Half-full glass

In keeping with advice I get frequently to remain optimistic, I offer this glass-half-full look at 2009:

- Barack Obama is still healthy and still President; the war in Afghanistan is not yet lost and members of Congress are not yet beating each other over the head with canes;

- I'm still here, which was by no means guaranteed six months ago;

- New York State has yet to default on paying any of its bills. Many members of the Legislature have yet to be indicted for any serious crime;

- Most banks are still open, the stock market is functioning, and the Chinese and the rest of our creditors are still willing to let us borrow more money;

- While scores of newspapers have gone out of business, most are still publishing daily, and although 40,000 newspaper jobs were eliminated, hundreds of thousands of other people are still drawing paychecks from publishers;

- Social Security is not yet bankrupt, allowing people like me to collect disability payments;

- The Red Sox and Patriots both made the playoffs;

- There are not yet any restrictions on who publishes what on the Internet, meaning an old newspaper guy can post his daily musings that some people actually read.

Now that I've fulfilled my "optimistic'' duties, may I fervently wish you a Happy New Year that is better than the 12 months that are about to elapse.

Oncologist doesn't follow script

The oncologist in Boston today didn't quite follow the script we hoped he would. He thinks I will need chemo for as long as I live (or it's effective) and emphasized there really is no cure for pancreatic cancer.

Still, he said the SC-Scan results are encouraging since there is no sign of the cancer spreading.

The decision I'm likely to have to make a couple of months down the road is how much discomfort to withstand from the chemo versus the protection it provides against the spread of the cancer. The problem is my body is tolerating the chemo less well (it is getting harder to find veins for the infusions and my thighs ache) the more often I have it.

He and the oncologist here will confer, and decide how to alter the chemo regime to try to take care of these problems. Meanwhile, I plan to be too involved in getting ready for our cruise and then being in the Caribbean to think too much about it right away.

Confirmation

The radiologist in Boston today confirmed the good news that we got last week in Albany: the recent CT scan shows shrinkage of the tumor in the pancreas, and no spread of the cancer to any other organ.

He also agreed that I should have two more rounds of chemo, and after that should be followed with CT scans every few months. Although we expected him to say what he did today, it was still comforting to hear him say it.

We hope and expect the same thing will happen when we visit our oncologist in Boston tomorrow.

All this gives me reason to hope that 2010 will be a better year than 2009.

Much more to learn

Part of the deal is being married to a psychotherapist is she is likely to have colleagues who are also friends, and many of them have become my friends as well. We entertained a trio of them yesterday, and they more or less took turns trying to enlighten me.

All three, plus Emily, put a lot of stock in alternative-healing strategies, like energy medicine, acupuncture, massage and some other Eastern-religions approaches. I have tried such things on occasion, and have found them in general to be not particularly helpful.

Some of you may recall that I had a conversation with an Indian mystic named Sai Maa this fall that I found very moving, and led to me carrying around a tissue box for several weeks as a virtual repository for all of my bad karma. But I was disappointed she never got back in touch with me, as she had promised to to.

At any rate, I am certainly not willing to dismiss any healing ideas out of hand, any more than I am speculation about what happens after we die. There is nothing like having a life-threatening illness to concentrate one's attention on such matters.

In the end, I agreed yestgerday to look at some books on the subject our friends recommended and also consider visiting a woman who seems to have good luck at looking into past lives, under the category of always being willing to learn more.

No Electric Football This Year

This year marked the fiftieth anniversary of my most memorable Christmas. The issue that year, when I was 12, was whether I would get a new ping-pong table or an electric football game. Getting both seemed impossible because my parents, although they regularly saved for the holiday through a Christmas Club, never had much extra money to throw around. But in 1959, my dad got a great last minute deal on an electric football game and so when I came down from my bedroom that morning, both the table and the football game were waiting for me. I'll never forget that.

This year, frankly, the presents were not quite as exciting. Maybe the most noteworthy was a T-shirt which reads "I'm here just to meet nurses," which I might wear next time I have chemotherapy.

More important, our family was all together in the house, built by my grandfather, where I have spent every Christmas but two since I was born. At one time I was the youngest person in our gathering and this year I was the second oldest. There's something deeply comforting about carrying on this tradition.

Back row, l-r: nephew Tim, nephew Patrick, brother Neil, nephew-in-law George

Middle row: daughter-in-law Allyson

Front row: daughter Janice, wife Emily, daughter Ellen, the author himself, sister-in-law Wendy, niece Julie

A great Christmas present

As usual, we were running behind today. As usual, a frazzled Emily needed some help in getting us out the door.

