IHT Rendezvous: What's in a Name, Hurricane?

LONDON — Congratulations are in order for Blær Bjarkardóttir, the 15-year-old Icelandic girl who this week won the legal right to keep her given name in defiance of the despotic-sounding Icelandic Naming Committee.

Blær — its means “light breeze” in Icelandic — had sued authorities who refused to register her name because it was not on an approved list of 1,853 names that parents are allowed to give their female children.

The Reykjavík District Court found in her favor on Thursday, although it turned down her appeal for the equivalent of $4,000 in damages.

“I am very happy,” she said. “Finally, I’ll have the name ‘Blær’ in my passport.”

Iceland is among those states that keep a tight rein on naming conventions, in part to protect children from bearing a lifetime burden as the result of fanciful choices made in the first flush of parenthood.

How many Excels and Hurricanes are there who wish there had been an authoritarian Naming Committee around when they needed it?

In Germany, as in Iceland, unisex names are banned, while a first given name must not negatively affect the well-being of the child.

Danish parents can pick from an approved list of 7,000 male and female names, and any unusual choice is likely to be rejected. That has mercifully spared intended victims from ending up as Pluto and Monkey, according to David K. Israel at the Mental Floss website.

A Swedish couple once attempted to strike a blow for parents’ rights by naming their son Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 (pronounced “Albin”). Their appeal to the law was rejected and instead they received a $750 fine for not registering the boy before his fifth birthday.

“What’s in a name?” as Shakespeare’s Juliet asked. “That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Maybe. But would she have felt the same if her parents had called her Moxie CrimeFighter, like the daughter of Penn Jillette, the American magician?

Celebrity children appear to be particularly vulnerable. Bob Geldof, the Irish music star, charity fundraiser and father of four daughters, has a Peaches, a Pixie, a Fifi Trixibelle and a Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence.

Parents in the United States are allowed to name their children pretty much what they like.

However, as Lisa Belkin wrote at the Motherlode parenting blog last year, Child Protective Services were called in when a couple in Easton, Pennsylvania, ordered a birthday cake for their little Adolf Hitler Campbell, brother of JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Himmler Jeannie Campbell.

Annual lists of favorite names indicate most parents remain conservative in their choices. Lisa Belkin wrote that Emma, Isabella and Emily, and Jacob, Michael and Ethan, topped the U.S. list in 2011.

If you’re about to choose a name for your newborn, keep in mind a handy rule of thumb for naming cats: Never pick a name that you would be embarrassed to yell out of the window at midnight.

Let us know what you think: Should the state have a right to veto what a parent names a child? Is the banning of outlandish names an act of mercy? And if you have an unusual given name, is it a burden or a benefit?

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Reformatting a Kindle Fire

I want to pass my old Kindle Fire to a friend since I got a new model. How do I make sure all of my personal content is erased before I give the old Kindle away?

The Kindle software includes a setting that wipes the tablet and returns it to the state it was in when you first took it out of the box. Before you start the process, though, check that the Kindle has a good battery charge so it does not conk out in the middle of erasing itself, and make sure you have any personal files you need on the device backed up elsewhere.

Next, tap the gear-shaped icon for the Settings menu. On the Settings menu, tap the More icon, scroll down and then tap Device. At the bottom of the Device screen, tap the option called Reset to Factory Defaults. In the Factory Data Reset box that pops up, tap the Erase Everything button.

When you tap Erase Everything, the Kindle does just that — it deregisters the tablet with your Amazon account and deletes any personal files you have copied to it. It also wipes out any movies, books, music, apps and other content you purchased on the device. (Although your personal files are erased, any Amazon purchases you made on the Kindle are backed up to Amazon’s cloud servers and can be used with the new Kindle registered to your account.)

Once the Kindle finishes erasing itself, it should reboot. When the tablet finishes restarting, you should see the Welcome screen that invites you to set up the Kindle Fire as a new device.

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The New Old Age Blog: Caregiving, Laced With Humor

“My grandmother, she’s not a normal person. She’s like a character when she speaks. Every day she’s playing like she’s an actress.”

