Forgiveness

Dear Liz: I went to a very expensive art school at 17 and my education was funded totally by loans. I take full responsibility for what I owe, but because I had to defer payments a number of times throughout the years I now owe about $73,000 and I don't know how I will ever get out from under this debt. I am a 38-year-old mom at this point with two small kids and I am saving for their education. There are programs to help young, single people but nothing for people like me, and it is frustrating.

HESPERIA - Worried that her daughter may be on drugs, or worse, Angelica Aquirre did what any parent of a rebellious 13-year-old might do. She cracked down, set a curfew and thought about moving closer to her family in Mexico. Now a distraught Aquirre is left wondering whether she was too harsh. Her daughter on Wednesday was in a juvenile detention facility in Apple Valley, accused of hatching a murder plot with two of her middle school friends. The target: her mother. "I don't know what to say. I just can't believe it," Aquirre said, weeping as she sat at a kitchen table in the family's tiny mobile home, a framed picture of Jesus on the wall.

Government and private-lender attempts to stem the home foreclosure crisis so far have mostly focused on loan modifications or refinancing -- giving borrowers a temporary or permanent reduction in their monthly payments. But some housing experts say the next wave of help will have to address the core problem for many homeowners: negative equity.

This is a story of persistence. In the case of Miriam Ramirez, it's the story of trying to obtain a much-needed loan modification from Bank of America. In BofA's case, it's the story of giving a mortgage customer the runaround for two years . Loan modifications have been an increasingly nettlesome issue as millions of homeowners struggle to make mortgage payments during the economic slump. The Obama administration has called upon banks to be more diligent in assisting customers prior to foreclosing on properties.

They spoke just twice. The first time was 10 years ago when Mark Stroman, armed with a sawed-off shotgun, pushed through the door of a Dallas gas station and furiously asked the dark-skinned clerk, Rais Bhuiyan, "Where are you from?" The second was a brief phone call this summer before Stroman was about to be executed. "I forgive you and I do not hate you," Bhuiyan told the man who had shot him in the face, blinding him in his right eye. "Thank you from my heart," Stroman said.

Re "An Apology, Intended to Heal, Divides" (March 23): Emotions run high when religious leaders such as San Diego Bishop Robert Brom appear to violate the tenets of Catholic faith: forgiveness and compassion. After denying gay nightclub owner John McCusker Jr. a Catholic funeral, the bishop apologized to the man's family and offered to say a Mass for him. I would ask Brom to consider Christ's message as the bishop participates in Holy Week services: "Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye but do not consider the log in your own?"

I found "Talking Through the Pain" by Jenifer Warren (Column One, Feb. 17) to be extremely motivational, showing the epitome of strength in both the victim and the criminal. I'm very appreciative that a positive, inspirational story graced the front page and took the focus off the bickering and unhappy state of the Iraq war. The pain and guilt of Mike Albertson as he listened to Patty O'Reilly's longing for her deceased husband warns society today of the consequences of drunk driving.

The Wake of Forgiveness A Novel Bruce Machart Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 310 pp., $26 Lavaca County, Texas ? one moment it's a place you've never been, the next it's a place you can't forget, a place that comes to mind when you call yourself American, even if you grew up on a tree-lined street in Connecticut. What happened? Same thing that happens when you read Willa Cather, William Faulkner or Cormac McCarthy. How else could you possibly know what the wind in the pecan trees sounds like, what mesquite smells like or how fast-moving clouds can make a person feel particularly small and helpless?

The mourners were outnumbered by news crews and clerics at this week's burial service at the Los Angeles County Crematory. I'm not sure what group to count myself in. I took notes, and I prayed. And I mourned for those who had died alone, as I contemplated the freshly dug mass grave that had become their final home. It held the remains of 1,689 people who died in Los Angeles County three years ago and were cremated by the county after no one showed up to claim their bodies. Three years later, their ashes were still unclaimed.

Forgiveness is a noble attribute ("Forgive and Be Well?" Dec. 31). However, in cases of rape and incest, it's crucial to pursue justice first and forgive later. Sexual predators who are locked up can't continue to abuse, and a victim's self-esteem may be helped by seeing justice done. But getting incestuous relations and rapists to court is very difficult, and an emotional nightmare for victims. The additional pressure to "forgive at all costs" would make it just that much harder, I fear.

