My memory occasionally swings back to early adolescence when, for two weeks in the late 1930s, I was a patient at the old St. John of God Hospital in Boston. I came to that institution with the mumps and, while there, caught scarlet fever. It was an ordeal to have felt sick enough with the first disease and to have my hospital stay extended by catching another.

Lying in bed during those long days, I would frequently fix my eyes on young women in starched white, well-fitted dresses, along with shoes and stockings of the same color. The caps pinned on their heads indicated the schools where they had studied and a black stripe would show that they had received their RN.

These were the nurses who took care of me and the other patients in that now gone hospital.

Dressed in those crisp white uniforms, they walked smartly into my line of vision often in the course of the day. Their figures, shaped in part by their costume, fascinated me, a boy of no sexual experience at all, but one ready to become interested. My gaze would remain fixated on these young women, and intimations of erotic desire stirred in me obscurely.

At that time I would have been ashamed of my own body, dressed in a johnny as I must have been. Almost surely I felt mixed, both embarrassed and excited, about inspection by these beautiful creatures whom I was busy ogling.

“The color white did not become popular until the early twentieth century, following the new findings about germs and their role in spreading infection,” reports John Seabrook in a 2002 New Yorker article about nurses’ attire. Many people besides me still associate the nursing profession with white uniforms, even though these have gradually been abolished since the 1960s.

As the same author explains, “Feminists began to read its whiteness as a sign not of power but of diminishment.”  It had become “a symbol of the angelic, demure, dependent woman, not of the tough, resourceful professional she really is.”

I contrast that scene from my teenage years with those I have recently witnessed as a hospital patient in late life. Now each female nurse is likely to dress in her own way. They come to work outfitted for convenience rather than in clothes designed to express their profession. Their outfits range from slacks and blouses to other forms of everyday wear.

The closest hospital nurses come to a uniform now is “scrubs,” which became popular in the 1980s. But so many other staff members also wear them, technicians and orderlies for example, that these loose fitting shirts and pants, often of a dark green, do not distinguish nurses.

Though the distinctive uniforms once worn by female nurses have vanished, fortunately the dedication and commitment of the profession has not. Nurses still bring both skill and compassion to their work as they have done traditionally. As in the case of  nuns, giving up uniforms has done nothing to lessen their high standards.

I have had recent occasion to admire nurses for their service to patients. Some of the tasks that have become routine for them used to be reserved for doctors, so their responsibilities have widened. They frequently work long shifts and show themselves remarkably patient with the likes of me, a person who can be rather ornery and complaining on occasion.

Though I have sometimes chafed at hospitals, especially for their bad food (or, more precisely, food badly presented) and little regard for patients’ need for sleep, I  never find fault with the care nurses provide. They go far to make us associate the medical profession with personal caring.

Just as I welcome the presence of so many women among the ranks of doctors ─ and count several among my regular health care providers ─ so I feel glad for the freedoms that female nurses have gained over the last few decades. They show themselves much freer to express their individual personality than in the past and that can be good for patients.

Though my focus here has been primarily on nurses who work in hospitals, I also admire those who visit patients at home. There, too, these women usually dress as they wish, rather than in uniform, something that suggests their independence and maturity. However, it is their skill and compassion for their patients that most commend them to me. I have felt privileged to receive care from them during periods of convalescence.

It would be foolish nostalgia for anyone to want the white uniforms brought back just for old time’s sake. However, some nurses and others do regret the loss of distinctive clothing. They would welcome, not the starched uniforms of the past, but rather some way of indicating that nurses are highly skilled professionals who have their own standards and traditions.

Richard Griffin

The new millennium has not cured us of ageism. It is “a persistent form of bigotry and prejudice” in many sectors of society, and even among older people themselves.

This, at least, is the view expressed in the current edition of Generations, a highly respected professional journal.  

After deciding to write about this prejudice, however, I encountered a problem. Ageism is not something that I have experienced myself. Looking back from age 77, I cannot cite a single example of bias aimed at me on the basis of age.

In fact, during recent bouts of illness, I found that members of the health care system treated me with great respect. Doctors, nurses, and others in the care network showed themselves remarkably solicitous of my well-being, and not at all inclined to be patronizing.