These are words of love, and they come from Sacha Goldberger, a French photographer who has turned his grandmother, 93-year-old Frederika Goldberger, into a minor European celebrity.

In the photos, you can see the qualities grandson and grandmother have in common: a wicked sense of humor, an utter lack of pretension and a keen taste for theatricality and the absurd.

This isn’t an ordinary caregiving relationship, not by a long shot. But Sacha, 44 years old and unmarried, is deeply devoted to this spirited older relation who has played the role of Mamika (“my little grandmother,” translated from her native Hungarian) in two of his books and a photography exhibition currently underway in Paris.

As for Frederika, “I like everything that my grandson does,” she said in a recent Skype conversation from her apartment, which also serves as Sacha’s office. “I hate not to do anything. Here, with my grandson, I have the feeling I am doing something.”

Their unusual collaboration began after Frederika retired from her career as a textile consultant at age 80 and fell into a funk.

“I was very depressed because I lived for working,” she told me in our Skype conversation.

Sacha had long dreamed of creating what he calls a “Woody Allen-like Web site with a French Jewish humor” and he had an inspiration. What if he took one of the pillars of that type of humor, a French man’s relationship with his mother and grandmother, and asked Frederika to play along with some oddball ideas?

This Budapest-born baroness, whose family had owned the largest textile factory in Hungary before World War II, was a natural in front of the camera, assuming a straight-faced, imperturbable comic attitude whether donning a motorcycle helmet and goggles, polishing her fingernails with a gherkin, wearing giant flippers on the beach, lighting up a banana, or dressed up as a Christmas tree with a golden star on her head. (All these photos and more appear in “Mamika: My Mighty Little Grandmother,” published in the United States last year.)

“It was like a game for us, deciding what crazy thing we were going to do next, how we were going to keep people from being bored,” said Sacha, who traces his close relationship with his grandmother to age 14, when she taught him how to drive and often picked him up at school. “Making pictures was a very good excuse to spend time together.”

“He thought it was very funny to put a costume on me,” said Frederika. “And I liked it.”

People responded enthusiastically, and before long Sacha had cooked up what ended up becoming the most popular character role for Frederika: Super Mamika, outfitted in a body-hugging costume, tights, a motorcycle helmet and a flowing cape.

His grandmother was a super hero of sorts, because she had helped save 10 people from the Nazis during World War II, said Sacha. He also traced inspiration to Stan Lee, a Jewish artist who created the X-Men, The Hulk and the Fantastic Four for Marvel comics. “I wanted to ask what happens to these super heroes when they get old in these photographs with my grandmother.”

Lest this seem a bit trivial to readers of this blog, consider this passage from Sacha’s introduction to “Mamika: My Might Little Grandmother”:

In a society where youth is the supreme value; where wrinkles have to be camouflaged; where old people are hidden as soon as they become cumbersome, where, for lack of time or desire, it is easier to put our elders in hospices rather than take care of them, I wanted to show that happiness in aging was also possible.

In our Skype conversation, Sacha confessed to anxiety about losing his grandmother, and said, “I always was very worried about what would happen if my grandmother disappeared. Because she is exceptional.”

“I am not normal,” Frederika piped up at his side, her face deeply wrinkled, her short hair beautifully coiffed, seemingly very satisfied with herself.

“So, making these pictures to me is the best thing that could happen,” Sacha continued, “because now my grandma is immortal and it seems everyone knows her. I am giving to everybody in the world a bit of my grandma.”

This wonderful expression of caring and creativity has expanded my view of intergenerational relations in this new old age. What about you?

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: Caregiving, Laced With Humor

“My grandmother, she’s not a normal person. She’s like a character when she speaks. Every day she’s playing like she’s an actress.”

These are words of love, and they come from Sacha Goldberger, a French photographer who has turned his grandmother, 93-year-old Frederika Goldberger, into a minor European celebrity.

