Well, it drizzled on their parade, but all in all it was a great day for Red Sox fans yesterday. Most reports indicated a triumphant day full of gratitude, atonement, well wishes, good cheer and tidings. Great job, Boston, and good luck next year.

Here are some tips from the American Academy of Pediatrics on how to make Halloween less of a trick and more of a treat.

Well, the Red Sox did it. The curse has been 86'd (I couldn't help it). Congrats to all of our New England brethren; however, the question for next season -- and forever after -- will be: Now what?

The Red Sox with the sixth highest team salary in the majors, and with the top ten salaried teams dominating their respective divisions, my guess is more of the same. More Yankees, more Cardinals, more Red Sox, more Braves, more Giants and (hopefully) more Dodgers. I don't mean to rain on Boston's parade (rain is already forecasted for Saturday's victory parade in Boston anyway), but someone needs to do something about the disparity in major league baseball. With a $112 million dollar difference between league salary leader, the Yankees, and the second to last Kansas City Royals (I considered last place Tampa Bay Devil Rays at $19.6 million as a statistical anomaly and left them out of the calculation), it's no wonder the rich keep getting richer and poor do their best to keep the faith in this league. It's a keen metaphor of our current political / socio-economic landscape, don't you think?

So I'll be rooting for whichever team has the lowest team salary in next year's World Series. This year it was the Cardinals (I root for them anyway since I have strong Missouri ties), last year it was the Florida Marlins. Next year? The Kansas City Royals? If there were a God...

D. Robert

Remember to vote. Remind all those around you too. Get them out, get your neighbors out. Get it all out next Tuesday!

We just got back from a fall foliage road trip up through Connecticut to Berkshire County, Massachusetts. What a spectacle. For all of you out there living in non-deciduous forest lands, get out to New England, the Northwest, Rockies, Wisconsin and the UP of Michigan all the way down to Tennessee -- the fall colors will inspire and awe you like nothing before.

Could the Red Sox do it? If last night's NLCS game 7 was any hint of the future, I would say that the end could be near for the 86 year "curse of the Bambino".

It would be magical if the Red Sox won it all, especially considering the path they've taken to get to the big dance. In historical fashion, taking four straight games from their archrivals, the Yankees, after being down three games to nothing in the series is more than satisfying -- it's a full-blown orgy of glee for fans.

Falling short of saying the city of Boston deserves the win (the Patriots have been dominating the NFL over the past three years and they just hosted a major political convention), let's just say that new traditions are worthy -- so goodbye to the old curse and in with the new (curse).

D. Robert

Tonight marks the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Peace to our Islamic brothers and sisters.

I love stories about young people acting out a thousand times their senior. Read about this 14-year-old Californian who has been doing her part to keep the homeless in the Bay Area warm with good ol' pairs of fresh socks.

You always hear about on the news, but it never sinks in until it hits close to home: The gift of one's own organs, especially to a loved one, is perhaps the gift of all gifts.

I have a dear friend, Janey, from San Diego, who recently donated her kidney to her sister, Julie. Her family waited for years to find a donor. Janey even tested at UCLA for compatibility. UCLA told them that Janey wasn't a match. But, with Julie's health continuing to fail, Janey decided to get a second opinion. Finally, a team at John Hopkins discovered that indeed Janey could donate her kidney. A small miracle in itself.

The procedure is done and the prognosis good. Now Julie and her family are left footing the bill (I won't get into the dollars and cents, but you can image the size of the bill). Here's our chance to help a friend in need. Send any donations to:

NTAF Southwest Kidney Transplant Fund
Suite 230, 3475 West Chester Pike
Newtown Square, PA 19073
*Please put a note in the memo section that it’s for Julie Gidion-Smith

I once worked for an organization in Los Angeles that planted 1,000,000 trees in time for the opening ceremonies of the 1984 Olympic Games held there. That was considered a tremendous feat for a small environmental organization. Huge. The whole city celebrated the effort.

Well, read on about Wangari Maathai of Kenya, the recent 2004 Nobel Peace Prize awardee, who founded the Green Belt Movement and for 30 years has helped other women in her position to plant 30,000,000 trees around Africa. Thirty million!! That's 3-0. Can you image that? She has had to fight poverty, oppressive governments and strongly patriarchal societies to get the job done in becoming the first woman from Africa and the first, man or woman, from Saharan Africa to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 103 years. She is also the first environmentalist to be awarded the Prize. A true warrior and all and all nice person, to say the least.

