How do you change?

I have been struggling for a while with trying to make a change. Well, to be honest, there are several things I want to change, but this one is particularly important. I have thought and thought and thought about it. I have tried to simply make the change. I have tried to envision my life after making this change. I returned to my therapist after a long absence in search of the wisdom I need to do this. All to no avail.

The thing I'm trying to change is a relatively new thing, something that wasn't even a factor in my life until the last five years or so. So why am I having such a difficult time rooting it out?

It is a sad day in the baseball family . . .

because last night, Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock, who was only 29 years old, died in a car wreck. He pitched in yesterday's Cardinals loss to the Cubs in St. Louis and the teams were scheduled to play again tonight.



It is always tragic to lose someone so young, but this loss hits even harder because it reminds the teams and their fan families of that terrible day almost five years ago when Cardinals pitcher Darryl Kile died of a heart attack in his Chicago hotel room just before a game between the Cubs and Cardinals. The Cardinals learned of Kile's death just before the game, having sent someone to check on him in his hotel room when he did not arrive at the ballpark at his usual time.

Eerily, something similar happened just a few days ago, when Hancock was late to the park for the Cardinals' game, leading to many frantic calls by his teammates. As this story reflects:

Hancock admitted he had overslept on his new comfortable bed, and thinking the game was starting later than it was (12:10 p.m.), didn't get up until the "20th call" he received from anxious teammates.

With righthander Darryl Kile dying before a game in Chicago five years ago, the Cardinals don't take it lightly when a player doesn't show up at the park on time.

Reliever Jason Isringhausen, the only pitcher still on the club who played with Kile here, said, "(Hancock's) phone always shuts off. Everybody was trying to reach him. That's why it's so different here because of what happened with Darryl. So everybody worries. That's got more to do with it than oversleeping.

"We were all a little nervous. We don't care if you're late. That happens. We want to know that you're OK."

On the day of Kile's death, Cubs catcher Joe Girardi announced to a packed Wrigley Field crowd that the game would not be played that day due to a "death in the Cardinals family." Similarly, tonight's Cards/Cubs game will be postponed and played at a different time.

Here is a good thing to know about Josh Hancock:

He was the only [Cardinals] player to attend the premiere of a DVD documenting the Cardinals' unlikely run to their 10th World Series championship after winning only 83 regular-season games.

Our thoughts are not on baseball today, but on the reminder, yet again, that as much as we love baseball, there are things even more precious.

This tells you all you need to know . . .

. . . about the Bush Administration:

It can be hard to tell whom the Bush administration considers more of an enemy at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp: the prisoners or the lawyers.

William Glaberson reported in The Times yesterday that the Justice Department had asked a federal appeals court to remove some of the last shreds of legal representation available to the prisoners.

The government wants the court to allow intelligence and military officers to read the mail sent by lawyers to their clients at Guantánamo Bay. Lawyers would also be limited to three visits with each client, and an inmate would be allowed only a single visit to decide whether to authorize an attorney to handle his case. Interrogators at Guantánamo Bay have a history of masking their identities, so the rule would make it much harder than it already is to gain the trust of a prisoner.

Perhaps the most outrageous of the Justice Department’s proposals would allow government officials — on their own authority — to deny lawyers access to the evidence used to decide whether an inmate is an illegal enemy combatant. Not even the appalling Military Commissions Act of 2006, rammed through in the last days of the Republican-controlled Congress, goes that far.

The filing, with the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., says lawyers have caused unrest among the prisoners and improperly relayed messages to the news media. The administration offered no evidence for these charges, probably because there is none. This is an assault on the integrity of the lawyers, reminiscent of a former Pentagon official’s suggestion that they are unpatriotic and that American corporations should boycott their firms.

The Justice Department also said lawyers had no right to demand access to clients at Guantánamo Bay because the clients are “detained aliens on a secure military base in a foreign country.”

The Supreme Court has already rejected that argument, and President Bush can hardly be worried about the sensibilities of Fidel Castro’s government. (The camp is on land leased to Washington after the Spanish-American War.)

