BY BRIGHT MAGAZINE GROUP
One man’s quest for a cutting-edge healthcare model
How life skills teach children virtues
Tips to protect your health, room by room
The ‘Food Babe’ on cleaning up the food industry and empowering Americans to reclaim their health
12 | Floral Show
At America’s botanic gardens, brilliant blooms beckon fower lovers.
14 | Force of Nature
Agent Nateur founder Jena Covello shares the morning routine that sets her up for the day.
15 | Drawing the Line
An etiquette expert’s advice for setting boundaries.
16 | What’s in My Pantry
Metabolic health expert Dr. Cate Shanahan shares her seed oil alternatives and other kitchen essentials.
18 | Home Detox
Rheumatologist Dr. Aly Cohen’s room-by-room guide for lowering your exposure to everyday toxins.
22 | Wonderful, Marvelous Hats
Eric Javits, who designed the striking boater worn by frst lady Melania Trump on Inauguration Day, sings the praises of hats.
24 | Creativity in Bloom
A gardener turned foral designer shares her creative inspiration and tips for simple but delightful athome arrangements.
30 | Remembering the Fallen
An annual Memorial Day event for military families transforms grief into hope.
32 | A Champion for Real Food
Making healthy food choices is complicated—but ‘Food Babe’ Vani Hari thinks it shouldn’t be.
40 | A New Health Paradigm
Dr. Jingduan Yang’s vision for holistic health takes into account all aspects of the human body—some of them too ofen ignored.
50 | Cultivating Compassion
Compassion for yourself is a critical part of healing, according to psychologist Jessica Russo.
52 | Love of Learning
Educator Chris Hall shares how the common arts can draw students closer to what’s good, true, and beautiful.
56 | Healing Our Soil, Healing Ourselves
Improving the health of our farms’ soil holds great implications for human health.
60 | What the Labels Mean
Farmer and physician assistant Rob McDaniel discusses raising healthy chickens and misleading labels to watch out for.
62 | A Creative Coloratura
Soprano Beverly Sills’s career was heralded by critics as “without parallel in American operatic history.”
64 | ‘Donut Dollies’
When the doughboys of World War I needed a morale boost, women volunteers met the challenge.
68 | O. Henry’s Second Act
O. Henry’s plain, frank approach to short stories made him one of the most read and circulated authors of his time.
72 | Minnesota’s Deadly Fire
The 1894 Hinckley fre killed hundreds of people and devastated 200,000 acres of land.
78 | America’s Loneliness Problem
Thought leaders Mattias Desmet and Aaron Kheriaty delve into the causes and consequences of loneliness.
82 | The Mountaineering Botanist
Known as the “Audubon of Botany,” Mary Vaux Walcott kept a travelogue of her west Canadian adventures by illustrating rare alpine wild fowers.
88 | Why I Love America
Tanya Khalimon recounts her journey from Belarus to the United States, and how it transformed her.
90 | Family Roots
Her grandparents’ love, patience, and Finnish ways have long stayed with Debbie Nedrow.
92 | ‘A Severe Mercy’
Author Sheldon Vanauken’s most successful book explores love, marriage, spirituality, and tragedy.
98 | Rx for Life
Productivity expert Tanya Dalton shares a strategy to prioritize what’s most important in your life.
AMERICAN ESSENCE BY BRIGHT MAGAZINE GROUP
FOR EVERYONE WHO LOVES THIS COUNTRY
MAY – JUNE 2025 | VOLUME 5 | ISSUE 3
PUBLISHER
Dana Cheng, PhD
EDITORIAL
Editor-In-Chief
Managing Editor
Lifestyle Editor
History Editor
Arts & Letters Editors
Editor-At-Large
Production Manager
Channaly Philipp
Annie Wu
Crystal Shi
Sharon Kilarski
Sharon Kilarski
Jennifer Schneider
Tynan Beatty
Astrid Wang
CREATIVE
Lead Designer
Designer
Photographers
Illustrators
Jane Russo
Karen Tang
Samira Bouaou
Adhiraj Chakrabarti
Biba Kayewich
Oriana Zhang
SALES
Sales Director
Sales Assistant Ellen Wang
Onon Otgonbayar
CONTRIBUTORS
Sandy Lindsey, Tim Johnson, Ida Pink, Annie Holmquist, Hazel Atkins, Anna Mason, Rachael Dymski, Krista Thomas, Amy Denney, Makai Albert, Conan Milner, Je f Minick, Ileana Alescio, Helena Elling, Dustin Bass, Brian D’Ambrosio, Andrew Benson Brown, Jan Jekielek, Michelle Plastrik, Tanya Khalimon, Debbie Nedrow, Marlena Figge, Barbara Danza
American Essence (USPS 24810) is published bimonthly by Bright Magazine Group at 5 Penn Plz. Fl.8, New York, NY 10001. Periodicals postage is paid at New York, NY.
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Dear Readers,
As spring transitions into summer, we invite you to embrace wellness with stories that nourish both body and soul.
For “Food Babe” Vani Hari, who graces this issue’s cover, true health starts with real food. In the era of ultraprocessed foods full of hidden additives, she’s on a mission to empower families to make informed, healthy choices and change the food industry for the better (page 32)
In New York, Dr. Jingduan Yang is redefning healing at his integrative clinic, blending ancient wisdom with modern medicine (page 40). His vision prioritizes the spirit and mind-body connection—elements too ofen overlooked—ofering a holistic path to vitality. Meanwhile, Amish farmer John Kempf’s research has profound implications for public health: Nurturing the soil with regenerative methods yields plants that are more resistant to disease, more productive, and more nutritious (page 56). Dr. Aly Cohen guides us in detoxifying our homes with the encouraging message that small shifs can make a signifcant diference in our health (page 18). And psychologist Jessica Russo inspires us to cultivate selfcompassion, a quiet strength that ripples outward to others (page 50)
Revel in spring’s renewal with Ashley Fox’s whimsical foral designs (page 24), or a visit to America’s botanic gardens—oases that delight and inspire (page 12). Here’s to cultivating wellness and blooming anew.
Warmly,
Editor-In-Chief Editor@AmericanEssenceMag.com
Indulge in the fnest at DAYES Cofee Roasters.
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A Toast to the Makers HEALDSBURG WINE AND FOOD EXPERIENCE
Healdsburg, Calif.
May 15–18
The rich agricultural legacy of Sonoma County is on full display as local winemakers, grape growers, chefs, farmers, and sommeliers gather for a weekend of food and wine. Events include the Vintners Plaza Grand Tasting from more than 150 winemakers and chefs, as well as a “wine-down” pool party to close out the weekend. A portion of ticket sales and sponsorships will go to nonprofits Farm to Pantry and Future Farmers of America HealdsburgWineAndFood.com
Destination Concert SITKA SUMMER MUSIC FESTIVAL
Sitka, Alaska
June 3–29
Set in the unspoiled beauty of the largest national forest in the United States, this festival celebrates classical chamber music performed by professional musicians from around the world. Founded in 1972 by violinist Paul Rosenthal, the event hoped in its early years to raise enough money from concert ticket sales to pay for the performers’ return flights. Now it’s a world-class destination event.
SitkaMusicFestival.org
By Sandy Lindsey
Raised Voices MAY FESTIVAL
Cincinnati, Ohio
May 16–24
As the oldest choral festival in the Western Hemisphere, this annual event has been thrilling audiences for almost 150 years. Led by festival director and highly acclaimed soprano Renée Fleming, this year’s program will include rousing performances by the May Festival Chamber Choir and the Cincinnati Boychoir Ambassadors, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Fleming herself, and a host of other internationally renowned talents. MayFestival.com
History in Action
250TH ANNIVERSARY OF BUNKER HILL
Gloucester, Mass.
June 21–22
History comes alive as visitors travel back in time to 1775 to witness two pivotal days of American history. British forces arrive by sea, attack the fort, and siege the city, culminating in the revolution’s first major battle. Historians are on hand for behindthe-scenes lectures, and there’s a fun Sons and Daughters of Liberty scavenger hunt. BattleOfBunkerHill250.com
Ancestral Perspectives ARTS OF THE ANCIENT AMERICAS
New York, N.Y.
Opening May 31
After an extensive multi-year renovation, The Met’s Arts of the Ancient Americas installation reopens with an impressive display of nearly 700 pieces of pre-1600 indigenous art, from North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean. Highlights include delicate ivory figurines of the Old Bering Sea era, stone sculptures by Inca artists, and exquisite Andean textiles over 2,000 years old.
MetMuseum.org
Passing the Torch
SMITHSONIAN FOLKLIFE FESTIVAL
Washington, D.C.
July 2–7
This year’s event, held on the National Mall, will feature free performances, exhibitions, and displays celebrating indigenous cultural heritage and the young people sustaining it. Created to help keep folklife traditions alive, the festival will include presentations on topics such as the Algonquian Peoples of the Chesapeake Bay area, the history of Latinos in the United States, and much more.
