In this episode, I will outline the advocacy efforts of my late mother Fran Young, and how I joined her in those efforts. Although I will be bragging about some of my own accomplishments, this really is a tribute to my mom who was such a dedicated advocate and volunteer in a variety of activities. Everything I accomplished in this area was based on her example of hard work and dedication to human services.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 36 of Contemplating Life.

The tagline of this podcast says that it’s about “Disability, religion, entertainment, politics, and anything else I want to talk about. You know, the easy non-controversial stuff. We briefly dove into politics in the last episode or two so I thought I would continue with that theme.

In this episode, I will outline the advocacy efforts of my late mother Fran Young, and how I joined her in those efforts. Although I will be bragging about some of my own accomplishments, this really is a tribute to my mom who was such a dedicated advocate and volunteer in a variety of activities. Everything I accomplished in this area was based on her example of hard work and dedication to human services.

As I mentioned previously, Mom was always interested in politics. She was a bit of a news junkie. She watched the Today Show every morning, local news, and the NBC nightly news every night as far back as the days of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. I absorbed that passion by being exposed to it at an early age.

She had what I called a strong sense of volunteerism. When I started at Roberts school she became involved in the PTA. First as a “room mother” which meant that she would host various parties for my class such as an annual thank you party from the PTA to celebrate our annual cookie sale fundraiser, Valentine’s Day parties, Christmas parties, etc.

Eventually, she was elected treasurer of the PTA and then the president.

Through that effort, she got involved in the citywide and statewide PTA organizations. The Indiana State PTA had something called the “Exceptional Child Committee.” It focused not only on special education for disabled kids but also on programs for gifted children such as advanced placement classes. They were active lobbyists at the Indiana General Assembly advocating for funding for education programs for exceptional children.

There she met a remarkable woman named Amy Cook Lurvey who became a lifelong friend. Amy was trained as a speech and language therapist and was the first to hold such a position in Indianapolis Public Schools. She ran for the IPS school board in 1963 but lost to Richard Lugar who would later go on to become Indianapolis Mayor and later US Senator. We talked about Lugar in recent episodes – what an amazing man he was.

While working as a lobbyist for the PTA, Amy, and other such advocates were advised by state Senator Charles E. Bosma that they were not being effective advocates. There were too many organizations competing with one another for scarce resources. He suggested that all the disability advocacy groups form a coalition that would speak with one voice on behalf of disabled people.

Amy Cook Lurvey, Muriel Lee, and other advocates formed an organization called the Council of Volunteers and Organizations for the Handicapped, or COVOH for short. I don’t know for a fact that my mother was on any of the founding documents of this organization, she certainly was involved from its inception and I don’t hesitate to describe her as one of its founders.

It was an organization of organizations. Its members included groups representing muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, Associations for Retarded Citizens, deaf and hearing impaired, blind and visually impaired, as well as other groups involved in education such as the PTA.

Through the lobbying efforts of this organization, the Indiana General Assembly passed the Mandatory Special Education Act in 1968. Prior to that legislation, there were only two school corporations in the entire state of Indiana that were serving the needs of disabled children. One of them was Roberts School in Indianapolis where I attended. The other was a special education school in Gary Indiana. Anywhere else in the state, if you were in a wheelchair or had any other disability that could not be accommodated by your local school, you simply didn’t go to school at all. The most you could hope for was that your school district would send you a “homebound teacher.” This was a teacher who would visit you perhaps 2 or 3 times per week giving you one-on-one instruction and a bunch of homework.

The Mandatory Act required that all school districts statewide develop special education programs and begin serving all Hoosier students by 1972. That was the year I graduated high school. Mom often said, “Sometimes you build your bridges behind you so that others may cross.”

You have no idea how tempting it is to read a sentence like that like I was Forest Gump.

”My mama always said sometimes you build your bridges behind you so that others may cross.”

I was fortunate that we lived inside the Indianapolis city limits and the IPS school district. My cousin Nancy, who was born with spina bifida, lived in Lawrence Township northeast of the city. My uncle and aunt sold their home and purchased a new one on the south side of Indianapolis so that Nancy could go to Roberts School five years behind me.

