DEC 2015/JAN 2016

Miraculous
Christmas
Stories 5 CLASSIC TALES ... 66

Forever Memory
From BBC.COM FUTURE ... 112

Outrageous Ways Charities Spend

Your Donations
An RD ORIGINAL ... 96

A Case Against Time Management

From QUARTZ ... 39

Baby in the Stream

A DRAMA IN REAL LIFE ... 86

Everyday Heroes Helping the Homeless

An RD ORIGINAL ... 10

The Big One

From THE NEW YORKER ... 118

LAUGHTER, THE BEST MEDICINE .................... 78

ALL IN A DAYS WORK ...................................... 54
QUOTABLE QUOTES ....................................... 148

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 Contents
DECEMBER 2015 JANUARY 2016

P. | 66
PHOTOGRAPH BY YASU+JUNKO. SWAROVSKI STAR ORNAMENT COURTESY SWAROVSKI.COM

Cover Story Stranger Who

66 MIRACULOUS Changed My Life
CHRISTMAS STORIES 106 THE CURIOUS WORLD
Five classic tales of wonder, OF MRS. REESE
compassion, and joy to The mom next door invited
inspire you this season. me over, and a new world
beckoned. H E AT H E R S E L L E R S
Drama in Real Life
86 BABY IN THE STREAM Science
When a neighbor pulls an 112 FOREVER MEMORY
unconscious toddler from What if our recollections could
an icy creek, the boys family live on long after we were gone?
fears the worst. But one Scientists are racing to make
doctor wont give up hope. that eternity a reality.
DEREK BURNETT SIMON PARKIN FROM BBC.COM FUTURE

Special Report National Interest

96 UNCHARITABLE! 118 THE BIG ONE
A look at the shocking A devastating earthquake
ways charities spend your in the Pacific Northwest is
donations and how to long overdue. Are we ready?
ensure your giving counts. KAT HRY N S CH U L Z
DEREK BURNETT FROM THE NEW YORKER

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 1
 Volume 186 | Issue 1116
DECEMBER 2015 JANUARY 2016

Everyday Heroes
10 Helping the Homeless
Three stories of
humanitarians with
innovative solutions.
A LYSSA J U N G , B R AND O N S P E CKTO R ,

P. | 44 BE T H D R E HE R , AND
M IC HE LE WOJ CI E CH OWS K I

VOICES & VIEWS

Department of Wit
17 The Real 12 Days of
6 Editors Note 8 Letters
Christmas
Its not all true love and
turtledoves.
READER FAVORITES
COLIN N ISSAN
FROM MCSWEENEYS
23 100-Word True Stories
26 Points to Ponder Words of Lasting Interest
31 Faces of America 20 Pretty Girl
32 Life in These United States Never give up on anything,
54 All in a Days Work least of all a dog.
R IC K BR AGG FROM THE BOOK
64 News from the
MY SOUTHERN JOURNEY
World of Medicine
78 Laughter, the Best Medicine Finish This Sentence
P HOTOGRAP H BY RALPH SMI TH

92 Thats Outrageous! 24 Im Finally Ready to ...

94 The Moth
You Be the Judge
104 Laugh Lines 29 The Case of the Ticket
110 Photo of Lasting Interest Mix-up
132 Look Twice Who should pay when
143 Word Power an airline sends passengers
146 Humor in Uniform to the wrong city?
148 Quotable Quotes V IC KI GLE M B O CK I

2 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
 ART OF LIVING

39 A Case Against the Clock

TONY CRABBE FROM QUARTZ

Food
42 What Your Holiday Eating
Habits Say About You
KELSEY KLOSS

Home
44 How Bad Is It ...
KELSEY KLOSS

46 Build the Perfect

Cozy Fire
P. | 39
KELSEY KLOSS

48 Master Your Holiday Mail

KELSEY KLOSS

Health
56 Classic Health Debates
SUNNY S EA GOLD

60 Festive Foods That Help

You Lose WHO KNEW?
L IZ VACCARIELLO
FROM THE BOOK STOP & DROP DIET 130 13 Things Credit Card
Companies Know About
62 The Seasons Germiest You M I C H E L L E C R O U C H
Greetings
C AROLINE PRADERIO 134 5 Celebrities Who Spied
FROM PREVENTION
on the Side
P HOTOGRAP H BY CLAIRE BEN OIST

LIN DA R OD R I G U E Z M CR O B B I E
FROM MENTAL FLOSS
PHOTOGRAPH BY
YASU+JUNKO
PROP STYLIST:
CHRISTINE
138 7 Touchy-Feely Questions
MOTTAU.
SWAROVSKI
Answered by Science
STAR ORNAMENT BR A N D ON S P E CKTO R
COURTESY
SWAROVSKI.COM

ADDITIONAL 140 Why We Love Superstorms

MEDIA IN OUR
M A R IA KON NI KOVA
TABLET
VERSIONS FROM THE NEW YORKER

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 3
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 Editors Note
Fantastic First Sentences
OPENERS ARE EVERYTHING. As Stephen King
famously remarked, An opening line should say:
Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.
Ive long collected the first lines that move me.
Here are a few of my favorites from Readers
Digest over the past year. (High five to anyone who
can name the stories they start.)
When I was your age, I changed your diaper,
said the dark-haired boy to his father.
Just how bad a mother am I?

P HOTOGRAP H BY STEVE VACC ARI ELLO; WARDROBE STY LIST: ELYS HA LENK IN;
Long before I ever wanted to be a neuroscien-
tist, I wanted to be a Broadway star.
Its a good time to be a pessimist.
Before they threw him in chains, he was a gutsy kid with wandering feet.
If you want to probe one of the great mysteries of the human mind, all

HAI R AND M AKEUP: AM Y KLEWI TZ FOR P RO-STY LE-CREW

you need is a duster and your feet.
Even as I said it, I knew it was ridiculous and selfish.
Once great wrongs are done, its rarely possible to undo them.
Nobody knows who he is, and nobody knows who he was.
Reader Bill Butler wrote my winner for this issue: When his story arrived in
my mailbox, I flagged it as one of five selections for Miraculous Christmas Sto-
ries on page 66. (Mr. Butler keeps good company there with James Michener.)
Id love for next years feature to include more stories by readers. Has
something miraculous happened to you? Send your incredible story (a maxi-
mum of 500 words, please) to [email protected]. We will pay $2 a word upon
publication of your article, which we reserve the right to edit and fact-check
(to the extent one can fact-check a miracle, that is).
Remember: Make that first sentence count.

I invite you to e-mail me at [email protected] and follow me at

facebook.com/lizvaccariello and lizvaccariello on Instagram.

6 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
 ELIMINATES
ODORS FOR
10 DAYS
Guaranteed
For complete terms and conditions, see freshstep.com/guarantee

Thats something even cats ind amazing.

 Letters
COMMENTS ON THE OCTOBER ISSUE

The Kindness my parents. As an adult,

of Strangers I decided to tell my parents
I have stopped watch- that I loved them, and all
ing the news because I got in return was OK.
of all the bad this world I didnt realize how much
has to offer, but this this still hurts me until I
article made me realize read this story. I am proud
there are still a lot of to say that my children
good people out there. and I say those words
I will keep this and often and easily
read it from time to because we
time as a reminder. understand how
LESA TRENT, G ra y , Te n n e s s e e important they areand
that is one of the best lessons
Can you make this feature a I learned from my parents.
permanent addition? I think JUDY WOODWARD, O r e m , Ut a h
we could all use a little more
inspiration in this day and age. Quotable Quotes
Thank you, RD! Since I was a child, my mom has
MICHELLE FOSTER, Na s h p o r t , O h i o always inspired me with wise
sayings. At 86 years old, shes still
I hate your magazine. Your stories around to share them with me.
about everyday heroes and random We would like to thank you for this
P HOTOGRAP H BY ALI BLUMEN THA L

acts of kindness always make my valuable page and the sweet connec-
eyes leak. Keep up the good work tion it continues to make. You can
its much better than listening to quote me on that. J. C., v i a e -m a i l
the news. G. H., v i a e -m a i l
Alone. Injured.
Why I Study Memory Almost Dead.
I am sitting here with tears I read this story with mixed emo-
staining my face. I still wish I had tions. Ive been a Boy Scout leader
heard the words I love you from for more than 30 years. Mr. Hein

8 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
sounds like an expert hiker who Freeing Alexander
is fully prepared to go into the Hamilton (and the DC7)
wilderness. However, one of the I cried when I read this article.
most important lessons we teach is While I am happy these beagles
to buddy up. Never go hiking or will now be adopted, I pray for
exploring alone. the day when animal experimen-
DUSTIN FULLER, Wo r l a n d , W y o m i n g tation is a thing of the past.
R. C., v i a e -m a i l
Points to Ponder
The paragraph by Gretchen Carlson When Siblings Stop
is one of the most profound thoughts Speaking
Ive read in a long time. It should While its true you cant choose
be printed on postcards and sent to your family, you can choose to
all politicians, pundits, and media surround yourself with only people
personnel. who love and support you. You
TOM SCHROEDER, In d i a n a p o l i s , In d i a n a dont have to please everyone.
Family members shouldnt get
As Our Military Sinks a free pass.
It is laughable to read this article RACHEL KOZAK, E l g i n , S o u t h C a r o l i n a
at a time when the whole country
is under threat from numerous
sources and our military is under- CAN YOU TOP THIS?
funded. This is the big concern Reader Staci Bailey wrote:
so-called climate change? My sister explained to HA!
my nephew how his FUNN
GAIL MOOTER, Ke n n a rd , Ne b ra s k a Y
voice would eventually FAMIL
CONT Y
change as he grew up. EST
I had no idea our bases were sinking Cool! said Tyler. I hope
into the ocean. If more people knew I get a German accent.
global warming was threatening our Do you have a hilarious
national security, wed be more story about your clan? If so,
active in fighting it. you can win $500! Go to
KATHLEEN CHOJNACKI, rd.com/funnyfamily for details.
We s t Ne w t o n , P e n n s y l v a n i a

Send letters to [email protected] or Letters, Readers Digest, PO Box 6100, Harlan, Iowa 51593-1600. Include your full name,
address, e-mail, and daytime phone number. We may edit letters and use them in all print and electronic media. Contribute Send
us your 100-word true stories, jokes, and funny quotes, and if we publish one in a print edition of Readers Digest, well pay you
$100. To submit your 100-word stories, visit rd.com/stories. To submit humor items, visit rd.com/submit, or write to us at Jokes,
Box 6226, Harlan, Iowa 51593-1726. Please include your full name and address in your entry. We regret that we cannot acknowl-
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and inquiries: Visit rd.com/help, call 877-732-4438, or write to us at Readers Digest, PO Box 6095, Harlan, Iowa 51593-1595.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 9
EVERYDAY

We want to
reach people
where they are,
says Doniece
Sandoval.
 Helping the Homeless:

Three Innovators
We reconnect people with their dignity
Doniece Sandoval

AN OLD BLUE BUS pulls up to her four decommissioned buses that

a wellness center in downtown San she then had remodeled with $75,000
Francisco, and a small crowd forms. shed raised on a crowdfunding
Young and old, men and women website. Each bus connects to a fire
are waiting to board for their turn to hydrant for water, which is heated by
bathe. This city bus has been modi- large batteries on board. Wastewater
fied as a sanitation station with two is drained into city sewers.
private bathrooms, each including The first bus hit the road in July
a shower, toilet, sink, and changing 2014; a second one rolled out in early
area. The brainchild of Doniece 2015. Doniece plans to put the other
Sandoval, a former public relations two buses elsewhere in the Bay Area
executive, Lava Mae (a play on the and imagines expanding the program
Spanish for wash me) provides up internationally.
to 500 showers a week for the thou- Those in need of a shower sign
sands of homeless people who sleep up for a 15-minute time slot at a
on the streets in this city. local homeless shelter, and Lava Mae
We reconnect people with their provides towels, shampoo, soap, and
dignity, says Doniece. a new pair of socks.
Two years ago, Doniece overheard No matter how clean you try to
a homeless woman on a San Fran- stay on the street, youre going to be
cisco sidewalk say that shed never grimy, said Silas Borden, a military
be clean. That made me wonder veteran who showers weekly on a
what her opportunities were to Lava Mae bus in the Mission neigh-
actually get clean, says Doniece. She borhood. And I want to wash it off.
learned that San Francisco had only Says Doniece, Its a humbling
eight public shower facilities. experience to see people come off
I thought, If you can put food on the bus so grateful for something that
wheels, why not showers? she says. should be a natural human right.
Doniece persuaded the city to give ALYSSA JUNG, WITH MICHELE WOJCIECHOWSKI

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MIKE MCGREGOR rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 11

E V E R Y D AY H E R O E S

They said it was bad karma Robert Lee

AS AN ELEMENTARY school to feed 20 people in line at a
student in New York City, Robert Lee New York City homeless shelter
would stare in disbelief at his class- that had run out of food.
mates throwing away half-eaten Robert, who had taken a job as
sandwiches after lunch. His Korean an analyst at J.P. Morgan, devoted
immigrant parents had taught him his spare time to creating a network
and his older brother not to waste of New York City restaurants, from
food. They said it was bad karma, mom-and-pop delis to large chains
says Robert, 24. like Starbucks and Panera Bread,
While studying finance and that agreed to donate food, and he
accounting at New York University, enlisted volunteers to make food
Robert remembered this lesson and deliveries to homeless shelters.
joined Two Birds One Stone, a After RLC received national press
food-rescue club on campus that attention, homeless shelters and
delivered, five days a week, uneaten soup kitchens in Portland, Oregon;
pasta, vegetables, and other leftovers Washington, DC; and other cities
from the dining hall to nearby reached out to Robert for partner-
homeless shelters. ship advice. To date, RLC has distrib-
When Robert and fellow club uted more than 250,000 pounds
member Louisa Chen entered a of food in 12 cities around the
college entrepreneurship contest, country.
they proposed a slightly different Only a year into his finance job,
idea for a food-rescue nonprofit Robert gave up his six-figure salary
group: Their program wouldnt to focus on RLC. I compared one
have a donation minimum (meaning hour of impact at J.P. Morgan to
they would gladly pick up one bag one hour at RLC, and the difference
of leftover bagels or a single pot of was just tremendous, he says.
soup), would operate seven days a Hes now the groups only full-time
week, and would be staffed entirely employee.
by volunteers. One shelter recently told us
Their idea won the competition. that our donations allow them to
With the $1,000 prize, they founded provide entire dinners for more
Rescuing Leftover Cuisine (RLC) in than 300 people, three nights a
July 2013. In just the first few weeks, week, Robert says. Things like
Roberts team delivered a donation that make me glad I quit my job.
of enough spaghetti and meatballs BRANDON SPECKTOR

12 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
This group
saves shelters
thousands of
dollars, says
Robert Lee.
 I want to give
people a chance
without judging
them, says
Veronika Scott.
 READERS DIGEST

Design to fill a need Veronika Scott

WHEN VERONIKA SCOTT was companies chipped in operating
a student at the College for Creative funds and insulating material. To
Studies in her native city of Detroit, date, the Empowerment Plan has
Michigan, she received an assign- produced more than 10,000 coats
ment to design to fill a need. She and distributed them in 30 states,
dreamed up an idea for insulated Canada, and elsewhere abroad.
overcoats that would double as The group employs about 20
sleeping bags, made 25 of them, and peoplemostly single mothers,
handed them out to people living in some of whom have served time
makeshift shelters on a run-down or worked as prostitutesand pays
city playground. While her efforts them more than Michigans mini-
were greeted mostly with enthusiasm mum wage. We dont require a
from those braving Detroits brutal GED or even previous employment,
winters, one woman voiced dissent. Veronika says. Were looking for
We dont need coats; we need jobs, people who are motivated. The
she told Veronika. Then she had her Empowerment Plan provides free
second inspiration. GED and financial-literacy classes
Veronika, now 26, found an expert and offers micro-loans to those who
to teach two homeless women to qualify. Nearly all the employees
sew and hired them to assemble the eventually move into permanent
coats. She paid them with donations housing, and some go on to jobs in
she received through her blog. At the auto industry and construction.
first, the coats were constructed in Veronika has refined the coats
a homeless shelters utility closet. design by switching to an outer layer
The top of the coat would hit one of lightweight polyethylene that
wall, and the bottom would be out resists air, wind, and water and an
the door, says Veronika. inner layer of synthetic fabric that
After graduating from college in stores body heat. Her latest innova-
2012, she moved the shop into an tion is to make the bottom of the
old downtown warehouse for socially sleeping bag removable.
conscious businesses and founded Still, Veronika is less focused on
the Empowerment Plan, a nonprofit the coats than on the workers who
organization. Clothing manufacturer make them. At the end of the day,
Carhartt donated several old indus- she says, [the coat] is a vehicle for
trial sewing machines and reams of us to employ people.
fabric and zippers. GM and other BETH DREHER, WITH MICHELE WOJCIECHOWSKI

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 15
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VOICES VIEWS

Department of Wit

The Real
12 Days of
Christmas
BY COLI N N I SSA N
FROM M C SW EENEY S

DAY 1: On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,

a partridge in a pear tree. Such a thoughtful gift; she knows
how much I love fruit. She also knows my buildings pretty
strict about pets, so the bird threw me a little. But he is a cute
little guy.

DAY 2: On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to

COLIN NISSAN me, two turtle doves. Wow, shes really into the avian theme
is a writer this year. Um, thank you? I guess Ill just put them in the
and voice kitchen with the partridge and the pear tree, which suddenly
actor who
seems a lot bigger than it did yesterday.
lives in
Brooklyn,
New York. DAYS 3 & 4: On the third and fourth days of Christmas, she
gave me three French hens and four calling birds. Funny,
I dont remember telling her my dream was to one day
ILLUSTRATION BY STEVE WACKSMAN rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 17
D E PA R T M E N T O F W I T

open a chapter of the Audubon French hens, calling birds, and

Society. You know what would have partridges. Glad you did your home-
been nice? Some birdseed. Im out work there.
of saltines, and things are starting
to get weird in here. DAY 8: Id like to give you the
benefit of the doubt on this one in
DAY 5: On the fifth day of Christmas, case you ordered these eight maids
she gave me five golden rings. See, a-milking online and there was some
now, thats a nice gift. confusion, but just to
A nice, practical gift. clarify, there are eight
A little on the feminine middle-aged women
side, but Ill take it. Three French wearing bonnets in my
hens and four apartment right now.
DAY 6: Six geese And they each brought
a-laying. Hmm, thats calling birds. a cow. Do you under-
so strange because You know what stand what Im saying
I was just telling some- to you? Theyre all here,
one that I could use
would have in my STUDIO apart-
some MORE @#$%*& been nice? ment, and judging by
BIRDS. Do you have any
Some birdseed. the size of their suit-
idea how much poop cases, they arent
six geese generate in a leaving anytime soon.
single day? Literally pounds. And

P REVIOUS PAGE: I LLUSTRATI ON BY JOE M CKENDRY (NI SSAN)

in case youre curious, all six of DAY 9: Big day today. Not only did
them have been a-laying since they I receive the unexpected gift of nine
got here. There are no fewer than ladies dancing, I also got a nice little
75 enormous eggs in my apartment note from my landlord. He covered
right now. I just tried to make an all kinds of stuff, but in a nutshell, it
omelet out of one of them and was about excessive dancing, illegal
almost ralphed. Very gamy. livestock, unnatural amounts of bird
feces, and me not living here any-
DAY 7: Guess what I signed for this more. Big day.
morning when the UPS guy rang my
doorbell. Seven swans a-swimming. DAY 10: Ten lords a-bloody-leaping!
True story. So no more baths for Yes, they are. Ten leotarded jerks are
me, I guess. Thanks for that. These literally jumping around my apart-
are terrible gifts! Terrible, confusing ment screaming Wheeeeee! every
gifts. Oh, and guess what swans dont time their feet leave the ground!
get along with. Geese, turtledoves, WHY?? Why are you doing this to

18 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
 READERS DIGEST

me? Youre sick! I loved you so of them. I havent slept or washed

much, and you destroyed it. You my body in quite some time. Food
destroyed everything. Tensions in is scarce the fighting, fierce. I cap-
here are escalating faster than tured a lord today! Snatched him
I could have imagined. The maids right out of the air. Now he doesnt
and dancers appear to have laid leap anymore. I used his leotard as
territorial claims in opposite corners a net to trap one of the swans. She
of the apartment. They are not the was delicious. Didnt even cook the
same civilized ladies who arrived old gal. Ha! I made everyone gather
here a short time ago. They bear to watchthats what you do when
a darkness now. One of them stole you want to send a message. A very
my golden rings, and I know just the important message! This is my castle!
one who did it. Im waiting until Do you all hear me? Do you see what
nightfall, and I will reclaim them ... Ive done? What I am capable of?!! No
through any means necessary. more eye contact with the king; do
you understand? Or I will end you!
DAYS 11 & 12: These final days have I will end you all right here and now!!
come and gone in a bewildering fog. Now, one of you fetch me a pear.
I remember drummers. Pipers. Lots The king needs something sweet.

MCSWEENEYS (DECEMBER 2009), COPYRIGHT 2009 BY COLIN NISSAN, MCSWEENEYS.NET.

FAMOUS QUOTES, UNABRIDGED

A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.

Oh, and shallowreally, really shallow.
COCO CHANEL

Two things are innite: the universe and human stupidity;

and Im not sure about the universe. But that
might just be me being stupid.
ALBERT EINSTEIN

If youre going through hell, keep going. But please stop

screaming; its not good for morale.
WINSTON CHURCHILL

Source: A Load of Hooey by Bob Odenkirk

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 19
WORDS OF LASTING INTEREST

Never give up on anything, least of all a dog

Pretty Girl
BY R I C K B R AG G F R OM T H E BO O K MY SO U T H E R N J O U R NEY

ILLUSTRATION BY JOE M CKENDRY. COURTESY FOUNDM YAN IMA L.COM (COL L AR AND L E ASH)
HER NAME was perfect.
She came to them in the dead of night, in the cold. She
was more than half dead, starved down to bones, her hair
completely eaten away by mange. She had been run off from
more than one yard when she finally crept into an empty
doghouse in the trees beyond my mothers yard. At least she
was out of the wind.
They found her, my mother and brother, in the daylight of
RICK BRAGG
the next day. They could not even tell, at first, she was a dog.
is a Pulitzer
Prizewinning
And it broke my heart, my mother said.
journalist and They did not call the vet because she knew what the vet
author. His would do. The dog was too far gone to save; any fool could
books include see that. My mama lives in the country and has to run off
Jerry Lee two wandering dogs a week, but this time, she said, I just
Lewis: His
couldnt. She couldnt even get up. How do you run off a
Own Story.
dog that cannot stand?
The broke-down dog had stumbled on two people who hate
to give up on anything, even a month-old newspaper. They
save batteries that have not had a spark of anything in them
for a long, long time. My mother keeps pens that stopped
writing in 1974. My point is, there is always a little use, a little
good, a little life left in anything, and who are they to decide
when something is done for good.
My brother Mark looked at her, at her tragic face, and
named her.
20 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com PHOTOGRAPH BY RUSS AND REYN
WORDS OF LASTING INTEREST

Hey, Pretty Girl, he said. and brother had tended her and
It was as if he could see beyond the even let her live in the house. She
ruin, or maybe into it. I dont know. ate people food and drank butter-
Her hips were bad, which was milk out of an aluminum pie tin. She
probably why she was discarded in was supposed to last, at most, a few
the first place, and her teeth were weeks or months. She lived three
worn down. Her eyes were clouded. more yearsdecades, in dog years
But Mark and my mother fed her, following my brother to the garden
gave her water, and to watch for snakes and
bathed her in burned listen for thunder.
motor oil, the way my I prayed for her,
people have been I prayed for her. my mother said. Some
curing the mange for Some people people say you aint
generations. They got supposed to pray for
her looking less atro- say you a dog, but
cious, and then they aint supposed And then after the
called the vet. gift of years, Pretty Girl
The vet found she
to pray for began to fail and died.
had heartworm. She a dog, but ... She is buried in the
was walking dead, any- mountain pasture.
way, at her age. It was The garden is already
then I saw her, still a sack of bones. planted. Some things were planted
It would be a kindness, I told my according to science, according to soil
mother, to put her down. She nod- and weather. And some things were
ded her head. planted according to lore, the shape
A month later, I pulled into the of the moon, and more. That is fine
driveway to see a beautiful white with me. There are things we cannot
German shepherd standing watch explain, things beyond science, like
at the front of the house. It was not how a man could name a ravaged and
a miracle; her ailments did not magi- dying dog and have her rise inside
cally cease. But together, my mother that, somehow, to make it true.
FROM THE BOOK MY SOUTHERN JOURNEY BY RICK BRAGG. COPYRIGHT 2015 BY RICK BRAGG.
REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION BY OXMOOR HOUSE, TIMEINCBOOKS.COM.