Also continual contact with college students and others not even a third my age has reinforced my feelings of worth.  Consistently, I find them polite and respectful of me as an older person. Though I welcome them calling me by my first name, I am often addressed as “sir” by my juniors with whom I have casual contact.

Perhaps this immunity from ageism comes from my social status. Being white, not economically impoverished, and connected with many friends may carry exemptions. If you benefit from fortunate circumstances, maybe you can escape the biases that some other people face.

On the other hand, the very idea of widespread prejudice against aged people, simply because they are aged, may have outlived its usefulness. At least that is what James Callahan suggests as an idea worth considering. Callahan formerly served as Secretary of Elder Affairs in Massachusetts and taught at Brandeis University until his retirement.

In a recent conversation, he questioned whether some professionals have a vested interest in maintaining the idea of widespread age discrimination. This question he asked, not in an accusatory spirit, but for the sake of reexamining the issue. Can it be that charges of ageism have their uses for those engaged in the field of aging?

Many agencies are responding well to the needs of older people. “Now that aging is seen as ubiquitous,” Callahan said, “businesses and other organizations are focusing on older people as a group to be served.” For money-making enterprises, old people are increasingly seen as customers like everyone else.

As with so many other issues, I find myself torn. Yes, professionals in the field of gerontology may exaggerate the presence of ageism in American society. They tend to see things through the prism of the hardships faced by older people in general. Thus the magazine mentioned earlier can easily recruit 16 experts to write on various phases of the supposed epidemic of age bias.

But there is certainly evidence that being old and poor can have tragic consequences. In the Hurricane Katrina disaster, older people ─ particularly women ─ suffered more than did others in the population. Altogether too often, they were left to shift for themselves against the forces released by broken levees and wind and rain.

This happened because they were poor, and because transport and planning were inadequate. But their chances would have been far better if they had been young and vigorous.

In the case of elder abuse, poverty is also sometimes a factor ─ but not always. At all economic levels, caregivers and family members can (consciously or not) look upon their elders as not worthy of respect. Such an attitude can prove deadly for an older person made dependent by illness or disability.

But the question of age bias remains very complex, according to another of my gurus in the field of aging, Robert Weiss, a sociologist retired from the UMass Boston faculty. “It depends an enormous amount on context,” he tells me.

In the world of work, for instance, “it’s tough to get a job in your 50s,” says this student of workplace issues. Despite some changes of attitude, industries are still reluctant to hire people middle-aged and older.

In other sectors, how older people are treated depends on their social standing. “It’s not a matter of discrimination against the aged,” says Weiss, “as that some are seen as belonging to a lower caste.” Like what happens in so many other spheres, status is what counts.

On a lighter note, some of my age peers have complained about the way they are treated at cocktail parties. “They just look right through you,” I remember a woman telling me. So long as you do not seem prestigious, you receive scant attention.

Perhaps the best authority on ageism is the man who invented the term in 1969, Robert Butler. Dr. Butler believes that “there has been some reduction in personal ageist attitudes.” However, he also finds that American society has a very long way to go toward eliminating the prejudices leveled against people on the basis of age.

Richard Griffin

This comedian ranks Boston’s Big Dig ahead of three famous construction projects of the last century. Granted, the Panama Canal, the Alaska pipe line, and the tunnel under the English Channel seem to have made some important connections: The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; the North Slope of Alaska and its south shore; England and France; all seem impressive enough.

But we are truly awed to think of what the Big Dig connected: Dorchester and the Financial District!

This is one of many jokes that stand-up comic Jimmy Tingle recently told to an audience of some 150 people in a church hall. His performance has led me to reflect on the art of comedy and what makes us laugh.

Though he has appeared many times on national television, this 51-year-old entertainer has not yet become the household name he deserves to be. Perhaps his reputation as “political,” and more specifically, “liberal,” limits his big-time invitations. But I consider him one of America’s best comics, right up there with Garrison Keillor and Jon Stewart.  

His routine about the rise of a first-class stamp to 39 cents is a work of art. The constantly increasing cost of this postage supplies a renewable riff for him on American values. He envisions the year when he hits 150 and that stamp costs six dollars. But, he will claim, it will enable you to send a letter anywhere in the American Empire ─ Iraq, Iran, Syria, wherever.

