R d int 2018 03 downmagaz com by ChanMyae Aung

INTERNATIONAL

MARCH 2018

GUARD THAT CHANGED A PRISONER’S LIFE PAGE ... 48

TO LOVE ELEPHANTS One Man’s Story of Life with the Herd PAGE ... 92

STOP TEXTING AND START TALKING PAGE ... 34

HOW TO KEEP YOUR EYES HEALTHY PAGE ... 40

PARKINSON’S NOW WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW PAGE ... 60

NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF MEDICINE ........... 18 LAUGHTER, THE BEST MEDICINE ...................... 46 LIFE’S LIKE THAT .................................................. 82 WORD POWER ...................................................... 111

Contents MARCH 2018

A cabbie, his kidnapper, and the unlikely connection that redeemed them.

Can We Talk?

Long-Term Vision

60 Parkinson’s Now—What

The Prisoner & the Guard

Photo Feature

68 Super Sized

One was a hardened young criminal. The other a calm and uncynical prison warder. All they had in common was sport. 2

Are such moments given to us to reveal the way we are supposed to live?

Why more conversations, and fewer texts, are good for your relationships and your emotional health.

How to protect your eyes from age-related retinal problems.

RD Classic

54 Overtaken by Joy

03đ2018

Imposing monuments around the world stand in honor of heroes, victories and deities.

You Need to Know

Treatments that are unique to each individual are the way of the future.

74 Grieving for Jonathan Since my husband died, I have tried to reanimate the love of my life word by word, tweet by tweet, text by text.

PHOTO, ON THE COVER: ©W.L. DAVIES /GETTY IMAGES. THI S PAGE: ©JAM ES O’NEIL/GETTY

Drama in Real Life

26 The Drive of His Life

Where the Pasture Meets the Sea Meet the chefs, farmers and fishermen who are changing Cornwall into a culinary Eden. Bonus Read

92 The Elephant Whisperer Lawrence Anthony ran an African preserve for 15 years. We bring you his story of life with the herd.

ILLUSTRATION BY MELA NIE LAM BRICK. PHOTO BY ALWIN GREYSON

DEPARTMENTS 12

8 Surprising Postmenopause Health Risks

14 16 18

Medical Mystery

READER FAVORITES

Adults Have Acne, Too News from the World of Medicine

Editor’s Note

Quotable Quotes

Letters

See the World Differently

My Life

Good News

Finish This Sentence

As Kids See It

Laughter, the Best Medicine

Points to Ponder

Life’s Like That

108

Brainteasers

110

Trivia

111

Word Power

113

All in a Day’s Work

115

Next Month

116

Last Laugh 03đ2018

I NTE RNATI O NAL Editor-in-Chief Raimo Moysa Editors Mary S. Aikins Janie Allen Alex Finer Art Director Marilee Lamarque Assistant Art Director Shirley Khaitan Rights and Permissions Manager Thomas Dobrowolski Content Operations Manager Lisa Pigeon Published by TMBI International, New York, USA

TRUSTED MEDIA BRANDS, INC.

President and Chief Executive Officer Bonnie Kintzer Chief Operating Officer Brian Kennedy Reader’s Digest Founders: DeWitt Wallace, 1889–1981; Lila Acheson Wallace, 1889–1984 Copyright 2016 TMBI, White Plains, NY, USA. Reproduction in any manner in whole or in part in English or other languages prohibited. All rights reserved throughout the world.

LET US KNOW if you are moved—or provoked—by any item in the magazine. Share your thoughts by sending an email to: editor@readersdigestinternational.com

03đ2018

Editor’s Note A Time for Renewal SPRING IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER, a time of renewal, new growth, new beginnings. It’s a glorious time of year. In this issue, we bring you an inspiring tale of one individual’s new beginning, and the person who gave him hope and a chance to change. In “The Prisoner and the Guard”, a young man whose life was turning into a cycle of crime and imprisonment, is given a new beginning in a most unexpected way—by a prison guard. Don’t miss the story of inmate John McAvoy and the prison guard who helped him turn his life around. As we age, so do our eyes. In the feature “Long-Term Vision,” the author gives readers the latest information on how to protect themselves from three common retinal problems—age-related macular degeneration, a detached retina, and diabetic retinopathy. And, very important: Don’t miss routine eye checkups. Retinal problems progress silently, and can surreptitiously rob you of sight when interventions might have helped. And for those suffering from Parkinson’s disease and their loved ones, there is new hope. A huge array of research is giving insights into the disease that affects each person differently. And, as people with Parkinson’s are living longer and longer, health professionals are focusing on ways to improve their quality of life. Don’t miss “Parkinson’s Now—What You Need to Know.” As spring begins in the world around you, don’t forget to stop and admire the early flowers of the season, and celebrate not only the earth’s yearly cycle of rebirth and renewal, but the possibilities of change for us all.

04đ2017

WE DIDN’T LOSE THE GAME; WE JUST RAN OUT OF TIME . VI N C E LO M BA R D I ,

former Green Bay Packers coach

Anxiety’s like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you very far. J O D I P I CO U LT, a u t h o r

Shared joy is double joy, and shared sorrow is half-sorrow. SW E D I S H P R OV E R B

A STRANGER RINGS; A FRIEND KNOCKS. DAV E E G G E R S , a u t h o r a n d p u b l i s h e r

It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult. Q U E E N E LIZ A B E TH I I

A SHIP DOES NOT SAIL WITH YESTERDAY’S WIND.

I wish I could tell you it gets better, but it doesn’t get better. You get better. J OA N R IV E R S ,

LO U I S L’A M O U R , n o v e l i s t

comedian

You can always tell about somebody by the way they put their hands on an animal. B E T T Y W H ITE

03đ2018

FROM TOP: JAM IE MCC ARTHY/GETTY IM AGES. M ARK C UTHBERT/GETTY IMAG E S. IL LYA S. SAVE NOK/G E TTY IMAG E S

Quotable Quotes

Letters READERS COMMENT ON OUR RECENT ISSUES

Happy Together

FINISH THIS SENTENCE

… close by,

I am a former faithful reader of Sélection Reader’s Digest. Yesterday, I came across your latest issue on the shelf of my little bookshop; what a joy to reunite with my favorite magazine! Going through it, I spotted first the great column “Finish This Sentence.” As you invite me to send a contribution, here is mine: For me, the most beautiful place I’ve ever visited is … here, exactly where I am. MRS MALIKA KHMOU, Goulmima, Morocco The most beautiful place I ever visited, was...

… my friend’s heart.

if you look at it the right way.

TARJA KOSKI-VÄHÄLA

Fi n l a n d

He’s an idiot, but his heart is golden. WAN NUR ALIFAH ILYANA

Ma l a y s i a

… Flor and Fjaere

… my hometown,

at Hidle, outside Stavanger.

where I had a happy childhood.

ELSE RAGNi

REINHARD

Norway

G e r m a ny

… filled with tourists.

… I still hope to find.

AHMAD HASSAN

… my bed

Singapore

after a heavy night shift.

LIEVEN VERHASSEL

Belgium

HELMA VAN VUGT

t h e Ne t h e r l a n d s

… Paris,

with my husband. MARTA CALDAS

Portugal

… your neck.

JOSÉ MARIA CADENAS

Spain

… the place I dreamt about BRUNO DENIS

… my granddaughter’s imagination.

Fra n c e

JEFF NORTHEY

last night.

Au s t ra l i a

1234567890

| 12•2017 [[1L]]

| 12•2017 [[2R]]

1234567890

With Tears in My Eyes

QQ Fan

I always read the Reader’s Digest with pleasure, but I particularly enjoyed the fabulous “Miracles in Real Life” (December). The one that touched me the most was “I Want to Make You My Daughter,” which tells the wonderful tale of adoption as an adult. I read it with tears in my eyes because I was so moved.

Ever since the [Berlin] Wall came down in 1989, we have been avid readers of Reader’s Digest magazine. Your choice of topics and the dramas and reports from far-away countries are a wonderful way of getting to know our world. We particularly enjoy the Quotable Quotes department with its wisdoms.

SYLVIE BOURLAND,

DIETER AND JANA TSCHITSCHKE,

Paris

Germany, via Email 03đ2018

03đ2018

PHOTO: © GETTY IMAGES /SCOTT OLS ON

SEE

THE WORLD ... Turn the page

03Ä&#x2018;2018

03đ2018

PHOTO: © IM AGEBROK ER/ALAM Y STOC K

... DIFFERENTLY Each year on the 17th of March, the Irish celebrate St. Patrick’s Day around the world. This traditional holiday, where the color green prevails, commemorates “The Apostle of Ireland,” Saint Patrick. Thanks to Chicago’s rich Irish heritage, the city also throws a parade for the occasion. Not only do the partygoers show their true colors, but, with the help of natural food coloring, even the Chicago River gets a full makeover. It takes about 45 minutes for the deep, rich green to fully saturate the waterways, but if you want to see it, don’t delay too long. The spectacular effect lasts only about five hours.

03đ2018

HEALTH

Brittle bones and breast cancer aren’t the only concerns women face as their hormone levels change with age

8 Surprising Postmenopause Health Risks

BY SUSAN JARA

GUM DISEASE

After estrogen levels decline, good oral hygiene counts more than ever because women become more susceptible to tooth loss and periodontal disease. In addition, “some postmenopausal women note dry mouth, or pain or burning in gum tissue, as well as altered taste for salty, peppery, or sour foods,” says Dr. JoAnn V. Pinkerton, executive director of the North American Menopause Society. SLEEP APNEA

The risk of developing sleep apnea rises after menopause, probably because of a drop in the hormone progesterone, which stimulates breathing. Unfortunately, the condition isn’t diagnosed in nearly 90 percent of affected women, says Dr. Pinkerton, citing the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study. Instead of the hallmark signs of the sleep disorder—snoring, pauses in breathing, excessive daytime sleepiness—women may experience insomnia, morning headache, and anxiety.

03đ2018

P HOTOGRAPH BY TERRY DOYLE

DIABETES

STY LI NG BY ELYSHA LEN KIN; H AI R BY PAUL WA RREN FOR JUDY C ASEY; MAKE U P BY REBECCA ALEXAN DER FOR SEE MA NAGEM ENT; N AI LS BY SH AN I EVA NS FOR ABTP.

If you began menopause before age 46 or after 55, you’re more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, according to the Women’s Health Initiative. Low estrogen, known to increase insulin resistance and trigger cravings, plays a role. Having high blood pressure, polycystic ovary syndrome, or previous bouts of gestational diabetes raises the risk even more. Get tested every three years starting at age 45, especially if you’re overweight.

HEART DISEASE

The estrogen your ovaries produce before menopause increases HDL (good) cholesterol, lowers LDL (bad) cholesterol, and helps prevent high blood pressure. It makes sense, then, that a reduction of estrogen makes risk of heart disease climb. One in eight women between the ages of 45 and 64—and one in four women over 65—has some form of heart disease. Not smoking, eating a plant-based diet, and exercising at least 30 minutes a day have big preventive payoffs.

EATING DISORDERS

A study published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders found that the menopausal transition (with its hormonal fluctuations and body composition changes) is linked to increased eating disorders and negative body image.

AUTOIMMUNE DISORDERS

Although the reasons are unclear, researchers found that the risk of developing autoimmune diseases—including lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis—rises after menopause. “Women have two X chromosomes, and defects in the X chromosome may make some women more susceptible to developing autoimmune disorders,” Dr. Pinkerton explains.

URINARY PROBLEMS

Urinary incontinence is particularly common after menopause. This is likely due to the thinning of the urethra (caused by declining estrogen) as well as weakened pelvic floor muscles (a result of vaginal childbirth and aging), Dr. Pinkerton says. You’re also more prone to recurring urinary tract infections. That’s because estrogen helps keep harmful bacteria out. Preventive steps: Do those Kegel exercises, drink plenty of fluids, and hit the ladies’ room before and after sex.

LIVER DISEASE

The harmful effects of alcohol, infection, and excess fat take a greater toll on your liver as you age, says Dr. Pinkerton. Also, people born between 1945 and 1965 are five times liklier to have hepatitis C. The U.S. Center for Disease Control recommends the people in that cohort get tested for the disease. 03đ2018

HEALTH

Medical Mystery THE PATIENT: Frank*, 46, a software engineer in Ontario, Canada THE SYMPTOMS: A sore, swollen leg and fatigue THE DOCTOR: Dr. John David Neary, clinical teaching unit director, General Internal Medicine at St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton, Ontario

IN SEPTEMBER 2012, Frank got off a plane from England and went straight to the ER at St. Joseph’s with a sore, swollen right leg. Both he and the doctors on call suspected a blood clot—a risk after sitting still in a confined space for long periods—but an ultrasound showed nothing amiss, and Frank was sent home. His symptoms continued, so he returned three weeks later and was *Name withheld to protect patient privacy 14

03đ2018

sent home again. It was the end of October when he made his third trip to the hospital. By now, his right knee was red, puffy and hot to the touch. Frank was admitted, diagnosed with cellulitis—a potentially serious bacterial skin infection—and given broad-spectrum antibiotics. He showed some improvement after two days and was discharged. Three months after the onset of his symptoms, Frank’s leg flared up again. He felt lethargic and was having trouble walking. He’d also developed bruises on the backs of his legs. Doctors inserted a needle into his knee to extract what they believed would be fluid, a sign of infection. They drew blood instead. Frank’s physicians struggled to arrive at a diagnosis that made sense. The patient was slightly anemic

PAPER ARTWORK BY KY LE BEAN; P HOTOGRAP H BY M I TCH PAYNE

BY SY D NE Y LONE Y

and had developed pinpricks of processed and out of a box.” Now blood (known as petechiae) on his they were convinced that scurvy was legs. This suggested he was bleeding the correct diagnosis. from somewhere, but a bleeding The doctors hadn’t encountered disorder would cause either deep or scurvy before, but they learned that it superficial bleeding, not both. requires a blood test for vitamin C, “His symptoms didn’t fit together,” and that the results could take up to says Dr. John Neary, who was a resithree weeks. dent when he heard about the case. Rather than wait for the results, “I said to my mentor, they gave the patient a ‘Maybe it’s scurvy.’” 500-milligram vitamin He was just throwing C supplement. Two Frank’s symptoms days later, his bruises out the suggestion for had initially a laugh. But when they faded and his knee improved because swelling diminished. examined the patient more closely, they of the hospital food. By the third day, he noticed the petechiae could walk comfortwere centered around ably and return home. his hair follicles, and The test results the hairs on his legs had curled into eventually showed that Frank had via corkscrew shape, both of which tamin C levels below the limit of what are signs of tissue fragility. Suddenly, the lab could detect. Left untreated, Neary’s far-fetched diagnosis scurvy can cause jaundice, edema became more plausible. (swelling caused by fluid buildup), Scurvy is caused by a severe defijoint pain, bruising, bleeding gums ciency in vitamin C, a nutrient that’s and potentially fatal heart problems. essential for maintaining the integrity Frank’s symptoms had improved of the skin, connective tissue, bones, during his initial hospital stay not gums and blood vessel walls. Combecause of the antibiotic he’d been mon on long ship voyages in the 17th given but because of the hospital century, the disease is still diagnosed food. “Scurvy is hard to get because in the elderly, anorexics, alcoholics you basically have to eat nothing and low-income families who can’t fresh,” Neary says, although his team afford or don’t have easy access to has seen six other cases since. fresh fruits or vegetables. Frank made a full recovery and Neary and his supervisor asked vowed to eat a healthier, more varied Frank about his daily habits. “We diet, but he also takes a multivitadiscovered that he ate the same min and vitamin C supplement every thing every day. All of it was heavily day, just to be safe. 03đ2018

HEALTH

Breakouts can come as a surprise. Here’s how to treat them.

Adults Have Acne, Too THE BATTLE WITH ACNE isn’t necessarily over just because you’ve exited your teen years. While adolescents are famously the most affected age group, some people deal with acne for decades. It’s even possible to face the condition—the plugging of pores with oil, dead skin and bacteria—for the first time as an adult. Adult acne is often caused by multiple factors working in tandem. For women, these can include hormone fluctuations related to menstrual periods, pregnancy or menopause. For both sexes, genetic predisposition plays a role: two-thirds of adult acne sufferers have at least one close biological relative with the same problem. Certain hair or skin products can 16

03đ2018

clog the pores, so if you’re prone, look for labels such as “non-comedogenic” or “non-acnegenic.” Despite popular claims, the link between diet and acne isn’t well established. There are plenty of reasons to eat well, but avoiding pimples isn’t proven to be one of them. However, outbreaks can be triggered by certain drugs (e.g., corticosteroids, lithium) or by stress-related inflammation. “There’s more acne among adults than there used to be,” says Dr. Françoise Poot, a member of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology. “We aren’t certain why, but we attribute the increase mainly to more stress and fatigue.” Compared to teen acne, the adult

ISTOCKP HOTO/JACOB WACKERHAUSEN

BY SAMANTHA RIDEOUT

form tends to be milder yet more start working, so make sure you stubborn, especially if previous understand how to use your prebouts of acne have left the skin’s scription and what to expect from it. microbes more resistant to treatment. While you’re waiting, don’t pick or Dermatologists might scrub aggressively at give sufferers prescripyour acne—it could tions containing bencause scarring. Instead, Due to hormones, zoyl peroxide (an wash it gently, no more antiseptic and antithan twice per day. If inflammatory agent), first-line treatments retinoids (vitamin A don’t work, your doctor derivatives that help can help you explore prevent pore plugging) other options. For of adult acne or antibiotics to eradiinstance, oral contraoccurs in women. cate excess bacteria. ceptives (suitable for Many common acne women only) can be creams and pills initially cause dryused to dial back the hormones that ness, flaking, redness or flare-ups, and are causing the skin to produce excesit can take up to eight weeks to see sive oil. Adult acne requires patience, any improvement. Some patients stop but with professional help, virtually treatment before it has the chance to every case can be controlled.

3/4

TEST YOUR MEDICAL IQ Lactase is…

A. a micronutrient found in dairy products that helps build muscle mass.

C. an enzyme that breaks down lactose, a sugar found in milk.

B. when a mother stops producing milk after weaning her child.

D. a disorder affecting infants who lack the instinct to breastfeed.

Answer: C. Lactase is a digestive enzyme that helps break down milk sugars. Virtually all humans produce plenty of lactase as babies, but many decrease production in adulthood. In fact, only about a third of the world’s adults can fully digest dairy products.

03đ2018

NEWS FROM THE

World of Medicine BY SAMANTHA RIDEOUT

About 5 to 10 percent of all diabetes in Western countries is type 3c, which develops when the body has trouble producing insulin because of pancreas damage due to conditions such as pancreatitis, cystic fibrosis, or pancreatic cancer. By contrast, in the common type 2 diabetes, the body is unable to use insulin properly. A British study recently showed that the majority of type-3c diabetes patients are diagnosed with type 2 instead. This matters because type 3c generally means worse glycemic control and a more urgent need for insulin in order to avoid complications (e.g., damage to the eyes or kidneys).

Veggie Nutrients Better Absorbed With Oil In an experiment published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, participants ate salad with varying amounts of soybean oil, a common ingredient in commercial salad dressings. 18

03đ2018

More oil resulted in higher blood levels of several essential nutrients, including vitamin A, lutein, and lycopene. These nutrients came from the salad vegetables, but the fat in the oil helped the body absorb them better. There’s no need to drown salad in dressing, the lead author said, but a couple of tablespoons’ worth of oil per day could help you get the most out of a healthy diet.