As we have already chronicled in previous episodes, Roberts did a fine job all the way through junior high but their high school program was severely deficient. Nancy lived very close to the Indianapolis/Perry Township border. When she reached high school age, she persuaded IPS to allow her to transfer to Perry Meridian High School.

I was pleased to learn that my mother’s work here in Indiana was paralleled by none other than Hillary Clinton. When Hillary ran for president in 2016 there were lots of features about her history. One of her first jobs as an advocate was for the Arkansas Department of Education. They were unaware that there were so many disabled kids not being served in Arkansas. I don’t recall if they said Arkansas passed its own special education law or if she then took that issue to the federal level which resulted in the passage in 1975 of Public Law 94-142 Known as the “Individuals with Disabilities Education Act” or IDEA. I thought it was cool to learn that my mother and Hilary had worked on the same cause in different states. In 1973 we also saw the passage of the Rehabilitation Act including section 504 which provided huge civil rights benefits for disabled people. Substantial progress in disability rights on the federal level had to wait until the night to guide the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Passing a piece of legislation, and implementing it fully are two different processes. There was still much work for COVOH to do. The organization, with my mother as the eventual president of the group, continued to be active in the Indiana General Assembly and other areas.

As I grew into adulthood, I began supporting her work in COVOH. One of our major activities was to review the abstract of every piece of legislation introduced in the General Assembly to see if it impacted disabled people. We would then track its progress through the legislature and put out frequent newsletters advising COVOH members to write or call their legislators in favor of or against various bills as we recommended.

We also worked closely with special education administrators. They had an organization led by a wonderful man named Bill Littlejohn. He hired me to post summaries of special ed legislation to an online service through Prodigy.

Mom served on a statewide special education advisory board and although I didn’t participate because I wasn’t on the board, I enjoyed attending those meetings with her as well as countless COVOH general meetings and committee meetings some of which were held in our dining room.

Periodically, the Indiana State Building Commission reviews all of the building codes for the State of Indiana. Mom educated herself in the federal Section 504 accessibility requirements and other accessibility standards. She would attend monthly meetings of the Building Commission and comment on proposed revisions to the building code. While I was in college and later after I had to quit work, I would attend such meetings with her.

The typical agenda of the Building Commission was to do some general housekeeping such as approving minutes from the previous meeting, setting the agenda for future meetings, etc. Then, architects, developers, project managers, or whoever would come before the board seeking a variance from building codes. If you could prove to them that you had a particular project that was unusual and could not be built strictly according to the code but that you could make accommodations that would ensure safety and access then the commission could grant you a variance.

Mom and I would sit at the back of the room patiently waiting through the boring request for variances until we got to the part of the agenda that interested us. Only after their ordinary business of variances was completed would the commission take up the revisions of building codes including accessibility provisions for which we intended to comment.

It seemed invariably, that there was one group always asking for relief from strict adherence to disability accessibility rules. Because the commissioners knew my mother well, they would often turn to her and ask, “Mrs. Young, what do you think of this request?” She became a resource to the commission as their resident expert on accessibility issues. Furthermore, we had made friends with members of the building commission. The State Fire Marshal on the board attended the same Catholic Church we attended during the summer when we stayed at our Lakeside cabin in Brown County. If the meeting ran all day, we would often eat lunch with them.

Anyway, when the plaintiff heard them ask my mother her opinion, you could see the expression on their face saying, “Who the hell is this woman and why are they asking her?” On occasions that I was sitting there in a wheelchair with her, they seemed especially disappointed. They knew they weren’t going to get any breaks with me sitting there staring them down.

On one memorable occasion, architects representing Indianapolis’ Market Square Arena were asking for a variance. I don’t think it was for the initial construction of the facility because my research shows it was completed in 1974 and I didn’t think I was attending those meetings with Mom until years later. Perhaps this was for a renovation. At any rate, there were 2 press areas at MSA. There was one on the sixth level nestled into a couple of rows of the stands. And then there was another press box high above the arena used for hockey games. That press box was not going to be accessible by elevator which would violate accessibility rules.

