energetic, dedicated man who embraced God and the church with a passion I will never forget. Every mass seemed a high mass when he celebrated it; every prayer, every blessing seemed a promise. Words diminish whatever it was he brought to the altar with him. And yet I have never found in any other church what I found in my youth in this man's presence.
Read MoreAs far as this baldness thing is concerned: Hey, you guys, you're being duped. Whoever told you that bald is unattractive? Whoever said that women lust less after men with shiny tops than those with bushy manes? Why are you so attached to dead cells that grow from holes in your head, that hang limp and lifeless and contribute nothing to your well-being anyway?
Read MoreExcuses, excuses. No one ever says "I was wrong" anymore. "It was my fault." No, it's always the other guy, always someone's else's mistake. You know what I mean?
Dinner arrives. It isn't what you ordered. So you call the waitress over and explain.
Read More
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