Disbelief

The boy is 8 years old and he is barefoot, and his right arm is in a cast and he is holding a paper bag containing chips and other treats.He is standing in front of a house in the 6700 block of S. Normal Ave. on the South Side of Chicago, squinting at the scene a half-block away.The neighborhood has been invaded by police officers and reporters, camped outside the residence of a little boy who is a murder suspect. There are white vans from nearly every TV station in town, their satellite hookups spiraling to the sky. Camera operators setting up their tripods.

To nobody's surprise, all four living former presidents were on their best behavior last week at the dedication of the library and museum named for the latest of them, George W. Bush, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The honoree's father, George H.W., along with Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, dutifully latched on to the positive about the junior Bush's eight years in the Oval Office, eliminated the negative and, as in Johnny Mercer's old song, didn't mess with Mr. In Between.

BETHESDA -- Two weeks later, Rocco Mediate has yet to wake up from his dream. All golfers have had the same one. You're beating Tiger Woods in the U.S. Open and you're just about to raise the trophy when the No. 1 player in the world, maybe in history, snatches it away in the end. AT&T National Tomorrow-Sunday, Congressional Country Club, Bethesda

Immediately after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the nation's unemployment rate dropped to 7.8 percent in September, conservatives started attacking the agency for producing figures that sounded a little too convenient for the Obama administration. The most prominent doubter was former GE chairman Jack Welch, who tweeted shortly after the announcement, "Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers. " But he was hardly alone.

There comes a moment in life when the weight of memory and emotion can lead to action. For Saul Friedlander, that moment arrived when he stumbled upon a misfiled Nazi document in Bonn, during research for a book on U.S.-German relations before World War II. During 1941, as news of Hitler's atrocities began spreading, Pope Pius XII had warmly invited the Berlin Opera to perform selections from Wagner at the Vatican, according to a formerly secret telegram...

Here are excerpts of reactions to the Littleton, Colo., school shootings from some of the nation's newspaper editorial pages:Los Angeles Times -- Why is it that other kids seem to recognize a volatility in troubled youths that adults seem to miss? There are no answers yet. There's only the continuing fatal mix of hormones, hurt feelings and high-powered firearms.Seattle Times -- The first rash of shootings prompted disbelief that such a thing could happen at a school. By Springfield, Ore., last May, the disbelief had narrowed.

I begin to count each pleasureas a gift the match of which Iwill not know again,seeing the giver mortalas the pigment in my greeneyes, @brief as snow on darkbranches, seasonal as coppersunlight in late fall, unreliableas cardinals that flee from catsleaving my yard bereft; Ibecome @the unfaithful lover,separating largess from the once trustedGiver.O, when habit shapes my lipsaround songs of praise I tellmyself I would believe in aplace more lovely than this globemantled in skies whose shapesand shades lift my essencebeyond my measure.

Washington National Opera's intriguing production of Puccini's La Boheme requires, to borrow a recently reverberating phrase, "a willing suspension of disbelief." Sure, all operas demand such suspension, to one degree or another, but this fresh take on the well-loved tale of Parisian bohemians moves the action so forcefully from the 19th century to our day and mindset that the result is almost a whole new work. If You Go La Boheme is at 7:30 tonight, Tuesday and Sept. 27; 2 p.m. Sunday and Sept.

CLEVELAND - TV is tightly regulated in our house because I don't want our kids to become statistics: seven hours watched a day, "X" number of violent acts witnessed per week, etc. I also don't want them to have a hypocrite for a parent, so I restrict my watching to late at night, before I fall asleep. I flip channels slowly, savoring each new possibility like a sip of good Scotch. It is dark in our room, and the TV light is as beautiful as moonlight on a beach. I fall asleep to an American lullabye: the sound of people hawking their wares.

BOSTON - This is the phrase repeated again and again when Katrina broke through the levees of denial: "I can't believe this is America." The mantra of disbelief echoed from a veteran of the war in Afghanistan to the president of Jefferson Parish, to mothers and fathers in the Superdome to families around their television sets: "This doesn't happen here." For days, we watched a toxic gumbo of natural and man-made disasters cooking along the Gulf Coast. "The city that care forgot" felt forgotten.

