Dying to Read Obituaries

Posted on December 11, 2008 by Jorge Costales

I have an unmorbid interest in obituaries. How to summarize a life. God, they were my age! People who served as volunteers seem most content. One of the pleasures [and dangers] of living in the web age in the US–or the ‘irresistibly lurid carnival of American life today,’ that Tom Wolfe often speaks of–is that like minded people have a way to connect with one another. So you will not be surprised that I am not alone in my obit interest. So much so, that the NY Times obituary writer recently answered a series of questions about their work; A sample:

Q. How do you discern which facts and milestones are key for inclusion and/or exclusion? Do you write from the perspective of communicating facts or telling a compelling story?

A. … From all that I try to craft a story that a generally curious reader would want to read, but the ideal situation is always mitigated by the daily journalism factor. Sometimes I have the time to find a lot more than I can use; sometimes I don’t have the time to get a genuine sense of who I’m writing about. Again, like any other journalist, on deadline I write what I know.

I saw these two obituaries on the same page this Tuesday.

Elmer A. Valentine

  • Self-described crooked cop who fled Chicago
  • Started a new life on the Sunset Strip by opening the Whisky [sic] a Go Go
  • Whisky a Go Go became a musical legend in the 1960’s
  • People who performed there: The Byrds, the Kinks, the Who, the Mamas and Papas, Sonny and Cher and the Doors
  • People who came by: Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles

George S. Morrison

  • Graduated from the Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1941
  • Witnessed the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941
  • Flew combat missions in the last year of World War II
  • Instructor for secret nuclear-weapons projects in Albuquerque NM
  • Earned a Bronze Star for combat in the Korean War
  • Commanded American naval forces which engaged three North Vietnamese torpedo boats in Aug. of 1964 – resulting in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
  • In 1972 became commander in chief of naval forces in the Marianas, which included some of the same islands he had bombed as a pilot during World War II, and where he organized relief efforts for nearly 100,000 Vietnamese refugees sent to Guam in 1975

Impressive record, no? As I was reading about Morrison’s amazing career, I did a double-take to ensure I hadn’t stumbled onto a review of Walter Mitty or Zelig.  But I hadn’t stumbled on the thing which most interested me and connected him to Mr. Valentine.

It turns out that Mr Morrison is survived two of his three children. You probably have heard of his deceased son, Jim Morrison, lead singer of the Doors.

I tend to regard people like Jim Morrison with a degree of contempt. In the case of Morrison–and who knows how many others–he had a father who earned enough respect to cover a seemingly prodigal son, and then some.

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.

———————————————————————————
NY Times
September 22, 2008
Talk to the Newsroom: Bruce Weber

Bruce Weber, an obituary writer, is answering questions from readers Sept. 22-26, 2008. Questions may be sent to askthetimes@nytimes.com. To move directly to the most recent answer, click here.

Mr. Weber joined The New York Times as a staff editor for the Sunday magazine section in 1986, where he also wrote cover articles on courtship in the age of AIDS, the Mets and the novelist Robert Stone, as well as a back page column that accompanied a photographic feature, Works in Progress. In the daily newsroom since 1991, he has been a general assignment reporter on the Metro desk (twice), a night rewrite man, a theater columnist, the national cultural correspondent (based in Chicago), a theater critic and a few other things besides.

He covered the Garry Kasparov-Deep Blue chess matches. He rode a bicycle solo across the United States and with others from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City and chronicled both journeys. He wrote a nine-part series about the creation of a contemporary opera, William Bolcom and Arnold Weinstein’s adaptation of the Arthur Miller play, “A View From the Bridge.” He has written profiles of the Harvard admissions department, the New York Public Library and Cher.

Since returning in April from working on a book, he has been writing obituaries. The book, “As They See ’Em: Travels in the Land of Umpires,” will be published in March by Scribner. He is also the author, with the dancer Savion Glover, of “Savion! My Life in Tap.”

Other Times staff members have answered questions in this column, including Executive Editor Bill Keller, Managing Editor Jill Abramson, Managing Editor John Geddes, Assistant Managing Editor Glenn Kramon, Associate Managing Editor Charles Strum, Obituaries Editor Bill McDonald, Director of Copy Desks Merrill Perlman, Metropolitan Editor Joe Sexton, Living Editor Trish Hall, Investigations Editor Matthew Purdy, National Editor Suzanne Daley, Digital News Editor Jim Roberts and Culture Editor Sam Sifton. Their responses and those of other Times staff members are available on the Talk to the Newsroom page.

These discussions will continue in coming weeks with other Times editors and reporters.

The Perfect Subject

Q. If you were asked to rewrite an obituary for any person, whose would you choose to rewrite?
— Rao

A. I’m assuming you mean which figures from history had lives that intrigue me as a reporter, and not the ones whose deaths I so relished that I would delight in reporting them. That said, there’s an endless list of lives that would be fascinating to summarize and try to illuminate, but I tend to be most interested in renegades, oddballs, eccentrics, people who achieved great things — or not-so-great things — by virtue of being boldly out of the mainstream. I wrote Bobby Fischer’s obit, for example, and was really enthralled by his arcane genius and his complicated, contentious persona. A few others I would like to have written about: Lenny Bruce, Bill Veeck, Mae West, Truman Capote.

A Place For Humor

Q. Occasionally an obit is really funny, reflecting, I suppose, the life that’s been lived. How much leeway do you have in reporting some of the wackier aspects of a person’s life?
— Judith Estrine

A. The general outlook of the obituary department is that our articles are about lives that have been lived, not deaths that have occurred. The idea is to appreciate the character of the subject to the degree that that’s possible, usually based on what we know that person has accomplished and on what we can glean from interviews with family members and others. You never want to make fun of anyone, but you do want to appreciate eccentricities, record unusual events and relay humorous incidents or comments. In that way, a good obituary can be like a good eulogy.

‘A Long Illness’

Q. Does “long illness” as in “died after a long illness” usually mean cancer? And why isn’t the nature of the illness given?
— Roger Lodger

A. Mr. Lodger, “long illness” does sometimes mean cancer, but it’s not a mere euphemism. For one thing, cancer can be a short illness. Often the phrase is shorthand for a combination of ailments that undermined someone’s health over a period of months or years. Sometimes the family isn’t sure how to characterize the cause of death and falls back on this description. Sometimes there is simply no more specific information available to us.

Close to Home

Q. I recall reading, with real interest, occasional obits on New York Times staffers (active or retired) until about six months ago. Now, no more. Is it just my imagination, or have Times staffers stopped dying?
— Bob McCabe

A. Alas, Mr. McCabe, Times staffers remain as mortal as they’ve ever been. I had the sad duty of writing about the death of a colleague, Martin Gradel, in August.

Who Gets an Obit?

Q. How do you choose? And how much impact does asking you to write an obit have — can a reader send an e-mail extolling someone?
— Arlene

A. As in any other section of the paper, what is printed on the obituaries pages is a matter of the editors’ news judgment. This pertains to whom we decide to write about and how much we decide to write.

We’re aware, by the way, that readers (some of them) try to figure out what we have judged to be the relative importance of obituary subjects by the length of the obituary and its placement on the page, but to reach conclusions based on those two elements is to operate on incomplete information. Other factors: How much space is available on the page that day? How much new information about the subject is revealed in the obituary? How interesting is it to read?

Sometimes the details of a person’s life may not add up to “important,” but they add up to interesting. Case in point: The typewriter man, Martin Tytell, whose vocation was so eccentric and he was so good at it that the details of his craft and life were reader candy.

As for whether extolling e-mails help us decide to write about someone, the answer is usually not. The exceptions are subjects who may have made important contributions to important events or to arcane fields of knowledge but who stayed below the general radar; in those cases we might well take note of extolling e-mails from experts in a field. An example: the death of Dick Netzer, an economist who worked with distinction at N.Y.U. and would probably have gone unremarked by the paper if we hadn’t heard from board members of the Municipal Assistance Corporation, which pulled New York City out of bankruptcy in the 1970s, that Mr. Netzer’s contributions to the original board were invaluable in solving the city’s fiscal crisis.

Before the Fact

Q. Do obituary writers for The Times generally interview their subject prior to their demise?
— Dick Hermans

A. Generally no, but that’s because most of our subjects are dead before we begin writing about them. For the subjects of advance obituaries, we often make inquiries about whether they would like to be interviewed. The reactions, as you might suspect, are mixed. Some are amused. Some are appalled. Some are eager to get in the last word, as it were. Some couldn’t think of anything more macabre and distasteful.

What’s the Attraction?

Q. What attracts you to being an obituary writer? Do you consider writing obituaries more as writing a short essay style biography of the deceased? It seems like an interesting way to get in and out of someone’s life quickly.
— Raghu Krishnaswamy

A. I think you’ve expressed the attraction accurately. Obituaries are, by nature, more essayistic than most other news stories. They provide the writer a little freedom from the pyramid form and other rigors of newswriting style, and often it’s a chance to learn about someone you’re glad to know about and achievements and bits of history you’d otherwise have missed.

Why So Many Men in the Obits?

Q. I have been reading The Times daily since I was about 10 years old. I love the autobiographical obituaries. It is interesting to me that 14 out of 15 are about men who have died, and the 15th is about a woman of note. It is amazing that so few women who die are interesting enough to write about. Tell me about this.
— Bernita Hassall Fadden, Palm Coast, Fla.

A. It’s hard to deny that a disproportionate percentage of our obituaries are about men, though I think 14 out of 15 is an exaggeration. (I counted my own recent obituaries, and 8 of the last 50 have been women, including Helen Galland, Mila Schön and Barbara Warren.) I certainly hope this isn’t about gender bias, and I don’t think it is. For one thing, our departmental discussions about who is and who isn’t deserving never touch on a subject’s gender, unless it’s to note that for a woman (or a man) to have accomplished such-and-such was unusual, as was the case with Mary Garber, whose obituary was written by Richard Goldstein. For another thing, the editor who does most of the daily assigning, Claiborne Ray, is a woman. Prompted by your letter I asked her about the disparity, and she confirmed my instinctive response, which is that the majority of people who are dying these days — that is, older people — grew up at a time when achievement and fame were far more accessible to men than to women. Writing obituaries often makes you feel as though you’re reporting on a world that doesn’t exist any more, and I can only assume that as time goes on, the number of women who appear on the obituaries pages will grow significantly.

Choosing the Facts to Include

Q. My mother and I own a genealogy business that stemmed from a hobby and has now grown to a full-fledged global business. Among basic documents such as birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, ship manifestos, etc., we often look to attainable obituaries for clues to the story and arc of a person’s life. As an obituary writer, how do you discern which facts and milestones are key for inclusion and/or exclusion? Do you write from the perspective of communicating facts or telling a compelling story?
— Jamie Davidson

A. Like any journalist, I’m beholden to facts and I spend most of my time gathering as many as I can. Aside from the personally defining information — dates of birth and death, surviving family members, etc. — I look for the facts that pertain to the reason I’m writing the obit in the first place. Usually that means professional achievements, though occasionally there are other reasons — intimate connections to the famous or interesting family lineage, for example. Finally, through interviews and research I try to get a sense of the subject in his or her written works, quotations in published pieces or recollections from people who knew the subject. From all that I try to craft a story that a generally curious reader would want to read, but the ideal situation is always mitigated by the daily journalism factor. Sometimes I have the time to find a lot more than I can use; sometimes I don’t have the time to get a genuine sense of who I’m writing about. Again, like any other journalist, on deadline I write what I know.

