Over-50

Baby Boomers, We'll Make It Through This One, Too

MU IN 49 STATES
MORGUES OVERWHELMED
ISRAEL SURGE WARNING

Let’s talk about success. How can you boost that in your own career and the trajectory of your business? ON YOUR OWN TERMS. You owe yourself a complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail (no selling).

Baby Boomers with Family Mental Illness - Still Not Much Known, Don't Look to Law for Much Help

On July 24, 2014, in Orange, Connecticut, 24-year-old Tim Granata murdered his mother Claudia. She was home with him and hadn't gone shopping with her daughter because she feared he would kill himself. 

Before that, Tim had been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital after suicide threats. Members of the Granata family voiced concerns that they feared he could harm them or the mother. He had already attacked a brother. 

Both his parents were medical doctors. They had the best available knowledge, the best network of psychiatric contacts, and the funds to pay for the best therapeutic interventions. All that didn't prevent the murder.

Obviously, mental illness remains a mystery. It also isn't easily treated. 

Obviously, too, the law as it was in Connecticut didn't prevent the mother from being killed by a son diagnosed with schizophrenia. Yes, we are quite aware of human rights and the mentally ill. And in-for-life mental asylums essentially are an achronism in America. 

However, at least in CT, the legal system did render justice, after the crime had been committed.

Tim eventually wound up in a psychiatric facility for "restoration competency" so that he could stand trial. When he regained enough of his mental faculties to assist with his trial his defense was not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. The trial took place not before a jury but a panel of three judges. After less than a hour he was acquitted. 

In the 2021 book "Everything Is Fine," Tim's older brother Vince tells that story. Depending on one's view of justice, it seems to have as inspirational as possible ending in terms of law. At least, after a horrific tragedy. And given the law that tragedy didn't seem preventable, not as Vice presents the details.

Vince reports the sort of positive outcome: 

"With the acquittal, the judges committed Tim to the jurisdiction of the Connecticut Psychiatric Review Board. This board would determine the length of his incarcerated treatement that could span decades, but could not exceed sixty years." 

At that facility Tim is allowed to go off his medications. However, since his demons take such hold of him again he can be coxed to get back on them.

In terms of what mental illness does to a family, according to Vince, Tim's two brothers, sister, and father will probably never be whole. However, Tim is part of their lives. They can separate out the disease from the person. They manage to still find and love pieces of Tim which are still there. 

An interesting part of this story from a genetics point of view is that Tim is a triplet. His brother Chris and sister Lizzie show no signs of mental illness. The older brother Vince did run into problem drinking after the murder but, alerted by his father, he exited out of that. 

For lawyers, healthcare workers, and families in which there is serious mental illness "Everything Is Fine" is a useful read. The tone is realistic about the limitations of the legal system and psychiatric community and the powerlessness of loved ones. The information is up-to-date. And there is hope that even in the worst-case-scenarios acceptance of what-is is possible. 

Disclosure: In my extended Eastern European family there have been both schizophrenia and suicide. I struggle to separate the disease from the human beings.

Let’s talk about success. How can you boost that in your own career and the trajectory of your business? ON YOUR OWN TERMS. You owe yourself a complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail (no selling).

Aging Workers, Get the Jabs - You Need Your Employer's Healthcare Insurance and You Can't Afford Large Subcharges

"Employers weighing whether to follow Delta Air Lines’ lead and impose financial penalties on their unvaccinated employees could charge an unlimited amount depending on the type of wellness plan they choose." - Sara Hansard, Bloomberg Law, August 30, 2021.

Like many corporations and law firms, Delta Airlines used the stick versus the carrot to motivate workers to become vaccinated. No surprise, given the seriousness of the Delta variant and other mutations such as C.1.2, it has assessed that strong action as necessary.

What has become newsworthy, though, is the kind of stick Delta Airlines is using and how it has quickly become a model other businesses are considering.

One of the key parts of that model is imposing a substantial surcharge - $200 - to the monthly premium for the company's healthplan for the unvaccinated. 

That is perfectly legal. Also legal for others leveraging that approach is to charge as high a subcharge as they decide will do the job in getting the unvaccinated to come to the party. That's because they can vary the monthly premium based on the wellness parts of their healthcare plan in terms of the unvaccinated.

Obviously, most employees can't afford that extra $200 a month, never mind surcharges considerably higher than that.

The Delta Airlines model could become the uniquely effective approach to increase the rate of vaccination. Optimism has faded that COVID will peter out even in 2022.

Let’s talk about success. How can you boost that in your own career and the trajectory of your business? ON YOUR OWN TERMS. You owe yourself a complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail (no selling).

In Era of Climate Change, Rethinking Relocating to the Gulf Coast for Retirement

BEAST
150 MPH
L I V E
STORM CHASERIda turns out to be a Category 5 hurricane. And there could be more to come. Instead of making a new life in retirement in Gulf Coast states like Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama, consider inland. Parts of Arizona are still affordable. One option is Sierra Vista, AZ, near offbeat towns like Bisbee (an old copper mining town) and Tombstone (where Wyatt Earp ruled).

