Morris (1996 - 2012)

  Morris the cat, a beloved member of our family, died today after a mercifully short battle with cancer. He was 16.

Morris was a gift from Roger Caras, then president of the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and a close friend.

Roger presented Morris and his brother Mookie to us at his office in ASPCA headquarters just after our marriage l5 years ago.Mookie passed away several years ago.

They were both rescue kittens who provided us with untold hours of enjoyment. They both improved our lives in many ways without demanding anything more than the basics of life themselves.

We would also like to thank our house guest Monika for her help caring for Morris during his last days on earth before he went to a better place. 

Farewell Morris. Godspeed.

A birthday message from the war zone

Today is my birthday. I’m 64.

This journal has used the occasion each year to keep my friends updated with the status of my battles with leukemia and this year is no exception. As it turns out, this year’s report comes as I get ready to fight the most important battle I’ve ever faced.

Leukemia has been part of my life for 8½ years. I’ve beat it back each time the mutant cancerous white cells tried to overcome my body’s defenses. Now the fight has reached a critical crossroad. My next choice of treatment will probably determine how many more updates like this one I’ll get to post.

I’m betting there’s a lot more whinging left in me.

Here are the latest dispatches from the front. Seven-months of chemo treatments – the third round of chemo since I was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia on September 9, 2003 – bought me a wonderful three-year vacation from the cancer of the lymphatic system. But this winter, quite suddenly, it came back.

The news was not unexpected. CLL is still incurable and the object of treatments has been to stabilize the disease and buy enough time to wait out the plodding process of finding, testing and approving new and better drugs. Although it’s the most common of adult leukemias, CLL is still relatively rare and has been officially given “orphan” status, which gives drug companies some breaks researching drugs they probably won’t make much money on. This has turned out to be a real stroke of luck since almost everything known about CLL when I was diagnosed has turned out to be wrong. (No wonder the drugs used to fight it didn’t work.)

The drug given me three years ago was invented by the East Germans 60 years ago. Originally used in World War I when it was called mustard gas, it has returned as part of a combination of chemo drugs with a modern genetically engineered monoclonal antibody called Rituxan that made it somewhat more effective. We hoped for miracles but that faded quickly as I saw fellow survivors post news of the return of their disease on the web-based bulletin boards used by patients to follow medical news. The disappointing tsunami of relapses began 18 months ago and quickly gathered speed.

Most doctors will tell their patients to give chemo another try because it’s the only tool they have and it might buy some more time. My fellow survivors also can pray for the rare but possible “total remission” that can mysteriously come at any time.

[Since almost all remissions eventually fail to last a full lifetime, doctors have always avoided use of the “CR-word” and now call remissions the more accurate but far less-hopeful “Progression-Free Survival.” And while we’re at it, let’s get this “CLL is a Good Cancer” myth straight. Many doctors tell newly-diagnosed CLL patients that many victims live a full lifetime without ever needing treatment. That’s accurate – but there are several genetic marker tests that can quickly determine if a patient falls into that lucky category (although recently published research questions their accuracy). I understand why many doctors use the half-truth as an easy way out in the emergency room. You can take my word for it; it isn’t an easy moment when you’re first told you have leukemia. I was fed the “good cancer myth” for weeks even though there was no way it could have been true since my CLL had been discovered because it had triggered a critical case of auto-immune anemia (AIA). If I was a candidate for the good leukemia, I won’t have had AIA. It was much easier to grab onto the myth instead of beginning to research the truth. It took me three months to work up the courage to learn what turned out to be vital information I needed to keep me alive.]

The big problem CLL patients face is that everything that is known about the cancer is changing so quickly. Most oncologists treating victims also treat patients with many other cancers like lymphoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and a half-dozen other forms of leukemia. Many still use chemo as their main form of treatment. Other doctors have more time to keep up with new research that pours in every day. Here’s an amazing fact, and I swear it’s true: Every time I’ve had to decide what treatment to choose, I’ve asked at least two other doctors their opinions. Every time, and I mean every time, they have come back with different opinions. This has happened at least six times in the course of my experience. [I’ve had three major arguments with doctors upset that I sought another opinion. And I’m talking about major fights complete with threats and screaming and accompanied by large doses of professional guilt trips thrown in. But that’s another story, probably a book, which should be titled: “How to Argue with Your Doctor and why you must if you want to stay alive.”]

Which brings us back to chemotherapy. Most oncologists are still prescribing chemo as their first-line treatment even though the practice seems headed to the scrapheap of bad medical ideas like bleeding and maggots. Most of my doctors now agree it’s been eliminated from my list of possible treatments. 

First of all, chemo loses its effectiveness each time it’s given. They only work half as well the second time around. And although there are chemo drugs that are great at killing cancerous cells but not so good at picking them out from the body’s healthy cells. They are armed and dangerous crazed serial killers let loose in your body. To seal the deal, the last chemo drug used to fight CLL that I haven’t tried yet has a nasty habit of triggering new outbreaks of AIA, which we already know I have a problem with.

So, while a few of my doctors are telling me to try chemo again, most of them have told me that I’ve had my fill of chemo drugs and that treatment has been eliminated from my list of possible therapies. Previous treatments have damaged my bone marrow to the extent that another round will leave my body without enough healthy marrow to ever recover. During the past two weeks of conversations with doctors, nothing has upset me more than the look on Marcia’s face when the director of New York Presbyterian Hospital’s CLL research program that another round of chemo would give me “another year.” I already knew that but then he deflated my hopes when he said there was a drug company testing a promising drug that seemed perfect for me but there were no openings in any of the on-going programs. He said there might be new tests I might be qualified to get into but they might take months to be announced. He wasn’t sure I had months left.

It sounded like I was out of options. It sounded pretty grim, right?

No. Not grim. Hope was just around the corner.  

For the record, with apologies to Gary Cooper, I might have been given a bad break, but I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.  

Lucky because of the team of doctors I’ve assembled during my battle. Lucky because I live in New York where the best hospitals in the world compete for pieces of the most promising clinical trials. Lucky because I live at the very moment in time when researchers have stumbled onto some of CLL’s secrets and have begun to use that information to fight the killer. And most important of all, lucky because my dear, loyal, talented and beautiful wife, Marcia, has got my back. Knowing that keeps me going. I love her more than she will ever know.