Festival.si.edu
This American film tells the story of the Bielski Brothers, who, before emigrating to the United States, led a tenacious World War II resistance organization in Belarus. Their forest encampment gave sanctuary to over 1,200 Jewish fugitives, while surviving German military offenses and enduring the antisemitism of their supposed Soviet Red Army allies.
DIRECTOR
Edward Zwick
STARS
Liev Schreiber, Daniel Craig, Jamie Bell, George MacKay
RELEASED 2008
STREAMING Paramount+
Audie Murphy’s extraordinary journey from a poor Texas youth to the most decorated soldier of World War II is based on his bestselling memoir. With Murphy playing himself, the film reenacts his intense battles, including his heroic stand against a German assault that earned him the Medal of Honor.
DIRECTOR
Jesse Hibbs
STARS
Audie Murphy, Marshall Thompson, Charles Drake
RELEASED 1955
STREAMING Amazon, fuboTV
READ READ
‘This Fierce People: The Untold Story of America’s Revolutionary War in the South’
Just in time for readers to digest before next year’s semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, a mesmerizing history book appears to celebrate a lesser-known aspect of the Revolutionary War. With descriptive prose, historian Alan Pell Crawford takes readers into important battles fought in the southern Colonies, proving that the major battles, long believed to have been fought only in the North, were not.
Alfred A. Knopf, 2024 Hardcover, 382 pages
‘Heartspoken: How to Write Notes That Connect, Comfort, Encourage, and Inspire’
Elizabeth H. Cottrell shares her belief in the connective power of the handwritten note, along with dozens of tips for readers, explaining how they can make their own letters reach out and touch the lives of others. Her guide covers the etiquette of letterwriting and special notes like get-well cards. But the chief value of this book from the heart lies in the advice to speak more sincerely and act more passionately.
Koehler Books, 2024 Paperback, 218 pages
These pages are in the preview.
By Tim Johnson
Is there anything more peaceful than a walk in the garden? Filled with life, botanical gardens are also places where you can learn much about the world’s flora. Here are five of the best to visit in the United States.
Originally purchased from William Penn, Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, was once Quaker farmland. Its 18th-century owners were avid naturalists who planted a varied collection of plants. Developed by businessman and philanthropist Pierre S. du Pont, today Longwood has grown to almost 200 acres of meadows and gardens, and it ofers beautiful views of the Brandywine Valley. There’s so much more, too: dancing fountains, a conservatory, and a chime tower. Go between May and September for the wow-worthy Festival of Fountains.
David Fairchild was a remarkable botanist. He traveled the world in the late 19th century and the early 20th, gathering plants on six continents, including the cherry trees that still bloom in Washington. In 1938, Fairchild moved to southern Florida and helped open the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables. The 83-acre garden, which still bears his name, contains many of his international treasures, including rainbow eucalyptus and a huge African baobab tree. Walk among rare palms, vines, and trees from dozens of far-fung countries.
A visit to Portland Japanese Garden in Oregon is an opportunity to visit Japan without the jet lag and the long, cramped f ight. Following World War II, Portland became a sister city with Sapporo, Japan. This garden, which became public in 1967, was part of an efort to repair ri f s between the United States and the Land of the Rising Sun. There are eight distinct areas. Walk over wooden bridges in the Strolling Pond Garden and feel the serenity in the Tea Garden. Then go for steaming ochazuke or miso soup at the Umami Cafe.
Founded in 1859 and covering 79 acres, this is a true oasis in the heart of St. Louis. The biggest attraction at the Missouri Botanical Garden is def nitely the Climatron. All glass and steel, it was the world’s f rst geodesic dome to be used as a conservatory and encloses some 24,000 square feet. Walk inside, and you’re immediately in a rain forest where thousands of tropical species grow, including orchids, cofee, cacao, and rare double-coconut. But there’s plenty more to see here, too, including one of the largest traditional Japanese gardens in North America.
Walk one of the fve di ferent circuits at the 140-acre Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona, and you can get lost in the Sonoran Desert (in all the best ways). This is one of the world’s most remarkable botanical gardens. Botanists brought together over 50,000 plants that thrive in the driest and hottest places on Earth. Wander amongst wild fowers and hummingbirds, past succulents, and under towering saguaro cactus backed by the red Papago Buttes and a sapphire-blue sky. Then, immerse yourself in the wonders of the 3,200-square-foot, open-air Butter fy Pavilion.
Integrative rheumatologist Dr. Aly Cohen shares her home essentials to lower toxin exposure and protect our health
By Hazel Atkins
When Dr. Aly Cohen’s beloved 4-year-old golden retriever suddenly became very ill, her personal and professional lives collided painfully. Truxtun was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis, a rare condition for his breed. “The fact that it was an autoimmune disease”—Dr. Cohen’s area of expertise—“was bizarre,” she said.
She started looking into what might’ve triggered the immune system of her otherwise healthy dog. She frst wondered whether he could have been drinking contaminated water. Then she thought about his fea and tick collar, and then the red rubber toy he was inseparable from.
“As I was reviewing his little life, I started coming up with information about humans and the lack of regulation [around] all the chemicals that go into cosmetics, cookware, cleaning products—it started to blow my mind,” she said. Following her instincts, she began investigating the toxins lurking in our lives—and their negative impacts on our health.
She found dozens of studies linking common chemicals found in food, water, personal care products, and household items with disruption of the body’s endocrine system. As she dove deeper, she realized that was just the tip of the iceberg: These endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) also interfere with the immune system, triggering abnormal immune responses and increasing the risks of a long list of chronic health conditions. The evidence was so compelling that she coined the term immune-disrupting chemicals (IDCs) to describe them.
Truxtun sadly passed away in 2008. Since then, Dr. Cohen has become a passionate environmental health expert and self-described “anti-toxin warrior,” dedicated to educating both doctors and consumers about her fndings.
She is triple-board certifed in rheumatology, internal medicine, and integrative medicine, and works in private practice in Princeton, New Jersey. When she’s not seeing patients, she
lectures around the country, develops curricula for schools and physician training programs, and hosts The Smart Human podcast. This month, she publishes a new book, “Detoxify: The Everyday Toxins Harming Your Immune System and How to Defend Against Them.”
While the information can seem overwhelming, Dr. Cohen wants to emphasize this: “It’s so fxable.” Even small lifestyle changes can lead to big health improvements.
“When you reduce these exposures [to toxins], when you change behaviors, when you choose better products, you are lowering toxic levels in your body in real time, which lowers your potential risk for developing a whole host of illnesses,” she said. Over the last two decades, she has watched her chronically ill patients quiet their autoimmune responses, tolerate medications better, and even lower the dosages they need.
Dr. Cohen encourages smart, sustainable shifs over extreme, budget-breaking measures—or living in fear. “There’s no failing,” she said. “Every little thing you do to reduce exposure to toxins is only moving in the right direction.”
Bisphenols (BPA, BPS): Found in plastics, canned food and drinks, and some medical equipment, including IV bags. Associated with endocrine disruption, increased risk of autoimmune disease, thyroid disease, and infertility.
Phthalates: Found in plastics, vinyl flooring, food storage containers and packaging, fragrances, cosmetics, and personal care products. Associated with developmental changes in newborns, autoimmune disease, high blood pressure, weight gain, early menopause, allergies, and asthma.
Flame-retardants: Found in some work uniforms, fire extinguishers, and couches. Associated with immune system and hormone disruption, increased cancer risk, and respiratory problems in newborns.
Home fragrances: Avoid incense, scented candles, and air freshener plug-ins that contain synthetic phthalates. Dr. Cohen doesn’t use any of these products, but recommends cleaner versions for those who do want them, such as beeswax candles with 100 percent organic, phthalate-free essential oils.
Windows: Instead of using fragrances to freshen the air in a home, Dr. Cohen recommends opening windows once a day to let the air circulate. “A lot of chemicals end up in dust and air particles, and you don’t realize they’re there,” she said.
Couch: Before she began investigating harmful environmental chemicals, Dr. Cohen sprayed her couch with a stain-guard: “We had two kids and a dog, after all!” She later discovered that these treatments contain chemicals linked to cancer and liver disease, among other health problems. Consider eliminating carpet sprays and stain guards and opting for all-natural cleaning solutions. Couches are also often treated with harmful flame-retardants that leach into the air, whether or not you can smell it. “When you’re ready to switch out your couch for a new one, you can find one without flame-retardant chemicals,” Dr. Cohen said. “Wool, for example, is naturally flame-retardant.”
Houseplants: Houseplants not only improve the air quality, but also provide surfaces to catch dust and chemicals. Just periodically wipe their leaves with a damp cloth. Dr. Cohen’s favorites are low-maintenance dracaena and spider plants.
