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How Young/Old Do You Feel?

Posted on October 22, 2015 | Leave a comment

Do you feel much younger than your real age?

A recent study, published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and reported in the Wall Street Journal, suggests that those who feel younger than their real age probably have a better memory and better cognitive function than those who feel older.

The study, conducted by researchers in France, analyzed data from over 1,300 men and women, ages 50 to 75. They’d originally been part of a U.S. study in the mid-1990s.

The respondents were asked how old they felt most of the time. They were also asked for their medical info and how often they engaged in moderate or vigorous exercise.

Following these people for 10 years allowed the researchers to assess how well they later did on tests of memory and executive function (defined as the capacity to plan and the ability to carry out complex tasks). The study found that the participants, on average, felt 19% younger than their chronological age.

Overall, 89% of the group felt younger than their actual age. But 11% felt older, and these individuals scored 25% lower on memory and cognitive tests than those who felt younger.

Factors like gender, education, marital status, and chronic diseases were ruled out.

The researchers concluded that people who feel older than their real age should probably be closely monitored because this may be an early marker of impaired cognition, leading to dementia.

The Journal also noted other research showing that a younger self-image is more common in physically active people with a lower body-mass index.

The findings in the French study coincide with a large body of data emerging from a recent AARP survey of 1,800 Americans, ages 40 to 90. AARP Magazine set forth the data in an article called “You’re Old, I’m Not: How Americans “really feel about aging.”

Although the respondents acknowledged facing challenges, they also revealed “some surprisingly rosy attitudes.” For example, 85% said they weren’t “old” yet.

When asked at which age is a person “old,” respondents’ answers depended on their age. People in their 40s said 63, those in their 50s said 68, those in their 60s said 73, while those in their 70s said 75. (One 90-year-old woman said that a woman isn’t “old” until she hits 95.)

The older people were, the “less hampered” they appeared to feel by their aging bodies. They were asked whether they agreed with the following statements:

1. Problems with my physical health do not hold me back from doing what I want.

2. I have more energy now than I expected for my age.

The physical-health answers were somewhat surprising. While 58% of people in their 40s agreed with the first statement, the rates of agreement went up with each age group. Those in their 60s and 70s agreed (that their physical-health problems didn’t hold them back) at the rate of 69%.

On the energy question, the results were also illuminating. Only 24% of those in their 40s expected to have more energy at their age (they probably expected to be pretty energetic), but 55% of people in their 70s said they had more energy than they’d expected to have at their age.

One new bit of information: According to the Centers for Disease Control, about 69 million Americans are not as “young at heart”—literally—as they think they are. The CDC just found that more than 40% of Americans had hearts that were five or more years older than their actual ages. Wow! Does this contradict the research on how young we feel?

Not really. CDC Director Tom Frieden said its “heart risk calculator” was just an easy way to reveal someone’s risk of heart attack or stroke. Frieden added that learning one’s heart age can be “a clear call to take charge of your health.” Let’s therefore keep this finding in perspective: all it really does is underscore the importance of your overall health.

So…how old do you feel? Staying active and avoiding excessive weight-gain no doubt improve your odds of feeling younger. But here’s the most important thing to keep in mind: Forget about numbers!

Don’t obsess about your chronological age. Don’t think in terms of “young” and “old.” If your physical health is reasonably good, and your overall life-situation is likewise, keep living an active and rewarding life.

Jonathan Swift wrote, “No wise [person] ever wished to be younger.” Maybe not. But as someone else once said, “We are all getting older, but we don’t have to GET OLD.”

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I’ve Got a Tip for You

Posted on December 6, 2014 | 1 comment

Next time you order a BLT at your favorite restaurant, will you leave your server a tip?

Tipping is an issue fraught with questions. Who do I tip? Where do I tip? How much do I tip?

When it comes to tipping, lots of people are confused.

But the people on the fuzzy end of the lollipop–the ones who do the hard work–live in hope that the folks they serve will cough up a big tip.

People who work as servers in restaurants are particularly vulnerable. Thanks to a crazy federal minimum-wage provision, in some states employers can pay tipped workers only $2.13 an hour, the same rate allowed since 1991.

The result? Tipped workers are about twice as likely to be living in poverty as workers who don’t rely on tips. According to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, tipped workers have a poverty rate of about 13 percent, compared with a rate of 6.5 percent for other workers. The median wage for tipped workers—including tips—is $10.22, compared with $16.48 for workers overall.