Let’s talk about success. How can you boost that in your own career and the trajectory of your business? ON YOUR OWN TERMS. You owe yourself a complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail (no selling).

Burning-Out Baby Boomers - Your Leaders Probably Are Clueless

" ... new study from Leadership IQ, called Employee Burnout In 2021, [found] only 19% of leaders rate their skills in reducing employee burnout as advanced or expert. In other words, 81% of leaders readily admit that they don’t really know how to successfully reduce employee burnout." - Mark Murphy, Forbes, August 27, 2021.

The takeaway on this, of course, is that they will have to learn - or designate the right people in the organization or experts parachuted from the outside to try out solutions. 

The most promising - and not only in the field of burnout - is to borrow strategies and tactics from the wellness movement. Those could range from cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) which reframes thoughts to old-fashioned health practices of regular exercise. 

Interestingly, in the difficult psychiatric niche of treating those with bipolar disorder, there is also the introduction of wellness. Robert G. Fawcett, MD explains that in his 2021 book "Calming the Bipolar Storm."

A clear benefit of going the wellness route is that doing so reduces the stigma of most kinds of conditions which society assesses as negative. 

In my coaching, I have found that the most efficient and effective tool for burnout is the CBT habit of reframing thought processes.

The client, a lawyer, says, "I'm overwhelmed." That can be reframed from the macro to the specific level. The client learns to say," This brief I have to write for a trial is especially difficult. But I know I can do it and after I do that there will be briefs similar to this one which will be easier for me to do." Much of the stress lifts.

Let’s talk about success. How can you boost that in your own career and the trajectory of your business? ON YOUR OWN TERMS. You owe yourself a complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail (no selling).

Retirement/Semiretirement and Relocation - So Much for the By-the-Water Dream

Read the retirement section on MarketWatch. So many of those readers contacting the experts sketch out their dream of relocating by water. Yes, they can afford it.

But, climate change could be changing that dream into a potential nightmare.

Obvious is all the hurricane activity in the Gulf of Mexico. It is not unthinkable that there could be a Category 6 kind of storm.

Not that other locations are free of the impacts of climate change. For instance, here in the retirement mecca of southwestern Arizona there is drought. Eventually the region could be uninhabitable. 

However, some areas are less vulnerable to the carnage of climate change than others. 

The peril is to wrap up a life in New York City or Chicago and relocate, only to have to continually seek shelter because of severe storm activity. 

The new way to research where to retire/semiretire is factor in climate change. That has become a must.

Let’s talk about success. How can you boost that in your own career and the trajectory of your business? ON YOUR OWN TERMS. You owe yourself a complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail (no selling).

Fooled Again - We Baby Boomers Should Have Not Fallen for Promise of the Triple Bottom Line

" ... our findings support the view that the BRT [Business RoundTable] Statement was mostly for show and that BRT Companies joining it did not intend or expect it to bring about any material changes in how they treat stakeholders." - Lucian A. Belchuk and Roberto Tallarita, both at Harvard Law School, from research paper "Will Corporations Deliver Value to All Stakeholders," published in SSRN, August 4, 2021.

Belchuk and Tallarita reviewed sundry corporate documents from 136 of the corporations which signed two years ago the Business RoundTable's "Statement on the Purpose of the Corporation."

That initiative was supposed to represent a pledge to focus on all stakeholders, not only shareholders. Those stakeholders include employees, vendors, business partners, communities, and planet earth. One moniker for that model is "The Triple Bottom Line."

The Business Roundtable's outreach received plenty of attention. Probably not since Peter Drucker created his statement about the purpose of the corporation had there been so much attention to that macro issue. Drucker declared that purpose was to serve customers. 

What the researchers turned up was this: Corporations have remained locked into what the authors of the paper call "shareholder primary." Part of that is that the values of corporate boards still tend to be in sync with what is good for the shareholders.

However, within society there is an expectation of that Triple Bottom Line. Institutions ranging from media to activist groups demand corporations provide "evidence" of playing fair with the various stakeholders. Essentially, that is what is both making headlines and triggering litigation, legislation, and regulation. In a sense, society is chasing an ideal model of how things should be. That movment has caught fire. 

Therefore, despite the shareholder-primacy approach, corporations also have to deal with the expectations of Business Roundtable thinking. That's where law firms' ESG (Environmental Social Governance) practices serve their corporate clients. An early adopter in that growing niche has been Paul Weiss, chaired by Brad Karp. Way back in April 2020, it created a practice whose mission is:

"Business leaders face greater pressure to increase their organizations’ resilience while simultaneously addressing social issues of importance to stakeholders. Our advisory practice helps companies navigate the legal, business and political ramifications of developing and implementing ESG initiatives. We advise on matters such as stakeholder engagement, corporate governance, crisis management, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, diversity and inclusion, ethics and compliance." 

