To the Editor:

“Jenny, listen to this.”

I looked quickly at my friend as my car picked up speed and already she seemed fast asleep as we drove toward Sunday church services. I abruptly realized my plan to make my friend a captive listener might not work.

“Jennie, wake up, ya hear? You’ve got to help me figure out this nutty dream I had the other night.”

“Whaa — oh, yeah. Sure. I'm sorry — must have nodded off there.”

Only slightly encouraged, I began my story of how this small bird flies into a White House office through a fifth-floor window someone had opened to let in some fresh spring air.

The little light-colored bird perched on the back of a nearby chair behind a well preserved desk. The newcomer looked around, startled when she saw a man in a chair close by, with his chin near his chest, snoring.

“Oh, I better not wake him,” the bird thought. “He must be working so hard at doing a good job, he has to nap.”

A half-eaten turkey sandwich on the left side of the desk repulsed her but the bread crumbs did not.  She had been flying for days and nights. The crumbs beckoned her.

All of a sudden, the man in the suit looked up and his molten face with its deep ridges and grooves and cold blue eyes fixed right on her.

“Robert,” she ventured. “Um, would you mind if I shared some of your lunch with you?”

He leaned forward, the grooves and ridges moving like lava and responded: “Mr. Kennedy, if you please. See that name plaque there? You need to address me correctly.

“OK, Robert,” the bird Katie replied. “Robert,” Katie continued, now eating the crumbs ravenously, forgetting all decorum, and almost forgetting to tell Robert why she was there.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke again. “Why are you here?” he inquired.

Katie then proceeded with her narrative of the big storm that blew her up from Texas, away from all the sad news about all the children getting sick from the measles and she thought there might even have been some deaths among those children and she told Robert she thought if he were a God-fearing man he would not let one more child get sick or die.

“My dear,” Robert stated, “I doubt, really doubt you have the education, experience, and expertise to make the difficult decisions that anyone in my position has to make. Here at the Department of Health and Human Services we are cutting waste and fraud daily. We are saving the taxpayers lots of money by, well, yes, cutting some services to millions of people.

“There will be pain and suffering, little bird, but I have found in my experience that a lot of people in this world are the cause of their own diseases and suffering. Big government’s role as the big nanny must end. Some people will pay a price. That’s not for me to decide. I just do what I’m supposed to do.”

With Robert’s monologue at its seeming end, Katie figured it was time to move on and warn whomever she could with her singing that the bridge over roiling waters is going down.

“That was it, Jennie. That was it. What do you think? What do you —” but Jennie was fast asleep, once again.

Betty Head

Altamont