The architects argued, there aren’t any disabled sports reporters. When they asked Mom what she thought, she asked, “What about Tom Carnegie?” For those of you who are not local to Indianapolis or not a race fan, Carnegie was the sports director at local TV station Channel 6 but is most famous for being the PA announcer at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway until he was well into his 80s. As he aged, he began walking with a cane and would navigate the Speedway in one of those three-wheel electric scooters.

“What if Tom Carnegie wants to branch out from racing and wants to cover hockey,” she asked.

I chimed in, “I’m an aspiring freelance writer. What if I wanted a job as a sports journalist? I wouldn’t be able to cover hockey.”

The architects went back to the drawing board.

My greatest accomplishment as an advocate was that I was instrumental in the passage of a bill that made it easier for disabled people to vote.

Mom and I would go to the Statehouse a couple of days a week during the legislative session to read bills, get copies of them, and occasionally attend hearings. I discovered a bill that would allow physically disabled people to be assisted in the voting booth by a member of their immediate family. The way the law was at the time, blind people could be assisted by family members but if you were physically disabled, you would have to be assisted by the two precinct judges – one Democrat, and one Republican.

Obviously, you want your vote to be private. These precinct workers could be people that you know from your neighborhood, church, or whatever. You don’t want them to know who you voted for. What if you wanted to vote for independent or even communist parties? That’s none of their business.

It wasn’t surprising that there was already a special provision for blind people to be assisted by their families. Prior to the formation of organizations like COVOH, it was common for specific disabilities to be able to advocate for specific benefits that related only to their people. Blind and visually impaired advocates had traditionally been very successful in securing accommodations but they did not extend those accommodations to other disabilities.

The bill wasn’t getting any action. I tracked down one of the sponsors of the bill but he said he was just a cosponsor. He really didn’t have anything to do with it. He just put his name on the bill. I needed to contact the author. So I tracked him down. He said that one of his constituents had written him a letter. She had MS and wanted her husband to help her operate the voting machine. The precinct would not allow it. So, she did what you’re supposed to do. She wrote her legislator. He wrote the bill but didn’t have the time, inclination, or political capital to see it through. He said we needed to get the committee chair to schedule a hearing.

So I tracked down the committee chair, cornered her in a hallway at the Statehouse, and asked, “Why haven’t you scheduled a hearing for this bill?” It had been assigned to some obscure subcommittee on elections that probably didn’t have any other business all session long. But seeing me sitting there in a wheelchair asking for a hearing on a bill that had no price tag necessary and wasn’t going to ruffle any feathers, she had no choice but to tell me she would schedule a hearing.

She did schedule it. A couple of days later I got on the elevator that she was on. She thought I was stalking her but I just needed a ride on the elevator. It was a coincidence. She said, “I got that hearing scheduled.” I had to explain I wasn’t tracking her down.

The hearing was scheduled for 8:30 AM and there was a question at first if was going to be in an accessible hearing room. Some of the rooms in our ancient Statehouse are up or down three or four steps for no good reason. I called out the troops and I was there along with five other people in wheelchairs ready to testify for this bill early in the morning.

One of the representatives asked, does the bill need a provision that you need something like a note from your doctor stating that you can’t operate the machine. One of my buddies Jim Pauly spoke up and said, “I’m tired of having to prove I’m disabled. Can’t you look at me sitting here in a wheelchair and not figure that out for yourself? Are you really concerned this is going to be abused somehow by nondisabled people?

The bill had no price tag attached so there really wasn’t anything to object to. It passed out of committee unanimously and went straight through both houses on unanimous votes. I don’t recall if it was even assigned to a committee in the Senate or if they just rubberstamped it in some committee. There was no need for an additional hearing. Once something innocuous makes it through one house, there is usually no resistance in the Senate.