Kitchen
Water: Switching to filtered drinking water is “my first priority,” said Dr. Cohen. She believes that drinking water is “probably the most underemphasized contributor to acute and chronic health conditions that no one thinks about,” and drinking filtered water is the number one way to detox the body. She strongly recommends installing a reverse osmosis filtration system, because it removes the greatest number of contaminants, but “a carbon filter is better than nothing,” she said.
Food: After water, the food we consume is our second biggest exposure to toxins by volume. Dr. Cohen recommends USDA-certified organic frozen fruits and vegetables as the cheapest, most accessible, and most nutritionally dense options for produce. They’re free of pesticides, frozen at the peak of nutrient density, and safely packaged and not exposed to toxins while in transit.
Cookware: Some cooking utensils and pans can leach chemicals into the food we cook. Swap plastic spatulas for bamboo, and nonstick pans with high-quality stainless steel or castiron. For food storage, glass containers are safer than plastic—and easier to clean.
Cofee and tea: One easy strategy for reducing toxin exposure is to “clean up some of your daily habits in a sequential way,” Dr. Cohen said. Start with your morning beverage of choice: “I like tea, so I use a ceramic tea container, filtered water, and loose-leaf tea to eliminate the teabag.” For cofee drinkers,
a glass and stainless steel French press is a better alternative to plastic single-serve pods. If you frequent a local cafe, take a personal stainless steel mug instead of using a disposable Styrofoam cup. “It’s the little things that you layer in over time, and each one is a success,” Dr. Cohen said.
Bathroom
Personal care products: Phthalates are the key chemicals to watch for in bathroom products, and especially perfumed products. Dr. Cohen recommends switching out antiperspirants that contain aluminum and fragrance phthalates. She and her teenagers consult Environmental Working Group’s database of nontoxic products for their beauty and personal care buys (EWG.org/skindeep).
Shower: Dr. Cohen uses a shower head with a carbon-block filter, which is afordable and available at most major hardware stores. Switch out the filter every six months.
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Bedroom
Bedding: “The main thing to think about in the bedroom is your bedding,” said Dr. Cohen. “Wrinkle-free usually means [it was treated with] formaldehyde, believe it or not.” She uses 100 percent cotton bed sheets, which are afordable and widely available.
Cleaning products: According to Dr. Cohen, most cleaning products contain harmful and unnecessary chemicals. Products labeled as “antimicrobial” can actually lead to antibiotic resistance, making people more susceptible to infections later on. Dr. Cohen uses vinegar, lemon juice, and soap and water for cleaning, and 70 percent isopropyl alcohol to kill microbes. When she’s too busy to mix up DIY cleaning solutions, “I look up EWG to see the products that are safe so that I can make a better choice,” she said.
Filters: Switch out furnace and water filters regularly. “Also clean the lint out of the dryer,” Dr. Cohen said, “especially if you have a gas dryer—carbon monoxide can build up there.”
Smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors need to be checked regularly to ensure they are fully functional, and it’s a good idea to have a fire extinguisher in working order.
Time to sweat: I exercise every day. I’m a runner. I like to run in extra layers to sweat more—it’s a great way to clear stuf out of your body.
Time with pets: I love my dog and cat, and I think pets are underrated in terms of mental health. It can be incredibly soul-supporting to be with your pet. Don’t forget that your mental health has an impact on your physical health and resilience.
I would not be doing what I’m doing if it were not for such a personal experience with my dog. We were not able to save Truxtun, and it was a while before we got another dog. I start every one of my talks with a photo of him, so he’s still with me wherever I go.
Lawn: Lawn herbicides and pesticides can be carcinogenic to the human body. Shoes and pets’ paws can track the chemicals into the house, and pets risk ingesting them when licking their paws. Instead of spraying weeds, Dr. Cohen recommends simply cutting the lawn low.
Floral designer Ashley Fox brings a gardener’s sensibility to her romantic, whimsical creations
By Rachael Dymski
Entering a room where Ashley Fox has worked her magic feels like walking into a natural wonderland. Whether it’s a wedding hall flled with wild fowers that hang delicately from the ceiling, or an entire venue decorated based on a client’s favorite painting, the award-winning foral designer’s creations surprise and delight. They hold a sense of childlike wonder—which, she says, fts her story just right.
As a little girl, Fox learned to love the outdoors.
“I come from a family of gardeners, and their families were gardeners,” said Fox. Homegrown vegetables and fowers always flled her backyard. “When you grow up around that, it really defnes who you become.”
As an only child, Fox spent hours outside, making her own entertainment and doing nature craf projects, or going on mushroom hunts with her dad. “That made me a very keen observer of nature and shapes,” she said.
Looking back now, Fox says all signs pointed to becoming a designer. But her path to foral design wasn’t so straightforward. She studied horticulture in college and spent her summers at a local garden shop, and then worked at her town’s arboretum for fve years.
“I was teaching kids there every day,” she said.
“Then, when I had my two children, I decided to stay at home. And that was a gif .”
As much as she relished the opportunity to be with her children, she realized that she still needed social connection and a creative outlet. She just wasn’t sure what that outlet could be.
Fate seemed to reach out and take her by the hand.
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“Right around that time, my best friend got married,” Fox recalled. “She asked me, ‘Can you do the fowers for my wedding?’ And it just started from there.”
That was in 2005. In 2008, Fox started her business, the Minnesota-based Ashley Fox Designs, and she’s since transformed wedding days and events for countless clients.
Nothing is too common a variety to use. It’s how you use it in a design that matters. “
Ashley Fox, floral designer, Ashley Fox Designs
In 2008, the romantic, nature-inspired style Fox is now so well known for was just beginning to gain steam in the industry. Round, symmetrical, monobloom bouquets—made with a single variety of fower—were very popular, inspired by Martha Stewart.
“I love Martha Stewart, of course, and read her all the time. But the one-bloom bouquet just wasn’t who I was as a designer,” Fox said. “I was a gardener f rst, so all of my designs look like a garden in a dish rather than a scoop of ice cream.”
Not long afer starting her business, Fox had the
Figs, begonia s, gra sses, celosia s, and peperomia s set a lush scene for a groom’s dinner in September. Fox l a yered the fresh florals with dried poppy seed pods and yarrow for extra texture, shape, and color.
An annual Memorial Day remembrance event at Arlington National Cemetery gives children of fallen heroes a way to heal
By Krista Thomas
It’s a powerful feeling to know you’re needed— especially when you’re needed by a grieving child. Amanda Carnes tenderly held onto the young boy as he cried for his military father who had died from suicide. Carnes wanted to give him the same kind of love and care that she would give to her own daughter during times of need. She held him tightly—and it meant the world to him. She is a “military mentor” for Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), ofering emotional support to families with a loved one in the military who has passed away. She also acts as a chaperone for TAPS’s annual Memorial Day weekend camp for children who have lost their military parents— which is where she met the young boy.
She feels blessed to be part of these families’ grief journey toward fnding healing and peace. “It may not seem like you’re making a diference frst, but you do,” she said. “You see them transition through … it and you’re there with them in their moments.”
The camp activities reach a crescendo with the creation of the annual TAPS Honor Wreath that is presented at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day. Rain or shine, without fail for the past 30 years, TAPS coordinates a special wreath-laying ceremony for hundreds of families. Every child scribbles, writes, or draws a heartfelt handwritten message on a paper silhouette of his or her own hand. Hundreds of silhouettes are then assembled together by dedicated volunteers.
Carnes said that one of the greatest honors of her life was when she was tapped to carry and lay the TAPS Honor Wreath in 2023. That morning, she wore the Marine Corps “dress blues” uniform with medals, ribbons, and badges and arrived by bus at the Arlington cemetery. She was an active duty Marine at the time; she feels that she was put in the right place at the right time, as it was her last act on active duty. “It felt so surreal that the chapter I was closing signi fed everything I believe in: servant leadership, giving back to others, and standing up for those who served and did not die in vain.”
A doctor pioneers an integrative model of care combining ancient and modern wisdom.
compassion to others starts with ourselves.
What’s really in your food? In an era of ultra-processed foods, Vani Hari is on a mission to uncover the truth and empower Americans to reclaim their health
WBy Amy Denney
hen Vani Hari’s mother joined her father in America, the first food he introduced her to was a McDonald’s hamburger.
“He said, ‘If we’re going to live in America, we’re going to eat like Americans.’ And so that’s how we grew up,” Hari said.
Her father had lef India to study in the United States, returned home for an arranged marriage, and then settled with his new bride in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hari and her older brother grew up on a blend of cultural fare and “American” food, as their parents tried to give them the best of both worlds.
“My mom knew how to make Indian food, but she didn’t have handed-down recipes from an American mother,” Hari said. So she relied on pre-made and packaged foods. Hari remembers Thanksgiving dinners from boxes and cans, and years of the same frozen Pepperidge Farm cake for her birthday. She gorged on candy, earning her the nickname “candy queen.” As she grew older, she shunned her mother’s homemade Indian meals, opting for junk food and Burger King.
