http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/index/ The website of Bruce Frankel, author of "What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life? True Stories of Finding Success, Passion, and New Meaning in the Second Half of Life" en bruce@brucefrankel.net Copyright 2010 2010-09-08T02:47:22+00:00 http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/still_working_morris_wilkinson_91_sally_gordon_101_and_an_increasing_number/ http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/still_working_morris_wilkinson_91_sally_gordon_101_and_an_increasing_number/#When:02:47:22Z “The preparation before work each morning starts in a methodical fashion. By 6 a.m., Morris Wilkinson, a 91-year-old letter carrier, irons his postal worker uniform—a crisp, collared shirt and gray slacks—a habit he formed while in the Marines during World War II. He enjoys a hearty breakfast of eggs or pancakes with his wife. He shines his black shoes. And he’s off to work,” arriving at a Birmingham, Alabama post office by 7 a.m. as he has for six decades. “I’d rather work than be idle,” he said one morning before heading off on his route to deliver mail to 550 families in his white mail truck. So began CNN’s story today taking note of the fact that across the nation, more men and women—even in their 90s and 100s—are choosing to forgo retirement and staying at their jobs longer and seeking new employment later in life. The reasons, of course, are not always voluntary. “It’s a combination of economics and just seeing they bring a lot of value to the workplace in terms of skills and ability,” says Deborah Russell, director of workforce issues with AARP, told the network. By 2012, nearly one-fifth of the U.S. work force will be older than 55, the AARP reported. As they prepare to retire, baby boomers likely will continue to work well beyond the traditional retirement age of 65, Russell said. While a daily job can provide older individuals with a schedule, alleviate boredom and sometimes improve their physical health, many older people also are continuing to work to supplement their retirement savings or help provide extra money for their families. For some, like Sally Gordon, 101, of Lincoln, Nebraska, it’s a preference. Gordon, assistant sergeant at arms for the Nebraska Legislature, was recognized in August by Experience Works as America’s Outstanding Oldest Worker for 2010. She says she likes the extra income. Besides she’s had a steady job since the 1920s and as long as the state wants to pay her to continue to work, she’ll be happy to oblige. “I used to be a model, and now I’m a Model T,” Gordon jokes. “I hope there’s a lot of mileage left.” See the entire CNN story @ http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/09/07/older.workers.100s.90s/index.html?hpt=C1 News 2010-09-08T02:47:22+00:00 http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/nobel_winner_paul_greengard_84_identifies_potential_key_to_halting_alz/ http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/nobel_winner_paul_greengard_84_identifies_potential_key_to_halting_alz/#When:00:17:39Z Scientist Paul Greengard first became interested in Alzheimer’s twenty-five years ago when his father-in-law developed the disease. Now, the 84-year-old researcher, awarded a Noble Prize in 2000 for his work on how brain cells communicate, may have found a target for drugs that could slow or stop the progress of the now untreatable disease. Greengard, who still works seven days a week in his Rockefeller University laboratory in New York City, recently identified a new protein that is key to the development of beta amyloid, the destructive plaque that builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s and is a hallmark of the disorder, according to a study published today in Nature. “This really is a new approach,” said Dr. Paul Aisen, of the University of California, San Diego, told Gina Kolata of The New York Times. “The work is very strong, and it is very convincing.” Dr. Aisen directs a program financed by the National Institute on Aging to conduct clinical trials of treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. In Greengard’s lab, when scientists knocked out a gene that produces the new protein, called γ-secretase activating protein (GSAP), mice used in the experiment developed fewer amyloid plaques.  