By T. Yuen

In August I took Anna (my 13 year old granddaughter) to Pearlridge Shopping Center (Aiea, Hawai'i) for a day of shopping. We decided to rate the service of each store at which we made purchases. Service was rated thus: Very nice, So-so, and Awful. Of the 8 stores we visited, 2 were Very nice...sales personnel were genuinely gracious and accommodating. Five stores were So-so...personnel were doing their jobs and could care less about going the extra step to make us feel valued as customers. The worst service, Awful...was at a fast food place in the food court. The people were totally rude and uncaring. Although we experienced only two of the eight stores with Very nice rating we felt very fortunate that indeed we had dealt with some very nice people. Accentuate the positive!

On that same shopping trip, I was lined up to pay for my purchases at GAP. The total came to a little over $100.00. Before I could make the transaction, a woman standing behind me gave me a GAP coupon for a $20.00 discount for purchases of $100.00 or more. I asked her "Don't you want to use it?" She said she never spends that much at one time. After giving me the coupon, she simply walked away. Apparently, she was just waiting to give away the coupon, and Anna and I were fortunate to have been there at the right time. This stranger made us very happy! So Nice!

By D. Robert

To cap off and an already capped off night, present at last Thursday's game were some very honest, very very nice kids who found a fortune worth of Yankees playoff tickets sitting on the streets in Summit, New Jersey. Instead of pocketing a few or all of the tickets and banking their college tuition, they did the right thing and returned them to their rightful owners (Wachovia Bank). So impressed was George Steinbrenner and the Yankees, they rewarded the kids and their parents with, you guessed it, free tickets to the game and a bucket-load of memorabilia. Wachovia Bank anteed up and treated the kids to prime box seats at Game 2 of the divisional playoff game versus the Twins. Pretty cool stuff. A blast of fresh air, wouldn't you say?

By D. Robert

Game night was magical. Crisp, clear skies and 49,000 teaming fans falling into chorus to varied chants of, "MVP, MVP (meant for Gary Sheffield)", "Boston Sucks, Boston Sucks", and, well, you get the picture. It was a fall MLB classic: The Yankees v. Twins, final regular season home game in the Bronx.

My partner and I, with beer and hot dogs in hand, were thrilled just to be in Yankee stadium for the first time. We could care less about the actual game than for the experience. The Tier section has the cheapest seats in the house after the non-alcoholic bleachers (boring), so you can imagine the company we had that night -- a true cross-section of society. Everyone from the elderly to drunken teens, from well-dressed Dominicans to hardened Irish bullies, from BA-Yuppies (broke-ass young urban professionals) to housecleaners, were all in the Tiers enjoying each other's company and cheering on the home team.

To cap off eight and a half innings of girls swooning over hunky cops, teen boys swooning over said girls and belligerent older males yelling at said teen boys to "sit down and shut the hell up", the game actually became a game. A classic, in fact: Bottom of the 9th, one out, one man on, tied 4 to 4, crowd favorite, Bernie Williams, came to the plate and hit a walk-off homerun for the win. So exciting. In one felled swoop, the girls forgot about the cop, the boys forgot about the girls (both choosing Bernie worship instead), and the thugs decided that hating the Red Sox was much more important than anything else. The night was grandiose. The Yankees clinched their division and won their 100th game for a record three consecutive seasons while the fans simply felt stoked just to be included in the party.

Walking amongst the crowds and crowds of people to the subway station, my partner and I couldn't stop talking about what a great night it was. Yet somewhere in the back of my head was the image of those two hard-working, well-deserving people in the Jeanne soaked ticket line the other night. I thought to myself that those two deserved to witness the magic of that night. They, of all people, would have truly enjoyed it. But, honestly, I only thought about it for a second then turned my attention back to conversation with my partner and trying to navigate the sea of several thousand people trying to cram through the subway turnstiles.

That's when I saw them. I kid you not. Of the tens of thousands of people filing out of the stadium and into the subway I recognized in front of me the couple from the other night. Unbelievable. They were there, at the game. I tapped the woman on the shoulder and in passing said, "You made it. You must have given up and bought yourselves tickets," thinking that there was no way the zombies in the Yankee ticket booth would have given in to their demands.

"No," she said, "my husband complained to his bosses yesterday that it just wasn't fair for him to suffer just because it rained. The Yankees can't just not give him the tickets, you know. So, his bosses just bought him tonight's tickets. VIP!"

"That's great. Great game, huh?"

"Yeah. Yeah, we're so happy."

They hurried off one way to the uptown 4 train as we continued on to the downtown D. In that one instance our night of magic had been completed. Somehow, above Bernie's heroics and the Tier experience, knowing that that couple from the Bronx finally got their night of VIP treatment was truly the highlight for me. Steinbrenner can be as crazy and greedy as he wants to be, and, hell, I may even become a rabid Sox fan someday, but the mystique of the Bronx Bombers will live with me forever.

Read this piece by Times op-ed columnist, Nicholas D. Kristof, about this brave woman standing out and standing up for basic human and women's rights in Pakistan. Note: Donation information to help her cause is listed at the end of the article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/29/opinion/29kris.html

* A shout out to Simon Binder of Manhattan for sending in this link.

