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This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
 FEBRUARY 2019
Jazz Up
Your
BRAIN
From CNN.COM

E FA LSE!
THAT AR
An RD ORIGINAL

ACTS OF
GENEROSITY
You Won’t
Forget
By JULIANA LABIANCA

An Injured Dog’s
Can chameleons
really turn Incredible
any color? Journey
See page 58.
From OUTSIDEONLINE.COM

A Stolen Flag
Comes Home

16
An RD ORIGINAL
Fitness
The Dangers of
Tips for Surgery Centers
Real People From KAISER HEALTH
From NEW SCIENTIST NEWS and USA TODAY
 © Pfizer 2018
STRENGTH
IN NUMBERS
25 QUALITY 34 YEARS OF
CHECKS BEFORE SAFE & EFFECTIVE
E V E R Y P I L L I S S O L D* PA I N R E L I E F

13 MILLION+ 8 D AY S
PILLS SOLD TO MAKE
E A C H D AY E A C H P I L L*

#1 IN 57
SELLING COUNTRIES
PA I N R E L I E V E R ACROSS
I N T H E W O R L D† THE WORLD

WE PUT OUR BEST INTO EVERY PILL.

NO WONDER ADVIL ® IS MORE TRUSTED† THAN ANY OTHER PAIN RELIEVER.

†
Use as directed. *Refers to Advil Tablets only. Based on sales of OTC branded pain relievers.
 Reader ’s Digest

58
cover story
FACT OR FICTION?
Twenty-five tall tales
that are impossibly
true, and 25 facts
that are actually ex tizon from
tlantic
myths.
by marissa laliberte,
ashley lewis, and jacopo
della quercia
on the cover: jiri hera/shutterstock (magnifying glass), kuttelvaserova

72
good deeds
stuchelova/shutterstock (chameleon). this page: matthew cohen

They Gave Millions

to Charity

ers, and janitors lived et renkl from

york times
frugally—then donated
their savings to others.
by juliana labianca

82
drama in real life
The Dog That Came
Back from the Dead
On a mountain run, a

a seemingly fatal fall.

But he isn’t done yet.
by eric wagenknecht
with tess strokes from
58 ewett and
alesia from kaiser
news and usa
outsideonline.com etwork

rd.com | february 2019 1

Reader ’s Digest Contents

Departments quotable quotes news from the

world of medicine
18 Betty White,
6 Dear Reader George R. R. 35 Concussions,
8 Letters Martin, Queen Breast Cancer,
Latifah and “Hanger”
everyday heroes
10 Detroit’s Proud how to
Tiger 20 Get in Shape in
by andy simmons the New Year
13 The Car on the from new scientist
Ledge
life well lived
by andy simmons
i won!
26 A Love Without
Limits
35
14 The World Beard by sean kirst from
& Moustache the buffalo news
Contest

10

from top: the voorhes. rachel woolf

2 february 2019 | rd.com

 HOW DO YOU
KNOW SHE’LL
LOVE THE TASTE
OF NATURAL?
Trademarks owned by Société des Produits Nestlé S.A., Vevey, Switzerland.

THE CHOW IS HOW.

With real chicken. No artificial flavors or preservatives.

Exclusive offers at catchow.com/naturals

Reader ’s Digest Contents

i am the food
on your plate
39 Avocados Humor
by kate lowenstein
and daniel gritzer 16
Life in These
we found a fix United States
43 Winterproofing
Your Shoes, 46
and More Laughter, the Best
Medicine
13 things
52 Amazing Facts 71
About Salt Humor in
by jen mccaffery Uniform
your true stories
55 Everyday
Gratitude and
39 80
All in a Day’s Work
105
Funny Animals Laugh Lines
everyday miracles The Genius
56 A Flag’s Long
Journey Home Section
by juliana labianca 116 Jazz Up Your
Brain
by sandee lamotee
from cnn.com
122 Brain Games
125 Word Power
128 Photo Finish

Send letters to letters@rd.com or Letters, Reader’s Digest, PO Box 6100,

Harlan, Iowa 51593-1600. Include your full name, address, e-mail, and daytime
from left: joana avillez. atwood/
shutterstock. dimj/shutterstock

phone number. We may edit letters and use them in all print and electronic
media. Contribute your True Stories at rd.com/stories. If we publish one in a
print edition of Reader’s Digest, we’ll pay you $100. To submit humor items, visit
rd.com/submit, or write to us at Jokes, 44 South Broadway, 7th Floor, White
Plains, NY 10601. We’ll pay you $25 for any joke, gag, or funny quote and $100
for any true funny story published in a print edition of Reader’s Digest unless we
specify otherwise in writing. Please include your full name and address in your

55 entry. We regret that we cannot acknowledge or return unsolicited work.

Requests for permission to reprint any material from Reader’s Digest should be
sent to permissions@tmbi.com. Get help with questions on subscriptions,
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inquiries at rd.com/help, or write to us at customercare@rd.com or Reader’s
Digest, PO Box 6095, Harlan, Iowa 51593-1595.

4 february 2019 | rd.com

 PUT TWO & TWO
TOGETHER
and you could save
Have GEICO car insurance? Get home
insurance through the GEICO Insurance
Agency and you could get a
ѴঞŊoѴb17bv1om|.

Some discounts, coverages, payment plans and features are not available in all states, in all GEICO companies, or in all situations. Homeowners, renters and
condo coverages are written through non-affiliated insurance companies and are secured through the GEICO Insurance Agency, Inc. GEICO is a registered
service mark of Government Employees Insurance Company, Washington, D.C. 20076; a Berkshire Hathaway Inc. subsidiary. © 2019 GEICO
Reader ’s Digest
DEAR READER
Blown Away!
B
y the time I first visited Chicago,
at 18, I already knew I would
love it.
I was raised in Northern California,
which, despite all the Olympic swim-
mers it bred, was not exactly a place
of broad shoulders. Chicago’s tough
counterimage lured me right in.
A favorite song was Lou Rawls’s nov-
elistic “Dead End Street.” “They call it
the Windy City,” Rawls recounted, a
blues bass dramatizing his memories
of winter. “Because of the Hawk ... the
almighty Hawk, Mr. Wind.”
By fate, my best friend at college
was a Chicagoan, so I began visiting
often. That Hawk was something, all
right. I can still recall the knife-edged
terror as John and I braved 20-below
windchill before ducking into one of
the city’s warm bars.
Then I fell for a beautiful girl,
and she was from Chicago too.
On our eventual wedding day—
held in February, the Hawk’s big
month—snow blew so hard we
barely survived the celebratory
buggy ride to our hotel.
So ask me why Chicago
is called the Windy City,
and my answer is as
deep in my bones as the
6 february 2019 | rd.com
infernal shriek under the windowsill
of our daughter’s apartment. (Yes,
she ended up in Chicago too.) It’s the
howling wind, dummy. Except it isn’t.
from top: kamil krzaczynski/epa/shutterstock (chicago). mike mcgregor
Sharing little-known facts is very
much at the heart of RD, but I have to
say our cover story, “Fact or Fiction?”
takes that mandate to new levels. It’s
irrefutable that Christ was born on
Christmas, Eskimos have the most
words for snow, and ostriches bury
their heads in the sand. But not ac-
cording to our crack fact finders.
Enjoy the shocks, starting on
page 58. And console me as I break
it to those I love most that we’ve
had the wrong idea about the city
that brought us together.
Talk about you don’t know what
you don’t know.
Bruce Kelley,
editor-in-chief
Write to me at
letters@rd.com.
 Treating
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Chronic productive
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Repeated antibiotic use
for chest infections?

These may be indicators of

bronchiectasis—a common
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airways.1
Half of people
with serious
COPD may have
bronchiectasis.2

inCourage® Airway Clearance Therapy is a drug-free way to clear excess mucus

from the lungs. Ask your doctor if the inCourage System may be right for you.

For a bronchiectasis information kit, call 833.208.5324 or visit

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We change lives. We help people breathe better.

1. Maselli DJ, Amalakuhan B, Keyt H, Diaz AA. Suspecting non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis:
What the busy primary care clinician needs to know. Int J Clin Pract. 2017;71(2):e12924.
2. Martínez-García MA, de la Rosa Carrillo D, Soler-Cataluña JJ, et al. Prognostic value of
bronchiectasis in patients with moderate-to-severchronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2013;187:823–831.

© 2018 Respiratory Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved. 910172-001 Rev B

Reader ’s Digest

with my eight-year-old

LETTERS
grandson, and he also
enjoys them, especially
Notes on the the jokes. Make all the
November issue changes you want
because it seems each
change makes the
Digest better.
—Beverly Mita
Back to the Future Pine Island, New York
I give your new format two thumbs up.
Personally, I do not
I would give it more if I had more thumbs. like the new format.
From Grumpy Cat on the cover to the last It isn’t as easy to see
page, aptly named Photo Finish, this was where one section
one of the best issues ever. ends and a new sec-
tion begins. Why fix
—Laurie Sanchez Kingman, Arizona
something that wasn’t
broken?
Your reference to the finish that and then —Paul Okoniewski
old series I Am Joe’s quit cold turkey. Your Bruce Township,
Body in your letter magazine saved my life. Michigan
explaining how the All these years later, I
new design came about am saying thank you. Thank you for your
prompted me to share —Norm Mast vision to grow Reader’s
this. In the ’70s, I was Middlebury, Indiana Digest with the times.
a heavy smoker. I knew I get so much good
it wasn’t healthy but I’m a creature of information that is
could not change my habit, and I don’t like helpful to me. I spent
habits. Then I read the new changes to 27 years in the military,
“I Am Joe’s Lung.” The Reader’s Digest. But and I especially enjoy
next morning, I walked I’ll get used to it. Humor in Uniform.
out my front door and —Helen McCarthy I doubt that RD is
coughed up blood. Trappe, Pennsylvania offered in heaven, so
Talk about a wake-up I need to stay healthy
matthew cohen

call. On New Year’s I have been enjoying in order to enjoy it

Eve, I had less than Reader’s Digest since longer!
half a pack of cigarettes I was eight years old. —Dave winslow
left, so I decided to I now share articles Brewer, Maine

8 february 2019
 The Funniest Jokes regularly have postings befitting its unique
Since the Internet about crimes and fear character and sound.
Your collection of caused by immigrants, How about hua, wa,
“Mistakes That Take I shared the article way, wu, whu, whi ...
the Cake” reminded there. I hope that it Anybody else? Or am I
me of my husband’s gets passed on for peo- existing in a vacwm?
50th birthday cake, ple to focus on a posi- —Peggy Lewis
which read: tive contribution that La Mesa, California
Happy Birthday, immigrants are giving
Bill & Papa! our country. Thanksgiving for
And Under That —Connie nuber the Soul
We Love You! Surprise, Arizona I immediately recog-
—Diane e. Meeks nized this story as hav-
Vidalia, Georgia The Secret Lives ing appeared in RD in
of Letters 1986 as “The Third
The Nicest Places Wow. Or should I write Grade Wanted Purple
in America Uuouu? The name of Mums.” I still have the
Love the new format the letter W is just plain original. At that time, I
and the Nicest Places in lazy. W is the only letter was a young mother
America. I want to visit whose name is more with small children,
them all! than one syllable, does and I used the article in
—Patricia J. Mencin not in the least reflect church presentations
Maple Heights, Ohio the sound it creates, and about the value and
is simply two letters beauty of service to
I enjoyed your article tagged together (which others. Thank you for
on Mr. Yassin Terou is confusing, since W is the sweet reminder of
and his family and often written as a dou- so many years ago.
business. Because my ble V). I suggest renam- —Shelly sharp
Facebook feed seems to ing it to something Yorba Linda, California

good
one, sis!
Remember when your kid
brother did ____ or your big sister
said ____? Of course you do!
We’re looking for the funniest
sibling stories in the land. Send
us yours at rd.com/siblings.

rd.com 9
John George says he
has one goal: “To save
the world, starting
with Detroit.”
 Reader ’s Digest

EVERYDAY HEROES

He fought to save his city,

and a movement followed him

Detroit’s
Proud Tiger
By Andy Simmons

A
s John George remembers it,
the Detroit neighborhood he
grew up in was straight out of
Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.
“We knew all our neighbors,” George,
60, told Detroit’s Metro Times. “On
Christmas Eve, we’d all go to midnight
Mass, and there’d be 300 people in our
house at one o’clock to about five in
the morning. The folks were just really
good, hardworking people.”
By the ’80s, however, the old neigh-
borhood was more Pottersville than
Bedford Falls. Due in part to economic
downturns and a nationwide drug
epidemic, well-kept homes had been
abandoned and kindly neighbors had
fled to the suburbs. But not George.
“Living in any city, it’s like being in a
relationship,” he told Reader’s Digest.
“Some days are better than others.
But it was my home. And when I saw
it deteriorating, I had two choices: I
could leave, or I could stay and fight.
I decided to stay and fight.”
When the abandoned home be-
hind his turned into a crack den, the
father of two grabbed some plywood
and nails and began boarding up the
house. After two neighbors stopped to

Photograph by Rachel Woolf rd.com | february 2019 11

Reader ’s Digest
ask what he was doing, they decided
to help, with great results. “When the
drug dealers came back, they turned
around and went home,” says George.
“That’s how it all got started.”
“It” is Detroit Blight Busters, or DBB,
an organization of civic-minded vol-
unteers dedicated to reviving the city
they love, one abandoned house, one
vacant lot, and one garbage-strewn
park at a time.
In the 30 years since that first
home rescue, an army of approxi-
mately 182,000 volunteers, along
“I’M HALF LEBANESE,
HALF ITALIAN,
AND 100 PERCENT
DETROIT STUBBORN.”
with corporate and private donors,
has helped George demolish around
300 derelict homes, mostly in the
poorer Northwest area of Detroit.
They’ve also secured 400-some homes
by boarding them up, thus keeping
bad actors out. They’ve painted and
renovated nearly 900 homes and built
over 100 from scratch. According to
Forbes, more than 1,000 Detroiters
have been housed as a result of DBB’s
work.
“I’m half Lebanese, half Italian, and
100 percent Detroit stubborn,” George
told nationswell.com. “Once we get
something in our heart and in our
head, it’s almost autopilot.”
12 february 2019
But that was only the beginning. In
2003, George also breathed life into a
dilapidated square mile of Detroit by
turning it into Artist Village, an area
now filled with galleries, a perfor-
mance space, community gardens, a
coffee shop, and outdoor courtyards.
Because this region of North Detroit
was a food desert, George also per-
suaded a supermarket chain to move
into the neighborhood.
“Blight is like a cancer: If you don’t
set upon it, it will spread,” George told
thehubdetroit.com.
And then there’s Halloween. In De-
troit, October 30 was ruefully known
as Devil’s Night, a period when all hell
would break loose in the form of crime
and vandalism. In response, George
created a citizens’ patrol that would
take to the streets, keeping an eye
on suspicious behavior. He dubbed
it Angels’ Night. What began with
12 neighbors on patrol in 1990 has
grown to more than 60,000 citywide.
George’s inspired ideas have not
gone unnoticed by the city he loves.
“John wants to show that there is still
something to Detroit. That it’s still
worth it,” says real estate agent Rob-
ert LaBute. And others are buying into
it. “We’re seeing the trend of younger
homeowners coming in.”
Is George proud of having boosted
his once-ailing hometown? You’d bet-
ter believe he is. As he puts it: “We are
on the front porch of the greatest ur-
ban comeback story in this nation’s
history.”
 Everyday Heroes

sudden move by anyone inside could

The Car send it over.
Jacob Rodriguez watched the scene
on the Ledge unfold from the truck-accessories
company where he works. A veteran,
he whispered a Navy mantra: “Ship,
shipmates, self,” then he and four
By Andy Simmons other men ran to the car. They leaped
onto the trunk to balance the weight
as the terrified kids in the back seat

I
t was rush hour on the morning watched.
of June 1 in the West Texas city of Meanwhile, Julio Vasquez and his
San Angelo. Heather Santellano, 36, nephew, Marco Vasquez, were driving
was driving her white 2012 Mazda on to their jobs at nearby Premier Auto-
Houston Harte Frontage Road with her motive. Julio jumped out of the car to
nine-year-old daughter and ten-year- help while Marco went to the shop,
old son in the back. Suddenly, a red grabbed a heavy-duty strap, and re-
pickup truck cut them off. Santellano turned to the dangling car. He tethered
turned the wheel hard to the right, the Mazda to an F-350 truck that had
sending the Mazda been driven over
skidding off the by one of the other
road and down an rescuers. With the
embankment that car secured, the
ended in a drop- group carefully
off after ab out opened the back
50 feet. If the car doors and helped
d i d n ’ t s t o p, i t the children out.
would go airborne But their de-
and plunge onto “There was a cloud of dust, and I thought par ture shifted
t h e ro a d s o m e she had gone over,” one rescuer said. the car’s weight,
20 feet below. causing it to tilt
Then a bit of luck: As the car raced forward. The men, still on the trunk,
toward the edge, its undercarriage got implored Santellano to jump into the
courtesy julio vasquez

stuck on the cement lip of the embank- back seat to rebalance the weight.
ment ledge, stopping it cold. She did and then inched out the back
The occupants, however, were far door. Finally, the men carefully got off
from safe. The car had come to rest the trunk. Everyone was safe. “Another
on top of a retaining wall, literally foot,” Rodriguez told USA Today, “and
teetering on the edge of disaster. One this would be a different story.”

rd.com 13
Reader ’s Digest

I WON!

The World
BEARD &
MOUSTACHE
CONTEST
jason kiley, age 42,
Viroqua, Wisconsin

When did you start

thinking of your facial
hair as a competitive
asset? I usually just
braid my beard, but I’d
get compliments on it, What’s your technique? How have the cab driv-
so I found a contest. I’ve learned how to do ers reacted? Everything
It was so much fun, it all my styling with my from pretending there’s
was ridiculous. The best hands. You can’t use nothing weird happen-
way to describe a beard bobby pins or wire or ing to getting selfies.
contest is as a cross be- anything. It has to be
tween a beauty pageant hair spray or wax hold- Is it hard to get a
and a dog show. ing your beard up. job with a beard that
reaches your belly
Your beard is almost What’s the competition button? I’m my own
two feet wide and as like? They have a boss, so the beard fits
curly as a basket of styling room at the into my dress code.
snakes. How did you event, but I always style
come up with the de- in a hotel room and
sign? I paid attention to then catch a cab to the The Remington Beard
what the winning styles event because I can’t Boss World Beard
were for other events. safely drive when I and Moustache
I was being strategic. have my beard styled Championships drew
I didn’t have a name up. I don’t have any 738 contestants from
for my design, but I get peripheral vision at 33 countries to Austin,
called Mr. Pretzel a lot. that point. Texas, in 2017.

14 february 2019 | rd.com Illustration by John Cuneo

Reader ’s Digest

LIFE
in these
United States

After my husband in-

jured himself, I ran him
over to the doctor’s
office. There, the nurse
dressed his wound and
gave him instructions
on how to care for it.
She then reassured him
by adding, “Now, if you
do everything I’ve told
you, you won’t be with
us for long.”
—Trudy Masloff
Portland, Oregon “I’m looking for a card that says
‘Your love is priceless’ for under $5.”
In his late 80s, my
father-in-law went to
the DMV to renew his My father-in-law replace the old ones?”
driver’s license. At one calmly shook his head. “They have a place
point during the road “That’s Mum’s side.” that manufactures
test, he approached a —Patricia L. Buck them,” I answered. “It’s
four-way stop, looked Windham, Maine called the ‘olfactory.’”
to his left, and cruised —Wayne Eggleston
straight through the The topic of conversa- Salt Lake City, Utah
stop sign. tion was nose jobs.
“Sir! You didn’t My slightly confused While shopping for
look to your right,” young daughter asked, a bathroom scale,
yelled the frightened “Where does the doctor I found one that tracks
inspector. get the new noses to not only weight but

16 february 2019 cartoon by Chris Wildt

 “This is your great-grandma and great-
grandpa,” I told my grandson as I handed him
a photo of my parents. “Do you think I look
like them?” He shook his head. “Not yet.”
—Veronica Dale Macomb, Michigan I RESOLVE TO
LOSE … WAIT, IS
also body fat, bone dressed on the first THAT A DOUGHNUT?
mass, and water per- date, I probably
centage. I nixed that wouldn’t have dated Happy New Year! Time
one in favor of a low- you again. You wore for the new diet—and
tech model. As I told those two different the new excuses:
the salesperson, “I brown plaids together; ✦ Just burned 2,000
don’t need to be de- that was terrible.” calories. That’s the last
pressed four ways; one —npr.org time I leave brownies in
is quite enough.” the oven while I nap.
—Susie Battaglia Spotted in the legal — @pingstarellis
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania notices section of the ✦ I’m not interested in
Maryland-based Daily any diet plan unless it lets
You know you’re getting Times: Michael Ray me use rollover calories.
old when you get that Dipirro petitioned the — @sbellelauren
one candle on the circuit court to change
✦ The only difference
cake. It’s like, “See if his name to Michael
in my life when I’m on a
you can blow this out.” Ray Forbes. His reason
diet is instead of saying
—Jerry Seinfeld, for doing so? “Ex-wife “I ate nachos,” I say, “I
comedian wants to keep my accidentally ate nachos.”
surname. She can have — @behindyourback
Tracia and Patrick that too!”
✦ Personal trainer: No
olga niekrasova/shutterstock

Kraemer met at a —Barbara Benton

nudist park and fell in Salisbury, Maryland pain, no gain.
love. “It was our third Me: Deal!
date before we saw — @abbycohenwl
each other dressed. Got a funny story ✦ How much mint do I
And that was a good about friends or fam- have to muddle into this
thing,” Tracia said, ily? It could be worth mojito for it to count as a
addressing Patrick, $$$. For details, go to serving of vegetables?
“’cause had I seen you rd.com/submit. — @MichaelTrying

rd.com 17
Reader ’s Digest

QUOTABLE QUOTES
The central idea of love is not even
a relationship commitment. The first thing is a personal
commitment to be the best version of yourself.

from left: matt baron. evan agostini/invision/ap. universal history archive. ibl (all shutterstock)
—Will Smith, actor

I get bored with people who complain about this or that.