I later saw the author of the bill and he thanked me for what I did. He was somewhat embarrassed to admit that he had not given it the attention it deserved. He said it’s the kind of thing where you introduce the bill, hope it goes somewhere, and if it doesn’t, you at least write back to your constituent and say, “I tried.” Apparently, he didn’t try very hard. I had to save the day.

I was extremely proud that my only official effort as a lobbyist was so successful.

Eventually, the volunteer efforts of my mother and I shifted from disability advocacy to work at Saint Gabriel Church. At some point, COVOH changed its name to “Council of Volunteers and Organizations for Hoosiers with disabilities” as the word “handicapped” fell out of favor. See Episode 4 for my rant over the loss of the term “handicapped”.

As best I can tell, COVOH no longer exists. It’s not that that there is no need for disability advocacy but without a central focus such as passing the Mandatory Special Education Act, the organization faded away. Mom said that Amy taught her, “The goal of any human service organization is to make itself obsolete. Once you have met all of the needs of your clientele, You no longer need to exist.” So I don’t feel so bad that COVOH is defunct. I feel like it served its purpose. There are other organizations, backed by laws and legal precedents that we didn’t have before that allow us to continue to advocate for our rights.

My mother is no longer with us. Mrs. Lurvey passed away several years ago. I’ve linked her obituary in the description. She was an amazing woman. Also, Muriel Lee, mother of my friend Christopher Lee, who was very active in that area is neuron with us. I learned a lot from their example and no others carry on that fight.

I want to recommend again a book that I recommended in early episodes. Disabled freelance journalist Ben Mattlin’s “Disability Pride: Dispatches from a Post ADA World” provides excellent background on the history of disability rights and the current state of affairs. Links are in the description.

My mother also spent countless hours volunteering for the Marion County Muscular Dystrophy Foundation (MCMDF). She developed a book about caring for special needs kids and updated a publication called “Navigation Unlimited”. It was a guidebook to accessible facilities in Indianapolis. She went to restaurants, shopping centers, government buildings, and other public places surveying their accessibility accommodations, availability of handicap restrooms, and other issues. These days, accessibility is much more ubiquitous than it was and such a guidebook is no longer needed. I’ve heard of some cities developing an app that would serve such a purpose but I don’t think it’s really needed anymore. She served on the Board of Directors of the organization and when her term was up, I replaced her and served two terms on the board.

We were funded mostly by United Way of Central Indiana. It was always a struggle to get funding for our organization because we were compared to the much more famous Muscular Dystrophy Association of America. MDAA was funded by the famous Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon. In those days, MDAA raised funds strictly for research. Nothing went to patient services such as assistance with the purchase of wheelchairs, home modification, assistive technology, accessible vans, etc.

MCMDF did fund a small research program but they primarily focused on patient services. The other reason they existed was that really objected to the way that MDAA portrayed “Jerry’s kids” as objects of pity. They would play on your guilt that you had healthy children in order to raise money. It was a successful tactic but it was abhorrent to nearly everyone in the disability community. There were also reports that of all major charitable organizations, a larger portion of their efforts with to administrative costs rather than the actual beneficiaries of the charity.

See the article from Wikipedia which talks about the downfall and demise of the telethon.

Jerry Lewis left the telethon in 2011 and the telethon ceased operations after 2014. There have been online fundraising videos a couple of hours long that tried to re-create the telethon efforts but they have been online only and have not had much success. Jerry Lewis died in 2017 at 91.

MDAA still exists and funds research. Only 30% of their annual budget came from the telethon at its height. They do now also provide some patient services and overall are a better organization than they used to be. MCMDF expanded beyond Marion County and is now known as the Indiana Muscular Dystrophy Family Foundation. They continue to focus primarily on patient services.

I also served two years on the board of another United Way Agency – the Central Indiana Radio Reading Service. This organization used volunteer readers to read newspaper and magazine articles over the radio for people who were described as “print handicapped”. This included the blind, visually impaired, and anyone who was physically unable to handle print media. The reading was broadcast over a sub-carrier frequency of the Butler University radio station and could be received by special radios that were distributed free to anyone who qualified for the service.