So the doctor, who was to be my last chance to get access to this miracle drug, came up empty. There were a couple of bad days ahead. But I need a lot more time to spend with Marcia, so I stepped on the gas and shifted into another gear,

Then, late one afternoon a week ago, my luck returned. I got a call from Angelica, a P.A. with Dr. Kanti Rai. I’ve consulted with Dr. Rai for all eight years of my battle with CLL. For those who have read this web site from the start, I called him “the Wizard” in earlier posts. He’s acknowledged to be the best CLL doctor in the world. Angelica told me Rai had just been awarded 12 slots in a clinical trial that featured the drug I needed and craved. I told her I would come to the office in a few days because I first wanted to honor an appointment I had at New York Hospital.

Angelica’s response was direct. ”No you won’t,” she said. “You’ll come here Monday. There are 12 open spots and Dr. Rai personally put your name on the list. Everyone who is on the list is coming Monday. Be here or someone else will take your spot.”

So a few days ago I got in my SUV and traveled to Dr. Rai’s research center near Long Island Jewish Hospital in the neighborhood where I grew up. I got a complete physical, instruction on how to go back to usual doctors to get some more forms filled out and signed the papers that nailed down a spot in an experiment that will hopefully keep me alive. Keep me alive for a long time.

I suggest a Google search if you want to learn more about this new drug. It’s called CAL-101. Its short history started when the world began to uncover the truth about how CLL operated. Scientists have discovered that the real dirty work of CLL takes place in the swollen lymph nodes that afflict some victims. I get them. Three years ago, you couldn’t tell I had them until a CAT-scan revealed my aorta was completely surrounded by a thick layer of nodes and another node in my groin was apparently blocking the lymphatic system preventing a nasty wound with cellulitous on my left shin to close and heal.

Right now I’ve got a swollen node the size of a ping-pong ball on the right side of my neck and another one a little bigger than a flattened-out football under my left armpit. Both of them move around and get bigger or smaller on a daily basis. And my spleen is swollen enough to win the award of being the biggest tumor in my body. Luckily, all the tumors thus far aren’t pressing against any organ I need and cause me very little discomfort or pain. Except for what we now know does on inside them, they can be safely ignored.

But we now know the cancerous mutated lymphocytes gather in the relative safety of these swollen nodes where, bathed in what scientists call the nodes’ micro-environment, the bastards literally get instructions on how to stay alive from specialized nurse cells who communicate with their loyal soldiers by means of specific proteins they inject into the nourishing soup. CAL-101 interferes with the army’s reception of these messages. The result is that the tumors get smaller at an amazing pace and, if all goes as planned, disappear. We know CAL-101 is non-toxic and does what it’s supposed to without hurting anything. \\\hat my trial will determine is the safe dosage when it’s used with some other, non-chemo drugs.

The CAL-101 is taken in pill form, usually one or two pills a day. There are some reported side effects, but not many. Finding more side effects is the job of us human guinea pigs. We’re supposed to take the pills daily for a year or until it stops working.

Depending on any limitations placed on me by the manufacturer, I’ll try to keep you informed about my progress through the year. Keep tuned.

I’ve got great confidence in these pills and my shrink has told me that a confident attitude goes a long way to assuring its success. 

So succeed it will. Another victory in a long list of battles won in a war that will be lost.

No one has ever won the war, so there’s no point in trying. In this war, it’s the battles that count. 

And I promise to win every battle.

Or die trying.

Happy Birthday! See you next year.

Memorial Service for Dr. Hamblin

The following post was just brought to my attention and while I realize only a handful of readers here will care about its contents, my admiration for Dr. Hamblin is such that just the opportunity to help spread the word of a memorial service in honor of his life is a privilege. And my thanks to England's Dick Morris, my new friend and fellow soldier in the war against CLL.who shares my feelings about Dr. Hamblin and who kept me informed during Terry's final battle. Thank you sir. Hopefully we will meet during the celebration marking a cure. The announcement:

A Service of Thanksgiving for the life of Professor Terry John Hamblin, will take place at Lansdowne Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK, at 1.30pm GMT on Tuesday 24th January 2012. All are most welcome to attend. The service will also be streamed live across the internet at the following URL. http://www.lansdownebaptistchurch.org.uk/live/

Donations if so desired can be made in favour of the Bournemouth Leukaemia [sic] Fund, via Harry Tomes Ltd, Funeral Directors, (01202) 394340, http://tributes.harrytomes.com/terence-john-hamblin/ '

Dick Morris.  UK.
13qdel 90 % and other markers,  W & W

R.I.P.: Dr. Terry Hamblin, 68

The world is poorer today. Those of us battling Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia have lost a true friend and someone who was never too busy or too sick to share his opinion about their proper course of treatment they should pursue. Dr. Terry Hamblin, one of the world’s acknowledged experts in our rare cancer of the immune system, died last Sunday in a hospice facility near his English home. He was 68 and way too young to be taken away from us.

I never met Terry in person, but we talked often. For many years, he took it on himself to answer hundreds of questions from frightened patients in the middle of their wars with the cancer. Some of those questions were from me. An intelligent, deeply religious man, Terry’s answers were always written in a way that stressed whatever hope he could find in the situation. But, by the end of his note, the patient Terry was addressing always knew the facts, the truth about his situation, the choices he faced and Terry’s opinion which was the correct choice to make.

Dr. Terry Hamblin, M.D.

Dr. Hamblin knew patients deserved and needed the truth. Because he was a wonderful communicator, an honest doctor and a compassionate person, he was an indispensable part of our little community.


Following the rules of Britain’s National Health Service, Terry was required to retire when he reached 65. A short time later, he was diagnosed with cancer of the appendix, a rare form that is very difficult to treat. It was, and the doctor was required to endure countless chemotherapy protocols, all of which are described in his wonderful web site “mutations of mortality.” I remember after one especially brutal session that Terry said he used to advise patients they would handle without trouble, Terry said the experience had taught him that doctors are among the last to learn how difficult the treatments can be and he suggested a new medical specialty that would produce doctors who cared from patients suffering through difficult chemo protocols. 
 
Among Terry’s favorite targets was “Bad Science,” where scientists altered data or simply lied about the results of their studies in order to nail down or extend their lucrative research grants. 
 
One of my favorite essays he left us for about the placebo effect. I don’t have the heart to edit a word of it, so here it is for your enjoyment. If you would like to read it in context, click here:

The Placebo Effect

By Terry Hamblin, M.D.