WAGER OF THE BEAST?

The sum of all the numbers on a roulette wheel is 666.
Source: Mental Floss

22 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
 Your True Stories
IN 100 WORDS

PERFECT DAY a piece would be worth if

W e went looking for

a wedding dress on
Sunday. Laughing, we made
someone got ahold of
one. But then the ball
descended very slowly.
for the door of a bridal shop. Shed expected it to crash
This would surely be the and that people would
first of many stores before scramble for the pieces.
we found the perfect gown. Shed wanted to see that!
Having witnessed other PAT GUTHRIE, P u l a s ki , Vi r g i n i a
brides and their mothers,
we vowed to be happy ALWAYS GROWING
in these moments.
Unexpectedly, my mind
went back to the day we
D ad auctioned off his
faithful red tractor,
rented out the land, and
brought her home some retired from farming in
27 years ago. I said a silent thank-you 1982. He and Mom moved to town.
to the young mother who, by letting But they reserved a small plot of land
her go, allowed her to be mine at this for a garden and returned each week
precious time. Two hours later, there of summer to tend it. Winter brought
she stood, in the dress of her dreams. new challenges. Dad had his hips
My beautiful girl. replaced, bypass and cataract surger-
MARYBOB STRAUB, S my r n a , G e o r g i a ies, and a stroke. Yet each spring the
garden was planted, watered, lovingly
SHATTERED tendedthe bounty shared with all.

M y elderly sister decided for the

first time to stay up until mid-
night on New Years Eve in New York
Now Dad is 93; his pale blue eyes
dodge the sun as he gingerly plucks
red tomatoes from the vine. What
City to watch the ball drop. The next will you remember about me? he
morning, she reported that she was asks. JULIE LISKA, S e w a rd , Ne b ra s k a
disappointed. When I asked her why,
she said that on the news the day To read more 100-word stories and to
submit your own, go to rd.com/stories.
before, the reporters had talked about If your story is selected for publication in
the crystals inside the ball and what the magazine, well pay you $100.

ILLUSTRATION BY KAGAN MCLEOD rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 23

FINISH THIS SENTENCE

Im finally
Spokane Valley, WA
Read
War and Peace.
CINDY MCMAHON
Stayton, OR

Go back to school, Stop coloring my hair and

after 29 years!
(Im sitting nervously in the hallway,
embrace my
waiting for my first class to start!)
SHAWNETTE MCFEE SCOTT
gray locks.
DEBBIE WAUFORD-APLIN

Fremont, CA
Follow my childhood
Ask her. dream and

TIMOTHY IP become a
cartoonist.
JEFF MORAN

Build my

tiny house!
JAN MCAFEE ROGAN
 ready to Move
out
of my parents
Do my house.

laundry. JAMIE LYNN

MICHELE BONDI STINGLE

Become
my Manchester, CT

mother... Stanton,
Lafayette
Hill, PA
CRISTINA MI Akron, PA
ALVARADO-PIERCE

Troy, MO
Oak Hill, OH
Accept that I will
probably never meet
St. Charles, MO
Hugh
Jackman.
REBECCA MILLEN
Forgive a friend,
and myself, for a rift that nearly
ended a 30-year friendship.
SHARON PARSONS

Wylie, TX
Tallahassee, FL

Publish  Go to
facebook.com/
my first novel (Im 16). readersdigest
MARLEE HEAD
for the chance to
finish the next
sentence.

MAP BY 5W INFOGRAPHICS rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 25

 Points to Ponder
MUSIC IS the supreme solace I LEARNED the roots of any
because it is so much more. It is the relationship [from working with
spiritual counterpoint to the worlds dogs]honesty, integrity, loyalty.
cacophony, essential as a heartbeat. Its hard to find a human to give you
all three. But every dog, thats all they
JOYCE CAROL OATES, know. Humans are the only species
c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g p r o f e s s o r a n d w r i t e r, that follows unstable pack leaders.
in her book The Lost Landscape
Animals dont Why would they?
WE NEED TO restore faith in our
own ability to effect change. If CESAR MILLAN,
pictures move one to actionand d o g w h i s p e r e r, in Mens Journal

I believe they canthen we need

images and videos not just of suffer- [SOCIAL MEDIA] feels like a
ing, not even just of triumph, but of protection racket. Your reputation
effort, of people laboring mightily will be murdered unless you join in
and repeatedly to pull the truck out this thing that is, in significant part,
of the ditch and the perhaps still- about murdering reputations. Why
living bodies out of the rubble. would I want to feed that machine?

JULIE WITTES SCHLACK, JONATHAN FRANZEN,

e s s a y i s t , o n w b u r. o r g novelist, in the Guardian (U.K.)

ON BAD MOVIES

Life is too short to dwell heavily on [lousy films and] their many sins.
Thats for another book that I wont be writing.
RICHARD SCHICKEL, m o v i e c r i t i c , in his book Keepers

The right attitude can make watching truly terrible movies one of lifes
best and most entertaining pleasures.
JOHN WILSON, c r e a t o r o f t h e R a z z i e Aw a rd s , in his book The Official Razzie Movie Guide

26 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
 Laughter is the best
medicine. But its
more than that. Its
an entire regime
of antibiotics and
steroids. Laughter
brings the
swelling down
on our national
psyche and then
applies an antibiotic
cream. STEPHEN COLBERT,
late-night T V host,
in Entertainment Weekly

I HAVE A PROBLEM about pontificat- TO RETURN FROM EUROPE to the

ing about gravelly undertones and United States, as I did recently,
raspberry overtones Just order the is to be struck by the crumbling
bottle of wine you like. infrastructure, the paucity of public
spaces, the conspicuous waste
ADAM RAPOPORT, (of food and energy above all), the
e d i t o r i n c h i e f o f B o n Ap p t i t , dirtiness of cities and the acuteness
SOURCE P HOTO: J OHN PAUL FI LO/CBS /GETTY I MAGES

on NPR

of their poverty. It is also to be

MOST DISCUSSIONS of having it overwhelmed by the volume and
all center on balancing work and vital clamor of American life, the
children, but that definition of all challenging interaction, the bracing
is incomplete Women also want intermingling of Americans of all
to spend time on other aspects of stripes, the strident individualism.
their lives: art, politics, faith, experi- Europe is more organized, America
encing the natural world. Left to more alive. Europe purrs; even its
pursue only two dimensions of our hardship seems somehow muted.
lives leaves other parts of who we America revs. The differences can
are undercultivated. feel violent.

LYNN PASQUERELLA, ROGER COHEN,

p r e s i d e n t o f Mo u n t Ho l y o k e C o l l e g e , op-ed columnist, in the New York Times
on huffingtonpost.com

ILLUSTRATION BY TRACY TURNBULL rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 27

 Give the Gift of Yum!
Holidays Made Easy makes holiday gifting easy & delicious
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Lusciuos Gingery Delectable Chive Juicy and Flavorful

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Go to TOHCookingSchool.com/holiday
Give the gift that keeps on giving!
 YOU BE THE JUDGE

Who should pay when

an airline sends passengers
to the wrong city?

The Case of
The Ticket
Mix-up
BY VIC KI GLEMB OCKI

WASHINGTON, DC, dentist there was a direct flight to Granada

Eddy Gamson had always dreamed from that airport.
of visiting the Alhambra palace in On September 8, Gamson and
Granada, Spain. When he signed up Canaday flew across the Atlantic
to attend a professional conference and boarded their flight to Granada.
in Portugal in September 2013, he However, 20 minutes into the flight,
decided to head overseas early so they noticed on the monitor that the
he could fly to Spain for a few days. plane was heading west, back over
He called British Airways (BA) di- the ocean. They asked the flight at-
rectly to book the flights for him and tendant why they werent heading
his partner, Lowell Canaday, cashing south, toward Spain. Were going
in more than 376,000 frequent-flier to Grenada, the attendant told
points for first-class seats. Gamson them. In the West Indies.
says he specifically discussed flying Gamson checked his e-ticket.
to Spain and outlined their itinerary There was no country listed, no air-
using airport codes. The ticket agent port codes, and no flight durations.
suggested the pair fly from Dulles There was just one word: Grenada
to Londons Heathrow and then to with an e instead of an a. After much
Gatwick because, the agent said, back and forth with BA, it took
ILLUSTRATION BY NOMA BAR rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 29
YO U B E T H E J U D G E

two days and three flights to get On March 7, 2014, Gamson and
the couple back to Lisbon, leaving Canaday represented themselves in
insufficient time to travel to Spain. a suit they filed in DC superior court
On September 22, Gamson sent against BA, claiming breach of con-
a letter to BA customer service ex- tract and negligence and demanding
plaining that the airline had errone- $34,000 in damages for their ruined
ously booked Gamson and Canaday vacation trip, lost wages, and other
on a flight to the wrong destination. associated expenses.
He asked to be reimbursed for their On March 28, the case was sent
out-of-pocket expenses (extra flights, to federal court on BAs request.
hotels, etc.), to be credited for the The airline argued that the Montreal
frequent-flier points they spent, and Convention, a treaty that governs
to be given two round-trip, first- international air travel, protected
class tickets from Dulles to Spain. the airline from certain claims that
BA instead offered to reimburse had been made. BA moved to have
them for their hotel in Grenada the case dismissed.
and to give each man 150,000
frequent-flier points. Should the airline pay for misrout-
I was beside myself, Gamson says. ing the couple? You be the judge.

THE VERDICT

In his opinion, federal court judge James Boesberg wrote, This case
proves the truth of Mark Twains aphorism that the difference between
the right word and almost the right word is the difference between
lightning and a lightning bug. Except here only a single letter is involved.
He noted that the case was not about aviation law, as BA contended, and
sent the case back to trial court. In July, BA filed a motion to dismiss the
case, and in an oral order on August 22, 2014, Judge Jeanette Clark tossed
it. She basically said, Ive flown before. Ive looked at tickets. Youre at
fault, says Gamson. We dont agree with her. Gamson hired an attorney
and, in September 2014, filed a request to appeal. Hes still waiting to find
out if its been granted. Last September, Gamson and Canaday flew to
Spainand paid for the flights with the points BA had given them.

Agree? Disagree? Sound off at rd.com/judge.

30 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
 FACES
OF AMERICA

BY GLEN N GLASSER

Charlotte Richards
L A S V E G A S , N E VA DA

There are the people who got

married here ten, 20, 50 years
ago, and they return with their
children and grandchildren to
renew their vows. And then
there are the people who get
married in California on a
Saturday night and come here
on a Sunday to do it all over
again. Because they just love it;
they love what they felt, I guess.
And it is a wonderful feeling.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 31
 Life
IN THESE UNITED STATES

Can you think of anyone the victim might have had a falling-out with?

A TWITTER EXCHANGE between an MY NIECE WAS DRAGGED into

angry customer and an apologetic court by a neighbor who complained
Dominos Pizza: about her barking dogs. At one point,
Customer: Yoooo I ordered a Pizza the judge asked the neighbor a ques-
& Came with no Toppings on it or tion. The neighbor didnt reply. Sir,
anything, Its Just Bread are you going to answer me?
Dominos: Were sorry to hear about The neighbor leaped to his feet.
this! Are you talking to me? he asked.
Customer (minutes later): Never Sorry; I cant hear a darn thing.
mind, I opened the pizza upside The case was dismissed.
down :/ Source: Twitter HELEN REYNOLDS, Mi s s o u l a , Mo n t a n a

32 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com ILLUSTRATION BY DENNIS MCCUE

 MY GREATEST ACTING performance JUST WHAT I
is when I check the caller ID, then
adopt an air of polite curiosity as
(NEVER) WANTED
I answer the phone Hello? Looking for that perfect holiday gift for
@SETHMACFARLANE someone you dont like? Give him or
her one of these frustrating products,
THESE WORDS ARE so joining our created by artist Katerina Kamprani.
vocabulary in 2016!
Chairdrobe (n.): piling clothes on
a chair in place of a closet or dresser.
Epiphanot (n.): an idea that seems
like an amazing insight to the con-
ceiver but is in fact pointless, mun- For the coworker
dane, stupid, or incorrect. who wants to
.
Internest (n.): the cocoon of blankets share your food
and pillows you gather around your-
self while spending long periods of
time on the Internet.
Textpectation (n.): the anticipation
felt when waiting for a response to
COURTESY KATERINA KAMPRANI FOR THE UNCOMFORTABLE PROJECT

a text. For the

cook wh
Unkeyboardinated (adj.): when o
cant.
youre unable to type without repeat-
edly making mistakes. Source: viralthread.com

AFTER I-MESSAGING back and forth

with my wife, I jokingly commanded
o its
Siri to pass along this message: You For that S
g! L ets
need to get back to work now; you stormin
g o! hike r.
have a husband to support.
Heres what Siri sent: You need
to get back to work now; you have
a has-been to support.
JOHN BROWN, Je n k s , O k l a h o m a

FUNNY FAMILY CONTEST! For the g

uest
Send us hilarious anecdotes about your who stays
and
kids, parents, or siblings, and you could stays and

win $500! Go to page 9 for details.

NOTE: Ads were removed from this edition. Please continue to page 38.
While many factors affect heart disease, diets low in saturated fat
and cholesterol may reduce the risk of heart disease.
, TM, 2015 Kellogg NA Co.
Why time management
doesnt make us happier
or more productive

A Case
Against
The Clock
BY TON Y C R A B B E F R OM Q UA RTZ

IMAGINE YOUR LIFE without

a constant sense that youre running
behind. Imagine not wishing for more
hours in the day. We havent always
been this obsessed with time. In fact,
before the Industrial Revolution,
clocks were largely irrelevant. People
had jobs to do, and so they did them
in the natural order, at the natural
time. This worked for an agricultural
society. However, the factories of
the Industrial Revolution needed to
coordinate hundreds of people to
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CLAIRE BENOIST rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 39
A CASE AGAINST THE CLOCK

get them working at the same time. Your Attention Suffers

Businesses imposed clock time on Our smartphones allow us to com-
their workforces. municate in real time and juggle mul-
Cast the clock forward 250 years. tiple to-dos, swatting away incoming
We dont need managers to impose demands like some supercharged
time discipline upon uswe do it task ninja, potent and efficient. As
ourselves because were so busy. We we seek to maximize our time, we
schedule and cram our time, squeez- slice and dice it into ever-smaller
ing all the efficiency we can out of increments. But when we scatter
each day. Time management, we our attention across a thousand mini
believe, is the solution to our busy- activities, we prevent ourselves from
ness: If we could organize our time engaging deeply or thinking properly.
better, wed be less overwhelmed, Conversations with loved ones
happier, and more effective. are disemboweled with frequent
But were wrong, and its damaging productive glances at the inbox;
our careers and the rest of our lives. our ability to think is decimated by
the distraction of the ping and the
You Just Get Busier ring. We maintain a state of chaotic
Research shows that if you increase mental activity that is the opposite
peoples awareness of timeby plac- of the optimal psychological state
ing a big clock in front of themthey of flow, where attention is allowed
do more stuff. (Think about how to sink into an activity without
much work you get done on the day distraction, where we bring our
before vacation.) It makes sense that thoughts, actions, and goals into
by getting more done, wed feel more perfect synchronicity. Flow doesnt

PROP STYLIST: SARA FOLDENAUER FOR KATE RYAN

in control. More than that, its one happen in splinters of time but in
of the great fantasies of time man- great big lumps of attention.
agement: If you get more organized, Think about your past few weeks.
you will get on top. All the moments you had of real
However, that works only in a insight or happiness came when
finite world. We havent lived in that you focused your attention, with
world for quite a while. In our infi- reckless abandon, into the moment.
nite world, we will never be able to In maximizing our time, we rob our
get on top of everything. When we moments of their color.
complete more tasks, more take their
placesend more e-mails, get more Youre Less Effective
replies. If we do more as a result of You may still think that youd be
better managing our time, we just willing to feel busier and less happy
become busier. as long as you could be effective.

40 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
 READERS DIGEST

see the number of blogs and

books that focus on getting to
an empty inbox or zero tasks,
as if either achievement were
worthwhile. No business or life
was changed by an empty inbox.
Perceived time pressure also
lowers our ability to achieve. Harvard
researcher Teresa Amabile has
shown that increased focus on time
reduces our problem-solving abilities
and our capacity to generate
imaginative solutions. We
dont think as well under
the shadow of the clock.

Beyond Time Management

It is true: We will be able to do more
stuff if we focus on managing our
Effectiveness comes from two core time, but we dont need more repeti-
factors: prioritization and achieve- tive, synchronized activity as we did
ment. When we prioritize well, we in the Industrial Revolution.
choose to do the right things, not just We need more thinking, creativity,
the obvious things. Yet a strong time and problem solving. Time manage-
awareness makes us prioritize the ment was a brilliant invention that
urgent and immediate rather than the helped to transform society 250 years
important and strategic. Research by ago. Now its time for us to develop
Microsoft, for example, suggests that a different strategyone that starts
77 percent of U.K. workers feel they from the recognition that, in our
have had a productive day if they have overloaded world, the greatest short-
emptied their inbox. It horrifies me to age is not of time but of attention.
THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN QUARTZ, 2015. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

WHO PUT THE X IN XMAS?

Long story shortthe Greeks. The popular greeting card
abbreviation derives from the Greek word for Christ: Xristos.
Source: Weird and Wonderful Christmas by Joey Green

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 41
FOOD

What Your Holiday

Eating Habits Say
About You BY KELSEY KLOSS

IF YOU: Chomp off the head of men may associate it with a tough-
the gingerbread man first guy ability to withstand the burn.
IT MEANS: Youre a leader
Yes, someone actually studied IF YOU: Drink white wine
this: If you munch on a gingerbread IT MEANS: You probably drink more
mans head first, youre a natural-born White wine drinkers pour 9.2 percent
leader, according to an informal more vino into their glasses than do
analysis by Alan Hirsch, MD, of red wine drinkers, according to an

PROP STYLIST: SARAH GUIDO-LAAKSO FOR HALLEY RESOURCES

the Smell & Taste Treatment and Iowa State University and Cornell
Research Foundation in Chicago. Start University study. This could be
with the legs? Youre sensitive. Bite on because clear wine gives the illusion
the left arm first, youre creative; go that there is less in a glass.
for the right, you may be pessimistic.
IF YOU: Opt for tart cranberry sauce
IF YOU: Bake spiced cookies IT MEANS: You may feel judgmental
IT MEANS: You probably like to Had a taste of a pucker-worthy food?
watch action movies You might be extra critical when your
A Food Quality and Preference study cousin nabs the last slice of pie. In
found that people who enjoy action a Psychological Science study, people
movies and exploration were about given a bitter beverage to drink made
six times more likely to enjoy spicy harsher judgments on individuals in
treats than people with more va- questionable moral situationslike
nilla preferences. Related research a student stealing library books
has found that while women who than on those given a sweet beverage
like spice are drawn to the sensation, or water.

42 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com PHOTOGRAPH BY RALPH SMITH

 STAY YOU.

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HOME

Certain winter
habits may leave
you with chilly
regret. Know
what you can
(and cant)
get away with.

How Bad Is It BY KELSEY KLOSS

to knock down icicles A child may get queasy or throw

on your house? up after eating, say, five poinsettia
PRETTY BAD Never whack icicles leavesbut not much more will
with excessive force; this could cause happen. (Plus, the leaves taste un-
building damage at the bases. Tap pleasant, so its unlikely many would

PROP STYLIST: SARAH GUIDO-LAAKSO FOR HALLEY RESOURCES

formations with a broom, from a be consumed.) The plants may cause
window if possible (never stand drooling, vomiting, or diarrhea in
below icicles, which can injure you cats and dogs, but medical treatment
when they fall). If icicles dont dis- is rarely necessary unless symptoms
lodge, call a professional to remove are severe. To be safe, keep poinsettias
themthe frozen mass can cause out of the reach of pets and young
structures like gutters to collapse. children, but theres no need to
banish your favorite holiday plant.
to have poinsettias
around children or pets? to hang a few indoor
SOMEWHAT BAD Despite its holiday lights outdoors?
poisonous reputation, the plant is PRETTY BAD Many holiday lights
only mildly toxic. A 50-pound child manufactured today are intended for
would need to eat more than 500 both indoor and outdoor use, but
poinsettia leaves to reach potentially you may come across some that are
toxic levels, and no deaths have been location specific. Indoor lights arent
documented from consumption. as resistant to moisture, which may

44 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com PHOTOGRAPHS BY RALPH SMITH

 cause electrical shorts and damage to nap next to a space
in wet weather. Many products tested heater?
for safety in the United States are PRETTY BAD It may seem
labeled with a UL tag (for Underwrit- harmless to doze off, but the U.S.
ers Laboratories, a certification com- Consumer Product Safety Commis-
pany that inspects such products). sion estimates that space heaters
Indoor lights have a tag marked with cause more than 25,000 residential
a green UL. Outdoor lights are fires every year. Thats mostly owing
marked with a red UL. to human error (like leaving a space
heater too close to long drapes). If
to pour warm water on you want to fall asleep next to the
a frozen windshield? heater, put the appliance on a timer
PRETTY BAD Nice try, but if the so it will shut off automatically.
temperature outside is freezing,
youll only add another layer of ice to to let pets drink from the
your windshield. Depending on the Christmas tree stand?
temperature difference between the PRETTY BAD That tree stand is
air outside and the water, this trick probably filled with water thats far
could even crack the glass. Instead, from fresh. Tree preservative, often
spritz your windshield with a solution made with fertilizer and fungicides,
of one part water to two parts rubbing can cause vomiting or upset stomach
alcohol to melt ice immediately. in pets; bacteria can also multiply in
the standing water. Snugly wrap a tree
to not idle your car skirt around the trunk to make the
before driving? water harder for your pet to get to.
NOT BAD AT ALL Idling was Sources: nfpa.org, christmastreeassociation.org,
springfield-ma.gov, pittsburghpa.gov, HGTV Magazine,
necessary with older cars that used farmers.com, adamshomes.com, realsimple.com,
doityourself.com, webmd.com, petpoisonhelpline
carburetors, devices that twisted open
COLLA R COURTESY FOUNDMYA NI M AL.COM

.com, medicinenet.com, lifehacker.com,

chemistry.about.com, wisebread
to move air and fuel into the engine. .com, chicagotribune.com,
energy.gov
Cold air could affect the balance
of air and fuel, causing the car to
run smoky or seize up. Cars made
from the late 90s on have electronic
systems that use sensors
to keep the air-to-fuel ratio
balanced. Even in frigid
temperatures, 30 seconds
is all you need to get
the oil circulating.
HOME

Build the Perfect Cozy Fire

BY KELSEY KLOSS

EVEN SEASONED fire builders can make mistakes starting a crackling

blaze. Follow these steps for a safer, more effective fire. Remember: Hire a pro
annually to inspect the chimney for cleanliness and safety before you begin.