It’s such a waste of time.
—Betty White, actor

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work

he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
—Robert Benchley, humorist

The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending

with difficulties ... Great necessities call out great virtues.
—Abigail Adams, first lady

My grandmother always used to say,

“Summer friends will melt away like summer snows,
but winter friends are friends forever.”
—George R. R. Martin, writer, in a dance with dragons

18 smith white adams martin

 Doing anything less than something amazing
is squandering this whole reason that you’re here.
—Brandon Stanton, photographer

I keep getting asked,

“What’s the secret of your longevity?”
I say, “I haven’t died.”
—Billy Joel, singer
from left: kristina bumphrey/starpix. matt baron. benjamin lozovsky/bfa (all shutterstock)

The sooner you stop comparing yourself to other people,

the more attention you get to put on yourself.
—Brooke Shields, supermodel

POINT TO PONDER
Teach, volunteer, show up at PTA meetings, show up at
the Boys & Girls Club, vote, march, be a citizen.
Because in a world of bullets and bots, divisions and distractions,
we need more citizens pulling us together instead of trying
to pull us apart. Give back to your home as the kind of citizen who
builds bridges. Home shapes you. You make sure you shape it back.
—Queen Latifah, rapper

joel latifah shields

 HOW TO

Get
in Shape
in the
New Year
Practical tips for
keeping that resolution—
even if you’ve never
succeeded before

from new scientist

20 february 2019
 Reader ’s Digest

Y
ou know why “get in shape” tops the list of most popular resolutions
year after year? Because it also tops the list of most unfulfilled resolu-
tions. In defense of failed exercisers everywhere, part of the problem is
that getting in shape feels more daunting than ever, what with so many
specialized gadgets, drinks, and experts out there allegedly designed to help.
Rather than overwhelm you with technical tips, this guide goes back to basics
by answering sensible questions about how to make an exercise program work
for you. Looking for marathoning advice? You won’t find it here. This is about
learning to just put one foot in front of the other—all year long.

How much exercise do I really the effects of old age on mitochondria,

need to do?
about 20 minutes a day, or 2.5 hours a
week, of moderate physical activity (or
about half that time for vigorous ac-
tivity), according to the World Health
matthew cohen (shoe). yasu+junko (hat and confetti). shoe courtesy new balance
the energy powerhouses inside cells.
What’s more, high-intensity train-
ing helps boost your metabolic rate,
which means you burn more energy
even at rest. That said, just incorporat-

Organization. ing some element of vigorous exercise

And no gym is required. One study
of more than 130,000 people found
that doing household chores such
as vacuuming and gardening was
enough to reduce the risk of death by
up to 30 percent, as long as you do at
least 2.5 hours’ worth per week. This
is true whether you spread your exer-
cise throughout the week or cram it all
into one day, according to a study of
more than 63,000 adults in the United
Kingdom.
Is intense exercise better?
yes. Pushing the body out of its com-
fort zone forces it to adapt. The higher
the intensity, the greater the adapta-
tion, with benefits for your lungs,
heart, and circulation. In a 2017 study,
Mayo Clinic researchers found that
high-intensity interval training re-
duced, and even sometimes reversed,
into a moderate routine—whether
faster-paced walking, some hills, or a
few stairs—will deliver benefits.
Does stretching help?
a little bit. Dynamic stretching, in
which you move your limbs to increase
the range of motion (as you do in a
walking lunge, for example), slightly
reduces the risk of some injuries to
muscles, ligaments, and tendons.
On the other hand, static stretching
(such as a calf stretch) may actually re-
duce exercise performance, according
to Lynda Norton of Flinders University,
who helped conduct a review of stud-
ies on the impact of stretching. “Static
stretching has been shown to inhibit
maximum strength and power, which
are important for explosive activities
like jumping and sprinting,” she says.
Also, a 2011 review of 12 studies

rd.com 21
Reader ’s Digest How to Get in Shape

found that regardless of whether you

do it before or after exercise, stretch-
ing doesn’t significantly reduce
muscle soreness.

Does music make exercise easier?

yes. Listening to tunes while you exer-
cise can improve power, strength, and
endurance. We move to the beat of
our playlist unconsciously. When
researchers secretly sped up or
slowed down music that cyclists
were listening to, they quickened or
eased their pace accordingly.
Another small study found that run-
ners who listened to either a metro-
nome or music at a tempo that synced
with their typical stride ran for longer
than they could without music. While
the metronome helped them maintain
a consistent pace, the runners said
music made the workout feel easier.

water bottle courtesy hydroflask. app courtesy weav run

To find the right music for you,
count how many times one foot hits
the ground in a minute and double
it to get your stride rate. Then find a
song with a similar number of beats
per minute (bpm). You can search
for tracks organized by bpm on the
website jog.fm; use the Spotify app,
which matches songs to your tempo;
or check out Weav Run, an app that
reengineers your favorite songs to
match your tempo.
Does a good workout mean sweat?
no. Research does show that people
perspire more as they get fitter because
their bodies adapt to dealing with the
effort and sweating more helps them
keep cool. Also, men tend to sweat
more during exercise than women.
But sweating doesn’t indicate anything
about the quality of a workout. matthew cohen. yasu+junko (confetti).
Is running on a treadmill easier
than running outside?
no. It’s true that on a treadmill, there
is no air resistance. (To make up for
that, some people set the treadmill’s
incline to 1 percent to approximate
the amount of extra energy they’d use
outdoors.) However, research shows
that at slower speeds, there was no
significant difference in the amount of

22 february 2019 | rd.com

 Save up to
on each
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Reader ’s Digest How to Get in Shape

oxygen uptake used for running inside What should I be eating?

versus outdoors.
In fact, many people think the
“dreadmill” feels harder. Runners on
treadmills who were asked to replicate
a pace they had previously run on a
track, for example, jogged more than
two minutes per mile slower. Irene
Davis of Harvard Medical School, who
studies the biomechanics of running,
blames the treadmill’s forcing them to
stay at one speed, which is unnatural.
For those who still use a treadmill,
Davis recommends adjusting the
speed and the incline according to
how you feel. “Anything constant is not
a good thing for your body,” she says.
Does exercising slowly burn
more fat?
no. The idea of the “fat-burning zone”
starts with the fact that the body can
quickly turn carbohydrates into fuel,
so they are called upon in an intense
workout. Fat is burned more slowly,
making it an ideal fuel for a slow pace.
Unfortunately, while it is true that
we burn proportionally more fat than
carbohydrates at a slower pace, the
amount of both burned will be much
higher at higher intensities. So keep
up the pace!
nothing. For a light workout, don’t
eat immediately before. While elite
athletes will get more power if they in-
crease their carbs for a few days before
a big event, those who are exercising
to stay healthy and lose weight don’t
need that energy boost. Researchers
at the University of Bath asked over-
weight men to walk for an hour on a
treadmill on an empty stomach and
after a heavy breakfast. Sure enough,
samples taken from their fat tissue
afterward showed that more fat was
used to fuel the exercise when the men
fasted than when they had eaten.
Post workout, eat protein, which
provides the building blocks required
for replenishing muscle, says Louise
Burke, head of nutrition at the Aus-
tralian Institute of Sport. She rec-
ommends eating about 20 grams of
protein (the amount in about 3 eggs,
1 cup of lentils, or 3 ounces of lean
beef ) within 30 to 60 minutes of fin-
ishing an exercise session to build
new muscle. In addition, include
20 grams of protein in every meal the
following day.
new scientist (january 2018), copyright © 2018 by
new scientist ltd., reprinted with permission by
tribune content agency, newscientist.com.

Confidential Lesson
I learned only one thing in private school, and obviously
I can’t tell you what it is, because it’s private.
@rachelle_mandik

24 february 2019 | rd.com

 Stan stays on
his feet all day
with the help of

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Guaranteed!
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ŚŝůŵĂƌŬDĂƐƐĂĐŚƵƐĞƩƐ

Manufacturers Coupon Expires 12/31/2019 RD219

$
3.00 OFF
081543900-170193

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Find in the Diabetic Care aisle.
Retailer: Wise Consumer Products Co. will reimburse you for the face value of this coupon
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Reader ’s Digest

LIFE WELL LIVED

A Love
Without
Limits
Some people thought that
a couple with Down
syndrome shouldn’t marry.
But after 25 years, Paul
and Kris Scharoun-DeForge
are still going strong.

By Sean Kirst
from the buffalo news

F
or years, Kris Scharoun-
DeForge had a Valentine’s Day
routine she celebrated like
clockwork with her husband,
Paul Scharoun-DeForge.
She would always have a card—one
Kris, 58, enjoys cooking. Paul loves
just about everything she makes. Yet
on Valentine’s Day, they would go out
to eat, maybe at Red Lobster or Olive
Garden, maybe someplace as basic
and comfortable as their beloved
buffalo news

of the elaborate ones she prefers to Subway. They were celebrating each
make by hand for those she loves— other.
waiting for him when he came home “He opened up my world,” Kris said,
from work. her arm resting on Paul’s.

26 february 2019 Photograph by Derek Gee


But this year’s Valentine’s Day may
be the most eventful one yet. That’s
because it is their 25th as husband
and wife, a landmark that would be
noteworthy for most couples but
is extraordinary for the Scharoun-
DeForges. They were both born with
Down syndrome and are believed to
be the longest-married couple with
the condition in the country.
Kris and Paul
enjoy a quiet
moment at the
apartment
they shared.
At the time of their wedding, some
folks believed that people with Down
syndrome didn’t have the emotional
maturity to be married. Kris, who as
a girl used to cut wedding photos
from magazines and hang them on
her wall, knew better. “I looked into
his eyes and saw my future,” Kris said
about falling in love with Paul when
they first met at a dance 30 years
rd.com 27
Reader ’s Digest

ago. To prove her point,

when they got married,
they decided to blend
their last names into
one.
Still, they’ve had their
struggles, and the most
recent one may be the
most monumental. This
year’s Valentine’s Day is
the first on which they
won’t be living together.
Paul, 54, is coping with
early-stage dementia,
an illness that affects
many with his condition at a relatively
young age. Several months ago, the
state moved him into a community
residence with intensive nursing care.
“When they told me, I started to cry,”
said Kris, who still lives in their cozy
apartment in Liverpool, New York,
a suburb of Syracuse. “He’s my life. I
don’t want to be without him.”
Their family worked hard to keep
them together. They believe that Kris
and Paul deserve the chance to make
the same decisions as any couple
when one partner faces dementia.
“They should define their own lives,”
Susan Scharoun, Kris’s sister, told
Today. “They know what is good for
them.”
When the New York State Office
for People with Developmental Dis-
abilities determined that Paul could
not stay in the couple’s home, the
family petitioned. They even found
a new apartment that met the state’s
Kris fell in love with Paul at first sight,
more than 30 years ago: “He’s my life.”
standards and was more easily ac-
cessible for Paul. At first, the state
agreed—a huge victory—but Paul’s
condition continued to deteriorate.
By that time he was using a wheel-
chair and required round-the-clock
care. The state decided he needed to
move to the facility after all.
The couple was disappointed
but not daunted. Kris visits Paul
regularly, and they spend week- courtesy kris and paul scharoun-deforge
ends together at Scharoun’s house,
where Kris still cooks for her groom.
“They have an unconditional love,”
Scharoun said. “They totally comple-
ment each other.”
The ongoing quest to keep them
together reminds Lorraine DeForge,
Paul’s mother, of all the obstacles her
son has overcome. With help from his
seven brothers and sisters, he mas-
tered the bus service in Syracuse. He

28 february 2019
 Life Well Lived

spent many years working at the Arc
of Onondaga’s vocational division. In
2013, this local chapter of the Arc, a
nationwide community organiza-
tion that advocates for the develop-
mentally disabled, cited Paul’s work
ethic, community service, and good
cheer when it named him Person of
the Year.
DeForge remembered how some
doctors told her “not to expect much”
when Paul was born. Instead, he grew
up to live a successful life that in-
cluded a marriage that has lasted a
quarter century.
Kris has had her struggles too.
While she speaks with passion of the
support of her parents, she spent a
year as a child in a state institution
after her father died young and her
mother became ill. “It was hard,” she
said quietly, recalling the sense of
isolation.
Then and now, she said, some
people could be cruel. She still en-
counters the occasional stranger who
makes casual and wounding use of
the word retard.
The truth is, those people have no
idea how rich and rewarding her life is.
They cannot appreciate how Kris,
a diabetic, has the courage to give
herself insulin injections four times
every day.
They cannot understand how Kris
learned to be a skilled cook and grad-
uated from high school, or how she
gets up in the morning to go to work
“I LOOKED INTO HIS
EYES,” KRIS SAYS,
“AND I SAW
MY FUTURE.”
in an office mail room, or how she and
Paul maintain a fierce allegiance to
NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.
They cannot see the kind of com-
mitment that endures after 25 years,
and is every bit as fresh today: “to
have and to hold, in sickness and in
health.”
And they can’t see how, as Kris sits
in her own living room and recalls
those vows from her wedding day, she
is surrounded by photos of herself with
the man who changed her life.
buffalo news (february 13, 2018), copyright © 2018
by buffalo news, buffalonews.com.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Whoever came up with the idea of combining diamonds
with marriage must have been pretty smart. What better to symbolize
marriage than the hardest thing known to mankind?
mike dugan, comedian

rd.com 29
What is NUEDEXTA® (dextromethorphan HBr and quinidine sulfate)
20 mg/10 mg capsules approved for?
• NUEDEXTA® is approved for the treatment of PseudoBulbar Affect (PBA). PBA is a
medical condition that causes involuntary, sudden, and frequent episodes of crying and/or
laughing in people living with certain neurologic conditions or brain injury. PBA episodes
are typically exaggerated or don’t match how the person feels. PBA is distinct and
different from other types of emotional changes caused by neurologic disease or injury.
• NUEDEXTA is only available by prescription.
IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION
Before you take NUEDEXTA, tell your doctor:
• If you are taking monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), quinidine, or quinidine-related
drugs. These can interact with NUEDEXTA causing serious side effects. MAOIs cannot be
taken within 14 days before or after taking NUEDEXTA.
• If you have previously had an allergic reaction to dextromethorphan, quinidine or
quinidine-like drugs.
• About all medicines, herbal supplements, and vitamins you take as NUEDEXTA and
certain other medicines can interact causing side effects.
• If you have had heart disease or have a family history of heart rhythm problems.
NUEDEXTA may cause serious side effects, including changes in heart rhythm. If you
have certain heart problems, NUEDEXTA may not be right for you. Your doctor may test
your heart rhythm (heartbeats) before you start NUEDEXTA.
• If you have myasthenia gravis.
While taking NUEDEXTA, call your doctor right away:
• If you feel faint or lose consciousness.
• If you experience lightheadedness, chills, fever, nausea, or vomiting as these may be
signs of an allergic reaction to NUEDEXTA. Hepatitis has been seen in patients taking
quinidine, an ingredient in NUEDEXTA.
• If you have unexplained bleeding or bruising. Quinidine, an ingredient in NUEDEXTA,
can cause a reduction in the number of platelets in your blood which can be severe
and, if left untreated, can be fatal.
• If you feel dizzy, since it may increase your risk of falling.
• If you have muscle twitching, confusion, high blood pressure, fever, restlessness,
sweating, or shivering, as these may be signs of a potential drug interaction called
serotonin syndrome.
The most common side effects of NUEDEXTA are diarrhea, dizziness, cough, vomiting,
weakness, and swelling of feet and ankles. This is not a complete list of side effects.
Tell your doctor about any side effect that bothers you or does not go away.
You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA.
Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 800-FDA-1088.
See Important Facts on next page.
©2018 Avanir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. All rights reserved. AVANIR and NUEDEXTA are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Avanir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in the United States
and other countries. MLR-NUE-US-0288-1118
 After
my STROKE,
I would
find myself
CRYING
UNCONTROLLABLY
for no reason.
It made me feel

MISUNDERSTOOD
I learned that these unpredictable episodes could be
symptoms of PBA, a condition that can be effectively
treated with NUEDEXTA.

If you are bothered by sudden, frequent, uncontrollable

episodes of crying and/or laughing that are exaggerated
or simply don’t match how you feel, you might have
PBA (PseudoBulbar Affect). PBA can follow certain
neurologic conditions or brain injury. When these episodes
occur, they can seem out of place and confusing.

If you’re experiencing symptoms, talk to your doctor

about the first and only FDA-approved treatment for
PBA, NUEDEXTA.

Think you could have PBA?

Learn more at NUEDEXTA.COM
IMPORTANT FACTS
(Pronounced: new-DEX-tuh)

ABOUT NUEDEXTA
• NUEDEXTA® is approved for the treatment of PseudoBulbar Affect (PBA). PBA is a
medical condition that causes involuntary, sudden, and frequent episodes of crying and/or
laughing in people living with certain neurologic conditions or brain injury. PBA episodes
are typically exaggerated or don’t match how the person feels. PBA is distinct and
different from other types of emotional changes caused by neurologic disease or injury.
• NUEDEXTA is only available by prescription.

DO NOT TAKE NUEDEXTA IF YOU NUEDEXTA MAY CAUSE SERIOUS

• Are taking other drugs that contain
quinidine, quinine, or mefloquine.
• Have a history of allergic reactions or
intolerance (including hepatitis, low blood
cell count, or lupus-like syndrome) to
quinidine, quinine, or mefloquine.
• Have ever been allergic to
dextromethorphan (commonly found in
some cough medicines).
• Are taking, or have taken, drugs called
monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs).
MAOIs cannot be taken within 14 days
before or after taking NUEDEXTA.
• Have had heart disease or have a family
history of heart rhythm problems.
• Are taking drugs such as thioridazine and
pimozide that interact with NUEDEXTA
and cause changes in heart rhythm. If you
have certain heart conditions or are taking
certain medicines, your doctor may test
your heart rhythm (heartbeats) before you
start NUEDEXTA.
SIDE EFFECTS
• Stop NUEDEXTA if these side effects occur:
Symptoms including lightheadedness,
chills, fever, nausea, or vomiting may
be a sign of an allergic reaction, or
thrombocytopenia which if left untreated
can be fatal.
Hepatitis has been seen in patients taking
quinidine, an ingredient in NUEDEXTA.
Abnormal heart rhythm. Stop NUEDEXTA
and tell your doctor immediately as it may
be a sign of Torsades de Pointes.
• In some cases NUEDEXTA can interact
with antidepressants causing confusion,
high blood pressure, fever, restlessness,
sweating, and shivering. Tell your doctor if
you experience any of these side effects.
• Tell your doctor if you’ve ever been
diagnosed with myasthenia gravis. If so,
NUEDEXTA may not be right for you.

