Bruce Frankel

Author Marsha Lucas Reveals How Meditation Rewires The Brain For Love

2012-02-02T20:21:00Z

Author Marsha Lucas talked to me recently about her new book and how mindfulness meditation rewires the brain for relationships, love and even sex.

In Rewire Your Brain For Love, the Washington-based neuropsychologist weaves together research and practical examples from her own psychotherapy practice, with humor, to explain the genesis of the relationship wiring of our brains. She contends that we can improve our emotional responses, insight, resilience, sex, and ability to handle fear at any age using mindfulness meditation. Here are a couple of excerpts from the interview published by SecondAct.com:

SA: How does meditation help rewire the brain for love and relationships?
ML: Better neural pathways mean better relationships. If your brain is not integrated, you might over-rely on one part of your brain. For example, you may be living in a literal, logical, linear world. When your spouse comes to you upset, you may respond with logic. Then she feels as if you don’t understand what she’s saying, and then there’s that disconnect. Practicing mindfulness gives you a chance, in the moment, to bring more pathways online and turn dirt roads into information highways.

SA: What does meditation cause the brain to do differently?
ML: Repeated meditation practice seems to develop a richer, thicker pathway from the body up to the limbic system—the key player in your emotional life—and through something called the insula to the “top” of your brain. A plumper insula seems to send information in a less knee-jerk way. So your limbic brain doesn’t get to run the show.

When I asked Lucas if mindfulness mediation could really change the structure of our brains in midlife or beyond, she noted that in the U.S., we imagine that with age everything shrivels. As a result, we expect dementia and attentional deficits. But in one captivating study, “researchers found that cortical areas (of the brain) were thicker in older meditators than younger nonmeditators.” Moreover, you don’t have to devote hours to meditation practice.
Patients often tell her, “I don’t have 10 or 20 minutes to meditate.”

“I say, ‘Okay, have you got two?” You can practice for six seconds—each time the phone rings. The brain loves micro-practicing. The more you practice, the more real estate your brain devotes.”

SA: How can mindfulness meditation improve our sex lives, even as we age?
ML: Parts of our bodies may not work the way they once did. But if we’re able to experience more of our body and all of the wonderful sensations, and get more connected to our partner so that we’re also getting all of that juicy emotional stuff, then we’ve got 10,000 times more input than with just our genitals. Sex really can be a much richer, bigger experience.

For the complete interview go to http://www.secondact.com/2012/02/new-book-reveals-surprising-benefits-of-meditation/

Perry’s Memory Malfunction: Anxiety Not Age Likely Key, Experts Say

2011-11-11T05:30:04Z

Admit it, Rick Perry’s 54-second brain freeze in Wednesday night’s GOP debate was riveting TV. Not because it was the death knell of the Texas governor’s presidential campaign as pundits predict, but because drawing a blank is a nightmarishly familiar experience.

Watching Perry, 61, search fruitlessly for the name of the third federal department that he declared he would abolish might even have caused opponents to feel a twinge of sympathy. After all, experts say that that, on average, people report one memory meltdown a week.

Still, it’s hard not to wonder how the governor of the nation’s biggest energy-producing state could forget a staple of his stump speech. That is, along with U.S. departments of commerce and education, he would put the Department of Energy out of business. His “oops!” didn’t quite cover his jaw-dropping lapse. He worked the talk show circuit on Thursday trying to improve on his explanation and save his candidacy.

Rick Perry Explains Flub

Here’s what some of the nation’s leading experts on memory say about the mental mishap:

Perry suffered from “blocking,” a temporary inability to retrieve information that is available in memory, according to Harvard psychologist Daniel L. Schacter, the author of The Seven Sins of Memory. “Interestingly, blocking occurs most commonly for proper names, as was the case here.” Blocking can be increased by stress and by aging, he added, “although we can’t know for sure whether either one was a factor in this instance.”

Oddly enough, blocking tends to occur for information that is familiar, but has not been retrieved frequently or recently, he says.

Psychologist Bennett Schwartz considers Perry’s memory malfunction a genuine “tip of the tongue” state. A main characteristic of the state is that we are confident we know something, but can’t access it at the moment. “He knows he has retrieved the item before,” so that failing to retrieve it from memory only heightens the stress, says Schwartz, a professor at Florida International University and the author of Tip of the Tongue States. The cause for the memory failure, he adds, is that two competing systems are at work: one is spreading activation, or searching, across the brain while another, stress, is causing interference.

Numerous studies have shown, additionally, that recalling items within a category becomes more difficult as we progress through a list. In effect, the items we recall earlier make it harder for us to recall the ones we are still trying to retrieve.

What made Perry’s gaffe odd, says Ira Hyman, a professor of psychology at Western Washington University, is that “you would expect that something that is part of a stump speech would be easily accessed.”

