In praise of public works

From left, Emily, Ellen, Judi, Janice and Jay at Lucifer Falls

There's a story in yesterday's NY Times about the end of the era of big public-works projects, and a column today about the need for a national WPA-type jobs project to get the unemployment rate down.

Both stories took on added relevance because of a hike we took yesterday at a place called Lucifer Falls in Ithaca, a spectacular natural attraction made accessible by a WPA project that built trails and stairs on either side of the natural cascade more than 70 years ago.

Those government workers, hired with taxpayer money when the unemployment rate was two or three times more than the current (10 percent-plus) rate, cut footholds into the rock that enclosed the falls so that generations present and future could get the sense of wonder that falling water seems to inspire.

The point of the Sunday Times story was that large-scale public-works projects seem to have ended for the time being with the completion of Boston's Big Dig two years ago, just as the recession was starting to hit. And yet, the story pointed out, big projects like bridges, dams and highways have often spurred economic growth and generated far more wealth than they cost to produce. The Erie Canal and the state Thruway are two often-cited examples.

The federal government has of course been spreading hundreds of billions of dollars around as part of its stimulus package to get the economy rolling, but most of it is targeted for small-bore projects that can be started quickly.

It's no small irony in New York that even as the government was searching for projects to spend money on, a key bridge across Lake Champlain was nearing the end of its useful life, and is now closed, disrupting life for thousands in Vermont and the Crowne Point area of New York. It's not clear where the money is gong to come from to replace it, and for now travelers are being asked to make do with a ferry.

After our spectacular hike, it's easier to understand the importance of public investments, even in down times, and how there are some things government can do that need to be done, even if the private sector can't be harnessed to do them.

Now, does anyone have a few billion dollars lying around for a new Tappan-Zee bridge across the Hudson? That will surely pay off in the long run. It's the short run that's the problem.

Road Trip

Today we took our first trip out of town unrelated to cancer since I was diagnosed in June. We drove about three hours here to Ithaca this afternoon.

Ithaca prides itself on being "centrally isolated," with almost no divided highways in all of Tompkins County, where it is located. The world's longest driveway, I-88, which runs between Binghamton and Schenectady, ostensibly built to aid the commute of former Senate Majority Leader Warren Anderson of Binghamton, gets you only about half way here. Then it's all back roads through hard-scrabble looking countryside until you emerge in what some people refer to as the "People's Republic of Ithaca" for its liberal politics.

We made that trip so that we could all see the miracles Janice has wrought with the 140-year-old house she bought last year. With the help of my carpenter brother, a handyman tenant and various tax credits, she has turned what appeared to be a crumbling structure into a cozy and lovely home. The roof, windows, hardwood floors, furnace and a hot water heater have all been replaced or refinished.

It's on a "transitional block" near downtown and her house is helping to tip the neighborhood in a positive direction.

This being New York, the taxes, of course, are outrageous. But the STAR program as well as a couple of tenants are helping Janice, who makes a modest living as a graduate student, keep her head above water financially. That's one more thing to be thankful for.

Laverne & Shirley

My sister-in-law Judi's best friend is named Shirley. So while doing a charade trying to get people to guess the title of the TV show "Laverne and Shirley," I merely pointed at her and then pointed to the empty space beside her. For some reason, that didn't work.

So next thing I went for was lavatory, figuring "lav" was the first syllable of Laverne. But the closest response I got was "peeing all over the world."

I actually solved the dilemma by aping the explosion of a volcano with lava flowing down the side. From there, it was a short jump to title of the 70's comedy.

Yesterday's charades game may be the beginning of a new tradition. We had Thanksgiving at our house for the first time in memory with Judi, my brother Neil, his wife Wendy, Ellen, Allyson, Janice and Charlie the dog all travelling hundreds of miles to be here.

Previous Thanksgiving traditions have been very important and meaningful to me but traditions evolve as situations change. It's nice to have a potentially new tradition to look forward to.

Here's a video of my charades triumph:

Happy Thanksgiving

It's easy to be cynical about what New Yorkers have to be thankful for in 2009. The state's finances are a mess, its governor ineffective, the legislature a joke, infrastructure crumbling, health care system teetering, economy stagnant and education system hugely expensive.