I joined the organization when it was founded. I remember the first board meeting. Apparently, at the time, there were 2 organizations that represented the interests of blind people and there seemed to be a rivalry between them. As we went around the table and introduced ourselves, one person said, “I represent people from the… Whatever the organization was.” And another person proudly said they represented the rival organization. You could really feel the tension between the two groups. When it came to my turn, I said, “I believe I was invited to serve on this board for my perspective on people with physical disabilities who qualify as print handicapped because they can’t handle newspapers and magazines. But it will be my intent to attempt to serve the interests of all of our constituents regardless of their affiliation or variety of handicaps.”

I saw some smiles from some of the other board members. Unfortunately, the blind representatives did not see them. I was bringing the COVOH philosophy of “We are all in this together and a rising tide lifts all boats.”

I served my term of two years and then moved on to other activities. As best I can tell, the organization no longer exists and is no longer necessary. With cable news, online news which is available to a variety of disabilities, and the advent of text-to-speech and screen reading software, such as service is no longer necessary.

I’m so very proud of everything that my mother did in her lifetime of advocacy and political activism as well as the countless hours she devoted to her church. And I’m proud to have served with her and tried to carry on some of her legacy.

As I mentioned, our focus shifted from disability advocacy to volunteering for our church. I think next week we will begin a multiparty series about the work I did at Saint Gabriel the Archangel Church. Some of it will be about my continued faith journey that I already chronicled in episodes 6, 7, and 11 through 15 but mostly it will just be my experiences of working as a volunteer there.

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I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

This week we conclude my two-part series on how I would change the world if I could go back in time and why the science fiction story had planned to tell based on that concept probably would not work.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 35 of Contemplating Life.

After last week’s episode, I detailed the outline of a science fiction/fantasy novel I considered writing about how I would change history during my lifetime if I had the opportunity.

I concluded that in order to have the power and influence to make major historical changes, I needed to be filthy rich. I outlined how I would have started my own software company and beat Bill Gates and Microsoft at their own game. I know the things they did right that I could duplicate and I know the mistakes they made that I could avoid.

If you are just joining us, or to refresh your memory, the scenario I’m working with is that a man is given the opportunity to live his life over again from the beginning yet retain all of the memories, intellect, and experiences of his first lifetime. He is going to use that knowledge of the future to effect change. Also, the idea for this story started out as an exploration of what it would be like for someone with a disability to relive their life without one.

The working title of the story is “The Reboots” because our hero, a guy named Eric is given the opportunity to reboot his life. Note the title is plural because along the way he’s going to discover other people who have similarly rebooted.

Eric would coin the word “reboot” explaining that he didn’t want to use the word reincarnation because it has religious overtones. Although the phrase “born again” would be highly descriptive, that’s even more linked to religious meaning. So he decided and his colleagues simply rebooted. When you reboot your computer, you start from scratch. Everything on your hard drive stays intact but the system itself goes back to its original state. And it’s a catchy title.

Under the scenario I developed, my reboot hero had only one opportunity to make a major change in history because once he had changed the timeline, the history that he knew would no longer exist. So it had to be something big. I decided our merry band of reboots would try to stop 9/11. And if we couldn’t do that, we needed someone other than Bush 43 and Dick Cheney in the White House at the time.

Note it’s not that I blame George W. Bush for 9/11. I blame him and Dick Cheney for the aftermath. I blame them for the unnecessary war to find WMDs that weren’t there, the illegal detention and torture of people without any due process, the Patriot Act, and other erosions of our Constitution.

How do you stop Bush 43? You need to fix what was wrong with the 2000 presidential election. If I’m in the computer business, I need to strongly promote accurate, reliable, foolproof computerized voting machines to avoid the problems experienced in Florida with their crazy punch card system and the hanging CHAD.