Let’s look at how this result has come about.

Most of us favor a fair minimum wage for employees in our country. Witness the recent adoption of a higher minimum wage in such politically conservative states as Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota, where referenda increasing the minimum wage passed in the 2014 midterm elections. And even though Republicans in Congress have stood in the way of enacting a higher federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour, as proposed by President Obama, some state lawmakers have taken the initiative and increased the income of workers in their states by passing minimum-wage legislation of their own.

One group has been largely left out of this benevolent trend: Workers who depend on tips. According to articles in Mother Jones magazine in May 2014 and the Wall Street Journal in August 2014, only seven states, including California and Alaska, require employers to pay tipped workers the same minimum wage as nontipped workers.

The federal minimum wage for tipped workers has remained stagnant at $2.13 since 1991. If tipped workers aren’t earning the regular minimum wage (currently $7.25) via tips, employers are supposed to make up the difference. Are you surprised to learn that they don’t always do it?

President Obama’s proposed Minimum Wage Fairness Act would gradually raise tipped workers’ minimum wage to 70 percent of the regular minimum wage. That would help. But this increase has been opposed by the National Restaurant Association, which spent more than $2 million lobbying against it in 2013. (Some may remember that former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain lobbied against any change during his tenure as president of the NRA.)

The NRA claims that no one is making only $2.13 an hour. But the “servers who make ‘good money’ are in the minority,” according to a spokeswoman for Restaurant Opportunities Center United, a group that tries to improve conditions for servers. She notes that servers are hit especially hard by the “wage theft” by restaurant owners who don’t make up the difference they’re supposed to. When the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division investigated the restaurant industry from 2010 to 2012, it discovered that nearly 84 percent of restaurants had some kind of wage and hour violation.

Barbara Ehrenreich has documented the deplorable life of servers in her 2001 bestseller, Nickel and Dimed. Trying life at poverty-level wages, she spent her first month as a waitress, resulting in a “monthlong plunge into poverty” during which she often endured dehumanizing treatment at the hands of restaurant managers.

One problem is that servers are often unaware of the law requiring employers to make up the difference. One server states that unless tips were on credit card receipts, “We never logged our tips or reported them to our employers.” And when she told other servers what they were entitled to, “nobody felt comfortable asking employers about it.”

In the last few years, a new trend has appeared: a ban on tipping. A handful of restaurants in California, New York, and elsewhere have adopted a no-tipping policy, paying servers between $10 and $20 an hour in lieu of lower wages plus tips. How do these restaurants cover the cost of the higher wages they pay? Some, like Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, add a service charge (like 15 or 20 percent) to their diners’ bills. Others are experimenting with higher menu prices. The San Francisco Chronicle noted in November 2014 that a new restaurant in that city plans to simply raise all prices on the menu by 15 percent.

As the Wall Street Journal has noted, servers in some upscale restaurants who currently earn “a handsome income” might not welcome losing out on tips. But the no-tipping trend is clearly underway. If adopted throughout the industry, it would likely benefit the vast majority of servers who right now are seriously underpaid, often living in poverty as a result. Doing away with tipping would require enormous change for most restaurants, however, so it may never become the standard policy in American restaurants.

In the meantime, next time you order that BLT, think about putting a generous wad of your own lettuce in the hands of your server. You just may be helping that server escape the grip of poverty.

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Welcome to my blog!

Posted on September 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

I’m launching this blog to express my thoughts.

Many of the posts I plan to include have been published as commentary elsewhere.

Please watch for those, and for new ones I will be adding.

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My publications

Posted on September 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

I’m a lifelong writer who has also worked as a lawyer and law professor. In recent years, writing has become my primary focus.

I’m the author of two novels, A Quicker Blood and Jealous Mistress.

I’ve written articles, book reviews, and op-ed pieces on the law, on travel, on the environment, and other topics, published in professional journals and in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Daily News, the Baltimore Sun, the ABA Journal, the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, the Los Angeles Daily Journal, the San Francisco Daily Journal, and other publications

I’ve also worked as an editor on two publications.

Here’s a list of my publications as of September 2012.

Fiction 

Two novels:

A Quicker Blood, a thriller published in 2009

Jealous Mistress, a murder mystery published in 2011

Both are available for purchase on Amazon.com.