Penicillin was a wonderful discovery. Before that doctors had very few medicines that worked - morphine, aspirin, digoxin, ether, chloroform, atropine, adrenaline, cocaine, and very few others. Penicillin opened the door to a huge pharmaceutical revolution that continues to this day. Despite this, there have been doctors around for thousands of years. Whatever did they do?

Their practice was very similar to that of the purveyors of alternative medicine today. First, they had a uniform. It differed from age to age, but when I was young it included a frock coat, top hat and arrogant affect. Later doctors had white coats and other paraphernalia. Nowadays it is likely to be surgical scrubs.

Second, they had equipment. To be honest it is very hard to distinguish the various noises heard down a stethoscope - chest physicians always believe the X-ray rather than their 'tubes' and cardiologists want an ECHO whatever their stethoscope tells them. Anyone other than an ophthalmologist looking with an ophthalmoscope is probably making it up, and ophthalmologists prefer to use a slit lamp.

Third, they had a ritual. Part of this is the medical examination. We hospital doctors are apt to scoff at general practitioners who don't examine their patients, and certainly the physical is good for some things. I once was referred a case of anemia to investigate by a consultant surgeon. Imagine his embarrassment when I stuck a finger in the rectum and detected a stonking great, bleeding carcinoma. Most complicated is the neurological examination with its reflexes and finger-nose pointing. But whenever a neurologist came to see one of my patients the first thing he would do was ask for an MRI scan, no matter what we had found on examination.

The physical examination is of absolutely no use when performed by a junior doctor. They do not have sufficient gravitas. The examination should be undertaken with a serious face at a deliberate pace, with pauses for reflection and many a "Hmm" interspacing the touching. "Say '99'" is a wonderful device; it shuts the patient up and adds a sense of mystery. It is very important that the patient completely disrobes. Stethoscopes poked through a gap in the clothing do not have the same therapeutic effect.

Ritual is very important. The consultation should always begin with the doctor rising to greet the patient. Hand shaking is very effective even if it does spread germs. Eye contact is good. Taking the history well is more important than anything and it is vital to let the patient tell his or her story in his or her own words. Leading the witness misleads the physician. It is important to get the story right, but of even more meaningful is the process of instilling in the patient the feeling that he or she is of value and worth listening to. Without the enormous modern medical bureaucracy the doctor of old had time to listen and put the patient at ease.

Never let anyone tell you that alternative practitioners have nothing to offer. Of course their oils and needles have no therapeutic effect, vast doses of vitamins and strange diets are completely useless. Enemas are good for constipation and colonic washouts are useful as preparation for colonoscopy, but they incorporate no magic cures. A recent study demonstrated that acupuncture needles stuck in the wrong places were as effective as needles stuck in the proper meridians - but they were effective. Just as doctors in the 1930s were effective. They all make use of the placebo effect.

'Placebo' is Latin for 'I please'. The placebo effect is what happens when a doctor goes through all the ritual of diagnosing and treating a patient and prescribes colored water. Although this sounds like deceit and fraud, the fact is that a proportion of patients will get better from whatever they are suffering. Ye, whatever they are suffering from. You might well expect a response from patients with chronic fatigue or headaches or backache, but placebos can heal up ulcers, abolish angina and even produce remissions in cancer.

Studies have been done on the placebo. Two pills are better than one. Injections are better than pills. Green pills are better than red ones, unless you are looking for a stimulant effect when red or orange ones are best. It is even possible to cure nausea by instilling a drug designed to make you vomit, directly into the stomach if you are able to convince the patient that what you are giving is an anti-emetic rather than an emetic.

You may believe that you are immune to the placebo effect, but if you are then why do you buy branded painkillers rather than straight ibuprofen. I know they work better but why? Because of the placebo effect. And they cost more. That's part of the placebo effect; expensive placebos work better than cheap ones.

Back in 1972, that sensible physician Richard Asher (yes, he was Jane's father) wrote, "If you can believe fervently in your treatment, even though controlled tests show that it is quite useless, then your results are much better, your patients are much better, and your income is much better too. I believe this accounts for the remarkable success of some of the less gifted, but more credulous members of our profession, and also for the violent dislike of statistics and controlled tests which fashionable and successful doctors are accustomed to display."

The problem with placebos is that they involve lying to patients. Placebos don't work if you say to a patient, "I'm giving you a sugar pill. There is absolutely no reason why it should make you better except for the 'placebo effect' which no-one understands but it probably acts psychologically." Or do they? A trial of sugar pills for pain that had been diagnosed as 'neurotic' was carried out at Johns Hopkins Hospital, with just such an explanation. The patients improved considerably.

Never apologise, never explain, goes the old adage. But we can't get away with that these days. We are obliged to tell patients the truth and to explain fully what we are about to do. The Philosopher and doctor Raymond Tallis has written, "The drive to keep patients fully informed has led to exponential increases in the formal requirements for consent that only serve to confuse and frighten patients while delaying their access to needed medical attention."

Alternative practitioners are not burdened by the same restrictions. They can look into your eyes and give you an explanation that sounds sciencey, but is in fact gobbledygook. Watch the TV for adverts for anti-aging creams to see what I mean by sciencey.

Actually, I think it is possible to invoke the placebo effect without telling lies and good doctors do it all the time. After I retired I handed on my patients to other physicians. I was surprised at how many of them promptly died. There was no change in treatment, only a change of treater. One patients illustrates the case starkly. She had cancer of the body of the uterus. She had refused surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy and all I did was see her, take a blood test and talk to her. I was astonished that her cancer did not progress. It remained static for three years. Then I retired and six months later she died. Somehow she had fixed on me as a walking placebo.

It should be possible to say to a patient without too much mendacity, "We have exhausted the latest treatment - we must now start thinking for ourselves. This is a concoction that I have tried before in cases like yours and it sometimes works. I don't know how it works - I could make up a scientific sounding explanation if you like - but I won't insult your intelligence. It is important though that you take it in the way that it is prescribed. You must take it on an empty stomach (and here you can invoke any ritual you think they will wear - standing on one leg, facing Mecca, drinking out of the back of the cup or prunes for breakfast) and I will see you every week if you can afford it. Unfortunately, it's not cheap, but if it works it will certainly be worth it."

Some of these people could sell snow to the Eskimos.