GSAP works through a mechanism involving its interactions with γ-secretase, an enzyme that chops up the amyloid precursor protein, a large molecule produced naturally in the body and found in many different types of cells. “Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating disorder for which there are no satisfactory treatments,” says Greengard, Vincent Astor Professor and director of the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research at Rockefeller. “Our findings reveal that γ-secretase activating protein is a potential target for a new class of anti-amyloid therapies.” While the discovery is exciting researchers recently deflated by setbacks in the research of anti-Alzheimer’s drugs, that the finding comes out of his lab will surprise few who know Greengard, who walks to work each day with his Bermese mountain dog, Alpha. Born in New York City in 1925, Greengard’s Jewish mother, Pearl Meister, died in childbirth. After his father’s remarriage, Greengard was raised as an Episcopalian and denied awareness of his mother’ family or his Jewish heritage, which he discovered later in life. He used his Nobel Prize money to create the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize, to honor women scientists and combat discrimination against women in science. Self-depricating, at the time he announced the prize, he said before the Nobel Prize his greatest previous prize came from winning a Boy Scout potato sack race. During World War II, he served in the United States Navy as an electronics technician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology working on an early warning system against Japanese kamikaze planes. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1948 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics, but chose to pursue biophysics in graduate school because post-war physics research was focusing on nuclear weapons. While studying for his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University, a lecture by Alan Hodgkin, a Nobel Prize winner in 1963, inspired him to begin work on the molecular and cellular function of neurons. Until now, scientists have been searching for ways to reduce amyloid-β production in Alzheimer’s patients by blocking γ-secretase, but most γ-secretase inhibitors also block the cleavage of an important immune system molecule called Notch. Notch plays a pivotal role in the development of blood-forming organs and the immune system. Earlier research by Greengard and his colleagues showed that Gleevec, a drug used to treat leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumors, successfully inhibited the ability of γ-secretase to form amyloid-β without affecting the Notch pathway. In the new study, led by Gen He, a research associate in Greengard’s lab, the researchers showed that GSAP stimulates production of amyloid-β in cell lines, and that reducing GSAP reduces amyloid-β. Unfortunately, the Gleevec molecule does not cross the blood-brain barrier, the gatekeeper that prevents some substances in the blood from entering the brain. Greengard, however, believes that it will be possible to design drugs that target GSAP but do not have this limitation. “Anti-amyloid therapeutic drugs represent a valid approach to treating Alzheimer’s disease, but their inability to accumulate in the brain has limited their usefulness,” says Greengard, who is head of the Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience. “The development of compounds that work like Gleevec, but have the ability to pass the blood-brain barrier and target GSAP, could revolutionize the treatment of this disease.” Neuroscience, News 2010-09-03T00:17:39+00:00 http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/warren_buffet_upgrades_forecast_turns_80_predicts_hell_work_past_100/ http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/warren_buffet_upgrades_forecast_turns_80_predicts_hell_work_past_100/#When:13:46:42Z As Warren Buffet celebrates his 80th birthday today, the “Oracle of Omaha” is also applying to himself the principles that have made him a master investor. Once again, he’s betting on intrinsic value and longevity: This time, his own. While talk of who will succeed Buffet as the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway continues to ramp up, he has revised the outlook he offered shareholders in 2007. Back then, based on actuarial tables, he figured he’d hang around until at least 88. Now, he tells Deal Journal, “I plan to work past 100, but to do so I may have to learn to think outside the box.” Meanwhile, Buffett’s followers say he is only getting better with age, writes Serena Ng in today’s Wall Street Journal. Because he loves his work, “Buffet has no intention of stepping down.” The return on his investments, including taking positions in Geico, Benjamin Moore, See’s Candies, Dairy Queen, and NetJets, must make his work easy to love. An investment of just $1,000 into Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, would be worth millions today. The relationship between his food choices and longevity is harder to figure. Well known for his love of hamburgers, Cherry Cokes, hash browns, in The Snowball he tells his biographer Alice Schroeder, “Broccoli, asparagus, and Brussels sprouts look to me like Chinese food crawling around on a plate.  Cauliflower almost makes me sick.  I eat carrots reluctantly.  I don’t like sweet potatoes.  