The New Old Age Blog: After Storm, 'Friends' Rescue a Caregiver

Tales of Hurricane Sandy survival will likely emerge for years — particularly about the sick and elderly who were trapped in their homes or forced to evacuate under harrowing circumstances. Many of those stories have happy endings, like this one of social media and neighborliness I recently heard.

It is about two ailing 90-year-olds who, because of social media, formal and informal, and the ingenuity of one of their daughters, were located amid the rubble of Long Beach, N.Y., after the storm’s initial fury, and in short order gained admission to one of the few elder care facilities in the region that could meet their divergent needs.

“The pluses of social networking really come into play in a situation like this,’’ said Alice, 66, the couple’s daughter, a social worker for senior services in the office of a New York State senator who found herself almost as flummoxed as a nonprofessional when she needed help for her own parents. “More people are willing to help others than we think, but nobody is going to help if we don’t ask.’’

Alice’s social media search, first to locate her parents and then to find them a new home, began on a Facebook page for missing persons, one of many that sprang up after the storm. Long Beach, one of the hardest-hit areas, had no phones or power and was, for the most part, inaccessible. A Facebook page, Long Beach NY Hurricane Information, was meant to help residents find free hot food, a mobile medical van, somewhere to do laundry, revised school bus routes, lists of open stores, suggestions for good contractors, warning of price-gougers and, increasingly, share tales of recovery.

“I put up a post and sure enough some wonderful man from Brooklyn got back to me,’’ Alice said (we tell Alice’s story using only her first name to protect her parents’ privacy). The man had braved the miles of dark back roads to get to his own mother, who happened to live in the same co-op building as Alice’s parents.

He volunteered to check on the old couple and their home health aide on the third floor. Alice’s father, who has dementia, is incontinent and cannot walk because of a neurological condition, and her mother, who is deaf, suffers from depression, but by comparison is the “well spouse.’’

Their personal belongings were not destroyed, although her mother’s medical records were lost when her doctor’s office was damaged. But the old building would be uninhabitable for an indeterminate time, surely too long for a pair of 90-year-olds to ever return. Still, the information that they were O.K., coming from a total stranger, “provided a night of sleep I otherwise never would have had,’’ Alice said.

The next morning, she and her younger sister, Sharon, were able to get to Long Beach and tell their mother that the evacuation would be permanent. They brought the couple to Alice’s home in Queens for a few days, then to a nearby hotel and finally to a borrowed apartment in a neighboring building.

“It is so painful for them to be uprooted all of a sudden, at this age,’’ Alice said. “But in a way this may be one of those blessings in disguise. The way they were living, it was only after we actually had them with us that we realized my mother’s description of how things were going were not exactly accurate.’’

This is the case with many elderly parents, getting by in their own apartment and putting the best face on it lest their children tell them it is time to leave. So in the short window before she and her husband left for Chicago, and Thanksgiving with their own children and grandchildren, Alice had to set in motion the next step.

Her sister and brother-in-law on Long Island would keep an eye on the old couple in the short term. But the long-term solution, Alice said, with the clear-eyes that came from seeing others in this situation day-after-day, was a senior community where her father could live in the skilled nursing section and her mother in the less restrictive assisted living area. They would see each other as often as they wished, but each would get the correct level of care.

So before leaving for Chicago, using a more informal kind of social media, Alice e-mailed 40 friends — from her synagogue, her social work circle, her Rolodex of elder care lawyers and Medicare advocates. The e-blast was a plea for help.

“Each of you on this email know me personally,’’ she wrote. “As you all know, many years of my professional life have been dedicated to helping seniors . . . . Now I find myself in the position of needing help for my mom and dad.’’ She told them the story of her parents evacuation and how “exhausted and completely stressed’’ she and her sister and both of their husbands were. Now her “biggest hurdle was to find a place that can accommodate each of their needs.’’

She essentially asked this group to put on their thinking caps, and they did. Alice and her husband left for the holiday on a Monday. That Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, she got a phone call from an admissions person from exactly the kind of facility she needed, who had been contacted by her friends. Alice was told what kind of records she would need for their application. A plan was made to reconvene by telephone the Monday after Thanksgiving.