Rheumatoid Arthritis Raises Risk of COPD By comparing more than 24,000 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients with controls, Canadian researchers recently discovered that RA increases the likelihood of getting chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) by 47 percent. That’s because inflammation plays a role in COPD development. The scientists recommended that RA patients minimize their inflammation with treatment (e.g., NSAIDs, biologics) and watch for lung symptoms, such as wheezing, so that COPD can be caught in the early stages if it does arise.

ISTOCKP HOTO

Important Diabetes Type Frequently Misdiagnosed

MY LIFE

How to Lose Weight BY ANNE ROUMANOFF

ANNE ROUMANOFF

ILLUSTRATIONS: JOE MC KENDRY ( TOP) COLONEL MOUTARDE (BOTTOM)

is a wellknown French humorist. She lives in Paris.

AT BREAKFAST, pretend to yourself that crusty French bread, butter, jam, croissants, and chocolate pastries don’t exist. At lunchtime, replace French fries with green beans. Your morale will plummet, and you’ll often feel like throwing in the towel. But that’s exactly the moment when you must confront a desperate desire for chocolate. Fill your supermarket trolley with products that are reduced in fat but increased in price, and don’t tell anyone that you’re cutting down, because if you do, they’ll say … “A little of what you fancy won’t harm you.” “Overweight? You don’t have an ounce to lose!” “Diets just don’t work.” “Go on, just take a taste of this chocolate cake.” “On a diet? AGAIN?” Drink as much water as you can (too bad if you spend all your time on the hunt for public toilets). Avoid overly energetic sports—otherwise you’ll end up with aches and pains, extreme fatigue, and an overwhelming urge to eat anything at all. Weigh yourself daily and note down the results, but don’t show them to your family, who will say things like, “It’s not worth all that pain and effort if you don’t lose weight.” Don’t touch a drop of alcohol. This means that when you’re invited to a dinner party, everyone will have a good time except you. Try on your favorite jeans every day, to quiet the inner voice that whispers, “What’s the point of all this?” when you smell pancakes with chocolate spread bubbling away on a street stall. Despite everything you do, be under no illusion that you’ll ever look like a fashion model. 03đ2018

Good News SOME OF THE POSITIVE STORIES COMING OUR WAY BY TIM HULSE

Tackling Isolation from a long-term illness, they miss their school friends. And not just during lessons, but in the breaks too. A Norwegian startup called No Isolation has come up with a way to reduce loneliness and social isolation. “We can make a difference. We know we can,” says 26-year-old co-founder and CEO Karen Dolva (right). She and her team developed a small white avatar called AV1, which sits on a child’s desk while they’re away from school. Back at home, or from hospital, the child can connect with their class to see and hear the teacher and look around the classroom, using simple controls on a laptop. They can ask the teacher questions and even whisper to fellow classmates.

Across Europe, hundreds of thousands of children are off school for at least two months a year, so the potential for the AV1, already in use in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, is huge. Karen Dolva is now looking at ways to alleviate loneliness for senior citizens. The ultimate goal is to end social isolation completely.

“It’s time for the Astrocat to get the memorial she rightly deserves.” M at t hew Se rg e G uy o n hi s su c c e ss fu l c a mp aig n t o fu n d a st atu e in Par is t o

Fé l i c e tt e, t h e f i rst ( a n d o n ly ) c at t o h av e g o n e t o sp a c e.

03đ2018

COURTESY OF NO I SOLATION; C AUSTI N/SUNDAY P OST

ROBOTS When children suffer

Help for Overwhelmed Venice

Sources: Robots—The Guardian, 13.7.17. Tourism—The Local (Italy), 8.11.17. Luck—The Local (Switzerland), 17.10.17. Heroes—ITV News, 24.11.17

TOURISM On any given day, there

are likely to be more tourists than residents in Venice. Frustrated locals have staged frequent protests at the impact this has had on their lives. Mayor Luigi Brugnaro has already introduced measures to stem the tide, including the promotion of less well-known corners of the city, a ban on new tourist accommodation and a “locals first” policy on water buses. But even more dramatic is the plan to ban large cruise ships from sailing into the lagoon past St. Mark’s Square, which pollutes the water and damages its historic waterfront. Italy’s transport minister has announced that within the next four years, ships weighing more than 55,000 tonnes will have to moor northwest of the city. Mayor Brugnaro has hailed the decision, saying, “We have a solution.”

HEROES GLASGOW’S DEDICATED LITTER-PICKER EDDIE KIRKWOOD has cerebral palsy. He’s confined to a wheelchair, but doesn’t let that restrict him. As he puts it: “Desire, commitment, hard work. That’s all you need in life.” These are the qualities Eddie (below) demonstrates all day, seven days a week as he picks up litter around his home town of Glasgow in Scotland. He does it come rain or shine, and without being paid for his work. “People say I’m doing a great thing, but I don’t see it that way,” he says. “I just want to do my bit so everyone can enjoy clean

Striking Gold LUCK In 2012, two employees of the

commune of Klingnau in Switzerland were mowing a meadow when they discovered 86,000 euros worth of gold ingots stashed in a bag hidden in bushes. After five years, Swiss law operates a “finders keepers” rule, and since no one has successfully laid claim to the ingots, they are now the official property of the commune. The lucky pair who found them have the right to 10 percent of their value.

streets.” Eddie has also raised thousands of pounds for the city’s powerchair football club, which he helped to found. But he doesn’t want thanks. “I’m just a normal guy doing everything I can to make Glasgow a bit better,” he says.

03đ2018

FINISH THIS SENTENCE

… beer!

The food I will never give up is…

New benefits are discovered all the time. KAÍSARAS LOGOS

Me x i c o

… corn tortillas.

MARÍA HERNÁNDEZ

Ho n d u ra s

… chili.

I make the best I’ve ever tasted. JANE SLADEN

Canada

… mayonaise and avocado! FABIOLA LEMUS

Guatemala

03đ2018

… what my mother cooks. LLUIS PUERTO

Spain

… the food in front of me. JUHA HILPINEN

Fi n l a n d

… chocolate cake. No need to ask why, is there? NATALIE

G e r m a ny

… turnips. They smell of good old days.

MARGRIET LESTRADEN

t h e Ne t h e r l a n d s

… brain food,

because it doesn’t give you indigestion. PAUL HARDY

Belgium

03đ2018

As Kids See It

WHOEVER COINED THE PHRASE

I WAS OUT WALKING with my

“the pitter-patter of little feet” clearly never heard a four-year-old walk.

daughters one evening, when my two-year-old looked to the sky and asked, “Mom, who folded the moon?”

@MYMOMOLOGUE

JULIANNA WALDNER

BRYNN, SEVEN YEARS OLD:

Granny, how old are you? GRANNY: I’ll be 66 next month. BRYNN: We’re not paying for that many candles! JUDY NOWISKI 24

03đ2018

YOU DON’T KNOW FEAR until you

hear your two-year-old flush the toilet and yell “bye-bye” from the hall bathroom. @LILWESTMAN

SUSAN CAM ILLERI KON AR

“I love that you have an entrepreneurial spirit and want to help Mommy rebrand her company, but ‘I’m the boss and you’re not’ isn’t quite what I had in mind for a slogan.”

MY THREE-YEAR-OLD granddaugh-

ter, Olivia, was playing with her two-year-old cousin, Nathan, on the gravel patio when I spotted them throwing stones. I called them both over and told them to stop. “Okay, Grandma,” they responded before scampering off. About an hour later, I caught them throwing stones again. I took my granddaughter aside and asked, “How many times do I have to ask you to stop?” She thought about that for a moment, then responded, “Three, Grandma.” JEAN DOBSON

AND ONE FOR THE KIDS Q: What gets wetter the more it dries? A: A towel. reddit.com

my face because I’m chewing gum. @THEBABYLADY7

KIDS: putting heads where “it looks

like it’ll fit” since the beginning of time. ymc.ca MY FAVOURITE THING about watch-

NOTHING PREPARES YOU for the

discovery that the hardcover copy of Anne of Green Gables you lovingly moved from your childhood home to your college dorm to your first apartment to your first house— without picking up so much as a nick or a scrape—has been cannibalized by a pair of safety scissors and double-sided tape to make you a Mother’s Day card. happyyouhappyfamily.com

LISTENING TO MY KIDS try to har-

monize “Livin’ on a Prayer” while brushing their teeth is why I had them in the first place. @ELLENHIMELFARB

FRIEND: “I can’t wait to have kids!” ME: “Yeah, you’ll love it,” I yell over

my one-year-old, who’s screaming in

ing a new movie with my five-yearold is probably watching it 17 times a day for the next three months. @NOT_THAT_MOM

MY KIDS TRIED TO SURPRISE me

for my birthday this morning. I totally heard them coming and snuck out to start a new life somewhere else. A c t o r RYAN REYNOLDS NOTHING WILL MAKE YOU both age

faster and strangely cause time to stand still quite like watching a seven-year-old do their homework. @OUTSMARTEDMOMMY

WHEN I WAS A BOY, I had a disease

that required me to eat dirt three times a day in order to survive. It’s a good thing my older brother told me about it. onelinefun.com 03đ2018

DRAMA IN REAL LIFE

THE DRIVE OF HIS LIFE A cabbie, his kidnapper, and the unlikely connection that redeemed them BY PAUL KIX F R O M G Q

“T

AKE US TO WALMART,” said the man who settled into the passenger seat. The driver, Long Ma, 71, recognized from his voice that he was the one who’d called for the cab, telling Ma that he and his friends needed a ride home from a restaurant. His name was Bac Duong. He spoke to Ma in Vietnamese—their shared native language—and wore a salt-and26

03đ2018

pepper goatee on his thin and weary face. It was 9:30 on a chilly Friday night in Santa Ana, California. Now they want to go shopping? Ma thought. What happened to going home? Ma, a small man with short gray hair and a gray mustache, had been asleep when ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRANCESCO FRANCAVILLA

Duong called and hadn’t bothered changing out of his pajamas. In the rearview mirror, Ma could see Duong’s friends, quiet in the back seat: Jonathan Tieu, a pimply 20-yearold, and Hossein Nayeri, an athletic Persian with an air of indifference. 03đ2018

READER’S DIGEST

Walmart didn’t have what the men needed, so they told Ma to drive them to a Target 45 minutes away. Ma had no way of knowing that they were desperate for phones, for clothes, and for some semblance of a plan. They finally emerged from Target. “My mom’s place is right around here,” Duong lied.“Take us there, please.” The streets were dark and quiet, and after a few minutes, Duong motioned to a mangy strip mall. “Pull in here,” he said. As Ma parked his Honda Civic, Tieu handed Duong a pistol, which Duong pointed at Ma. Ma’s mind raced as Nayeri shouted,

escape and, with all the dread he felt, no easy way to fall asleep. In the morning, Duong turned on the TV. A report about a prison escape was on the news. “Hey,” Duong shouted, “that’s us!” Mug shots filled the screen. A massive manhunt, Ma now learned, was under way for his three roommates.

HE JAILBREAK HAD occurred

a day earlier, on January 22, 2016. It began after Duong, sprawled on a bunk in the open-floor dormitory of the Orange County Jail’s Module F, watched a guard finish his 5 a.m. head count. Duong then gathered the tools that he’d been hoarding MA WAS CONVINCED HE WAS and shuffled to the rear of the GOING TO DIE—HE JUST DIDN’T housing block, where Nayeri KNOW HOW OR WHEN. and Tieu waited for him. There, hidden behind a bunk bed, the three used their tools “Boom, boom, old man!” to work loose a metal grate. They belThe men placed Ma in the back seat, lied through the hole and, surrounded where Tieu now trained the gun on his by pipes and wiring, inched along a stomach. Nayeri jumped behind the metal walkway until it dead-ended wheel and set out for a nearby motel. against a wall. Using the pipes, they By the time they arrived, Ma was shinnied skyward into a ventilation convinced he was going to die—he shaft that led to a trapdoor, which they just didn’t know how or when. Inside a shoved open. cramped room, he watched as Nayeri, Now on the roof, they fastened a who he suspected was the group’s ring- makeshift rope that they’d fashioned leader, splayed out on one of the two from bedsheets and rappelled down beds. Ma was ordered to double up four stories to the ground. No alarms with Duong on the other as Tieu slept sounded; no lights swept the exterior. on the floor near the door, the gun un- They’d done it. They were out. der his pillow. For Ma, there was no The fugitives allegedly first visited 28

03đ2018

READER’S DIGEST

friends, who gave them money. By 9 p.m., the escapees were still in Santa Ana and needed to get away. Duong dialed a cab service that advertised in a local Vietnamese newspaper. Long Ma answered the call. As the men in the motel hooted and marveled at their images on the TV, Ma was introduced to his captors by their televised rap sheets. The three men were in jail awaiting trial. Tieu had allegedly taken part in a drive-by shooting that left one person dead; Duong had allegedly shot a man in the chest after an argument. And Nayeri, well, he was plenty notorious. Four years earlier, acting on a hunch that the owner of a marijuana dispensary had buried $1 million in the Mojave Desert, Nayeri had allegedly snatched the guy and his roommate and driven them to the spot where the loot was thought to be hidden. There, Nayeri and his crew were said to have shocked the man with a Taser, burned him with a butane torch, and poured bleach on his wounds, among other abuses, all in a failed attempt to locate the cash. After the man assured Nayeri there

was no buried money, he was left out there to die. (His roommate found help and saved his life.) Spooked, perhaps, by the prospect that Ma’s disappearance had been noticed, the escapees decided they needed a second vehicle. The next morning, they found a van for sale on Craigslist. Duong took the vehicle for a test spin and then simply drove away. He met up with the others again later, and the fugitives visited a hair 03đ2018

READER’S DIGEST

salon and altered their appearances, none more than Duong, who shaved his goatee and dyed his hair black. When they left the salon, Nayeri and Tieu took the van. Duong and Ma got into the Civic, and there, alone in the car, Duong became relaxed and even chatty, asking about the cabbie’s life in their native Vietnamese. At one point, he even called Ma “Uncle,” a term of endearment that implied respect for the old man. But Ma was leery. For all he knew, Duong was playing an angle. As always in the States, Ma found his fellow Vietnamese the hardest people to read.

who had arrived earlier and become dentists and pharmacists and whitecollar success stories—made him feel ashamed of the life he had made. Money had always been tight, which exacerbated the arguments between Ma and his wife. He knew she was losing respect for him and that everyone in the family had noticed it. Rather than suffer the indignity, Ma moved one day, without explanation, from their home in San Diego. He found a little room in a boardinghouse near Santa Ana, 90 minutes north, and began a solitary existence as a taxi driver—a choice that seemed to have led to his current predicament.

MA KNEW IF HIS KIDNAPPERS KILLED HIM NOW, THEY COULD MAKE A CLEANER ESCAPE. When Ma had landed in California in 1992, with a wife and four kids, he’d struggled. A former lieutenant colonel in the South Vietnamese Army during the Vietnam War, he still had the physical and emotional scars from seven punishing years spent in a Communist forced-labor camp. The war and his time in the camp had placed him nearly two decades behind the first wave of emigrants who’d left Vietnam for the United States. For years he took menial jobs. He would later say that his siblings— 30

03đ2018

DUONG STEERED the Civic

toward a new motel, the Flamingo Inn, where they would meet Nayeri and Tieu. Deep into the night, the fugitives laughed and drank and smoked cigarettes, while on television the news anchors said that the reward for information leading to their arrest had increased from $20,000 to $50,000. Sunday dawned, and Nayeri seemed more distant than usual. Ma’s captors drank and talked in urgent tones. Nayeri soon began yelling at Duong. The room became loud and tense and small. Ma, with his limited English, sensed that the argument concerned him. He’d begun to consider what the men must have realized themselves: If they killed him now, they could make a

cleaner escape. Ma watched as Nayeri pointed in his direction and again shouted, “Boom, boom, old man!” The escapees decided they needed to move north, and on Tuesday morning—day four of Ma’s captivity— they drove 560 stressful kilometers to a motel in San Jose. The journey exhausted Ma, and that night he snored so loudly that he woke Duong, who was lying beside him. But Duong didn’t elbow him awake. Instead, he slowly climbed out of bed, careful not to stir Ma, and curled up on the floor, so Uncle might rest more peacefully. The next day, Nayeri announced that he and Tieu needed to take Ma out for a while in the van. By the time they parked near the ocean in Santa Cruz, Ma had figured he’d been driven to the beach to be executed. His stroll with Nayeri and Tieu began aimlessly—and because of that, it felt even more malevolent to Ma. Nayeri had them pose for pictures. With the ocean, the beach, and the pier as their backdrop, Nayeri acted as if they were friends. What is he doing? Ma thought. And then ... nothing. The three got in the van and drove back to the motel. After watching another news report on themselves, Nayeri and Duong started shouting at each other. Suddenly, Nayeri glanced at Ma and ran his index finger across his throat. In an instant, days of anger and anxiety broke, and Nayeri and Duong fell into a rolling heap. Nayeri ended up on

top and landed a series of clean shots to Duong’s nose and jaw, one after another. Satisfied, Nayeri pulled himself out of his rage. Each man gasped for air. Ma was terrified. But Nayeri did not grab the gun and shoot the cabdriver. He did not haul the old man outside and, in the shadows of the motel, slit his throat. Nayeri simply retreated to a corner. For another night, the four watched one another and, as they went to bed, stewed in the frustration that filled the room. The news reports were no better the next morning—their seventh day on the run. Law enforcement shared photos of the stolen van the men were driving. This rattled Nayeri and Tieu, who announced to Duong that they were leaving to have the van’s windows tinted and its license plates changed. When the door closed behind them, Duong turned quickly to Ma. “Uncle, we have to go,” he said in Vietnamese.

HE TWO MEN drove south in

Ma’s Civic, with Duong behind the wheel. When Duong said to him, “Don’t be afraid; you’re not in danger anymore,” Ma snickered to himself. We’ll see, he thought. He had understood enough of the news to piece together Duong’s criminal past: a 1995 burglary conviction in San Diego, four years after he became a U.S. resident; twice pleading guilty to selling cocaine; stints in state prison; and then, in November 2015, the al03đ2018

READER’S DIGEST

leged attempted murder of a Santa Ana man after an argument. And yet, in spite of Duong’s past, there had been, this whole week, another composite on view: that of a flawed but compassionate man. Ma had caught flashes of details but not the full picture of Duong’s conflicted life. He didn’t realize how chronic drug dependency and what Duong’s friends

her the day her daughter graduated from college, another immigrant success story: “I’m proud of you, Sister.” She was as close to family as he had. Ma listened, reticent but knowing that sometimes people need to be heard even more than consoled. Duong told Ma that Nayeri’s plan had been to kill the driver on the beach. But for whatever reason, Nayeri hadn’t gone through with it. The brutal fight the night before had been over THEY BOTH FELT SO GRATEFUL, Ma too. Duong couldn’t SO SURPRISED BY THE abide seeing the cabdriver POSSIBILITY OF FRIENDSHIP. murdered for Duong’s mistakes. Ma said at last, “ You saw as mental disorders had pushed should turn yourself in.” Duong down a criminal path—and he Duong didn’t balk at the suggestion. didn’t yet know that Duong was the He was grateful for the way Ma hadn’t father of two boys, Peter and Benny. judged him. He didn’t want to call Ma Duong, his eyes filling with tears, “Uncle” anymore, he said. Given the told Ma that he hated how his crimes circumstances of the past week, Duhad placed him outside society. That ong said he wanted to call Ma “Father.” was the most painful thing—not being The suggestion moved Ma, who accepted. His father wouldn’t speak understood the cultural obligation that to him, and his mother said she was came with the moniker: To call Duong ashamed. “Son.” To trust him, to love him, even. A few years earlier, out of prison This scared Ma. Life had taught him to after serving a drug sentence, Duong be cautious around love. And yet when had asked his friend Theresa Nguyen he looked at the damaged man next to and her husband to go with him to his him, his face bruised from the fight mother’s home—“Because I want her with Nayeri, his psyche scarred, he to know that I have normal friends, saw the good that the rest of the world too,” he told Nguyen. He could never failed to see. It warmed him. atone in his family’s eyes. Nguyen “Yes,” Ma said. “You can call me began to get it, why Duong had been ‘Father,’ and I will call you ‘Son.’” calling her “Sister.” Why he’d phoned After hours on the road, they pulled 32

03đ2018

up to an auto-repair shop in Santa Ana. As instructed, Ma slunk inside the garage while Duong sat in the car. In a moment, the old man returned with a woman, who put her head inside the vehicle. Duong started to cry. “Sister,” he said to Nguyen, “I’m tired.”

