Where is time travel when you need it?

LAKE PLACID _ OK, so my timing was a little bit off. Thirty years off, to be exact.

I sat in hotel room here with friends today to watch the U.S. try to win an Olympic gold medal in hockey. They fell in overtime to Canada, 3-2.

Almost exactly 30 years ago, the gold-medal hockey game was in this tiny (pop.2,500) village in the middle of the Adirondacks. The U.S. won that one, but we were in Ann Arbor Mich. for that academic year so I missed it.

Actually, driving around the area, it's hard to believe it could host the Olympics (it has twice, in 1932 besides the '80 games.) Vancouver, site of the games this year, is a world-class city, with the hotels and transportation systems that implies. Even at the height of tourist season, Lake Placid is a sleepy place.

But, alas, the world has changed a lot in 30 years. In 1980, for example, professionals were supposedly banned from Olympic competition, so the hockey players were mostly college kids.

But now they're pros. One of the people watching with me refused to get excited about the game because it was nothing more than a National Hockey League all-star game with the players divided by their citizenship.

Good point. But it was still fun to watch.

One thing I'll never understand. Driving into the village, we went past the ski jumps built for the '80 Olympics. They tower what looks like hundreds of feet over the surrounding countryside.

It's hard to imagine anyone even wanting to go to the top of such a structure, much less slide down off of them and out into space. Yet obviously some people do it all the time.

More power to them, I guess, as long as I don't have to follow them.

Looking for one good man or woman

I'll admit it. I don't know what it takes to be a good governor.

David Paterson, who announced today he won't run in November, struck me when he was inaugurated in March 2008 as an inspiring (because of his handicap), unassuming, humorous guy who seemed like the perfect antidote to his predecessor, the steamroller himself, Eliot Spitzer. Turns out, to put it politely, that Paterson was in over his head.

Fifteen months earlier, when he took office, the combative Spitzer seemed just what was needed to shake the state out of its lethargy. But his aggressiveness got him in trouble even before a prostitution scandal brought him down.

Twelve years before that, George Pataki's tough talk about holding down spending, cutting taxes and making New York more business-friendly seemed like the right road to take, given the state's economic and fiscal woes. But he abandoned those policies within a couple of years in the face of dismal poll numbers.

I wasn't here when Mario Cuomo was inaugurated in 1983, but I remember being in awe early on (I arrived in August of 1984) of his speaking and leadership skills. It became apparent only later that he was far too much of a detail guy to focus on big-picture issues, and that he brooked little internal dissension.

So what about the new guy who will take over in January? It will most likely be Andrew Cuomo, who now comes across as the epitome of competence and reasonableness. But he was known as a fierce partisan when he was a top adviser to his father 25 years ago.

Wonder how long it will take his fatal flaw to emerge.

Happy Anniversary?

Eight months ago today I underwent eight hours of abdominal surgery to try to help me beat, or at least hold off, pancreatic cancer.

The results were mixed: the tumor was wrapped too tightly around key blood vessels to be removed. On the other hand, the surgeon saw that the cancer hadn't spread beyond the pancreas and rearranged some of my other digestive organs so that they would work together even with a golf-ball-size intruder nearby. He also put some markers on the tumor so that an advanced form or radiation could be used. I had that treatment, which shrunk the tumor a little, in November.

Today, I had my 18th chemotherapy treatment and also got word that a measurement of the cancer activity had fallen again, to a level of less than tenth of what it was last summer. And after three straight weeks of infusions on Thursdays, my body gets a break next week.

The common wisdom for these things is that a patients shouldn't get too high or low with each twist in the road, and that maintaining a positive attitude is a key part of the fight.

I'm trying.

Amtrak rant

Why can't we get trains to work?

I had a friend come in from Rochester today who was assured when she boarded the train at 8:27 this morning that since the bad weather was mostly in Albany and to the south and east, that she should get here on time.

