How to Eviscerate Government Programs, Courtesy of Republican Congressman Paul Ryan and his Budget Plan

By Richard Kirsch

Paul Ryan’s budget recklessly slashes health programs and ignores our responsibility to care for each other.

USAction President William McNary, one of the most powerful voices of my generation, often reminds us that budgets are not about numbers; budgets are moral documents, a statement of our values and priorities. Paul Ryan, the Republican Budget Committee Chair, agrees with McNary’s attention to values, saying that the goal of his proposed budget plan is to “… leave our children and our grandchildren with a debt-free nation. It is a moral imperative.”

Philosophers have written volumes on whether morality can be absolute or is always relative — one man’s morality is another man’s offense — so I’d take Ryan’s statement of his concerns about the moral transcendence of the national debt at face value except for one thing: his budget includes $4 trillion in tax cuts, including $1.5 trillion to corporations and higher-income individuals. If avoiding the saddling of our children with debt were Ryan’s true moral compass, then lowering tax rates would be off his map. Despite Ryan’s boy scout earnestness, he is really driven by an ideology of eviscerating government and denying our responsibility to care for each other.

As progressives, we should welcome a values debate with Ryan and his supporters. The centerpiece of Ryan’s vision for the future, his dismantling of the nation’s public health insurance programs and repealing of the Affordable Care Act , is in sharp contrast with our own vision. Ryan’s health proposals would reduce federal debt by making families destitute and would result in tens of thousands of Americans dying each year because they do not have health coverage. His proposals would enrich the private insurance industry and protect the interests that are most responsible for high health care costs.

Ryan’s budget would replace Medicare, the nation’s national health insurance program for seniors and people with serious disabilities, with vouchers to buy private insurance. The Ryan voucher plan is not about controlling health care costs; instead, it is intended to shift costs from the federal government to the seniors and the disabled who are covered by Medicare.

We have decades of evidence that Medicare does a better job of controlling health care costs than private insurance. Health care costs have increased at a significantly lower rat under Medicare than in private insurance plans, chiefly because Medicare is much better able to limit how much it pays to doctors and hospitals. The private insurance plans that now cover about one out of five Medicare patients do so at a cost that is 13% greater than Medicare pays for the same benefits (cost overruns that will be significantly reduced by the Affordable Care Act). Insurers reap substantial profits from these private Medicare plans, profits that would soar if the entire Medicare population were handed over to the health insurance industry. And because private insurance has failed to rein in doctor and hospital costs as effectively as Medicare, health care providers would be enriched too.

Ryan’s plan does cut health care costs in one macabre way: When people can’t afford the care they need — and the CBO reports that the Ryan plan will double the already high cost of health care to seniors — they die sooner. From a dollar-driven point of view, a cynical person might argue that a retired senior who is not being a productive worker and has no savings left to be a productive consumer is really a drain on society.

Which leads us to the Ryan plan to ruin Medicaid by replacing a program that now entitles low-income people to health coverage with a block grant to states to spend however they want on health care for the poor. In this instance, the federal government saves money by decreasing what it pays to state governments and states get to do the dirty work of cutting people’s health care.

Ryan and the Republicans are betting on the notion that people think Medicaid is for “those people,” the undeserving poor (a tautology for Republicans). Putting aside the fact that the low-income people who qualify for Medicaid are women, children and the working poor, what a great many Americans actually experience is that Medicaid is a program for their parents and grandparents. Seventy percent of Americans in nursing homes are on Medicaid and two-thirds of Medicaid expenditures are on the elderly and disabled. So after the Medicaid voucher program bankrupts seniors so that they would qualify for Medicaid, Ryan would pull that rug out from them too, as states would be forced to cut the biggest cost in the Medicaid program, long-term care.

The other way states could make up for the lost federal revenue is by cutting health coverage entirely, or providing skimpy coverage with high out-of-pocket costs, to women and children and other low-income people who are covered by Medicaid. By increasing the number of uninsured, Ryan’s plan would result in the death of even more people, since for every one million people that are uninsured, about 1,000 people die a year due to the lack of health coverage.

The Ryan budget also eliminates the state children’s health insurance program, which covers millions of children in moderate-income working families who earn too much for Medicaid. And it eliminates the coverage provisions of the Affordable Care Act, which, by expanding Medicaid to 133% of the federal poverty level and providing income-based subsidies to buy coverage for millions of families who don’t get coverage at work, would cover 32 million uninsured. That’s not all: Ryan would also raise the age to qualify for Medicare from 65 to 67, adding that age group to the uninsured for the first time since Medicare began in 1965.

I’ve lost track at this point of the number of people who such changes to the nation’s health care coverage system would kill each year — certainly upwards of 40,000. Who knows? And millions more would be saddled with personal debt or driven into bankruptcy .

Progressives have moral alternatives to Ryan’s dark vision. The Affordable Care Act is a good start, as it reduces the federal debt while covering 32 million people a year, relieves millions more of medical debt and begins to control costs at their root: over-payments and wrong incentives to health care providers. Much more can be done in this last area to move from a health care system that relies on a failed free market to control health care costs. The successful route to controlling costs is that which was taken in many other nations: a national health care plan that controls the methods and amounts that health care providers are paid.

For example, we can set the prices we pay for prescription drugs, which other nations do, cutting drug prices in half. We can provide hospitals with global budgets, giving them an incentive to reduce the amount of disease in a community and not duplicate services provided by other hospitals. And if we really want to follow Ryan’s example of politically difficult policy approaches that are visionary, we could move to a national health care plan that covers everyone as a matter of right, with comprehensive coverage and low out-of-pocket costs, financed through taxes. That’s the vision that would lower health care costs and lead to a prosperous, healthy future for all Americans.

Richard Kirsch is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and is writing a book on the progressive campaign to enact health reform. This post appeared first in the Roosevelt blog, New Deal 2.0.

"What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Death?"

By Devin Cholodenko

Although the sky was overcast and grey outside, the light coming through the window seemed bright. It illuminated the chestnut desk, which held the television, and the dull brown carpet next to the armchair where Claire sat, slender and frail.

The television glowed, the only illuminating object in the gloomy room.

On a small dark table beside Claire sat a small glass filled halfway with liquid, amber in color, which she sipped every now and then. She always swallowed slowly.

Sitting at her other side, on the orange faded couch, was Claire’s father, a large rotund bearded man. Every now and then, about twice as often as Claire’s sipping, he leaned forward to the coffee table, a large slab of glass supported by a wooden frame, and sputtered saliva-mashed chewing tobacco into a white paper cup.

The television was louder during commercial breaks. Claire continued the conversation, yelling to overcome both the television’s noise and her father’s poor hearing.

“The doctor gave him two months maybe three, and that was a month ago,” she said to her father.

Although she talked loudly, Claire’s voice was limp with drunkenness and passivity as if she was only watching herself talk, rather than choosing and speaking words.

“It’s a shame. Well what do doctors know anyways? I was watching this program last night that had a guy who the doctors told him he was going to die in a year but he’s been going for ten…miracles can happen,” she mused, uninspired.

“How’s Jackie taking it?” asked Claries father.

“Well John hasn’t been so great to him. Last time he was giving Jackie a hard time about missing that catch at the big game last year. He upset Jackie pretty bad.”

“That was a horrible play,” Claire’s father muttered agreeably.

“But it was a whole year ago.”

“You’re absolutely right Claire. I think Jackie had enough a hard time with it, with not getting invited back on the team this year and all. It’s a hard thing letting your team down. I knew a guy who missed a catch back in—“

“Dad I’m really not in the mood for listening to you relive the glory days of your sports youth…”

“It was only…it was relevant,” he protested.

“This isn’t the time for that.”

“What time is it for then, what do we talk about?”

When the commercials ended, both Claire and her father’s heads moved smoothly to fix on the glowing screen. The light from the window had moved slightly—it now illuminated Claire’s hand, which rested on the armrest of the armchair. Her hand was heavily veined, the blue streaks showing slightly through pale and loose skin.

Footsteps gave them both warning of Jack’s return from school, and yet neither of them moved an inch. Their eyes were stuck to the screen. The front door creaked and Jack entered through the foyer.

“Honey how was school?” Claire asked in a flat voice.

“Good. Hi grandpa,” Jack muttered before going to his room at the other side of the house.

A new set of commercials came on the television.

“Have you told him yet?” Claire’s father muttered under his breath to her.

“No I haven’t,” she said quietly.

“What?” He cupped a wrinkled hand to his ear.

She shook her head at first violently, to communicate with her father, and then slower, to herself. Jack entered the room.

“What’s on TV?” he asked.

“Nothing, just some program.”

Jack sat on the far side of the couch, fiddling with his fingers. He looked like a ghost in the flickering light of the television. A weight loss commercial was playing loudly on the television.

LOOOOSE 20 POUNDS IN JUST 5 DAYS, THAT’S RIGHT, ONLY 5 DAYS, with the top secret PROMAX formula…

After some silence Jack turned to his mother, “Are we going to the hospital to visit Dad today?”

Our secret PROMAX formula maximizes your protein receptors to full capacity, virtually effortless…

“Yes hon,” Claire answered lifelessly.

20 Pounds in just 5 DAYs! Our secret formula will hyper-boost your metabolism. You don’t have to do a thing; weight loss is effortless with the secret PROMAX formula. One easy payment of—

“Is Dad gonna die?”