And surprisingly, this year as usual, I loaded the car and despaired that I wouldn't have enough room to pack all the Christmas presents we wanted to bring to Massachusetts. Finally, as usual, I was able to cram everything in that we wanted to bring.

What made all this unusual though, was that probably a week ago I would have begged off packing the car, saying I needed to rest. But the favorable test results I got yesterday seemed to have provided me with a boost, as more prosaic and familiar concerns about Christmas dominated over immediate health issues.

My family and others keep asking me how I feel about the good news we received yesterday, and I find that giving a definitive answer is hard. What I do know, however, is that my condition is less at the front of my mind than it has been for the past six months.

It's hard to imagine a much better Christmas present than that. Merry Christmas.

Good Christmas news

The doc gave us some good news today: my tumor has shrunk a little since the last time I was tested in September and there's no sign that the cancer has spread anywhere else. The radiation and/or chemo treatments I have been getting are apparently working, at least for now.

Merry Christmas, indeed.

What is not known at this point is how much of the tumor is still active, and therefore dangerous, and how much is scar tissue of cells killed by treatments. A new kind of test called a Pet-scan might resolve that issue, and I might have that done in a couple of more months after some additional chemo.

Meanwhile, I can exhale at least a little. I'm far from out of the woods, but some positive results is a nice way to end the year and gives us some basis for optimism.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

Something new to hate

What Christmas tree wouldn't be complete without a little baseball ornament with a Yankees icon on it?

I no longer have to worry about such things, since the alwsys-thoughtful reporters at the Capitol today gave me this Symbol of Evil as part of ceremonies marking their typical end-of-the-year work frenzy. It's always nice to have a focus of one's hatred. The cornucopia of gifts also included always-popular Super Hero boxer shorts.

It was my first time back at the Capitol since June, and I was impressed that despite media business woes, there still are reporters working there and the press room is not a ghost town, albeit not exactly a hub of activity either. Even though there are fewer reporters at the Capitol than at any time in the last several decades, there has seldom been a time with more news coming out of state government.

The reporters were their usual charming selves.

"Is the key to looking pretty good is looking so bad before?'' one asked, in something I think almost started as a compliment.

They didn't need to rouse themselves much today to cover the big news of the day - Rudy Giuliani saying he's not running for anything next year - because most had reported it earlier in the week. Although they did note drolly that New York's new Hamlet, last elected to office 12 years ago and rumored to be interested in several offices since, did not rule out running for something in the future.

Someone who has been away for a while would also notice an uptick in press room alcohol consumption, although it is still almost literally a drop in the bucket compared to what it was when I arrived at the Capitol 25 years ago.

But along with the recent spike in scandals, it does suggest a certain long-wave rhythm to the place.

He's a boy and he's not going to Holy Cross

Janice and Charlie got home last night, which means that Christmas has started early.

Janice took me to my always-fun CT-SCAN appointment today, while Charlie, her 110-pound Old English Sheepdog, stayed in the car, which is what he loves doing more than anything else.

Then his mistress and I took a crack at moving my memoirs forward, which have been stuck on my prep-school years for a while.

I think I live in the wrong era. Writing is easiest for me when I can dictate it, in part to get an immediate reaction. My experience with my memoirs so far as been if Ellen or Janice thinks a story is good, then it's usually worth including. The converse is also true.

There is also something liberating about writing things that happened so long ago. For example, I can now tell the truth that the biggest influence on my going to Colby College was a trip our prep-school football team took there (our coach was an athletically prominent alum) the fall before. Our alert team noticed two main things as we strolled around campus: it seemed to be overpopulated with pretty girls and the beer-delivery trucks were swarming around the fraternity houses.

I can now admit that when I tried to explain to my mother why I didn't want to go to Holy Cross ("He's a boy and he's going to Holy Cross!" she exclaimed at almost the moment I was born) those factors didn't come up. I think I talked about the strength of the Colby's Government Department and the study-abroad program, or some such fabrications. (To her everlasting credit, despite her strong opposition, she devoted about half of her teaching salary for four years to paying for me to go to Colby, despite the presence of co-eds and the absence of a requirement to attend Mass daily.)

An old college roommate called today while I was in the middle of dictating a passage about this decision to Janice. He asked, in a wise-guy way he has that hasn't changed much in more than 40 years, if I wanted him to edit the Colby parts, so that there might be a little truth in some of what I write.