In the photos, you can see the qualities grandson and grandmother have in common: a wicked sense of humor, an utter lack of pretension and a keen taste for theatricality and the absurd.

This isn’t an ordinary caregiving relationship, not by a long shot. But Sacha, 44 years old and unmarried, is deeply devoted to this spirited older relation who has played the role of Mamika (“my little grandmother,” translated from her native Hungarian) in two of his books and a photography exhibition currently underway in Paris.

As for Frederika, “I like everything that my grandson does,” she said in a recent Skype conversation from her apartment, which also serves as Sacha’s office. “I hate not to do anything. Here, with my grandson, I have the feeling I am doing something.”

Their unusual collaboration began after Frederika retired from her career as a textile consultant at age 80 and fell into a funk.

“I was very depressed because I lived for working,” she told me in our Skype conversation.

Sacha had long dreamed of creating what he calls a “Woody Allen-like Web site with a French Jewish humor” and he had an inspiration. What if he took one of the pillars of that type of humor, a French man’s relationship with his mother and grandmother, and asked Frederika to play along with some oddball ideas?

This Budapest-born baroness, whose family had owned the largest textile factory in Hungary before World War II, was a natural in front of the camera, assuming a straight-faced, imperturbable comic attitude whether donning a motorcycle helmet and goggles, polishing her fingernails with a gherkin, wearing giant flippers on the beach, lighting up a banana, or dressed up as a Christmas tree with a golden star on her head. (All these photos and more appear in “Mamika: My Mighty Little Grandmother,” published in the United States last year.)

“It was like a game for us, deciding what crazy thing we were going to do next, how we were going to keep people from being bored,” said Sacha, who traces his close relationship with his grandmother to age 14, when she taught him how to drive and often picked him up at school. “Making pictures was a very good excuse to spend time together.”

“He thought it was very funny to put a costume on me,” said Frederika. “And I liked it.”

People responded enthusiastically, and before long Sacha had cooked up what ended up becoming the most popular character role for Frederika: Super Mamika, outfitted in a body-hugging costume, tights, a motorcycle helmet and a flowing cape.

His grandmother was a super hero of sorts, because she had helped save 10 people from the Nazis during World War II, said Sacha. He also traced inspiration to Stan Lee, a Jewish artist who created the X-Men, The Hulk and the Fantastic Four for Marvel comics. “I wanted to ask what happens to these super heroes when they get old in these photographs with my grandmother.”

Lest this seem a bit trivial to readers of this blog, consider this passage from Sacha’s introduction to “Mamika: My Might Little Grandmother”:

In a society where youth is the supreme value; where wrinkles have to be camouflaged; where old people are hidden as soon as they become cumbersome, where, for lack of time or desire, it is easier to put our elders in hospices rather than take care of them, I wanted to show that happiness in aging was also possible.

In our Skype conversation, Sacha confessed to anxiety about losing his grandmother, and said, “I always was very worried about what would happen if my grandmother disappeared. Because she is exceptional.”

“I am not normal,” Frederika piped up at his side, her face deeply wrinkled, her short hair beautifully coiffed, seemingly very satisfied with herself.

“So, making these pictures to me is the best thing that could happen,” Sacha continued, “because now my grandma is immortal and it seems everyone knows her. I am giving to everybody in the world a bit of my grandma.”

This wonderful expression of caring and creativity has expanded my view of intergenerational relations in this new old age. What about you?

Read More..

DealBook: Dutch Government Takes Control of SNS Reaal

The Dutch government took control of one of the country’s biggest financial institutions, SNS Reaal, after the troubled company failed to find a private-sector buyer.

The Dutch finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, said the government would spend 3.7 billion euros, or $5 billion, in taxpayer money to clean up the bank, which has struggled for years with unprofitable real estate loans. The government will also require the country’s top three banks — ING, ABN Amro and Rabobank — to contribute 1 billion euros next year in a one-time payment, he said.

The moves comes as Europe continues to deal with a sluggish economic and debt problems. Last year, Spain took over Bankia, a mortgage lender also hurt by property deals.

