Social Security Debate... What we really need in this country is a good poor person lobby. One composed of independent poor and disabled persons who can talk about what their life is really like, and how they are mangled by services set up to help them How come in all the Social Security talk I haven't heard one word about Social Security Disability, Medicaid, Medicare, and Nursing Homes? It is a true fact that if you are poor, disabled, and over 50, the present system shoves you into a nursing home the minute your situation becomes destabilized with a medical problem or housing issues. Rather than give a person on disability an increase so they can pay their rent or find an apartment, and an Aide to come in to assist them, they are summarily carted off to a "Facility." The Facility gives them a nice bed in a little shared room where they can't have their own things, and it's usually in a place far from home where their old friends can't easily visit. The facility takes over their disability payments, and since it isn't enough to pay for all the "services" the person is getting, they turn to the government for additional money. Facilities must have good lobbyists, because they seem to get the laws passed to keep the money flowing. I once had a client, a 94 year old man who went to Tompkins Square park every day to socialize with his old friends in the neighborhood. They would sit on the park benches together speaking Polish, remembering the old country, and go to the Odessa coffeshop for dinner. Then he had a minor stroke and was taken to the hospital. Next thing we knew, he was moved out to Queens, way-out past the subway lines, and shoved into a facility. There was a lawsuit in progress about their club house on 8th Street, so I drove one of his friends out to see him and to confer about the lawsuit. The facility was a big place on a bare field, built of yellow brick, with windows that didn't open, and wide corridors paved with cold blue linoleum tiles. We found him in the second floor lounge and he looked miserable. He felt like he was in jail. No park, no friends, no polish coffee shop every day for dinner. They wouldn't let him come home to his apartment where he had lived for 40 years because it didn't have a shower. Fortunately, he had a room mate taking care of the rent. So one of the young club members got together the room mate and the landlord, and together they put an accessible shower in so he could come home.

February Orange... On my way home from church on Sunday I biked up Central Park West about 1 pm. The Park walkways, the sidewalks, and the street were jammed with folks that turned out to see "The Gates" draped over 23 miles of Central Park's walks. Over on Columbus Avenue the restaurants were filled with out of town brunchers. The side streets were packed with their out of state SUVs and the bike paths blocked with double parkers. I heard on NPR that over a million people visited the Park on Sunday- some kind of a record in February, even for a sunny Sunday. I like The Gates better in yesterday afternoon's misty weather, or in the twilight at sunset. They lend themselves to a gray day, adding a secret layer of not too bright orange fluttering throughout Central Park's muted winter paths. In the bright Sunday at high noon, they looked traffic cone orange, too bright, too effusive against the digitally accessorized crowds, too loud, too crude, too New York.