I arrived at the station about 20 minutes before the scheduled arrival at 12:50 p.m. and was startled by the crowd. Many, I soon learned, had been waiting hours for delayed trains headed south, into the teeth of the bad weather.

I called my friend to check on her progress and found out that she was still west of Schenectady and creeping along, for some undisclosed reason, at about 15 mph. She finally arrived about 2:15 p.m., or almost an hour and a half late. She almost could have bicycled from Schenectady faster.

But why should I be surprised? I remember going to Rochester for work a few years ago by car, and deciding that Emily would join me for the weekend there. The train seemed like the logical answer - but the train ended up being four hours (!) late. We haven't tried that again.

Insert your own horror stories here, as well as tales of fast, efficient trains in Europe and Asia. I will skip all of the press conferences I have covered over the years promising yet another new program to speed rail serviced.

But on a good note, my friend was impressed with the new train station across the river from Albany. Far different from the dump in Rochester, she noted.

Then again, she mentioned that only a handful of people got on the train in Rochester.

Wonder why?

Optimism reigns

I read somewhere that when young people are optimistic, they tend to have babies, which accounted for the boom in births that I was part of after World War II.

I now think it's also true that when old people are optimistic, they plan trips.

At least, that's what we (read: Emily) have been doing for the last couple of weeks. We're going to Lake Placid this weekend, an Alaska cruise in June and the Finger Lakes in August.

We did get trip insurance for the Alaska trip, mostly in case I can't make it, after we got a bit of a runaround over what constitutes a "pre-existing condition.'' What it apparently means is if you're healthy enough to travel on the day you book the trip, you're covered even if you're not well enough when the day actually comes. So I qualify.

Part of this flurry of travel is built around the "can't-take-it-with-you'' school of retirement finance. But another motivation is we all had so much fun on our Caribbean cruise and I got such a boost from it that we figure it's worth trying again. Although this time the whole family is not coming along - we could burn through a Wall Street trader's annual bonus pretty quickly continuing that trend.

Emily at the same time has been planning a hiking trip she intends to take without me in September with some friends in the White Mountains. I wouldn't have wanted to do that in any case - I prefer hot showers and a private bedroom to the New Hampshire huts. But I guess the far extreme of our optimism would be that I could do such a trip by then.

Maybe not born too late

Is it really so bad that the contemporary Pony Tails singing group really has no connection to the original singing group of the same name?

At last one responder to yesterday's blog said yes, since they're taking advantage of the name some people made for themselves many years ago without having to pay for it.

I didn't mind. The new group did a passable "Born Too Late'' and seemed to have the same spirit as the original trio.

Far worse, as I recall, was going to see the original Platters more than a decade ago. When they sang "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes'' and got to the key part of "Ooooooh,'' the lead singer's voice cracked, and the whole show practically ground to a halt.

So an oldies show that was supposed to take the audience back to their youthful years instead had the opposite effect of making me and I suspect many others in the crowd feel, well, old.

My all-time favorite group is the Beach Boys. When I was an adolescent I thought what could be better than having a woody car, picking up your Surfer Girl and heading for the beach? (especially from the perspective of someone in New England in February)

Now of course a Beach Boy concert is a crap shoot, depending on how many of the originals, half of whom are still alive, are part of the group. At least Dennis Wilson, as I recall, had the decency of going out like a Beach Boy: getting drunk and falling off a boat.

Who knows? Maybe the new Pony Tails will have a hit, only 52 years after the original group pulled it off.

Born Too Late

There are people who have a head for numbers, or remembering historical dates, or chemical formulas.

I remember the words to old songs.

That was brought home to me last night when we went to hear a group called the Pony Tails, whose sole hit was "Born Too Late'' in 1959, perform at a local Elks Club.

Fortunately, especially considering the short dresses they were wearing, these were not the original Pony Tails, but a more contemporary group of three women and two men who pounded out at least three hours' worth (that's when we went home) of oldies.