Problems at SNS Reaal, which is based in Utrecht, had intensified in the last two weeks as depositors began losing faith, fearing talks with potential buyers would fail. The company had been reportedly negotiating possible investments with CVC Capital Partners and other funds in the hope of averting disaster.

Mr. Dijsselbloem, the finance minister, said in a statement that the takeover ‘‘was made necessary by the extreme situation’’ of the bank and the ‘‘serious and immediate threat posed by that situation to the stability of the financial system.’’

Shareholders and subordinated bondholders of SNS Reaal will be wiped out, effective immediately, Mr. Dijsselbloem said. The holders of senior debt will be repaid and depositors will not lose their money.

Three top executives of SNS Reaal said in a statement that they were stepping down, as ‘‘they do not want to and cannot take responsibility for the nationalization scenario.’’ The three — Ronald Latenstein, the bank’s chief executive, Rob Zwartendijk, the chairman, and Ference Lamp, the chief financial officer — said they had done ‘‘everything in their power’’ to avoid a bailout.

‘‘The persons in question do not advocate the chosen solution, but respect the choice of the Ministry of Finance,’’ according to a statement.

The announcement is the latest in a spate of recent bad news about European banks. On Thursday, Deutsche Bank posted a surprise fourth-quarter loss of 2.2 billion euros, and problems continue at Monti dei Paschi di Siena, which received a bailout from the Italian government last year.

The case of SNS Reaal also adds urgency to efforts to set up procedures to identify and wind down terminally ill banks in a way that does not burden taxpayers.

The move also signaled the transfer of another of the Netherlands’ biggest financial institutions into state hands. The Dutch business of ABN Amro was nationalized in October 2008 after the collapse of Lehman Brothers sent the world financial system into shock.

ABN Amro had been taken over and split up by Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis and Santander in a 2007 deal that has since come to epitomize the worst excesses of the credit bubble. Both Royal Bank of Scotland and Fortis, once the biggest Belgian financial house, were laid low by the debt burdens they took on for the ABN Amro deal when the credit crisis struck.

The ABN Amro deal also marred SNS Reaal, which needed a bailout in 2008 after it acquired the broken-up lender’s property business. That bailout has not been fully repaid.

As part of the deal announced Friday, the state will forgive 800 million euros of the unpaid bailout loans, inject 2.2 billion euros into SNS and write off 700 million euros from the bank’s property portfolio. ING estimated that its share of the cost of bailing out SNS Reaal would come to 300 million to 350 million euros, but said the impact on its finances would be limited.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 1, 2013

An earlier version of the article incorrectly spelled the name of the nationalized company. It is SNS Reaal, not SNS Reall.

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U.N. Panel Says Israeli Settlement Policy Violates Law

GENEVA — Israel has used the expansion of Jewish settlements to pursue a creeping annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories and committed multiple violations of international law in its treatment of Palestinians, the United Nations Human Rights Council said in a report on Thursday that called for an immediate halt to all settlement activity.

Presenting its findings after a nearly six-month investigation, the panel of three women jurists led by a French judge, Christine Chanet, said Israel’s settlements had clearly violated the Geneva Conventions which prohibit a state from transferring its own civilian population into territory it has occupied.

Israel “must cease all settlement activities without preconditions” and begin the withdrawal of all settlers from the occupied territories, the jurists said their report, which is to be debated at the Human Rights Council in March.

The panel examined 67 submissions from academics, diplomats, Israeli civil society and Palestinians, Ms. Chanet said, but Israel refused to cooperate with the mission which was unable to visit the West Bank and instead went to the Jordanian capital, Amman, to hear testimony.

The Human Rights Council voted a year ago to investigate the impact of settlements on Palestinian rights, which prompted Israel to break off cooperation and castigate the panel as a political platform used “to bash and demonize Israel.” The report came two days after Israel boycotted the council’s review of Israel’s human rights record, becoming the first country to withhold cooperation from a process in which all 193 United Nations member states have previously engaged.

