Reader's Digest - December 2018/January 2019 (Holiday Miracles Issue)

Healthier Brain. Better Life.

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The Church That Wouldn’t Burn

By BILL HANGLEY JR.

DECEMBER 2018/JANUARY 2019

BELIEVE IN

MIRACLES REAL-LIFE STORIES OF HOPE

Secrets of HOLIDAY SHOPPING An RD ORIGINAL

A 4-Year-Old Hunger Activist

By CLAIRE NOWAK

Unfreeze Your Brain From the book ELASTIC

32

Brilliant Made-Up Words

By BILL BOULDIN

The Man Who Rigged the Lottery From THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

Reader ’s Digest

80 98 military life You Own Every Bullet

CONTENTS

In the midst of a tense ambush in Iraq, a soldier recalls his father’s valuable lesson. by matt susko from reddit.com

Features

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cover story

REAL-LIFE MIRACLES

matthew cohen

This holiday season, let these eight stories stir a sense of wonder and faith.

first person

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104 inspiration

The Magic Trick That Changed My Life

Luck and the Four-Leaf Clover

After perfecting it for six years, a magician tries out his big stunt.

One woman’s knack for finding good fortune.

by nate staniforth from the book here is real magic

by teva harrison from the walrus

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74 department of wit

88 health & medicine

true crime

The Best Made-Up Words Ever

The Lifesaver on Dad’s Computer Screen

Do you suffer from “carcolepsy”? Are you an “afterclapper”? The dictionary won’t tell you, but we will.

A daughter caring for her father finds help— and peace of mind— from a virtual companion.

He got hold of the winning numbers— five times. But how?

by bill bouldin from the del rio news-herald

by lauren smiley from wired

The Man Who Rigged the Lottery

by reid forgrave from the new york times magazine on the cover: photograph by yasu+junko ornament courtesy swarovski

rd.com | dec 2018 ) jan 2019

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Reader ’s Digest Contents

Departments 6 Dear Reader 8 Letters everyday heroes

10 The Caped Crusader by claire nowak

14 Dog’s Best Friend

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18 The Chicken Wing Super Bowl quotable quotes

22 Paul Rudd, Gisele Bündchen, Bruce Springsteen how to

25 Maintain Your Purpose in Life by david g. allan from cnn.com

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from top: serge bloch. cary norton

Super helper Austin Perine with his dad, TJ Perine

by andy simmons

i won!

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SWEET RAISINS

CRUNCHY BRAN FLAKES

PLOT TWIST WE ADDED BANANA SLICES

®, TM, © 2018 Kellogg NA Co.

Reader ’s Digest Contents news from the world of medicine

your true stories

39 Chance Meetings and Christmas Memories

32 Fasting, Glaucoma, and Spirituality

13 things

life well lived

40 Holiday Money Savers That Work All Year

36 The Gift of a Great Neighbor by nicole burrell

i am the food on your plate

45 Potatoes

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by kate lowenstein and daniel gritzer

49 Airport Security and More

The Genius Section 118 Unfreeze Your Brain by leonard mlodinow from the book elastic

122 Brain Games 125 Word Power 128 Photo Finish

20 Life in These United States 52 Laughter, the Best Medicine 73 Laugh Lines 79 Humor in Uniform 96 All in a Day’s Work

Reader’s Digest (ISSN 0034-0375) (USPS 865-820), (CPM Agreement# 40031457), Vol. 192, No. 1146, December 2018/January 2019. © 2018. Published monthly, except bimonthly in July/ August and December/January (subject to change without notice), by Trusted Media Brands, Inc., 44 South Broadway, White Plains, New York 10601. Periodicals postage paid at White Plains, New York, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Reader’s Digest, PO Box 6095, Harlan, Iowa 51593-1595. Send undeliverable Canadian addresses to ca.postal.affairs@rd.com. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction, in any manner, is prohibited. Reader’s Digest and The Digest are registered trademarks of Trusted Media Brands, Inc. Marca Registrada. Printed in U.S.A. SUBSCRIBERS: You may cancel your subscription at any time and receive a refund for copies not previously addressed. Your subscription will expire with the issue identified above your name on the address label. If the Post Office alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. A special Reader’s Digest Large Print with selected articles from Reader’s Digest is published by Trusted Media Brands, Inc. For details, write: Reader’s Digest Large Print, PO Box 6097, Harlan, Iowa 51593-1597. CONSUMER INFORMATION: Reader’s Digest may share information about you with third parties for the purpose of offering products and services that may interest you. If you would rather not receive such offers via postal mail, please write to Reader’s Digest Customer Mailing List, PO Box 3123, Harlan, Iowa 515930189. You can also visit www.tmbi.com/preference-center to manage your preferences and opt out of receiving such offers via e-mail. Please see our Privacy Policy at www.tmbi.com/privacy-policy.