Hari also grew up struggling with common health issues—severe eczema, asthma, and allergies. By her 20s, she was on eight prescription
medications. Fueling a high-pressure corporate job with fast food sandwiches and sugary snacks, she was overweight and wore exhaustion on a puf y face.
Now, Hari knows better. Her younger self is unrecognizable from the powerhouse she is today: an investigative food activist, cookbook writer, and ft mom of two, dedicated to bringing healthy change and transparency to the American food industry. Her high-energy presence attracts supporters to rallies just as her popular Food Babe blog has been gaining ardent followers since 2011. Lately, she’s emerged as a powerful voice of the Make America Healthy Again movement, led by former presidential candidate and now Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) head Robert F. Kennedy.
Hari’s mission is inspiring a revolution of Americans with the food knowledge to take back control of their health—just as she did.
Hari’s transformative journey to vibrant health began on a hospital bed: recovering from an emergency appendectomy at age 23.
“Everyone my age was going out and going to parties, and I was sitting in a hospital room recov-
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Makes 1 serving
• 2 cups kale
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• 3 sprigs parsley
• 3 sprigs cilantro
• 1 pear, chopped
• 1 cup strawberries
• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1 cup filtered water
Wash all ingredients. Place them into a blender and blend to combine.
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ering from getting my stomach cut open. I just kind of had enough,” she said. Tired of never feeling well, she resolved to make her health a priority.
Though she lacked a background in health or dietetics, Hari dove into research and armed herself with books, eager to learn about nutrition—and whether her diet was behind her health problems. She quickly built a case against ultra-processed foods.
“I found out my body was super inflamed because of what I was eating,” Hari said.
“One of the books I was reading has this concept that the majority of grocery foods in a package or [that are] processed are dead. They’re not alive. Well, that’s how I felt for most of my life. So I decided to eat more real, live foods that came from nature, that hadn’t been adulterated by the food industry.”
She visited local farmers markets and sought out fresh, whole ingredients. She ditched the fast food and the candy. Soon, her health began to change.
Hari lost the 30 pounds she’d gained in her early 20s, plus fve extra. Her energy soared to new highs.
Her skin and breathing issues faded, and she didn’t need to refll her prescriptions. Family and friends noticed the “candy queen” wasn’t eating candy anymore, and they commented that she looked like a diferent person.
They convinced Hari to share how she did it, and her blog, FoodBabe.com, was born.
On the blog, Hari shared stories about her journey and new lifestyle, including healthy recipes and food recommendations.
She also wrote about her investigations into the American food industry and the harmful ingredients hiding in our food supply.
“I used my newfound inspiration for living a healthy life to drive my energy into researching the causes of chronic disease. It all came back to our food,” she said.
The leading cause of mortality in the United States is diet-related chronic disease. Diet is blamed for new diseases like infammatory bowel disease, E
irritable bowel syndrome, Type 2 diabetes, and obesity. One in fve American children is obese, and rates of Type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease are rising rapidly in young generations. These modern health problems have disproportionately afected industrialized countries with diets high in ultra-processed food.
Ultra-processed foods are made in labs, ofen with chemically altered food extracts and additives that make the food hyper-palatable—difcult to stop eating—and extend their shelf life. Additives include artifcial favors, colors, emulsifers, and preservatives.
“I realized that I was eating chemicals that were not there to improve the nutrition of my body, or make me healthy, or make me live a long, beautiful life. [They] were invented to improve the bottom line of the food industry, and actually were detrimental to my health,” Hari said.
She also realized there was a lack of transparency around these ingredients that made it hard for consumers to make truly informed food choices. When she investigated healthful claims on the label of her favorite yogurt brand, the company responded by removing misleading marketing.
“This led me more into an activism role, as I saw that we had the ability to infuence companies to change,” she said.
The more she called out major food companies for using unhealthy chemical ingredients, the more her popularity grew. Her blog has since grown to more than 4 million subscribers, whom Hari calls the Food Babe Army.
“I started to realize I had this amazing community that not only cared about their own health, but also wanted to hold these companies accountable,” she said. “I realized that I had the ability to get people’s attention on these issues in a way that could really change the food industry.”
It’s All Personal
Some of Hari’s most popular investigations compare two versions of the same Americanmanufactured food product: the version sold in the United States, and the version sold overseas. The latter ofen has a noticeably diferent, shorter ingredient list.
One of her frst investigations was a personal favorite food of hers: Quaker Oats Strawberries and Cream instant oatmeal. She discovered that while the UK version used real strawberries, the
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Makes 4 servings
• 1 large Yukon gold potato, cut into 2- to 3-inch-long strips
• 1 large sweet potato, cut into 2- to 3-inch-long strips
• 1 large purple potato, cut into 2- to 3-inch-long strips
• 3 to 4 tablespoons olive oil
• Sea salt, to taste
• Ground black pepper, to taste
Preheat the oven to 375°F.
Toss the potatoes with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Place on a mesh baking rack and bake for 25 minutes, tossing at the halfway point.
Serve with ketchup or your favorite dip.
Dr. Jingdu an Yang is an integra tive neurologist, psychia trist, and acupuncturist, bo ard-certified in psychia try, specializing in integra tive mental health and Chinese medicine.
‘I want our children and grandchildren to live in a better, healthier, more beautiful world,’ says integrative physician Jingduan Yang. Step by step, he’s working to build it
By Makai Allbert | Photographed by Samira Bouaou
When Jingduan Yang was just a boy, his father asked him: “You like to eat meat?”
Yang nodded.
“Well, then,” his father replied fatly, “you’d better learn medicine— or you’re going to go hungry.”
Born in Hefei, Anhui province, in 1962 as the youngest of eight siblings, Yang grew up under the weight of family tradition and the turbulence of a changing China. His ancestry traces back to renowned Chinese doctors, including a royal physician to the Qin Dynasty emperor. His father, a fourth-generation practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), expected to pass down this legacy to his frstborn son.
However, in Yang’s case, tradition allowed for an exception. With his eldest brother sent for “re-education” in the countryside during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the duty of upholding the family’s inheritance fell to Yang.
At 13, Yang began shadowing his father, learning the ancient art of Chinese medicine. His father hoped that, at the very least, he could become a “barefoot doctor”—a physician who travels through villages to treat farmers in need, usually carrying a simple toolbox of acupuncture needles and herbs. Most importantly, this way, he could ensure he never went hungry.
In 1977, China reinstated its national college exam system. Yang took the exam and scored high enough to choose his feld of study. The opportunities were numerous, but undoubtedly, medicine was his destiny, “I never questioned that,” he said.
Following his father’s advice that “Traditional Chinese medicine is best learned at home” and believing combining it with Western medicine would make him a more capable doctor, Yang enrolled in the prestigious Fourth Military Medical University.
This choice of school, while seemingly straightforward, was discreetly infuenced by his family’s troubled political past.
Yang’s father was a former resistance fghter against the Japanese during World War II. Due to his outspoken temperament, he had been targeted by the Chinese Communist Party. As a result, he changed the family name from Tao to Yang to conceal his identity. Now, he urged his children to attend military universities, believing that the trust the communist leadership placed in military graduates would grant a protective veil over the family.
Unbeknownst to young Yang, as he lef home for medical school, he embarked upon a journey that would take him from the constraints of communist China to the freedom of the West and from the wisdom of the past to the frontiers of modern medicine.
Once in medical school, Yang found himself straddling two worlds—one rooted in empirical science, the other in millennia-old philosophy. “That’s where the confusion started,” he said.
During summer breaks, he regularly engaged in spirited debates with his father about the discrepancies between the two medical systems.
“In medical school,” he recalled, “we learned
blood is produced in the bone marrow. But Chinese medicine says it’s produced by the kidneys—I couldn’t reconcile these two.”
The answer would elude Yang for a decade, the contradiction lingering in his mind. “I couldn’t convince [my father] ... and he couldn’t convince me.”
These discussions, at times muddling and frustrating, sowed the seeds for what would become Yang’s lifelong quest: to harmonize the wisdom of the East with the rigor of the West.
By his fourth year, Yang’s exceptional performance earned him a scholarship to study abroad in Sydney. At 21, he was wide-eyed and unaware of the revelations that awaited him.
In Australia, Yang experienced the Western world’s cultural and academic openness. He lived in a seaside cottage under the wing of professor Thomas Stapleton, a stern but warm-hearted mentor. Every morning, the professor made him and his cohort run along the beach and plunge into the frigid ocean. The training was intensive yet liberating.
Back in China, his curriculum was conventional and rigid—anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry—psychology wasn’t included. In Australia, he had room to breathe, to ask questions, to probe the meaning of life itself.
These pages are in the preview.
On one occasion, a fellow medical student asked Yang about the Daoist philosopher Lao Zi. Yang was surprised by his interest, as he had been taught that Lao Zi was a bad person, “feudalist” and “backward.”