The United States also opposed creating the fact-finding mission on the grounds that “it does not advance the cause of peace and will distract the parties from efforts to resolve the issues that divide them.”

Washington has opposed Israel’s creation of further settlements and construction in East Jerusalem as “unhelpful” and an obstacle to a two-state solution of the Palestinian issue.

Reviewing Israel’s settlements policy since 1967, the panel said that Israel, with the full knowledge and compliance of successive governments, had established some 250 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967 which now have an estimated 520,000 settlers and are growing much faster than the population of Israel. The result is “a mesh of construction and infrastructure leading to a creeping annexation that prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination,” the report said.

These actions fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, the panel said, and if Palestine ratified the Rome Statute that created the court, Israel could be called to account for “gross violations of human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law,” the report said.

The settlements are maintained through “a system of total segregation” between the settlers, who enjoy a preferential legal status, and the rest of the population, the report said. It found Palestinian rights to freedom of movement, equality, due process of law and access to education, water, housing and natural resources “are being violated consistently and on a daily basis.”

The panel reported that violence and intimidation by “a small minority” of settlers continued with impunity and expressed grave concern at the high number of children who are detained. They were “invariably mistreated, denied due process and fair trial,” the report said and many were transferred to detention centers in Israel, also a violation of international law.

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Ericsson Sales Rise on Spending to Upgrade Mobile Networks

BERLIN — Ericsson, the world’s biggest maker of mobile network equipment, said on Thursday that its sales and profit grew faster than expected in the fourth quarter as phone operators in the United States and Canada spent heavily to upgrade wireless networks.

The company booked a net loss during the quarter as it wrote down the value of ST-Ericsson, an unprofitable smartphone component venture with the French chipmaker ST Microelectronics.

But investors apparently looked past that to focus on the underlying growth. Shares of Stockholm-based Ericsson rose almost 10 percent after the earnings report, which showed that demand from North America had helped lift Ericsson’s global sales of network equipment, the company’s main business, by 6 percent from a year earlier.

Ericsson’s sales of equipment, software and services in the three months through December rose 5 percent to 66.9 billion kronor, or $10.6 billion.

“This suggests the declining sales of network equipment we have seen for some time has finally begun to turn around,” said Hakan Wranne, an analyst at Swedbank in Stockholm.

In North America, Ericsson said sales of mobile broadband and other network gear to U.S. and Canadian operators surged 86 percent to 9.4 billion kronor in the quarter from a year earlier, without providing a comparative figure. Sales of equipment rose 10 percent in Western Europe, and 38 percent in India, part of an upswing in half of Ericsson’s global sales regions.

The increase followed four quarters of declining global network sales.

“We continue to believe the long-term fundamentals of this industry are attractive,” Hans Vestberg, the Ericsson chief executive, said. “I think it is clear that society will be using mobile broadband and the cloud much more than they are now.”

Ericsson said it took an 8.6 billion kronor charge against earnings in the period for ST-Ericsson, which is based in Geneva and has generated about $2.8 billion in losses since February 2009. The charge caused Ericsson to report a loss of 6.3 billion kronor for the fourth quarter.

Ericsson had warned investors of the charge on December 20.

ST-Ericsson employs 5,090 workers and makes processor modules and modems for some Samsung, Motorola and Sony smartphones.

Mr. Vestberg said he had no new information on the future of ST-Ericsson, which reported a $71 million loss in the quarter on unchanged sales of $358 million. Last month, ST Microelectronics announced plans to leave the venture and Ericsson said it had no intention of buying its partner’s stake.

“We continue to believe that the modern technology in this venture is of strategic importance to the industry,” Mr. Vestberg said. “We are now in a discussion among the shareholders about our options going forward. We don’t exclude anything at this point.”

Mr. Wranne, the Swedbank analyst, said he thought it was possible that Ericsson might simply resort to shutting down the joint venture sometime this year.

“Both parents have essentially turned their back on the company and what I think they have done is essentially killed it,” Mr. Wranne said. “At this point, it is not certain whether the venture will be operating six months from now.”