Side effects may contain headache, nausea, diarrhea, abdominal pain, over productive sweat glands, unwanted facial hair, temporary paralysis…

She answered him quickly, “Honey! Don’t say that! Your father’s going to be absolutely fine. The doctors are just giving him special vitamins that are only at the hospital. They say he’ll be out very soon. Don’t say such things! Don’t be so ridiculous!”

Her voice had changed from limp to sharp, full of derision and life. She lifted herself from the armchair quickly and floated to the kitchen.

Consult a certified physician if you have thoughts of harming yourself or considerations of suicide. Call now to get two PROMAX supplement kits for the price of one! A limited number of customers will receive this incredible offer! Call now the lines are open! Don’t wait and get left behind. 20 Pounds in just 5 days with PROMAX, an easy solution…

In the kitchen Claire began to scrub at an already sparkling stove. Jack’s grandfather muttered inaudibly while he turned the volume of the television slightly down. He looked at Jack for a few seconds and then back to the television.

“Jackie do you know what you want to be when you grow up?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well you’ve got to choose something that you can make money at. It doesn’t matter what the job is or if it matters or anything like that. You need to make the bills Jackie. You understand?”

“Yes grandpa.”

“It doesn’t matter. You could do anything…as long as you make money. Be a chiropractor, they make tons of money. Yeah, a chiropractor. Do they need a degree? They make a lot of money. Take out a loan for chiropractor school. You won’t regret it. When you have money you can do things. You might slave through the week and all. But on the weekend, you take your boat out, or anything, you go fishing. You go to the Bahamas. You go to Hawaii. You go to the roller coasters. You understand?

Jack nodded.

“Having money is what matters. It’s magical. It’s just paper, but it can do anything. Anything you want for a piece of paper. It’s magic. Whoever came up with money was a genius. I used to have this 54’ corvette. I saved and saved for that. But it was worth it. Flying around in that beautiful car…I don’t think I ever loved anything more than that car. It had this bright cherry red finish and when you hit the gas it just purred. It was a convertible too. Used to go down to the beach in it. Course I had to sell it when your mother went to college…”

“Mom can you bring me some water?” Jack called into the kitchen.

Claire floated from the kitchen with a glass of water for Jack. She had scrubbed all the surfaces in the kitchen and now she dusted all the surfaces in the television room, although the room didn’t need dusting. It was gloomier now that the sun had gone down. They could only see by the light of the television. Jack took a hurried gulp of the water and set the glass down on the coffee table.

“JACK WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! YOU DON’T PUT WATER ON WOOD,” Claire bellowed.

She lunged toward the glass but Jack had already picked it up off the table.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

“Oh God there’s going to be a ring. There’s going to be a ring!!” Claire shrieked in pain.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking, I’m sorry!” Jack pleaded.

“Why do you do this to me? Why? You know you can’t put a wet glass on wood Jack. Why did you do it? Why?”

“I don’t know, I’m sorry, I forgot.”

“YOU FORGOT?” She ran to the kitchen to get paper towels. She banged the cabinets theatrically. As she dried the tiny ring of water on the wood of the coffee table Jack said, “Mom, I’m so sorry, I don’t know why I did it, I’m sorry, I forgot.”

Claire had regained control, her pensive voice returning.

“Honey, you don’t put water on wood. It’s just not something you do. Please think before you put your glass down.” She spoke soothingly now.

“I will, I will. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay honey, I don’t think there’s going to be a ring. I got to it quickly enough.” Claire smiled at him.

She returned to the kitchen to throw out the one paper towel she had used and came back to the television room, slumping into her armchair with a sigh. Jack’s grandfather had pretended not to notice the scene which had just taken place. He remained on the couch acting as though nothing had even happened. All three of them stared at the television screen.

Jack turned to his mother. “Mom, do we have to go to the hospital today? Can’t we go another time?”

“No honey, we’re going today, actually we’re going to leave in a few minutes.”

“But Dad’s going to be fine you said so. I’ll see him when he gets out.”

“Yes he’s going to be fine,” she answered swiftly and added, “but we are going to go see him soon. Do you have to get ready? Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

“But I don’t want to see him,” Jack muttered.

“Honey! Don’t say things like that! Why don’t you want to see your father? He’s in the hospital, you have to go see him.”

After several seconds of silence Jack said in a whiny voice, “My stomach hurts. I’m can’t go. I’m sick.”

“Honey, you’ve got to go it’s really important that you go.”

“I can’t go, I’m sick,” Jack whined.

“How about we go to the mall afterwards and I’ll buy you something. Anything you like—under 20 dollars though, I’m not made of money.”

“Can’t we just skip the hospital and go to the mall?”

“No, honey, we can’t do that.” Claire spoke just above a whisper.

“Okay I guess I can go. The stomach ache isn’t too bad,” Jack said softly.

At the mention of the mall Claire’s father got excited and turned to Jackie, “Ok, Jackie, you better think about what you’re gonna get at the mall! Maybe a toy? What are you gonna buy? Try to buy something that lasts.”

Devin Cholodenko is a senior at the University at Albany, SUNY, majoring in Journalism. He will graduate next month.

What's THIS? A Movie Trailer for "THE SPIRITKEEPER"? How Cool!

You've seen a million trailers before. Every time you go to the movies there are trailers galore for upcoming films.

But have you ever seen a TRAILER for a book?

Author Lynn Biederstadt just released a trailer for her wonderful new novel, The Spiritkeeper.

The trailer is intended to spark interest in the book among readers and also, among potential publishers.

Marketing a book this way is a brand new idea -- have a look and tell us what you think!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvBBI_yO1DM

YES, Blood IS Thicker Than Water!!

NOTE TO READERS: Jennifer Orellana, a junior at the University at Albany, SUNY, wrote the first part of her "Flip the Script" assignment on her father. In flipping the script, she wrote from her mother, Yolanda's, perspective.

By Jennifer Orellana

“Ugh thank god I’m home.” Yolanda slipped out of her coat, tossed her boots across the room, and took in that sweet scent that soothed her as soon as she walked through the door, the smell of home. Her husband was in the kitchen cooking one of his many delicious dishes and cursing because he had almost messed up the meal.

“Que Mierda!” he exclaimed. She looked at this man she loved so much and started laughing. He was so funny and so predictable. He did this cooking, learning new dance steps, and of course as he was fixing things around the house.

She turned her attention to her daughter, Jennifer, who was sitting on the couch with her legs up talking intensely on the phone.

Yolanda couldn’t help but see herself in her daughter. She had long curly hair, long thin legs, and big bright brown eyes. She looked exactly like Yolanda did when she was that age. But the more she looked at her daughter the more she saw her ex in her too. She had his lips, his hands, and even the same bags around her eyes. Just the thought of him made Yolanda cringe. He was her horrible past, a past that she would never regret because through the pain and sadness was born the most amazing thing that had ever happened to her, her baby and her best friend Jennifer.

*****

Yolanda looked at herself in the mirror and shook her head back and forth back and forth. Then she took a deep breath and stared at her reflection. She had long dirty blonde hair, big brown eyes, and beautiful plump lips that were being chewed on in her state of panic.

“Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god. What am I going to do?” she murmured to herself. What could she do? She was 22 years old, with a boyfriend she could hardly depend on. She looked down at the floor then back up at her reflection in the mirror again.

Then she asked herself, “Can I do this on my own?” She thought about this for a moment, raising a kid on her own and realized yes she could, and smiled. She reached down for the pregnancy test and instead of looking at the plus sign as this huge dilemma she stared at it now and saw it for its possibilities. She knew her life would never be the same, and as scary as it was she was willing to go through with it, for her unborn baby.

*****

The look in her daughter’s eyes is what brought her back to reality. Something was wrong, something was really wrong.

“Who is she talking to?” She asked her husband.

“Oh I think she’s talking to her aunt from Virginia. I’m kind of worried, though, Jen looks like she’s on the verge of tears,” he replied.

Yolanda couldn’t take it anymore, she knew it had to be about Jen’s father, what else could it be?

“What has he done now?!” Yolanda exclaimed but was met with silence. Jen was really submerged into the conversation so

Yolanda and her husband Rob sat at the dining table waiting intently for the conversation to be over. A half hour passed and they had become restless.

“Jen! Hello what’s going on?” Yolanda yelled again, impatience filling up inside of her to its highest point. Jen finally got off the phone and Yolanda felt a miniscule amount of relief from within only to have it replaced two seconds later with more impatience.

“What did she say?” Rob asked intently. Then Jen sat there with her hands quivering and told them that her dad had remarried in Italy and had never even sent his own daughter an invitation. She also found out that her father’s new bride was pregnant.

Yolanda and Rob sat there stunned by the news. Yolanda thought to herself “who in their right mind would marry a lunatic like him and bare his child knowing that he has two other children that he never sees?” Rob on the other hand thought of the pain that Jen was going through and how he wished he could make it go away. He wished he could somehow relay this to his own daughter who never seemed to appreciate him as much as his step daughter had.

Yolanda put her arms around her daughter and held her close. Telling her that everything would be alright and not to let it get to her.

“Ma, he lives on New Dorp now,” Jen said in a monotone.

“What? He lives in Staten Island now?” Yolanda was taken aback. Could this be true?