“That was embarrassing,” Yang remembered. “It made me aware of the defcit of my own education for my own culture.” But Yang didn’t know better. He had been, in his own words, “brainwashed by communism”—fed a distorted reality.
Academically, his days were f lled with discussions of medicine but with an unfamiliar approach.
Once, Stapleton tested Yang with a question about a baby a ficted with diarrhea. Yang confdently listed medical interventions: rehydration, treating infections, and managing symptoms. But Stapleton pressed him further: “What else? What was the mother doing? Where was the father?” This moment taught Yang to think beyond biology and seek other causes—a lesson
Imagine a system where primary care physicians are paid equally for preventing illness as they are for treating it. That would fundamentally change our approach to health. “
Dr. Jingduan Yang
are not included preview.
Regenerative agriculture establishes a virtuous cycle of healthier soil, healthier food, and healthier people
By Ileana Alescio
When people think about regenerative agriculture, most of them think about regenerating the soil.
But for John Kempf, founder of regenerative agronomy consulting company Advancing Eco Agriculture, it’s also about regenerating public health.
The key, he says, lies in plant immunity. When farmers grow healthy, nutritious plants that are naturally resistant to illnesses and pathogens, the crops can transfer that immunity to the livestock and the people who eat
them—the animals as well as the plants.
“These more nutritious foods increase the function and performance of our immune system, and they reduce our susceptibility to degenerative illnesses,” Kempf said.
He cited scientifc papers that describe the use of selenium as an efective treatment to both prevent and treat cancer. “One hypothetical possibility is simply to make sure that the foods that our farmers are growing are bioforti fed with selenium by having adequate selenium levels in our soil.”
Kempf comes from a farming family in northeast Ohio that grew tomatoes, cucumbers, cantaloupe, and zucchini. Following Amish tradition, he started working on the family farm afer fnishing eighth grade. He was put in charge of irrigation and spraying fertilizers and pesticides.
In 2004, the Kempf family started cultivating a feld on a neighboring farm, one with less pesticide exposure. They planted cantaloupe in both felds. At harvest, the plants on their soil—that had a great amount of pesticides applied to it—had 80 percent of their leaves infected with mildew. To Kempf’s surprise, there was no mildew on the plants growing in their neighbor’s soil.
“Not 5 percent or 10 percent. You couldn’t fnd any.”
This experience led him on a search to understand why some plants were more susceptible to powdery mildew when other, identically treated plants a yard away were resistant.
Through extensive reading and discussions with teachers and mentors, he discovered a vast body of knowledge about plant immune systems that has been thoroughly studied yet remains unutilized in large-scale agriculture.
“The idea is that plants have an immune system much like ours,” he explained. “But we know that our immune systems don’t all function equally well—some people become ill very easily with
In the photo on the right, wheat seeds were given a germination catalyst from AEA, BioCoat Gold, with nutrients and beneficial soil microbes. The seeds of the wheat plant on the left did not receive the same treatment.
the frst cold or fu bug that comes along, and other people practically never become ill. It’s because of how well their immune system has been supported throughout the course of their entire lifetime.”
The same concept holds true for plants. “Plants have the ability to be resistant to diseases and insects and all types of pathogens as long as their immune system is supported with good nutrition and with a good microbiome.”
On his farm, he found that the herbicides and fungicides applied to the soil had harmed the microbiome and diminished nutrient availability so severely that it resulted in what he refers to as “disease-conducive soil.” This nutritional imbalance allowed an infux of insects to target the cantaloupes grown in that environment.
“Diseases and insects are simply nature’s survival-of-the-fttest mechanisms,” he said.
“They are here to take the unhealthy plants out of the system. Diseases and insects don’t attack plants indiscriminately—they always go to the weakest parts of the feld frst.”
He added that modern agriculture uses genetic modifcation and fertilizers to facilitate signifcant growth. However, those conventionally grown plants lack the nutrition needed to develop a functional immune system.
“Much the same as people. We talk about how we are consuming empty calories, we’re consum-
“
From Kempf’s perspective, regenerative agriculture doesn’t just regenerate soil health and ecosystems. ‘It is also a form of agriculture that regenerates public health.’
ing all these carbohydrates and sugars without good mineral nutrition, and that’s because we treat our plants in the feld in the same way.”
When Kempf learned that it was possible to grow plants resistant to diseases and insects, he started implementing these systems on his farm. Soon, he discovered that having remarkably healthy plants had other benefts as well.
First, he discovered that the healthy plants were regenerating the soil as they grew.
“There’s been this idea that somehow agriculture is by its very nature inherently extractive and that the very process of growing crops means that we remove nutrients and we remove carbon from the soil,” he said. “But what we observed was the opposite, that when we were growing very healthy plants, they were actually storing carbon in the soil and increasing soil organic matter and increasing nutrient availability.”
Secondly, he realized that the plants not only have functional immune systems, but they also have the capacity to transfer that immunity to the animals and humans who eat them.
“We could have a legitimate conversation about growing food as medicine,” he said.
From his perspective, regenerative agriculture doesn’t just regenerate soil health and ecosystems. “It is also a form of agriculture that regenerates public health.”
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The third beneft was economical. As plants become healthier, yields increase. “It seems obvious because when you have really robustly healthy plants, you can’t stop the yields from increasing. This was in direct contrast to many people who suggested that we should expect reduced yields from regenerative agriculture.”
This third beneft is motivating more farmers to embrace regenerative agriculture. But it wasn’t always like that.
When talking to other farmers, Kempf discovered that even though the idea of cultivating crops that can restore both soil and human health sounded appealing, concerns about potential economic losses caused many farmers to be reluctant to make the switch.
Kempf decided to change the approach of his consulting frm. He started focusing intensely on economic outcomes. His promise to “help farmers make more money with regenerative agriculture”
attracted many clients. So far, he and his team of more than 80 employees have worked with over 10,000 farms in North America, helping over 4 million acres of land transition to regenerative agriculture practices.
One example shared by Kempf is the story of a cherry grower in the Pacifc Northwest named Mike Omeg, owner of Omeg Orchards. At their frst meeting, Omeg made it clear that he didn’t care about reducing pesticides or fertilizers. Rather, he wanted Kempf’s advice on how to grow large, frm cherries that would qualify for the export market and long-distance transportation.
They worked together on improving tree nutrition. In an annual review meeting three years later, Omeg told Kempf that his trees had no powdery mildew or bacterial canker anymore, and they had developed freeze resistance. He no longer needed to apply fertilizers and pesticides, so his cherries could even qualify as organic. At the same time, both his yields and proftability had signifcantly increased.
A Change in Paradigm
Kempf firmly believes that if more farmers switched to regenerative agriculture, it could have a signifcant impact on public health. But before that happens, he said other things need to happen frst.
One important factor would be switching from the perspective of “humans as parasites that degrade ecosystems”—which proposes that the way to regenerate a landscape is to remove people from it—to one of humans as caretakers.
“I hold the point of view that the fastest way to regenerate an ecosystem is not to remove people from the landscape, but to get more people who care about ecosystems and who love the land and who love the soil to be engaged as caring, loving stewards,” he said.
For Kempf, regenerating the capacity for stewardship is key. Rural communities lack talent, as many young people move to the cities searching for better opportunities. “If we want to regenerate agriculture at its most foundational level, we need to regenerate agricultural economics so that farmers are compensated well. In so doing, we regenerate the capacity for good stewardship.”
To drive this change, Kempf said that there are two main things people could do. The frst is to support farmers who use regenerative practices and produce healthy food by buying from them directly. This isn’t limited to local farms, as many accept online orders and can deliver nationwide.
The second is to join the conversation about the health crisis in America and what can be done about it.
Kempf believes agriculture is in a “unique position” to prevent diseases and enhance public health; however, a shif in food policy is essential for widespread impact. He noted that for nearly a century, the United States has followed a “cheap food policy,” resulting in a rise in degenerative diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, along with signifcant healthcare expenses related to these conditions.
“So rather than a cheap food policy, we would be much better served to have a quality food policy, where we focus on producing food that has exceptional nutritional quality.”
The current policy incentivizes farmers to produce cheap food; that’s why Kempf thinks that a change in policy is needed to get more farmers to produce high-quality, nutritious food. “Because the reality is, farmers today are doing exactly what has been asked of them,” he said.
Kempf thinks that the current Make America Healthy Again movement is “an opportunity for us to inspire and motivate signifcant change at the policy level in a way there never has been before.” For him, the transition to adopting regenerative agriculture on a wider scale doesn’t start in the farmers’ felds.
“Transition happens first in our hearts and minds.”
Women volunteers known as the ‘Donut Lassies’ boosted soldiers’ spirits by giving them a taste of home
By Dustin Bass
The Great War began during the summer of 1914, and it was nearly three more years before America sent her boys to fght in Europe. Congress declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. Although women were not allowed to serve as soldiers in the United States military, thousands of women joined the cause in Europe anyway.
