Sony likely to unveil next PlayStation on Feb. 20

NEW YORK (AP) — Sony is poised to unveil the next PlayStation game console on Feb. 20, a date that would give the Japanese electronics company a head start over Microsoft‘s expected announcement of an Xbox 360 successor in June.

Sony Corp. invited journalists to an evening press event in New York City. The company has not said what it plans to show off, but signs indicate that it’ll be the PlayStation 4. Sony would only say that it “will deliver and speak about the future PlayStation business.”

Such a console would follow Nintendo‘s Wii U, which launched last fall, and precede Microsoft Corp.‘s next Xbox game console, which will likely be unveiled in June at the E3 video game conference in Los Angeles.

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said it’s a “super smart” move for Sony to pre-empt Microsoft. This way, the PlayStation 4 will get the spotlight without much competition.

The currently available PlayStation 3 went on sale in 2006, a year after the Xbox 360. But Xbox 360 has been more popular, largely because of its robust online service, Xbox Live, which allows people to play games with others online. The Wii is still the top seller among the three consoles, though it has lost momentum in recent years.

The Wii U was the first of the newest generation of video game consoles to launch, but sales so far have been disappointing. Nintendo Co.’s president, Satoru Iwata, acknowledged recently that the Wii U and the handheld Nintendo 3Ds didn’t do well over the holidays, but he ruled out a price cut for the new console.

All three console makers are trying to position their devices as entertainment hubs that go beyond games as they try to stay relevant in the age of smartphones and tablet computers. Such hubs can deliver TV shows, movies and music. The Wii U has a TV-watching feature called TVii. With it, the console’s touch-screen GamePad controller becomes a remote control for your TV and set-top box. TVii groups your favorite shows and sports events together, whether it’s on live TV or an Internet video service such as Hulu Plus. And it offers water-cooler moments you can chat about on social media.

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Mary Wells, singer of ‘My Guy,’ gets posthumous Rock Hall push

(Reuters) – Mary Wells, Motown Records‘ first female star who paved the way for the success of Diana Ross and The Supremes, shot to fame in the early 1960s only to fade away as a footnote of the longtime Detroit record label.

Now, some two decades after Wells’ death in 1992 at age 49, the singer who scored a No. 1 hit with “My Guy,” is receiving a push for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Peter Benjaminson, the author of the first Wells biography, “Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Story of Motown’s First Superstar,” has spearheaded the campaign for the singer, who he said has not received the recognition afforded to the likes of The Supremes or Martha and the Vandellas.

Benjaminson, 67, believes that aside from Wells’ merits as an R&B singer and as Motown’s first big female star, she deserves consideration as a pioneer who crossed the black-and-white racial divide in the United States.

“I think it’s unfair to have Mary, who set the path for so many superstars today, be excluded from an honor like this, which she should’ve gotten a long time ago,” Benjaminson told Reuters by phone from his home in New York’s Harlem neighborhood.

Wells was born into a broken household in Detroit in 1943 and contracted spinal meningitis and tuberculosis at a young age, which left her partially blind and deaf.

After graduating high school Wells set her sights on Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown, with a song she wrote herself, “Bye Bye Baby.”

“Gordy kept refusing (a meeting), but she kept persisting,” Benjaminson said. “Finally, he got so annoyed that he asked her to sing it right there … He was so impressed he signed her up the next day as a Motown singer.”

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“Bye Bye Baby,” rose to No. 45 on the Billboard Top 100 chart in 1960, a rare feat for a black, female singer, Benjaminson said.

“She really paved the way for the other women who came after, including Diana Ross,” Benjaminson said. “She showed how quickly a woman could rise on the charts with Motown.”

Wells was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 and 1987, but never made the cut for induction.

“I don’t know what happened in 1986 and 1987, but she’s certainly due the honor this late in the game,” he said.

Benjaminson is hoping first to get Wells inducted into the Legends Hall of Fame at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, a prominent historical venue for African-American musicians.

“I think that would help in getting her into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” said Benjaminson, who hopes his book may play a role in resurrecting Wells’ reputation.

