alocispepraluger102

June 8 | Research MEDIA CONTACT: Pat Vaughan Tremmel at 847-491-4892 or p-tremmel@northwestern.edu Study Offers Provocative Comparison of Selling a Home EVANSTON, Ill. --- A provocative new study shows that sellers who joined a for-sale-by-owner (FSBO) Web site got at least as much for their homes as sellers who did their real estate business through the use of an agent and the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). Houses sold through the MLS were more likely to sell faster. The recent study shows that the FSBO sellers ended up with a significantly enhanced net sale price because they didn't have to pay the brokerage commission that real estate agents charge sellers, generally six percent of a house's sale price -- $12,000 for a $200,000 home. There was no gain in price in selling a home through MLS vs. by owner, at least when it comes to Madison, Wis., during the relatively strong housing market in the period analyzed, the study concludes. (Though the research suggests national implications, the findings, at this point, cannot be generalized beyond the specific Madison housing market.) While the MLS does not deliver a higher price, it does offer a higher probability of a quick sale, within 60 or 90 days. In addition, roughly 20 percent of FSBO listings end up re-listing in the MLS, which translates into a longer time on the market, roughly 68 more days. Thus, one of the advantages of MLS is a shorter time to sale, which translates into savings (on mortgage, taxes and insurance). “For most people, the sale of a home is the largest financial transaction of their lives, and, accordingly, the question of whether or not to use a realtor is of great concern,” said Igal Hendel, professor of economics at Northwestern University. “Realtors undoubtedly can offer value, saving sellers time and helping them through a stressful and sometimes difficult period,” said Aviv Nevo, professor of economics at Northwestern. They provide expertise with setting the listing price, preparing the house, checking potential buyers' qualifications, showing the house, bargaining the terms of the deal and handling the paperwork. But the realtor cost is significant, compared, for example, with using FSBOMadison.com, which charges $150 for its no-frills services and listings for six months. Hendel, Nevo and François Ortalo-Magné, Robert E. Wangard Chair in Real Estate, University of Wisconsin-Madison, are co-investigators of the study and co-authors of the paper, titled “The Relative Performance of Real Estate Marketing Platforms: MLS versus FSBOMadison.com.” The study was made possible because of rich data provided by the South Central Wisconsin Realtors Association and FSBOMadison.com, as well as data from the City of Madison and Dane County. The merging of these data sets provided a complete history of events that occurred for virtually every single family home listed in Madison between January 1998 and December 2004. FSBOMadison.com started in 1998, and by 2004 it had a 25 percent share of Madison's listings, by attracting listings from both the MLS and from other more traditional for-sale-by-owner channels. The data offer an unparalleled opportunity to compare outcomes for selling a home by owner vs. through a real estate agent and the MLS. The outcomes compared include price, time on market and probability of sale within a given period after initial listing. In computing the differences across platforms, the study controls for changes in market conditions over time, differences in house characteristics, differences across neighborhoods (FSBO is much more popular in some areas) and differences across sellers. The research suggests that some sellers seem to be better at getting a favorable price. They might be better at marketing and bargaining or are more patient; they also are more likely to choose to use FSBO. “Sellers in Madison appear to sort themselves as expected across platforms, the more patient and astute ones going to FSBO, and those who need more help or a quick transaction going to MLS,” said Ortalo-Magné. “Our results are good news for buyers,” he said. “The price buyers pay appears to be driven entirely by the characteristics of the property and of the seller. Whether the property is sold through FSBOMadison.com or a realtor appears to make little difference in terms of purchase price.” “Realtors undoubtedly can provide value to sellers,” Nevo concluded. “But our research shows that for-sale-by-owner Web sites increasingly are making selling your own home more appealing and offering a viable alternative to realtors.” Academics | Admissions | Athletics | Business and Industry | Computing and Technology | Diversity | Giving Jobs | Libraries | Life at Northwestern | Offices and Departments | Research | Visiting Campus Students | Faculty and Staff | Alumni Association | Prospective Students Northwestern University 633 Clark Street Evanston, IL 60208 Evanston: 847-491-3741 Chicago: 312-503-8649 E-mail: webmaster@northwestern.edu Last updated 06/08/2007 World Wide Web Disclaimer and Policy Statements © 2007 Northwestern University

i took it off the air way back when. awesome 2 hours.

really fine coach of 3rd basemen. he tutored many fine major leaguers.

