Kindness

The school district turns its attention to bullying, healthy relationships, and the theme of kindness this month, presenting two school and two public events aimed at raising awareness about the issues. Boys at the Oak Middle School will attend a school assembly on Thursday, followed by an evening event open to the public. The program will focus on the concept of "making a difference," featuring films and guest speaker Paul Phillips, the head basketball coach at Clark University. On Jan. 30, girls at the Oak Middle School will convene with staff and members of the Delta Zeta sorority from the University of...

Every racehorse that captures the public's imagination with a Triple Crown try has something more going for him than speed. I'll Have Another doesn't have Big Brown's size, or his "look-at-me" swagger. He doesn't have the blue-collar bona fides that Smarty Jones and Funny Cide did, the aristocratic connections of War Emblem, the rags-to-riches background of Charismatic, or the superstar trainer behind Real Quiet and Silver Charm. But what the chestnut colt has in abundance is grit.

For drivers who are very cheap, very lucky, or very reliant on the kindness of strangers, the search for a parking meter with time left on the dial offered a special sense of serendipity. Every minute that some other driver left behind on a meter made the search for more quarters - in pockets, in car seats, under floor mats - a little less urgent. Alas, this anonymous gesture of civility may be no more. Boston is upgrading its meters to allow motorists to pay for their parking with the swipe of a prepaid card when they take a spot and again when they leave.

" More college presidents hail from outside academia " (Page A1, May 14) was a fascinating article. Like many organizations, academic institutions are not generally prone to engage in self-reflection. Indeed, my experience has been that those within the so-called academic village write the rules on who can enter the village, and reinforce those requirements of academic standards that, in some cases, perpetuate the myth of value or importance of many programs. Academic excellence comes from questioning the norms, not reinforcing irrelevance.

In honor of Fenway Park's 100th anniversary, members of the Red Sox community, including front office execs and players, are taking part in a program called 100 Acts of Kindness, which is just that - 100 good deeds for nonprofit organizations. This week's kind acts in the Fort Myers, Fla., area included a visit by GM Ben Cherington and players such as Nick Punto to Special Equestrians Inc., a therapeutic riding center, and a visit by Bobby Valentine to the African Caribbean American Center, an after-school program in Lee County.

Whenever a movie has something nice to say about people, I'm all ears. So it was with tremendous satisfaction that I watched "Intimate Stories," a delightful road movie from Pablo Solarz and Carlos Sorin set in the dusty climes of southern Patagonia. It's a showcase for sincere, well-meaning folks, three of whom travel for the most part separately from their small town of San Julián searching for something they're not sure they'll find. Old Don Justo (Antonio Benedictus) steals some money and sneaks away from his son and daughter-in-law to...

In life, 16-year-old Andy Reese was known in the town of Shrewsbury for his kindness and compassion. It was a life cut short in a car crash last December, but, in their loss, his family and friends have found a way to perpetuate Andy’s spirit. His mother, Lisa Reese, founded Andy’s Attic, based in an upstairs room in her Alden Avenue home. The nonprofit organization is set up to distribute clothing to teens in need. “Andy was a teenager who helped teens,’’ said Reese.

Bea Quirk was recently awarded a medal of honor by the Joslin Diabetes Center for having lived with the disease for more than 50 years. A Massachusetts native, she was treated at Joslin from 1957 to 1981. That year, she moved to Charlotte, N.C., where she is a freelance writer. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. For me, living with diabetes is like being a swan. Although swans appear to glide gracefully and effortlessly upon the water, underneath they are paddling like hell.

This slim volume by British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and British (Canadian-born) historian Barbara Taylor is an extended meditation on the question: Why should we be kind? Folded around this question is a more fundamental one: Why should - why do - we love at all? If “On Kindness’’ takes more than a hundred pages to arrive at, essentially, the answer Woody Allen offers at the end of “Annie Hall,’’ this book, like the 1977 movie, is nevertheless a fine ride. The very different perspectives of the two authors marry happily here.

Amalee , By Dar Williams, Scholastic, 240 pp., $16.95 Songwriter Dar Williams rose from Boston folk stages to national stardom with ballads depicting childhood and adolescence as the difficult, uncertain times they often are. Fittingly, her first novel is aimed at children 9 and up but will surely delight any who enjoy her music. Williams's empathy and uncompromising honesty are wonderfully employed in telling the tale of precocious 11-year-old Amalee Everly. She is being raised, to her tastes, a bit too dotingly by her single father and his four...