And whether it was Dion, Danny and the Juniors, the Shirelles, the Supremes, the Diamonds or the Dixie Cups, I could usually identify the song and the "artist" (OK, using the term loosely) just a couple of bars into the song.

All I can figure is since I went to a boarding school for high school where radio reception was spotty at best, I simply drank in all of this pop culture when I came home, and it stuck in my brain (unlike Latin vocabulary words, for example.) And it has yet to unstick.

Last night, two friends and I even got called up to the front to sing our own version of "Book of Love.'' I love books like that with only four chapters.

Good survivor tale

Checking my e-mail today, I came across a nice note from a guy in Buffalo who pointed out to me that former SUNY Chancellor D. Bruce Johnstone was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer 16 years ago but is still writing, teaching and enjoying outdoor activities.

It's important to get reminders like that every once in a while, when the cases of movie star Patrick Swayze, who died of the disease last September, and Apple founder Steve Jobs, who has the same disease and looks increasingly gaunt, are far more familiar.

In fact, an easy way to get depressed is to look at the survival statistics for the disease, which are horrific and not getting better. But as several docs have told me, statistics are only abstract, each patient is different and I'm doing pretty well so far.

On that more optimistic note, the day after chemo this week has been better - I'm getting around with very little pain today and there has been no nausea to speak of.

I remember thinking and hearing that Johnstone was a good guy when he ran SUNY in the late '80s and early '90s. Now I have even more reason to admire him.

17th treatment, but who's counting?

I suppose this was bound to happen eventually. The previous blog entry was actually one I wrote for the League of Women Voters and put on this blog by mistake. Can't keep 'em straight all the time, I suppose. Anyway, you should join. It's a great group doing God's work.

On a more personal level, I had today my 17th chemo treatment, but who is keeping count? The "infusion'' was uneventful, which is a good thing. The nurse found the vein on the first try. I feel fine now, and hope tomorrow isn't too bad.

Should just one man control so much money?

A report out today about the state’s well funded pension system could be fodder for the debate about whether one person should be in charge of the massive $129 billion common retirement fund.
A report from the Pew Center on the States found that New York is one of only four states whose obligations to pay the pensions of state and local-government workers outside New York City are fully funded. In fact, it has more than enough - 107 percent - compared to the national average of 84 percent, according to the report.
This is a little jarring because typically in most measures of fiscal health, like taxes imposed, debt owed and per-person spending, New York typically ranks near the bottom of states.
But the state’s pension system is set up differently from those in the rest of the country.
Here, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, an independently elected official, is the sole trustee of the pension fund.
In other states, when times have gotten tough, governments haven’t chipped as much into pension funds as needed to keep them fully funded. This has often happened because the governor of the state has a hand in deciding how much to set aside for pensions and doesn’t want to raise taxes of cut other spending to meet the long-term obligation.
But in New York, DiNapoli can resist such pressure, since he reports only to the voters. (OK, to be technical, he was appointed to the job by the Legislature after Alan Hevesi was forced to resign in 2007, but he has to face voters this year.)
That little parenthetical phrase might give you a clue that the New York system has had, shall we say, a few problems. Hevesi pleaded guilty to using assets of the fund for his own personal use. And investigators have also found that top officials at the fund accepted gifts from people who wanted a piece of it invested with them.
For some, the answer to the problems is to put a committee in charge of the fund, the way state teachers, New York City workers and public workers in most of the rest of the country have done it.
But today’s report shows the merit of keeping it as it is.
OK, the report also found that New York has put almost nothing aside to pay for the medical benefits of retirees. But then, neither have most other states.

More Gannettisms

Can't resist a few more Frank Gannett-isms from the booklet I wrote about yesterday that founder of the newspaper chain penned after flying around the world in 1947.

In India, after describing the horrors of the Calcutta slums, he says, "Britain has done much for this great country but it is an almost unsolvable problem and the people don't seem to appreciate the blessings they enjoyed under British rule.'' He went on to say that "real democracy in India is impossible.'' India is now, of course, the world's largest democracy.