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/06/04/Southpin...aught_off.shtml

The classical staff sould be canned too.

arabia curtis fuller benny golson

June 3, 2007 Fingers That Keep the Most Treasured Violins Fit By IAN FISHER CREMONA, Italy — A violin, it turns out, needs to be played, just as a car needs to be driven and a human body shooed off the couch. In this city that produced the best violins ever made, that job belongs to Andrea Mosconi. He is 75, and for the past 30 years, six days a week, he has finger-fed 300-year-old violins, worth millions, a diet of Bach, Tchaikovsky and Bartok. It is peaceful where he works, in a chapel-turned-museum here, so it jars when he compares his gentle job to the roar of Formula One racing. He is nothing but serious about what he does. “It is not a matter of habit,” Mr. Mosconi said. “When Schumacher gets to 350 kilometers an hour, do you think he ever loses his concentration?” he added, speaking of the retired racing champion Michael Schumacher. “In my case, too, I have to pay attention,” he said. “You have to give your best with these instruments. They make you sweat.” He had just finished playing a few lines of Bach on the most valuable piece in this town’s small but significant collection of locally made stringed instruments: a violin made in 1715 by Antonio Stradivari, whose name itself has come to signify the perfection allowed to man. It was the kind of exercise, at once heroic and the slightest bit melancholy, repeated endlessly around Italy: driven by zeal to keep the nation’s superlative past alive, and dogged by worry that the past may overshadow a less glorious future. That tension is on display at the violin museum at the city hall in Cremona, where the modern violin was born and built, to a standard not yet surpassed, by the families of Amati, Guarneri and Stradivari. Every morning, Mr. Mosconi, the city’s official musical conservationist, stands before pristine, multilocked glass cases and faces three violins by the Amatis (one of the first makers of the modern violin, from the mid-16th century), two by the Guarneris and four instruments — three violins and a cello — by Stradivari. Mr. Mosconi has no favorite: The very question is a mild affront. “It’s as if you were to ask me which of my three children I preferred,” he said. Why these violins sound so much better than others, and so are preferred by the masters who can afford them, has never been fully accounted for. Theories range from the possibility that their wood was fermented in saltwater or somehow affected by the ice age to their having been constructed with special glues, varnishes or metal plates. “It’s unexplainable, how it was able to rise to such heights,” Mr. Mosconi said, dismissing the many who have tried to replicate the so-called Cremona sound. “First it was the Americans, then the Japanese, then the Russians. Then the Americans again. “But no one has ever come close,” he said. “Let them try. But then it is the musicians who make their choices. As scientists they have to try everything because it is their job, even though there are more important things to worry about.” But this mystery of molecules and millimeters, edged one way or another by each master violin maker, comes with another: that to keep fit and sounding their best, violins need to be played. “The wood gets tired,” explained Karl Roy, a German violin maker and one of the rarefied field’s top experts. “It’s the same as with a human being. If you just sit and rest in your comfortable chair, when you get up after a while you will feel crazy.” And so, Mr. Roy said in a telephone interview from Germany, collections of instruments made by Stradivari and other top violins around the world are all played regularly. That, Mr. Mosconi suggested, is the special care he gives to Cremona’s collection, played every morning but Sunday and when he is on vacation in August. He does not play the cello, but he contracts a young musician to work with the single one in the collection, built by Stradivari in 1700. “I think this is the only place in the world where they are treated like we treat them,” he said. Mr. Mosconi — who was born in Cremona, began playing the violin at age 9, studied violin making and went on to teach and perform — starts his work at 8 a.m., an hour before the museum opens. He stores his tools in a tastefully concealed closet: two bows, resin, baby-soft cotton rags and jugs of distilled water for the humidifier that keeps the air at the perfect moisture to preserve the instruments. Getting down to work, he unlocks the cases and carefully removes each instrument. He tunes them, then plays each for six or seven minutes. He starts with scales and arpeggios, then something more substantial, on a recent day one of Bach’s partitas for the violin. Nothing less would do. “A great instrument should get great music and also a great performer,” he said. A multimillion-dollar violin in hand, he paused for a moment to ponder his own place. “Not that I am a great performer,” he said. “But I do my work.” He does it in a jacket and tie, which seems appropriate. He is more business and reverence than poetry when he talks about his privileged job. Most violinists never get near a Stradivarius and still, three decades after he began, he feels the weight of caring so closely for so many. Asked if he liked his job, he said: “It’s a difficult question. I don’t really know. I asked the same question to my son, who is a surgeon. He said, ‘It’s hard, but I wanted to do it.’ “Everyone says I am lucky,” he added. “But every coin has two faces.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml.../bmelgar112.xml