“Yes,” Jen answered as tear after tear dripped down her face.

Looking at her daughter cry made Yolanda’s heart ache. She wanted to march to that man’s house with a shot gun and shoot him but she did her best to shake that thought from her head. If only she could protect her from this, if only she could protect her from every pain in the world. She was able to give her daughter life but she could not live her daughter’s life for her. So Yolanda did one of the hardest things a mom has to do, she just sat there holding her daughter close in silence and did nothing but offer her support and love.

As she cradled her daughter she comforted her by saying, “Don’t worry baby he’s the one missing out on having a wonderful person like you in his life. It may not seem like it now but him not being in your life is the best thing he could have done for you.”

THE SPIRITKEEPER, A Love Story -- Chapter 12

NOTE TO READERS: With this installment of "The Spiritkeeper," we will pause while author Lynn Biederstadt seeks a print publisher for her fine novel. MyStoryLives has been delighted and proud to serialize the first portion of the book, and if it works, we will continue to serialize at a later point. GOOD LUCK WITH PUBLISHING LYNN!!

By Lynn Biederstadt

In the morning, she decided to fit another piece to the David Emory puzzle.

Marjorie Maxwell’s cottage wasn’t difficult to find; it was the only one that was even remotely close to David’s place, just under a mile away. And a cottage was exactly what it was.

She had thought that the Emory homestead was ridiculously picturesque. The Maxwell house made David’s charming home look like a cinderblock bomb shelter. Picket fence. Rose arbor. An honest-to-god thatched roof. An immaculate 50s-era Buick in the gravel drive. And a pair of residents who might have sprouted from the earth of their English garden.

Marjorie and her sister Martha were ancient, deeply wrinkled Hobbits, adorable, grey-haired and Puritan thin. Their warm, bright, lace-curtained living room smelled of lavender, baking bread and wood stove. Every space was given over to sewing surfaces and a huge spinning wheel. From seemingly every corner, every sill, every chair, a cat watched the proceedings, just as David had described.

Despite their advanced years, the sisters were energetic, old-line New Englanders, industrious and purposeful. Their hands were never still. Every word of conversation was accompanied by the whirr of the spinning wheel and click of the treadle sewing machine. Marjorie, the spinner, was the talker of the two. Her sister seemed content simply to listen, nod and smile. “Did you come to pick up the things for David? “

Marjorie fetched up six neatly-twisted skeins of white handspun yarn. McGill held them to her cheek. The wool had presence in her hand, a soft weight, a trace of oil that spoke of living things. She had never been a big fan of handcrafts, but there was something touchingly alive about this product of an old woman’s labor. The spun wool, to the loomed cloth, to the finished product on David’s back: the circle completed. It was all very satisfying, somehow.

“All that yarn in David’s barn: Did you make that? And the jacket?”

“Oh yes. The yarn from David’s wool, and the jacket from David’s cloth. How is he? We haven’t seen him in several weeks.”

Marjorie had assumed for her an acquaintance of longer standing; McGill didn’t try to correct the error. She didn’t mention his stay at St. Amelia’s. That was for David to tell. “He’s fine. He’s well,” she said. The smell of lavender was making her euphoric. She wished she could have been one of their cats. She wanted to curl up on the doilied couch and nap the morning away in the sunshine. “You’ve known him for a long time, I guess.”

“And his parents. And his grandparents. I taught him to weave when he was eight years old.”

“Marjorie, what was he like back then?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He was a sweet boy, then. He’s a sweet boy now.” Sweet wasn’t what she’d hoped for. And it was far from all there was. Behind that milk-and-cookies smile, McGill caught a glimpse of the fierce protectiveness she’d seen in those who knew David well—Eli Cline’s steely loyalty, dressed in an antique lace glove.

“You’re asking me, I think, how he’s different between then and now?” Marjorie was more savvy than she’d let on. “He’s more complicated, now. In some ways, he’s still so very young. And he’s not as strong as he thinks he is. Why do you ask?”

“I just find him…interesting.”

Old women were wonderful. Old women missed nothing. They saw things you hadn’t yet guessed. “Of course you do, dear,” said Marjorie Maxwell.



McGill was letting herself in at the front door. Trying to. She never could figure out which key was which. Footsteps came quickly up the walk behind her. She turned, startled.

It was Jon Arledge.

What the hell? He knew where she lived. He had followed her home. This was creepy.

“What are you doing here?”

He smiled at her from behind his aviator sunglasses. She couldn’t see his eyes. He was all Ivy League casual, starched and pressed and expensive down to his fingernails. As cool and slick as a reptile in the rain. “Do you know where he is?”

“He who?”

“David Emory.”

“Why would I know that?”

“You were seen coming out of his home.”

Alarm bells. “How do you know that?”

“No one escapes attention in a small town. Could it be that you haven’t discovered this?”

“Could it be you haven’t discovered that it’s illegal to stalk people?”

“I’m not stalking you, Ms. Forester. I’m looking out for you.”

“Whatever you’re calling it, this Captain Ahab thing of yours is not very attractive. You’re obsessing over nothing. David is harmless.”

“And how many hospitalizations would it take to convince you otherwise? Two? Three? Five? You don’t know him well enough to have an opinion, I assure you.”

It was true: She knew David Emory nowhere near well enough to defend him in anything, from anyone. But she was coming to understand that she would have defended Charles Manson if Arledge had been on the opposing side.

“Here’s a thought: Maybe next time you can follow him home and tell him how concerned you are.”

“Do you know how he came to me this last time, when you met him?”

“He collapsed. At an execution.”

“Exactly. But there have been no executions in New York State for more than 30 years. Have you asked yourself what he was doing at an execution at all? In another state? A place he had no legitimate reason to be?

“Listen to me, Ms. Forester: Be very, very careful around David Emory. Sooner or later, he is going to harm someone. When he does, it won’t matter whether he’s been out of the hospital for two weeks or ten years. Whoever is close to him will suffer.”

The sweet afterglow of the Maxwell’s living room was snuffed, stolen. McGill was all scrapper, now. “Jon—I’ll call you that since we’re on such intimate terms—take it up with him.” She saw herself in his slick sunglasses, and saw his superior smirk harden. She was about to make an enemy, and she couldn’t have cared less. “Now get off my property. And don’t ever come here again.”




She slammed the door, slammed her bag onto the kitchen counter, slammed a few counter doors just for punctuation. She had started way wrong with Arledge as far back as their first meeting, but he’d taken it too far. Was this his bizarre idea of courtship? Was it a genuine concern for her wellbeing? Maybe he did know his patient better than she did. Maybe he was just an ass. But he was dangling David in front of her like a perverse little carrot, playing her curiosity to recruit her to some personal crusade. She didn’t like it. Did she know where David Emory was….

The fact was, within five minutes she did know. As soon as the phone rang.

“Yeah. Talk.”

It was David, pulled up short by the exasperation that hadn't been intended for him. “Ahhh…I think I’ve caught you at a bad time.”

“No, no, it’s okay. I was just chasing away a pest. What can I do for you?”

“Are you busy around one? I wanted to invite you to lunch.”

Two invitations. In two days. Not good. “David…you know I’m married, right?”

An uncomfortable hesitation. That appealing awkwardness again. “You know it wasn't, ummm… that kind of an invitation. Eli will be here.”

She laughed, embarrassed at being so full of herself. “In that case, yes, I’d love to come. Where shall I meet you?”

Instantly, the gaff was forgiven. Discomfort was not allowed to live long in David Emory’s company. “Come here to the house. See you at one.”



His call had tickled her, she had to admit. Social invitations weren’t all that common—at least, not ones without the strings of Ty Florey attached. He was a hot commodity; people got close to you to try to get closer to him. As for her other opportunities, the self-congratulatory ego-fests that were part of the writing business, they held not a scrap of appeal for her. Invitations came in a unending stream. Without exception, she turned them all down. Were they to stop coming, she wouldn’t be particularly sorry to see them go.

But this one, this was different. This was going to be good.




She showed up at David’s place a socially-incorrect five minutes early, a bottle of wine in each hand. David answered the door on the third ring, elegant in pale grey, wiping his hands on the crisp white chef’s apron tied around his waist. She’d caught him in mid-preparations. He was flushed with activity and, charmingly, he was a bit flustered; evidently, his “join me for lunch” logistics were a little rusty.

As distracted as he was, his big smile switched on when he saw her. He seemed genuinely delighted that she’d shown up.

“Come on in. Oh…wine. Thank you. I forgot to ask whether you like Thai food.”

“It’s my favorite.”

“Good, good. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if you said no. Eli will be along shortly, I expect. He makes a point of never being on time for anything.”

“You’re sure he’s coming?”

“Eli eats sausages out of a can. If there’s food in the invitation, yeah, he’s coming.”

“Shall I join you in the kitchen?”

“Probably not a good idea. I’d try so hard to impress you that I’d probably cut a finger off. But there’s wine open over there on the coffee table. Make yourself at home. I won’t be long.”

She poured herself a glass of the same good white varietal he’d offered her yesterday in the barn; helped herself from a platter of rumaki and parmesan crisps warm from the oven. She settled in on the couch, and, as she’d done in Cline’s office, she indulged herself with the property-anthropology she’d been too preoccupied to undertake the last time she was here.