I don’t even want to be close to a rhubarb, it makes me retch.” But last year, he said he had reformed. In answer to the advice from a New Jersey nutritional dentist who encouraged him to eat more healthy food and take nutritional supplements, he claimed in the Omaha World-Journal: “My diet, though far from standard, is somewhat better than usually portrayed. I have a wonderful doctor who nudges me in your direction every time I see him.  All in all, I’ve enjoyed remarkably good health — largely because of genes, of course — but also, I think, because I enjoy life so much every day.”  When his doctor told him that he had to either change his diet or exercise, he picked “the lesser of two evils,” he said.  Of course, I would be quick to point out that it’s not really a choice. Long-term well being depends on both. And investing an hour a day in exercise is known to offer the kind of long-term returns he appreciates. So far, though, Buffett has shown no signs of ill health. “But he has acknowledged there may come a time when his mental faculties begin to fade,” writes Ng. “He said he expects Bill Gates— a longtime friend, bridge partner and member of the Berkshire board—to tell him if it is time to step down.” In his letter to shareholders a few years ago, he also noted that when a person’s abilities decline so usually do their powers of self-assessment. “Someone else often needs to blow the whistle.” News 2010-08-30T13:46:42+00:00 http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/the_writers_voice_interview_how_to_find_fulfillment/ http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/the_writers_voice_interview_how_to_find_fulfillment/#When:13:52:09Z Yesterday, Francesca Rheannon’s interview with me aired on her wonderful radio show The Writer’s Voice. It was a pleasure to speak with her a little about writer Harry Bernstein, erotic art collector Naomi Wilzig, filmmaker Alidra Solday, and dancer Thomas Dwyer, among others. My interview is paired with a fascinating interview with Susan Whitbourne about The Search for Fulfillment: Revolutionary New Research that Reveals the Secret to Long-Term Happiness, her book about her 40-year study which has tracked a group of nearly 200 Baby Boomers from college to retirement. Take a listen: Writer’s Voice The purpose of Whitbourne’s study was to discover what factors influence life direction and fulfillment. She says that people generally follow one of five life pathways:  Meandering Way, Downward Slope, Straight and Narrow Way, Triumphant Trail, or Authentic Road. In the interview, Whitbourne, who is a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, speaks of some of the troubles people get into following “the meandering way”—constantly moving between jobs, locations, and relationships, ever unsatisfied—as well as the surprising amount of unhappiness she found among some of her most outwardly successful subjects who had followed “the straight and narrow way”—the rigid path laid out early to please others. While perhaps it comes as no surprise that fulfillment is found following the “authentic way”—when how one lives is aligned with one’s inner values, it’s interesting to hear that a careful study of behavior over four decades bears out the same truth I discovered writing the stories of people like Dana Dakin, Thomas Dwyer, Loretta Thayer, Robert Iadeluca, Betty Reid Soskin and the others in What Should I Do With The Rest Of My Life? In the current issue of AARP, the magazine, Jamie Katz writes about other late-bloomers who found ways to release their inner talents in his article Find Your Inner Genius. “We never lose the potential to learn new things as we grow older,” says Gay Hanna, head of the National Center for Creative Aging. “In fact, we can master new skills and be creative all our lives.” Environmental factors and willpower are just as important as wiring. “Genes impact our lives,” says David Shenk, author of The Genius in All of Us, “but our lives also impact our genes—the brain changes shape according to the experiences it has.” 2010-08-26T13:52:09+00:00 http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/transformative_vocalist_abbey_lincoln_dies_at_80_asked_what_are_you_do/ http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/transformative_vocalist_abbey_lincoln_dies_at_80_asked_what_are_you_do/#When:14:49:08Z Abbey Lincoln, who died yesterday, at 80, knew as much as anyone how to reinvent herself with purpose and passion. After she met drummer Max Roach, The first here, “What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?”,  teaches what a difference a preposition makes. After she met drummer Max Roach, she changed herself from a cutely sexy chanteuse in a Marilyn Monroe dress to a singular voice of civil rights advocacy.  In the 1960s, she became a movie actress opposite Sidney Poitier.  