Sources: Mark Schaub, a chimney relining and restoration expert in Hillsborough, New Jersey; Judy Comoletti, division manager for
public education at the National Fire Protection Association; realsimple.com; artofmanliness.com; marthastewart.com; epa.gov
ASHES Save NEWSPAPER Stuff
1 the ash bed 4 seven grapefruit-size
from your last fire: balls of newspaper between
Two inches of ash 6 the two logs. Youll light this
insulates fireplaces to start the fire. Add dried
and creates a hotter orange peels for an inviting
fire. Keep one inch scent. Never burn wrapping
5
clear between the paper or boxes; they can
ash and metal grate. damage your fireplace and
release harmful chemicals.
GRATE Use a
2 metal grate or 4 STICKS Crisscross
andirons to raise logs 5 kindling, like thin
off the ground so air sticks of wood, across the
can fuel the fire from starter logs for air circula-
below. tion. The flames will spread
through the kindling first
STARTER and then to the logs. Never
3 LOGS use driftwood or wood with
Lay two dried paint or varnish (it may
3
logs (look for release toxic chemicals).
gray logs with
loose bark) EXTRA LOGS
parallel on each 2
6 Add another log
end of the grate. every ten to 20 minutes
If youre purchas- for the first hour, but
ing wood from dont get too aggres-
a store, look sive in building the
for seasoned, fire. You should always
ready to burn, be able to see the top
or kiln-dried on of the flame in the
the label. 1 fireplace.

46 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com ILLUSTRATION BY THE ELLAPHANT IN THE ROOM

Trademarks owned by Socit des Produits Nestl S.A.,Vevey, Switzerland

ONE Food.
Whole Body Health For Life.

ALL THE NUTRITION YOUR CAT NEEDS.

AND NOTHING THEY DONT.
Theres a Purina ONE formula to help support your cats whole
body health today and every day of their life. Expertly
developed with real meat, poultry or sh and 100% nutrition
for each life stage, Purina ONE provides all the nutrition
your cat needs for a lifetime.

facebook.com/purinaonecats PurinaONE.com/WholeBodyHealthCat
HOME

Master Your Holiday Mail

BY KELSEY KLOSS

SEND BOOKS ON THE offer insurance but will pay

CHEAP Gifting a good read? the declared amount if an
Mail educational items such item is lost or damaged. UPS
as books and DVDs covers packages valued up
through the USPS Media to $100 and has similar
Mail, starting at $2.72 pricing to declare the value
typically the cheapest of more-expensive goods.
shipping option.
SHOP THE DOLLAR
GET A MONTH OF STORE Need shipping
SERVICE UP FRONT supplies? Dollar stores
Websites like shop sell a range of inexpen-
runner.com and sive bubble mailers, en-

PROP STYLIST: SARAH GUIDO-LAAKSO FOR HALLEY RESOURCES

amazon.com/prime velopes, packaging tape,
offer memberships and mailing labels for far
with free two-day less than the post office
shipping. Sign up or a shipping center.
for a 30-day trial,
then decide if you DONT MISS
want to keep the FREE SHIPPING DAY
membership after Hundreds of retailers
the holidays. offer to send at no cost
gifts purchased online
INSURE EXPEN- on December 18, 2015.
SIVE GIFTS To ship Check freeshippingday
costly goods through .com for a list of partici-
FedEx, consider paying pating vendors.
the 90-cent charge (per Sources: Lauren Greutman, a frugal-
living expert and founder of
$100 of value) to declare iamthatlady.com, a consumer savings
website; freeshippingday.com;
their worth. FedEx doesnt fedex.com; usps.com; ups.com

48 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com PHOTOGRAPH BY RALPH SMITH

 A strong connection
isnt just about
signal bars.

AARP members
can save with AT&T.
Meet with one of our in-store experts and learn about
how, for a limited time, when you switch to AT&T youll get
$300 in credits when you buy a smartphone
on AT&T Next and trade in a smartphone.*
SM
Bring your AARP
membership card to an
And youll get a 10% service discount** AT&T store near you.
on qualified wireless plans.
*Reqs porting number, elig. svc & trade-in.$300 credit = $100 bill credit (w/in 90 days) + $200 phone trade-in credit (may be promo card).
**Service Discount: Offer avail. only to current members of AARP. Members must provide valid AARP membership card and subscribe to svc under an individual
account for which the member is personally liable. Discount subject to an agmt between AARP, AARP Services, Inc. and AT&T. If the foregoing agmt is terminated,
discount may be discontinued without notice at the end of the existing term of your svc agmt. Offer avail. only in AT&T and authorized retailer store locations.
Discount applies only to recurring monthly svc charge of elig. voice and data plans, not overages. Not avail. w/any unlim. voice plans. For FamilyTalk, discount applies
only to the primary line. For all Mobile Share plans, discount applies only to monthly plan charge for the data allotment of qual. plans with 1GB or more, not to addl
monthly device access charges. Discount may take up to 2 bill cycles to appear on invoice after eligibility is confirmed and will not apply to prior charges. Discount
is applied after application of any avail. credit or other offer and may not be combined with other svc discounts. Addl restrs apply. For eligibility or other questions,
visit a store or contact AT&T at 800-331-0500 for details.
*$300 CREDIT: Ltd time offers. $100 switcher bill credit + $200 trade-in credit per elig. line. New lines only. May not be combinable w/other offers. Select
locations.AT&T NextSM: Must buy phone via installment agmt w/qual. postpaid wireless svc (voice & data). Excludes Lifeline, Residential Wireless & select discounted
plans. If wireless service canceled device balance is due. May req. down pmt. Tax due at sale. Limit on no. of financed devices per acct. See att.com/next for
details. Switcher Bill Credit: Reqs porting elig. number (excludes Cricket) & buying elig. phone in same transaction. Must be active & in good standing for 45 days.
Trade-in: Must be in good working condition w/min. $10 buyback value & meet AT&T Buyback program requirements. At att.com, to complete trade-in & get credit
you are emailed promo code (valid for min. 30 days) after smartphone ships. Trade-in Credit: Get instant credit or promo card. Private label AT&T Promotion Card
(Card) issued by MetaBank or CenterState Bank of Florida NA, via license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. At att.com, get Card in ~3 weeks after elig. trade-in & condition
validation. Credit & Card (valid for min. 90 days) may be used only toward purch. of AT&T products & svc in AT&T owned retail stores, at att.com, or to pay wireless bill.
At participating dealers get credit (w/addl terms & conditions) for use only at specified dealer. GENERAL TERMS: Activ./Upgrade Fee: $15/line. Deposit: May
apply per line. Return/Restock:If return w/in 14days, up to $35 fee. Wireless Svc Terms: Subject to Wireless Customer Agmt. Other fees, monthly charges,
overage charges, & restrs apply.Pricing & offers subject to change & may be modified, discontinued, or terminated at any time w/out notice. Puerto
Rico: $300 Credit ends 10/31/2015. Svc not avail. everywhere. See participating store to learn more.
AARP member benefits are provided by third parties, not by AARP or its affiliates. Providers pay royalty fees to AARP for the use of its intellectual property. These
fees are used for the general purposes of AARP. Some provider offers are subject to change and may have restrictions. Please contact the provider directly for details.
2015 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and Globe logo are registered trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property. All other marks are the property
of their respective owners.
Is your
BLADDER
calling the shots?

Talk to your doctor about Myrbetriq (mirabegron),

approved by the FDA to treat overactive bladder
(OAB) symptoms of:

Urgency Frequency Leakage

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.

TAKING CHARGE OF YOUR OAB SYMPTOMS

STARTS WITH TALKING TO YOUR DOCTOR.
Visit Myrbetriq.com for doctor discussion tips. Ask your
doctor if Myrbetriq may be right for you, and see if you can
get your rst prescription at no cost.*
*Subject to eligibility. Restrictions may apply.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

Myrbetriq is not for everyone. Do not use Myrbetriq if you have an allergy to
mirabegron or any ingredients in Myrbetriq.

Please see additional Important Safety Information on next page.

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 (continued)

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 may cause allergic reactions that may be serious. If you experience
swelling of the face, lips, throat or tongue, with or without difculty 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), ecainide (Tambocor), propafenone (Rythmol), digoxin (Lanoxin).
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.
In clinical studies, the most common side effects seen with Myrbetriq included
increased blood pressure, common cold symptoms (nasopharyngitis), urinary
tract infection and headache.

For further information, please talk to your healthcare professional and

see Brief Summary of Prescribing Information for Myrbetriq (mirabegron)
on the following pages.
You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs
to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Myrbetriq is a registered trademark of Astellas Pharma Inc.

All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
2015 Astellas Pharma US, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in USA. 057-0586-PM
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 it and
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352'8&72)-$3$125,5(/$1'6HHERWWOHODEHORUEOLVWHUSDFNDJHIRURULJLQ
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 ALL IN

A Days Work

We were looking for suitable human DNA to help save our species from
extinction, but we got sidetracked by your huge selection of seasonal coffees.

SCENE: A conversation with my WHILE I WAS WORKING as a store

friends father, who knows I do Santa, a boy asked me for an electric
Web design. train set. If you get your train, I told
Father: I have a business idea. How him, your dad is going to want to
hard is it to make a Facebook? play with it too. Is that all right?
Me: Oh, very easy. The boy became very quiet. So,
Friend: He doesnt mean to make moving the conversation along,
a Facebook profile. He means to I asked, What else would you like
remake all of Facebook. Santa to bring you?
Me: Oh. Very hard. He promptly replied, Another
Father: Oh, OK. From clientsfromhell.net train. From guy-sports.com

54 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com ILLUSTRATION BY P. C. VEY

 GILDING THE LILY is a job seekers voice. I entered the house and heard
birthright. Here are a few doozies, the same voice: If youd like to make
where the applicant claimed a call, please hang up and try your
... to be a former CEO of the com- call again.
pany to which he was applying. WILSON HSIA, Te m p l e C i t y , C a l i f o r n i a
... to be fluent in two languages
one of which was pig Latin. MOST OF OUR MUSIC store custom-
... to be a Nobel Prize winner. ers have a story about their old vinyl
FROM LEFT: STEP HEN LOVEKIN/GETTY IM AGES . RON WOLF SON /GETTY IMAG E S. RON G AL E L L A, LTD. /G E TTY IMAG E S.

... to have worked in a jail when he collection. Once, a man asked how
was really in there serving time. much a record cost. My coworker
... he was fired on accident. quoted him the price, then added,
From careerbuilder.com But theres a surcharge if we have to
listen to how your mother made you
PAUL N ATKIN/GETTY IM AGES. CHARLES SY KES/GETTY IMAGES. STUART WIL SON/G E TTY IMAG E S

WHILE ON PATROL, I arrested a bur- throw out all your old vinyl records.
glar whod injured himself running LINDA NEUKRUG, Wa l n u t C r e e k , C a l i f o r n i a
from a home. He told me hed broken
in and unhooked the phone before Anything funny happen to you at work
searching for valuables. But hed lately? It could be worth $100. For details,
panicked when he heard a womans see page 9 or go to rd.com/submit.

EMINEM WANTS WHAT?!

Match the bizarre dressing-room demands to the
celebrity who allegedly made them:
1. A used-chewing-gum attendant 4. Every item must be covered
(a person whose sole job is to in plastic wrap until this star
dispose of the stars gum) removes said plastic wrap
2. Toilet bowl filled with rose petals 5. Brand-new toilet seats in the
3. A square melon (evidently very bathroom
popular in Asia) 6. A koi pond

A. B. C. D. E. F.
Madonna Eminem Barbra Axl Mariah Prince
Streisand Rose Carey
Source: stars.topix.com
Answers: 1-E; 2-C; 3-D; 4-F; 5-A; 6-B

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 55
HEALTH

Low carb vs. low fat. Treadmill vs. elliptical.

Sugar vs. artificial sweetener. Here, the final word

PROP STYLIST: SARAH GUIDO-LAAKSO FOR HALLEY RESOURCES

on the best choices for your health.

Classic Health Debates

BY S UNNY S EA GO LD

Whats healthier in your (i.e., you burn it for energy and,

coffeesugar or artificial if you eat too much of it, store the
sweeteners? Winner: Sugar. rest as fat), emerging animal
Go ahead and opt for the real stuff. research suggests that, on the other
Not because artificial sweeteners hand, a habit of artificial sweeteners
arent safe (they are, confirms the may interfere with metabolism and
FDA), but the premise that we should blood sugar regulation, possibly
eat real foods in moderation is even contributing to weight gain
persuasive. Whereas your body and glucose intolerance. (One
knows how to deal with sugar possible exception: People with

56 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com PHOTOGRAPHS BY RALPH SMITH

diabetes, who must closely monitor journal Perceptual and Motor Skills,
their blood sugar levels, should talk which is a helpful factor if theyre
to their doctor about the healthiest trying to stick to an exercise program.
choices for them.) That said, folks with arthritis or who
But more important than how are overweight may find the lower-
you sweeten your java is your overall impact elliptical to be more comfort-
intake of sugar or artificial sweeten- able for their joints, says Matthews.
ers, says Elisa Zied, RDN, a former
spokeswoman for the Academy of Which diet is more effective
Nutrition and Dietetics and the for weight losslow fat or low
author of Younger Next Week. carb? Winner: Low carb.
The World Health Organization Researchers have been bickering
says adults should limit sugar intake over this diet dilemma for decades,
to about six teaspoons total each day but last year, a randomized study
(one can of soda can have about funded by the National Institutes
ten teaspoons). While FDA recom- of Health firmly tipped the scales in
mended limits for sweeteners vary, favor of low-carbohydrate diets.
Zied advises using no more than At the end of 12 months, low-carb
a couple of packets a day. eaters lost more weight than did
low-fat dieters (about eight pounds
Which provides a superior more). But a low-carb diet doesnt
workouttreadmill or mean no carb, points out Melina
elliptical? Winner: Treadmill. Jampolis, MD, president of the
You can raise your heart rate and National Board of Physician
burn calories on any piece of cardio Nutrition Specialists.
equipment, but every time your foot Low carbers in the NIH study, for
comes down on that treadmill belt, example, took in about 30 percent of
you get the bonus of building bone their calories from carbohydrates
strength too, says Jessica Matthews, about 110 grams of carbs a day for
senior adviser for health and fitness a 1,500-calorie diet. That equates
education for the American Council roughly to a cup of oatmeal with
on Exercise. Unlike the elliptical, half a cup of blueberries and a
only weight-bearing exercisessuch teaspoon of brown sugar, a small
as walking, jogging, jumping rope, apple, a cup of low-fat Greek yogurt
and weight traininghelp to with half a cup of high-fiber cereal,
preserve bone density. and one piece of whole wheat bread,
Most exercisers also simply like as well as a lot of veggies and
the treadmill more than the elliptical, protein. Plenty of wiggle room for
found a recent study published in the pasta lovers.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 57
C L A S S I C H E A LT H D E B A T E S

Which is better when youre Which is the better germ

tiredexercise or an extra hour fightersoap or hand
of sleep? Winner: Exercise. sanitizer? Winner: Soap.
Both sleep and exercise are essential While soap doesnt kill microbes,
to your health, but tacking on an as the alcohol in some sanitizers
extra hour after a full nights sleep can, washing with suds and water
is not going to be as beneficial as makes for cleaner hands, according
a morning sweat session. to the infectious-disease experts at
A single workout can reduce the CDC. Multiple studies have found
depressive symptoms and lower that the combo of running water,
blood pressure for hours, even in lathering with soap, and friction
people without hypertension, studies from rubbing hands for 20 seconds
have found. Whats more, workouts removes the highest number of cer-
KETTLEBELL COURTESY S PRI.COM

can be energizing. A 2006 review of tain sickness-causing bacteria and

studies by scientists at the University viruses. No need to use warm or hot
of Georgia found a strong link waterit doesnt seem to help clear
between physical activity and a any more germs than cool water
reduction in fatigue. Randomized- does and may actually dry out your
controlled experiments done by the hands more. When you cant get to
same researchers in 2008 and 2010 soap and water, a hand sanitizer with
confirmed: Working out doesnt zap at least 60 percent alcohol is a decent
energyit builds it. second choice, says the CDC.

58 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
 READERS DIGEST

Which is healthier for your critical ways to promote not only

feetwedge heels or ballet good oral health but systemic
flats? Winner: Wedge heels. health as well, Dr. Gonzalez adds.
Both allow for even distribution An infection in the mouth can
of your body weight, since theres negatively affect the cardiovascular
ample contact between the sole system, diabetic patients, and the
of the shoe and the floor (versus, health of pregnant women.
say, stiletto heels). But more support While most generally healthy
can put wedges on top, says Michele people can keep their mouths in
Summers Colon, DPM, a podiatrist shape by brushing with a regular
and shoe designer in El Monte, toothbrush twice a day, he says,
California. Very flat flats are the those with gum disease or issues
worst shoes you can wear, says like arthritis, which can make
Summers Colon. There is no regular brushing tough, will probably
support for the mid-foot, so the get more benefit from an electric.
ankle tends to roll inward, causing
ankle, calf, and even knee soreness. Which is preferable for
good digestionyogurt or
Which toothbrush works a probiotic supplement?
betterelectric or manual? Winner: Yogurt and other
Winner: Electric. fermented foods.
Studies have seesawed, but finally Food is always the best way to get
a Cochrane review of 56 studies your nutrients, says Gerard Mullin,
confirmed in 2014 that powered MD, director of Integrative GI Nutri-
brushes remove 11 to 21 percent tion Services at Johns Hopkins
more plaque than do manual ones University School of Medicine in
and reduce other symptoms of gum Baltimore and author of The Gut
disease better. Another helpful Balance Revolution. The synergistic
feature of many electric brushes? effects of all the components in
The timer. Patients often dont whole foods cant be duplicated in
realize how little time they spend a supplement. When youre shop-
cleaning their teeth, says Ricardo ping for probiotic-containing foods
Vidal Gonzalez, DDS, of the Mayo such as kimchi, miso, sauerkraut,
Clinic. Most dentists agree that kefir, yogurt, and kombucha, look
proper brushing takes at least two for live and active cultures on labels.
minutes and recommend that to If you cant stand the taste of foods
their patients, but many people that contain probiotics, ask your doc-
brush less than a minute. tor to recommend a high-quality
Good brushing is one of the most supplement, says Dr. Mullin.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 59
HEALTH

RED WINE
Stop Drinking 6 ounces

Festive Foods Australian or Chilean red wine

(alcohol by volume, or ABV:

That Help 13.5 to 16 percent)

Start Drinking 6 ounces

You Lose European red wine

(ABV: 11 to 13.5 percent)
Drop: 25 calories
BY L IZ VACC A RI E L LO
Tip: Low ABV equates
to fewer calories.
GOOD NEWS, FOLKS: A New
England Journal of Medicine study VEGGIE DIP
found that average weight gain over Stop Eating 2 tablespoons
the holidays is less than a pound. Marzetti Spinach Veggie Dip
Still, when youre trying to lose, Start Eating 2 tablespoons
every ounce matters. With the right Marzetti Otria Garden Herb
choices, you can eat your favorite Ranch Greek Yogurt Dip
party foods and still shed weight. Drop: 50 calories, 7 grams fat
Follow my guide (right) to the best Tip: Greek yogurt
and worst picks for alcohol, dip, dips are low in
and chips to have your fill and save calories but high
calories. Another tip? After one in filling protein.
helping, shift your focus from the
food to reconnecting with friends CHIPS
and family. Youll find thats the Stop Eating 21 Crunchy Cheetos
best holiday treat. Start Eating 34 Cheetos
Oven Baked Crunchy Cheese
COURTESY STOP & DROP DIET

On the Stop & Drop Diet, Flavored Snack

you stop eating the
unhealthy versions of the Drop: 20 calories, 5 grams fat
foods you love so you can Tip: Check whether
drop up to five pounds in your favorite party
five days. Learn more
chips have a baked
about the books meal
plans and 21-day course, in which author
versionand eat more
Liz Vaccariello is your personal coach, at for fewer calories.
stopanddropdiet.com/book.

60 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
HEALTH

The Seasons
Germiest Greetings
BY C A RO LINE P RAD ERIO FR O M PR E V E NTION

ARE YOUR salutations making you sick? We wondered after a JAMA

editorial called out handshakes as a major germ spreader. Rob Danoff, DO,
a family physician in Philadelphia, ranks the healthiness of your hellos.

WORST: Handshake BAD: High Five OK: Cheek Kiss

Your palm = a germ hot Its a hit-and-run hand- Generally safe if neither
spot. Extended contact is shake: same germy con- greeter is coughing or
a no-go in cold-and-flu tact point but only about sneezing. (Stand under
season. But if you must, half the bacteria transfer the mistletoe at your
wash up afterward ASAP. because of the speed. own risk.)

GOOD: Hug BETTER: Fist Bump BEST: Smile and Wave

Turn your head away Bug transfer is far lower Yeah, this could be per-
and go gentlehugs than with a standard ceived as a little rude.
that force breath out shake. (Bonus: captur- But isnt keeping every-
of the lungs lead to ing Grandmas first fist one healthy the kindest
airborne pathogens. bump on camera.) regards of all?