On Friday, Nov. 30, Alice and her sister toured the place. In that same blur of a week, the sisters took turns going to Long Beach to deal with their parents’ possessions. Alice’s mother slowly moved from reconciled to relieved. When it was time to tell Alice’s father “he went from sad and crying to angry at my sister and I for not being able to take them to live with either of us.’’

Through it all, Alice kept her e-mail committee up to date. She had crowd-sourced one of the hardest problems she would ever face. She had tapped the viral nature of hastily created Facebook pages, where strangers literally “friend’’ each other, and sent e-mail blasts to the kind of friends who take no offense at receiving the same message as a bunch of people they may or may not know.

In the “new old age,” this is one of many ways of doing what nobody really knows how to do. And in all likelihood, with the paperwork almost complete, Alice’s parents will have a new home for Christmas.

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UBS to pay $1.5 billion to settle Libor charges

UBS has agreed to pay a fine of $1.5 billion to authorities and plead guilty to a felony count of wire fraud, the most recent developments in a far-reaching probe into how banks manipulated interest rates leading up to the financial crisis.

Two former traders were also charged with conspiracy in a complaint unsealed Wednesday, the first people charged criminally in the Libor scandal.

"We cannot and we will not tolerate misconduct on Wall Street of the kind admitted to by UBS today and by Barclays last June," said Assistant Atty. Gen. Lanny Breuer, head of the criminal division. In June, Barclays was the first bank to settle with authorities, paying $450 million.

The fine was one of the biggest leveled against a financial institution by American and British authorities, just short of the $1.9-billion fine HSBC agreed to pay last week over money laundering allegations.

The charges relate to the ways traders leaned on banks to manipulate the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, to benefit their own trading positions.

Officials said that from 2006 through 2009 UBS traders placed bets on the movement of Libor and manipulated the rate, which is used as a benchmark to set interest rates for many mortgages, credit cards and other consumer lending instruments. The traders profited by knowing which way the Libor would move.

In coming months, the probe probably will expand to include other banks that help determine the Libor, analysts say. But it's the criminal charges that turned some heads on Wall Street on Wednesday.

The plea agreement on wire fraud charges by a UBS subsidiary in Japan, which included a $100-million fine, marks the first time since 2005 that a major financial institution has pleaded guilty to criminal charges, the Justice Department said.

"For a bank to admit to criminality is kind of mind-blowing," said Peter Shapiro, managing director of Swap Financial Group in South Orange, N.J. "Obviously, they didn't do that easily — that was something that must have been a big priority of enforcement agencies."

Enforcement agencies have been feeling some pressure to level blame on financial institutions in the wake of the financial crisis, Shapiro said. No senior financial executives have served jail time for their roles in the financial crisis.

"Both the regulators and enforcement agencies feel somewhat beleaguered by the repeated assertions that they failed to deliver enough heads on a plate as a response to the financial crisis," he said.

U.S. officials also announced criminal charges against two former senior traders for UBS in connection with the scandal. Tom Alexander William Hayes, 33, of Britain, was charged with conspiracy and wire fraud, and Roger Darin, 41, of Switzerland, was charged with conspiracy. Both remain abroad, but the Justice Department will try to extradite them.

"The motivation here was nothing short of sheer greed, and the scheme was nothing short of a shell game, a Wall Street version of three-card monte," said Kevin Perkins, associate director of the FBI, which helped investigate the case.

More criminal charges at other banks could follow, said Anthony Sabino, professor of law at the Tobin College of Business at St. John's University.

"Once you start to round up some accused bad guys, that leads to more people being rounded up," he said. "This is a vast conspiracy among a multitude of banks, which therefore implicates a multitude of individuals."

Much of the activity took place at UBS Japan Securities Co., where Hayes was a senior trader. The Justice Department released internal UBS messages in which Hayes and others talked about their alleged manipulation.

In one from November 2006, Hayes told a UBS employee who submitted rate information for the Libor that he and Darin "skew the Libors a bit" and then said he needed the six-month rate to stay high for three days.

UBS traders were often colorful and emphatic in their pleadings, according to documents released by Britain's Financial Services Authority. One wrote, "I need you to keep it as low as possible.... If you do that, I'll pay you, you know, $50,000, $100,000, whatever you want."