Of course, even psychology professors like himself, Hyman says, commonly experience tip of the tongue states when they run into a student they know well as they walk across campus but at the instant can’t recall the student’s name. Fifteen minutes later, when the stress of remembering subsides, the name is recalled.

“It’s unfortunate for Perry” that his forgetfulness seemed to corroborate a growing perception that he is limited cognitively, says Hyman. “If Mitt Romney did it, the moment would be laughed off.”

“It’s obvious that he has a lot on his mind and is distracted,” says Elizabeth Loftus, a fellow of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and a professor at the University of Washington. She discounted age as a factor in the gaffe.

However, she did not rule out a lack of self-efficacy, or confidence, which is known to interfere with memory and could have come into play as a result of Perry’s previous poor debate performances. “Anxiety and preoccupation are not good for performance,” she adds. “I don’t like a lot of Perry’s policies, but I would rather see people go after him for his politics and plans than for this.”

What Motivates Fauja Singh, 100-year-old Marathon Man?

2011-10-22T19:07:38Z

Looking for motivation for your run? Fauja Singh, the 100-year-old runner who this week became the world’s oldest person to complete a full-length marathon, might supply some.

“Anything worth doing is going to be difficult,” says Singh, of Ilford, England, whose 3,850th place finish at the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront marathon, in eight hours, 25 minutes and 16 seconds, qualified him for the Guiness Book of Records.

Sometimes called “The Turbaned Tornado,” the slender 5’8”, 125-pound white-bearded and turbaned figure, found his motivation for the run in the record set in 1976 by the 98-year-old Greek runner, Dimitrion Yordanidis. “I just wanted to break that bloody record,” Singh said, explaining to a reporter why, worried he and his trainer might not finish the marathon, didn’t tell relatives he was running it.

“I lost my speed in this race,” says Singh, “but it was the thought of that old man that pushed me through the last four miles. That and God.”
Singh, who speaks Punjabi, says running has given him purpose and a sense of peace. “Why worry about these small, small things? I don’t stress. You never hear of anyone dying of happiness.”

Having moved from India to England in 1995, after the deaths of his wife and son, Singh lives with family in east London, and leads what he says is “a very simple life”.
He took up serious running when he was 89 after a neighbor happened to introduce him to ex-professional runner Harmander Singh, his trainer and friend. “I train him for free,” says Harmander. “It’s an honour for me.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72LQEz-uzok&feature=related

Health tests done last year showed that Singh “has the bones of a 35-year-old,” says his trainer. The centenarian runner claims never to drink milk. “I’m scared of building up phlegm,” says Singh. “Punjabi people know eating and drinking is important, but I just eat the minimum of what I need: some daal and roti, gobi and chai – I’d probably be dead if I was full all the time.”
Singh’s late-life career as a runner first brought him celebrity six years ago when, at at 94, Adidas signed him for an its very cool Nothing Is Impossible campaign, along with soccer heroes David Beckham and Jonny Wilkinson.

“I’m not really interested in all the rupees, I give it to charity,” he says of his sponsorship deal. “Money can be saved and spent and lost and made. At my age it’s nice just to do this. Come on, who wants to talk to this old man? Everyone now! And it’s because of the running that all these people keep showing me so much love. Look how blessed I am. What’s not to be happy about?”

Fauja Singh reflects on healthy living:

Fauja Singh reflects on healthy living

http://youtu.be/mAGcDfkJscI

At 61, Vietnam Vet Kicks His Way Into College Football History

2011-10-21T23:06:48Z

Talk about dreams deferred! Consider 61-year-old placekicker Alan Moore, a laid-off construction worker who has become the oldest college football player to score points on the gridiron.

Forty-two years after Vietnam War interrupted his athletic and academic career and out of work, Moore returned to college to study for his bachelor’s degree and to play football again, cheered by fans and teammates at Faulkner University, a small Christian college in Montgomery, Alabama.

He was spurred to return to football after watching a game at another small college while visiting his grandchildren in Mississippi. “Their kicker wasn’t doing well that night, and I just joked to some people that I thought I could kick for them the next year,” he told the Associated Press.

He had, after all, been pretty good in his day. In 1968, as a freshman at Jones County Junior College in Ellisville, Miss., Moore’s placekicking helped his team clinch a national championship. But with the Vietnam War beginning, he quit college and enlisted. After his discharge, he returned home, went to work, was twice married and had three children.

Five decades after leaving college, he approached officials at Jones about returning to play football. The school wasn’t interested. But at Holmes Community College, coach Danny Robertson was intrigued and offered Moore a try out. “He did a good job,” Robertson told the Birmingham News. “I told him we only had one kicker coming back, and if he wanted to earn a spot with us, we would welcome him to two-a-days. He showed up here, and things have worked out for him.”

This year, Moore transferred to Faulkner (a four-year institution) and on Sept. 10, wearing the Faulkner Eagles’ cobalt-blue home uniform, he made history when he calmly split the uprights with a kick for an extra point after a touchdown, boosting the Eagles to a 25-0 advantage over visiting Ave Maria University. (The Eagles won the game 41-19.)