Benjaminson has set up a Facebook page called “Induct Mary Wells into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” that urges fans to send letters to the foundation that runs the Cleveland, Ohio-based Hall of Fame (http://www.rockhall.com/).

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum was established in 1983 and has inducted some 700 performers, songwriters and record producers, chosen by some 600 artists, music historians and industry members.

After scoring other hits such as “You Beat Me to the Punch,” in 1962, Wells landed atop the chart for two weeks in 1964 with “My Guy,” her final Motown hit.

Wells left Motown at the height of her popularity over compensation issues and never found the same success again. She died in 1992 after a battle with throat cancer.

Benjaminson’s biography of Wells, published in November 2012, is his third book on Motown.

(Reporting by Kurt Anthony Krug in Detroit,; editing by Eric Kelsey, desking by G Crosse)

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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Fayetteville, Ga. He was 90.

The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap wore out.”

“He lived a full life,” his son said. “He didn’t leave anything in the tank.”

Dr. Sams grew up on a farm in the rural Piedmont area of Georgia, seven mud-road miles from the nearest town. He was a boy during the Depression; books meant escape and discovery. He read “Robinson Crusoe,” then Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. One of his English professors at Mercer University, in Macon, suggested he consider a career in writing, but he chose another route to examining the human condition: medical school.

When he was 58 — after he had served in World War II, started a medical practice with his wife, raised his four children and stopped devoting so much of his mornings to preparing lessons for Sunday school at the Methodist church — he began writing “Run With the Horsemen,” a novel based on his youth. It was published in 1982.

“In the beginning was the land,” the book begins. “Shortly thereafter was the father.”

In The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Robert Miner wrote, “Mr. Sams’s approach to his hero’s experiences is nicely signaled in these two opening sentences.”

He added: “I couldn’t help associating the gentility, good-humored common sense and pace of this novel with my image of a country doctor spinning yarns. The writing is elegant, reflective and amused. Mr. Sams is a storyteller sure of his audience, in no particular hurry, and gifted with perfect timing.”

Dr. Sams modeled the lead character in “Run With the Horsemen,” Porter Osborne Jr., on himself, and featured him in two more novels, “The Whisper of the River” and “When All the World Was Young,” which followed him into World War II.

Dr. Sams also wrote thinly disguised stories about his life as a physician. In “Epiphany,” he captures the friendship that develops between a literary-minded doctor frustrated by bureaucracy and a patient angry over past racism and injustice.

Ferrol Sams Jr. was born Sept. 26, 1922, in Woolsey, Ga. He received a bachelor’s degree from Mercer in 1942 and his medical degree from Emory University in 1949. In his addition to his namesake, survivors include his wife, Dr. Helen Fletcher Sams; his sons Jim and Fletcher; a daughter, Ellen Nichol; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Some critics tired of what they called the “folksiness” in Dr. Sams’s books. But he did not write for the critics, he said. In an interview with the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Dr. Sams was asked what audience he wrote for. Himself, he said.

“If you lose your sense of awe, or if you lose your sense of the ridiculous, you’ve fallen into a terrible pit,” he added. “The only thing that’s worse is never to have had either.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 2, 2013

An earlier version of this obituary misstated the town in which Mr. Sams died. It was Fayetteville, Ga., not Lafayette, Ga.

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Americans Closest to Retirement Were Hardest Hit by Recession

David Maxwell for The New York Times

Susan Zimmerman, 62, has three part-time jobs.

Michael Stravato for The New York Times

Arynita Armstrong, 60, at her home in Willis, Tex. She last worked five years ago. “When you’re older, they just see gray hair and they write you off,” she says.

In the current listless economy, every generation has a claim to having been most injured. But the Labor Department’s latest jobs snapshot and other recent data reports present a strong case for crowning baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.

These Americans in their 50s and early 60s — those near retirement age who do not yet have access to Medicare and Social Security — have lost the most earnings power of any age group, with their household incomes 10 percent below what they made when the recovery began three years ago, according to Sentier Research, a data analysis company.

Their retirement savings and home values fell sharply at the worst possible time: just before they needed to cash out. They are supporting both aged parents and unemployed young-adult children, earning them the inauspicious nickname “Generation Squeeze.”