It was not the frst time that American women were involved in military con f ict. Fi f y years
before World War I broke out, the Civil War created the opportunity for women to become nurses. The new European con fict swung wide the door for women to become involved. Between 1917 and 1919, more than 22,000 women were recruited by the American Red Cross to join the U.S. Army as nurses. Nearly half of them served near the Western Front. There were an additional 1,500 who served with the U.S. Navy. The primary di ference between the nurses of the Civil War
and those serving during World War I was that the latter were already professionally trained.
But it wasn’t just the American Red Cross that recruited women to serve during the war. Other private charity organizations, like the Knights of Columbus, the Jewish Welfare Board, the YMCA, and The Salvation Army, launched eforts to recruit women. The YMCA issued pamphlets informing potential recruits that their service would be needed in “its Canteens overseas.” The type of women desired was more specifc.
“The women selected for overseas’ service should be the choicest spirits among the women of America,” the pamphlet noted:
They should be women of social gif s and graces, of established Christian character, of sound health capable of enduring constant strain. They should believe with all their souls in the cause of the United States and her Allies. They should possess quiet, undiscourageable enthusiasm, and above all should have the capacity of bringing cheer and comfort to men in the face of the great realities involved in devotion even unto death to a great cause.
Although volunteering for such service would cost approximately $2,000 (about $50,000 today), thousands signed up to volunteer. Ultimately, nearly 3,500 “Y girls” found their way into Europe, primarily France. The “Canteens” the women ran provided a bit of the American home front to the soldiers. They served hot chocolate and fudge sundaes. In June of 1919, Ethel Ash, who was sent to France and was one of the last “Y girls” to leave Europe a fer the war concluded, told her family how the soldiers “grin with tears in their eyes when they see [the ice cream] coming and come back every day of their pass.”
It was another treat, however, that Ash and many of the female YMCA and Salvation Army volunteers would become known for. In October of 1917, a few months a fer the f rst troops of the American Expeditionary Force arrived in France, Salvation Army volunteers Margaret Sheldon and Helen Purviance came up with an idea of how to further boost the spirits of the American soldiers. They would surprise them with a true
American treat: doughnuts.
The ladies garnered as many baking supplies as they could. They mixed together four, sugar, baking powder, salt, eggs, and milk, and then using empty wine bottles and shell casings as rolling pins, they rolled the dough. From there, they placed an oil-f lled helmet over a f re, and placed the circular rolls of dough inside. Once fried thoroughly, they dusted the doughnuts with powdered sugar and handed them out by the hundreds to soldiers. Being only a few miles from the trenches in eastern France, there were plenty of soldiers excited to receive a taste of home.
“Well can you think of two women cooking, in one day, 2,500 doughnuts, eight dozen cupcakes, ff y pies, 800 pan cakes and 255 gallons of cocoa, and one other girl serving it,” Purviance wrote in a letter home. “That is a day’s work.”
These pages are in the preview.
A Famous Nickname Purviance and Sheldon had created a phenomenon in the war-torn country of France. The women were called “Donut Lassies,” and their new morale-boosting initiative spread across the front lines. Soon, other women volunteers with The Salvation Army, as well as the YMCA, began baking doughnuts for the troops. It seemed ftting that the American soldiers who had been termed “Doughboys” were getting their fll of doughnuts.
“Can you imagine hot doughnuts, and pie and all that sort of stuf ?” one soldier wrote in a letter home. “Served by mighty good looking girls, too.”
The women baked goods for the soldiers, hosted parties when they could, and continued their other duties, such as conducting church services, praying for soldiers, mending clothes, and helping them write letters home. By the end of the war, about a year afer Sheldon and Purviance’s doughnut surprise, the women of these mobile canteens, dubbed “clubmobiles,” were known for their many morale-boosting eforts, but it was their breakfast pastry creations that brought them the most fame. Along with “Donut Lassies,” they were also called “Donut Dollies” and “Donut Girls.” It is estimated A
that at the height of their collective doughnut production, the “Donut Lassies” were serving 9,000 doughnuts daily.
Even when there weren’t enough baking supplies available, the Dollies made do. In March 1919, about four months a fer the armistice was signed, Ash wrote home about her day working in the “Doughnut Canteen.” She wrote to her family that “we made fve hundred doughnuts and put on parties at Rampont and Dugny [French communes]. Now you know my experience in making doughnuts is mostly second handed but, honest, considering we didn’t use an egg nor any milk they weren’t so bad and now we are making the best doughnuts in France. … Mother, you would even be proud of them.”
The Lassies Honored
With the war over and the peace signed in the summer of 1919, the volunteers and the soldiers were back home. Interestingly, the “Donut Dollies” are credited with popularizing the doughnut back in America. It indeed helped that they had established a large customer base before returning home.
The doughnut craze continued, and in 1938 the Salvation Army of Chicago established the f rst Friday of June as National Donut Day in honor of the “Donut Lassies.” During World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, the “Donut Dollies” returned to the war zone to help boost the morale of America’s soldiers, serving as many as 20,000 doughnuts a day while performing many other necessary duties.
The Salvation Army’s Famous Doughnut Recipe
5 cups four
2 cups sugar
5 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups milk
1 2/3 cups vegetable oil
Directions
Mix ingredients together to make the dough.
Thoroughly knead dough.
Roll smooth.
Cut into rings that are less than 1/4 inch thick.
Drop the rings into the vegetable oil until doughnuts are browned.
When browned, remove doughnuts and allow excess oil to drip of
Dust with powdered sugar.
Let cool and enjoy!
America’s favorite short story writer found a silver lining during his time in prison
By Brian D’Ambrosio
Henry is remembered by millions as America’s unparalleled maven of the short story. His stories were pithy, comprehensible, and moving, and there were hundreds of them. A brilliant force of nature, he could produce a pearl of a story in a single night and hardly ever corrected his work from the initial handwritten manuscript. If there ever was someone who seemed to possess an innate talent for putting into words the dreams, desires, and motivations of ordinary people, it was he.
But behind the pseudonym, there was a real man who once received reconciliation and a second chance and never looked back. He’s a sterling example of one who corrected and reinvented himself, and who, when at a point in life of utmost crisis, took up his mat and walked.
Born on a plantation on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina, William Sidney Porter was raised by his grandmother. He lef school at age 15 to work in his uncle’s drugstore and obtained a pharmacist’s license by age 18.
At age 20, he drifed to the rapidly industrializing West and, afer settling in Texas, held a series of jobs, including working on a friend’s ranch, bookkeeping in a real estate ofce, and working in a pharmacy. There are an epic number of stories foating around about Porter’s whereabouts and travels at that time, and a fair share of them are most likely apocryphal. Indeed, from brazen cattle thief, to miner and cowboy, to weary traveler and wandering tintype artist, the tales and legends attached to him are many.
“A lot of yarns,” he was once quoted in the Houston Daily Post as saying, “have been printed about me and none of them is true.”
What is known is that Porter moved to Austin in 1884, population of over 11,000, and worked a variety of odd jobs before fnding work as a drafsman with the General Land Ofce.
Subsequently, he married Athol Estes Roach and found employment as a teller in a bank in Austin, where he was said to be kindly regarded by his customers and co-workers. Around that time, he
became a columnist for a Houston newspaper and ran a weekly newspaper in Austin called The Rolling Stone, a comic and humor journal. He whittled away his free nights writing stories. Life ostensibly seemed to only be getting better a fer the couple welcomed a son into the world. But then a string of ill-fated events changed the course of his life—and the trajectory of American letters.
The couple’s infant son died in 1888, and Athol became tubercular. In 1894, a suspicious defcit had been discovered at the First National Bank where he had worked. He removed himself from his position, and two years later he was indicted on four counts. Not willing to cope with the humiliation of a trial or its potential repercussions, he fed to New Orleans before eventually departing the United States. Porter ended up in Honduras, in July 1896, where he lived a harsh, difcult existence. (He also began writing “Cabbages and Kings” while in Honduras, notable for the introduction of the term “banana republic.”)
Informed that his wife was gravely ill, Porter returned to the United States about six months later. She died of tuberculosis shortly a fer. He was tried and convicted (some say unfairly and without legitimate evidence) for embezzling $854.08. He ofered no defense for the misappropriation of funds, remaining silent at his trial, and the fact that he had run away was perhaps a
sizeable factor in his conviction. He was sentenced in February of 1898 to fve years’ imprisonment in a federal penitentiary in Ohio, entering as a shattered man, pushed to “the limit of endurance,” as he wrote to his mother-in-law. He had lost his son, his wife, his good standing, and his freedom, in addition to now also losing contact with his 8-year-old daughter, Margaret.