The College Hall of Fame has since requested a football signed by Moore for display. But questioned about his accomplishment, a smiling Moore demurs. “It’s not about me, and it’s not about being old,” says Moore, whose teammates jokingly call him Moses, Old School and Grandpa. “It’s about the team.” The lesson, he says, is simple. “Never, ever, give up.”

And the kick is…
Moore’s extra point

Interview with Moore:
61-year-old place kicker

Scientists Say They Have Physical Proof Bilingualism Delays Onset of Alzheimer’s

2011-10-17T04:34:51Z

When an editor at a major celebrity magazine proposed a profile of an educator teaching two-year-olds to speak second languages a few years ago, the editor in chief scoffed: “For what, so they can order their food in French?’ An embarrassed silence filled the air.

Now, a Canadian study has given a stunning retort:

People who speak more than one language suffer twice as much brain damage as those who speak only one language before they exhibit symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. The study provides the first physical evidence that bilingualism delays the onset of the disease. Prior studies have suggested that bilingualism retards by four to five years the onset of the cognitive issues of Alzheimer’s.

“No drug can come close, and now we have the evidence to prove this at the neuroanatomical level,” said Dr. Tom Schweizer, a neuroscientist who headed the research at St. Michael’s

Schweizer’s team studied CT scans of patients who had been diagnosed with probable Alzheimer’s disease and who had similar levels of education and cognitive skills, such as attention, memory, planning and organization. Half were bilingual and able to speak at least two languages fluently; the other half spoke only one language.

Despite performing equivalently on all measures of cognitive performance, bilingual patients showed twice as much atrophy in areas of the brain known to be affected by Alzheimer’s.

Schweizer theorized that said speaking two languages exercises the brain and helps develop additional neural networks, adding to what neuroscientists call cognitive reserve. That is, despite damage from the disease, the brain is able to recruit help from enhanced neural networks in undamaged regions of the brain and better compensate for damage the disease causes.

Here’s a video of an interview with Schweizer:

bilingualism and Alzheimer’s

The findings have been published on-line in the journal Cortex.

Thinking of Grace

2011-08-31T05:08:21Z

Few people ever so embodied joy or so freely shared themselves as the writer Grace Paley, who died at 84 in 2007. She was known for her slim, compelling stories fueled not by plot but by pitch-perfect, tragic-comic New York dialogue. But tonight, thinking of her and her impish eyes and corona of white curls, I turned to one of her later poems:
Therefore

When I am old
I will not be surprised as
Leon Trotsky said I would
I will not be surprised
for I have built my
Ship of Death as D.H. Lawrence
said I should

Therefore I can right now
as Barbara Deming cried
come dance with all your might
then I will live though I die old
in passion like a fool as
William Butler Yeats thought
would be right

Now I have learned in politics and
dream from William Blake
and that beloved Prince Kropotkin
whom I’ve read
with Robert Nichols in
the parlor and in bed
before we loved and sometimes afterwards
because the summer moon stands low
to glare on shadowed fields and in
this window makes such light it is
the natural law as any child
would know of moon and love and night

Here’s a glimpse of Grace from a documentary about her by Lilly Rivlin:

Grace Paley

Puzzling Out Retirement Together: 10 Must-Have Conversations

2011-06-20T05:34:45Z

Conversations couples face as they transition to the second half of life — money, roles, sex, and death among them — can be knotty, complex, and fraught with unsettling conflict. Differing goals, values and dreams that daily life obscured, press for answers.

Sometimes threateningly.

As in those knee-buckling words, “Honey, we need to talk.”

Authors Dorian Mintzer (left) and Roberta Taylor

To help, psychotherapists and life coaches Dorian Mintzer and Roberta Taylor have written The Couple’s Retirement Puzzle: 10 Must-Have Conversation for Transitioning to the Second Half of Life ($17.95, Lincoln Street Press), a warm, practical, no-nonsense, and user-friendly guide to navigating and defusing potentially hazardous dialogues.

“What you are retiring to is more important than what you are retiring from,” they write. But figuring out how two people, confronted by a cascade of questions, can communicate effectively and puzzle out a map and route to a mutual destination — or shared vision — without falling prey to banked-up fears, secrets, differences and resentments is tricky stuff.

Do we want to retire? Can we afford to retire? How will we spend our time? What’s important? Do we have to spend all our time together? What if he wants to move to Key West and she wants to stay near the grandchildren in Pittsburgh? What if health concerns plague one and not the other? And what if there’s not enough money to retire? What if the long-awaited for chance for intimacy is around the corner, but the ways of it remain as elusive as ever?

The authors put to work experience and insights gathered from extensive careers treating individuals and couples struggling to talk together about difficult things. And in addressing the issue of transitioning to retirement, they frame taboo topics and coach the reader on how to have productive conversations.