The major problem that made it tough for Al Gore to win the 2000 election was that he couldn’t run on the legacy of the Clinton/Gore administration. During that administration, we were not involved in any significant armed conflict. The economy was booming. We had a balanced federal budget and were beginning to pay down the debt. It was an amazing record that he should’ve been able to leverage to an easy victory. But he had to distance himself from Bill Clinton because of all of the scandals.

As with most political scandals, it’s not so much what you did wrong but in the attempt to cover it up. Liberal pendants will say Clinton was impeached for having an extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky. But let’s be fair, he was impeached for obstruction of justice. To a certain extent, the same was true for Nixon. He didn’t plan or order the Watergate break-in. He orchestrated the cover-up.

So to help Al Gore get elected, we have to get rid of the Clinton scandals.

In a nutshell, the secret to stopping the post-9/11 consequences is to get Bill Clinton to keep his pants zipped!

But how do you do that?

As a young man, Bill Clinton dreamed of being president. He wanted to create a legacy for himself. If you could go to him early in his political career, convince him that you could accurately predict the future and that his destiny was the Oval Office, but similarly convince him that his unchecked libido was going to destroy that legacy, it might be enough to keep him out of trouble.

One of my favorite scenes in the film Terminator 2 is when John and Sarah Connor along with the Good Terminator, visit Miles Bennett Dyson who developed the supercomputer chip at the heart of Sky Net. Sky Net was the evil AI that tried to destroy humanity. They explained to him the consequences of his invention. Dyson says, “You are accusing me of things I haven’t done yet.” I could imagine if you sat down with Bill Clinton and told him that his extramarital affairs meant that we had a weak president in office at the time of the most deadly terrorist attack in US history he would’ve said something similar.

If you had Bill Clinton’s ear, there is a lot you could do to prevent 9/11 even if you couldn’t stop him from having a scandalous lifestyle and ruining things for Gore. The Clinton administration had the opportunity to get Osama bin Laden and missed it. You could have convinced him to make that a higher priority. There were intelligence failures that should have prevented 9/11 and didn’t. You could advise him to ensure that didn’t happen. I’ve already mentioned that you could fix the problems of the 2000 election. Clinton could have promoted a federal election law that sets standards for and promoted the use of better quality computerized voting equipment. You could institute some of the security measures that were implemented post-9/11 such as reinforced lockable cabin doors and stricter passenger screenings.

You might write a book about a fictional hijacking based on your knowledge of 9/11 to call attention to these issues. Then again, if no one heeded this cautionary tale, you would be accused of planning the hijacking for the terrorists.

How do you get your foot in the door with Bill Clinton? How do you convince him that you have credible knowledge of the future?

You have to demonstrate that knowledge. You have to make predictions for him that you are confident will come true. The problem is… I’m terrible at history. As I established last week, I can’t remember the dates or the details of historical events. Okay, I know when 9/11 was. I remember the date of the JFK assassination. But I didn’t recall the date of MLK or RFK assassinations when I talked about them a few episodes ago. I had to look it up.

I need to add another gimmick to the story to make it work. I hate to do that but I couldn’t see any way around it. In science fiction, I abhor what I call “plot-driven technology”. I define it as a gadget or gimmick that works the way it does solely for the purpose of making the plot work the way you want it to. Well-written science fiction uses “technology-driven plot.” You invent a technology and then see where that takes you. Unfortunately, in this instance, I need some gimmick to make the plot work. Someday I’ll probably do a whole episode on plot-driven technology complete with extensive examples. For now, I’m just confessing and dipping my toe into those waters.

We can’t just reboot our hero, send him back in time to the day of his birth, and have him grow up with knowledge of the future. We have to give him a photographic memory of the events of his life.

One of the problems of creating a superhero is you need to put limits on their superpowers. Every Superman has to have some sort of kryptonite. So rather than have my hero Eric have a perfect memory of everything that occurred in his life, let’s give him, and other rebooted characters, a photographic memory of particular areas of interest.

Eric, who is based on me, would have total recall of everything he ever learned about computers. He would have detailed knowledge of the APIs of CP/M, MS-DOS, and Windows so that he could easily re-create these programs himself.