HE DAY AFTER Duong turned

himself in, Tieu and Nayeri were captured in San Francisco after police were alerted to their van parked on a city street. Ma returned to his boardinghouse. No one had even reported him missing. Though Duong is back in jail now, Ma has stayed in touch. And while money is scarce for the cabdriver, he has put cash in Duong’s jail account. Ma has even visited the man who kidnapped him. The last time he went, Ma watched through a glass parti-

tion as Duong, in an orange jumpsuit, bowed when they met. “Daddy Long!” Duong said, greeting his friend. Throughout their half-hour visit, the two men wept softly and spoke in their native language of the bond they had nurtured since their week on the run. They both felt so grateful, so surprised by the possibility of friendship. Perhaps Ma especially. Whatever he had expected to experience on that dark, cold night when he left his house in his pajamas, it wasn’t this. Wherever he’d figured that trip might lead, it wasn’t here. As Ma grinned through the glass of the visitors’ room wall, he realized that Duong had saved his life, even redeemed his soul. “My son,” Ma said to Duong, “as long as you are still here, I will rescue you like you rescued me.”

MARRIAGE IN THE 21ST CENTURY It turns out that this age-old institution is a wonderful source of modern-day amusement: @Xalqee: At least 10 percent of divorces can be avoided by buying bigger blankets. @TheCatWhisperer: I’m at the level of marriage where “getting lucky tonight” just means we’re having tacos for dinner. @_troyjohnson: Marriage is mostly about knowing which hand towels you can use and which ones are for the better people who visit your wife’s home. BUZZFEED.COM

03đ2018

Why more conversations, and fewer texts, are good for your relationships and your emotional health

CanWe

Talk?

OT LONG AGO, when out-of-town relatives would stay with me for the weekend, my favorite part of each visit happened after the kids went to sleep. We’d pour ourselves wine and chat until nearly midnight, laughing about old memories and sharing new stories. These days, the dynamic is completely different. The first adult who returns from bedtime duty doesn’t reach for the wine glasses; he parks himself on the couch and reaches for his mobile phone. Just until the others show up, he tells himself. One by one, everyone

03đ2018

ILLUSTRATIONS BY CARL W IEN S

BY LISA FIELDS

03Ä&#x2018;2018

READER’S DIGEST

gathers where we used to regale each other with amusing anecdotes, but there’s silence instead of laughter as everyone checks e-mail accounts, text messages and Facebook feeds. We might eventually pour some wine and talk, but everyone keeps a mobile phone in his or her lap the whole night, and the conversation is often interrupted with an alert that someone elsewhere has something (better?) to say. Whenever this happens, I yearn wistfully for the days

WE’RE RESIGNED TO COMPANIONS WHO SOMETIMES PREFER TO USE THEIR DEVICES INSTEAD OF FULLY ENGAGING WITH US .

when my relatives and I would focus all of our attention on each other and really connect. My experience isn’t unique. Half the people in the world have smartphones. In Europe, there are even more mobile phone subscriptions than people, so phones are really everywhere. Mobile phone usage is so widespread, people like me—who value quality conversation—have become resigned to the fact that sometimes our companions prefer to use their devices instead of fully engaging with 36

03đ2018

us. Today’s instant-gratification, shortattention-span lifestyle has trained people to seek new information at every moment, so for many people, faceto-face, lull-in-the-conversation encounters aren’t as engaging as phones with constant news and updates. And relationships are suffering. “Smartphones have become a safety blanket—whenever there’s a moment of potential boredom, people turn to their smartphones,” says Daria Kuss, senior lecturer in psychology at Nottingham Trent University, who studies mobile phone usage. “Since the development of the first smartphones 15 years or so ago, that behavior has been so normalized. Everyone has them.”

A CONSTANT DISTRACTION Because smartphones can produce a never-ending stream of interesting things to look at, they often rival reallife companions. “Mobile phones communicate themselves,” says Oliver Bilke-Hentsch, a psychiatrist in Zürich who studies Internet addiction. “You don’t need a phone call from someone. The device itself shows you new information. You have to control yourself just to look.” Nicole Gommers, 38, of The Hague, has grown tired of competing with a mobile phone for her partner’s attention. “It is hard to have a conversation with him, because he is constantly distracted by his phone,” Gommers says. “When I ask something, he will

“Young people find it very difficult to develop the skill of talking to another person and paying attention to another person without engaging with a smartphone,” Kuss says. “They may have trouble having real-life conversations in a way that we older generations may be used to connecting to people and engaging in deep and meaningful conversation.”

A SILENT FORCE

answer, but I can tell that his mind is elsewhere. There is always someone who sends a text, and that means the end of the conversation, because it requires an answer. “For a while, he was totally addicted to Wordfeud, an online word puzzle game you can play with anonymous others. As soon as he started a game, you were no longer allowed to speak, because he couldn’t focus.” Because younger people grew up with a lot of exposure to technology, they’re more likely than older folks to use mobile phones in social settings, and they’re considerably more likely to sit silently with a group of peers, each person staring at a phone. This has impacted the generation’s communication skills.

Smartphones are so influential, they can have power over a conversation even when they aren’t in use. Researchers have found that when a mobile phone is placed on a table—even if the phone’s owner isn’t actively using it—the depth of mealtime conversation plummets. “Our study found that when the phone was within sight of one or both conversation partners, the participants reported poorer quality of conversations and lower levels of empathetic exchange,” says study author Shalini Misra, an assistant professor of urban affairs at Virginia Tech University. “Rather than being a benign background object, smartphones that are in sight can distract individuals from their in-person context.” Because people may realize that they can be interrupted, they’re less likely to engage in conversations about feelings or problems, instead 03đ2018

READER’S DIGEST

leaning toward superficial small talk. “Meaningful conversations require attentive participants,” Misra says. “We need to listen to the words, tone and pauses, observe facial cues and body movements, and think about what we are hearing to understand what it means and respond appropriately. This is a complex task and requires a lot of cognitive resources. If our attention is split, our complex tasks—like conversations—will suffer. And the visibility of the phone prompts us to direct our thoughts to other things.”

A NEGATIVE INFLUENCE Recent research has found that college students in 2009 had lower levels of empathy than college students did 30 years earlier. The researchers considered the effects of technology and social media on this deficit of empathy, among other factors, but they didn’t draw conclusions about the cause for the drop between 1979 and 2009. “I don’t know that there’s evidence right now of cell phones or social media causing the loss of empathy,” says study author Sara Konrath, assistant professor of philanthropic studies at Indiana University in Indianapolis. “There are probably multiple reasons for the change: changes in family dynamics and sizes, changes in political activities.” Konrath’s other research has found that young adults have the lowest empathy levels, while middle-aged 38

03đ2018

women have the highest levels. Why? Middle-aged women may have more opportunities to flex their empathy muscles: Caring for their children, looking after their older parents and mentoring younger colleagues. Fortunately, Konrath says, you can increase your empathy levels with practice, and leaving your phone out of the equation can help. “We are wired to react face-to-face— our ancestors didn’t have cell phones,” Konrath says. “It’s good to practice empathy in a face-to-face way. You have the capacity to see facial expressions and hear tone of voice. There are more signals about how they’re doing, so you can tune in better.”

FEEDING AN ADDICTION Because mobile phones are so distracting, people become preoccupied with them everywhere, even at work. Fabien Guasco, 43, of Saint-Pathus, France, gets frustrated when it disrupts his meetings. “People are concentrating on the messages that arrive in their e-mail box instead of listening to what is being said,” Guasco says. “That’s why I got into the habit of quickly turning silent if one of my staff is tapping away at their smartphone. As a result, everyone pays attention!” Researchers have found out why it’s hard to put those devices down: They feed an addictive nature. “Every time you get a Like on social media or a reward in a game,” Bilke-

Hentsch says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;you get a little injection of dopamine in your reward center in your brain. You want to have it again. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like smoking a cigarette or eating a sweet. Maybe from your spouse you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get these rewards.â&#x20AC;?

of clinical psychology at the University of Luxembourg, who studies the addictive use of information and communication technologies. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Research suggests that when you receive notifications, you generally check more applications than just the one A HOPEFUL SOLUTION that has sent the notification.â&#x20AC;? r #F iQSP QPDLFUT u Encourage your If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re tired of playing second fiddle to a handheld device and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like partner to keep his unused phone in to curtail a loved oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s smartphone his pocket, not on the table. â&#x20AC;&#x153;When usage without a heated argument, try the phone is in sight, it becomes sathese ideas: lient to the person, even if they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t r %FUBJM ZPVS OFFET Spell out what consciously realize that their attenyouâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d likeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;no phones at mealtime, tion is divided,â&#x20AC;? Misra says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Out of perhaps, or no answering texts while sightâ&#x20AC;? may very well be â&#x20AC;&#x153;out of mind.â&#x20AC;? r $JUF VTFS TUBUT Your partner may youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re conversingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but speak calmly, and donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t accuse or blame. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Use more not realize how much time he spends â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; statements than â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; statements,â&#x20AC;? on his phone, but his phone tracks Kuss says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Say â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I would like to spend how much time he spends on each more time with you,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; instead of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;You app. Ask him to check his numbers. spend all of your time on technology.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;These make you realize the kind of r /FHPUJBUF GPS GFXFS BMFSUT Your time you are spending on your phone,â&#x20AC;? partner doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just look at his phone Kuss says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Seeing that may decrease when he wants to; the phone alerts your use.â&#x20AC;? r #VZ IJN B XBUDI He wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have him to check it whenever something happens on social media or in his fa- to reach for his phone to check the vorite games. If he disables the alerts, time when he wants to know if itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll use his phone less often. dinnertime. Says Billieux, â&#x20AC;&#x153;A recent â&#x20AC;&#x153;These notifications will increase study showed that people wearing a your actual use of the mobile phone,â&#x20AC;? watch reduced their time spent using says JoĂŤl Billieux, associate professor smartphones.â&#x20AC;?

HOWâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S THAT AGAIN? Every crowd has a silver lining. P.T. BARNUM

03Ä&#x2018;2018

How to protect your eyes from age-related retinal problems BY LISA FIELDS

LO N G -T E R M

V I S G

RETEL SCHMITZ-MOORMANN OF DRESDEN, GERMANY, wore

glasses for decades, but when she was 53, they stopped helping. No matter how her eye doctor adjusted her prescription, she simply couldn’t read anymore. The problem? Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which cloaks the central field of vision, making it difficult to see whatever you look at directly, although peripheral vision remains intact. There was no treatment for her condition. “If you think of a dark spot wherever you look, that’s almost exactly what my vision is like,” says Schmitz-Moormann, now 79, a patient spokesperson with Pro Retina Deutschland, a self-help association of people with retinal degeneration. “It took months, if not years, for me to allow the idea that this eye disorder was part of my life.”

03đ2018

I O N 03Ä&#x2018;2018

AMD is one of three common conditions affecting the retina, the area in the back of the eye that the lens projects images onto. To see those images, your retina must send details to the optic nerve so that your brain can process the scene. If the retina becomes damaged, part or all of your vision can be wiped away, sometimes permanently. Millions of older Europeans have retinal conditions. They’re often caused by aging or associated diseases. Yet many neglect their eye health. “As people get older, they have an expectation that there will be a decline in their vision,” says Dr. David GarwayHeath, an ophthalmology professor at the University College London, “so they don’t necessarily seek out routine care to detect eye disease.” Skipping checkups can have dire effects: Retinal problems progress silently, surreptitiously robbing you of sight when interventions might have helped. “People with these conditions may have no complaints,” says Dr. Sehnaz Karadeniz, professor of ophthalmology at Florence Nightingale Hospital in Istanbul. “Therefore, regular eye examinations are mandatory to save the sight.”

AGE-RELATED MACULAR DEGENERATION AMD is the leading cause of adult blindness, affecting some 18 million Europeans. Changes within the eye damage the center of the retina, impacting vision. Early on, straight lines 42

03đ2018

look distorted. Later, dark spots block what you’re viewing. “The center of the retina gives you the most quality of life,” says Dr. Hansjürgen Agostini, retinal specialist at the Eye Center of the University of Freiburg in Germany. “That’s where you read, where you recognize faces.” There are two forms of AMD: Wet and dry. About 80 percent of people have dry AMD, caused by retinal thinning due to aging. There’s currently no treatment, although there is research ongoing. “An early study showed that in a specific genetically defined group, which is about half the population, you can slow the progression of the disease by a monthly injection, but these findings will have to be confirmed by late-stage trials,” he says. Only 20 percent of people have wet AMD, but it causes significant vision loss: Abnormal blood vessels grow behind the retina, leaking blood, scarring and damaging the retina. Intraocular injections can stop the bleeding, but they must be given frequently, often over years. “The injections aren’t pleasant, because they go into your eye , but patients are prepared so that they don’t feel any pain,” says European Forum Against Blindness board member Julie-Anne Little, senior lecturer in optometry and vision science at Ulster University in Northern Ireland. “Several studies have proven their value in preserving vision.” People with AMD don’t go com-

ALL PHOTOS: ©SHUTTERSTOCK

READER’S DIGEST

pletely blind and can navigate with peripheral vision. Schmitz-Moormann maintains her independence with absorptive-filter glasses and a cane for walking, plus a magnifying glass for reading large-print books. TO REDUCE YOUR RISK OF AMD: n Don’t smoke. It can double your

risk of AMD. n Live healthily. “The Mediterranean diet should reduce your risk,” says Dr. Peter Wiedemann, director of the Eye Department at the Leipzig University Hospital in Germany. “Physical activity lowers risk. In 41,000 white individuals, those who did physical activity had 40 percent lowered risk of AMD than sedentary people.” n Try a supplement. Researchers found that specific antioxidants and minerals may reduce risk. “The antioxidants present in the retina are lutein and zeaxanthin, so those two antioxidants are in the supplement,” Little says. “It wasn’t a barn-door positive effect, but it definitely did help.” n Test yourself between eye tests. Look at a special grid of lines, called an Amsler grid, to catch AMD early. “Periodically look at that through each eye separately,” Little says. “Do you see the four corners? Distortion of any squares? It’s a very useful thing.”

DIABETIC RETINOPATHY One-third of Europeans with diabetes have diabetic retinopathy, the lead-

ing cause of preventable blindness among diabetic adults. Uncontrolled blood-sugar levels damage blood vessels throughout the body, including vessels that nourish the retina. They can become swollen and leak blood. Or new, leaky vessels may grow on the retina. Leaked blood or insufficient blood flow can distort or block vision. People often don’t notice a problem until their vision is damaged. “People with diabetes have gradual visual loss due to retinopathy and therefore are not aware of it unless their daily life is affected,” says Dr. Karadeniz, who is European chair of the International Diabetes Federation. “We can prevent severe visual loss, in most of the cases, if it is diagnosed early and treated.” Proliferative diabetic retinopathy is usually treated with laser surgery to reduce bleeding at the back of the eye. A separate condition, called diabetic macular edema (DME), is developed by about half of those with diabetic retinopathy. DME is treated with regularly scheduled anti-VEGF intraocular injections, which block a protein that can stimulate abnormal blood vessels to grow and leak fluid. “The moment you stop the injections, four to six weeks later, the proliferations come back,” says Dr. Agostini. In 2009, 70-year-old Hüsnü Ender Erel of Istanbul was diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy, decades after his diabetes diagnosis. He has been treated with intracocular injections 03đ2018

READER’S DIGEST

GLAUCOMA, A STEALTH DISEASE GLAUCOMA IS AN OPTIC NERVE CONDITION that doesn’t directly damage the retina but robs many people of vision. Fluid flows into and drains out of the eye at set rates. When it doesn’t flow quickly enough, pressure can build up, damaging the optic nerve. This causes irreversible peripheral vision loss and can lead to blindness. You can’t tell if you have glaucoma because it’s painless, your central vision is intact, and you’re tricked into believing that you have peripheral vision. “It’s not a dark spot, like with AMD,” Dr. Wiedemann said. “You are behind three cars but you see two cars. What do you see instead of the third car? You just see street. Your brain fills in what you expect to see or are used to seeing. If a child runs into the street and into the part where you don’t see anything, you don’t even notice that you don’t see the child.” Some 12 million Europeans have glaucoma, of whom 10 to 15 percent are blind. Glaucoma is more common after age 60, and it often runs in families. There’s no way to lower your risk and no cure, but there are treatments: Eyedrops are most common, followed by laser treatment or surgery. Although drops can prevent vision loss, unfortunately many patients don’t consistently use their drops. Doctors want to change this. Says Dr. Garway-Heath, who is also vice president of the European Glaucoma Society, “Moorfields Eye Hospital is leading a large, randomized, multicenter trial of people with glaucoma, funded by the UK’s National Institute for Health Research, to see which is the most cost-effective treatment and which patients prefer, the drops or the laser treatment.” Peter Austin of Surrey, England, was diagnosed with early glaucoma at age 32. Today, at 61, his vision is still intact because, twice a day, he applies eyedrops. “It’s not uncomfortable, it’s not difficult—you just have to be disciplined,” said Austin, a patient advocate with the International Glaucoma Association. “Tell me, how much of your eyesight would you like to lose before you felt terrible enough to do something? I haven’t missed a dose for more than 20 years.”

03đ2018

and keeps his blood sugar at the recommended levels with a strict diet program. So far, he hasn’t lost any vision. “I am fastidious about it,” Erel says, “Diabetes controls are very important.” TO REDUCE YOUR RISK OF DIABETIC RETINOPATHY: n Control your blood sugar. You’ll

protect your eyes. “We can do a lot, but we do not have a chance if the glucose levels are not controlled well,” Dr. Agostini says. n See an eye doctor. Go when you’re diagnosed with diabetes, then annually thereafter. “About 20 percent of people with type 2 diabetes are diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy at the time of diagnosis,” Dr. Karadeniz says.

DETACHED RETINA Retinal detachment—a medical emergency —is more common after age 40, and it’s often caused by the aging process. The interior of the eye is filled with a gel-like substance, the vitreous. As you get older, the vitreous can shrink, and it may pull on the retina as it shifts. Sometimes, it pulls with enough force to tear the retina, separating it from the back of the eye so that the retina can’t work properly. Ophthalmologists can easily identify a detached retina. Reattaching it quickly can restore vision. “The earlier we get it, the better

your vision is,” Little says. “It’s complex and difficult surgery, but surgeons get some pretty good results.” In 2014, Tom Greenberg of Michigan had no idea that he had a detached retina. “I started seeing a dark blob on the edge of my field of vision, and it would move around some as I moved my eyes,” says Greenberg, 66. He waited a week before seeking help. Although a surgeon reattached his retina, vision in that eye remains distorted. When his other eye exhibited identical symptoms in 2017, Greenberg acted quickly: He had surgery that day, and the vision in that eye is as good as it was before. Lifestyle changes can’t prevent age-related retinal detachment, but you can preserve your sight by getting treated promptly. TO PREVENT VISION LOSS FROM DETACHED RETINA: n Question visual obstructions.