New research suggests that they may die sooner, because their health, income security and mental well-being were battered by recession at a crucial time in their lives. A recent study by economists at Wellesley College found that people who lost their jobs in the few years before becoming eligible for Social Security lost up to three years from their life expectancy, largely because they no longer had access to affordable health care.

“If I break my wrist, I lose my house,” said Susan Zimmerman, 62, a freelance writer in Cleveland, of the distress that a medical emergency would wreak upon her finances and her quality of life. None of the three part-time jobs she has cobbled together pay benefits, and she says she is counting the days until she becomes eligible for Medicare.

In the meantime, Ms. Zimmerman has fashioned her own regimen of home remedies — including eating blue cheese instead of taking penicillin and consuming plenty of orange juice, red wine, coffee and whatever else the latest longevity studies recommend — to maintain her health, which she must do if she wants to continue paying the bills.

“I will probably be working until I’m 100,” she said.

As common as that sentiment is, the job market has been especially unkind to older workers.

Unemployment rates for Americans nearing retirement are far lower than those for young people, who are recently out of school, with fewer skills and a shorter work history. But once out of a job, older workers have a much harder time finding another one. Over the last year, the average duration of unemployment for older people was 53 weeks, compared with 19 weeks for teenagers, according to the Labor Department’s jobs report released on Friday.

The lengthy process is partly because older workers are more likely to have been laid off from industries that are downsizing, like manufacturing. Compared with the rest of the population, older people are also more likely to own their own homes and be less mobile than renters, who can move to new job markets.

Older workers are more likely to have a disability of some sort, perhaps limiting the range of jobs that offer realistic choices. They may also be less inclined, at least initially, to take jobs that pay far less than their old positions.

Displaced boomers also believe they are victims of age discrimination, because employers can easily find a young, energetic worker who will accept lower pay and who can potentially stick around for decades rather than a few years.

“When you’re older, they just see gray hair and they write you off,” said Arynita Armstrong, 60, of Willis, Tex. She has been looking for work for five years since losing her job at a mortgage company. “They’re afraid to hire you, because they think you’re a health risk. You know, you might make their premiums go up. They think it’ll cost more money to invest in training you than it’s worth it because you might retire in five years.

“Not that they say any of this to your face,” she added.

When older workers do find re-employment, the compensation is usually not up to the level of their previous jobs, according to data from the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

In a survey by the center of older workers who were laid off during the recession, just one in six had found another job, and half of that group had accepted pay cuts. Fourteen percent of the re-employed said the pay in their new job was less than half what they earned in their previous job.

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Cardinal Mahony says he wasn't equipped to handle priest abuse

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony responded Friday to Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez's decision to relieve him of all public duties over his mishandling of clergy sex abuse of children, saying he did all he could to protect children.

Mahony posted the letter, addressed to Gomez, on his blog Friday afternoon. In the letter, he outlined the steps his administration had taken to address the priest abuse scandal and to create policies to prevent further such abuse.

Addressing Gomez, Mahony wrote: "When you were formally received as our archbishop on May 26, 2010, you began to become aware of all that had been done here over the years for the protection of children and youth.  You became our official archbishop on March 1, 2011 and you were personally involved with the compliance audit of 2012 — again, in which we were deemed to be in full compliance.

"Not once over these past years did you ever raise any questions about our policies, practices, or procedures in dealing with the problem of clergy sexual misconduct involving minors," Mahony added.

Mahony also reminded Gomez:  "I have stated time and time again that I made mistakes, especially in the mid-1980s.  I apologized for those mistakes, and committed myself to make certain that the archdiocese was safe for everyone.

"Unfortunately, I cannot return now to the 1980s and reverse actions and decisions made then.  But when I retired as the active archbishop, I handed over to you an archdiocese that was second to none in protecting children and youth."

Gomez announced the action against Mahony on Thursday and also said that Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry, who worked with Mahony to conceal abusers from police in the 1980s, had resigned his post as a regional bishop in Santa Barbara.

The announcements came as the church posted on its website tens of thousands of pages of previously secret personnel files for 122 priests accused of molesting children.

