Grammys pay tribute to Shankar, King, Temptations

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ravi Shankar passed away in December before he could attend The Recording Academy‘s Special Merit Awards celebration where he was to receive a lifetime achievement award. But the 91-year-old sitar master, Indian music promoter and friend to The Beatles got the call a few days before he passed away, and that meant everything to his family.

“I was very excited to hear about the lifetime achievement award a week before my dad passed away, one day before he went into surgery,” Shankar’s daughter, Norah Jones, said in an email to the Associated Press a few hours before the ceremony. “He knew about it and was very happy, and also that he and my sister, Anoushka, were both nominated in the same category for a Grammy (this year) was a special thing as well. We all miss him and are very proud of him. I will forever be discovering and re-discovering his music from all walks of his long and amazing life.”

Jones and Anoushka Shankar‘s acceptance of their father’s award Saturday afternoon at the Wilshire Ebert Theatre in Los Angeles was one of many memorable moments in the ceremony honoring performers and non-performers alike.

The crowd made a happy birthday video for Carole King, saluted husband-and-wife songwriters Marilyn and Alan Bergman on their 55th anniversary, and swooned as Charlie Haden paid tribute to his wife and family.

Shankar, singer-songwriter King and jazz bassist Haden were honored with lifetime achievement awards along with classical pianist Glenn Gould, who made his final public performance in the same theatre, blues guitarist Lightnin’ Hopkins, The Temptations and pop singer Patti Page, who like Shankar passed away in the last two months.

Special merit awards also were handed out to non-performers. Chess Records founders Philip and Leonard Chess, husband-and-wife songwriters Marilyn and Alan Bergman, and former Capitol Records executive Alan Livingston won the Trustees Award given to non-performers. And MIDI developers Ikutaro Kakehashi and Dave Smith and ribbon microphone manufacturer Royer Labs won technical Grammys.

Haden noted the importance of his family in his acceptance speech.

“I thank my brother Jim for letting me listen to his jazz records,” Haden said. “I heard Charlie Parker and that changed my life forever.”

For King, it was James Taylor who sent her down a new path. She noted in her video message he forced her to get up and sing one of her own songs in concert when she really didn’t see herself as a performer: “I guess he was right.”

The Bergmans, who wrote “The Way We Were,” turned in a romantic acceptance speech, adding another special moment to a partnership that produced some of our most well-known songs.

“I just want to say this in public: I’m married to the most remarkable woman in the world,” Alan Bergman said.

“Oh, cut it out,” Marilyn Berman responded.

___

Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott at http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott .

___

Online:

http://www.grammy.com

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For Families Struggling with Mental Illness, Carolyn Wolf Is a Guide in the Darkness

When a life starts to unravel, where do you turn for help?

Melissa Klump began to slip in the eighth grade. She couldn’t focus in class, and in a moment of despair she swallowed 60 ibuprofen tablets. She was smart, pretty and ill: depression, attention deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, either bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.

In her 20s, after a more serious suicide attempt, her parents sent her to a residential psychiatric treatment center, and from there to another. It was the treatment of last resort. When she was discharged from the second center last August after slapping another resident, her mother, Elisa Klump, was beside herself.

“I was banging my head against the wall,” the mother said. “What do I do next?” She frantically called support groups, therapy programs, suicide prevention lines, anybody, running down a list of names in a directory of mental health resources. “Finally,” she said, “somebody told me, ‘The person you need to talk to is Carolyn Wolf.’ ”

That call, she said, changed her life and her daughter’s. “Carolyn has given me hope,” she said. “I didn’t know there were people like her out there.”

Carolyn Reinach Wolf is not a psychiatrist or a mental health professional, but a lawyer who has carved out what she says is a unique niche, working with families like the Klumps.

One in 17 American adults suffers from a severe mental illness, and the systems into which they are plunged — hospitals, insurance companies, courts, social services — can be fragmented and overwhelming for families to manage. The recent shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., have brought attention to the need for intervention to prevent such extreme acts of violence, which are rare. But for the great majority of families watching their loved ones suffer, and often suffering themselves, the struggle can be boundless, with little guidance along the way.

“If you Google ‘mental health lawyer,’ ” said Ms. Wolf, a partner with Abrams & Fensterman, “I’m kinda the only game in town.”

On a recent afternoon, she described in her Midtown office the range of her practice.

“We have been known to pull people out of crack dens,” she said. “I have chased people around hotels all over the city with the N.Y.P.D. and my team to get them to a hospital. I had a case years ago where the person was on his way back from Europe, and the family was very concerned that he was symptomatic. I had security people meet him at J.F.K.”