They may signal detached retina. “If you suddenly see stars or floaters or soot-particle flakes—we see it as dark snow—you should go and see your eye doctor, because this may be an emergency,” says Dr. Wiedemann. n Seek care immediately. Delaying can lead to permanent vision loss. “If you see dark clouds or really strong flashes or shadows or dark walls coming up, go the same day to see a specialist,” Dr. Agostini says.

03đ2018

Laughter THE BEST MEDICINE

GOOFUS AND GALLANT OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

Gallant waits patiently to be fed.

Gallant likes to exercise daily.

Gallant politely poses for photographs.

Goofus camps out in his bowl.

Goofus hides when it’s time for gym class.

Goofus has to ruin every picture.

I GOT MY HAIR HIGHLIGHTED

because I thought some strands were more important than others. C o m e d i a n MITCH HEDBERG

A COUPLE ARE SITTING in their

living room, sipping wine. Out of 46

03đ2018

the blue, the wife says, “I love you.” “Is that you or the wine talking?” asks the husband. “It’s me,” says the wife. “Talking to the wine.” S u b m i t t e d b y MARVIN KEELER, Salina, Kansas

P HOTOS, C LOCKW ISE FROM TOP LEF T: ISTOCK/TH INKSTOCK (CATS AND G OATS). AP PHOTO/KERSTI N JOENSSON. COURTESY LINCOLNSHI RE F IRE A ND RESCU E

The popular U.S. children’s magazine, Highlights, poked fun at the goofy people and the gallant in our world. Gallant always did things correctly, while Goofus was like us—messing up right and left. Turns out, they can be found in the animal world too.

THE COOL PART about naming

your kid is you don’t have to add six numbers to make sure the name is available. @BILLMURRAY THE LATEST PARENTING fads, according to the Onion: Couples are waiting to announce their pregnancy until after their child has graduated college and become a partner in a successful law firm. Parents are choosing not to learn the gender of their obstetrician. As part of the new Infinity Womb trend, women are using a wide range of Lamaze, strength-training, and yoga techniques to forcefully prevent their children from ever leaving their wombs, forever protecting them from the harsh realities of the world. I CAN STILL REMEMBER a time when I knew more than my phone. @CLARKEKANT

THE STAR OF Cake Boss was arrested for driving while impaired. Police interrogated him for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

GRAPHIC: GETTY IMAGES

C o m e d i a n JOE TOPLYN

TWO MEN HAVE BEEN ice fishing all day. One has had no luck, while the other has pulled out a ton of fish. “What’s your secret?” asks the unlucky fisherman. “Mmmmm mmm mm mmm mmmm mmm mmm,” is the reply.

“I’m sorry; what did you say?” “Mmmmm mmm mm mmm.” “I still didn’t understand you.” The lucky fisherman spits something into his hand and says slowly and clearly, “You’ve got to keep your worms warm.” EVERY NOVEL is a mystery novel if you never finish it. @MEGANAMRAM

EDIBLE COMPLEX Food blogs are rife with pressing questions, helpful hints, and caustic comments from readers. One site took a jaundiced look at what one might expect to find on such boards. ■ “I don’t eat white flour, so I tried making it with raw almonds that I’d activated by chewing with my mouth open to receive direct sunlight, and it turned out terrible. This recipe is terrible.” ■ “I don’t have an oven; can I still make this? Please reply immediately.” ■ “A warning that if you cook this at 275°F for three hours instead of at 400°F for 25 minutes, it’s completely ruined. Do you have any suggestions?” MALLORY ORTBERG, on the-toast.net

03đ2018

One was a hardened young criminal. The other a calm and uncynical prison warden. All they had in common was sport. BY BRUCE GRIERSON

Prisoner & Guard

The Prisoner 48

03Ä&#x2018;2018

& the Guard

READER’S DIGEST

He crossed 10,000 meters of pretend ocean and then stood up, his top soaked with sweat. None of the other inmates took much notice of the 26-year-old. But Davis, veteran guard and Sports and Leisure Tutor here at Lowdham Grange Prison near Nottingham, England, was impressed. Davis, then 40, didn’t know much about McAvoy. The convict had said little since he’d arrived three months earlier from a maximum-security prison up north. Davis sidled up. “How fast did you do that?” he asked. McAvoy gave him the number the rowing machine had coughed up. Davis nodded, then excused himself and disappeared into his office. Two years earlier, John McAvoy had received a life sentence for conspiracy to robbery and firearms offenses. He was a known criminal; deep family roots in high-profile bank heists (his stepfather is in prison serving life for armed robbery and his uncle took part in the renowned Brink’s-Mat gold bullion robbery in 1983) pushed the boy towards villainy. He had first been held at the high security unit at London’s Belmarsh Prison, before eventually being relocated to Lowdham Grange. To McAvoy, it was just another jail. 50

03đ2018

But landing here would prove a stroke of fortune. Because Darren Davis was anything but just another prison guard. Tall and broad, with a calm air of competence, Davis firmly believed in the notion that everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt, and everyone deserves a second chance. That’s one of the reasons he became a prison guard in the first place. “I feel it’s part of my duty,” he says, “to help rehabilitate and guide individuals in their ambitions to change.” There is no trace of cynicism in Davis, which is pretty rare in his circumstances. McAvoy noticed that a rift existed between Davis and some of the other prison officers; they seemed not to know what to make of his guileless positivity. After he’d slipped away from the gym to his office, Davis returned carrying a stack of paper he’d printed from his computer. He handed it to McAvoy. “What are these?” “The current British and world records for indoor rowing,” Davis said. Based on what he’d just seen— it turned out McAvoy had pumped out those 10,000 meters in a time an Olympic rower would be satisfied with—Davis reckoned a couple of world endurance records were poten-

PHOTO (P REVIOUS SP READ) BY ALW IN GREYS ON

NE AFTERNOON IN NOVEMBER 2009, amid the clanking of barbells in a prison gym in the British Midlands, officer Darren Davis kept his eye on one inmate in particular. John McAvoy, a compact, baby-faced tank of a man, was working out ferociously on a rowing machine.

PHOTO: P OLICE HANDOUT

tially within the inmate’s reach. The 100-kilometer record for lightweight men, perhaps, or even the 24-hour distance record. “Can you even get an official record for something you do in prison?” McAvoy asked. Good question, Davis said. He’d look into it. Davis had broken the ice with John McAvoy at the perfect time, for the young inmate was just about ready to talk. To need to talk. Two weeks earlier, McAvoy had learned that his cousin Aaron—his best friend in the world—had been killed in a botched ATM-van robbery. After receiving the news by phone, McAvoy returned to his cell and stared at the ceiling. If I hadn’t been in jail I probably would have been with him, and I would be dead too, he thought. That fact hung in the air for a moment, and in the silence an insight bloomed. What do I have to show for my life? Nothing. I’ve only caused anguish for my mum. He made a promise to himself that night that he would turn his life around. Now, epiphany stories are ten a penny in prison. But as McAvoy opened up to Davis bit by bit over the days and weeks that followed, telling him the story of wanting to change, of his turnaround, Davis reserved judgment. He didn’t scoff and he didn’t laugh. He listened. When a job in the gym—folding towels and cleaning the equipment— fell vacant, McAvoy applied and got it.

A police photo of McAvoy from his time in prison

Then he began requesting shifts that overlapped with Davis’s. “There’s no one else in prison I can talk to about anything other than crime,” McAvoy told him. What the two men talked about, mostly, was sport. Davis was a high-performance athlete. He had scaled peaks in Greenland, run a famously grueling 69-mile race in a day, cycled the length of Britain, been written up in the local papers. McAvoy was impressed. Davis’s toughness had depth. McAvoy learned that he had raised money for charities on many of his extreme challenges. Whenever they met, Davis would advise him on training, nutrition, human physiology. McAvoy lapped it all up. Like a wise older brother, Davis knew to wear his influence lightly. Everyone is capable of changing, Davis believed. But he also knew he couldn’t change anyone, least of all John 03đ2018

McAvoy. “The life adjustment,” he says, “has to come from within.” In any prison there is an invisible line between inmates and guards. The “inmate’s code” includes the tenet: “Don’t trust guards or the things they stand for.” But the code goes the other way as well. McAvoy wondered what price Davis was paying, in the eyes of his colleagues, for befriending him. The pair sat down and discussed what McAvoy was capable of and came up with a plan. McAvoy would go for the 24-hour world rowing record. He had already begun training for shorter distances, and he was surprised at how quickly his body responded. “It’s something inside me I didn’t know I had,” he told Davis. In the meantime, Davis pondered 52

03đ2018

PHOTO: COURTESY JOHN MCAVOY

McAvoy, a one-time hardened criminal, is now a world-class athlete.

how he could make this happen. Releasing McAvoy from his cell for a full day violated the prison’s protocol, let alone for 24 hours. This was a category-B high-security jail; at night it was completely and utterly locked down. Davis wrote a letter appealing to the prison governor. Could an exception be made in these unusual circumstances? The young inmate showed huge focus and determination, Davis told the governor. Indeed he was dead set on being a sportsman when he got out of prison. Then Davis added that the inmate aimed to raise muchneeded funds for the Rainbows Children’s Hospice charity. The governor mulled it over. Then he said yes. A couple of months later, in early spring 2011, Davis and McAvoy set up camp in the prison gym. It was Davis’s day off, but he’d come in anyway to monitor McAvoy’s world-record attempt. He tacked up a white board to keep track of McAvoy’s time, pace and calories consumed—the nitty gritty of extreme human performance. As other inmates wrapped up their workouts in the last exercise period of the day, Davis pulled a stationary bike up right behind the rowing machine. At 4 p.m., Davis looked McAvoy in the eye and counted down from three. McAvoy brought the oars back, and his shoulders engaged. He began to row. Right behind him, in solidarity, Davis began to pedal. Evening approached. The last of the staff clocked out, leaving McAvoy

READER’S DIGEST

and Davis to their private labor. The flywheel hummed. In four years, McAvoy had not been outside his cell after dark. A thrill of freedom gripped him. As midnight came and went, he was flying. But around 2 a.m., something happened. McAvoy started showing signs of a man who badly wanted to lie down. Davis dismounted and crouched close to him. “Your brain is telling you to sleep, but trust me, this is absolutely the time to keep rowing,” he said. “I promise you that in the morning, when you’re used to waking up, you’ll come out of this dark spell.” Sure enough, come the dawn, McAvoy got his second wind. As other prisoners began to wake, word went through the prison that McAvoy was still on the machine, and ahead of the world-record pace. By late morning, the record was in view. By 2 p.m. McAvoy had it. But still Davis applied the spurs. “The more distance you put between you and the next guy,” he said, “the harder this record will be to break.” The new official world record— 263,396 meters, or more than 163

miles—was duly recorded at 4:05 p.m. (McAvoy’s record has since been broken, in 2014.) While McAvoy lay wet and exhausted on a blue mat next to the rowing machine, Davis turned to him and said, “You have a gift,” he said. “Not many people can push themselves and do what you can do. Do not waste that gift.” Then McAvoy, his back plaster-cast stiff, returned to his cell. The other inmates burst into applause as he entered the wing. It was the first time John McAvoy had got respect for anything that didn’t involve pointing a gun at somebody. TODAY MCAVOY competes as a triath-

lete. He knows how lucky he is to have met Davis—his sensei—on the other side of the law. “Davis is the man who set me on the path to change,” he says. From hardened criminal to a redeemed man: if you wrote it as fiction, no one would quite believe it. But for Davis—the prison guard and the man—McAvoy’s turnaround is not surprising. For Davis believes that “No matter how far down the wrong road you’ve gone, it’s never too late to turn back.”

TO THE POINT Here’s a good rule of thumb: Too clever is dumb. OGDEN NASH

03đ2018

T WAS A DAY IN LATE JUNE, gray and depressing, with clouds hanging low. My husband and I were driving to Nova Scotia, Canada, for a much-needed vacation. We traveled glumly, hoping to reach rest and dinner before the rain came. Suddenly, on a lonely stretch of highway, the storm struck. Cascades of water shut us in, making driving impossible. We pulled off onto

03đ2018

the shoulder of the road and stopped. Then, as though someone had turned off a celestial faucet, it ended. A thin radiance, like a spray of gold, spread from the clouds. Every blade of grass was crystalline as the sun flashed on trembling drops. The very road shone, and a rainbow arched across the sky. It was as though this beam of color had been built for us alone. We could hardly speak for awe and joy.

P HOTO: © JAM ES O’NEIL/GETTY I M AGES

RD CLASSIC

Overtaken by

Joy BY A R D IS WHITMAN

A friend of mine has described a similar experience. She had walked out on a lonely beach at twilight. It was a time of grief for her, and loneliness was what she wanted. Offshore, across the darkening sea, she made out the image of an anchored fishing boat, and in it the figure of a man. My friend told me that after a while, she felt an intense and glowing sense of oneness with that

silent figure. It was as though sea and sky and night and those two solitary human beings were united in a kind of profound identity. “I was overtaken by joy,” she said. Most of us have experienced such lighted moments, when we seem to understand ourselves and the world and, for a single instant, know the loveliness of living beings. But these moments vanish quickly, and we are 03đ2018

almost embarrassed to admit that they the realization that this other person have ever been. speaks as you speak, feels as you feel. However, psychologist Abraham Joy may wait, too, just beyond danMaslow of Brandeis University em- ger when you have enough to face a barked some years ago on a study of av- situation and live it out. Whatever the erage individuals and found that a great source, such experiences provide the many report such experiences— most memorable moments of life. “moments of great awe; moJoy is much more than ments of the most intense happiness. It is “exultahappiness or even raption of spirit,” says the Joy is the ture, ecstasy, or bliss.” dictionary, “gladness; feeling that we In his files, for exdelight ; a state of ample, is the story felicity.” Awe and a have touched the of a young mother. sense of mystery are hem of something Getting breakfast for part of it; so are hufar beyond her family, she hurmility and gratitude. ried about the kitchen S u d d e n l y w e a re ourselves. pouring orange juice and keenly aware of every livcoffee, spreading jam on ing thing—every leaf, flower, toast. The children were chattering; cloud, the mayfly hovering over the the sun streamed in on their faces; her pond, the crow cawing in the treetop. husband was playing with the littlest “O world, I cannot hold thee close one. All was usual. But as she looked at enough!” cried the poet Edna St. Vinthem, she was suddenly so overcome cent Millay in such a moment. by how much she loved them that she The most important thing in these could scarcely speak for joy. peak experiences, says Maslow, is the Here, too, is the story of a man who feeling of these people that they had remembers a day when he went swim- really glimpsed “the essence of things, ming alone and recalls “the crazy, the secret of life, as if veils had been childish joy with which he cavorted in pulled aside.” the water like a fish.” He was so overWe see, too, the unity of things—a whelmed by his great happiness at dazzling vision of the kinship we all being “so perfectly physical” that he have with one another and with the shouted again and again with joy. universal life around us. Everyone Apparently almost anything may who has ever had such a moment has serve as the impetus of such a feeling— noted this quality of “melting into.” starshine on new snow; a sudden field The sad thing is that it happens to of daffodils; a moment in marriage most of us so rarely. As we grow older, when hand reaches out to hand in our lives become buried under the 56

03đ2018

READER’S DIGEST

pressures of the workaday world. Joy is not likely to come to us when we are going round and round the tormenting circle of our own busyness. Instead, it seems that when life’s transiency and frailty are omnipresent, what we have grows sweeter. I remember finding myself seated beside an old gentleman on a train some years ago. He sat quietly looking out the window. His eyes searched each leaf, each cloud, the lines of passing houses, the upturned faces of children watching the train go by. “It is beautiful, isn’t it?” I ventured at last, intrigued by his absorption. “Yes,” he said. Then he smiled and waved a hand at a passing hay wagon. “See,” he said. “Hay going to the barn.” And he made it sound as though there could be no greater event than a wagonload of hay on its way to the mow. He saw the question in my face. “You think it’s strange,” he said, “that just a hay wagon means so much. But you see, last week the doctor told me I have three months to live. Ever since, everything has looked so beautiful, so important to me. You can’t imagine how beautiful! I feel as if I had been asleep and had only just woken up.” Perhaps we’re more likely to experience a moment of joy if we can admit there is more to life than we have fathomed; if we can acknowledge a world greater than our own. To be sure, the experience of joy is not necessarily religious in a conventional way. But a characteristic is the feeling people

have that they have touched the hem of something far beyond themselves. In my own life, there was a moment of special exaltation. En route by plane to the U.S. Midwest, we were flying at a high altitude, and a continent of shining clouds spread beneath us. Often, before and since, I have watched these radiant towers and hillocks of cloud go by. But this time, the scene was haunted by a strange joy so penetrating that the plane seemed not to be there. I thought of myself as living and walking in a land like that, and I knew in a flash of deep illumination that there was in the universe a light, a stuff, a web, a substance in company with which one would never be lonely. The experience left the compelling certainty that we dwell safely in a universe far more personal, far more human, far more tender than we are. What if these moments of joy are given to us to reveal that this is the way we are meant to live? What if the clarity of joy is the way we should be seeing all the time? To many people, it seems almost wicked to feel this radiance in a world threatened as ours is. But most generations have known uncertainty and challenge and peril. The more grievous the world, the more we need to remember the luminous beauty at the center of life. Our moments of joy are proof that at the heart of darkness an unquenchable light shines. This article originally appeared in the April 1965 issue of Reader’s Digest. 03đ2018

Points to Ponder NO ONE CAN give money to everyone who asks. But when you come upon one of your species who is struggling, you need to let him know that you see him. Look into his eyes, and let him look into yours.

[THE 21ST CENTURY IS] just not what it was cracked up to be. I would have liked to see us control the weather as opposed to being able to make a phone call without having a cord. LEWIS BLACK,

comedian,

ELIZABETH BERG, in Real Simple

THERE IS A DIMENSION to life that

is not fully knowable simply by our rational capacities. I love reason, I love science, but reason doesn’t explain to me what it feels like to kiss my wife.

GIVING YOUR BABY a name, it turns out, also includes anticipating how other children will cruelly twist it to hurt them. After a few rounds of brainstorming possible mean things, you begin to think you may have missed your calling.

THOMAS TROEGER,

theologian,

MEAGHAN O’CONNELL,

on wonderingsound.com

w r i t e r,

on nymag.com

TO TRAVEL ALONE, I learned, isn’t to rely on yourself. To travel alone is to force yourself to depend on others. It is to fall in love with mankind. KEN ILGUNAS,

a u t h o r,

in his book Trespassing Across America

My mother would say to me, “You can’t eat beauty. It doesn’t feed LUPITA NYONG’O, you.” actress, in a speech

03đ2018

DAVID CROTTY/GETTY IM AGES. RAY TAMA RRA/GETTY I M AGES

novelist,

in the Eugene Weekly

I’m a person who spends a great deal of his time wondering why he’s not happier. I have found that the only thing that does bring you happiness is doing something good for somebody who is incapable of doing it for DAVID LETTERMAN, themselves. former late-night talk show host, in the New York Times

THE RED CARPET is a strange zone in the Western world, one utterly untouched by feminism … It is a place where there is a tacit agreement that both celebrities and the public are idiots and will be treated as such by entertainment journalists.