But what fun would that be?

Force, revenge and grace

Who says leadership doesn't matter? I bet no one who has seen "Invictus,'' the new Clint-Eastwood-directed movie we saw last night about rugby and the end of apartheid in South Africa.

The leader here is Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman), the then-newly elected South African president who decides that championing the national rugby team could be an important tool in healing his country's profound racial divide. He hatches an improbable alliance with the captain of the team (Matt Damon), which makes a surprising run to the World Cup championship game in 1995 against New Zealand. (Guess who wins?)

Freeman carries the movie, capturing Mandela's familiar clipped speech and physical gestures perfectly.

Mandela is such a transcendent figure because while he was imprisoned for 27 years by the white-supremacist apartheid regime, he emerged from prison to be elected president with an agenda of racial conciliation rather than hate.

One reviewer described the film as a "spare, plain-spoken lesson about the brutality of force, the foolishness of revenge and the surprising power of grace.''

Certainly in this holiday season especially those lessons are all worth taking to heart.

The warmth of Christmas

We've gone a little crazy with Christmas cards and letters this year, finally getting a big batch of them into the mail today.

We had so many to send because so many people have been helpful to us this year, and contact with them has never seemed more important. The best part of Christmas from where I sit is having an excuse to keep in touch.

Let me be not the first to decry the over-commercialization of the holiday, and urge a return to the roots of the occasion and using it for connecting with loved ones and friends and celebrating what we have.

Not many things make me feel colder than reading in the paper about homeless people who had to sit in chairs last night and try to sleep since beds were generally full at shelters in the area as temperatures plummeted. Seems like that's the kind of story that could ignite a lot of giving and bring more warmth to the holiday.

We've gone a little crazy with Christmas cards and letters this year, finally getting a big batch of thank-you cards and letters into the mail today.

We had so many because so many people have been helpful to us this year, and contact with them has never seemed more important.

Let me be not the first to decry the over-commercialization of the holiday, and urge a return to the roots of the day of connecting with loved ones and celebrating what we have. Not many things make me feel warmer than reading in the paper about homeless people who had to sit in chairs last night and try to sleep since beds were generally full at shelters in the area.

Patient as pin cushion

I was feeling a bit like a pin cushion today as nurses had trouble finding a vein that would hold up for the latest chemo treatment.

Finally on the 6th try a vein near the inside of my elbow was strong enough to take the needle successfully, and the gemcydabine began to flow and do its work on the tumor (as well as the rest of me). It seems that veins get less tolerance for such intrusions over time. This was my 12th chemo treatment. Don't understand how junkies inject themselves every day.

Fortunately my typical three-weeks-on, one-week-off schedule has me taking a break next week, which means I should be (relatively) fit for Christmas. That day will also be the six-month anniversary of my abdominal surgery. With our cruise coming up shortly, it could be that the break from chemo turns out to be longer than a week.

On the medical front for the next couple of weeks: a CT-SCAN next Monday here to gauge the effect of last month's radiation treatments, and then consultation with our Albany oncologist Wed., which means he will have a chance to give me a really nice Christmas present. Then the following week, we go back to Boston for a couple of days to see what those guys think.

Soar like an eagle

A friend sent me a story today about the power we all have to improve our lives, which I took to be especially significant for me since maintaining a positive attitude is so important in my chances of recovery. Here it is:

"A man named Harvey was waiting in line for a ride at the airport. When a cab pulled up, the first thing Harvey noticed was that the taxi was polished to a bright shine. Smartly dressed in a white shirt, black tie, and freshly pressed black slacks, the cab driver jumped out and rounded the car to open the back passenger door for Harvey. He handed Harvey a laminated card and said: 'I'm Wally, your driver. While I'm loading your bags in the trunk I'd like you to read my mission statement.' Taken aback, Harvey read the card.

It said: Wally's Mission Statement: To get my customers to their destination in the quickest, safest and cheapest way possible in a friendly environment...

This blew Harvey away, especially when he noticed that the inside of the cab was also spotlessly clean. As he slid behind the wheel, Wally said, 'Would you like a cup of coffee? I have a thermos of regular and one of decaf.'

Harvey said jokingly, 'No, I’d prefer a soft drink.'

Wally smiled and said, 'No problem. I have a cooler up front with regular and Diet Coke, water and orange juice.' Almost stuttering, Harvey said, ’I’ll take a Diet Coke.' Handing him his drink, Wally said, 'If you'd like something to read, I have The Wall Street Journal, Time, Sports Illustrated and USA Today.'