For Tingle, as with other skilled comics, words as they appear in the script are only part of it. The sound of his voice has a vital function; so does the timing of his words and sentences. Pauses play a crucial role in any good comedian’s presentation.

If you could see Tingle’s face as he delivers a line, you would appreciate that line’s true meaning. He knows how to screw up that face in anguish, to pull down his forehead as he frowns in doubt or look aghast in feigned horror. His facial expressions thus become an integral part of the comic message.

Sometimes he will trudge along the stage, as the celebrated mime Marcel Marceau is fond of doing. He knows how to make like a duck, waving his bent arms up and down. The man can twist his torso to indicate a person in psychic difficulty.

All of this serves his ironic view of life and the world around us. He loves to talk about the way things have changed since his boyhood. For instance, Columbus no longer holds the place that his teachers led him to believe. Now he envisions the Vikings coming to New England after first landing in Newfoundland.

Armed with a case of Tuborg, those hardy warriors work their way down the coast on badly marked roads so typical of Massachusetts and run into some of the highly stressed people of our state. Six of these Vikings stop and get married on the Longfellow Bridge.

Since he was speaking at a Catholic parish, Tingle directed some of his jokes toward people who belong to the church. Not all members of the parish had welcomed the choice of this particular entertainer. Someone was said to have scrawled on a poster advertising his appearance “A liberal comedian for a liberal church.”

In his riff, Tingle asked if there were any “cafeteria Catholics” in the audience. Some hands went up. He then extended the title, affirming the existence of cafeteria Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, and others. He even claims that some people are cafeteria atheists.

For himself, he likes to walk down the line with an imagined tray in his hand: holy water, fine; candles, I’ll light one; discrimination against gays, definitely no; and God loves each one of us unconditionally, oh yes.

Jimmy Tingle does not consider himself a fan of Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster who recently announced that, after all, Jews can get into heaven. That, as the comic sees it, will enable St. Peter to leave his post at the golden gate where he has been waiting for 21 centuries. Now, thanks to Robertson, we know that St. Peter can at last enter the abode of the blessed.

Fortunately, Tingle knows how to offend some people but he does so with grace and style. Being a comic with religious and political convictions cannot be altogether easy. I suspect he wants his members of his audience to think as well as to laugh.

His persona ─ that of a fellow who has grown up working class, and had to recognize himself as an alcoholic ─ gives him credibility. It may enable him to get away with statements that would be regarded as simply offensive if they came from someone who grew up economically privileged.

The most important factor, however, remains the humanity of the man, his art, and his angle on the world that enables others to laugh at themselves and the often crazy world in which we all live.

Richard Griffin

Jim Bouton does not look much like a major league baseball pitcher. This former New York Yankee appears too slight for that role, but he certainly shows himself tough enough. Decades after his playing career this 67-year-old entrepreneur appears remarkably trim and often combative.

In 1970 he shook up the baseball world and made himself persona non grata to its bosses by publishing Ball Four, an exposé of how the sport really works. Unveiling the seamy side of the business and the often dubious antics of his fellow players, he made few friends and many enemies.

In town for a law school forum a few weeks ago, Bouton focused mostly on his recent abortive efforts to renovate Wahconah Park, the dilapidated stadium in Pittsfield. Blocked by politicians, he and his business partner have had to give up their dream of renewing baseball in a western Massachusetts city where, according one historical record, the sport was played as early as 1791.

My own interest in Bouton focused less on his real-estate frustrations and more on his experience as a player. Taken by my father to ball games in Boston starting in the 1930s, I am one of the few people still around who remember seeing the Boston Bees play at the Beehive, on Commonwealth Avenue, before they resumed their old name Braves. When the Red Sox traveled out of town, the Bees were at home with their combination of formidable pitching and woefully weak hitting.

Jim Bouton broke into the majors with the Yankees in 1962. In his second season, he pitched brilliantly, winning 21 games and losing only 7 with an earned run average of 2.53. In 1964, he appeared in the World Series against the Cardinals and won two games. Later, however, he developed a sore arm, had to convert to a knuckle ball, and never again compiled much of a record on the field.

In Ball Four, long since famous for its muckraking, Bouton relied on a secret diary he had kept while with the Seattle Pilots, a team that existed for only a single year. However, the book also contains a trove of anecdotes from the years he spent with the Yankees and, later, other teams.