Many lawyers work with mentally ill people or their families, but Ron Honberg, the national director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said he did not know of another lawyer who did what Ms. Wolf does: providing families with a team of psychiatrists, social workers, case managers, life coaches, security guards and others, and then coordinating their services. It can be a lifeline — for people who can afford it, Mr. Honberg said. “Otherwise, families have to do this on their own,” he said. “It’s a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week job, and for some families it never ends.”

Many of Ms. Wolf’s clients declined to be interviewed for this article, but the few who spoke offered an unusual window on the arcane twists and turns of the mental health care system, even for families with money. Their stories illustrate how fraught and sometimes blind such a journey can be.

One rainy morning last month, Lance Sheena, 29, sat with his mother in the spacious family room of her Long Island home. Mr. Sheena was puffy-eyed and sporadically inattentive; the previous night, at the group home where he has been living since late last summer, another resident had been screaming incoherently and was taken away by the police. His mother, Susan Sheena, eased delicately into the family story.

“I don’t talk to a lot of people because they don’t get it,” Ms. Sheena said. “They mean well, but they don’t get it unless they’ve been through a similar experience. And anytime something comes up, like the shooting in Newtown, right away it goes to the mentally ill. And you think, maybe we shouldn’t be so public about this, because people are going to be afraid of us and Lance. It’s a big concern.”

Her son cut her off. “Are you comparing me to the guy that shot those people?”

“No, I’m saying that anytime there’s a shooting, like in Aurora, that’s when these things come out in the news.”

“Did you really just compare me to that guy?”

“No, I didn’t compare you.”

“Then what did you say?”

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The fine line between legitimate businesses and pyramid schemes

Controversy is again casting a shadow over the multilevel marketing industry, as nutritional supplement company Herbalife Inc., which has thousands of distributors in the Chicago region, has been publicly called a pyramid scheme by a prominent investor — an allegation the company vigorously denies.

Meanwhile, a different multilevel marketer, Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing, was shut down in recent weeks after a lawsuit was brought by regulators and several states, including Illinois, alleging the company scammed consumers out of $169 million. The scheme affected an estimated 100,000 Americans, including some in Chicago, where it targeted Spanish-speaking consumers, the Federal Trade Commission alleged.

Most people outside the industry might have only a vague notion about multilevel marketing, also called network marketing and direct selling. It often involves personal sales of cosmetics, wellness products or home decor items — or as critics flippantly call it, "pills, potions and lotions" — usually sold through product parties hosted by friends or relatives.

For sellers, the companies offer the appeal of starting a business on the cheap with little training, working from home and being their own boss, if only for part-time money. Some might recruit friends and family to become sellers, which augments their own commissions and gives them a shot at the six-figure compensation many such marketing companies tout but few distributors attain.

The largest multilevel marketing companies, often known as MLMs, are household names: Avon, Mary Kay, Pampered Chef and Amway. MLMs have annual sales of about $30 billion, with about 16 million people in the United States selling their products, according to the industry group Direct Selling Association, which represents these firms and others.

The recent controversies might raise the question: What's the difference between a legitimate multilevel marketing company and an illegal pyramid scheme, in which only people who get in first — at the top of the pyramid-like structure — make money and everyone else is a dupe?

The harshest critics maintain there is no difference, that there's no such thing as a legitimate MLM and that the industry's secrets stay safe because of a cultlike mentality and a blind eye of regulators.

Jon M. Taylor, who was once a seller for an MLM company, said he has studied the industry for 18 years and analyzed more than 500 MLM companies. He maintains the website MLM-thetruth.com and offers a free e-book there.

"I have not yet found a good MLM — a good MLM is an oxymoron," Taylor said.

He said all MLM companies have the same flaw: They depend on endless chains of recruiting new members.  "There is no more unfair and deceptive practice than multilevel marketing," Taylor said.

Tracy Coenen, a forensic accountant and fraud investigator with Sequence Inc. in Chicago and Milwaukee, is author of the Fraud Files Blog. She is also a critic.

"Multilevel marketing companies are pyramid schemes that the government allows to operate," said Coenen. "The only difference is that Herbalife, or any multilevel marketing company, has a tangible product that they use to make their pyramid appear legitimate."

The Direct Selling Association says MLMs are legitimate businesses, and that the group has about 200 members carefully screened by the organization to ensure they are not pyramid schemes and don't use deceptive practices.