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dec 2018 ) jan 2019 | rd.com

from left: matthew cohen. shutterstock (3)

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DEAR READER

The Miracle of Memory s I hang the first ornament, I’m singing along with Eartha Kitt.

I know I look like a fool in my Santa hat, belting out “Santa Baby,” but it’s the Sunday before Christmas, tree-dressing day.

I’ve chosen the towering Bavarian stick-skier in a red quilted jacket that my dad loved. “Not right in front, it’s dorky,” Rachel protests. She is grown, a working nurse, but revisiting the “OMG, Dad!” role of youth.

A

When I was a kid, my mother had the Christmas-tree bug, and I’ve taken the same silly joy in the ritual.

I remember her holiday jazz albums (Jimmy Smith, Stan Getz) dropping from the stack onto the turntable as my two older brothers and I danced, quibbled, and dressed the tree.

So I string the lights and build the fire, then let each ornament trigger smack talk and memories. The ugly glass owl? A memorial to Neil’s obsessive hunting for owl pellets when he was a kid. “I was a freaking Steve Irwin,” he deadpans. The handmade sleeping kitty with a crack across it?

My sweet mother-in-law, Ruth, glazed that in honor of our first cat. Only the ornament remains, glued and proud.

Each object fills me with emotions I can’t otherwise always tap. Our dear friends the Nashes sent the jaunty mini cowboy boot after they’d moved away from us to Texas. The tiny San Francisco Giants baseball in glass brings back the incredible day in 2010 when we all finally celebrated, for real.

Bent, awkward, or old ornaments join the pretty bulbs up front. We sing along with Luther Vandross—“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”—and I feel all the people and places life has lucked me with.

Bruce Kelley, editor-in-chief Write to me at letters@rd.com.

from top: matthew cohen (3). mike mcgregor

Reader ’

Reader ’s Digest panic attacks were gone. I have not had one since.

—jany sabins Maplewood, New Jersey

LETTERS Notes on the October issue

Learn to Not Fall

I can’t treat eyestrain by placing cucumber slices on my eyelids because I’m allergic to cucumbers. I tried to achieve similar results by closing my eyes for 15 minutes, but I failed since I couldn’t resist reading the rest of your fine magazine. However, I still wonder whether the secret to avoiding eyestrain is simply to close your eyes once in a while.

—markell raphaelson west Laurel, Maryland

You encouraged people to use aloe vera for burns, but you failed to mention that bottled aloe vera products may actually contain very little aloe vera. The most reliable source is the real plant.

Everyone should have one on their windowsill.

—T.B. via e-mail

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dec 2018 ) jan 2019

How to Conquer Panic Attacks I had panic attacks for 28 years, took every prescription drug in the book, meditated, exercised, etc. Three years ago, I went on a vegan diet but continued to eat seafood because my nutritionist advised against quitting meat cold turkey.

In four months, my

Sympathy for My Bully I was bullied from sixth to eighth grade.

When I complained to our vice principal, she told me she didn’t believe the young man would do such things.

I recently learned that, after being in and out of jail, my bully passed away of an overdose at 30 years old. I can’t help but wonder, What if my report had been respected? Might it

matthew cohen (2)

Old-Time Doctor Remedies That Work

I would add: Do not wear backless shoes.

Twice, more than 30 years apart, I had falls from wearing backless shoes. The last one led to a broken arm— and the inability to do some ordinary things for myself. There is also a psychological component to a serious fall.

—Alice Marcus Solovy Highland Park, Illinois

have opened a dialogue that would have helped him? As the author says, “Look at every bully and his or her victim and you’ll often find two kids who need help, not just one.”

—ALEKA STEFANOPOULOS Munster, Indiana

Word Power The pronunciation of the word bruschetta was incorrect: The letters sch should be pronounced sk as in scheme and not sh as in she.