POSSIBLE COMMON SIDE EFFECTS OF NUEDEXTA

The most common side effects in patients taking NUEDEXTA were diarrhea, dizziness,
cough, vomiting, weakness and swelling of feet and ankles.
• If you are unsteady on your feet or if you have fallen before, be careful while taking
NUEDEXTA to avoid falling.
• This is not a complete list of side effects.
• Tell your doctor if you have any side effect that bothers you or does not go away.
TAKING NUEDEXTA ALONG WITH OTHER MEDICATIONS
• Tell your doctor about all medicines, supplements, and vitamins you take before
starting NUEDEXTA.
• NUEDEXTA may interact with other medications causing potentially serious side-effects,
and may affect the way NUEDEXTA or these other medicines work. Your doctor may adjust
the dose of these medicines if used together with NUEDEXTA:
Antidepressants.
Certain heart or blood pressure medications. Your doctor may test your heart rhythm
before you start NUEDEXTA.
Digoxin.
Alcohol. Limit alcohol intake while taking NUEDEXTA.
These are not the only medicines that may cause problems when you take NUEDEXTA.
• Before starting a new medicine, remind your doctor if you are taking NUEDEXTA.

ADDITIONAL IMPORTANT INFORMATION

• If your PBA symptoms do not improve or if they get worse, contact your
healthcare provider.
• NUEDEXTA has not been studied in patients less than age 18 or in pregnant women.
Tell your doctor if you may be pregnant.
• Nursing mothers: Because many drugs are excreted in human milk, discuss with your
healthcare provider if you are nursing.
• Take NUEDEXTA exactly as your doctor prescribes it.
• You and your healthcare provider should talk regularly about whether you still need
treatment with NUEDEXTA.
• NUEDEXTA may be taken with or without food.
• Keep NUEDEXTA and all medicines out of reach of children.
• The need for continued treatment should be reassessed periodically, as spontaneous
improvement of PBA occurs in some patients.

NEED MORE INFORMATION? NEED PRESCRIPTION

ASSISTANCE?
This information about NUEDEXTA is important but is not
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Information or call 1-855-4NUEDEX (1-855-468-3339). and co-pay information.

Marketed by Avanir® Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Aliso Viejo, CA 92656

©2016 Avanir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. All rights reserved.
AVANIR and NUEDEXTA are trademarks or registered trademarks of Avanir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in the
United States and other countries. NUE-0445-OTH-1116 Rev. Date Nov 2016

Show Me Your
Ways Lord
Gabriel Baptiste
www.xlibris.com
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This devotional seeks to depict how accessible
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humanity, and He does this in many ways.
An Insider’s History of
the Swingin’ Medallions
Carroll Bledsoe
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This biography charts the story of eight young
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Road to Freedom
My Life and Journey from a
3rd World Country
Edward A. Nieto
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This memoir details Edward A. Nieto’s life
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G.B. Jones
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Snatched from her happy home and placed with
drug-addicted, abusive relatives, Nia sinks into
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The love of another abused child seeps into her
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Mad Druggist
Frank Hozeska
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Louie gets fi red from every pharmacy job. He
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Robert Maddock
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A Story about CIA / MI6 Middle East 1957
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 Reader ’s Digest

When Chemo Isn’t

Worth It Against
Breast Cancer
A new study found that
about 70 percent of
women with the most
common type of early-
stage breast cancer
News From the likely do not need

WORLD OF chemotherapy after

surgery. A gene-

MEDICINE expression test exam-

ined the tumors of more
than 10,000 women
with hormone receptor–
positive, HER2-negative
breast cancer that had
not spread to lymph
nodes. The test assigned
each woman a “recur-
A SINGLE CONCUSSION rence score” from 0 to
100; the higher the
RAISES DEMENTIA RISK score, the greater the
A study of more than 2.5 million people chance the cancer
would return. Among
found that having just one concussion in- the women who scored
creased the risk of developing dementia by between 11 and 25,
17 percent compared with those with no those who received hor-
concussions. The more concussions you’ve mone therapy (the most
common treatment)
had, the greater the risk. If you’ve had a had almost identical
concussion, though, don’t panic: Your abso- survival and recurrence
lute chance of getting dementia remains rates as those who also
quite low. That said, you might want to man- got chemo. The one
exception: Women
age the other known risk factors, which in- age 50 or younger with
clude alcohol abuse and hypertension, and a score of 16 to 25 did
take precautions against getting hurt again. benefit from chemo.

Photograph by The Voorhes rd.com | february 2019 35

Reader ’s Digest

Flu Vaccine Osteoporosis Drug

Could Save Your May Cure Baldness
Life if You Have
Heart Failure Researchers from the
University of Manches-
Need another reason to ter have discovered that
get your flu shot? Ac- a drug originally devel-
cording to an analysis oped to treat bone loss
of data from more than may also help treat hair
78,000 patients with
heart failure, getting
A PHOTO A loss. The drug, known
as WAY-316606, sup-
a seasonal influenza DAY KEEPS presses the activity of
vaccine was associated
with a 50 percent drop
THE DOCTOR a protein that is key
to regulating the
in the risk of death AWAY growth of many differ-
(from any cause) dur- ent types of tissue,
ing flu season and a Taking a photograph including hair follicles.
20 percent drop in the each day and posting it In a lab, the researchers
risk of death during the online is a popular extracted hair follicles
rest of the year. Accord- hobby, if the millions of from male hair-
ing to the study’s lead online pictures tagged transplant patients,
author, it is well-known “#365” are any indica- then treated the sam-
that heart failure pa- tion. To explore how ples with the drug. In
tients have an elevated this habit affects health, just two days, the drug
risk of flu-related British researchers in- stimulated the hair fol-
death, so it makes terviewed the creators licles to grow. A clinical
sense that vaccination of online photo journals trial is needed to en-
can help. Getting vacci- and discovered that sure that the treatment
nated was also linked daily photography im- is safe and effective
to a 22 percent reduc- proved respondents’ when used on hair still
tion in the risk of being lives in several ways: attached to living hu-
octographers/shutterstock

hospitalized with car- It made them mindful man scalps, but experts
diac problems. of the present, it moti- are excited about the
vated them to go for prospect of a new med-
walks to get their ication, as existing hair-
photos, and it gave loss treatments are not
them opportunities to effective for everyone.
interact with folks who
share their interests.

36 february 2019 | rd.com

 News from the World of Medicine
THE SCIENCE OF
“HANGER”
If you’ve ever been “hangry”—that is,
so hungry it makes you angry—you’ll
be happy to learn that scientists have
begun studying the
causes of this un-
pleasant condition
and recommend-
ing fixes.
To diagnose
hanger, re-
searchers from
the University of
North Carolina at
Chapel Hill asked sub-
jects at varying levels of
hunger to write a story about either
their emotions or an average day.
Next, they were asked to look at
circles on a computer that had been
rigged to crash. The experimenter
would then blame the participant for
crashing the program.
It turns out that the people who
had written stories about emotions
fisher photostudio/shutterstock (food)
(and were therefore focused on their
ilya akinshin/shutterstock (plate),
feelings) felt less stressed or angry
when they were unfairly blamed for
the computer crash, even if they
were hungry.
The takeaway: Being aware of
your emotional state reduces the
chance that hunger will ruin your
mood. Mindfulness training can help
with that. Of course, if you’re hangry,
eating also helps.
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 Reader ’s Digest

T
he plant kingdom contains a
staggering array of fruits, nearly
I Am the
every one trading in the same
FOOD old thing: sweetness. My fruit breth-

ON YOUR
ren whisper sugary promises to coax
animals into eating their flesh and

PLATE spreading their seeds. Their offer is

understandably appealing—eating
simple carbs is the fastest way for any
creature on the move to get the burst
of energy it needs. But me? I’m the
oddball that plies my charms not with
sugar but with rich, silky fat.
Once a nutritional pariah, that fat
is largely what earned me my current
spot as an American health darling,
chunked into almost every salad and
mashed into guacamole as if every
day were Super Bowl Sunday. You’ll
get up to 30 grams of fat from each
of me, and 20 of those are the mono-
unsaturated kind credited with raising
“good” HDL cholesterol and lowering
heart disease risk. I’m also great for
weight control, since I’m high in fiber
and abundantly satiating.
Avocados What’s good for the heart and belly
is also good for the mind. Research-
A “Fat Bomb” ers recently found that people over 50
who ate one of me a day for six months
for Hearts improved (improved!) their cognition.
That’s likely courtesy of a pigment I

and Minds carry called lutein. You’ll find it in leafy

atwood/shutterstock

greens, too—in greater quantities, in

fact—but in me the built-in presence
of my monounsaturates helps the body
By Kate Lowenstein absorb it, eventually shuttling it to the
and Daniel Gritzer brain. With greens, you need to add
olive oil to get the same effect.

rd.com | february 2019 39

Reader ’s Digest

As health experts began emphasiz- AVOCADO-COFFEE

ing good fats, their wish became your
desire. In 1985, America ate about
4 million pounds of me per week; that
figure is projected to be 50 million in
2019. In other countries, I’ve been
wildly popular for decades: In Brazil,
I’m mashed with condensed milk,
cream, and lime juice; in Indonesia,
I’m whipped into a shake with choco-
late syrup; in Morocco, I’m blended
with milk, sugar, and orange-flower
water.
But as much as you humans love
me, you’re not nearly the first species
to clamor for my substantial flesh.
Millennia ago in my native southern
Mexico and Central America, there
existed beasts with digestive systems
large enough to process and then
disperse my massive pit. These were
the so-called megafauna: sloths that
could reach ten feet tall; armadillo-like
glyptodons that were as big as small
cars; and gomphotheres, cousins of
SMOOTHIE
Combine the flesh of 1 ripe Hass
avocado, 1 cup whole milk, ½ cup
sweetened condensed milk, a pinch
of salt, and 8 ice cubes and blend
until smooth. Blend in 3 tablespoons
strongly brewed coffee, such as
an espresso shot, cooled to room
temperature. Drizzle chocolate syrup
on the inner walls of the serving cups
to make a swirl before filling with the
smoothie. Makes about two 12-ounce
servings. Note: This smoothie also
tastes great without the coffee.
And for a colder beverage,
simply add more ice; prechilling
the liquid ingredients in the
refrigerator will also help
keep the drink cold.

mark derse/toh, food stylist: sarah farmer/toh

the elephant, with their ginormous
tusks. Historians and botanists don’t
know exactly which of these snacked
on me, but they all would have been
able to pop me into their mouths like
peanuts, then poop out my pits far
and wide for new trees to grow. With-
out them to spread my unusually large
seed, my creamy green gift would have
been little more than a weird and mo-
mentary blip in fruit’s sugary history.
Fast-forward to about 13,000 years
ago, when humans came along and
hunted my behemoth patrons into

40 february 2019
 I Am the Food on Your Plate

extinction. That would have been
the end of me, too, had people not
decided that they also loved a dose of
plant-based fat. While human diges-
tion can’t accommodate my pit, your
hands can, and I was able to achieve
even wider distribution via the thumb-
carrying Homo sapiens who ate me
and tossed my seed here and there.
With agriculture, things got even
better for me. I spawned into hundreds
more varieties, which are today grown
from South Africa to New Zealand and
California to Indonesia. Some of my
strains are the size of a chicken’s egg,
with a peel so thin you can eat its skin
and flesh together, like an apple. Others
are as large as a football. Some, such as
the Hass (which makes up most of the
American market), turn black and peb-
bly on the outside when mature; others
are green and smooth at peak ripeness.
Thankfully for the farmers who trans-
port me across the United States from
California and Mexico, I ripen off the
tree and therefore ship well.
If you buy me before I’ve ripened,
you can put me in a brown paper bag
for a few days to speed things up, as
I produce a gas called ethylene that
promotes ripening. Adding an apple
or a banana—also ethylene-producing
fruits—makes the process even more
efficient. To test me for ripeness, apply
gentle pressure anywhere on my skin;
if it yields, I’m probably ready to eat or
to put in the fridge, where the soften-
ing process will slow.
One last word—of caution. There
has been a spate of “avocado hand,”
which is what happens when well-
meaning guac makers whack their
knives at my pit in hopes of dislodg-
ing it but instead find themselves
with a blade in the palm. ER doctors
report an increase in such incidents
and strongly advise caution when pre-
paring me. Please listen to them. My
reputation for being both healthy and
rich gets dinged when I bite the hand
that breeds me.
Kate Lowenstein is the editor-in-chief
of Vice’s health website, Tonic; Daniel
Gritzer is the culinary director of the
cooking site Serious Eats.

Intergalactic Buzz
It sounds like a plot for a Martian movie, but scientists really
are planning to unleash a swarm of robotic bees on the Red Planet.
These bumblebee-size “Marsbees” (as NASA is calling them) could replace
most of the clunky, expensive rovers that are busily searching for
methane gas emissions and other signs of Martian life.
livescience.com

rd.com 41
8 kids a day are accidentally killed
or injured by FAMILY FIRE.
FAMILY FIRE is a shooting involving an
improperly stored gun, often found in the home.

ENDFAMILYFIRE.org
 Reader ’s Digest

WE 1
FOUND
Winterproof Your Boots
cleaning Give your winter boots and other
A FIX
9 tricks to
shoes a good coating of WD-40, which
will stop water from seeping through
Improve Your Life* to your feet. WD-40 can also remove ugly
salt stains from leather shoes during the
winter. Just spray onto the stains and
wipe with a clean rag.

*From RD.com reporting

PHOTOGRAPH BY Ali Blumenthal rd.com | february 2019 43

Reader ’s Digest

2
Brew Your Tea Cold
4
Remember Where
health Tea is full of antioxidants, which boost your You Parked
immune system. Instead of sipping a hot mugful, auto Once you’ve pulled
Michael Greger, MD, author of The How Not to Die into your spot, open
Cookbook, suggests brewing it cold: Antioxidant levels the Google Maps app
are higher than when tea is made with boiling water. on your phone and tap
your location (marked by
the blue dot). Choose Set

3
As Parking Location, and
the address will become
a plot on the map marked
Keep Your Dog from Getting the Flu by a P. You’ll never lose
your car again—as long
pets Like any other member of your family, as you don’t lose your
your pooch is susceptible to the sniffles. phone.
Ask your vet about getting your dog the

5
canine influenza vaccine. If your pup is
unvaccinated, avoid dog parks, groomers,
and doggy day cares or boarding facilities.

eric isselee/shutterstock (dog). stuar/shutterstock (tissues)

Get Free Tax Help
money If you or someone
in your life needs help
filling out and filing tax
forms, you might be in
luck. The Tax Counseling
for the Elderly program
offers assistance to
individuals 60 years and
older, while Volunteer
Income Tax Assistance
is open to people who
generally make $54,000
or less. With both
programs, IRS-certified
volunteers are available
to help you prepare your
taxes for free. To learn
more, go to irs.gov.

44 february 2019
 We Found a Fix

8
Prevent Streaky
Windows
home Your mother might
have taught you that
cleaning windows with
newspapers would make
the glass shiny and streak-

6
free. While it’s true that
newsprint doesn’t leave
lint behind the way paper
Avoid Overweight-Bag Fees towels do, it can tear eas-
travel Many of the major U.S. airlines recently raised ily if oversaturated and
their baggage fees, and an overweight bag can cost you doesn’t pick up dirt and
an extra $100. If you’re not sure whether yours will make residue well. For a surefire
the cut, pack a few of your heavier items in a tote bag, way to get spotless win-
then pack the tote at the top of your suitcase. If your dows, dilute rubbing alco-
luggage tips the scales, you can simply take the tote hol or vinegar 50/50 with
bag out and carry it on as a personal item. water, dab the mixture
onto a microfiber cloth,

7
and wipe away grime.
“smishing,” phishing
attempts conducted

Delete These Texts
Immediately
technology You know
you shouldn’t open
e-mails or answer phone
calls from people you
don’t know. This helps
you avoid phishing, a
africa studio/shutterstock
over SMS (short message
service, better known
as texting). In particular,
if you get a text from an
“acquaintance” you’ve
never met, from your
bank asking you to
confirm your account, or
from a contest you didn’t
9
Never Waste
Ketchup Again
food Instead of furiously
shaking the bottle only
to produce an enormous
ketchup blob, a Heinz

scamming tactic used
to trick people into
revealing confidential
information about their
bank accounts, credit
cards, or other personal
accounts. Now you
also need to be wary of
enter informing you that
you’ve won a prize,
delete it immediately.
And never click on links
sent by text from people
you don’t know. They
could infect your phone
with malware.
spokesperson told Today,
hit the bottle where the
neck starts to narrow.
The ketchup will come
out more quickly and
smoothly.

rd.com 45
 LAUGHTER
The best Medicine

“After you acquire the power of speech, we need to talk.”

A guy gets a ticket to seated next to him. “I’m so sorry. But

the Super Bowl but “Why would anyone couldn’t you find a
finds he’s in the nose- pass this up?” friend to come with
bleed section. He spots “It’s my wife’s,” you?”
an empty seat on the says the older man. The older man
50-yard line, runs “We’ve gone to every shakes his head.
down, and claims it. Super Bowl since we “They’re all at the
“What a view!” he says were married, but funeral.”
to the elderly man she passed away.” —humorplanet.com

46 february 2019 cartoon by Phil Witte


I did some research, and it turns out
I’m super Irish. Even my blood type
is O apostrophe.
—Brian Kiley, comedian
To the guy who stole
my antidepressants:
I hope you’re happy
now.
—Submitted by
Dan Cusato
Tustin, California
The village blacksmith
finally found an ap-
prentice willing to
work long, hard hours.
The blacksmith in-
structed the boy,
“When I take the shoe
out of the fire, I’ll lay it
on the anvil, and when
I nod my head, you hit
it with this hammer.”
The apprentice did
just as he was told.
Now he’s the village
blacksmith.
—valleybugler.com
courtesy vince rozmiarek
Fred Astaire and Gin-
ger Rogers were dining
in New York. Ginger
was resplendent in a
ball gown and pearls,
and Fred also sported
Reader ’s Digest
DRIVE-BY LAUGHS
What’s the funniest
town in Colorado? It
might be Indian Hills,
home to these hill-areas
evening wear. But the road signs.
meal was marred when
the waiter bringing
their desserts tripped
and covered Fred from
head to toe in treacle
sponge.
“I’m terribly sorry,”
said the waiter.
“So you should be,”
replied Fred. “Thanks
to you, I’ve pudding on
my top hat, pudding
on my white tie,
pudding on my tails.”
—Submitted by
George Kloss
Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma
I went to the doctor
and he said, “You’ve
got hypochondria.” I
said, “Not that as well!”
—Tim Vine, comedian
Got a funny joke?
It could be worth $$$.
For details, go to
rd.com/submit.
rd.com 47
bladder (OAB) treatment in its class.
In clinical trials, those taking Myrbetriq made fewer trips to the bathroom and had
fewer leaks than those not taking Myrbetriq. Your results may vary.
TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR OAB SYMPTOMS BY TALKING
TO YOUR DOCTOR ABOUT MYRBETRIQ TODAY.
USE OF MYRBETRIQ (meer-BEH-trick)
Myrbetriq® (mirabegron) is a prescription medicine for adults used to treat overactive
bladder (OAB) with symptoms of urgency, frequency and leakage.
IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION
Myrbetriq is not for everyone. Do not take Myrbetriq if you have an allergy to mirabegron or
any ingredients in Myrbetriq. Myrbetriq may cause your blood pressure to increase or make
your blood pressure worse if you have a history of high blood pressure. It is recommended
that your doctor check your blood pressure while you are taking Myrbetriq. Myrbetriq may
increase your chances of not being able to empty your bladder. Tell your doctor right
away if you have trouble emptying your bladder or you have a weak urine stream.

Myrbetriq® is a registered trademark of Astellas Pharma Inc.

All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
©2018 Astellas Pharma US, Inc. All rights reserved. 057-2708-PM
IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION (CONTINUED)
Myrbetriq may cause allergic reactions that may be serious. If you experience swelling
of the face, lips, throat or tongue, with or without difficulty breathing, stop taking Myrbetriq
and tell your doctor right away.
Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take including medications for overactive
bladder or other medicines such as thioridazine (Mellaril™ and Mellaril-S™), flecainide
(Tambocor®), propafenone (Rythmol®), digoxin (Lanoxin®) or solifenacin succinate
(VESIcare®). Myrbetriq may affect the way other medicines work, and other medicines
may affect how Myrbetriq works.
Before taking Myrbetriq, tell your doctor if you have liver or kidney problems. The most
common side effects of Myrbetriq include increased blood pressure, common cold
symptoms (nasopharyngitis), dry mouth, flu symptoms, urinary tract infection, back pain,
dizziness, joint pain, headache, constipation, sinus irritation, and inflammation of the
bladder (cystitis).
For further information, please talk to your healthcare professional and see Brief
Summary of Prescribing Information for Myrbetriq® (mirabegron) on the following pages.
Myrbetriq® (mirabegron) extended-release tablets 25 mg, 50 mg
Brief Summary based on FDA-approved patient labeling
Read the Patient Information that comes with Myrbetriq® (mirabegron) before you start taking
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30
Reader ’s Digest

1
Salt was so valu-

13 THINGS able in ancient

Rome that soldiers
were sometimes paid
with it. In fact, the
Amazing Facts word salary comes
from the Latin word

About Salt sal, for salt. When a

soldier was doing a
By Jen McCaffery lousy job, his paycheck
might be cut, which is
how we got the expres-
sion “not worth his
salt.”

