SACRAMENTO — State corrections officials are poised to drop the arrest warrants of thousands of parole violators, releasing them from state supervision at a time when their detention would complicate efforts to ease crowding in state and county lockups.
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation intends to begin a massive review next week of more than 9,200 outstanding warrants, starting with individuals who were convicted of nonviolent crimes and absconded from supervision. Over the next eight months, parole field offices across the state will be given lists of missing felons, 200 at a time, to review and determine if retaining them on parole "would not be in the interest of justice."
The mass purge is an attempt to ease the burden on counties in July, when the state hands off responsibility for parole revocations to local courts, said agency spokesman Jeffrey Callison. Weeding out cases that are years old, or of parolees nobody is looking for, will make it easier to focus on those who pose a threat, he said.
It will not, Callison said, "allow some paroles to 'get off the hook.' "
"I have been told that discharging people is not the point of the exercise," he said Friday.
Which is exactly the claim of some victims' advocates who are infuriated by the state's so-called warrant review project.
"It's mass amnesty for felons," said Assemblyman Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber), a vocal opponent of Gov. Jerry Brown's plans to ease state prison crowding by shifting responsibility for low-level offenders to counties.
When inmates are released from state prison, they are required to report to a parole officer. When a felon does not appear, or disappears later, an arrest warrant is issued. With low-level offenders now serving time in county jails, the state's parole population is shrinking dramatically because those released from jail go to county probation, not state parole.
But the same law that shifted responsibility for low-level offenders also requires county courts to take over most revocation hearings for parole violators. The warrant review will remove many of those potential cases.
The plan calls for parole agents to review about 7,000 warrants against low-level offenders to determine if those parolees have violent offenses or multiple felonies, belong to gangs or committed new crimes. Agents will then decide whether to drop the warrant and release the felon from parole.
Once that review is completed, the agency may undertake a similar study of outstanding warrants against missing parolees who committed serious or violent offenses, indicating that they too might be released from state supervision.
Sexual offenders are excluded from the reviews.
Callison said the state has no idea how many parolees may be released from supervision. Nielsen, former chairman of the Board of Prison Terms, estimated it would be 70%.
"This is as close as just letting people go as we've come," said Todd Gillam, a Northern California parole agent and vice president of the Parole Agent Assn. of California.
Gillam said the mass reviews overlook the value of leaving outstanding warrants in law enforcement computer systems, especially for routine matters such as traffic stops. "The warrant is a warning, to alert the officer that this guy is a problem," he said.
Gillam and others said parole agents are under pressure to release felons from state supervision as soon as possible.
Those criticisms come as the corrections department reacted to a report in the Fresno Bee on Friday that the man who killed two people at a chicken processing plant in Fresno earlier this week, then killed himself, was released from parole over the objections of his parole agent. The gunman, Lawrence Jones, was freed from prison in June 2011 and discharged from parole in May, even though his parole agent deemed him a danger.
The state corrections department "greatly regrets the tragedy," spokesman Luis Patino said, "but it must be noted that Jones had been out in the community for almost a full year and a half when he apparently committed this heinous crime.... Neither CDCR, nor any other law enforcement agency, can guarantee that someone will not commit a crime out in the community once they have been released from prison."
The newspaper's report also came on the same day that the governor named a new state parole chief: Daniel Stone, a longtime agency employee and former parole officer. Stone's appointment over the Division of Adult Parole requires state Senate confirmation.
Epic fantasy has become the literature of more. We equate it with more pages than the average book, more books than the average series. There are more characters, more maps, more names and more dates. The stories and the worlds are bigger to contain all of this more. And when all the books have been devoured, the fans want more.
For my just-released anthology, Epic: Legends of Fantasy, I compiled a collection of stories that demonstrate the heights the subgenre is capable of attaining; including works by George R. R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, Robin Hobb, Tad Williams, Ursula K. Le Guin and other legends of the field, the anthology attempts to survey all that is epic in the short form and bring the best of it to you in a single volume.
In this exclusive excerpt from the anthology, Mary Robinette Kowal presents a tale that exemplifies what epic fantasy is all about.
By Mary Robinette Kowal
Light dappled through the trees in the family courtyard, painting shadows on the paving stones. Li Reiko knelt by her son to look at his scraped knee.
“I just scratched it.” Nawi squirmed under her hands.
Her daughter, Aya, leaned over her shoulder studying the healing. “Maybe Mama will show you her armor after she heals you.”
Nawi stopped wiggling. “Really?”
Reiko shot Aya a warning look, but her little boy’s dark eyes shone with excitement. Reiko smiled. “Really.” What did tradition matter? “Now let me heal your knee.” She laid her hand on the shallow wound.
“Ow.”
“Shush.” Reiko closed her eyes and rose in the dark space behind them.
In her mind’s eye, Reiko took her time with the ritual, knowing it took less time than it appeared. In a heartbeat, green fire flared out to the walls of her mind. She dissolved into it as she focused on healing her son.
When the wound closed beneath her hand, she sank to the surface of her mind.
“There.” She tousled Nawi’s hair. “That wasn’t bad, was it?”
“It tickled.” He wrinkled his nose. “Will you show me your armor now?”
She sighed. She should not encourage his interest in the martial arts. His work would be with the histories that men kept, and yet…”Watch.”
Pulling the smooth black surface out of the ether, she manifested her armor. It sheathed her like silence in the night. Aya watched with obvious anticipation for the day when she earned her own armor. Nawi’s face, full of sharp yearning for something he would never have, cut Reiko’s heart like a new blade.
“Can I see your sword?”
She let her armor vanish into thought. “No.” Reiko brushed his hair from his eyes. “It’s my turn to hide, right?”
- - -
Halldór twisted in his saddle, trying to ease the kink in his back. When the questing party reached the Parliament, he could remove the weight hanging between his shoulders.
With each step his horse took across the moss-covered lava field, the strange blade bumped against his spine, reminding him that he carried a legend. None of the runes or sheep entrails he read before their quest had foretold the ease with which they fulfilled the first part of the prophecy. They had found the Chooser of the Slain’s narrow blade wrapped in linen, buried beneath an abandoned elf-house. In that dark room, the sword’s hard silvery metal — longer than any of their bronze swords — had seemed lit by the moon.
Lárus pulled his horse alongside Halldór. “Will the ladies be waiting for us, do you think?”
“Maybe for you, my lord, but not for me.”
“Nonsense. Women love the warrior-priest. ‘Strong and sensitive.’” He snorted through his mustache. “Just comb your hair so you don’t look like a straw man.”
A horse screamed behind them. Halldór turned, expecting to see its leg caught in one of the thousands of holes between the rocks. Instead, armed men swarmed from the gullies between the rocks, hacking at the riders. Bandits.
Halldór spun his horse to help Lárus and the others fight them off.
Lárus shouted, “Protect the Sword.”
At the Duke’s command, Halldór cursed and turned his horse from the fight, galloping across the rocks. Behind him, men cried out as they protected his escape. His horse twisted along the narrow paths between stones. It stopped abruptly, avoiding a chasm. Halldór looked back.
Scant lengths ahead of the bandits, Lárus rode, slumped in his saddle. Blood stained his cloak. The other men hung behind Lárus, protecting the Duke as long as possible.
Behind them, the bandits closed the remaining distance across the lava fields.
Halldór kicked his horse’s side, driving it around the chasm. His horse stumbled sickeningly beneath him. Its leg snapped, caught between rocks. Halldór kicked free of the saddle as the horse screamed. He rolled clear. The rocky ground slammed the sword into his back. His face passed over the edge of the chasm. Breathless, he recoiled from the drop.
As he scrambled to his feet, Lárus thundered up. Without wasting a beat, Lárus flung himself from the saddle and tossed Halldór the reins. “Get the Sword to Parliament!”
Halldór grabbed the reins, swinging into the saddle. If they died returning to Parliament, did it matter that they had found the Sword? “We must invoke the Sword!”
Lárus’s right arm hung, blood-drenched, by his side, but he faced the bandits with his left. “Go!”
Halldór yanked the Sword free of its wrappings. For the first time in six thousand years, the light of the sun fell on the silvery blade bringing fire to its length. It vibrated in his hands.
The first bandit reached Lárus and forced him back.
Halldór chanted the runes of power, petitioning the Chooser of the Slain.
Time stopped.
- - -
Reiko hid from her children, blending into the shadows of the courtyard with more urgency than she felt in combat. To do less would insult them.
“Ready or not, here I come!” Nawi spun from the tree and sprinted past her hiding place. Aya turned more slowly and studied the courtyard. Reiko smiled as her daughter sniffed the air, looking for tracks. Her son crashed through the bushes, kicking leaves with each footstep.
As another branch cracked under Nawi’s foot, Reiko stifled the urge to correct his appalling technique. She would speak with his tutor about what the woman was teaching him. He was a boy, but that was no reason to neglect his education.
Watching Aya find Reiko’s initial footprints and track them away from where she hid, Reiko slid from her hiding place. She walked across the courtyard to the fountain. This was a rule with her children; to make up for the size difference, she could not run.
She paced closer to the sparkling water, masking her sounds with its babble. From her right, Nawi shouted, “Have you found her?”
“No, silly!” Aya shook her head and stopped. She put her tiny hands on her hips, staring at the ground. “Her tracks stop here.”
Reiko and her daughter were the same distance from the fountain, but on opposite sides. If Aya were paying attention, she would realize her mother had retraced her tracks and jumped from the fountain to the paving stones circling the grassy center of the courtyard. Reiko took three more steps before Aya turned.
