Lori Falce stories, Page 9

Bullying is one of those things that is easily defined but hard to identify. It is generally seen as cruel, aggressive, intimidating abuse. And yes, that seems accurate. But there is a nuance to bullying that just seems hard to grasp with words. There are any number of situations that...

On Nov. 5, 2011, retired Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was arrested for child sex abuse after a statewide investigating grand jury indicted him on 40 counts of various crimes. More would be added later. It was a moment that indelibly stained the university and fractured the alumni community...

Oh, Mark Zuckerberg. We haven’t met, but as you own all the pictures of my son since his birth and are responsible for a healthy percentage of the threatening communications I receive winding their way to me through tags and Messenger and comments on pieces I write, I feel like...

Oh, the agony of defeat. No one likes to lose, but it’s an important life skill everyone has to pick up along the way. You can’t learn to walk without struggling to keep your balance and winding up on your butt now and then. Every chess grandmaster earned his rank...

It used to be that when you lost someone you loved, you knew exactly where you go to pay a visit. My father’s grave lies just next to his grandparents’, down a short road from where his parents rest in a small cemetery in the Minnesota town where they lived....

Representation is a word that gets a lot of heat and light these days. You hear it called out in good ways as more people are given more presence in our media and culture. There is greater representation of minorities in films and television than there ever has been before....

I have 839 Facebook friends and a disproportionate number of them are women. Some are my mom’s age — friends from places I worked 20 years ago or retired teachers from high school. Some are my contemporaries like classmates or fellow baking enthusiasts or girls from my moms’ group. There...

There is an impression that the law is supposed to be fair. People who think that it actually works out that way don’t spend a lot of time comparing the way people are charged or sentenced. When it comes time to pay the price for bad behavior, it seems like...

If you want to have an impassioned discussion about the right to privacy, you don’t want to engage with a constitutional law scholar or a talk radio host. Find a teenager and suggest that you have casually scrolled through text messages. You will be treated to breathless defense of our...

Sept. 11, 2001, was not just a day. It wasn’t a simple Tuesday. Kids went to school and people went to work and the day still started with alarm clocks and cereal and morning commutes, but the differences between that day and what came after were apparent as people took...

Gatekeeping is one of those terms that gets a lot of play these days, like cancel culture or safe spaces. It’s a term that means people in one area decide what the criteria for admission will be. It generally refers to something like a “fandom,” like comic book enthusiasts or...

Everyone loves to talk about that hot, hot coffee at McDonald’s and the frivolous lawsuit that popped up when a woman complained that her hot coffee was ­— surprise, surprise — hot. This is why we can’t have nice things, they say. This is why we have warnings on irons...

Do not say the lives were wasted. As the U.S. military forces drew closer to the Aug. 31 deadline that was drawn for pullout from 20 years of presence in Afghanistan, the Taliban advanced, gaining momentum as villages and cities fell like dominoes. It was a messy wreck of an...

There are things I knew I had to accept when I married into an Italian famiglia. I had to understand that, despite the fact most people think I am a pretty good cook, my husband would never let me make sauce. Also, that I couldn’t send him to the grocery...

Some wounds are easy to diagnose. Break a bone and an X-ray will tell you just how to line the pieces up to put them back together. Cut your skin and it’s clear where the bandage has to go. Even hidden internal problems give us clues with pain or fever,...

They say money can’t buy happiness, and that might be true. I could argue not having to check my bank balance before I order pizza could make me pretty happy, but hey, I’m willing to believe the rich have their own struggles. I’ll never know the terrible pain of a...

If you want to know what the impact of the coronavirus pandemic was in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put a number on it this week. No, that isn’t how long the world was in lockdown. It wasn’t how long we wore masks or kept six...

My sister’s youngest child just graduated from high school, which means come fall, she will have two kids in college at the same time. Teasing her about the campus visits and paperwork and packing and all of the costs was funny. Until I realized my son is 13. That puts...

Shortcut. For some, that’s a kitchen blasphemy. “Do it right or don’t do it at all!” they shout. If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly! OK, fine, but that kind of gatekeeping could keep a big chunk of people from learning some valuable skills — and from...

I have always loved the Olympics. Even if I disagree with the International Olympic Committee on whether any particular event is a sport or not, I gladly bow to the greater pageantry of the entire production. Maybe I don’t think tug-of-war — yeah, it was an Olympic event until 1920...

It can be hard to feel bad for a college athlete. You look at what many are being given. Full-ride scholarships and world-class training facilities. Training table meals and a staff of people to keep them healthy. Tutors to keep their grades up and, hey, if you go to the...

When I was 20, I stood on the steps of Schwab Auditorium at Penn State as my dearest friend had a kind of confirmation. It was Coming Out Day, and people from across campus were declaring who they were inside. Gay, lesbian, bisexual — they stood up, spoke the truth...

On Sunday, barbecues will fire up, hammocks will be in full swing and ties will be wrapped and ready to be oohed and ahhed over. Father’s Day will have arrived, the day when we celebrate the dads in our lives. But with that in mind, let’s remember that not all...

When it comes to sports, I am a product of my environment. My soul has fed on the Steelers’ Super Bowl wins and the Penguins’ names etched on the Stanley Cup. Even when they missed the playoffs or if it was charitably described as a “rebuilding year,” the faith is...

My son enjoys a good game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. In his version, it’s more Six Degrees of Marvel Movie Characters, but the principle still holds — especially since Bacon played the villain in “X-Men: First Class.” Take any actor — or person, really — and find the...