Embracing a New Path
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But Porter dug deep within, and he discovered a way to overcome his feelings of shame and afiction, accepting his sentence as an invitation to change. He made crooked ways straight, trans -
formed himself into a new creation, and would ultimately become world famous for his talent.
Porter was a model prisoner: He worked long, overnight hours as the prison drug clerk and was secretary to the prison steward. He drew from his life and prison experiences, and, from a heart-piercing place of fresh insight, he learned from them. He befriended fellow inmates and based some of the characters and plots of his stories on their true-to-life accounts. It would not be too much of a stretch to say that Porter rejoiced in the inward journey of writing and found some degree of refuge and repentance in it.
One can only speculate how redemptive it must have felt to him when, as his new alter ego O. Henry, he sold his frst story, “Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking,” to the national magazine McClure’s Magazine in December of 1899.
Porter was blessed with an early release, serving only three years and three months out of his fveyear sentence. He had sold about a dozen stories and earned a few hundred dollars from them, which was enough money for him to eventually travel east to New York a fer he was freed on July 24, 1901. There, Porter earnestly committed himself to writing; drawing from a seemingly endless fount of lucid and compelling ideas, he mastered the short story form.
He never returned to Austin, and he never again used his real name. Some have proposed that his pseudonym was an abridged adaptation of the name of the French pharmacist Etienne Ossian Henry. The most commonly accepted explanation and origin story of the pseudonym O. Henry, however, is that Porter borrowed the name from a guard at the Ohio Penitentiary named Orrin Henry, who, depending on which account you decide on, was either Porter’s “favorite jailer” or no longer working at the time that Porter was incarcerated, but whose name was still available in the prison records.
In 1903, the Sunday supplement of the New York Herald started to publish his weekly stories of city life, and the response was overwhelming. O. Henry developed his own, one-of-a-kind style, a
plain, frank approach to weaving a yarn, which, in time, made him one of the most read and circulated authors of his time. His well-cra fed, def ly packaged writings are crammed with careful details and unforgettable characters—shopgirls, opportunists, neighbors, cops, landlords, ministers, artists, and waitresses, to name but a few—as well as the vivid juxtaposition of irony, intimacy, humor, and pathos. Precious for their colorful colloquialisms, surprise, laughter, excitement, and, occasionally, tears, O. Henry’s works withstand the test of time as some of the best turn-of-the-century vestiges of tongue and technique.
Supernaturally proli fc, he penned, by some estimates, more than 600 short stories, including “The Gif of the Magi,” one of the most endearing Christmas stories ever written, and “The Last Leaf,” a thought-provoking reflection on the inherent symbiosis of death and life, told through metaphors of old ivy leaves and the regenerative pursuit of art.
The author known as O. Henry died on June 5, 1910, in New York, the conclusion of a remarkably successful and unique journey. Outside of the smartness and aptitude of words, William Sidney Porter profoundly exemplifed the truism that, indeed, there are second acts in American lives, and that America gives second chances and is especially generous to those who accept them with care.
As America faces an epidemic of loneliness, thought leaders Mattias Desmet and Aaron Kheriaty explore its origins and ramifications
ABy Jan Jekielek
merica is facing an epidemic of loneliness—it’s as bad for people’s health as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, according to former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.
Moreover, the past two decades have seen an enormous rise in “deaths of despair,” a term coined by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, professors emeriti at Princeton University, to denote suicides, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related deaths.
What’s fueling the social fragmentation and isolation? And how are they linked to broader political and social trends?
In a recent episode of “American Thought
Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek discussed these questions with two of the world’s leading thinkers on bioethics and group psychology.
Aaron Kheriaty is a fellow and the director of the program in Bioethics and American Democracy at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. For many years, he was a psychiatry professor and the director of the medical ethics program at the University of California Irvine Medical School. He’s the author of “The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State.” Mattias Desmet is a professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University and author of “The Psychology of Totalitarianism.”
Jan Jekielek: I keep thinking about [loneliness] as a foundational issue. So let’s start with you, Aaron. You mentioned that [former] Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said there was this huge epidemic of loneliness, which is very much the case.
Aaron Kheriaty: Murthy is a man with whom I have disagreements, but on this point, he was absolutely right, and he wasn’t using that word metaphorically. He was looking at it as a health-related phenomenon and at robust data that this epidemic of loneliness was compromising Americans’ physical and mental health.
In connection with that, researchers at Princeton, [Anne] Case and [Angus] Deaton, were doing work on so-called “deaths of despair,” deaths by suicide, alcohol-related illnesses, and drug overdose, which, since 1999, had been on the rise. Drug overdose deaths in 1999 were 20,000 a year. That had ballooned to 70,000 a year by 2019.
With our response to COVID, we threw gasoline on that fre. A fer the lockdowns in 2021, that 70,000 number jumped to 100,000 a year. The same thing happened with alcohol-related deaths—69,000 a year pre-pandemic to 99,000 a year post-pandemic. And that crisis has continued to worsen. Tragically, the suicide numbers have continued to go up every year.
Behind those statistics is this epidemic of loneliness, isolation, being locked behind a screen, and having fewer face-to-face interactions.
This suggests a profound crisis in society. Technological developments have played a role, but certain social and ideological developments have also played a role, like what’s driving us to embrace this technology. Why have we, as a society, pursued the use of technologies in certain ways that lead to these kinds of problems?
Mr. Jekielek: Mattias, I’ll get you to build on that. Mattias Desmet: As Aaron mentioned, technology plays a role. The more technology [is] used, the more lonely people feel, which is surprising because we always believe that technology connects us to each other.
That’s true at the level of the exchange of information, but it disconnects us at the level of the resonating bond between humans.
What is also interesting is that sometimes it is intentionally created. Hannah Arendt said totalitarian leaders can only seize control in a society where a lot of people feel lonely. Once people feel
lonely, they are vulnerable to propaganda. A new type of mass emerged in the 20th century, which Jacques Ellul called the “lonely [crowd].” Mass formation has always existed, but in the 20th century, it became stronger [not only] because of the emergence of mass media and propaganda, but also because more people felt lonely. In this way, the propaganda really kicked in and led to a kind of mass where people no longer have to meet physically, but could form a mass while they were in their houses, because they were all infused by the same narratives through the media.
There is this last thing I want to add. We have to try to understand the complex relationship between loneliness and narcissism, because they are related to each other. That’s the root cause of the emergence of loneliness in our society, something I will describe in my next book.
Our modern worldview started to emerge in the 16th to 17th century, when human beings lef the religious view of man and the world, and replaced it with the rationalist, materialist view of man. The focus changed. It was no longer focused on ethical awareness and ethical rules. No, it was focused outwards. We started to believe that the real world is the world we observe with our eyes. We also started to believe at the level of our own identity that we could see who we are in the mirror. We are our outer mirror image, meaning that we couldn’t see the image of the other anymore. We resonated less with the other because we were more focused on our outer image and ego, and that ego is literally like a superfcial shell of your own being.
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If you focus your attention on your outer ideal image, you get disconnected from the other because you don’t mirror the other’s image anymore. There is no spontaneous emergence of empathy.
Dr. Kheriaty: You see that as young people are curating and airbrushing their image and projecting it on Instagram. They can’t experience being together with other people in spontaneous, convivial friendship. Young people go to a dance, and the whole purpose of the dance is to take pictures and post them. Otherwise, it’s like it didn’t happen, right?
The whole project of rationalism and its apotheosis in the 19th century was that we can recreate ourselves by recreating the world. That was basically the Marxist revolutionary program: that there are no elements in the world or in human
nature that need to be respected and regarded with a contemplative gaze. Everything needs to be subjected to rationalist control. This leads to a topdown managerialist society of total control and totalizing surveillance.
It leads to extreme ideologies like transhumanism that begin from the premise that there is no such thing as human nature. We recreate ourselves and become demigods—bigger, faster, stronger through the use of biotechnology or nanotechnology or other technological enhancements. And this program doesn’t make us better. It certainly doesn’t make us happier, as the “deaths of despair” are suggesting.
We aren’t disembodied ghosts in a machine. We are human beings, embodied spirits, if you will, that need to connect with one another in real face-to-face encounters, where all our senses are engaged. And these things are stripped away. We’re creating this unreal world and then trying to conform ourselves to a virtual unreality we were never built for. That can only lead to unhappiness and misery and all kinds of downstream social problems.
Think about the lockdowns during COVID-19. The world and free Western democratic societies embraced a level of control and organized loneliness that had never been seen. The question is, why? How did we get to that point where something that would have sounded insane to people 50 years ago was embraced with very few examples of dissent and pushback?
Mr. Desmet: That’s a good question. Many young people prefer virtual reality over in-person contacts and conversations. Mobile phones are our major addiction and the most dangerous one. The introduction of television and radio reduced the number of in-person contacts we had, maybe by 50 percent or more, and then the introduction of the internet with another 30 percent.
If we don’t really think about how we can escape, I believe humanity might end up in a very well-organized prison.