A little ashamed of herself, she went for the snark first. She looked for the taint of money in his living space; that sense of privilege that had always chapped her raw. She didn’t find it. The place was not fussy. It was tasteful. And comfortable. Good furniture. A lot of beautiful New England antiques, well used but well cared-for. Lamps placed for reading. Bike in the hallway. No sign of a pet.

There were more of the superb, unearthly, grey abstract paintings on the walls, David’s work. Conversely, he kept no self-important evidences of his weaving around the place; no wall hangings, no rugs, no fiber-art, no pillows. She supposed that, outside of the elegantly simple white jacket she’d seen him wear, he gave most of it away.

On the coffee table, next to the food, Poet Charles Wright’s Buffalo Yoga, with David’s reading glasses left to mark his stopping-place. The Sibley Guide to Birds with a pair of binoculars resting on top. A stack of books beside it, and a wall of books behind that, a collection that described a questing intelligence. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica. James Hillman’s A Blue Fire. E.O. Wilson. The Tao. The Tao of Physics. Socrates, Dialogs. Between Silence and Light, about the spiritual architecture of Louis I. Kahn. Books by Stephen Hawking. Hunter Thompson. Isaac Asimov. Nabokov. Books on Art History. CDs that confessed a taste in music as all-embracing as his taste in books.

A laptop in its own bookshelf space. A sweater thrown over the arm of the sofa. A hearth, recently used. Everything just tidy enough, but not too much. It was all so… normal. Maybe he had bodies buried in the basement as Doctor Arledge had hinted, but where was the crazy in all this?

David has a rich inner life, Cline had said, not altogether ironically. This was evidence of it: a life that was solitary but not nearly empty. More and more she wondered why someone so essentially present, so fully realized and comfortable in his skin, could have isolated himself as completely as David had done. This place was an island—a wonderful one, given, but an island nonetheless.

Eli arrived to the disquieting sound of gunfire in the near distance. He let himself in. “Those damn kids are back out there in your woods again, David,” he shouted toward the kitchen. To McGill, he said “The little bastards shoot anything that moves. Somebody’s gonna get killed.”

David came out with a platter of cheese. “They’re Jeffrey’s kids, Eli. Nobody’s going to do anything about the sheriff’s kids.”

“I’ll do something about them—with an ass-full of rock salt.”

“Look. McGill brought wine.”

“Oh thank God. I was afraid she was going to bring her book. Feed me.”




It was her own fault, the turn the conversation took.

David was one of those easy, natural hosts who made his guests feel welcome without trying. As he warmed to the task, his moments of gawky social discomfort were replaced by flashes of grace. He was amusable. Engaging. And the man could cook.

David was good at conversation, engaged and responsive. He listened, at times, with an attention that was almost unnerving, yet he tempered the effect generously with that warming, childlike smile of his. He had an endearing way of tilting his head to the side when he grinned at you; of tossing his head when he laughed, and he laughed a lot. The laugh was a surprise—even to him, it seemed. He laughed as if he had forgotten how; as if he were laughing at the joy at discovering laughter again.

And he had a liberal hand with the wine bottle. The more he poured, the more interesting the conversation got.

It started innocently enough. “David, I noticed you don’t have a pet.”

“That surprises you?”

“I didn’t expect it—somebody with such an affinity for animals…

“That’s not my choice, exactly. I like animals, but….”

“David, they follow you in the road.”

“I can’t get them to stop. I’ve tried.”

Eli, a wry broadside. “I know the feeling.”

“Sometimes they get hit by cars. Then I feel terrible.”

McGill said “You know, David, I was curious….”

David sat forward. McGill being McGill, he should have guessed that she would take even the most casual conversation as far as it would go.

“Tell me about the first time.”

“The first time animals followed me?”

“No, the first time for everything.”

No hesitation, this time. His eyes wandered after the memory. “It was a cold day, I remember. Down in the City. The November before the fire at the mill. A bird hit a window. I picked it up; held it the way you do, you know, hoping it will come back. But it didn’t. And when it died, I felt something happen.”

His eloquent hands fluttered an ethereal outline around his chest. “It was like a door opening. And something came in. Light and small. Suddenly, for just a second, I was that thing….that quick, bright thing lifted by the air. I knew what flight was. I saw trees and branches differently; berries. Bugs. I could see color.” He gave a delighted little laugh. “I’d never seen color before. And then the feeling was gone. But the...the thing…the presence…was still there. It had weight. And substance and character. I didn’t know what it was. But it was wonderful.”

He paused, carefully gathering the right words. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘When you witness one death, you witness them all’? Everything was different for me after that. Death was different. I could no longer say ‘that was just a bird that died’ or ‘that was just a dog’ or ‘that was just somebody I didn’t know.’ There was no just in anything. It was all…I don’t know how to say this…greater. More meaningful. Every time I opened the door inside, I got a glimpse of something human beings don’t get to see. That limitlessness: It’s a very humbling thing.”

“A look into the void.”

“No…not a void, because it’s not empty. And not full because there’s nothing to fill. I can’t call it everything, because you have to stand outside of everything to know that it is everything. This is just…” that awed, aimless flying of hands again “…is.”

“Ehyeh asher ehyeh,” Eli said in Hebrew. I am that I am.

McGill quoted. “You mean, it's kind of like ‘an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.’”

“Yes. Who said that?”

“Obi-wan Kenobi.”

Eli howled. “I love this woman.”

Their host took the ribbing in good spirits. “I know, I know. After all this time, I have a hard enough time believing it—and I’m the one living with it. But it is what it is.”

“David, I don’t know what you think you’re seeing. But there are no dead relatives waiting to greet you when you die; no floating above your body, no going toward the light.”

“No, those things are real—except maybe the dead-relatives-waiting part. So far the only one waiting has been me.”

“I don’t believe that. These aren’t cosmic phenomena. They’re the brain’s synapses shutting down. Science knows this.”

“Ah, science,” Eli said caustically. “Conversation over.” He put his fork down. “How do you explain the nursing home pets that know when a person is going to die? How do you explain the 21 grams?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Science. In a controlled experiment in the last century, a physician weighed dying men before death and in the moments after. The difference was 21 grams. The weight of the soul.”

“Sorry. Not buying it.” She could have left it there. But she had a point to make. “Tell me this: Why you, David?”

“Don’t know. Don’t need to know. Carpenter builds a house…doesn’t necessarily know who’s going to live there. Or why.”

“Are they animal souls? Human souls?”

“What’s the difference? Souls are souls. The rest is window dressing.”

“Why would they want to come to you, these souls?”

“No idea. For safekeeping, maybe. Some wander, like the ones in accidents—they’re the worst: They can’t get their bearings; they need to be pointed in the right direction. The rest? Maybe they’re the ones with no place else to go. If they don’t want to come to me, they don’t.”

“Wouldn’t they want to…go on?”

“Not the ones that come to me.”

“Where do they go…after?”

“They don’t. Go anywhere. Not so far.”

“And what happens to them if something happens to you?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out one of these days.”

Her next question was loaded. Like a shotgun. “Do you believe in God, David?”

Eli reached for the wine bottle. “Here we go.”

David held up his hands. “Sorry. Too big a question.”

“Not for most people.”

Cline snorted. “Quod erat demonstratum.”

“Seriously.”

David said, “Let me ask you the same thing, McGill.”

“Don’t go there, Em,” Eli muttered. “I’m warning you.”

“The question’s on the table, so it’s fair game. I’d like to know.”

“The jury’s still out on the God thing for me,” she answered bluntly. “The soul? No. I watched both of my parents die within a year of one another. There was no upside. When you’re dead, you’re dead. The end. Nothing stays. Nothing goes anywhere.”

She had momentum, now. Between the wine and the passion of the debate, she couldn’t have stopped if she’d wanted to. “But let me backtrack. You can’t do anything with this gift of yours, correct? You can’t channel it or put it to use? If you’re just wandering around collecting things, what’s the purpose? What’s the point?”

Eli spoke up. “You mean it has to have a mission? Like what—saving Mankind? Why does there need to be a point? Why does it need to do anything at all?”

“That’s very Talmudic of you, Eli. But you’re taking an awful lot on faith.”

“Exactly. Let me ask you this: What if the question is the reason? Is a higher state of being made of knowing? Or is it merely the opening of a door to more questions? What if this thing of David’s is nothing more than questions: Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s a human interpretation of an essentially empty universe.”

“And if the universe is just us and energy, is it any less wonderful? You asked if David believes in God. You didn’t ask me.”

She grinned. “I was afraid to.”

“The answer is no. But if there were a God, what do you think Yahweh would think about all these inconsequential little bio-blobs so absolutely sure they’ve got it all figured out, and so willing to tell you exactly what to believe?

“What if it’s the asking that’s sacred? That priceless, inestimable ability to look at an unknowable universe and say, humbly, I don’t know. When the question is enough, McGill: That’s faith. When you can be content to do nothing more than let it all come into you—for reasons you will never understand: That’s worship.” He drained his wine glass and held it out to be refilled. “Thus endeth the lesson.”

David was grinning in unrestrained delight. “That was fun.”

“I don’t know about you,” McGill said, “but I’m worn out.”

“Coffee, anybody? Prozac? You two, sit. I’ll be right back.”




As David left the room, McGill caught Cline watching him, as if seeing something in the younger man that he hadn’t seen in a while, something he approved of. He caught her watching him; scowled at her. “What are you looking at?”