Since this is a story that was born out of my own fantasies, we have to give our hero a love interest. In this case, she would be based on my teenage crush Rosie who you’ve heard about in previous episodes. I would call her Julie and she would have total recall of world events. If it was something you would see on the evening news or read in the newspaper, she could tell you the date of any major event. By the way, there are people in real life who have such an ability.

Later we would introduce a character who had total recall of medical knowledge about infectious diseases and we would develop his storyline where he could try to develop an early cure or treatment for HIV/AIDS.

Perhaps we would introduce a space enthusiast based on my friend Christopher Lee. He would try to prevent the Apollo 1 fire and or the space shuttle Columbia and Discovery accidents.

Eric and Julie using mostly her knowledge of “current events” would type up a list of predictions. This would probably occur during the Watergate scandal. Eric would come up with an excuse to interview Bill Clinton perhaps for a school project. Maybe he was writing a report about Rhodes scholars. After getting a sitdown with Clinton, he would say something like, “Mr. Clinton I have come here under false pretense. Please give me just 10 minutes of your time. In all likelihood at the end of 10 minutes, you will shake my hand, wish me well, and plead with me saying, ‘Young man. Please get psychiatric help because if you truly believed or expected me to believe this bullshit story then you truly must be crazy.’”

Eric would explain that he had accurate knowledge of future events but would not tell him how or why he was telling him this. He would hand Clinton a typed list of near-future events and say, “When you are more certain than not that the next item on the list is going to come true, call me and I will tell you why I’m letting you in on this secret.”

About six weeks later Clinton would call and say he was a believer.

One of the problems our hero would face was that he could possibly convince someone that he had credible, accurate knowledge of the future. But he couldn’t prove how he came about that knowledge. To say that he was given the opportunity to reboot his life and live it over again is less credible than if he made up some weird story about inventing a Time Machine that would allow him to read the evening newspaper in the future.

Only after Clinton was convinced that Eric could predict the future would he tell him that if he didn’t keep his pants zipped, America would be in deep trouble with a weak president during a deadly terrorist attack in 2001. Eric could also give him an outline of other things we discussed that he could do to positively change the future.

I think it’s a pretty good idea for a sci-fi novel even if it is a little bit far-fetched. It would illustrate the butterfly effect that small changes can have big consequences. For years I was very excited about the possibility of trying to write this story.

There are also some serious moral questions to be debated in this scenario. In my get-rich-quick scheme, outlined last episode, I would be stealing the legacy of Bill Gates and Ernő Rubik. What did they ever do to me that I would ruin them? Gates, unlike other billionaires such as Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Musk, has been a significant philanthropist. Maybe to assuage my guilt I would offer Gates a job or a merger between my company and Microsoft. Gates isn’t just a skilled programmer. He is a shrewd and at times ruthless businessman.

What are the difficulties of keeping such a secret? How would you apply your knowledge of the future on a personal scale? Would you make the same friends? Would they be interested in being friends with you if your life was significantly different? Would you warn friends about mistakes they were going to make and could you convince them without revealing your secret?

Would the lies you had to live weigh you down? I imagine if someone said to Eric, “Did you really invent the Twisty Cube at age 14?” He could reply truthfully, “According to the US patent office I did.” You can tell I’ve studied politics. I know how to answer the question I wanted to answer and not the one that was asked.

What does our hero do during his teenage years he wants to explore his sexuality in ways that he could not with a disability? Let’s say Eric dies and reboots at age 65. When his rebooted self is 16 and wants to have sex with a 16-year-old girl it’s not a pair of 16-year-olds. He is essentially 81 years old. That’s statutory rape. He would face some tough moral dilemmas. There is no guarantee that Rosie… whoops I mean Julie… would fall in love with him the second time around even though they would share this amazing secret existence.

So… I’ve gone into a lot of detail to tell you the outline of the story that sadly I’m never going to write. One of the problems is that many of my sci-fi story ideas take place in the very, very near future. And by the time I get the story written, the real world has evolved to the point where the story no longer works.