His stories about fellow players ring true. Sometimes, as he now tells it, he would go to the bathroom to write down exactly what he had heard players saying, before the words could slip from his memory.

At the forum he told an anecdote about Mickey Mantle, the Yankee slugger whom Bouton calls “the greatest player I ever saw.” One day the team played in Minneapolis and that night Mickey went out with some of the other guys to a bar. There he drank himself into stupefaction, as was often his custom.

The next day, when the teams faced off again, Mickey was announced as out of the lineup because of a pulled rib cage. Actually, he was in the trainer’s room, out of uniform, thoroughly hung over. However, when the game went into extra innings, the manager needed a pinch hitter, so he sent into the clubhouse to get Mantle.

The latter pulled himself together, strode to the plate, and, on the first pitch smashed a 450 foot home run over the center field fence. But the drama was not over: His teammates wondered if Mickey would be able to find the bases and run toward each one of them.

Asked later how he achieved the home run, Mantle said “It was simple: I hit the middle ball.”

When quizzed now about players’ high salaries, Bouton does not speak delicately. “After 100 years of owners screwing players, for 30 years the players screwed the owners; we have 70 years to go” In Ball Four he details how stingy the moneybags running the Yankees were about paying him a decent wage even after two years of all-star performances.

The management of that same team held a grudge against Bouton for decades. Not until 1998 did they invite him to Old Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium. That happened only after Bouton’s son had published an op-ed piece telling of his sister’s death and the Yankees’ boycott against his father.

Employment conditions were such that Bouton busied himself playing an adversarial role against his bosses, dampening the fun he got out of the game. His book has brought him much more money and attention than his career as a player ever did. He has proven himself a skilled writer and an engrossing speaker about his experiences.

Like many another classic, Bouton’s book has lost some of its zip. Ironically, it has fallen victim to the author’s success in raising the curtain and revealing what the game on its highest level was really like. Jim Bouton in person, however, still brings a sharp mind and a perceptive spirit to a sports business that continues to need its critics.

Richard Griffin

The high school teacher pointed to four of his students and told them sternly that they would have detention that afternoon. They would be required to stay after school because they had been acting up in his classroom.

In response, the ringleader of the group announced “I’m not staying here,” and promptly stomped out, followed by the other three boys. Of that event, which occurred in December of his first year as a teacher, Richard Kindleberger says: “I had a mini-mutiny on my hands.”

Kindleberger later worked out this particular problem but, as this anecdote suggests, the first months of teaching can be fairly rough. In this instance the teacher was almost 60 with a long and rewarding career elsewhere.

On balance, however, he is glad he took on this new role in the world of work. “I feel gratified and satisfied with my experience,” he says, “even though it has been hard.”

Before becoming a teacher, Kindleberger spent more than 30 years as a newspaperman. He wrote for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette before moving to the Boston Globe in 1972. At this paper he covered a wide variety of areas, including the environment, the State House, and the “Spotlight Team,” the Globe’s investigative arm.

In his later years there, he transferred to business and wrote first about security and mutual funds, then about real estate, both retail and commercial. Some of the work he found exciting, as when he went up against the Boston School Committee and later when he took on the notoriously ornery John Silber, then president of Boston University. He recalls having been thrown out of the latter’s office when Silber objected to his line of questioning.

“A good way to spend one’s active work life,” says Kindleberger about his years as a journalist. It satisfied him to write about such a variety of topics for a newspaper that had achieved dominance in New England. But when the company offered a buyout for employees near the normal retirement age, he decided to take the deal.

“I wanted to do something else,” he says of his decision. Not for him was the formerly conventional view of retirement. He did not want to put his feet up and simply take it easy. Instead, he desired a challenge that would come from taking on a different kind of work.

A trip he and his wife made to Costa Rica stirred in him the desire to learn Spanish. “That trip gave me the bug,” he says, recalling how he first became enthusiastic about the language. This interest turned out to be no mere passing phase. Instead, he plunged into Spanish studies, first hiring a tutor, then taking an immersion course in Mexico, spending a summer in Madrid, and finally getting a master’s degree in the subject.

The decision to become a teacher came readily, in part because his father and his sisters had followed that same path before him. In what he thinks of as a “way of getting my feet wet,” Kindleberger started teaching a course for some of his neighbors. Then he passed the state exam for teacher certification and was offered a part-time job by a North Shore town, starting in the fall of 2004.