2
Salt can still be
valuable today.
Amethyst Bamboo
9x salt, which rings up
at $398 a pound, may
be the most expensive
in the world. This
pricey stuff takes a lot
of time to produce—it’s
roasted nine times in-
side a bamboo pole at
temperatures exceed-
ing 1,400 degrees F.
One store says the
resulting delicacy
“smells like something
dragons use to season
their victims before
eating them.”

3
Historically,
salt’s value came
from its ability to
preserve food. Venice,

52 february 2019 Illustration by Serge Bloch

Italy, may be famous 170 milligrams of water, says Christy
for its canals now, but sodium per ounce— Brissette, RDN, presi-
salt imports fueled its a little more than a dent of 80 Twenty
rise as an influential small bag of potato Nutrition.
trade power by the end chips.

8
of the 13th century. Sea salt may

6
Even French fries sound healthier

4
Salt also took aren’t necessarily than table salt,
on a great deal of the biggest culprit. but most sea salts
symbolic value. A 2012 study that ex- contain roughly the
There’s a reason it is amined sodium levels same proportion of
mentioned so many of fast-food menu items sodium—about
times in the Bible (“salt from different countries 40 percent—as table
of the earth,” “a pillar found that pizza and salt. If you are looking
of salt,” “a covenant of burgers contained for sodium-free
salt”). Its preservative more sodium than flavoring, try garlic,
properties made it french fries, because pepper, oregano,
an apt metaphor for they come in larger sage, rosemary,
permanence and serving sizes. and other spices or
conviction. herbs.

7
Extra salt might

5 9
Most people be lurking in your Even if you
know about the meat, even if you don’t have
health risks asso- cook at home and are hypertension,
ciated with sodium, very careful. According it’s still a good idea
but reducing your in- to the USDA, about 60 to cut down on your
take isn’t always easy. percent of all raw meat salt intake to reduce
More than 75 percent and poultry products your blood pressure,
of the sodium Ameri- are injected with or according to a 2017
cans eat comes from soaked in a salty review of 185 studies.
processed foods; solution. The words

10
bread, cured meats, enhanced, marinated, For older
and canned soup top basted, or improved folks especially,
the list. Even foods on the packaging can a heavy hand
that don’t taste salty signal the presence with the salt shaker
may contain it. Instant of salt. To avoid it, may also hurt your
oatmeal with maple opt for label wording head. A study of 975
and brown sugar, for such as contains up to people ages 60 to 80
instance, contains 4 percent retained with hypertension

rd.com 53
Reader ’s Digest 13 Things

found that reducing sodium—the equiva- of table salt sold

sodium in their diets lent of about three or through retail is iodized.
was associated with four shakers of salt.

13
lower risk of headache. All that said,

12
In the 1920s, the number

11
Still, we all salt became a one use of salt
need at least primary tool in in the United States
some salt. It the fight against goiter, isn’t on food at all. In
facilitates the transport a thyroid disorder 2016, about 44 percent
of nutrients and oxy- caused by iodine of salt went toward
gen, allows nerves to deficiency. Iodized salt deicing roads, accord-
transmit messages, and became common in ing to the U.S. Geologi-
helps our muscle work. American kitchens, and cal Survey. Only
The average adult’s cases of goiter nearly 3 percent was used in
body contains about disappeared. Today, agricultural and food
250 grams of only about 53 percent processing.

5 Hilarious Literal Translations

Saratan el bahr (Arabic)
Translation: “cancer of the sea”
What we call it: lobster
Joulupukki (Finnish)
Translation: “Christmas billy goat”
What we call it: Santa Claus
Diànnǎo (Mandarin)
Translation: “electric brain”
What we call it: computer
Stofzuiger (Dutch)
Translation: “dust sucker”
What we call it: vacuum
Nacktschnecke (German)
Translation: “naked snail”
What we call it: slug
mentalfloss.com

54 february 2019

YOUR
TRUE
STORIES
Quiet, Please!
I’m Trying to Nap
I am a leader of a national
college ministry and was
discussing the book of
Genesis with some stu-
dents one day. We were
talking about the story
of human beings created
to live in a garden set-
ting. Lending credence
to this idea, I said that
there is no sound more
soothing than a burbling
stream or brook. Then
I asked the students,
“What is the most peace-
ful environment you can
imagine—for example,
where you could most
easily fall asleep?” There
was a short silence, and
then a young lady spoke
up helpfully: “Class?”
—Rob Gunn
hyde park, utah
To read more true stories and to submit your own,
go to rd.com/stories. If your story is published in
the magazine, we’ll pay you $100.
illustration by Joana Avillez
Reader ’s Digest
You’re the Cream in My Coffee
It’s 4 a.m., and we hurry into the truck stop
for our morning coffees, his black and mine
with cream. As we head down the road
drinking and chatting, he hands me his still-
hot coffee so I can pour a little into mine.
He knows my coffee cools quicker because
of the cream. Such a tiny thing—one of
the many little threads that make up the
fabric of our life—but such a sweet thought-
fulness that makes all the difference in a
relationship. I have the world’s best husband.
—T.S. via rd.com
Like a Duck Takes
to Water
My husband and I were
excited when we pur-
chased a lakefront home
because we had a yellow
Labrador puppy and we
knew Labs loved the water.
Much to our surprise, our
pup was petrified of the
lake and whimpered every
time we tried to coax her
in to swim with us. That is,
until the day a family of
ducks swam by. Our Lab
joined the ducklings and
began to paddle with
them. The mother duck
was not pleased at the
new addition, but we were
ecstatic.
—Joyce Cooper
vassalboro, maine
rd.com 55
Reader ’s Digest
EVERYDAY MIRACLES
A Flag’s Long Journey Home
By Juliana LaBianca
O
ne early morning last winter,
someone broke into Shawn
Marceau’s truck. That wasn’t
particularly unusual—thieves had
already hit him three times in recent
months, even as the truck was parked
outside his home in White Swan,
Washington. This time they made off
with a laptop, some riflescopes, and,
unbeknownst to Marceau at the time,
an American flag.
But this wasn’t just any flag. It had
56 february 2019
belonged to his son, 22-year-old Ma-
rine lance corporal Joe Jackson. The
flag had been signed by each member
of Jackson’s platoon at the beginning
of their deployment and had hung over
his bed for his entire tour of duty in
Afghanistan. Jackson was on foot patrol
in Helmand Province in 2011 when he
stepped on an improvised bomb and
was killed. His father frequently took
the flag to memorials and veterans’
events to share his son’s story. It wasn’t
illustration by Gel Jamlang
until several weeks after the break-in,
when he was getting organized for an
annual memorial rifle shoot honor-
ing Jackson, that Marceau realized the
neatly folded flag was gone.
“I was very upset—in a rage,” he
told Fox & Friends, “because I lost it.”
Marceau reached out to friends and
family, asking them to search for the
flag wherever they could—at pawn-
shops, secondhand stores, even the
local Goodwill. Nothing. He went to
the rifle memorial, on April 21, with-
out the flag.
In a last-ditch effort, the heart-
broken father took to Facebook.
“Would appreciate it if all my friends
could share this note. This American
flag was stolen out of my truck,” he
wrote, including a photo of the flag.
“Any information would be great. No
questions asked.”
By the next morning, on May 5, his
post had been shared around 2,000
times. By May 7, there were around
40,000 reposts. “I couldn’t believe it,”
says Marceau. “There were so many
comments I couldn’t keep up.” Un-
fortunately, the flag was still nowhere
to be found.
Soon enough, there were other flags.
A 9/11 firefighter sent one to Marceau
signed by dozens of his colleagues,
many of whom had responded at the
World Trade Center. A Special Forces
sergeant major sent a flag he’d taken
with him on missions around the
world, from Iwo Jima to Afghanistan.
Marceau, a retired Marine himself
and the son and grandson of veterans,
cherished these gifts while continuing
to pray for the return of Jackson’s flag.
Still waiting for those prayers to
be answered, Marceau went about
his routine as normal. On Tuesday,
July 3, he visited his son’s grave, just
as he has every Tuesday since Jackson
was buried. “It’s religion,” he says. “It’s
my time to meditate and pray and get
ready for the week.”
“I WAS VERY UPSET—
IN A RAGE,”
MARCEAU SAID,
“BECAUSE I LOST IT.”
When he got to Jackson’s grave that
morning, there was something there:
a flag. Marceau didn’t let himself get
too excited. People had gifted him so
many flags in the weeks prior that he
figured this was just another keepsake
that had belonged to someone else.
But when he got closer, he noticed the
signatures—black ink on each of the
white stripes. This was his son’s flag.
“It was pretty amazing,” he says.
There was also some mystery. Who-
ever had returned the flag left no note,
and as of yet, no one has stepped for-
ward to say he or she returned it. Did
the thief bring it back? Did a Good
Samaritan find it in a thrift shop?
Marceau has decided not to speculate.
“For me, it’s just a miracle,” he says.
“It’s God. That’s who put it there.”
rd.com 57
 COVER STORY

25 TALL TALES THAT ARE IMPOSSIBLY TRUE …

FACT
58 february 2019
 Reader ’s Digest

… AND 25 FACTS THAT ARE ACTUALLY MYTHS

OR

FIC TION?
By Marissa Laliberte, Ashley Lewis, and Jacopo della Quercia

rd.com 59
Reader ’s Digest

Strange 2 McDonald’s once

created bubble-
gum-flavored broccoli.

but
Not surprisingly, the
bizarre attempt to get
kids to eat healthier did

Impossibly
not go over well with
the child testers.

3 You have a greater

TRUE
chance of dying on
your birthday than on
any other day of the year.
In fact, the younger you
are, the more likely

this page: pixel-shot/shutterstock (birthday). chananchida ch/shutterstock (flags)

you are to bite the bul-

1
Dinosaurs had feathers. That’s what

previous spread: linda bucklin/shutterstock (dinosaur). matthew cohen (pez)

let on your big day. So
archaeologists have found in the fossil go ahead and party—
evidence of some species, including but not too hard.
velociraptors. Whether bigger species
such as Tyrannosaurus rex had them
is under debate, but some scientists believe
they had light feathering. In fact, researchers
have long noted that chickens and other
birds share skeletal similarities with T. rex
and are its probable descendants.

4 The current American flag was designed by a

high school student. Betsy Ross, make way for
Bob Heft. He sewed the prototype for a history
project in 1958, the year before Alaska and Hawaii
joined the Union. (His teacher gave him a B−
because no one knew for certain that the flag
would ever need updating.) Heavens to Betsy—
there’s no proof that Ms. Ross even had anything
to do with the original 13-star version of the flag.

60 february 2019
 Cover Story TRUE

5 Sloths can hold their

breath longer than
dolphins can. Dolphins
7 The U.S. government
saved every public
tweet from 2006 to
enterphoto (sloth). marchello74 (border), serzh (chicago). all shutterstock

need air after ten min- 2017. But starting

utes, but a swimming in 2018, the Library
sloth can hold its breath of Congress decided
for up to 40 minutes. to keep tweets only on
Their secret: Sloths can certain subjects and
slow their heart rate at on “a very selective
will, reducing the need basis,” such as those
for fresh oxygen. about elections, dealing
with public policy, and
of overall national in-

6
Chicago isn’t called the Windy terest. If you want to
City because of its weather. check out the govern-
It was meant as an insult to the ment’s comprehensive
city’s windbags. Journalists tweet collection, you
are out of luck. The
used to criticize Chicago’s elites entire thing is embar-
for being “full of hot air,” as reported in goed “until access is-
an 1858 Chicago Daily Tribune story that sues can be resolved
read, “[A] hundred militia officers, from in a cost-effective and
sustainable manner.”
corporal to commander … air their vanity …
in this windy city.”
8 A woman was
elected to Congress
before women’s
suffrage. Montana’s
Jeannette Rankin was
sworn in as the first
female member of
Congress in 1917;
all American women
were given the right
to vote in 1920.

rd.com 61
Reader ’s Digest

9 The dunce cap used

to be a sign of intelli-
gence. Thirteenth-
century philosopher
John Duns Scotus
thought a pointed cap
would funnel knowl-
edge from its tip to his
brain, and his “Duns-
men” followers wore
the hats as badges of
honor. In the 1500s,
his ideas became
less popular and
the meaning of
the Duns cap
was turned
on its head,
becoming
something
of a joke.

10
The founders of Adidas
and Puma were brothers.
Adi and Rudi Dassler went
into the shoe business in
1924 as Dassler Brothers
daniel karmann/epa/shutterstock (soccer)
everett collection/shutterstock (dunce)
Shoe Factory. They made running shoes
for Jesse Owens, among others. But their
sibling rivalry boiled over in 1948, when
they split the company: Adi launched
Adidas; Rudi created Puma.

Astronauts can cry in space. But with no gravity to pull the tears
11 down their faces, the water just pools into a ball on the astronauts’
cheeks. Even more annoying: No-flow crying “stings a bit,” says astronaut
Chris Hadfield.

62 february 2019
 Cover Story TRUE

12
Nutella was invented for chocolate lovers.
After World War II, chocolate supplies were
low in Italy. Pietro Ferrero knew Italians would
still want their chocolate fix, so he came up with
a way to stretch what he had by creating a sweet
paste made of sugar, hazelnuts, and just a little cocoa.

13 The CIA has a top

secret coffee shop.
Yes, it’s called Starbucks,
but the branch in the
CIA’s Langley, Virginia,
headquarters is unlike
any you might have
visited. The baris-
tas have to pass
matthew cohen (cup). profiles in history/solentnews/shutterstock (shoe)
14 The shortest war
in history lasted
38 minutes. In 1896,
the sultan of British-
protected Zanzibar died
and a new one took
over without British
approval. The Brits
were not happy,

extensive back- especially when

ground checks
and can’t write
customers’ names
on the cups, since
some of them are
undercover agents.
The store’s name on
the receipt isn’t even
Starbucks, but “Store
Number 1.”
Sultan Khalid bin
Barghash refused
to step down.
16 Dorothy’s slippers
in The Wizard of Oz
weren’t always ruby red.
British warships In L. Frank Baum’s
spent less than 1900 novel, he describes
40 minutes bombarding them as “silver shoes
the palace before Khalid with pointed toes.” But
fled, marking the end the 1939 movie was
of the (very quick) being shot with the new
Anglo-Zanzibar War. Technicolor technique,
and red shoes made a
more eye-catching

15
The longest word in the
English language has
189,819 letters.
It’s the technical name of
a protein, which lists its
entire amino acid sequence and would take
about three and a half hours to say out loud.
choice than silver ones.
There were at least four
pairs made for the film,
one of which was re-
covered only last year
after having been stolen
from the Judy Garland
Museum in 2005.

rd.com 63
Reader ’s Digest

17
Firefighters use chemicals to make water
“wetter.” The wetting agents reduce the surface
tension of plain water so it spreads and soaks into
objects more easily, which is why what fire crews
use is known as “wet water.”

19 Frogs’ eyes help

them swallow. Like
snakes, frogs swallow
20 The second got
its name for being
the second unit of time,
their food whole—and after the minute. The

toeyfatboy/shutterstock (hose). khumthong/shutterstock (kiwi)

alive. When a frog closes Romans called 1/60 of
its eyes, they are pressed an hour pars minuta
into their sockets and prima (first small part),
down toward the roof of so it was logical that
its mouth, pushing on 1/60 of a minute would
the food and moving it be pars minuta secunda
18 Kiwis were
originally called
Chinese gooseberries.
down the throat. (second small part).

After New Zealanders

started growing and

21
Movie trailers originally
exporting the fruit, they
changed the name in a
played after a movie.
marketing move. “Kiwi- They “trailed” the feature
fruit” was more appeal- film—hence the name. But
ing to U.S. consumers, theaters noticed that the
and it drove home the
idea that it came from
audience would leave before these de facto
“Kiwis,” a nickname for ads ran, so they were moved to before the
New Zealanders. film, with their old name trailing with them.

64 february 2019 | rd.com

 Cover Story TRUE

22
Giraffe tongues
can be 20 inches
long. The tongues’
marni rae photography (giraffe). ilya akinshin (lighter). karramba production (man). all shutterstock

dark bluish-black
color probably helps
prevent sunburn.

23 The lighter was

invented before
the match. In 1823,
24 Adolf Hitler’s
nephew fought
with the Allies. William
25 You can’t hum
while holding
your nose. You just
a German chemist Hitler, a British native, tested it, didn’t you?
created the world’s first was traveling in the You might be able to
lighter, Döbereiner’s United States with his get a note or two out,
lamp, which was used mother, Bridget Hitler, but good luck with a
in industrial settings. It when World War II full song. Normally,
wasn’t until three years broke out. An outcast when you hum, the
later that an English in England because air is able to escape
chemist made the first of his family name, through your nose to
friction match. William tried to enlist create the sound, and
in the U.S. armed of course, it can’t do
forces but was denied. that when you’re hold-
After a sincere letter ing your nostrils shut.
to President Franklin
Roosevelt and a thor-
ough background
check, William was
finally accepted. He
served in the U.S. Navy
for three years as a
pharmacist’s mate.
Reader ’s Digest Cover Story

“Facts” That
Are FALSE

1
Blood is blue inside your body. Human blood is the same
color inside your body as it is outside: red. Our veins look
blue because the tissue covering them changes the way light
is absorbed and scattered, which affects our perception of
their color.

2 Paul Revere
shouted “The British 3 The hottest
part of a 4 Jesus Christ
was born on

ewing galloway/uig/shutterstock (revere). artkio/shutterstock (pepper)

are coming!” You can chili pepper December 25. The
thank Henry Wads- is the seeds. Gospels of Matthew
worth Longfellow and Capsaicin, and Luke never men-
his poem “Paul Revere’s a chemical tion the date of Jesus’s
Ride” for spreading that compound birth. So why do we
tale. No one knows that binds celebrate December 25
what, if anything, Re- to the pain as the day that Christ
vere shouted through receptors on was born? It could be
the streets of Lexington, our nerves to because of a Roman
Massachusetts, though produce that Catholic historian from
we do know he told one fiery heat, is the third century,
guard that “the regulars most concen- Sextus Julius Africanus,
are coming out.” trated in the who believed Jesus
inner white rib was conceived on
of the chili pep- March 25—nine
per. The seeds months before what
don’t actually is now Christmas Day.
contain any capsaicin,
but they may be coated
in it because they touch
the rib.
 5
The Sahara is the world’s largest
desert. Technically, Antarctica is.
The U.S. Geological Survey defines
a desert as “arid land with meager
rainfall [usually less than ten
inches per year] that supports only sparse 6 Chameleons can
change their
coloring to match any
vegetation and a limited population of people background. The liz-
and animals.” Antarctica averages only six ards do adjust their
inches of rain a year (mostly as snow) and is skin tone to camouflage
almost 5.5 million square miles. The Sahara themselves in certain
environments, but their
is only 3.3 million square miles.
color range is limited.
The really vibrant
jan bures/shutterstock (chameleon). matt makes photos/shutterstock (antarctica)

hues you see on TV

and in books aren’t
usually meant for trick-
ing predators. Those
chameleons are trying
to attract a mate or
defend their territory.
Male chameleons have
even been known to
change their colors to
appear female, which
helps them sneak by
other males without
the threat of a fight.