“Neglect,” a short story published in Chicago Lawyer Magazine (prizewinner in its First Annual Fiction Contest), August 1993

San Francisco Chronicle Publications  

Twelve op-ed/commentary pieces, January 2007-December 2011:

“No butts about it,” January 29, 2007

“A good man is not so hard to find…if he’s been cloned,” September 16, 2007

“Charitable organizations presume too much,” October 28, 2007

“Why emulate Chicago?,” June 16, 2008

“High heels are killers,” July 4, 2008

“Gender equality came via the keyboard,” September 14, 2008

“Toys for boys and girls,” December 24, 2008

“Federal waste we can end,” January 28, 2009

“Before you buy, ask: Is it reunion-worthy?” May 12, 2009

“To travel cheaply, sleep on the sofa,” July 23, 2009

“Unequal pay harms U.S. women,” April 23, 2010

“Politics afflicts the Christmas tree trade,” December 15, 2011

Chicago Tribune Publications

May 13, 1996, “Pension Problems Come Alive, Along with Practical Guidance” (book review of The Pension Book by Karen Ferguson and Kate Blackwell)

June 28, 1992, “Foul play: Some games have no winners” (commentary)

October 12, 1991, “How much is a child’s love worth?” (op-ed piece)

April 12, 1989, “Playing by the Rules” (travel)

September 11, 1988, “Law School Ladies’ Day is No Longer Such a Trial” (commentary)

March 15, 1987, “Intellect Can Sprout in London’s Bloomsbury” (travel)

November 23, 1986, “Questionable Language: to a Person, We Could Use This Cure For Sexism” (commentary)

March 18, 1986, “It’s All the Lawyers’ Fault!” (op-ed piece)

Money-saving tips for travelers to Paris, 1982 (also published in the NY Daily News)

Chicago Daily Law Bulletin Publications

March 21, 2003, “Author:  Racial ‘pathologies’ still plague U.S.” (book review of “Interracial Intimacies:  Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption” by Randall Kennedy)

February 24, 2003, “A case of contempt” (book review of “The King of Torts” by John Grisham)

July 22, 2002, “Searching for truth; decisions of consequence” (book review)

October 23, 2001, “Structure your writing to make your point”

May 23, 2000, “Sometimes both sides lose” (book review)

November 19, 1999, “Sexual autonomy as the foundation for a new law on rape” (book review)

August 18, 1998, “Watch out! Your vacationing relatives may be ‘living with’ you”

March 11, 1998, “Getting tough in fight against pollution”

December 17, 1997, “State should recognize value of children’s companionship”

March 15, 1996, “Horrific acts spark attorney’s internal debate” (book review)

January 25, 1996, “Ensuring future security with private pension plans” (book review)

January 9, 1996, “Personal liability under Family Leave Act”

August 1, 1995, “Insurance case yields ruling on allocation”

June 22, 1995, “Insurer forced to cover sex abuse claim”

June 6, 1995, “Admission withheld, admission denied”

May 4, 1995, “2d Circuit says it’s reasonable to rely on insurance broker’s coverage statements”

April 27, 1995, “Distinguishing between law and equity”

April 11, 1995, “Officers escape some liability for failed S&L”

March 30, 1995, “Pollution case weighs personal liability”

September 12, 1994, “Appeals court rejects bank’s claim for lien”

July 13, 1994, “Judge allows parents to recover in vaccine-injury case”

May 24, 1994, “Court invokes two-part test for preferential transfers”

Nov. 19, 1993, “Making Adoption Accessible, Affordable and Acceptable” (book review of “Family Bonds” by Elizabeth Bartholet)

Oct. 20, 1993, “‘Lax business practices’ prove fatal in bank dispute”

May 24, 1993, “United flight attendants on strong legal grounds”

July 2, 1993, “Courts must do their part in fight against sexual harassment”

February 2, 1993, “Court rules IRAs exempt from a bankruptcy estate”

January 12, 1993, “Landowners’ indifference’ will not be rewarded: court”

November 2, 1992, “After 4 losses, lenders win in 5th Circuit”

Some Other Publications 

“Legal Writing 101:  Some tips on creating a framework that makes your documents clear and easy to understand,” The Recorder (legal publication in San Francisco) (December 21, 2009) 

Book reviews of Unwanted Sex: The Culture of Intimidation and the Failure of Law by Stephen J. Schulhofer appear in 86 American Bar Association Journal 86 (August 2000); Chicago Daily Law Bulletin (Nov. 19, 1999); Los Angeles Daily Journal (Dec. 28, 1999); San Francisco Daily Journal (Dec. 28, 1999)