On the other hand, as we like to say in editorial pages, I took a walk today in an idyllic state park only two miles from our house. The birds were singing, the deer cavorting and streams gurgling on a piece of publicly owned land less than ten miles from the Capitol. New York has recently expanded this park to help hold back the suburban sprawl which had seen McMansions proliferate in the area before the recession stalled their advance.

Overall, you have to give New York credit for having a great system of parks, including the 6-million-acre Adirondack Park, the largest public reserve in the lower 48 states.

More importantly of course, most New Yorkers are healthy and won't be hungry tomorrow. Millions will have loved ones to share a meal with. Those are joys even a dysfunctional government usually can't screw up.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Is there a connection here?

In an important sense, it doesn't make any difference whether a federal jury finds former New York Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno guilty of cheating taxpayers out of the "honest services'' they're entitled to.

The reason is if what he did isn't against the law, it should be.

Testimony and evidence admitted at his trial, the most closely watched political story in Albany since Eliot Spitzer's prostitution scandal last year, show that he violated the public trust even if it's unclear whether his conduct rises to the level of crimes.

Information disclosed at the trial shows that he:
-- Used state facilities and employees in his private consulting business that brought him $3.2 million;
-- Failed to disclose the source of his income;
-- Took money from investment firms for introductions to labor unions who were looking for advice about where to invest their pension money at the same time those unions had business before the Senate. Guess what? They took his advice and he made a 10 percent commission.
-- He took tens of thousands of dollars from a friend who had an interest in a firm that got $500,000 in grants from the state.

Federal prosecutors were able to dig out information that reporters, local and state officials apparently missed for years. It almost makes those citizens who believe that state officials should work exclusively for their benefit look like saps.

Meanwhile, Bruno's successors in the Senate are carrying on in the grand tradition of irresponsibility, refusing to make spending cuts that would hurt education and health care to balance the budget. By failing to act they are placing the state's financial stability at risk, according to the governor.

And while Bruno's financial dealings have been bared, one of the biggest unanswered questions at the Capitol is, how much money does Bruno's former counterpart in the Assembly, Speaker Sheldon Silver, get from the trial-lawyer firm he is associated with? Silver, who has been the top Assemlly official since 1994, has steadfastly refused to disclose how much he gets or who it comes from and he doesn't have to.

Like Bruno used to, Silver makes about $125,000 for his part-time government work.

Not counting Bruno, about 20 lawmakers have been removed from office for fraud-related crimes over the past few years.

... All of this news, and fewer reporters than ever to write about it, and fewer newspaper subscribers than ever to read about it... Is there a connection here?

The grass shouldn't always be greener

My sister-in-law Judi and I were sitting in a popular lunch place today, leisurely attacking our grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches, as dozens of well dressed people buzzed by us. They seemed intent on getting their food, eating it and getting back to work, even sometimes checking their blackberries while they waited in line or ate.

As is often the case when I'm in such places these days, I was thinking how much I envied those people, with firm schedules, deadlines and a sense of accomplishment likely on their daily agendas while a largely empty afternoon loomed before me.

But later Judi, a former corporate human-resources manager who has been retired for eight years, said her attitude is to enjoy such moments and not have to worry about rushing back to work. While staying active with volunteer work, hobbies and friends, she has adjusted to a slower pace of life.

Savor it, she suggested, and I did manage to recall all of the rushed meals, hurried trips to the Capitol, editors needing stories minutes after a news event, spokesmen who didn't return calls, politicians who wouldn't give me a straight answer and the other daily frustrations of my former life.

I am sure back in those days the sudden lifting of the burden of producing blogs and news stories daily would have seemed like a great relief sometimes. And
since that is my situation now, of course it makes the most sense to enjoy what ever hand you're dealt.

So I'm trying. There are obviously worse things in life than sleeping in, taking long walks, lingering over meals, reading my fill of novels and catching up on e-mails.

Albany isn't Wyoming

We learned this weekend that Albany is not Wyoming and that it is closer to Broadway than one might think.

A local state lawmaker, Jack McEneny, made the point about Albany and Wyoming after a performance of "The Laramie Project'' at Albany High School today. The play is about the 1998 hate-crime murder of University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, who was gay.