IF YOU WANT to live a good life these days, you know what you’re supposed to do. Get into college but then drop out. Spend your days learning computer science and your nights coding. Start a technology company … that’s the new American dream. FAREED ZAKARIA,

HADLEY FREEMAN,

op-ed columnist,

w r i t e r,

in his book In Defense of a Liberal Education

in the Guardian (U.K.)

BASEBALL IS SIMILAR TO LIFE. THE REASON WHY unexplained

events have a disproportionate emotional impact is that we are especially likely to keep thinking about them ... Once we explain an event, we can fold it up like freshly washed laundry, put it away in memory’s drawer, and move on to the next one.

You start out at home and get a little older (first base). Then in early adulthood (second base), you’re the furthest away from home you’ll ever be. You get a little older and wiser (third base), and you see home plate. Then you realize that where you want to be is where you already were.

DANIEL GILBERT,

RICH DONNELLY,

social psychologist,

f o r m e r Ma j o r L e a g u e B a s e b a l l c o a c h ,

in his book Stumbling on Happiness

in the National Catholic Register

03đ2018

Treatments that are unique to each individual are the way of the future

Parkinson’s Now

What You Need to Know

Nicolai Hesdorf exercises weekly to reduce his symptoms and level of medication.

03đ2018

PHOTO BY LARS BERTELSEN

BY ANNE MULLENS

READER’S DIGEST

T WAS CHRISTMAS 2011 WHEN DUTCH TEACHER Martin van Lokven noticed a tremor in his right arm. He was rehearsing a play with his students. “I couldn’t imagine I was nervous,” said van Lokven, then 62. The tremor didn’t go away. Five months later, after an appointment with a neurologist, he got the diagnosis: Parkinson’s Disease.

r Nicolai Hesdorf of Copenhagen had a high-powered job, working 60- to 80hour weeks in his job as head of the Nordic Division of Monitor Deloitte, an international strategic consulting firm. When he developed a stiff, sore shoulder and fatigue in the spring of 2016 he thought it was work stress. That June, however, a special brain imaging procedure called a DaTscan showed his levels of the essential neurotransmitter dopamine, which regulates movement, emotions, and feelings of pleasure, had fallen by 80 percent. He was 41 and had Parkinson’s. r Graphic artist Emma Lawton of London was just 29 in 2013 when her right arm became stiff and numb. She thought it was carpal tunnel syndrome and ignored it for months. When she finally went to a doctor, the unexpected diagnosis was early onset Parkinson’s. Every week, some 1,500 people in Europe are diagnosed with Parkinson’s. The second-most common neurodegenerative condition after Alzheimer’s disease, two-thirds of those diagnosed are men, with rates in both sexes increasing with age. According to the European Parkinson’s Disease Association, more than 1.2 million people 62

03đ2018

in Europe are estimated to have the condition. With the aging of the population, the numbers are expected to double by 2030. It is now known that one thing that goes wrong in Parkinson’s is the rogue behavior of a protein, called alpha synuclein, that begins clumping and folding in irregular ways, gunking up the transmission of nerve signals, especially around the release of dopamine, the essential neurotransmitter for movement and coordination. It is still not known what propels the protein to turn nasty or why the disease progresses at different speeds in different people. Current thoughts are that it may be caused by an infectious agent, like a virus, bacteria or prion (a protein particle) combined with other triggers. As Parkinson’s progresses, hands can tremble uncontrollably so that eventually the ability to do up a button, hold a pen, hold a knife or fork without shaking is lost. An expressionless “stone” face as well as posture, walking—and freezing in place—and balance problems can arise, too. London surgeon James Parkinson first described the condition in 1817,

PHOTO COURTESY EMM A LAWTON

yet the cause and cure are still unknown. Since the 1960s, medications (primarily carbidopa/levodopa) have been available that boost dopamine and manage some of the symptoms— for a while—yet no therapy can halt, slow or repair the neurodegeneration. The good news, however, is a huge array of research is giving insights into the unique presentations and progression of the disease in each person; how risk factors may unite to spur the disease; and new targets for treatment. Moreover, since individuals with Parkinson’s can live for 40 years or longer, more focus is being placed on the training and coordination of day-to-day care and on personalizing approaches to improve the quality of life of those living with the condition. “One size does not fit all in Parkinson’s and our approach must be unique to the individual needs of the patient,” stresses Dr. K. Ray Chaudhuri, head of Parkinson’s Research at King’s College London. “This is the way of the future.” If you or a loved one has Parkinson’s, here are seven encouraging developments:

NEW GENES, NEW TREATMENT TARGETS For years Parkinson’s was thought to have no genetic link. In 1997, however, an extended family in a small Italian village was found to have more than 60 descendants affected with the condition. This led scientists to the discovery of the first related gene that encodes a

With the use of a specially designed, hightech watch that calms tremors, Emma Lawton can write and draw again.

specific protein, alpha-synuclein, that builds up in the brain, eventually destroying the cells that produce the important neurotransmitter dopamine. Today more than 20 genes or gene variants have been found. “These genetic findings show us where to look for what goes wrong and what we might be able fix to stop the disease,” explains Brian Fiske, senior vice president of research programs for the Michael J. Fox Foundation, established by the U.S. actor who was diagnosed at age 29 with Parkinson’s. Gene research has even led scien03đ2018

higher risk. Periods of high stress have also been linked to Parkinson’s.

Martin van Lokven keeps well-informed and participates in his own treatment.

tists to reexamine new uses for old drugs, such as Exenatide, for diabetes, which in a 2017 study was found to slow disease progression by altering brain energy production. One of the most important features of the genetic research, however, is the knowledge that having any of the genes is not a guarantee the condition will strike an individual. That means one or more other triggers must also occur, too. To date, a wide range of other possible co-triggers have been identified including head injury, carbon monoxide poisoning and environmental toxins. People with type 2 diabetes are at 64

03đ2018

STARTING IN THE GUT OR THE NOSE? In 2003 German anatomist Dr. Heiko Braak proposed a six-stage progression of the disease, starting in the nose or the intestinal tract, then gradually traveling up nerves to the brain. “The Braak Hypothesis has opened up fascinating new avenues of research,” explains Professor Bastiaan Bloem, consultant neurologist in the Department of Neurology at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands. Dr. Braak’s theory connects dots of puzzling early symptoms. For example, about 90 percent of people with Parkinson’s report a loss of smell up to 10 years before the onset of any tremor. A recent study found significant shrinkage and altered anatomy of the part of the brain responsible for smell in people with Parkinson’s. In others, constipation is an early problem, which has now been linked to potential changes in the gut microbiome. Another intriguing finding is that 80 percent of people with a specific sleep disorder, in which they act out their dreams, develop a neurodegenerative disease such as Parkinson’s within 10 years. Could early changes to the part of the brain responsible for sleep get damaged first, before dopamine production is hit? Such early nonmotor symptoms may create targets

PHOTO BY GOFF E STRUIKSMA

READER’S DIGEST

for early screening and interventions, such as a vaccine, to halt the spread before more widespread nerve damage occurs.

GLOBAL SEARCH FOR RELEVANT BIOMARKERS Led by $60 million in funding from the Michael J. Fox foundation, a massive study is underway at 33 clinical sites in 11 countries—including nine in Europe—to collect blood, tissue, physical measurements, and other biological and physical data. Nearly 1,000 individuals with and without Parkinson’s have volunteered to participate. Called the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI), the ongoing study started in 2010, tracking data from the same people over time to see if any key biological changes, or biomarkers, determine the rate of disease progression. If they do, then it may be possible to diagnose the condition or intervene with new therapies earlier. The Netherlands has its own $13 million Personalized Parkinson’s Project, funded by the Dutch government and the former Google Life Sciences. It is following 650 people with Parkinson’s for two years, collecting their plasma, blood, DNA, RNA, and cerebral spinal fluid, and conducting state-of-the-art neuroimaging. The project will even collect the participants’ microbiome—the blend of intestinal bacteria in their feces—to compare it to brain-related changes. Each individual will also wear a spe-

cial smart watch to constantly record movements, tremors, exercise, heart rate, and other measurements. It is the first study using wearable sensors to track and measure Parkinson’s symptoms. “The main goal of the project is to build very finely grained individual disease profiles to really personalize treatment,” said Bloem. Reliable biomarkers are essential to promising vaccine research underway in Europe, notes Dr. Alexandra Kutzelnigg, head of clinical development at the Vienna biotech company AFFiRiS, which is currently testing two vaccine formulations. Biomarkers will not only determine if vaccines are halting progression, but will contribute to the ultimate goal: a vaccine that prevents Parkinson’s completely.

TECH HACKS FOR BETTER LIVES In June 2016, graphic artist Emma Lawton got a special gift: a prototype watch to wear on her wrist, linked to a computer tablet, that emits a vibration that disrupts her tremor enough for her to write and draw again. “It’s really empowering,” said Lawton who worked with Haiyan Zhang, Innovation Director at Microsoft Research Cambridge, U.K., to develop and test the invention, which is now being trialled with others with Parkinson’s. Other such new devices include gyroscopic gloves that reduce the impact of tremors; stablizing cutlery and anti03đ2018

READER’S DIGEST

spill cups that make it easier to eat; smart phone apps that prompt home exercise, coach speech therapy, and dial numbers; and cueing headphones that emit rhythmic tones or music to improve walking skills. There are also shoes that send out laser light cues that spur a smoother gait less prone to falls. Parkinson’s destroys the internal automatic movement functions of the brain, but, says Bloem, “If they look at stripes on the floor or listen to a rhythmic beat, they can walk effectively. It is called external cueing.” In development are wearable sensors that will track symptoms and eventually predict patterns, helping individuals know when they may need to rest, up their medication or be careful with timing of activities. “Parkinson’s is so varied, not only between people but for an individual between their good and bad days, that [devices] that can look back and see patterns and then predict future patterns would be particularly helpful,” says Lawton, who now is Devices and App Strategist for Parkinson’s U.K.

DIET AND EXERCISE Parkinson’s symptoms respond to exercise. “Exercise works like a drug, in that it stimulates and boosts dopamine, replenishing it in the brain,” says Bloem, who notes the boost lasts much longer than the duration of the exercise. With his team at Radboud University, Bloem has conducted 66

03đ2018

multiple research studies on the value of various exercises and has recently developed a game app that increases exercise motivation. Nicolai Hesdorf has found he can greatly minimize his symptoms and reduce his use of medication by exercising vigorously five to six times a week with strength training and cardio. Healthier diets, too, seem to mitigate Parkinson’s symptoms, but each patient needs to find what works best for them. “I avoid all sugar—in any shape—as well as gluten and dairy products. I also do prolonged fasting at least twice a week where I only consume water, tea and coffee for 32 hours,” Hesdorf says. “I try to maintain a diet high in healthy fats such as coconut and avocado oil and low in carbs.”

DEEP BRAIN STIMULATION Over the last 15 years, deep brain stimulation (DBS) has become an accepted treatment that can provide significant improvements in Parkinson’s symptoms and medication side effects. “In the carefully selected patient, it is a very strong treatment that can provide a second honeymoon of reduced disability and symptoms,” said Dr. Guenther Deuschl, a neurologist from Kiel, Germany. Ideally, the patient is under 70, at least four years into their diagnosis, has more tremors, “off” periods, and needs higher doses of medication. During the procedure, which takes

about six to seven hours with the patient usually awake, electrodes are implanted deep in both hemispheres of the brain. Wires from the electrodes are then threaded underneath the skin down into a small battery-operated terminal, called a neurostimulator, which is implanted near the collarbone. Once in place, the neurostimulator is programmed to meet each patient’s unique needs. Steady electrical pulses are then delivered continuously through the electrodes to the brain.

NEW MODEL OF CARE While research discoveries and high tech treatments are exciting, what makes the most difference in the daily life of a person with Parkinson’s is coordinated, easy-to-access care from health professionals with specific training and expertise to help. Realizing this sort of care was sorely lacking, in 2004, Bloem and his colleague, physiotherapist Marten Munneke, set up a Dutch network of multidisciplinary care providers—neurologists, physiotherapists, dietitians, massage therapists, speech therapists, nursing, psychiatrists, psychologists and more—with defined expertise in Parkinson’s.

They then linked them together in a user-friendly, web-based platform that people with Parkinson’s could easily search to find appropriate providers in their region. Not only that, the interface allowed people with Parkinson’s to access up-to-date information, communicate with providers, and provide feedback, increasing their connections and knowledge. Called ParkinsonNet, the awardwinning model now has 69 regional hubs in the country with more than 3,000 health professionals. Studies have found the model reduces falls and hospitalizations and increases selfreported quality of life. Overall treatment costs are lower in regions where ParkinsonNet operates. A spinoff, ParkinsonTV, features a monthly online broadcast of experts and patients discussing daily Parkinson’s issues. Both the network of Parkinson’s professionals and the TV show are being replicated elsewhere, including Norway and the U.S. “ParkinsonNet involves patients in their own care. The caregivers are all specialized, which means you always end up in the right place,” said Marten van Lokven. “If you as a patient are well-informed you can actively participate in your own treatment.”

PLAY IT SMART You only live once—but if you work it right, once is enough. JOE E. LEWIS

03đ2018

Imposing monuments from around the world built in honor of heroes, great victories and deities BY CORNELIA KUMFERT

CRISTO REDENTOR is the 30-meter-high Christ statue that stands high above Rio de Janeiro with arms outstretched. The Brazilian city‘s most famous landmark is both tourist attraction and pilgrimage site. On some days, as many as 4,000 people make the trek up the 710-meterhigh Mount Corcovado to visit the tiny chapel in the mighty statue’s base or simply to enjoy the stunning views of the city by the Sugarloaf Mountain.

03đ2018

PHOTO: © GETTY IMAGES /LOBO PRESS

Super Sized

life! The 204-metric-ton Statue of Liberty in New York stands 93 meters tall and wears 762-centimeter-long sandals on her feet. If you’re planning on enjoying the view from her crown, you’d do well to wear sensible footwear yourself—you’ll need to climb 354 steps to get there. THE WORLD’S LARGEST stonecarved Buddha is in Sichuan province in China, near the city of Leshan. Work on the giant stone statue began in AD 713 and was only completed more than 90 years later. Almost completely intact more than 1,200 years after it was finally finished, the 71-meter-high Leshan Giant Buddha still watches over the city in southwest China today. 70

03đ2018

P HOTOS: © TRAVEL PI CTURES/ALAM Y STOC K PHOTO; © ARTERRA/UIG VIA GETTY I M AGES

THIS LADY really does live the high

A MYTHICAL BEAST, half lion, half fish, guarantees people’s prosperity in Singapore—at least according to legend. The Merlion once saved the city-state from a storm and has been a symbol of good luck ever since. Today, its heroic deed is commemorated by a 37-meter-high statue.

ARMED WITH sword and shield,

the Motherland Statue towers 102 meters above the Ukrainian city of Kiev. But the future of the world’s tallest statue of a woman is up in the air—for many Ukrainians the monument is an unwelcome reminder of the Soviet era.

PHOTOS: © ZOONAR GMBH/ALAMY STOCK P HOTO; © GETTY IM AGES/M UME MORIE S; © ANATOL II STEPA NOV/AFP/GETTY I MAGES; © GETTY IMAGES/JA MES O‘NEIL

GANESHA is one of the Hindu faith’s best-loved deities. At 16 meters high and 22 meters long, this sculpture in Chachoengsao may not be the biggest, but it is nonetheless a popular destination for Thailand’s Hindu minority.

03Ä&#x2018;2018

Since my husband died, I have tried to do the impossible: reanimate the love of my life word by word, tweet by tweet, text by text

Jonathan BY NANCY WESTAWAY FR O M T H E WAL RU S

03Ä&#x2018;2018

I LLUSTRATION BY MELANIE LA MBRIC K

Grieving for

03Ä&#x2018;2018

OR MONTHS, I HAVE BEEN SEARCHING through tweets, emails, Facebook posts and text messages for a missing person. He isn’t a stranger. He’s my husband and the father of my two children. And he’s not really missing. He’s dead.

Late at night, after I put our kids to bed, I begin my hunt for Jonathan. I reread emails about mundane dental appointments or brunch dates. “Whose job is more important today?” reads one, sent when a child needed to be collected early. I linger over quick asides, our children’s pet names and his simple sign-off, “love JJ.” Each time, I find another morsel, some note that makes me smile. I can almost hear him. But I know I am trying to do the impossible: to reanimate the love of my life word by word, tweet by tweet, text by text. My husband was a writer. He made wry observations in a few crisp syllables. We met at journalism school in Winnipeg in the early 1990s. I am strangely attracted to a badly dressed man, I thought at first. He needed a haircut, and he wore runners and rugby shirts he got from playing the game. I hated sports. We used the same carpool, and our daily commute became a rolling, laughing ride through the streets. Jonathan’s biting wit earned him the sarcastic moniker “Sunshine.” In school we learned how to interview and tell stories accurately, all while meeting high-pressure dead76

03đ2018

lines. Soon after graduation, eager to begin our careers, Jon took a job as a newspaper reporter in Edmonton and I started working as a managing editor at a news and entertainment weekly in Winnipeg. We were still just friends, but I felt hollow when he moved away. One perk of my job was a computer with Internet access. I quickly connected with Jon and two other members of our carpool. Online, we resumed the banter of the icy drives to school. I teased Jon for his ineptitude at dating in an email with the subject line, “Why Jonny Can’t Breed.” His hilarious responses became the highlight of my day; my heart jumped whenever I saw his name appear in my inbox. One summer day, Jon came home to Winnipeg for a visit. We took a walk, and I told him I was crazy about him. We started dating immediately. Our long-distance relationship was both exciting and excruciating. We would hug in the airport and launch into a whirlwind weekend. But halfway through a visit, I would begin to crash, awaiting the inevitable goodbye. And far too soon we’d be back in the airport, saying our farewells. We filled the physical gap with fre-

READER’S DIGEST

quent emails about our days and the stories we were pursuing. It was years before we lived in the same city. We broke up, got back together and, finally, both landed jobs in Toronto. After one year of sharing an address, we got engaged. We married in Winnipeg on December 28, 2000, on an extremely cold afternoon.