—John Kellett Los Osos, California From the editors: Our go-to reference, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, says that both pronunciations are correct but sh is preferred.

How to Make It as a Fossil Harry R. Truman, the man who ran Spirit Lake Lodge at the foot of Mount St. Helens, refused to leave when the volcano erupted on

May 18, 1980. It is presumed he is now under 200 feet of landslide debris, along with his 16 cats: modern fossils in the making.

—kirke Campbell Corvallis, Oregon

Heaven Can’t Wait

Scout’s Honor

You will be waiting a long time if you start looking for the next total lunar eclipse on January 20, 2019, as Joe Rao urged. In fact, it will happen the day after, on January 21.

—Bill Schoenborn Agawam, Massachusetts

I work for the Boy Scouts in Tennessee and enjoyed the article about the man who went to Camp Minsi to see whether he had what it takes to be a Scout. But I have a question about the boy who consumed 35 slushies in seven days: Only 35?

—Joe priester Franklin, Tennessee

According to meteorologist Joe Rao, who wrote the story, the eclipse starts on January 20 and finishes on January 21. On the 20th, the moon will begin moving into Earth’s dark shadow, called the umbra, at 10:33 p.m. (EST). The total phase will begin at 11:41 p.m. and last for 62 minutes.

The moon will move out of the umbra in the early morning of the 21st, at 1:50 a.m.

got any bad advice?

No doubt there’s a pearl of wisdom that has stayed with you for your entire life, but what about the other kind?

The worst advice you ever got can be memorable, too—and maybe, in retrospect, amusing!

Tell us about it at rd.com/worstadvice. rd.com

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Reader ’s Digest

EVERYDAY HEROES A four-year-old boy discovers that compassion for the less fortunate can produce superhuman results

The Caped Crusader

By Claire Nowak

Austin Perine is not your typical superhero. Oh, sure, he looks the part, with his signature cape flapping against his blue shirt. He has an arch nemesis, as all good heroes must. He even uses a catchy name for his heroic alter ego: President Austin.

But two things set this caped crusader apart : His adversary is not confined to the pages of a comic book—President Austin’s foes, hunger and homelessness, are very real. Also, he’s only four years old.

Our hero’s origin story started this past February in the Perine family living room in Birmingham, Alabama.

Austin and his father, TJ Perine, were watching a program on Animal Planet

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about a mother panda leaving her cubs. “I told him that the cubs would be homeless for a while,” TJ says. “Austin didn’t know what homelessness meant, but he was sad and wanted to know more.”

Seeing this as a teachable moment, TJ took Austin to the Firehouse Ministries, a local shelter that provides housing, food, and other services for chronically homeless men. As they drove by the redbrick building, they saw a group of 25 homeless men standing on the street corner. “Dad, they look sad,” Austin said. “Can we take them some food and make them smile?”

That day, Austin used his allowance Photograph by Cary Norton

Austin models his costume, which he created for those times he works with the needy.

Reader ’s Digest Everyday Heroes to buy each man a Burger King sandwich and handed the food out himself. Seeing what their presence meant to the men at the ministry, Austin and TJ returned the next week. Austin again dipped into his piggy bank to buy sandwiches, which he handed out along with his new catchphrase, “Don’t forget to show love!”

After he returned every week for five weeks, word of Austin’s acts of kindness spread through social media and national news outlets. Burger King jumped aboard, agreeing to

AUSTIN DOLES OUT FOOD AND A MOTTO: “DON’T FORGET TO SHOW LOVE!” donate $1,000 a month for an entire year toward the cause. Soon, churches and shelters across the country began inviting Austin to come distribute food in other poverty-prone areas. He’ll have visited at least 15 locations by the end of this year, including Skid Row in Los Angeles and parts of Puerto Rico affected by Hurricane Maria. Whereas before Austin and TJ could feed 25 to 50 people at a time, now, thanks to corporate and community support, they can feed 800 to 2,000 people at once.

But Austin isn’t just filling bellies.