As her daughter turned, Reiko felt, more than heard, her son on her left, reaching for her. Clever. He had misdirected her attention with his noise in the shrubbery. She fell forward, using gravity to drop beneath his hands. Rolling on her shoulder, she somersaulted, then launched to her feet as Aya ran toward her.
Nawi grabbed for her again. With a child on each side, Reiko danced and dodged closer to the fountain. She twisted from their grasp, laughing with them each time they missed her. Their giggles echoed through the courtyard.
The world tipped sideways and vibrated. Reiko stumbled as pain ripped through her spine.
Nawi’s hand clapped against her side. “I got her!”
Fire engulfed Reiko.
The courtyard vanished.
- - -
Time began again.
The sword in Halldór’s hands thrummed with life. Fire from the sunset engulfed the sword and split the air. With a keening cry, the air opened and a form dropped through, silhouetted against a haze of fire. Horses and men screamed in terror.
When the fire died away, a woman stood between Halldór and the bandits.
Halldór’s heart sank. Where was the Chooser of the Slain? Where was the warrior the sword had petitioned?
A bandit snarled a laughing oath and rushed toward them. The others followed him with their weapons raised.
The woman snatched the sword from Halldór’s hands. In that brief moment, when he stared at her wild face, he realized that he had succeeded in calling Li Reiko, the Chooser of the Slain.
Then she turned. The air around her rippled with a heat haze as armor, dark as night, materialized around her body. He watched her dance with deadly grace, bending and twisting away from the bandits’ blows. Without seeming thought, with movement as precise as ritual, she danced with death as her partner. Her sword slid through the bodies of the bandits.
Halldór dropped to his knees, thanking the gods for sending her. He watched the point of her sword trace a line, like the path of entrails on the church floor. The line of blood led to the next moment, the next and the next, as if each man’s death was predestined.
Then she turned her sword on him.
Her blade descended, burning with the fire of the setting sun. She stopped as if she had run into a wall, with the point touching Halldór’s chest.
Why had she stopped? If his blood was the price for saving Lárus, so be it. Her arm trembled. She grimaced, but did not move the sword closer.
Her face, half-hidden by her helm, was dark with rage. “Where am I?” Her words were crisp, more like a chant than common speech.
Holding still, Halldór said, “We are on the border of the Parliament lands, Li Reiko.”
Her dark eyes, slanted beneath angry lids, widened. She pulled back and her armor rippled, vanishing into thought. Skin, tanned like the smoothest leather stretched over her wide cheekbones. Her hair hung in a heavy, black braid down her back. Halldór’s pulse sang in his veins.
Only the gods in sagas had hair the color of the Allmother’s night. Had he needed proof he had called the Chooser of the Slain, the inhuman black hair would have convinced him of that.
He bowed his head. “All praise to you, Great One. Grant us your blessings.”
- - -
Reiko’s breath hissed from her. He knew her name. She had dropped through a flaming portal into hell and this demon with bulging eyes knew her name.
She had tried to slay him as she had the others, but could not press her sword forward, as if a wall had protected him.
And now he asked for blessings.
“What blessings do you ask of me?” Reiko said. She controlled a shudder. What human had hair as pale as straw?
Straw lowered his bulging eyes to the demon lying in front of him. “Grant us, O Gracious One, the life of our Duke Lárus.”
This Lárus had a wound deep in his shoulder. His blood was as red as any human’s, but his face was pale as death.
She turned from Straw and wiped her sword on the thick moss, cleaning the blood from it. As soon as her attention seemed turned from them, Straw attended Lárus. She kept her awareness on the sounds of his movement as she sought balance in the familiar task of caring for her weapon. By the Gods! Why did he have her sword? It had been in her rooms not ten minutes before playing hide and seek with her children.
Panic almost took her. What had happened to her Aya and Nawi? She needed information, but displaying ignorance to an enemy was a weakness, which could kill surer than the sharpest blade. She considered.
Their weapons were bronze, not steel, and none of her opponents had manifested armor. They dressed in leather and felted wool, but no woven goods. So, then. That was their technology.
Straw had not healed Lárus, so perhaps they could not. He wanted her aid. Her thoughts checked. Could demons be bound by blood debt?
She turned to Straw.
“What price do you offer for this life?”
Straw raised his eyes; they were the color of the sky. “I offer my life unto you, O Great One.”
She set her lips. What good would vengeance do? Unless… “Do you offer blood or service?”
He lowered his head again. “I submit to your will.”
“You will serve me then. Do you agree to be my bound man?”
“I do.”
“Good.” She sheathed her sword. “What is your name?”
“Halldór Arnarsson.”
“I accept your pledge.” She dropped to her knees and pushed the leather from the wound on Lárus’s shoulder. She pulled upon her reserves and, rising into the healing ritual, touched his mind.
He was human.
She pushed the shock aside; she could not spare the attention.
- - -
Halldór gasped as fire glowed around Li Reiko’s hands. He had read of gods healing in the sagas, but bearing witness was beyond his dreams.
The glow faded. She lifted her hands from Lárus’s shoulder. The wound was gone. A narrow red line and the blood-soaked clothing remained. Lárus opened his eyes as if he had been sleeping.
But her face was drawn. “I have paid the price for your service, bound man.” She lifted a hand to her temple. “The wound was deeper…” Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped to the ground.
Lárus sat up and grabbed Halldór by the shoulder. “What did you do?”
Shaking Lárus off, Halldór crouched next to her. She was breathing. “I saved your life.”
“By binding yourself to a woman? Are you mad?”
“She healed you. Healed! Look.” Halldór pointed at her hair. “Look at her. This is Li Reiko.”
“Li Reiko was a Warrior.”
“You saw her. How long did it take her to kill six men?” He pointed at the carnage behind them. “Name one man who could do that.”
Would moving her be a sacrilege? He grimaced. He would beg forgiveness if that were the case. “We should move before the sun sets and the trolls come out.”
Lárus nodded slowly, his eyes still on the bodies around them. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“What?”
“How many other sagas are true?”
Halldór frowned. “They’re all true.”
- - -
The smell of mutton invaded her dreamless sleep. Reiko lay under sheepskin, on a bed of straw ticking. The straw poked through the wool fabric, pricking her bare skin. Straw. Her memory tickled her with an image of hair the color of straw. Halldór.
Long practice kept her breath even. She lay with her eyes closed, listening. A small room. An open fire. Women murmuring. She needed to learn as much as possible, before changing the balance by letting them know she was awake.
A hand placed a damp rag on her brow. The touch was light, a woman or a child.
The sheepskin’s weight would telegraph her movement if she tried grabbing the hand. Better to open her eyes and feign weakness than to create an impression of threat. There was time for that later.
Reiko let her eyes flutter open. A girl bent over her, cast from the same demonic mold as Halldór. Her hair was the color of honey, and her wide blue eyes started from her head. She stilled when Reiko awoke, but did not pull away.
Reiko forced a smile, and let worry appear on her brow. “Where am I?”
“In the women’s quarters at the Parliament grounds.”
Reiko sat up. The sheepskin fell away, letting the cool air caress her body. The girl averted her eyes. Conversation in the room stopped.
Interesting. They had a nudity taboo. She reached for the sheepskin and pulled it over her torso. “What is your name?”
“Mara Halldórsdottir.”
Her bound man had a daughter. And his people had a patronymic system — how far from home was she? “Where are my clothes, Mara?”
The girl lifted a folded bundle of cloth from a low bench next to the bed. “I washed them for you.”
“Thank you.” If Mara had washed and dried her clothes, Reiko must have been unconscious for several hours. Lárus’s wound had been deeper than she thought. “Where is my sword?”
“My father has it.”
Rage filled Reiko’s veins like the fire that had brought her here. She waited for the heat to dwindle, then began dressing. As Reiko pulled her boots on, she asked, “Where is he?”
Behind Mara, the other women shifted as if Reiko were crossing a line. Mara ignored them. “He’s with Parliament.”
“Which is where?” The eyes of the other women felt like heat on her skin. Ah. Parliament contained the line she should not cross, and they clearly would not answer her. Her mind teased her with memories of folk in other lands. She had never paid much heed to these stories, since history had been men’s work. She smiled at Mara. “Thank you for your kindness.”
As she strode from the room she kept her senses fanned out, waiting for resistance from them, but they hung back as if they were afraid.
The women’s quarters fronted on a narrow twisting path lined with low turf and stone houses. The end of the street opened on a large raised circle surrounded by stone benches.
Men sat on the benches, but women stayed below. Lárus spoke in the middle of the circle. By his side, Halldór stood with her sword in his hands. Sheltering in the shadow by a house, Reiko studied them. They towered above her, but their movements were clumsy and oafish like a trained bear. Nawi had better training than any here.
Her son. Sudden anxiety and rage filled her lungs, but rage invited rash decisions. She forced the anger away.
With effort, she returned her focus to the men. They had no awareness of their mass, only of their size and an imperfect grasp of that.
Halldór lifted his head. As if guided by strings his eyes found her in the shadows.
He dropped to his knees and held out her sword. In mid-sentence, Lárus looked at Halldór, and then turned to Reiko. Surprise crossed his face, but he bowed his head.
“Li Reiko, you honor us with your presence.”
Reiko climbed onto the stone circle. As she crossed to retrieve her sword, an ox of a man rose to his feet. “I will not sit here, while a woman is in the Parliament’s circle.”