Reassuringly, they share their own real-life experiences with challenging issues with their own spouses as well.

Mintzer, a Ph.D. psychologist who became a first-time mother at fifty, is still ramping up her career as her older physician-husband curtails his professional life. Taylor, a couples coach who found true love with her first sweetheart after two failed marriages, faces the difficult balancing act less than a decade after her dream marriage began. The strategy works. The reader sees that no one is exempt from struggle.

But along with the challenges of the second half of life, comes the great opportunity to reassess outdated roles, to let go of what no longer works, and to open new possibilities. “It takes courage, commitment, and compromise,” the authors write. But when couples think ahead, communicate, and plan together, good things happen.

Mintzer (also the founder of Boomers and Beyond, a national special interest group of interdisciplinary professionals) and Taylor don’t offer revolutionary advice.

Rather, they give readers a solid, accessible, positive template. They remind, too, that the nature of retirement is changing before our eyes. Instead of a future of withdrawal and decline, as dominated expectations in the past, possibilities for the second half of life are now as varied as the 78 million baby boomers entering it. That is particularly true for the many who can expect to live two to three decades beyond the “traditional” age of retirement.

As a result, couples that avoid the difficult conversations, do so at their own peril.

In the transition to retirement or new careers and undertakings in later life, partners may have to redefine roles that have become their identities. To understand how and why and to receive help and support, the conversation starters and aids this book offers may help. Mintzer and Taylor also warn couples to watch out for some myths about retirement, such as ‘everything will be fine.’ It may not be.

But the authors promise something better than myth for couples when acceptance, the willingness to “agree to disagree” and true communication occur.

The chance, that is, to see unexpected possibilities, new perspectives, individual growth, a more intimate relationship, and a mutually-created future which both partners enter with enthusiasm and shared, informed expectation.

As helpful as this companionable book will be to those facing the transition to retirement or to new, unexpected lives in the second half of life, it’s also a worthy wedding gift to newlyweds just starting out. The timetable may not be precisely the same, but most of the issues aren’t radically different and the need to communicate effectively and listen well are just as critical.

Picturing Harry Bernstein: Italian Novelist Ugo Barbara’s Bittersweet Goodbye

2011-06-12T05:28:50Z

Last December, I received emails from Italian journalist and novelist Ugo Barbara, asking if I might put him in touch with author Harry Bernstein, whose life and work are profiled in What Should I Do With The Rest Of My Life?, and then from his 13-year-old daughter, who wrote: “Me and Dad decided to write to you ‘cause we really, really love Harry’s books and we are still surprised by the energy that such an old man can put in his work.”

“Dad reminded me that a couple of years ago he represented Harry in the final phase of one of the most important literary prizes in Italy: Bancarella. And while The Invisible Wall didn’t win, Mom told me that Daddy’s words about Harry’s work moved people to tears and were welcomed with 10 minutes of applause! I did my part too! For my summer homework I wrote a summary about The Invisible Wall and my teacher told to the class that she cried, too. There were no applause, but pretty good anyway, right?”

“At the moment I’m reading The Golden Willow and I’m looking forward to reading Rose’s adventures (in Harry’s next book), ‘cause I don’t know that much about her. Tell Harry to keep on writing, because I don’t want to feel as Holden says at the end of Catcher in the Rye: —“Don’t tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” And hug Harry for me: probably his most enthusiastic 13-year-old Italian fan!”

How could I resist? I put Barbara and his daughter in touch with Harrry immediately. A fast, sweet friendship, a publishing deal for Harry in Italy, and plans for a visit to New York ensued. Last week, Barbara, wrote the following online post:

I hoped one day to publish a photo of a spry old man and me on the porch of a house in Brooklyn. Around us: my family and the man’s daughter, all of us smiling, happy to finally have this long-awaited moment of being together.

The old man at the center is more than a little old. By the time the picture would have been taken, Harry Bernstein would have already been 101 years old for a few months. Close to him, you would also see Adreanne, his daughter, and my children, who devoured his novel, The Invisible Wall.

I will never publish that picture because it will never be taken. Just days after celebrating his birthday and less than three months before I could keep a promise to visit him, Harry is gone. He died late at night on June 3rd.

Yet I have that picture. It is as clear in my mind as if I had framed and shot it myself. In it, I am — or perhaps it’s a self-delusion — smiling on the other side of the lens, one hand resting on Harry’s shoulder.

My son’s face has the same expression of joy he had in a photo taken in January on the Paris Metro. He was then constantly immersed in reading the Wall. And he took every opportunity to pull it out of his pack and get lost in its pages: on line for tickets to La Villette; on the train to Disneyland; just returned to the hotel and exhausted in the evening. The picture I took that day pleased Harry when I sent it to him: my son looking into the camera and smiling as if looking directly at Harry, his book clearly visible in my boy’s hands.