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=14000 A benefit concert for the great Mario Rivera will take place Tuesday, June 5 from 7:00 pm-12:00 am at Birdland, 315 W. 44 Street, 212-581-3080. The admission will be $25 and all proceeds will go directly to Mario to help him with his medical and living expenses. Artists performing include The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra with Arturo O'Farrill, Paquito d'Rivera, Wynton Marsalis, George Coleman, Giovanni Hidalgo, Papo Vasquez, the Tito Puente Orchestra, and many others. Thank you very much for your help in spreading the word about this event.

henri duparc to the stars (about as beautiful as music can be) not jazz, but, what the hell!

No - they simply didn't have an Industrial Revolution and a French Revolution. (Yet) MG another fine MG bullseye...

(how many productivity meetings have many of us endured?) Doomed GM plant is most productive Rankings show GM plant slated to close takes least time of any in North America to assemble a car. By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer May 31 2007: 3:59 PM EDT NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The most productive auto plant in North America is doomed - it's on the list of plants that General Motors is closing as the world's largest automaker slashes capacity in a bid to stem losses. The annual ranking of auto plant productivity by Harbour Consulting found GM's Oshawa No. 2 plant is the most productive in the North American auto industry. That plant is among the plants that GM (Charts, Fortune 500) plans to close in coming years as it seeks to get capacity closer in line with demand. The Ontario plant, which makes the Pontiac Grand Prix and Buick LaCrosse and Allure, took only 15.68 hours on average to build a vehicle in 2006. That's an improvement from the 16.08 hours it took in 2005, and is better than the 16.34 hours it takes to build a vehicle at the neighboring Oshawa No. 1 GM assembly line. The No. 2 plant was originally slated to close when it's done making 2008 models about this time next year. But GM now plans to keep some production going there for an undetermined amount of time as it modernizes the Oshawa No. 1 plant to give that facility a more flexible assembly line. Oshawa No. 2 was the second most productive plant in last year's rankings but the only plant that was more productive, an Atlanta plant that built the Ford Taurus, was closed last year when Ford (Charts, Fortune 500) discontinued production of that model. GM announced in November 2005 that it would close Oshawa 2, as well as a dozen other facilities. A spokesman for GM was not immediately available for comment Thursday. But a year ago when the rankings showed that a plant slated for closure was its most productive, GM spokesman Dan Flores said the decision to close the Ontario assembly line was based on a number of factors, not just productivity. "We obviously do have plants that perform well in the Harbour report being impacted," he said at that time. "We faced a very difficult fact that we have too much manufacturing capacity compared to what the market wants." The rankings also showed that GM has the most productive engine plant in the North American industry in Spring Hill, Tenn., and the most productive transmission plant in Toledo, Ohio. GM put out a statement talking about its gains in productivity, but not mentioning that the Oshawa No. 2 plant is one of those slated for closure. "GM's leadership in three of the four manufacturing categories demonstrates we are transforming the company for sustainable, long-term success," said a statement from Gary Cowger, GM group vice president of global manufacturing and labor relations. "This success is a result of our people being involved in the business like never before." Even with productivity improvements at the traditional Big Three automakers, Toyota Motor (Charts) led Harbour's ranking of productivity for all auto facilities, while Honda Motor (Charts) had the most productive assembly plants, with an average of 21.13 hours per vehicle. But the report showed that GM, Ford and Chrysler Group, which is being sold by DaimlerChrysler, made gains and narrowed the productivity gap with the Japanese automakers' U.S. plants. "Improving productivity in the face of lower production is a huge accomplishment, but none of the domestic manufacturers can afford to let up," said Ron Harbour, president of Harbour Consulting. "General Motors essentially caught Toyota in vehicle assembly productivity." Ford lost an average of $5,234 on every North American-produced vehicle, according to the Harbour study, while GM lost $1,436 and Chrysler lost $1,072. Meanwhile, Japanese automaker Nissan (Charts) earned a pretax profit of $1,575 for each North American vehicle, while Honda earned $1,368 and Toyota, $1,266. The cuts by the U.S.-based automakers mean that they're likely to continue to show gains in productivity. "Considering that they will be building vehicles in 2007 with dramatically fewer hourly employees in the U.S., GM, Ford and Chrysler likely will reduce their hours per vehicle significantly," said Harbour.

http://library.thinkquest.org/18602/histor...n/bgoodman.html

beautiful uncommon natural thoughts. a couple of my friends from india feel the same as you, but no one else i can think of today.