Lárus scowled. “Ingolfur, this is no mortal woman.”
Reiko’s attention sprang forward. What did they think she was, if not mortal?
“You darkened a trollop’s hair with soot.” Ingolfur crossed his arms. “You expect me to believe she’s a god?”
Her pulse quickened. What were they saying? Lárus flung his cloak back, showing the torn and blood-soaked leather at his shoulder. “We were set upon by bandits. My arm was cut half off and she healed it.” His pale face flushed red. “I tell you this is Li Reiko, returned to the world.”
She understood the words, but they had no meaning. Each sentence out of their mouths raised a thousand questions in her mind.
“Ha.” Ingolfur spat on the ground. “Your quest sought a warrior to defeat the Troll King.”
This she understood. “And if I do, what price do you offer?”
Lárus opened his mouth but Ingolfur crossed the circle.
“You pretend to be the Chooser of the Slain?” Ingolfur reached for her, as if she were a doll he could pick up. Before his hand touched her shoulder, she took his wrist, pulling on it as she twisted. She drove her shoulder into his belly and used his mass to flip him as she stood.
She had thought these were demons, but by their actions they were men, full of swagger and rash judgment. She waited. He would attack her again.
Ingolfur raged behind her. Reiko focused on his sounds and the small changes in the air. As he reached for her, she twisted away from his hands and with his force, sent him stumbling from the circle. The men broke into laughter.
She waited again.
It might take time but Ingolfur would learn his place. A man courted death, touching a woman unasked.
Halldór stepped in front of Reiko and faced Ingolfur. “Great Ingolfur, surely you can see no mortal woman could face our champion.”
Reiko cocked her head slightly. Her bound man showed wit by appeasing the oaf’s vanity.
Lárus pointed to her sword in Halldór’s hands. “Who here still doubts we have completed our quest?” The men shifted on their benches uneasily. “We fulfilled the first part of the prophecy by returning Li Reiko to the world.”
What prophecy had her name in it? There might be a bargaining chip here.
“You promised us a mighty warrior, the Chooser of the Slain,” Ingolfur snarled, “not a woman.”
It was time for action. If they wanted a god, they should have one. “Have no doubt. I can defeat the Troll King.” She let her armor flourish around her. Ingolfur drew back involuntarily. Around the circle, she heard gasps and sharp cries.
She drew her sword from Halldór’s hands. “Who here will test me?”
Halldór dropped to his knees in front of her. “The Chooser of the Slain!”
In the same breath, Lárus knelt and cried, “Li Reiko!”
Around the circle, men followed suit. On the ground below, women and children knelt in the dirt. They cried her name. In the safety of her helm, Reiko scowled. Playing at godhood was a dangerous lie.
She lowered her sword. “But there is a price. You must return me to the heavens.”
Halldór’s eyes grew wider than she thought possible. “How, my lady?”
She shook her head. “You know the gods grant nothing easily. They say you must return me. You must learn how. Who here accepts that price for your freedom from the trolls?”
She sheathed her sword and let her armor vanish into thought. Turning on her heel, she strode off the Parliament’s circle.
- - -
Halldór clambered to his feet as Li Reiko left the Parliament circle. His head reeled. She hinted at things beyond his training. Lárus grabbed him by the arm. “What does she mean, return her?”
Ingolfur tossed his hands. “If that is the price, I will pay it gladly. Ridding the world of the Troll King and her at the same time would be a joy.”
“Is it possible?”
Men crowded around Halldór, asking him theological questions of the sagas. The answers eluded him. He had not cast a rune-stone or read an entrail since they started for the elf-house a week ago. “She would not ask if it were impossible.” He swallowed. “I will study the problem with my brothers and return to you.”
Lárus clapped him on the back. “Good man.” When Lárus turned to the throng surrounding them, Halldór slipped away.
He found Li Reiko surrounded by children. The women hung back, too shy to come near, but the children crowded close. Halldór could hardly believe she had killed six men as easily as carding wool. For the space of a breath, he watched her play peek-a-boo with a small child, her face open with delight and pain.
She saw him and shutters closed over her soul. Standing, her eyes impassive, she said. “I want to read the prophecy.”
He blinked, surprised. Then his heart lifted; maybe she would show him how to pay her price. “It is stored in the church.”
Reiko brushed the child’s hair from its eyes, then fell into step beside Halldór. He could barely keep a sedate pace to the church.
Inside, he led her through the nave to the library beside the sanctuary. The other priests, studying, stared at the Chooser of the Slain. Halldór felt as if he were outside himself with the strangeness of this. He was leading Li Reiko, a Warrior out of the oldest sagas, past shelves containing her history.
Since the gods had arrived from across the sea, his brothers had recorded their history. For six-thousand unbroken years, the records of prophecy and the sagas kept their history whole.
When they reached the collections desk, the acolyte on duty looked as if he would wet himself. Halldór stood between the boy and the Chooser of the Slain, but the boy still stared with an open mouth.
“Bring me the Troll King prophecy, and the Sagas of Li Nawi, Volume I. We will be in the side chapel.”
Still gaping, the boy nodded and ran down the aisles.
“We can study in here.” He led the Chooser of the Slain to the side chapel. Halldór was shocked again at how small she was, not much taller than the acolyte. He had thought the gods would be larger than life.
He had hundreds of questions, but none of the words.
When the acolyte came back, Halldór sent a silent prayer of thanks. Here was something they could discuss. He took the vellum roll and the massive volume of sagas the acolyte carried and shooed him out of the room.
Halldór’s palms were damp with sweat as he pulled on wool gloves to protect the manuscripts. He hesitated over another pair of gloves, then set them aside. Her hands could heal; she would not damage the manuscripts.
Carefully, Halldór unrolled the prophecy scroll on the table. He did not look at the rendering of entrails. He watched her.
She gave no hint of her thoughts. “I want to hear your explanation of this.”
A cold current ran up his spine, as if he were eleven again, explaining scripture to an elder. Halldór licked his lips and pointed at the arc of sclera. “This represents the heavens, and the overlap here,” he pointed at the bulge of the lower intestine, “means time of conflict. I interpreted the opening in the bulge to mean specifically the Troll King. This pattern of blood means — ”
She crossed her arms. “You clearly understand your discipline. Tell me the prophecy in plain language.”
“Oh.” He looked at the drawing of the entrails again. What did she see that he did not? “Well, in a time of conflict — which is now — the Chooser of the Slain overcomes the Troll King.” He pointed at the shining knot around the lower intestine. “See how this chokes off the Troll King. That means you win the battle.”
“And how did you know the legendary warrior was — is me?”
“I cross-referenced with our histories and you were the one that fit the criteria.”
She shivered. “Show me the history. I want to understand how you deciphered this.”
Halldór thanked the gods that he had asked for Li Nawi’s saga as well. He placed the heavy volume of history in front of Li Reiko and opened to the Book of Fire, Chapter I.
- - -
In the autumn of the Fire, Li Reiko, greatest of the warriors, trained Li Nawi and his sister Aya in the ways of Death. In the midst of the training, a curtain of fire split Nawi from Aya and when they came together again, Li Reiko was gone. Though they were frightened, they understood that the Chooser of the Slain had taken a rightful place in heaven.
Reiko trembled, her control gone. “What is this?”
“It is the Saga of Li Nawi.”
She tried phrasing casual questions, but her mind spun in circles. “How do you come to have this?”
Halldór traced the letters with his gloved hand. “After the Collapse, when waves of fire had rolled across our land, Li Nawi came across the oceans with the other gods. He was our conqueror and our salvation.”
The ranks of stone shelves filled with thick leather bindings crowded her. Her heart kicked wildly.
Halldór’s voice seemed drowned out by the drumming of her pulse. “The Sagas are our heritage and charge. The gods have left the Earth, but we keep records of histories as they taught us.”
Reiko turned her eyes blindly from the page. “Your heritage?”
“I have been dedicated to the service of the gods since my birth.” He paused. “Your sagas were the most inspiring. Forgive my trespasses, may I beg for your indulgence with a question?”
“What?” Hot and cold washed over her in sickening waves.
“I have read your son Li Nawi’s accounts of your triumphs in battle.”
Reiko could not breathe. Halldór flipped the pages forward. “This is how I knew where to look for your sword.” He paused with his hand over the letters. “I deciphered the clues to invoke it and call you here, but there are many — ”
Reiko pushed away from the table. “You caused the curtain of fire?” She wanted to vomit her fear at his feet.
“I — I do not understand.”
“I dropped through fire this morning.” And when they came together again, Li Reiko was no more. What had it been like for Aya and Nawi to watch their mother ripped out of time?
Halldór said, “In answer to my petition.”
“I was playing hide and seek with my children and you took me.”
“You were in the heavens with the gods.”
“That’s something you tell a grieving child!”
“I — I didn’t, I — ” His face turned gray. “Forgive me, Great One.”
“I am not a god!” She pushed him, all control gone. He tripped over a bench and dropped to the floor. “Send me back.”
“I cannot.”
Her sword flew from its sheath before she realized she held it. “Send me back!” She held it to his neck. Her arms trembled with the desire to run it through him. But it would not move.
She leaned on the blade, digging her feet into the floor. “You ripped me out of time and took me from my children.”
He shook his head. “It had already happened.”
“Because of you.” Her sword crept closer, pricking a drop of blood from his neck. What protected him?
Halldór lay on his back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know…I was following the prophecy.”
Reiko staggered. Prophecy. A wall of predestination. Empty, she dropped to the bench and cradled her sword. “How long ago…?”