The Hard Parts of the Job

Q. Can you talk about some of the more difficult (for whatever reason) obituaries you’ve been assigned? Do you ever discover vital details that should have made one of your pieces after it’s gone to print? Most important, did you specifically want this job or did you fall into it? As a journalist myself, I’m not sure how to get into the field of obituary writing.
— Christian Smith

A. For me, the most difficult obits are the ones whose subjects were important in fields that I’m not especially well versed in, economics and physics to pick two. So the cases of Henry B. R. Brown, who invented, with a partner, the money market mutual fund, and Alvin Marks, a prolific inventor of energy-related devices, were sticky. For the former, I asked a colleague in the business section, Floyd Norris, for help in crafting the language that described Mr. Brown’s work. For the latter, I asked a partner of Mr. Marks to do the same.

It’s happened a couple of times that I’ve discovered a fact that I should have included in an obituary. In the obituary of John Jay Iselin, the television executive who led Channel 13 from 1973 to 1987, I spent all my time researching his impact on public broadcasting and missed the fact that he was among those prominent New Yorkers who were duped by the young con man pretending to be Sidney Poitier’s son, a circumstance that became the basis for John Guare’s play “Six Degrees of Separation.” More than one reader pointed out to me that I missed the boat on that, that it was a significant news event in which my subject played a part and should have been included in the obit. I’d have to agree.

As for whether I wanted the job or fell into it, both are sort of true. In the spring when I returned to the paper from writing a book, it was one of a handful of jobs that were open. I chose it over several others.

Another Euphemism?

Q. O.K., answer me this. Why is it obituary writers still write, “Died peacefully in his/her sleep,” when in truth the following statement would be correct most of the time, “Died in his/her sleep because they had the money and connections to obtain lethal drugs?” I am sure you can extrapolate what I am hitting at.
— David

A. You’re a cynical man, David. I don’t know why obituary writers elsewhere write that. In our newspaper, it is often used in the paid death notices, but I don’t believe you’ll ever find the phrase “died peacefully in his sleep” (or “her sleep”) in an obituary in The New York Times.

Can an Obit Be Purchased?

Q. Are New York Times obits purchased? Can a New York Times obit be purchased? If so, how?
— Bruce Bailey

A. In a word? No.

Which Bruce Weber Are You?

Q. Are you the Bruce Weber who authored the “All-Pro Baseball Stars” books I bought off Scholastic reading lists in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when I was in second, third and fourth grades in Staten Island? If so, why didn’t you pick more Yankees to your All-Pro teams? Just joking. I enjoyed those books as a kid, and every time I see your byline I wonder…
— Jeff Diamant

A. Nope. Not me. I’m not the photographer Bruce Weber, either. Or the downtown poet. Or the University of Illinois basketball coach, for that matter.

Handling Controversies in Obits

Q. How can you prevent an obituary from becoming a forum for the agenda of the deceased’s associates, as occurred in the recent case of John Y. Simon? Aren’t there safeguards to subject controversial charges to the same scrutiny as a hard news story? In that case, I was appalled to see the public exposure of an ongoing investigation that had been carefully kept quiet on campus to protect the privacy of all involved. I noted that other outlets that reposted the obituary, such as The Chicago Tribune, edited out the two paragraphs that discussed the investigation.

A. Obviously, whether to report on the controversy that occurred during the last months of Professor Simon’s life was a difficult matter to decide, and I discussed it at length with my editors. Having learned about it, we felt we couldn’t simply ignore it, especially since it had a bearing on the professional life that made Mr. Simon worthy of writing about to begin with. In writing about it, I tried to present only the facts and not “the agenda of the deceased’s associates.” If your opinion is that I failed to do so, we disagree.

The Joys of Reading British Obits

Q. One of joys of reading obits in the British papers is the subtext information provided by each paper’s stylist. “He enjoyed life to the fullest”, i.e. he was a drunken sot; “He was a confirmed batchlor,” i.e. he was gay; cautious = tightwad; etc., etc. The Times doesn’t go in for this??? — or am I not sussed into the key words?
— Karl Johnson, Arlington, Va.

A. I agree. That is one of the pleasures of reading obits in the British papers. I’m afraid you’ll have to take other pleasures from ours.

Your Own Obituary

Q. Mr. Weber, have you written your own obituary — yet?
— Shan Ellentuck

A. Should I be worried? Do you know something I don’t know?

Writing About the Painful Moments

Q. Do you ever find that writing an honest account of someone’s life might be awkward or painful for someone still living? How much is the effect on others on your mind as you write?
— Gretchen Stein

A. Sometimes it is awkward, yes. I’m always aware that writing about an unhappy time in the life of a subject is likely to make family members revisit it, but the reporter in me realizes I’m not writing for the benefit of the family but for the benefit of readers. In a situation like that you try to write straightforwardly and not exploitatively, and in my experience, limited as it is, most times family members end up appreciating honest appraisals of a loved one’s life. First and foremost I think they want to feel they recognize the person they read about.

The Toughest Question

Q. Just curious: has The Times maintained Alden Whitman’s (the Iceman) tradition of past years to meet with potential obituary subjects during the living years so as to prepare much of the obit in advance? Also, if so, what is the toughest question to ask?
— Grady Holloway, Bar Harbor, Me.

A. For advance obits, we often inquire whether the subject would like to participate. I’ve only written a handful of advances and no one has yet agreed to talk, so for me, I’d have to say the toughest question has been: Would you like to be interviewed for your obituary?

Getting Prepared for Death

Q. I’ve always marveled at the depth and quality of the obits in The New York Times . . . to the point where I now make a point of picking up the paper when someone notable dies. I’ve always assumed that much of them are written in advance, with recent details added when the person actually dies. If this is the case, I wonder how you decide when it’s time to get to work on an obit. Have you ever started working on one for a younger person who seems on a collision course with early death? Morbid, I know. But I guess that’s your bag, huh? I think your department does great work. Keep it up.
— Michael Kargas

A. There isn’t any hard and fast rule about when an advance obit should be written. If we hear of a well-known person’s illness, that might be a reason. Advanced age in and of itself can be a reason. (In addition to the advances we have on file, we have a long list of people, in many categories of public life, we’d like to do.) Every now and then the name of a pop star with self-destructive tendencies comes up as a possibility. We try to figure out who we need to be prepared for. I suppose we’re like actuaries in that way.

Talking to Family Members

Q. Part of the obituary reporting process involves talking to family members and others who were close to the deceased. How do these people react when you call them? Do they hang up on you and tell you to leave them alone, or are they usually willing to talk? What have you learned about handling what must be a sensitive and sometimes uncomfortable situation?
— Ira Kaplan

A. In my experience, family members are almost always willing to talk and, in fact, are eager to talk. For one thing, I think they perceive a New York Times obituary as something of an acknowledgment of a noteworthy life. For another, after a loved one dies, the impulse to speak lovingly and appreciatively of him or her to anyone and everyone is a rather natural one, I think. As far as “handling” the situation, I think common respect and courtesy are obviously called for. Less specifically, I think you can communicate empathy simply by the way you talk to someone. I’ve become better at that because I think having this job has made me more empathetic — I walk around more cognizant and consciously aware that this kind of loss is a universal experience.
————————————————————————————-
Elmer Valentine, Owner of Rock Clubs, Dies at 85
By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Elmer A. Valentine, a self-described crooked cop who fled Chicago to start a new life on the Sunset Strip by opening the Whisky a Go Go, one of the most celebrated clubs in the history of rock music, died Dec. 3 in the Studio City section of Los Angeles. He was 85.

The cause was heart failure after four years of numerous ailments, said Lou Adler, Mr. Valentine’s business partner.

Whisky a Go Go was a nondescript former bank building at the northwest corner of Sunset Boulevard and Clark Street in West Hollywood that became musical legend in the 1960s. The Byrds, the Doors, the Kinks, the Who, the Mamas and Papas and Sonny and Cher, among many other stars, performed there.

Bob Dylan dropped by to play pool, Jimi Hendrix to jam. When the Beatles arrived in Los Angeles in 1964 on their first American tour, the Whisky was the place they wanted to see. At the urging of his daughters, President Lyndon B. Johnson made a reservation — but never showed up.

On the night the Whisky opened, Jan. 15, 1964, Mr. Valentine pretty much by accident introduced what for years to come was a pop-culture staple: the go-go girl suspended in a cage.

“It was just so popular, right from the very first night,” Mr. Valentine said in an interview with Vanity Fair in 2000. “I tell you, I was just lucky. It was easy. You know what? It was easy.”

The Doors, with Jim Morrison, were the house band, at least until the night they sang “The End,” which Mr. Valentine considered obscene; one night the club had performances by them, Buffalo Springfield, Love, Van Morrison and Frank Zappa.

Though the club never again reached the level of fame it reached in the 1960s, it became a focus for the punk and new-wave movements in the 1970s, hard rock and metal bands in the 1980s and grunge in the 1990s, when Mr. Valentine sold his interest.

Elmer Aaron Valentine was born on June 16, 1923, in Chicago. He told Vanity Fair that an elementary school teacher told him he would be sent to the electric chair someday. At 14, he bolted home and rode trains and hitchhiked to California. He served in the Army Air Forces in England in World War II.

He became a policeman in Chicago, rising to the rank of detective. After his marriage ended, he said, he ran into what he termed “a little career trouble.” He was indicted on charges of extortion involving collecting bribes on behalf of a captain but was never convicted.

“I used to moonlight running nightclubs for the outfit,” he said to David Kamp, the Vanity Fair writer. “For gangsters.”

He moved to California and joined with partners from Chicago to open a nightclub, P.J.’s, named after the Manhattan bar P. J. Clarke’s. In 1963, visiting Europe with the idea of becoming an expatriate, he happened to visit a discothèque in Paris called Whisky à Go Go and was enthralled by the enthusiastic young dancers.

Mr. Valentine returned to Los Angeles and invested $20,000 of his profits from his share in P.J.’s in what became the Whisky. He gave a one-year contract to Johnny Rivers, then a 21-year-old rocker and bluesman, who turned out to be wildly popular.

The Whisky briefly had satellite franchises in San Francisco and Atlanta. Later, with partners, Mr. Valentine started the Rainbow Bar & Grill and the Roxy Theater, also in West Hollywood, retaining an interest in them until his death.

Mr. Valentine is survived by his daughter, Kimberly Valentine, and a grandson.