Notice the use of the term "stakeholder."

No surprise, given how integrated the global economy is, the focus on beyond the return to shareholders is worldwide. According to The Blended Capital Group, last year about 50 law firms around the world had develooped ESG practices. 

Likely, law firms will beef up those practices, hiring brandname laterals.

That special expertise will expand in demand, influence, and power in part because of the impacts of the virus which just isn't going away. Workers around the world are rethinking their expectations of employers. The life-and-death realities of the pandemic have set in play those "Ah-Ha Moments."

In addition, the current crazy weather hightens concerns about climate change. It's not an overreaction to envision kinds of diasporas from affected regions. Already, for example, retirees have to factor in the dynamics of climate change in their plans for relocation to more affordable areas. They may have to rule out X or Y because of tropical storms or drought. 

Meanwhile, the Belchuk and Tallarita research can set off a fresh wave of grassroots and institutional activism about how corporations should be providing for the needs of stakeholders. The enraged mindset could be: Fooled again, but not for long. 

How much media attention this will get depends on what else is going on in the news. For instance, on the bible of public relations - ODwyerPR - Kevin McCauley laments that the tragedy going on in Haiti post-earthquake isn't getting adequate media attention. Among what had knocked it off the digital front page are the developments in Afghanistan. 

Obviously, stakeholder supporters have to become increasingly savvy about getting, holding, and enhancing media attention. And, law firms have to guide their ESG clients through the maze of expectations about the purpose of the corporation. 

Let’s talk about success. How can you boost that in your own career and the trajectory of your business? ON YOUR OWN TERMS. You owe yourself a complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail (no selling).

Booster Jab Could Be in Our Future

"U.S. could offer COVID vaccine boosters for elderly as soon as this fall" - Associated Press (reprinted in MarketWatch), August 15, 2021.

Already the feds have approved the booster shot for those with compromised immune systems.

There is growing concern about the downright necessity of a booster shot for everyone. But vulnerable groups, including us over-60, are first in line. Research shows that protection declines 6% every 2 months from the initial COVID jabs.

In Israel, those over-60 are already eligible for the booster if their original COVID vaccinations had been at least 5 months earlier.

Those in the healthcare loop assess that the Delta variant hasn't yet peaked in the U.S.

Let’s talk about success. How can you boost that in your own career and the trajectory of your business? You owe yourself a complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail (no selling).

Delta+ - What Should We Baby Boomers Be Thinking? (in addition to planning booster jab)

"More than 60 cases of the new Delta-plus variant have been detected in the San Francisco-Bay area ... The new strain, an off-shoot of the highly-transmissible Delta variant, is thought to be more contagious than its predecessor ..." - Meliss Koenig, Daily Mail, August 6, 2021.

There is no need to panic, not yet. The experts indicate that variants of the virus are to be expected. And, there are so many unknowns associated with Delta+, just as there are with the original version of Delta. Those unknows could turn out to be positive or negative.

Since we are in a high-risk category, we have to continue to practice hyper-caution. Yes, mask up and perhaps even curtail daily schedule of activities outside the home - before the official mandates are issued. If we can get a refund, perhaps we should cancel that three-day weekend in Las Vegas.

As for vaccines, of course, we should have received the jabs. They, we now know, do not prevent contagion, However, if we do become infected they can lessen the severity of what we have to go through.

And, what might be downright common sense is this: booster shots. In its coverage of those, The Wall Street Journal explains that the protection from a vaccination declines about 6% every 2 months. Within 6 months we could be too vulnerable to all the versions of COVID which could and probably will emerge.

Takeaway: Let's be proactive.

Let’s talk about success. How can you boost that in your own career and the trajectory of your business? You owe yourself a complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail (no selling).

 

Risk of Dementia: 30% Higher for Middle-Aged Sleeping Less than 6 Hours Nightly

Head researcher Dr. Severine Sabin at the University of Paris is careful in positioning and packaging the findings of a sleep study, reports The Guardian. Her study is published in Nature Communications.

Sabin doesn't indicate that for the middle-aged less than six hours of sleep nightly causes dementia. What she does state is that it can increase the odds of developing dementia about 30%. She does add that sleep loss in itself could be an early symptom of that kind of cognitive impairment. 

Since all-nighters as well as simply going without seven hours are typical among overworked professionals in the current economy, they should pay special attention to these findings. 

Although the functions of sleep are not completely understood what is known is this: It clears the brain of what's being referred to as "toxic waste." Mom was right when she reassured her troubled child that everything would seem better "after a good night's sleep."

It's interesting to wonder that if an employer mandates a workload and deadlines which require a sustained pattern of loss of sleep and the middle-aged professionals develop dementia, could the family file a lawsuit? 

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