Approaching age 60, she emerged anew for a long final chapter as a movingly expressive singer and influentially introspective songwriter. She could pry the heart loose with a phrase. The best tribute is to listen to her: The first here, “What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?”,  teaches what a difference a preposition makes. Abbey Lincoln : what are you doing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALhAmEhKqsQ Nate Chinen writes in The New York Times: Long recognized as one of jazz’s most arresting and uncompromising singers, Ms. Lincoln gained similar stature as a songwriter only over the last two decades. Her songs, rich in metaphor and philosophical reflection, provide the substance of “Abbey Sings Abbey,” an album released on Verve in 2007. As a body of work, the songs formed the basis of a three-concert retrospective presented by Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2002. Her singing style was unique, a combined result of bold projection and expressive restraint. Because of her ability to inhabit the emotional dimensions of a song, she was often likened to Billie Holiday, her chief influence. But Ms. Lincoln had a deeper register and a darker tone, and her way with phrasing was more declarative. “Her utter individuality and intensely passionate delivery can leave an audience breathless with the tension of real drama,” Peter Watrous wrote in The New York Times in 1989. “A slight, curling phrase is laden with significance, and the tone of her voice can signify hidden welts of emotion.” NYTimes Obit Abbey Lincoln 2010-08-15T14:49:08+00:00 http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/why_dance_to_maintain_everyday_competence_and_stay_fit_physically_and_menta/ http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/why_dance_to_maintain_everyday_competence_and_stay_fit_physically_and_menta/#When:19:47:28Z Why dance? Beyond the joy of bopping to rhythm and staying in shape, a growing tide of research has been pointing to dance’s ability to preserve mental fitness, too. Now, a new study suggests that following a regular schedule of dancing into old age has far-reaching effects that not only preserve cognitive, motor, and perceptual abilities, but is “a prime candidate for the preservation of everyday life competence of elderly individuals.” In recent years, dance has been used as a therapeutic tool for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, dementia, obesity in children, and patients with serious mental illness. Most previous studies have focused on its benefit to the cardiovascular health, muscle strengthening, posture, and balance among the elderly. Using PET scans, neuroscientists have previously shown that dancing activates many areas of the brain and elicits the interaction of wide-spread neural networks. Other studies have shown that repeated physical activities have the ability to reorganize the brain, otherwise known as neuroplasticity, into old age. “We here went one step further by hypothesizing that year-long dancing activity in an elderly population should promote general advantages including preservation of cognitive, motor and sensorimotor performance as well as perceptual abilities,” according to the study by researchers, led by Jan-Christoph Kattenstroth, at the Neural Plasticity Lab at the Institute for Neuroinformatics, Ruhr-University Bochum. They studied the impact on 24 amateur dancers, with an average age of 71 and an average of 16.5 years of regular ballroom dancing, compared with a sedentary group of 38 adults, of the same average age, with no record of sports or dancing activities. Neuroscience, dance 2010-08-10T19:47:28+00:00 http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/at_60_diana_nyad_waits_for_cuba_and_calm_seas_for_rematch_with_the_sea/ http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/at_60_diana_nyad_waits_for_cuba_and_calm_seas_for_rematch_with_the_sea/#When:18:55:09Z On the verge of turning 61, long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad is awaiting word from the Cuban government on whether she will be permitted to attempt what she failed to do 32 years ago: complete a 103-mile Cuba-to-Florida swim through shark-infested waters. 2010-08-05T18:55:09+00:00 http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/why_more_education_leads_to_fewer_signs_of_dementia_in_elderly/ http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/why_more_education_leads_to_fewer_signs_of_dementia_in_elderly/#When:21:41:23Z After more than a decade of puzzling over why people who continue their educations longer have a lower risk of developing dementia, researchers have come up with an answer. Do the brains of the more educated resist disease better? Nope. The answer is that people with more education cope better with changes in the brain associated with dementia, say researchers in England and Finland. Researchers, by examining the brains of 872 people who took part in three large aging studies, had concluded previously that each additional year of education results in an 11% decrease in the risk of developing dementia. But they had, until now, been unable to say definitively whether or not education—which is linked to higher socioeconomic