DARVAS, GÁBOR REMINISZCENCIÁK (1979) (Reminiszenzen) für Tonband Manuskript Autograph: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek - Musiksammlung, Wien Schallplatte: Hungaroton-SLPX-12365 (1982) [12'56"] one of the most powerful and moving pieces of music aloc has heard.

about an hour ago i heard lennie tristano playing his own composition, elegy.

Facing death, saxophonist provides moving coda to jazz career with CD of final recording sessions By CHARLES J. GANS The Associated Press AS THE NEW year began, Michael Brecker’s life was coming to an end. But the tenor saxophonist, suffering from acute leukemia, was still thinking about his music. He went downstairs to his home studio to perform the last notes on an electronic wind instrument for what would be his final album. The 57-year-old died in a Manhattan hospital on Jan. 13, just four days after telling his manager that the record was ready for mixing. That album, Pilgrimage, has been released this week — an inspiring coda to the career of a quiet, gentle musician widely regarded as the most influential tenor saxophonist since John Coltrane, whether playing straight-ahead acoustic jazz or electronic jazz-rock in seminal fusion bands like The Brecker Brothers. It’s the first of the 800-plus albums the 13-time Grammy winner recorded as a leader and a sideman — with such pop icons as Paul Simon, James Taylor and Aerosmith — consisting solely of his original compositions. Brecker’s wife, Susan, considers it "a miracle" that her husband managed to record Pilgrimage — the title of the last track he ever recorded, a 10-minute musical journey with a deeply spiritual prelude that evokes memories of his main inspiration Coltrane. "I believe it was his spirit, his wanting to complete the record . . . that kept him alive a lot longer than really was humanly possible given his physical condition," she said, interviewed with his manager Darryl Pitt in a midtown Manhattan restaurant. For nearly two-and-a-half years Brecker had battled myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a cancer in which the bone marrow stops producing enough healthy blood cells, which eventually progressed into acute leukemia. He had to stop publicly performing in March 2005 and could not practice his saxophone more than five minutes at a time. But he used the time remaining to him to write the album’s tunes at his home in Hastings-on-Hudson, north of New York City, in between lengthy hospitalizations. "What I would like people to take from this record is that it is one man’s testament to the human spirit," said Susan Brecker, her voice choking with emotion. "This music is just one man’s response to hearing he is going to die . . . and there can be nothing more honest or more vibrant than that, nothing." Just two weeks after Brecker died, his wife and children, manager and jazz musician friends gathered in a midtown Manhattan recording studio for the mixing of Pilgrimage." "Hearing Mike playing so vibrantly in the studio it was literally as if he were conjured back to life," said the album’s executive producer Pitt, Brecker’s close friend and manager for 20-plus years. "It was deeply moving and profoundly touching and sometimes deeply upsetting." The 78-minute CD respects Brecker’s wishes by including all nine original tunes he recorded with a jazz all-star lineup of guitarist Pat Metheny, pianists Herbie Hancock and Brad Mehldau, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Jack DeJohnette. "The compositions are among the best Mike had ever written," said Metheny, who appeared on Brecker’s first solo album in 1987, in an e-mail response. "I have always contended that he was one of the best modern jazz composers of our time. He had a strong individual voice." Pitt says the album would not have been possible were it not for Brecker’s 18-year-old daughter Jessica. Brecker was close to dying in November 2005 when she volunteered as the half-match donor in an experimental clinical trial at a University of Minnesota hospital involving a new stem cell transplant procedure. The operation alleviated the pain by killing off large growths of leukemia cells but the transplant failed to engraft, leaving the disease free to spread again. Last June, Hancock, at Pitt’s suggestion, coaxed a reluctant Brecker into making a surprise appearance at a JVC Jazz Festival concert at Carnegie Hall honouring the pianist. He received a standing ovation after performing the tune One Finger Snap, his last public performance. The experience encouraged Brecker to go ahead with the recording session that had already been postponed twice. "When he asked me to be on the record, I was really thrilled because I just didn’t expect it to happen," said Hancock. "And when we actually started working on the record . . . I said, ‘Wait a minute Michael, are you sure you’re still sick?’ . . . What was exuding from him was so much power, conviction and enthusiasm to do this record, and it was just a joy to experience that." During the August recording session at the Manhattan studio, Pitt and Brecker intentionally masked from the other musicians just how poorly Brecker felt in order to keep the focus on the music. But none of that frailty is reflected in Brecker’s performances, whether it’s his rapid-fire arpeggio runs on Anagram with its shifting tempos or his deeply emotional, soulful playing on the poignant ballad When Can I Kiss You Again? — a question asked by his son Sam during a hospital visit when physical contact was prohibited to avoid infection. "No one would ever think when they listen to this recording that this guy’s fighting for his life. . . . You get the feeling of somebody who’s at the top of their game," said Patitucci. After the session, Brecker was optimistically planning for future albums. He took a family vacation in Florida and attended his son’s Bar Mitzvah. He was diagnosed with acute leukemia in October, but kept working on the record. It was bittersweet for those closest to Brecker when just days after the mixing session ended in early February, he won two Grammys for the CD Some Skunk Funk, recorded in 2003 with older brother Randy on trumpet. On Feb. 20, Brecker’s family, fellow musicians and fans filled Manhattan’s Town Hall for a memorial celebration. Hancock and Paul Simon performed Still Crazy After All These Years, one of the many classic pop tunes with a memorable Brecker solo. "His efforts to get this final message out to all of us (on Pilgrimage) will go down as one of the great codas in modern music history," Metheny said in his eulogy. Brecker’s legacy also includes his efforts to encourage people to enrol in the national marrow donor registry. The introverted saxophonist went public about his illness after realizing how many thousands of people die every year waiting to find a genetically matched blood stem cell donor. More than 30,000 people have been added to the registry since 2005 as the result of Brecker-sponsored events at jazz festivals, concerts and synagogues, said Pitt, who with Brecker’s wife founded the Time Is of the Essence Fund, named after a Brecker album, to pay for blood tests for potential donors. "Mike was a hero through the whole thing," said Hancock. "He used the challenge of a life-threatening disease to express his compassion for human beings and was able to express it with his music." © 2007 The Halifax Herald Limited