URS WAS A media-driven household; we consumed newspapers over coffee and breakfast before starting long, unpredictable days working as reporters—Jon in print and me in radio. We

outdo the other’s story. After three years in Toronto, Jon went to Australia to cover the Rugby World Cup. While he was away, I flew to Calgary for a wedding and wound up calling Jon with some news of our own: I was pregnant. In the first few emails, we dubbed our tiny offspring Grain. But only a week and a half later, doctors told me I was having a miscarriage. Jon was still away, trying to support me through phone calls and emails as best he could. Everything would be okay, he said. But bad turned to worse when I collapsed from what turned out

WE WERE HIGHLY COMPETITIVE AND TAUNTED EACH OTHER ON SLOW NEWS DAYS WITH EMAILS ABOUT MADE-UP EVENTS. never knew whether we’d be home for dinner and understood when a movie night was cancelled because of a breaking story. We were highly competitive and taunted each other on slow news days with emails asking about made-up events: “Do you know about the thing? Can’t believe it blew up.” or “Did you get to talk to that guy? Amazing story he has.” If we appeared at the same scrum, we would smile hello, ask our questions and run back to our respective newsrooms, each of us trying to

to be a ruptured ectopic pregnancy and was rushed into emergency surgery. Through the time difference, the sadness and the haze of painkillers, email continued to be our connective tissue. Our dream of a family came true when we welcomed our son in 2004 and our daughter in 2007. Jon crafted news release–style birth announcements in which we were identified as CEO and president of Jenkaway Inc., a merger of our last names. The email notice of our first-born 03đ2018

READER’S DIGEST

included the line: “The launch, widely expected for the past nine months, went smoothly, and stock in the new division opened trading at 9 pounds 12 on the London exchange.” Three years later, a new “operating system” was “unveiled to a rapturous industry after a laborious operation that went off with surgical precision at exactly 4:53 p.m. EST.” Jon worked newsroom shifts that sometimes allowed him to be my co-pilot during the day while I was on maternity leave. When he wasn’t home, he sent me sanity-saving

Our lives settled into a fairly predictable pace until one September day in 2013, when I found myself at an endoscopy clinic, waiting nervously for Jon to appear. He had booked an appointment after a sore throat had turned into trouble swallowing. When he finally arrived, he told me he had been stuck in an elevator but hadn’t called because he thought I would have seen his playby-play tweets. (“Help! I’m trapped in a Queen’s Park elevator with no politician to grill.”) I didn’t read the elevator posts until

I COULD SAY EVERYTHING CHANGED THE DAY OF JON’S DIAGNOSIS, BUT EVERYTHING KEPT CHANGING. emails from the outside world; I gave him the scoop on grins, crawls and spit-ups. When I returned to work, we sent each other hasty messages about daycare drop-offs and pick-ups. Over the years, Jon became a political reporter with a busy online presence. He effortlessly turned the news of the day into acerbic one-liners on Twitter. When he covered elections he would be away for weeks, and I wouldn’t know where he was on the campaign trail until I looked at his tweets. I’d piece together his day 140 characters at a time. 78

03đ2018

weeks later, when I needed a reminder of when things were simpler. While Jon was waking up from his throat scope, the doctor took me aside in the hallway and told me the worst news I’d ever heard: Jon had esophageal cancer. I could say everything changed that day, but everything kept changing. Dramatically. Terrifyingly. Helplessly. We started communicating differently: I took notes at doctor’s appointments and wrote emails—that Jon would then proofread and edit— to update family and friends. In

surgeon was coming to see me. I knew Jon was either dead or dying. I began to cry as I was escorted into a small room inside the main waiting area, where I frantically tried to call our family. My cellphone kept cutting out, and my texts couldn’t seem to escape that little room. When the surgeon arrived, she told me the cancer had spread too far for surgery. I went to Jon’s bedside and held his hand as the doctor told him Nancy Westaway and Jonathan Jenkins in September he was dying. 2013, the month of his cancer diagnosis. Hours later, we sent the toughest email we had ever them, we shared our hopes for Jon’s written—the story of his impending treatment regimen. death. I read it to Jon, and he offered We also explained how we told our his edits. It included our determined son and daughter about their dad’s resolve to enjoy each and every day, diagnosis using the three Cs: the kids no matter how many we had. didn’t cause it, cancer isn’t contagious and they will always be cared HAVE BEEN LIVING with one for. It was important for us to make foot in the past, rereading traces sure our friends and family had a of a journey that ended on April vocabulary for talking about cancer, 28, 2014. with their children and ours. The first line of Jon’s obituary read: The intense chemotherapy drained “Family man, Winnipeg Jets fan and Jon. He lost his mop of hair. He journalist Jonathan Jenkins died afcouldn’t eat because he couldn’t swal- ter a brutal home invasion—cancer low. He stopped being able to work. crept in and robbed him of his life in Six months after his diagnosis, we pre- his 50th year.” The line first appeared pared for a major day-long surgery. on Facebook and then on Twitter. A While Jon went into the OR, I found a cascade of messages soon took over couch in the waiting room. Only one my feeds. Kind words began ricochethour into the procedure, I was told the ing around the Internet. Jon’s name

P HOTO: JOEE WONG

03đ2018

READER’S DIGEST

started trending on social media. He was everywhere and nowhere. At first, I was uncomfortable with the online grieving. When people clicked “like” on a Facebook post of Jon’s obit, the action felt remote and impersonal, as if someone were taking something that belonged to us. But digital death notices and online goodbyes are now part of modern

Jon’s account to mine to keep track of something important. And my heart still leaps when I see his name appear in my inbox. As much as I want to hold onto virtual pieces of Jon, estate business involves erasing your beloved. I’ve sent back his driver’s license and health card. I’ve cancelled his credit cards and redirected bills. When I register the kids

THE ECHOES OF JON, THE PULSES OF HIS DIGITAL PRESENCE, HELP ME GET THROUGH THE DAYS. love. When I saw the names of people I had never met posting their condolences, I understood it. When I die, I want my friends and family to be comforted too. After he died, Jon’s Internet presence grew (curiously, for a while his Twitter account even gained followers) and then faded. Every time I Google his name, his articles have slipped further down in the search results and his email accounts keep filling up with spam: “It’s been a long time since we heard from you, Jon,” and “You can still get a deal on…” Once, his e-book subscription service sent him an email about a title it said had been chosen just for him: Heaven Is for Real. These things would have made him laugh. Sometimes I forward emails from 80

03đ2018

for summer camps online, Jon’s name often autofills the forms, and I have to put my cursor in each field and hit delete, delete, delete. Before he died, Jon shared the important passwords with me, but we were too busy living the last of his days to get caught up in paperwork. When he was gone, I was astounded by how many other passwords I needed for basic online transactions, such as continuing a newspaper subscription or downloading a movie. Jon had always taken care of all the technical stuff. Now I’m reluctantly teaching myself things I never wanted to learn about: uploading pictures, upgrading operating systems, removing viruses and keeping Apple TV running. As I navigate solo parenting, I’m

building an archive for the kids of their dad—a bread-crumb trail of their father’s spirit for them to follow. But I worry about storing the copies of his tweets, Facebook posts and emails. Our house is filled with obsolete technology, a reminder that Jon could disappear further when computer systems change. A few weeks after Jon died, I dropped my iPhone and the glass shattered. I used packing tape to try to save the screen and carried the device around like a bandaged Bible. I comforted myself by flipping through text messages and time-travelling back to before we ever used words like cancer, chemo, morphine or palliative care. I tried to transfer texts with date stamps to my email. I bought an app, but it didn’t work. Then one day, when the phone was in my pocket as I was shoveling snow, water from a melting snowflake slipped under the tape and washed away most of the screen.

My phone’s demise was another kind of ending. How many virtual strands should I be holding onto? When is it time to retire Jon’s Twitter and Facebook accounts? When should you say goodbye to old, broken cellphones? And what else should be kept? A shirt our son might grow into, or the pink tie Jon wore when our little girl sat perched in a pink dress on his lap in the press gallery of the legislature? What about my wedding ring? I always called Jon my good thing. We said our love would last a lifetime, and for one of us it did. The echoes of him, the pulses of his digital presence, help me get through the days. Every time I search through my emails for the words “love JJ,” I know that with every click, I will be filled with both comfort and torment. I often think of the last text he sent me, four days before he died. It posed a question I struggle with each day. “Is everything okay?”

OLD-BOY NITWORK We have a lively Yahoo! Internet group for our schoolmates. There’s Sajan, one dear old-boy member, who enjoys correcting everybody’s spelling and grammar. So when Davis, another member, misspelled “deteriorating” as “rdediatoring” on the message board, Sajan immediately pulled him up in an open rebuke. We all thought it was unfair, since it seemed no more than a typing error—until Davis posted this: “Sorry Pal, Thanks for the correction. I know I am week in spelling.” MOHAN SIVANAND, MUMBAI

03đ2018

I’M AT THE LIBRARY, and for some

I WAS CUDDLING with my girl-

reason, when I plug my flash drive into the computer, it doesn’t show up. I keep trying, but nothing happens. As an IT major, I know I can figure this out. So I spend 15 minutes changing settings and inserting and removing the flash drive. Then a girl sitting next to me taps my shoulder and says, “You’re plugging into my computer, not yours.” Source: acidcow.com

friend, and she said, “I love lying here with you.” “I once caught a fish, and it was five feet long and spoke Hebrew,” I replied. She stared at me, confused. “That was my lie,” I said. “Oh, right. I see. Very funny,” she said. She paused a moment before rolling over. “That was my lie.”

03đ2018

From

@AB1KENOBE on reddit.com

ILLUSTRATION BY JOE DI CHIARRO

Life’s Like That

I’M AT THE AGE where I can’t take

anything with a grain of salt. S u b m i t t e d b y c o m e d i a n MATT WOHLFARTH

A COMMERCIAL boasted that its

product could help people live pain-free in their golden years. “Am I in my golden years?” my wife, 63, asked. “Not at all,” I assured her. “But you are yellowing fast.”

SLINGING MUD Stop! Don’t take that dirty car to the car wash. Let Texas artist Scott Wade turn your mud-caked back window into fine art instead.

DENNIS MCCLANAHAN, B u c kn e r, Mi s s o u r i

HUMOR 101

A few years back, a woman wanted to use the word acorns. What she wrote instead was egg corns, and ever since, linguists have had a new toy: eggcorns, words and phrases that people screw up: ■ Social leopard (social leper) ■ Mute point (moot point) ■ Skimp milk (skimmed milk) ■ Youthamism (euphemism) ■ Like a bowl in a china shop (like a bull in a china shop) ■ Holidays sauce (Hollandaise sauce) Sources: the Eggcorn Database and theguardian.com

SCOTT WADE

AFTER MY THREE-YEAR-OLD

begged and begged, I gave in and let her attend a concert with her older sister and brother. As we took our seats, I handed programs to the kids. Following the lead of her siblings, my three-year-old opened her program and announced, “I’ll have the chicken.” From gcfl.net 03đ2018

Where the

Pasture

Sea

Meets the

The picturesque fishing village of Port Isaac dates to the 14th century.

03Ä&#x2018;2018

In Cornwall, old traditions give way to something new as chefs, farmers, and fishermen transform their pastoral corner into a culinary Eden BY JEFF CHU F RO M TRAVEL + L EISU RE

03Ä&#x2018;2018

READER’S DIGEST

03đ2018

the fragrance of thyme and garlic, and the glow of Cornish butter. It was an expression of Cornwall itself—unexpected, unfussy, and gorgeous. Adams and Bloomfield aren’t the only outsiders to realize the fertile promise of Cornwall. Some of Britain’s most inventive young chefs and entrepreneurs are settling here and finding inspiration in the region’s traditions. Together with Cornish farmers and fishermen, they are sparking a profound, renewed confidence in the bounty of this land. What’s old is new again—and it tastes phenomenal. BEFORE ARRIVING at Coombeshead Farm, my husband, Tristan, and I spent three days hiking 41 kilometers of Cornwall’s South West Coast Path, from Boscastle to Padstow. The path traverses slope after seaside slope, some so steep that we ascended and descended by earthen staircase. Gulls squawked but kept their distance, much as the locals did. Everywhere we went, they were welcoming but reserved, embodying the ambivalence that the Cornish have about outsiders. Legend has it that when Saint Piran, one of Cornwall’s patron saints, arrived, having floated on a millstone across the Irish Sea, his

PHOTOS BY SI MON WATSON

N AN AUGUST DAY,

Britons Tom Adams and April Bloomfield splashed through a stream and then crossed a field behind Coombeshead Farm, their 18thcentury Cornish farmhouse. The two chefs—he in London and she in New York—have turned their property, located near Lewannick, England, into an inn and restaurant. They were expecting dinner guests that evening, and the afternoon’s mission was to forage ingredients— wild sorrel, blackberries—for the meal. We passed wild watercress, common hogweed (whose seeds taste of citrus), and pineapple weed, which offered an instant olfactory trip to the tropics. The sorrel we gathered would go with pig’s-head rillettes. Blackberries were destined for an arranged marriage with Cornish cream. “Such abundance,” Bloomfield said. We skirted a streamside forest. Suddenly, the two unleashed a litany of expletives. The object of their awe was in a tree: a Chicken of the Woods mushroom about the size of a human head. Within hours, it would be transformed into the best version of itself, bearing the wood-fired oven’s char,

Opposite: a pasty from Boscastle Bakery. Above left: Chef Adams forages ingredients. Above right: St. Enodoc, Trebetherick, was once almost completely buried in sand.

first converts weren’t people—they were a badger, a fox, and a boar. It’s easy to see why outsiders still come to this fat finger of land, which points from Britain’s southwesternmost corner across the Atlantic. Though Cornwall contains some of England’s poorest neighborhoods, it is rich in heritage and beauty. Every hill on our hike brought new vistas, every bend a different field—this one framed by an ancient stone wall, that one filled with golden rapeseed blossoms. Just as abundant : the stories, stretching back centuries. In Trethevy,

we sat for a few silent minutes in a medieval chapel dedicated to Saint Piran. In Tintagel, we clambered amid the cliff-top remnants of what legend has is King Arthur’s castle. In several places, we marveled at gravity-defying seaside towers, souvenirs of Cornwall’s quarrying days. For sustenance as we walked, we bought savory pasties in each town. Once, the miners took these thick pastries, filled with beef, potatoes, and onions, down into the tin and copper mines as a practical, all-inone meal. Discarded remnants of 03đ2018

READER’S DIGEST

crusts were reputedly scavenged by knockers, elf-like creatures believed to inhabit the mines. A few kilometers past Trebarwith Strand, we passed a flock of sheep grazing in a cliff-top pasture. I confessed to my husband I was thinking about mutton stew and lamb chops. He chided me. “What are you thinking about?” I asked him. He smiled sheepishly and replied: “Sweaters. And sheepskin-covered seating.” WE ENDED OUR HIKE in Padstow, a foodie destination, which owes its culinary stardom to celebrity chef Rick Stein, who opened his first seafood restaurant in Cornwall in 1975. One evening, we dined at his casual restaurant Stein’s Fish & Chips. The lemon sole in a perfectly crisp batter was heavenly—the fact that we had to pay one pound for tartar sauce, less so. The establishment is one of ten Padstow businesses owned by Stein, including four restaurants, a café, delicatessen, bar, patisserie, fishery, and gift shop. Stein’s success has downsides, as does Cornwall’s emergence as a gastronomic destination. The complaints? Crowds in Padstow, whose population swells from about 2,500 to 5,500 during peak season. Commercialization, too: Stein’s empire can feel corporate and over-branded. The upsides of success? Hundreds of jobs, as well as a magnetism that attracts tourists and culinary talent. Nathan Outlaw, who originally came to 88

03đ2018

cook in one of Stein’s restaurants, now has five of his own—two in Port Isaac, one in Rock, and two outside of Cornwall—and they have four Michelin stars among them. When I asked what rejuvenates him, he thought for a moment. “Callum, one of my fishermen, who does all the crabs and lobsters,” he said. “From the restaurant, I can watch him get his pots, day in and day out, rough weather—whatever. That’s an inspiration.” Another recent non-native entrepreneur is Tarquin Leadbetter, proprietor of the six-year-old Southwestern Distillery. Reared in neighboring Devon, he spent several years in London before settling here. “I wanted to quit my desk job, go surfing in the morning, and make gin in the afternoon,” he said. Leadbetter now lives that dream on Constantine Bay Beach, a crescent of golden sand. Though his gin and pastis have quickly accumulated prizes, including the title of Best Gin at the 2017 World Spirit Competition, nothing else happens fast at the distillery. Everything is made in small batches, mostly in in handhammered copper pot stills. For his gin, Leadbetter used to grow violets in his garden, and for his pastis, forage for wild gorse flowers, which lent the spirit a hint of coconut. Cornish patience can be misinterpreted by people elsewhere in Britain. But conservation of Cornwall’s natural balance is a key metric of suc-

Left: Hanging out on the waterfront patio of The Shipwrights Pub in Padstow. Right: A cliff-top view near the remnants of what legend has is King Arthur’s Castle.

cess, claims Saul Astrinsky, a native Cornishman who owns the Wild Harbour Fish Co. His six-year-old company, which he runs with his wife, Abi, sells seafood to some of London’s top restaurants. All of his fish are caught by rod, handline, or inshore trawls and pots, the most sustainable methods, and he pays his small-boat suppliers premium prices. “There are lads who pick winkles off the rocks for us, and we’re now doing mussels, lobsters, crabs,” he told me, “We’ve got to be careful not to ruin this.” His landlubbing counterpart might be master butcher Philip Warren,

whose namesake butchery and graziers has been carving up cows from Bodmin Moor since 1880. Though often stereotyped as bleak and moody, the moor is a vibrant ecosystem of granite and peat, hill and marsh. The cattle that Warren’s suppliers raise are accustomed to the bitter grasses growing in the moor’s acidic soil. “The cattle are tending the moor, and the moor is tending the cattle,” Warren said. “If you didn’t have the cattle, in five years, the moor would be overgrown with gorse and bracken.” Warren and his farming neighbors have found new life by marketing their unique, naturally organic meat 03đ2018

READER’S DIGEST

to chefs from Cornwall to London. Business has roughly tripled during the past decade, and he now has a long waiting list. He lauds consumers’ shifting preference for grass-fed beef, which is typically richer in flavor. “We live in an imperfect world of farming. And we’re really quite happy about it.” Really, the entrepreneurship is just a new version of an old story: neighbor caring for neighbor. “All we want,” Warren said, “is for people to keep making a living in this age-old way.” FARMING “IS hand-to-mouth living” for most Cornish families, Mark

TRAVEL TIPS n LODGING Avalon Hotel, Tintagel, doubles from Ð106, theavalonhotel. co.uk; Coombeshead Farm B&B, Lewannick, doubles from Ð197, and prix fixe dinner for Ð73 per person Thursday-Sunday, coombesheadfarm. co.uk n DINING Golden Lion Inn, Port Isaac, harborside, entrées Ð9-19, thegoldenlionportisaac.co.uk; The Mariners Public House, Rock, overseen by chef Nathan Outlaw, entrées Ð17-28; themarinersrock.com; Paul Ainsworth at Number 6, Padstow, modern Cornish cooking, entrées Ð36-50, paul-ainsworth.co.uk; Stein’s Fish & Chips, Padstow, entrées around Ð12, rickstein.com

03đ2018

Hellyar told me. His family raises lambs and grows barley on 162 acres outside Padstow. The dairy farms that once dotted the region are mostly gone, including his family’s. The costs were too high, revenues too low. Today, part of the family land—set amid coastal countryside designated by the government as an “Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty”—is a caravan park. Over eight weeks each summer, the Hellyars reap four times as much revenue from trailer fees as they do annually from barley and lamb. Hellyar also owns vineyards in France and fantasizes about planting some grape vines. He jokingly speculates that the product, like Cornwall’s people, would be robust “and maybe a little salty.” One reason he’s been able to dream: European Union subsidies. By holding at least 4.8 hectares, one becomes eligible for yearly subsidies of, in Hellyar’s case, £15,000 per year. Thanks to the 2016 Brexit vote, in which a strong majority of Cornish voters backed leaving the EU, “that’s all in doubt now,” Hellyar said. Farming’s decline has also meant opportunity for enterprising businesspeople like Adams and Bloomfield. Coombeshead Farm is welcoming, understated, unpretentious. The five bedrooms are simple but comfortable. House manager Lottie Mew, Adams’s girlfriend, makes the soap with homegrown lavender. The point of it all, noted Bloomfield, is rest. “Everything

today is so transient, so fast,” she said. “Let’s slow down a minute.” Guests are welcome to watch as Adams and his team cook. One afternoon, he sent me to the garden to harvest chards and lettuces for that evening’s salads; the next morning, I went to the henhouse to collect eggs for breakfast. “There’s a charm in something unrefined,” he said. “We want to create a place that not only fills the stomach but also lowers blood pressure and makes guests feel at home.” And local. The Coombeshead team produces its own vinegars, kombucha and a fermented-tomato jam. There’s no citrus, not even for the gin and tonics, because it doesn’t grow nearby; the delicious alternative is a housemade black-currant-and-nettle cordial. There’s no olive oil, either. One concession: coffee. Adams and Bloomfield imagine Coombeshead might become more than the existing inn. Bloomfield grew up in inner-city Birmingham and fell in love with food and agriculture during countryside sojourns in her teens. “We’d buy a bag of peas from a farm stand and just eat them raw,” she said. She’s already drafting mental plans for

turning outbuildings into educational facilities for working-class youths, like she once was. IT’S NOT SURPRISING that Bloomfield wants others to experience the Cornish countryside. One morning, I rose with the sun, put on wellies, and walked to a nearby field where a stand of trees stood silhouetted against the pink and orange sky. The grass was wet with dew. As I neared the house, the hens clucked their greetings. Adams was alone in the kitchen making granola when I came in, and we chatted about inspiration. “Here we are at the faraway end of the country, and there are so many interesting people doing interesting things. A lot of them don’t even realize how good it is,” he said. He still commutes to London for two days a week and spends five at Coombeshead—a brutal schedule made possible only by the fresh creative air that reinvigorates him in Cornwall. “It’s this mix of people coming in, learning, and doing something new, and people doing things their family has done for generations. Yet it all feels like it’s just the beginning.”