 

   

  

THE ANGEL ON EAST 96TH STREET

Hope still thrives in New York City. It’s out there in the streets all over the city.. Most of the time, you don't even have to look for it to find it. You just have to want it.

I think there's so much hope to go around in the city because New Yorkers, who move at a faster pace then other Americans, don't usually slow down to take their share. As they move through the city's sidewalks, there's someone on every block who wants smething (money) from them or wants to give something (advertisements) to them. It's tough makinhg so many moral judgements. You can't possibly stop for everyone so most of us decide to avoid anyone who wants our attention. Sometimes that means you might miss something good.

I found what seems to be an almost limitless supply of hope on East 96^th Street. It’s in the crumpled plastic bags of a beautiful New Yorker who always seems to be looking for anyone who could make use of a ounce of optimism,

Wilma in her East 96th Street office

The name of this angel who holds all this hope is Wilma. Her office is a rent-free table on the north side of 96^th between Park and Lexington Avenues.  In addition to selling costume jewelry and giving away hope, Wilma finds the time to act as the de facto mayor of the stretch of sidewalk in front of her table. She makes sure the tiny fields of dirt the city allots to its trees are carefully tilled, planted and weeded each spring. Then she protects them from the deposits of the over-fed canines of the Upper East Side.

Wilma also keeps a supply of quarters and makes sure that motorists who park at meters near her table are protected from the army of  zealous public servants once known as “meter maids” in less politically-correct times who do their best to destroy hope so they can balance the city budget. 

Wilma sells costume jewelry from her little table on the sidewalk outside the basement entrance to a locksmith's store on East 96^th Street. She’s there all year, absent during only the most inclement weather, selling inexpensive earrings, bracelets and broaches for prices ranging $5 - $10. 

East 96^th Street. is a nice New York mix – mostly a residential  pre-war and newer doorman apartment buildings, about half of which have a low-key mix of small commercial properties on the street. It’s light-years away from the mostly commercial mix they have on East 86th  Street to the south –  where most of the stores have morphed into national chains. The street stubbornly holds onto the 20^th Century,

To the West, it ends at Fifth Avenue, which skirts Central Park’s eastern border with direct connections to the slighty less-tony Upper West Side via a transverse road that speeds your car  without a glimpse of the greatest urban park in the world (designed that way so park visitors wouldn’t see the horse-drawn carriages which plied that expressway when it was built 150 years ago).

To the East lies the East River and – more importantly – major entrances to the FDR Drive which cuts off access to the water to residents for the benefit of north and south-bound cars skirting city traffic. South of the street still marks the unofficial border of the very expensive Upper East Side (car towing fees triple south of 96^th St.). The sprawling Mt. Sinai Hospital stands to the north as a buffer separating the UES from Spanish Harlem.  A single block north is where speeding trains on the busy Metro-North Commuter RR take their last breath of fresh air before diving under Park Avenue heading toward the  underground delta of train platforms that used to mark a much more exotic and grand Grand Central Terminal. 

The IRT subway line has a local stop on the street at Lexington Ave. as will the new Second Ave. line when – and if – construction ever ends on that project. The street also boasts a Catholic Church, a NY Public Library Branch and the largest Mosque outisde the Middle East.  And all these people and all these institutions work together in peace and freedom,. 

Wilma introduced herself after a few months of my buying dozens of earrings from her costume jewelry collection – almost $50 worth. “I’m Wilma,” she said, adding, when she saw the strange look on my face: “Wilma, like the Flintstones.” I’ve never forgotten her name once after that. Brilliant.  

Wilma knows my wife is on TV, wears earrings, but loses them all the time because she takes them off whenever she’s on the phone, which is all the time. So Wilma searches through flea markets for the clip-on variety especially for Marcia. She watches for Marcia on TV frequently and always knows when Marcia is wearing a pair of her earrings. I’ve bought over 100 pairs of earrings from Wilma over the years.

I’m likely to see Wilma each time I visit a doctor I see whose office is on 96^th Street. I usually see him every two weeks and I’ve been a patient for over five years. You do the math. Each time I see Wilma I learn a little more about her. I know she loves classical music and once considered pursuing a career as a concert pianist.  I know that she has a sister who is a nun in a New Jersey convent. She’s a mother superior, I think. And I know she has access to the Internet and infrequently checks out my web site.

I learned this last item when she asked me about a story I posted about a drunk hunter who blew the beak off a bald eagle and left it to die. The bird was saved by some good people who nursed it to health and donated their talents to construct several artificial beaks until one worked well enough to allow it to live a fairly normal life. I wrote how strange it was that humans could be capable of such cruelty and mass murder but also be capable of producing such sublimely beautiful things as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

I told  Wilma that post resulted in messages from all over the globe and how much that piece of music moves me. I also told her a tale I had heard that the composer worked for years to make it perfect – and then debuted it with several sections that were obvious and deliberate errors and the theories about why he did that.

She was delighted with the tale and had a surprise waiting for me when I returned to her table after my appointment an hour later. Patiently waiting with her was a young lady who Wilma introduced to me. After telling me to be quiet and listen, Wilma turned to the woman and began singing with Wilma providing perfect harmony while conducting her one-piece symphony orchestra, The two sang, in perfect harmony, an unplugged version of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” The noise of the passing traffic disappeared as they sang. The nearby subway didn’t rumble for a minute. People stopped and listened. The two women sounded like they were on the stage of Carnegie Hall, which sat empty just 39 blocks to  the south. When they finished, I knew I should thank them and tell them how beautiful they sounded. But I just couldn’t find the words. Any words. I gave them a round of applause.

 

One year before, I was driving my car when the cell phone rang and flashed an unfamiliar telephone number. On the other end of the line was a woman with a totally unfamiliar voice. She asked for me and when I told her she had found me, she wanted if I knew Wilma. Oh no, I thought, something’s wrong with Wilma. But she said she was Wilma’s sister and Wilma was worried about me because she hadn’t seen me in a couple of weeks and was worried. She didn’t have her own phone so she asked her sister to call using a number on a business card I had given her several years before in case she ever needed to reach me. It took me five minutes to convince the sister that I really “was alright” and then get her assurance that so was Wilma.

But there was one day with Wilma that changed my life just a little. I was still working downtown and Wilma’s table was on a direct line to the subway. After I spent about 10 minutes picking out Marcia’s earrings and talking to Wilma, I told her that I wasn’t in great shape and was about to start a round of chemotherapy.  “Wait,” she called as I turned to leave. “I want you to have this.”