The Federal Trade Commission agrees there are legitimate MLMs. The difference between a legitimate business and pyramid scheme comes down to products.

If the company and its distributors make money primarily from the sale of products to end-users (and not boxes of product accumulating in a distributor's garage), it's OK.

By contrast, a pyramid scheme compensates those at the top of the pyramid with participation fees paid by those recruited at the bottom. It eventually collapses when the scheme can't recruit more people.

But identifying a pyramid scheme can be difficult because MLMs typically have product sales, along with recruitment fees and recruitment incentives.

"It gets cloudy when you have a situation where you have fees being paid for both," said Monica Vaca, assistant director of the FTC's division of marketing practices. "It's very nuanced."

While prosecuting an MLM can seem somewhat of a judgment call, cases have a common factor: deceptive promises about how much money distributors will earn, Vaca said.

In the Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing case filed last month, C. Steven Baker, director of the FTC's Midwest region, said, "These defendants were promising people that if they worked hard they could make lots of money. But it was a rigged game, and the vast majority of people lost money."

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Blizzard wallops Northeast, thousands without power

A blizzard slammed into the northeastern United States on Friday, snarling traffic, disrupting thousands of flights and prompting five governors to declare states of emergency in the face of a fearsome snowstorm.

Forecasters warned that about 2 feet of snow would blanket most of the Boston area with some spots getting as much as 30 inches. New York was due to get about a foot in some areas, while heavy snowfall was also expected in Connecticut and Maine.

Winds were blowing at 35 to 40 miles per hour (56 to 64 km per hour) by Friday afternoon and forecasters expected gusts up to 60 mph as the evening wore on.

Driving conditions were treacherous. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick took the rare step of announcing a ban on most car travel starting Friday afternoon, while Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy closed the state's highways to all but emergency vehicles.

As the evening wore on and the snow piled up, mass transit was also affected.

In New York City, transit officials said "suspensions in service remain a strong possibility," and Metro-North Railroad suspended some of its commuter rail service at 10 p.m.

The Long Island Rail Road partially suspended service on its Montauk branch.

The blizzard left about 10,000 customers along the East Coast without power, and some 3,500 flights were canceled.

"We're seeing heavier snow overspread the region from south to north," said Lance Franck, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton, Massachusetts, outside Boston. "As the snow picks up in intensity, we're expecting it to fall at a rate of upwards of two to three inches per hour."

Early Friday evening, officials warned that the storm was just ramping up to full strength, and that heavy snow and high winds would continue through midday on Saturday. The governors of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Maine declared states of emergency and urged people to stay indoors.

In many cases, authorities ordered non-essential government workers to stay home, urged private employers to do the same, told people to prepare for power outages and encouraged them to check on elderly or disabled neighbors.

People appeared to take the warnings seriously. Traffic on streets and ridership on public transportation was significantly lighter than usual on Friday.

"This is a very large and powerful storm, however we are encouraged by the numbers of people who stayed home today," Boston Mayor Thomas Menino told reporters.

In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested the storm created an opportunity to relax and catch up on sleep.

Even so, the storm caused a few accidents, including a 19-vehicle pile-up outside Portland, Maine, that sent one person to the hospital.

In addition to Friday's cancellations, more than 1,200 flights scheduled for Saturday were scratched, according to the website FlightAware.com.

The storm also posed a risk of flooding at high tide to areas still recovering from Superstorm Sandy last October.

"Many of the same communities that were inundated by Hurricane Sandy's tidal surge just about 100 days ago are likely to see some moderate coastal flooding this evening," said Bloomberg.

Brick Township in New Jersey had crews out building up sand dunes and berms ahead of a forecast storm surge, said Mayor Stephen Acropolis.

Travel became more difficult as the day progressed.

Amtrak suspended railroad service between New York, Boston and points north on Friday afternoon.

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Humble Damon cheers Oscar hopeful, friend Ben Affleck

BERLIN (Reuters) – It seems that wherever Matt Damon goes to promote his movies he is asked about something else altogether – his old friend and collaborator Ben Affleck, whose Iranian hostage drama “Argo” is in the running for a Best Picture Oscar.

Damon shared a screenplay Academy Award with Affleck for the 1997 film “Good Will Hunting” and has gone on to become one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, with blockbusters including the “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Bourne Identity” series.

He was in Berlin on Friday for the festival premiere of “Promised Land”, a tale set in rural America that tackles the controversial gas extraction technique known as “fracking”.