62 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com ILLUSTRATIONS BY LAUREN ROLW ING

 NEWS FROM THE

World of Medicine
BY KELSEY KLOSS

What Actually Causes Sadness Really Does Turn

Rosacea The World Gray
Dont just blame your family tree for In a Psychological Science study, 127
that red, thick, pimply skin. Your hab- participants watched either a sad film
its play a big role too. In a University or a comedy skit and then indicated
Hospitals Case Medical Center study, the color of patches that had been de-
275 pairs of twins took lifestyle and saturated to more neutral shades. Sad
medical surveys and underwent skin people had a difficult time discerning
screenings. Genetics contributed to shades on the blue-yellow axis. Re-
46 percent of rosacea risk, while the lated research has linked perception
rest was due to environmental factors of these colors to dopamine, the
such as sun exposure and alcohol. brains feel-good neurotransmitter
Talk to your doctor about which risks that is low when youre feeling down.
you can reduce; lowering alcohol
intake, for example, might be a first Car Sickness Breakthrough
step in making a big difference. British researchers tested a device
that delivers a mild
electrical current
to the scalp (it
feels like a brief
tingle) on 20 vol-
unteers who sat
in a spinning
chair designed
P ROP STYLI ST: ROBI N FIN LAY

to induce motion
sickness. Those
who received the
current before
taking a second
ride took longer
to get sick than
before. The current

64 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com PHOTOGRAPH BY ADAM VOORHES

dampens responses in the brain re- breast cancer than those on the
gion that processes motion signals. A low-fat diet. The nut group had an
device might be developed for use in insignificantly lower risk. Women
boats and cars in as little as five years. with the lowest risk ate about four
tablespoons of olive oil per day.
Hangover Cure Thats
A Myth Dizziness After Standing
Sorry, but a jug of water wont help May Signal Bigger Issues
you after too many cocktails. In a If you often experience dizziness after
Dutch and Canadian study, research- standing, its a good idea to tell your
ers surveyed 826 Dutch students on doctor. Harvard researchers studied
methods of relieving hangovers. More 165 people with orthostatic hypoten-
than half drank water before sleeping sion (OH), a drop within three
or during the next-day recovery. minutes of standing, or delayed OH
Water can prevent dry mouth, but (DOH), a drop after three minutes
the study found it didnt lessen the both of which can cause dizziness.
severity of hangover symptoms. Those with OH had a death rate of
64 percent over ten years; DOH pa-
Surprising Perk of Sarcasm tients had a death rate of 29 percent.
A caustic coworker could improve (Only 9 percent of a control group
your creativity. Participants solved died over the time period.) Patients
problems after hearing sarcastic were likelier than healthy adults to
phrases, like an insincere I am sorry, have a number of underlying health
in a study in the journal Organiza- conditions, such as Parkinsons
tional Behavior and Human Decision disease or diabetes, that might play
Processes. They were three times more a role in dizziness.
creative than a group hearing sincere
messages. Sarcasm forces the brain to A Clear Reason for Children
think abstractly, boosting innovation. To Get Outside
In a new JAMA study, nearly 2,000 first
Diet That Protects Against graders were divided into two groups.
Breast Cancer One group maintained a normal
More than 4,000 women followed schedule, while the other spent an
the Mediterranean diet supplemented extra 40 minutes outside each school
with olive oil, the diet with nuts, or day. Children who spent more time
a low-fat diet in a new JAMA: Internal outdoors were 23 percent less likely
Medicine study. In five years, women to become nearsighted. Bright light
on the Mediterranean diet with olive may affect eye development in a way
oil had a 68 percent lower risk of that inhibits nearsightedness.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 65
COVER STORY

66 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
 Five classic tales
of wonder,
compassion,
and joy to inspire
you this season

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JULENE HARRISON

M I R AC U LO U S C H R I ST M AS STO R I E S

The Christmas Present

BY JAM E S M IC H E NE R

hen I was a boy of nine in the little

town of Doylestown, Pennsylvania,
I used to mow the lawn of Mrs. Long,
an elderly lady who lived across from
the Presbyterian Church. She paid me
very little for the chore, for she had not
much money. But she did promise me,
When Christmas comes, I shall have
a present for you. I spent much time wondering what it would be.
The boys I played with had baseball gloves and bicycles and ice
skates, and I was so eager to acquire any one of these that I convinced
myself that my benefactor intended choosing from among them.

It would hardly be a baseball could imagine myself upon the skates.

glove, I reasoned with myself. A As the cold days of November arrived
woman like Mrs. Long wouldnt know and ice began to form on the ponds,
much about baseball. Since she was I began to try my luck on the ice that
a frail little person, I also ruled out would be sustaining me and my skates
the bicycle, for how could she handle through the winter.
such a contraption? Get away from that ice! a man
On my last Saturday at work, shouted. Its not strong enough yet.
Mrs. Long said, Now remember, be- But soon it would be.
cause youve been a good boy all sum- As Chr istmas approached, it
mer, at Christmas Ill have a present was with difficulty that I restrained
waiting. You come to the door and col- myself from reporting to Mrs. Long
lect it. These words clinched it. Since and demanding my present. Our fam-
she was going to have the present in ily agreed that the first of December
her house, and since she herself would was too early for me to do this. She
be handling it, unques- may not have it wrapped yet, some-
Published tionably she was giving one argued, and this made sense.
in Readers me a pair of ice skates. On the 21st of December, a serious
Digest
in 1967.
I became so con- cold snap froze all the ponds so that
vinced of this that I boys who already had ice skates were

68 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
 READERS DIGEST

able to use them, and weighed almost nothing.

my longing to pos- What is it? I asked.
sess mine, even though Youll see on Christmas Day.
I could not open the pack- I shook it. Nothing rattled, but
age for a few days, became overpower- I thought I did catch a sound of some
ing. On December 22 I could restrain sorta quiet, muffled sound that was
myself no longer. I marched down the somehow familiar but unidentifiable.
street, presented myself at the door of What is it? I asked again.
the house whose lawn I had tended all A kind of magic, Mrs. Long said,
summer, and said, Ive come for my and that was all.
present, Mrs. Long. Her words were enough to set my
Ive been waiting for you, she mind dancing with new possibilities,
said, leading me into her parlor, its so that by the time I reached home,
windows heavy with purple velvet. I had convinced myself that I held
She sat me in a chair, some great wonder.
disappeared to another She gave me a magi-
room, and in a moment cians set. Ill turn pitch-
stood before me hold- On Christmas ers of milk into rabbits.
ing a package which morning, I had How long the passage
under no conceivable to Christmas was! There
circumstances could this box on my were other presents of
hold a baseball glove or knees, tearing at normal dimension and
a bicycle or even a pair
of skates. I was painfully
the string that weight. But Mrs. Longs
box dominated all, for
disappointed but so far bound it. it had to do with magic.
as I can recall did not On Christmas morn-
show it, because during ing, before the sun was
the week, my advisers at home had up, I had this box on my knees, tear-
warned repeatedly, Whatever she ing at the reused colored string that
has for you, take it graciously and say bound it. Soon the wrapping paper
thank you. was off and in my lap lay a flat box
What she had was an ordinary par- with its top hinged about halfway
cel about nine inches wide, a foot down.
long, and no more than a quarter of With great excitement I opened the
an inch thick. As Mrs. Long held it hinged lid to find inside a shimmer-
in her frail hands, curiosity replaced ing pile of ten flimsy sheets of black
my initial disappointment, and when paper, each labeled in iridescent let-
I lifted it from her, the extreme light- ters, Carbon Paper Regal Premium. Of
ness of the gift quite captivated me. It the four words I knew only the second,

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 69
 M I R AC U LO U S C H R I ST M AS STO R I E S

and what it signified in this of carbon paper. It was the most

context I could not guess. enchanting Christmas present a boy
Is it magic? I asked. like me could have had, infinitely
Aunt Laura, who more significant than a baseball glove
taught school, had the or a pair of skates. It was exactly the
presence of mind to say, present I needed, and it reached me
It really is! And she at precisely that Christmas when I was
took two pieces of white best able to comprehend it.
paper, placed between I have received some pretty thun-
them one of the black sheets dering Christmas presents since then
from the box, and, with a hard pencil, but none that ever came close to the
wrote my name on the upper sheet. magnificence of this one. The average
Then, removing it and the Carbon present merely gratifies a temporary
Paper Regal Premium, she handed yearning, as the ice skates would have
me the second sheet, which her pen- done; the great present illuminates all
cil had in no way touched. the years of life that remain.
There was my name! It was clean, It was not until some years later that
and very dark, and well formed and as I realized that the ten sheets of Carbon
beautiful as Christmas Day itself. Paper Regal Premium which Mrs. Long
I was enthralled! This was indeed gave me had cost her nothing. She had
magic of the greatest dimension. That used them for her purposes and would
a pencil could write on one piece of normally have thrown them away,
paper and mysteriously record on except that she had had the ingenuity
another was a miracle which was so to guess that a boy might profit from
gratifying to my childish mind that a present totally outside the realm of
I can honestly say that in that one his ordinary experience.
moment, in the dark of Christmas I hope this year some boys and girls
morning, I understood as much about will receive, from thoughtful adults
printing and the duplication of words who really love them, gifts that will
and the fundamental mystery of dis- jolt them out of all they have known
seminating ideas as I have learned in till now. It is such gifts and such
the remaining half-century of my life. experiencesusually costing little or
I wrote and wrote, using up whole nothingthat transform a life and
tablets until I had ground off the last lend it an impetus that may continue
shred of blackness from the ten sheets for decades.
 READERS DIGEST

Yes, Virginia ...

ear Editor, I am 8 years old.
Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
Papa says, If you see it in The Sun, its so.
Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia OHanlon
Virginia, your little friends are Claus, but even if they did not see
wrong. They have been affected by Santa Claus, what would that prove?
the skepticism of a skeptical age. Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is
They do not believe except they see. no sign that there is no Santa Claus.
They think that nothing can be which The most real things in the world are
is not comprehensible by their little those that neither children nor men
minds. All minds, Virginia, whether can see. Did you ever see fairies danc-
they be mens or childrens, are little. ing on the lawn? Of course not, but
In this great universe of ours man is thats no proof that they are not there.
a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as Nobody can conceive or imagine all
compared with the boundless world the wonders there are in the world.
about him. You tear apart the babys rattle and
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. see what makes the noise inside, but
He exists as certainly as love and gen- there is a veil covering the unseen
erosity and devotion exist, and you world which not the strongest man,
know that they abound and give to nor even the united strength of all the
your life its highest beauty and joy. strongest men that ever lived, could
Alas! How dreary would be the world if tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry,
there were no Santa Claus! It would be love, romance can push aside that cur-
as dreary as if there were no Virginias. tain and view and picture the supernal
There would be no childlike faith then, beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real?
no poetry, no romance to make toler- Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is
able this existence. We should have no nothing else real and abiding.
enjoyment, except in sense and sight. No Santa Claus! Thank God he lives,
The eternal light with which childhood and he lives forever.
From
fills the world would be extinguished. A thousand years from The Sun
Not believe in Santa Claus! You now, Virginia, nay ten (New York);
might as well not believe in fair- times ten thousand published
ies! You might get your papa to hire years from now, he will in Readers
Digest
men to watch in all the chimneys continue to make glad in 1933.
on Christmas Eve to catch Santa the heart of childhood.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 71
M I R AC U LO U S C H R I ST M AS STO R I E S

The Phantom of the Woods

BY D O RIS C H ENE Y WH ITE H O US E

t was late when I got off duty. I didnt even stop

at the nurses barracks to change my uniform,
but went directly out into the woods that
surrounded the neuropsychiatric wing of the
big Army hospital. The leaves under my feet
were thick and dry, and as I waded through them
I was aware of the tangy smell of autumn. The
keys to Ward 8, worn on a long rope around my
waist, jingled as I walked.
Anthony D. Nardo* was a young GI, bandages encircled both his wrists.
a victim of combat fatigue. Diagnosis: His face was angular and elongated,
agitated depression, manic-depressive and in it I saw a quality of tenderness.
type. I was a cadet nurse, sound of Something within me had stirred with
mind, on loan from a civilian hospital. an answering tenderness, so that dur-
And yet, that very afternoon, standing ing the days that followed, I favored
together on the sun porch of Ward 8, him over all the others.
Tony and I had shared an incredible Tony had been evacuated from his
vision. The thing we had seen was post in the South Pacific, where on
somewhere in these woods. I had to a certain morning he had removed the
find out what it really was, to prove double-edged blade from a razor and
to him that it was only an illusion and slashed the arteries in both his wrists.
thereby end its threat to his recovery. All through the early days of his stay
I thought about the day that Tony on Ward 8, the pale hands tore at their
had been admitted, three months restraints in a desperate effort to rip
before. I saw him as he was then, apart the sutures. For seven weeks he
bound to a canvas stretcher, his tou- did not speak or even lift his eyes.
sled hair ebony-black. I had watched In time, the wounds began to heal,
as a medical corpsman removed his and the tortured hands relaxed.
straps and led him into Slowly the spirit found its way out
Published a room where he was to of the darkness. I watched him as
in Readers be confined for seven he moved about the ward, straight
Digest
in 1960.
weeks. Beneath gray and sure. I saw him ministering to
pajama sleeves, white the needs of his fellow patients with

72 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
 READERS DIGEST

the wisdom of into the woods. For a long time

one who knew the I stood above him, wishing that
demons that pos- I could take the dark head in my hands
sessed them. and soothe away the dreadful danger.
Tony was almost But one does not do such a thing,
well. Even our skeptical chief nurse, especially when one is a student nurse.
Lt. Barbara Rankin, was forced to con- Instead, my eyes wandered absently
cede it. But then, without warning, on out over the woods, while a dreaded
this day in late October, a phantom word rose up and pushed against my
thing had threatened to destroy him. throat: hallucination. Now he must
The day had begun like any other. indeed be judged insane.
I reported for duty at 7 a.m. At noon, But as I gazed, my eyes were drawn
I went to lunch. Lieutenant Rankin to something whiteand there in the
was waiting for me in her office when distance among the trees I saw the
I got back. Youd better go and have figure of the Virgin!
a look at your protg, she said. I must have cried aloud because
Whats wrong? I asked. Tony turned his head and looked at
Oh, nothing much. Her voice was me. Ah, you see her too!
granite. He just got a little excited Yes, I see her too ...
when he saw the Virgin Mary stand- The rest of the afternoon passed
ing in the woods, thats all! slowly, but at last I was off duty and
I turned and ran to Ward 8. I found free to search for the strange Madonna.
him kneeling, his forehead pressed I felt relief in the knowledge that I had
against the w ire scre en which only to find the logical source of the
surrounded the sun porch. His eyes illusion to prove that Tony was not
were fixed on a spot somewhere out hallucinating.
in the woods. He was praying softly. It was getting dark and cold. I folded
My voice came out harsh and shaky. my arms against my body underneath
What are you doing, Tony? I said. my cape, shivering. And then I saw it,
Get up! just ahead of me.
But you dont understand, Tony A white birch stump, tall and slender,
said. I can see the Virgin standing had been carved by the hand of time
there! Then he looked up at me. Is and weather into an abstract image
there a statue out there? he asked. of the Madonna. Even at this close
No, Tony. I know those woods. range, the delicate curve of head and
Theres nothing out there. Now, please shoulder, the graceful draping of the
get up! mantle, were clearly visible in the
He turned from me polished bark.
and looked out again I rushed back to the ward. Tony

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 73
M I R AC U LO U S C H R I ST M AS STO R I E S

was sitting on a wooden bench, star- began to pack. Suddenly I saw that
ing out into the woods. He spoke a light snow was falling, just begin-
without looking up. ning to adhere to the branches of the
Did you find what you were look- trees. I got my coat and went outside.
ing for? The wind was cold on my face, and
Suddenly I was afraid. Tony seemed I blinked my eyes against it. My heart
prepared for a simple answer, logical was beating very fast, and I began to
and conclusive. But I knew that I had run. And then, within a few yards of
stumbled upon something inscru- my destination, I stopped.
table, a thing that transcended rea- There, on a glistening blanket of
son, and I was afraid that Tony was snow, clad in a heavy coat of olive
not well enough to cope with such a drab, a solitary figure knelt, the white
mystery. It was nothingjust a white flakes falling like weightless feathers
birch stump, I whispered. on his bare head. He knelt at the feet
I should have known that of the woodland Madonna, which was
it would not end there. clothed in a new whiteness.
Late in November, When he finished his prayer, I did
Tony was transferred a thing that one does not do when
to a ward where he one is a student nurse. I moved to
was free to come and the place where he knelt and stood
go about the hospital behind him, taking the dark head in
grounds. Seeing him grow my hands. I brushed away the snow
stronger day by day, I began to that had collected in his hair.
believe that I had been wise in keep- Youll catch your death of cold,
ing silent about what I had really seen. I said.
So I held the lovely secret in my heart, He looked up at me, and I could see
hoarding itIm sure the other nurses that he had been expecting me.
wondered why I walked alone in the Miracles come in many sizes,
barren woods so often. he said.
It was a week before Christmas. Then he stood and turned to face
My training period was over, and me, smiling. And in his smile were
I was being reassigned. I said good- all wisdom and all tendernessand
bye to Tony and learned that he had I knew that he was well.
been given leave to go home for the
holidays. Then I went to my room and *Names have been changed.
 READERS DIGEST

Pennies from Heaven

BY JULIE BAIN

y dad loved pennies, especially those with

the elegant stalk of wheat curving around
each side of the ONE CENT on the back.
Those were the pennies he grew up with in
Iowa during the Depression, and Lord
knows he didnt have many.
When I was a kid, Dad and I would attended in a long time. I decided to go.
go for long walks together. He was Sunday morning, I was greeted
an athletic six-foot-four, and I had to warmly and ushered to a seat in the
trot to keep up with him. Sometimes soaring old sanctuary. I opened the
wed spy coins along the waya program and saw that the first hymn
penny here, a dime there. Whenever was A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,
I picked up a penny, hed ask, Is it Dads favorite, one wed sung at his
a wheat? It always thrilled him when funeral. When the organ and choir
we found one of those special coins began, I burst into tears.
produced from 1909 to 1958, the year After the service, I walked out the
of my birth. On one of these walks, he front doors, shook the pastors hand,
told me he often dreamed of finding stepped onto the sidewalkand there
coins. I was amazed. I always have was a penny. I stooped to pick it up and
that dream too! I told him. It was our turned it over, and sure enough, it was
secret connection. a wheat. A 1944, a year my father was
Dad died in 2002. By then, I was serving on a ship in the South Pacific.
living in New York City, which can That started it. Suddenly wheat pen-
be exciting, or cold and heartless. nies began turning up on the side-
One gray winter day, not long after walks of New York everywhere. I got
his death, I was walking down Fifth most of the important years: his birth
Avenue, feeling bereft, and I glanced year, my moms birth year, the year his
up and found myself in front of the mother died, the year he graduated
First Presbyterian Church, one of from college, the war years, the year he
the oldest churches met my mom, the year they got mar-
Published in Manhattan. When ried, the year my sister was born. But
in Readers I was a child, Dad had alas, no 1958 wheat pennymy year,
Digest
in 2007.
been a Presbyterian the last year they were made.
deacon, but I hadnt Meanwhile I attended church

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 75
M I R AC U LO U S C H R I ST M AS STO R I E S

pretty regularly, and along toward and I couldnt read the date. When
Christmas a year later, I decided I got home, I took out my magnifying
I ought to join. The next Sunday, af- glass and tilted the copper surface to
ter the service, I was walking up Fifth the light. There was my birthday.
Avenue and spotted a penny in the As a journalist, Im in a profession
middle of an intersection. Oh, no way, where skepticism is a necessary and
I thought. It was a busy street; cabs honest virtue. But I found 21 wheat
were speeding byshould I risk it? I pennies on the streets of Manhattan
just had to get it. in the year after my father died, and
A wheat! But the penny was worn, I dont think thats a coincidence.

My Favorite Christmas
BY BILL BUTLE R

s a five-year-old, I didnt know how poor we

were. We had just moved to Manhattan and
knew no one in that city. My father would not
be home that Christmas Eve; he was in the
Army serving overseas. My mother, in her 20s,
and I worked all afternoon making tree
decorations. The kitchen table was crowded
with stars, globes, and animals made
of shiny paper.
There was at least a dozen feet of and walked four blocks to a parking
a chain made of colored paper loops. lot where they sold Christmas trees.
We were going to get the Christmas How much is your cheapest tree?
tree later in the evening, when the my mother asked the man standing at
prices for them usually dropped. the lot entrance.
Just after sunset, we bundled up He held his gloved hands over the
against the chilly Manhattan night fire in a steel barrel. His brown skin

76 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
 READERS DIGEST

glowed in the flick- how we could hang

ering. Thirty dollars, many decorations on a
miss. sparse tree.
Her smile disappeared. She was smiling again.
Nothing for less? Go to sleep now. Santa will
The man picked up a small tree decorate the tree for us.
branch and dropped it into the fire. I I woke at dawn and rushed into
just work here, miss. I cant change the the living room. To my amazement,
price. the tree had filled out. I couldnt
The sudden melancholy in my even see the trunk anymore. And it
mothers face made me sad. had a beautiful natural shape. The
The man looked down at me for decorations glistened in the morn-
what felt like a long time; it probably ing light. The chain of blue, red,
was only moments. He pointed at white, and green paper draped grace-
a mound of branches, the size of a car, fully around the tree. I almost didnt
in the corner of the lot. See that pile notice the presents wrapped in shiny
of cuttings? Behind it is a tree that we paper under it.
cant sell. You can have it for free. Days later, curiosity made me
Thank you, my mother said. She examine the tree closely. Christmas
nudged my shoulder. evening, my mother had used wire
Thank you, sir, I said. from clothes hangers to somehow fix
We hurried to the back of the discarded branches to the almost nude
mound. There it was, a scrawny thing tree trunk. She had carefully trimmed
just a little taller than me, leaning it with scissors to get its perfect shape.
against the wire fence. It had few A few weeks later, my father
branchesalmost a ghost of a tree. returned from overseas. When I told
My mother shouted to the man, him about the tree, something hap-
Can we take some of these branches, pened that I didnt understand at the
also? time. Tears filled the eyes of that burly
He waved his arm. Take it all if you soldier.
want to, miss. Since then, I have Bill Butler
I hauled the tree, and she carried seen many wonderful is a
a bundle of branches. We set the tree holidays. That Christ- Readers
Digest
in the corner of the living room, away mas remains as my reader.
from the radiator. I couldnt imagine favorite.
 Laughter
THE BEST MEDICINE

Simmons ... party of one?

IVE GIVEN UP social media for the them. And it works. I already have
New Year and am trying to make three people following metwo
friends outside Facebook while police officers and a psychiatrist.
applying the same principles. Every S u b m i t t e d b y NANCY L. CLARK,
day, I walk down the street and tell P o i n t s , We s t Vi r g i n i a

passersby what Ive eaten, how I feel,

what I did the night before, and what I THINK A LOT OF the conflict that
I will do tomorrow. Then I give them happened in the Wild West couldve
pictures of my family, my dog, and been avoided had architects in those
me gardening. I also listen to their days just made their towns big
conversations and tell them I love enough for everyone. Seen on reddit.com

78 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com ILLUSTRATIO N BY HARLEY SCHWADRON

 HOW CAN YOU EVER be late for he says, I drive like my brother!
anything in London? They have A few blocks later, he plows right
a huge clock right in the middle through a red light. I say, You just ran
of the town. JIMMY KIMMEL a red light. And he says, I drive like
my brother! So now were coming up
MARY GOES to the post office to buy on a green light, and he slows down.
50 stamps for her Hanukkah cards. Im confused, so I say, Its green; why
What denomination? asks the are you slowing down? He says, My
postal clerk. brother might be coming.
Mary thinks a second before
replying, Give me six Orthodox, HATE TO BREAK IT TO YOU,
12 Conservative, and 32 Reform. Facebook, but the entire Internet
is already a Dislike button.
HONESTLY, OFFICER, I wouldnt @JOSHGROBAN
have pulled over had I known you
were just going to criticize me. BIFOCALS ARE Gods way of saying,
@BRIDGER_W (BRIDGER WINEGAR) Keep your chin up.
C o m e d i a n MATT WOHLFARTH
DEAR CHARLIE,
Weve been neighbors for six tumultu-
ous years. When you borrowed my HOW NOT TO ANSWER
snowblower, you returned it in pieces. TEST QUESTIONS
When I was sick, you blasted Metal-
lica. And when your dog decorated
my lawn, you laughed. I could go on,
but Im not one to hold grudges. So I
am writing this letter to tell you that
your house is on fire.
Cordially, Harry
S u b m i t t e d b y EDWARD PHILLIPS,
COURTESY SADA NDUS ELESS .COM

Boynton Beach, Florida

MY FRIENDS TELL ME that cooking

is easy, but its not easier than not
cooking. C o m e d i a n MARIA BAMFORD

IM DRIVING WITH THIS GUY, and

How do you answer Send us your gag,
he runs right through a Stop sign. So and we may publish it and give you $$$?
I say, Hey, that was a Stop sign. And Heres how: OK! See page 9 for details.

