One night we went to dinner, and when we came down the driveway on our return, it was apparent that the power had gone out. Not a light on anywhere: not by the front door, over the kitchen sink, not even that faint ectoplasmic shimmer we've all learned to recognize as the television screen. At the dining-room table the kids were playing a board game by the light of a Coleman lantern, eating the ice cream they had unselfishly rescued from the out-of-commission freezer. The scene had a nice old-fashioned feel: "Little House on the Big Electrical Grid." Or, for a few hours, off it.

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs recently issued a report documenting a sharp rise in hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Many of the victims are teenagers. How can we awaken America to the need to combat this violence? A part of the answer was recently made clear to me in a New York restaurant, along with a renewed understanding of the importance of electing Barack Obama our next president.

Barack Obama is dropping a little in the polls, and John McCain is rising a little in the polls, which is to say the race for president is now a toss-up.

What is happening in the republic of Georgia is all too reminiscent of what happened back in 1956, when Russian tanks rolled into Hungary -- and the West did nothing.

It's funny how little we hear about "drug reimportation" these days.

I was one of the alleged 3 billion people watching the opening ceremony Friday night of the Beijing Olympics on TV, and I think I received the intended message: China is here, big time. The scope, precision and beauty of the production were, you will agree, astonishing. The distinguished film director Zhang Yimou was given $300 million and full reign of his imagination, and perhaps some of his background in opera was also useful.

We have forgotten so much about the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that many people may not remember the deadly anthrax spores that were mailed to various prominent people in politics and in the media during that time.

They're called "gappers" -- students who skip a year between high school and college. I was one 30 years ago but I suspect, at my college prep school, they had another name for kids like me:

A few days before Congress passed its housing bailout bill, Carlene Balderrama of Taunton, Mass., found her own solution to the housing crisis.