By Lauren Williams

We moved to SW 54th Avenue in Portland last July. I knew this neighborhood was different when we returned from grocery shopping one afternoon to find a photocopied, child-drawn invitation to a Saturday afternoon ice cream social. Bring your own spoon, bowl, and a topping. An ice cream social! Where were we – a Norman Rockwell painting? That Sunday we walked down the hill two blocks to meet our neighbors and heard stories of people who had grown up here, moved away, and come back to raise their families. We met 70-year-old couples who had helped friends next door build garages or fences. We ate vanilla ice cream topped with crumbled cookies, bananas, coconut, and chocolate sauce. Little kids rode their bikes in circles in the street. That day I fell in love with my neighborhood.

Early this summer, ice cream social glow having been doused by a long, wet, winter, I was trying to start my lawnmower. I yanked and yanked on the starter cord. The motor sputtered and stopped, sputtered and stopped. My cheeks grew red from both the effort and the embarrassment as the occasional car or dog-walker passed by. Suddenly, one of these cars stopped. It was Phil, my neighbor I’d met once (we both have small children – we get busy). I had seen him pull out of his driveway about 10 minutes earlier.

“Here,” he said, as he handed me a shiny can.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Quick Start. You spray it on the filter, like this,” he explained, as he bent down to show me where the filter was, rightly assuming I did not know the anatomy of a lawnmower.

After he sprayed this magic liquid for two seconds, I yanked one final time, and the mower started right up. He handed me the can, smiled, and went back to his house. He had driven to the hardware store for the sole purpose of getting me this arm-, shoulder-, and back-saving stuff. “How kind,” was all I could think.

The next week when I knocked on Phil’s front door to give him the lavender plant I’d gotten at the farmer’s market (a small token of my gratitude), I learned that he used to be the person on the block ruining his arm every Saturday while trying to start his lawnmower. It was Floyd, Phil’s across-the-street neighbor, who had given him a can of Quick Start.

Now, as I run or walk through the neighborhood, I always keep an eye out for someone having trouble starting their mower. It’s now my duty to pass on the magic can.

By D. Robert

Recent weather in the East has been dominated by the crossing of Hurricane Jeanne. Heavy rain forced cancellation of baseball games up and down the coast all week long. One of those was Tuesday's opener between Division leaders, the Twins and the Yankees.

I was at Yankee Stadium that night purchasing tickets for the final game of the series on Thursday, coincidentally, the final home game of the season. Jeanne was pissing hard that night and the box office lines were jammed with eager fans trying to exchange their Tuesday tickets for double header tix the next day. Standing in the back of the line I saw one-by-one, happy (and wet) fans turning from the service window smiling and happy at the prospect of spending all the next day at the ballpark.

Except for the couple in front of me. The woman, as nicely as possible, explained to me that her husband had just won an award at work for doing the best job of cleaning offices and bathrooms in a local chain store. Management had awarded him complementary VIP tickets to Tuesday's game in exchange for his excellent service. Turns out that the Yankee box office would not honor an exchange of the comp tickets simply because it had been won and not bought. Well, I would say that that is very much an anti-nice response by the Yankees.

We stood in line, getting soaked for another 15 minutes before we got to the front of the line, whereupon the box office staff rejected the couple's second plea to exchange the tickets (yes, they stood in line twice in hopes of prevailing). The couple were told to go stand in yet another line to speak with the manager. Understandably defeated, they quietly and respectfully turned around, heads hanging, and left the stadium grounds all together.

I was stunned and somewhat bummed out by the whole thing. I knew it wasn't the fault of the box office staff -- they were just following policies drawn up somewhere in Steinbrenner's den. It wasn't even necessarily Steinbrenner's fault because he can't possibly foresee and accommodate every single ticketing situation. I chalked it up in my mind to a bad system. A system not just governing the Yankees but that of the greater community. Somehow, in the hearts of the box office clerk and in Steinbrenner's business machine was instilled the sense that two very deserving, and well-meaning people didn't deserve a second look; that processing 3.7 million tickets a year requires that they not recognize people’s humanity just their pocketbook. I say it’s an aspect of the greater community because most people don't even blink at these kinds of stories. I can hear the "that's too bad," and "man, that sucks," already as people read this. But let's not forget the human part of this equation. Let's really look into ourselves and remember that two people, who worked extremely hard for a very long period of time to get VIP tickets were just brushed off like lint before a Calvin Klein show. Just like that.

I think Charlie Brown said it best in, A Charlie Brown Christmas, when commenting on Snoopy’s overly commercialized approach to celebrating the Holidays, he exclaims, “Oh, the humanity.”