NOTE: Ads were removed from this edition. Please continue to page 86.
 When a neighbor pulls an unconscious
toddler from an icy creek, the boys
family fears the worst. But one doctor
wont give up hope.

Baby IN THE
Stream BY D E RE K B U R N ETT

86 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com PHOTOGRAPHS BY DUSTIN COHEN

 DRAMA IN REAL LIFE

Gardell Martin,
age two, beside the
creek that nearly
took his life
BABY IN THE STREAM

TS THE FIRST warm day of spring, and the March sun pours
over the ridge that borders Doyle and Rose Martins rural
property outside Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania. Yesterday it rained
all day, melting the better part of the long winters snow, and what
the rain left behind, the sun is taking care of today. Water seeps
and trickles down the surrounding slopes, swelling the normally
humble creeks until they nearly jump their banks. The stream that
runs through the Martins yard is usually ankle deep and lethargic,
but today it is so spring-riled that it courses angrily beneath the
footbridge at startling speed, up to a mans waist and frigid.
The Martin boys will not squan- stream. Rose dials 911, and the girls
der such a lovely afternoon. After the call their father. The property echoes
school bus drops them off, they barge with the familys frantic shouts for
outside to ride bikes, gathering sticks Gardell, as mother and children
to build a fire. They are what people in scramble along the banks of the
some circles call free-range kids; the brook, sickened by the speed of that
Martins have eight in all [their youngest icy gray water.
boy born just this April], and in keep-

R
ing with their own upbringings, Doyle ANDALL BE ACHEL IS wash-
and Rose expect their children to learn ing dishes at his kitchen sink
independence and responsibility, the when he looks idly out the
older ones looking after the younger. window and sees Grace and Gary
Today, Gary, 11, and Greg, seven, are Martin running alongside the stream
playing with little Gardell, who is not where it exits their property. Some-
yet two. Doyle, a trucker, is out on the things wrong. Grace is barefoot, no
road. Rose is working in the kitchen, jacket. Theyre yelling. He steps out-
where she can frequently check on the side. Whats wrong? he calls to Gary.
boys through the window. We cant find my little brother!
Suddenly Greg bursts through the Randalls heart sinks. He runs back
door, his face streaked with tears. inside, tells his wife, Melissa, whats
I cant find Gardell! he screams. He going on, and pulls on his shoes.
was just with me! Together they rush outside and down
Rose and her two eldest, Gloria and the road to where the stream passes
Grace, charge outside, hollering through pastureland some eighth of a
Gardells name. Just to make sure, mile downstream of the Martin place.
they check the two outbuildings, but Randall holds the strands of electric
everybody is thinking about that raging fence wire, ignoring the shocks, as

88 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
 READERS DIGEST

Melissa climbs through. When they the body. Thats all Randall sees before
reach the brook, Melissa goes down- the vehicle turns around and speeds
stream and Randall begins following toward town. As for Rose, she never
the brook back toward the Martins, gets so much as a glimpse of her son.
scanning the waters surface. After a Theyre taking him to Evangelical
moment, he sees a tiny pair of navy- Community Hospital in nearby Lew-
blue boots partially obscured by brush. isburg, she learns. Within minutes,
A step or two farther, and he sees the her sister and brother-in-law arrive
whole picture: the little boy, still clad at the house, and together they speed
in a hooded snowsuit, hang-
ing bizarrely on his side in
the middle of that rushing The CPR has gone on for more
stream, his face turned away
than an hour. If he survives, it will
from the current.
Randall plunges into the be a miracle, says a paramedic.
brook, gasping involuntarily
the water temperature is around 35 toward the hospital. As they rush
degreesloses his footing, and blun- into the emergency room 15 minutes
ders into a deep hole. Recovers him- later, Rose is told theyre transporting
self. Pulls the limp little body off what him by Life Flight to a trauma center.
turns out to be a grassy underwater Through the windows of the waiting
knoll. Staggers back to dry land, holler- area she can see the chopper on the
ing, I found him! even as he turns the heliport, its interior illuminated, med-
kid over to see if he can drain the water ical workers hunched over what must
from his mouth and lungs. An ambu- be Gardells body. Her brother-in-law
lance is coming up the road. Randall is an EMT, and he can tell that theyre
raises an arm, and it stops. still doing CPR in thereafter all this
A paramedic comes racing across the time!but he says nothing to Rose.
field, and Randall hands the little boy Mike Lesher, the paramedic who
off and stands watching as the rescuer first carried Gardell to the ambulance,
rushes back toward the ambulance, heads back to the station. The CPR has
performing CPR as he goes. When Ran- gone on for more than an hour; typi-
dall reaches the road, the ambulance cally rescuers give up after less than
staff have torn off Gardells clothes. half that time. If he survives, Lesher
One of the paramedics has placed remarks, it will be a miracle.
a mask onto the little boys face and A moment later, the aircraft lifts off.
is hand-pumping air into his lungs; Rose watches through the window,
the other is rhythmically compressing tears stinging her eyes; she has missed
the tiny chest to force blood through her little one again.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 89
BABY IN THE STREAM

D
R. FRANK MAFFEI is prepar- at 6.54. No heartbeat, no breathing,
ing for his evening rounds in and a low pH: The boy is dead.
the pediatric intensive care Dr. Maffei has been doing this work
unit at Geisinger Medical Centers for 25 years. Objectively, he knows that
Janet Weis Childrens Hospital in its all over. Yet he cant shake some
Danville, some 15 miles from Lew- strange, subjective notion that Gardell
isburg. He gets a call from the ER is still in there. Keep going, he says.
downstairs: toddler on his way via Now its after 8 p.m., and Gardell
Life Flight, full cardiac arrest. Worse: remains unresponsive. The doctors
CPR ongoing for more than an hour, move him to the operating room and
to no avail. Not promising. prepare to put him on a heart bypass
Still, Dr. Maffei and his colleagues machine. Theyve gotten his tempera-
leap into action. Upon Gardells ture up to 83 degrees, but the machine
arrival, they run a breathing tube will allow them to warm his blood
down the boys throat, and four externally and recirculate it, speed-
residents line up on his left side to ing the process. A surgeon stands
continue CPR : two minutes of chest scrubbed and ready to cut into the
compressions, move to the back of the little boys chest.
line. Its critical to get Gardell warmed Lets just do one more pulse
up, so even as the limp little body jig- check, Dr. Maffei says, laying his
gles and jolts under the force of the fingertips against Gardells femoral
chest compressions, other doctors artery. To his amazement, there is a
and nurses carefully insert an IV and pulse. His colleague Dr. Rich Lambert
two catheters to send warm fluids into checks the brachial arterythere is a
his body, which is at only 77 degrees. strong pulse there. Excited, they stand
A resident turns to Dr. Maffei. At in the OR, monitoring Gardells pulse
what point are we going to stop? for more than an hour, then transfer
Well stop if we warm him to 90 him to pediatric intensive care.
degrees and hes still unresponsive, Dr. Maffei steps out into the waiting
Dr. Maffei says. area to meet Rose. Gardells alive, he
What about a pH? says. However, we have to understand
The resident is referring to the acid- that hes alive after essentially being
ity of the blood, which spikes when dead for an hour and 41 minutes. He
a person stops breathing; a pH lower needs to manage her expectations:
than 6.8 is considered incompatible Gardells oxygen-starved brain will
with life. probably be forever damaged. Its any-
Dr. Maffei hears himself answer, ones guess as to whenor whether
6.5. Its an outrageous threshold. A he will wake up and what function
few minutes later, the pH comes back hell have when he does.

90 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
 READERS DIGEST

N
OW ITS THE wee hours of
the morning. Doyle Martin
has gotten in from the high-
ways, and he and Rose are sitting over
Gardells bed. Gardell, Doyle says
as he always does when he reaches
home, I came back from trucking to
play with you. Do you want to play?
And to the eternal astonishment of
all, the boy opens his eyes and turns
his head toward his fatherthe boy
who, eight hours ago, was dead.
Gardell stays in the hospital two
more days, under light sedation. Hes
kept at a cool 90 degrees to prevent his
brain tissue from swelling. He begins
opening his eyes more frequently, I never felt hopeless, says Dr. Maffei.
obviously aware of his surround- I thought, Weve got a shot to save him.
ings. The breathing tube is removed.
Hes weaned off the sedation. On flow and low oxygen, Dr. Maffei says.
the fourth day, a Sunday, he returns The severe cold stopped Gardells
home. Within a week, hes playing heart, but it also saved his brain, just
with his siblings. You would never as you might put an amputated finger
know anything happened, Rose says. on ice until you can reattach it. At a
higher temperature, Gardells brain

S
O HOW DID a little boy who, by cells would surely have died for lack of
every objective measure, was oxygen; as it was, they could waitat
dead for nearly two hours come least for an hour and 41 minutes. But
back to life unscathed? To the Martins no one involved in the rescue has ever
and many others, Gardells survival seen such an extreme case.
was simply a miracle. Rose points out Randall Beachel, the neighbor
that his pulse returned just as local who pulled Gardell from the stream,
church groups were meeting to pray sometimes looks over at the Martin
on his behalf. place and chuckles at the sight of
Physiologically, the key to Gardells the towheaded youngster kicking
survival was the fact that he nearly dirt around in the garden or chasing
drowned in ice water. Hypothermia his brothers. Its simple to him too.
imparts a degree of protection from Its truly a miracle, he says. Truly
the detrimental effects of low blood a miracle.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 91
 Thats Outrageous!
THE 7 FUNNY SINS

LUST: When their blond figure on

pet tortoise, Boris, top. Thanks to auto-
escaped through correct, the figure
a fence, the frantic adorning the cake
owners searched was a wee blind girl.
YouTube for tor- Source: telegraph.co.uk

toise pornography.
The mating noise is PRIDE: A thief on
loud and startling, the lam was arrested
reports the Week UK. Its also evi- soon after liking a copy of his
dently quite seductive, since Boris Wanted poster on a Crime Stoppers
lumbered home soon after hearing Facebook page.
the videos play. Source: theweek.co.uk Source: Great Falls Tribune (Montana)

GREED: A North Carolina college ENVY: Pro tipcovet only those

student was arrested for using coun- things you know how to use. After
terfeit money. What gave her away spotting the car of their dreams, two
was the signature on the bill. Its sup- Houston teens pointed a gun at the
posed to be the name of the secre- owner and made him hand over
tary of the Treasury. Instead, it was the keys. One problemthe car had
signed Moe Money. Source: myfox8.com a manual transmission, and neither
teen knew how to drive a stick, which
ANGER: A Miami Beach thief made it a lot easier for the cops to
snatched a necklace from a tourist catch them. Source: Associated Press

and took off. He was arrested when

he returned to berate the victim over GLUTTONY: A burglar broke into
his fake jewelry. Source: nbcmiami.com a house in Petaluma, California.
He might have gotten away with it
SLOTH: Dont be that lazy person except for the fact that he stopped
who never rereads her texts. When to heat up some Tater Tots. Thats
a British woman texted a baker to not all. When the homeowner
make a cake for her daughters returned, she found him snoozing
21st birthday, she requested a wee on the couch. Source: Associated Press

92 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com ILLUSTRATION BY NISHANT CHOKSI

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 The Moth
TRUE TALES FROM AMERICAS PREMIER STORYTELLING GROUP

Presenting three Grand Slam winners from across the nation.

This months theme: Funny.

WINTS!
KE
TC
I

For the chance to attend

a Moth event near you, go
to rd.com/moth-tickets.

A GAME GUY hed won the show the week before

BY MOR A N C E R F and wasnt allowed to go on again. So
TE L AVIV, IS R AEL
hed played this week using my name.
SA RAH STACKE/COURTESY THE MOTH

A
few years ago, I was involved Now Im going be on the radio
in a massive scheme to win competing with ten other people to
an Israeli quiz show similar to win the show. Not to worryhes
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, only planning to help me. With one phone,
I never wanted to be on the show. I listen to the radio show, and on an-
I was walking down the street when other phone, I have my friend telling
a friend called and said, Dude, youve me what to say. I am just echoing the
got to run home. Youre going to be on answers: Who won the 1998 World
the radio in 20 minutes. Explanations Cup? France. France. Whats the
later. As I walked, he explained that largest country in Africa? Algeria.

94 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
Algeria. And so on as we advance to HIPPIE HIPPIE
the final round, where I get the ques- SHAKE
tion Who has sold the most albums? BY NE S H AM A FR A N KLI N
I know the answer, so I shout it. SA N FR A N C I S CO, CA LIFO RN IA

I
As it turns out, Britney Spears is not m standing on a stage, almost
the one. stark naked. They start to laugh.
This is not a bad dream; this is
A SALTY JOKE real life. Its 1969, and I am about to
BY KAT HL E E N M I L L E R do the hippie dance of love in a San
NEW YO R K , NEW YOR K
Francisco nightclub so the tourists

I
n the fourth grade, I am accepted can have that wild experience in
into the advanced and gifted a safe place with drinks in hand.
program, and I am convinced life I had two toddlers at home and far
is going to be all Doogie Howser and from a showgirls body: short legs,
Harvard from now on. As the only wide hips, wide hair. And my partner,
girl, I spend most of my year trying the dance teacher who came up with
to win the approval of a dozen boys this gig, looked more like a grumpy
who think that an XX chromosome botanist than a hippie. But for four
always indicates a terminal diagnosis glorious weeks, I got paid for what
of stupid with cooties. I loved to do: improvising with an
Trying to be cool, I play a practical ironic twist, hence the laughs.
joke, slipping the leftovers from a salt Now, to look at me, you might not
rock crystal experiment into four milks think naked hippie dance of love.
at lunch. The boys really enjoy the These days, Im a librarian. When
disgusted looks on the faces of the you see an old lady with frizzy gray
drinkers as they recoil, and I am in. An hair, you have no idea what shes
hour later, I am in the principals office. been up to. I believe this is the mani-
He informs me that there are four festo. I believe we are like Russian
boys in the hospital having their stom- nesting dolls; everything weve done
achs pumped. They are near death. is still inside us. Twist off the top and
There could be manslaughter charges. there it is.
Little do I know, the boys have
momentary tummy aches and go Readers Digest has
back to class. The principal is trying partnered with the Moth
to teach me a lesson. on storytelling events in 19 cities, with
Then my mother arrives, meets the best stories appearing in a special
issue of RD next summer. To get tickets
with the principal, calls him out on to a show near you or subscribe to the
his total BS, and takes me out for ice Moths critically acclaimed podcast,
cream and to see the The Aristocats. visit themoth.org.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 95
 SPECIAL REPORT

OUTRAGEOUS
WHAT SOME
CHARITIES DO WITH
YOUR DONATIONS
AND HOW TO ENSURE
YOUR GIVING COUNTS

UNCHARITABLE!
BY D E RE K BURNETT

AMERICANS ARE A GIVING PEOPLE. Last year, we donated

more than $358 billion to charity. The overwhelming
majority of American charities are responsible, efficient, and
passionate about their missions. But sometimes, our dona-
tions are wasted through poor management or, worse, fraud.
When that happens, everybody loses: The needy are
deprived of funds that otherwise would have helped them,
the government misses out on money that should have been
taxed, legitimate charities are bypassed, and donors become
hesitant to give.
Most of the charities mentioned in this article have not
preyed on the kindness of the charitable. But to a one, their
actions have raised real questions about how some organi-
zations operate. Here are four practices that need changing.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRIAN STAUFFER rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 97

U N C H A R I TA B L E !

MONEY MUGGED: cancer meds; in fact, some were inap-

CANCER FUND OF propriate for cancer patients, accord-
AMERICA ing to the complaint.
What happened to the other 97 per-
Until recently, you might have re- cent of the donations? According to
ceived a telemarketing call on behalf the FTC, much of the money was spent
of the Knoxville, Tennesseebased on the charitys staffprincipally the
Cancer Fund of America (or one of founder, James T. Reynolds Sr., and his
its three affiliates: Cancer Support Ser- extended family and friends. A trip to
vices, the Breast Cancer Society, and Disney World (with a paid babysitter
Childrens Cancer Fund of America), in tow). A trip to Vegas. College tuition
boasting of the organizations work for several employees. Ten cars. Dues
in the forefront of the fight against for a dating website. A luxury cruise.
cancer. The charity provided direct Apart from the perks, more than twice
aid, the pitch continued, to people the amount that was spent on children
anywhere in the United States suf- with cancer went to pay the salaries
fering from over 240 types of cancer. of Reynoldss children, in-laws, fellow
Its charter includes driving cancer vic- churchgoers, and friends, who were
tims to chemo appointments, paying hired without regard to their qualifi-
for their groceries, and providing pain cations, says the FTC. Reynoldss son,
medication to suffering children. for example, received nearly $371,000
So you wouldnt know, then, had in 2010 as CEO of the spin-off group
you donated money to the group, that Breast Cancer Services.
only 3 percent of your gift would have According to the FTCs complaint,
gone to direct aid, according to the the groups operated as personal fief-
Federal Trade Commission. And, ac- doms characterized by rampant nepo-
cording to a fraud case filed by the tism, flagrant conflicts of interest, and
FTC and law enforcement partners excessive insider compensation, with
from all 50 states, none of that direct none of the financial and governance
aid consisted of driving people to controls that any bona fide charity
chemo or doling out pain meds. would have adopted. The fraud alle-
Instead, Cancer Fund of America gations pertain to the activities of the
distributed gift boxes filled with defendants from 2008 to 2012a four-
Little Debbies snack cakes, hotel-size year run in which they raised $187 mil-
shampoo samples, and batteries. The lion from unsuspecting donors. How
only drugs the charities distributed did they get away with it for so long?
were those they received as gifts in Tracy Thorleifson, the FTC s lead
kind, which were shipped to devel- attorney on the case, points out that
oping countries and were often not the federal governments hands are

98 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com
 READERS DIGEST

organizations would be
shuttered and their exec-
utives would pay restitu-
tion. (Reynolds declined
to comment on the case,
and litigation pertaining
to Cancer Fund of Amer-
ica itself, and Reynolds
personally, continues.)
But that might not be the
last we hear of the Reyn-
olds clan. They could set
up shop again tomorrow,
says Sandra Miniutti, CFO
of the watchdog organi-
zation Charity Navigator.
Its pretty scary.
In 2011, Reynoldss es-
tranged wifes daughter-
in-law, Jula Connatser,
who once worked for
Cancer Fund of America,
founded her own non-
profit, called the Ameri-
tied when it comes to charities fraud. can Association for Cancer Support. It
There is no federal law that prohibits was not named in the FTCs suit but is
a charity from lying to consumers to reportedly under investigation by the
get money, she says. Cracking down state of Tennessee. As of now, it has
on fraud is generally left up to the not been accused of wrongdoing and
states and their patchwork of laws. is operating freely in Knoxville.
Because it lacks jurisdiction over
charities, the FTC sought to prove that
Cancer Fund of America and its affili-
MONEY ON MUTE: THE
ates were not charities at all but rather
AMERICAN RED CROSS
corporations whose real purpose was Even the best nonprofits can fail the
to enrich their leaders. In June, with- public by not being up-front about
out admitting wrongdoing, two of how theyve spent donors money.
Cancer Fund of Americas affiliates When a 7.0-magnitude earthquake
agreed to a settlement in which the struck Haiti in 2010, killing some

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 99
U N C H A R I TA B L E !

100,000 people and leaving more than

a million homeless, Americans were
GIVING WISELY
quick to open their wallets, many
reaching for their favorite charity,
1. Be proactive. Identify the
the American Red Cross, in the same
causes you care most about,
way theyd reach for Coca-Cola when then do research to find the best
they wanted a soda. After the acute charities carrying out that type
phase of the disaster, other groups of work. This keeps you on the
whose coffers were full began turn- offensive rather than in a defen-
ing away money, but the Red Cross sive point of sale posture in the
continued fund-raising aggressively, face of heart-tugging pitches.
ultimately pulling in $488 million 2. Give a few large gifts instead
worth of donations, more than any of many small ones. Dont be
other organization. A year after the guilt-tripped into giving to every
disaster, as part of its Haiti relief, the worthy cause. Developing your
charity announced that it expected to own portfolio of charities
spend $100 million on construction gives you more sway within the
organizations and makes you
of permanent homes and community
more inclined to give carefully.
development projects.
Four years later, NPR and Pro- 3. Never give over the phone
Publica made this stunning accusa- in cold-call situations. Instead,
tion: Despite having spent nearly if youre interested, keep your
donations out of the hands
half a billion dollars, the American
of telemarketers by donating
Red Cross had built a grand total via the groups website or
of six new homes in Haiti. The Red mailing a check.
Cross has since explained that those
4. Perform due diligence. Look
six homes were a modest pilot project
into the groups finances, and
and that when faced with the on-the-
once you give, follow up to find
ground realitiesa cholera outbreak, out how the money was spent.
the nations confounding land-title
system, corruption, security issues 5. Take advantage of these
watchdog groups. Before mak-
the group had changed its plans. But
ing a donation, check out the
by now, donors and the public were charity at these websites: Charity
demanding details about exactly Navigator (charitynavigator.org),
what had gone on in Haitiand the Charity Watch (charitywatch.org),
American Red Cross was not satisfy- and the National Association
ing the clamor. of State Charity Officials
Instead of opening its books, the (nasconet.org).
charity has disclosed its spending only

100 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com

 READERS DIGEST

in broad categories, without getting would harm anyone. Still unknown

down to the specifics (a spokesper- is how much money the Red Cross
son told Readers Digest that it hasnt transferred to other organizations,
provided a more granular breakdown how much was budgeted to each proj-
because of lack of public appetite for ect, and the number of people those
such detail). projects assisted.
Much of the groups spending on One of the things with charities
shelter in Haiti was on projects carried that you hope for is transparency,
out by distributing funds to nearly 50 says Eileen Heisman, CEO of the
partner aid groups (including Habitat National Philanthropic Trust. I think
for Humanity and Save the Children), the Red Cross is basically a good orga-
each of which took a cut for adminis- nization, but in this particular situa-
trative costs. As ProPublica and NPR re- tion, it very much looks like they need
ported, in one case, the American Red to answer more questions.
Cross forwarded $6 million to the In-
ternational Federation of the Red Cross
(IFRC) to subsidize rent for people who
MONEY MORASS:
had been living in tents. IFRC took out
COMMUNITY CHARITY
26 percent for administration, and on ADVANCEMENT
top of that, the American Red Cross Operating costs are an expensive fact
took its standard 9 percent for pro- of life for charities. But some try to
gram management. In another case, hide the real price.
the American Red Cross took a full Community Charity Advancement,
24 percent for costs incurred while a Pompano Beach, Floridabased
managing another groups efforts. charity, says its mission is to provide
So was all this money well spent? health-care services, products, and
Misspent? Who knows? Under tough related assistance to those in need in
questioning from Sen. Charles Grass- the U.S. and Central and South Amer-
ley, the organization has reportedly ica and to provide support to breast
offered some specifics about its Haiti cancer research; also assisting victims
programs but requested that its tes- who have lost their homes to fire. (It
timony not be made public, citing does business under several names
contractual obligations with its part- to accommodate such versatility.) Its
ner organizations. Grassley has com- 2013 tax filing shows that a staggering
plied with the request but noted, Its 91 percent of its spending went to
hard to see how disclosing the dollar overheadadministrative and fund-
amounts given from the Red Cross to raising costsand that a meager
the individual organizations and how 9 percent went to its actual programs,
those organizations spent the money according to Charity Watch.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 101

U N C H A R I TA B L E !