She handed me a string of rosary beads. Attached to it was the traditional crucifix with a gory replica of the agonized body of the dead Jesus hanging from the cross. I was stunned and just a bit flabbergasted. “But Wilma, I’m Jewish.” I said.

“I know,” she said, using her fingers to close my own over the rosary. “But I want you to have it. Please.”

“Okay. Thanks,” I said as I turned to leave. “See you in two weeks.”

It was about a half a block to the subway entrance. I walked it in silence thinking about why she would give me a rosary. I was only a few yards from the steps going down to the Lexington Avenue IRT when Wilma’s reason began to reveal itself in my mind. 

Tears had started filling my eyes as I went down the staircase, swiped my Metrocard and waited on the platform for the downtown local.

By the time the doors opened and I got on the train, they were flowing down my face and my eyes must have been a very sad shade of red. I think someone got up just to give me his seat  but I’m not sure if he was only getting ready to get off.

I took the seat and cried all the way downtown. I never considered switching to the express at Grand Central.  By that time, it felt good to release the emotions unleashed by Wilma’s gift. She didn’t give me a rosary. She gave me something even more valuable.

I’ve never told Wilma, but I carry it everywhere I go.  I carry hope with me. All the time.

.    

AUTHOR’S DISCLOSURE: I’ve wanted to write this piece for a few months but every time I began writing something urgent came up. Although I fear this preface might appear to be a plea for the reader’s pity, a reader deserves to be aware of recent events in my life, including those that surely changed what was supposed to be a short tale of a Manhattan street vender. Instead it seemed to morph into a longer story describing how New Yorkers find hope in places that seem bereft of anything so precious. So be aware that as I wrote these words I was obsessed with leukemia, my nemesis for the past eight years. The cancer has renewed its assault on my immune system after a hiatus of almost three years. What complicates decisions about how to fight the disease is that reams of new research is being published each day that is changing almost everything we thought we knew about the disease. Ultimately, the choice of treatment is mine to make. “Animated arguments” (screaming matches) with my doctors over these “life and death” decisions have already begun. And since its my life or my death that’s involved,  the stress added to each day to my life is considerable and unavoidable. The other day, medical considerations had to share my stress scale with a family crisis (one that will remain private for now) that suddenly developed. Throughout my uncommonly lucky life, I think I’ve handled stress in fairly well. But I confess that there have been moments during the past week when I’ve felt nearly overwhelmed.  So I admit it’s possible that I inadvertently wrote the following tale at the wrong time. On the other hand, it remains about hope and the unexpected places where it might be found – which might be exactly what I need right now. So I’ll go ahead and present the following tale in the hope that it might teach me about how to find more hope while I still have some.

MK; Westchester, NY;  January 2012

THE SHUTTLE ENDS A 30-YEAR RUN

Getting this piece of writing posted on this site turned out to be almost as complicated as getting a shuttle off the ground.  I started the piece in January, on the 25^th anniversary of the Challenger disaster  but I fell asleep before the finish line, forgot about it and never finished or posted it. Then, last week, I got an email from a long-lost Post colleague who was in the city room the day the Challenger exploded and mentioned the events to me as one of his strongest memories of over 20 years of working at The Post. When I went to return his note and point him to my own posted memories of the day, I searched this site but couldn’t  find the story. It took searches of at least six terabytes of backup hard disk drives before I figured out what happened and discovered the file I had started. I finished it once, lost that file, and then had to repeat the search before I found the original file again. What follows the result of this process, I’m not sure it makes any sense, but it does record an important moment in my newspaper career – the biggest “scoop” I ever managed to dig up, 

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The last American space shuttle landed safely yesterday, triggering the dispersal of the nation’s manned space program to museums around the nation. The program – 135 flights, 133 of them successful, over 30 years – was based around a system conceived and designed by a huge committee made up entirely of overpaid engineers.  What they created worked – well within its anticipated 10 percent failure rate – but failed to achieve its primary mission: to carry stuff into space economically.

It was a beautiful system that was doomed by an impossible mission. In the end, it simply was too expensive to get each ounce of cargo into orbit with humans – who were usually unnecessary baggage -- hitching rides aboard each flight. The weight of the safety systems required for manned flights took away too much cargo capability. Beancounters! If only they had realized a generation ago that space travel would require two separate systems, one for lifting cargo and another for getting humans into orbit. 

The real cost of the shuttle will be how much political support it cost. In the past decades even plans for the proper duel system are in jeopardy. The current plan is to allow private for-profits to develop the new system. But that would still require the investment of billions of government dollars that, at least right now, are not there, So the globe’s most suiccessful space program is left to beg rides aboard a Russian fleet of ancient robot ships that do the job cheaper. At least until the Russians discover they have a monopoly and raise their rates like good capitalists. Ah, payback.

But it’s not really as bad as all that. The nation almost certainly has a vigorous secret manned space program that is well funded within the huge, opaque military budget. Remember , the F-117 Stealth fight-bombers flew in secret for almost 20 before thepublic was told about them. And America’s most important military asset is its fleet of incredibly successful spy satellites, some of which are almost certainly manned and possibly armed. [The Chinese are already in orbit testing a similar system.]

Anyway, here’s my story  …

It was a Tuesday and I was working rewrite for The Post on the 5:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. shift. In addition to rewrite, I also replaced the city editor on his days off and occasionally covered the space shuttle beat. [Sounds like Sgt. Friday, doesn’t it?] 

Since the first shuttle missions, when I watched liftoffs from Cape Canaveral, filed stories and then flew to California in time to see the first few landings at Edwards AFB in the high California desert , shuttle missions had become routine.

But just for the record, liftoffs were never routine and if you never got the opportunity to see one in person, you missed one of mans' most awe-inspiring -- and noisy -- survivable explosions. on the other hand, witnessing a shuttle land was like watching paint dry. You stand around until you hear two sonic booms, wait for a press release confirming the brakes worked and everyone aboard remained alive. Then you got in your car, told the paper to run the holding story you filed the night before. Then you went home. 

But shuttle blast offs were unforgettable. Veteran NASA reporters told me they were almost as good, but different, then the start of Saturn 5 moon missions -- but the Saturn still stands as the most powerful machine ever built.