In between Mr. Rivers’s three sets, Mr. Valentine wanted to play records as they did at the Whisky in Paris, suspending a D.J. in a glass-walled cage to save space. The mother of the girl who won a contest to be the D.J. would not let her take the job. The cigarette girl, Patty Brockhurst, wearing a slit skirt, was drafted; she spontaneously started dancing. “Thus out of calamity and serendipity was born the go-go girl,” Mr. Kamp wrote.

Mr. Valentine soon installed two more cages and hired two more dancers. One, Joanie Labine, designed what became the official go-go-girl costume, fringed dress and white boots.
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December 9, 2008
George S. Morrison, Admiral and Singer’s Father, Dies at 89
By WILLIAM GRIMES

George S. Morrison, who commanded the fleet during the Gulf of Tonkin incident that led to an escalation of the Vietnam War and whose son Jim was the lead singer of the Doors, died Nov. 17 in Coronado, Calif. He was 89 and lived in Coronado.

He died after a fall in the hospital, his daughter, Anne Chewning, told The Associated Press.

Aboard the flagship carrier Bon Homme Richard, Mr. Morrison commanded American naval forces in the gulf when the destroyer Maddox engaged three North Vietnamese torpedo boats on Aug. 2, 1964. A skirmish and confused reports of a second engagement two days later led President Lyndon B. Johnson to order airstrikes against North Vietnam and to request from Congress what became known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, allowing him to carry out further military operations without declaring war.

Mr. Morrison’s relationship with his famous son was difficult. Rebellion met blank incomprehension. In “The Doors by the Doors” (Hyperion, 2006), he is quoted as saying: “I had the feeling that he felt we’d just as soon not be associated with his career. He knew I didn’t think rock music was the best goal for him. Maybe he was trying to protect us.”

George Stephen Morrison, known as Steve, was born in Rome, Ga. His father was a railroad worker. After graduating from the Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1941, he was assigned, as an ensign, to the mine layer Pruitt in Pearl Harbor, where he witnessed the Japanese attack of Dec. 7, 1941.

While at Pearl Harbor, he married Clara Clarke, who died in 2005. Besides his daughter, Anne, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., he is survived by his son Andrew, of Pahoa, Hawaii. Jim Morrison died in Paris in 1971.

After taking part in operations in the Aleutians and the central Pacific, Mr. Morrison took flight training in Pensacola, Fla., and flew combat missions over Wake Island and Honshu, Japan, in the last year of World War II. After the war, he was an instructor for secret nuclear-weapons projects in Albuquerque. During the Korean War, he was assigned to the joint operations center in Seoul, earning a Bronze Star for his part in combat operations against North Korean and Chinese forces.

Mr. Morrison took command of the Bon Homme Richard in 1963 and in 1967 was promoted to the rank of rear admiral. In 1972 he became commander in chief of naval forces in the Marianas, which included some of the same islands he had bombed as a pilot during World War II, and where he organized relief efforts for nearly 100,000 Vietnamese refugees sent to Guam in 1975. It was an assignment he called the most satisfying of his career.

Mr. Morrison, who was portrayed briefly in the 1991 movie “The Doors,” donated several items belonging to his son Jim to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland for a Doors exhibit that opened last year. These included his school report cards and college diploma and a Cub Scout uniform. ———————————————————————

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Change You Have To Believe In

Posted on December 10, 2008 by Jorge Costales

In Politico, there is a article that lays out the basic facts about the arrest of Illinois Gov Blagojveich. The things not emphasized in the article are the more interesting things about this case, which is all about corruption in Chicago. To believe in the Obama who ran for president, you have to believe the following:

  1. People who are not corrupt–Obama, Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Mayor Daley–can survive and flourish in a corrupt political environment.
  2. Obama’s initial silence about Gov Blagojveich’s behavior just reflects a cautious nature. But it is fair to note that if someone did have something to hide or was concerned about other things being leaked, silence would be their reaction as well.
  3. Cases of ‘misremembering’ are purely coincidental. The one day old Blagojveich case has already generated two Obama team clarifications. One involving David Axelrod and the other by Rahm Emanuel.
  4. Rahm Emanuel was either lying or exaggerating in a 2008 New Yorker magazine article that he and Obama were “the top strategists of Blagojevich’s victory” in 2002. Emaunuel is the incoming Chief of Staff. In a normal political environment, we should expect Mr Emaunuel to be asked how he got that so wrong? Emanuel now says that Obama had no connection to Blagojveich in 2002.

Like Don Corleone cautioning Michael about who the traitor would be, watch for commentators who want to give Obama credit for not negotiating with Blagojveich. Given that it was well known that the Blagojveich was under investigation, only people out of the loop would have risked dealing with him. As such, those who praise his restraint in this instance, mainly just reveal their political allegiances.

I have been pleasantly surprised by Obama’s cabinet picks and appointments, especially his economic team–although I don’t get the Clinton pick. It seems to signal his intentions not to pursue a tax increase in 2009, which I think is the most critical decision he will be making in the short term. But it is a sobering thought that he and the team he brings to power is a product of the most corrupt political environment in our country, Chicago.

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.

————————————————————————–
Politico – In scandal, risks for Obama

By: Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin
December 10, 2008 08:16 AM EST

At first blush, Barack Obama comes out of the Rod Blagojevich scandal smelling like a rose. The prosecutor at a news conference seemed to give the president-elect a seal of approval, and the Illinois governor himself was caught on tape complaining that Obama was not interested in crooked schemes.

But make no mistake: The Blagojevich scandal is nothing but a stink bomb tossed at close range for Obama and his team.

Legal bills, off-message headlines, and a sustained attempt by Republicans to show that Obama is more a product of Illinois’s malfeasance-prone political culture than he is letting on—all are likely if the Blagojevich case goes to trial or becomes an extended affair.

Obama and his aides have so far mounted a tight-lipped defense, publicly distancing themselves from Blagojevich’s alleged plans to profit personally from his power to fill Obama’s newly vacant Senate seat with firm but vague denials of any involvement.

Privately, Obama allies are noting that the foul-mouthed governor and the president-elect, though both Democrats atop the Illinois power structure, are hardly close: Obama did not back Blagojevich in his 2002 primary race for governor, and Blagojevich did not back Obama in his 2004 Senate primary.

Republicans, though, plan to keep the pressure on. Republican National Chairman Robert “Mike” Duncan on Tuesday said Obama’s initial response to questions about the governor was inadequate. South Carolina GOP Chairman Katon Dawson, seeking the national party post, went further. He called on Obama to release any records of discussions between his transition team and Blagojevich about Obama’s successor – citing Obama’s oft-repeated pledge for greater transparency.

And, in a Politico interview, Illinois state Republican chairman Andy McKenna, pressed Obama to commit to keeping U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in his post until the corruption cases run their course.

One prominent Chicago Democrat close to many of those named in the indictment suggested the risk for Obama is “Whitewater-type exposure.” That was a reference to an Arkansas real estate deal that produced a series lengthy and highly intrusive investigations in the 1990s that never proved illegality by the Clintons.

What this Democrat meant with his analogy—which on the facts so far seems a bit premature—was that Obama could suffer by being in the proximity of a back-scratching and deal-making culture, even if he was mostly a bystander. “What will splatter on to Obama is he is to some degree a product of this culture, and he has never entirely stood against it,” said the Democrat, who wanted anonymity for fear of antagonizing the president-elect.

Indeed, at a minimum it will be hard for a transition team that wants to shine a light on their plans to clean up Washington if the steaming compost pile of Illinois politics— and its florid tradition of bribes, extortion, and payback—is in the news.

But there are less obvious hazards. Anyone who has ever been near a public corruption case—and many of Obama’s top advisers have, thanks to their experience in the Clinton years—knows the hassles that can torment even innocent people. Even peripheral figures wind up hiring expensive lawyers. At trial, testimony by minor witnesses becomes a major news event if it is someone close to the president taking the stand.

Prosecutor Fitzgerald pointed out during questions and answers at his news conference that “there’s no reference in the complaint to any conversation involving the president-elect or indicating that the president-elect was aware of it.”

Obama advisers argue that Blagojveich’s alleged crimes — extorting campaign contributions from a children’s hospital, demanding the firing of the top editors at the Chicago’s flagship newspaper in return for state assistance — are so over-the-top that they speak for themselves, and will only serve to taint the disgraced governor.

Obama aides see proof of his vindication in the fact that Blagojevich, in the secret tapes, complains that the president-elect’s team won’t give him anything. Obama emerged personally untarnished in the 78-page Blagojevich complaint. He was, to the allegedly deeply corrupt governor, the “mother***er” who was owed no favors and a lily-livered reformer who, instead of a bribe, wouldn’t give the disgusted Blagojevich “anything except appreciation.”

But there are enough unanswered questions to give his political opponents plenty of grist, starting with Obama’s curt denial that he had ever spoken to Blagojevich about how to fill Obama’s vacant seat.

His chief political adviser, David Axelrod, Tuesday corrected his own suggestion last month that Obama and Blagojevich had spoken about filling Obama’s vacant seat. Spokespeople did not respond to a question of when Obama and Blagojevich last spoke, and about what.

And there is the question of Fitzgerald’s future . Presidents can appoint their own U.S. Attorneys, but Republicans aim to all but dare Obama to remove the crusading Fitzgerald before he’s done cleaning out corruption in Chicago and Springfield.

“What he should do tomorrow is say, ‘Patrick Fitzgerald has a job and can have for as long as he wants,'” McKenna told Politico. “Some have wondered if Barack Obama would keep Fitzgerald [as U.S. Attorney]. It would be great if he confirms that he plans to.”

Meanwhile, the case is likely to turn reporters into students of Illinois political history, just as the Clinton presidency produced a generation of reporters and opposition researchers obsessed with turning over the rocks of Arkansas politics.

In 2002, when Blagojevich left the U.S. House (opening up a seat for Emanuel), Obama joined other black Chicago Democrats – including his one-time rival Bobby Rush and state Senate mentor Emil Jones –in supporting Roland Burris, an African-American former Illinois Comptroller and state Attorney General.

In a further effort to put distance between Obama and the governor, Obama allies are preemptively noting that incoming Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s claim this summer in a New Yorker article that he and Obama were “the top strategists of Blagojevich’s victory” in 2002 was inaccurate.

In a subsequent article in the Springfield political publication Capitol Fax this summer, now being circulated by Obama allies, Emanuel walked back his assertion.

“David [Wilhelm] and I have worked together on campaigns for decades,” Emanuel said, referring to the Democratic operative who was a top adviser to Blagojevich in 2002 and strongly denied that Obama had been involved in that race. “Like always, he’s right and I’m wrong.”

Further, the allies note that Blagojevich did not support Obama in 2004 in what was initially thought to be a hotly contested primary.

Still, as Obama emerged from the sheltered, reformist enclave of Hyde Park in the 1990s, he made valuable friends among the bosses of its political machine – Mayor Richard Daley, Emil Jones and many others. He bragged at times that Illinois had made him tough. He also campaigned on an ethics bill he helped pass in the Illinois State Senate.