It’s obvious why the administration is attacking the lawyers. It does not want the world to know more than it already does about this immoral detention camp. And brave lawyers have helped expose abuse and torture there, as well as detentions of innocent men — who are a large portion, if not a majority, of the inmates at Guantánamo Bay. The Bush administration does not want these issues aired in public, and certainly not in court.

Mr. Bush thinks that he has the right to ignore the Constitution when it suits him. But this is a nation of laws, not the whims of men, and giving legal rights to the guilty as well as the innocent is a price of true justice. The only remedy is for lawmakers to rewrite the Military Commissions Act to restore basic rights to Guantánamo Bay and to impose full accountability for what has happened there.

New York Times Editorial, April 27, 2007.

Just a thought: As of today . . .

Number of people who died at Virginia Tech: 33

Total U.S. deaths in Iraq: 3333

Total U.S. wounded in Iraq: 24,313

Reported minimum number of civilians killed since our "intervention" in Iraq: 62,417

If I had actual spare time, I would research the percentage of daily news coverage dedicated to the Virginia Tech shootings versus the daily percentage dedicated to the Iraq war and the lies that led our innocent soldiers there.

A post from the plane . . .

I have been leading you all on.

For the last week, I’ll bet you thought I was typing blog posts on my old laptop, the beautiful Sony Vaio with which I was quite smitten, so much so that I even posted a picture about it here. I have been deceiving you, as my old laptop is not serving me in the role she once enjoyed. Here is the sad, sad story.

About six months ago, as I waited in the sheep pen that is an aisle full of airplane passengers anxious to deplane, the bag holding my beloved Vaio took a dive to the aisle floor. While her heart and brain survived intact, she suffered the computer equivalent of a broken hip when the plastic casing around one of the two connectors between laptop screen and body snapped. For several months, my laptop limped alone while I oh-so-gently opened and closed her lame screen, hoping that rehabilitation would be possible. It was not possible, however. Rather, the metal lever connecting her screen and body, shorn of its protective plastic covering, gave way, with the result being a separation between the screen and its plastic frame that caused me to fear total computer meltdown, electrocution or worse.

I quietly began a search for another laptop, feeling slightly guilty about doing so on my beloved and soon-to-be replaced laptop. Several agonizing hours were spent search web sites, wondering things like whether my law practice would come to a screeching halt if I forced an Apple computer to process Word documents and whether I could live with a smaller screen in trade for a lighter, more battery-preserving model. I ultimately returned to Sony, the maker of my beloved laptop, and puchased another Vaio, this one with a 13.3 inch screen, weighing just over half as much as my other laptop and with a super-long life battery. That laptop arrived last Tuesday and after much hand-wringing about new-computer things like the idiosyncracies of Microsoft Vista , it is on that laptop that I type this post.

Why have I chosen this moment in which to inform you of my acquisition, you ask? I realized just now that I have been holding my breath all week while I considered returning the laptop to Sony in exchange for a different model more like my old one. But on this flight from Chicago to Dallas, I am enjoying typing this post while watching an episode of The West Wing and see the battery has several hours of life remaining. My back isn’t aching from lugging a heavy laptop around. And I think I’m sold. Sold on this new light and nimble laptop that I think I’ll keep after all.

A smattering of thoughts from yesterday, some retrieved from my Moleskine . . .

My seatmates (on the flight to Chicago) are two of the nicest ladies I have ever met . . . both are headed to Michigan.

The good thing about a 7am flight is that it goes quickly when one sleeps the whole time.

The drive from O'Hare to downtown goes quickly as well, when one works the whole time.

I love my hotel . . . it is small, in an old and beautifully restored building. [Later, upon checking in . . . ] and the room is like a lovely little jewel box, with a small, but stunning, view of Lake Michigan.

Riding the "L" to Wrigley Field, I realize that a Cubs fan's version of hell is being surrounded by Cardinals fans on a small train car, with all of them seeking to one-up each other with Cardinals history and trivia.

The ushers at Wrigley Field are like an entire team of sweet and welcoming grandparents.