With the charge against earnings, Ericsson has written off the entire value of its investment in ST-Ericsson, said Jan Frykhammar, the Ericsson chief financial officer. The business began to deteriorate after Nokia, its biggest client, announced plans in 2011 to halt its Symbian smartphone line, which had used many ST-Ericsson components.

Ericsson’s main network equipment business, which made up 53 percent of its sales in the quarter, more than made up for the ST-Ericsson write-off. Sales of Ericsson’s equipment, software and services in North America rose 51 percent to 17 billion kronor.

Excluding the ST-Ericsson charges, Ericsson’s operating profit in the quarter rose by 17 percent to 4.8 billion kronor.

Sales in the quarter rose on an annual basis in all regions except Scandinavia, the Mediterranean region of southern Europe, China, the Middle East and Latin America.

The gains are a harbinger a new phase of purchasing by global phone operators, Mr. Vestberg said, as they compete to sell mobile broadband services to the rapidly expanding ranks of smartphone users. Ericsson expects the number of mobile broadband users around the world to rise 40 percent to 2.1 billion by the end of this year from 1.5 billion in 2012.

By the end of this year, three in 10 cellphone users around the world will be operating smartphones and subscribing to mobile broadband service, Ericsson predicted. Demand for fast wireless Internet will in turn lift demand for Ericsson’s networks, Mr. Vestberg said. In the last quarter, he said, 40 percent of all cellphones sold worldwide were smartphones.

Operators, recognizing the strong consumer interest in mobile broadband, are stepping up their orders for new data networks that can handle the heavy traffic demands on their grids. “Operators and customers are focusing now on mobile broadband,” Mr. Vestberg said. “We are clearly seeing a change in their behavior.”

Shares of Ericsson rose 9.8 percent, or 6.55 kronor, to 73.45 kronor in Stockholm.

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Well: Waiting for Alzheimer's to Begin

My gray matter might be waning. Then again, it might not be. But I swear that I can feel memories — as I’m making them — slide off a neuron and into a tangle of plaque. I steel myself for those moments to come when I won’t remember what just went into my head.

I’m not losing track of my car keys, which is pretty standard in aging minds. Nor have I ever forgotten to turn off the oven after use, common in menopausal women. I can always find my car in the parking lot, although lots of “normal” folk can’t.

Rather, I suddenly can’t remember the name of someone with whom I’ve worked for years. I cover by saying “sir” or “madam” like the Southerner I am, even though I live in Vermont and grown people here don’t use such terms. Better to think I’m quirky than losing my faculties. Sometimes I’ll send myself an e-mail to-do reminder and then, seconds later, find myself thrilled to see a new entry pop into my inbox. Oops, it’s from me. Worse yet, a massage therapist kicked me out of her practice for missing three appointments. I didn’t recall making any of them. There must another Nancy.

Am I losing track of me?

Equally worrisome are the memories increasingly coming to the fore. Magically, these random recollections manage to circumnavigate my imagined build-up of beta-amyloid en route to delivering vivid images of my father’s first steps down his path of forgetting. He was the same age I am now, which is 46.

“How old are you?” I recall him asking me back then. Some years later, he began calling me every Dec. 28 to say, “Happy birthday,” instead of on the correct date, Dec. 27. The 28th had been his grandmother’s birthday.

The chasms were small at first. Explainable. Dismissible. When he crossed the street without looking both ways, we chalked it up to his well-cultivated, absent-minded professor persona. But the chasms grew into sinkholes, and eventually quicksand. When we took him to get new pants one day, he kept trying on the same ones he wore to the store.

“I like these slacks,” he’d say, over and over again, as he repeatedly pulled his pair up and down.

My dad died of Alzheimer’s last April at age 73 — the same age at which his father succumbed to the same disease. My dad ended up choosing neurology as his profession after witnessing the very beginning of his own dad’s forgetting.

