Thank you for linking that story. Dr. Willie Parker is a hero, and everyone should know about his work.

MIT has required all freshmen to live on campus for quite a while. http://housing.mit.edu/undergraduate/…

Different strokes. When I was five, I had to walk with another five year old over a mile each way to kindergarten, and from six on the same friend and I would walk over three miles back home from our parochial school (we took a public bus to school, also unsupervised). As a child I was equal parts lazy and fearful,…

My mother is 84 and her oldest sister is 89. My Aunt Mary has a mind like a steel trap, and I can completely picture her seeing a classmate who had gone off to World War II, lived elsewhere and then come back to our hometown, and greeting him like that. It gives me hope for my mental abilities later on.

OOOOHHH We got a badass here!

Not that you're entirely wrong, but Western Mass has been giving the side eye to East Hartford for years, so your high horse is looking a little more Shetland-like.

You are correct. I shouldn't have phrased it that way, because there are many factors that cause a person to need need assistance that are out of the control that person - medical bills for accidents, weather related loss, job lay-offs. I was thinking of my friends who have needed assistance, and in all those cases…

Really? Does your boss get to decide how you spend your salary? Because if employees are paying into a healthcare program, the benefits are part of their compensation. Your argument is the equivalent of saying your boss can decide that you also can't use your salary to buy Plan B.

I think this is the definition between compassion and empathy. Compassion is that my friends went through a bad situation, empathy is that you did.

And do you see all the people on WIC and welfare who don't come into the ER because they're managing, just barely, but they're managing to keep their lives together. Because that's who we're talking about.

What is humiliating about it, if you have never done drugs, despite growing up in a neighborhood where it may be the norm, is that the assumption is that you must be scamming the system because you need aid. It's another way of humiliating the poor, because the assumption is of guilt, not innocence.

Okay...Satan. I am not quite as old as my mother, but I'm old. Iodine had a dye in it so we never wanted to use it, as it dyed the skin around for about three weeks. Are you recommending it so we're marked and you can harvest our souls....Satan?

I think Karen Carpenter needs to be given credit as an excellent drummer, which is what she always wanted to be, and would have been if Richard could sing. Apparently her mother never could admit Karen was Richard's equal in musical talent, and that drove her demons.

Honestly, it wouldn't have phased her - the woman is a former naval officer and state championship basketball coach, and she is very tough. She broke her hip falling down her stairs two years ago, and thank god I happened to be visiting at the time, as she still insisted on sliding herself down the rest of the stairs…

Thanks! I'll stock up tomorrow! I thought I was being all Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman because I had enough wits about me to snatch the Clorox Cleaning Wipes that she was about to use on herself out of her hands, and substitute the hydrogen peroxide.

OT: What should we be using? My 84 year old mother knocked a pretty good hole in her shin when we were out at our cabin in the middle of the woods, so I cleaned it out with the hydrogen peroxide wipes from the First Aid kit and bandaged her up. Should I be keeping Neosporin there instead?

Ho. Ly. Christ. That is the stuff of Wes Craven movies. You win!

As a fellow Seven Sisters college, and an MIT grad, I like seeing both, as well. Women's STEM for the win!

I dated a Wendell, who was named by his oldest sister. He was the sixth child of seven, and I guess his parents decided to outsource the task from sheer exhaustion. Wendell is the name of the neighboring town they happened to be driving through when they asked her for ideas.

Haha! I feel the same! But, yes, I was quite sad, as I went to Smith around the same time as Laura, and I've always loved the Blue Heron, especially when it was at the Montague Book Mill. But maintaining anonymity on Jez is paramount in my life, too.