It takes an interesting older lady to create a Cubs hat with a fake dead red bird (legs up) on top of it.

Mixing romance (or anything resembling it) with baseball is a bad idea.

The new young Cubs fans arrive late, block one's view of Ryan Theriot scoring what would be the Cubs' only run of the game, stare at their cell phones for several minutes upon arrival, call someone to say, "I'm at the Cubs game!" and then take several pictures of each other and the field before finally settling in to see what is happening on the field.

I will never understand how Albert Pujols is such a good hitter (except for this season, so far) despite his incredibly awkward batting stance.

Who is the person in the dugout who throws Derek Lee the next inning's toss-around ball each time he comes off the field?

I like having Ted Lilly on the Cubs . . . there is something solid and reassuring about him. Maybe it's because his name is actually Theodore Roosevelt Lilly.

Time for the soothing panacea that is baseball

I worked late last night and then stayed up all night (what was left of it, anyway) so as not to miss my 7:00 a.m. flight this morning. And now I am posting this from Chicago, where sadly, I am not yet able to check into my hotel (though the delightfulness of the front desk staff makes up for that). The one piece of work I had to do this morning has been completed, so I'm stashing my bags and heading to the ballpark.

Not just any ballpark, of course: Wrigley Field. While Wrigley is always a beautiful place to be, there is something extra special about my first visit there in each baseball season. This is my version of a cathedral, I guess. The place will be even more energized than usual today, as the HATED ST. LOUIS CARDINALS ARE IN TOWN. (Take that, Jay!) Wish my team luck . . . and if you see a girl with a massive Nikon camera obsessively taking pictures, that may very well be me!

Speechless.

I have spent the last two days sorting through my feelings in an attempt to make some kind of sense of the Virginia Tech shootings. My reaction to this horrible incident has been intense beyond understanding. I thought at first this was because of the uncertainty immediately following the event, the wanting to know who did it and why they did it. We are so accustomed now to having instant answers that I found it surprisingly frustrating not to know these things right away. While the answers to those questions now seem somewhat clearer, I still find myself feeling wracked with sadness to a degree I cannot fully understand, given that I do not know any of the victims. I hurt for them and their families, who are experience the shock and grief that come when one loses a loved one unexpectedly and grapples with the reminder that life is so fragile and our hold on it so tenuous.

I think I am also sad in part for us, meaning the American people. How did things go so awry that the kind of mental health issues that many, many people observed in the shooter can go unaddressed for so long? Why do parents continue to allow their kids to play the kind of mindlessly violent video games that I understand played a significant role in the shooter's free time as a boy, the kind of games that can only desensitize a person to the horror and pain that comes from spilled blood. My heart aches for the teacher who cared enough to tutor him one-on-one when her colleagues and students were too frightened to be around him, even working out a signal for her assistant to call for help should something go wrong. But I am angry with a system in which university officials felt too afraid of the legal ramifications or too powerless to act to get help for such a seriously disturbed student. Had help been obtained, 33 lives may not have been lost and countless others not shattered by the horrifying experience of the shooting.

I am also sad for the shooter. It makes me angry when people speak sadly of the loss of 32 lives, discounting the shooter's life as not worthy of mourning. How must his parents and his sister feel right now? I think their pain must be the worst of all, because not only have they lost a son and a brother; they also are living with the guilt and shame of what he did and probably have far fewer friends flocking to their door to comfort them than do the victims' families. Surely, the shooter's family knew a time when he still had light and laughter, before he descended into what by all accounts seems to have been a profound darkness in recent days. But his life is a loss, too, for him and for his family and for us, in that he had the potential to do things of value in the world, as do we all, and that potential is snuffed out. It is just that we gave this boy up for dead much sooner, while he was still living, when we failed to get him the help he needed.

Don't get me wrong. He did an awful, inhumane thing to innocent people. But I understand, albeit on a much smaller level, the power of mental illness and I am not comfortable falling back on the platitudes about him being "an adult who made a conscious choice." Maybe it is because I cannot find it in my heart or mind or soul to accept that any person in their right mind would or could do what he did. That is simply unimaginable to me.