Decades later, grandfather’s atrophied brain found its way into a jar on my father’s office desk. Was it meant to be an ever-present reminder of Alzheimer’s effect? Or was it a crystal ball sent to warn of genetic fate? My father the doctor never said, nor did he ever mention, that it was his father’s gray matter floating in that pool of formaldehyde.

Using the jarred brain as a teaching tool, my dad showed my 8-year-old self the difference between frontal and temporal lobes. He also pointed out how brains with Alzheimer’s disease become smaller, and how wide grooves develop in the cerebral cortex. But only after his death — and my mother’s confession about whose brain occupied that jar — did I figure out that my father was quite literally demonstrating how this disease runs through our heads.

Has my forgetting begun?

I called my dad’s neurologist. To find out if I was in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s, he would have to look for proteins in my blood or spinal fluid and employ expensive neuroimaging tests. If he found any indication of onset, the only option would be experimental trials.

But documented confirmation of a diseased brain would break my still hopeful heart. I’d walk around with the scarlet letter “A” etched on the inside of my forehead — obstructing how I view every situation instead of the intermittent clouding I currently experience.

“You’re still grieving your father,” the doctor said at the end of our call. “Sadness and depression affect the memory, too. Let’s wait and see.”

It certainly didn’t help matters that two people at my father’s funeral made some insensitive remarks.

“Nancy, you must be scared to death.”

“Is it hard knowing the same thing probably will happen to you?”

Maybe the real question is what to do when the forgetting begins. My dad started taking 70 supplements a day in hopes of saving his mind. He begged me to kill him if he wound up like his father. He retired from his practice and spent all day in a chair doing puzzles. He stopped making new memories in an all-out effort to preserve the ones he already had.

Maybe his approach wasn’t the answer.

Just before his death — his brain a fraction of its former self — my father managed to offer up a final lesson. I was visiting him in the memory-care center when he got a strange look on his face. I figured it was gas. But then his eyes lit up and a big grin overtook him, and he looked right at me and said, “Funny how things turn out.”

An unforgettable moment?

I can only hope.

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Nancy Stearns Bercaw is a writer in Vermont. Her book, “Brain in a Jar: A Daughter’s Journey Through Her Father’s Memory,” will be published in April 2013 by Broadstone.

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Well: Waiting for Alzheimer's to Begin

My gray matter might be waning. Then again, it might not be. But I swear that I can feel memories — as I’m making them — slide off a neuron and into a tangle of plaque. I steel myself for those moments to come when I won’t remember what just went into my head.

I’m not losing track of my car keys, which is pretty standard in aging minds. Nor have I ever forgotten to turn off the oven after use, common in menopausal women. I can always find my car in the parking lot, although lots of “normal” folk can’t.

Rather, I suddenly can’t remember the name of someone with whom I’ve worked for years. I cover by saying “sir” or “madam” like the Southerner I am, even though I live in Vermont and grown people here don’t use such terms. Better to think I’m quirky than losing my faculties. Sometimes I’ll send myself an e-mail to-do reminder and then, seconds later, find myself thrilled to see a new entry pop into my inbox. Oops, it’s from me. Worse yet, a massage therapist kicked me out of her practice for missing three appointments. I didn’t recall making any of them. There must another Nancy.

Am I losing track of me?

Equally worrisome are the memories increasingly coming to the fore. Magically, these random recollections manage to circumnavigate my imagined build-up of beta-amyloid en route to delivering vivid images of my father’s first steps down his path of forgetting. He was the same age I am now, which is 46.

“How old are you?” I recall him asking me back then. Some years later, he began calling me every Dec. 28 to say, “Happy birthday,” instead of on the correct date, Dec. 27. The 28th had been his grandmother’s birthday.

The chasms were small at first. Explainable. Dismissible. When he crossed the street without looking both ways, we chalked it up to his well-cultivated, absent-minded professor persona. But the chasms grew into sinkholes, and eventually quicksand. When we took him to get new pants one day, he kept trying on the same ones he wore to the store.

“I like these slacks,” he’d say, over and over again, as he repeatedly pulled his pair up and down.