“Him. You.”

“Him, me—what?”

She dared him with her smile. “You’re cute together.”

“Cute.” A murderous look. She loved getting under his skin: It was so easy. “Young woman, you do love to live dangerously.”

“No, it’s not that. You surprised me. He surprised me. I never expected any of this.”

“Then you’ll have to stop making things so interesting.”

“Do you think I went too far?”

“You invented ‘too far.’”

“He’s got me curious, I’ll give him that much.” She drew patterns on the tablecloth with her spoon. “Speaking for a second as if I were actually buying all this? He’s so different today. Not the David from a few days ago.”

“Why should that surprise you?”

“I don’t understand why his…his gift…would affect him that way.”

“Think about it. There’s only so much the human organism can take. We’re born with an infinite capacity for love, yes. For forgiveness, yes. But one soul is all we’re issued. There isn’t room for more. Not for most of us, anyway.”

“Why does he do it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know that he knows. Maybe he thinks he’s doing good. Mostly, I think he can’t help it. He never could turn himself off.

“The problem is, David isn’t afraid of death. I wish he were. I wish this thing scared the crap out of him. Because sooner or later, one more is going to be the one too many.”

“That’s not enough to get him to stop?”

“Apparently you don’t know David.”

She reached for the wine bottle and refilled both their glasses. “Did he tell you that Jon Arledge came to see me at my house? He was lobbying for an ally in the David Emory witch-hunt. He was trying to tell me something about David at an execution.”

Eli reined-up. Hard. He sidestepped the subject so fast he could have given himself whiplash. “Jon is a self-righteous idiot. But unfortunately, he’s a connected one who gets what he wants in this county.”

The Pay Attention bell was going off in her head. Eli was stonewalling. “Eli, what is it about the execution?”

David returned into the room, coffee-laden. “What did I miss?”

Eli steered the conversation decisively to safer ground. “We were talking about Jon.”

David grimaced. “And everything was going so well.”

“David has been Jon’s personal project for years. There’s been bad blood between his family and the Emorys forever—property, money, influence. And now that he’s decided that David is a danger to the community, he thinks he’s legitimized a grudge that really started long before he was born.

“He gets his hands on David once every couple of years, when he can catch him incapacitated. Locks him up, throws the key away. It’s medieval, what he does to him in that hospital: electro-convulsive therapy, for God’s sake. He shoots him so full of anti-psychotics he can’t see straight. The drugs only make it harder for David to find his way back. And of course David won’t talk to him about what’s wrong, which Jon chalks up as one more symptom.

“After a while, couple of weeks in, David always manages to struggle back on his own. Jon runs out of legal means to keep him inside, and so he pronounces his latest psychiatric miracle cure and lets him go. Then David has another episode and it starts all over again. How many times so far, Em?”

“Five. Five too many.”

Eli’s pager went off. “Shit. I gotta get to the hospital. Mike Dockery’s boy broke another limb. The little klutz.”

“Don’t forget to tell your patient that his doctor is drunk.”

Cline snorted. “Drunk—please. How long have you known
me? Besides, I’m not getting within ten feet of that kid. Not when I can terrorize my snot-nosed resident Daniels into doing it. I do love making him sweat.” He downed his coffee at a gulp headed for the door. “David, you haven’t forgotten how to cook. McGill, thanks for the seminar.”

McGill reached for her purse. She fumbled her car keys out of her bag.
“Maybe I’ll call it an afternoon, too,” she said.

David plucked the key ring gently out of her hand. “Bad host. Bad. Too much wine, too little time.”

“Guess I don’t have Eli’s constitution. Drive me.”

“I haven’t driven in fifteen years. We’ll go through the woods. It’s closer than driving, and we could both use the walk. Come on—I won’t let anything happen to you, promise."

Why Grandmother Comes Back, as Ghost

Editor's note: Rebecca Jennings, a UAlbany student majoring in art, took a different approach to the "Flip the Script" assignment, and produced an amazing story.

By Rebecca Jennings

It was kind of an odd feeling, like I had never closed my eyes to begin with. I was there and then all of a sudden I wasn’t. I had just aspired into this. I had waited for my daughter, Jessica to leave to do it. It was so strange; I had waited for it to happen for so long and when it finally did, it came so easy, easier than I thought. I had been so angry and bitter, tired and depressed for so long it all came as a relief and I was surprised how all of that had gone away so quickly.

Where was I? It felt like I was in a big ball of white fog just floating. Where was my body? There was no body. I was just there, suspended. Oy vey, it was all so new. The fog cleared up a little and I could make out a small grey silhouette behind the fog - it was me. I was still on the bed and my children were surrounding me. Time and space flew through air so easily, before I knew it arrangements had already been made and I could feel connections, or better yet, souls pull toward me like magnets. I could already feel the thoughts about me, the emotions. I could feel the movement of people traveling toward me. It had started, my last hurrah, my big bang. Oddly after feeling so bitter about the end I was now somehow excited; it was a new journey to travel, something I yearned to experience once more after I got sick. Also, I had always wanted to know who would arrive in the end. I was always curious about other people’s funerals and now it was my turn.

I spent most of my time exploring my new world and waiting with each family member for the “big bash”. The thought made me giggle to myself a little. I went from each of my children’s homes and then to my husbands and sometimes to my grandchildren and brother. It was depressing of course - sometimes they wept for me, sometimes they didn’t, sometimes they smiled, but mostly, they didn’t. If I chose I could hear their thoughts and feel what they feel, but I just sat with them and watched. I was curious, as I had always been a people watcher. I had watched as each of my mourners covered their mirrors and put on their black suites and outfits.

I sped through the time and space of night and arrived in the car of one of my children, Sharon with my two grandchildren also in the car. Strangely the fog around me moved into a vessel, a body-like craft. I no longer had to float around, and somehow I felt more human, a strange reminder of my former life.

I looked at my eldest grandchild in the front seat, Rebecca. She had a different aura about her. It was somber like everyone else’s, but it was also mixed with something else. It was anger and fear and panic and that’s when it hit me. Why couldn’t he have been first, She thought but it was immediately followed with guilt. It took me by surprise at first, but I understood. We had never had that talk about what happened before I passed - I regretted it now.

She was stiff in her seat, her elbow resting against the door with her head against the glass, looking out. It wasn’t until then that I could feel Rebecca’s knots in her stomach. I remained seated in my vessel next to my other grandchild, Michael as I watched the scene unfold.

She took a deep breath attempting to calm her nerves and Rebecca could smell the faint combination of her mother’s hairspray and perfume. Her attempt was in vain. Her mother, who was already easily agitated, was bickering with her brother, who was sitting in the backseat. Rebecca grew tired of listening to the argument and repressed a loud sigh.

Rebecca slipped on her earbuds, mellowing out to “One Headlight”. The song reminded her of me in a way she couldn’t understand, and she thought about the last few times she had seen me. The difference between the times she saw me on Christmas and the time she saw me two weeks ago was substantial. A single tear trickled down her cheek. She heard her mother answer the phone over the music.

“Sharon?” said a man on the phone.

“Hi Rabbi.” She answered in a sob and hearing the tears in her mother's voice made Rebecca’s eyes water once more. Rebecca hated when she cried, it always made her want to cry right along with her. They drove through the center of Monsey and the neighborhood was filled with people. There were people walking and riding their bikes, traffic nonstop. Buses flew around corners and cars were constantly beeping desperately driving to wherever they were headed. It was a Friday (Shabbat) and everyone was rushing to get last minute errands done before sundown.

Finally they had arrived at their final destination, The Gates of Zion. Sharon parked next to her sister, Esther’s van and she sighed. Rebecca decided to leave her bag and iPod in the car and opened the door, the air was brisk, but strangely she found it comforting. She felt the cool wind brush against her bare legs, her black skirt swayed to the side. The black accentuated her pale skin and she was sure she looked whiter than ever. She saw her Uncle Scott sitting in the van and he gave her a nod.

My body was in the hearse across the big turn around circle next to the graveyard. I sensed my cold body in the pine coffin and gave me the strange sensation of what would have been a chill running down my spine - if I had a spine.

My “eyes” found Rebecca again and I followed her for a bit; she worried me. She was looking around for her cousins and desperately hoped she wouldn’t come across her grandfather yet. She wanted to put that off for as long as possible, and I began to feel my guilt. As a human I was so used to suppressing feelings, so I wasn’t used to accepting the guilt. My other grandchildren walked out of the building to meet her and Michael. Stephanie, the tallest of the three stood before her red and teary. She gave her a hug and then turned to her brother Michael to do the same. Rebecca gave hugs next to her cousins Matthew and Allison. Matthew and Michael went off together to return to their strange comical relationship. They hadn’t seen them in several weeks and it was time for them to come together and catch up on each other’s lives. Watching Michael and Matthew interact was something I missed.

“I just can’t believe it. It all happened so fast. You remember how she was a few months ago.” Stephanie said to Rebecca, and she nodded giving her another hug. Rebecca didn’t know what to say, or how to respond, so she walked away to head inside where everybody else had retired while they waited. She swung the door open and immediately felt regret. An old man stood before her, waiting behind the door, Rebecca suspected that he had probably been waiting for her to walk through it.
“Hi Rebecca.” He greeted her in a way that made Rebecca shutter. I could sense all she ever wanted was for him to pretend she didn’t exist, and only then, she thought everything would be fine.