It was my daughter who first suggested reading the Wall. “It’s sad, so devastating,” she had said, “but you will like it.” Then she and I began hunting everywhere to find Harry. We were eager to tell him how much we had liked his books.

I had been the first to learn about Harry, when Piemme asked me to present an award to this 97-year-old literary newcomer. After Harry and his book touched me, he touched my wife who passed it on to her parents, then mine, then ...

There is no one in the family now who has not read - and loved - Harry Bernstein and his history. I will always be grateful to ... Harry for offering me his friendship, and for the chance to have had time enough to exchange emails and receive the funny and moving ones he sent to my children, in the spirit of un ultranonno — a great uncle — even more than that of a successful writer.

——

Ugo Barbara works for AGI news agency in Rome and has published five novels, based on Italian social and political life, including: Il Corruttore; Le Mani Sugli Occhi and In Terra Consacrata, which was short-listed for the prestigious Strega Prize. Edizioni Piemme is Barbara’s publisher; it is expected to bring out Harry Bernstein’s fictional memoir What Happened to Rose in 2012.

Harry Bernstein, a Ruby of a Writer and Author of “The Invisible Wall,” Dies at 101

2011-06-04T10:17:13Z

With great sadness, I report that author Harry Bernstein, a favorite subject of my book, whose heart-wrenching debut memoir, The Invisible Wall, was published in 2007, when he was 96, died Friday night in Brooklyn NY.

Photo by Robert Deutsch

Harry was 93 when he sat down to write about his bleak childhood, before World War I, on a cobblestone street in the Lancashire mill town of Stockport, England. He re-imagined his life as a working-class kid coming to terms with the grievous mysteries of that small universe where Christians and Jews cohabited uneasily, where he served as the go-between his sister and her Christian boyfriend, who lived across the street.

Critics praised the book for its evocation of a world of pain and prejudice in spare, restrained prose. His writing was compared D.H. Lawrence, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and most frequently to Frank McCourt’s writing in Angela’s Ashes. “The reviews made my head swim,” he once told me “I never allowed myself to aspire to such literary heights. The praise meant a great deal to me after all those years.”

Harry had published short stories in the 1920s and 1930s in proletarian magazines, next to the likes of William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein and Nelson Algren. He wrote his first novel in 1930s at the request of the editor Clifton Fadiman, but after he submitted Hard Times and White Collars to Simon & Schuster, Fadiman decided it would not fit his list. Harry earned a living for many years as a script reader for MGM and later as an editor of a construction trade magazine. He wrote some 40 works, most of which he destroyed when they too were rejected. At seventy, in 1981, he came close to publication. His novel, The Smile, was printed but its Boston publisher went broke before the book was distributed.

The loneliness he experienced following the death of his wife, Ruby, in 2002, after 67 years of marriage, drove Harry to sit down and write again. At first, The Invisible Wall was also rejected by publishers in the United States. Then he sent it to Random House in England, where it sat in a slush pile for a year before Kate Elton, the publishing director of Arrow, a Random House imprint, read it in one day. She called Harry the following day and offered him a contract with a small advance. The book has since been published in the U.S., Finland, Sweden Germany, Norway, Denmark, and Brazil. In 2008, it earned Mr. Bernstein a Christopher Award and the Handelsman Prize for Jewish Nonfiction. He also became one of the oldest-ever recipients of Guggenheim Fellowship.

By the time the book was published in the United States, Harry had completed work on a sequel, The Dream, which was published in 2008. It deals with his family’s move to Chicago when he was twelve, the continuing abuse of his family by his alcoholic father and the writer’s coming of age in New York City during the Great Depression.

In 2009, he published his third memoir, The Golden Willow, which centers on his married life and later years. The title refers to a tree in Central Park beneath which Harry and Ruby first consummated their love. A fourth book, What Happened to Rose, is scheduled for publication by the Italian publisher early next year.

“These have been the most productive years of my life,” he told me in 2008. “You live in a sort of dream most of your life. Your dreams are wishful thinking of what you want to be and want to have. It’s not until you face the harsh reality of yourself that you can do or say anything intelligent. Write what you know, they say. Well, it sure took me a long time to get that, didn’t it?”

He is survived by a daughter, Adraenne, with whom he was living in Brooklyn at the time of his death, and a son, Charles, of Lansdale, PA.

“What Should I Do With The Rest Of My Life? wins 2011 Nautilus Book Awards Silver

2011-05-16T20:48:20Z

“What Should I Do With The Rest Of My Life?” has won the 2011 Nautilus Book Awards Silver Medal in the category Aging Gracefully and Retirement.

The Nautilus Awards recognizes books, audio books, and e-books that promote spiritual growth, conscious living & positive social change, while at the same time they stimulate the “imagination” and offer the reader “new possibilities” for a better life and a better world.

