I've had 'The Principles of Fighting the Blahs' stick-pinned to the bulletin board above my computer for months. I knew I'd need them some day. I'm looking at them now because 'some day' arrived Wednesday.

Remember Wednesday? More snow…

This was the headline that ran on Page 1 Nov. 18 'Helping stranger cost him his life.'

You might remember the story. Keith Willwerth, 22, of Melrose died of massive head injuries after stopping to help move a drunken stranger off a sidewalk near Faneuil Hall. The young man was carrying flowers for his girlfriend when he was attacked and beaten by a group…

It's happened again. I should have learned by now. I know this. Nothing is forever. Things change. People change. Parents age. Children grow. People get sick. Friends move. Colleagues switch jobs. Schools that you went to get boarded up. Hotels where you once stayed get torn down. The world is in constant flux. And yet, when something…

It would be nice if just once in a while you ran into some fair, thoughtful, truthful, unbiased news stories. But it's all laced with gossip these days. He said. She said. Overheard. Alleged. According to unnamed sources. Witnesses maintain. Or it's inappropriate cleverness, a.k.a. the Bobbitt and the Michael Jackson stories…

Yesterday marked the beginning, once again, of 'Ordinary Times.' I noticed the reappearance of the words in church Sunday, a phrase I pondered last summer when the term leaped out and struck me as if I were hearing it for the first time.

The words startled me, affronted me almost back then, because I…

I have to piece together their love story. I know so little of it. I don't know him, and I hardly know her, for I have been privy to only the briefest outline of her life. And yet she inspires me. She's 90 and still in love with her husband - not just fond of him, or devoted to him, or committed to fulfilling an obligation. She's in love. She says his name and her face softens. She tells stories about him and her eyes shine like a girl’s…