"I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil," Gomez wrote in a letter addressed to "My brothers and sisters in Christ."

The public censure of Mahony, whose quarter-century at the helm of America's largest archdiocese made him one of the most powerful men in the Catholic Church, was unparalleled, experts said.

"This is momentous, there is no question," said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer and Dominican priest who has testified across the nation as an expert witness in clergy sex abuse cases. "For something like this to happen to a cardinal.... The way they treat cardinals is as if they're one step below God."

In his letter Friday, Mahony said he did the best he could to handle the abuse cases.

"Nothing in my own background or education equipped me to deal with this grave problem," he wrote.  "In two years [1962—1964] spent in graduate school earning a master’s degree in social work, no textbook and no lecture ever referred to the sexual abuse of children.  While there was some information dealing with child neglect, sexual abuse was never discussed."

On his blog, Mahony said he sent the letter to Gomez on Friday. "There is nothing confidential in my letter.  I have been encouraged by others to publish it, so I am do so on my personal blog.  I hope you find it useful," he wrote.

Before Gomez's announcement, Mahony had weathered three grand jury investigations and numerous calls for his resignation. He stayed in office until the Vatican's mandatory retirement age of 75. No criminal charges have been filed against Mahony or anyone in the church hierarchy.

Terrence McKiernan, president of bishopaccountability.org, said that in a religious institution that values saving face and protecting its own, Gomez's decision to publicly criticize an elder statesman of the church and his top aide was striking.

"Even when Cardinal [Bernard] Law was removed in Boston, which was arguably for the same offenses, this kind of gesture was not made," he said.

Law left office in 2002 amid mounting outrage over his transfer of pedophile priests from parish to parish, but the church presented his departure as of his own accord and he was later given a highly coveted Vatican job in Rome.

Bishop Thomas J. O'Brien of Phoenix relinquished some of his authority in a deal with prosecutors to avoid criminal charges for his handling of abuse cases, but he kept his title and many of his duties. A Kansas City bishop convicted last year of failing to report child abuse retained his position.

Criticism of the L.A. archdiocese heated up Jan. 21, when the files of 14 clerics accused of abuse became public in a court case. They revealed in Mahony and Curry's own words how the church hierarchy had worked to keep law enforcement from learning that children had been molested at the hands of priests.

To stave off investigations, Mahony and Curry sent priests they knew had abused children out of state,  and kept them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities.

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Coming soon to Facebook- more action, battle games

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – When nWay began a trial of its dark, sci-fi combat game “ChronoBlade” on Facebook last year, the San Francisco-based startup felt sure it had a hit on its hands.

“First of all, what comes is, ‘Wow, I had no idea you could actually do a game of this quality on Facebook,’” said Dave Jones, Chief Creative Officer of nWay, who has worked on “Grand Theft Auto.”

Then came some resistance: Jones admits some potential investors and partners questioned how an action-focused game with slick graphics can play to a Facebook audience more accustomed to “Farmville” and other less time-consuming casual games. Others wondered how the game — which launches this spring — would gain significant users and revenue on the social network.

But Facebook Inc is betting nWay and a clutch of other developers this year can extend console-style action games beyond Microsoft Corp‘s Xbox or Sony Corp’s PlayStation onto the world’s largest social network.

Facebook is spearheading the launch of 10 high-quality games created by third-party developers in 2013 that squarely target so-called hardcore gamers, an atypical audience overlooked thus far against the wealth of family-friendly offerings like Zynga Inc’s “Farmville” that now dominate the social network’s gaming landscape.

The effort, which began late last year but will accelerate in 2013, is part of Facebook’s ongoing objective of making sure its 1 billion-plus users log in and spend more time on the network, which in turn boosts ad revenue. Facebook also takes a cut of its applications’ revenue.

Facebook’s push into action and battle games follows a meeting in January between companies that make games like “first-person shooters” and Vice President Joe Biden to look for ways to curb gun violence in the wake of the Connecticut school shootings.

Based on the console gaming industry experience, hardcore gamers — typically men 18 to 30 years old — spend more time and effort to master fast-paced games such as first-person shooters (Microsoft’s “Halo”) or real-time strategy games (Activision Blizzard’s “StarCraft”).