The UBS fine was larger than that leveled on Barclays earlier in the year because UBS' misconduct was "considerably more serious than Barclays' because it was more widespread within the firm," the Financial Services Authority said. At least 45 individuals at UBS were involved in or aware of the rate-fixing practice.

UBS said that it had fully cooperated with authorities and that the interest-rate manipulations were the isolated actions of certain employees.

"Their misconduct does not reflect the values of UBS nor the high ethical standards to which we hold every employee," UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti said in a statement.

Analysts say that there's still potential for significant civil suits against UBS and other banks, which could be more damaging than the fines levied against them. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, an equity research firm, estimated in July that potential industry damages could reach $35 billion.

Those estimates were validated Wednesday when the Inspector General for the Federal Housing Finance Agency estimated that government-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may have lost a combined $3 billion because of reduced interest payments on securities and other holdings. Officials at FHFA, which regulates Fannie and Freddie, have not confirmed the estimate but are evaluating potential issues involved with the Libor manipulation.

There are barriers to further lawsuits — the burden of proof will be high, analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said. To move forward with civil suits, plaintiffs would have to prove that traders were conspiring, said John C. Coffee, a Columbia Law School expert in corporate fraud.

"But that said, the size of the potential liability is mushrooming," he said.

Times reporter E. Scott Reckard contributed to this report. Semuels reported from Los Angeles and Puzzanghera from Washington.

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Gun lobby's grip on Congress threatened

WASHINGTON — The gun-control debate sharpened Tuesday as President Obama backed an effort to revive the assault weapons ban spearheaded by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is poised to have a powerful new role as the head of the Senate committee overseeing gun laws.

Calls for federal gun restrictions were mounting following last week's shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. — even from lawmakers who had rejected them in the past. The National Rifle Assn. and its allies have successfully kept such efforts at bay for years, but the slayings of 20 children have roiled the politics of gun control and now challenge the gun lobby's hold on Capitol Hill.

The NRA broke its four-day silence Tuesday, saying it "is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again," but offered no details. The group plans to hold a news conference Friday.

The gun lobby faces a newly empowered opponent in Feinstein, a Democrat, who is in line to succeed Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) as chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with the power to call hearings and move new legislation.

Feinstein said Tuesday that on the first day of the next Congress she would introduce an updated version of the expired assault weapons ban that she helped pass in 1994. As drafted, the measure would ban the Bushmaster .223 rifle that Adam Lanza used in the Newtown slayings, which also left six school employees dead.

"This is an uphill climb," she said. "Sure, it's tough, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try."

The issue is personal for Feinstein, who became mayor of San Francisco in 1978 after then-Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot to death at City Hall. A pen President Clinton used to sign the assault weapons ban hangs prominently in her Capitol Hill office.

Feinstein has the backing of Obama, who vowed Sunday in Newtown to harness the power of his office to try to prevent future massacres.

The president put little effort into gun legislation during his first four years in the White House, despite several mass shootings — including one in Tucson that left six people dead and 13 wounded. Then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, was shot in the head and nearly killed.

On Tuesday, spokesman Jay Carney said that Obama was "actively supportive" of Feinstein's effort to reinstate the assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, and that he would back support legislation to tighten sales at gun shows.

An NRA spokesman declined to comment on the calls for gun control. But the group released a statement saying it was "shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown."

"Out of respect for the families, and as a matter of common decency, we have given time for mourning, prayer and a full investigation of the facts before commenting," the statement continued.

The gun lobby's influence is renowned: It easily swept back efforts to toughen federal gun laws after the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, as well as the July movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo., that left 12 dead and dozens wounded. Much of the NRA's power stems from its relentless lobbying and an increasingly polarized House, which is controlled by the group's Republican allies.

Few doubt the NRA will wield substantial influence in the debate, joined by even more vociferous groups, such as Gun Owners of America, which sees the NRA as too willing to compromise.

Michael Hammond, legislative counsel for Gun Owners of America, said his group wouldn't retreat an inch from its opposition to restrictions, including a ban on high-capacity magazines like those used in Newtown.

"I think it's a horrible idea," he said, saying such magazines are valuable in self-defense. Lanza used magazines that held 30 rounds each.