Very cool! I’m delighted, proud and grateful that my book was selected for this honor.

Please visit their site for more information http://www.nautilusbookawards.com.

Holy Ghost!‘s “Wait and See” With Their Sixty-Plus Dads

2011-04-27T00:52:32Z

A few weeks ago, my son, Alex, asked me to appear in the new Holy Ghost! video along with his music partner Nick’s dad, Tim Millhiser. Given that I am a bit beat-challenged, I was half-hoping he was kidding. He wasn’t.

Pitchfork.com writes: While you watch the wistfully retro clip for Holy Ghost!‘s “Wait and See”, from their recently released self-titled debut LP, you might notice that the the disco duo look a little, well, different. Older, in fact. That’s because the two men in the Ben Fries-directed video are actually the fathers of Holy Ghost!‘s Alex Frankel and Nick Millhiser. The pair act like their sons as they hang out and drink beer, go out to nightclubs, fall asleep with half-eaten pizza crusts in their hands, and so on. The result is a pretty humorous look at what it would be like if we all literally refused to grow up. Plus, these dads actually look pretty cool doing what they’re doing here. Watch it below.

Holy Ghost! - Wait & See from DFA Records on Vimeo.

By the way, Alex is the pizza guy; Nick is the barista.

What Should I Do With The Rest Of My Life? Wins The 2011 Axiom Business Book Awards Silver Medal

2011-03-26T21:02:26Z

I’m proud to announce that “What Should I Do For The Rest Of My Life?” won the 2011 Silver Medal in the careers category of The Axiom Business Book Awards.

Designed to honor the year’s best business books and their authors and publishers, the fourth annual awards were announced by the Jenkins Group. “The awards are intended to bring increased recognition to exemplary business books and their creators, with the understanding that business people are an information-hungry segment of the population, eager to learn about great new books that will inspire them and help them improve their careers and businesses,” according to the organization’s announcement. A ceremony honoring the award recipients is scheduled for May 23 in New York City.

Thanks and congratulations to my editors and publishers at Avery / Penguin and thanks to the judges and the Jenkins Group for this honor.

Also, please note, “What Should I Do With The Rest Of My Life?” is now also available in paperback.

Thanks to all!

Ida Keeling: Late Start, Strong Finish; Claims Record Sprint At 95

2011-03-01T02:04:13Z

When diminutive 95-year-old Bronx native Ida Keeling set a world record on the hallowed Armory track in New York City the other day, running 60 meters in 29.86 seconds, the most important number was the one at which the sprinter took up running.

At 4-foot-6 and 83 pounds, Keeling didn’t hit the track until she was 67—giving proof to what scientists have been reporting lately: regular aerobic exercise, even begun late in life, not only keeps the heart pumping, but keeps the brain thriving, too.

Following her record-setting run, Keeling said she felt, “Like a puppy… I feel younger now than when I was in my 30s and 40s!”

Ida had suffered more than her share of heartbreak. Her husband died of a heart attack when he was just 42, and she lost two sons in drug-related killings.
But in running, Keeling found a refuge.

Her daughter, Shelley Keeling, a lawyer and real estate investor who coached track and field at a nearby high school, convinced her to go on a “mini-run” 28 years ago. Two years later, Ida Keeling ran a 5K race. “It felt good, and I felt uplifted,” Keeling told ABC News. “Well, gee, this is for me.”

Showdown in Egypt: Mohamed Elbaradei, 67, Takes to Street; Tells Obama, Mubarak Must Go No

2011-01-30T20:04:18Z

Egyptian activist Mohamed Elbaradei was already widely-respected for his moral integrity. But when the 67-year old Nobel Peace laureate joined protesters on Sunday in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to call for President Hosni Mubarak to step down immediately, the U.S.-trained lawyer displayed personal courage that at once earned him the credibility of “the street” and placed him at the center of a dangerous showdown with the man who has ruled Egypt for 30 years.

“You have taken back your rights and what we have begun cannot go back,” Elbaradei said. “We have one main demand: the end of the regime and the beginning of a new stage, a new Egypt. I bow to the people of Egypt in respect. I ask of you patience. Change is coming in the next few days.”

Elbaradei’s fate, and possibly the fate of the Middle East, is now inextricably tied to the direction that change takes: toward democracy and freedom of expression or toward an even more brutal and repressive dictatorship.
Speaking to CNN, he urged President Barack Obama “not to appear that he is the last one to say to President Mubarak, ‘It’s time for you to go.’ ” He said he feared that unless Mubarak departs, “things will get bloody.”

ElBaradei’s stature in Egypt and on the world stage is unique. He is, as Time magazine commented last year, “an outsider to regime politics.” Moeover, he gained international recognition when served in Vienna as chief of the international nuclear watchdog for 12 years and challenged the Bush Administration’s claims that Iraq had nuclear weapons ahead of the U.S.‘s 2003 invasion. Later investigations proved him right. In 2005, ElBaradei was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to curb nuclear proliferation.