Contrast that bad attutide with the Phillipines. "Flilpinos are fine people in every respect,'' Gannett said. "They appreciate what America has done for them and are our real friends.''

Guess he didn't hear about our water-boarding of rebels when we took over the place around the turn of the 20th Century.

The stewardness on the plane, Alice Lemieux, "was both beautiful and efficient.'' When the plane arrived in Tokyo. When she appeared at the doorway of the plane, "every GI whistled. It was such a whistle as I have never heard before. It was the soldiers' stamp of approval for this lovely American girl, for she epitomized their ideas of beauty and charm.''

There were non Betty Friedans to put the boys back on their heels. The whole experience of reading the booklet was something like watching the hit show 'Mad Men,'' about the people who worked in an advertising agency in the late '50s and early '60s and seemed to spend most of their time smoking, drinking and hitting on or insulting women. Gannett doesn't talk about smoking, but the attitude about women would fit on that show.

It seems that while demeaning women was the fashion fifty years ago, 62 years ago it was no ingrained that many people hardly noticed.

Gannett was relieved to get to to Bangkok, Thailand, after Calcutta.

"The people are a great contrast to the people we saw in Calcutta,'' he wrote. "They are well dressed, clean and intelligent.''

It would be interesting to think of Gannett coming back in his next life working in a call center in Bangalore or some other Indian boom town.

It would also be fun to fast-forward ahead 60 years to see how silly we look to someone living in that era.

Around the world in 13 days

I got a special present from a friend yesterday: a booklet written by Frank Gannett about a trip he took after flying around the world in 1947. My friend came across it when he was going through papers in the home of his parents, who recently died.

Gannett is the guy who founded the company that issued me paychecks regularly for 35 years, and 1947 was the year I was born, so the booklet is of particular interest to me.

He was part of a group of about 12 press barons and a few others who circled the globe in 13 days in June of 1947, apparently to promote new service being provided by Pan American Airways. (Gannett is silent on who picked up the tab. You can bet it wasn't him.)

He was obviously a man of his time and place. He expresses admiration for some of the men he met on the trip who turned out to be, shall we say, flawed (Chiang Kai-Shek and Douglas MacArthur), demeans others almost in passing ("The Chinese are a wonderful hard-working people. They are more intelligent than most other peoples in the Orient.'') and has what looks like wildly inflated view of American virtue ("We need to give them a spiritual lift and wise guidance,'' he said of the rest of the world.)

He also had virtually given up on Great Britain ("Personally I consider the future of Britain dark and doubtful'') and India ("Now that the country is to be turned back to the Indians, there is no telling what will happen.'')

But after all it was just two years after the end of World War II and most of the world was flat on its back, and looking for us to help them stand up. The Marshall Plan, which helped to revive Europe, the Green Revolution that helped India to feed itself, and the rise of China and other Pacific Rim countries were all in the future, as were wars in Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf.

And to be fair, he got some calls right: he said Japan was on the road to becoming a stable democracy, plane travel would help to knit the world together and that the combination of oil and autocracy in the Middle East would likely spawn trouble.

Still it is a bit wrenching for a modern reader to hear him first describe seeing people in Calcutta "in about the lowest state human beings can reach,'' and in the very next paragraph to describe "a good room I had at the hotel. An Indian servant, called a 'bearer,' looked after me. He slept on the floor outside my door, brought food to my room and took good care of me.''

The biggest disappointment was that most of the discussions he had with world leaders were "off the record,'' meaning he couldn't report what they said.

Gannett newspaper readers would have been better served if the money spent on the trip had been used to open some news bureaus in some of these far-away places that it turns out we knew so little about so that actual reporters could have asked questions of these people and maybe even gotten some answers.

Instead, Gannett got to experience, the evening after viewing the slums of Calcutta, a lavish dinner.

"Here all were in evening clothes and there was music, dancing and wonderful food. It was a fine party and seemed especially remarkable in contrast to the sights we had seen in the afternoon,'' he wrote.