status and healthier lifestyles—protects the brain against dementia. The new study, led by Professor Carol Brayne, an epidemiologist and public health physician at the University of Cambridge, shows people with different levels of education, in fact, have similar brain pathology. That is, disease that causes dementia was as prevalent the brains of people who had extensive educations as those who did not. The difference, say the researchers, is that those with more education are better able to compensate for the effects of dementia. Other researchers have long suspected that the ability of well-educated people to cope with damage to their brains, known as cognitive reserve, explained why, at a certain point, the better educated appeared to decline more rapidly if dementia appeared. They theorized that the disease process was probably already more advanced by the time the brains of those with more education could no longer cope. “Previous research has shown that there is not a one-to-one relationship between being diagnosed with dementia during life and changes seen in the brain at death,” said co-author Dr Hannah Keage of the University of Cambridge. “One person may show lots of pathology in their brain while another shows very little, yet both may have had dementia. Our study shows education in early life appears to enable some people to cope with a lot of changes in their brain before showing dementia symptoms.” This study, which uses data from the EClipSE collaboration—which combines three European population-based longitudinal studies—was able to pinpoint the relationship between education and dementia. The study strengthens the case for investment in early education, says Brayne. “This is hugely relevant to policy decisions about the importance of resource allocation between health and education.” The results of the study are published in the journal Brain. This post was adapted from material on Science Daily and my prior interviews with neuroscients. Further details of EClipSE are available at 2010-07-27T21:41:23+00:00 http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/music_rx_for_learning_and_the_brain_the_duke_of_uke_demonstrate_nina_k/ http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/music_rx_for_learning_and_the_brain_the_duke_of_uke_demonstrate_nina_k/#When:22:54:40Z Nothing attests to the hunger for music more than the ubiquitous sight of thin white wires draped like jewelry from ears and plugged into devices, playing who knows what: Bach? Beyonce? Bieber? Noticing the other day how many riders on the subway were wired up, I mused that it was no wonder Dr. Rudolfo Llinás, a giant of modern neuroscience, speaks of the the life of cells in the brain as looking “like a Riverdance perfomance,” with “some cells tapping in harmony and some … silent, creating myriads of patterns that represent the properties of the external world. Cells with the same rhythm form circuits to bind information in time.” Nor does it surprise that an explosion of studies in recent years has suggested that music on the brain is a good thing, good for learning and longevity. Consider this disparate group of musicians and their current ages: BB King, 84; Earl Scrugg, 86, Ravi Shankar, 90, ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards, 95; and Pinetop Perkins, 96; or the world’s oldest performing musician, Bill Tapia, the Duke of the Uke, 102, who appeared recently at the New York Uke Festival. Music and the Brain “A musician’s brain selectively enhances information-bearing elements in sound,” Kraus said. “In a beautiful interrelationship between sensory and cognitive processes, the nervous system makes associations between complex sounds and what they mean.” The efficient sound-to-meaning connections are important not only for music but for other aspects of communication, she said.   Musicians are more successful than non-musicians in learning to incorporate sound patterns for a new language into words, according to literature gathered in the Nature review. Children who are musically trained show stronger neural activation to pitch changes in speech and have a better vocabulary and reading ability than children who did not receive music training. And musicians trained to hear sounds embedded in a rich network of melodies and harmonies are primed to understand speech in a noisy background. They exhibit both enhanced cognitive and sensory abilities that give them a distinct advantage for processing speech in challenging listening environments compared with non-musicians. Children with learning disorders are particularly vulnerable to the deleterious effects of background noise, according to the article. “Music training seems to strengthen the same neural processes that often are deficient in individuals with developmental dyslexia or who have difficulty hearing speech in noise.” Their review,  Northwestern researchers conclude, argues for serious investing of resources in music training in schools accompanied with rigorous examinations of the effects of such instruction on listening, learning, memory, attention and literacy skills. (Part of this post was adapted from materials provided by by Northwestern University.)   