Dorothy Lee says it will be good to get her grandson back home from Iraq. But the Havre de Grace woman will believe it when she sees him. In the months since Pfc. Christopher Hine left for Contingency Operating Base Adder in southern Iraq, Lee has heard conflicting information about when the Maryland National Guard member will return. To her, the announcement Friday by President Barack Obama that all U.S. troops are to be withdrawn by the end of the year was just another potentially erroneous report.

They began arriving four hours early, ignoring triple-digit heat-index levels for a chance to hoot and holler at Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin's health-care town hall meeting Monday night. Outspoken opponents of the Democratic overhaul plan, which Cardin supports, vented their hostility at the first-term senator. In an echo of similar events around the country, most of those in the capacity crowd at Towson University were clearly hostile to the reform proposal and dismissive of Cardin's attempts to defend it. "I know some of you don't want me to mention the facts, but listen to the facts," the senator said early on, drawing an angry response from opponents in the room and applause from supporters - who were both outshouted and outnumbered.

BETHESDA -- Two weeks later, Rocco Mediate has yet to wake up from his dream. All golfers have had the same one. You're beating Tiger Woods in the U.S. Open and you're just about to raise the trophy when the No. 1 player in the world, maybe in history, snatches it away in the end. AT&T National Tomorrow-Sunday, Congressional Country Club, Bethesda

I can't believe this guy. Wouldn't you think that Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chris Henry would be doing everything within his power to stay out of trouble, now that his eight-game suspension is over? Wouldn't you think he would be listed in the program as Choir Boy? Wouldn't you think he would avoid trouble at any cost, even if it means being a shut-in? Not Henry. Reports have surfaced that he allegedly was involved in an altercation with a parking attendant Tuesday, the night before he was allowed to rejoin the Bengals.

Washington National Opera's intriguing production of Puccini's La Boheme requires, to borrow a recently reverberating phrase, "a willing suspension of disbelief." Sure, all operas demand such suspension, to one degree or another, but this fresh take on the well-loved tale of Parisian bohemians moves the action so forcefully from the 19th century to our day and mindset that the result is almost a whole new work. If You Go La Boheme is at 7:30 tonight, Tuesday and Sept. 27; 2 p.m. Sunday and Sept.

Sept. 11 falls on a Tuesday this year. It will be the first time since that other Sept. 11, six years ago. Do you remember? Can you recall how difficult it was to even conceive of going forward from that moment? The events of that day had so thoroughly lacerated us that it seemed as if, in some small corner of our collective soul, the clock had stopped. In that corner, it would forever be 8:46 EDT on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Do you remember? If so, then the world as it stands six years later must come as something of a shock.

Sept. 11 falls on a Tuesday this year. It will be the first time since that other Sept. 11, six years ago. Do you remember? Can you recall how difficult it was to even conceive of going forward from that moment? The events of that day had so thoroughly lacerated us that it seemed as if, in some small corner of our collective soul, the clock had stopped. In that corner, it would forever be 8:46 EDT on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Do you remember? If so, then the world as it stands six years later must come as something of a shock.

While high-profile builders and developers were making a splash by building new homes that were affordable for low-income buyers only because they came packaged with government-backed, low-interest mortgages, Charles Jeffries was taking an different road to help people buy houses.He reasoned that it was better to put people into houses already on the market, rehabilitate vacant houses to revitalize neighborhoods, teach people how to manage their earnings and credit and then show them how to buy a house.

There comes a moment in life when the weight of memory and emotion can lead to action. For Saul Friedlander, that moment arrived when he stumbled upon a misfiled Nazi document in Bonn, during research for a book on U.S.-German relations before World War II. During 1941, as news of Hitler's atrocities began spreading, Pope Pius XII had warmly invited the Berlin Opera to perform selections from Wagner at the Vatican, according to a formerly secret telegram...

When ground squirrels, groundhogs and bears hibernate, their heart and respiration rates drop to help them survive. Now scientists are asking whether humans can pull the same trick. Some researchers believe the ability to hibernate is buried in our genetic code, and they're searching for ways to turn it on occasionally. The goal: to put seriously injured people into a form of suspended animation, or a hibernation-like state, to stave off the infections, brain damage and organ failure that often accompany severe bleeding.