As they were pulling away, Wally handed Harvey another laminated card, 'These are the stations I get and the music they play, if you'd like to listen to the radio.'

Wally told Harvey that he had the air conditioning on and asked if the temperature was comfortable for him. Then he advised Harvey of the best route to his destination. He also let him know that he'd be happy to chat and tell him about some of the sights or to leave him with his own thoughts...

'Tell me, Wally,' Harvey asked the driver, 'have you always served customers like this?'

Wally smiled into the rear view mirror... 'No, not always. In fact, it's only been in the last two years. My first five years driving, I spent most of my time complaining like all the rest of the cabbies do. Then I heard the personal growth guru, Wayne Dyer, on the radio one day. He had just written a book called You'll See It When You Believe It. Dyer said that if you get up in the morning expecting to have a bad day, you'll rarely disappoint yourself. He said, 'Stop complaining! Differentiate yourself from your competition. Don't be a duck. Be an eagle. Ducks quack and complain. Eagles soar above the crowd.''

That hit me right between the eyes,' said Wally. 'Dyer was really talking about me. I was always quacking and complaining, so I decided to change my attitude and become an eagle. I looked around at the other cabs and their drivers. The cabs were dirty, the drivers were unfriendly, and the customers were unhappy. So I decided to make some changes. I put in a few at a time. When my customers responded well, I did more.'

'I take it that has paid off for you,' Harvey said.

'It sure has,' Wally replied. 'My first year as an eagle, I doubled my income from the previous year. This year I'll probably quadruple it. You were lucky to get me today. I don't sit at cabstands anymore. My customers call me for appointments on my cell phone or leave a message on my answering machine. If I can’t pick them up myself, I get a reliable cabbie friend to do it and I take a piece of the action.'

Wally was running a limo service out of a Yellow Cab."

Head-shaking time near the Capitol

I had lunch today with a couple of former journalist friends who are also long-time PR people, and we spent some of our time shaking our heads about a new poll finding.

The Siena College poll reported today that fewer than a third of voters like the current system where state lawmakers are part-time and can have other jobs. But there is no agreement on what system should take its place.

The poll question was sparked by last week's guilty verdict in the trial of former Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, who was charged with using his public office to help enrich himself. He pocketed more than $3.2 million over a decade from private sources, testimony and evidence at the trial showed. He got about $120,000 a year from taxpayers for his legislative duties.

One of my dining partners angrily pointed out that most lawmakers already don't have enough to do, and that making them work full-time at it would just lead to more mischief-making.

Some of those polled by Siena thought that having stricter disclosure requirements (lawmakers now don't have to say how much money they make from other jobs, or where the money comes from) might be the answer. Others just want to ban all outside income.

That got us to talking about the most-asked question in Albany these days: how much money does Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver get from the trial-lawyer firm he is associated with in Manhattan?

Silver, who has been the leader of the Assembly since 1994, won't say, but speculation around the Capitol puts it in the tens of thousands of dollars per month. (Nice part of a blog over a newspaper is being able to use unsubstantiated numbers like that.) Measures to curb personal-injury lawsuits and other proposals the trial lawyers don't like regularly die in the chamber Silver controls.

Meanwhile, chances of lawmakers, judges and state commissioners getting raises is nil, even though they haven't had an increase in 11 years. Legislators make a base salary of $79,500, with every senator, every Republican member of the Assembly and about two-thirds of the Democrats getting "leadership'' stipends that puts the average up over $90,000 a year.

By political tradition, the pay of judges and commissioners is linked to that of lawmakers. Trial-level state judges have made $136,700 a year since 1999. They have been screaming less loudly lately about this bad deal as the state's fiscal situation has grown more dire.

Thus goes gossip near the Capitol. Things promise to get even more interesting next year when lawmakers have to figure out a way to come up with multiple billions of dollars to close a budget gap.





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Collins and the "Antichrist''

Can someone who earlier this fall compared a leading New York Democrat to Adolph Hitler be seriously considered as a Republican candidate for governor of New York?

That's a question facing Republicans as Erie County Executive Chris Collins edges closer to jumping in the race.

Collins told Fred Dicker today on Talk-1300-AM in Albany that he'll decide in January whether to seek the GOP nomination for governor.He sounded like he was already running.