During a discussion after the performance, McEneny responded to a suggestion that Albany has similar intolerance problems by pointing out that New York has a hate-crime law that adds penalties onto infractions that have an aspect of bias to them.

He also took the opportunity to point out that the fault lines on homosexual rights in New York now is on the gay-marriage issue. The Assembly has passed a bill legalizing the unions, but whether the Senate will pass the measure, which Gov. David Paterson has promised to sign, remains unclear.

On the other geographical question concerning Albany, it seemed closer than 150 miles (the actual distance) to Broadway yesterday when we saw a local production of "My Fair Lady,'' where the leads could have given Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn a run for their money.

It was also a good way to ease into the more serious issues of bias and prejudice in the "Laramie'' show.

Finally, a last word about volcanoes. Buffalo friend Peter Reese corrected me about the cause of the year with no summer.

"Hey dude, Krakatoa blew its top in 1883,'' he told me. "The year with no summer was the result of the eruption of Tambora in 1815, the largest of the modern era. (The nineteenth century was a bad time to live next to a volcano.)''

Shouldn't "Nineteenth Century'' be capitalized?

No more chemo 'til December

Good news on the chemo front: none 'til December.

Our oncologist told us today that it's a good idea to take a little break from chemo after the radiation treatments I had last week. And since next week is Thanksgiving, it seems to make sense to hold off until after that so that my head doesn't crash into the mashed potatoes and gravy next Thursday.

That also sets up a three-week round of treatments before taking Christmas week off, and it would be nice not to feel too crappy that week.

We will get our first indication of what effect if any the cyberknife procedure had that week - I'm scheduled for another CT-Scan on the 21st that will examine the tumor and then will talk to the doc about it on the 23rd.

Our Albany doc told us today that I am his first patient who has had the procedure, so we're in unchartered waters here.

One more word on the end of the world I wrote about yesterday: friend Peter Slcoum points out that in 1816 NY experienced "the year of no summer,'' when it snowed in the Adirondacks in June, July and August.

The reason was the eruption of Mt. Krakatoa (sp?) in Indonesia, which spewed enough ash into the atmosphere to block out the sun in parts of the world for months. That gave a real boost to those who thought then that the end was near.

They were wrong then and let's hope they're wrong this time too!

How close is doomsday?

The media presents such a blizzard of conflicting information these days anyone with his or her eyes and ears open has to wonder about whom to believe.

This week I happened to catch the movie "2012,'' the premise of which is the world is doomed because of a confluence of cosmic events on the winter solstice in three years. Buttressing this doomsday scenario is the ancient Mayan calendar, which shows time running out on that date, and a 50-year-old theory about how the earth's crust could become displaced.

This gives the moviemakers an excuse to use all sorts of neat special effects to show Los Angeles falling into the Pacific Ocean, a tsunami drowning the Himalayas, an aircraft carrier crashing into the White House and all sorts of other fun scenes. As one review said, people do love seeing things get blown up.

Yet earlier in the week The NY Times said, essentially, not to worry. The world may end "soon,'' a story in the paper's weekly Science section said, but "soon'' in a geologic sense could mean tens of millions of years, so there's no reason to stop buying unripe bananas quite yet. There's no particular threat looming in 2012, the story said.

The Times was in part quoting NASA, which has actually been getting mail from people scared by the movie and felt it necessary to respond.

Scaring the heck out of people is of course a time-tested way to make money, and most people seem able to just shrug off the implications, of any, if fantastic movies like this.

Nevertheless, it is sobering to realize that many more people will see the movie, which will probably make a profit of 10s or 100s of millions, than will see story in The Times, which is struggling to stay in the black. And energy wasted worrying out such a thing detracts from more realistic threats, like global warming or the demise of newspapers.

One last nit to pick (2 actually)

I promise this is my last grammar nit-pick post for a while, but I can't resist this one.

Yesterday I went to the Siena-Northeastern basketball game. The ticket said it started at "12:00 p.m.'' This confused me, because there is no such time as 12 p.m. By definition, 12:00 is neither a.m. nor p.m.

