June 30, 1993

Homer's odyssey teaches kids

June 30, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

This is a note-in-a-bottle-story with a new twist.

Instead of taking a group of kids to the ocean and floating their letters around the world in the hope that a few might reach some people who would write back, a teacher in Irvine, Calif., updated this age-old game.

June 27, 1993

Food for the Poor director `begs' for the impoverished of the world

June 27, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

Ferdinand Mahfood makes me uncomfortable. He is too earnest, too intense. I look into his eyes and want to turn away. I listen to his words and want to block my ears.

He tells me things I don't want to hear, about people I don't want to know, about a situation I cannot change.

June 25, 1993

Fate takes the next step

June 25, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

In the morning, the gully between the trees into which the car had plunged, seems smaller than it did at midnight. I drive past and am amazed that an automobile fit in that spot, never mind landed there. A few inches either way, and the driver would have been hurt, might have been killed. The car windshield was smashed, the front end shattered; but the driver emerged unscathed. She'd been wearing a seat belt, and an angel no doubt was sitting beside her.

June 22, 1993

The more we listen, the less we really hear

June 22, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

My favorite Bible story when I was growing up was the Tower of Babel. The tale intrigued me. Here were all these people working together, co-operating, pooling their talents and energy to build a stairway to Heaven, which I thought, was a brilliant idea.

I still remember what the page looked like in the book we used: people of all different shapes and sizes and colors were stirring mortar, gathering bricks and smiling.

June 20, 1993

A father's ordinary kindnesses make extraordinary impression

June 20, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

You want something out of the ordinary for a Father's Day story.

You want a tale of tenacity: Jamie Fiske's father fighting for a liver transplant for his small daughter. Or a tale of courage: Ricky Hoyt's father repeatedly achieving, with his physically challenged son, seemingly impossible goals. Or a gripping melodrama: a soldier clinging to a picture of a child he has never seen, enduring great hardships, surviving deadly battles, fed by the need to go home and embrace his son.

June 18, 1993

Nuke test return will poison earth

June 18, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

Tuesday, June 8: I am at my computer moving words around a screen, but not seeing them. My mind is fixed on three people I know, at three different hospitals, all seeing doctors, all undergoing tests and procedures, all doing battle with cancer.

Caryn is having a check-up. She's examined every six months now. Three and a half years ago she found a lump, was diagnosed, had surgery and months of radiation and chemotherapy.

June 15, 1993

A place that gave women a chance closes shop

June 15, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

Celeste House is quiet these days. The old convent, converted four years ago into a home for recovering homeless substance-abusing women and their children, is closing shop.

Most of the beds on the second floor have been stripped clean. Photographs that once covered the walls are gone. In the playroom there is just one child, for only one mother remains here. All the others have been transferred to other homes for substance-abusing women throughout the state.

June 13, 1993

Years melt away as stranger's face recalls timeless memory

June 13, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

It happened again a few weeks ago.

I saw him in a crowd, at a graduation, a boy I used to date in high school. I recognized him right away: the dark blond hair, just a little too long to be a crew cut; the thin face; the high cheekbones; the wide-set eyes. Even his clothes looked familiar: blue sportscoat, white shirt, striped tie. I started to wave to him and almost shouted, "Tom? How are you? How've you been?"

But then I realized it couldn't be Tom because Tom would be 49 or maybe even 50 by now and this Tom was just a boy, not even 18.

June 11, 1993

To be a kid again in summer

June 11, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

I envy the kids who get out of school in a few weeks. Summer vacation - even the words sound luxurious. "One more week and then finals and then I'm free," my daughter said to me a few days ago. "No more chemistry and no more Spanish for two whole months."

Two whole months. Imagine not having to be anywhere or do anything you didn't want to do all summer long…

June 08, 1993

The real problem is rotten parents

June 08, 1993/ Beverly Beckham

It is an idea born of frustration, holding parents criminally accountable for their children's violent actions. But Mayor Ray Flynn, fed up with violence, as are we all, is advocating just that: punishing parents who fail to keep guns out of their children's hands.

Last week he ordered Boston Police Commissioner Mickey Roache to convene a task force to draft legislation that would penalize parents whose children carry guns. Should the plan win final approval, it would affect only those living within city limits.

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