Sarah-Elizabeth Poller, 16, could not imagine a school administration more supportive of gay students. At the Arlington School, a small, private institution in Belmont, posters on the walls espouse tolerance. Students are encouraged to get involved with the Gay-Straight Alliance. Some teachers are openly gay or lesbian. Even so, Poller had one reaction when she considered attending her school's prom: No way. Instead, she will attend another prom on Saturday night - the oldest and largest one for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youths in the country.

Receiver Donte' Stallworth is back with the Patriots, five years after his first stint with the team, and on Tuesday said the allure of returning to the postseason and the friends he still has in New England made signing here an easy decision. "Being here, it's obviously a special place and I've always had a lot of respect for Mr. (Robert) Kraft and really the whole organization and a lot of the players here," he said. "Still got a lot of friends on the team, so I just thought that it made a lot of sense for me to come back here and try to...

The war on smoking can help guide the nation's fight against obesity. Trash food can be the cigarette. Obesity can be lung cancer. This week, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Weight of the Nation conference in Washington, researchers projected that 42 percent of Americans will be obese by 2030. That is more than triple the rates a half-century ago. The health care costs of obesity have, by most accounts, surpassed the medical costs of smoking. "Obesity is analogous to tobacco," Justin Trogdon, a research economist at RTI International in North...

Wiley Cash says he's a big fan of Thomas Wolfe, a fellow western North Carolinian. So, it's not surprising that the title of his first novel, "A Land More Kind Than Home," comes from Wolfe's posthumously-published "You Can't Go Home Again. " Cash's publishers call his debut a literary thriller and coming-of-age novel, so it seems that Cash traipses along some of the same territory explored by his literary hero under the guidance of editor Maxwell Perkins. Cash's novel is woven together from the narratives of three characters, 9-year-old Jess, elderly Adelaide Lyle, and...

Forget about carbo-loading. This year's Boston Marathon was all about hydrating and thermoregulating. With temperatures in the high 80s, Monday's race was more about surviving the 26.2-mile route before internal temperatures climbed to dangerous levels. Fortunately, the Boston Athletic Association gave official entrants a graceful way out, in the form of an offer for a deferment into next year's race. Still, more than 22,000 stepped off for the race, about 4,000 shy of those who registered.

GREENLAND, N.H. - There was one last thing Michael Maloney needed to attend to before heading off into retirement after 26 years as a police officer, a task he would not leave to others. "He couldn't talk about it," Karen Anderson, Greenland's town administrator, recalled Friday, "but he said he would take care of it. " It was typical Maloney, a small-town police chief never hesitant to work a traffic detail or serve a search warrant. That simple sense of duty would cost him his life.

Sarah-Elizabeth Poller, 16, could not imagine a school administration more supportive of gay students. At the Arlington School, a small, private institution in Belmont, posters on the walls espouse tolerance. Students are encouraged to get involved with the Gay-Straight Alliance. Some teachers are openly gay or lesbian. Even so, Poller had one reaction when she considered attending her school's prom: No way. Instead, she will attend another prom on Saturday night - the oldest and largest one for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youths in the country.

PAYING IT FORWARD: After a routine mammogram led to a diagnosis of breast cancer in March 2011, Lexington resident Megan MacInnes took six weeks off from her job as a certified nurse-midwife at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge to recover from surgery. Two months later, she began chemotherapy at Mount Auburn Hospital's Hematology/Oncology Center. She continued to work, but had to rest for four days following treatment sessions, which were every other week for four months. The support that MacInnes received at home was complemented by that of her "second family" at work.

MALDEN - It was a mob hit in a cannoli shop. But cash not crooks descended on The Cannoli Guy Café here Friday at the city's first "cash mob. " The café opened at 7 a.m., and by midafternoon, owner Clark Heighton could not turn out the treats fast enough. "A fantastic, fantastic day," said Heighton, who rang in as many sales - 400 cannoli - in eight hours as he does in an entire week. "I'm trying to figure out a way to thank the city. " Customers found out about the event, organized by the city of Malden, days earlier on Facebook and Twitter, and they came out to support the six-month-old...