“Six thousand years.”
She closed her eyes. This was why he could not return her. He had not simply brought her from across the sea like the other “gods.” He had brought her through time. If she were trapped here, if she could never see her children again, it did not matter if these were human or demons. She was banished in Hell.
“What do the sagas say about my children?”
Halldór rolled to his knees. “I can show you.” His voice shook.
“No.” She ran her hand down the blade of her sword. Its edge whispered against her skin. She touched her wrist to the blade. It would be easy. “Read it to me.”
She heard him get to his feet. The pages of the heavy book shuffled.
- - -
Halldór swallowed and read, “This is from the Saga of Li Nawi, the Book of the Sword, Chapter Two. ‘And it came to pass that Li Aya and Li Nawi were raised unto adulthood by their tutor.’”
A tutor raised them, because he, Halldór, had pulled their mother away. He shook his head. It had happened six thousand years ago.
“‘But when they reached adulthood, each claimed the right of Li Reiko’s sword.’”
They fought over the sword, with which he had called her, not out of the heavens, but from across time. Halldór shivered and focused on the page.
“‘Li Aya challenged Li Nawi, saying Death was her birthright. But Nawi, on hearing this, scoffed and said he was a Child of Death. And saying so, he took Li Reiko’s sword and the gods smote Li Aya with their fiery hand, thus granting Li Nawi the victory.’”
Halldór’s entrails twisted as if the gods were reading them. He had read these sagas since he was a boy. He believed them, but he had not thought they were real. He looked at Li Reiko. She held her head in her lap and rocked back and forth.
For all his talk of prophecies, he was the one who had found the sword and invoked it. “‘Then all men knew he was the true Child of Death. He raised an army of men, the First of the Nine Armies, and thus began the Collapse — ‘”
“Stop.”
“I’m sorry.” He would slaughter a thousand sheep if one would tell him how to undo his crime. In the Saga of Li Nawi, Li Reiko never appeared after the wall of fire. He closed the book and took a step toward her. “The price you asked…I can’t send you back.”
Li Reiko drew a shuddering breath and looked up. “I have already paid the price for you.” Her eyes reflected his guilt. “Another hero can kill the Troll King.”
His pulse rattled forward like a panicked horse. “No one else can. The prophecy points to you.”
“Gut a new sheep, bound man. I won’t help you.” She stood. “I release you from your debt.”
“But, it’s unpaid. I owe you a life.”
“You cannot pay the price I ask.” She turned and touched her sword to his neck again. He flinched. “I couldn’t kill you when I wanted to.” She cocked her head, and traced the point of the blade around his neck, not quite touching him. “What destiny waits for you?”
“Nothing.” He was no one.
She snorted. “How nice to be without a fate.” Sheathing her sword, she walked toward the door.
He followed her. Nothing made sense. “Where are you going?” She spun and drove her fist into his midriff. He grunted and folded over the pain. Panting, Reiko pulled her sword out and hit his side with the flat of her blade. Halldór held his cry in.
She swung again, with the edge, but the wall of force stopped her; Halldór held still. She turned the blade and slammed the flat against his ribs again. The breath hissed out of him, but he did not move. He knelt in front of her, waiting for the next blow. He deserved this. He deserved more than this.
Li Reiko’s lip curled in disgust. “Do not follow me.”
He scrabbled forward on his knees. “Then tell me where you’re going, so I will not meet you by chance.”
“Maybe that is your destiny.” She left him.
Halldór did not follow her.
- - -
Li Reiko chased her shadow out of the parliament lands. It stretched before her in the golden light of sunrise, racing her across the moss-covered lava. The wind, whipping across the treeless plain, pushed her like a child late for dinner.
Surrounded by the people in the Parliament lands, Reiko’s anger had overwhelmed her and buried her grief. Whatever Halldór thought her destiny was, she saw only two paths in front of her — make a life here or join her children in the only way left. Neither were paths to choose rashly.
Small shrubs and grasses broke the green with patches of red and gold, as if someone had unrolled a carpet on the ground. Heavy undulations creased the land with crevices. Some held water reflecting the sky, others dropped to a lower level of moss and soft grasses, and some were as dark as the inside of a cave.
When the sun crossed the sky and painted the land with long shadows, Reiko sought shelter from the wind in one of the crevices. The moss cradled her with the warmth of the earth.
She pulled thoughts of Aya and Nawi close. In her memory, they laughed as they reached for her. Sobs pushed past Reiko’s reserves. She wrapped her arms around her chest. Each cry shattered her. Her children were dead because Halldór had decided a disemboweled sheep meant he should rip her out of time. It did not matter if they had grown up; she had not been there. They were six‑thousand years dead. Inside her head, Reiko battled grief. Her fists pounded against the walls of her mind. No. Her brain filled with that silent syllable.
She pressed her face against the velvet moss wanting the earth to absorb her.
She heard a sound.
Training quieted her breath in a moment. Reiko lifted her head from the moss and listened. Footsteps crossed the earth above her. She manifested her armor and rolled silently to her feet. If Halldór had followed her, she would play the part of a man and seek revenge.
In the light of the moon, a figure, larger than a man, crept toward her. A troll. Behind him, a gang of trolls watched. Reiko counted them and considered the terrain. It was safer to hide, but anger still throbbed in her bones. She left her sword sheathed and slunk out of the crevice in the ground. Her argument was not with them.
Flowing across the moss, she let the uneven shadows mask her until she reached a standing mound of stones. The wind carried the trolls’ stink to her.
The lone troll reached the crevice she had sheltered in. His arm darted down like a bear fishing and he roared with astonishment.
The other trolls laughed. “Got away, did she?”
One of them said, “Mucker was smelling his own crotch is all.”
“Yah, sure. He didn’t get enough in the Hall and goes around thinking he smells more.”
They had taken human women. Reiko felt a stabbing pain in her loins; she could not let that stand.
Mucker whirled. “Shut up! I know I smelled a woman.”
“Then where’d she go?” The troll snorted the air. “Don’t smell one now.”
The other lumbered away. “Let’s go, while some of ‘em are still fresh.”
Mucker slumped and followed the other trolls. Reiko eased out of the shadows. She was a fool, but would not hide while women were raped.
She hung back, letting the wind bring their sounds and scents as she tracked the trolls to their Hall.
The moon had sunk to a handspan above the horizon as they reached the Troll Hall. Trolls stood on either side of the great stone doors.
Reiko crouched in the shadows. The night was silent except for the sounds of revelry. Even with alcohol slowing their movement, there were too many of them.
If she could goad the sentries into taking her on one at a time she could get inside, but only if no other trolls came. The sound of swordplay would draw a crowd faster than crows to carrion.
A harness jingled.
Reiko’s head snapped in the direction of the sound.
She shielded her eyes from the light coming out of the Troll Hall. As her vision adjusted, a man on horseback resolved out of the dark. He sat twenty or thirty horselengths away, invisible to the trolls outside the Hall. Reiko eased toward him, senses wide.
The horse shifted its weight when it smelled her. The man put his hand on its neck, calming it. Light from the Troll Hall hinted at the planes on his face. Halldór. Her lips tightened. He had followed her. Reiko warred with an irrational desire to call the trolls down on them.
She needed him. Halldór, with his drawings and histories, might know what the inside of the Troll Hall looked like.
Praying he would have sense enough to be quiet, she stepped out of the shadows. He jumped as she appeared, but stayed silent.
He swung off his horse and leaned close. His whisper was hot in her ear. “Forgive me. I did not follow you.”
He turned his head, letting her breathe an answer in return. “Understood. They have women inside.”
“I know.” Halldór looked toward the Troll Hall. Dried blood covered the left side of his face.
“We should move away to talk,” she said.
He took his horse by the reins and followed her. His horse’s hooves were bound with sheepskin so they made no sound on the rocks. Something had happened since she left the Parliament lands.
Halldór limped on his left side. Reiko’s heart beat as if she were running. The trolls had women prisoners. Halldór bore signs of battle. Trolls must have attacked the Parliament. They walked in silence until the sounds of the Troll Hall dwindled to nothing.
Halldór stopped. “There was a raid.” He stared at nothing, his jaw clenched. “While I was gone…they just let the trolls — ” His voice broke like a boy’s. “They have my girl.”
Mara. Anger slipped from Reiko. “Halldór, I’m sorry.” She looked for other riders. “Who came with you?”
He shook his head. “No one. They’re guarding the walls in case the trolls come back.” He touched the side of his face. “I tried persuading them.”
“Why did you come?”
“To get Mara back.”
“There are too many of them, bound man.” She scowled. “Even if you could get inside, what do you plan to do? Challenge the Troll King to single combat?” Her words resonated in her skull. Reiko closed her eyes, dizzy with the turns the gods spun her in. When she opened them, Halldór’s lips were parted in prayer. Reiko swallowed. “When does the sun rise?”
“In another hour.”
She turned to the Hall. In an hour, the trolls could not give chase; the sun would turn them to stone. She unbraided her hair.
Halldór stared as her long hair began flirting with the wind. She smiled at the question in his eyes. “I have a prophecy to fulfill.”
- - -
Reiko stumbled into the torchlight, her hair loose and wild. She clutched Halldór’s cloak around her shoulders.
One of the troll sentries saw her. “Hey. A dolly.”
Reiko contorted her face with fear and whimpered. The other troll laughed. “She don’t seem taken with you, do she?”
The first troll came closer. “She don’t have to.”