Book reviews of We Love Each Other, But by Dr. Ellen Wachtel appear in Chicago Daily Law Bulletin (May 23, 2000); Los Angeles Daily Law Journal (June 13, 2000); San Francisco Daily Journal (June 13, 2000); 22 Pennsylvania Family Lawyer 73 (Dec. 2000)

“You’re a lousy dentist!” November 1998 (focus: defamation), in the ADA Legal Adviser: A guide to the law for dentists, a monthly newsletter published by the American Dental Association

The high cost of getting old, August 1998 (focus: long-term care insurance), in the ADA Legal Adviser: A guide to the law for dentists, a monthly newsletter published by the American Dental Association

One patient’s tale of trouble, November 1997 (focus: insurance coverage), in the ADA Legal Adviser: A guide to the law for dentists, a monthly newsletter published by the American Dental Association

Do you want a perfect lawn or a healthy family? Pioneer Press Forum, May 30, 1996

Mozart and the Abuse of Women, Today’s Chicago Woman, April 1996

Granada Memories Will Live On (commentary), Chicago Sun-Times, March 5, 1990

Symbolic Synagogue (travel article about Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island), Raleigh News & Observer, January 1, 1989 

Legal London: A Brief Walk Lets Visitors Judge Its Historical Treasures (travel), Baltimore Sun, Jan. 18, 1987

Legal London: A World Rich in History (travel), Chicago Sun-Times, June 15, 1986

A Walking Tour of Legal London: The Inns and Outs (travel), Raleigh News & Observer, May 18, 1986

Everything you always wanted to know about the federal judiciary (but didn’t know you could find in a book), Washington University alumni publication, 1985

Travel article about the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark, New York Daily News, 1982

Travel article about Paris, New York Daily News, 1982

Articles in professional journals

Book review, 86 American Bar Association Journal 86 (August 2000), reviewing Unwanted Sex: The Culture of Intimidation and the Failure of Law by Stephen J. Schulhofer

Preemployment Inquiries and Examinations: What Employers Need to Know About the New EEOC Guidelines, 45 Labor Law Journal 667 (1994)

Book Review, 17 Illinois Family Law Reporter 159 (July 1994), reviewing Elizabeth Bartholet, Family Bonds: Adoption and the Politics of Parenting (1993)

The Fourth Circuit decides that ‘indifference’ will not be rewarded, March 1993, Environmental Control Law (Illinois State Bar Association newsletter)

Twenty Tips for Associates, 7 CBA Record 24 (Feb. 1993) (with Elias N. Matsakis), reprinted in 34 Law Office Economics & Management 143 (1993) and selected by the editor to appear in LOEM Manual at sec. 18.07 (1993 update)

Hoffman Homes decision limited USEPA’s power to regulate isolated wetlands, September 1992, Environmental Control Law (Illinois State Bar Association newsletter)

A Fairer Hand: Why Courts Must Recognize the Value of a Child’s Companionship, 8 Thomas M. Cooley Law Review 273 (1991)

Book Review, 62 Kentucky Law Journal 1161 (1974)

Business-Sponsored Mechanisms for Redress and Arbitration, in Staff Studies Prepared for the National Institute for Consumer Justice (1973)

The Captive Patient: The Treatment of Health Problems in American Prisons, 6 Clearinghouse Review 16 (May 1972), reprinted in Medical and Health Care in Jails, Prisons, and Other Correctional Facilities: A Compilation of Standards and Materials (American Medical Association, Commission on Correctional Facilities and Services, 1973)

Legal Analysis of Problem Situations, in Freya Olafson, Confidentiality: A Guide for Neighborhood Health Centers (Monograph No. 1, Neighborhood Health Center Seminar Program, 1971)

Abortions for Poor and Nonwhite Women: A Denial of Equal Protection?, 23 Hastings Law Journal 147 (1971) (with Alan Charles)

The State of Emergency Medical Services Under the Highway Safety Act, or Don’t Be Caught Dead in an Ambulance, 5 Clearinghouse Review 72 (June 1971)

A Child of a Different Color: Race as a Factor in Adoption and Custody Proceedings, 17 Buffalo Law Review 303 (1968)

Editing

Editor of the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary: Profiles of All Active United States District Court Judges (1984-85)

Editor and author of articles in the ADA Legal Adviser (newsletter published by the American Dental Association; winner of the 1998 Silver SNAP award) (1996-98)

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