Empathy for R.I. Pride Committee

  I can empathize today with the workers at the Rhode Island

    Pride Committee 's office . Their computer was stolen recently.

    Hundreds of hours of information -some of it perhaps quite

    sensitive -was stored in its memory disk.

           Just yesterday I absent mindedly left a black travel

    bag containing nothing more valuable than tediously obtained

    information , on a RIPTA bus . I think, I hope it is at their

    " lost and found " .  What chance was there that an honest person

    picked it up ? My very phone number is on a dozen papers.

            It never ceases to amaze me that common hoodlums -who could

    not do much good in the world, even if " reformed - can almost

    never make up for the harm they do  .

           Our society pays an awful price for its vast numbers of

    ethically challenged. I guess , as the line in West Side Story

    goes, they are depraved because they were deprived.

           Or is that excuse just liberal soft headedness ?