“You’ll see a whole set of games hitting in the next two quarters in particular and throughout the year that really start to redefine what people think of Facebook games,” Sean Ryan, head of game partnerships at Facebook said in an interview.

Facebook will embrace games from “casual all the way up through first-person shooters, massively multiplayer online games, real-time strategy games – all those types of more core player-versus-player games.”

Just as hardcore gamers interact online and form clans in multiplayer games on console game networks like Xbox LIVE, Facebook can be that social layer needed to foster such gaming communities that help popularize titles, Jones said.

GAMING POPULATION

Over a quarter of Facebook’s 1.06 billion monthly active users play games, one of the largest gaming communities in the industry, and the social network hopes that can grow.

Facebook also aims to make more revenue from games. Revenue from the area was flat in the fourth quarter from a year ago, the company said on Wednesday without providing details.

The 8-year-old social network takes a 30 percent revenue share from game developers who offer their product free but then charge for virtual goods — like ammunition and power boosts.

On Wednesday, Facebook’s Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman told analysts on a post-earnings conference call that its “games ecosystem continues to show healthy signs of diversification” and suggested that games revenue would grow with increasing user engagement.

To grow its gaming business, Facebook has invested time and resources to work with developers since the summer to bring titles like u4iA’s first-person shooter “Offensive Combat” and Plaruim’s real-time strategy game “Stormfall: Age of War” alive, Ryan said.

“It doesn’t mean we’re walking away from other games, but there’s no question our focus for 2013 much of it will be about becoming a better platform for core gamers and developers who make those games.”

To help users discover them, Facebook added new action and strategy games categories on its App Center that also shows you friends from your list playing those games. It brought back notification messages from game apps — a feature that had been removed because users found the annoying — with certain restrictions that stop developers from spamming a gamer.

Developers also rely on word-of-mouth publicity and ads on Facebook’s advertising platform to draw in prospective gamers.

“Stormfall” has a player base of 4.5 million and hardcore games were proving to be far more lucrative, said Gabi Shalel, chief marketing officer Of Tel Aviv, Israel-based Plarium.

“Hardcore gamers pay more, play more and generate higher average revenue per user than traditional casual games.”

Kixeye, which makes the warfare-strategy game “War Commander,” said its gamers spend 20 times more than players of social games, helping it stay profitable over the past three years.

Going forward, nWay’s Jones says Facebook must have a defining title that comes along that establishes it as a hardcore gaming spot for gamers.

“Like ‘Super Mario’ did for Nintendo or ‘Halo’ on Microsoft, I think it just takes one title to come along, sort of as a benchmark to legitimize the whole thing,” he said.

(Reporting By Malathi Nayak; editing by Andrew Hay)

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Wispelwey: Loneliness of the long-distance cellist

LEIDEN, Netherlands (Reuters) – Dutch cellist Peter Wispelwey has recorded the haunting, delightful and soul-uplifting Bach Six Suites for Solo Cello three times and still he’s not finished.

His next, he says, is his “Lost in Translation” version, referring to the Bill Murray movie about an actor coming to terms with an alien culture in Tokyo.

Wispelwey is doing the same, flying into the Japanese capital for recording sessions in the early morning hours.

When it is released, he wants to strew CDs of portions of the Bach suites around Tokyo for people to find them, he told Reuters over a three-course dinner served during intervals as he performed in this Dutch university town.

“That’s my ideal,” he said. “I want the Tokyo preludes, the Tokyo gigues, the Tokyo allemandes.”

At this stage in his career, the 50-year-old Wispelwey who first fell in love with the cello’s growling sound at the age of two while listening to an amateur quartet in which his father played violin, can be indulged.

Growing up in a small country at a time when it did not have much of an established conservatory tradition, he more or less is a self-made cellist, though he has had several of the world’s best teachers, among them compatriot Anner Bylsma.

He made his name in the Netherlands by putting on recitals in his late teens of all the mainstream repertoire for solo cello, renting the hall himself, getting the tickets distributed and playing it all from memory.

He got his international credentials with his first 1990 recording of the Bach suites, for the Channel Classics label, which became one of the gold-standard versions.