YUGANAUT : The Lost World, at The Drexel June 2nd. On Sat. June 2nd, Yuganaut, a Brooklyn- based progressive jazz trio (analog keyboards, bass, and drums) will perform a live soundtrack to 1925 silent film classic THE LOST WORLD. This is the second installment of the newly begun Cinemuseica series of film/live music collaborations, hosted by the Drexel Grandview Theater. It is also a joint production with The Icebox Music Series, an ongoing concert series (est. 2004) dedicated to presenting progressive jazz and improvised music in Columbus .Please look for articles on the event in this week's Other Paper and Alive. "The Lost World" is based on a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, and was directed by Harry Hoyt. It was a direct precursor to the style and theme used by Hoyt in "King Kong", both futuristic and prehistoric. Over 50 robotic dinosaurs battle to the accompaniment of the U.S.'s premiere Multi-media jazz group, Yuganaut. In tribute to The Lost World, there will be free toy dinosaurs to all in attendance!! "Get your boarding passes ready and queue up for an interstellar journey ..........piloted by Yuganaut, a crew of three intrepid explorers skilled in traveling the byways of space and time in the spirit of such previous pathfinders as Sun Ra, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Miles Davis in his '60s and '70s electric period. Stephen Rush, Tom Abbs, and Geoff Mann create genuinely unpredictable soundscapes throughout this highly diverse disc, but always with attention to organic development and flow... Yuganaut proves that their chosen style of musical expression can be the sound of something genuinely startling. - Dave Lynch / All Music Guide ESSENTIAL DETAILS- EVENT : CINEMUSEICA, in association with The Drexel Theater presents Yuganaut "The Lost World" DATE: Saturday, June 2nd, Columbus Ohio. VENUE: Drexel Grandview Theater, 1247 Grandview Ave. TIME: 10 pm (till 'round midnight...) TIX: $7 general, $5 students/seniors. Under 12 free. IMPORTANT WEB LINKS Yuganaut website: www.yuganaut.com Drexel Theaters: www.drexel.net The Icebox Music Series: www.iceboxshows.com A link to a summary of the 1925 movie THE LOST WORLD http://www.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/lostworld1925.html Want to see the movie to tune up for the show? go here -> http://www.jonhs.net/freemovies/lost_world.htm