He’s improving the lives of those he meets. On that first trip to Firehouse Ministries, TJ and Austin talked to

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a man named Raymont, who was estranged from his family. The respect Austin bestowed on 41-year-old Raymont touched the man, and he shared with TJ just how grateful he was to be treated so considerately by a fouryear-old stranger. Raymont and TJ kept in touch. With help from TJ’s mother, Audrey Perine, who worked at the Alabama Department of Transportation at the time, TJ helped Raymont collect all the credentials he needed to get a driver’s license. The license helped Raymont get a job. And with money in the bank, he was able to rent his own apartment. All that was made possible because a little boy took the time to care.

Austin’s passion has now become his family’s calling. After raising money through a GoFundMe page, Audrey established the Show Love Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting homelessness. She now serves as president, and TJ left his job as a project manager for a hospital chain to oversee public relations for the foundation full-time. He’s in talks with the city of Birmingham to secure the redbrick building where it all started—Firehouse Ministries is moving—as the site of their own shelter, which would offer medical and mental health care as preventive steps against homelessness.

As for President Austin, he continues to give out food, smiles, and his inspirational message of love. “It makes me feel like I’m saving the day.”

Reader ’s Digest Everyday Heroes

Dog’s Best Friend

By Andy Simmons

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Jarrett Little tried a few ways of carrying Columbo. This proved the easiest.

happy that we were there, touching him, and hadn’t taken off on him.”

The trio’s 30-minute ride into town ended at a bike store, where they got more water and food for the dog. That was when Andrea Shaw, a corporate attorney from Maine in town on business, happened by. The dog made a beeline for her, licking and “loving on her,” says Dixon. Shaw was smitten and, after learning what had transpired, declared her intentions: “I am keeping this dog.”

Shaw called him Columbo after the town where they’d met and scheduled an operation on his leg. Today, Columbo is living the high life on a farm with a horse, a pony, a sixyear-old boy, and two coonhounds to keep him company. As Dixon told the Ledger-Enquirer, “He is literally the luckiest dog alive.”

courtesy jarrett little

Jarrett little was road testing his mountain bike outside of Columbus, Georgia, when his riding partner, Chris Dixon, stopped suddenly. Something in the distance moving among the trees had caught her attention. It turned out to be a sandy-colored fivemonth-old Great Dane mix.

“He was really thin, ribs showing, and had a lot of road rash and a broken leg,” Little told CBS News. The cyclists fed the friendly pup and shared their water. They also quickly realized that the dog was coming with them, although they had no idea how.

They were more than seven miles from downtown and riding bikes.

“We couldn’t leave him,” Little told the Ledger-Enquirer. “Out there next to the Oxbow Meadows, he was going to end up as alligator food.”

Little, a 31-year-old brick and concrete business owner, had an idea. He carefully picked up his new friend and slipped the 38-pound dog’s hind legs into the back pockets of his cycling jersey. Then he draped the dog’s front paws over his shoulders.

“He was injured, so he wasn’t trying to fight,” Little says. “He was also

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Reader ’s Digest

I WON! The

CHICKEN WING SUPER BOWL molly schuyler, age 39, Plumas Lake, California

You ate 47 pounds of chicken wings in 30 minutes to win Wing Bowl 26.

How do you train for that? The night before, the girls had a night out and we ate a lot of nachos. That morning, I drank at least three gallons of water to stretch my stomach.

When did you realize you might be good at this?

When I did my very first challenge, everybody took note of it. I kept saying, “I just ate a hamburger, whatever.”

Do you compete often?

Fifteen to 20 times a year. I won $22,000 at my first Wing Bowl.

(She has also competed

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with cinnamon rolls, bratwurst, pudding, and fried mushrooms, though not at the same time.)

But how do you still weigh only 127 pounds?

Any professional eater will not eat like that at home. It’s fruits and veggies in our house.

How did you find this career? I had four small children. I was working as a bartender to be home during the day, but when I started doing this, I was making more money in minutes

dec 2018 ) jan 2019 | rd.com

than I would make in a whole month.

What do people say when you tell them what you do? People make fun of us sometimes.

But competitive eating is a physical sport. If you overeat on Thanksgiving, you’re doing the same thing we are— only we’re getting paid.

The Wing Bowl is held every year in Philadelphia the Friday before the Super Bowl.

Schuyler has won the contest three times.

Illustration by John Cuneo

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Reader ’s Digest

LIFE in these United States

On the phone with my 93-year-old brother in Wisconsin, and I told him I thought it was time he paid someone to shovel snow for him. He suddenly grew indignant. “Why should I pay someone to shovel?” he demanded. “I can get my son to do it. He’s only 70!”

