NEWTOWN — DebraLee Hovey was on a hill on a beautiful Caribbean island when she learned of one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. Hovey was on St. Thomas celebrating her wedding anniversary and had walked up the hill from her condominium to get cellphone service. When she neared the top, her iPhone lit up with emails and texts about the shooting.

Three Mondays ago, a paraplegic medical marijuana user from Meridian Township — or so he described himself — called me and said that he had been robbed at gun point in his home in the middle of the night by three armed “black guys.”. The man did not want to give me his name, but he described the home invasion this way: He was sleeping, naked, on his couch very, very early on a Sunday morning when the men barged in waving guns.

MILFORD >> It was near 8:30 p.m. on July 19 in a quiet residential neighborhood when Leroy Gardner thought he was going to die. Gardner, a canvasser for the Citizens Campaign for the Environment , was out collecting signatures for petitions and soliciting for letters to send to politicians. He was near the end of his shift, revisiting homes whose occupants hadn’t been there when he had visited earlier in the day.

So why not pose for a calendar wearing nothing but a pair of bunker pants, a firefighter’s helmet and a sultry gaze? After all, it’s for a good cause. Moore, a 3 ½-year veteran firefighter for South King Fire and Rescue, is one of 29 hunks and babes who appear in the 2011 Washington Firefighters Calendar.

How likely is it that you would get shot, stabbed, beaten, robbed, carjacked or otherwise molested if you were to take a walk around The Commons Mall late at night — say, between midnight and 2 a.m.? What dangers lurk in that shadowy space between Sears and the shoe outlet? What weirdo is waiting to strike from behind Panera Bread?

One month after the Sandy Hook shooting, Ben Shapiro undid the liberal anti-gun argument on live TV. It was a time of mourning, but Democrats had made guns control the topic du jour. Liberal CNN host Piers Morgan was their hatchet man, and invited Shapiro on his show likely hoping to score an easy win for the anti-gun side.

ORANGE >> If you know who Crash Bandicoot is, how to wield the Triforce or the correct way to perform a “babality” move on your enemy, then there’s a new business in town for you. On Saturday, Retro Games Plus opened in a small shopping plaza along the Boston Post Road. The store specializes in selling and buying retro video games, especially for systems from the early 1990s and late 1980s — an era in which the millennial generation came of age.

On display in Robert Jozwiak’s living room, there is a symbol of life, and there is a symbol of death. In the middle of the room, which is covered with spotless white carpet (visitors must remove their shoes when entering the house), there is a giant ficus tree. It was a gift from his sister, who said he’d have to prove that he was able to take care of a plant before having children.

A cutting-edge Everett technology company has a special connection to the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court battle. The company Electric Mirror, which manufactures mirrors with built-in technology, has filed an amicus brief to the Hobby Lobby lawsuit to aid in the fight for religious freedom. Hobby Lobby, along with the company Conestoga in a separate suit, is suing the federal government over an Obamacare mandate to provide contraceptive and abortion-inducing drugs in health care plans for employees.

Gary Andrews touts that it was he, working as an independent local cable access producer, who got exclusive footage of visits to Michigan by John Sinclair. Sinclair is a famed counterculture activist who, among other things, has been a poet, marijuana legalization activist, manager of the band MC5, underground newspaper publisher and founder of the White Panther Party, which sought to help the Black Panther Party.