Collins, 59, has been chief executive of the largest upstate county (home of Buffalo) for two years. His potential candidacy might look a little better to Republicans today after a new poll showed that Gov. David Paterson would defeat the only Republican to announce so far, former Long Island Congressman Rick Lazio, who lost the Senate election to Hillary Clinton in 2000. (Of course, most people expect Paterson to drop our and that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo will be the Democratic candidate.) Still, Lazio doesn't look like a winner.

Collins was more of a potentially hot statewide commodity before October, when he told a GOP fund-raiser crowd in Buffalo that he was "pretty sure" that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, an Orthodox Jew, is an "Antichrist" like Napoleon and Hitler.

His profuse apologies and claims he's simply made a "poor joke'' since haven't done much to quiet criticism that his words made him a political pariah, especially downstate, where 12 million of the state's 19 million people live.

Yet he has a strong anti-tax, anti-government message that might be just what Republicans will be looking for next year, especially if the economic slide and trend to higher taxes continue (good bet).

Trouble is, once you insert a foot into your mouth, it is often difficult to get it out.

I Need a Little Christmas Now

Six months ago today a surgeon at St. Peter's Hospital told me the mass that a CT scan had detected on my pancreas was probably cancerous. He said the mortality rate after five years was 80%. That diagnosis would be formally confirmed by a biopsy four days later.

Today I was sitting at a Christmas choral concert, listening to "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" and "Silent Night'" and thinking how lucky I was to enjoy the music. As my doctor told me Friday, "worst case, you're holding your own." A couple of people we ran into at the concert told me told me that I looked strong and healthy, which is always good to hear - especially this week when the chemotherapy knocked me for a loop more than it had before.

I also have a new found respect for the potential of Christmas to lift my mood. As the Albany Pro Musica singers put it in "We Need a Little Christmas:"

For I've grown a little leaner,

Grown a little colder,

Grown a little sadder,

Grown a little older.

And I need a little angel

Sitting on my shoulder,

Need a little Christmas now.

Baseball through the ages

In the midst of hot-stove-league transactions, I am reading a terrific book called "The Housekeeper and the Professor'' about a forgetful Japanese math professor (his memory lasts only 80 minutes) and his doting housekeeper.

Baseball plays a key role in the book, as it is an important way that the prof and the housekeeper's 10-year-old son connect.

When the three of them finally go to a game together in Hiroshima, they had a reaction that reminded me of my first trip to a Red Sox game more than 56 years ago..

"As we reached the top of the stairs that led to the seats above third base, all three of us let out a cry,'' the housekeeper-narrator writes. "The diamond in all of its grandeur was laid out before us - the soft, dark earth of the infield, the spotless bases, the straight white lines, the manicured grass. The evening sky seemed so close you could touch it, and at that moment, as if they had been waiting for our arrival, the lights came on. The stadium looked like a spaceship descended from the heavens.''

No one ever compared Fenway Park in Boston to a space ship - more like a rickety old barn. But, as I recount in my memoirs (anticipated completion date at this rate: 2020) I had a similar reaction the first time I saw the field.

"If I ever get to heaven, my arrival could be no sweeter than that moment I saw Fenway Park,'' I wrote.

"We loaded up into our ’41 Buick, and drove to the Salem railroad station. On the trip to North Station in Boston, I looked out wide-eyed at the passing factories, apartments and triple-deckers, as they got denser and denser as we approached what even then everybody called the Hub of the Universe.

When we got off the train, I intently held my Dad’s hand as thick crowds of tall strangers surrounded us as we squeezed into a Green Line car for the 15-minute subway trip to Kenmore Square. We made the short walk to the ballpark, and then started walking up the ramp towards nirvana.

"And there is was: the scene burst upon me. The bright sunlight reflecting off the emerald grass that I had before seen only as a shade of gray on our black and white TV. And there were my heroes: Ted Williams, Jimmy Piersall, Jackie Jensen, Sammy White, Ted Lepcio, in brilliant white uniforms with red trim.

"In a later item for his paper about our trip, (for a column that reads much like a modern blog, by the way) my Dad reported that his normally shy son ate and talked his way through all nine innings, until the Kansas City Athletics were deservedly vanquished.

"It was as perfect a day as I've ever had in my life.''

Hard to be grumpy

We were getting a briefing from our travel agent on our upcoming cruise today and discovered a disturbing fact: no newspapers are available on our ship.

This is on a vessel that advertises "onboard, each day unfolds with countless ways to play,'' but apparently not so many ways for its 3,000 guests to stay informed.