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8...;show_article=1

bobby/billy/brasil hackett and butterfield on verve --------------------------------------------------------------------- paul desmond/jim hall bossa antiqua ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the concert sound of henry mancini

aloc, as well.

during sam's interview from thursday, he mentioned being on oxygen the last couple months because of bouts with pneumonia, and noted forgoing the oxygen without his doctor's consent. for mr. rivers to perform the concert you mentioned is more than remarkable.

(giving up my way of life is one of my most frightening thoughts.) Guest Columnist Rethinking Old Age By ATUL GAWANDE At some point in life, you can’t live on your own anymore. We don’t like thinking about it, but after retirement age, about half of us eventually move into a nursing home, usually around age 80. It remains your most likely final address outside of a hospital. To the extent that there is much public discussion about this phase of life, it’s about getting more control over our deaths (with living wills and the like). But we don’t much talk about getting more control over our lives in such places. It’s as if we’ve given up on the idea. And that’s a problem. This week, I visited a woman who just moved into a nursing home. She is 89 years old with congestive heart failure, disabling arthritis, and after a series of falls, little choice but to leave her condominium. Usually, it’s the children who push for a change, but in this case, she was the one who did. “I fell twice in one week, and I told my daughter I don’t belong at home anymore,” she said. She moved in a month ago. She picked the facility herself. It has excellent ratings, friendly staff, and her daughter lives nearby. She’s glad to be in a safe place — if there’s anything a decent nursing home is built for, it is safety. But she is struggling. The trouble is — and it’s a possibility we’ve mostly ignored for the very old — she expects more from life than safety. “I know I can’t do what I used to,” she said, “but this feels like a hospital, not a home.” And that is in fact the near-universal reality. Nursing home priorities are matters like avoiding bedsores and maintaining weight — important goals, but they are means, not ends. She left an airy apartment she furnished herself for a small beige hospital-like room with a stranger for a roommate. Her belongings were stripped down to what she could fit into the one cupboard and shelf they gave her. Basic matters, like when she goes to bed, wakes up, dresses, and eats were put under the rigid schedule of institutional life. Her main activities have become bingo, movies, and other forms of group entertainment. Is it any wonder most people dread nursing homes? The things she misses most, she told me, are her friendships, her privacy, and the purpose in her days. She’s not alone. Surveys of nursing home residents reveal chronic boredom, loneliness, and lack of meaning — results not fundamentally different from prisoners, actually. Certainly, nursing homes have come a long way from the fire-trap warehouses they used to be. But it seems we’ve settled on a belief that a life of worth and engagement is not possible once you lose independence. There has been, however, a small band of renegades who disagree. They’ve created alternatives with names like the Green House Project, the Pioneer Network, and the Eden Alternative — all aiming to replace institutions for the disabled elderly with genuine homes. Bill Thomas, for example, is a geriatrician who calls himself a “nursing home abolitionist” and built the first Green Houses in Tupelo, Miss. These are houses for no more than 10 residents, equipped with a kitchen and living room at its center, not a nurse’s station, and personal furnishings. The bedrooms are private. Residents help one another with cooking and other work as they are able. Staff members provide not just nursing care but also mentoring for engaging in daily life, even for Alzheimer’s patients. And the homes meet all federal safety guidelines and work within state-reimbursement levels. They have been a great success. Dr. Thomas is now building Green Houses in every state in the country with funds from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Such experiments, however, represent only a tiny fraction of the 18,000 nursing homes nationwide. “The No. 1 problem I see,” Dr. Thomas told me, “is that people believe what we have in old age is as good as we can expect.” As a result, families don’t press nursing homes with hard questions like, “How do you plan to change in the next year?” But we should, if we want to hope for something more than safety in our old age. “This is my last hurrah,” the woman I met said. “This room is where I’ll die. But it won’t be anytime soon.” And indeed, physically she’s done well. All she needs now is a life worth living for. Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a New Yorker staff writer, is the author of the new book “Better.” He is a guest columnist this month.

that did it. now i must go to the butcher shop ang get some freshly ground.