And he seemed still to be in that Chicago straddle when asked about Blagojevich’s arrest yesterday, mustering only word that he was “saddened” and “sobered” at a time when even other Illinois Democrats were demanding Blagojevich resign.
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BLAGOJEVICH ARRESTED – He’s the clown, but joke’s on us

John Kass

December 10, 2008

Now that Gov. Dead Meat has been arrested at his home and charged with selling Illinois by the pound—and Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat by the slice—let’s just savor the aroma.

I love the smell of meat over coals in the morning.

It smells like . . . victory.

The people of Illinois needed some good news and they got it. Former Republican Gov. George Ryan is in prison, and the arrest of his successor, Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, surely means that the Illinois Combine that runs this state can stop with the rumors that U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald will be leaving town.

And, as Blagojevich most likely prepares to be Ryan’s bunkmate, let’s not forget the scores of other politicos, of all parties, who’ve gone down on corruption charges—including some of Mayor Richard Daley’s guys who helped rebuild that Democratic machine the mayor says doesn’t exist.

At a news conference in the federal building in Chicago, authorities were asked about Illinois corruption.

“If it isn’t the most corrupt state in the United States, it’s certainly one hell of a competitor,” said Robert Grant, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Chicago office.

Grant had the privilege of standing outside Blagojevich’s home about 6 a.m. Tuesday and calling the sleepy governor to say federal agents were outside, waiting to arrest him quietly.

“I could tell I woke him up,” Grant said. “And the first thing he said was, ‘Is this a joke?’ “

No, but standing before a federal judge wearing jogging pants, sneakers and a powder blue fleece sort of made the governor of Illinois look like a jester. Or a joker.

Political corruption in the state that has made corruption an art form isn’t funny, like a clown. The joke is on all of us, everyone who lives in Illinois. Because Blagojevich was elected governor on the reform ticket, promising to clean up the state and end business as usual.

Chicagoans aren’t really surprised. This is the state run by the Combine, with the Democratic machine on one side and the Republican insiders on the other, and the Chicago Outfit forming the base. That is the real iron triangle.

Blagojevich was supported by the machine and by the now-indicted Republican power broker Big Bill Cellini. If that’s not reform, what is?

The governor is alleged to have tried to sell Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder, used his leverage in attempts to oust Tribune editorial writers who didn’t play ball, and schemed to shake down the chief executive officer of Children’s Memorial Hospital for campaign cash in exchange for a state grant.

So though Illinois isn’t surprised—this is after all the home of the Chicago Way—the national media must be shocked.

They’ve been clinging to the ridiculous notion that Chicago is Camelot for months now, cleaving to the idea with the willfulness of stubborn children. It must help them see Obama as some pristine creature, perhaps a gentle faun of a magic forest, unstained by our grubby politics, a bedtime story for grown-ups who insist upon fairy tales. But now the national media may finally be forced to confront reality.

Even national pundits with tingles running up their legs can’t ignore the tape recordings in which Blagojevich speculated how he’d get the gold for picking Obama’s successor.

“I’m going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain,” Blagojevich allegedly said on tape. “You hear what I’m saying? And if I don’t get what I want, and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself.”

Obama’s Senate seat, Blagojevich allegedly said, “is a [expletive] valuable thing. You don’t just give it away for nothing.”

Then, on Nov. 5, he allegedly said, “I’ve got this thing, and it’s [expletive] golden and, uh, I’m just not going to give it up for [expletive] nothing. I’m not gonna do it. And I can always use it, I can parachute me there.”

Parachute me?

If a jury hears that tape, it’s [expletive] over.

I figure Blagojevich most likely will start talking to the feds, blabbing about everyone he knows, in order to cut down his time, because what’s on the federal tapes is devastating.

Once he starts, the feds will have to slap him to shut him up.

Naturally, Obama didn’t have much to say.

Obama said he never talked to Blagojevich about the Senate seat. In this, his hands are clean.

But he also didn’t want to get involved, much like last week, when he didn’t want to get involved in the Democratic push led by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Big Jim) to get Ryan out of prison.

“I had no contact with the governor or his office and so I was not aware of what was happening,” Obama told reporters at his transition office in Chicago. “It’s a sad day for Illinois; beyond that, I don’t think it’s appropriate to comment.”

I don’t think Obama would ever countenance paying Blagojevich for a Senate seat or allow others close to him to even consider it. I’m not saying Obama is corrupt here. He’s busy with all the great issues of the day, but at some point the president-elect must address the stench in his home state.

Because this is no fairy tale. This isn’t Camelot.

This is Chicago.

And a governor is on the grill.

jskass@tribune.com

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune
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Boxing Hall of Fame and Matchmakers

Posted on December 10, 2008 by Jorge Costales

The Miami Herald had an article by Santos Perez about the 2009 International Boxing Hall of Fame [HOF] inductees, the big name being Lennox Lewis. Among the non-boxers elected was Bob Goodman, longtime matchmaker for promoter Don King.

Boxing matchmakers works with promoters to setup a fight card. While there are many factors which can go into setting up matches, not the least of which is money and availability, there is a real skill involved in determining good matchups. So what does the sport of boxing do when confronted with a problem based on the need to disseminate information? It does what any smart business would do, it turns to the web. Check out these sites designed to help matchmakers, Pugilist Match and Boxing Matchmaker.

Also, see the Yahoo Sports article by Kevin Iole which makes the HOF case for Bruce Trampler who worked for Bob Arum. An excerpt:

He praised Trampler for his development of Erik Morales, who is a cinch to be elected to the Hall of Fame after a career in which he won world championships at super bantamweight, featherweight and super featherweight.

“You’ll never see Bruce take a fighter and put him in before his time,” Chargin said. “Erik Morales is his masterpiece. Bruce saw something in the kid. (Morales) was really a borderline (main event) guy, but Bruce kept picking the right fights at the right time and Morales started to come. He waited until Morales had the experience and the confidence and then he turned him loose and look what he became.”

Articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.

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Hall of Fame selection caps Lewis’ stellar ring career

BY SANTOS A. PEREZ

Two-time heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis heads the new class of the International Boxing Hall of Fame announced Tuesday by the Hall of Fame office.

Lewis compiled a 41-2-1 record and 32 knockouts during a 15-year career, which ended after his technical knockout victory over Vitali Klitschko in June 2003. A first-ballot selection, Lewis was elected by vote of boxing media and historians.

Lewis, an English citizen and part-time South Florida resident, scored victories over Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield, the top heavyweights of his era. Lewis also won an Olympic gold medal representing Canada in the 1988 Olympics.

”I’m proud and honored to be selected into the International Boxing Hall of Fame,” Lewis, 43, said in a statement. “I’m humbled to be considered among the greats in my field by esteemed boxing historians and professionals.

“My journey began over 30 years ago when I put on my first pair of gloves. I continued boxing because I loved the sport and I received tremendous support from my family and coaches.

“To know that all of those years of hard work and sacrifice through my amateur and professional career have been recognized and appreciated by the best in the boxing community is a great feeling.”

The 2009 Hall of Fame class also includes former bantamweight Orlando Canizales, a bantamweight champion in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and South Africa’s Brian Mitchell, who successfully defended his title 12 times during a super-featherweight reign between 1987 and 1991.

Nonparticipants elected include Bob Goodman, longtime matchmaker for Don King, and HBO boxing analyst Larry Merchant.

The newly elected members will be inducted June 14 in Canastota, N.Y.

REPLACEMENT

Demetrius Hopkins has replaced Ricardo Torres as Kendall Holt’s opponent in a World Boxing Organization junior-welterweight title bout Saturday night in Atlantic City, N.J. Torres was scheduled to fight a third title bout against Holt but withdrew Monday because of an illness.

ESTRADA LOSS

Miramar resident David Estrada lost a split decision Friday night to Argentina’s Luis Alberto Abregu in Santa Ynez, Calif.

Estrada opened a deep cut above Abregu’s left eye and pressured Abregu (25-0) in the second half of the 10-round welterweight match. But Abregu won on two judges’ scorecards, 98-92 and 98-91. The third judge scored the bout 96-94 for Estrada.

”I was chasing him around the ring and he was running for his life in the last couple of rounds,” Estrada said in a statement.

“I don’t know what hurts worse — the fact they gave him the decision or the margin two of the judges had him winning by.”

Estrada, 30, is 22-6, losing three of his past four bouts.
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Trampler belongs in boxing’s Hall of Fame

By Kevin Iole, Yahoo! Sports Jul 30, 8:57 pm EDT

Yahoo! Sports

Bruce Trampler’s job seems so easy that, well, every now and then, I get to thinking I can do it.

It’s not so easy, though. Being a boxing matchmaker is one of the most difficult, unappreciated and thankless jobs in the world.

Trampler just makes it look so simple, the way Joe DiMaggio made baseball appear like a breeze, that a lot of guys who sit in front of a television with a beer and a bag of chips think they can do it as well, or better.

Trampler, 58, may be the best at his craft who’s ever lived. He’d gag at the thought, since he holds his mentor, the late Hall of Famer Teddy Brenner, in such esteem.

He’s good enough at it, though, that he’s built Top Rank into the sport’s dominant promotional company, largely with his shrewd eye for talent and understanding how to build stars and champions.

Top Rank continues to churn out quality young fighters, primarily because Trampler understands who can fight and who can not.

“No fight is made in this company unless Bruce gives it his blessing,” said his boss, Top Rank chairman Bob Arum.

Arum is already a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame. It’s about time that he’s joined by his long-time matchmaker, who was instrumental in building fighters such as Oscar De La Hoya, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Miguel Cotto and Kelly Pavlik into champions.

Don Chargin, a consultant for Golden Boy Promotions and a Hall of Fame matchmaker with a resume equal to anyone, said few have ever understood styles the way Trampler has.

“If this guy isn’t a Hall of Famer, I don’t know who is,” Chargin said. “Bruce understands how a fighter’s style will fit with another. He’s a matchmaker who doesn’t try to act like a manager. He tries to put on good fights.”

Importantly, though, that doesn’t mean always putting his fighters in with the toughest guy on the block. He has an uncanny knack for exposing his fighters to a variety of styles and pushing them progressively harder each time out.

Trampler said the process of building a fighter isn’t particularly complicated. As a fighter develops, Trampler tries to make certain the boxer is not surprised by anything he sees in the ring by the time he’s ready for the main events.

His goal is that by the time the fighter matures into contender status, he’s seen left-handers and right-handers, fast-handed fighters and power punchers and everything in between.

“You don’t want to throw batting practice, but you also don’t want to throw them knuckleballs,” Trampler says, using a baseball analogy in describing his philosophy of bringing a young fighter along.

Chargin said Trampler has great patience and is willing to wait if he believes a fighter has a chance to one day become a star.

He praised Trampler for his development of Erik Morales, who is a cinch to be elected to the Hall of Fame after a career in which he won world championships at super bantamweight, featherweight and super featherweight.