I mean, how am I supposed to settle in without knowing what names Gov. Paterson called legislative leaders the day before, or who has been indicted at the Capitol and how much the state deficit has grown, much less how many in a row the Celtics have won or the latest big-name player the Yankees have purchased?

I know, I know, there is always the Internet. But the on-board charge for a connection is 75 cents a minute, so the dollars would pile up pretty quickly and the reception is iffy, considering there are few relay towers in the ocean. It would probably cost a few bucks just to read Fred LeBrun in the Albany Times Union, so there is a definite cost-benefit analysis needed here.

That brings to mind a conversation I had last night with a self-described former political hack who spends his winters in Florida. He was marveling that with a few mouse clicks he could read all about the verdict in the Joe Bruno trial and not spend a penny.

"What kind of business model do newspapers have that lets them think they can give stuff like that away?'' he asked.

Good question. Maybe he'll look at an on-line ad and remember to buy something when he returns home in the spring? Not likely.

It is of course difficult to feel truly grumpy about the prospects of floating around the Caribbean Sea for a week in January when the temperature is likely to be in the 70s and 80s most of the time on a ship designed to meet your every whim. We even will have a balcony off our state room to sit on and watch the sun rise (on the first half of the trip) and set (on the homeward-bound leg.)

But I'm trying my best.

Christmas '09

We have been sending out a letter with Christmas cards for about 15 years ever since we figured out the word-processor capabilities of computers and the efficiency, if lack of personal touch, a standard letter provides.

Early on, I wrote them as sort of a spoof, since we started getting inane ones from people we hardly knew. Our favorite was from a couple who told us about replacing the linoleum in their kitchen. Talk about too much information.

Then of course there was the incessant bragging about children. It's a wonder that by now world peace hasn't been established, cancer cured and global warming reversed considering what brilliant, talented kids they were back in the '90s. My way of coping was to write about our perfect, talented, brilliant, well behaved-but-with-just-a-touch-of-mischief children in an over-the-top way.

But at some point, I started writing them differently and found it a useful exercise to try to sum up a year, with Emily, Ellen and Janice all providing editing, whether I wanted it or not.

The challenge this year, of course, is that the news hasn't been good. But writing it will give me a chance to concentrate on the positive, which of course is what I should be doing anyway.

Here, exclusively on JayGallagher.blogspot.com, is the first draft of this year's letter:

The dominant event for us this year was Jay’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in June. He had surgery in Boston on June 25 and since has had both radiation and chemotherapy treatments. He’s not in any pain but is tired most of the time.

The diagnosis was grim, but he has done his best to remain upbeat during this fight. Best thing to come out of it has been the rallying of Emily, Janice and Ellen, as well as Emily’s sister Judi and other relatives and friends, to help Jay cope.

Although the experience has been a trial, another positive to come out of it has been a greater appreciation on Jay’s part to the parts of life that are important - mostly human relationships - and more acceptance of minor irritants that before seemed more important than they actually are. He has become a big hugger.

He sorely misses the world of the Capitol, but writing a daily blog with his musings on politics, life and other subjects, as well as news in the cancer fight, provides him with an important writing outlet. The address is http://Jaygallagher.blogspot.com.

Emily has cut back on her practice, but still works about three days a week and has managed to fit in some hikes, canoe trips and other fun as she copes with having an ill spouse.

Janice, who spent a good chunk of the summer at home helping to care for Jay, is back for her second year of graduate work at Cornell and is especially enjoying being a teaching assistant. She has done a great job in fixing up the old house she bought in downtown Ithaca last year into a cozy, warm home.

Ellen has changed jobs, and is now helping to coordinate a national campaign to help immigrants feel more welcome. She is on the road a lot preaching her inclusive message, while at home she and Allyson are hoping the housing market dips enough in the Boston area so they can buy a house.

We’re all taking a cruise together next month in the Caribbean. We once thought such a trip would be too sedentary, but now view it as a chance to be together while having lots of options for things to do.

We hope the holiday season finds you healthy and happy.

Will Bruno verdict change Albany? Don't count on it

Reactions I've heard over ex-Sen. Joe Bruno's conviction on corruption charges have ranged from "it's about time'' to "there's no way this will hold up.''

Bruno, 80, the leader of the New York state Senate from 1994 until last year, was convicted yesterday on two counts of illegally using his public office for private gain. A federal jury determined that he did essentially no work for $200,000 he received from someone with business before the state and that he was also failed to disclose another $80,000 he got for a worthless race horse from the same source.