“Hi” she replied calmly and stalked past him and to where her other aunt, my daughter Jessica, and uncle stood. She could feel the fire in her throat but swallowed it back down to her core. She pleaded for it to stay there, for the sake of her mother. All she wanted was to get through the next few hours without any hysterics. It was hard to hold back some of her disgust, but she was surprised by how easily it was to let go of the panic she had grown accustom to feeling. Oh Rebecca, I’m so sorry I couldn’t understand; I’m sorry I was so unwilling to understand, so hopelessly blind of the abuse. I hoped somehow my apology had reached her ears. It didn’t seem likely; she remained seated in a corner hiding behind the protection of her brother.

Michael had grown up a lot in the past year. Michael and Rebecca were protectors of one another, though they didn’t realize it.

Michael intentionally blocked their grandfather’s view of her - he often worried to himself whether or not she was okay dealing with his presence. Rebecca was more protected than she thought, it was not only Michael who was watching over her, but her mother as well. Sharon would sometimes look over to make sure she was okay; Jessica had a thought or two about how she was feeling as well. Rebecca was right though, to some degree. Most of the time the family had forgotten about what he had done to her, and they still questioned if it had happened or not, but one thing she was wrong about was how much they loved her; how much I had loved her - how much I still loved her.

My husband tried to motion to Rebecca to come over so he could introduce a few people to her, but she decided to leave the room instead, slipping secretly behind people to walk to the graveyard. She didn’t want to deal with it. Why doesn’t he get it? Why don’t any of them get it? She thought. She wanted to visit another person buried in the cemetery, I let her have some privacy and my vessel took me to my children. Sharon and my daughter Esther were talking to old cousins while Jessica and her husband Mitch were talking with my other son Mark explaining that the funeral was going to start soon and that they should start walking.

I watched at the top of the hill as my family and friends walked the trail up to the empty grave - it was a strange sight to see. Many of the older people weren’t even wearing black, they had been to so many funerals they stopped dressing up for it. When everyone arrived at the top my coffin was carried to the grave and lowered down into the deep, cold ground. The wind whipped around everyone and gave the earth a little shiver, and I could feel it beneath me. It was strange seeing some people here that I hadn’t seen or talked to in months, some even years.

It made my vessel shake its “head” and I let out a giggle. All of my four children where lined along the grave with my husband beside them, and my grandchildren were there beside their parents to comfort them. As sad as it was, it was a beautiful sight. Sharon gave a speech and the burying began; each person lined to take a shovel and put as much dirt upon my coffin as they wished - everybody cried, Esther even had a whole tissue box with her. I assumed she was afraid she would run out.

When it was over everyone began to walk back down the big hill ready to resume to his or her lives. A light shined behind me and it brought a foggy mist with it, which rolled onto the grass of the cemetery. My mother stood in the light and I smiled inside, I knew what was next, but I couldn’t leave yet - there was something I still had to do. I watched as Rebecca walked with Sharon to the car and went inside; somehow I just knew what had to be done.

Rebecca I called to her: I love you with all my heart, I always have, and with that message I gave all my strength, my love, and my hope to her. It was all things she needed, to do what she was planning. She wanted to tell everyone how she felt: betrayed by her family for pretending the abuse never happened, like they didn’t care. I knew that when she told them, things could be different for her. I was sorry I couldn’t protect her and talk to her about it, and now it was too late, this was the last thing I could do for her.

As she looked out the window at where I was, I knew it had reached her; tears were in her eyes then and she smiled a little. She was going to be okay. I returned to the top of the hill, where my mother had waited, we smiled at each other, and I went with her into my final journey; wherever it led me I would go.

Andrew Cuomo Your Father is Mario Cuomo NOT Ronald Reagan!

I left the New York State capitol yesterday, where demonstrators were streaming into the building to protest Andrew Cuomo’s state budget. The budget gives tax breaks to millionaires in a state loaded with them while making devastating cuts to education in the poorest school districts. The demonstrators planned on spending the night at the capitol, inspired by the example of protesters against Republican Governor Scott Walker.

Did someone really say that Andrew was not only a Democrat, but Mario Cuomo’s son?

In 1984, Mario Cuomo thrilled Democrats across the nation with a visionary speech that denounced President Reagan’s portrait of America as a “shining city on a hill.” Mario Cuomo told Reagan, “Mr. President you ought to know that this nation is more a ‘Tale of Two Cities’ than it is just a ‘Shining City on a Hill.’”

What more appropriate description could there be of New York, which boasts the biggest gap between the rich and poor of any state in the nation, than a tale of two cities.
Mario Cuomo went on to use words that could be a direct indictment of his son’s budget. He said Reagan’s philosophy was to

“Make the rich richer, and what falls from the table will be enough for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle class.” Instead, he urged the President to listen to Americans like “a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire.”

Mario Cuomo laid out the task for Democrats in the 1984 election: “We must convince them that we don’t have to settle for two cities, that we can have one city, indivisible, shining for all of its people.” And he asserted, “We speak for young people demanding an education and a future.”

While New York faces a budget crisis — and budget cuts are inevitable — Andrew Cuomo has chosen to emulate Reagan rather than his father. As the New York Times wrote in a March 20th editorial, “Just extending the surcharge on New York’s highest earners through 2012 would add an estimated $1.2 billion in revenue to the upcoming budget and $4 billion the following fiscal year. Without that surcharge and other targeted tax increases, Mr. Cuomo’s proposed cuts in education and other vital services will inevitably be deeper and more painful than necessary, harming both individuals and the foundation for the state’s future economic growth.”

The choice is most stark when it comes to education. As the Times pointed out, “For instance, Mr. Cuomo wants to withhold a $1.2 billion payment due to poor school districts under a 2006 court order. If the Legislature agrees, it will be the second year in a row that the ordered payment is not made. And it will further widen an already unconscionably wide gap between rich and poor school districts.”

The editors at the Times highlighted the injustice of that gap in another editorial a few days later, in which they compared two school districts, echoing Mario Cuomo’s portrait of two cities. In wealthy Syosset, which offers almost 30 Advanced Placement courses to children who graduate to Ivy League schools, Cuomo proposed to cut $212 per student. In upstate Ilion, which has one AP class and where one-third of the students qualify for the school lunch program, Cuomo’s budget cut $688 per student.

The buzz around Albany is that this is all about Andrew Cuomo’s insatiable desire to be president based on a strategy of being a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. At the same time that Cuomo has insisted on giving tax breaks to the rich, he’s begun pressing the State Legislature to legalize gay marriage. His father’s moving address was based on unifying people, saying, “Remember that, unlike any other Party, we embrace men and women of every color, every creed, every orientation, every economic class.”

His son seems to have put his finger in his ears after “orientation.” But then, the wealthy Democratic donors who are spending millions of dollars to push Cuomo’s budget plan don’t hear that well either.

One courageous New York Senator is rejecting the calculus that civil rights will trump economic rights. Manhattan Senator Thomas Duane, an openly gay champion of marriage equality, will vote against the budget. But where are the rest of New York’s Democrats, who control the State Assembly and make up a 48% of the State Senate?

Only seven Democratic Assemblymembers had the guts to buck the Democratic Governor and vote against the budget bill that will lower tax rates for the rich. A handful of Democratic Senators will join them. The rest are captive of Albany’s craven “let’s make a deal” politics that seems to strip state legislators of the courage to do what is right.

In 1984, Mario Cuomo told the nation that:

The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans —
the Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail. “The strong” — “The strong,” they tell us, “will inherit the land.” We Democrats believe in something else. We democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once.

Mario Cuomo seems to have lost one of his own family members along the way.

Richard Kirsch is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and is writing a book on the progressive campaign to enact health reform. This post appeared first at NewDeal 2.0, the Roosevelt Institute blog.

BLOOD ISN"T THICKER THAN WATER

By Jennifer Orellana

I sat there with the phone attached to my ear, just waiting for this dream to end. This had to be a dream. No way could this be true. I tried to keep my composure and not break down crying because I could feel the anticipation of my mother and step father radiating towards me.

They wanted to know what was going on but I couldn’t tear myself away from the phone. Not for one second, because then I might just miss an important detail. Finally after twenty minutes my mother couldn’t take it anymore. She stood up and said,

“What has he done now?!” But I couldn’t hear her. My mind was drifting to someplace else, back to a time when things were a lot simpler…

*****

“Um I want the six piece with French fries and an apple juice please!” I screamed into the drive thru order box.

“Are you sure you’re going to eat all your food Jen?”

“Yes dad, I’m not a little girl anymore I’m already eight and a half years old.” I said as a matter of fact.

“Okay you’re right I keep forgetting how big you are. I know your mom must tell you I’m a bad man and that I’m crazy, and she’s right. But even though I might not be the best dad I do love you very much. I now you’re young but I want you to know that no matter what bad things I do or say I am a part of you, and you are a part of me. My blood runs through your veins and you have to always remember that our blood is thicker than water.”

I looked at him extremely dazed and said, “Okay dad”. Then I grabbed my happy meal with such excitement and we drove off.

*****

“Jen! Hello, what’s going on?” My mom started screaming, obviously getting tenser by the minute. I got off the phone saying goodbye and I love you to my aunt who lived in Virginia, my father’s sister.