Born June 17, 1942, Mohamed ElBaradei was raised in Cairo where his attorney father headed the Egyptian Bar Association and often found himself at odds with the dictatorial regime of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, one of the most repressive eras in Egyptian history, as he fought for democracy and human rights.

“That to a lot of extent shaped my view as to what I wanted to do in the future,” ElBaradei told the Washington-based Academy of Achievement last year. “I wanted to have a world where people are free to express their views, to have freedom of worship, to have freedom from want, and I saw poverty in Egypt when I grew up. To me, freedom, in the larger sense—to be able to speak, to worship, free from want, free from fear—I think it was a key as to what I thought I would like to do when I grow up.”

Following in his father’s footsteps, the young ElBaradei earned a law degree at the University of Cairo in 1962. He joined Egypt’s diplomatic service in 1964, and was assigned to his country’s United Nations missions in New York and Geneva. He was placed in charge of political and legal matters and gained his first experience in arms control issues. While serving with Egypt’s UN mission, he lived in Greenwich Village and studied at New York University School of Law, receiving a doctorate in International Law in 1974. He credits his years in New York City with broadening his worldview, teaching him to see the world in terms more global than nationalistic.

“My focus when I left Egypt in the ‘60s was Egypt-centered, but then I went to New York (and) recognized both through my academic studies, through my mentors at university, through living in this melting pot that the world is just bigger than one country, and you are really better off if you have a global picture,” he said. “If you want to achieve change, you shouldn’t focus on one particular people, one particular country, one particular language, but try to look at the global picture and try to integrate humanity, and I think that—that really now is my passion, and I think by doing this, I am serving every single person in the world by trying to get all of us together.”

While he had wanted to be more directly involved in Egyptian society, he saw little room for a lawyer in private practice within the socialist system of the time to work and express himself.
“Eventually, I thought I should learn, through diplomacy, through living abroad, and then come back to Egypt and be able to effect change,” he said.

After completing his doctorate, he was appointed Special Assistant to the Foreign Minister of Egypt, a position he held until 1978. President Nasser’s successor, Anwar al-Sadat, broke the close ties to the Soviet Union that Nasser had cultivated. Instead, Sadat sought closer ties with the West and peace with Israel. ElBaradei served on the Egyptian negotiating team at the historic Camp David peace talks that led to Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel.

In 1980, he went to work directly for the United Nations and as an adjunct professor of international law at New York University. He was first assigned to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1984 and, in the wake of the Persian Gulf War, was sent to Iraq in 1991 to uproot the country’s nuclear weapons program. His team blew up laboratories and pulverized equipment.

In 1997, ElBaradei was chosen to lead the IAEA and soon found himself embroiled in a paramount international conflict. Saddam Hussein expelled the U.N. weapons inspectors from his country. And following terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, the United States insisted that Iraq comply with the UN weapons inspection regime. When IAEA inspectors returned to Iraq in 2002, they found no trace of the previous nuclear program.

In a moment of extraordinary courage and integrity, ElBaradei soon found himself squaring off with President George W. Bush. In a State of the Union address, Bush said, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” To support his claim, the U.S. presented the IAEA with a document, obtained in Italy. IAEA investigators identified the document as a forgery and ElBaradei dismissed the evidence before the UN Security Council. No evidence has since been produced to prove ElBaradei’s judgment in error.

But his defiant stance earned him a CIA tap on his phone in Vienna, according to The Washington Post. “It’s dangerous to be proved wrong, but sometimes it’s even more dangerous to be proved right in the end,” ElBaradei has said.

But there were other rewards. In 2005, ElBaradei and the agency he headed were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to prevent the use of nuclear energy for military purposes and to ensure its use for peaceful purposes in the safest possible way.

During his three-term tenure at the IAEA, ElBaradei called for a five-year world-wide moratorium on plans for new uranium enrichment and fission facilities, and pressed the existing nuclear powers to renounce their weapons for good. He vigorously promoted the peaceful uses of nuclear power and strove to make radiation therapy available in less-developed countries for the treatment of diseases such as cancer and malaria.

In 2010, after 12 years as its head of IAEA, ElBaradei retired and founded the National Association for Change, a non-partisan group that works for democratic reforms of Egypt’s electoral process. He believes that a version of an American-style deomocracy is possible.

“I have very much a concept of an American Dream. An American Dream meaning to be free, to be able to achieve what you want to do, to have an environment within which you can excel,” he told the Academy of Achievement. “I have always been an admirer of the American Dream. We grew up admiring the freedom you have in the U.S., the equality, the egalitarian system you have in the U.S. And I hope, with all the restrictions that we have seen after 9/11 that we will someday go back where the U.S. American Dream will be the way I saw it when I was growing up here in the ‘60s. It’s a model that might not be replicated 100 percent everywhere else, but the basic element of the American dream is the future for humanity.”