Those were the two of eight corruption charges the jury convicted him of. The jury said he was innocent of charges he illegally got almost $3 million more over a decade from other sources he did business with who had issues before the state. An appeal is likely.

Bruno backers point out that the U.S. Supreme Court this week heard arguments that might result in the law the conviction was based on being thrown out. The "honest-services'' statute, which says that it's a crime to used interstate communications to deprive the public of the right to have public officials work honestly on their behalf, is considered by some to be so vague as to be unconstitutional.

Many of those not on the side of the charming, silver-maned former lawmaker think it's that's unlikely the court will throw the law out.

Either way, it's hard to imagine Albany ever being the same. In the course of the trial, witnesses and documents showed that Bruno used state facilities and employees to essentially run his private business, which was so intertwined with his official duties it was hard to tell where one ended and the other started. Yet no one has proved he violated any state laws or ethics rules.

As Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group has been saying for years, "there is no cop walking the beat'' to enforce ethical behavior in the state Legislature.

It seems like a slam-dunk that lawmakers will have to adopt some stricter ethics guidelines so that it won't take a three-year FBI investigation to stop the next scandal. And yet the Senate has failed to act up until now on common-sense disclosure requirements.

An unrelated scandal might give a hint of potential problems. A Senate panel is now probing whether to oust Hiram Monserrate, a Queens Democrat convicted last month of assaulting his girlfriend.

A colleague, Ruben Diaz of the Bronx, protested yesterday that the Senate shouldn't go after his Latino colleague unless it also pursued Sen. Kevin Parker of the Bronx, an African-American who also has a history of assaults.

"I must question your initiative in creating a committee to investigate Senator Hiram Monserrate when you have not done the same for Senator Kevin Parker," Diaz said in a letter to Senate leaders.

This seems like an attempt to tie any reform initiatives up in ethnic-political knots. That's the kind of mindset that will have to be overcome before the Legislature takes any steps to reform itself.

In praise of junk literature

One might think that someone in my situation would use the time I have now to catch up on some great literature and become an even more erudite person.

One would be wrong.

I am now hip-deep in popular literature, which seems to have no redeeming social value other than it is fun.

We watched "Angels and Demons'' on TV the other night. I am also listening to "Lost Symbols'' on an I-pod (bet you never would have guessed I could figure out how to do that) and am reading David Baldacci's "True Blue'' in the old-fashioned print format.

For those of you totally out of touch with pop culture, "Angels and Demons and "Lost Symbols'' were both written by Dan Brown, of "The DeVinci Code'' fame. Both are the same types of stories: fantastic evil plots based on medieval secret rites where the characters seem to spend much of their time running through what look and sound like Roman catacombs, although "Symbols'' is set in Washington, D.C.

The hero is the same in both cases - a smart, determined prof who has a knack for attracting attractive women to his side and has incredible luck in sniffing out the bad guys and avoiding physical harm.

"True Blue'' is a slightly different but related genre, with a female ex-cop who talks tough, acts rashly but, you guessed it, has a heart of gold. She is being pursued by some mysterious people at the Pentagon even as she tries to solve a murder - a colleague of her new boyfriend was the victim. Baldacci has had 17 straight NY Times best-sellers, according to a blurb on the book jacket.

Shakespeare none of it is, and it often perplexes Emily that this is how I choose to spend my time rather than on more spiritual pursuits. But I answer that if vicarious adventure is the only kind available, it beats the alternative.

New York wins one

We had dinner last night with a retired couple that has made an unusual decision: they recently moved back from North Carolina to the Albany area.

And so far, even the news that the state Senate voted down same-sex marriage and that the state is facing a huge budget gap has not persuaded them they may have made a mistake.
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For those who used to read my column, this is the same couple I wrote about in May after we visited them at their home in Flat Rock (near Asheville, in the southwest corner of North Carolina) after we discovered that while our houses were worth about the same, they were paying less than one-seventh (about $1,000) of the property taxes we pay.

I pointed out at the time that despite the disparity in taxes, schools were open in North Carolina, the roads paved and the police seemed to be managing to keep the peace.

Some things however, have proven more important to our friends even than money - chiefly the relatively close proximity of family and the presence of a large number of old friends in the area.

They're also more of MSNBC watchers than Fox News, so they also appreciate the "progressive'' nature of the state and the area.

So far the crowds and the traffic have proven to be a little startling to them after the few years spent in the Tarheel State, but they're quickly getting up to speed.