DON’T GET UP People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy. BOB HOPE

03đ2018

The

Elephant Whisperer FROM THE B OOK T H E E L E P H A N T WHISPER E R : M Y L I F E W I T H T H E H E R D IN THE AF RIC A N W ILD

Nana, her baby at her side, gives Lawrence a friendly nudge. 92

03Ä&#x2018;2018

BONUS READ

Lawrence Anthony ran an African preserve for 15 years. Here is his story of life with the herd. BY LAWRENCE ANTHONY

READER’S DIGEST

HE GAME RESERVE WHERE I LIVED IS CALLED THULA

We had lots of indigenous wildlife at the reserve, including white rhino, Cape buffalo, leopard, giraffe, zebra, antelope. But no elephants. And now I was being offered a whole herd. There was only one problem, Garai told me. The elephants were considered “troublesome.” They had a tendency to break out of reserves, and the current owners wanted to get rid of them. If we didn’t take them, they would be put down—shot. All nine of them. What do you mean by troublesome? The matriarch is an escape artist and can break through electric fences, Garai explained. She’s learned how to unlatch gates with her tusks. Or she twists the wire around her tusks until it breaks, or else just takes the pain and smashes through. I pictured a 4.5-metric-ton beast deliberately enduring the agonizing shock of eight kilovolts stabbing 94

03đ2018

through her body. That took determination. Perhaps I should have said no. But I have always loved elephants. Not only are they the largest and noblest land creatures, but they symbolize what is majestic about Africa. I was unexpectedly being offered my own herd. Would I ever get an opportunity like this again? “Yes,” I replied. “I’ll take them.” I had two weeks, or else the deal would be off. The elephants would be shot. In that time we had to repair and electrify 32 kilometers of biggame fencing and build from scratch a quarantine boma—a stockade, or holding pen —strong enough to hold the planet’s most powerful animal. I radioed my two main men: David, a 19-year-old friend of the family, and Ndonga, an ex-military man who was head of my Ovambo guards. I’ve been given a herd of elephants, I told

Thula, comprising more than 2,000 hectares of pristine bush in the heart of Zululand, South Africa. Elephants once roamed here freely. But no more. Many rural Zulus have never even seen an elephant. One day the phone rang. It was Marion Garai from the Elephant Managers and Owners Association. She got straight to the point. She had heard how we had purchased the old hunters camp the year before, and were now working with the local population to foster conservation awareness. So she wondered … would I be interested in adopting a herd of elephants?

them. But they’re a bit of a problem. I could see the two men had the same concerns I had, but they were enthusiastic. We put out word that we needed laborers. And to keep the local chieftains on our side, I made appointments to explain what we were doing. Fortunately, I brought my wife along. Françoise employed her French charm to persuade them that there were no real concerns, and the chieftains approved our plan. We hired 70 recruits and, sing-

WE CUT DOWN TREES THAT COULD BE SHOVED INTO THE FENCE, AS THIS WAS A WAY THE ELEPHANTS COULD SNAP THE CURRENT. ing martial songs, the gangs started work. Construction continued every day from dawn to dusk. It was backbreaking work, sweaty and dirty with temperatures soaring to 43 degrees Celsius. But kilometer by torturous kilometer, the electric fence took shape around the reserve. Building the boma was equally grueling. We measured out 92 square meters of virgin bush and cemented 2.7-meter-tall eucalyptus poles into concrete foundations every 11 meters. Then coils of mesh and cables as thick

as a man’s thumb were strung onto the poles, tensioned by attaching the ends to our Land Rover bumper and “revving” it taut. The electrification process was simple. Four live wires were bracketed onto the poles while two energizers that ran off car batteries generated the juice. The eight-kilovolt punch would be massive, and excruciating for the elephants, but not fatal. I inadvertently tested this by accidently touching the wires, much to the mirth of the workers. The electricity seizes you and your body shudders, and unless you let go quickly you sit down involuntarily as your legs collapse. The only good thing is that you recover quickly to laugh about it. Once the fence was up, the final task was to chop down any trees that could be shoved into it, as this was a way the elephants could snap the current. The two-week deadline passed in an eye-blink, and of course we were not finished. I got on the phone and bought us some extra time. But then one day I got the call I dreaded. The herd had broken out again. The elephants were being loaded onto an 18-wheeler even as we spoke, and they would arrive at Thula Thula in 18 hours.

Close Call

HE ZULUS who live close to the land have a saying that if it rains on an inaugural occasion, 03đ2018

READER’S DIGEST

the event will be blessed. Rain is life. But that day it didn’t just rain. The bruised skies sprayed down torrents. When the truck arrived outside Thula Thula in thick darkness, the deluge had turned the dirt tracks into streams of mud. As we opened the gates to the reserve a tire burst, the reinforced rubber cracking loud as a rifle shot. This panicked the elephants, and they

A TRUNK LASHED AT HIS ANKLE. IF THE ELEPHANT HAD CAUGHT HIM, HE WOULD HAVE BEEN YANKED INSIDE TO A GRUESOME DEATH.

started thumping the inside of the trailer like it was a gigantic drum, while the crews worked feverishly to change the wheel. “This is Jurassic Park!” Françoise cried. We laughed, but not in mirth. Françoise and I had met in London in 1987. We’d gone to a jazz club where I spent most of the evening telling her of the magic of Africa—not hard in the middle of an English winter. But now here we were 12 years later drenched to the marrow in the bush, wrestling with a gigantic wheel on a muddy rig loaded with elephants. 96

03đ2018

I don’t recall mentioning this could happen while piling on the charm during our first date. The spare wheel had scarcely been bolted on when the truck slid a few yards and sank into the glutinous mud, its tires spinning and spewing muck all over the place. No amount of swearing, kicking or packing branches under the tires worked. And even worse, the elephants were becoming more and more agitated. Fortunately, the truck driver in a fit of frustration slammed the truck into reverse and somehow skidded the huge rig out of the bog and veered off the greasy road onto the savannah. Dodging the tire-shredding thornbush and slithering past huge termite mounds, he somehow kept momentum until he reached the boma. Coaxing the animals from the truck was the next problem. We had to dig a trench so the trailer’s floor would be level with the ground. But the trench was now a soggy pit brimming with rainwater, and when we backed in, the trailer’s sliding door jammed into the mud. It was 2 a.m., dark as obsidian. And the rain was still sluicing down thick as surf. Armed with shovels we slithered around in the sludge hacking a groove for the door, and finally we all stood back, ready for the animals to be released into their new home. But first our vet decided to inject the herd with a mild sedative, using a polesized syringe. He climbed onto the

PHOTO: COURTESY MACMI LLAN PUBLI SHI NG GROUP

roof of the trailer, and David jumped up to help him. As David landed on the roof a trunk whipped through the ceiling slats as fast as a snake and lashed at his ankle. David leaped back, dodging the grasping trunk. If the elephant had caught him, he would have been yanked inside to a gruesome death. As simple as that. Thankfully, all went smoothly after this, and as soon as the injections had been administered, the door slid open and the matriarch emerged. She stepped onto Thula Thula soil, the first wild elephant in the area for almost a century. Six other elephants followed: the matriarch’s baby bull, three females, an 11-year-old bull and the last one out, a 15-year-old bull. He walked a few yards, swiveled his head and stared at us. Then he flared his ears and with a high-pitched trumpet of rage he turned and charged, pulling up just short of slamming into the fence in front of us. I had to smile in admiration. Here he was, just a teenager, and he was defending his family. David immediately named him Mnumzane which in Zulu means “Sir.” We named the matriarch Nana, and the second female in command, the most feisty, became Frankie. After Françoise. Nana gathered her clan, loped up to the fence, and stretched out her trunk, touching the electric wires. The eight kilovolts sent a shudder through her

Lawrence and Françoise, shown here with their dog Bijou, first met in 1987.

hulk. She hurriedly backed off. Then, with her family in tow, she strode the entire perimeter of the boma, her trunk curled fractionally below the wire to sense the current, checking for the weakest link. I watched, barely breathing. She completed the check and smelling the waterhole, led her herd off to drink. The issue with the boma was deciding how long we kept the animals inside. Too short, and they don’t learn enough respect for the electrified fence. But if it’s too long, they figure out that it’s possible to endure the few 03đ2018

READER’S DIGEST

agonizing seconds it takes to snap the strand. Once that happens, they will never fear electricity again. Once the gates were bolted everyone moved away from the boma,

“WE’RE GOING AFTER ELEPHANTS,” HE SAID. “THEY BUSTED OUT OF THULA. WE’RE GOING TO SHOOT THEM BEFORE THEY KILL SOMEONE.”

except for the two game guards who would watch from a distance. As we were leaving I noticed the elephants lined up facing north, the direction of their former home, as if their inner compasses were telling them something. It looked ominous. I headed off to bed with a sense of foreboding.

Trace Against Time

AMMERING echoed in my head. My eyes flickered open. Then I heard yelling. It was Ndonga. “The elephants have broken out of the boma. They’ve gone!” I leaped out of bed. Françoise also woke up. “I’m coming. Hang on!” I shouted, shoving through the door to the garden. An agitated Ndonga was standing outside. “Two big ones started shoving a tree,” he reported. 98

03đ2018

“They worked as a team, pushing it until it crashed down on the fence. The wires shorted and the elephants smashed through. Just like that.” “What tree?” “The moersa tambotie. The one that everyone said was too big to pull down.” That tree was nine meters tall and must have weighed several tons. Yet Nana and Frankie had figured out that by working in tandem they could topple it. These were some animals, all right. The herd was now stampeding toward the border fence. If they broke through that barrier, they would trample right through the homesteads scattered outside Thula Thula. I ran over to David’s bedroom across the lawn. “Get everyone up. The elephants have broken out. We’ve got to find them—fast!” Within minutes I had raised a search party. The upper section of the tree was toppled over. The fence looked as though a division of tanks had thundered through it. The Ovambo guard pointed us in the direction he had seen the elephants heading. We ran after them, following the spoor to the boundary. We were too late. The border fence was down and the animals had broken out. Judging by the tracks, the animals had reached the nearly two-and-ahalf-meter fence, milled around for a while, and then backtracked into

READER’S DIGEST

P HOTO: B. MA RQUES/COURTESY M ACM ILLAN P UBLISHIN G GROUP

Frankie, with baby Ilanga at her side, leading a young Mabula and Marula.

the reserve until— uncannily— they found the energizer that powered the fence. How they knew this small, nondescript machine hidden in a thicket 800 meters away was the source of current baffled us. But somehow they did, trampling it like a tin can and then returning to the boundary, where the wires were now dead. They then shouldered the concrete–embedded poles out of the ground like matchsticks. Their tracks pointed north. There was no doubt they were headed home, to the only home they knew, nearly 1,000 kilometers away, where in all probability they would be shot. That’s assuming game rangers or poachers didn’t get them first. As daybreak came, a motorist spotted the herd loping up the road about

five kilometers away. He saw the flattened fence and had the presence of mind to call, giving us valuable updated information. The chase was on. We had barely driven out of the reserve when we saw a group of men parked on the dirt road, dressed in hunting gear and bristling with rifles. You could tell they were excited. I stopped and got out of my Land Rover. “What are you guys doing?” One looked at me and shifted his rifle. “We’re going after elephants. They busted out of Thula. We’re gonna shoot them before they kill someone. They’re fair game now.” I stared at them for several seconds. “Those elephants belong to me,” I said, taking two steps forward to emphasize my point. “Show me your hunting permit,” I demanded. I 03đ2018

READER’S DIGEST

knew they didn’t have one. He stared at me, his face reddening with belligerence. “They’ve escaped, okay? They can be legally shot. We don’t need your permission.” Fizzing with anger, I ordered my men back into the car. Revving the engine and churning up dust clouds for the benefit of the gunmen staring aggressively at us as we sped up the road. The acrimonious encounter shook me. Technically, the urban Rambos were correct—the elephants were “fair game.” The wildlife authorities, who we’d alerted as soon as the herd broke out, were issuing rifles to their staff. Their prime concern was the safety of people in the area, and who could blame them? For us it was now a simple race against time. We had to find the elephants before anyone with a gun did. The herd’s tracks veered into the bush, thick with thorn-studded branches that scarcely scratch an elephant’s hide, but to us soft-skinned species it was like running through a maze of fish hooks. The forest spread north as far as the eye could see. How could we find the animals in this impenetrable wilderness? Then I looked up to the heavens and thought of a friend of mine, Peter Bell, who was an expert pilot and, fortuitously, had access to a chopper. I rushed back to Thula Thula and called him, then returned to continue the chase on foot through the bush. 100

03đ2018

We kept in contact with Peter as he flew tight search grids ahead, while wildlife rangers visited nearby settlements asking headmen if anyone had seen the herd. The answer was negative, which was good news. Our biggest concern was that the animals would wander into a village

NANA DREW THE HERD UP INTO A DEFENSIVE POSITION, BOTTOMS TOGETHER FACING OUTWARD, LIKE THE SPOKES OF A WHEEL.

and stomp thatched huts into floor mats, or worse, kill people. We kept moving, every now and then finding broken branches or elephant spoor—signs that we were on the right track. But after a long, hot, thirsty and empty day, the sun dipped below the horizon, and we stopped. Nobody looks for elephant stumbling around a thorn jungle at night. We arrived home bedraggled and exhausted. We ate a hearty meal, soaked in a bath, then fell into bed. At dawn we drove to where we had left off the day before and plunged back into the thorny bush. We got a report of a sighting from wildlife authorities. That gave us a confirmed position. Peter found them in the early afternoon.

There’s only one way to herd elephants from the air, and that’s to fly straight at them until they turn and move in the opposite direction—in this case, back toward Thula Thula. Peter banked and whirred down, blades clattering and coming straight at Nana, skimming just above her head. He turned and came at them again. The herd had been on the move for 24 hours; they were exhausted. They should have turned away from the giant bird buzzing from above. But the herd stood firm. Again the chopper came at them, and eventually Peter wore them down, edging them around until they were finally facing Thula Thula. Then he got them moving, maneuvering his machine like a flying sheepdog. Back at Thula Thula workers had spent the day mending ruined fences. And finally, after hours of tense aerial herding, the helicopter hovered on the horizon. I caught sight of the elephants’ ears, then the humps on their backs. They were going to make it. Soon they came into view, plodding on until they were about 13 meters from the gate. Then Nana tested the air with her trunk and halted. She trumpeted her belligerence and drew the herd up into a classic defensive position, bottoms together facing outward like the spokes of a wheel. They held their ground with grim determination. Peter kept buzzing them, goading them to step into the reserve. To no avail.

Then Peter peeled off and put the helicopter down. He ran up to me and asked for my gun. “It’s the only thing left. I go up and fire shots behind them. Force them to move forward.” I didn’t like it; but Peter was right. We had run out of alternatives. Peter took my gun. Lifted off, and then . . . crack, crack, crack. Shots rang out. He might as well have been using spitballs. Nothing would move the elephants. Dusk fell, and in the glow of strengthening stars I saw the murky shapes of the elephants still holding firm with defiance. Then, when Peter left, Nana and her bone-tired family melted back into the bush.

Glimmer of Hope

NCE AGAIN I was up at 4 a.m., desperate to get going. David and the trackers were standing by and as the first shards of pink dawn pierced the darkness we picked up spoor and headed north, following their new path through the thorny thickets. It was now obvious that we had some very agitated, unpredictable wild elephants on our hands. Peter was unable to fly that day, and I couldn’t rid myself of the vision of them trampling through a village. I heard from wildlife rangers that the elephants had broken into one of their reserves during the night. They had split into two groups, up to 11 kilometers apart, then they met up 03đ2018

101

READER’S DIGEST

again. How they did that defies comprehension—it seems impossible to navigate in the dark so precisely without compasses or radio. There is no doubt that elephants possess incredible communication skills. Close to where the two groups had rendezvoused there was a hut used by wildlife rangers. They were inside fast asleep when they felt the structure shaking. Then the door burst open and in the moonlight they saw a trunk snake through. The elephants

I STOOD AND WALKED TOWARD THE FENCE. NANA WAS DIRECTLY AHEAD. “DON’T DO IT, NANA,” I SAID CALMLY AS I COULD.

had smelled the rangers’ stock of rations and were going to take their share, which of course meant all of it. The rangers scurried under their beds for protection as the trunk weaved like a super-sized vacuum cleaner around the hut yanking the sacks out. Other trunks shattered the windows and jerked the furniture around, smashing everything as they searched for more food. Fortunately, the men on the floor did not reach for their weapons. They were devoted to saving animals; they 102

03đ2018

would only kill as a last resort. As soon as the rampaging behemoths left, they radioed in their sighting. At dawn, one of the conservation managers spotted the animals and approached on foot. He was still some distance away when Frankie turned and, with a bellow of rage, came thundering at him. He turned and ran for his life, leaping into his vehicle and speeding off with several tons of storming juggernaut just yards behind. When he told his colleagues of the close escape, the rangers got very worried. This was getting out of hand. They proposed darting the herd, maybe overdosing the adults and saving only the youngsters. I was dumbfounded at the suggestion, and tried to stonewall any talk of putting any of them down. “I’ll get them back in the boma and keep them locked up,” I promised. “Then we can watch and make that decision later. If they’re still out of control in a couple of months, then we’ll have no choice. I’ll take full responsibility.” Now I could only wait. And early the next day a helicopter carrying an experienced marksman thudded off to where the herd was last sighted. The elephants were spotted, and as the pilot swooped down the herd went into full flight, crashing through the bush with the clattering chopper blades behind them, offering a clear view of their broad backs. Crack! The .22 shell fired a hefty

aluminum dart filled with a powerful anesthetic into Nana’s rump. The matriarch is always darted first, and as soon as one dart hit, another was rapidly loaded and fired. Once the last dart struck, the pilot gained altitude and watched as first Nana and then the others started to stagger and sink to their knees before collapsing in slow motion. The ground team sped to the scene and reversed up to Nana. They winched the animal up into the air, feet first, and deposited the body in the back of a huge truck. The 4.5-ton slab of meat, muscle, bone and blood, hanging upside down, was not a pretty sight, but it was done as gently and rapidly as possible. Once all were aboard the trucks revved off to Thula Thula, where the animals recovered. They were a little wobbly, but looked as defiant as ever. Their bid for freedom had, if anything, increased their resentment of captivity. Just before nightfall I went down to the boma, about five kilometers from our house, and cautiously walked to the fence. Nana was standing with her family behind her, malevolently watching my every move. There was no doubt that sooner or later they were going to make another break for it. Then in a flash came the answer. I would go live with the herd. I would remain outside the boma, of course, but I would stay with them, feed them, talk to them, but most importantly be with them day and night. These mag-

nificent creatures were extremely distressed and disoriented and maybe, just maybe, if someone who cared about them stayed with them, they would have a chance. There was no doubt: Unless we tried something different, they would continue to break out and would die in the process. I discussed my idea with Françoise and she agreed. I asked David if he wanted to come along and was answered by his broad smile. So we packed the Land Rover with supplies. The vehicle would be our home for as long as it took. The first day we spent watching from a distance of about 30 meters. Each day we would get closer. Nana and Frankie watched us continuously, rushing up to the fence if they thought we were getting too close. One night David’s whisper woke me. “Quick, something’s happening at the fence.” We crept up to the boma. I could see nothing in the dark. Then an enormous shape morphed in front of me. It was Nana, about nine meters from the fence. Next to her was her baby son. I strained my eyes and saw the others, all standing motionless behind her. Suddenly Nana tensed her enormous frame and flared her ears. “Jeez, look at the bloody size of her!” whispered David, crouching next to me. Nana took a step forward. “Here she goes,” said David. “That electric wire better hold.” Without thinking I stood and 03đ2018

103

READER’S DIGEST

104

03đ2018

The herd bathing at the Gwala Gwala Dam.