The $100 bill is the biggest bill in circulation. Although the federal govern-
7 ment stopped printing them in 1945, currency notes in denominations
of $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 are still legal tender. If you’ve never seen
them, that’s because most have been snatched up by private collectors. But
those aren’t even the biggest bills ever printed. Between December 18, 1934,
and January 9, 1935, the government put out $100,000 notes featuring Presi-
dent Woodrow Wilson. However, they were only for transactions between
Federal Reserve banks and never went out to the general public.

rd.com | february 2019 67

Reader ’s Digest

9
The Declaration of
Independence made the United
States a sovereign country.
Congress adopted the final
text on July 4, 1776, but most
countries didn’t recognize the new
government then. The French waited two
years, and the British didn’t formally accept
8 eBay was founded by
a man who wanted
to help his fiancée trade
losing their colonies until the Treaty of
Paris in 1783.
PEZ dispensers. That’s
the story that circulated
when the online auc-
tion house began, but it
was really just a PR tall
10 Lemmings will
blindly join in
mass suicide. Norwe-
11 A factoid is a fun
mini-fact. In fact,
it’s the opposite of a
tale. It is true that PEZ gian lemmings do mi- fact. Writer Norman

matthew cohen (pez). marcio jose bastos silva/shutterstock (neanderthal)

(named after the Ger- grate in packs, but the Mailer coined the term
man word for pepper- well-known image of in 1973 to describe
mint, Pfefferminz) were their mass suicide was “facts” that were
originally created, in staged for the 1958 doc- invented by gossip
1927, to help smokers umentary White Wilder- reporters. The suffix
quit. Almost as strange: ness. Filmmakers tipped -oid (as in humanoid)
The all-important dis- brown lemmings from a refers to something that
pensers didn’t get their truck over a cliff’s edge, appears like something
character-inspired tops making it look as if they else but is not.
until 1957. The first was were following one an-
a witch, for Halloween. other to their deaths.

12
Neanderthals were dumb.
They were probably just
as intelligent as Homo
sapiens, but scientists
think that Neanderthals
didn’t fare well when the animals they
hunted died out after the Ice Age.

68 february 2019
 Cover Story FALSE

13
Eskimos have more words for snow than any
other culture. The Canadian Inuit in the Nunavik
region do have more than 50 words for it, and the
Central Siberian Yupik have 40. But the Scots
have the biggest snow vocabulary—421 words.

14 Julius Caesar was

born via cesarean
section—and the proce-
dure was named for him.
In Caesar’s time, a ce-
sarean was performed
only on dying women,
and Caesar’s mother
likely lived long enough
to see him attack En-
gland. The origin of the
name is uncertain, but
15 Citronella candles are the best way to keep
mosquitoes out of your yard. The smoke
from citronella candles is as effective as that from
itsaret sutthisiri/shutterstock (mosquito). matthew cohen (wasabi)

it might have come regular candles—and neither helps much. If you

from the Latin caedare, want an all-natural mosquito repellent, try plant-
which means “to cut.” ing some catnip. (Your cat will thank you too.)

The green paste served with your sushi is wasabi. Wasabi is expensive
16 and difficult to grow. Since it’s in the same family, most restaurants and
food companies use horseradish (with food coloring) instead. Real wasabi is
more complex and sweeter than what you get in a typical Japanese restaurant.

rd.com 69
Reader ’s Digest Cover Story FALSE

20 The Hope
Diamond is the
biggest in the world. At
45.52 carats, it is a mere
bauble compared with
the 545.67 carat Golden
Jubilee. 21 You can get
tetanus from a rusty nail.
It’s the dirt around the
nail that can carry the
Clostridium tetani bac-
teria. 22 Water conducts
electricity. Pure H2O is
an insulator. 23 You
can tell a ladybug’s age
by counting its spots.

17
Ostriches bury their heads
in the sand. The birds
would suffocate if they did.
A ladybug’s spots do not
change once it becomes
an adult. 24 Earth is

andrey_kuzmin/shutterstock (ostrich). shutterstock (hope diamond)

closer to the sun in the
If a predator is approaching, summer. Just the oppo-
a frightened ostrich will lay site: We’re closest in
its head and neck flat against the ground as January. 25 Maine is
the easternmost state.
a camouflage ploy. Some human onlookers
Alaska’s Semisopochnoi
have assumed that the birds’ light-colored Island is so far west
heads were actually in the sand. that it crosses into the
Eastern Hemisphere.

18 Minnesota has
more lakes
than any other state.
19 Space is always
cold. Without
an atmosphere, there’s
Minnesota, aka the nothing absorbing the
Land of 10,000 Lakes, sun’s harmful rays or
actually has almost trapping in heat. When
12,000 of them—but astronauts are orbiting
Alaska has more than Earth, the temperature
3 million. can range anywhere
from −250°F to 250°F.

70 february 2019
 Reader ’s Digest

“Gesundheit.”

said. “It was always shy of six feet tall,

Humor in selling out, and I could but when our drill

UNIFORM
never keep it in stock. sergeant called for all
So I quit ordering it.” six-footers to line up,
—Jerry Robert Ryan I stepped forward any-
Franklin, Tennessee way. I instantly knew
I was in the right outfit
Our base’s Army Ex- I admit it—I have a ten- when I looked around.
change Service carried dency to exaggerate, I was the tallest guy
a particular brand of and I was afraid when in line.
underarm deodorant I joined the Navy that —George Walter
that I liked and bought my “creativity” might Reamy Lorena, Texas
for years. Then one get me in trouble. But
day I couldn’t find it. my fears were put to
I asked an employee rest one day while get- Your funny military
whether they still car- ting into formation, story could be worth
ried my deodorant. which was determined $$$. For details, go to
“No, we don’t,” she by height. Now, I was rd.com/submit.

cartoon by Bill Abbott rd.com 71

 GOOD DEEDS

In life, they were humble

SECRETARIES,
TEACHERS, and JANITORS.
When they died, they were richer
than anyone knew—and they
GAVE MILLIONS
TO CHARITY
By Juliana LaBianca

henever Jane Lockshin went out to lunch

W with her elderly aunt Sylvia, she made a

point to pick up the tab. After all, Sylvia
Bloom was a modest secretary, a widow of
more than a decade who lived in a one-bedroom Brook-
lyn apartment and took the subway everywhere, including
to her job at a Manhattan law firm. She worked there—
full-time—until she was 96. Simply put, Lockshin didn’t
want Aunt Sylvia to blow her budget on lunch.
So when Bloom died in 2016, at 97, it was something of
a shock to discover that she’d left behind a multimillion-
dollar estate. Almost as shocking: She had chosen to give

72 illustrations by Adam Cruft

Reader ’s Digest

The Secretary
Sylvia Bloom left
$8.2 million to
educational programs
and a scholarship fund.
Reader ’s Digest
$8.2 million to charity. Six million dol-
lars went to educational programs at
the Henry Street Settlement, a social
services organization in New York
City. An additional $2 million went
to scholarship funds, including at
Bloom’s alma mater, Hunter College.
“She had millions,” says Lockshin,
“and no one suspected it.”
Bloom’s bequest to the Settlement,
the largest in its 126-year history,
will help fund a program for dis-
advantaged students. “The gift has
been transformative not just because
of the good we’ll be able to do with
it,” says David Garza, the agency’s
executive director, “but because of
“IN A SURVIVAL-OF-
THE-FITTEST WORLD,
THEY ARE A SPECIAL
CLASS OF PEOPLE.”
the selflessness and the humility be-
hind it.”
Sylvia Bloom’s story is indeed ex-
traordinary, but it’s not as uncommon
as you might think. Working-class
benefactors—secretaries, teachers,
janitors, and more—make headlines
with awe-inspiring regularity. In 2015,
a retired grocer in Milwaukee left
$13 million to a local Catholic high
school. The year before, a former
JCPenney janitor from Vermont left
a nearly $5 million bequest to a local
hospital. Their stories are as rich and
74 february 2019
as full as their hidden bank accounts.
“In a world that is in many ways sur-
vival of the fittest, they’re certainly a
special class of people,” says Garza.
hese unassuming philanthro-
T pists share some qualities. The
most obvious is that they often
have no children. That’s one reason
many of them were able to save so
much of their humble paychecks.
It also means they had no direct
natural heirs. “People who are single
are thinking about what good they
can do with their money and what
legacy they want to leave,” says Stacy
Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of
Philanthropy.
Often that legacy touches on help-
ing the children they never had. As a
kid in Milwaukee, Leonard Gigowski
took the 6:30 bus every morning to get
to St. Francis Minor Seminary, a Cath-
olic high school that later became
St. Thomas More High School. After
a stint in the Navy, Gigowski went on
to become a butcher and a grocer. He
never married—and he never forgot
St. Thomas More. Gigowski visited
regularly and sometimes would eat
lunch with the students in the cafete-
ria. One time, he stood up and started
singing the school cheer. His “kids,”
as Gigowski called them, grinned and
joined him. On his 90th birthday, in
2015, administrators arranged a sur-
prise assembly for him. The kids sang
“Happy Birthday,” and Gigowski led
them in prayer.
 Good Deeds

on each of his birds. “He

told me he loved being
around God’s creatures
and caring for them,”
s ay s h i s f r i e n d Je f f
Korpal.
But the school was his
passion. Larry Haskin,
Gigowski’s friend and
the lawyer who helped
him set up the Leonard
Gigowski Catholic Edu-
cation Foundation, says
there was no doubt that
Gigowski had saved his
money with the intent
of donating as much as
he could to the students
of St. Thomas More.
“He wanted to have the
greatest impact pos-
The Grocer sible on future genera-
Milwaukee’s Leonard Gigowski left a $13 million
scholarship fund to his high school alma mater. tions,” Haskin says. “He
felt he owed his long
life to God, his Catholic
Three months later came the bomb- education, and his deep faith, and he
shell: Leonard Gigowski had passed wanted to pass it on,” Korpal adds.
away—and he’d left behind a $13 mil- Gigowski had a lot in common
lion scholarship fund for St. Thomas with Margaret Southern, a special-
More. “I nearly fell off my chair,” Mary needs teacher from Greenville, South
McIntosh, the school’s president, told Carolina, who died in 2012 at age 94.
the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Southern loved children and animals.
Gigowski may have been humble, Before she allowed Mike Shain, vice
but he led a very full life. He was president of wealth management at
an avid ballroom dancer—he had a UBS, to handle her investments, she
dance floor in the basement of his made him promise to take in her
modest suburban home. He also dachshund, Molly, if anything hap-
loved pigeon racing. He had a coop in pened to her. “I know you’ll take care
his yard and kept meticulous records of her,” she told him.

rd.com 75
Reader ’s Digest

In fact, Southern out-

lived Molly by several
years and had her buried
in her yard. But she con-
tinued to worry about
a n i m a l s, e s p e c i a l l y
those that were home-
less. When she died, she
left half her $8.4 million
estate to the Greenville
Humane Society—even
though she’d never had
any direct contact with
the organization—and
the other half to the
Community Founda-
tion of Greenville, which
distributed the money
to organizations that
benefit early childhood
education and special
The Teacher
Margaret Southern left $8.4 million to
education for children. the Humane Society and education causes.
She also left money
to various friends and
family. added to that through the ’80s, if only
“It’s a wonderful surprise to wake up to feather a nest for others to use.
and find a very unassuming woman “What’s exceptional is she didn’t
who cares greatly for our community spend it on herself, and she was able
and its children,” said Susan Shi, PhD, to accumulate a lot of money that
founder and chair emerita of the In- she wanted to direct to her dearest
stitute for Child Success, a recipient of charities,” Bob Morris, president of
$25,000. the Community Foundation, told the
Southern’s wealth also came as Greenville News. “I haven’t met a lot of
a shock to most who knew her. She people like that.”
lived in a modest town house and got Did their generous natures help
around Greenville in a gray 1980s- Southern and these other extraor-
model Cadillac. Her money came from dinary givers live so long? It’s pos-
a few shares of stock left to her by her sible. Studies have found that people
husband, who had died in 1983. She who are charitable, whether it’s via

76 february 2019

volunteering or donating money,
tend to have lower blood pressure,
less stress, and longer lives. One 2011
study even found that older volun-
teers had a lower risk of dying in a
four-year period than nonvolunteers.
They certainly understood the im-
portance of planning for the future.
Careful, conservative investing—
putting money in the stock market
and leaving it there to grow—has
always been the ticket to a comfort-
able retirement, and that’s how these
working-class benefactors built their
legacies. For instance, when Sylvia
Bloom was a young legal secretary,
part of her job was to keep track of
her bosses’ stock purchases. She’d
take note of which stocks the lawyers
were buying and buy a few shares for
herself. “She invested in the market
and didn’t spend it,” says Lockshin.
“She followed the rules.”
onald Read was a blue-collar
R guy with blue-chip smarts.
A gas station attendant and
JCPenney janitor in Brattleboro, Ver-
mont, he read the Wall Street Journal
every day, following his investments
in Ford, IBM, Procter & Gamble, and
CVS Health. When he died in 2014 at
age 92, he was worth $8 million.
But while he had watched his
money carefully, he rarely touched it.
After one of his last meetings with his
attorney, Laurie Rowell, she insisted
on walking her frail client to his car.
They proceeded up a steep hill,
Good Deeds
passing empty parking spots as they
went. When they got to Read’s 2007
Toyota Yaris, Rowell realized why he
had chosen that spot: There were no
parking meters at the top of the hill.
“You would have thought he was pen-
niless if you met him,” she says. (In
fact, Read didn’t even want his lawyer
to walk with him to the car, because
he thought she might charge him for
the time.)
Read’s frugality was sometimes mis-
taken for actual poverty. One morning,
the man ahead of him in line for cof-
fee noticed Read’s tattered clothes and
“IT’S A WONDERFUL
SURPRISE TO WAKE UP
AND FIND A WOMAN
WHO CARES GREATLY.”
promptly paid for his drink. He got his
coffee that day, and most others, at
Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, which
served some of the best java in town.
“That coffee shop was beloved by a
number of people,” says Rowell. “They
took good care of him.” When Read
died, hospital officials were surprised
that he had left the bulk of his estate,
nearly $5 million, to the hospital.
“Some of us knew he had some in-
vestments,” his stepson Phillip Brown
told the Brattleboro Reformer, “but
obviously he had a whole lot more
that we didn’t know about.”
rd.com 77
 The Janitor
Gas station attendant
and janitor Ronald
Read left nearly
$5 million to the local
hospital, where he
regularly had coffee.
 Good Deeds Reader ’s Digest

ot every w orking-cl ass

N benefactor scr imped and

saved. Kathleen Magowan, a
teacher from Simsbury, Connecticut,
had no idea she was rich until just be-
fore she died in 2011, at age 87. Not
long before she passed away, she vis-
ited a small law firm for help manag-
ing her estate. When they asked how
much she thought it was worth, Ma-
gowan guessed around $40,000. The
real number: $6 million.
Magowan’s twin brother, Robert
Magowan, had always managed their
finances. They had lived together un-
til he died in 2010. “She never had a
demand for that kind of money,” her
attorney, Louis George, told the Hart-
ford Courant. The Twin
Some would go on a shopping spree Kathleen Magowan’s twin brother had
managed her finances, so she was
if they became millionaires overnight.
shocked to discover she had $6 million.
Magowan turned to charity. Her will
outlined $5 million in bequests to
15 organizations, along with gifts to as the schoolteacher who always had
relatives and neighbors. She left close a twinkle in her eye,” Deene Morris,
to half a million each to her alma ma- the former fund-raising director at
ter, the University of St. Joseph in West McLean, told the Hartford Courant.
Hartford; the McLean nursing home “She loved engaging in conversa-
where she spent her final days; and tion with all sorts of different people,
the Simsbury public schools, where and everyone loved talking to her. A
she had taught first grade for 35 years. schoolteacher. That’s how she lived in
“All of us remember her very much our hearts.”

Tidbit from Your Fitbit

“Something’s wrong. He’s never walked this far before.”
—What my shoes would say if you walked a mile in them
@ibid78

rd.com | february 2019 79

 All
in a Day’s

WORK

“You’re right. We should have built the castle first, THEN the moat.”

As the dentist labored Nursing can be a me, scrunched his

over my teeth, he tried dirty business, as I nose, and said, “God,
to make small talk. discovered while you’ve got bad breath!”
“What do you do?” helping my grumpy —an anonymous nurse, on
businessinsider.com
he asked. patient change his
“I’m a comedian,” I colostomy bag. You I work in the front
answered. can imagine the smell. office of a housing
“Interesting.” After Still, I soldiered on, complex that supports
a pause, he said, “Let’s telling myself to think people living with
get an impression—” about the patient’s mental illness. On
“It’s more observa- feelings and not let one particularly
tional humor, actually,” my queasiness show. hectic day, a tenant
I interrupted. “I don’t That all changed came in to pay her
do impressions.” when he turned to rent. Frazzled, I said,
The dentist contin-
ued, “—of your teeth.”
—Michael Buzzelli Anything funny happen to you at work? It could
Carnegie, Pennsylvania be worth $$$. For details, go to rd.com/submit.

80 february 2019 Cartoon by Jon Carter


“Ever have one of
those days when
you feel everyone is
out to get you?”
She smiled and
replied, “I take
medication for
that.”
—Sarah Pennisi
Beamsville, Ontario
A cheat sheet for
deciphering your
performance review:
✦ “Good communi-
cator” = Needs to stop
e-mailing me
✦ “Creative problem
gresei/shutterstock (peanut). jiri vaclayek/shutterstock (glasses)
solver” = Creates a lot
of problems
✦ “Collaborative” =
Gets other people to
do his work
✦ “Passionate” =
Always interrupting
me
✦ “Excellent time-
management skills” =
Uses meetings to
check e-mail
✦ “Punctual” = Leaves
every day at five
✦ “Results-driven” =
Will throw you under
the bus
—how to be successful without
hurting men’s feelings by sarah
cooper (andrews mcmeel)
Reader ’s Digest
I once saw a pigeon on the subway
get off at the financial district, and all
I could think was, That bird makes
more money than me.
—Jonny Sun, comedian
“THE NUTTY-PROFESSOR AWARD GOES TO ...”
The Ig Nobel Prize is a tongue-in-cheek award given
each year to actual research projects that seem—well,
silly. The winners are published in a humorous periodi-
cal, Annals of Improbable Research.
economics Researchers measuring the degree
in Canada and the to which human saliva is
United States, for a good cleaning agent for
investigating whether dirty surfaces.
it is effective for peace Researchers in
employees to use Spain, for measur-
voodoo dolls to ing the frequency,
retaliate against
motivation, and
abusive bosses. effects of shouting
(Their finding: and cursing while
It is!) driving an
biology Research- automobile.
ers in Sweden,
nutrition A lec-
Colombia, and turer at England’s
Germany, for University of
demonstrating Brighton, for
that wine experts calculating that the
can reliably iden- caloric intake from a
tify, by smell, the pres- human-cannibalism diet
ence of a single fly in a is significantly lower than
glass of wine. the caloric intake from
chemistry Three Portu- most other traditional
guese researchers, for meat diets.
rd.com 81
 DRAMA IN REAL LIFE

The
Dog
That
Came
Back
from
the
Dead
By Eric Wagenknecht with Tess Strokes
from outsideonline.com

82 february 2019
 Reader ’s Digest

On a run in the
Rocky Mountains, the
author’s dog, Merle,
fell 800 feet, injured
beyond hope. But he
wasn’t done yet.

Photographs by Daniel Milchev

rd.com 83
 W
Reader ’s Digest Drama in Real Life

We charge up the final ascent of

the 13,041-foot Grand Traverse
Peak, about seven miles east of Vail,
Colorado. My new running partner,
Merle—a one-year-old blue Austra-
lian shepherd—seemed unfazed by
the previous eight miles we’d cov-
ered. I also felt strong, energized by
the clear Rocky Mountain air and
endless blue sky. It was Father’s Day
2017, and I was set to return home
to my four-year-old son, Axel; my
nine-year-old daughter, Lily; and my
wife, Susan, by noon. As I reached
the summit, I heard a short yelp but
assumed Merle would be seconds
behind me, as he had been all morn-
ing. I snapped a photo of the view for
my family, called out to the dog, then
tucked my phone in my pack and
headed back down the trail. Merle a steep chute. I followed them cau-
was nowhere to be seen. “Merle! tiously until they disappeared entirely
Merle!” I called. “Where are you?” I off the edge. About 800 feet below,
felt a tickle of panic in my throat as I the chute ended abruptly in a boul-
threaded my way down the ridge, still der field and a massive cliff. Below
seeing no signs of him. But he was that, I could see a wide, empty, snow-
athletic and young and invincible. He covered basin. There was no sign of
must be fine, I reasoned. Merle in the rock field or the basin.
Then, several hundred feet farther I could still hear that last yelp in my
down, I saw his paw prints on a five- mind, and now I realized what it had
foot-wide strip of snow at the top of signaled. Merle was gone.