But at least Community Charity judge groups by how much work they
Advancement is open about how get done: Did they feed 10,000 home-
inefficient it is. Other groups are more less people last year? Did they counsel
subtle. Accounting rules allow them to 500 pregnant teens?
bundle certain fund-raising expenses But even the overhead myth bust-
in with program costsif the fund- ers concede there are reasonable limits
raising efforts can be somehow con- to how much it should cost to operate a
strued as supporting their missions. charity. For organizations that deliver
It can get kind of funny, says Daniel services, whether those services are
Borochoff, president of Charity Watch. provided by a for-profit or a nonprofit,
A charity might say the fund-raising the norm for overhead is 25 to 35 per-
that interrupted your dinner is a pro- cent, says Tim Delaney, president of
gram service because they ask you to the National Council of Nonprofits.
pray for people who are suffering in
the Sudan, or ask you to fly a flag and
show youre patriotic. Then they can
MONEY TO THE
magically turn the cost of that solicita-
MIDDLEMAN: OPTIMAL
tion call into a program service. MEDICAL FOUNDATION
Such techniques can have a major When a nonprofit fund-raising caller
impact on how effectual charities ap- interrupts your dinner, even though
pear to be. The Police Protective Fund he or she may speak of our mis-
claims to spend 48 percent of its ex- sion and our work, theres a strong
penses on its mission (to promote of- chance that that person has never
ficer safety through education). But even met anyone from the char-
according to Charity Watch, when ity he or she is asking you to give to.
you move the joint fund-raising and In fact, the person youre talking to
program costs into the overhead cat- most likely works for a decidedly for-
egory, you see that only 7 percent goes profit enterprise: a third-party fund-
to that cost. The rest is operating cost. raising firm that skims a hefty cut off
Overhead alone is not a sufficient every dollar raised for the charity that
basis on which to evaluate a charity. hired it. Thousands of charities use
A number of oversight groups point third-party solicitors, and their com-
out that for a charity to be effective, missions can be so exorbitantfrom
it must invest in its people and its 65 to 95 cents of every dollar raised
infrastructureafter all, nonprofits that they leave very little for the non-
compete for executive talent against profits to apply to their actual work.
the private sector, and no one believes Take the Association for Firefighters
that a choice to work for a nonprofit and Paramedics, which paid a fund-
should be a vow of poverty. Instead, raising firm nearly 90 cents for every

102 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com

 READERS DIGEST

dollar it raised in 2012. Or Optimal you donate directly instead of having

Medical Foundation, which also does the telemarketer siphon off the bulk
business as the Association for Breast of it. That cost, concedes Michael
Cancer Research and the Childhood Gamboa, president of the Association
Disease Research Foundation. Ac- for Firefighters and Paramedics, is a
cording to an investigation by the difficult thing to deal with.
Tampa Bay Times and the Center for States can require telemarketers
Investigative Reporting, the Michigan- to disclose that they work for a third
based group raised $7.8 million from partybut not all states do. And some
2003 to 2012 through solicitorsand telemarketers will lie. Unfortunately,
paid the third-party solicitors who the only way to know how big a cut
raised it $7.6 million over the same the third party gets is to dig up the
period. As a result, only 3 percent of nonprofits recordssomething few
funds went toward the organizations of us are going to do. But that point
stated mission of supporting research is largely academic anyway. More of
into cancer and childhood diseases. the money is going to the telemarket-
Even the National Rifle Association ing firm than to the charity itself, says
of America paid a fund-raising firm Charity Navigators Miniutti. What
called InfoCision $59 for every $100 it more do you need to know?
raised on its behalf in 2013, according
to New York States attorney general. GIVING TO CHARITY should not be
Third-party fund-raising is perfectly fraught with such pitfalls. Still, it would
legal, and many legitimate charities be irresponsible to stop donating just
use it simply because its cheaper than because some groups are corrupt
having full-time fund-raisers on staff. or inept. As Delaney of the National
Still, most of us would be reluctant to Council of Nonprofits says, legitimate
give if we knew that the lions share charities are the first responders for
of our donation was being diverted to our nations most challenging and
a for-profit business. For that matter, critical social ills.
the charity itself would rather have So give but carefully.

THE AGE-OLD PROBLEM

When I turned two, I was really anxious because

Id doubled my age in a year.
I thought, If this keeps up, by the time Im six, Ill be 90.
STEVEN WRIGHT

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 103

 Laugh Lines
WHAT A MOUTHFUL!

Clif Bars answer

the question
What if it wasnt
frowned upon If you think
to eat an entire eggplant is good,
sleeve of you should try
mushed-up any other food;
oatmeal cookies its much better.
before noon? @JAKEANDAMIR
@JULIEKLAUSNER (AMIR BLUMENFELD)

Triscuit is the perfect The closest Ive

combination of been to a diet this
cracker and doormat. year is erasing food
@1CARPARADE
searches from my
(JASON GELLES)
browser history.
@PAULYPELIGROSO

I hate when I try to order

a salad and my mouth says,
GETTY I MAGES

Ill have a Double Quarter Sick of having to go to two

Pounder with Cheese. different huts to buy pizza
JIM GAFFIGAN and sunglasses. @LEEMANISH

104 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com

Should you be included
in the Camp Lejeune
Historic Drinking Water
UV[PJH[PVUKH[HIHZL&
If you lived or worked at U.S.
Marine Corps Base Camp
Lejeune, North Carolina, in 1987
or before, the U.S. Marine Corps
wants to hear from you.

;OL4HYPUL*VYWZPZJVTTP[[LK[VUKPUNHUK
LUJV\YHNPUNHSSZLY]PJLTLTILYZ[OLPYMHTPSPLZ
HUKJP]PSPHULTWSV`LLZ^OVSP]LKVY^VYRLKH[
*HTW3LQL\ULPU VYILMVYL[VILPUJS\KLK
PU[OL*HTW3LQL\UL/PZ[VYPJ+YPURPUN>H[LYUV[PJH[PVUKH[HIHZL
(-LKLYHSW\ISPJOLHS[OHNLUJ`[OL(NLUJ`MVY;V_PJ:\IZ[HUJLZHUK+PZLHZL
9LNPZ[Y`(;:+9PZZ[\K`PUN^OL[OLYWHZ[L_WVZ\YL[VJOLTPJHSZPU[OLKYPURPUN
^H[LYH[*HTW3LQL\ULTH`OH]LJH\ZLKHK]LYZLOLHS[OL
LJ[Z)LZ[LZ[PTH[LZ
MYVT(;:+9Z^H[LYTVKLSPUNL
VY[ZPUKPJH[L[OH[ZVTLVM[OLIHZLZ^H[LY
^HZH
LJ[LKI`JOLTPJHSZHZLHYS`HZ \U[PSHZSH[LHZ 9LNPZ[LYLK
PUKP]PK\HSZ^PSSILUV[PLKVMYLZ\S[ZMYVT[OLSH[LZ[PUKLWLUKLU[ZJPLU[PJZ[\KPLZ
HZ[OL`HYLUHSPaLK
0UMVYTH[PVUYLNHYKPUNZ[\K`YLZ\S[ZHUKOLHS[OJHYLSLNPZSH[PVUJHUILMV\UKI`]PZP[PUN
[OL*HTW3LQL\UL/PZ[VYPJ+YPURPUN>H[LY^LIZP[Lwww.marines.mil/clwater
(SYLHK`YLNPZ[LYLK&=PZP[[OL*HTW3LQL\UL/PZ[VYPJ+YPURPUN>H[LY^LIZP[L
for additional information or to update your contact information.

To register, or if you have

any additional questions or
concerns, please visit
www.marines.mil/clwater
or call toll free at 877-261-9782
Monday-Friday from 8:30 a.m.
5:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
I
GREW UP IN A TROUBLED HOME in the 1970s, on the
outskirts of downtown Orlando, Florida. Our subdivision
was one of many that backed up to a dwindling orange
grove. One remnant farm, an island of pastureland with
horses, a few cattle, and an enormous garden, remained
among the sea of tract houses. The home was an early-
1900s Arts and Crafts three-story with a great porch,
complete with a swing. I loved that storybook house.

106 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com ILLUSTRATION BY TATSURO KIUCHI

 THE STRANGER WHO
CHANGED MY LIFE

The mom next door

invited me over, and
a new world beckoned

THE CURIOUS
WORLD OF

Mrs.
Reese
BY H E ATH ER SELLER S

It was nothing like the one I lived land next door? I wondered. Some-
in with my mother, a dark place with times I glimpsed the father on
strict rules about befriending others. a horse with a lasso. Sometimes
As in: Dont. Never, ever talk to any- I saw the two boysdark curly hair
one, my mother said. She suffered running around the land, chased by
from profound depression and para- two border collies. I never saw the
noid delusions. Just getting through mother, but the whole operation
the day was a war for my mother. looked like heaven, and I yearned to
Who lives on that utopian plot of join that family.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 107

THE CURIOUS WORLD OF MRS. REESE

One day, in sixth grade, a petite, S, s, s. What is another word for

raven-haired woman wearing ruby-red yes?
lipstick, gold eye shadow, and thick But my mother had been defini-
mascara was introduced to our class: tive. Never. We could not mix with
Mrs. Reese. Mrs. Reese explained that the neighbors.
she was starting Spanish Club. She I harangued my mother all sum-
invited anyone interested in learning mer and into fall, well after Span-
Spanish language and culture to stay ish Club had dissolved. I have been
after school. invited to that house.
I could not take my You have to let me go.
eyes off her tortoiseshell I spoke as though my life
bracelets, her sparkling YOU SMELL depended on it. It did. I
aquamarine rings. wept at night sometimes,
DIFFERENT,
The bell rang, and to so worried that Mrs.
my shock, no one went
SHE SAID, Reese and her cowboy
up to Mrs. Reese. I was
EYEING ME husband and those two
under a strict order to go SUSPICIOUSLY. beautiful boys with the
straight home. But that I AM black curly hair would
day, I lingered. I finally DIFFERENT. IM move away before I could
asked Mrs. Reese when COMPLETELY get my cooking lesson.
the club started. DIFFERENT. Before I could get inside.
We could begin right At some point, I man-
now if you like, she said. aged to wear my mother
She smiled with her eyes, as though down, and one Saturday afternoon, I
we were in on a secret. I felt beautiful. got on my bike and rode out to the
I felt fluent in Spanish, fluent in every- little farm. Fuchsia bougainvillea ran
thing. We met right there in the hall- rampant around the porch. There
way, and that day she taught me this was a great bronze hand, a door
question: Dnde est su casa? Thats knocker. Mrs. Reese opened the door
when I learned that Mrs. Reese lived grandly and ushered me in.
in the mansion with the kids and the We had tea on her red velvet sofa.
collies. The house of my dreams was She painted my toenails crimson.
her house. That day, I learned how to She showed me how to water the
answer questions about my age, my African violets that lived in clusters in
favorite food (helado!), and the names nearly every room. The details of that
of every perro I had known. And afternoon are etched in my mind:
I learned, Do you want to come over We made guacamole and then a gar-
tomorrow after school for cooking licky picadillo. I carefully wrote out
lessons? the recipes on white paper, making

108 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com

 READERS DIGEST

notes as she explained the steps. You different. I am completely different.

cant have too much garlic. We spoke She said no. You know I cant have
in Spanish. In Spanish, my voice was garlic in the house. She hated the
loud, romantic, assertive. This is the smell. I felt hurt, proud, disloyal, and
real me! I remember thinking. brilliant, all at once, when I told my
Mr. Reese pulled onto the property mother, Mrs. Reese doubles the gar-
in a gigantic blue Ford truck and went lic. My toenails, secret jewels, sparkled
straight to the barn. Ty, who was in my in my sneakers.
class at school, came in from playing I knew Id always have garlic in my
outside. Mrs. Reese put one hand on house. I knew Id paint my nails the
top of his headthose gorgeous black deepest, bloodiest red, first chance
curls, those wild blue eyes. She put I got. I knew Id learn to dance, be-
her other hand, all those sparkling come fluent in Spanish.
ringson my back. She pressed us For Christmas, Ty gave me a sil-
toward each other. Mi novia, mi novio. ver necklace from their family trip to
It was alarming. And thrilling. Colombia, slipping it to me at school.
Ty ran up to the atticthree flights. My mother never permitted me
Mrs. Reese encouraged me to fol- another visit to Mrs. Reeses house,
low. She nodded, serious, vibrant, as and I saw her only occasionally from
though saying, Step into your life. But a distance, hanging laundry on the
it wasnt quite right. I did not want to line or sweeping their cavernous front
kiss a boy; I wanted to bake dulces. porch. But four decades and countless
When I got home, I announced moves later, I still have the necklace:
to my mother that we had to get the a little silver man, carved with strange
ingredients for picadillo imme- symbols, a talisman from the life
diately. You smell different, she she showed me, proof of a possible
said, eyeing me suspiciously. I am future.

BEING GROAN-UPS

So much of being an adult is bringing a bottle of wine someone

brought to your house to someone elses house.
@EAXFORD (EMILY AXFORD)

Hey, empty-nest parents: If you want your kid to call you,

just change your Netix password.
@CRAYDRIENNE (ADRIENNE AIRHART)

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 109

ISTOCK
 PHOTO
OF LASTING
INTEREST

Photograph by Zsros Istvn

Chosen by Omid Safi,
director of the Duke Islamic Studies
Center and onbeing.org columnist
Among images of Syrian refugees in
a makeshift camp inside a Budapest
train station, it was the black-and-
white photo that grabbed my heart.
A moment of affection, tenderness, and
love, in the midst of months of chaos.
In their love, their tenderness, and
their hope, there is hope for all of us.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 111

SCIENCE

What if our recollections could live on

long after we were gone? Scientists are racing
to make that eternity a reality.

FOREVER
Memory
BY S I M ON PARK IN FR O M BBC .CO M FU T URE

A FEW MONTHS BEFORE SHE DIED, my grandmother made a de-

cision. Bobby, as her friends called her, was a farmers wife who not
only survived World War II but also found in it justification for her
natural hoarding talent. So she kept old envelopes and bits of card-
board cereal boxes for note taking and lists. She kept frayed blan-
kets and musty blouses in case she needed material to mend. She
was also a meticulous chronicler. She kept albums of photographs
of her family members. She kept the love letters my late grandfather
sent her while he traveled the world with the Merchant Navy.
Yet in the months leading up to her death, the emphasis shifted
from hoarding to sharing. Every time I visited, my car would fill with
stuff: unopened cartons of orange juice, balls of fraying wool, damp
antique books. The memories, too, began to move out. She sent
faded photos to her family and friends, as well as letters detailing
some of her experiences.

112 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com PHOTOGRAPH BY DAN WINTERS

FOREVER MEMORY

On the afternoon of April 9, she collect and curate our memories more
posted a letter to one of her late hus- thoroughly than ever before.
bands friends. In the envelope, she We save what we believe to be im-
enclosed snapshots of my grandfather portant, but what if some essential
and his friend playing as children. context to our words or photographs
You must have them, she wrote. It is lost? How much better it would be to
was a demand but also a plea, per- save everything: everything we know
haps, that these things not be for- and all that we remember, the love af-
gotten when, a few hours later, she fairs and heartbreaks, the moments of
slipped away in her favorite armchair. victory and of shame, the lies we told
and the truths we learned. If you could
SAVING YOUR MIND save your mind like a computers hard

T
he hope that we will be re- drive, would you? Its a question some
membered after we are gone is hope to pose to us soon. Engineers are
both elemental and universal. now working on technology that will
Poet Carl Sandburg captured this feel- be able to create wholesale copies of
ing in his 1916 poem Troths: our minds and memories that live on
Yellow dust on a bumblebees wing, after we are burned or buried. If they
Grey lights in a womans asking eyes, succeed, it promises to have profound,
Red ruins in the changing sunset and perhaps unsettling, consequences
embers: for the way we live, whom we love, and
I take you and pile high the memories. how we die.
Death will break her claws on some San Franciscan Aaron Sunshines
I keep. grandmother also passed away re-
Since the first paintings were cently. One thing that struck me is
scratched on cave walls, humans have how little of her is left, the 30-year-old
sought to confound the final vanish- tells me. Its just a few possessions. I
ing of memory. Oral history, diary, have an old shirt of hers that I wear
memoir, photography, film, and po- around the house. Theres her prop-
etry: Theyre all tools in our arsenal erty, but thats just faceless money.
in the war against times whitewash. It has no more personality than any
Today, we bank our memories onto other dollar bill.
Internet servers. Theres the Facebook Her death inspired Sunshine to sign
time line that records our life events, up with Eternime, a Web service that
the Instagram account on which we strives to preserve a persons memo-
store our likeness, the Gmail inbox ries after death. It works like this:
that documents our conversations, While youre alive, you grant the ser-
and the YouTube channel that broad- vice access to your Facebook, Twit-
casts how we move, talk, or sing. We ter, and e-mail accounts, uploaded

114 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com

 READERS DIGEST

photos, geo-location history, and even knows, the act of recording ones life
Google Glass recordings of things that is a selective process. Details can be
you have seen. The data are collected tweaked, emphases can be altered,
and analyzed before being transferred and relationships can be erased.
to an artificial-intelligence avatar What if, rather than picking and
that tries to emulate your looks and choosing what we want to capture
personality. The avatar in digital form, it were
learns more as you inter- possible to record the
act with it, with the aim As anyone who contents of a mind in
of better reflecting you has a Facebook their entirety? The ef-
after youre gone.
Its about creating an
profile knows, fort would require three
breakthroughs. Scien-
interactive legacy, says recording ones tists must first discover
Marius Ursache, one of life is a selective how to preserve, non-
Eternimes cocreators. process. destructively, someones
Your great-grandchil- brain upon death. Then
dren will use it instead of the content of the pre-
a search engine or time line to access served brain must be analyzed and
information about youfrom photos captured. Finally, that capture must
of family events to your thoughts on be re-created on a simulated human
certain topics to songs you wrote but brain on which a backup of a humans
never published. memories could run.
Sunshine says a service like Eter-
nime could change our relationship ARE WE OUR MEMORIES?

R
with death, creating truer memories esearch in this area is ongoing.
in the place of the vague stories we The BRAIN Initiative is work-
have today. The technology is in its ing to record brain activity
infancy now. But even after it exists, from millions of neurons, while the
the company could go under some- Human Brain Project in Europe tries
day, and the people it homes would to build integrated models from this
die a second death. activity.
As my own grandmother grew older, Anders Sandberg, a researcher from
some of her memories retained their the Future of Humanity Institute at
vivid quality; others became confused, Oxford University, wrote a paper in
the specifics shifting in each retelling. 2008 titled Whole Brain Emulation: A
Eternime and other services counter Roadmap, in which he describes simi-
the fallibility of memory; they offer a lar projects as stepping-stones toward
way to fix the details of a life. But as emulating the human brain. Progress
anyone who has a Facebook profile has been slow but steady, he says.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 115

FOREVER MEMORY

Creating a digital record of a hu- endure in some diluted or altered form.

mans memories is a different sort of So, too, perhaps, do our metaphysical
challenge. Memories are not neatly attributes (What will survive of us is
stored like files on a computer to cre- love, as Philip Larkin put it in his 1956
ate a searchable index, Sandberg poem An Arundel Tomb).
says. Memory consists of networks I ask Sunshine why he wants his
of associations that are activated life to be recorded. To be honest, Im
when we remember. A brain emula- not sure, he says. The truly beautiful
tion would require a copy of them all. things in my life are too ephemeral to
Beyond all the discussions about be preserved in any meaningful way. A
how we could save our minds, is that part of me wants to build monuments
something any of us truly wants? Hu- to myself. But another part of me wants
mans long to preserve their memories to disappear completely. That might
because they remind us of who we be true of us all: We desire to be re-
are. If our memories are lost, we cease membered, but only the parts of us
to know who we were and what it all that we want to be remembered.
meant. But at the same time, we tweak Despite my grandmothers care-
and alter our memories to create the ful distribution, many photographs
narrative of our lives. To record them remained in her house. These un-
with equal weight might not be useful, known faces meant a great deal to
either to us or to those who follow us. her in life, but in a curious way, they
Could the true worth of the en- have become a burden to those of us
deavor rest in the reassuring knowl- left behind.
edge for a person that he or she wont My father asked my grandmothers
be lost without trace? Through our de- vicar what he should do with the pic-
scendants, we reach for a way to live tures; to just throw them away seemed
on beyond our passing. All parents disrespectful. His advice was simple.
take part in a grand relay race through Take each photograph. Look at it care-
time, passing the gene baton on and fully. In that moment, you honor the
on through the centuries. Our physical person in it. Then you may discard it
traitsthose eyes, this temperament and be free.
BBC.COM FUTURE (JANUARY 23, 2015), COPYRIGHT 2015 BY BBC WORLDWIDE AMERICAS, INC., BBC.COM/FUTURE.

WRITE AND WRONG

Im a writer. I write checks. Mostly fiction.

WENDY LIEBMAN

116 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com

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York Times bestselling author
NATIONAL INTEREST
The

Big
One
Its past due. Are we ready?
BY KAT H RY N S C H ULZ FR O M T H E N E W YORKER

WHEN THE 2011 EARTHQUAKE and tsunami struck

Tohoku, Japan, Chris Goldfinger was 200 miles away,
in the city of Kashiwa, at an international meeting on
seismology. As the shaking started, everyone in the room
began to laugh. Earthquakes are common in Japanthat
one was the third of the weekand the participants were,
after all, at a seismology conference. Then everyone in the
room checked the time.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADAM VOORHES rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 119

THE BIG ONE

S
E I S M O L O G I S T S know a seismic-safety technology in which
that how long an earth- the body of a structure rests on mov-
quake lasts is a decent able bearings rather than directly on
proxy for its magni- its foundation. Goldfinger lurched
tude. The 1989 earth- over to take a look. The base was
quake in Loma Prieta, lurching, too, back and forth a foot
California, which killed at a time, digging a trench in the
63 people and caused six billion dol- yard. His watch swept past the three-
lars worth of damage, lasted about minute mark and kept going.
15 seconds and had a magnitude of 6.9. For decades, seismologists had
A 30-second earthquake generally believed that Japan could not expe-
has a magnitude in the mid-sevens. rience an earthquake stronger than
A minute-long quake is in the high magnitude 8.4. In 2005, however, at
sevens, a two-minute quake has a conference in Hokudan, a Japanese
entered the eights, and a three- geologist named Yasutaka Ikeda had
minute quake is in the high eights. By argued that the nation should expect
four minutes, an earthquake has hit a magnitude 9.0 in the near future
magnitude 9.0. with catastrophic consequences be-
The earthquake was not particularly cause Japans famous earthquake and
strong. Then it ticked past the 60- tsunami preparedness was based on
second mark, making it longer than the incorrect science. Now, Goldfinger
others that week. The shaking intensi- realized as the shaking hit the four-
fied. At a minute and a half, everyone minute mark, the planet was proving
in the room got up and went outside. the Japanese Cassandra right.
It was March. There was a chill in For a moment, that was pretty
the air and snow flurries but no snow cool: a real-time revolution in earth-
on the ground. Nor, from the feel of quake science. Almost immediately,
it, was there ground on the ground. though, it became extremely uncool
The earth snapped and popped and because Goldfinger and every other
rippled. It was, Goldfinger thought, seismologist in Kashiwa knew what
like driving through rocky terrain in was coming. One of them pulled out
P ROP STYLI ST: ROBI N FIN LAY

a vehicle with no shocks, if both the a cell phone and started streaming
vehicle and the terrain were also on videos from the Japanese broadcasting
a raft in high seas. The quake passed station NHK, shot by helicopters that
the two-minute mark. The flagpole had flown out to sea soon after the
atop the building that he and his col- shaking started. Thirty minutes after
leagues had just vacated was whip- Goldfinger first stepped outside, he
ping through an arc of 40 degrees. watched the tsunami roll in, in real
The building itself was base-isolated, time, on a two-inch screen.

