In the nearly 20 years that I have been writing this column, I've received many letters. I wish I could say that I answered every one promptly. Most times it took me a while. Eventually though, I got to almost every letter because each was there on my desk, in plain view, with my name printed or scrawled or typed or underlined in red…

It came out of nowhere. Without preamble, without warning, it was simply there - a long-forgotten fact that I didn't search out because I didn't know it still existed. 

That fact is this: When I was a child, I knew all the serious talk about keeping the Ten Commandments had nothing to do with me or anyone else I knew. With the certainty of innocence, I was sure human beings wouldn't…

They were probably the nicest young women, good to their mothers, loyal to their friends, devoted to their pets. They were both pretty and cheerful and neat. But they never stopped talking. They sat not together but in their individual seats on a train…

My husband calls our bedroom the igloo, though not for reasons you might suspect. The bedroom is cold, so cold that if David Lean were alive he could film all of "Dr. Zhivago" within its confines and never have to deal with the fickle outdoors…

I didn't watch the Super Bowl so I didn't see the ads then. But on Monday morning there they were, on AOL, just a click away. That's how I happened upon Michael Jordan. He was on the screen, the man he is now, playing hoops - through the magic of technology - with his younger self. Michael Jordan the man and Michael Jordan the boy together in a pitch for Gatorade…

As the war drums beat louder and faster every day, I wonder, how did we get here?

Every night now on the news there is fresh footage of young people going off to war. Why are they going? What exactly are they fighting for?

Two Air Force pilots went off to Afghanistan with the best of intentions. Then the Air Force allegedly force-fed them amphetamines, gave them a plane…

It stalked him his whole life and he ran from it but he couldn't hide. He knew about good and he knew about evil and the legacy of both, long before he knew that a camera could be a weapon and that memory is the best revenge. Roman Polanski was only a boy when his mother, who was four months pregnant, was killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz…

They make the most compelling photos. A firefighter rushing into a burning building. A passer-by pulling a stranger from a hissing car. An unidentified someone risking life and limb to rescue a cat from a tree or a dog from a patch of ice. There was Officer Russell Cera crawling across a half-frozen river in Racine, Wisc., Tuesday, and the breadth of his effort was so clear that the photograph made national news. We eat up these snapshots of heroes in our midst. Didn't we all believe and imagine, until a feeding pond came up empty, that a Bridgewater farmer…

It stands out now because it stands alone. Last week, all the houses in the neighborhood where I walk had wreaths on the doors and lights in the windows. Now the lights are gone and the wreaths, if they're there, hang in the dark.

Only one house still has lights in the windows, and on every bush…

Beth and I have been walking. Almost every day. Around her neighborhood. Around in a circle. Four loops and we're done.

I used to walk, years ago, because it was the only way I could get anywhere. I walked over to Janet Butler's and we'd walk together to church…