My dad died of Alzheimer’s last April at age 73 — the same age at which his father succumbed to the same disease. My dad ended up choosing neurology as his profession after witnessing the very beginning of his own dad’s forgetting.

Decades later, grandfather’s atrophied brain found its way into a jar on my father’s office desk. Was it meant to be an ever-present reminder of Alzheimer’s effect? Or was it a crystal ball sent to warn of genetic fate? My father the doctor never said, nor did he ever mention, that it was his father’s gray matter floating in that pool of formaldehyde.

Using the jarred brain as a teaching tool, my dad showed my 8-year-old self the difference between frontal and temporal lobes. He also pointed out how brains with Alzheimer’s disease become smaller, and how wide grooves develop in the cerebral cortex. But only after his death — and my mother’s confession about whose brain occupied that jar — did I figure out that my father was quite literally demonstrating how this disease runs through our heads.

Has my forgetting begun?

I called my dad’s neurologist. To find out if I was in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s, he would have to look for proteins in my blood or spinal fluid and employ expensive neuroimaging tests. If he found any indication of onset, the only option would be experimental trials.

But documented confirmation of a diseased brain would break my still hopeful heart. I’d walk around with the scarlet letter “A” etched on the inside of my forehead — obstructing how I view every situation instead of the intermittent clouding I currently experience.

“You’re still grieving your father,” the doctor said at the end of our call. “Sadness and depression affect the memory, too. Let’s wait and see.”

It certainly didn’t help matters that two people at my father’s funeral made some insensitive remarks.

“Nancy, you must be scared to death.”

“Is it hard knowing the same thing probably will happen to you?”

Maybe the real question is what to do when the forgetting begins. My dad started taking 70 supplements a day in hopes of saving his mind. He begged me to kill him if he wound up like his father. He retired from his practice and spent all day in a chair doing puzzles. He stopped making new memories in an all-out effort to preserve the ones he already had.

Maybe his approach wasn’t the answer.

Just before his death — his brain a fraction of its former self — my father managed to offer up a final lesson. I was visiting him in the memory-care center when he got a strange look on his face. I figured it was gas. But then his eyes lit up and a big grin overtook him, and he looked right at me and said, “Funny how things turn out.”

An unforgettable moment?

I can only hope.

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Nancy Stearns Bercaw is a writer in Vermont. Her book, “Brain in a Jar: A Daughter’s Journey Through Her Father’s Memory,” will be published in April 2013 by Broadstone.

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DealBook: Deutsche Bank Posts Surprise $3 Billion Loss

FRANKFURT – Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender, reported a surprise net loss of 2.2 billion euros ($3 billion) for the fourth quarter of 2012 on Thursday, hurt by the diminished value of some assets as well as costs related to numerous legal proceedings.

The results underline the task ahead for Jürgen Fitschen and Anshu Jain, the co- chief executives who took over the bank less than seven months ago and have declared their intention to deal more severely with the legacy of the financial crisis.

“This is the most comprehensive reconfiguration of Deutsche Bank in recent times,” Mr. Fitschen and Mr. Jain said in a statement. They warned that “deliberate but sometimes uncomfortable change” lay ahead, adding that “this journey will take years not months.”

Deutsche Bank avoided a government bailout during the financial crisis, but has faced numerous lawsuits and official investigations, including a tax-evasion inquiry that led to a raid on company headquarters last month by German police.

“Significant” charges related to legal proceedings contributed to the loss, Deutsche Bank said, without providing specifics.

Analysts consider the bank to be among the most highly leveraged in Europe, and bank management has promised to reduce the number of risky activities, a process that sometimes requires it to recognize the reduced value of assets and book losses.

Despite the loss, Deutsche Bank said fourth-quarter revenue rose 14 percent, to 7.9 billion euros, from the period a year earlier. The bank also said it had increased the amount of capital held as insurance against risk, and reduced the amount of money it needed to set aside to cover possible bad loans. The bank said it had reduced total employee pay to the lowest level in years.

The bank had warned in December that it would incur major charges in the quarter, without saying how much.

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