When the rain stopped for a few moments this evening, I went out to the garden, tore off a tomato leaf, a sprig of mint, and thought about Bernie Madoff and Thomas H. Mitchell Jr. Yeah, I know. Strange.

Mitchell, who served time for the kidnapping and bloody assault of the 17-year-old daughter of Robert and Marilyn Leavitt of Standish, is well-known to us. He recently was found guilty of murdering Judith L. Flagg back in 1983.

Bernie Madoff, of international infamy, is a monster of a different shade. The blood on his hands is green, and he will now serve a sentence of 160 years in prison. A long time.

Mitchell will soon be sentenced. No matter how long that sentence, he, like Madoff, will certainly die in prison. We'll switch channels now.

But before we all turn our attention back to the economy, the carnival death and circus of a pop icon, the journey of Sarah Palin, why not drag some light from all of this darkness?

Of the two, Madoff I think will suffer the most. He is a man who lived larger than Mitchell and knew a grander life, who inhaled the sweet air of the rich and powerful. Bernie Madoff had all those things most of us wish we could have, if even for a day. But now they're both in cages, and I think this is news we can use. There's a positive twist here for all of us who may have become a little lazy.

You, out there on the deck of your camp, with your child or grandchild on your lap, fishing in your boat or simply waiting under an umbrella so you can play another hole, give this some thought.

These men will never again taste the sauce on a steak, or a cold beer on a hot August day. Neither of them will ever fall asleep with the moonlight on their pillows. When autumn comes, there will be no aroma of crushed burning leaves or the smell of the burning wood in the fireplace, the stew in the oven, the aroma of the wine just poured in the glass.

Neither man will ever hear the crunch of snow beneath his feet on a winter's night, hear carolers at the door or hear a child scream with joy on opening a gift.

And when spring comes, there will be no scent of fresh earth wafting down the halls of their prison. Madoff will not see his grandchildren graduate from high school. The late sun of September will not flow through the windows and fall on their pictures, as it does on mine, and yours.

They will never smell the oil of a woman's skin on a hot beach in July, eat a hot dog at a ball game, pet a dog or hold a cat, stroke the feathers of a bird, eat breakfast at a cafe, pour their own coffee or hear the loons, the surf, the crickets and the cries of birds heading south in the fall.

These are the things of our lives, that we do each day without really thinking of them, that we take for granted. Life for them will be the ticking of a clock, the pages of a calendar. They will look forward to visiting days and then watch the visitors leave, knowing they will get into a car and hear its engine hum, go home to a real bed, have dinner by candlelight and sleep without the tap of a guard's heavy shoes echoing down the corridors.

These are bad men, evil men, and the darkness is their due. But the news of their fate is something we can use. We can reach out and touch the freedom around us we too often take for granted.

Madoff and Mitchell. News we can use.