Indeed.

He may be a carpetbagger, but at least he's not from upstate

What is it about New York and carpetbaggers?

For whatever reason, New Yorkers seem more likely to elect new arrivals to the U.S. Senate than most other states. The examples of Bobby Kennedy of Massachusetts (1964), Jim Buckley of Connecticut (1970) and Hillary Clinton of wherever (2000) spring immediately to mind.

The latest potential person to fit this category is, of course, Harold Ford Jr. of Tennessee, who moved here after losing a Senate race in his home state in 2006 after serving five terms in the House - which he admitted was his first full-time job after graduating from law school. He's mulling (I almost never hear anybody actually say that word, but it's in my newspaperese DNA) a Democratic primary run against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

As 'fessed up to in yesterday's blog, I bailed out on last night's Black and Hispanic Legislators' Conference before before he delivered his keynote address (hope my pay doesn't get docked) but through the miracle of blogs, I was able to watch him today.

In front of a crowd that had little reason to be friendly to him, he was funny in a self-deprecating way, modest and even a little inspiring. Nothing of substance, of course, but after all it was a political speech. The crowd gave him kind of a tepid welcome but a warm round of applause when he was done.

Will performances like that be enough to buck most of the Democratic establishment, which is lining up behind Gillibrand? Will the current anti-incumbent fervor extend to Democratic primaries? Will his Wall Street ties and apparent reluctance to release his tax records hurt him with middle-class voters?

It's too early to tell. But maybe the best thing he has going for him is that Gillibrand herself is from upstate, which many New York City voters (who make up two-thirds of those who cast ballots in Democratic primaries in the state) consider more alien territory than much of the rest of the country.

Slow learner

Emily will tell you that one of my most consistent (and probably most annoying) habits is punctuality. I hate it when people I am meeting are late, and can't stand to be late myself.

I come by this trait naturally. My Dad actually used to make "reconnaissance trips'' to unfamiliar destinations ahead of time so that he would be on time. His life would have been simpler had GPS's been invented.

Nevertheless, in the world of government and politics, things seldom come off on time. Yet when I saw today that the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus dinner was set to start at 7 p.m. and that former Congressman Harold Ford of Tennessee was scheduled to speak at the dinner, I decided I had to be there at 7.

Big mistake. At 7, people had barely started to filter into the hall. Once they were seated, there were endless introductions, speeches, entertainment, etc. By the time I left at 9:30, after standing up for most of that time (hard for me these days) he hadn't spoken yet.

Similar things have happened to be over and over through the years. I might have literally torn my hair out when the Senate, before Joe Bruno became majority leader in 1995, would regularly start at least an hour past the scheduled time.

One time, though, it paid off. When I and a bunch of other reporters were traveling with Gov. Pataki in Hungary in 1995, his pr woman told us to meet in the lobby at 9 a.m. to catch our ride to get to the events of the day. Oh sure, we reporters thought. Pataki was notoriously late for almost everything.

But I got there on time, and, surprise, the governor was right behind me. We got into a van, even though a couple of reporters were not accounted for. We tried to get the driver to wait, but his English wasn't any better than our Hungarian. The tardy reporters had to catch a cab and missed the first event.

So the moral of the story is, I guess, once every 15 years or so, it pays to be on time. Just not tonight.

cocktail results: mixed

Results of new chemo cocktail so far: some nausea, some exhaustion and relatively minor leg pain.

I have also developed over the last couple of days the bane of anyone who uses a keyboard: repetitive stress injury in my right wrist.

But Emily and I have been playing doctor with it. She went to CVS last night and got me a wrist brace, which I have worn all day and has allowed me to type without too much pain, especially when I remember not to reach with my fingers. It feels better now than it did this morning.

It's hard to say whether this new thing is related to chemo or just a heavier load of typing on a laptop. Good thing I 'm just blogging and not writing my first novel.