Neuroscience 2010-07-23T22:54:40+00:00 http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/book/ http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/book/#When:02:42:10Z Gangster Al Capone’s relatives, real and sham, have recently been trying to take his notorious name to the bank. Family feuds have, as a result, been brewing. A memoir, ‘Uncle Al Capone,’ written by Deirdre Marie Capone, the great niece of the Chicago mobster once known as Public Enemy #1, is at the center of the controversy, according to a bylined story by David Kesmodel in today’s Wall Street Journal. But money is not her goal, says the 70-year-old Florida grandmother. After decades of research and at the insistence of her children, she hopes to renovate the family name by telling what it was really like growing up Capone.  “Just because you have Capone blood does not mean that you are monster. It really makes me angry,” she said. Al Capone, she says, was really just a “big kid” who enjoyed rolling on the carpet with her, soothed her when she fell from an apple tree, and taught her to swim in the pool of his house in Miami. It was there that Al Capone lived from the time of his release from prison in 1939—after serving eight years of his sentence for a conviction on charges of tax evasion—until his death from syphilis on Jan. 25, 1947, the date of Deirdre’s seventh birthday. Though government prosecutors believed Al Capone was responsible for as many as 500 murders, they never succeeded in forging a case against him on those charges. But the Capone name became synonymous with rampant brutality thanks to the ceaseless mythologizing of the press, says Dierdre Marie Capone. As a result, her father, Ralph, a graduate of Notre Dame and Loyola University Law School, committed suicide in 1950, at age 33. Otherwise, she says, he might have redeemed the family name the way that John F. Kennedy did the Kennedy name. “He was a brilliant man,” she said. “I want to give my father’s short life back to him.” For years, she used her father’s middle name, Gabriel, to hide her true identity.  She learned early that her real last name was a blight. Not long after Al Capone’s death, parents at the Catholic school she attended in Chicago discovered that she was a Capone from press reports of her first communion. From then on, they forbid their children to ever play with her. In our interview, she declined to disclose her married name, where she lives, or the names of any current or former jobs or employers. She claimed to have worked as a “business executive” and said she had sat at tables with senators and governors.  “There are still a lot of people out there who would like to be the one to shoot the last Capone,” she said to explain her reticence. “I try to keep my adult life out of it.” Still, she was interviewed on NBC’s Today Show two years ago: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy While the Wall Street Journal story said she plans to publish her book this fall, she currently has no book contract. Even if her book gets published, she won’t make buyers out of some Capones. “I wouldn’t read it if somebody bought it for me,” Theresa Capone, Al Capone’s granddaughter, told Kesmodel. She said she was furious about revelations in the recently published book, “Get Capone,” by Jonathan Eig, a former Wall Street Journal reporter. The book cites a claim by Deirdre Marie Capone that Theresa’s father,  Albert “Sonny” Capone, was not the son of Al Capone’s wife, Mae, but of a young woman who died in childbirth. “It is totally and completely false.” Meanwhile, Chris Knight Capone, the 38-year-old author of a self-published and ghost written book, Son of Scarface, has also angered the Capone clan by filing a lawsuit in Chicago to have the gangster’s remains exhumed to prove that his father, Bill Knight, was Al Capone’s son. After years of research, in 2008, Chris Knight changed his last name to Capone. And then there’s Dominic Capone III. His relation to Al Capone is also questioned. Nonetheless, he’s been capitalizing on it with his “Capone Family Secret” tomato sauce, which he sells at 188 grocery stores in the Chicago area, and via PayPal. It pulled in about $300,000 last year, he recently told Lou Carloza of AOL’s Wallet Pop. “We’ve been doing really good—in fact, a lot better than we thought we’d do.” Dominic, an actor who starred as Al Capone in the TV documentary “The Real Untouchables,”  claims the sauce’s recipe was handed down to him by his grandfather Ralph. However, Deirdre Marie discounts his claim of being related to the gangster. Asked what the real relation was, he said,  “I can’t really say. It’s a little scandalous, what’s going on in the Capone family.” 2010-07-21T02:42:10+00:00