Don't let Beantown become a has-been town. Buckle your seatbelts: it's going to be a wet 'n' wild ride. That's the prediction -- or, rather, the certainty -- that today's global warming carries. Erratic and unpredictable weather is en route, and coastal areas are among the places destined to be hardest hit. So why are Americans paying so little heed? As scientists and weather pundits survey the winds of change destined to bounce our thermostats and pivot our climate, the political will of the nation seems becalmed. With change now the constant, it is high time and high tide to …

My grandmother, the family provider in World War II's market of scarcity, pleaded -- or was it flirted? -- with the butcher for meat. My father, who couldn't hit his hat with a hammer, volunteered for military service and wound up in Boston army ordinance helping "our boys" make munitions. On "the home front," my mother taught my sister and me to paste savings stamps in a book to buy war bonds. Image: NARA. Abroad, my Polish cousin, a secret agent, did underground duty in Paris. My uncle, a bombardier, flew the B-17s of "Bloody Hundredth" fame, while his wife …