From the beginning, this former newsman has found himself warmly accepted by fellow teachers and the school’s administration. “I felt very much made welcome,” he says of their response. “They were willing to take a chance on non-traditional careers.”

The response of the students, however, appeared to be mixed. “The kids seem to have a different way of relating to teachers,” he explains. They are less impressed with their teachers as authority figures than he recalls from his own school days.

The adolescents also remain less focused on their studies; teachers must compete with television and video games. Some students also are distracted by problems they encounter at home. Looking on their Spanish teacher as a man of a certain age, they often tease him as being “out of it.”

As a result, “the learning curve has been steep for me,” Kindleberger freely admits. Classroom management has proven to be more of a challenge than he expected. However, he credits the wealth of experience he has of himself and the world of work with enabling him to withstand some of the rough parts of the job.

Would he advise others to make the same kind of transition to teaching? “I would not discourage anyone from trying it,” he says, “but they should not expect it to be always fun.” He has no regrets personally, but he cannot deny it has been hard.

In fact, he plans to take next year off and then will investigate alternative teaching positions. His hope ─ shared by teachers of all ages ─ is to find students who are eager to respond to his enthusiasm and love for his subject.

Richard Griffin

A historically significant death occurred this winter without anyone shedding tears. On January 27, the last telegram was sent. Western Union has announced the demise of this technology, once such a significant part of American life. The telegraph machine has tapped its last.

Invented by Bostonian Samuel F. B. Morse, the telegraph replaced the Pony Express as a means of coast-to-coast communication. On May 24, 1844 Morse sent the first public message from Washington, D.C. to his assistant in Baltimore, “WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT?” From that memorable moment on, the device took its place as a basic institution in American life.

145 years ago this month, Jefferson Davis received a telegram informing him that he had been chosen president of the Confederacy of southern states that had broken with the federal government. On reading the message, the reluctant official turned ashen with fear for the future.

A telegram from Orville Wright to his father carried news of the first airplane flight in 1903. In December 1941, a telegram from the commander of the Pacific Fleet read: AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NO DRILL.

Telegrams were not always terse; in February 1946, George Kennan, a diplomat based at the American embassy in Moscow, sent his classic “Long Telegram” to the State Department, providing a scholarly and wise analysis of the threats that the Soviet Union then posed.

Movies of my growing-up years often featured dramatic scenes of people receiving the characteristic yellow envelope with news, sometimes joyful, often devastating. In the latter category, were ranked the telegrams delivered by military personnel and the received by families of WWII casualties: WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU.  .  .

Unlike many of my age peers, I remember receiving a telegram only once. Mine came to me in 1971 from a staff person in the office of the governor of Massachusetts. I was in Paris with a delegation of anti-war Americans who were meeting with Vietnamese officials. The terse message simply said: “PLEASE PROCEED.” That meant I could continue trying to sound out the North Vietnamese on a plan that would dramatize opposition to the Vietnam War.

The then governor of the commonwealth, Frank Sargent, was open to this plan whereby North Vietnam would agree to release Massachusetts prisoners of war in return for the governor’s promise not to allow residents of the state to be sent to fight in Vietnam. I considered it a brilliant anti-war move in part because it would pit a Republican governor against the Republican President Nixon.

Ultimately nothing came of the plan, but the telegram still occupies a place in my  files. I suppose it might have been entered in evidence against me if the federal government had brought charges against our delegation, as a lawyer friend suggested it could have done.

As an institution, the telegram has now fallen victim to other devices, faster and more direct. Morse’s invention was always only half a technology, anyway, since it depended on human legs to deliver the message to its intended recipient. By contrast with email, for example, it did not come directly to you unless you were operating a machine to receive it.

Like email, the telegram gave rise to a special language, one feature of which was the word “STOP.” Senders used this word often because, unlike punctuation marks, it did not cost money.

The rapid pace at which technologies come and go in contemporary America continues to astound me and my age peers. New communication devices, in particular, enter the market in bewildering profusion. I feel at a loss to evaluate what is worth purchasing among the gizmos that promise to take photos, show you movies, and play your favorite music, all at the touch of a button.