The shuttle ignited about three miles away from the press site, the closest a civilian could get tothe lauch pad. After an uncomfortable night in a mosquito-infested swamp filled with snakes and alligators while spending hours staring at a huge digital clock slowly countdown to zero, the first thing you saw when a mission began was a distant light. It was white, almost as bright as the Florida sun and unusually pure -  like what you imagined what the very first nanosecond of a nuclear blast must look like. But this flash stopped growing soon after it appeared and seemed to stay motionless for several long seconds. What you were seeing was the shuttle’s only true advancement to the science of rocketry – three main engines that burned a mixture of super-cold liquid oxygen and hydrogen and were the first capable of being throttled up and down. What they produced was clean thrust – so pure that it had no visible flame and left behind only steam water.

Finally, the light seemed to explode as all at once the two dependable solid fuel boosters bolted to the shuttle’s huge fuel tank ignited and set off the main event. The bright white light quickly disappeared behind an expanding cloud of dirty brown smoke. Simultaneously, the huge bolts holding the huge machine down exploded open and let it all loose. And it moved skyward impossibly slowly.

Everything was quiet where you stood and watched the shuttle gain momentum and start flying. Then, just at the moment when you first sensed the expanding cloud wasn’t going to crash back to ground, the noise arrived. But not all at once. Actually, you first felt it first. Not in your feet, as you expected, but in your body which shook back and forth at a vibration rate much faster than you ever experienced. It was only then that your ears started working and you heard a noise like nothing you ever heard before. It was loud all right, but surprisingly very sharp and crackling. Then the ground shook and the experience reached its peak. All that was left to do was watch the machine climb into the sky and leave behind an odd trail of exhaust that wasn’t straight, but weaved slightly back and forth in reaction to the horizontal winds aloft. You couldn’t help but scream. I did each time, I think it was five launches. There certainly were times when being a reporter was one of the greatest jobs in the world.

There, I’ve got that out of my system. Now back to the Challenger story.  

By the 25^th flight, I had long stopped even asking if they wanted me to go to Florida anymore.   The shuttle program had become routine and the paper usually used small wire stories marking just the start and the end of most missions. The mission that day was interesting only because one of the astronauts was a civilian – a teacher from New England. My own interest was more focused on Astronaut Judy Resnik, an experienced astronaut who had been the second American woman to be launched – as well as the first Jew, a fact she hated every time it was ever mentioned. Resnik was one of only two astronauts I had ever developed any kind of relationship with and I enjoyed watching her career develop.

There was so little interest in the flight that the launch wasn’t broadcast on any of the networks. Since The Post’s building on South St.  didn’t have cable or satellite TV, I covered the launch by calling a special NASA telephone number for reporters that allowed me to listen to communications between the crew and mission control together with the usual uninteresting NASA press narration. 

I listened to the launch on a phone on the city desk since it was one of few with a speaker phone. I’ve listened to enough launches to know when the routine launch communications become unusual. I heard the now famous crew acknowledgment “Go at throttle up” followed by a spooky nothing. Then, a few endless seconds later  the sound of the NASA narrator admitting “Obviously a major malfunction.”  I stood up and shouted for everyone to be quiet --  but no one listened. I tapped the shoulder of Dick Belsky, my good friend and city editor, and told him: “I think something’s happened. Something really bad.”

Dick knew me well enough to know that I was serious. We both quickly glanced at the clock. It was right on deadline. “How do you know?” he asked. 

“I heard it.”

“On the phone?”

“Yeah.” But I knew he didn’t really believe me.

He shouted for Vinnie Musetto, the Asst. Managing Editor who was scribbling on layout sheets like he always did as deadlines approached. He glanced at his green glowing computer terminal and said “It’s not on the wires. How do you know?”

I was beyond pissed, trying to listen to the phone and convince editors that I had heard what I had heard. Vinnie was direct: “I don’t believe you,” he said. “Why isn’t it on TV?”

“How the fuck do I know?” I said and then noticed that the TV above the city desk wasn’t  even turned on. “Oh shit. Turn on the fucking TV.”

Then we all watched the usual game shows for half a minute before the networks got  their act together and cut into their regular programming with the bulletin. We all watched together for the first time that amazing tape of the deadly fireball that engulfed the shuttle and then the two booster rockets as they hurtled uncontrolled through the sky. 

“What about the astronauts?” Vinnie asked. 

“They’re dead,” I said, never taking my eyes off the screen.

 “Are you sure? How can you tell?”

“I’m sure. They’re dead.” They had to be. It was over a minute after launch and they were too high and going too fast to be alive. [Actually, history proved that I was wrong about that. Their cabin had survived the explosion intact and they were all alive and functioning as what was left of the shuttle tumbled through the air and hit the ocean surface. They knew they were going to die for two minutes before they hit the water. NASA doesn’t like to talk about it much.]

The next hour went by in a flash. I remember noting, while watching a rerun of the disaster, that the shuttle’s exhaust trail seemed to be pushed to one side a lot more than usual just before the explosion.  Shuffling paragraphs from a handful of wire stories that moved immediately, I wrote a few paragraphs of my own and handed them over to Mike Berlin, an experienced fellow rewriteman who actually put together the story that made the edition. 

As Mike finished up and passed the number of the story to Belsky for editing, Managing Editor Ken Chandler tapped my shoulder and, handed me a wad of cash and a set of airline tickets. He told me I was I was booked on a flight to Melbourne, Florida (the closest airport to the Kennedy Space Center) that left in an hour. A car was waiting for me downstairs. 

The next thing I remember was sitting on the jet airliner as it taxied to the runway at LaGuardia Airport.  I’ve always loved to fly. I’ve been up in many private planes and as a reporter, I’ve flown a fighter jet with the Blue Angels, traveled at twice the speed of sound 70,000 feet off the ground on the Concorde and spent 12 hours on a Hurricane Hunter turboprop repeatedly flying through the eye of a force-five hurricane. But that day’s flight to Melborne was the only time I’ve ever been scared in an airplane. I was literally a "white-knuckle flier" the entire flight.

   

I had no luggage, just a manila envelope filled with blank notepads, sharpened pencils and all-important expense forms that a copyboy had handed me as I went out the door. I also had a copy of the newspaper I had grabbed as I left the cityroom. It had literally been “hot off the press” when I first touched it but it had cooled down when I first looked at it on the airliner.

