Guilt

Vietnam veteran John Otte did his best to forget the war. He got married, raised two sons and made a career working at credit unions. But as Otte neared retirement, memories of combat flooded back. Starting in 2005, he filed a series of claims with Veterans Affairs for disability compensation, contending that many of his health problems stemmed from the war. The VA agreed, and now the 65-year-old with two Purple Hearts receives $1,900 a month for post-traumatic stress disorder and diabetes - and for having shrapnel scars on his arms.

The mother of a man accused of killing a 5-year-old boy in a Spider-Man costume left the courtroom Friday carrying a green pocket Bible after a mistrial was declared in her son's case. Leonard Hall Jr. was a gang member but not a murderer, Deborah Mosby said. Her heart goes out to the victim's family, but she is going through a lot, too, she said. "I'm glad God was in there," she said Friday outside court. "God knows he didn't do it.” The victim's grandfather, Wiliam Shannon, drew on reserves of patience as he hoped for a retrial.

The little girl who got away is 32 now, with two teenage sons. She likes to camp and fish with her family, and she helps her husband remodel their vintage house. But she rarely goes out alone, and she hates getting into her car after it's been parked outside overnight. She is haunted by guilt, dating from when she was 8 years old. On June 2, 1985, Opal Horton and her friend Melissa Ackerman were riding bicycles on a gravel road in Somonauk, Ill., when a man stepped out of a blue AMC Gremlin and asked for directions.

SEATTLE - This is a city that knows how to nurse a grudge. Seattle basketball fans never got over their anger when Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz signed the deal in 2006 that would ultimately send the beloved SuperSonics to Oklahoma City. Try Googling "Howard Schultz" and, take your pick, "traitor," "Howard the Coward" or "evil incarnate. " Fan forums endured for years sharing venom and regret over the team's reemergence in 2008 as the Oklahoma City Thunder. Guys in Sonics hats showed up at Schultz's book signing at a Costco in 2011 and proudly videotaped themselves getting thrown out. A documentary film, "Sonicsgate," explored in excruciating detail the raw deal that preceded the transfer and the civic pain that ensued.

Just because a federal judge dismissed all charges Tuesday against former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens doesn't mean he's not a crook.

The father of psychiatry, Sigmund Freud, had a special affinity for discerning the guilt and self-blame in his patients' thinking: This, he said, is one of the things that distinguished depression from mere sadness. And the physical representation of this penchant for blaming oneself -- as well as many other symptoms he could observe but not dissect -- would someday be found somewhere in the brain, the Austrian neurologist long speculated. Turns out, the old man was onto something.

Throwing a half-eaten hamburger in the trash is more likely to prompt consumer guilt than watering a lawn, according to a study to be released Thursday. The Eco Pulse survey from marketing communications firm Shelton Group found that 39% of Americans felt the most green guilt for wasting food. The fifth annual survey polled 1,013 Americans and found that consumers also felt guilty about leaving the lights on when leaving a room (27%), wasting water (27%), failing to unplug chargers for electronics (22%)

Dear Amy: When my husband and I divorced more than two years ago, I gave him nine months to move out of my house. He's still here. He claims that he has no money, and he doesn't. He gambled it all away in the stock market after our divorce. My ex-husband is rude. He belittles me and trashes me. He is manic-depressive. He wakes me at 3 a.m. to berate me about my shortcomings. He pays very little in living expenses; he just buys some groceries and pays the cable bill.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - In a place where tidy suburbia meets the foothills, where middle-class families came for the view and stayed for the schools, 10 footsteps now separate relief from ruin. On Vantage Vista Drive, Ernie Storti toes at a line of charred earth so precise it looks as if it had been drawn with black Magic Marker. He struggles to comprehend why his home is nearly untouched from the catastrophic Waldo Canyon fire, yet the house next door - one so close he once joked he could reach over and turn off the sprinkler - was all but vaporized.

Staying motivated to lead a more healthful life can be difficult, what with fattening foods, television and laziness always tripping people up. But there may be another way to keep us on the right track: guilt. Used for centuries by parents to keep their children in line, researchers wondered how guilt would factor in to inspiring people to stick to a more wholesome lifestyle. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine surveyed 100 male and female cardiology outpatients on their feelings about guilt, which was defined as "a negative feeling linked to a particular action and is viewed as separate from the individual; in other words, someone can see themselves as a good person who has done a bad action.