“Don’t hurt me. Please, please…” Reiko retreated from him. When she was between the two, she whipped Halldór’s cloak off, tangling it around the first troll’s head. With her sword, she gutted the other. He dropped to his knees, fumbling with his entrails as she turned to the first. She slid her sword under the cloak, slicing along the base of the first troll’s jaw.
Leaving them to die, Reiko entered the Hall. Women’s cries mingled with the sounds of debauchery.
She kept her focus on the battle ahead. She would be out-matched in size and strength, but hoped her wit and weapon would prevail. Her mouth twisted. She knew she would prevail. It was predestined.
A troll saw her. He lumbered closer. Reiko showed her sword, bright with blood. “I have met your sentries. Shall we dance as well?”
The troll checked his movement and squinted his beady eyes at her. Reiko walked past him. She kept her awareness on him, but another troll, Mucker, loomed in front of her.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I am the one you sought. I am Chooser of the Slain. I have come for your King.”
Mucker laughed and reached for her, heedless of her sword. She dodged under his grasp and held the point to his jugular. “I have come for your King. Not for you. Show me to him.”
She leapt back. His hand went to his throat and came away with blood.
A bellow rose from the entry. Someone had found the sentries. Reiko kept her gaze on Mucker, but her peripheral vision filled with trolls running. Footsteps behind her. She spun and planted her sword in a troll’s arm. The troll howled, drawing back. Reiko shook her head. “I have come for your King.”
They herded her to the Hall. She had no chance of defeating them, but if the Troll King granted her single combat, she might escape the Hall with the prisoners. When she entered the great Hall, whispers flew; the number of slain trolls mounted with each rumor.
The Troll King lolled on his throne. Mara, her face red with shame, serviced him.
Anger buzzed in Reiko’s ears. She let it pass through her. “Troll King, I have come to challenge you.”
The Troll King laughed like an avalanche of stone tearing down his Hall. “You! A dolly wants to fight?”
Reiko paid no attention to his words.
He was nearly twice her height. Leather armor, crusted with crude bronze scales, covered his body. The weight of feast hung about his middle, but his shoulders bulged with muscle. If he connected a blow, she would die. But he would be fighting gravity as well as her. Once he began a movement, it would take time for him to stop and begin another.
Reiko raised her head, waiting until his laughter faded. “I am the Chooser of the Slain. Will you accept my challenge?” She forced a smile to her lips. “Or are you afraid to dance with me?”
“I will grind you to paste, dolly. I will sweep over your lands and eat your children for my breakfast.”
“If you win, you may. Here are my terms. If I win, the prisoners go free.”
He came down from his throne and leaned close. “If you win, we will never show a shadow in human lands.”
“Will your people hold that pledge when you are dead?”
He laughed. The stink of his breath boiled around her. He turned to the trolls packed in the Hall. “Will you?”
The room rocked with the roar of their voices. “Aye.”
The Troll King leered. “And when you lose, I won’t kill you till I’ve bedded you.”
“Agreed. May the gods hear our pledge.” Reiko manifested her armor.
As the night-black plates materialized around her, the Troll King bellowed, “What is this?”
“This?” She taunted him. “This is but a toy the gods have sent to play with you.”
She smiled in her helm as he swung his heavy iron sword over his head and charged her. Stupid. Reiko stepped to the side, already turning as she let him pass.
She brought her sword hard against the gap in his armor above his boot. The blade jarred against bone. She yanked her sword free; blood coated it like a sheath.
The Troll King dropped to one knee, hamstrung. Without waiting, she vaulted up his back and wrapped her arms around his neck. Like Aya riding piggyback. He flailed his sword through the air, reaching for her. She slit his throat. His bellow changed to a gurgle as blood fountained in an arc, soaking the ground.
A heavy ache filled her breast. She whispered in his ear. “I have killed you without honor. I am a machine of the gods.”
Reiko let gravity pull the Troll King down, as trolls shrieked. She leapt off his body as it fell forward.
Before the dust settled around him, Reiko pointed her sword at the nearest troll. “Release the prisoners.”
- - -
Reiko led the women into the dawn. As they left the Troll Hall, Halldór dropped to his knees with his arms lifted in prayer. Mara wrapped her arms around his neck, sobbing.
Reiko felt nothing. Why should she, when the victory was not hers? She withdrew from the group of women weeping and singing her praises.
Halldór chased her. “Lady, my life is already yours but my debt has doubled.”
He reminded her of a suitor in one of Aya’s bedtime stories, accepting gifts without asking what the witchyman’s price would be. She knelt to clean her sword on the moss. “Then give me your firstborn child.”
She could hear his breath hitch in his throat. “If that is your price.”
Reiko raised her eyes. “No. That is a price I will not ask.”
He knelt beside her. “I know why you can not kill me.”
“Good.” She turned to her sword. “When you fulfill your fate let me know, so I can.”
His blue eyes shone with fervor. “I am destined to return your daughter to you.”
Reiko’s heart flooded with pain and hope. She fought for breath. “Do not toy with me, bound man.”
“I would not. I reviewed the sagas after you went into the Hall. It says ‘and the gods smote Li Aya with their fiery hand.’ I can bring Li Aya here.”
Reiko sunk her fingers into the moss, clutching the earth. Oh gods, to have her little girl here — she trembled. Aya would not be a child. There would be no games of hide and seek. When they reached adulthood, each claimed the right of Li Reiko’s sword…how old would Aya be?
Reiko shook her head. She could not do that to her daughter. “You want to rip Aya out of time as well. If Nawi had not won, the Collapse would not have happened.”
Halldór brow furrowed. “But it already did.”
Reiko stared at the women, and the barren landscape beyond them. Everything she saw was a result of her son’s actions. Or were her son’s actions the result of choices made here? She did not know if it mattered. The cogs in the gods’ machine clicked forward.
“Are there any prophecies about Aya?”
Halldór nodded. “She’s destined to — ”
Reiko put her hand on his mouth as if she could stop fate. “Don’t.” She closed her eyes, fingers still resting on his lips. “If you bring her, promise me you won’t let her know she’s bound to the will of the gods.”
He nodded.
Reiko withdrew her hand and pressed it to her temple. Her skull throbbed with potential decisions. Aya had already vanished into fire; if Reiko did not decide to bring her here, where would Aya go?
Her bound man knelt next to her, waiting for her decision. Aya would not forgive Reiko for yanking her out of time, anymore than Reiko had forgiven Halldór.
His eyes flicked over her shoulder and then back. Reiko turned to follow his gaze. Mara comforted another girl. What did the future hold for Halldór’s daughter? In this time, women seemed to have no role.
But times could change. Watching Mara, Reiko knew which path to choose if she were granted free will.
“Bring Aya to me.” Reiko looked at the sword in her hand. “My daughter’s birthright waits for her.”
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Clear Channel Media, The Madison Square Garden Company and The Weinstein Company are joining together to produce a benefit concert to raise money for victims of Hurricane Sandy.
The concert, titled “12-12-12,” will feature live music, although the producers did not reveal who would be performing. The roster should be an A-list one though, given that this is the same group of corporate entities that backed “The Concert for New York City,” a star-studded affair with the likes of The Who and Billy Joel on hand to raise money for 9/11.
The concert for Sandy Relief will be held on December 12, 2012, at Madison Square Garden in New York, and the money raised will be dispensed through the Robin Hood Relief Fund.
Hurricane Sandy slammed into the Eastern Seaboard last week, leaving 110 people dead and more than 1 million without power. Damage from the storm is estimated to be between $ 30 billion to $ 50 billion in economic losses.
“12-12-12″ will be produced by James Dolan, executive chairman of The Madison Square Garden Company; John Sykes, president of Clear Channel Entertainment Enterprises; and Harvey Weinstein, co-founder and chairman of The Weinstein Company.
In a joint statement, the producers said: “The Concert for New York City was a night filled with emotion, courage and tremendous hope when we came together as a city following the 9/11 attack. Once again, our city, as well as millions of our neighbors in the tri-state area, are in desperate need of our assistance as they recover from Hurricane Sandy and rebuild their lives. We have no doubt that the event we are planning will be filled with unforgettable music, entertainment and that uniquely American spirit of community, compassion and generosity.”
Let’s talk about the emotional aftermath of the storm that left tens of thousands of older people on the East Coast without power, bunkered down in their homes, chilled to the bone and out of touch with the outside world.
Let’s name the feelings they may have experienced. Fear. Despair. Hopelessness. Anxiety. Panic.
Linda Leest and her staff at Services Now for Adult Persons in Queens heard this in the voices of the older people they had been calling every day, people who were homebound and at risk because of medical conditions that compromise their physical functioning.
“They’re afraid of being alone,” she said in a telephone interview a few days after the storm. “They’re worried that if anything happens to them, no one is going to know. They feel that they’ve lost their connection with the world.”
What do we know about how older adults fare, emotionally, in a disaster like that devastating storm, which destroyed homes and businesses and isolated older adults in darkened apartment buildings, walk-ups and houses?
Most do well — emotional resilience is an underappreciated characteristic of older age — but those who are dependent on others, with pre-existing physical and mental disabilities, are especially vulnerable.
Most will recover from the disorienting sense that their world has been turned upside down within a few weeks or months. But some will be thrown into a tailspin and will require professional help. The sooner that help is received, the more likely it is to prevent a significant deterioration in their health.