At a news conference following the press screening, the 42-year-old did not have to wait long for a question about Affleck, and, once again, he lavished praise on an actor who he said had endured his share of tough times.

“His life is so interesting that I kind of never get tired of talking (about it),” Damon joked.

Of the critical acclaim and string of awards for “Argo,” he said: “I’m really happy for him. He certainly deserves it.”

“He’s worked so hard and he’s taken it on the chin for years from the press and just from everywhere. He was really in a rough spot 10 years ago,” Damon told reporters, referring to the ridicule Affleck suffered during his romance with Jennifer Lopez and their 2003 movie flop “Gigli.”

The actor recalled Affleck once telling him he was “in the worst place you could be career-wise: I sell magazines and I don’t sell movie tickets’.”

Damon singled out some “fantastic” performances by Affleck in recent years: “Hollywoodland,” “The Town” and “Argo” itself, the last two of which he also directed.

He would not, however, be drawn on the chances of “Argo” landing the big prize at the Oscars on February 24.

PROMISED LAND “BOMBS”

Less successful has been “Promised Land,” which Damon readily admitted had “bombed” in the United States. It opens across Europe in February, March and April.

According to Boxofficemojo.com, the movie earned just $ 7.6 million at the North American box office.

“I’m leery of becoming one of those people who lives so much in a bubble that I just think everything I do is great,” he said. “I try to be mindful of that and listen.

“I’ve had a lot of movies that … haven’t been well received by an audience and I’m realistic about that, but with this one I just really love it and a big part of my heart is in it and I don’t understand what I’m hearing back.”

He said it was possible that “Promised Land,” also starring Frances McDormand and directed by “Good Will Hunting” filmmaker Gus Van Sant, would be appreciated more in the future.

“I’ve had movies bomb worse than this one and then actually make their money back.”

“Promised Land” is one of 19 movies in the main competition at the Berlin film festival running from Thursday to February 17.

Also screening on Friday were Polish entry “In the Name of” and Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s “Paradise: Hope,” the final part in a trilogy looking at the lives of a single family, in this case an overweight teenager sent to a diet camp.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Jill Serjeant and Doina Chiacu)

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In Nigeria, Polio Vaccine Workers Are Killed by Gunmen

At least nine polio immunization workers were shot to death in northern Nigeria on Friday by gunmen who attacked two clinics, officials said.

The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio.

Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of the head, local reports said.

A four-day vaccination drive had just ended in Kano State, where the killings took place, and the vaccinators were in a “mop-up” phase, looking for children who had been missed, said Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, one of the agencies running the eradication campaign.

Dr. Mohammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s minister of state for health, said in a telephone interview that it was not entirely clear whether the gunmen were specifically targeting polio workers or just attacking the health centers where vaccinators happened to be gathering early in the morning. “Health workers are soft targets,” he said.

No one immediately took responsibility, but suspicion fell on Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group that has attacked police stations, government offices and even a religious leader’s convoy.

Polio, which once paralyzed millions of children, is now down to fewer than 1,000 known cases around the world, and is endemic in only three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Since September — when a new polio operations center was opened in the capital and Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, appointed a special adviser for polio — the country had been improving, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization. There have been no new cases since Dec. 3.

While vaccinators have not previously been killed in the country, there is a long history of Nigerian Muslims shunning the vaccine.

Ten years ago, immunization was suspended for 11 months as local governors waited for local scientists to investigate rumors that it caused AIDS or was a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls. That hiatus let cases spread across Africa. The Nigerian strain of the virus even reached Saudi Arabia when a Nigerian child living in hills outside Mecca was paralyzed.

Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who tracks vaccine issues, said the newest killings “are kind of mimicking what’s going on in Pakistan, and I feel it’s very much prompted by that.”

In a roundabout way, the C.I.A. has been blamed for the Pakistan killings. In its effort to track Osama bin Laden, the agency paid a Pakistani doctor to seek entry to Bin Laden’s compound on the pretext of vaccinating the children — presumably to get DNA samples as evidence that it was the right family. That enraged some Taliban factions in Pakistan, which outlawed vaccination in their areas and threatened vaccinators.

Nigerian police officials said the first shootings were of eight workers early in the morning at a clinic in the Tarauni neighborhood of Kano, the state capital; two or three died. A survivor said the two gunmen then set fire to a curtain, locked the doors and left.

“We summoned our courage and broke the door because we realized they wanted to burn us alive,” the survivor said from her bed at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.