OK, so it didn't really confuse me. I knew that by 12:00 p.m. they meant noon. (Why they were playing at noon on a Tuesday is another story - suffice it to say it was a chance to get on national TV as part of a 24-hour ESPN marathon to mark the beginning of the college-basketball season.)

I also know that by 12:00 a.m. people usually mean midnight. And I have no idea why people say "12 noon,'' since "11 noon'' or "1 noon'' make no sense.

Also have to mention the comma splice on the back of the ticket. "No refund or exchanges, the ticket is nontransferable,'' it declares, avoiding at all costs the simple period that would properly have separated two distinct thoughts into two sentences.

OK, you can now stop sending me examples of errors I have made in pointing out other people's mistakes, and I'll go back to silently stewing about such issues.

The institute for writers

The New York State Writers Institute has hosted hundreds of distinguished authors at SUNY Albany over the last 25 years. While Hunter S. Thompson, Frank McCourt, Saul Bellow and Richard Russo have been among them, Lynne Truss has not.

Truss, regular readers may recall, is the author of "Eats, Shoots and Leaves,'' a book about the deterioration punctuation use and, therefore, the decline of the English language.

I have no inside information about this, but I suspect that were she to be invited, one of the first things Truss would have mentioned is that the name of the organization should be the "New York State Writers' Institute." How can "writers'' be anything but possessive, and therefore how can the title not include that all-important apostrophe?

This was brought to mind last night when we attended the institute's 25th-anniversary celebration. The ceremony was pretty thoroughly botched, with malfunctioning microphones and too-long speeches by the people who run the institute and not enough time for the two stars of the evening, Mario Cuomo and Doris Kearns Goodwin (a Colby College graduate as well as a Pulitzer-Prize-winning biographer).

Both were still worth listening to in the limited time they were allotted. Cuomo, New York governor from 1983 to 1994, pulled the classic stunt to those who are familiar with him of discarding a question he didn't want to answer (why weren't you president?) substituting one of his own (how should Barack Obama handle Afghanistan?) and answering it (make Congress either declare war and get the country behind the endeavor, or leave if Congress won't do it, since the war is unwinnable without the support of the country.)

Goodwin had the best answer I've heard on why Congress doesn't work any more: most members now go home weekends to raise money for TV ads to get re-elected and don't develop across-the-aisle friendships like they used to. Plus the splintered media encourages extreme positions.

What's been lost: the ability of politicians like Lyndon Johnson to get Republicans to cross party lines to pass important bills like the voting-rights act in 1965.

Even if it is punctuation-challenged, the institute has brought lots of interesting people to the area. Maybe its name will be fixed and Truss will come next year.

World is going to hell

I'm surprised that in the more than five months I've been absent from work, our papers haven't been flooded with complaints from readers upset that stories from Albany don't have enough hyphens in them, or have them in the wrong places.

My biggest grammatical tick is assuring that compound adjectives ("deficit-reduction plan, last-minute victory, public-health assessment,'' etc) are connected by hyphens, while adverbs and the adjectives they modify ("newly painted store, highly decorated veteran, deeply troubled project'') are not.

I have tortured generations of correspondents and interns with these basic grammatical lessons. I am used to watching them roll their eyes.

This issue came to mind again because I just finished a fun book called "Eats, Shoots and Leaves'' about the deterioration of punctuation and how that is causing problems with understanding language, especially in the instant-communication age.

Author Lynne Truss, tongue in cheek, dedicated the book "to the memory of the striking Bolshevik printers of St. Petersburg who, in 1905, demanded to be paid the same rate for punctuation marks as for letters, and thereby directly precipitated the first Russian Revolution."

The title refers to a joke about a panda bear who went into a restaurant, had a meal, shot the place up and then walked out. He explained that that's what pandas do, according to a guide book. The problem is there should be no comma after "eats.'' Then the phrase merely describes the panda's diet of shoots and leaves.

The other reason I thought of picky grammar was a recent Maureen Dowd column in the NY Times about greedy bankers.

"Goldmine Sachs, as its known, is out for itself,'' she wrote, in a sentence that presumably went through multiple layers of editors and I'm sure she was proud of as a clever turn of phrase on the name of the investment bank Goldman Sachs.