His latest, and third version, is unique for tuning his baroque cello, with gut rather than modern steel strings, to a much lower pitch than A at 440 hertz, or slightly higher, which is the standard for modern orchestras, pianos, wind instruments and pretty much everything.

Wispelwey has done it at 397 hertz, a full tone below the modern A tuning, and a semitone, or half tone, below the usual baroque A which is 415 hertz.

There are theoretical reasons, including evidence it was the pitch Bach would have known. But more importantly, the sound world is different.

“If the general public comes in to hear the Bach suites on a baroque cello they need almost an hour just to adjust to that sound world and it’s not surprising,” he said, between gulps of food and before taking a shower to refresh for the continuation of one of the most demanding recital programs, for soloist and audience alike.

“We’re used to a steely, projecting laser beam of a sound and this has shades, it has color and it has the overtones. That’s why we can hear it. It has this very particular shine. but it’s a shine of nobility.”

Here’s what else he had to say about Bach’s appeal today, the mystical “Black Sarabande” and why it can sometimes seem a bit lonely being a cello soloist:

Q: What is it about Bach’s music, written in the early 18th century, that speaks to us three centuries later with such power, if not to say God-like authority?

A: “One is the magic of Bach. Even in the sparse notes of the cellos suites there is a narrative and it becomes more hypnotic the less you hear and the less you hear it filled in. It’s the hypnotic element of being carried away by so little. That said, the concentration of the listener is tunneled and first there’s an emotion of being narrowed but then the opposite happens.

“After an hour that tunnel gives suddenly way to the biggest panorama you’d ever want to see. It starts meaning everything, the small world becomes the big world and everything starts shining and becoming meaningful…Bach’s brain was all over the place all the time. That’s why we’re so eternally intrigued at what kind of creativity was at work there.”

Q: In the Suite No. 5, there’s a movement you call the “Black Sarabande”. Why?

A: “It’s painful, not nice. There is comfort in it but death is there. It’s about blackness, about dust and with the gut C string it sounds like dust, it sounds like throwing something into the grave or a last breath – it’s all there. The first four bars are a sort of solar system, all those notes hanging in space but they are somehow related…It’s dark and light and death and life. It’s so simple that its meaning expands in space. The simpler it is the more meaningful it seems to be.”

Q: Of course you don’t play only Bach – though you play these suites a lot. Two days from now you are doing a Schubert program and you also play modern composers like Ligeti and Crumb. Is it hard finding sufficient repertoire for an instrument which, let’s face it, has never been as big a crowd pleaser as the violin?

A: “It (Bach) does sound like you are playing really serious, profound music, so that’s good, and the other thing of course is the cello repertoire is so small that when we have six pieces by the greatest composer of all time, well, then, of course… There are 15 great cello concertos against 40 great violin concertos. The cello was emancipated (from its accompaniment role) late. Then look at the 20th century. We have Mstislav Rostropovich and suddenly we get this tsunami by the great composers…”

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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The New Old Age: 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 under way 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?

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DealBook: Amid Bank's Legal Problems, Barclays Chief Gives Up Bonus

6:44 p.m. | Updated

Antony P. Jenkins, the new chief executive of Barclays, said on Friday that he would forgo his bonus as the British bank struggled to rebuild its reputation after recent missteps.

British regulators are investigating new accusations that Barclays failed to properly disclose to shareholders a loan to a group of Qatari investors that gave the British bank a cash infusion during the financial crisis, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

Last year, the bank disclosed that British and American authorities were investigating the legality of the payments related to the $7.1 billion cash injection to Qatar Holding, the sovereign wealth fund.

Mr. Jenkins is dealing with a series of legal headaches.

In June, Barclays agreed to pay a $450 million settlement with United States and British regulators over rate manipulation. The scandal forced a number of the bank’s top executives to resign, including the chief executive at the time, Robert E. Diamond Jr.

The British firm has also set aside $3.2 billion to cover legal costs related to the inappropriate selling of insurance to consumers. British authorities recently told the bank that it must review the sale of certain interest rate hedging products after 90 percent of a sample of the complex instruments were found to have been sold improperly. Analysts say the investigation may lead to millions of dollars of new legal costs.

