When you review the unfolding scenario, it’s clear our leadership did not over-react. As Irene first headed up the coast as a category 2 Hurricane, the worst case scenario presented by meteorologists predicted a slightly weakened category 1 monster  flooding lower Manhattan and driving in the high tides with 100 mile per hour winds.  That scenario could have resulted in severe damage to the subway infrastructure and power grid in the lower Manhattan area, not to mention blown out windows in many high rise buildings throughout the boroughs.  Coastal regions like Coney Island, the Rockaways and Long Beach could have been flooded and cut off from the mainland under this early prediction.

Irene was not downgraded to a tropical storm with winds closer to 60-70 miles per hour until just before the eye of the storm set down on Coney Island on Sunday morning.  I watched the ominous early flooding that could have been so catastrophic if the winds had remained stronger. The fact is New York City had no reported fatalities that day and little major damage.  As the sun returned over New York City on Monday morning, the subways and buses were running again and my neighborhood was cleaning up. Irene had remained a ferocious storm, as thousands of residents flooded out of their homes in Long Island and New Jersey can still attest. Yes, I am grateful for over-preparedness!  That’s  the New York I love!

His words come just days after the 50^th Anniversary of the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, who challenged Americans to beat the Russians in space. Amazingly a modern day astronaut named Mark Kelly is dominating the news lately, the husband of wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. He was shown holding his wife’s hand in her hospital room during the President’s speech. Her condition has now been upgraded to good, and she will be starting rehab this week.

Kelly has taken over Gifford’s recovery from severe brain injury as though it were a space mission. He asked to have her moved to Houston so he could resume his role as the commander of the Endeavour Space Shuttle, due to make its last mission in April, while also overseeing her care.  He’s already declared Giffords “is a fighter” and will be back in Tucson, walking through the hospital doors for a visit in months, not years.  His early bedside vigil, accompanied by her devoted congressional friends, produced “miraculous” progress, according to her Tucson Doctors. And the miracle continues in Houston.

It was 50 years ago this month that Kennedy brought the spirit of the mythical Camelot to Washington and announced that the torch was being passed to a new generation in his inaugural speech. Soon afterwards he declared his intention to develop a program that would send Americans to the moon first.

Kennedy was concerned that Russia was developing an ominous lead in space rocketry that would upset the balance of power. Despite Kennedy’s tragic assassination in Dallas before the end of his first term, his dream came true. On July 20, 1969, American Neil Armstrong was the first man to literally step foot on the moon. It was a historic achievement by the United States and was, according to historians, a persuasive demonstration of national will and technological capability for the United States.

Astronaut Kelly’s assured, optimistic assessment of his wife’s recovery reminds me of the best of the space race – and the jubilant early astronauts like Armstrong, who were such strong role models for kids of that era. Where the fear of the 60s was grounded in the specter of nuclear war with Russia, today we face more complex fears, including the rise of China as an economic rival, the fear of nuclear proliferation to rogue states and an on-going war against terrorism overseas we can’t seem to win, but that is driving up our national debt.

Kelly has been showing this country how to stay positive and driven in the face of great uncertainty.  And now President Obama is evoking the spirit of Camelot again as he presided over a Congress that was showing remarkable unity , applauding repeatedly together as he asked the nation to “please stand together with me.” Kelly’s optimism and Obama’s call to action reminds us that we met the enormous, almost unimaginable challenge of the space race in the 60s, so why can’t we accomplish miracles on that scale again?

As a result, Paul Hastings chairman Seth Zachary announced that the firm is planning to partner with the American Bar Association to establish a fund in Barcella’s name to foster collegiality in the courtroom. Barcella believed vitriol between prosecutors and defense lawyers was unnecessary and counterproductive,  Zachary said at the memorial ceremony at the E. Barrett Pettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington DC.

Now if there’s a serious effort afoot to make the halls of justice more civil, why can’t our legislators get the point? I grew more hopeful in watching the coverage of the aftermath of the shootings in Tucson last week when President Obama appealed to the nation to remember the dreams of our children, as represented by the youngest victim, 9 year old Christina Taylor Green, who wanted to go into public service and was born on 9-11-2001. The audience was in tears.

Later that day, a moving interview with New York state senator Kirsten Gillibrand revealed the miraculous moment when she was holding the hand of gunshot victim U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and she first opened her eyes. Giffords, a centrist Democrat who urged civil discourse among her colleagues, is now off life support and her chances for survival are assured, despite being shot point blank in the head by a determined killer.  When her many friends, her husband NASA astronaut Mark E. Kelly and even her doctor went on television to talk about her recovery, they also talked in terms of “miracles.”  I consider it the miraculous power of friendship, love and a steel will at work against the forces of anger and hate spewed out by the troubled gunman.