The hope is a good night's sleep and being off my feet for most of the day, and being away from the keyboard tomorrow, will work miracles.

Hey, you never know.

Good blood-test results

Some good news on the blood-test front today: a measurement of cancer activity taken in December was only about a quarter of what the number was in October, and less than a tenth of what it was last summer.

That seems to indicate that that the radiation and/or chemo is working, and that we should continue the chemo indefinitely.

The down side of that is the side effects of the chemo, most seriously the pain I have in my legs for a couple of days after chemo treatments.

To fight that, today we tweaked the chemo cocktail to eliminate a medication designed to ease nausea but also we think is the leg-pain culprit. We should know the effects of the shift by tomorrow.

Brave New World of Information

I heard for about the eighth time today that tomorrow will be the day when The New York Times publishes a blockbuster story about Gov. David Paterson.
I know the essence of blogging, almost, is to start or repeat rumors, but I'll take a pass on it this time. Suffice it to say if the rumors are true, Paterson, already toast politically, could be forced out of office. But it was Super Bowl Sunday that we first heard about this alleged story, and it has yet to surface.
Paterson forcefully denied yesterday that he has done anything wrong or that he is aware of the Times pursuing any such damaging story about him. He even said there is no broom closet in the Executive Mansion, a place mentioned in some of the blog reports alleging misconduct on his part.
Could this be an effort by a political or budgetary opponent to force him from office? Or is it just irresponsible speculation? Or is it true? We don't know yet.
One of the ironies of the decline of the newspaper business is that the thirst for information from the public has never been stronger. Another irony is while there is probably more need than ever before for careful editing of information that goes before the public, there is far less now than there used to be.
It's a brave new world of information out there, and it doesn't always serve the public well.

back in the saddle - sort of

"Good to see you, you miserable bastard,'' one member of the Assembly greeted me this week, as I went on the Assembly floor for the first time in almost eight months. "I mean both things - it is good to see you and you are a miserable bastard.''

I took this as a sign of affection from a notoriously prickly lawmaker, with whom I have clashed, and had pleasant conversations, over the years.

And I admit I hugged a couple of legislators, one of whom has kept in touch with me via-e-mail since June, and another who is also fighting cancer. Afraid some of the journalistic distance we all struggle to maintain shrunk considerably.

I got warm handshakes, best wishes and promises of prayers from some others. There was also a group who gave me a nod, like I was just there last week.

One told me, "I really wish you the best - and that's not just some kind of press bullshit.'' Another who has given me a religious medal told me I was in his prayers. I had the medal he gave me in my pocket.

It was good to be back at the Capitol today, until a vote on whether to expel a member of the Senate, Hiram Monserrate, scheduled for noon, was delayed repeatedly. Nine hours later, there was still no vote.

Reporters, some of them sitting on the floor and almost all of them hungry and tired, wearily waited for senators to emerge from behind closed doors to take action.

I decided to take advantage of my new position as a volunteer columnist and blogger to go home and have dinner.

The state budget dance

After covering state budgets for 25 years, more people are asking me what is so different about this year.

The most obvious way is that the numbers are worse than they have been in any year I have been here, with the exception of 1991, when lawmakers voted to cut school aid in the middle of the year. The governor is also in the weakest political position of any chief executive since I have been paying attention. Some think that voter anger over taxes and spending is at an unusually high pitch.

But in another sense, it is the same dance that goes on every year.

If there were a lot of money available, schools, hospitals and other groups would scream as loudly as they could that they need more. And instead of talking about tax increases, how big tax cuts should be, and who should get them, would occupy lobbyists and journalists.

And every year since Nelson Rockefeller left office in 1973, the governor has wanted to spend less (or cut more) while lawmakers want to add spending or minimize cuts.

In other words, the numbers change, but the basic structure of the budget dance is predictable.

What does that tell us about this year? That whatever is finally adopted will be less than lawmakers want but more than the governor proposed, and that all sides will try to find painless ways to pay for more spending (higher estimates of tax revenues, rosy assumptions about fraud recoveries and expenditures, etc.)