Which current technologies will follow telegrams to the grave? That could be the subject of a parlor game, if we still had parlors. One that has surprised me in its recent decline is the FAX machine. After only a few decades of common use, it seems to have been supplanted in large part by various computerized devices.

These devices encourage an abbreviated language that often echoes that of telegrams. Baltimore Sun reporter Stephen Kiehl recently noted the use of telegraphese by text messaging teenagers and Blackberry-equipped executives. (In the jargon of the day, Blackberry is described as “a wireless email solution for mobile professionals.)

But in a hundred years or so, when our current technologies have expired, will journalists write articles about famous text messages, or the Blackberry that changed history? Will our instant communications have a place in our family files, or in the archives of our great institutions?

The telegram─which must have seemed impersonal and ephemeral to the contemporaries of Samuel Morse─proved itself to be an extraordinary source of private and public drama. We are still waiting for similar possibilities in our current technologies.

Richard Griffin

“What is life all about anyway if not to honor our relationships and take care of people who took care of us? What makes us human if not this caring?”

These questions formed part of a message I received last December in response to a column about parent care. My reader identified herself as Nina Fiore, a 31-year-old woman who had spent the previous year taking care, first of her father, then of her uncle, as they were dying.

To do so, this young woman had to break off her career, leave her home, and provide for both these family members in turn. Of this time she writes: “The experience is both rewarding and incredibly difficult at the same time.”

To her, it is mistaken to consider care of the dying as merely a responsibility or as burdensome. In fact, she criticized my column about a middle-aged career woman who abandoned her work and moved back home to help her mother. This reader found fault with me for allegedly presenting the woman as sacrificing herself rather than taking on an experience from which she would benefit.

In fact, I have long agreed with my correspondent’s point of view. I have often had occasion to quote author Mary Pipher on the subject: “Parents aging can be both a horrible and a wonderful experience. It can be the most growth-promoting time in the history of the family.

“Many people say, ‘I know this sounds strange, but that last year was the best year of my parents’ lives. I was my best. They were their best. Our relationships were the closest and strongest ever,’ or, ‘The pain and suffering were terrible. However, we all learned from it. I wouldn’t have wanted things to be different.’”

Like other caregivers, my correspondent had to confront American society’s taboos regarding death. She tells how “neighbors, friends, co-workers, and most family members can barely deal with the reality .  .  . and .  .  . therefore ‘check out’ of most  people’s lives, right when they need them the most.”

As she sees it, empowerment counts as one of the greatest needs of people approaching death. Her task became to “make them feel empowered while they were losing power.” This notion she understands as the need to feel respected and to have one’s dignity preserved.

She also insists on the need for advocacy on behalf of dying patients. This I heartily second, since people with serious disease very often feel too weak to make a case for themselves. From personal experience, I know what a difference it makes to have a family member there to represent my interests.

Nina Fiore credits her then boyfriend, now fiancé, both for understanding her need to be with her family members and for coming often to help out in the caregiving tasks. “I would not want to spend my life with someone who could not understand and do that,” she says.

This young woman indicts society for wishing to shield young people from contact with the dying. “How does youth mature,” she asks, “if it is sheltered from life’s basic events?” Further, she raises the question of priorities by asking “Is it more meaningful to bring home a paycheck than to be with people most important to you while they die?”

This latter question was presumably directed against my statement about not wanting my young daughter to be deflected from her own career by taking care of me when the time comes for my own decline and death. However, I do recognize care- giving to be one of the most valuable human experiences and, for young people, one of the most maturing.

Not basing one’s identity on a career, as Nina Fiore suggests, also shows wisdom although I feel that a career, seen in perspective, itself can contribute much to the maturing process. “I also never confused my work for who I am as a person and for what is truly important to me,” she adds.

Taking care of family members as they decline has helped my correspondent deal with guilt. “I can rest more easily in my own head, knowing I did all I could for them while they were alive,” she writes. It is liberating for her to feel relieved of the burden of guilt as she looks back on this experience that has helped redefine her sense of herself.

My correspondent, by the way, did not grow up privileged and affluent. Her parents were immigrants and her father did not have a high school education. He owned a small barber shop on Wall Street in Manhattan and his wife served as his accountant.

I have shared the views of one reader because I was deeply touched by her response. Hers was the kind of message that gives writing a weekly column added value.

Richard Griffin