Today's Erie Times-News has a Norman Rockwell feel to it. Starting with the photo on the front page, showing a young boy getting a booster shot to ward off the chickenpox, to a pleasing portrait on the City & Region page of a third-grade student covering her mouth as she laughs, readers see pleasing images.

The theme of today's Varsity section, the weekly tabloid that covers high school sports in depth, is "Thanks, Mom." More than a dozen students wrote in to praise their mothers for all the support they provide. It's a feel-good piece in anticipation of Mother's Day on Sunday, and, next to apple pie, nothing's more American that giving a salute to Mom.

Coverage is not limited, however, to the bright, Rockwell-esque stories and photos in the news. Today's Times-News follows the brutal attack and rape of a 75-year-old woman on Erie's eastside, as well as the perplexing case of Chytoria Graham, the stressed-out mother who, in the midst of a fight with her boyfriend, confessed to picking up her four-week-old son and swinging him like a baseball bat. The infant suffered a fractured skull when the incident happened in October, but is now on the mend.

Several readers called me for the latest information on the investigation of the attack on the elderly woman. One female caller said her mother is "panicked over the story, and she's afraid to remain alone in her house."

As awful as the attack was, it's reassuring in an odd way that people in Erie seem so outraged by the incident. It shows that this kind of thing doesn't happen here very often.

What today's paper ultimately represents, I think, is a community that cares about its youth and elderly. Erie's not a perfect place by any stetch of the imagination, but we take our reputation seriously as a "good place to raise a family" and as a good "family town." Many folks here care not just about their own children, but about the others in the neighborhood and those belonging to friends and other family.

In short, Erie people care. It's what makes this a special place, and it's why I enjoy working on the Times-News so much.

-- Kevin Cuneo

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