I often hear that today’s tumultuous discourse is very reminiscent of the ‘60s, when violence in reaction to civil rights produced a great leader in Martin Luther King. He urged his followers to respond to the vicious attacks of that era with non-violence and quiet determination. The battle for equal rights was eventually won. May the legacy of professionals like Larry Barcella now rule the day with their message of civil discourse as we face the challenges of getting along in the global community.

The usually calm Mayor Bloomberg was irritable and lectured critical residents to be patient as day after day went by without snow plows or relief. In my Brooklyn neighborhood of Ditmas Park, residents were stranded  by unplowed snow drifts and without access to cars or public transportation.  Each time I went out, I found my neighbors grumbling as they trudged through snow clogged street corners, searching for signs of help, swapping horror stories and rumors about work stoppages by angry sanitation workers,  and agreeing that it had never, ever been this bad.

“I don’t believe he gives a hoot about us in Brooklyn,”  one neighbor complained to me, suggesting Bloomberg was only interested in his own Borough of Manhattan.  Another declared, “I’ve lived here 40 years and it has never been this bad.”  Others compared it to the “Lindsay Storm” in 1969, which ended that Mayor’s political future. One media pundit speculated that it was the curse of the third term, where Mayors often lose their early energy and focus and make strategic errors that tarnish their legacy.

Each day, tragic stories came in from Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island as emergency vehicles were unable to respond in time to calls of help from residents in distress, especially involving the elderly and newborns (see Daily News coverage http://nydn.us/ecHO1C).  New Yorkers could compare Bloomberg’s haughty attitude to Newark’s Corey Booker, who picked up a shovel and helped out his constituents. Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, reported that clean up crews In Nassau and Suffolk counties had clearly beaten the champs in NYC this time –they couldn’t believe it!

Bloomberg finally admitted the city flubbed its response and agreed to an inquiry, so we will eventually find out what decisions – or failure of command – led to the chaos that everyone agreed couldn’t be repeated.

Now as we start the New Year, let’s hope the Mayor and his inner circle learned clear lessons in leadership for times of on-going budget crisis.    Leaders for our new times need to make citizens (and employees) believe in the future again!

Shop keepers rent bikes without locks and report that they’ve never been stolen. “We’ve never had a bike stolen in 28 years,” Jackie Sypherd told Hartman. “If you expect the best from people that’s what you’re going to receive.”   They even leave sales items outside all night with money boxes so that customers can make purchases on the honor system – and nothing is ever stolen.

I would like to think that Lake Side is a metaphor for the way we could live together in harmony all over this country if we only could muster faith over fear. We did it once in wide swaths of this land, and I think of the unlocked doors in my paternal Grandparents’  rambling home in Colchester, Ontario, across Lake Erie from Lake Side as well as in my maternal Grandparents’ farmhouse near Vassar, Michigan.  That lasted into the 60s of my childhood  – and I wonder if President Obama’s beer summit was a step in the right direction of bringing trust to a new generation that is far more culturally mixed today.  There’s a lot of argument about whether Obama should have entered the dialogue at all in Cambridge and let it remain a local issue between Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley  http://bit.ly/VkDI1.

Perhaps, but once it got started,

the results from the dialogue have been mostly positive, getting the men to meet and talk and getting the country to begin cooling down its hardline positions (although Gates has still reported receiving death threats).  But it also highlighted how the one person who stayed above the racial fray­­– Lucia Whalen, the woman who made the 911 call– was careful to stick with the facts and was nevertheless vilified as racist until the transcript was played on the air proving she never mentioned that Gates was black.  She was not invited to the summit and when asked if she was resentful, Whalen  commented that she doesn’t like beer anyways.

The coop in the news is Group Health and its president Scott Armstrong told the New York Times “There’s a kind of accountability to the patients in our system. And when you bring the principles of a cooperative to bear, patients feel responsibility for holding the system together and for their own health.”  I would add that the sense of responsibility he speaks about results from the fact that co-op members actually own an equal share of the business.

In fact, Paul Hazen, President and CEO of the National Cooperative Business Association wrote recently that it’s time to remember that cooperatives thrived in the great depression.   Cooperative credit unions, for instance, founded back in the 30s, are remaining stable in this uncertain economy. Remember the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life?”  It’s not just about the spirit of sharing during the holidays - the battle between the values of a small Savings & Loan (not a coop, but a family-run business) dedicated to its customers pitted against a runaway Bank culture (yes, there are great global banks) focused only on the bottom line, resonates in today’s economy.

Even if national healthcare eventually ends up as a government plan, I’m glad the spotlight right now is on cooperatives.  We need to help each other get through today’s hard times and cooperatives offer us a way to get started on that journey!