With the controversy surrounding the bank, Mr. Jenkins said he did not want to be considered for a bonus that could have totaled up to $4.3 million, adding that many of the problems engulfing the bank were of its own making. The Barclays chief’s annual salary is $1.7 million.

“I think it only right that I bear an appropriate degree of accountability for those matters,” Mr. Jenkins said in a statement. “It would be wrong for me to receive a bonus for 2012.”

A spokesman for Barclays declined to comment about the investigation into potential wrongdoing connected to the loan to Qatari investors.

By giving up his bonus, Mr. Jenkins contrasts with his predecessor. Mr. Diamond was in line for a $4.3 million bonus for 2011 despite criticism about the bank’s performance. Faced with mounting opposition, Mr. Diamond and Chris Lucas, the bank’s finance director, eventually agreed to forgo half of the deferred stock payout if the British bank failed to reach a number of its financial targets.

Barclays, which will disclose details of a major overhaul of its operations when it reports earnings on Feb. 12, is expected to cut up to 2,000 jobs in its investment bank in an effort to reduce its exposure to risky trading activity, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Mr. Jenkins, who previously ran Barclays’ consumer banking business, told employees in January that they should leave the bank if they were not willing to help rebuild the firm’s reputation.

“My message to those people is simple,” Mr. Jenkins wrote in an internal note obtained by The New York Times. “Barclays is not the place for you. The rules have changed.”

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 1, 2013

An earlier version of this article indicated that the Barclays chief executive told employees earlier this month that they should leave the bank if they were not willing to help rebuild the firm’s reputation. He told them in January.

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Senate Democrats huddle on gun measures

WASHINGTON – Vice President Joe Biden met Thursday with Senate Democrats to brief the caucus about the rationale behind the administration’s recommendations on guns, arguing that, in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shooting, the nation “will not understand if we don’t act.”

Biden seemed intent to emphasize that the most politically challenging of the initiatives he has  recommended – an assault weapons ban – was still a priority for the administration, mentioning it first in remarks to reporters afterward.

“My message was to lay out for my colleagues what our game plan was, what we thought needed to be done,” Biden said after the more than hourlong meeting. “I made the case for not only assault weapons but for the entire set of recommendations the president laid out.”

Biden said he also asked to sit down with the key parties on Capitol Hill to plot strategy going forward.

All 23 of President Obama's gun policy proposals

A day after the Senate Judiciary Committee held its first hearing on guns, the vice president said there has been a “sea change” in public opinion since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, calling it the “straw that broke the camel’s back” to get the public behind gun measures for the first time in decades.

“I’m not saying there’s an absolute consensus on all these things,” he said. “But there is a sea change in attitudes of the American people. And I believe that the American people will not understand – and I know everyone in that caucus agrees with me – will not understand if we don’t act.”

Participants in the meeting said the vice president indicated he will continue to travel to make the administration’s case, as will the president. A week ago Biden traveled to Richmond, Va., to focus on the call for universal background checks, which is seen as the most likely of the slate of proposals to pass.

PHOTOS: President Obama’s past

At that time, Biden did not mention the assault weapons ban in remarks to reporters afterward, though aides said it did come up in the private discussion with officials present.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Biden told the caucus Thursday that the administration is still behind the ban, a priority of her California colleague, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

“He said this is something that they support. And that the reports that he’s seen have shown that it did make a difference,” Boxer said.

That remains a challenge though, even in the Democratic-controlled Senate because the Democrats must defend 21 seats in 2014.

“Until I see the bills and the language, the only thing I’m going to say is I’m a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment. We’ve got to find a balanced approach, and I will take each amendment and bill as it comes,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who will be seeking reelection next year in a deeply Republican state.

Biden maintained that while there is no way to eliminate the possibility of another mass shooting, “there are things that we can do … that have virtually zero impact on your 2nd Amendment right to own a weapon for both self-defense and recreation that can save some lives.”

“I’ve always been confident we can reach a consensus on a broad cross-section of issues that can reduce some of this violence, even knowing it will be imperfect,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.).

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michael.memoli@latimes.com

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