About an hour later, six men on three-wheeled motorcycles stormed a clinic in the Haye neighborhood, a few miles away. They killed seven women waiting to collect vaccine.

Ten years ago, Dr. Larson said, she joined a door-to-door vaccination drive in northern Nigeria as a Unicef communications officer, “and even then we were trying to calm rumors that the C.I.A. was involved,” she said. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars had convinced poor Muslims in many countries that Americans hated them, and some believed the American-made vaccine was a plot by Western drug companies and intelligence agencies.

Since the vaccine ruse in Pakistan, she said, “Frankly, now, I can’t go to them and say, ‘The C.I.A. isn’t involved.’ ”

Dr. Pate said the attack would not stop the newly reinvigorated eradication drive, adding, “This isn’t going to deter us from getting everyone vaccinated to save the lives of our children.”

Aminu Abubakar contributed reported from Kano, Nigeria.

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S&C relay at center of Super Bowl outage

An electrical relay device supplied by Rogers Park's S&C Electric Co. was found to be at the center of the Super Bowl power outage in New Orleans, the company said Friday.

S&C Electric Co. said the outage, which lasted for more than 30 minutes at Sunday's game, happened when the demand for Superdome power exceeding a "trip setting" for its electrical relay.

But the device didn't malfunction, S&C said. Instead, it said it found in testing that system operators didn't account for the amount of power needed at the Superdome. S&C doesn't control the power settings on its equipment.

S&C wouldn't go into more details, but the power provider for Sunday's game was Entergy New Orleans, a unit of Entergy Corp.

In a statement, Entergy said the relay device had functioned properly at other high-profile sporting events, including the Sugar Bowl.

The relay was designed to prevent an outage if a cable connection to the stadium failed.

"S&C continues to work with all those involved to get the system back online, and our customers can continue to rely on the quality and performance of our products," Spokesman Michael Edmonds said in a statement.

S&C equipment is commonly used where high reliability is critical, he said, including data centers for United Parcel Service Inc., drug manufacturing centers and hospitals. The company also works with other stadiums throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Entergy said in a statement that the Superdome relay has been removed and replacement equipment is being examined.

That statement came before a special meeting of the New Orleans City Council's Utility Committee Friday morning to discuss the root cause of the outage.

Immediately after the game, Entergy indicated its equipment was functional and the problem must have come from the Superdome, but later said it was launching an investigation to determine the source of the problem.

"While some further analysis remains, we believe we have identified and remedied the cause of the power outage and regret the interruption that occurred during what was a showcase event for the city and state," Entergy New Orleans President and CEO Charles Rice said.

sbomkamp@tribune.com | Twitter: @SamWillTravel

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Hawks nail Torres, and then drill Coyotes 6-2

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Jamal Mayers punched Raffi Torres in the face and then Patrick Kane punched the rest of the Coyotes in the gut.

It didn't take long for the Blackhawks to get their reprisal on Torres and not much longer to get the last laugh, too, as they drilled the Coyotes 6-2 on Thursday night at Jobing.com Arena.

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In Torres' first appearance against the Hawks since his 21-game suspension for an illegal hit that seriously injured Marian Hossa during the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs ended, Mayers confronted the Coyotes veteran just 2 minutes, 35 seconds into the game.

Hossa watched from the bench as the two dropped the gloves and threw flurries of punches during the spirited bout. With that out of the way, it was time for Kane and Co. to get to work.

Kane had two goals and an assist — all in the first period — Jonathan Toews, Bryan Bickell and Viktor Stalberg each had a goal and an assist and Dave Bolland also scored as the Hawks remained unbeaten in regulation to improve to 9-0-2.

Patrick Sharp added three assists and Ray Emery earned the victory in goal to help the Hawks move to 3-0-2 on their season-long, six-game trip. Martin Hanzal scored for the Coyotes and Mike Smith, who was yanked in the second period, suffered the loss in goal.

The Hawks reeled off four consecutive goals in the first period as Stalberg started things off with a one-timer past Smith after a fine pass from Andrew Shaw. Kane scored the first of his goals with the Hawks holding a five-on-three advantage. Toews located the puck during a goal-mouth scramble and poked it to Kane.

Kane then worked more magic, spinning deep in Coyotes zone and hitting Bolland with a pass the center knocked in. Another five-on-three advantage resulted in another Kane goal as Sharp's cross-ice pass found the winger, who then buried it.

Hanzal momentarily stopped the bleeding for the Coyotes with a power-play goal, but Toews made a highlight-reel move, dancing right around defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson and besting Smith. But Bickell then scored from the slot for a 6-1 lead after two periods.