When Mubarak’s government refused to negotiate with election reform advocates in 2010, ElBaradei returned to self-imposed exile in Vienna. His wife, Aida Elkachef, has said she would prefer her husband not run for the presidency of Egypt. They have two grown children. He returned to Egypt on Thursday after massive street demonstrations swept Egypt’s cities and was reportedly put under house arrest.

(ElBaradei with his wife Aida and daughter Laila, in Vienna, 2005)

The substance of Elbaradei’s biography was adapted from one posted on the website of the Academy of Achievement. To see the complete Academy of Achievement interview at http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/elb0int-1

Resistance Hero Stephane Hessel, 93, Cries “Indignez Vous!” - Ignites Bestseller in France

2011-01-06T21:22:50Z

In the few weeks since 93-year-old Nazi concentration camp survivor and former French ambassador Stephane Hessel issued a political call to arms with his succinct book, Indignez Vous!, French book buyers have swept up more than 600,000 copies and propelled it to the top of the bestseller’s list.

Aghast at modern society’s inert acceptance of human rights violations, particularly in France and Israel, and the widening gap between rich and poor, Hessel hopes to convince discouraged young people that they can overcome entrenched and financially powerful interests and change society for the better.

The 32-page book has hit a nerve among the French. Some credit public exasperation at contemporary social inequalities and the politics of President Nicolas Sarkozy; others see a nation hungry for a passionately rebellious French voice.

Still others attribute the literary phenomenon to Hessel’s charisma and his life story.

Born in Berlin in 1917, Hessel emigrated to France aged seven. His free-spirited journalist mother, Helen Grund-Hessel, and father Franz Hessel — who was Jewish — inspired the Henri-Pierre Roche novel Jules and Jim which Francois Truffaut turned into a memorably poignant film about a love-triangle of two male friends and a woman who loves them both. They frequented the Paris avant-garde scene of artists like Alexander Calder and Marcel Duchamp. His mother’s essays of fashion drew serious attention.

Hessel became a naturalized French citizen in 1937. During the Nazi occupation of France, Hessel fled to London to join resistance leader Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s outfit in 1941. He snuck back into occupied France on an intelligence mission in 1944 where he was arrested by the Gestapo, subjected to the “bathtub” treatment in which his head was dunked under water, and shipped off to Buchenwald concentration camp. He escaped hanging by swapping his identity with another French prisoner who had died of typhus.

After the war, along with U. S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, he helped to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and later became a diplomat.

The book, whose title translates as “Be Indignant” or “Get Angry,” has tapped France’s penchant for rebellion at a time when a lack of economic opportunities and frustration at the actions of governments is felt by many people worldwide. While he is aware some of the public’s response may be attributable to his age, he would rather they focus on his message.

“I would like people to be conscious of the fact that things in this society and this age are not going the right way,” Hessel told AP reporter Jamey Keaten on Thursday, while seated in a plush armchair in the living room of his Paris apartment decorated with dark oil paintings and bookshelves.

“They realize this everyday, and they are unhappy, or they are unfortunate, or they find that it should be different — but they don’t do anything very much about it,” he said. “If you, the citizens of our countries, really take it in hand and act, then these things might still change.”

The book opens with his age: “93 years old. It’s a little bit the final phase.” He trumpets the values of the French Resistance and decries the “power of money” in today’s world. Instead of providing a prescription, Hessel invokes the French Resistance against the Nazis for the present day.

Hessel deplores that the civil liberties he helped articulate while drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after World War II, still are not enjoyed by everyone, more than 60 years later.

A champion of illegal immigrants’ rights in France, he noted in a 2008 interview with FRANCE 24 that he was “revolted” by the “way the current government treats illegal immigrants”.

Israeli treatment of Palestinians is a major theme of his essay, in which he notes: “Jews themselves perpetrating war crimes is intolerable. Alas, the past offers few examples of people learning lessons from their own history”.

French Jewish groups have often condemned Hessel for his “fixation” on Israel. “We think the circumstances surrounding the publication of this book are very abnormal,” Marc Knobel, a researcher on anti-Semitism at CRIF, the French Jewry umbrella organization, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. “It’s a sort of a cult around Hessel, an image of pure humanity of a man at the end of life who wants to proclaim something.” Knobel said Hessel has ignored Islamic terrorism and Palestinian attacks on Israelis, saying that some were justified because of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

While Hessel, a proud Socialist Party member, sees justification for violence in Israeli treatment of Palestinians, he asserts that violence is failure, regardless of the frustration that provokes it. He calls for peaceful, non-violent revolt.

Beyond specific issues dear to him, Hessel hopes its broader philosophical argument for agitation against the status is embraced and arouses actions that can change things for the better wherever necessary.

“I wish for all of you, for each one of you, to have your reason for indignation”, he writes. “It is precious”