“You’ll never see Bruce take a fighter and put him in before his time,” Chargin said. “Erik Morales is his masterpiece. Bruce saw something in the kid. (Morales) was really a borderline (main event) guy, but Bruce kept picking the right fights at the right time and Morales started to come. He waited until Morales had the experience and the confidence and then he turned him loose and look what he became.”

Dean Chance, the 1964 American League Cy Young winner, is a longtime friend of Trampler’s. He compared Trampler to a great baseball scout and said Trampler has an uncanny ability to pick out talent.

Some scouts, Chance said, will pick out guys who are lucky to make it to Double-A.

“But Bruce is like a (baseball) scout who goes out and finds guys like Manny Ramirez, CC Sabathia and Grady Sizemore,” Chance said.

Trampler understands that records are meaningless in boxing and a shrewd matchmaker can take a fighter who isn’t particularly good and help him build a gaudy record. And he knows that just because a guy has a horrendous record doesn’t necessarily mean he can’t fight.

As Exhibit A, he points to Anthony Ivory, a middleweight who finished his career with a 33-78-5 record. Trampler said he decided that Ivory would be the perfect guy for Pavlik, now the middleweight champion but in late 2003 an unknown prospect, to fight. Pavlik was 18-0 and was blowing out everyone he fought in a round or two.

Trampler knew that Pavlik needed to go some rounds and to be extended and challenged, if he were ever to fulfill his potential.

He suggested to trainer Jack Loew and Pavlik’s management team that Pavlik fight Ivory, who at the time was 29-66-4.

“There was a lot of bitterness and acrimony when I told them I wanted Kelly to fight Ivory,” Trampler said.

They eventually relented and Ivory pushed Pavlik to his limits and took him the full eight rounds.

These days, Loew sings Trampler’s praises to anyone who will listen.

Arum said he doesn’t understand the logic in him being in the Hall but not Trampler. “Without Bruce, where is this company?” Arum said. “How can I be a Hall of Famer and Bruce is not? Without Bruce, I’m nothing.”

Arum relies on Trampler’s wisdom nearly all of the time. When managers call trying to push a young prospect, Arum instinctively orders them to send a DVD to Trampler. Arum, though, has promoted fights for more than 40 years. Occasionally, he resists Trampler’s advice.

Most recently, Arum fell for a charismatic 6-foot-9 heavyweight named Tye Fields. Fields had a gaudy record compiled mostly by clobbering fighters much smaller, with little ability or who were way over the hill.

Arum became convinced he was a future champion and began including Fields on his television broadcasts.

Arum had Fields face veteran Monte Barrett on June 28 on a pay-per-view card. Barrett is hardly a significant factor in the division, but he stopped Fields in less than a round, ruining Arum’s dreams.

“He told me (Fields) couldn’t fight,” Arum said. “That’s the last time I’ll ever doubt him. I’ve learned my lesson.”

Hopefully, the folks who vote for the International Boxing Hall of Fame have learned theirs.

It’s about time Bruce Trampler is selected.
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Undisputed #1 Team – The Lady Badgers

Posted on December 9, 2008 by Jorge Costales

The University of Wisconsin [UW] Women’s Hockey team is undefeated and the undisputed #1 team in the land according to the latest USA Today poll. What better way to get a head start on the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics–or the upcoming NCAA Championships, the Frozen Four–than checking out one of their games on cable. I can tell you right now who the USA’s goalie will be, Jessie Vetter. A truly dominating athlete who recently recorded her 31st career shutout, an NCAA record. She is expected to lead the lady Badgers to their 3rd national championship in four years come next March.

That’s her in the photo on the right, in a defensive posture that only Catholic parents of teenage girls can truly appreciate.

I came to learn of the Lady Badgers after an impassioned defense of their cause was made by a not so recent UW graduate and now a Miami-based attorney, who in the middle of a Florida college football email smackdown–consisting mostly of white men from very narrow socio-economic backgrounds–proceeded to unabashedly sing their praises.

The introduction of any type of Women’s sport–other than beach volleyball for reasons too obvious to note here–into a general sports discussion is so unusual that it silenced the discussion. People just couldn’t figure out what his angle was.

With a strong wireless signal strength and a serious late afternoon lack of work ethic, I set out to find out if he was correct or just blowing cheese. I learned the above and found something else almost as interesting about UW. Did you know that UW dominated collegiate boxing during the 1940’s & 1950’s–earning 8 NCAA championships during that period. In a logic which would make Malcolm Gladwell smile, it appears to have been partially based on the fact that Madison was a boxing crazed community which the NCAA rewarded by having it host the NCAA Championships on numerous occasions. A classic ‘outlier’ – talent and good fortune contributing to success. See Christopher Hart’s paper which tells the story nicely.

To get up-to-the-minute ticketing, fundraising and promotional information about the Wisconsin Badgers, join BUCKYMAIL!

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Inauguration Looms … I’m Comfortably Numb

Posted on December 8, 2008 by Jorge Costales

As the inauguration approaches, friends worry and ask, ‘hey loser, can I get you a conscious, a passport, commemorative plates?’ Roger Waters and Pink Floyd fill my head as I tell them:

[At the 3:20 mark]
There is no pain, you are receding
A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re sayin’

When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown, the dream is gone
I have become comfortably numb

The version of Comfortably Numb I have been listening [or non-chemically medicating] to is the one used in The Departed soundtrack.

Roger Waters and my bastardized version of the song are copied in full at end of post.

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Roger Waters Comfortably Numb lyrics

Hello
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone at home?
Come on, now
I hear you’re feeling down
Well, I can ease the pain
And get you on your feet again
Relax
I need some information first
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts?
There is no pain, you are receding
A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re sayin’
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I’ve got that feeling once again
I can’t explain, you would not understand
This is not how I am
I have become comfortably numb
I have become comfortably numb
Ok
Just a little pinprick
There’ll be no more –Aaaaaahhhhh!
But you may feel a little sick
Can you stand up?
I do believe it’s working, Good
That’ll keep you going through the show
Come on it’s time to go
There is no pain, you are receding
A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re sayin’
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown, the dream is gone
I have become comfortably numb
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Guayaberaly Numb lyrics

[Lyrics redacted by Homeland Security until further notice]
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>Advent Homily – Fr Vallee

Posted on December 7, 2008 by Jorge Costales

>Our favorite ethernet homilies come courtesy of Fr Vallee. Here is a portion:

… what was true for John the Baptist those many centuries ago in the deserts of Judea is no less true for us today in the different sort of desert that is Miami. The reason that many people do not find their God is that there is no room in their lives or their hearts for their God. We get so busy and so powerful and so competent at what we do that we no longer even really need God. In fact, we often act as if God needs us a lot more than we need God.

…
John the Baptist tells us and then he shows us. Prepare in your hearts a way for your God to get in. This means prepare a space of emptiness and humility. This means make ready a space of silence and stillness. Oddly enough, many people prepare for Christmas in exactly the wrong way. We shop and wrap and spend and drive and decorate and drink and eat and run around, as my Dad used to say, “like chickens with our heads cut off.” All this so that in the end we are so exhausted and so annoyed that there is no room or time or need for Christ. If you want to be your own Savior, you don’t need Jesus Christ for a Savior. If you want to get ready for Christmas in a way that will mean something, take a clue from John the Baptist. Go to a still and quiet place. First of all, tell yourself, quite clearly and repeatedly, that you are not the Messiah. You do no have the key to unlock the mystery of your heart. Then, in silence and humility, wait, watch and listen for the one who is the Messiah. Prepare the way of the Lord. Wait, watch and listen for Jesus Christ. This is the greatest gift you can give yourself and those you love. It is even better than a 72 inch HDTV or a 10 carrot diamond.

As an act of faith, I’m not going to question his 72 inch HDTV example.

Fr Vallee’s homily is copied in full at end of post. If interested in being added to his email list for his homilies, please send an email to: Cioran262@aol.com

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Advent Homily – Fr Valle
I. Prepare the way

John the Baptist is the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Before John, there had been no authentic prophet in Israel for three hundred years. His voice, from the desolation of the desert by the Dead Sea, breaks a long and barren silence. John says of himself: “I am the voice crying in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord..” It is as though John is saying, “I speak to lead him into your hearts, but he will not and cannot come lest you prepare the way for him.”

II. Prayer = humility
To prepare well means to pray well; it means to think humbly of oneself. John the Baptist shows us exactly what this means. He is thought to be the Christ; he is presumed to be the Messiah. He declares he is not who they think he is. He does not take advantage of the crowd’s mistake to glorify himself. If he had said, “I am the Christ,” they would have believed him because they already thought he was the Messiah before he even spoke. But he did not say it. Instead, he admitted clearly and simply who he was and who he was not. In short, he humbled himself. He saw where his salvation lay. He understood that he was a lamp and his fear was that it might be blown out by the winds of pride. John is like a telephone operator. He is there to connect us to Christ and then to fade away

III. Same for us
Of course, what was true for John the Baptist those many centuries ago in the deserts of Judea is no less true for us today in the different sort of desert that is Miami. The reason that many people do not find their God is that there is no room in their lives or their hearts for their God. We get so busy and so powerful and so competent at what we do that we no longer even really need God. In fact, we often act as if God needs us a lot more than we need God.

IV. A Bad Homily
I heard a homily on TV once — mercifully not Catholic – that said that we had to become warriors for Christ that we had to stand up and fight for God in the modern world because God was powerless without us! My God! What a horrible mix of confusion and heresy. We don’t defend God; God defends us; we don’t save Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ saves us. The idea that God needs us to protect God is presumptuous, arrogant and absurd. But, more than that, it is spiritual death and spiritually deadly. If you or I are so full of ourselves, our power, our position or our importance, then there really is no room for God and no need for God.

V. Conclusion
John the Baptist tells us and then he shows us. Prepare in your hearts a way for your God to get in. This means prepare a space of emptiness and humility. This means make ready a space of silence and stillness. Oddly enough, many people prepare for Christmas in exactly the wrong way. We shop and wrap and spend and drive and decorate and drink and eat and run around, as my Dad used to say, “like chickens with our heads cut off.” All this so that in the end we are so exhausted and so annoyed that there is no room or time or need for Christ. If you want to be your own Savior, you don’t need Jesus Christ for a Savior. If you want to get ready for Christmas in a way that will mean something, take a clue from John the Baptist. Go to a still and quiet place. First of all, tell yourself, quite clearly and repeatedly, that you are not the Messiah. You do no have the key to unlock the mystery of your heart. Then, in silence and humility, wait, watch and listen for the one who is the Messiah. Prepare the way of the Lord. Wait, watch and listen for Jesus Christ. This is the greatest gift you can give yourself and those you love. It is even better than a 72 inch HDTV or a 10 carrot diamond. Come Lord Jesus!
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Freddie Roach

Posted on December 6, 2008 by Jorge Costales

Miami Herald boxing article by Santos Perez on Freddie Roach.