Torres scoredd a meaningless goal with 1:25 left in the third.

Mayers' fight with Torres quickly answered the question of how the Hawks would respond — if at all — to the Hossa matter. With a 48-game season, taking penalties or risking suspension or injury could prove costly.

"It's such a competitive league, not only with the parity but the shortened season makes it even that much more of an issue," Hawks defenseman Duncan Keith said before the game. "Points are at premium and you don't want to do anything (that might) put even one point in jeopardy."

ckuc@tribune.com

Twitter @ChrisKuc

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California boy to be arraigned in “swatting” prank on actor Kutcher

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Prosecutors charged a 12-year-old boy on Thursday with making a false emergency call that sent police swarming to the home of actor Ashton Kutcher in a “swatting” prank.

The name of the boy, who was arrested by Los Angeles police in December, was withheld due to his age. He was scheduled to be arraigned in a juvenile court in Los Angeles on Friday.

The trend toward placing false emergency calls is known as “swatting” because SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) officers often are sent to the purported crime scenes. Authorities say such situations can be dangerous due to the risk of a misunderstanding between police and occupants of a building.

The boy has been charged with two felony counts each of making false bomb threats and computer intrusion in connection with the October 3 emergency call that drew police to the Hollywood Hills home of Kutcher, star of the sitcom “Two and a Half Men,” and a similar call on October 10 that sent police to a Wells Fargo Bank.

Authorities have accused the boy of having reported men armed with guns and explosives in Kutcher’s home and that several people had been shot. Dozens of emergency personnel were sent to the house. Kutcher was not home at the time.

Swatting calls in recent months have also sent police to the homes of singers Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Bill Trott)

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Peter Hauri, Psychologist Who Focused on Insomnia, Dies at 79

Peter Hauri, a psychologist who was among the first researchers to study the mysterious mechanics of a good night’s sleep, and who established widely used guidelines for avoiding insomnia without drugs, died on Jan. 31 in Rochester, Minn., where he had been director of the Mayo Sleep Disorders Center until he retired in 2000. He was 79.

The cause was complications of a brain injury sustained the day before in a fall, a family spokesman said.

Dr. Hauri’s early work included studies of narcolepsy and sleepwalking. He later studied the use of biofeedback in helping people with insomnia to fall asleep, and he measured the relative depths of so-called rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep and non-REM sleep. Those studies established him as part of the first generation of scientists to recognize sleep as an organized physiological process, not a simple “turning off” of the brain.

He was best known, though, for a 1992 book, “No More Sleepless Nights.” Written with Shirley Linde, it outlined some of the practical strategies he had developed for helping people sleep without taking pills.

The book mainly describes a painstaking process of self-observation and note-taking, followed by behavior modification.

Dr. Hauri said the most important thing he had learned in his research — in sleep lab experiments with volunteers draped in bridal trains of wires and electrodes so he could record the pulsing of their sleeping, or nonsleeping, brains — was that, like snowflakes, every person’s sleeping problem was unique. “There is no one set of rules that can be mimeographed and given to every patient who comes into the office,” he said in a 2010 videotaped interview for the archive of the Sleep Research Society.

Nonetheless, Dr. Hauri devised guidelines that became the standard medical advice of recent decades. Among them was this paradox of insomnia therapy strategies: Never try to sleep. “The more a person tries to sleep, the more aroused he or she gets,” Dr. Hauri said in an interview. Instead, he advised, get out of bed — and leave the bedroom — until sleepiness calls.

Another suggestion: Eliminate the bedroom clock, or turn it to the wall, out of reach. “There is no scientific proof,” Dr. Hauri said in 2010, “but I’m convinced of that one: Getting rid of the alarm clock works.”

Peter Johannes Hauri was born on June 25, 1933, in Sirnach, Switzerland, one of six children of Rudolf and Verena Hauri. After graduating from a teachers college, he taught junior high school students in Switzerland for several years until an opportunity arose to study in the United States. In 1960 he received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from North Central College in Naperville, Ill. He studied psychology from 1960 to 1965 at the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D.

Survivors include his wife, Cindy, and their son, Matthew. He is also survived by a daughter, Heidi Hauri-Gill; a son, David Courard-Hauri; and four grandchildren from a previous marriage.

In the 2010 archive interview, Dr. Hauri was asked what had begun his interest in sleep.

He replied with an impish smile, “My mother was a very famous insomniac.” And, he added, “I don’t sleep so well myself.”

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