David exhaled. “Bloody hell! I thought she was going to go for it.” We lit a small fire and brewed coffee. There was not much to say. I was not going to tell David that I thought I had connected for an instant with the matriarch. It would have sounded too crazy. But something had happened. It gave me hope.

Near Death Experience

HE DAYS progressed, and each day was the same. As the sun came up, the herd would start pacing up and down along the fence, turning on us and charging if we got too close, halting at the electric cable. The elephants always knew David

P HOTO: FRANÇOISE M ALBY-ANTHONY/COURTESY M AC MILLAN P UBLIS HI NG GROUP

walked toward the fence. Nana was directly ahead. “Don’t do it, Nana,” I said calmly as I could. “Please don’t do it, girl.” She stood motionless, but tense. Behind her the rest of the herd froze. “This is your home now,” I continued. “Please don’t do it, girl.” I felt her eyes boring into me, even though I could barely make out her face in the murk. “They will kill you if you break out. This is your home now. You don’t have to run anymore.” Still she didn’t move, and the absurdity of the situation struck me. Here I was in the dark, talking to a wild female elephant with a baby, the most dangerous possible combination, as if we were having a friendly chat. Absurd or not, I continued. I could see her tense up again, preparing to go all the way. If she hit the wire and could take the pain, she’d snap the wire. The rest of the fence wouldn’t hold. She’d be out. Frankie and the rest would smash through after her in a flash. I would only have seconds to scramble out of their way and climb a tree, or else be stomped flatter than an envelope. The nearest tree was perhaps nine meters to my left. Would I be fast enough? Then something happened between Nana and me, some infinitesimal spark of recognition, flaring for the briefest moment. Then it was gone. Nana nudged her baby with her trunk, turned and melted into the bush. The rest followed.

The water attracts a diverse wildlife.

and I were around. We pushed 900 kilograms of food a day over the wire. In a week we each lost four-and-a-half kilograms, most of it in sweat. I would spend hours walking around the boma, checking the fence and deliberately speaking loudly so they heard my voice. Sometimes I would even sing, which David uncharitably remarked was enough to make him want to jump right into the electric fence. Slowly we became an integral part of their lives. They began to know us. Still, the alarming ritual at dawn, when they seemed most determined to break out, continued. Nana would line up the herd facing their old home. She would tense up and for ten adren-

aline-soaked minutes I would stand up to her, pleading for her to stay back, telling her that this was now their home. It was always touch-andgo, and I was always relieved as she ghosted back into the bush with her family. One day Nana and Frankie toppled a tall acacia tree. It was too far away to hit the fence, but when it crashed down it bounced and some of the top branches snagged the wires, straining them to breaking point. There was lots of crackling which fortunately frightened off the elephants. The wires didn’t snap, so there was still current. But the elephants would soon sense that this was a weak link, so we had to act quickly. There was only one solution. Someone had to sneak into the boma with a saw and hack the branches off the fence. David stepped forward and volunteered. So we devised a plan. First we missed a feed to make the elephants really hungry. I placed two rangers with radios at the energizers to control the current, and one more stayed with me as my communicator, to relay instructions on the radio. The rangers then started heaving food over the fence to entice the elephants away from the fallen tree. I nodded to the ranger next to me and he shouted to the energizer crew: “Power off—go!” David scaled the fence. Then the ranger ordered: “Power on!” David was now caged inside the 03đ2018

105

READER’S DIGEST

boma. I had a rifle and zeroed in the sights on the animals on the far side. David started sawing the branches, while I gave running commentary: “Everything’s okay. It’s working. Just a few more minutes ...“ In a blink everything changed. Frankie must have heard a noise and she looked up. Enraged that someone was in her territory, she broke into a charge. “David, get out. Now! Cut the power! She’s coming!” I yelled. But the message didn’t get through; the rangers didn’t cut the power. David was trapped. He clambered wildly over the tree, grabbing at the fence as the enraged elephant thundered up at impossible speed. I took aim, but I knew it was too late. I could put a bullet in Frankie’s brain but her momentum would smash into David and he would be pulverized. My finger tightened—and then I heard the foulest language you could imagine. It was David, cursing the radioman who hadn’t properly conveyed the cut power message. I jerked the rifle up as Frankie thundered past us, then stared at David, dumbfounded. He had just scaled the eight-foot electrical fence—and against infinitesimal odds he somehow missed touching the live wires in his frantic scramble for safety. As soon as everyone calmed down, David insisted on climbing back into 106

03đ2018

the boma to finish the job. But not before warning the radioman that if he messed up again, he would personally kill him. “But you’ll be dead,” said another ranger. David led the booming laughter.

The Right Thing As the weeks progressed, the herd gradually started to settle down. We were now able to approach the fence at feeding time without being charged by enraged elephants. And by now the dreaded dawn patrol had stopped. Nana no longer lined up at the fence, threatening a mass breakout. One morning I glanced over at Nana and her baby at the fence right in front of our little camp. This had never happened before. As I stood, Nana lifted her trunk and looked straight at me. Her ears were down and she was calm. Instinctively, I decided to go to her. Elephants prefer slow deliberate movements, so I ambled across, stopping to pluck a grass stem, generally taking my time. I needed to let her get used to me coming forward. I stopped about three meters from the fence and gazed up at the gigantic form. Then I took a slow step forward. Then another. She did not move. Suddenly I felt sheathed in a sense of contentment. Standing in front of a wild animal that until now had wanted to kill me, I had never felt safer. I remained entranced by the mag-

nificent creature towering over me, noticing her tusk, her thick eyelashes, the wrinkles criss-crossing her skin. Then she gently reached out to me with her trunk. I watched, hypnotized. David’s voice echoed in the background. “Boss. What are you doing?” I was about to step back, but something made me hold my ground. There it was again, the feeling of mesmeric tranquility. Once more Nana reached out with her trunk. And then I got it. She wanted me to come closer, and without thinking I moved to the fence. Time was motionless as Nana’s trunk snaked through the fence, carefully avoiding the electric strands, and reached my body. She gently touched me. I was surprised at the wetness of her trunk and how musky her smell was. After a moment I lifted my hand and felt the top of her colossal trunk, briefly touching the bristly hair fibers. Too soon the instant was over. She slowly withdrew her trunk. She looked at me for a few moments before slowly

returning to the herd. As she got back Frankie stepped forward and greeted her. That was when I knew it was time to let them out. The next morning we opened the boma gate and Nana led her herd down a game path to the river. We watched the thick summer bush swallow them up, and I said to David, “We have done the right thing.” Lawrence Anthony ran his preserve in South Africa for 15 years. He traveled to Iraq to save the Baghdad Zoo during the war in 2003, and later worked to preserve endangered species in Southern Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On March 2, 2012, Anthony, 61, died of a heart attack. The elephants made their way to the house two days after his death and lingered for two hours to say goodbye to the man they loved, returning on the same date for the next two years. Françoise and his two sons continue to run Thula Thula.

COOL IT ON THE NIGHTLIFE I awoke from a dream shouting greetings to an old friend. Happily, my wife appeared to have slept through my outburst. But as we went to bed the next night, she said, “Do me a favor? If you see anyone you know in your dreams tonight, just wave.” MERVYN SAUNDERS

03đ2018

107

Brainteasers Challenge yourself by solving these puzzles, then check your answers on page 114.

The red birdhouse is on a higher branch than the yellow one. The yellow birdhouse is to the left of the blue one, but not necessarily directly to the left. The blue one hangs from a thicker branch than the red one. Only one of the following three statements is true: ■ The red birdhouse is in the top row. ■ The yellow birdhouse is in the left column. ■ The blue birdhouse hangs from one of the two thickest branches. Can you figure out where each birdhouse was placed?

108

03đ2018

(BIRDHOUSES) DARREN RIGBY

BIRDHOUSES (Difficult) The Robinsons have three birdhouses in different colors: red, blue and yellow. They’ve hung them in a tree so that they face their home. They had a number of branches to choose from, in the configuration shown.

(LUCK OF TH E DRAW, FAI R AN D SQUARE?) MA RCEL DANESI; (ARITHME-PICK) FRASER SIMPSON; (CROSSHAIRS) DARREN RIGBY

LUCK OF THE DRAW (Easy)

There are six marbles in a bag. They are exactly alike except for color: one is red, two are green and three are blue. Without looking into the bag, what’s the smallest number of marbles you would need to draw out to guarantee getting either two green or two blue ones?

ARITHME-PICK (Moderately difficult)

Place one of the four basic arithmetic operations (+, –, ×, ÷) in each box to make a correct equation. Symbols may be repeated, and you don’t have to use all four. All operations are performed from left to right, ignoring the mathematical order of operations. The result at each step must be a positive whole number. What’s the equation?

4 = 32

FAIR AND SQUARE? (Moderately difficult)

CROSSHAIRS (Easy)

Would it be possible to join these six pieces together to form a square?

None of the white squares in this diagram have their edges lined up. One of the squares is a different size from the others. Can you find it?

1 2

03đ2018

109

Trivia Quiz BY PAUL PAQUET

1. Which Italian city ran a republic

9. What horror novelist dedicated

that lasted from 697 to 1797 AD?

his book The Dark Half to “the late Richard Bachman,” in honor of a recently exposed pen name he’d been using?

alive today that has teeth? 3. Buprenorphine is considered a safer

replacement for what street drug? 4. Which long-standing European

border is known in local languages as “La Raya” and “A Raia” (“The Line”)? 5. In what band did Beyoncé sing

10. Who was called the “grandmother

of Europe” because her nine children and 42 grandchildren married into royal houses all over the continent? 11. What Dutch artist painted—among

before becoming a solo act?

other things—a milkmaid, an astronomer and a girl with a pearl earring?

6. In 2015, a tourist created an inter-

12. In architecture, what is the term

national uproar when he shot Cecil in Zimbabwe. What was Cecil?

for a vertical structure that provides ventilation to a building?

7. A type of cancer called

13. During the American

mesothelioma is nearly always caused by exposure to what substance?

Revolution, militants dumped enough tea to fill 18.5 million tea bags into what city’s harbour?

8. According to past

American Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., what’s the fee we pay for a civilized society?

15. Money raised through an ice-bucket challenge helped scientists discover a gene that might be connected with what disease?

14. Pau Gasol, a native

of which country, was the first European player named the NBA’s rookie of the year?

ANSWERS: 1. Venice. 2. The sperm whale. 3. Heroin. 4. The Portugal-Spain border. 5. Destiny’s Child. 6. A lion. 7. Asbestos. 8. Taxes. 9. Stephen King. 10. England’s Queen Victoria. 11. Johannes Vermeer. 12. A chimney. 13. Boston. 14. Spain. 15. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). 110

03đ2018

I STOCKPHOTO/CHONESS

2. What’s the largest animal species

IT PAYS TO INCREASE YOUR

Word Power This month’s quiz is for fans of the BBC series and Netflix favorite Sherlock, as well as readers of the original mystery tales by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sleuth out the meanings—or follow the trail to the next page for answers. BY EMILY COX & HENRY RATHVON

1. connoisseur (kah-neh-'sir)

n.—A: swindler. B: expert. C: paid informant. 2. faculties ('fa-kuhl-teez) n.—

A: powers. B: intricate details. C: sudden insights. 3. infallible (in-'fa-leh-buhl) adj.—

A: never wrong. B: remaining questionable or unsolved. C: carefully balanced. 4. minatory ('min-uh-tor-ee) adj.—

A: unethical. B: with a menacing quality. C: subversive. 5. furtive ('fer-tiv) adj.—A: nervous.

A: urgent. B: doubtful. C: impressively direct. 9. tenacious (tuh-'nay-shus) adj.—

A: persistent. B: well concealed. C: supremely rational. 10. desultory ('deh-suhl-tor-ee)

adj.—A: yielding no clues. B: hot and humid. C: having no plan. 11. proficiency (pruh-'fih-shun-see)

n.—A: right-handedness. B: likelihood. C: great skill. 12. illustrious (ih-'luhs-tree-uhs)

adj.—A: graphic. B: eminent. C: deceiving.

B: sneaky. C: tall and thin.

13. injunction (in-'junk-shun)

6. untoward (uhn-'toh-uhrd) adj.—

n.—A: order. B: coincidence. C: shot of medicine or drugs.

A: illogical. B: strongly opinionated. C: not favorable. 7. facilitate (fuh-'sih-luh-tayt)

v.—A: make easier. B: confront. C: unravel. 8. incisive (in-'siy-siv) adj.—

14. truculent ('truh-kyuh-luhnt)

adj.—A: cruel or harsh. B: puzzled. C: of few words. 15. sardonic (sahr-'dah-nik) adj.—

A: carelessly dressed. B: threatening. C: mocking. 03đ2018

111

READER’S DIGEST

Answers 1. connoisseur—[B] expert. “Can

9. tenacious—[A] persistent. Though

you recommend an art connoisseur?” the detective asked after the robbery at the museum.

not very personable, Officer Bluntley can be as tenacious as a bulldog.

2. faculties—[A] powers. The prose-

cution set out to test the full faculties of the defense team.

After finding no clues at the crime scene, the police began what felt like a desultory search for evidence.

3. infallible—[A] never wrong. “Not

11. proficiency—[C] great skill.

to worry—our key witness has an infallible memory,” the lawyer said.

“I claim no proficiency at lab work— but I am a huge CSI fan!”

4. minatory—[B] with a menacing

12. illustrious—[B] eminent.

quality. The thief gave his victim a minatory gaze before leaving her in the alley.

After an illustrious 30-year career, Detective Klein finally decided to step down.

5. furtive—[B] sneaky. I didn’t for

13. injunction—[A] order. For

one second trust the suspect—he has a cruel and furtive look. 6. untoward—[C]

not favorable. “Barring untoward circumstances,” said the judge, “we’ll have a decision by week’s end.” 7. facilitate—[A]

make easier. The sergeant needed at least one more lead to facilitate the investigation. 8. incisive—[C]

impressively direct. “Guilty,” the juror offered in a most incisive tone. 112

03đ2018

10. desultory—[C] having no plan.

CALLING ALL DETECTIVES The term private eye alludes simply to private i (short for investigator). You may also call such a person a tec (short for detective), a gumshoe (from quiet, rubber-soled footwear), a sleuth (from an Old Norse word for “trail”), a shamus (of Yiddish origin), or a hawkshaw (from a detective in the 1863 play The Ticket of Leave Man).

failing to follow the injunction, Thomas was ordered to serve 90 days of community service. 14. truculent—[A]

cruel or harsh. The witness was unscathed by the prosecutor’s truculent remarks. 15. sardonic—[C]

mocking. “Catch me if you can!” cried the felon with a sardonic laugh. VOCABULARY RATINGS

9 & below: bloodhound 10–12: junior detective 13–15: master sleuth

ALL IN

A Day’s Work

ILLUSTRATION BY BILL ABBOTT

“No, we haven’t started yet. My hand was cold.” WHEN MY COWORKER answered

SCENE: A RADIO NEWSROOM.

his phone, the confused woman on the other end asked, “Who is this?” “This is Steve. With whom did you wish to speak?” After a pause: “Did you just say whom?” “Yes, I did.” The woman replied, “I have the wrong number,” and hung up.

Caller: I just wanted to let you know you’re off the air. Host: Yes, we know. The engineers are working on it. Caller: It would be nice if you put something on the air that says that.

From gcfl.net

Source: Overheard in the RADIO Newsroom

FOR MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY,

I asked my fifth graders how they’d 03đ2018

113

READER’S DIGEST

Brainteasers: Answers make the world a better place. One said, “I’d make potato skins a main dish rather than an appetizer.” JESSICA CASTRONOVO,

Ma n a l a p a n , Ne w Je r s e y

LIBRARIANS MAY BE SHY, but

their patrons aren’t. Look at their oddball requests: ■ A patron offered me $100 to steal a cactus from somebody’s yard. ■ A patron wanted me to find a book to teach her dog German. ■ A patron on his way to the casino asked to rub my red hair for luck. ■ A patron once asked me for my home phone number so she could call me with reference questions when I wasn’t at work.

BIRDHOUSES

The red birdhouse is hanging from the smaller branch in the top row. The yellow one is hanging from the centre branch. The blue one is hanging from the branch on the bottom right. LUCK OF THE DRAW

Four. ARITHME-PICK

5 + 7 ÷ 3 × 9 – 4 = 32. FAIR AND SQUARE?

Yes.

5 4 3

ROZ WARREN, from womensvoicesforchange.org

AN AD FOR a hedge clipper that

I had to read twice: “A built-in safety switch prevents accidental starting, and blades will stop when you take one hand off.”

2 6

MICHAEL GOLDSTONE, Ma n c h e s t e r, E n g l a n d

A WELSH POLITICIAN asked the

government for information about UFO sightings and if it might fund UFO research. Officials wrote back, “jang vIDa je due luq … ach ghotvam’e’ QI’yaH devolve qaS.” Which means, “The minister will reply in due course. However, this is a non-devolved matter,” in Klingon. Source: bbc.com

114

03đ2018

CROSSHAIRS

Next Month

COMING IN THE APRIL ISSUE

Secrets to a Smarter You

P HOTO BY NI KKI ORM EROD

Sharpen your wits by harnessing the power of words, languages and mnemonics.

World’s Dumbest Criminals Have a laugh at the misadventures of these would-be masterminds.

Drama in Real Life

Racing the Storm The sailors thought they could make it home before the storm hit. It was a deadly miscalculation.

Why It Pays to Be Happy You’ll get more out of life if you go through it with a smile.

TH E NE X T I SS U E W I L L B E P U B L I S H E D A PRIL 1, 2 018 03đ2018

115

ILLUSTRATION BY MIROSLAV BARTÁK

Last Laugh

116

03đ2018