After Representative Chris Lee took off his shirt, sent his picture to a woman on Craig’s List (which ended up on GAWKER), resigned from the House of Representatives, and then had to explain all this to his wife, a Special Election was called for the most Republican district in New York State. My District, District 26, is the most conservative district in New York. It has voted Republican for the past 58 years. So replacing Chris Lee should have been a slam-dunk for the Republican candidate, millionaire Jane Corwin. The 26th District has 30,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats. Erie Country Clerk, Kathy Hochul, the Democratic candidate had little chance in such an overwhelmingly Republican district…except Corwin announced she supported the Paul Ryan Plan to kill Medicare and replace it with a voucher system.
Kathy Hochul slammed Corwin for the last month for not supporting Medicare. Corwin, who held her ground until this past weekend when polls showed she was trailing her Democratic rival, suddenly flipped and ran TV ads embracing Medicare. But, it was too late. Despite the $10 million dollars of advertising money spent in this race, the result turned on Medicare. The national Republican Party might regret that vote in the House where Republicans were pressured to support the Ryan Kill Medicare Plan.
I’ve admired Francine Prose’s novels since I read Blue Angel, a cunning story of a college professor who becomes involved with a student. In Prose’s latest novel, My New American Life, a 26-year-old Albanian nanny’s story of coping with America becomes both a cultural critique and a twisted version of the immigrant experience. Lula is hired by a wealthy banker to baby-sit his teenage son. The banker’s wife, Ginger, has abandoned her husband and son and travels the world sending postcards and making middle-of-the-night phone calls from foreign countries. As in all the Francine Prose novels I’ve read, the plot twists and curls in unexpected ways. You might have a notion of where the story is going, but time and again, Prose proves you wrong. GRADE: B+
Jack Vance, best known as a Grand Master of Science Fiction, wrote mystery novels as well. Subterranean Press has collected three of Vance’s best mysteries in a wonderful 560-page omnibus volume: the Edgar Award winning The Man in a Cage (1960), the suspenseful Bad Ronald (1973), and the mysterious The Deadly Isles (1963). Jack Vance was at the top of his game in the 1960s and early 1970s and these three mysteries are first-rate. I hope Subterranean Press reprints more of Jack Vance’s mysteries that have long been out-of-print. 
Marc Freedman suggests that with our extended life-spans, we need to plan (and implement) plans for second and third careers. The Big Shift includes plenty of stories about successful men and women who have transitioned from one career path to another. Marc Freedman provides research which shows that if people remain engaged in their later years, they have better health and happiness than if they retired to a couch with a remote. Freedman includes lists of resources to help with the planning process and advice about how to make it happen. If you don’t want to continue working in your later years, Freedman provides contacts for volunteer projects and agencies if that is more your style. The message behind this book is “Stay Active & Engaged” if you want to stay healthy and happy. For more detail, you can listen to the NPR story below. GRADE: B
Garrison Keillor single-highhandedly tries to keep poetry somewhere central to our lives. Good Poems: American Places is the just published second collection Keillor’s brought out in his quixotic quest to keep poetry relevant in our decadent times. Many of my favorite poets are included: Grace Paley, W. S. Merwin, Emily Dickinson, Robert Bly, Kenneth Rexroth, Philip Levine and a dozen others. Keillor includes poems that celebrate all parts of America. There’s even a poem entitled “City of Tonawanda Softball Championship” by Sarah Freligh. I also discovered some new poets I’ll have to read more of. One of them wrote the poem below: