After first painfully working his way up the winding staircase, the sick man was suddenly felled by a heart attack. Twisting and turning, he tumbled back down the steps.

The audience, of which I was a member, looked on in horror. Even if this dramatic action took place in an opera, the fall was done so realistically that we could only gasp.

The singer who managed this feat is Ryan Allen. He was playing the role of Horace in Marc Blitzstein’s 1949 opera Regina, based on Lillian Hellman’s play (and subsequent film) The Little Foxes.

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During my sophomore year in college, I lived in a dorm room with porous walls. This enabled me to hear much of what went on next door.

In this instance, that meant nothing scandalous, unless you considered the music of Cole Porter disreputable. For me, it was sheer pleasure to listen to the guys next door thump on the piano over and over, and join in belting out hit songs from “Kiss Me Kate”.

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I have fallen in love. Again.

This time the object of my affection is at a distant remove from me. However, just a few weeks ago, she stood only some 30 yards out of reach. Since then she has returned home and remains more than three thousand miles away.

She is also almost forty years younger than I am, but what does age have to do with true love?

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Cynthia Primus, a resident of Boston, takes care of a woman who, in later life, is paralyzed and needs round-the-clock help. That involves turning her over three times each day, making sure she takes her meds, and trying to keep her as comfortable as possible.

Of clients like this one, Cynthia says: “You show them love,” she says. “If you are not nice to them, they get worse.”

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On the first day of February this year, Father W. died at the age of 93. The world did not take much notice of this event but, when I found out about it last month, I did.

My reason for paying attention is that this priest of the archdiocese of Boston was the last survivor among my teachers in high school and college.

Now they have all preceded me in death. Those pedagogues have departed this world, leaving me with varied memories of their classrooms and their personalities.

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Hadi Hadizadeh does not look like a man who, seven years ago, spent 128 days in a small Iranian cell under grim conditions.

During almost all of that ordeal he was kept in solitary confinement. His only break came each weekday when he was taken out of his cell for 20 minutes, but blindfolded.

Despite that treatment, he looks now to be in flourishing health at age 60. Of medium height, affable, and given to frequent smiling, Hadi appears none the worse for the persecution he suffered for supporting democracy in his native country of Iran.

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“Ask not.”

That’s the way Ted Sorensen answers when people ask him if he wrote the most famous line John F. Kennedy ever spoke.

It’s a cute way of deflecting the question. And a smashingly effective one to boot.

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