For the first time during a boisterous joint interview with Barbra Streisand, who plays his mother in the new comedy "The Guilt Trip," Seth Rogen seemed at a loss for words. The question posed was straightforward: Did he grow as an actor working with veteran Streisand ("Funny Girl," "The Way We Were," "Yentl," "A Star Is Born") in the buddy comedy opening Wednesday? But Rogen hesitated. "I don't know," said Rogen, 30. He looked over at Streisand, one of a relative handful of entertainers who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony, sitting next to him on a sofa at a Beverly Hills hotel room.

In "The Guilt Trip," which features Barbra Streisand's first starring performance in more than 15 years, the definitive diva plays a lighthearted version of a stereotypical Jewish mother, eating candy in bed and endlessly doting on her only son, played by Seth Rogen. He is an aspiring inventor who has lined up a series of meetings across the country to try to sell his nontoxic household cleaner to box stores and other major retailers. Circumstance and a little affectionate subterfuge on his part lead him to invite her along.

It sat in a corner of my freezer for weeks, a reminder of my indecision. Or my lousy Spanish accent. I'd flown to La Paz, Mexico, earlier this year for a fishing trip with a friend. We'd been hunting a few times before and had always made it a point to eat whatever we brought back, and this trip was no different. In search of smaller species like dorado or mackerel that are relatively plentiful, we were supposed to go on a 20-foot craft that would stay relatively close to shore.

A jury Friday ordered the city of Los Angeles to pay $5.7 million to a man who was shot and paralyzed by police, an award that exceeds by $1.2 million a proposed settlement that the City Council rejected earlier this year. "If the city has to pay some more to show that we stood up and supported our police officers when they did nothing wrong then so be it," said City Council member Paul Krekorian, a vocal opponent to settling the case out of court. "It's money well spent. " The payout could increase even more if the judge orders the city to pay attorneys' fee for the man. The jury's decision compensates 26-year-old Robert Contreras for injuries he suffered one night in September 2005, when several officers on patrol in South Los Angeles responded to a report of a nearby shooting.

Throwing a half-eaten hamburger in the trash is more likely to prompt consumer guilt than watering a lawn, according to a study to be released Thursday. The Eco Pulse survey from marketing communications firm Shelton Group found that 39% of Americans felt the most green guilt for wasting food. The fifth annual survey polled 1,013 Americans and found that consumers also felt guilty about leaving the lights on when leaving a room (27%), wasting water (27%), failing to unplug chargers for electronics (22%)

As imagined by John Logan in his Tony-winning drama "Red" and portrayed by the galvanizing Alfred Molina, painter Mark Rothko is a man of fierce convictions and fiery words. His opinions about art are delivered like biblical proclamations, spoken in the Old Testament cadences of a burning bush. As he holds forth on the nobility of highbrow ambition and the ignominy of commercial frivolity you might momentarily think you've stumbled into a town hall on the fate of the Museum of Contemporary Art. In fact, you are at the Mark Taper Forum, where this sensational production from London's Donmar Warehouse (and later Broadway)

We have reached the zenith of absurdity in our society when four teenagers allegedly steal a van and crash it, killing one of them as they were being pursued by the police ("Youth Killed as Van Chased by Deputies Crashes," July 7). The article in The Times almost apologizes that the police had to get involved. Then the same article seems to give society a "guilt trip" that somehow it was our fault that the teenagers stole the van in the first place. To begin with, at this time of the night why weren't the teenagers at home?

She was quite a sight in her proper business attire, stuffing a pinball machine in the overhead luggage compartment. "It's for my son," she said weakly, as the flight attendant helped her cram the large toy into the small space. "He called me yesterday and said he really wanted one." For the flight attendant, the only variation on this theme was the object purchased by the anxious, absent parent. "You felt guilty because you were out of town," she said.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - In a place where tidy suburbia meets the foothills, where middle-class families came for the view and stayed for the schools, 10 footsteps now separate relief from ruin. On Vantage Vista Drive, Ernie Storti toes at a line of charred earth so precise it looks as if it had been drawn with black Magic Marker. He struggles to comprehend why his home is nearly untouched from the catastrophic Waldo Canyon fire, yet the house next door - one so close he once joked he could reach over and turn off the sprinkler - was all but vaporized.

The father of psychiatry, Sigmund Freud, had a special affinity for discerning the guilt and self-blame in his patients' thinking: This, he said, is one of the things that distinguished depression from mere sadness. And the physical representation of this penchant for blaming oneself -- as well as many other symptoms he could observe but not dissect -- would someday be found somewhere in the brain, the Austrian neurologist long speculated. Turns out, the old man was onto something.