The best overview comes from a November 2008 position paper from the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry that reviewed the effects of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters. After Katrina, “the elderly had the highest mortality rates, health decline and suicide rates of any subgroup,” that document notes. “High rates of psychosomatic problems were seen, with worsening health problems and increased mortality and disability.”
This is an important point: Emotional trauma in older adults often is hard to detect, and looks different from what occurs in younger people. Instead of acknowledging anxiety or depression, for instance, older people may complain of having a headache, a bad stomachache or some other physical ailment.
“This age group doesn’t generally feel comfortable talking about their feelings; likely, they’ll mask those emotions or minimize what they’re experiencing,” said Dr. Mark Nathanson, a geriatric psychiatrist at Columbia University Medical Center.
Signs that caregivers should watch out for include greater-than-usual confusion in an older relative, a decline in overall functioning and a disregard for “self care such as bathing, eating, dressing properly and taking medication,” Dr. Nathanson said.
As an example, he mentioned an older man who had “been sitting in a cold house for days and decided to stop taking his water pill because he felt it was just too much trouble.” Being distraught or distracted and forgetting or neglecting to take pills for chronic conditions like diabetes or heart disease can have immediate harmful effects.
Especially at risk of emotional disturbances are older adults who are frail and advanced in age, those who have cognitive impairments like Alzheimer’s disease, those with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia or major depression, and those with chronic medical conditions or otherwise in poor physical health, according to the geriatric psychiatry association’s position paper.
A common thread in all of the above is the depletion of physical and emotional reserves, which impairs an older person’s ability to adapt to adverse circumstances.
“In geriatrics, we have this idea of the ‘geriatric cascade’ that refers to how a seemingly minor thing can set in motion a functional, cognitive and psychological downward spiral” in vulnerable older adults, said Dr. Mark Lachs, chief of the division of geriatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College. “Well, the storm was a major thing — a very large disequilibrating event — and its impact is an enormous concern.”
Of special concern are older people who may be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia who are living alone. For this group, the maintenance of ordinary routines and the sense of a dependable structure in their lives is particularly important, and “a situation like Sandy, which causes so much disruption, can be a tipping point,” Dr. Lachs said.
Also of concern are older people who may have experienced trauma in the past, and who may suffer a reignition of post-traumatic stress symptoms because of the disaster.
Most painful of all, for many older adults, is the sense of profound isolation that can descend on those without working phones, electricity or relatives who can come by to help.
“That isolation, I can’t tell you how disorienting that can be,” said Bobbie Sackman, director of public policy for the Council of Senior Centers and Services of New York City. “They’re scared, but they won’t tell you because they’re too proud and ashamed to ask for help.”
The best remedy, in the short run, is the human touch.
“Now is the time for people to reach out to their neighbors in high-rises or in areas where seniors are clustered, to knock on doors and ask people how they are doing,” said Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of the division of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.
Don’t make it a one-time thing; let the older person know you’ll call or come by again, and set up a specific time so “there’s something for them to look forward to,” Dr. Kennedy said. So-called naturally occurring retirement communities with large concentrations of older people should be organizing from within to contact residents who may not be connected with social services and find out how they’re doing, he recommended.
In conversations with older adults, offer reassurance and ask open-ended questions like “Are you low on pills?” or “Can I run out and get you something?” rather than trying to get them to open up, experts recommended. Focusing on problem-solving can make people feel that their lives are being put back in order and provide comfort.
Although short-term psychotherapy has positive outcomes for older adults who’ve undergone a disaster, it’s often hard to convince a senior to seek out mental health services because of the perceived stigma associated with psychological conditions. Don’t let that deter you: Keep trying to connect them with services that can be of help.
Be mindful of worrisome signs like unusual listlessness, apathy, unresponsiveness, agitation or confusion. These may signal that an older adult has developed delirium, which can be extremely dangerous if not addressed quickly, Dr. Nathanson said. If you suspect that’s the case, call 911 or make sure you take the person to the nearest hospital emergency room.
This is a safe place to talk about all kinds of issues affecting older adults. Would you be willing to share what kinds of mental health issues you or family members are dealing with since the storm so readers can learn from one another?
There was an outcry last year when some retailers opened at midnight on Thanksgiving, with workers and shoppers saying the holiday should be reserved for family, not spent lining up for the start of the Christmas shopping season.
This year, retailers are responding to the criticism by opening even earlier on Thanksgiving evening — and a handful are even planning to be open all day.
The lesson of 2011 was clear: earlier shopping hours were good for the top line. Retailers said their midnight openings drew a younger crowd who wanted to party — and shop — late rather than get up early. At Macy’s Herald Square store in Manhattan, for instance, about 9,000 people were in line as it opened, compared with 7,000 for an early Friday opening the previous year.
“We got customer feedback that says, ‘I like to shop earlier so I can go to bed earlier,’ so as we looked at the balance of being competitive in the marketplace and being customer-centric,” said Duncan Mac Naughton, chief merchandising and marketing officer for Wal-Mart, which will put its first doorbuster items on sale at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving.
Just a few years ago, most major stores opened about 5 a.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving, usually the busiest shopping day of the year. This year, not only are the openings scattered across two days, but several retailers are offering staggered deals — some items at a certain time, other items a few hours later, still others over the weekend.
“We had Black Friday pretty cleanly teed up, with, here are the ads, here are the stores opening Friday morning, pick a retailer and go,” said Brad Wilson, who lists Black Friday ads at BradsDeals. “Now you have this multiday affair, and you can go at different times.”
Kmart has perhaps the most confusing hours. Like last year, it will open at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving. It will then stay open until 4 p.m., close from 4 to 8 p.m., reopen at 8, stay open until 3 a.m. on Friday, close from 3 to 5 a.m., reopen at 5, and then stay open until 11 p.m. on Friday.
Sears, which was closed on Thanksgiving last year, will open at 8 p.m. on Thursday night.
Sears Holdings, which owns both Sears and Kmart, said in a news release that customers wanted “more flexible Black Friday in-store shopping times.”
Lord & Taylor was closed last year on Thanksgiving, but this year it will be open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Walmart, which is generally open 24 hours anyway, is offering the first deals on Thanksgiving two hours earlier than last year. Mr. Mac Naughton said customer feedback and competitiveness with other retailers were factors.
Target, which last year got angry feedback from employees when it opened at midnight on Thanksgiving, this year moved it up three hours to 9 p.m., according to a holiday circular posted online on Friday.
Some workers object to Thanksgiving Day holiday openings, saying it cuts into family time. It shows “disregard for all of our families,” said Mary Pat Tifft, a Walmart employee in Kenosha, Wis., who is part of the union-backed OUR Walmart group, in a statement. But in many cases, it can also mean a higher hourly pay rate for holiday duty.
Now, the handful of retailers who are holding off until midnight on Thanksgiving suddenly look like the respectful ones.
“We believe that Thanksgiving Day is a time to spend and celebrate with family, and we want our associates to do so,” said Jim Sluzewski, a spokesman for Macy’s, which will open at midnight. Kohl’s will also open at midnight Thanksgiving, as will Best Buy, according to a circular posted online Friday.
Companies are also sprinkling sales throughout the weekend in an effort to keep traffic coming.
After its initial 8 p.m. sale, Walmart will put another set of items on sale at 10, and a third group at 5 a.m. Friday. “Whether they like to start early, stay up late, or go to bed early and get up early, we’re going to have three different events that will meet their needs,” Mr. Mac Naughton said. Then, Walmart will “kick off a weekend full of savings with more specialty offers” on items like jewelry, sewing machines and tools.
Target, after its 9 p.m. doorbuster special, will offer a free gift card for purchases made between 4 a.m. and noon on Friday, according to the circular posted on Mr. Wilson’s site and elsewhere. (Target declined to confirm the authenticity of the circular, saying it had not yet publicly announced holiday details.)
Sears will do a second wave of promotions at 4 a.m. on Friday, eight hours after it opens. Sports Authority will do some doorbusters at its midnight opening, then put numerous others on sale over the weekend. And Ace Hardware is offering different percentages or dollars off, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Mr. Wilson of BradsDeals says the retailers may be intentionally trying to confuse shoppers. “They’re trying to introduce more variables,” he said, to make it harder to figure out exactly which is the best deal.
All of the twists and turns, though, may just end up frustrating consumers.
Only 6 percent of shoppers plan to hit stores on Thanksgiving night, and just under one-fifth will go to stores on Black Friday, according to a new survey from Ipsos and Offers.com, accurate within three percentage points.
At least one major retailer is going against the grain. Sam’s Club, which last year opened at 5 a.m. on Black Friday, this year is opening two hours later, at 7 a.m., and offering coffee and pastries to shoppers.
“If they want to chill out on Thanksgiving day and not go out and get into the rat race of everything, they can do that,” said Todd Harbaugh, executive vice president for operations at Sam’s Club. “Our members said they want hassle-free shopping.”
Surgeons and a 40-member medical team in Philadelphia have successfully completed the separation of 8-month-old twin girls who were joined at the lower chest and abdomen, according to the hospital where the procedure took place.
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia said the seven-hour operations were completed on Wednesday. It was the 21st time surgeons at the hospital had separated a set of conjoined twins. Other hospitals have also reported successful separations.
The twins, Allison June and Amelia Lee Tucker, of Adams, N.Y., shared a chest wall, diaphragm, pericardium and liver, according to a hospital statement.
Led by Dr. Holly L. Hedrick, pediatric general, thoracic and fetal surgeon, a multidisciplinary team of about 40 members, including physicians, nurses and other medical staff from general surgery, plastic and reconstructive surgery, cardiac surgery, anesthesiology, radiology, and neonatology, participated in the separation.