Hammond noted that gun-rights supporters have faced hostile political environments in the past. After the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School that left 12 students, a teacher and two gunmen dead, he said, "things looked very bleak for the 2nd Amendment community." Despite the increase in public support for gun control at the time, his group and others turned back efforts to tighten gun laws.

Still, both allies and opponents say the gun lobby faces a much steeper fight this time. Those calling for tougher gun laws include longtime NRA allies, such as Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who met Tuesday with Feinstein and spoke with Obama by phone.

Susan Ginsburg, who coordinated firearms policy at the Treasury Department during the Clinton administration, says she believes the Newtown massacre will lead to new gun restrictions.

"I don't think this is going to fade back into invisibility again," she said. "We seem to have turned a corner in which it's just not acceptable for children to be killed like that."

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Cassadee Pope wins Season 3 of 'The Voice'

NEW YORK (AP) — Cassadee Pope, who was country singer Blake Shelton's protege on the third season of NBC's "The Voice," has won the show's competition.

The 23-year-old singer is stepping out into a solo career after performing with a band called Hey Monday. Her victory over Scottish native Terry McDermott and long-bearded Nicholas David was announced at the end of a two-hour show Tuesday.

"The Voice" has grown into a hit for NBC and was the key factor in the network's surprising success this fall.

The show's status was affirmed by the stream of hitmakers who performed on the finale. They included Rihanna, Bruno Mars, the Killers, Smokey Robinson and Peter Frampton.

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The New Old Age Blog: Older People Become What They Think, Study Shows

All of us have beliefs — many of them subconscious, dating back to childhood — about what it means to get older. Psychologists call these “age stereotypes.” And, it turns out, they can have an important effect on seniors’ health.

When stereotypes are negative — when seniors are convinced becoming old means becoming useless, helpless or devalued — they are less likely to seek preventive medical care and die earlier, and more likely to suffer memory loss and poor physical functioning, a growing body of research shows.

When stereotypes are positive — when older adults view age as a time of wisdom, self-realization and satisfaction — results point in the other direction, toward a higher level of functioning. The latest report, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that seniors with this positive bias are 44 percent more likely to fully recover from a bout of disability.

For people who care about and interact with older people, the message is clear: your attitude counts because it can activate or potentially modify these deeply held age stereotypes.

The researcher who has done more than anyone else to advance our understanding of this is Becca Levy, an associate professor of epidemiology and psychology at Yale University.

In the mid-1990s, she began a series of experiments with older people in laboratory settings. The idea was to expose them subliminally to negative or positive stereotypes by flashing words associated with aging on a computer screen too fast for them to process consciously. Then these seniors were asked to perform a task.

Those exposed to negative words such as “decrepit” had poorer handwriting, slower walking speeds, higher levels of cardiovascular stress and a greater willingness to reject hypothetical medical interventions that could prolong their lives. Those primed with positive words such as “wisdom” did much better.

The experiments involved external stimuli, however, and Dr. Levy was interested in peoples’ subjective experience of older age. For that, she turned to a database of adults age 50 and older in Oxford, Ohio, who were followed for a period of 23 years, from 1975 to 1998.

Many had filled out questionnaires at the start of the study designed to elicit stereotypes about aging. This involved soliciting a “yes” or “no” answer to a series of statements like “things keep getting worse as I get older,” or “as you get older, you get less useful.”

When Dr. Levy looked at 660 participants, she found that those with positive age stereotypes lived 7.5 years longer than those with negative stereotypes. The research was published in The Journal of Personal and Social Psychology in 2002.

What might account for this finding? In her paper, Dr. Levy speculated that people with positive age stereotypes have a stronger will to live, and that this might affect their ability to adapt to the rigors of older age. Also, people with negative age stereotypes may have a heightened cardiovascular response to stress, with attendant ill health effects.

In other research using this data set, Dr. Levy established that people with positive age stereotypes were more likely to eat a balanced diet, exercise, limit their alcohol consumption, stop smoking and get regular physical exams, and that they had a higher level of physical functioning over time. Results were controlled for other factors like illness, gender, race and socioeconomic status.

In these papers, Dr. Levy hypothesized that positive age stereotypes are associated with a greater sense of control and that this enhanced seniors’ sense of self efficacy — their ability to remain captains of their own ship, as it were.