But it looked hot. Vinnie had cleared the cover and colored the wood--  the name of the front page headline – solid red. There was no picture -- there had not been enough time. Just  giant red letters screaming the stunning news. SPACECRAFT BLOWS UP – SEVEN CREW DEAD.”  Inside was the story. Mike Berlin shared the byline with me.

The press facilities at the space center had grown up since the first few launches. The swamp-floored canvas tents had been replaced by a temporary domed structure built to handle sparse press corps. In the days before cellphones, when you planned to attend a launch, you would have the telephone company install a telephone line for you. Now every press conference was attended by about 100 accredited reporters, who then fought for the five pay phones available to file their stories.

It didn’t really matter the first day because there was a giant lack of news and I was limited to filing a few mood pieces that I was very unhappy with and assumed the editors back in New York were also. Thursday started out the same way. A late afternoon press briefing was so boring that I walked out early to get on line for the phones. But I caught the eye of a NASA engineer I had gotten to know a little in the early days when launch delays were celebrated by all at local bars and a strip bar on Coco Beach. I don’t remember his name now and doubt I recalled it then but he called me over. “We found out what happened,” he whispered. “We looked at the launch tapes taken from the other side and saw a flame coming out from one of the joints of a booster. It burned a hole in the external tank.” And he walked away.

It made sense after I thought about it for a few minutes. The booster rockets had been designed to be reusable and were actually long tubes made up of attached segments. I put it together with the wind shear I had seen on that early replay (and confirmed earlier in the day with a NASA spokesman). I grabbed a press book of the shuttle design and looked at how the segments were joined together. It made sense! What a story!

I looked at my watch. It was right on deadline for the first edition. Then I looked at the line for the pay phones. Maybe 50 reporters. I spotted a NASA secretary sitting at a desk in a cubicle. She had a phone! I raced over to her, reached into my pocket and pulled out a $100 bill. “I’ll give you this if you let me use that phone to make a five minute collect call to my paper.” She got up and let me sit down.

I called my editor, Al Ellenberg and explained what I had. I vividly remember his exact words. “That’s quite a story you’ve got, son. Hold on.”

I didn’t have much and it didn’t take long to file it all to one of the paper’s skilled rewrite-people. We made the first edition and it ran all day under my byline. And it was a scoop. It took two days for the high-and- mighty New York Times to match it. But their reporters didn’t go to bars and topless joints. 

I saw the paper on the newsstands at the airport when I got home the next day. And that first story basically held up. I misstated the name of the booster joint, calling it a “filled joint” instead of “field joint.” I also missed the cold weather angle. But that important piece of the puzzle wasn’t discovered until the investigation committee met in Washington a year later. 

Chandler made me cover that also. Thanks for the memories Ken. Incidentally, they let me expense the $100 bribe to the secretary. 

The Sun Puts on a Hell of a Show

Remember a while ago when I told you - Sept. 24, 2008 (click here) -- of the unusual quiet period dominating the surface of ]the star we (the Earth) orbit 93 million miles away and call the Sun? Well, as predicted, its been followed by a period of amazing activity. This active cycle might effect our climate in the near future (in the recent past, similar periods of great activity have triggering decades that are later called mini-ice ages), but right now it's just amazing to see. And we should realize we are the first human to ever see such a spectacle. The following video was recorded on June 7, just a few days ago. I suggest you set your computer to watch it on full screen and listen to the narrator, who does a better job explaining what's happening than I ever could. Just one thing: What's happening is taking place in an area large enough to hold 5000 Earths, which, at least in my mind, makes all our whining about global warming seem just a little pathetic.With apologies to Craig Ferguson, "I look forward to your letters (as uninformed as they might be)."

THE GIRL WHO DIDN’T SOURCE HER APPLES

Yesterday, my good friend Norm forwarded an E-mail to me containing a touching story about a man who found his true love during the Holocaust. Usually, these E-mails go straight to my circular file on the floor next to my desk (now known as the “recycle bin” on my computer’s desktop) but on closer reading I was intrigued that anyone (especially those loony right-wingers who have proclaimed themselves the real American intelligencers) could be so stupid that they would believe this story. Admittedly, there was a time when I was someone who broke a chain of extortion only after much thought, so I might have once considered keeping this one alive if it wasn’t so frigging stupid. 

Hell, here’s the original message so you can see for yourself. (I certify the message is exactly as it arrived. Only the names and E-mail addresses of the morons who fell for the obvious scam have been omitted to protect their right to be openly stupid.)  My forwarded reply to those who fell for the partially hatched plot of the marginally retarded (yeah, retarded – as in retards, as in the goofy kids who drooled and arrived at school in short yellow buses) follows and Norm tells me he also posted my rant to those addresses that didn’t make the cut to my lists. Please take the rant for what it was meant to be … funny!

Sent: Mon, May 30, 2011 5:58:39 PM
Subject: FW: The Girl With An Apple--true story

Amazing!

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Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 13:51:26 -0700
Subject: Fwd: The Girl With An Apple--true story

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, May 29, 2011 at 10:03 PM
Subject: Fwd: The Girl With An Apple--true story

 I can't wait to see this movie.
Happy Memorial Day everyone.

  A quick read.!!!!