“Like all separations of conjoined twins, this was a very complex surgery, but it went very well and as expected,” said Hedrick, who led the team that worked on the patients. “Allison and Amelia are currently recovering in the Newborn/Infant Intensive Care Unit (N/IICU) and will be monitored closely by CHOP’s expert clinical teams for the duration of their recovery,” she stated.
“We expect that, with this complex surgery behind them, Allison and Amelia will receive the care, therapy and support to allow them to live full, healthy and independent lives,” Hedrick stated.
Conjoined twins occur once in every 50,000 to 60,000 births, and most are stillborn. About three-quarters of such twins are female and are joined at least partially in the chest, sharing organs. Chances of successful surgery and survival are greater if the twins have separate sets of organs, the hospital said.
The Tucker family has not commented. The hospital asked the media to respect the family’s privacy.
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Parts for the rocket engines of NASA’s Space Launch System will be created using a method of 3D-printing known as selective laser melting.
The space agency is taking advantage of new technology to help improve safety and save money as it builds the SLS — a heavy-lift launch vehicle intended to facilitate long-duration deep space exploration, including trips to near-Earth asteroids and, ultimately, to Mars.
“It’s the latest in direct metal 3D printing — we call it additive manufacturing now,” says Ken Cooper, leader of the Advanced Manufacturing Team at the Marshall Centre. “It takes fine layers of metal powder and welds those together with a laser beam to fuse a three-dimensional object from a computer file.”
Although not all of the rocket parts can be generated using the current SLM process, it can be used to improve the overall safety of the system by creating the geometrically complex pieces which would normally require a lot of welding.
According to Andy Hardin, the integration hardware lead for the project, “since we’re not welding parts together, the parts are structurally stronger and more reliable, which creates an overall safer vehicle.”
The other benefit of using the 3D printing technology is its ability to reduce costs. Switching to SLM as a manufacturing method means that the rocket parts can be created faster and more cheaply, saving NASA millions of dollars.
After testing, the parts are expected to be used in the Space Launch System‘s test flight, scheduled for 2017.
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict already has 1.2 billion “followers” in the standard sense of the word but he soon will have another type when he enters what for any 85 year old is the brave new world of Twitter.
Vatican officials say the pontiff, who is known not to love computers and still writes most of his speeches by hand, will have his own handle by the end of the year.
“It will be an officially verified channel,” said a Vatican official.
Primarily the tweets will come from the contents of his weekly general audience, Sunday blessings and homilies on major Church holidays. They will also include reaction to major world events, such as natural disasters.
The leader of the world’s 1.2 billion or so Roman Catholics will not, of course, write the tweets himself, but he will sign off on them before they are sent in his name.
But even divine intervention might not help squeeze the gist of a papal encyclical, which can run to more than 140 pages, into 140 characters.
Those tweets will probably be limited to a link to a url with the entire document.
The papal handle has not yet been disclosed but it is widely expected to be @BenedictusPPXVI, his name and title in Latin.
The pope has given a qualified blessing to social networking.
In a document issued last year, he said the possibilities of new media and social networks offered “a great opportunity”, but warned of the risks of depersonalisation, alienation, self-indulgence, and the dangers of having more virtual friends than real ones.
In 2009, a new Vatican website, www.pope2you.net, went live, offering an application called “The pope meets you on Facebook”, and another allowing the faithful to see the pontiff’s speeches and messages on their iPhones or iPods.
The Vatican famously got egg on its face in 2009 when it was forced to admit that, if it had surfed the web more, it might have known that a traditionalist bishop whose excommunication was lifted had for years been a Holocaust denier.
(Reporting By Philip Pullella; editing by Mike Collett-White)
The latest clinical trial of the world’s leading malaria vaccine candidate produced disappointing results on Friday. The infants it was given to had only about a third fewer infections than a control group.
But researchers said they wanted to press on, assuming they keep getting financial support, because the number of children who die of malaria is so great that even an inefficient vaccine can save thousands of lives.
Three shots of the vaccine, known as RTS, S or Mosquirix and produced by GlaxoSmithKline, gave babies fewer than 12 weeks old 31 percent protection against detectable malaria and 37 percent protection against severe malaria, according to an announcement by the company at a vaccines conference in Cape Town.
Last year, in a trial in children up to 17 months old, the same vaccine gave 55 percent protection against detectable malaria and 47 percent against severe malaria.
The new trial “is less than we’d hoped for,” Moncef Slaoui, Glaxo’s chairman of research and development said in a telephone interview. “But if a million babies were vaccinated, we would prevent 260,000 cases of malaria a year. This is a disease that kills 655,000 babies a year — 31 percent of that is a very large number.”
The company, which has already spent more than $300 million on the vaccine, wants to keep forging ahead, he said, “but it is not just our decision.”
It also depends on the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, which has put more than $200 million of its Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation financing into the vaccine, and on the World Health Organization, which has helped talk seven African countries into allowing the vaccine to be tested on their children.
The Gates Foundation declined to say how much money it was ultimately prepared to spend on an imperfect vaccine; this set of trials is set to go into 2014.
“The efficacy came back lower than we had hoped, but developing a vaccine against a parasite is a very hard thing to do,” Bill Gates said in a prepared statement. “The trial is continuing, and we look forward to getting more data to help determine whether and how to deploy this vaccine.”
All the families in the trial were given insecticide-impregnated mosquito nets and encouraged to use them; 86 percent did, so the vaccine worked despite other anti-malaria measures.
RTS, S contains a protein found on the parasite’s surface that provokes an immune reaction. It was first identified decades ago by two New York University scientists, Ruth and Victor Nussenzweig. The vaccine was developed by Glaxo in Belgium and initially tested on American volunteers by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. When the Gates Foundation began focusing on global health in the early part of this century, it was one of the first projects the foundation adopted. Different ways to make the vaccine more effective, including adding different boosters and giving more shots, are being experimented with. Other vaccines using different ways to provoke an immune reaction exist, but none are as far along in clinical trials.
Like an H.I.V. vaccine, one against malaria has proved an elusive goal. The parasite morphs several times, exhibiting different surface proteins as it goes from mosquito saliva into blood and then into and out of the liver. Also, even the best natural “vaccine” — catching the disease itself — is not very effective. While one bout of measles immunizes a child for life, it usually takes several bouts of malaria to confer even partial immunity. Pregnancy can cause women to stop being immune, and immunity can fade out if someone moves away from a malarial area — presumably because they no longer get “boosters” from repeated mosquito bites.
Victims in the Tucson shooting rampage will get a chance to confront gunman Jared Lee Loughner, who will be sentenced Thursday for killing six and wounding 13 people, including then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
Giffords and her retired astronaut husband Mark Kelly are expected to be in court and make a statement before Loughner is sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Larry A. Burns in Tucson. Other victims are also expected to appear.
Giffords was making a routine political appearance mid-morning on Jan. 8, 2011 at a supermarket parking lot in her Tucson district when Loughner opened fire, shooting her in the head. Passers-by rushed to help Giffords and wrestled Loughner to the ground. Before Loughner was subdued, he fired 31 more shots.
TIMELINE: Deadliest mass shootings in the U.S.
The nation then waited as doctors worked to save Giffords’ life in what has been described as a miraculous recovery. She then turned to her long-term and inspirational rehabilitation. Her first visit to Congress before stepping down from office led to a prolonged ovation from her colleagues.
The facts in the case were never in doubt. Loughner was the only suspect and the question focused on whether he would avoid the death penalty because of his mental health. After the shooting, Loughner was diagnosed with schizophrenia and underwent forcible psychotropic drug treatments.
Burns ruled that Loughner, now 24, was able to understand the charges against him, which eventually paved the way for a plea bargain designed to ensure that he would spend the rest of his life in prison without possibility of parole.
Three months ago, Loughner pleaded guilty to 19 federal charges. The agreement includes the dismissal of 30 other charges and a sentence of seven consecutive life terms, followed by 140 years in prison.
Giffords and some of the other victims said at the time that they welcomed the agreement because it meant that they could avoid a long and emotionally challenging court process that would have demanded they relive the events of that day.
Christina Pietz, the court-appointed psychologist who treated Loughner, had warned that although he was competent to plead guilty, he remained severely mentally ill and that he could deteriorate if forced to stand trial. Loughner, who has been in a prison medical facility in Springfield, Mo., for more than a year, is expected to serve his sentence in prison wards for the mentally ill.
Other victims are expected to make comments. Rep. Ron Barber, a former top aide to Giffords who replaced his boss in Congress, is expected to issue a statement. Barber is still awaiting word on whether he was re-elected to the seat on Tuesday.
Thursday’s proceedings end the federal case against Loughner. Pima County officials are still deciding whether to bring state charges.
Killed in the attack were: John Roll, 63, presiding U.S. District Court judge for Arizona; Gabe Zimmerman, 30, one of Giffords' staffers; Christina-Taylor Green, a 9-year-old attending Giffords' event with an adult neighbor; Dorwan Stoddard, 76; Dorothy Morris, 76; and Phyllis Schneck, 79, three retirees at the event.
In addition to Giffords and Barber, the wounded were: Mavy Stoddard (Dorwan's wife); George Morris (Dorothy's husband); Susan Hileman (Christina-Taylor's neighbor); Pam Simon, another Giffords staffer; and event attendees Bill Badger, Kenneth Dorushka, Eric Fuller, Randy Gardner, Mary Reed, James Tucker and Kenneth Veeder.