Truss dedicated several pages of her book to the idiocy of not including an apostrophe in "it's'' when it is meant to read "it is'' and not the possessive.

And yet this simple mistake found its way into the story of one of the best known columnists in the country on arguably the most influential page of any newspaper. Yet there was no outcry the next day.

I can almost feel myself growing into a curmudgeon, which I think will suit me.

In praise of pen and ink

Many years ago, a thoroughly love-besotted college sophomore kept his Dad and brother-in-law, who had made a three-hour trip to Maine to pick him up for summer vacation, waiting for a couple of hours in his dorm room.

He was busy helping his girlfriend pack and doing his best to charm her parents and sister.

The Dad was a mild-mannered man, but steam was almost coming out of his ears when his distracted offspring finally showed up and started to pack his own stuff.

I know about this because the guy was me, the girl was Emily, and we wrote about this day, humorous only in retrospect, in letters that we have retained all of these years.

This weekend we dusted off a few of the hundreds of letters we wrote back and forth over a summer she was away being a camp counselor and the two years she spent at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst after transferring from Colby. (That move was, she now says, her last-ditch attempt to find a nice Jewish boy. Oh well, can't win 'em all.)

One thing we both noticed immediately while reading the letters was how much clearer our handwriting was back in the '60s. Funny what you can do when there aren't any keyboards around.

What will be the equivalent in another 40 years of the old bags into which we jammed these letters, and will there be an electronic version of the back of a closet where they have sat since we moved here in 1984?

Much is gained by blogs, e-mails, twitters, etc., but much can be lost by the passing of more prosaic technology as well. Hopefully devices to save such seemingly prosaic but eventually precious communications are being developed even as I write this.

Flash: Insurance company does the right thing

Forget what I have said before about health-insurance companies. We got word today that Empire Blue Cross-Blue Shield will pay for the cyberknife treatments I had this week. We don't have an exact amount on the cost, but it runs into the tens of thousands of dollars.

Initially the company said no, claiming that the procedure is experimental, but we went ahead with the treatment anyway. We gathered strong opinions from docs that we sent to the insurance company, pointing out that the treatment is now widely accepted, and that it is one of the few viable options for someone in my situation. The company rep was extremely helpful in directing us through the appeals process.

Such rationality, apparently, paid off, as the company took a serious second look at its decision and reversed its position.

The decision might even get me to stop complaining, even if only briefly, about the soaring cost of health insurance.

Why medical costs are so high

I got to talking this week with one of the cyberknife nurses about the unusual shirt I had to wear for the radiation treatments.

It was made from a rough, clingy material with no sleeves but lots of elasticity and some wire connections that lit up when plugged in. It looked something like a football referee's jersey.

Its main task was to measure my breathing rhythm, which helped to direct the robot delivering the radiation. That's needed because every time I breathe, the tumor moves.

The nurse was complaining that the shirts have to be thrown out each time a patient is through with it - the wiring precludes washing and dry cleaning doesn't get it clean enough.

That brought me up short. How much do they cost, I asked. What it costs to make or what we have to pay for it? she shot back. Answer: the hospital pays about $500 apiece.

Which may or may not be part of the reason that health care now accounts for a fifth of our economy and why it may cost us nearly as much as we paid for our first house to have had this procedure done.

For those who missed it, the link to get to my radio interview with Alan Chartock that aired today is:
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wamc/news.newsmain/article/3566/0/1576435/WAMC.Speakers.Corner/Alan.Chartock...In.Conversation.with.Jay.Gallagher

Reminder

The radio interview with Alan Chartock I taped last month is due to be broadcast on WAMC at 1pm tomorrow, Thursday November 12 on the "In Conversation With..." program.

Those who can't catch it should look for it on WAMC.org and Ellen will post a link (most likely from this site) if there is one available.

Cyberknife Fini

Cyberknife Fini

I finished my third and last cyberknife treatment today, managng to lie still for another couple of hours while a device that looks like an old tv camera attached to a robotic arm moved around my body, zapping the tumor in my pancreas from various angles. Or at least that's what they tell me, I couldn't feel, see or hear a thing.

We should know the results in about a month when I have a CT scan that is supposed to show whether the tumor has shrunk.