“What did she say?” My stepdad asked.

I took a deep breath and looked at my mom and stepdad’s eyes soaked with concern. I had decided not to hold it in anymore, so I told them everything.

“Titi Madeline said that my dad has gotten married to some Italian lady. They had the ceremony in Italy two months ago and the whole family was invited, everyone but me. Oh and I forgot to mention, his new wife is pregnant, I’m going to have another brother or sister.”

My parents looked at me, shocked. They couldn’t believe the news either, especially since I had just seen my dad three months ago. He had taken me out to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant because everyone knows my favorite food is Italian food.

“I wanted to bring you here so that I can tell you that I want things to be different. I mean I look at you and I still see my little girl except you’re not so little anymore. I know I haven’t been in your life the way you’ve wanted me to but I want us to be closer. You are my child, my blood, and I love you.”

I had heard this speech many times before but it just felt so sincere. He was my father and I loved him very much. I wanted him to come to my softball games and I wanted him to be proud of me. But every time I looked into the crowd he wasn’t there. When I looked for him at my graduation, he wasn’t there. When it was my birthday I would sit by the phone and just hope that he would at least call to wish me a happy birthday, but he never did. How could I believe him now when we’ve been through this so many times? I guess I never really did believe things would change but I wanted it to with all my heart, so I clung onto hope.

My mom put her arms around me and held me close telling me that it would be alright and not to let it get to me. But how could I not?! He’s my dad and he didn’t even invite me to his wedding, he didn’t even tell me he was with someone. But that wasn’t even the worse news.

“Ma, he lives on New Dorp now.”

“What? He lives in Staten Island now?”

“Yes,” I said, looking at the floor as tear after tear slowly ran down my cheek.

All my life my father used distance as an excuse as to why he never got to see me.

He lived in the Bronx and I lived in Staten Island. My mom always told me that that wasn’t a logical excuse, that if a parent wanted to see their child there was no amount of distance that would stop them from visiting. But now my dad lived about ten minutes away from me and still I got no phone call or visit.

What was his excuse now? Guess our blood isn’t as thick as he said.

Jennifer Orellana is a junior at the University at Albany, SUNY, majoring in psychology. A student in the Happiness class this semester, Jennifer wrote this piece as part of the "Flip the Script" assignment. She has written a second version of the piece, "flipping the script" and telling the story from her mother's point of view; that piece will appear in the Happiness class blog shortly.>

THE SPIRITKEEPER, A Love Story -- Chapter 11

By Lynn Biederstadt

Chapter 11: "EYES IN TWILIGHT"

Grocery bags. Purse. Keys. Travel bag. Laptop. The eternal front-door juggling act of the newly-arrived. This was the moment when the phone was bound to ring. This was the moment when it did.

She dumped her armloads on the counter just as the answering machine picked up. She let the machine screen the call; if this was Ty calling she had no interest in talking to him.

But it wasn’t Ty. It was Kismet.

“McGill? …ummmm…hi….this is David Emory?” The soft voice on the machine was awkward. Shy. Kind of appealing, really, in a grown man. “Hope you don’t mind my calling. I should be home around six on Saturday afternoon, if you’re available…if you feel like stopping by…ahhhhh…oh, it’s 81 Republic Road. Hope to see you. Thanks.”

She arrived an hour ahead of his invitation, claiming the high ground early as she always did when she was about to interview somebody. David didn’t answer the door. She tried the handle: It wasn't locked, but she didn’t go in. She wandered around back, to see if she would find him there.

Nice, neat yard. Nature left largely to itself. House and outbuildings set in a clearing, surrounded by trees, bordered on one side by a flower-decked meadow. Flagstone walkways with thyme growing between the stones; an herby smell when you walked there. And, like a gem at the clearing’s edge, a beautifully preserved old barn. No sign of David.

A peculiar, rhythmic sound worked its way out into the yard through the barn’s tall windows. She followed the sound inside.

The scene was almost too picturesque, too perfect. Like a magazine photo. A third of the old barn had been finished into a huge greatroom, the old post and beam-work exposed from floor to ceiling. Towering windows filled the room with a warm light that a painter would have envied. In the center of the room, a pair of cushy armchairs rested welcomingly on a beautiful Kilim carpet. Along one wall, sat a long wooden farmhouse table laden with books; built high along another were box cubbies, filled with hundreds of skeins of yarn in grays and whites and blacks. Big handmade baskets of washed wool lay here and there. In front of the tall windows stood a great wooden loom. And at that loom sat David.

He was small at the immense mechanism, like an organist at a mighty instrument. He hadn’t heard her come in, so utterly engaged was he in his task. She had never seen a man weave. His body worked the cadence of the loom with a lithe, languid grace, no movement wasted. His sure, steady hands moved over the pale grey threads with practiced efficiency. His focus was captivating.

It was only when he sat up to stretch his back that he realized he had a visitor. He looked up at her over the glasses perched halfway down his nose and smiled his welcome. It was the first time she had ever seen him smile: a startling, wonderful, childlike grin with nothing held back, completely unexpected and totally disarming. It changed his face. It changed everything about him. When he smiled, you couldn’t help but smile back.

He swung his legs over the bench and came to greet her. She realized that she’d never really seen him upright and full-on. He was taller than she’d thought, narrow through the shoulders, built vertical. His slender frame was draped in charcoal grey head to foot, shirt buttoned to the neck. This was a guy who would have seemed perfectly at home teaching a hip and wildly popular course in Contemporary Art at some first-choice urban university, pedaling to his classes on a bike, worshipped by adoring students. Whatever had been the matter with him those few days ago was gone from him now. The intensity was gone. The distraction was gone. The shy was gone. He didn’t look like a man in mortal danger from some improbable gift. Whoever David Emory was, today he was whole.

“You got my phone message. Good. I’d hoped you wouldn’t mind my looking up your phone number; Eli Cline told me who you were. Come sit.” He led her to one of the comfortable chairs in the center of the room.

“I was wondering where that beautiful white jacket of yours came from,” she said admiringly. “Now I think I know.”

“My friend Marjorie Maxwell spins for me. Her sister Martha does the sewing. I’ll introduce you one of these days; their cottage is right up the road. I hope you like cats.” His voice was at the low end of tenor, with a soft smoky cast. For all the cordiality of his welcome, his speech had a halting quality, as if he weren’t used to talking for more than a sentence or two at a time. “Can I get you a cup of something…” he glanced at his wristwatch “…or, better still, a glass of something?”

“I will if you will. Thank you.”

The place had the heady smell of wood and wool, earth and clean hay. In the field beyond the tall windows, a half-dozen sheep grazed. The peace was exquisite. This was a place where the world didn’t come.

He came back to her holding a glass of white wine by its stem, the bowl clouded by the coolness of the golden liquid. “Try that,” he said.

“Thank you…may I call you David?”

“I think we’re past that formality, don’t you?”

“You know, I’ve driven by this house a dozen times. I’ve always thought how beautiful it was. We’re neighbors. Did you know?”

“I did. You were pretty big news on the small town tom-tom last month. Everybody knows everything about everybody here.”

“And you’ve been here just about forever, I understand. Eli told me that your family was in textiles?”

“Yeah, although I’m not sure they would have understood this.” He waved a hand at the room. “For them, it was all about big noisy machines. I’m the only one who ever wove by hand, for the pleasure of it.”

“It suits you.”

“Keeps me sane. More or less.” He quickly changed the subject. “Speaking of Eli, you’ve made quite an impression on him, you know. I think he likes that you’re not afraid of him. Most everybody is, most of the time. Including me.”

“I have a particular fondness for tough nuts.”

“Then you are going to love Eli. You actually told him he was crazy?”

“That would be me.”

“Brave woman.” A reflective silence. “I expect you’re wondering why I asked you over.” Silence again; David had a habit of gathering quiet around him when he was considering what to say. “I wanted to apologize for the other day. In the road. And after. Don’t misunderstand: I’m grateful that you were there. But I know it must have been…difficult for you.”

He had given her an opening. “Not for me. More for you, I think,” she said. “This happens often?”

“More and more often, unfortunately.” He paused, prepared, and finally got to the point he’d been hovering around. “I know Eli told you about me. And I know that you’re… having a hard time with it.”

“I reacted badly. I was rude. I’m sorry.”

“No. No. Don’t be sorry. I wouldn’t believe it either, if I were you.”

“You’ve got to admit, it’s not something you hear every day.”

“And you accepted my invitation to find out whether I really was around the bend. I get it. But I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you. I’m a pretty ordinary guy.”

“All evidence to the contrary.”

A grin. “Well, there’s that.”

“You know, I followed you to town.”

“I know. I saw you. Don’t look so disappointed: You’re very good at tailing people—really.”

“Would it surprise you to hear that more than a few folks in the village think you’re crazy? I also heard, let’s see…that you’re a good guy…eccentric, odd, private, tragic, mysterious…oh, and a murderer. I think that covers it.”

He chuckled. “Apparently things are improving over there.”

“But crazy, David?”

“You could make a case for crazy.”

“I’ll tell you who did make a case for it: Doctor Arledge. He made a point of warning me about you.”

David fidgeted with his wine glass. For someone whose affect seemed so open, he didn’t give a lot away. But his expressive hands said more than he did. She would have to learn to decode them.