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Prefight spat snares trainer

Posted on Sat, Dec. 06, 2008

BY SANTOS A. PEREZ

In the hype leading up to big fights, secondary players sometimes play large roles.

Veteran trainer Freddie Roach has been cast in such a position during the weeks leading to Saturday night’s welterweight bout between Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas.

Although identified more with training Pacquiao through his championship runs in the super-bantamweight, super-featherweight and lightweight divisions, Roach had a brief association with De La Hoya. When De La Hoya fought Floyd Mayweather Jr. last year, De La Hoya avoided a possible conflict of interest by replacing his trainer and Mayweather’s father, Floyd Sr., with Roach.

De La Hoya lost the bout by a split decision. Tensions between fighter and trainer have escalated since then and now provide a noticeable angle preceding Saturday’s bout. It features De La Hoya, the sport’s most popular fighter of the past 10 years, against a fighter considered by many as the sport’s pound-for-pound best.

INSULT

”The thing is, he told me that he’d never fight without me in his corner again one time and he just wanted to make me feel good at some point, and I fell for it,” Roach said. “But I did feel good for a moment.”

De La Hoya brought Mayweather Sr. back as trainer for his bout against Steve Forbes on May 3. But De La Hoya shifted course again for the Pacquiao bout, hiring veteran Mexican trainer Nacho Beristain to direct his camp and fight. Hall of Fame trainer Angelo Dundee was added as a training consultant.

”Oscar was great in training camp,” Roach said of his brief tenure with De La Hoya. “He works really hard and he’s a hard trainer; he’s a hard worker.

“He’s not the fastest learner in the world. When you show him something new, you have to keep working on him, where Pacquiao picks it up a lot quicker.”

Roach believes De La Hoya’s reduction of jabs in the late rounds cost him against Mayweather.

”The game plan we had for the fight was working well in the early rounds and I thought we were winning the fight,” Roach said. “Then he abandoned the game plan and then we end up losing the decision. And then, I guess about a month ago, he started blaming me for the loss.”

TIME TO RETIRE?

After the Mayweather bout, Roach suggested De La Hoya, 35, should retire and concentrate on his promotional company.

”Freddie Roach has made comments,” De La Hoya said. “And it’s obviously his way of pumping up his fighter.

“My motivation for this fight is Manny Pacquiao’s explosiveness, Manny Pacquiao’s punching power, Manny Pacquiao’s speed, Manny Pacquiao’s youth.

“I’m still going to say and put on the line is that I still respect him as a trainer and I still respect him as a person.”

The De La Hoya-Pacquiao fight will be televised on pay-per-view and will start between 11:15 p.m. and 11:45 p.m. The pay-per-view telecast, featuring two additional bouts, begins at 9.
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Miami’s Real Estate Market

Posted on December 5, 2008 by Jorge Costales

Business Week had an article on how vulture funds have targeted the Miami condo market. Good news bad news. Bad news for developers, but I hardly think its news to them. More like a better idea on how their demise will actually go down. Very good news to young professionals looking to rent over the next 5 years. A wide selection is now available. This from the article:

The bleak tableau is exactly what vulture investors have been waiting for. Having sat out the bubble, they’re flocking to the Magic City to make lowball, often all-cash offers for numerous properties at once. Some members of this motley assortment of foreign professionals, U.S. money managers, and retired corporate executives learned how to prey by picking through the detritus of the U.S. savings and loan bust. Others earned their stripes in emerging-market financial crises. They differ in their tactics; what unites them is their absolute insistence on paying bottom dollar.

Article referenced is copied in full at end of post.

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Business Week
Real Estate October 16, 2008, 5:00PM EST text size: TT
Vultures in Miami’s Real Estate Market
They’re flocking to the city to make lowball, all-cash offers for batches of properties

By Roben Farzad

On the 79th Street Causeway that connects inner Miami to the city’s beaches, a colony of giant turkey vultures sits ominously on a radio tower, staring at the downtown skyline. Migratory scavengers, they’re drawn to tall buildings.

Across the bay, vulture investors, that other breed of migratory scavenger, are feasting. South Florida is in the throes of a truly hellish real estate bust. Home prices are down 24% in the past year, with many places changing hands for less than half their height-of-bubble values. The region has seen foreclosures on more than $14.2 billion worth of property this year—a record. Developers can’t sell enough units to pay construction loans. Condo boards are trying to keep the stairwells of their half-empty buildings clear of vagrants. Landlords are renting out units at daily rates to makers of porn films.

The bleak tableau is exactly what vulture investors have been waiting for. Having sat out the bubble, they’re flocking to the Magic City to make lowball, often all-cash offers for numerous properties at once. Some members of this motley assortment of foreign professionals, U.S. money managers, and retired corporate executives learned how to prey by picking through the detritus of the U.S. savings and loan bust. Others earned their stripes in emerging-market financial crises. They differ in their tactics; what unites them is their absolute insistence on paying bottom dollar.

Consider the hard bargains being driven by Beverly Hills banker Joel Heffron. On a humid October morning he ventures into Miami’s Brickell Avenue financial district to meet with Peter Zalewski, principal at Condo Vultures Realty, a Miami real estate brokerage and consulting firm catering to distressed-property investors. The two are looking for real estate for Heffron’s personal portfolio. They size up the luxe lobby of a waterfront high-rise that was the first building on mainland Miami to break $500 a square foot. Now it anchors what Zalewski has christened the Foreclosure District.
EASY PICKINGS

And yet the building is still too rich for Heffron’s cold blood. “Look,” he says, taking off his sunglasses. “The deal that I want to do—where my heart is at—is to steal apartments that I can rent for a few years and then sell. I have the cash. What I need is a nice building—not too nice, but not popcorn ceilings, either—with ownership problems or people not paying their maintenance.”

The two move on to the neighboring tower. Zalewski notes that the seven-year-old waterfront building has banned realtors from using lockboxes, which hold keys for other agents to show properties and are usually placed on front doors, so as not to advertise that entire floors of condos are for sale. And yet, a flyer in the elevator reads: “Come to the board meeting in the Clubroom to see the status of our collections, foreclosures, and delinquencies.”

On the 14th floor, a foreclosed two-bedroom with an expansive view of the bay is listed at $299,000, down from $700,000 just months ago. Heffron, 65, thinks the property could go for less than $250,000. The bank, after all, isn’t pleased about paying a $680 monthly maintenance fee, which from the looks of the building’s unkempt pool deck is sure to rise. In this financial crisis, says Heffron, sellers have no choice but to cut their asking price every 10 days or so until the property moves.

Not since a hurricane devastated Miami in 1926 has the city offered so much property at such steep discounts. “You’re not going to see a new condo go up in this town for seven years, minimum,” says Zalewski. “The common Joe can’t get a mortgage, and a 40% downpayment is becoming the rule for anyone who can. But if you have the cash, you can feast like a king.”

Especially foreign cash. Esteban, a doctor from Colombia who requested that his last name be withheld, has seen his buying power boosted by the strong Colombian peso, which he swapped for U.S. dollars this summer when it hit a decade high. On a recent Tuesday he inspects a new two-bedroom condo with a wraparound balcony overlooking the port of Miami, one of several purchases he wants to make. The unit’s absentee owner paid $650,000 pre-construction, tried to sell it for $515,000, and is now asking $489,000. Esteban is confident he can close on a deal near $425,000 before Christmas, having just spied a foreclosure notice on a neighbor’s door. “I don’t care if they tell me to f— off,” says the Colombian. “They have to face the bank, not me.”

A mile south, Frank Marrero, a snowbird from Hoboken, N.J., is three luxury bayfront condos into a campaign to buy 15 by 2010. “If you have cash down here and say you’ll close in two weeks, you’re golden,” says the 31-year-old mortgage broker. Marrero is targeting the nonrefundable 20% cash deposits that buyers have put down on properties still in development. He offers to repay the buyers some portion of their deposit to entice them to back out. Then he plays hardball with the developers. So far he has pulled off this maneuver twice, he says. His goal is to buy places so cheaply that he can rent them out for enough to cover the entire monthly nut and still produce 8% cash flow on the investment—with the option of selling the units at a profit if the market comes back.

“Hey, other people—not me—got in at crazy prices,” says Marrero. “Now the weak are trickling off, and I swoop down for the kill.”

When rueful condo buyers want out, the billable hours soar. The Miami Herald has been covering the surge in South Florida attorneys marketing the new legal niche of “contract cancellation.” In a prescient Mar. 22, 2007, article, the Herald reported that “buyers seeking to get out of contracts are pouncing on changes in developers’ plans” to wiggle out of contracts. What started as a novel legal ploy is now commonplace.

To read “Nervous Condo Buyers Want Out”, go to http://bx.businessweek.com/real-estate-speculators/reference/

BusinessWeek Senior Writer Farzad covers Wall Street and international finance.
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Year-End Strategies to Trim Your Taxes

Posted on December 3, 2008 by Jorge Costales

WSJ Tax article
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Year-End Strategies to Trim Your Taxes

DECEMBER 3, 2008

By TOM HERMAN

‘Tis the season to make last-minute tax-saving moves. Just don’t automatically repeat everything you’ve done in past years.

Because of several tax-law changes and questions about what may lie ahead in 2009, you may need to consider new strategies — or at least a few variations on old themes.

Year-end tax planning “will be trickier than usual” because of factors such as the stock market’s volatility and the possibility of significant tax changes next year when Barack Obama takes over as president, says Sidney Kess, a New York accountant and lawyer. During the campaign, then-Sen. Obama proposed cutting taxes for most Americans while raising income taxes and capital-gains taxes for those at the top end of the income scale. But he also indicated he might postpone recommending any tax increases if the economy looked shaky — as it now clearly does.

Adding to the uncertainty, “there might even be another economic stimulus package carrying tax changes” enacted before the end of this year, says a new, 93-page publication by the tax and accounting business of Thomson Reuters.

A separate report by CCH, a Wolters Kluwer unit, warns that this year is “especially challenging for year-end planning” in view of “a flood of eleventh-hour tax law and regulatory changes.” CCH estimates there have been more than 500 changes this year to the Internal Revenue Code.

But don’t throw out your old playbook entirely. Many time-honored techniques will still work well for most people. Among them is one that is especially timely this year in view of sharp declines in stock and bond prices: Consider dumping losers you were thinking of getting rid of anyway. Those losses can be valuable for tax savings.

Also, if you’re thinking of investing in mutual funds this month for a taxable account, contact each fund or check its Web site to see whether it’s planning to make large year-end capital-gains distributions soon. Even some funds that have lost money this year are planning December payouts. If a fund you’re considering is planning a big payout soon that will affect your tax bill, consider waiting to invest in that fund until after the date to qualify for the distribution.

Here are a few other ideas that tax and investment strategists are recommending:

Timing is everything. In most cases, it pays to accelerate deductions, such as charitable donations and state and local tax payments, into the current year whenever possible. But that strategy may backfire for some people this year because of an important law enacted earlier this year: If you claim the standard deduction for 2008, you can take an additional amount to reflect real-estate taxes. (This additional standard deduction is also available for 2009.)