Her new findings about the impact of age stereotypes on older adults’ recovery from disability is an extension of this body of work. In this case, Dr. Levy and her co-authors followed 598 adults age 70 and older in New Haven, Conn., from 1998 to 2008. Disability was defined as needing help with basic activities of daily living like bathing, dressing and walking, and its onset was typically precipitated by an illness or injury.

Again, seniors with positive age stereotypes were much more likely to have good results and recover fully.

Dr. Marie Bernard, a geriatrician who serves as deputy director of the National Institute on Aging, said she found the report “quite intriguing” and that it confirmed her clinical observations in more than 30 years of medical practice. But she cautioned that it is a small study that needs to be replicated.

“What we really need to understand is the mechanism,” she said. “Is it something that is malleable and, if so, could we help people live longer, healthier lives?”

Researchers don’t have an answer to that yet. But many believe that part of the answer has to lie in tackling ageism – which is pervasive in our youth-oriented culture — early on, from earliest childhood.

“Even young kids have negative associations; they tell you that older adults are sick, slow, forgetful, no good,” said Dana Kotter-Gruehn, a visiting assistant professor in the department of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.

Also generations need to be brought together so that “people can experience what it means to be an older person” and stereotypes can be dispelled, Dr. Kotter-Gruehn said. This has been shown to help change people’s stereotypes about race and homosexuality, she noted.

Closer to home, all of us who interact with older people can “think about how to reinforce the more positive aspects of aging,” Dr. Levy said.

“If all of us became a little more aware of the implications of our communications” — the tone of voice we use with seniors, the attitude we adopt, the use of loaded phrases or expressions, the extent to which we give older adults our full, undivided attention — “that would help quite a lot.”

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Instagram draws ire over new user rules

SAN FRANCISCO — When it comes to policy changes, Instagram could have used a filter of its own.

Its usually devoted users threatened to delete their accounts en masse Tuesday if the popular photo-sharing app did not roll back new terms of service that appeared to give the company ownership of their images. Instagram users — about 100 million now — snap the photos on their smartphones, apply digital filters to enhance the photos and then instantly share them with friends.

"Dear @Instagram, why did you think we'd just be OK with your new terms? They are NOT COOL. Signed, The Entire Internet," Jason Pollock, a Los Angeles filmmaker and social media consultant, wrote on Twitter.

Instagram founder Kevin Systrom tried to calm the uproar and reassure users in a blog post Tuesday afternoon.

"Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos," he wrote. "We respect that your photos are your photos. Period."

Instagram's new terms of service announced Monday included a clause stating that Instagram had the right to turn images into advertisements without any approval from or compensation for users starting Jan. 16. — part of Facebook's drive to make money from the service it bought this year for $715 million in cash and stock.

That angered amateur and professional photographers alike — even Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg's wedding photographer.

"Pro or not if a company wants to use your photos for advertising they need to TELL you and PAY you," Noah Kalina said on Twitter.

The effort to make money from Instagram users struck a nerve. According to the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, nearly half of Internet users post photos and videos online that they have created themselves.

Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Instagram quickly realized it had "overplayed its hand." But its mea culpa blog post still contains plenty of loopholes, he said.

"They say they don't have any plans to put your photos in an advertisement, but nevertheless that is the permission they were seeking," Opsahl said. "We will have to see what the language of the terms of service looks like after they revise it."

Jeff Lawrence, a 29-year-old DJ, graphic designer and photographer from Seattle, said he'll decide if he's dumping Instagram after he sees what the company plans to do in black and white.

"Thankfully we are all Internet savvy enough to know that people can say one thing and do another," said Lawrence, an avid Instagram user. "I am going to wait and see if Instagram takes this criticism to heart and changes the terms of service."

The backlash underscored the rising tensions between users of free social media services and the companies that are trying to profit from them. More users are asking for more control over how these companies handle their information.

Clayton Cubitt, 40, a photographer and filmmaker from Brooklyn, N.Y., quickly dubbed the new terms of service a "suicide note" from Instagram.

He urged his fellow Instagram users to revolt against the current policies at social media companies that he described as "you have a free place to post content and in exchange the company sucks the soul out of your life."

"They look at users as a herd to milk," Cubitt said.