The final deal will leave the state in a weaker financial position going forward, but will allow lawmakers and the governor, all of whom are running in this year's elections, to say they stuck up for their constituents.

And next year, most likely, things will be even worse.

Happy birthday Emily

Today was Emily's 63rd birthday, which gave me a chance to reflect on the life of the spouse of a cancer patient.

When we were married and took our vows 40 years ago, we both joked that we preferred "in health'' and "for richer'' over the alternatives.

For most of our time together we have been fortunate to hold "sickness'' and "for poorer'' at bay, but that was before my cancer diagnosis last June.

Since then, she has had to curtail her therapist career and favorite leisure-time pursuits, like kayaking and cross-country skiing and developing her spiritual side, to help take care of me. That ranges from arranging doctor appointments to accompanying me to chemotherapy to picking up the slack of chores I used to do like the dishes.

Even more importantly she comforts me when I despair, reassures me when I wonder what is going to happen next and is always ready with a hug when I most need it.

I didn't know what I would have done without her before I got sick, and can't imagine keeping my sanity for the last eight months without her support. Having her by my side is the one constant I can count on as I go into the uncertain future.

Happy birthday honey.

Joys of no chemo

Ah, the joys of life without chemo.

Friday, the day after the treatment, is usually the day when my legs are sore, my temperature is up and down and I don't feel like doing anything other than taking a hot shower, sitting in a chair and maybe reading.

But after three Thursdays in a row of that, I am having my scheduled week off, where my bod gets a little chance to bounce back.

So I could take a walk in the sun today, enjoy a lunch out (even have a glass of wine) and feel reasonably sharp sitting in front of the computer.

It's back to the old grind next week, and for the two weeks following that. Then it will be time to decide whether to continue the chemo treatments, maybe on a reduced schedule, to keep the cancer at bay.

The alternative, assuming test results show no spread of the disease, is to stop them and let my body fully recover, and then watch closely for any recurrence before starting them up again.

Not an easy choice.

One bug that's hard to shake

The political bug is a powerful infection that it seems some people can never shake.

That's what struck me earlier this week when I watched former Gov. Eliot Spitzer on Comedy Central's "Colbert Report'' TV show.

He had to play along with host Stephen Colbert's jokes about his patronizing of a prostitute that forced him to resign in 2008.

"Any big plans after the show?'' Colbert asked him.

"Going straight home,'' Spitzer replied, as the audience laughed.

"I condemn you,'' Colbert, who plays a faux right-wing talk-show host, told the former governor, who is rumored to be considering a run for state comptroller this year.

"I get that sense,'' Spitzer replied.

"But I like you...You've got nothing to lose,'' Colbert said. "You've got no public image to uphold. There's nothing they have on you.''

"Not any more,'' Spitzer said.

Colbert also asked him if he thinks he has a chance to be re-elected governor since Ben Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank, which oversees the banking system, was recently reappointed to his job, even though "he screwed everybody.''

"I just became a big fan of Ben Bernanke,'' Spitzer joked.

Spitzer looked as if he was enjoying himself, but how much humiliation can one man take? Surely there must be something he can do with his life that doesn't involve listening to snide jokes and comments about himself. And the closer he edges back to the public arena, the more intense the spotlight is going to be.

He must figure that people will get tired of it eventually. But he may be underestimating how much people like to be titillated.

An unscratched itch

I had lunch today with a friend who has spent a lot of years being both a lobbyist at the Capitol and a college teacher.

We had our share of laughs about the characters and rascals who inhabit the world we share, and wonderment at how little the place has changed over the decades. After all the years we have spent here, we still find it fascinating.

But he got far more passionate talking about some of the students who passed through his classrooms over the years - the ones whose minds seemed to have come alive while taking his courses and have kept in touch with him. I identified strongly with what he was saying.