This change is likely to mean some people who itemized deductions in past years might be better off claiming the standard deduction for 2008 — and thus deferring items such as charitable donations and state and local taxes into next year, when they might be deductible.

The maximum amount of the new additional standard deduction for state and local real-estate taxes is $1,000 for married couples who file jointly and $500 for singles. The basic standard deduction for 2008 is $10,900 for joint filers and $5,450 for most singles. There are additional amounts for those who are 65 or older and blind.

Thus, a married couple filing jointly, each at least 65, and who paid at least $1,000 of real-estate taxes, would get a standard deduction for 2008 of $14,000, says Bob Scharin, senior tax analyst at Thomson Reuters. (That’s the $10,900 basic standard deduction plus $1,050 for the elderly husband, $1,050 for the elderly wife and $1,000 for their real-estate taxes.)

Another complicating factor is the alternative minimum tax. The AMT, a separate way of calculating your taxes, operates under many different rules than the regular system. For example, you can’t deduct state and local taxes under the AMT. Thus, if you’re ensnared by the AMT or claim the standard deduction for 2008, don’t prepay state and local taxes this month that aren’t due until 2009, says Mr. Scharin. About four million people were caught by the AMT for 2007, and roughly the same number will be for 2008. It’s unclear what Congress will do about the AMT next year.

Tax swaps. Some investors recently have been selling municipal bonds at a loss, thus nailing down capital losses that can be used to cut taxes, and then reinvesting the proceeds in other municipal bonds with similar credit ratings and durations, says Benjamin A. Pace III, a managing director at Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management. “We’re seeing some interest lately” among wealthy investors in this tax-swapping technique, mainly with municipal bonds, Mr. Pace says. “You can do this without changing the nature of your credit quality or duration.”

Capital gains. On the campaign trail, then-Sen. Obama proposed increasing the top rate on long-term capital gains, now 15%, to 20% for people making more than $250,000. With the economy in a deep slump, it’s unclear whether President-elect Obama will delay that plan. Thus, investment advisers are urging most clients not to rush out and sell stocks now purely to take advantage of the 15% rate, which may remain the same next year, after all.

Whatever the case, never make any investment move based solely on tax considerations, says Blanche Lark Christerson, a managing director at Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management.

Stayin’ alive. Buried in the tax law is a powerful incentive for many wealthy people who care about their heirs to stay alive at least until the dawn of 2009. The basic federal estate-tax exclusion, now $2 million, is scheduled to soar to $3.5 million next year. Thus, if someone survives until Jan. 1, an additional $1.5 million of that person’s estate will be sheltered from the federal estate tax, where the top rate is 45% both this year and next.

Mr. Kess says wealthy people should also consider taking advantage of the annual gift-tax exclusion, which allows you to give away as much as $12,000 this year to anyone you want — and to as many people as you wish — without any tax considerations. That amount will rise next year to $13,000. With stock prices down sharply, more shares can be transferred this way, he says.

Other breaks. First-time homebuyers will have until mid-2009 to claim a new refundable tax credit for a qualifying home purchase in the U.S., says a CCH report. But the credit must be repaid in equal installments over 15 years, or earlier if the house is sold. Thus, it’s effectively an interest-free loan from Uncle Sam, CCH says.

Congress also extended the life of several popular breaks that had expired. Among them is one that allows taxpayers who itemize to deduct their state and local sales taxes instead of their state and local income taxes. This law, which was extended through 2009, is especially important for taxpayers who live in Florida, Texas, Washington and other states that have no income tax. But it also benefits millions of other people in many other states.
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Neuroscience, Dopamine and Vern Den Herder

Posted on December 3, 2008 by Jorge Costales

Coming to a late night infomercial near you….

Neurotransmitter got ya down?

At the law offices of Jose Garcia & Cy Rabinowitz, we’ll fight for your rights to recall your enemies….

I keep expecting the type of advances discussed in optimistic magazine articles about neuroscience to always be down the road. The wait is over. In this Sunday’s NYT, see the article about ongoing genetic testing. The testing described involves the ACTN3 gene, which is tied to athletic performance. I started this post with a joke about lawyers, but it’s not hard to see a few years down the road if the ACTN3 gene’s athletic connection turns out to have been incorrect, some parent suing for wasted swim lessons for Johnny. The liability / disclaimer forms associated with the testing must be a Georgia-Pacific wet dream.

Speaking of where all this is going. Another article that day dealt with Gay rights groups protesting the California amendment which passed and excludes homosexuals from obtaining a formal marriage designation. The gay gene. At this point it appears to be a when, not if, they identify it. The first and most obvious ramification will be parents who wish to ensure that their child does not have that gene. But how about if a gay couple hires a surrogate mom and attempts to ensure that the child–the term ‘fetus’ is only applicable when people wish to kill it–have the gay gene. Who complains in scenario A? Who complains in scenario B? Who will be consistent on the issue? I am against the idea of DNA manipulation, i.e. playing God. But what if the gene manipulation pertains to avoiding a disease?

Then in Tuesday’s WSJ, an article about ongoing testing to determine the origins of senior moments. It turns out that there is this biochemical called dopamine, which is associated with adrenaline, the absence of which allows us to relax [and forget things] as we age. However, if we lose too much, we are susceptible to Parkinson’s.

I note all this as I doggedly attempt–determined for now not to google it–to recall Vern Den Herder’s jersey number, since ‘vdenherder’ was one of my password clues for the online Comcast account which I apparently once setup.

Hey quit you’re smirking about Den Herder. He is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and in 12 seasons for the Dolphins, he played in three Super Bowls and went to a Pro Bowl.

All articles referenced are copied in full at end of post.

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Biochemicals

Amino Acids — The fundamental building blocks of proteins and also an important class of biochemicals involved in intermediary metabolism.

Cholesterol — Can’t live with it, can’t live without it. This important steroid serves as the precursor to an entire lineup of essential steroids.

DNA — The hard drive of the human body. This complex biopolymer is the storage site for genetic information.

Fatty Acids — Long chained biochemicals that store food energy until it is needed. These molecules are also involved in a variety of biological functions.

Hormones — Probably our biggest problems derive from increased blood levels of certain hormones. Once again, can’t live with ’em, but can’t live without ’em either.

Minerals — A collection of bioessential salts that are used in a huge number of biochemical metabolic pathways.

Neurotransmitters — Small biochemicals that our body uses to shuttle messages from one part to another. Often these guys are the target of abusive chemicals and drugs.

Phytochemicals — The “vitamins” of the next millennium, these chemicals are mostly derived from plants. There is a growing body of evidence that many of these biochemicals can stop cancer.

Prostaglandins — Bioactive lipids that act in a manner similar to hormones, although on a more localized basis. These chemicals are synthesized and degraded very rapidly.

Proteins — Important biopolymers that play a critical role in the structure and function of the body. This class of biochemicals includes enzymes, collagen, and hemoglobin, to name a few.

Sugars — An important food source for the brain. These biochemicals are involved in a vast number of important pathways and are also commonly used as structural components of proteins, enzymes, and cell walls.

Vitamins — Derived from the term “vital amines”, these essential biochemicals must be obtained in the diet. They are responsible for catalyzing some of the most complex biosynthesis in the body.
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Surveying the Brain for Origins of the Senior Moment

DECEMBER 2, 2008

Aging Brings Mental Changes — Including a Slowdown of Mere Milliseconds — That Drive Us to Distraction

By ROBERT LEE HOTZ

SAN FRANCISCO — Nyla Puccinelli sat patiently at the crossroads of memory, attention and aging, while a lab technician threaded color-coded electrodes into the mesh cap on her head. A retired school teacher, she’d always had trouble recalling her students’ names but she worried more now about her memory and found it harder to shrug off distractions.

“If I am really concentrating on something now, I have to turn off the radio,” Ms. Puccinelli, 69 years old, said. “There is a lack of concentration. Because you’re getting older, you get more concerned about it.”

By recording the electrical activity of her mind at work, neurologist Adam Gazzaley at the University of California at San Francisco was using her healthy brain as a road map of mental changes that age brings to us all. In particular, Dr. Gazzaley and his colleagues were trying to understand why aging drives us all to distraction.

At the slightest interruption — an irritating ring tone, an insistent email alert or the hushed conversation in the adjacent office cubicle — our thoughts can plunge into the mental underbrush like hounds snuffling after the wrong scent. As scientists document the normal brain changes at fault, they are highlighting a growing conflict between the push-me-pull-you demands of modern multitasking and our waning powers of concentration. By one estimate, the average office worker is interrupted every three minutes. Indeed, our inability to ignore irrelevant intrusions as we grow older may arise from a basic breakdown of internal brain communications involving memory, attention span and mental focus starting in middle age, researchers have discovered.

These days, we look for any insight into how aging alters the brain. “My patients are most worried about having something go wrong with their brain as they age, more than they worry about cancer,” says clinical neuropsychologist Karen Berman at the National Institute of Mental Health.

America’s 78 million baby boomers are turning 60 at the rate of about 8,000 a day. By 2050, the world’s population of those over 60 years old is expected to exceed the number of young people for the first time in history, according to the United Nations population division, with more than 2 billion people potentially prone to absent-minded moments of memory lapse and befuddlement.

“It is a public health issue — the aging mind — but more than that, it is an individual issue for so many people,” says Dr. Gazzaley. “People don’t want to retire. They want to compete in the workplace as well as they ever did, as well as the 20-year-old who was just hired in the room next to them. People want their brain to be the same their whole life.”

No matter what we do, though, our brains normally shrink as we age — a man’s faster than a woman’s — affecting regions associated with learning and memory. Many genes linked to brain function in the prefrontal cortex also become less active, affecting how deftly we can orchestrate thoughts and actions.

By combining different measures of brain activity — positron emission tomography, functional magnetic resonance imaging and electro-encephalography — scientists for the first time can see how aging brain regions, designed to work in unison like the interlocking innards of an expensive watch, fail to mesh swiftly and smoothly. Normal aging, for example, disrupts the electrical crosstalk between major brain regions, researchers at Harvard University reported last December in the journal Neuron.

“With these new physiological techniques, we can look at what is going on the brain when you are supposed to be ignoring something,” Dr. Gazzaley says.

Among the brain circuits that focus attention and memory, his research suggests, aging is a matter of milliseconds. In experiments testing how well people of different ages could recall faces and landscapes, Dr. Gazzaley and scientists at UC Berkeley found that among older people, the brain was slightly slower — 200 milliseconds or so — to ignore irrelevant test information. That instant of interference was enough to disrupt a memory in the making, they found.

“This is the distractibility,” he says. In fact, it significantly affected how well older people did on memory tests compared to younger adults. “In that first fraction of a second, younger adults are much better at blocking things out,” Dr. Gazzaley said.