I have no answers. I can only hope that some good will come of this, that after the healing has begun, we will begin to look at how to make it possible to get help for someone so desperately needs it, before it is too late. The price of ignoring mental illness and hoping it will go away is far too high.

The Power of a Few Thoughtful Words

I wish I was a more thoughtful person. For years, I thought about writing a little note to thank the man who founded my first law firm, a kind and decent and humble man who took time to talk to silly first year lawyers like me. But I didn't, and then he died last year, and I was sorry I never sent him the note I thought about writing all those years.

Tonight, I ran across a note someone sent me seven years ago. I have managed to keep track of that note all this time, despite having the least organized home ever. I have taken care to keep track of it because it meant so much to me. The note is from one of the attorney/instructors from a great trial advocacy workshop I attended that summer. I came out of the workshop with the confidence that I knew how to construct a good cross-examination, but feeling unsure about my "style." We talked a lot about style and I saw people with all kinds of styles at the workshop . . . I worried that I wasn't crisp or commanding enough to impress a judge or jury.

And then, a handwritten note came in the mail, penned in green ink by one of my favorite instructors. I won't transcribe it here, as to do so would somehow seem to make it a little less special. But I still pull out his note and read his words again whenever I doubt myself. He assured me that I can excel at this thing called the law while being myself, finding particular qualities in me that I sometimes find myself having to strain hard to see.

I mention this because I'll bet you know someone, whether a family member or a coworker or an acquaintance, whose day would be made by receiving a kind note from you. It would only take five minutes for you to write such a note. What are you waiting for?

I feel as if I should be wearing a sweeping and lovely gown . . .

because I was just completely humbled upon seeing that Popeye has bestowed upon me this award after receiving it himself:



I enjoyed Popeye's summary of my blog as including writing about baseball, civil rights and law, and thought, "Man, I need to diversify a bit!" So I promise to write about something else soon . . . but first, I must name five others who are deserving of this award.

Popeye already honored J.D. for his blog and I'm thinking you faithful readers might like for me to point out five blogs you may not already know about (as so many of you know and visit each other's blogs!). So, I name (in no particular order):

Susan, who used to call her blog "The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc." and now calls it "Kiss My Big Blue Butt," which may give you a hint about how her politics and mine intersect . . . always entertaining and well-written!

Brian Dickie, who is the General Director of the Chicago Opera Theater and writes a really interesting blog about all things opera and opera-related.

Frog, who manages with her warm and low-key blog to make you feel as if you are one of the "small friends" she writes about.

Chris of Notes from the Trenches, who manages to write about her life with her seven--yes, seven!--children in a way that not only interest me, it makes me laugh and want to hang out and drink with her.

Wendy of Poundy, who is an excellent writer and gives me hope that yes, Virginia, there is the possibility of finding love after dating a Very Scary Guy Who Makes You Doubt Yourself.

I hope you will check out these wonderful blogs (but stop by here every now and again, because I would miss you people! :)

Does anyone else wonder this?

I have been closely following the plodding progress of the Congressional committee investigations into the Attorney General's firing of "underperforming" U.S. Attorneys. While there are so many questions one can wonder about in this scandal, here is the one that is bothering me the most tonight: why are they allowed to redact information about all U.S. Attorneys and USA offices other than those pertaining to the fired individuals?

I make my living as an employment lawyer, and the bread and butter evidence in any case about a person being fired is whether (or not) other employees who were performing equally badly were treated the same way. Here, it seems that the holy grail proof would be if other U.S. Attorneys who were performing similarly to these eight, but who were not indicting Republicans or who were indicting Democrats or were otherwise demonstrating themselves to be "good soldiers" for the Bush Administration, managed to keep their jobs. Yet, in the newest sets of documents among the 2,000 pages released by the DOJ today (bury the trash in the Friday news cycle, do 'ya?), all information pertaining to U.S. Attorneys other than "The Eight" is redacted. Which means we are looking at this in a vacuum, unable to see how the fired Eight compared to those who were not fired, as it isn't just the names that are redacted--it is all information pertaining to people or offices other than those of the Eight.