The teaching itch is one I have yet to scratch, and have to admit I come by it naturally - I am the son, brother and father of teachers.

The closest I have come, beyond occasional guest lectures, is teaching and mentoring the interns whom we hire every semester, many of whom have gone on to solid careers in journalism and most of whom did a good job for us. I know it's not like being in a classroom, since it's one-on-one with someone highly motivated, but it gave me a taste of the good side of the job (no discipline problems or lunch-room duty.)

A few years ago, my friend had to make a choice between teaching and lobbying. Lobbying won because the money was so much better, even if the psychic satisfaction is far less. He was wistful about the choice, though.

Scrum time at the Capitol

I was in my first "scrum'' today since last June with Gov. Paterson, who didn't do a bad job at defending his education policies, explaining why he intended to veto an ethics bill on his desk and what he hopes his political opponents will continue to do to each other.

In this context "scrum''means a public figure being surrounded by reporters and other media types asking questions and sticking tape recorders and microphones in his or her face. Fans of the movie "Invictus'' might recall "scrum'' is a rugby term to describe pileups of players trying to make off with the ball.

This was a civilized media one, since a podium was set up for the governor to stand behind, and most of the TV cameras had already been set up in a hallway outside the convention center in the Empire State Plaza near the Capitol. The 20 or so reporters around were mostly the usual LCA (Legislative Correspondents' Association) suspects.

Reporters wanted to talk to Paterson after he addressed a rally of charter-school supporters in the convention center. He wants to expand the number of the publicly funded by privately run institutions, but he and the Legislature haven't been able to agree on how big to make that number.

Paterson told reporters he'll try again to get lawmakers to agree to raise the cap on the number of charter schools. He also said he agrees with critics who say his budget plan doesn't provide enough money for schools.

"They say we shorted them on education. They're basically right,'' he told reporters, who followed the new ritual of identifying themselves before asking the governor a question, since he can't see well enough to identify them.

But, he added, no one is coming up with ideas on where to find more money to help fund schools.

He also said he intended to either sign or veto today an ethics-reform bill that he said doesn't go far enough. That was widely interpreted that in the absence of a compromise he would veto it, which he did later in the day.

Just before press aide Morgan Hook announced "one more question,'' he was asked what he thinks about likely Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio criticizing Andrew Cuomo, an all-but-certain Democratic challenger to Paterson, for not yet announcing his intentions to run.

"These are two men who are considered likely to run against me,'' Paterson said. "They should just continue fighting.''

Then he was whisked away by aides amid chuckles and mumbled thanks from reporters, most of whom had the quotes or the tape they needed to help them get through the day.

Cancer and the state budget

The fight against cancer and money are, of course, intimately related, and at least on one front today the news on the state budget didn't sound good for patients.

"This is a terrible year. There is no money,'' Senate Health Committee Chairman Tom Duane, D-Manhattan, told members of a patient-advocacy group called the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society who were at the Capitol to lobby for a few bills.

Mainly, they want the Legislature to approve setting up a fund to increase participation in clinical cancer trials. Seems that many people who would otherwise participate can't because they can't afford the transportation, hotel and other related expenses.

This bill has been around for a while, and at first sought $10 million, then $5 million, for the program. The current version just calls for the program to be established, then funded in flusher times.

The other bill the advocates are pushing for the would force insurance companies to pay for oral chemotherapy on the same basis as drugs that are taken intravenously. Now such pills are considered a prescription drug, and far more expensive than traditional chemo.

This is particularly key for this group, because a drug taken orally called Gleevac has shown great promise in fighting a certain type of blood cancer. It actually just attacks certain cancer cells, leaving healthy fast-dividing tissues alone (and thus having just minimal side effects.)

A total of 140,000 people die of blood cancers across the country annually. That's far more than my cancer, pancreatic, but fewer than the big killers - breast, lung and prostate. It's not clear whether there is enough push behind these bills to get through the Legislature and to have Gov. Paterson sign them.