The Mall Killers thread keeps on producing gems from you readers. The latest is this remark from a reader who posts only under the lower-case initial “k”:

I wish people could know how small it really can start, the power of small things. Enough to make a new generation just a little bit better off than the last in how they parent, in the level of life chaos they are willing to tolerate, in what they expect and believe of themselves. Because I have come from this underclass of poverty and crime (multiracial, not the specifically black inner city) I can think of the examples of success, where convicts have turned around, where children of parents in jail have come out okay, where very bad teens find success as adults, where torn up families find religion or something that heals their hearts, all of this. And it is nothing so special; there are many. I always wonder why we don’t hear more about this, the things that actually are working on the ground, though still too few to arrest the greater trajectory. There seems something ugly in many of our spirits that loves the crime tragedy stories on a tv special, but if it’s a story where people found God and/or actually raised up their level of morality and behavior, we make a face and turn away.

You know what I’d like to read? Stories from you about small things that made an enormous difference in your life. Stories of hope. Go.