Anger

She stood there in the new yellow suit that her mother had bought her, a dental office manager from Roslyn, Pa., choking down the anxiety she felt as she looked at thousands of faces in the mammoth San Diego Convention Center. But as she began to speak, she could feel the anxiety leaving her - replaced by the anger that came just in recalling Aug. 23, 1993, when a 16-year-old who had been visiting a neighbor's house crept through her window and into her bed and raped her. "Words cannot describe the 45 minutes of terror, the helplessness, the violation," Jan Licence told the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night.

If you really want to get writer Nathan McCall angry, mention the crime bills legislators are trying to pass in the nation's capital these days. Crime is on the minds of many here, including President Clinton, members of the Senate and House, and those who work and live in the District of Columbia, where the per-capita murder rate is the highest in the country. McCall agrees that it's time to discuss the growing problem of crime, which disproportionately affects African Americans, who are the vast majority of the city's population.

The righteous heat of anger is what kept college professor Robert Polhill alive through 39 months of captivity, much of that time spent chained in a windowless room. So says the ex-hostage, who was released Sunday in Beirut. But anger also may contribute negatively to health, as a report in yesterday's New York Times points out. The report focused on the slow-burning and longstanding anger over racial prejudice felt by many African-Americans who, as a result, may suffer from dangerously high blood pressure.

COLUMNIST Myrna Shure (Oct. 23) says spanking doesn't work and sends the wrong message. I disagree. Hard spanking and abusiveness, I concur, send the wrong message. But light spanking coupled with meaningful punishment can benefit the child. Our children are best served by light spanking coupled with positive reinforcement, and tough love. Those actions are considered by some to be the best method of behavior-molding and modification. There are times in a child's life when he or she will benefit from the knowledge of aggressive behavior - when and when not to use it. I don't think there is anything wrong with a child who can identify with anger.

Earlier this year, author Karen E. Quinones Miller found out that Walmart wouldn't be carrying her semiautobiographical book on its shelves. The reason? There were concerns that the book's title, An Angry-Ass Black Woman , might offend some of the retail giant's customers. Given Walmart's reach, a lot of authors would have picked a new title and maybe rejiggered things for the sake of book sales. Not Miller. Her decision wouldn't surprise anybody who knows Miller - or anybody who's actually read her work.

Good morning. Today's assigned reading comes from the Epistle to the Ephesians, chapter 4, and verse 25 through chapter 5:225 So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. 26 Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not make room for the devil. 28 Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy.

His name is Larry, and the other day, he read a column of mine that made him laugh. This seems to strike him as a minor miracle. "Before reading your column," he writes, "it is standard procedure for me to ... brace myself in case the angry black man side of you is aroused. ... "I am a white, middle-class, Southerner, baby boomer. Because most of the black man's problems appear to be blamed on me and my contemporaries or my ancestors, I tend to read many of your columns with a defensive posture.

Question: Am I crazy to still be friends with my ex-wife? We split up five years ago after she had an affair with the man she is married to now. We had been married 15 years and had three kids, now ages 21 to 15. I let go of any anger I had and forgave her several years ago. Now we are friends and text from time to time, and have lunch to talk about life, work, and the kids. There is nothing sexual happening. She is just a friend I have known for 21 years. All my divorced friends think I am crazy and can't really be happy unless I put her out of my life.

"You are ignorant. " "In addition to being ignorant . . . you are despicable. " "Dullards shouldn't be writing columns for major newspapers. " "I'm sure you and Tony Auth have a grand old time in bed together every night. " "I understand your conservative bias, but I don't understand your failure to grasp basic English. Slovenly?" "You are a child of your generation: i.e., the most overprotected, irresponsible, self-indulgent, self-absorbed generation in the history of the planet.

It would be easy for me to make light of the study that dubbed Philadelphia "Hostile Capital of the U.S.A.," not to take its claims seriously, to allow myself to be amused. I would be amused if studies of this sort, written by "experts" weren't reduced to damaging sound bites, which get flung all over the country by the media and which become lodged in the brains of typical Americans as truths. Philadelphia, Hostile Capital of the U.S.A., for one. No wonder the mayor was upset.