120 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com

 When the next full-margin rupture
happens, the Pacific Northwest
will suffer the worst disaster in the
history of North America.
In the end, the magnitude-9.0 Just north of the San Andreas, how-
Tohoku earthquake and subsequent ever, lies another fault line. Known
tsunami killed more than 18,000 peo- as the Cascadia subduction zone, it
ple, devastated northeast Japan, trig- runs for 700 miles off the coast of the
gered the meltdown at the Fukushima Pacific Northwest, beginning near
power plant, and cost an estimated Cape Mendocino, California, continu-
$220 billion. The shaking earlier in ing along Oregon and Washington,
the week turned out to be the fore- and terminating around Vancouver
shocks of the largest earthquake in Island, Canada. The Cascadia part
the nations recorded history. But for of its name comes from the Cascade
Chris Goldfinger, a paleoseismologist Range, a chain of volcanic mountains
at Oregon State University and one of that follows the same course a hun-
the worlds leading experts on a little- dred or so miles inland. The subduc-
known fault line, the main quake was tion zone part refers to a region of
itself a kind of foreshock: a preview of the planet where one tectonic plate
another earthquake still to come. is sliding underneath (subducting)
another. Tectonic plates are those
The Coming Quake slabs of mantle and crust that, in

M
OST PEOPLE in the United their epochs-long drift, rearrange the
States know just one fault line earths continents and oceans.
by name: the San Andreas, Take your hands and hold them
which runs nearly the length of Cali- palms down, middle fingertips
fornia and is perpetually rumored to touching. Your right hand repre-
be on the verge of unleashing the sents the North American tectonic
big one. That rumor is misleading, plate, which bears on its back our
no matter what the San Andreas ever entire continent. Your left hand rep-
does. Every fault line has an upper resents an oceanic plate called Juan
limit to its potency, determined by its de Fuca, 90,000 square miles in size.
length and width and by how far it can The place where they meet is the
slip. For the San Andreas, that upper Cascadia subduction zone. Now slide
limit is roughly an 8.2a powerful your left hand under your right one.
earthquake but, because the Richter That is what the Juan de Fuca plate is
scale is logarithmic, only 6 percent as doing: slipping steadily beneath North
strong as the 2011 event in Japan. America. When you try it, your right

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 121

 After a 9.2 quake and tsunami,
our operating assumption is that
everything west of Interstate 5 will
be toast, says a FEMA official.
hand will slide up your left arm, as if the Cascades, will drop by as much as
you were pushing up your sleeve. That six feet and rebound 30 to 100 feet to
is what North America is not doing. the west. Some of that shift will take
It is stuck, wedged tight against the place beneath the ocean, displacing
surface of the other plate. a colossal quantity of seawater. The
Curl your right knuckles up so that water will surge upward into a huge
they point toward the ceiling. Under hill, then promptly collapse. One side
pressure from Juan de Fuca, the stuck will rush west, toward Japan. The
edge of North America is bulging other side will rush east, in a 700-mile
upward and compressing eastward, at liquid wall that will reach the North-
the rate of, respectively, three to four west coast, on average, 15 minutes
millimeters and 30 to 40 millimeters after the earthquake begins. By the
a year. It can do so for quite some time. time the shaking has ceased and the
But it cannot do so indefinitely. There tsunami has receded, the region will
is a backstopthe craton, that ancient be unrecognizable. Kenneth Murphy,
unbudgeable mass at the center of the who directs FEMAs Region X, the di-
continentand, sooner or later, North vision responsible for Oregon, Wash-
America will rebound like a spring. If ington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, Our
only the southern part of the Cascadia operating assumption is that every-
subduction zone gives wayyour first thing west of Interstate 5 will be toast.
two fingers, saythe magnitude of the In the Pacific Northwest, the area
resulting quake will be somewhere of impact will cover some 140,000
from 8.0 to 8.6. Thats the big one. If square miles, including Seattle,
the entire zone gives way at once, an Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem,
event that seismologists call a full- Olympia, and some seven million peo-
margin rupture, the magnitude will ple. When the next full-margin rupture
be somewhere from 8.7 to 9.2. Thats happens, that region will suffer the
the very big one. worst natural disaster in the history of
Flick your right fingers outward, North America. Roughly 3,000 people
forcefully, so that your hand flattens died in San Franciscos 1906 earth-
back down again. When the next very quake. Almost 2,000 died in Hurricane
big earthquake hits, the northwest Katrina. FEMA projects that nearly
edge of the continent, from California 13,000 people will die in the Casca-
to Canada and the continental shelf to dia earthquake and tsunami. Another

122 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com

 READERS DIGEST

27,000 will be injured, and the agency stuck on oceanic platesas North
expects it will need to provide shelter America is stuck on Juan de Fuca
for a million displaced people and and then getting abruptly unstuck. And
food and water for another 2.5 mil- nearly all the volcanoes are caused
lion. This is one time that Im hoping by the oceanic plates sliding deep
all the science is wrong, and it wont beneath the continental ones.
happen for another thousand years, The Pacific Northwest sits squarely
Murphy says. within the Ring of Fire. Off its coast,
In fact, the science is robust, and an oceanic plate is slipping beneath
one of the chief scientists behind it a continental one. Inland, the Cascade
is Chris Goldfinger. Thanks to work volcanoes mark the line where, far
done by him and his colleagues, we below, the Juan de Fuca plate is heat-
now know that the odds of the big ing up and melting everything above
Cascadia earthquakes happening in it. In other words, the Cascadia sub-
the next 50 years are roughly one in duction zone has, as Goldfinger put it,
three. The odds of the very big one all the right anatomical parts. Yet not
are roughly one in ten. Even those once in recorded history has it caused
numbers do not fully reflect the a major earthquakeor any quake to
dangeror, more to the point, how speak of. By contrast, other subduc-
unprepared the Pacific Northwest is tion zones produce major earthquakes
to face it. Forty-five years ago, no one occasionally and minor ones all the
even knew the Cascadia subduction time. The question facing geologists
zone existed, and its discovery stands was whether the Cascadia subduction
as one of the greatest scientific detec- zone had ever broken its eerie silence.
tive stories of our time. In the late 1980s, Brian Atwater,
a geologist with the U.S. Geological
Reading the Trees Survey, and postgraduate student

A
LMOST ALL THE worlds most David Yamaguchi found the answer
powerful earthquakes occur in and a major clue in the Cascadia puz-
the Ring of Fire, the volcani- zle. Their discovery is best illustrated in
cally and seismically volatile swath of a place called the ghost forest, a grove
the Pacific that runs from New Zea- of western red cedars on the banks of
land up through Indonesia and Japan, the Copalis River, near the Washington
across the ocean to Alaska, and down coast. The cedars are spread out across
the west coast of the Americas to Chile. a salt marsh on a northern bend in
The Ring of Fire, it turns out, is really the river, long dead but still standing.
a ring of subduction zones. Nearly Leafless, branchless, barkless, they are
all the earthquakes in the region are reduced to their trunks and worn to
caused by continental plates getting a smooth silver gray.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 123

A view of two earthquake-induced phenomena: The 2011 tsunami in Japan was
triggered by a 9.0 earthquake; Washingtons ghost forest resulted from a 1700 rupture.

It had long been assumed that they But it did not. If you travel 5,000
died slowly, as the sea level around miles due west from the ghost
them gradually rose. But by 1987, forest, you reach the northeast coast of

FROM LEFT: JIJI P RESS /A FP/GETTY IMAGES. COURTESY U.S. GEOLOGI CAL SU RVE Y
Atwater, who had found in soil layers Japan. That coast is vulnerable to
evidence of sudden land subsidence tsunamis, and the Japanese have kept
along the Washington coast, sus- track of them since at least AD 599.
pected that that was backwardthat One incident has long stood out for its
the trees had died quickly when the strangeness. On the eighth day of the
ground beneath them plummeted. To 12th month of the 12th year of the Gen-
find out, he teamed up with Yamagu- roku era, a 600-mile-long wave struck
chi, a specialist in dendrochronology, the coast, leveling homes, breaching
the study of growth-ring patterns in a castle moat, and causing an accident
trees. Yamaguchi took samples of the at sea. The Japanese understood that
cedars and found that they had died tsunamis were the result of earth-
simultaneously: In tree after tree, the quakes, yet no one felt the ground
final rings dated to the summer of shake before the Genroku event. When
1699. Since trees do not grow in the scientists began studying it, they called
winter, he and Atwater concluded it an orphan tsunami.
that sometime from August 1699 to Finally, in a 1996 article in Nature,
May 1700, an earthquake had caused a seismologist named Kenji Satake and
the land to drop and killed the cedars. three colleagues, drawing on the work
That time frame predated the written of Atwater and Yamaguchi, matched
history of the Pacific Northwest that orphan to its parent. At approxi-
and so, by rights, the detective story mately nine at night on January 26,
should have ended there. 1700, a magnitude-9.0 earthquake

124 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com

 READERS DIGEST

struck the Pacific Northwest, causing sample, then comparing their extent
sudden land subsidence and, out in and consistency along the length of the
the ocean, lifting up a wave half the Cascadia subduction zone, Goldfinger
length of a continent. It took roughly and his colleagues were able to deter-
15 minutes for the eastern half of that mine how much of the zone has rup-
wave to strike the Northwest coast. tured, how often, and how drastically.
It took ten hours for the other half to Thanks to that work, we now know
cross the ocean. It reached Japan on that the Pacific Northwest has expe-
January 27, 1700: by the local calendar, rienced 41 subduction-zone earth-
the eighth day of the 12th month of the quakes in the past 10,000 years. If you
12th year of Genroku. Once scientists divide 10,000 by 41, you get about 243,
had reconstructed the 1700 earth- which is Cascadias recurrence inter-
quake, certain previously overlooked val: the average amount of time that
accounts also came to seem like clues. elapses between earthquakes. That
The reconstruction of the Cascadia time span is dangerous both because
earthquake of 1700 is one of those it is too longlong enough for us to
rare natural puzzles whose pieces fit unwittingly build an entire civiliza-
together as tectonic plates do not: per- tion on top of our continents worst
fectly. It is wonderful science. It was fault lineand because it is not long
wonderful for science. And it was terri- enough. Counting from the earth-
ble news for the millions of inhabitants quake of 1700, we are now 315 years
of the Pacific Northwest. As Goldfinger into a 243-year cycle.
put it, In the late 80s and early 90s, It is possible to quibble with that
the paradigm shifted to uh-oh. number. Recurrence intervals are
averages, and averages are tricky: Ten
When the Dogs Bark is the average of nine and 11 but also

G
OLDFINGER TOLD ME this in of 18 and two. It is not possible, how-
his lab at Oregon State. Inside ever, to dispute the scale of the prob-
the lab is a walk-in freezer. In- lem. The devastation in Japan in 2011
side the freezer are floor-to-ceiling was the result of a discrepancy be-
racks filled with cryptically labeled tween what the best science predicted
tubes, four inches in diameter and and what the region was prepared to
five feet long. Each tube contains a withstand. The same will hold true in
core sample of the seafloor. During the Pacific Northwestbut here the
subduction-zone earthquakes, torrents discrepancy is enormous.
of land rush off the continental slope, The first sign that an epic Cascadia
leaving a permanent deposit on the earthquake has begun will be a com-
bottom of the ocean. By counting the pressional wave, radiating outward
number and the size of deposits in each from the fault line. Compressional

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 125

 Among natural disasters, tsunamis
are close to unsurvivable. The only
likely way to outlive one is not to
be there when it happens.
waves are fast-moving, high-frequency indoors and unsecured will lurch
waves, audible to dogs and certain across the floor or come crashing
other animals but experienced by hu- down. Refrigerators will walk out of
mans only as a sudden jolt. They are kitchens, unplugging themselves and
not very harmful, but they are poten- toppling over. Water heaters will fall
tially very useful, since they travel fast and smash interior gas lines. Houses
enough to be detected by sensors 30 that are not bolted to their founda-
to 90 seconds ahead of other seismic tions will slide offor, rather, they
waves. That is enough time for earth- will stay put, obeying inertia, while
quake early-warning systems, such the foundations jolt westward.
as those in use throughout Japan, to Other, larger structures will also
automatically perform a variety of start to fail. Ian Madin, who directs
lifesaving functions: shutting down the Oregon Department of Geology
railways and power plants and trig- and Mineral Industries ( DOGAMI ),
gering alarms so that the public can estimates that 75 percent of all struc-
take cover. The Pacific Northwest has tures in the state are not designed to
no early-warning system. When the withstand a major Cascadia quake.
Cascadia earthquake begins, there FEMA calculates that, across the
will be, instead, a cacophony of bark- region, something on the order of
ing dogs and a long, suspended, what- a million buildingsmore than 3,000
was-that moment before the surface of them schoolswill collapse or be
waves arrive. Surface waves are slower, compromised in the earthquake. So
lower-frequency waves that move the will half of all highway bridges, 15 of
ground both up and down and side to the 17 bridges spanning Portlands
side: the shaking, starting in earnest. two rivers, and two thirds of railways
Soon after that shaking begins, the and airports; also, one third of all fire
electrical grid will fail, probably every- stations, half of all police stations, and
where west of the Cascades and possi- two thirds of all hospitals.
bly well beyond. In theory, those who The shaking from the Cascadia
are at home should be safest; it is easy quake will set off landslides through-
and relatively inexpensive to seismi- out the regionup to 30,000 of them in
cally safeguard a private dwelling. Seattle alone, the citys emergency-
But most people in the Pacific North- management office estimates. It will
west have not done so. Anything also induce a process called liquefac-

126 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com

 READERS DIGEST

tion, whereby seemingly solid ground hesitating amid the ruins of a home,
starts behaving like a liquid, to the det- searching for loved ones. When that
riment of anything on top of it. Fifteen tsunami is coming, you run, says Jay
percent of Seattle is built on liquefiable Wilson, chair of the Oregon Seismic
land, including 17 day-care centers and Safety Policy Advisory Commission
the homes of some 34,500 people. So is (OSSPAC). You protect yourself, you
Oregons critical energy-infrastructure dont turn around, you dont go back
hub, a six-mile stretch of Portland to save anybody. You run for your life.
through which flows 90 percent of
the states liquid fuel and that houses What Can We Do?

T
everything from electrical substations HE TIME TO SAVE people from
to natural gas terminals. The sloshing, a tsunami is before it happens,
sliding, and shaking will trigger fires, but the region has not yet taken
flooding, pipe failures, dam breaches, serious steps toward doing so. Hotels
and hazardous-material spills. Four to and businesses are not required to
six minutes after the dogs start barking, post evacuation routes or to provide
the shaking will subside. For another employees with evacuation training.
few minutes, the region, upended, These lax safety policies guarantee
will continue to fall apart on its own. that many people inside the inunda-
Then the wave will arrive, and the real tion zone will not get out. Twenty-two
destruction will begin. percent of Oregons coastal popu-
Among natural disasters, tsunamis lation is 65 or older. Twenty-nine
may be the closest to being unsurviv- percent of the states population is
able. The only likely way to outlive one disabled, and that figure rises in many
is not to be there when it happens: to coastal counties. We cant save them,
steer clear of the vulnerable area or Kevin Cupples says. Im not going to
get yourself to high ground as fast as sugarcoat it and say, Oh, yeah, well
possible. For the 71,000 people who go around and check on the elderly.
live in Cascadias inundation zone, No. We wont.
that will mean evacuating in the nar- Those who cannot get out of the
row window after one disaster ends inundation zone under their own
and before another begins. They will power will quickly be overtaken by
be notified to do so only by the earth- a greater one. A grown man is knocked
quake itselfa vibrate-alert system, over by ankle-deep water moving at
Kevin Cupples, the city planner for the 6.7 miles an hour. The tsunami will be
town of Seaside, Oregon, jokes. De- moving more than twice that fast. Its
pending on location, they will have ten height will vary with the contours of
to 30 minutes to get out. That timeline the coast, from 20 feet to more than a
does not allow for finding a flashlight, hundred feet. It will look like the whole

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 127

THE BIG ONE

ocean, elevated, overtaking land. Nor valuable by their proximity to the sea.
will it be made only of waternot But, covertly, they also present us with
once it reaches the shore. It will be a problems of time. The earth is 4.5 bil-
five-story deluge of pickup trucks and lion years old, but we are a young
door frames and cinder blocks and species, with an average individual
fishing boats and utility poles and ev- allotment of threescore years and ten.
erything else that once constituted the The brevity of our lives breeds a kind
coastal towns of the Pacific Northwest. of ignorance of or an indifference to
The inundation zone in a full- those planetary gears, which turn
margin rupture will be scoured of more slowly than our own.
structures from California to Canada. This problem is bidirectional. The
The earthquake will have wreaked its Cascadia subduction zone remained
worst havoc west of the Cascades but hidden from us for so long because
caused damage as far away as Sacra- we could not see deeply enough into
mento, California. FEMA expects to the past. It poses a danger to us today
coordinate search-and-rescue opera- because we have not thought deeply
tions across 100,000 miles and in the enough about the future. Where we
waters off 453 miles of coastline. stumble is in conjuring up grim fu-
OSSPAC estimates that in the I-5 cor- tures in a way that helps to avert them.
ridor, it will take one to three months
after the earthquake to restore electric- The School in the Zone

T
ity, a month to a year to restore drink- HE LAST PERSON I met with in
ing water and sewer service, six months the Pacific Northwest was Doug
to a year to restore major highways, Dougherty, the superintendent
and 18 months to restore health-care of schools for Seaside, which lies al-
facilities. On the coast, those numbers most entirely within the tsunami inun-
go up. Whoever stays there will spend dation zone. Of the four schools that
three to six months without electric- he oversees, with a total student pop-
ity, one to three years without drink- ulation of 1,600, one is relatively safe.
ing water and sewage systems, and The others sit five to 15 feet above sea
three or more years without hospitals. level. When the tsunami comes, they
How much all of this will cost is any- will be as much as 45 feet below it.
ones guess. But whatever the ultimate In 2009, Dougherty told me, he
figure, the economy of the Pacific found land for sale outside the inun-
Northwest will collapse. dation zone and proposed building
On the face of it, earthquakes seem a new K-12 campus there. Four years
to present us with problems of space: later, to foot the $128 million bill,
the way we live along fault lines, the district put up a bond measure.
in brick buildings, in homes made The measure failed by 62 percent.

128 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com

 READERS DIGEST

Dougherty tried seeking help from behind the school. At its tallest, it is
Oregons congressional delegation 45 feet highlower than the expected
but came up empty. The state makes wave in a full-margin earthquake. For
money available for seismic upgrades, now, the route to the ridge is marked
but buildings within the inundation by signs that say Temporary Tsunami
zone cannot apply. At present, all Assembly Area. I asked Dougherty
Dougherty can do is make sure that his about the states long-range plan.
students know how to evacuate. There is no long-range plan, he said.
Some of them, however, will not Doughertys office is deep inside the
be able to do so. At an elementary inundation zone, a few blocks from the
school in the community of Gearhart, beach. Eighty miles farther out, 10,000
the children will be trapped. They feet below the surface of the sea, the
cant make it out from that school, hand of a geological clock is some-
Dougherty said. They have no place where in its slow sweep. All across the
to go. On one side lies the ocean; on region, seismologists are looking at
the other, a wide, roadless bog. When their watches, wondering how long we
the tsunami comes, the only place to have, and what we will do, before geo-
go in Gearhart is a small ridge just logical time catches up to our own.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORKER (JUNE 20, 2015), NEWYORKER.COM.

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 WHO KNEW

13 Things
Credit Card
Companies
Know
About You
BY MICH E L L E C R O U C H

1 Youre having marital problems.

Most credit card companies comb
through cardholder data for signs
a verbally abusive caller. Every time
you call in after that, the customer-
service rep will be on guard.
of financial trouble, and we may use
that to lower your credit. A Federal
Trade Commission suit against
CompuCredit, which marketed the
3 What you did last summerand
the summer before that. We track
your favorite places to visit. We also
Visa Aspire card, accused the com- know your top ATMs and when you
pany of lowering available credit to normally log in to your mobile app.
customers who used cards for mar- Paying attention to those things is
riage counseling, bars, or pawnshops. one of the ways we catch fraud.

2 You dont have the best manners.

If you call even one time and get
angry or use profanity, we may put
4 Whether you take good care of
your home. One study found that
people who buy carbon monoxide
a note on your account that you are monitors and pads for chair bottoms

130 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com ILLUSTRATION BY SERGE BLOCH

rarely miss payments. If you protect
your things, you may also want to
protect your credit score.
9 Whether youre worth hanging
on to. When you call customer
service, the reps at some companies
see a green or red indicator on their

5 Where you are at this very mo-

ment. If youve enabled location-
based services in your cards app, we
screen based on your risk score.
That tells them whether to try to
keep you as a customer.
can follow your movements around
town and send coupons for nearby
merchandise. With new tracking
technology, we hope to soon follow
10 What your signature looks like.
If youre not sure a charge is le-
gitimate, most credit card companies
you inside a store to record how can send you a copy of the receipt.
long you spend in each aisle.

6 Youre the boss. If a responsible

customer asks for a lower interest
11 Youre clueless about your
cards benefits. Many cards
offer perks such as rental-car insur-
rate, theres a good chance we will ance, trip-cancellation insurance,
say yes. A Synergistics survey found and even a personal conciergebut
that 78 percent of cardholders who you probably dont know about them
asked for a lower rate received one. if you havent read the fine print.

