Tonight may turn out to be the day my beloved Red Sox win a long-awaited championship. If so, it will turn out to be a date of very good memories. It is also the birthday of a friend of mine who died last January.

Bruce and I each reported for our new jobs on Monday, September 10, 2001. We were among 20 people of diverse ages and backgrounds who were beginning 10 weeks of training in disability claims analysis and related activities. For Bruce, this was a second career—as of the previous Friday, he had retired from a 30-year career as a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You can imagine how badly, on September 11, he wanted to undo his retirement and go hunt down terrorists.

He stayed, however, and proceeded with training. He and I were on career paths. I was training as a claims analyst, he as a fraud investigator. We became friendly acquaintances, sitting together in class, talking about our families, and exchanging jokes. He left our class once the training became more job-specific. During my first year on the job, I worked with him on a few cases. I considered him a friend, and he certainly treated me that way.

Just over a year on the job, around Thanksgiving, Bruce became ill. He would eventually be (mis)diagnosed with liver cancer and go into surgery, only to awaken to find out that the surgery had to be aborted. It turned out he had an aggressive form of stomach cancer which had spread beyond surgical intervention. Not one to give up, Bruce embarked on several consecutive months of grueling chemotherapy treatments.

I began dropping him notes, calling him with the latest work news, keeping him up to date on the happenings among our former training classmates, talking to him about my beloved Red Sox and his most recent mini-vacation. I also discovered that Bruce was a man of strong religious faith who believed in the power or prayer and was grateful to have others praying on his behalf. I had him included on my church prayer line, sent him the bulletin listing him among those for whom the parish was praying, and assured him of my own prayers for him. He was always grateful.

Bruce did well for awhile before having a relapse, just less than a year after his initial diagnosis. There wasn't much more to be done, so he began preparing for his own death. He visited with his daughter who lived locally and his son from out-of-state. He kept in touch with friends. On one particular day in early December, I called him to say hello. He sounded weak and confused, the way some people get when cancer just begins to overtake their faculties. Upon learning that he was visiting with his children, I cut our call short but promised to call him again soon. He said he looked forward to it and to hearing about my spring training vacation. He didn't seem aware that spring training was 3 months away.

I never did talk to Bruce again. He went into Hospice, by which time I was reluctant to call and interrupt what might very well be his last lucid moments with loved ones. On January 3, 2004, he died peacefully at home. I attended his funeral and said good-bye.

Bruce and I never had that next promised conversation, and he didn't live long enough to hear about my trip to spring training 2004. But I imagine that if he were still alive, he would be one of the first people to call me today to say, "Looks like your Red Sox are about to win it all." I would go on and on about how exciting it is and how much I love the team, and he would laugh a little at me and a little with me.

Looks like our Red Sox are about to win it all, Bruce, and on your birthday. Happy birthday, my friend.

Maybe I'm over-reacting, but I'm pretty sure every scam artist on the planet started peddling "real 18K gold replica Rolex watches" via e-mail about a week and a half ago. In the same time span, the volume of Viagra spam coming into my inbox has plummetted.

Hey, if you have a real fake Rolex, who needs generic Viagra?

Did you hear the one about the 30-something women who drove into a river and then called their friend instead of 911? No, I'm not making this up.

Trapped inside the sinking SUV, the women were unable to tell their friend where they were and although their friend scrambled to use another phone to call police, authorities didn't immediately know where the vehicle had ended up.

Questions abound: Why did they drive into the river? What did they think their friend could do for them? Was I this stupid when I was in my 30s?

Sen. John Kerry spent yesterday campaigning at an A.M.E. church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. According to a New York Times account (free registration required), the candidate is trying really, really hard to convince liberal Christians that it is actually he who is their savior. Does the Internal Revenue Service know about this? What about Americans United for Separation of Church and State?

Or perhaps the more important question would be whether the American Psychiatric Association knows about it. After all, grandiose delusions are a pretty clear sign of psychosis.

[Kerry] earns amens as he recites "Amazing Grace" and describes his campaign as a continuation of the civil rights movement.

"Vote your climbing of a mountain," he said at Mount Hermon A.M.E. Church in Fort Lauderdale. "Vote the unfinished journey."

Mount Hermon's pastor, the Rev. John F. White, promised to lead a pilgrimage to the polls next Sunday after services, and compared Mr. Kerry to Moses leading the children of Israel to the promised land.

"For the last four years we've been living in the wilderness," he shouted from the pulpit, Mr. Kerry seated by his side. "There is one who can divide the Red Sea for us and we can cross over on dry ground. You've got a vote in your hand - use it on Election Day, use it and be liberated and be set free."

And they say George W. Bush has a grandiosity complex? Please.