Why is the DOJ able to get away with that?

What's up in your world, readers?

I forgot to tell you that I am now officially the President of the Dallas chapter of my favorite civil rights organization. Me! Yay!

Book Review: Cubs Nation

I have a crushing amount of work to do before heading to Chicago for the Cubs/Cards series, but this weekend, I found myself feeling the need to do something baseball-ish. So, at long last, I read the copy of Gene Wojciechowski's Cubs Nation book that has been gracing my packed bookshelves for a few years now. (Yes, I read the entire book in less than a weekend--meaning my work week will be lots of fun!)

In short, I loved this book, though the season Gene (I cannot spell his name correctly again) chose to follow--the 2004 crash and burn--was one of the most frustrating and wasteful in my recollection.

The book is structured game-by-game, with a short summary of the score, memorable moments, Cubs' status in the playoff hunt and other tidbits leading each chapter. I found it fun to amble through the book, stumbling here and there upon games I actually attended, and remembering those games.

Gene also includes in each chapter an interview or in-depth look at some aspect of the Cubs phenomenon . . . talks with celebrities and other devoted Cubs fans like Studs Terkel, Sam Sianis and Billy Corgan, talks with the young leaders of the family business responsible for making all uniforms in MLB, talks with the family of the young man shot and killed that year outside the Cubby Bear after a traffic altercation. But my favorite of his interviews were those with the longtime staff who support the team, such as Jimmy Farrell, who takes care of the umpires, and the ushers, and the guys in charge of tickets, the stadium and the Cubs' travel details. Because I am a girl who lacks major league baseball ability, these people have my dream jobs and I love reading their humble and wondrous appreciation of the fact that they are living a dream.

At the very beginning of the book, Gene challenged me to a mission: to try to discover which Cubs player he was referring to when he wrote, "with the exception of one player who declined to be interviewed unless he was paid, the Cubs were mostly receptive to my many questions. Michael Barrett, Todd Walker, Paul Bako, LaTroy Hawkins, Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, Matt Clement, Greg Maddux, and Glendon Rusch were especially helpful." So I find myself, nerd that I am, listing the entire 2004 Cubs roster and checking off names of players who did talk to Gene as I work my way through the book. The answer? Unless I missed some quotes, the main position players whom I did not check off were Aramis Ramirez and Sammy Sosa. All of the main pitchers are represented. But I cannot be sure, as the book lacks an index that would make it easier to check myself on this.

Other highlights I noted:

--A Sun-Times report that Sosa and Donald Trump trade phone calls that end with Sosa telling Trump, "You're fired." (ironic, given how the season and off-season end for Sosa)

--Another irony: after Dusty Baker is tossed from the April 16th game for throwing a tantrum after botching a double switch, his son Darren compares him to Lou Piniella

--I am stunned to learn that George Will (whom I saw at Don & Charlie's during Spring Training this year) tells Gene he would choose the Cubs winning the World Series over seeing a Republican President in office

--Gene correctly observes that Bull Durham and The Natural are the two greatest baseball movies ever--he ranks Major League third, but I cannot comment, as I have yet to see it

--I can't stop thinking of the story in which a realtor tells Gene about a young architect in Chicago on business for a year who chooses to live in a trashed out apartment with a view of right field at Wrigley, rather than the lovely apartments his company's allotment would have purchased for him

--Another irony: Jack Wilson of the Pirates tells Gene after Prior kept him off base three times, "Hey, it's good to see him healthy."

I don't want to tell you everything that's in the book. There is wry commentary on Wavin' Wendell that will make you want to hug Mike Quade in this still-young season. You may, as I did, tear up when you read Ryne Sandberg's account of his last at-bat in Wrigley Field. There is a harrowing story of a toupe stuck to a Fed Ex box. And Gene will let you dig with him into old Cubs scouting reports on Barry Bonds and others that will give you a new appreciation for the prescience we demand of those scouts, who are still looking longingly into the windows of the Hall of Fame.