—David Groeschel Philadelphia, Pennsylvania All I’m saying is, if we had a dungeon, my wife would decorate it with throw pillows.

— @TheBoydP (Boyd’s Backyard™) Before heading off to Mexico on vacation, my daughter asked her doctor for medicine to

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“You keep giving me advice when what I need is herbal tea and lemon bars.”

Scene: A public bus in New York City.

Bus Driver: “Everyone remember to keep your headphones plugged in. From the looks of all of you, I can already tell I hate your music taste.”

—instagram.com/overheardnewyork

ward off any potential stomach troubles.

Instead, the doctor prescribed bottled water and electrolytes, “which have

simple sugars and salt.”

My daughter liked that. “Oh,” she said, “like a margarita?”

—Kaaryn Roberts La Sal, Utah Cartoon by Phil Witte

My three-year-old son: I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.

Me: You can be anything you want.

Son: (after a few seconds) I think I’ll be a mother.

—Mary Lahl Chaska, Minnesota Looking for a reason to chuckle? Three people share their wry stories: ✦ “Today, I met a girl named Unique,” I said.

“She has an identical twin sister.” No one thought it was funny. ✦ Today in Latin, my teacher was trying to figure out how many days were in July. I said 31. He asked whether I knew it from a rhyme or something. I said yes.

The real reason I know is because Harry Potter’s birthday is July 31.

Got a funny story about friends or family? It could be worth $$$. For details, go to rd.com/submit.

✦ Today, I was at the doctor’s office. Because I’m a teenager, I was required to take a survey about drugs,

alcohol, and sex.

It asked whether I was in a gang. I wrote “marching band.”

—mylifeisaverage.com

MY BIG, FAT SHOPPING LIST Ever go to Costco only to realize you need a moving van to bring your purchases home? The women behind the Instagram account imomsohard understand completely. This snapshot posted before a recent haul might make you feel better the next time you overdo it.

**My List** Wine 50lb bag of trail mix that will never get eaten Chicken 6 pack of John Grisham books, just because Box of chicken nuggets 6" too wide for my freezer Big ol’ bag of spinach that turns into green water Extra TV Wine with a handle on it Chorizo I sampled but will never cook So much chicken salad, so so much Tent?

Bucket of pickles—only thing under $10 Gross vitamins Wine in box Magnum of Head & Shoulders for my babe —instagram.com/imomsohard

rd.com

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Reader ’s Digest

Discipline shows who you really are.

To control yourself, that is the ultimate power.

—Kendrick Lamar, rapper

If somebody asks, “What are you doing in five years?” and you have an answer, I think there’s a good chance you aren’t going to get there. If you pick one thing, then you’ve neglected all other opportunities.

—Darla Moore, philanthropist

“That’s not my problem” is possibly the worst thing people can think.

—Atul Gawande, surgeon

I have no social media. I don’t need things in my life to distract me from my life.

—Paul Rudd, actor

If you can affect someone when they’re young, you are in their hearts forever.

—Mara Wilson, actor

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lamar

moore

rudd

wilson

from left: mediapunch/shutterstock. lou krasky/ap/shutterstock. lovekin/shutterstock. courtesy mara wilson

QUOTABLE QUOTES

The speaker at my high school commencement concluded by asking us whether we would explore and develop the spiritual part of our identity throughout our lives or wait for illness or advancing age to force a crash course … Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that this is the most important question of all.

—Francis S. Collins, director of the national institutes of health

Mental toughness is the ability to see the bright side of a hopeless situation. Adversity is an experience, not a final act.

—George Raveling, basketball coach

from left: charles krupa/ap. cindy barrymore. broadimage. all shutterstock

Nature is the biggest teacher: She’s always teaching you how to adapt.

—Gisele Bündchen, supermodel

POINT TO PONDER People don’t come to rock shows to learn something. They come to be reminded of something they already know and feel deep down in their gut ... It’s the reason true rock ’n’ roll will never die.

—Bruce Springsteen, singer

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Reader ’s Digest

HOW TO

Maintain Your Purpose in Life

shutterstock (5)

Start each year by writing it down anew. Your everchanging answers may help you live longer and better.