I can't be the only person who thinks the trend away from in-person voting on a single election day is a bad idea. After all the whining about the Florida recounts in 2000, I'm surprised so many of the very same whiners are pushing systems that just beg fraud and abuse, systems like motor voter registration, early voting, and voting by mail.

Let's start with voter registration. In many municipalities, it is appallingly easy to register with little or no proof of the age, residency, and citizenship requirements set forth in the United States Constitution. When my son registered to vote two years ago, he was told by the Town Clerk's office that no documentation of any kind was necessary—he needed only show up and sign up.

Then there is "Motor Voter", federal legislation requiring that states offer and accept voter registration in conjunction with motor vehicle licensing and registration. It is safe but sad to say that in 21st century America, there are many more licensed drivers than dedicated voters. And since many of those drivers are non-citizens (of both the legal and illegal variety) there is little to stand in the way of registration by someone not legally permitted to vote.

The possibility of anonymity-aided abuse is not confined just to voter registration. Oregon now not only allows but requires voting by mail, meaning there is no way to insure that the person completing the ballot is actually the voter to whom that ballot is assigned. In an era of identity theft resulting from something as simple as stealing a credit card from someone's mailbox, why would something as necessarily personal as voting be relegated to the level of sending a vacation post card?

Even where voting still takes place in person at a specified polling location, there is little to prevent imposters from casting ballots. In my town, polling staff require no identification when voting. If you know a voter's name and address, you can easily vote under someone else's name. And with voter turnouts as low as 5-10% in some local elections, the chance of the impersonated voter actually showing up and finding out what happened is small.

Meanwhile, down in Florida as in some other states, voters can now cast their ballots early, even if they have no need of an absentee ballot. While on the surface such a system would seem to present no more problems than one-day voting, it has the potential to further dilute public awareness of elections. If the number of people who forget to vote because the deadline passes begins to exceed the number who would not have voted if not for the extended polling period, there's another blow to voter participation.

The common thread that connects these new approaches to voting is a clash between style and substance. By making something so easy as to be no less routine than replacing a lost license plate or making it to the annual yard-waste recycling week, its prestige is diminished. By encouraging participation in volume rather than in quality of understanding of the issues, the very quality of the outcome is jeopardized. By so relaxing standards of participation that even the legally unqualified can partake in the process, its very integrity is imperiled. I am a firm believer in the responsibility—not merely the right—to vote. More importantly, I believe in the responsibility to become informed before voting. My fear is that by making registration so easy that you don't have to go the least bit out of your way to do it diminishes the perceived importance of voting.

It is troubling to me that concerns about the integrity of the voting process are expressed almost exclusively by conservatives. Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby is one of those conservatives who has tried to sound the alarm about voter and election fraud. Yet his warnings fall upon deaf ears; evidently it is preferable to complain about poorly-designed ballots and careless punching than about whether the people casting those ballots should be allowed to do so. Isn't it time for people all along the ideological spectrum to once again take seriously the responsibilities of citizens to exercise democracy?

More than 50 years after the Korean War, some of the hundreds of American service personnel missing in action are being recovered and repatriated. As well they should be, finally.

Meanwhile, a single missing pilot from the first Gulf War is on the verge of being abandoned yet again. Evidently the Pentagon has found "no new leads" in the case of U.S. Navy Captain M. Scott Speicher, shot down on the first night of Operation Desert Storm and believed captured by Iraq. Lack of new information to follow may be reasonable cause to call off the active search, but as with most things the Pentagon touches, it isn't quite that simple:

Later, however, under questioning by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., [Brig. Gen. Joseph] McMenamin [military commander of the Iraq Survey Group], said some leads could not be pursued to their end because of the security threat posed by the Iraq insurgency.

The search for Capt. Speicher is a cause near to my heart. I wear his POW/MIA bracelet 24 hours a day. I also have friends and children of friends in harm's way in Iraq at this moment. I would hate to see their lives placed at risk, any more so than they already are. But their lives are at risk trying to save Iraqis. An American, a fellow service member, should be worth at least the same risk.

Johnny Kelley was already an old man when I was a 10-year-old kid growing up in Massachusetts 30 years ago. I knew who he was; everyone around here did. It was 1974, 41 years since Kelley's first complete Boston Marathon, and though no one knew it at the time, it would another 18 years until his last. In between, he won the venerable event—the world's oldest annual marathon—twice, finished a record 58 times, and even ran the Olympic marathon both before and after World War II. People were sad to see his running career end in 1992, an astounding 64 years after he ran his very first marathon.

Johnny died yesterday at age 97. The Boston Athletic Association, sponsor of the Boston Marathon, pays tribute to one of New England's most beloved athletes.