Children's happiness is mine, too

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Children make the world go away. It's that simple.

The barrage of bad news on radio and TV, in newspapers and books, the endless deceit and fraud and abuses and lies, public and private, all the wars and broken hearts and broken bodies and broken dreams.

World without mend, amen.

Children displace these things. Not forever, but for a while.

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Counting calories and sins

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I am sitting at my computer eating reduced-fat potato chips, using them to scoop up tuna fish once packed in water but now swimming in low-fat mayonnaise. And I am feeling smug and Spartan because there is no bread in my lunch, no yummy roll grilled in butter, no slice of white American cheese melted on top. There's 1 percent milk in my coffee and just a single cookie on my plate: my neighbor Katherine's homemade - without butter - almond biscotti. Ah, healthful eating.

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What's in a Grandparent's Name?

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I’ve heard the names my whole life: Grandma, Grampy, Mimi, Bube, Grandpa, Papa, Nonna. Nonny, Nana. Grandfather, Grandmother.

But I never knew these names were magic until one was said to me.

It was Nana that I called my grandmothers, Big Nana and Little Nana, because that’s what they were, not just in size, Big Nana as wide as she was tall and Little Nana petite and delicate…

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