84 february 2019

Merle quickly
proved to be a
phenomenal
partner, easily
banging out
15-mile runs.
M
erle and I had started the day
at 4 a.m. at our home in Eagle,
Colorado. I’d stacked my run-
ning clothes next to the bed the night
before and filled my pack with water
bottles, trail food, and a can of
sardines—my go-to for big days in the
mountains. It would be my first long
run in the Gore Range this summer
and my first big adventure with Merle.
We’d bought the 40-pound blue-
Eric Wagenknecht and
Merle on a Gore Range
trail near where Merle
went missing
and-brown-eyed Aussie
shepherd six months
earlier from a breeder in
Durango. Merle quickly
proved himself to be a
phenomenal running
partner. He could easily
bang out 15 miles.
That morning, we
drove 36 miles from our
house to the Deluge
Lake trailhead in East
Vail. I’d grown up in Il-
linois but as a kid made
frequent trips to Vail,
where my late father had
a house. I’d hiked this
trail every year since I
was seven. My dad, a
mountaineer and ultra-
runner, would take me
and my younger sister
up the eight miles to
Deluge Lake—training, he called it,
for our annual summit of Mount of the
Holy Cross, the peak where I would
spread his ashes in 2002.
I hadn’t thought twice about
taking Merle up Grand Traverse; in
fact, I’d expected him to beat me to
the summit. Which is why, even as
I stood above the steep chute, I still
thought, “It’s going to be OK.” I knew
this summit was the only spot on the
rd.com 85

Experts say that humans need to help dogs
understand their limits in tough terrain.
trail where I would get cell service, so
I called Susan, panicked. “Merle fell! I
don’t know what happened,” I told her.
“I’m going for him. It’s OK. I’m OK.”
Then I saw something running in
the basin below me. “There he is! Oh
my God! I’m OK. I need to go.”
“OK, be safe” was all Susan had
time to say before I hung up and ran
down the ridge. Merle was sprinting
downhill, away from me. I couldn’t
follow his nearly vertical route without
technical climbing gear, so I needed to
find a safer way down.
After nearly an hour, I had made it to
the basin, and I saw Merle standing on
a large rock outcropping. Relief washed
over me. “Merle, come here, buddy.
Good dog. I’m so sorry,” I called. But
he ran away. I didn’t blame him. I’d
taken him on a selfish pursuit to a
86 february 2019
selfish place. I’d pushed him too far.
I followed Merle up the basin. Soon, I
was close enough to see that he looked
oddly swollen; he was covered with
lacerations, and his gait was hobbled
and stiff. When I got within a few feet of
him, he dived into a crack at the edge
of a field of rocks. I grabbed his back
legs for a moment, but he squirmed
away, deep into a subterranean pocket
within the boulders. I moved rocks and
snow away from the crack’s entrance
until two backyard grill–size boulders
slid together, clamping my ring finger
between them. I yanked out my hand
and saw the nail was smashed and
spurting blood. I threw on a glove from
my pack to contain the flow, then kept
digging. A few minutes later, I’d cleared
enough snow to stick my head in the
crack. I peered down into the darkness.
I could hear the jingle of Merle’s collar,
but I couldn’t see him.
I yelled, alternating between angry
and nearly hysterical and calm and
coaxing. No response. I decided to give
him space. Maybe he was OK and my
panic was freaking him out. I opened
the can of sardines and left them as a
lure at the mouth of the cave. While I
waited, I went to the scene of the fall.
 Drama in Real Life Reader ’s Digest

Above, I saw the path Merle had taken: Bluetooth system. After I hung up,
He’d slid some 700 feet down the up- they burst into tears.
per snowfield, fallen off a 40-foot cliff,

I
then rolled down another 100-foot cliff ’ve always owned dogs. They ac-
to the lower snowfield where I now companied me into the mountains,
stood. “How did he walk away from where, bounding off-leash, they
this?” I thought. seemed protected by an invincible
I returned to the crack, leaned in, athleticism. Merle was bred for the
and called his name again. Inside, it trail. I had assumed the rugged Aussie
smelled wet. After a decade of archery would take to the high alpine trail in-
hunting, I knew the scent—it smelled tuitively. But the reality is that almost
like death. I spent another hour no one thinks about training their
crouched outside the cave, until the dogs for the mountains.
jingle of the collar and Merle’s deep In potentially deadly terrain, it’s
breathing stopped. critical that humans help dogs under-
It was late afternoon, and I wor- stand their limits, says Amber Quann,
ried about losing daylight. I was on who runs Summit Dog Training in Fort
the wrong side of a Collins, Colorado.
big mountain, many I spent an hour She helps owners
miles from home, and and dogs prepare for
not prepared to spend
crouched outside outdoor adventures
the night outside. I the cave, until through relationship
packed up, traversed the jingle of building and body-
the basin, descended
a slushy snowfield,
Merle’s collar and conditioning classes.
Dogs can’t talk to us,
then found my way his deep breathing but they have other
to the base of the stopped. ways of communicat-
chute I’d come down. ing that we need to
I climbed the melting pay attention to. It’s
snowpack as quickly as I could, reusing up to us to learn their idiosyncrasies. Of
my kicked steps from the descent. course, it’s difficult to tune into a dog’s
When I got reception, I phoned Susan. subtle behavior changes when you’re
“I’m OK, Sus, but I’m walking down listening to a podcast or chatting with
alone.” your climbing partner. “It’s as simple
“Is he dead?” as putting your phone down and being
“Yeah.” present in the moment,” Quann says.
Then I ran away, back down the That communication leads to trust,
trail. I didn’t know that Lily and which is the other part of taking a dog
Axel had heard me through our car’s into the mountains. “You have to trust

rd.com 87
Reader ’s Digest Drama in Real Life
your dog to make good decisions by
giving her a safe amount of freedom
and not always interrupting her natu-
ral behaviors,” Quann says. “We want
owners to help their dogs but not
micromanage them.” The bottom line,
she notes, is if a trip will be more stress-
ful with your dog, leave him or her at
home.
I knew Susan questioned whether
I’d done enough to keep Merle safe.
My possible carelessness gnawed at
me, too, so I called our longtime vet
and friend, Charlie Meynier, owner of
Vail Valley Animal Hospital, to try to
get some closure. He assured me I had
done everything I could to save Merle.
“He crawled into that cave to secure
shelter, which is typical for a dog in
distress who is on the verge of dying—
they hide and hunker down,” he said.
T
hree weeks later, on July 8, a
real estate agent named Dana
Dennis Gumber was preparing
a listing in East Vail, less than a mile
from the Deluge Lake trailhead where
Merle and my journey had started
off. She noticed a ragged-looking
dog near the property’s deck and as-
sumed he belonged to the landscap-
ers working on the complex. But when
she returned to the house two hours
later, the crew had left and the dog
was curled by the front door. Gumber
had noticed him limping earlier, and
now she saw that he was filthy, weak,
and skeletally thin. She ushered the
dog into her car, then took him to her
88 february 2019
Eagle-Vail home for food and water.
Miraculously, Gumber found that
the dog still had a collar. That after-
noon, she left a voice mail on my cell:
“I have Merle. Please call me.”
I’d left town a few days earlier for a
work trip to Austria. I got the call and
FaceTimed Susan back home immedi-
ately, where it wasn’t yet dawn. Neither
of us knew what the message meant.
Susan assumed it was a sick prank,
but she agreed to call the woman back
that morning. A few hours later, we
had an answer: Merle was alive, Susan
said. “I’m getting him this afternoon.”
When she got to Gumber’s house, she
collapsed to the floor as soon as she
saw Merle, gently stroking his battered
body. He seemed to recognize her,
though his wandering eyes made her
think he’d suffered some brain damage.
Susan drove him to the Vail Valley
Animal Hospital, where emergency
veterinarian Rebecca Hall found that
Merle had two detached retinas, a
punctured lung, facial lacerations,
and sores on his hind legs. He had lost
about 12 pounds—almost a third of his
weight. His stool showed that he’d sur-
vived on pine needles and berries. He
was tattered, but, remarkably, he didn’t
need stitches and none of his bones
were broken. Dr. Hall was amazed that
Merle had walked away from falling so
far. He had hunkered down in a cave,
likely gone into a coma, then woken
up and, seriously injured, covered
20 miles in 20 days to return home.
“You don’t hear a lot of stories about
Reunited
at last:
Susan, Lily,
Axel (bottom),
Eric, and
Merle

dogs surviving in the wilderness,”

Quann says. “But herding breeds are
driven and tough. His return was most
likely testament to his positive associa-
tion with home. These dogs are incred-
ibly bonded to their owners.”
Quann says Merle probably followed
human smells on the trail to get back
to civilization. “We can’t wrap our
brains around how easy it is for a dog
to follow a scent or hear traffic miles
away,” she says. Plus, after a week in
the wilderness, Merle’s senses had
likely sharpened. “I’d guess it was this
combination, plus intuition and some
luck, that got him home,” she says.
Over the next week, while I was still
away, Merle recovered beautifully.
His wandering eyes straightened, he
gained weight, and his gait returned
to normal. Axel and Lily, who now
fully believe in miracles, spent every
moment with their best friend. When
I got home just after midnight one day
later that month, I walked through
the front door, anxious to see Merle.
Would he run from me again? I en-
tered our living room, then kneeled
down and called him to me. He gave
a quick bark before lowering his ears,
tucking in his tail, and wiggling onto
my lap. He clawed my chest like he
wanted to climb on top of my shoul-
ders and kissed my face.
outsideonline.com (july 5, 2018), copyright © 2018 by
tess strokes and eric wagenknecht.

TGIFrankenstein
If teenage Mary Shelley can win a storytelling contest with Lord Byron
by inventing science fiction, I can surely make it to Friday.
@sketchesbyboze

rd.com 89
 FIRST PERSON

HONORING
LOLA,
AT LAST
She had spent her life caring for our family
under the most unusual circumstances.
A final trip to her childhood home might
help her—and my conscience—rest in peace.

By Alex Tizon
from the atlantic

90 february 2019 | rd.com Photograph by Alan Berner

 Reader ’s Digest

Lola lived to be 86.

She spent most of her
years in servitude.
Reader ’s Digest

he ashes filled a black plastic box about the size

T
of a toaster. I packed it in my suitcase in July 2016
for the transpacific flight from Seattle to Manila,
Philippines. From there, I would travel to a rural vil-
lage and hand over all that was left of the woman
who had essentially raised me while spending more
than 50 years working in my family’s home.

Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pu-

lido. We called her Lola. She was four
foot eleven, with mocha-brown skin
and almond eyes. She was 18 years
old when my grandfather brought her
home, and when my family moved
from the Philippines to the United
States, we brought her with us. She
prepared three meals a day, cleaned
the house, waited on my parents, and
took care of my four siblings and me.
My parents never paid her, and they
scolded her constantly.
It confused me: They would be af-
fectionate to us kids one moment Lola, shown here in her passport photo,
and vile to Lola the next. I was 11 or was brought to the United States in 1964.
12 when I began to see Lola’s situ-
ation clearly. My brother Arthur, friends or hobbies outside the family.
eight years my senior, introduced the To our American neighbors, we
word slave into my understanding of were model immigrants. My father
what Lola was. had a law degree, my mother was on
“Do you know anybody treated her way to becoming a doctor, and my
the way she’s treated?” he said. He siblings and I got good grades. Lola’s
courtesy melissa tizon

summed up Lola’s reality: Wasn’t
paid. Toiled every day. Was tongue-
lashed for sitting too long or falling
asleep too early. Was struck for talk-
ing back. Ate scraps and leftovers
by herself in the kitchen. Had no
role in our family was a dark and,
frankly, complicated secret. After my
mother died in 1999, Lola came to
live with me. I had a family, a career,
a house in the suburbs—the American
dream. And then I had a slave.

92 february 2019

At the baggage claim in Manila, I
unzipped my suitcase to make sure
Lola’s ashes were still there. Outside,
I inhaled the familiar smell: a thick
blend of exhaust and waste, of ocean
and sweet fruit and sweat.
Early the next morning I found a
driver, an affable middle-aged man
who went by the nickname Doods,
and we hit the road in his truck.
We were headed to the place where
Lola’s story began, up north in Tarlac
province. Rice country. The home of
AT NIGHT, LOLA SAT
ON THE EDGE OF MY
MOTHER’S BED AND
FANNED HER TO SLEEP.
a cigar-chomping army lieutenant
named Tomas Asuncion, my grand-
father. The family stories paint Lieu-
tenant Tom as a formidable man who
had lots of land but little money and
kept mistresses in separate houses
on his property. His wife died giving
birth to their only child, my mother.
She was raised by a series of utusans,
or “people who take commands.”
Slavery has a long history on the is-
lands. Even the poor can have utusans
or katulongs (“helpers”) or kasamba-
hays (“domestics”), as long as there
are people even poorer.
In spring 1943, Lieutenant Tom
First Person
brought home a distant cousin from
a nearby village. He had approached
her with an offer: She could have food
and shelter if she would take care of
his daughter, who had just turned 12.
Lola agreed, not grasping that the
deal was for life.
“She is my gift to you,” Lieutenant
Tom told my mother.
“I don’t want her,” my mother said,
knowing she had no choice.
Lieutenant Tom went off to fight the
Japanese, leaving Mom behind with
Lola, who fed, groomed, and dressed
her. At night, when Lola’s other tasks
were done—feeding the dogs, sweep-
ing the floors, folding the laundry—
she sat at the edge of my mother’s bed
and fanned her to sleep.
One day, Lieutenant Tom caught my
mother in a lie. Furious, he ordered her
to “stand at the table.” In a quavering
voice, Mom said that Lola would take
her punishment. Without a word, Lola
walked to the dining table and held on
to the edge. Tom raised the belt and
delivered 12 lashes, punctuating each
one with a word. You. Do. Not. Lie.
To. Me. You. Do. Not. Lie. To. Me. Lola
made no sound.
In 1950, Mom married my father
and moved to Manila, bringing Lola
along. Lieutenant Tom had long
been haunted by demons, and in 1951,
he silenced them with a .32-caliber
slug to his temple. Mom had his
temperament—moody, imperial, se-
cretly fragile—and she took his lessons
to heart, among them that you must
rd.com 93
Reader ’s Digest
keep those beneath you in their place,
for their own good and the good of the
household. They will love you for help-
ing them to be what God intended.
My brother Arthur was born in
1951. I came next, followed by three
more siblings: Albert, Ling, and Maria.
While Lola looked after us, my parents
went to school and earned degrees.
Then the big break: Dad was of-
fered a job in foreign affairs. The sal-
ary would be meager, but the position
was in America—a place he and Mom
had grown up dreaming of.
MOM WOULD COME
HOME AND UPBRAID
LOLA FOR NOT
CLEANING THE HOUSE
WELL ENOUGH.
Dad was allowed to bring his fam-
ily and one domestic. Lola was terri-
fied, she told me years later. “It was
too far,” she said. “Maybe your mom
and dad won’t let me go home.” What
convinced her was my father’s prom-
ise that things would be different in
America. He told her that as soon as
he and Mom got on their feet, they’d
give her an “allowance.” Lola could
send money home. Her parents lived
in a hut with a dirt floor. Lola could
build them a concrete house.
We landed in Los Angeles on May 12,
1964. I was four years old—too young
94 february 2019
to question Lola’s place in our family.
But as my siblings and I grew up, we
came to see the world differently.
ola never got that allowance.
L She asked my parents about it
when her mother fell ill with dys-
entery and her family couldn’t afford the
medicine she needed. “How could you
even ask?” Dad said. “You see how hard
up we are. Don’t you have any shame?”
My father was transferred to the
Philippine consulate in Seattle. He
took a second job cleaning trailers,
and a third as a debt collector. Mom
got work as a medical technician. We
barely saw them.
Mom would come home and up-
braid Lola for not cleaning the house
well enough or for forgetting to bring
in the mail. “Didn’t I tell you I want
the letters here when I come home?”
she would say, her voice venomous.
“An idiot could remember.” Some-
times my parents would team up until
Lola broke down crying.
When guests came over, my parents
would ignore Lola, or, if questioned,
lie and quickly change the subject.
We lived across the street from the
Misslers, a rambunctious family of
eight. “Who’s that little lady you keep
in the kitchen?” Big Jim, the patri-
arch, once asked. A relative from back
home, Dad said. Very shy.
Billy Missler, my best friend, didn’t
buy it. “Why is she always working?” he
once asked me.

Lola raised the author and his siblings,
including his older brother, Arthur (above).
“She likes to work,” I said.
“Your dad and mom—why do they
yell at her?”
“Her hearing isn’t so good …”
Admitting the truth would have
meant exposing us all. We spent our
first decade in the country learning
the ways of the new land. Having a
slave gave me grave doubts about
what kind of people we were, whether
we deserved to be accepted.
There was another reason for
courtesy melissa tizon
secrecy: Lola’s travel papers had ex-
pired in 1969. After Dad quit the con-
sulate, he arranged for permanent
resident status for our family. Lola
wasn’t eligible. He was supposed to
send her back.
First Person
Lola’s mother, Fermina, died in
1973; her father, Hilario, in 1979. Both
times, she wanted desperately to go
home. Both times, my parents said
“Sorry.” No money, no time. My par-
ents also feared for themselves, they
admitted later. If the authorities had
found out about Lola, as they surely
would have if she’d tried to leave, my
parents could have gotten into trou-
ble, possibly even been deported.
Our family moved from Seattle to
Honolulu, back to Seattle, then to
the Bronx, and finally to Umatilla,
Oregon, population 750. Mom often
worked 24-hour shifts, first as a medi-
cal intern and then as a resident be-
fore she got her license to practice as a
doctor. Dad would disappear for days,
working odd jobs but also, we later
learned, womanizing. For days, Lola
would be the only adult in the house.
When I was 15, Dad left for good.
He didn’t pay child support, so money
was always a struggle. My mom kept
herself together enough to go to work,
but at night she’d crumble in self-pity
and despair. Her main source of com-
fort during this time: Lola. I’d find the
two of them at the kitchen counter,
telling stories about Dad, sometimes
laughing wickedly, other times work-
ing themselves into a fury.
n our way to Lola’s village,
O Mayantoc, Doods and I passed
through beautiful country.
Mountains ran parallel to the highway
rd.com 95
Reader ’s Digest
To outsiders, Lola (far right) looked like one of the family. That was their cover story.
on each side. From ridge to ridge,
west to east, I could see every shade
of green.
“Two hours more,” Doods said.
His not knowing anything about the
purpose of my journey was a relief. I
had enough interior dialogue going
on. I was no better than my parents.
I could have done more to free Lola.
Why didn’t I?
I tapped the cheap plastic box and
regretted not buying a real urn, made
of porcelain or rosewood. What would
Lola’s people think? Not many were
left. Only one sibling remained in the
area, Gregoria, 98 years old, and I was
told her memory was failing. One of
Lola’s nieces had planned a simple
memorial, followed by the lowering of
the ashes into a plot at the Mayantoc
Eternal Bliss Memorial Park.
Doods veered northwest. Two lanes
became one, and then gravel turned to
96 february 2019
dirt. The path ran along the Camiling
River, clusters of bamboo houses off to
the side, green hills ahead. The home
stretch.
In the late 1970s, I was attending col-
lege an hour away. On my frequent
trips home, I heard Lola say that her
mouth hurt. Then her teeth started
falling out.
“That’s what happens when you
don’t brush properly,” Mom told her.
I said that Lola needed to see a den-
tist. She was in her 50s and had never
been to one. A year went by, then two.
Lola’s teeth looked like a crumbling
courtesy melissa tizon
Stonehenge. One night, I lost it.
Lola could barely eat because her
teeth were rotting out of her head, I
screamed at my mother. Couldn’t she
think of her as a real person instead
of as a slave?