“Jon Arledge. I’d wondered whether there was anyone left in town whose ear he hadn’t poisoned.”

“Why does he have it in for you?”

“The doctor and I are suffering a fundamental difference of opinion. I believe that I’m sane. He believes I should be locked up for the rest of my life.”

“Because of your…?”

A gentle evasion. “And other things.”

She decided to go for it. “David, how long have you had your gift?”

A hesitation. “A long time.”

“They come to you? Animals? People? The dead?”

“Not the dead. But what they were, yes.”

“You mean ghosts.”

“No, not ghosts. Not like ‘I see dead people.’ More like when someone you’ve loved dies you carry a part of that person. Closer to that. But much, much bigger.”

"Why collect souls, David?”

His shoulders went up. A defensive tell. David carried his nerves high in his body. She had moved into a very private space and he didn’t like it. His shoulders and his silence gave him away.

She took another path. “What’s it like when it happens?”

“You mean the it you don’t believe in?” he asked.

“I’d really like to know.”

“Ever bungee jumped?”

“Yes.”

“Into a canyon? At night?”

“What does it feel like? Right now?”

The shoulders again. “It feels….busy. Sometimes it feels as if I can’t breathe.”

“Is it like hearing voices?”

“More like standing in a crowded subway car. It’s so crowded nobody can move, yet nobody’s actually touching you. Except that you’re also the subway car.” A weary smile. “It has its good parts. When it happens, I can see color. That’s pretty nice…” He tugged at his grey clothing, an explanation. “I’m color-blind.”

She looked for the at-war in him; the crazy. It just wasn’t there. He wasn’t ranting from some imaginary dimension. He was simply telling a truth as he saw it. He seemed saner, smarter, calmer than she’d anticipated. And it made her all the more determined to find out exactly how deep he ran.

“These souls: Do you seek them out?”

“Not at first.”

“But now?”

His eyes lowered. A qualified yes. She could see that progress was going to be made by inches with this one. So she did what she always did when a subject wasn’t delivering what she wanted. She pushed him, probing with rapid-fire questions for the one unguarded emotion that would bring others along with it.

“How many can you…hold?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think not one more.” There it was: the awareness of what Cline had talked about; the possibility of the fatal full-stop.

“Do they know that the others are there?”

“I do. I don’t think they do.”

“Can you feel them die?” Not exactly.

“Can you feel what was wrong with them in life?” No.

The harder she pushed, the shorter his answers got; and the paler he became, his impatience drawn so far into him that he could barely speak around it. David doesn’t argue and he won’t get angry, Cline had said. But if he didn’t, she felt certain, it was an act of will, not of nature. These answers came from a sense of obligation, not from a desire to make himself known to her.

“How did it start?”

“You mean, did I bump my head and there it was?”

“Okay, when did it start?”

“Around the time my wife died.”

“Is that what caused it, do you think?”

He balked, the first time she had seen this conflict-averse man come anywhere close to ire. “Does it matter?”

He stood. “I’m sorry. The question-and-answer portion of our program has ended for the day.” He was tired. She’d worn his patience raw. But he was too well-mannered to let the mood last long. “Come with me. There’s something I wanted to give you.”

The “something I wanted to give you” turned out to be the strangest gift of her life.

She followed David out of the barn and down a jeep-wide dirt track that led into the woods. The road narrowed to a well-worn path into the trees, and at the road’s terminus stood the stump of a tree that had probably been two hundred years old. Three people holding hands could barely have circled it, it was that big.

She laid her hands on the stump’s smooth, flat surface. “What a beautiful tree this must have been.”

“It was.” His voice was deceptively casual. “This was where my wife died. I had it cut down.”

McGill stammered an apology. But it was not David’s way to let an uncomfortable moment last long. With his unfailing politeness, he sent the awkwardness away. “Don’t be. You couldn’t have known. And it’s become a was, not an is. It’s past.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Patience. You’ll see.”

McGill had never been comfortable in the outdoors. Nature was very big and very open, and very scary. But David was here, and David was an education.

No sooner were they past the tree stump and onto the path than the energy of his walk changed. David tuned himself to his surroundings with soft footfalls; an alert, reverent attention that was fascinating to see. She would have bet that he could tell you the tiniest thing that had happened since he’d last been here—what bud had bloomed, which bird had made a nest. It was an intimacy like a friendship of very long standing, intensely personal but not private; something she could observe but never understand.

Sensing her anxiety, David kept talking, directing her attention to any little thing that offered the potential to distract her. And those distractions were easy enough to come by: The place was beautiful.

Dogwoods bloomed like snowfall under the canopies of taller trees. The path wound past secret galleries—one at the meadow’s edge, another in a copse of silver maples, a third beside a tiny, spring-fed pond. Each meditative space framed a jewel-like view, yet each alteration had been coaxed from the landscape with a deference for what Nature had already established there: A wood was still a wood, a meadow stayed a meadow, a pond remained a pond. In some of the galleries, she saw a heart-touching evidence of an unsaid thing… here and there, two chairs, sometimes three, an arrangement for conversations that she suspected rarely ever happened; a life that hadn’t turned out quite the way he’d expected it to.

The day retired as they walked. And after ten minutes with no sight of fence, sidewalk or road, the retreat of the light put her on edge. For a queasy moment, she wrestled with the memory of what Arledge had said about David and death. How smart had it been, she wondered, to take a twilight walk into the deep woods with a man she’d met in an asylum for the insane.

“How far does this go on?” she asked uneasily.

“About 300 acres…a little more,” he said. “But don’t worry: We’ve arrived. Now come sit.”

He guided her the final few steps to a rustic bent-willow bench in a grove of birches at the edge of a lake-sized pond. He sat beside her. The night was balmy. The birch bark glowed white in the failing light. “Okay. Now watch. Listen.”

Although McGill had bought a house in the country, she never sat outside at night. Darkness outside was even worse than darkness inside. It was bigger. And darker. And more threatening. And yet, in this huge, suffocating darkness, she found reassurance in the presence of this peculiar man.

Watch. Listen. As the faint fuscia of last light smoldered over the treetops, one by one her senses opened to his invitation. Tree frogs trilled. A breeze rustled the high leaves and whispered through the low places. She smelled the exhaling of green things. She heard the trickle of an unseen creek.

David dug into his pocket and brought out a flashlight the size of a pencil stub, the kind of light made for locating a front door lock and good for little else. Inexplicably, he leaned forward slowly, held the light close to the ground and clicked it on.

“My God,” she breathed.

Reflections. Eyes. All around them, revealed in the muted light; the eyes of a dozen creatures that had come together at the edge of the gathering dark. Just sitting. Watching. Visiting. Visiting him.

He watched her reaction with tilted head and sidelong glance, enjoying her enjoyment. His smoky two-note chuckle patted the darkness.

She whispered, afraid she’d frighten their guests away. “Does this happen often?”

“Not always. Often enough.”

They sat with their visitors in the electric quiet until the twilight had disappeared. David’s clothing had melted into the grey of the evening; only his white hair was visible, luminous in the dying light. Too soon, it was time to go. Under a pale fingernail moon, he took them back along the unseeable path with an unnervingly sure sense of the way home.

It was only after he had put her into her car and waved her good-bye that she realized what he had done and why. This had been his thank you for her help. An act of unadulterated kindness. And a consolation prize for all those things he had no intention of telling her.

She couldn’t sleep. She paced from one room to the other. Picked books up and put them down. Turned on the TV and switched madly through the channels. The encounter in the woods had left her wired. Dazzled. Restless. Grateful. And a lot of other feelings that she wasn’t sure she wanted to understand.

She did what she never did. What she’d said she wouldn’t do. What she had absolutely no good reason for doing. She called Ty.

She hoped he’d be asleep. She hoped he’d be alone. She hoped his phone would be turned off. She meant only to drop a guerilla “I love you” on him, an innocent enough way to spill off some of the residual voltage left over from two hours with David Emory.

Two rings. Three. Four, before the call got picked up. But it wasn’t Ty answering. It was Manny, wakened from sleep. “This’s Manny. This better be good.”

“Manny, I’m sorry. I was calling Ty. Did I call you by mistake?”

The hostile silence crackled. “No, Gee, this is his phone. He doesn’t want to talk to you. You’ve really pissed him off, this time.”

“Are you back in Tokyo?”

“Uh-uh. The whole Japan leg is fucked up, now. Some legal bullshit.”

“So where’s Ty?”

“You really want to know, McGill? And you think I’d tell you anyway? Why don’t you be smart this once and stay out of his face for awhile. Let him cool down.”

The slap. The cold water in the face. The bear trap. The iceberg in open water. “Is this really any of your business, Manny?”

“I’m the one holding Ty’s phone, so you tell me. Forgive me for saying this, but how stupid are you? Listen—I’m gonna give you some free advice. Whoever this guy is you’re seeing on the side, stop it. Don’t keep calling it work. It’s just pissing Ty off.”

What guy? I’m not….”

“I’m telling you. Don’t be stupid. Cut if off. Before something bad happens. You hearing me?” He yawned. “That’s all I got. I’m going back to sleep. Ty will call when he feels like it. G’night. Remember what I told you.”

Novelist Lynn Biederstadt is the author of two previous novels. Her blog is called Sky Diaries.