It's kind of a giddy feeling not to have any immediate event to dread.

Those of you who warned that "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown might not be too distracting were right. But an impending murder helped the last half hour or so go by more quickly.

We're about to hit the road to Albany where we plan to thankfully stay ensconced for at least the next few weeks. We've been told to expect even more fatigue than usual which I'm learning to cope with.

The big event now on our calendars is the same as for most people: Thanksgiving.

Over the cyberknife hump

We're now over the hump on cyberknife - two two-hour treatments down and one to go.

Today's was a little shorter than yesterday's since I did a better job keeping still (the machine shuts down when you move) and the nurse taped my feet together to end my unfortunate habit of crossing and uncrossing my ankles.

The Dan Brown book was also a little better- someone's severed hand was discovered on the floor of the Capitol Rotunda in Washington DC, giving hope for more action and gore to come to distract me. It still ain't easy lying there for so long, though.

The very charming spokeswoman from Blue Cross just called to say our appeal of their decision not to pay for the treatment has been denied. We're taking it to the next appeal level.

We are enjoying staying with Ellen and Allyson, although I made the shocking discovery (when I went looking for Monday Night Football to watch) they do not have ESPN on their cable system. I thought that was as essential to a home as running water, but found out otherwise. They offered to find the game for me on-line but it would not have been the same. Thank God they have TiVo or I would dispair for the coming generation.

Emily is adjusting well to the big city. Since I can't drive the seven or so miles through thick urban traffic betweeen the apartment and the hospital because of the drugs in me, she is returning to her Mass.-driving roots and acclimated quickly to the lunatics who get behind car steering wheels here. Not even a dent yet.

We plan to head home tomorrow afternoon after the last treatment is over and are looking forward to being home. We won't know the results of this treatment for several weeks.

Cyberknife one-third over

Cyberknife is now one-third done with two-thirds to go. The first session today at Beth Israel-Deaconness Hospital in Boston was long - two and a half hours - but not very stressful, especially with a couple of Ativans in me.

The most important thing is that the room where I laid on a table was wide open and the radiation machine,which flits back and forth over me for most of the time, doesn't come within a couple of feet of my body - so no claustrophobia.

I brought along a CD of Dan Brown's new book about Masons and Washington DC that although it's gotten terrible reviews sounded highly distracting. But I was too spacey to listen to it closely.

The nurses told me to on the lookout for nausea and (even more) tiredness, but they haven't kicked in yet. Maybe tomorrow.

Also a development on the cat front: Maya, Ellen and Allyson's cat, seems glad to see me and has even jumped up in my lap a couple of times and purred while I stroked her. Still no final decision to get one of our own though.

Cyberknife time

Off to hit the Mass. Turnpike again today to travel to Boston. Too bad you can't rack up frequent-driver and toll-payer points. At least it gives us a chance to buy that (relatively) cheap Mass. gas.

My first cyberknife appointment is scheduled for 11 a.m. tomorrow at Beth-Israel Deaconess Hospital, with additional two-hour sessions at 10 a.m. Tuesday and 11 a.m. Wednesday. It is hard to imagine how I am going to lie still that whole time, but lots of other people have done it so I guess I can too.

Still up in the air is who will pay for it. Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield promised us an answer by tomorrow. Of course, we're going ahead with it either way and are prepared to wrestle with them more later.

This treatment is actually one of the major payoffs for going to Boston for treatment, since there is nothing similar offered in Albany. And this is offered as a replacement for six weeks of radiation (for an hour a day, five days a week) that is the standard of care here. That sounds grim.

We had a scare this weekend when the day after the last round of chemo I got a fever that spiked at 101.9 degrees. I was afraid that would throw off the cyberknife timing. However, with the help of a little Tylenol, it quickly receded.

Anyway, I'm bringing the new Dan Brown book to listen to on CDs to help pass the time. I will be glad when it's over. We won't know how successful the treatment has been in shrinking the tumor for a month or so.

another cx

I apologize to Janice for the slight misinterpretation of what she told me today about academics and pressing political problems.

My interpretation of what she's saying now are that academics will study an issue to death and at such great length that by the time they reach a conclusion the issue is likely to be moot anyway.