During that momentary lapse, we can forget a new name, misplace our keys or lose our train of thought.
Brain Teaser

Test your ability to tune out distractions on the interactive “Remembering Faces” quiz, at National Public Radio, developed by neurologist Adam Gazzaley at the University of California at San Francisco to test memory and attention.
Recommended Reading

Dr. Gazzaley reported on recent experiments revealing how normal aging affects memory and attention in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and in Nature Neuroscience.

Psychologist Cindy Lustig at the University of Michigan’s cognition and aging laboratory and her colleagues surveyed current research on aging and cognition in “Brain aging: Reorganizing discoveries about the aging mind” published in the journal Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

Dr. Karen Berman at the National Institute of Mental Health and her colleagues reported on how a healthy brain mellows with age in “Age-related changes in midbrain dopaminergic regulation of the human reward system.”

Harvard University neuroscientist Daniel L. Schacter writes broadly on the foibles of memory in two books: The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers, which received a New York Times Notable Book of the Year Award, and Searching for Memory, which won the American Psychological Association’s William James Book Award.

Moreover, our brains start changing long before we can see the pattern in such shortcomings. Last month, researchers at UCLA reported that, beginning in middle age, we start to lose the myelin insulation that sheathes the nerve fibers running through our frontal lobes. In essence, the electrical wires of our neural circuits begin to fray and that could imperceptibly hamper our thought process. In 2006, scientists at the University of Toronto and the Rotman Research Institute in Canada reported that, among people in their 40s, they already could detect the neural mismatches that make many of us more vulnerable to distractions.

By the time we reach age 65 or more, one fourth of us may be wrestling with a failing memory and other mild cognitive problems, researchers at the Indiana School of Medicine reported in the journal Neurology. An 88-year-old widow described the feeling. “My brain argues with itself,”‘ she says. “Spontaneous thoughts can be a struggle because they keep dancing off. They don’t all march along at the same speed. It’s very annoying.”

Not all the indignities of age are inevitable, research suggests. “Yes, there are biological brain changes; yes, things get harder; but we seem to be able to compensate for that,” says University of Michigan psychologist Cindy Lustig, who studies how mental abilities change with age.

To keep mentally fit, a generation of aging gym rats has embraced the cognitive calisthenics of computerized brain exercises. Not all mental gymnastics or herbal supplements work as advertised, but proper diet, cardiovascular exercise and formal education do stave off mental decline, according to new research. “With the right kind of training, we can take an older mind and make it younger,” Dr. Gazzaley says. “The potential exists.”

Something seems to be working. Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Michigan reported that, in a study of 11,000 retired people, memory loss and other cognitive problems were becoming less common among older Americans. That could be due to better care of high blood pressure, cholesterol and other medical risk factors. No one is sure. An active social life also appears to slow the rate at which memory fails, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health reported this past July in the American Journal of Public Health.

Despite its distractions, a healthy brain may also mellow with age. The roller-coaster rush of dopamine, a biochemical associated with heady feelings of reward, doesn’t affect older people as strongly as it does the young, Dr. Berman reported this fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Is this evidence that, among older neurons and synapses, life can lose its savor? “I would suggest it shows that older people are appreciating life in a different way,” says Dr. Berman.

In other words, the dopamine drop may be a biochemical marker of something else: the wisdom to accept with grace what we cannot change.
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Born to Run? Little Ones Get Test for Sports Gene

November 30, 2008

By JULIET MACUR

BOULDER, Colo. — When Donna Campiglia learned recently that a genetic test might be able to determine which sports suit the talents of her 2 ½-year-old son, Noah, she instantly said, Where can I get it and how much does it cost?

“I could see how some people might think the test would pigeonhole your child into doing fewer sports or being exposed to fewer things, but I still think it’s good to match them with the right activity,” Ms. Campiglia, 36, said as she watched a toddler class at Boulder Indoor Soccer in which Noah struggled to take direction from the coach between juice and potty breaks.

“I think it would prevent a lot of parental frustration,” she said.

In health-conscious, sports-oriented Boulder, Atlas Sports Genetics is playing into the obsessions of parents by offering a $149 test that aims to predict a child’s natural athletic strengths. The process is simple. Swab inside the child’s cheek and along the gums to collect DNA and return it to a lab for analysis of ACTN3, one gene among more than 20,000 in the human genome.

The test’s goal is to determine whether a person would be best at speed and power sports like sprinting or football, or endurance sports like distance running, or a combination of the two. A 2003 study discovered the link between ACTN3 and those athletic abilities.

In this era of genetic testing, DNA is being analyzed to determine predispositions to disease, but experts raise serious questions about marketing it as a first step in finding a child’s sports niche, which some parents consider the road to a college scholarship or a career as a professional athlete.

Atlas executives acknowledge that their test has limitations but say that it could provide guidelines for placing youngsters in sports. The company is focused on testing children from infancy to about 8 years old because physical tests to gauge future sports performance at that age are, at best, unreliable.

Some experts say ACTN3 testing is in its infancy and virtually useless. Dr. Theodore Friedmann, the director of the University of California-San Diego Medical Center’s interdepartmental gene therapy program, called it “an opportunity to sell new versions of snake oil.”

“This may or may not be quite that venal, but I would like to see a lot more research done before it is offered to the general public,” he said. “I don’t deny that these genes have a role in athletic success, but it’s not that black and white.”

Dr. Stephen M. Roth, director of the functional genomics laboratory at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health who has studied ACTN3, said he thought the test would become popular. But he had reservations.

“The idea that it will be one or two genes that are contributing to the Michael Phelpses or the Usain Bolts of the world I think is shortsighted because it’s much more complex than that,” he said, adding that athletic performance has been found to be affected by at least 200 genes.

Dr. Roth called ACTN3 “one of the most exciting and eyebrow-raising genes out there in the sports-performance arena,” but he said that any test for the gene would be best used only on top athletes looking to tailor workouts to their body types.

“It seems to be important at very elite levels of competition,” Dr. Roth said. “But is it going to affect little Johnny when he participates in soccer, or Suzy’s ability to perform sixth grade track and field? There’s very little evidence to suggest that.”

The study that identified the connection between ACTN3 and elite athletic performance was published in 2003 by researchers primarily based in Australia.

Those scientists looked at the gene’s combinations, one copy provided by each parent. The R variant of ACTN3 instructs the body to produce a protein, alpha-actinin-3, found specifically in fast-twitch muscles. Those muscles are capable of the forceful, quick contractions necessary in speed and power sports. The X variant prevents production of the protein.

The ACTN3 study looked at 429 elite white athletes, including 50 Olympians, and found that 50 percent of the 107 sprint athletes had two copies of the R variant. Even more telling, no female elite sprinter had two copies of the X variant. All male Olympians in power sports had at least one copy of the R variant.

Conversely, nearly 25 percent of the elite endurance athletes had two copies of the X variant — only slightly higher than the control group at 18 percent. That means people with two X copies are more likely to be suited for endurance sports.

Still, some athletes prove science, and seemingly their genetics, wrong. Research on an Olympic long jumper from Spain showed that he had no copies of the R variant, indicating that athletic success is probably affected by a combination of genes as well as factors like environment, training, nutrition and luck.

“Just think if that Spanish kid’s parents had done the test and said, ‘No, your genes show that you are going to be a bad long jumper, so we are going to make you a golfer,’ ” said Carl Foster, a co-author of the study, who is the director of the human performance laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. “Now look at him. He’s the springiest guy in Spain. He’s Tigger. We don’t yet understand what combination of genes creates that kind of explosiveness.”

Dr. Foster suggested another way to determine if a child will be good at sprint and power sports. “Just line them up with their classmates for a race and see which ones are the fastest,” he said.

Kevin Reilly, the president of Atlas Sports Genetics and a former weight-lifting coach, expected the test to be controversial. He said some people were concerned that it would cause “a rebirth of eugenics, similar to what Hitler did in trying to create this race of perfect athletes.”

Mr. Reilly said he feared what he called misuse by parents who go overboard with the results and specialize their children too quickly and fervently.

“I’m nervous about people who get back results that don’t match their expectations,” he said. “What will they do if their son would not be good at football? How will they mentally and emotionally deal with that?”

Mr. Reilly insisted that the test is one tool of many that can help children realize their athletic potential. It may even keep an overzealous father from pushing his son to be a quarterback if his genes indicate otherwise, Mr. Reilly said.

If ACTN3 suggests a child may be a great athlete, he said, parents should take a step back and nurture that potential Olympian or N.F.L. star with careful nutrition, coaching and planning. He also said they should hold off on placing a child in a competitive environment until about the age of 8 to avoid burnout.

“Based on the test of a 5-year-old or a newborn, you are not going to see if you have the next Michael Johnson; that’s just not going to happen,” Mr. Reilly said. “But if you wait until high school or college to find out if you have a good athlete on your hands, by then it will be too late. We need to identify these kids from 1 and up, so we can give the parents some guidelines on where to go from there.”

Boyd Epley, a former strength and conditioning coach at the University of Nebraska, said the next step would be a physical test he devised. Atlas plans to direct children to Epic Athletic Performance, a talent identification company that uses Mr. Epley’s index. He founded the company; Mr. Reilly is its president.

China and Russia, Mr. Epley said, identify talent in the very young and whittle the pool of athletes until only the best remain for the national teams.

“This is how we could stay competitive with the rest of the world,” Mr. Epley said of genetic and physical testing. “It could, at the very least, provide you with realistic goals for you and your children.”

The ACTN3 test has been available through the Australian company Genetic Technologies since 2004. The company has marketed the test in Australia, Europe and Japan, but is now entering the United States through Atlas. The testing kit was scheduled to be available starting Monday through the Web site atlasgene.com.

The analysis takes two to three weeks, and the results arrive in the form of a certificate announcing Your Genetic Advantage, whether it is in sprint, power and strength sports; endurance sports; or activity sports (for those with one copy of each variant, and perhaps a combination of strengths). A packet of educational information suggests sports that are most appropriate and what paths to follow so the child reaches his or her potential.

“I find it worrisome because I don’t think parents will be very clear-minded about this,” said William Morgan, an expert on the philosophy of ethics and sport and author of “Why Sports Morally Matter.” “This just contributes to the madness about sports because there are some parents who will just go nuts over the results.

“The problem here is that the kids are not old enough to make rational autonomous decisions about their own life,” he said.

Some parents will steer clear of the test for that reason.

Dr. Ray Howe, a general practitioner in Denver, said he would rather see his 2-year-old, Joseph, find his own way in life and discover what sports he likes the best. Dr. Howe, a former professional cyclist, likened ACTN3 testing to gene testing for breast cancer or other diseases.

“You might be able to find those things out, but do you really want to know?” he said.

Others, like Lori Lacy, 36, said genetic testing would be inevitable. Ms. Lacy, who lives in Broomfield, Colo., has three children ranging in age from 2 months to 5 years.

“Parents will start to say, ‘I know one mom who’s doing the test on her son, so maybe we should do the test too,’ ” she said.

“Peer pressure and curiosity would send people over the edge. What if my son could be a pro football player and I don’t know it?”
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