“A slave,” Mom said, weighing the
word. “A slave?”
We argued into the night. I would
never understand her relationship
with Lola, she said. Never.
“Why do you stay?” my siblings and
I sometimes asked Lola.
“Who will cook?” she said. Another
time she said, “Where will I go?” This
struck me as closer to a real answer.
She had no contacts in America.
Phones puzzled her. Fast-talking peo-
ple left her speechless, and her own
broken English did the same to them.
I got Lola an ATM card linked to my
bank account and taught her how to
use it. She succeeded once, but the
second time she got flustered, and she
never tried again.
After my big fight with Mom, I
mostly avoided going home, and at
age 23 I moved to Seattle. Mom’s
health started to decline. Diabe-
tes. Breast cancer. Leukemia. She
went from robust to frail seemingly
overnight.
When I did visit, I saw a change.
Mom had gotten Lola a fine set of
dentures. And she cooperated when
my siblings and I set out to change
Lola’s immigration status. It was a long
process, but Lola became a citizen in
October 1998. Mom lived another year.
The day before Mom died, a Catho-
lic priest came to the house to per-
form last rites. Lola sat next to my
mother’s bed, holding a cup with
a straw, poised to raise it to Mom’s
mouth.
First Person
The priest asked Mom whether
there was anything she wanted to for-
give or be forgiven for. She scanned
the room with heavy-lidded eyes.
Then she reached over and placed an
open hand on Lola’s head. She didn’t
say a word.
Lola was 75 when she came to stay
with me. I was married with two
young daughters, living in a cozy
house on a wooded lot. We gave Lola
license to do whatever she wanted:
sleep in, watch soaps, relax. I should
have known it wouldn’t be that
simple.
She cooked breakfast, even though
none of us ate more than a banana
or a granola bar in the morning, usu-
ally while running out the door. She
made our beds and did our laundry.
She cleaned the house. I found myself
saying to her, “Lola, you don’t have to
do that.” “OK,” she’d say, but she kept
right on doing it.
It irritated me to catch her eating
meals standing in the kitchen, or to
see her tense up and start cleaning
when I walked into the room. One day,
after several months, I sat her down.
“I’m not Dad. You’re not a slave
here,” I said. She was startled. I took
a deep breath and kissed her fore-
head. “This is your house now,” I said.
“You’re not here to serve us. You can
relax, OK?”
“OK,” she said. And went back to
cleaning.
rd.com 97
Reader ’s Digest
She didn’t know any other way to
be. I realized I had to take my own
advice and relax. One night, I came
home to find her sitting on the couch
doing a word puzzle, her feet up, the
TV on. Progress, I thought.
I knew Lola had been sending almost
all her money—my wife and I gave her
$200 a week—to relatives back home.
One afternoon, I found her sitting on
the back deck gazing at a snapshot
someone had sent of her village.
“You want to go home, Lola?”
“Yes,” she said.
Just after her 83rd birthday, I paid
her airfare to go home. I’d follow a
month later to bring her back—if she
wanted to return. The unspoken pur-
pose of her trip was to see whether
the place she had spent so many years
longing for could still feel like home.
She found her answer.
“Everything was not the same,” she
told me as we walked around Mayan-
toc. Her house was gone. Her parents
and most of her siblings were gone.
Childhood friends were like strangers.
She’d still like to spend her last years
here, but she wasn’t ready yet.
ola was as devoted to my
L daughters as she had been to
my siblings and me. We took her
on family vacations, but she was just
as excited to go to the farmers’ mar-
ket down the hill. She taught herself to
read. Every day, she watched the news
98 february 2019
and listened for words she recognized.
She triangulated them with words in
the newspaper and figured out the
meanings. She came to read the paper
daily, front to back. I wondered what
she could have been if, instead of
working the rice fields at age eight, she
had learned to read and write.
During the 12 years she lived in
our house, I tried to piece together
her life story. She often gave one- or
two-word answers to personal ques-
tions, and teasing out even the sim-
plest story was a game of 20 questions
that could last days or weeks. Some of
what I learned: She was mad at Mom
for being so cruel all those years, but
she missed her. Sometimes she’d felt
so lonely that all she could do was cry.
But living with Mom’s husbands—my
dad and her second husband, a vola-
tile man named Ivan—made her think
being alone wasn’t so bad. Maybe her
life would have been better if she’d
stayed in Mayantoc, gotten married,
and had a family. What came her way
instead was another kind of family:
Mom, my siblings and me, and now
my daughters. The eight of us, she
said, made her life worth living.
Lola lived to 86. Her heart attack
started while she was making dinner.
A couple of hours later, she was gone.
She died on November 7, twelve years
to the day after Mom.
Going through her boxes in the at-
tic, I found photo albums with pic-
tures of my mom. Awards my siblings
and I had won. A stack of yellowed
 First Person

newspaper articles I’d written. She

couldn’t read back then, but she’d
kept them anyway.

Doods pulled up to a small concrete

house amid the rice fields. Before I
even got out of the car, people started
coming outside.
“This way,” a soft voice said. Follow-
ing close behind were about 20 peo-
ple. Once we were all inside, they sat
down on chairs and benches arranged
along the walls. I remained standing.
People glanced at me expectantly.
A woman in a housedress sauntered
in with a smile. Ebia, Lola’s niece. This
was her house. She gave me a hug and
said, “Where is Lola?”
I handed my tote bag to her. She
sat on a wooden bench and pulled When Lola came to live with the author’s
out the box. She set it on her lap and family, he urged her to relax and enjoy life.
rested her forehead on top of it. Her
shoulders began to heave, and then bench, and I knew it was right to bring
she was wailing—a deep, mournful, Lola back to the place where she’d
animal howl. I hadn’t expected this been born.
kind of grief.
Before I could comfort Ebia, a Alex Tizon died unexpectedly in his
woman walked in from the kitchen sleep, of natural causes, at age 57, on
and wrapped her arms around her. The the same day in March 2017 that the
next thing I knew, the room erupted Atlantic decided to publish his story
with sound. Everyone was crying. I was on its cover. Tizon never got the news.
so fascinated that I barely noticed the Although he had won a Pulitzer Prize
courtesy melissa tizon

tears running down my own face.
Ebia sniffled and said it was time
to eat. Everybody started filing into
the kitchen, puffy-eyed but suddenly
lighter and ready to tell stories. I
glanced at the empty tote bag on the
for his work at the Seattle Times, his
wife, Melissa Tizon, called this “his
ultimate story.”
from lola’s story, copyright © 2017 by the estate
of alex tizon, as first published in the atlantic
(june 2017), theatlantic.com.

rd.com 99
 TRAVEL

AMERICA’S
GREATEST
ROAD
SHOWS
VACATIONS ARE
WONDERFUL, but these
quirky roadside attractions
prove that getting there is
often half the fun
christian heeb/laif/redux

By Margaret Renkl
from the new york times

100 february 2019 | rd.com

 Reader ’s Digest

When it comes to
stop-worthy landscapes,
it’s hard to top Carhenge,
a Stonehenge-inspired
tribute in Alliance,
Nebraska.
Reader ’s Digest
Mitchell Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota; the Leaning Tower of Niles, Illinois; the big
duck in Flanders, New York; Camden Park’s Haunted House in Huntington, West Virginia
y husband and I were
M driving down I-65, still
in Tennessee but near
the Alabama border,
when a statue of a giant
chicken caught my eye. It was stand-
ing in front of a truck stop near Elkton.
I am grateful to be married to a man
who will instantly pull off the highway
when someone says, “Hey, let’s take a
selfie with that chicken!”
That particular chicken is an adver-
tisement for the Shady Lawn Truck
Stop’s fried-chicken plate. It is wear-
ing a chef’s hat. Its wings hold a giant
fork and a giant carving knife under-
neath them. The combination makes
for a troubling message: chicken as
both dinner and diner. It is also cov-
ered with graffiti, mostly people’s
names but also an exhortation to
“Read More.” Unlike the existential
conflict at the heart of the chicken’s
identity, that’s a message I had no
trouble decoding.
Between Nashville and the Alabama
Gulf Coast, where my husband and I
102 february 2019
were heading, there are quite a few
unusual roadside attractions. An ac-
tual NASA Saturn rocket, all 168 feet
of it, is posed as if for blastoff at the
Alabama welcome center near Ard-
more. The Ave Maria Grotto, where
a Benedictine monk built 125 min-
from left: courtesy library of congress. thomas barrat/shutterstock.
iature replicas of famous buildings,
religious sites, and shrines—all made
in part from found objects such as
cold cream jars and toilet floaters—
occupies a four-acre park in Cullman.
anaglic/shutterstock. courtesy library of congress
Fifty-five miles south of this “Jeru-
salem in miniature,” in Birmingham,
the cosmology goes back even fur-
ther. Rising above the city is a mam-
moth statue of Vulcan, the Roman god
of fire and the forge. It is the world’s
largest cast-iron statue, but during the
years when I was growing up there, its
fame lay primarily in its peculiar at-
tire: Vulcan is wearing nothing but
a blacksmith’s apron and knee-high
sandals, and his bare buttocks shine
a moon right at the adjacent city of
Homewood.
Perhaps because that image is still

The abandoned Igloo City in Cantwell, Alaska; dinosaurs roaming in Cabazon, California;
the end of the United States in Key West, Florida; a basket of apples in Frazeysburg, Ohio
fresh in mind by the time drivers on
I-65 reach Chilton County, center of
the Alabama peach-growing region,
it’s hard not to see a connection be-
tween Birmingham’s famous land-
from left: chris burton/solentnews/shutterstock. breanna peterson/offset.
mark and Chilton County’s water
tower, which was built in the shape of
an authentically cleft peach.
Ten miles down the road, as if
to punish such thoughts, there’s a
chris labasco/shutterstock. courtesy library of congress
billboard directing motorists to “ GO
TO CHURCH or the Devil Will Get You!”
that graced the interstate near Pratt-
ville for many decades before a storm
knocked it down in 2016. In 2017,
heavy rains kept the surrounding soil
photo contest
The Great American Road Trip is the
theme for this year’s Reader’s Digest
photo contest. If you’ve taken a funny or
amazingly beautiful shot along America’s
byways, send it to us at rd.com/
photocontest. It just might be featured in
the magazine—and win you a cash prize.
Travel
too wet for the necessary repairs. “The
devil is trying to knock it all down, but
we’re going to get it back up,” the son
of the Montgomery man who first
erected the billboard told a reporter.
Satan apparently lost the battle last
year: The sign is now back in place, the
original red-tailed devil intact. And the
monstrous red scythe the devil is hold-
ing could surely take even the Elkton
chicken’s carving knife in a fight.
Nearby Montgomery boasts the
World’s Largest Brick Made of Bricks.
We didn’t stop to see it, but we did
stop for five more giant chickens—
some metal, some concrete—that
were standing in front of various
small-town establishments off the
interstate.
These are some of the roadside
highlights along one stretch of one
highway, mind you. The peach-
shaped water tower in Chilton County
is half the size of the Peachoid in
Gaffney, South Carolina. The giant
chicken outside Elkton has noth-
ing on the World’s Largest Prairie
rd.com 103
Reader ’s Digest Travel
A piece of the rock in Moab, Utah; the world’s largest scale model of a tire, near Detroit;
Lucy the Elephant in Margate, New Jersey; “alien” lands near Area 51 in Hiko, Nevada
Dog in Cactus Flat, South Dakota. I
know because we stopped to see the
prairie dog in 2006. We also stopped
in Collinsville, Illinois, to see the
World’s Largest Catsup Bottle. Both
stops occurred on the way to Mount
Rushmore, which my husband still
calls “The World’s Largest Carving of
Presidential Heads.”
All across the country stand an
uncountable number of homespun
reminders that American ingenuity
and wit have not yet been Walmart-
ized out of existence. Think of Car-
henge in Alliance, Nebraska, a replica
of Stonehenge made entirely of vin-
tage automobiles. Think of Dog Bark
Park Inn in Cottonwood, Idaho, a
bed-and-breakfast that doubles as
the World’s Largest Beagle. Think of
the 13-foot-tall peanut smiling with
Jimmy Carter–style teeth outside of
Plains, Georgia; the World’s Largest
Ball of Twine, claimed by Cawker City,
Kansas; or Lenny, the World’s Only
Life-Size Chocolate Moose, in Scar-
borough, Maine. Every state has them.
104 february 2019
Virtually every road in the country is
the site of at least one.
They are most visible on leisurely
summer road trips, when a detour
to take a selfie with a chicken or to
from left: ruslan kalnitsky/shutterstock. susan montgomery/shutterstock.
snicker at a 112-year-old statue’s bare
butt won’t make anyone late for the
cranberry relish or the Easter ham,
but they are always there.
Often meant to be advertisements
courtesy library of congress. diegomariottini/shutterstock
for local enterprises, they are in-
evitably much more than the mercan-
tile economy requires. They are also
evidence that human imagination
will always resist homogenization,
that daring art isn’t found only in
galleries and museums, that wit and
wile are everywhere among us. When
interstate exits are marked by the in-
stantly recognizable icons of a dozen
fast-food restaurants and gas stations
supplied by the same multinational
oil companies, the giant roadside
chickens will always remind us who
we are.
new york times (august 25, 2018), copyright © 2018
by new york times co., nytimes.com.
 Reader ’s Digest

LAUGH LINES
Proud to announce my You can tell which inmates were
dream of becoming a involved in organized crime
criminal lawyer is halfway because their cells are much
neater than the other prisoners’.
complete! Just working
— @mstern68
on the lawyer part now.
— @sabrinahamiddd
Whenever I watch
Forensic Files and
Just remember, when
the jury is deciding
between premeditated
Guffaw realize I’ve already
seen the episode,
I get so mad I could
murder and man-
slaughter ... it’s the
& poison someone in
small amounts every
thought that counts.
— @C00LpenNAME
Order day for six months.
— @Jeremy_Rowley

Saw a police Did you know you

officer dressed have the right to
as a pilot today remain silent even
and thought when you’re not
it was weird. being arrested?
Then I realized
he must be one
of those “plane
dimj/shutterstock

clothes cops.”
— @Tmoney68

rd.com 105
 NATIONAL INTEREST

ARE
SURGERY
CENTERS

SAFE? By Christina Jewett and Mark Alesia

from kaiser health news and usa today network

They are less expensive

than hospitals. But when a facility isn’t
equipped to handle an emergency,
the consequences can be deadly.
106 february 2019
Reader ’s Digest

rd.com 107
Reader ’s Digest

The surgery went fine. Her doctors left for the day.
Four hours later, Paulina Tam started gasping for air. Internal bleed-
ing was cutting off her windpipe, a well-known complication of the
spine surgery she had undergone. But a Medicare inspection report
says that nobody who remained on duty that evening at the North-
ern California surgery center could help. In desperation, a nurse did
something that would not happen in a hospital: She dialed 911.
By the time an ambulance delivered Tam to the emergency room,
the 58-year-old mother of three was lifeless, according to the report.

If Tam had been op- in March 2018 discov-

erated on at a hospital, ered that more than
a few simple steps could 260 patients have died
have saved her life. But since 2013 after in-and-
like hundreds of thou- out procedures done at
sands of patients each surgery centers across

previous spread: tonyng/shutterstock. this page: courtesy the tam family

year, Tam went to one of the country. Dozens of
the nation’s 5,600-plus people, some as young
surgery centers. Surgery as two years old, have
centers were created p e r i s h e d a f t e r ro u -
nearly 50 years ago as tine procedures such
low-cost alternatives for Paulina Tam had as tonsillectomies and
minor procedures. They surgery to replace two colonoscopies.
now outnumber hospi- disks in her back. The investigation—
tals, as federal regulators w h i c h i nv o l v e d e x-
have signed off on an ever-widening aminations of more than 12,000 state
array of outpatient surgeries in an ef- and Medicare inspection records and
fort to cut federal health-care costs. interviews with dozens of doctors,
Thousands of times each year, these health-policy experts, and patients—
centers call 911 when patients expe- revealed some startling trends. Chief
rience complications ranging from among them: At least 14 patients of
minor to fatal. Yet no one knows how the more than 260, counting Tam,
many people die as a result of those died after complex spinal surgeries. At
complications, because no national least 25 people with a variety of under-
authority tracks the tragic outcomes. lying medical conditions left surgery
An investigation by Kaiser Health centers and died within minutes or
News and the USA Today Network days. They included an Ohio woman

108 february 2019


with out-of-control blood pressure, a
49-year-old West Virginia man await-
ing a heart transplant, and several chil-
dren with sleep apnea. Medicare does
require surgery centers to line up a lo-
cal hospital to take their patients when
emergencies arise, but in rural areas,
centers can be more than 20 miles
away from a hospital. Even when one
is close, 20 to 30 minutes can pass be-
tween a 911 call and arrival at an ER.
Surgery carries risk no matter where
it occurs, and most operations done in
surgery centers go off without a hitch.
Some centers have state-of-the-art
equipment and highly trained staff that
are better prepared to handle emer-
gencies. But the Kaiser/USA Today
study found more than a dozen cases
in which the absence of trained staff or
emergency equipment appears to have
put spine-surgery patients in peril. And
in cases similar to Tam’s, patients who
had surgery on their upper spines
have been sent home too soon, with
the risk of suffocation looming.
In 2008, a 35-year-old Oregon father
of three struggled for air, pounding
the car roof in frustration while his
wife sped him to a hospital. Another
Oregon man began to suffocate in his
living room the night of his upper-
spine surgery in 2014. A San Diego
man gasped “like a fish,” his wife re-
called, as they waited for an ambu-
lance on April 28, 2016.
None of them survived.
Many in the health-care field,
from doctors to private insurance
National Interest
companies to Medicare, have dis-
missed the mounting deaths as medi-
cal anomalies beyond the control of
physicians. Responding to lawsuits
around the nation, surgery centers
have argued that fatal complications
were among the known outcomes of
such surgeries. Two centers blamed
patients for negligence in their own de-
mises. Bill Prentice, chief executive of-
ficer of the Ambulatory Surgery Center
A SAN DIEGO MAN GASPED
“LIKE A FISH” WAITING
FOR AN AMBULANCE
AFTER SPINAL SURGERY.
Association, said he has seen no data
proving surgery centers are less safe
than hospitals. “The human body is
a mysterious thing, and a patient that
has met every possible protocol can
walk in that day and still have some-
thing unimaginable happen to them
that has nothing to do with the care
that’s being provided,” he said.
However, Kenneth Rothfield, MD,
a board member of the Physician-
Patient Alliance for Health & Safety,
said many surgery centers and physi-
cians push the envelope on how much
can be done in outpatient centers.
“Surgery centers are not hospi-
tals,” he said. “They have different re-
sources, different equipment.”
Rekhaben Shah, 67, had gone to
rd.com 109
Reader ’s Digest
Rekhaben Shah (in photo) stopped breathing during a colonoscopy at a surgery center.
Oak Tree Surgery Center in Edison,
New Jersey, for a simple colonos-
copy. After receiving the standard
anesthetic, she stopped breathing.
The anesthesiologist, Yoori Yim, MD,
later testified that she came up empty-
handed when she tried to find the
right-sized airway tube for Shah, ac-
cording to an ongoing lawsuit.
Dr. Yim tried a variety of methods to
help Shah breathe, with limited suc-
cess. Paramedics responding to the
center’s 911 call ultimately had to use a
video GlideScope, equipment the sur-
gery center didn’t have, to see inside
Shah’s throat, according to court testi-
mony. What’s more, paramedics testi-
fied that Dr. Yim refused to move away
from Shah and allow them to attempt
110 february 2019
lifesaving measures. An expert for the
surgery center said Shah’s airway was
amy newman/north jersey media group/usa today network
obstructed and was cleared around
the time the paramedics arrived. He
said the GlideScope is not required in
New Jersey, nor would it likely have
made a difference. Shah’s family has
settled its lawsuit against the center—
which denied wrongdoing—under
confidential terms.
An expert for Dr. Yim, however, said
that her actions were appropriate and
if a GlideScope had been at the cen-
ter, “we would probably not be dis-
cussing this case at all.” Instead, from
the moment Shah stopped breathing
on the operating table, 33 minutes
passed before a paramedic effectively
inserted a breathing tube, according