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A Girl With An Apple (This is a true story and you can find out more by Googling Herman Rosenblat. He was Bar Mitzvahed at age 75) August 1942. Piotrkow , Poland . The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men, women and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square. Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated. 'Whatever you do,' Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, 'don't tell them your age. Say you're sixteen. 'I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker. An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down, and then asked my age. 'Sixteen,' I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood. My mother was motioned to the right with the other women, children, sick and elderly people. I whispered to Isidore, 'Why?' He didn't answer. I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her. 'No, 'she said sternly. 'Get away. Don't be a nuisance. Go with your brothers.' She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her. My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany . We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night later and were led into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers. 'Don't call me Herman anymore.' I said to my brothers.. 'Call me 94983.' I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead into a hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number. Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald 's sub-camps near Berlin .. One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice. 'Son,' she said softly but clearly, I am going to send you an angel.' Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear. A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone: a little girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree. I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in German. 'Do you have something to eat?' She didn't understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life. She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence. I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, 'I'll see you tomorrow.' I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat - a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple. We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both. I didn't know anything about her, just a kind farm girl, except that she understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples. Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia . 'Don't return,' I told the girl that day. 'We're leaving.' I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the little girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples. We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM. In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over. I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited. But at 8 A .M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers. Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived; I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none. My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come. Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America , where my brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U. S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957 I'd opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in. One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called me. 'I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date.' A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma. I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart.. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life. The four of us drove out to Coney Island . Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn't remember having a better time. We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the backseat. As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, 'Where were you,' she asked softly, 'during the war?' 'The camps,' I said. The terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss.. I had tried to forget. But you can never forget. She nodded. 'My family was hiding on a farm in Germany , not far from Berlin ,' she told me. 'My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.' I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were both survivors, in a new world. 'There was a camp next to the farm.' Roma continued. 'I saw a boy there and I would throw him apples every day.' What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. 'What did he look like? I asked. 'He was tall, skinny, and hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months.' My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't be.. 'Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?' Roma looked at me in amazement. 'Yes!' 'That was me!' I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn't believe it! My angel. 'I'm not letting you go.' I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn't want to wait. 'You're crazy!' she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week. There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found her again, I could never let her go. That day, she said yes. And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go. Herman Rosenblat of Miami Beach , Florida This story is being made into a movie called The Fence. This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people world-wide. Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world. Please send this e-mail to 10 people you know and ask them to continue the memorial chain. Please don't just delete it. It will only take you a minute to pass this along. Thanks! My answer: Dear friends, This is a touching story that reached my desk via one of the  "underground railroads of truth" that have been patched together to replace the American mainstream media, which is going through a slow, painful, very public and well-deserved death. Since I was in the newspaper business for over 35 years and the story began with a set of instructions on how to verify its accuracy, I did what any modern reporter would do -- and never lifted a finger to check it out. But just before I was going to follow the author's request to send the post along to any contacts who might still trust my aging sources, a battered and dying truth fairy appeared on my shoulder pleading with me to give the tale a quick Google poke. Since the story struck me as vaguely reminiscent of a similar hoax and even an extensive Google research project took virtually no energy, I decided give it a shot. It took a quarter of a second for Google to return 116,000 web posts describing how Herman Rosenblat, a well-meaning (ahem) Holocaust survivor had fabricated the most important parts of his story in order to make it, ah, better. He first admitted the scam in 2008 (a year before it was scheduled to be published), tried to resurrect it a year later and then gave it another go-around last February. All his admissions were covered by the news media pretty much on an international basis because the story had snowballed to enormous proportions, especially after international culture goddess Oprah Winfrey described it on-air as the single greatest love story she had heard during over two decades doing her show. She later issued an apology that was run as a major story by just about every newspaper in the world. All of Rosenblat's bullshit got thrown on top of the earlier bullshit until it cast a shadow large enough to get the attention of his book publisher. And after hundreds of hours of high-level executive meetings, it was decided just to spike Rosenblat's "Angel at the Fence" and drop an attempt to save some careers by rerouting the title to the fiction section. But, unlike once-great newspapers, this shit-stained project refused to die gracefully. Rosenblat has always insisted he made up the story for only the best reasons and money never had anything to do with it. But by now, along with almost everything else in his story, that last part is hard to believe. Before he admitted playing with the truth, the film rights to the book were purchased for $25 million. And even in the movie business, that's a lot to hide on a balance sheet, so the script made a sharp left-hand turn to avoid the pile of bullcrap and became the "story behind the story" of Rosenblat's hoax. Castel Film Studios, the largest movie studio in Eastern Europe -- producers of the hits "Borat" and "Cold Mountain" -- signed an agreement to finance the film, which was scheduled to be shot sometime this year. So the entire affair is going down as one of the greatest literary hoaxes in history -- right up there with Clifford Irving's autobiography of Howard Hughes. But none of that stopped the journey of a thoroughly discredited 15-year old fake story from traveling through the new untruths -changing world of inter-connected new-media web sites that spread outright rumors that become confirmed true stories literally at the speed of light. If you don't believe me, I can show you a story sent to me yesterday by a good friend (he's actually a M.D., a surgeon) that supposedly proves that President Obama was actually against conducting the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden and that the entire affair was originated, planned, ordered and carried out by Leon Panetta. The attached documentation to this story read like a piece of bad fiction written by Howard Hunt with huge holes and factual errors. But I bet any hint of possible untruths never reached those on the receiving end of this electronic chain of blogs and web sites that purportedly distribute the news. It sure didn't reach the good doctor. Incidentally, this kind of screw-up isn't new to journalism. It’s called a “scam” story in city rooms and it takes a sharp editor to spot one before it gets into print. l’ll be brief, but please consider the “Great Boomerang Trans-Atlantic Pigeon Scam.” It started with a small item in a small column in a small give-away weekly newspaper serving a small lower Manhattan neighborhood. It was in the midst of Fun City, a dark era in city history marked by soaring crime rates, crazed sweegee guys on nearly every corner and a virulent crack epidemic  that left its mark on the 1970s through most of the 80s. The item quoted a local comic who had joked that there were so many empty plastic crack bottles in Central Park that city pigeons had eaten enough residue of the drug that thousands had become addicted and had been spotted acting crazy before dropping dead in record numbers. Well a “real city paper,” in this case The Post’s Page Six, had spotted the item and wrote an equally small item repeating the joke. Well, a New York-based reporter for the British press service – which is called the “Press Association” – saw the Page Six item and sent a small story to his editors in London. Now on the European side of the Atlantic, the story took on a new life and morphed into something  else when it ran in the “News of the World” -- an especially tawdry Sunday-only sister paper to the Rupert Murdoch-owned “Sun,” the biggest selling paper in Britain and the home of the topless “Page Three” girls. “The News of the World” is one of the best at “piping” weak stories into major scoops. The only problem with many of them was that they weren’t true. Anyway, the London office of the American version of the Press Association -- the “AP” or Associated Press -- then picked up the now huge pigeon story and sent it to New York, where it was sent to every media outlet in the U.S. as a huge, horrific story that probably kept thousands of tourists from checking into NYC hotels for decades. But it was all just a not-very-funny joke from the mind of a not-very-funny comic. (Well, I know – but I tried to be brief.) The point, of course, is that the process a generation ago was the same – but it took a week. The explosion of the Apple story might have taken seconds. No one wants to place any limits on the web (just as our Constitution prohibits ANY limits on American newspapers, sorry right-wingers and opponents of the MSM (main-stream media) while it does not prohibit licenses and other restrictions of broadcast media. So if "What does all this mean?" is the question. Then "Let's be careful out there, Americans." has to be the answer.

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