The book obviously ends with the last day of the season--the meaningless game after the Cubs had already been eliminated from Wild Card contention. And a tidbit there makes me hope I have found the answer to who wouldn't talk to Gene . . . while Sosa had already skipped out during the early innings of the game, leaving his team and a seething Jim Hendry, Aramis Ramirez "still in his uniform, sits in front of his locker with his head down."

I highly recommend this book if you love the Cubs and/or baseball in general. Remembering that 2004 season may make you hesitate for a moment to get swept up in the optimism that has marked the 2007 season thus far. But if you have been a Cubs fan this long, I suspect that hesitation will fall away by the end of the first homestand.

Happy Easter, Everyone!

In a freakish fit of reverse global warming, it snowed in Dallas yesterday. So there may not be any of this bare-footed outdoor stuff today:



Nor, apparently, is it a good day for someone in the market for a new laptop. Mine is operating fine, except for the broken hinge between screen and laptop body that gives the thing the feel of a 90-year old with a broken hip, causing me to fear that I will soon lose the ability to see anything on the screen. I just wanted to go look at Sonys and Apples because I'm thinking about making the leap away from the PC, succumbing to the seductiveness that is Apple's marketing program.

But alas, Apple, Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's and Target are all closed. You know I am a desperate electronics seeker when I even consider driving up to the big Fry's, which feels like Wally World of Griswold fame with its herd of fake cattle out front and frighteningly huge interior. So, do you think there is collusion regarding the Easter closings of these electronics stores? I noticed they are all closed, while both Home Depot and Lowe's are open. Where is the logic in that? One can work on one's house on Easter, but not purchase electronics to stow in it? Do you think it could be related to the whole "Joseph was a carpenter" thing? This is a mystery to me.

As a special Easter gift, I want to share with you a video clip that will make you laugh out loud:

Good friends

Yesterday I had a really bad day at work. Nothing terrible happened, it was just the kind of day where you get a call at 7:30 a.m. telling you to be somewhere an hour away without any prior notice, even though you have something to do for that same client that requires you to be in the office all day, and then have six other things that are all time sensitive, going on all at once. No big deal--it's what I do--but it does not add up to a "take things at your own pace" kind of day.

Anyway, I was on my way home later that night and had ordered dinner to pick up on the way (having skipped lunch), and I called a friend to see what was going on. Next thing I knew, my friend and I and another friend (new to me) were all sitting on a porch, drinking wine and talking about deep things like whether God exists and what a true conservative is and and what defines meaning in what we do on a daily basis.

Oh, and how I learned yesterday that there is a realm of vulgarity with which I am not comfortable, a lesson acquired when an otherwise professional-seeming opposing counsel used the phrase "creaming in his pants" in the context of a settlement discussion (you don't want to know the context, believe me). I felt downright Victorian in my reaction to her phraseology.

My point, dear readers, was that the hectic day was long-forgotten while I talked 'isms and 'illogies with my friends, old and new, whom I very much appreciate and value.

Sky from My Work Window

This was last night's sky--breathtaking, though this camera phone photo doesn't truly capture it. I need to have my camera with me at all times, because I feel I have been missing out on some excellent photos lately.

Sleep musings.

Today I woke up early because I'm giving a speech at a breakfast meeting and I find myself thinking of sleep-related things:

How does the "brain alarm clock" work so well? I am not a morning person. I unconsciously turn off my alarm and go back to sleep for a few minutes or an hour on more days than not. But today, when I absolutely had to be up early, I not only woke up, I woke up a few minutes before the alarm was set to go off. This seems a tiny miracle to me.

Also, is there anyone who feels they get enough sleep? Other than when I am on vacation (and sometimes not even then) do I sleep until I wake up and reach a state of maximum recharge. I try every day to get to bed early enough to get a full night of sleep, but that rarely happens other than on the weekend. If anyone has a trick to share, I would love to hear it!

In honor of Opening Day for Major League Baseball . . .