to medical and EMS records. By then,
the family claims, it was too late. Shah
was removed from life support at a
nearby hospital two days later. She
died on Christmas Day 2015.
The explosive growth of surgery
centers—which receive $4.3 billion a
year from Medicare—has taken place
under circumstances some medical
experts consider unseemly. Federal
law allows surgery-center doctors, un-
like others, to steer patients to facilities
they own rather than to the full-service
hospital down the street. In some
cases, doing so could increase the risk
to a patient but double a physician’s
profits: Doctors who own a share of
a center can earn their own fee plus
a cut of the facility’s fee, a meaning-
ful sum for operations that can cost
$100,000 or more. Prentice said phy-
sician ownership of surgery centers
is a good thing. “The physicians who
practice there are responsible for ev-
erything that happens in that surgery
center from the moment the patient
walks out of their car in the parking
lot to the moment they leave,” he said.
But several studies have shown
that surgery-center doctors who are
owners perform operations more fre-
quently than those who aren’t owners.
And in lawsuits across the country,
surgery-center doctors have been ac-
cused of taking risks with patients.
Larry Teuber, MD, a South Dakota
neurosurgeon who worked as an ex-
ecutive in the surgery-center indus-
try for 22 years, said he has watched
National Interest
surgery-center owners take on in-
creasingly complex—and lucrative—
orthopedic and spinal surgeries,
undercutting a nearby hospital’s profits
for their own gain. “The money over-
shadows everything,” Dr. Teuber said.
The first surgery center in the United
States opened in Phoenix in 1970. In
1982, Medicare began paying for pro-
cedures at these centers, which helped
drive their expansion. Today, there are
“SHE WAS THE DRIVING
FORCE OF THE FAMILY.
WE DIDN’T EXPECT THE
WORST TO HAPPEN.”
more than 5,600 Medicare-certified
centers. The expansion has come de-
spite lingering safety concerns. In 2007,
Medicare noted that surgery centers
“have neither patient safety standards
consistent with those in place for hos-
pitals, nor are they required to have the
trained staff and equipment needed to
provide the breadth and intensity of
care.” Some procedures are “unsafe”
to be handled at surgery centers, the
report concluded.
While the thrum of a hospital con-
tinues through the night, some cen-
ters’ doctors keep bankers’ hours.
That means patients whose surgeries
end later in the day are sometimes left
in the care of one or two nurses for up
to 23 hours.
rd.com 111
Reader ’s Digest
Medicare advised the centers to
transfer patients to hospitals when
emergencies arise. Only a third of sur-
gery centers participate in a voluntary
effort to report how often that hap-
pens. They sent at least 7,000 patients
to the hospital in the year that ended
in September 2017, a Kaiser Health
News analysis shows.
One of the saddest cases reviewed
in the investigation happened in 2016
THE BOY MADE IT TO
THE HOSPITAL 37 MINUTES
AFTER THE SURGERY
CENTER CALLED 911.
at West Lakes Surgery Center in Iowa.
The paramedics arrived as staff tried to
revive 12-year-old Reuben Van Veld-
huizen after he experienced complica-
tions during a tonsillectomy, according
to a Medicare inspection report. One
paramedic told state inspectors she
had to ask who was in charge of the
resuscitation efforts. No one replied,
the report says. The boy made it to the
hospital 37 minutes after the surgery-
center staff called 911. There, he was
pronounced dead.
The family filed suit, alleging that
the center and anesthesiologist erred
in giving the boy an anesthetic that
carries a warning about cardiac arrest
risk in young boys. In court filings, the
surgery center and anesthesiologist
112 february 2019
said Van Veldhuizen’s death was a
result of “pre-existing conditions,
acts of others, or conditions over
which (Defendants) had no control
or responsibility.”
Such tragedies rarely find their way
into the discussion when Medicare de-
cides whether to approve new proce-
dures at surgery centers. For instance,
until 2015, Medicare wouldn’t pay for
spinal operations at surgery centers.
Then the industry’s trade association
urged the agency to make a change,
and encouraged its members to start
a campaign. Letter writers included
Alan Villavicencio, MD, who said he’d
been doing such surgeries for 12 years
and found that his patients “appreci-
ate the convenience and cost savings.”
He did not mention that James Long,
56, had died three weeks earlier after
spinal surgery at a Lafayette, Colorado,
surgery center where he is an owner,
health department and medical board
records show.
United Surgical Partners Interna-
tional, a surgery-center chain, urged
the approval of even more proce-
dures, not mentioning a patient death
hours after a spine surgery at one of
its affiliate centers several months
before, according to court records
and securities filings. The chain said
in a statement that it stands behind its
comments in support of the proposal.
Such letters carry weight with
Medicare, which approves proce-
dures in surgery centers based on the
invasiveness and complexity of the

The parents of Reuben Van Veldhuizen, 12, who died after a tonsillectomy
surgery and on input from stakeholders.
But Robert Beatty-Walters, an attor-
ney based in Portland, Oregon, who
has represented the families of three
people who died after spine proce-
michael zamora/the register/usa today network
dures at surgery centers, said Medi-
care’s decision-making process is not
evenhanded.
“ The stakeholders—they call
them—during these regulatory pro-
ceedings are the profit makers, not
the people who are being provided
the service,” he said.
Medicare approved ten spine-
surgery procedures to be billed at
surgery centers starting in 2015 and
added more in 2017. In an e-mail, a
spokesperson for Medicare said that it
had received no comments suggesting
National Interest
the procedures would pose a threat to
patients.
And yet in 2014, Paulina Tam had
died after a spinal procedure at Fre-
mont Surgery Center. Tam had fin-
ished careers as a nurse and as an
educator and planned to travel the
world with her husband of 32 years.
“She was the driving force of the fam-
ily, the spirit,” said her son, Eric Tam,
MD, of New York City. “We didn’t ex-
pect the worst to happen.”
Pain from a car crash had bothered
Tam for years. Her doctor scheduled
her for a procedure to replace two
disks in her upper spine on April 7,
2014. Any such surgery—entering
the front of the neck to address pain
in the spine—comes with a risk of
rd.com 113
Reader ’s Digest National Interest

suffocation, according to the Medi-
care inspection report.
About four hours after her proce-
dure, Tam told a nurse that her surgical
collar felt too tight. Then she said she
couldn’t breathe. With her surgeon and
anesthesiologist already gone for the
day, the only doctor on-site was a di-
gestive health specialist, the inspection
report shows. A nurse called a code
blue just after 6:30 p.m., records say.
Medical experts say the first step in
helping such patients is removing the
surgical staples so the pooled blood
can disperse, allowing the patient to
breathe. In Tam’s case, staff repeatedly
tried and failed to insert a breathing
tube through her mouth and into her
airway, the inspection report shows.
A last-ditch remedy would have been
to punch a hole through the front of
her throat to restore breathing, but the
gastroenterologist later told an inspec-
tor that he “wasn’t prepared” to do so.
The inability to per for m the
suffocation-rescue maneuver, the
inspection report says, amounted to
the center’s “failure to ensure patient
safety.”
From the time a nurse called 911,
it took 24 minutes to get Tam to the
nearest hospital, EMS records show.
She arrived without a pulse and re-
mained on life support overnight, as
her children raced to her bedside to
say goodbye.
Tam’s surgeon filed pleadings in
court saying Tam’s “carelessness and
negligence” caused her death. It’s un-
clear what the defense meant by negli-
gence. The case reached a confidential
settlement. After Tam’s death, the
center told Medicare inspectors that
a qualified doctor would stay on-site
overnight after all upper-spine cases.
Nancy Epstein, MD, chief of neuro-
surgical and spine care at New York
University Winthrop Hospital, said
surgery centers’ doing delicate work
near the spinal cord, windpipe, and
esophagus in a same-day procedure
is “pretty revolting.” But she said the
centers are making so much money—
“reeling it in hand over fist”—that the
potential dangers are being ignored.
“Medically, it should not be tolerated,”
she said, “but it is.”
Editor’s Note: In July 2018,
Medicare announced that it is
reviewing its approval of 38
procedures at surgery centers.
copyright © 2018 by kaiser health news and usa
today network.

You Can’t Have Fries with That Here

The only state capital without a McDonald’s within city limits:
Montpelier, Vermont. (There’s no Burger King, either.)
aol.com, boston.com

114 february 2019 | rd.com

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 THE
GENIUS
SECTION
10 Pages to sharpen
Your Mind

JAZZ UP
YOUR
BRAIN
It sounds illogical, but you can
learn to improvise better in daily
life. All it takes is practice.
By Sandee LaMotee
from cnn.com

116 february 2019


F
ingers graze a keyboard,
poised to play. A trumpet
rises to the lips. Drum-
sticks perch in the air. What
comes next? No one knows.
The beauty of jazz is the way impro-
visation is entwined with art, each
instrument capable of hijacking the
melody and reinventing it in ways
even the musician doesn’t under-
stand. Or as trumpeter Miles Davis
put it, “I’ll play it and tell you what
it is later.”
Charles Limb has a far more scien-
tific description: “That’s not just phe-
nomenal music. That’s phenomenal
neurobiology.”
A neuroscientist at the University of
California, San Francisco, and an ac-
complished jazz musician, Limb has
long been fascinated by the genesis
of creativity. Improvisational jazz, he
believes, is essentially pure creation
in action. It’s what can happen when
the brain is freed from having to fol-
low rules and simply invents. “I had
always intuitively understood that
leigh prather/shutterstock
the creative process in jazz improvi-
sation is very different from the pro-
cess of memorization,” he explains.
“When you hear great jazz, like John
Coltrane or Miles Davis, it has this
jaw-dropping quality to it, and what’s
been described as ‘a sound of sur-
prise’ takes place. And you think to
yourself, ‘Wow.’”
So Limb looked for a way to study
what happens in the brain when it
turns inspiration into creation. Find
Reader ’s Digest
the right key, he believed, and science
could one day unlock the secret to any
kind of creativity, whether it’s artistic
or something more ordinary, such
as a better solution for organizing
your day.
To see whether he could quan-
tify the seemingly ineffable way the
brain creates, Limb asked jazz musi-
cians to play a memorized song while
their brains were scanned with func-
tional MRI. Then the musicians were
IMPROVISATION IS
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN
THE BRAIN IS FREED
FROM RULES AND
SIMPLY INVENTS.
scanned while they were riffing to
compare the differences. The results,
published in 2008, were fascinating.
While the musicians improvised,
the part of the brain that allows hu-
mans to express ourselves—the me-
dial prefrontal cortex—became more
active. At the same time, the part of the
brain responsible for self-inhibition
and control, the dorsolateral prefron-
tal cortex, became dormant.
In other words, in order to improvise
successfully, the musicians needed to
turn off the part of their brains respon-
sible for self-monitoring, Limb says. “If
you’re too self-conscious, it’s very hard
to be free creatively.”
rd.com 117
Reader ’s Digest
“THE STATE OF
CREATIVITY IS A
DIFFERENT
FUNCTIONAL BRAIN
STATE.”
Jazz musicians aren’t the only
folks whose brains show unique
signs of creativity unleashed. In the
past decade, the field of improvisa-
tional neuroscience has expanded
to peer inside the brains of rappers,
classical musicians, stand-up comics,
caricature artists, writers, and even
so-called divergent thinkers (people
who are excellent at thinking on their
feet).
These studies consistently show a
difference between people’s brains
when they are improvising and when
they are not. “So we’re quite con-
vinced,” Limb notes, “that the state
of creativity is a different functional
brain state, and it’s measurable.”
One of the first myths that this re-
search has debunked: “Right-brained”
people are more creative, while “left-
brained” people are more analytical.
In fact, an analysis of the brain activ-
ity of more than 1,000 people revealed
that no one has a dominant side of the
118 february 2019
brain; everyone uses the networks in
both the left and the right sides, and
both sides of the brain are intimately
involved in creativity and change.
Another debunked myth: The abil-
ity to create on the fly is a talent only
certain people have, and they have
it from birth. Rather, research finds
that the best improvisers are those
who have honed their skill over hun-
dreds of hours of practice. Explains
Rex Jung, a professor of neurosurgery
at the University of New Mexico
who studies aptitude, intelligence,
and creativity, “The more time you
devote to developing a skill set, the
more raw material you have to draw
on and the easier it is to improvise.”
The more paintings you have done,
the faster you can identify which
colors will mix well. The more jokes
you have told, the easier it is to know
which punch lines will draw the most
laughs.
Moreover, although it seems a little
counterintuitive, improvisation itself
is a skill that you can improve with
practice. In a 2018 study at Columbia
University, researchers showed that
musicians who regularly practiced
improvisation were better at it and
more quickly able to change chords
in a piece of music (while maintaining
a pleasant harmony) than musicians
who were accustomed to just follow-
ing what was written.
Science has also demonstrated
that improvisational creativity is not
restricted to the arts. Limb says that
 The Genius Section

the “idea of responding to something relationships, our work, our cooking,

that we didn’t anticipate happening
is a fundamental attribute of what
it means to be human. Humans are
hardwired to create.” The creative
brain state that Limb has documented
in musicians, comedians, and artists is
similar to that of athletes “in the zone”
who turn off the self-monitoring part
of their brains and use their instincts
about which shots to take. This mind-
set is also what we employ in daily life
to deal with unexpected occurrences.
Faced with a delayed train, for in-
stance, we might decide to walk or take
the bus. Or, realizing that we’re out of
lemons while cooking, we might sub-
stitute a lime—or something else.
“Everyone is creative; it’s just a
matter of degree,” says Jung. “We
have this prototypical idea of artistic
creativity, but we are creative in our
or even arranging our homes in a dif-
ferent way.”
To train your brain to think cre-
atively, then, look for ways to im-
provise in your daily life. Improv
comedian Anthony Veneziale prac-
tices this with his daughter by giving
her a “yes” day. For one day, as long as
she doesn’t hurt anyone, they will do
anything she wants: Have ice cream
for breakfast. Go swimming. Visit a lo-
cal park. This sort of exercise is just as
important to your health as the physi-
cal kind. Limb notes that “the creative
brain is a generally more activated
brain than a noncreative one”—and
an activated brain is generally better
able to ward off forgetfulness, absent-
mindedness, and even dementia.
cnn.com (april 29, 2018), copyright © 2018
by cable news network.

Six-Word Challenge: What Would You Grab in a Fire?

Burial flag from my grandfather’s casket.
shannon busitzky, anoka, minnesota

My triplets and their cell phones.

annette hanley, boston, massachusetts

I would grab my family’s hands.

elyse klemchuk, lagrange, illinois

My glasses, two sons, two blankets.

april edmonds-lucas, lock haven, pennsylvania

My beloved box of oily rags.

george raymond, los angeles, california
collected from rd readers via facebook and tmbi inner circle

rd.com 119
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Reader ’s Digest

BRAIN GAMES

Word Sudoku
medium Complete the grid L G M I C
so that each row, each
column, and each three- D I A M
by-three frame contains
the nine letters from the M I C L G N
black box below. A hidden
nine-letter word is in the V D I N M
diagonal from top left
to bottom right. (It may
contain repeated letters.)
I M N G V D
D N M L
ACDGILMNV
C G N I D V
V G C
N A V M C L

Sum-Thing Special
difficult Each letter from A through H has one F+ D=H
of the eight values listed below, and no two letters
sum-thing special: fraser simpson

have the same value. Which number goes with

which letter to make all the equations true? G+ C=A
Values: F+ B=E
1 3 5 6 7 10 13 16 C+ A=D
A+ H=E
122 february 2019
 The Genius Section

Changelings
$ medium Each of the three lines of letters below
spells the name of a fruit, but four letters from the
first word are in the third line, four letters from the
third word are in the second line, and four letters
from the second word are in the first line. What are
the words?

L A T E E T E L NN
C C E M A N U I P E
Net Worth
easy Tamara has $20,000 W A N T R L O MO E
saved up. If four fifths of
net worth: marcel danesi. jerry mander strikes again: roderick kimball of enigami fun

what Tamara has equals

eight ninths of what Mar-
tina has, how much money For more Brain Games, go to
does Martina have? games.rd.com.

Jerry Mander Strikes Again

medium Your name is Jerry Mander, and
you must draw your town’s voting dis-
tricts so that George Greene becomes
dogcatcher rather than Barbara Blue. To
do that, Greene must win the majority of
the city’s five voting districts. Each district
comprises three households. This map
shows how each of the town’s 15 house-
holds will vote (the tree represents a park
that’s not in any district). The catch: The
three households in each district must
share at least one border with at least
one other household in the district.
Can you draw the five districts in a way
that guarantees Greene defeats Blue?

For answers, turn to page 127.

rd.com 123
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 The Genius Section Reader ’s Digest

9. fervor n.
WORD POWER ('fer-ver)
a aggravation.
b strong preference.
c passion.
Love is in the air on February 14,
10. compunction n.
but why limit yourself to just one emotion? (kum-'punk-shun)
You’ll experience a wide range of a remorse.
feelings in this month’s vocabulary quiz. b exasperation.
c doubt.
If you’re in the mood, check the
11. umbrage n.
next page for answers. ('uhm-brij)
a indignant displeasure.
By Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon b destructive rage.
c meditative state.
1. ebullient adj. 5. amatory adj. 12. schadenfreude n.
(ih-'bull-yent) ('am-uh-tohr-ee) ('shah-den-froy-duh)
a tranquil. a irritable. a tearfulness.
b haughty. b romantic. b timidity.
c enthusiastic. c easygoing. c joy at another’s pain.
2. pique n. 6. timorous adj. 13. querulous adj.
(peek) ('tih-muh-rus) ('kwair-yuh-lus)
a resentment. a affectionate. a hyperactive.
b self-importance. b fiery. b fretful.
c whimsy. c fearful. c fickle.
3. bonhomie n. 7. wistfully adv. 14. blithesome adj.
(bah-nuh-'mee) ('wist-fuh-lee) ('blyth-sum)
a nostalgia. a with sad longing. a unconcerned.
b friendliness. b dreamily. b guarded.
c peace of mind. c in defiance. c merry.
4. dour adj. 8. belligerent adj. 15. lugubrious adj.
('dow-er) (buh-'lij-uh-rent) (luh-'goo-bree-us)
a guilty. a hostile. a chatty.
b generous. b regretful. b mournful.
c gloomy. c sympathetic. c disgusted.

To play an interactive version of Word Power on your iPad,

download the Reader’s Digest app.

rd.com | february 2019 125

Reader ’s Digest
Word Power
ANSWERS
1. ebullient (c)
enthusiastic. Nina has
such a bubbly, ebullient
personality—I can’t be-
lieve she was ever shy!
2. pique (a) resentment.
After being passed over for
a promotion, Manuel left
the office in a fit of pique.
3. bonhomie (b) friendli-
ness. There’s an absence
of bonhomie between the
rival basketball teams.
4. dour (c) gloomy. How
can you be so dour on this
sunny morning?
5. amatory (b) romantic.
Some people claim that
chocolate can put you in
an amatory mood, but I
don’t buy it.
6. timorous (c) fearful.
Bernard is usually
timorous around large
126 february 2019
dogs, but he seems to
love our three golden
retrievers.
7. wistfully (a) with sad
longing. “I miss when
my friends would call
me on my birthday—now
they just text!” Monica
said wistfully.
8. belligerent (a) hostile.
The sightseers were
chased from the pond
by a belligerent swan.
9. fervor (c) passion.
Nicole’s fervor for local
honey inspired her to
open a beekeeping
business.
10. compunction
(a) remorse. The con man
showed no compunction
about fleecing unsuspect-
ing investors.
11. umbrage (a)
indignant displeasure.
Elvira took umbrage at
being called a wicked
witch.
12. schadenfreude
(c) joy at another’s pain.
We all felt some
schadenfreude when
our boorish manager
was finally fired.
13. querulous (b) fretful.
I don’t recommend
traveling overseas with
Aunt Lisa—she gets
querulous and cranky
on long flights.
14. blithesome
(c) merry. “There is
nothing so blithesome
as a summer day at
the beach with the
children, is there?”
Tim said.
15. lugubrious (b)
mournful. This lugubrious
violin solo isn’t doing
much to raise my spirits.
matthew cohen
Vocabulary Ratings
9 & below: content
10–12: delighted
13–15: ecstatic
 The Genius Section

make
BRAIN GAMES us !
ANSWERS l ugh
a
See page 122.

Word Sudoku
A L G N M V D I C
C D N I G A V M L
M I V C L D G A N
G V L A D I N C M
I C M L N G A V D
D N A M V C L G I
L M C G A N I D V
V G I D C L M N A
N A D V I M C L G

Sum-Thing Special
a = 6, b = 13, c = 1, d = 7,
e = 16, f = 3, g = 5, h = 10

Net Worth Caption Contest

$18,000 What’s your clever description for this
picture? Submit your funniest line at
Changelings
watermelon rd.com/captioncontest. Winners will
clementine appear in a future Photo Finish (page 128).
cantaloupe

Jerry Mander Reader’s Digest (ISSN 0034-0375) (USPS 865-820), (CPM Agreement# 40031457), Vol. 193,
No. 1147, February 2019. © 2019. Published monthly, except bimonthly in July/August and
Strikes Again
j.w.alker/imagebroker/shutterstock

December/January (subject to change without notice), by Trusted Media Brands, Inc., 44 South
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rd.com 127
Reader ’s Digest The Genius Section

PHOTO FINISH
Your Funniest captions

Winner
How I feel asking my teenagers about their day.
—Jeff Schembeck Albany, New York

Runners-Up
The cheapest guided tour in New York City.
—Arlene Hills Shawano, Wisconsin
jonathan higbee

“C’mon, man, get your head out of the gutter.”

—Amber McKay San José, Costa Rica

To enter an upcoming caption contest, see the photo on page 127.

128 february 2019 | rd.com

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