It has been 20 years, and Rodney King finds himself in what must be an awkward position: He is an elder statesman of victimhood. Instead of asking questions — "Can we all just get along?"— he is now being asked to answer them. Can we all just get along? What about Trayvon Martin? How does it feel to be a symbol? King, 47, tried to answer those questions Saturday at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, appearing as the co-author of a new memoir, "The Riot Within: My Journey From Rebellion to Redemption.

'The Forgiveness of Blood' MPAA rating: Not rated Running time: 1 hour, 49 minutes, Albanian with English subtitles Playing: At Nuart Theatre, Santa Monica

You can love or you can hate the recent $25-billion federal-state mortgage foreclosure settlement, but there's no getting around one simple fact: There's a huge, gaping hole right in the middle of it. The hole is that if your home loan has been bought from your lender by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, you're not eligible for the mortgage relief encompassed by the deal. Since Fannie and Freddie control well more than half of all outstanding mortgages, this shortcoming looks to be what engineers would call "non-trivial.

The window is closing rapidly on one of the most important tax-relief provisions enacted by Congress during the housing crisis to help financially strapped homeowners. Although the 2007 law that allows taxpayers to exclude from income the amount of debt that is forgiven or canceled by their lenders doesn't expire until Dec. 31, it's likely to take every bit of the next 11 months for financially troubled homeowners to persuade their banks to either foreclose or allow their houses to be sold for less than they are worth.

Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh left his battered nation Sunday for medical treatment in the U.S., asking his countrymen to forgive him for years of turmoil and vowing to return to the Arabian Peninsula state he has ruled for decades. It was not immediately evident what effect Saleh's absence from Sana would have on a government weakened by protests, resurgent Al Qaeda militants, secessionist rumblings in the south and a rebellion in the north. The president's departure was characteristic of his brash, often unpredictable nature that has long kept his friends and enemies off balance.

Two men tied to reputed Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger came to collect money. "I knew one of the guys," says Dana White, recalling the mid-1990s incident, "and he was [Bulger's] right-hand man. " The shakedown, for the regular payment allegedly charged to run a business in Bulger's territory, came while White was teaching a boxercise class at a South Boston health club. White didn't have the money, so he left Boston and moved back to Las Vegas, where he had gone to high school.

A young man's rash, drunken act robbed her of her son. Now, her hatred for that man threatens to take away everything else. Such is the situation at the beginning of "Convictions," a provocative if only intermittently dramatic movie about the reverberations of violence and the rocky road to forgiveness. Starring Blair Brown ("The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd") as embittered Idaho mom Zalinda Dorcheus, it debuts at 9 tonight on the Lifetime cable network.

A truck driver begged for forgiveness before he was sentenced to death Wednesday for stabbing his two young daughters to death. Julian Beltran, 37, of Anaheim was also sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for killing the girl's mother -- his former girlfriend -- after she rejected his attempts at reconciliation. "My entire existence has been, is and will be sorry for what I did and all the pain I caused. . . . I beg all of you to forgive me," Beltran said tearfully in court.

Dear Liz: Several years ago, we were talked into getting what I believe was a predatory loan - a negatively amortizing mortgage for 100% of the purchase price of our home. The loan broker assured us we could refinance the following year to a more traditional mortgage. We paid the minimum monthly payment required, which didn't cover all the interest owed, so that amount was added to our mortgage balance. Like others, we have experienced the nightmare of the current housing market, and with the negative amortization adding on even more debt, we are severely underwater.

Now that we've entered the annual season of "goodwill toward men," it seems like an excellent time to consider oxytocin, a hormone that has gotten attention in recent years as the grooviest thing since lava lamps and love beads. Oxytocin is secreted by the pituitary gland, and it has effects on regions of the body of a type that you memorize for a final exam and then promptly forget. But oxytocin also gets into the brain, where it affects behavior. How? For starters, oxytocin promotes maternal behavior in rodents.