Even now, she doesn't understand why it happened, why it's happening still. The politics elude her. She is 33, a wife, a mother of two young boys. Until two years ago, her life was urban ordinary. She lived in an apartment in a bustling city, worked as an attorney for a bank. Her husband was a businessman, her parents lived close by. Her children went to good schools and on holidays and weekends she socialized with family and friends.
Read MoreThe 16-year-old says I stole her idea. She has been keeping what she calls a "common place book," for half a year now, since her English teacher, Mr. Schauble, introduced the concept to her class.
It's really a very UNcommon book, a journal augmented by other things, more like a scrapbook than a diary.
Read MoreYou don't have to come to New York to see "Blood Brothers," the hit London musical about twins separated at birth, one raised with money, one raised without. The story's an old, familiar one. It has been playing for centuries in cities and towns all over the world. The chasm between the haves and the have nots has always been the Great Divide.
And the chasm is getting wider.
Read More"Don't waste your tears," my mother used to say when I was young and moping around the house because John W. didn't talk to me at CYO, because John W. didn't notice me at school, because John W. didn't like me though I liked him more than I liked any other boy in the world.
"Save your tears for real sorrow," my mother said the afternoon I came racing into the house, sobbing because John had finally asked me out and I couldn't go. I thought she was heartless. I'd already accepted a date to the Victory Dance and I had to turn John down.
Read MoreI don't know if an ambassador can do this. Probably not. It will probably take divine intervention on a grand scale. An edict by the pope or something. But maybe Ray Flynn can get the ball rolling. Or put a bug in the pope's ear, to coin a cliche or two.
"Here ye, here ye, Catholic Americans. Get your act together. Learn how to open your mouths, raise your voices to Heaven and praise the Lord."
We're bad at this, you know. Catholics do not sing. Protestants belt out hymns with the passion of converts, but we Catholics don't even bother to mouth the words. We stand silent in our churches and let the organists and the one vocalist who substitutes for a choir do all the work.
Read MoreListen up, folks. Have I got a hot tip for you. Forget about those lottery tickets. Forget about Suffolk Downs. You want to strike it rich? Here's how.
Go to the library, borrow "Gone With the Wind" or "The Firm" - pick a book, any book you choose, but make sure it's popular - copy the words in a notebook and then move them around a little. Change a verb here, a noun there, embellish, enhance. Invert a couple sentences, but don't deviate too much. You don't want to mess with a winner.
And you don't have to. Plagiarism isn't a bad word anymore. It's a way to fame and fortune.
Read MoreThere is no anger in Virginia Suozzo's voice. There's pain, sorrow, even bewilderment.
But no rage.
Her 25-year-old sister, Dawn, was killed last weekend, shot in the head as she walked into their parent's house with her boyfriend, Mitch, and her 12-year-old nephew, Michael.
Dawn Brown grew up in a nice, safe Wollaston neighborhood with four sisters and a brother. The family remains close. All were at their parent's Royal Street home last weekend because Kimberlee Brown, 23, is getting married in August, and last Saturday was the ritual wedding shower.
Read MoreSo what is the American media telling the American public about the agreement - worked out with Congress - of four major broadcast networks to voluntarily provide warnings prior to violent television shows beginning in the fall?
"The networks' new parental advisories are almost pathetically beside the point," writes Kurt Andersen in "Time."
"All they're doing is applying a Band-Aid. It's just a sham," says Dr. Carole Lieberman, a psychiatrist who heads the National Coalition on Television Violence, in "Newsweek."
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NEW YORK - I awaken to sirens these days and horns blaring and scrapes and thuds, trucks picking up or dropping off something. City sounds, foreign sounds to me.
There's an air-conditioner in the bedroom, but we sleep with it off and the window open. Closed, this place is hermetically sealed. We could be anywhere - in a barn, in a bubble.
I want to remember where I am: New York City.
Read MoreThe news is full of mayhem - all over the country, all over the world. That's what news is. Man bludgeons man. Man hurts and hates and avenges and rebukes and betrays and alienates.
We drive from Boston to Manhattan and as the local radio station fades and the New York one becomes strong, only the names of the victims change. The stories are the same: Child shot; man stabbed; woman raped; teens killed; girl attacked by gang; terrorists vow revenge.
Bad news is like the moon at night. You can't get away from it. It follows us all.
Read MoreThere is something burning in my office. I smell it. Wires. Computer chips. Something electrical.
This is Day 3 of Trying To Get The Printer To Print. It's supposed to be a simple thing. Plug it in. Turn it on. Feed it some paper. Tell it what to print and sit back and relax.
This is not what has been happening.
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The 21-year-old keeps appearing at my office door in clothes I know I threw away two decades ago.
"What do you think, Mom? Don't you just love this outfit?"
This "outfit," the one she's modeling now, is the worst of the lot. It's a black-and-white polka-dot-one-piece, who-knows-what-to-call it.
"It's three different fashions in one," she explains. "It's a bell-bottom jumpsuit with an empire waist and a halter-top front. Remember those halter tops you used to wear?"
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