His rants may have angered Zuckerberg, but Zuckerberg's sister Arielle Zuckerberg publicly "liked" Cubitt's Instagram snapshot of the most controversial part of Instagram's terms of service.

It's unclear if the Instagram backlash will cause lasting damage to the service.

Hacker collective Anonymous had urged its more than 780,000 Twitter followers to ditch Instagram with the hashtag #BoycottInstagram and posted screen shots from followers who had. The servers of Instaport.me, which helps users download their photos from Instagram, were overloaded Tuesday as Instagram users deleted their accounts and switched to other options such as Hipstamatic and Twitter's new photo service that has filters similar to Instagram. Yahoo said it has seen "strong interest" in its new Flickr app for iPhones.

Many Instagram users said they would give Instagram the benefit of the doubt — for now.

"I am going to rage about it, and get people to rage about it, until we change their policy," Pollock, 31, said in an interview. "There is just something so personal and beautiful about Instagram. Hopefully they don't completely ruin it."

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

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Newport Beach dock renters may withhold holiday love

Marcy Cook embraces the holiday season. The tell? Start with the teddy bears dressed as Santa. More than 1,500 stand sentry around and inside her Newport Beach waterfronthome. Garland and strings of lights threaten to strangle the place like kudzu.

"We decorate a little bit, if you haven't noticed," said Cook, 69. "It's the highlight of the year for us."

Each Christmas, Newport Harbor is ablaze in lights as homeowners go to extraordinary lengths to complement the city's annual Christmas Boat Parade — an indelible tradition that renews itself Wednesday night and continues through Sunday.

But this has been a stressful season here along the tranquil waterfront lined with multimillion-dollar homes.

An increase in city rental fees for residential docks that protrude over public tidelands created a furor when it was approved last week by the City Council.

It also prompted a call to boycott the boat parade and festival of lights by a group calling itself "Stop the Dock Tax."

"It costs us thousands of dollars to voluntarily decorate our homes and boats to bring holiday smiles to nearly 1 million people," organization Chairman Bob McCaffrey wrote to the city. "This year, we are turning off our lights and withdrawing our boats in protest of the massive new dock tax we expect the City Council to levy."

Pete Pallette, a fellow boycott proponent and harbor homeowner, told city leaders the group would call off the boycott only if the council delayed voting on the rent hike. "Otherwise," he vowed, "game on."

In a place where homes come with names and mega-yachts bob in the harbor, it might appear the wealthy are wielding a weapon most often reserved for the masses. A holiday blackout, proponents say, will underscore their displeasure.

Newport's dock fee, which has stood at $100 a year for the last two decades, will now be based on a dock's size. The city says rents will increase to about $250 for a small slip to $3,200 annually for a large dock shared by two homeowners.

"People have been paying $8 a month all these years to access what is public waters," said Newport Beach City Manager Dave Kiff. "That's a pretty good deal. The City Council didn't think the increase it approved was too extreme."

Many did.

They packed council meetings when the hike was discussed, accusing the city of an excessive money grab.

They brushed aside the city's rationale: Statelawmandates cities charge fair market rents for the private use of public lands, and Newport Beach was only now catching up.

And they were unmoved by arguments that the extra revenue will go exclusively to badly needed repairs to a harbor that, despite outward appearances, needs a lot of work.

The city's five-year plan for the harbor calls for $29 million in long-overdue maintenance. Its silt-filled channels haven't been fully dredged since the Great Depression. Ancient, leaky sea walls protecting neighborhoods need to be repaired or replaced.

"We have the makings of a perfect storm like they did on the East Coast" during Superstorm Sandy, said Chris Miller, the city's harbor resources manager. "The sea walls are nearing the end of their useful life."

Even with the rent increases, Newport's dock owners will contribute a tiny fraction of that cost — the rest coming from the federal government and the city's general operating fund.

As dock owners fumed over having to pay more, others recoiled at the proposed boycott of the boat parade, which dates to 1908 when a single gondola led eight canoes illuminated by Japanese lanterns around the harbor. It has now swelled to a decent-sized armada of dozens of boats — some carrying paying customers — that circle past the decorated harbor-front homes.

"The boycott is ridiculous," said Shirley Pepys, whose frontyard on Balboa Island has been taken over by a family of penguins dressed for a Hawaiian luau.