Mr. Jekielek: That is a very dark future.
Dr. Kheriaty: There’s a real lack of intellectual humility today. Behind these converging ideologies and uses of technologies, there’s a lack of self-awareness and understanding that the world is enormously and beautifully complicated. The hyper-rationalist ideology says we can figure
everything out and then put the really smart people into positions of permanent power. It’s a very naive view of the cosmos and of the world we live in, which is enormously complex and beyond our ability to fully comprehend.
I should say, and I’m sure Mattias would say the same thing, that both of us are fans of science as a process for discovering and learning more about the natural world. I’m not opposed to technology as a way of managing our lives in the environment, but to put those things at the service of the complex world we live in is going to require a very diferent path [from the one] we are going down now.
Mr. Desmet: In the beginning, scientifc discourse was a f ne example of truth-telling and truth-searching. A small minority of people went against a dominant discourse, and that’s exactly what truth-speech does. It destroys a common illusion.
73 % attributed loneliness in America to the prevalence of technology, according to a 2024 Harvard study. of Americans
But as science became dominant in society, people started to use scientifc discourse to make a career, to earn money, and the discourse got perverted.
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Somewhere along the road, what science the academic world produces has nothing to do with truth-speech.
Another important phenomenon is the following: As soon as the rationalist, materialist human being emerged, people started to believe that rational understanding should be the guiding principle in life. We started to think about what was the smartest way to do things. So as rational knowledge accumulated, our ethical awareness declined. The combination is extremely dangerous because accumulation of rational knowledge gives you more power. At the same time, if your ethical awareness declines, you have the recipe for evil.
Dr. Kheriaty: We’ve moved into an ideology which is diferent from science. Scientism is the non-scientifc claim smuggled through the back door that science is the only valid form of knowledge. That claim contradicts itself, because science is not the only valid form of knowledge. It’s a metaphysical claim that attempts to hide itself.
But the exclusion of moral knowledge, of spiritual, moral, metaphysical perspectives; the diminution of the humanities, of the arts, and of literature—all of this points to a totalitarian conception of science. You get people in authority saying absurd things like, “I am the science and he who
questions me questions the science,” which no real credible scientist says. It’s important that we draw this distinction between science as a pursuit that is good, and scientism, which is an ideology that has nothing to do with the disinterested pursuit of truth and everything to do with deploying power.
Mr. Desmet: The strange thing is you fall prey to the illusion that, through your rational understanding, you will be capable of controlling and manipulating everything, that you will be capable of becoming god.
This rationalist illusion always leads humanity into complete irrationality. If you really walk the path of rationality, step by step, you will soon arrive at the end, where you will see the limit of rational understanding. That’s extremely important. I consider myself to be very, very rational, but I’m not a rationalist at all.
Dr. Kheriaty: There’s an aesthetic dimension to science. Einstein himself talked about seeing the truth of his theory of relativity, embracing it not because he had irrefutable experimental proof for it. That actually came later. But he embraced the theory initially because he thought it was beautiful, because it was intuitively elegant. As he liked to put it, God did not play dice with the universe. It was almost a mystical intuition.
Mr. Desmet: You need sincerity. That’s something Einstein said in a foreword of a book by Max Planck. He said, many people think science is born from rational thinking. It’s not. It’s born from a capacity for “einfühlung,” which means feeling into what you observe. In a speech at an American university, he said the best starting point for science is cosmic religious awareness.
Mr. Jekielek: What do you mean by fnding sincerity?
Mr. Desmet: Sincerity is exactly the act through which you punch a hole in your ego. Sincerity means you reveal something that doesn’t match the ideal image.
Sometimes you are in a social situation and you feel everyone [is] buying into something and you don’t agree. If you make this courageous decision to articulate what you feel, you will destroy your ideal image in that group. You will say something that destroys the socially shared ideal image. You feel it almost physically in which you push something that resonates in your body through the outer ideal image. You literally punch a hole in your outer ideal image, your ego.
We have to try to understand the complex relationship between loneliness and narcissism, because they are related to each other.
“ Mattias Desmet, professor of clinical psychology, Ghent University
The efect is that usually the other people can open themselves a little bit. They can put aside their prejudices and social ideal images, and you will see how the words you articulated make them resonate. That’s why sincerity is the only remedy for a society sick of lies, propaganda, and manipulation.
Dr. Kheriaty: It may be just stepping out of a group and saying, “No, we can’t do that. That’s wrong; that’s not what we do to people.” Or just speaking some simple moral truth that everyone in the room ought to know, but no one is acknowledging because of social or ideological forces getting in the way. If courageous people begin trying to live that way, that will grow. People will fnd one another.
Mr. Desmet: I agree. Try to practice the art of sincere speech.
Mr. Jekielek: Should we give a homework assignment to all of us here as to what is sincere?
Dr. Kheriaty: A practical homework assignment would be to notice the times when you don’t say what you think. I’m not advocating that you say every thought that comes into your head in every social situation. Obviously, there’s discretion and propriety. But I think we’ve gone far down the path where, in certain social situations, we almost never say what we think on really important matters. We restrict ourselves to trivialities.
We need to recognize there may be moments to actually say what we believe. It may feel risky, and it may have negative social consequences. But in a society where no one does that, we are ripe for misery and perfect fodder for authoritarian rulers. So, push back against self-censorship. Notice when you’re biting your tongue simply to go along, to get along, and fnd ways here and there to strategically try to push back against that and to engage in the kind of sincere speech that Mattias described so beautifully.
Mr. Jekielek: Mattias, a fnal thought?
Mr. Desmet: It’s just as simple as that. If you speak sincerely, you will inevitably lose something in the world of appearances. And you will win something in the real world. You have to accept that and go for the real world.
This
interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Mary Vaux Walcott’s illustrative research of alpine wildflowers brought North America’s floral diversity to the public’s attention
By Michelle Plastrik
Adiverse range of labels—including adventurer, mountaineer, glacier geologist, botanist, photographer, and painter—are descriptive of Mary Vaux Walcott (1860–1940). A pioneer in the felds of science, art, and exploration, Walcott is best known for the 1925 to 1928 publication of her fve-volume set of exquisite watercolor studies cataloging North America’s wildfowers. This highly acclaimed seminal work led to her sobriquet: the “Audubon of Botany.”
Her sketches and illustrations, which number
near 1,000, continue to be exhibited and republished. Their enduring appeal and importance lie in their combination of great beauty and scientifc accuracy.
Walcott was born into a prosperous Philadelphian Quaker family, the eldest of three siblings. In childhood, she was given a painter’s box, which she kept for the rest of her life. This paint set was the catalyst for her frst forays into painting fowers and landscapes. In the late 19th century,
Since Walcott rendered the pl ants to scale, some illustra tions fea ture empty m argins while others, such a s the 1932 wa tercolor “Mountain Rose-B a y (Rhododendron ca ta wbiense),” are cropped a t the edges.
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the pursuit of botanical drawings was deemed a suitable hobby for an educated young woman. However, it was assumed that ladies gathered inspiration from their gardens, not from a precipitous peak thousands of miles away from home in the great outdoors.
Walcott intended to attend Bryn Mawr College, but the unexpected early death of her mother required that she stay home and care for her father and brothers. Despite the loss of this opportunity for formal higher education, a new path emerged: In 1887, the Vauxes began making annual amateur scientifc research trips to the Canadian Rockies, and Walcott was included as an active participant by her family.
On their f rst trip, the Vauxes traveled 10,000 miles, employing transportation both typical (foot, horse, ferry, carriage) and new (the Canadian Pacifc Railway). The trip was eventful, as they survived a train crash and a derailment. The family were adept photographers, especially Mary; she
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Walcott always worked in the field, making her watercolor sketches on-site.
became known for her ability to assemble a darkroom even at a mountain campsite. They began capturing the Illecillewaet Glacier, taking perhaps the f rst ever photos of it. Their documentation lasted more than 40 years.
Walcott kept a travelogue of these west Canadian adventures as she collected and captured images of wildflowers with her paints. She even climbed Mount Stephen, which is over 10,000 feet. Walcott achieved further feats as an outdoors-woman throughout her life, and
Mount Mary Vaux in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada, is named in her honor.
Botanical Illustrations
During one of these summer trips, Walcott painted a rare blooming arnica at the request of a botanist. It was met with praise, and she was inspired to apply herself to scholarly botanical illustration. She searched high and low for rare fowering species and was unrelenting in her quest. Walcott always worked in the feld, making her watercolor sketches on-site, which was an uncommon practice. She felt this was necessary to accurately capture color. Battling discomfort and mosquitos, speed was key as cut wildfowers can last only for a day or sometimes just a few hours. Walcott was known to work up to 17 hours outside.
Walcott’s botanical watercolors are exquisite in their shade, hue, light, detail, movement, and composition. These precise illustrations are unusual
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