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Opera has updated its flagship desktop web browser to version 12.10, which offers several speed improvements, new goodies for web developers and better integration with Apple’s latest Retina screen laptops.
To grab a copy of Opera 12.10 beta for Windows, Mac or Linux, head on over to the Opera download page.
Among Opera 12.10′s standout features is baked-in support for the new SPDY network standard, which offers faster, more secure connections to websites that support it, including big names like Gmail and Twitter.
Opera 12.10 now supports the latest Web Sockets implementation, which fixes the security flaws that previously forced Opera to remove Web Sockets support. Web Sockets are back on by default. Another web standards improvement in Opera 12.10 is support for more “unprefixed” CSS rules, including transitions, transforms, gradients, and animations, all of which will now work without the -o- prefix.
Web developers starting to play with the new CSS Flexible Box Layout Module syntax can now test layouts in Opera 12.10. Check out CSS guru Chris Coyer’s earlier rundown of what’s changed recently with Flexbox.
There’s good news for Mac users in this release — Opera 12.10 is the first to support Apple’s high-res display, making it well worth the update if you’ve got one of the new Retina MacBook Pros. Other Mac improvements include support for new features in OS X Mountain Lion, like the new Notification Center and the built-in content sharing through any social network accounts you’ve set up.
Windows 8 users will be happy to know that basic touch support now works in Windows 8. It’s nowhere near as nice as what you’ll find in IE 10 or Firefox, but it’s a start.
LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister David Cameron warned on Thursday that speculation about the identity of an unidentified member of his ruling Conservative party accused of sexually abusing children could turn into a witch-hunt against gay people.
Cameron, who leads a troubled two-party coalition, ordered an investigation this week after a victim of child sexual abuse in Wales said a prominent Conservative political figure had abused him during the 1970s.
The claims, which follow the unmasking of late BBC star presenter Jimmy Savile as one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders, have stoked concern that a powerful pedophile ring may have operated in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s.
“I have heard all sorts of names bandied around and what then tends to happen is of course that everyone then sits around and speculates about people, some of whom are alive, some of whom are dead,” Cameron said during an ITV television interview.
“It is very important that anyone who has got any information about any pedophile no matter how high up in the country go to the police,” he said.
Britain’s interior minister warned lawmakers this week that if they named suspected child abusers in parliament they risked jeopardizing future trials.
MPs benefit from “parliamentary privilege” – meaning they can speak inside parliament freely without fear of legal action on a host of legally sensitive issues that might otherwise attract lawsuits.
Reports of child abuse have provoked fevered speculation on the Internet about the identity of the Conservative figure from the era of Margaret Thatcher, prime minister from 1979 to 1990.
When the ITV interviewer passed Cameron a piece of paper with the names of people identified on the Internet as being alleged child abusers, Cameron said:
“There is a danger if we are not careful that this could turn into a sort of witch-hunt particularly against people who are gay.”
“I am worried about the sort of thing you are doing right now – giving me a list of names you have taken off the Internet,” Cameron said.
The BBC aired a program last week in which Steven Messham, one of hundreds of victims of sexual abuse at children’s care homes in Wales over two decades, said he had been sexually abused by a prominent Conservative political figure.
However, the BBC reporter said he could not name the figure because there was “simply not enough evidence to name names”.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
Whether it’s George Washington’s teeth or Bill Clinton’s former hamburger habit, Americans have always been fascinated by the health of the president and presidential candidates.
With help from the Web site DoctorZebra, which has compiled an exhaustive list of the medical history of American presidents, we’ve created an Election Day quiz to test your knowledge of presidential fitness and health.
Shares on Wall Street edged lower on Thursday as investors continued to adjust for upcoming negotiations over the so-called fiscal cliff, overshadowing a batch of positive economic data.
Investors worry that if no deal is reached in Congress over the fiscal cliff — some $600 billion in spending cuts and tax increases set to kick in early next year — it could derail the American economic recovery.
Data showed that the United States trade deficit narrowed in September as exports increased, suggesting that the economy expanded more than previously estimated in the third quarter.
Also on Thursday, the government reported than fewer Americans than expected filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week. The jobs data was distorted by the effects from Hurricane Sandy, though it was not clear if the storm increased or decreased claims.
“We’ve seen a big spike in the trend of the jobs market in the past few months,” said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of Sarhan Capital in New York. “We should react positively to this.”
In afternoon trading, Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down 0.3 percent, as was the Dow Jones industrial average. The Nasdaq composite was 0.5 percent lower.
On Wednesday, equities slumped more than 2 percent, as investor focus returned to Europe’s economic troubles and the looming tax hikes and budget cuts in the United States.
McDonald’s shares dropped 1.4 percent after the company reported a 1.8 percent drop in October sales at established restaurants around the world, its first monthly sales fall since March 2003.
Qualcomm reported quarterly revenue late Wednesday that beat expectations, sending shares up more than 6 percent.
Whole Foods Market reported earnings that met expectations, but its shares were down 4.9 percent.
President Obama celebrates his victory Wednesday, and plans a meeting with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
President Barack Obama has won re-election. The Republican Party faces a reckoning about its identity. In Florida, however, the election goes on.
The state whose dysfunctional voting methods traumatized the nation 12 years ago, is still up in the air. The state was supposed to have been a major presidential battleground, but the morning after election day, it was still a question mark.
Instead of butterfly ballots and hanging chads, the problem appears to have been caused by a long ballot, high turnout and some mechanical failures.
Even the president, in his victory speech in Chicago, acknowledged the problem:
“I want to thank every American who participated in this election, whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time--by the way, we have to fix that.”
PHOTOS: America goes to the polls
On Wednesday morning, all precincts in Florida had finished reporting, and the totals gave an edge of more than 46,000 votes to Obama, about half of one percent. Even without Florida’s 29 electoral votes, Obama accrued far more than the 270 he needed to secure re-election. (Without Florida, the total was 303 electoral votes for the president to GOP challenger Mitt Romney’s 206.)
The worst of the problems occurred in Miami-Dade, the state's largest county. Long lines began before the polls opened Tuesday and never let up; when the election was called for Obama, people were still standing in line at dozens of precincts. The Miami Herald reported that the last Miami-Dade voter finished just after 1 a.m.
A number of counties had not yet counted their absentee ballots. In Miami-Dade, elections workers still had to count 20,000 absentees. In Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, there were about 9,000 absentees yet to be counted. Elections officials said it would be Wednesday afternoon before the results would be final.
John Card, an attorney heading the Elections Protections monitoring effort in Miami-Dade on Tuesday, said voting actually went smoothly in much of the county. But in some precincts, he said, it was a "debacle."
Voters faced a ballot filled with complicated constitutional amendments and local issues. For some, it was 12 pages long. In some crowded precincts, scanners malfunctioned. In others, poll workers were confused about the state's new rules on address changes, Card said. Some voters were told they were ineligibleto vote, others may have been purged from rolls improperly.
LIVE: Presidential election results
"I do think they were a little overwhelmed in some places," he said. "A number of people got frustrated and left," said Card, whose organization is a coalition of advocacy groups. "The system played out in a way that denied them the right to vote."
The president’s victory may not have packed the same emotional punch as his historic 2008 win as the first African-American to win the presidency. But early Wednesday morning, as he stood on a Chicago stage to address the nation, he seemed to reconjure the conciliatory, high-minded politician the country first got to know four years ago.
That man—with the inspiring speeches and the ability to make Americans believe in their better angels--had sometimes disappeared under the fatigue, stress or just plain aversion to the brutal campaign process.
The president attempted to set a peaceable tone for a country inflamed by hot partisan sentiment, stoked by the stunning amounts of money that had flowed unimpeded into the race.
Though his first term accomplishments, such as health care reform and a stimulus bill that most economists say helped stave off a second Great Depression, were accomplished with almost no Republican support, he vowed to be a better bi-partisan in his second term.
“I am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together: reducing our deficit; reforming our tax code; fixing our immigration system; freeing ourselves from foreign oil.”
PHOTOS: President Obama’s past
He also said he planned to meet with Romney “to talk about where we can work together to move this country forward.”
Before the president spoke, Romney, 65, the former Massachusetts governor, had conceded the election in a gracious but wistful speech before downcast supporters in Boston.
“I so wish that I’d been able to fulfill your hopes to consider as a course in a different direction,” Romney said in his brief speech, “but the nation chose another leader and so Ann and I join with you to earnestly pray for him and this great nation.”
Meanwhile, in Washington, Republicans began to grapple with the party’s future. The party kept control of the House, but despite its hopes for much of the election cycle did not wrest control of the Senate from Democrats. Montana incumbent Jon Tester was declared the victor over Republican Denny Rehberg Wednesday morning, saving for Democrats one of Republicans’ biggest pick-up hopes.
With Romney vanquished, the party’s putative leaders are its top legislators, House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
But Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, often touted as the ideological leader of the party’s conservative wing, will have solidified his importance as the GOP grapples with its ideological future, as well as with the demographic changes that contributed to its failure to recapture the White House.
PHOTOS: Mitt Romney’s past
In a statement released after midnight Tuesday, Boehner congratulated the president, noted that the Republicans have maintained their majority in the House of Representatives, and cautioned the president.
“If there is a mandate,” said Boehner, “it is a mandate for both parties to find common ground and take steps together to help our economy grow and create jobs, which is critical to solving our debt.”