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$35 Raspberry Pi computer gets its own app store

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Zooey Deschanel, rocker husband finalize divorce

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge has finalized Zooey Deschanel's divorce from her rocker husband of roughly three years.

Court records show a judge finalized the actress' divorce from Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard on Wednesday in Los Angeles.

Gibbard and Deschanel, who stars in Fox's "New Girl," were married in September 2009. They had no children together.

The actress filed for divorce in December 2011 after separating two months earlier.

The judgment does not provide financial details of the breakup, although it states that the former couple's marriage cannot be repaired by counseling or mediation.

Deschanel was nominated last week for a Golden Globe for her work on "New Girl."

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The New Old Age Blog: In the Middle: Helping Unhappy Couples

A post on Monday discussed the forces that can make an older couple’s good marriage suddenly go bad — an array of subtle, and often-misunderstood, mental, physical and emotional factors that can upset the equilibrium of even the happiest marriages.

Now we have consulted marriage counselors and geriatricians to find out what caregivers — either the grown children of the couple, or one of the spouses involved– can do to help restore peace and balance to these relationships. The experts consulted uniformly agreed that even older people can at least take steps to reduce tensions and improve their relationship, even if they cannot actually change. (Really, who can, at any age?)

“Even though the situation may seem overwhelming, take heart,” said Dr. Gordon Herz, a psychologist in private practice in Madison, Wisc., who specializes in neuropsychology and rehabilitation psychology. “Couples who have been together for 60 years tend to have worked out ways to manage conflict – or they wouldn’t still be together.”

Retreat to a neutral corner

When grown children see their parents fight, many want to run and hide. But those who are assuming an increased caregiving role often feel impelled to jump in and “fix” the problem, as they do with the other caregiving issues.

If you are so inclined, experts speak with one loud voice to advise: Don’t!

Trying to act as emotional broker between your parents can backfire. (Now they tell me! Suffice it to say that after one such effort my sister said to me in not exactly the friendliest tone, “Well, that went well, didn’t it?”)

“It’s better if your parents can find somebody else to talk to than you,” said Dr. Nancy K. Schlossberg, professor emerita of counseling psychology at the University of Maryland and the author of “Overwhelmed: Coping With Life’s Ups and Downs.”

Don’t give up on marital therapy

“Marital therapy for individuals over 65 years of age is difficult, since habits of a lifetime are deeply ingrained,” stated a study in The Canadian Journal of Medicine, one of the few in the medical literature about marital therapy among older people.

“Yet, in a sense, marital therapy is more crucial for the elderly than for younger patients,” the study continued. “At a time when they are least adaptable and most vulnerable to stress and are entering perhaps the most difficult period of their lives, the elderly must learn new methods of relating and coping” because of the physical and mental changes described in our earlier post.

There’s another reason learning to cope with life changes as a couple is even more critical for older couples: Unlike younger couples, the elderly are rarely in a position to leave the marriage and start over.

Help at least one spouse get counseling

What if only half the couple is ready to seek counseling? Not a problem, therapists said. “You want to help the part of the couple that is suffering,” said Dr. Elaine Rodino, a therapist in private practice in State College, Penn. “The other person may still be the curmudgeon, but I think of it as the law of physics: When you change one aspect of the formula, things change in the total.”

When dementia affects one of the spouses, therapy can help the caregiving spouse learn coping techniques, “which can reduce the marital discord and stress that can make conditions, especially cognitive difficulties, worse,” said Dr. William Dale, chief of geriatrics at the University of Chicago Geriatrics Medicine.

Consider the general practitioner or internist

If the couple won’t see a marriage counselor or therapist, can a family doctor be of any use? The experts had mixed responses.

Many pointed out that general practitioners have neither the time nor the training to offer much relationship help, unless the origin of the problem is exclusively physical. Others thought they could be of use, if given a little direction from the family.

“I encourage the kids to talk to the doctor in advance and let him know something is going on – signs of depression or other problems the parents won’t talk about,” advised Dr. Dale, adding that a consultation with a geriatrician who is more familiar with problems of the aging might be even more productive. “Then the doctor can say, ‘Gee, you sound really frustrated or down — are there any reasons we can explore?’”