I bring to you, via McSweeney's, "Opening Day Genesis" by Glenn Birkemeier. The following is an excerpt:

And God divided the players into two teams of nine players each, under direction of a manager, to play The Game on His field. God called some of these players Pitchers and some of them Hitters. He placed a Pitcher precisely 60 feet 6 inches from a Hitter. Then God commanded that it's one, two, three strikes you're out at the ol' Ballgame.

And God granted jurisdiction of The Game to lesser Gods, whom He called Umpires. God said the Umpires are infallible, blessed with Heavenly authority, whose judgment is not to be questioned under penalty of expulsion from The Game. And God looked at his creation and He was pleased. Then God created the Infield Fly Rule to confuse nonbelievers.

Play ball!

It is a gorgeous Spring day today.

But an event I attended Friday night reminded me of a memory I have on the first day of school each year, and I can't get that thought out of my head. In 1984, I was about to begin my sophomore year at the girls' Catholic high school I attended. Patti, a girl from the class behind me at my elementary school who would be a high school freshman that fall, was going to carpool with us. As my Mom and I scurried about with last minute back-to-school preparations, the telephone rang.

I don't remember how my Mom explained the call to me. But I vividly recall what the message was. Patti had killed herself that morning. Although Patti was more of an acquaintance than a close friend, I knew her well enough to suspect that it was a combination of fear and perfectionism and self-doubt that led to her decision that morning. I knew her well enough to know that the extinguishing of her light was a loss, not just to her family, but to all of us. Oh, how the world missed out as a result of that loss, as Patti was smart and dedicated and funny and I cannot help but think about the difference it would have made for her to inhabit the world as an adult. Although this happened nearly 23 years ago now, I think of it every single fall when the kids are returning to school, for this is my memory of the first day of school.

Why am I writing about this on a beautiful spring day? On Friday night, I heard Patrick Kennedy (yes, that is Senator Ted Kennedy's son) speak. Patrick is a Congressman from Rhode Island who has experienced his share of drug, alcohol and mental health issues, miraculously winning reelection on multiple occasions despite those troubles. Patrick is on a mission now, one that is surely intended, in part, to redeem him for the effect of his troubles on his loved ones and constituents. The mission? The Campaign to Insure Mental Health and Addiction Equity, in which he hopes to require insurance companies to include coverage for mental health and addiction issues on par with the coverage they offer for other illnesses. Patrick made a compelling case Friday night for his mission, making points like these:

As Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island CEO James Purcell said: Imposing limits on mental-health and addiction coverage is “bad medicine, bad law, and bad insurance.” For these reasons, equalizing benefits has been shown in virtually every state that has done it, and in the huge federal employees’ insurance program, to have negligible impact on overall health costs.

And while the costs are low, the benefits are immeasurable. Tuesday we heard from courageous consumers who came forward to share some of the hardships, and victories, of their families in coping with mental illnesses and addictions. For many, access to treatment is the difference between life and death. We pay for the status quo, as individuals and families, in broken relationships, lost jobs, failed schooling, and, most tragically, 30,000 suicides each year. Nearly twice as many people in America take their own lives each year as are victims of homicide.

We also pay as a society through our special-education budgets, our emergency rooms, our criminal-justice systems, homelessness and unemployment. As Providence Police Chief Dean Esserman forcefully argued on Tuesday, we measure our failures in homicide, suicide, and incarceration rates.

Treat Mental, Physical Illness Equally, Providence Journal, Jan. 26, 2007, by Patrick Kennedy and Jim Ramstad.

Kennedy and Ramstad (a Republican from Minnesota) intend to reintroduce a law to help establish parity in funding and are conducting forums like the one I attended to let the American people understand the need for change. There are practical reasons--like the cost of confining prisoners whose root problem is substance abuse, the delays in hospital emergency rooms caused by patients there with mental health and substance abuse problems, and the increased cost of insurance that results from the physical harms caused by such problems, among other things. But another reason to require insurance to cover those with mental health and substance addiction problems, in addition to those with broken bones and cancer, is that it is the right thing to do.

Please let your Representative in Congress know that you, too, are interested in parity for mental health and addiction treatment and that you want them to act in support of this new bill. Here's how you can find out who represents you--it will only take a few minutes for you to contact them by email!