For once, North Carolina's loss is New York's gain. Now if we could just do something about that tax disparity...

Democracy in action

On the surface, this may not look like the greatest week the New York legislature has ever had, but it did accomplish something of significance.

Sure, it adopted a joke of a deficit-reduction plan that merely puts off hard decisions for a few months, in essence digging the state's fiscal hole even deeper than it was. The action reinforced the notion that when the going gets tough, most lawmakers just want to duck.

Even the "reform'' of higher pension contributions that was part of the package was marred by enough giveaways to unions to make those worried about the long-term fiscal health of the state whether it was worth it.

The more significant action, though, was the defeat by the state Senate of a bill to legalize same-sex marriages, which failed 38-26.

While obviously a setback for the cause of marriage equality, the vote was a rare instance of lawmakers going on record on an issue that didn't pass.

More typically, leaders count heads and not make their members make a "tough'' vote if the issue was likely to voted down.

But this time, because of intense pressure from supporters of the idea and some arm-twisting by (he admittedly weak) Gov. Paterson, the issue was brought to a vote and many lawmakers who had been firmly on the fence had to come down on one side or the other.

Unfortunately there was little debate, with only one lawmaker on the prevailing side bothering to explain his position.

The supporters have vowed to work to unseat those who voted no and replace them with people who share their views. The opponents say they'll work on the other side.

That's how the system is supposed to work, but rarely does at the Capitol.

Back to ol' chemo routine

It was back to the ol' chemo routine today after almost a month away from it. As usual it wasn't a bad experience, but I have to brace for the effects that usually hit the next day. I expect to be more tired than my (now) normal semi-exhausted state.

The stuff (technically, gemcitabine) burned a little more than usual going in, but a hot pack and the diversion provided by Emily's cousin, David Jacobowitz, who stopped in for a visit, brought relief.

I was also hit again by the routine of it all. There must have been more than 20 people in the room all getting "infusions'' of various types - most of whom looked normal in most respects. If you saw them the street wouldn't guess they're cancer patients, except for the ones who have lost their hair and choose not to wear wigs. Of course, it makes one wonder about the problems and hidden heartaches of so many people walking around out there.

It's two more weeks of the same cycle, then a week off that happens to fall on Christmas week. Then I have tests and doctor visits planned to gauge what happened as a result of the cyberknife treatments that I had three weeks ago. Then we'll plot a strategy from there, which will most likely include continuing chemo in some form.

Guest missed already

We took my sister-in-law Judi to the airport today, and she is now winging her way back to California after spending the last two weeks here.

This is the second time since I was diagnosed in June that she has traveled across the country to see us, and I miss her already.

She has provided not only invaluable help with chores like food preparation (especially Thanksgiving) cleaning up and shopping, she has been an amiable companion for me and someone on whose shoulder I can (and do) literally cry.

For Emily, who needed a break from putting up with not-always-cheery me, she also provided welcome company, and her nieces had an all-too-infrequent chance to connect with her.

Even though she has lived in California for almost as long as I have known Emily, we have stayed closely connected over the years. As a long-time corporate human-resources executive who retired about eight years ago, she has always made time for family - and especially for fabulous cruises and other trips she's taken the girls on.

When she was struck down by an unusual arm disorder last year, Emily went out to California to help out her only sister (a brother died as an infant).

The relationship is different now, with me most in need of comfort, and she once again has come through. I'm already looking forward to her returning later this winter.

For everything there is a season

We walked this morning in the midst of a snow flurry - the first flakes of the year and the best indication, along with flipping the calendar page, that winter is on the way.

The main excitement about snow has always been that skiing will soon be possible. I'm hoping this year to still to be able to do some cross-country trails.

But of course winter will mean different things to us this year than it has in the past. First off, we're planning to take a cruise in January - something we have both long resisted because it seemed like too sedentary a way to spend a vacation, but now seems to fit our needs better. Best part is if I need to just sit or lie down, I can do that while the rest of the party can go have fun.

I also have a heightened sense of coziness this season. One of my real delights now is coming in from the cold and sitting or lying with a blanket on me, snug and warm. The best part of the day for me is feeling that coziness when I wake up, and knowing I don't have to leave the cocoon immediately to go out and face the world.

Christmas will also be a far different holiday as well this year. I hope I can use the opportunity to reflect on the joys that remain in life and not on what has been lost. Certainly I will appreciate another excuse to gather with family.