But what do I know? I am just one of those first drafts of history guys.

cx on Dad's Blog

As typical for a journalist, my father didn't get quite right what I was saying about academia's interest in solving political problems today over lunch.

It's not so much that academics don't want to get their hands dirty dealing with contemporary issues, but that academics have a lot of theories about what causes big problems. Once they have their theories, they take a long time to gather careful data supporting that theory, and often find that there are many different interpretations of the data and subsequent policy implications.

More clearly, my hunch is that academics who study this stuff know enough to know there is no easy solution.

That said, I do agree with my dad that academics, and political scientists especially, need to be "more normatively focused" - meaning, they need to be careful that there painstaking, exhaustive work teaches us something about how things should work, and how to get there.

Thinking too much is a dangerous thing

The day after chemo is typically a lay-low day and gives me time to think, which I know is a dangerous thing.

The tendency was compounded today by having a budding political scientist (Janice) home for a visit.

We of course have been talking about the elections, and the Republican gains in suburbs around the state and country. It's only a year since a Dem sweep of almost everything but now things seem to be swinging back to the Repubs. It seems possible that the GOP will take back Congress next year.

Just what do voters want?

The NY Times wasn't much help today. On the op-ed page, one columnist (Paul Krugman) said Obama's economic-stimulus plan didn't go far enough, while on the same page another (David Brooks) argued that independents want less government involvement in the economy and in their lives.

Then on the front page of the local paper was a story about how the government extending unemployment benefits for up to 20 weeks is an important lifeline for millions of chronically unemployed people. I suspect many of these people decry "big government.''

That got me thinking about the essentially false choices our system tends to offer - whoever is out of power tends to look better in bad economic times, while incumbents seldom have trouble when times are good - and how making tough decisions (raising taxes or cutting spending) always seems to be a political death sentence.

Take New York, for example. State Senate Dems don't like the cuts that Gov. Paterson is proposing, but offer nothing of their own to deal with the deficit. Paterson's payoff for being the more responsible party is record-low poll ratings.

In New Jersey, Gov-elect Chris Christie promises to cut property taxes, even though state government is facing a multi-billion-dollar deficit, and offers no specifics on how to save money.

The system seems broken. What do those in academia think about such problems? Don't hold your breath waiting for an answer, Janice warned. Those in ivory towers seldom want to get their hands dirty dealing with such real-world issues.

Congratulations to Yankees? Sure

This is a copy of a note sent over my name today to a friend who is a Yankee fan:

Dear Tom:

A warm congratulations on the Yankees World Series Win. I do believe that is number 27 -- now 20 more than the Red Sox. Now, I know much has been made of the team "buying'' its championship, so I was heartened to see the likes of Jeter, Posada, Rivera and Pettitte play such important roles in the series. And, yes, I certainly noticed that the clinching game for the Yankees came at the hands of Pedro Martinez.

So, again, I'm happy for you, and the Yankees.

Sincerely,

Jay Gallagher

No, of course I didn't write this, which is why signature issues on the Internet are such a mess. It was a figment of the imagination of a Capitol reporter who knew I would be snarly at best today and so took it upon himself to express my sentiments over last night's win. Makes me wonder about the credibility of the stories he writes about the supposedly "dysfunctional'' state government.

My congratulations to Yankee fans (who won the World Series last night) have been more of the snide variety, like, "you finally got your money's worth,'' or "it couldn't happen to a more obnoxious group of fans'' (Phillies are a close second on that race too, especially compared to the dignified academics who tend to populate Fenway Park - The "Jeter sucks, and A-Rod swallows'' signs you see occasionally there notwithstanding.)

It's time to move on, to revel in the collapse of New York's professional football teams (actually Jersey-based) as well as the ongoing struggles of its hockey and basketball teams, while the Patriots and Celtics sweep all before them. (It's too early to worry about the Bruins.)

Spring training is a mere four months away. Which reminds me, if a team can't clinch the title until November, it shouldn't count.

Is all politics local?

I got invited to a party to watch the returns in our town's elections last night - the first time I have ever attended such an event other than as a reporter.