7 Youre a small-business owner.

We love small-business owners.
They tend to make a lot of purchases
12 You talk too much. To build
rapport with customers, we
often train customer-service reps to
and rack up charges on their cards. stay on the phone as long as the cus-
Sometimes we buy lists of new tomers want. Some lonely ones stay
limited liability companies and on the line for more than an hour.
corporations so we can send them
business credit card offers.
13 Youre about to cancel. We
analyze data to flag you if you

8 Youre due for a shopping trip

at Target. We work with market-
ers to create special offers for you
havent been using your card or there
are other signs you might close your
account. We may send you a promo-
based on your purchases. If you tion in an attempt to keep you.
were a regular shopper at Target but Sources: Bill McCracken, CEO of Synergistics Research
havent been back in a while, a digi- Corporation, a financial research company; Bert Ely, a
banking consultant based in Alexandria, Virginia; David
tal coupon from Target may pop up Wallace, global financial services marketing manager at SAS,
a data analytics firm; Paul Stephens, director of policy and
in your banks mobile appor from advocacy for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse; a former
credit card customer-service manager; a credit card customer-
a competitor trying to lure you away. service representative; a senior fraud consultant; nytimes.com

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 131

LOOK
TWICE
 What do you see?
A) The roof of a cathedral,
B) a Middle Eastern mosaic, or
C) 170,000 calories?
Answer: C. In his Pits and
Pyramids series, photographer
Sam Kaplan turns treats into
temples, as with this sugary
shrine of more than 1,300
cookies glued to foam-core
platforms. I think prop stylist
Michelle Longo and I bought
every box of Lorna Doones in
a 20-block radius, Kaplan says.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 133

 WHO KNEW?

Lucky Luciano
Robert
Baden-Powell

Roald Dahl
Harry Houdini

Julia Child

5 Celebrities Who Spied

On the Side BY LINDA RO D RIGU EZ MCR OB B I E
FR O M ME NTA L FLOSS

Harry Houdini caught the eye of American and Brit-

THE MAGICIAN WHO SPIED ish intelligence agencies. According
HIS WAY TO STARDOM to a 2006 biography, both the Secret
At the start of his career in the late Service and Scotland Yard used
19th century, Harry Houdini gained Houdini to gather sensitive informa-
notoriety by waltzing into police tion for them during his tours across
stations and demanding that officers Europe and Russia.
lock him up. It was a great publicity In return for his services, the book
stunt. Every time he ditched the cuffs, claims, Houdini asked for one thing:
he made headlinesand eventually publicity. Scotland Yard superinten-

134 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com ILLUSTRATION BY SEAN MCCABE

 dent William Melville, who notes that hed had his own men set fire
Houdinis cooperation in his diary, to the Normandie in a plot to force
helped him set up escape stunts in his release. But as the New York
front of London theater managers. Times noted, Luciano was known
to exaggerate his own cleverness.
HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IM AGES . RONALD DUM ONT/DAI LY EXPRESS/GETTY IMAG E S. TOPICAL PRE SS AG E NCY/G E TT Y IMAG E S

Lucky Luciano
THE MOBSTER WITH THE Julia Child
HEART OF A PATRIOT THE CHEF WITH A TASTE
SOURCE P HOTOS , CLOC KWIS E F ROM TOP LEF T: P OP PERFOTO/GETTY IMAG E S. NE W YORK TIME S CO. /G E TTY IMAG E S.

As head of the Genovese crime FOR ADVENTURE

family, Charles Lucky Luciano Julia Child wasnt always into French
smoothed out the Mafias rough cooking. As she famously recounted
edges and turned families of thugs in her autobiography, My Life in
into well-oiled organized-crime France, it wasnt until she lived in
machines. He also ended up working Paris in her mid-30s that she learned
for U.S. intelligence. what good food tasted like.
In 1936, Luciano was sentenced How did Child keep busy before
to 30 to 50 years in prison. But in that? By performing equally inven-
1942, the government discovered tive work for the Office of Strategic
it needed his help. A French ocean Services (OSS), the U.S. governments
liner, the Normandie, was being precursor to the CIA. Child joined the
converted into a troop ship when spy outfit in 1942 after discovering
it suddenly caught fire and sank. that the Womens Army Corps had
Officials suspected sabotage, since a height limit; at six feet two inches,
many of the dockworkers were under she was too tall to serve. Luckily, the
the Mafias thumb, but they needed OSS was a perfect fit. One of Childs
an in, and Luciano was the key. first assignments was to help cook up
Soon any supposed sabotage a shark repellent to protect underwa-
on the docks ended. In exchange, ter explosives from being set off by
Luciano enjoyed preferential treat- curious creatures. By all accounts,
ment for the rest of his time in prison. she excelled at her work. Following
Luciano continued to help a stint in the OSS lab, Child went to
American forces for the remainder Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and then
of World War II, using his Mafia to China, where she worked as chief
contacts in Sicily to expose Nazi of the OSS Registry. As such, she
battle plans. After he served only ten enjoyed top security clearance and
years in prison, his sentence was even a little danger. (The CIA remains
commuted, and he was deported to mum about exactly what she did.)
his birthplace of Italy. Before he died Working at the OSS also turned out
there in 1962, he told two biographers to be a recipe for love. Julia fell for

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 135

WHO KNEW?

another OSS officer, Paul Cushing set up Boy Scout troops across the
Child. After the two got hitched in globe. All the while, its rumored that
1946, Julia quit her job, while Paul Baden-Powell remained active in the
continued to work for the govern- military, spying wherever he toured.
ment. Within two years, he was
transferred to the U.S. Information Roald Dahl
Agency in France, where Julia took THE LADIES MAN WHO FELL
up cooking to occupy her time. IN LOVE WITH WRITING
The rest is culinary history. Long before he wrote Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl was
Robert Baden-Powell a fighter pilot for the British Royal Air
THE BOY SCOUT WITH A MERIT Force during World War II. But after
BADGE IN SNEAKINESS sustaining several injuries in a 1940
Be Prepared figures into the codes crash, Dahl was transferred to a desk
of both spies and Boy Scouts, so job at the British embassy in Wash-
you may not be surprised to learn ington, DC. He quickly charmed his
that the Scouts were founded by an way into high society and became so
illustrious British agent, Lord Robert popular among DC ladies that British
Baden-Powell. intelligence came up with a new role
In 1899, Baden-Powell made a for him: seducing powerful women
name for himself during the Second and using them to promote Britains
Boer War in South Africa when he interests in America.
faced a 217-day siege by a Boer army It wasnt all fun and games. Clare
of 8,000 men. Wholly outnumbered, Booth Luce, a prominent U.S. repre-
he used props, cunning, and decep- sentative married to Time magazine
tion to defend the territory of Mafek- founder Henry Luce, was so frisky in
ing. He ordered his men to plant fake the bedroom that Dahl begged to be
mines on the edge of town and pre- let off the case. In the end, however,
tend to avoid barbed wire to throw his work with the ladies paid off. Dahl
off the enemy. Because he was short not only rallied support for Britain at
on troops, he enlisted all the young a time when many Americans didnt
boys in town as guards. Somehow, he want the country to enter the war, but
managed to protect the territory until he also managed to pass valuable
reinforcements finally arrived. stolen documents to the British gov-
The story made Baden-Powell a ernment. While penning propaganda
hero in England, and in 1907, he used and war stories in American papers,
his new fame to kick-start the scout- Dahl discovered something else:
ing movement. Soon he was helping his own talent for writing.
MENTAL FLOSS (DECEMBER 20, 2013), COPYRIGHT 2013 BY MENTAL FLOSS, MENTALFLOSS.COM.

136 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com

 Advertisement

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WHO KNEW?

7 Touchy-Feely Questions
Answered by Science
BY BR A N D O N S P E C KTO R

WHY DO with them at all).

1 OUR These ghostly vibra-
FINGERS AND TOES tions are merely
PRUNE UP WHEN hallucinations
WE SWIM? based on prior ex-
To better handle perience, in which
wet objects. Re- the same areas of
searchers at New- the brains sensory
castle University centers are acti-
found that subjects vated as when we
with pruney fingers feel a true vibration.
could transfer wet Similar to when
marbles between youre pretend
two containers tickled, the brain
significantly quicker tricks itself into a
than subjects without. On the other feeling based on expectation.
hand, pruney fingers added no advan-
tage to transferring dry marbles. WHY DO ATHLETES FIST
3 BUMP SO MUCH?
WHY DO WE GET PHANTOM Because touch makes a team stron-
2 PHONE VIBRATIONS? ger. In a UC Berkeley study of NBA
Because were expecting a call. In teams during the 20082009 season,
a study at an academic medical researchers saw that players and
center in Massachusetts, 68 percent teams who engaged in celebratory
GETTY I MAGES

of mobile phone users reported touches (fist bumps, high tens, etc.)
feeling vibrations from time to time after successful shots early in the
even though their phones werent season performed noticeably better
actually vibrating (or, in some cases, later in the season. To put it bluntly:

138 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com

Winning teams spend more time OK, BUT WHY IS SCRATCHING
touching than losing teams. 6 SO CONTAGIOUS?
Its probably part of our disease-
CAN TOUCH HELP YOU LAND fighting instinct. If you notice
4 A JOB? someone near you scratching, your
Yesand you dont even need to be brain intuitively wonders whether
in the same room as your interviewer you are being exposed to the same
to take advantage. In one study, unpleasant insect, bacteria, etc.,
passersby were asked to rate a single that that person is. Its adaptive
job applicant by reading a rsum for you to feel a sympathy itch
attached either to a light clipboard (whether or not theres anything
(about the weight of a soup can) dangerous there) and scratch away.
or a heavy one (about the weight of
a laptop computer). Subjects rated
Mr. Heavy Clipboard considerably 7 CAN HUMAN CONTACT
LITERALLY SAVE YOUR LIFE?
better and more interested in the In a way, yes. Touch may be the first
job than Mr. Flimsy, despite the sense we develop in utero, and it
identical rsums. remains important throughout our
lives. Studies show that prolonged
WHY DOES SCRATCHING touch deprivation in infants (for
5 AN ITCH FEEL SO GOOD? example, babies in understaffed
Because even pain is preferable orphanages or preemies in incubator
to an itch. One theory is that isolation) can result in stunted
wherever we scratch, it creates growth and poor immune systems
a slight pain sensation in our brains right away, plus significantly higher
that competes with the itch sensa- rates of heart disease, obesity, and
tion, thereby reducing it. The more type 2 diabetes in adulthood.
we scratch, the more the itch is
Source: Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart, and Mind
overshadowed. by David J. Linden

RIDDLE ME THIS

QUESTION: The man who made it doesnt want it.

The man who bought it doesnt need it.
The man who needs it doesnt know it. What is it?
ANSWER: A coffin.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 139

WHO KNEW?

Why We Love Superstorms

BY M A RI A KO NNIKOVA FR O M T H E N E W YORKER

WEATHER IS a famously boring perilous conditions, we developed

conversation starteruntil you drop a certain baseline expectation of risk.
a name like Sandy, Katrina, Juno, Even if you stayed inside your camp
or Irene. Even without a hurricane or your cave, the world was full of
or snowmageddon on the horizon, unpredictable, potentially dangerous
weather reports on channels like CNN things. And actively taking risks
garner high viewer ratings. Some- could be rewarded; that might have
times, the Weather Channel itself been the only way to get food. In the
beats the rest of the competition. modern environment, we arent
But why are people so fascinated by exposed to natural risks in the same
storms, even when theyre nowhere way. But the underlying neural
near them? When the weather turns mechanisms havent gone anywhere.
bad, why cant we look away, even Some people innately seek out
after weve gotten the information high-risk situations. They run ex-
we need to get through it? treme races, BASE jump, or invest in
We may be addicted to the danger. volatile stocks. Most of us, though,
Humans didnt evolve to be safe, enjoy a certain thrill without losing
risk-minimizing citizens; because our our heads. We like roller coasters.
early experiences involved constantly Well ski the black-diamond trail but

140 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com ILLUSTRATION BY SEAN MCCABE

may not go off piste. Its a phenome- last year as avidly as any New Yorker
non that the sociologist Stephen or Bostonian, risk can well be experi-
Lyng calls edgework. We feel like enced vicariously. We stay glued to
were living on the edge, but we forecasts of gloom and doom for the
know that theres a safety net. same reason we watch the latest
Edgework is precisely what extreme X Games. They capture our attention
weather is. A winter stormor any and emotion. The media know this all
storm, reallyapproximates this too wellhence the Blizzardmobile
thrill. Its powerful and and endless calls for
even dangerous. But photos of the storm.
safely ensconced There is one major
We stay glued to exception: those
inside and in front of
our computer screens, forecasts of gloom who have suffered an
we dont think it will and doom for extreme weather ca-
really hurt us. The lamity in the past. We
power might go out, the same reason learn differently from
but then we would be we watch the description than from
able to share a picture experience. If you were
of a car buried in a
latest X Games. in a record-breaking
snowdrift. And then, storm in the past and
soon, it will be over. You will have had nothing bad happened, you will likely
the thrill, and you might have gained dismiss the current danger. But if
control over it by capturing a moment you experienced a major lossthe
of danger, but in all, it seems a destruction of a house, say, or a multi-
relatively minor risk. We satisfy our week-long loss of poweryou likely
inner risk seeker without going into wont do much rubbernecking this
dangerous territory. time. Unlike everyone else, you real-
As for the people on the West Coast ize the danger probably isnt worth
who followed the winter storm Juno the Instagrammed snow scene.
THE NEW YORKER (JANUARY 27, 2015). COPYRIGHT 2015 BY COND NAST, NEWYORKER.COM.

Statement required by the Act of August 12, 1970, Section 3685, Title 39, United States Code, showing the ownership, management and circulation
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The names and addresses of the publisher, editor-in-chief, and managing editor are: Publisher, Kirsten Marchioli; Editor-in-Chief,
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rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 141

 Liz Vaccariello VP, Editor-in-Chief | Chief Content Officer

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Readers Digest Founders: DeWitt Wallace, 18891981; Lila Acheson Wallace, 18891984

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Diane Dragan Jim Woods

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 IT PAYS TO INCREASE YOUR

Word Power
What makes a word beautiful? Is it a melodious sound?
An exotic meaning? For whatever reason, the words below appeal
to our sense of beautythough their meanings may not all be
pellucid (a pretty word for clear). Answers on next page.
BY E M ILY COX & H E NRY RATH VO N

1. lavaliere (lah-vuh-'leyr) n. shrouds. B: drowsiness. C: goose-

A: magma outflow. B: pendant on feather quill.
a chain. C: rider with a lance.
10. tendril ('ten-druhl) n.
2. flan ('flan) n.A: pizzazz. B: cus- A: wooden flute. B: spiraling plant
tard dessert. C: mirror reflection. sprout. C: clay oven.
3. panoply ('pa-nuh-plee) n. 11. imbroglio (im-'brohl-yoh)
A: impressive array. B: bouquet. n.A: complicated mix-up.
C: folded paper art. B: Asian palace. C: oil-painting style.
4. gambol ('gam-buhl) v.A: stake 12. dalliance ('dal-lee-ents)
money on a horse. B: frolic about. n.A: frivolous or amorous play.
C: sing in rounds. B: flourish on a trumpet.
C: blinding light.
5. chalice ('cha-luhs) n.A: goblet.
B: ankle bracelet. C: glass lamp. 13. mellifluous (meh-'lih-fluh-wuhs)
adj.A: having broad stripes.
6. languorous ('lan-guh-ruhs)
B: milky white. C: sweet sounding.
adj.A: of the tongue. B: in the
tropics. C: lackadaisical or listless. 14. diaphanous (diy-'a-fuh-nuhs)
adj.A: marked by a fine texture.
7. pastiche (pas-'teesh) n.
B: having two wings. C: romantic.
A: thumbnail sketch. B: fabric soft-
ener. C: artistic imitation. 15. recherch (ruh-sher-'shay)
adj.A: elegant or rare. B: well
8. opulent ('ahp-u-lehnt) adj.
practiced. C: silent.
A: right on time. B: pertaining to
vision. C: luxurious.
 To play an interactive version of
9. penumbra (peh-'nuhm-bruh) Word Power on your iPad, download
n.A: something that covers or the Readers Digest app.

rd.com | 12/1501/16 | 143

WORD POWER

Answers
1. lavaliere[B] pendant on a chain. Upon his first steps into the ancient
The lavaliere around the princesss chamber, the explorer fell under
neck caught the eye of her suitor. a penumbra of fear.
2. flan[B] custard dessert. We went 10. tendril[B] spiraling plant
from one Mexican restaurant to an- sprout. The alien pod wrapped its
other, searching for the perfect flan. tendrils around the captains ankle.
3. panoply[A] impressive array. 11. imbroglio[A] complicated
Eli was mesmerized by the panoply mix-up. For my tastes, too many
of dinosaur fossils at the museum. films these days are based around
a much-expected imbroglio.
4. gambol[B] frolic about. In
their downtime, North Pole elves 12. dalliance[A] frivolous or
are known to gambol in the snow. amorous play. The couples early
dalliance was marked by subtle
5. chalice[A] goblet. One chalice
flirting and letter writing.
contains deadly poison; the other,
an all-healing elixirnow choose! 13. mellifluous[C] sweet sound-
ing. Nothing is so mellifluous as the
6. languorous[C] lackadaisical
jingle of a bell on our Christmas tree.
or listless. The winter chill made
Sara long for the languorous hours 14. diaphanous[A] marked
of her summer at the lake house. by a fine texture. My wife wore a
diaphanous veil on
7. pastiche[C]
our wedding day.
artistic imitation. CELLAR DOOR
You call his work 15. recherch
Among others, the fantasy
a pastiche; I call it writer J. R. R. Tolkien main- [A] elegant or rare.
a knockoff. tained that the loveliest Alison wondered if
combination of sounds her grandmothers
8. opulent[C]
with the rs and ls that peo- bejeweled shoes
luxurious. During ple find lyricalis the phrase were too recherch
her first visit, Sally cellar door. Try repeating for the office party.
was overcome by it aloud. It ends with an
the opulent en- open o sound, which
trance of Tiffanys. Edgar Allan Poe called VOCABULARY
the most sonorous of the RATINGS
9. penumbra vowels (sonorous meaning 9 & below: Fair
[A] something that full sounding). 1012: Lovely
covers or shrouds. 1315: Pulchritudinous

144 | 12/1501/16 | rd.com

 Legal Notice

If You Bought or Leased a New Motor Vehicle, or Bought

Certain Replacement Parts for a Motor Vehicle Since 2000
You Could Get Money From Settlements Totaling Approximately $54 Million
Two Defendants and their afliates (Settling How can I get a payment?
Defendants) have agreed to Settlements No money will be distributed yet. Class
resolving claims that they xed the price of Counsel will pursue the lawsuits against
certain motor vehicle components. This may the Non-Settling Defendants. All funds
have caused individuals and businesses to received in this case will be distributed at the
pay more for new motor vehicles and certain conclusion of the lawsuits or as ordered by
replacement parts. The Settling Defendants the Court. You will need to le a valid claim
deny any claims of wrongdoing. to receive a payment. Notice about the claims
process will be provided at a later date.
Am I included?
If you want to receive notice about the claims
You may be included if, from 2000 to 2015,
process or future settlements, you should
you: (1) bought or leased an eligible new
register at www.AutoPartsClass.com.
vehicle in the U.S. (not for resale), or (2)
indirectly paid for an eligible motor vehicle What are my rights?
replacement part. Indirectly means you bought
Even if you do nothing, you will be bound
the replacement part from someone other than
by the Courts decisions concerning these
the manufacturer of the part. Eligible new
Settlements. If you want to keep your right
motor vehicles are automobiles, light trucks,
to sue the Settling Defendants regarding a
vans, mini-vans, and sport utility vehicles.
particular component part, you must exclude
Visit the website, www.AutoPartsClass.com
yourself from that Settlement Class by
or call 1-877-940-5043 for a full list of
March 28, 2016. If you stay in a Settlement
Settling Defendants and time periods.
Class, you may object to one or more of the
What do the Settlements provide? Settlements by March 28, 2016.
The Settlements provide money for consumers The Court will hold a hearing on May 4,
in 30 states and the District of Columbia 2016 to consider whether to approve the
as well as non-monetary relief, including Settlements and approve Class Counsels
cooperation, and an agreement by Settling request that up to $2 million be set aside for
Defendants not to engage in certain conduct future litigation costs and expenses. Class
for a period of 24 months. Counsel will also request at the hearing, or at
a later date, attorneys fees of up to one-third
The 30 states are: Arizona, Arkansas,
of the Settlement funds, plus reimbursement
California, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas,
of costs and expenses. You or your own
Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota,
lawyer may appear and speak at the hearing
Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska,
at your own expense.
Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New
York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, If the cases are not dismissed or settled,
Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Class Counsel will have to prove their claims
Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and against the Non-Settling Defendants at trial.
Wisconsin. Trial has not been set yet.

For More Information or to Register: 1-877-940-5043 www.AutoPartsClass.com

 Humor in Uniform
UNTRUE MILITARY FACTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

FROM LEFT: GRANT FAI NT/GETTY IM AGES . PETRI FI ED COLLEC TION/GETTY IMAG E S. CE NTRAL PRE SS/G E TTY IMAG E S
Last Tuesday, 2,200 years A recent Navy World War I saw medical
after Hannibal defeated decree states that advances on the front
the Romans at the Battle of all troublemakers will lines when Germany hired
Canae, the last holdouts be kicked off ships an eye, ear, nose, and
finally turned in their and forced to walk to throat specialist, as well
spears and returned home. their battle. as a proctologist.

DURING ORIENTATION at Fort Sill, AFTER MY NIECE returned from

in Oklahoma, our first sergeant stated her second tour in Iraq, I remarked
that if anyone lost his locker key to how beautiful her complexion
see him, as he kept a master key in looked. What do you use on your
his office. Sure enough, a few weeks face to keep it so smooth? I asked.
later, I lost my key. I walked into the Nothing, she said. Ive been
orderlys room and asked Sarge if sandblasted. WANDA KALTREIDER,
I could borrow his master key. Wr i g h t s v i l l e , P e n n s y l v a n i a

Why, certainly, young man, he

said, as he reached under his desk Send us your funniest military anecdote
and handed me a large pair of bolt or news storyit might be worth $100!
cutters. JOHN DANNAR, Pa s a d e n a , Te x a s For details, see page 9 or rd.com/submit.

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 Quotable Quotes
YOU HAVE TO BE GOING Its never too
TO A PRETTY AWFUL late to have
a happy
PLACE IF GETTING childhood.
THERE IS HALF THE FUN. TO M R O B B I N S ,
M I S S P I G GY, h a m novelist

GOD GAVE US
MEMORY SO THAT
I see life as like being attacked by a bear.
You can run, you can pretend to be

FROM TOP : SCOTT GA RFIELD/ WA LT DIS NEY PIC TURES/COURTESY EVERE TT COL L E CTION.
WE MIGHT HAVE
ROSES IN DECEMBER.
J . M . BA R R I E ,
dead, or you can make yourself bigger.
author AMY POEHLER, c om e di an

A man who procrastinates in his

CHRISTOPHER F ELVER/CORBIS . AM AN DA EDWARDS /GETTY IM AGES

choosing will inevitably have his choice
made for him. H U NTE R S . TH O M P SO N , j o u r n a l i s t

Would you believe in If you dont have

what you believe in if time to do it right,
you were the only when will you have
time to do it over?
one who believed it? J O H N WO O D E N , f o r m e r
K A N Y E W E S T, m u s i c i a n UCL A basketball coach

Readers Digest (ISSN 0034-0375) (USPS 865-820), (CPM Agreement# 40031457), Vol. 186, No. 1116, December 2015/January 2016. 2015.
Published monthly, except bimonthly in July/August and December/January (subject to change without notice), by Trusted Media Brands, Inc.,
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