My plans for this great sci-fi/fantasy alternate-history opus began dying in 2016 with the election of Donald J. Trump and culminated with the events of January 6, 2021.

By that time, the greatest threat to democracy and the United States of America was no longer 9/11 and its aftermath. The greatest world crisis in public health was no longer HIV/AIDS.

I thought about writing the story with my hero dying in 2016 before Trump was elected. Then perhaps he comes across a reboot person who died in 2023 and who had knowledge of the events between those two dates. Our hero could then change his plans in such a way that he could stop 9/11 and stop Donald Trump.

At one point, I decided to do it that way. Eric would die in 2016 shortly before the election he would think that Trump was going to lose and he would continue with this plan to rewrite history as we’ve described. Then he would come across another rebooted person and he would have to rework the plants.

I started to write that story. I wrote the first chapter. When I finished it, I realized that the first chapter was a pretty good standalone story. I submitted it to seven magazine and website markets but it was rejected everywhere.

But I have news for you. My first ever Patreon benefit other than the early release of the podcast. I’m going to record a reading of that first chapter under the short story title “I Can’t Say.” No, I’m not being coy. The title is literally “I Can’t Say.” Patreon will also have the text of the story. Both the audio and text versions are available now to Patreon subscribers.

The reason I haven’t continued beyond that first chapter is I don’t know where to go with it. For the past five years or so, I’ve racked my brain to come up with an alternative way to tell the story to prevent Trump from becoming president.

All I had to do to stop 9/11 was convince Bill Clinton to keep his pants zipped. But no simple nor complex solution to stopping Trump and Trumpism has occurred to me after countless hours of trying to find a way to do it. First of all, assassination is off the table. And it’s not just stopping Trump. I have to stop the climate that allowed him to rise to power. As Rachel Maddow said recently, when history looks back on these days, it won’t ask, “How did a former president come to be indicted with dozens of felony charges?” It will ask, “How did such a man get to be president in the first place?” Even if I get Hillary elected in 2016, the January 6 riots just come 4 years early. The threat to democracy will continue.

I think over the past two episodes, I’ve demonstrated what a vivid imagination I have. I can come up with insanely crazy detailed scenarios for changing the world and changing my life. But I lack the imagination to find a simple way to stop Trump and the erosion of public trust in our institutions including law enforcement, the judicial system, and the press. I don’t know how, even if I could go back in time and rewrite history I could keep him out of office so that a competent president would have been at the helm when COVID emerged.

Directly or indirectly, Donald J. Trump has systematically assaulted our values, and our American life, and cost us hundreds of thousands of lives.

Not in my wildest fantasies can I fix what’s wrong with the world right now.

I lived through the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK. I witnessed the Iran hostage crisis, Reaganonmics, Newt Gingrich, the TEA party, the 2008 financial collapse, and wars in Vietnam, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine as well as the ongoing issues between Israel and the neighbors.

None of that compares to the crisis we currently face.

I can only hope and pray that the assault on democracy fails. There was a glimmer of hope when Joe Biden defeated Trump. That glimmer faded on January 6 and proves that the fight isn’t over. The GOP’s failure to deliver big results during the 2022 midterm elections is a good sign. On the other hand, indictments in four jurisdictions with over 90 felony charges have only served to strengthen Trump. Biden, if he can be relected, will be the most disliked incumbent President to ever be reelected.

A huge percentage of the country has fallen under Trump’s influence and it seems that no amount of reason or logic can sway them from their cult.

My hope and my prayer is that I live long enough to see us emerge from this crisis with democracy intact.

If you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and any other benefits I might come up with down the road. Although I have some financial struggles, I’m not really in this for money. Still, every little bit helps.

Many thanks to my Patreon supporters. Your support pays for the writing seminar I attend. But mostly I appreciate it because it shows how much you care and appreciate what I’m doing. Your support means more to me than words can express.

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All of my back episodes are available and I encourage you to check them out if you’re new to this podcast. If you have any comments, questions, or other feedback please feel free to comment on any of the platforms where you find this podcast.

I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.