At first, it showed all the excitement of a wake. These were Republicans in a town with 9,300 enrolled Democrats, 6,500 unenrolled and only 6,000 members of the the GOP. The Dems held every town office, to say nothing of control of our county, state and federal governments.

Thirty or 40 people gathered at a pizza joint to watch as the results were called in from polling places.

Shortly after the polls closed, the GOP candidate for the top town job of supervisor, Sam Messina, was talking about how the election wasn't the most important thing in his life, how it had been a great experience meeting people, etc., and all of the other things candidates expecting to lose say.

But from the beginning, something peculiar was happening. While all of the other local GOP candidates were taking their expected drubbing, Sam was hanging close to his Democratic incumbent opponent in early returns.

"We're at least going to give him a race,'' he said about 45 minutes after the polls closed and he was only slightly behind.

At the end, he pulled narrowly ahead, by about 130 votes out of about 9,000 cast. The final tally will be decided after about 400 absentees are counted, but typically absentees break about the same way votes cast on election day do, making it likely that Messina will be the next supervisor.

As the crowd erupted at the news, Messina climbed up on a chair, urging caution about the final results and thanking those who had helped him and pledging to work with his (apparently) vanquished foe. It was good he had something planned to say in case he won as well as the expected concession speech.

What happened? There were no exit polls to provide a clue. Maybe it's a tiny signal that the bloom is off the Barack Obama rose, as the results of the New Jersey and Virginia governor's races also seemed to indicate last night? Or did people pay enough attention so that his calls for lower spending and less partisanship actually resonated with enough voters to make the difference?

The unpredictability of politics is part of the fun. Sometimes voters are smarter than the pros give them credit for.

Feline fantasy?

Those who read this blog closely will recall the fiasco when Emily and I cared for Charlie, Janice's English sheepdog, a few weeks ago. We don't seem to have the patience or aptitude to be pet owners.

That experience would seem to have bolted the already closed door on the chances of us ever having a pet. But a crack has appeared.

While at Ellen's this week, her cat, Maya, jumped up on my lap and then purred contently while I stroked her back. I liked that. I'm home a lot. Anyone would like to have an affectionate critter around, especially one who doesn't demand much.

I used to be allergic to cats but that is one aspect of my health that seems to have improved over the years. No more itchy eyes, sniffling and sneezing when a cat is around.

The big advantage cats have over dogs is there is no need to walk them or pick up after them. The only chores appear to be buying and putting out food and cleaning out the litter box.

We had a dog only briefly when I was a kid I remember my mother complaining a lot about the care it took (my sister had sprung it on them without warning one summer when a couple she knew split up.) But we all loved him for the few years he was around.

As parents we favored goldfish and other low-maintenance creatures for our kids. Janice demanded a dog when we moved here from Rochester in exchange for her acquiescence - she was 7) but we bargained her down to a gerbil. The animal bit her a few weeks after we moved here, ending that experiment.

The odds are still against any change, but we plan to spend three nights with Ellen and Allyson next week during my cyberknife treatments. Maybe Maya will be cute and cuddly enough to open the crack a little wider.

Ready for Cyberknife

I was injected with dye, had a body mold made of myself, had a CT scan and received a couple of pep talks in Boston today in preparation for my cyberknife treatments next week.

All were to make sure they know exactly where the tumor is and therefore zap the right place in a series of three, two-hour treatments of hyper concentrated radiation. The task is made easier by the operation I had back in June which, among other things, placed markers in the tumor to help guide the radiation. Both the doc and the nurses assured me that the procedure is painless and mostly comfortable even though I have to remain relatively still the whole time. Drugs will help.

Also the procedure will be in an open room with nothing over my head and therefore none of the dread of an MRI exam for me. Our biggest task this week would seem to be to find a good book on tape to listen to during the procedure.

Our doc said the results won't be obvious for a month or so since it takes that long for the effects of the radiation to show up on the tumor. It would be a lie to say I'm still not anxious about undergoing the procedure. But I do feel better about it than I did yesterday. This will be the first time we've really directly attacked the tumor.

The big outstanding issue of course is getting the insurance company to pay for it. So far they're taking the unreasonable position that this is an experimental procedure. But it's been used successfully hundreds of times. We have to figure out a way to make Empire Blue Cross see the light.