Don’t overlook the importance of intimacy

“Mutually stimulating sexual relationships need care and feeding by both partners at any age, but especially in the geriatric years,” according to a study on marital therapy for the elderly. “The need for physical contact, warmth and touching perhaps reaches a peak in this age of loneliness, decreased self-esteem and poor health.”

Forget the idea that elderly couples are too shy to talk about intimacy, insisted Dr. Rodino. “I saw a couple in their 80s, the husband was getting penile injections at the doctor’s office, and then they hurried home to have sex.”

But Dr. Rodino does concede that for older patients it is especially important to focus not only on sexual function and performance, but on “touching, and non-intercourse sexual relations; I help them rekindle the affection and emotional closeness,” Dr. Rodino said.

Address any neuropsychological issues.

To find out whether the sudden marital conflict may stem from early mental cognitive impairment (M.C.I.) —or to rule M.C.I. out and find the real source of trouble — make sure the spouse obtains a full neuropsychological evaluation. If it is M.C.I., “it convinces everybody that there is more than just abstinence, it’s not a personality problem — and they need to address it,” said Dr. Dale.

Don’t overlook simple solutions

“Sometimes a memory problem is something simple, like low Vitamin B12, that is easily fixed,” said Dr. Dale. “Or hypothyroidism, which is quite common, can affect memory.”

In that case, doctors administer synthroid, a thyroid hormone replacement that Dr. Dale said is “very safe, with almost no side effects.” Other changes in behavior can also be the result of a simple problem or be remedied by a change in medication. Don’t assume the worst.

Put an end to the blame game

Help reframe the problem. “Even if dementia is involved, let them know it’s not that their partner hates them, it’s that he is having cognitive changes,” said Dr. Linda Waite, director of the Center on Demography and Economics of Aging at NORC/University of Chicago.

“When you re-frame it like that, it’s easier for the spouse not to take it personally and not blame themselves and feel it’s something they did,” said Dr. Waite. “It can make a difference.”

A 2009 study in the journal Gerontologist supports this notion: “Care partners likely would benefit from strategies aimed at reducing self-blame, enhancing coping skills … and communicating effectively with the person with M.C.I and significant others.”

Separate the anxiety

Divide and conquer — time away improves time together.

“Older couples, especially those with disabilities, spend way too much time together,” said Dr. Lisa Gwyther, director of the Duke Center for Aging Family Support Program. “It would be a problem for any couple.”

Caregivers can best help by arranging for an activity or outing that each spouse can do separately so they can return to each other refreshed and more cheerful. “That can help a lot,” said Dr. Gwyther.

Dial down the tone

For spouse caregivers, it is important to watch not just what is said, but how it is said. In any relationship, tone influences our interpretation of what our partner says. Those with M.C.I. will especially react to tone, rather than the substance of the exchange, Dr. Dale said.

“Ratchet down the emotions, repeat things calmly,” Dr. Dale said. The person with cognitive problems doesn’t know he asked the same question five times — he only knows that you sound angry at him for no reason he can fathom. One spouse’s anger fuels the other’s, and pretty soon there is a fight or withdrawal.

Zero tolerance for violence

If a spouse becomes violent, “that’s an entirely different issue,” said Dr. Schlossberg. “Call in an expert on family violence” or the police.

Help them help others

Nobody likes feeling dependent and having to ask for help. Finding a way to have your loved one volunteer, help others and continue to feel useful can improve moods and marital interactions – even if M.C.I. is involved.

With one couple Dr. Gwyther saw, the wife was not only “driving her husband nuts because she was asking him the same questions over and over,” but she could no longer drive and deliver food in a mobile meals program as she used to. “So her husband agreed to be the driver — and she took the meals to the doors,” Dr. Gwyther recalled.”It made her feel good to continue to do that — and it made them feel good to do it together.”

Caregiver, heal thyself

You have heard it a million times here and elsewhere but, unlike us, this advice never gets old.

If you are exhausted from caregiving, you are bound to be cranky, and that will make everybody around you edgy and irritable, too — especially the spouse who requires your care. Taking the time to look after your own health and engage in activities that bring you pleasure can go a long way toward reducing stress and reestablishing a peaceful balance in a marriage.

How have you coped with tensions in your marriage — or in your elderly parents’ marriage, as you care for them in their old age? Share in the comments below.

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