By David G. Allan from cnn.com

very January for the past 20 years, I have taken a few moments to ponder the answer to the big question “What is the meaning of life?”

It’s one of those enormous questions that is so important—philosophically and practically in terms of how we live our lives—and yet we never stop to really think about the answer. Given that you might be able to formulate

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Reader ’s Digest How to Maintain Your Purpose in Life your response in less than a minute, the wisdom-to-effort ratio for this philosophical exercise could not be more advantageous. I tend to ponder such things as the creator of the Wisdom Project, a collection of writings about the wisdom in everyday life experiences.

Doing this simple exercise might even help you live longer. According to two separate studies published in 2014—one with 9,000 participants around age 65 and another with 6,000 people between 20 and 75— those who could articulate the meaning and purpose of their lives died

“THE PURPOSE OF LIFE,” SAID ROBERT BYRNE, “IS A LIFE OF PURPOSE.” later than those who saw their lives as aimless. It didn’t seem to matter what meaning participants ascribed to their lives, whether it was personal

Readers Share What Brings Meaning to Their Lives Spreading Warmth

Helping those in need. I make blankets for children’s hospitals, pet blankets for animal shelters, and shawls for the elderly.

—Christen Lippincott atascocita, texas

Collecting Memories, Not Stuff Stop buying trinkets that give you momentary pleasure. Rather, make memories that will last a lifetime. Travel and visit as many places as you can, reconnect and build friendships, and take plenty of

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photos along the way. Memories have given me much more long-lasting happiness than any physical object can bring!

—Sriram Sridhar raleigh, north carolina

Building Literacy I truly believe we can change the world one person at a time, which is why I became a literacy volunteer. Nothing is more memorable than the look in the eyes of an adult when he or she reads for the first time. You know for as long as they live they will remember you.

—Charlotte DiPaola niverville, new york

NEW!

BIG VANILLA

(such as happiness), creative (such as making art), or altruistic (such as making the world a better place). It was having an answer to the question that mattered.

The connection to longevity could be causal—having purpose may help one cope with daily stress, as other research has shown. But it could also be that those who think about life’s meaning are more likely to do other activities that promote good health.

The reason I ask this question year after year is that my answer changes over time, which I find interesting and insightful. There is no objectively

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The meaning of life became clear to me after watching my parents battle short illnesses and pass away a mere six weeks apart. My faith told me they were in a better place, but I was feeling sorry for myself and my family. I gradually came to believe that our time on this earth is short and we never know when it will end, so while we are here we need to live it to the fullest. Take time to sit on the deck and watch the sunset, stay up late during the week to visit with a friend (who cares if you’re tired at work the next day?), use those vacation days, and let the dishes sit in the sink so you can watch your kids play ball. As they say, “Don’t sweat the small stuff—and it’s all small stuff.” If we aren’t enjoying life, then what’s the point?

— Amy Wasson waukon, iowa

Reader ’s Digest How to Maintain Your Purpose in Life correct answer, I believe—only answers that are right for you at any given time.

Great thinkers have given the question thought, so you can look to the words attributed to them for inspiration. Plato, the Greek philosopher who lived more than 2,300 years ago, concluded that only “love can light that beacon which a man must steer by when he sets out to live the better life.” Russian author Leo Tolstoy wrote, “The sole meaning

of the old Peanuts comic strip in which Lucy asks Charlie Brown, “Why do you think we’re put here on earth?” Charlie Brown says, “To make others happy.”

Lucy then asks, “What are the others put here for?”

—Mike Adamkosky columbus, ohio

Empowering Others Growing up with a disability, I was subject to discrimination and what is now called bullying. All I wanted was the equal

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Martin Luther King Jr. framed the sentiment as a question: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” And the Dalai Lama added, “If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is desist from harming them.”

Others came to the same conclusion, in their own words. For instance, Scottish rugby legend Nelson Henderson put the notion poetically when he said, “The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” And actor Whoopi Goldberg’s meaningof-life metaphor was to “throw little

opportunity to pursue my dreams. Empowering others to pursue theirs through teaching, advocacy, and the practice of law is what brings meaning to my life.

—Cindy Simon wayne, new jersey

Playing as a Team My husband coaches high school tennis.

In a preseason conditioning run, the lone freshman, new to the team, was falling behind. One of the older boys left his spot with the pack to go back and run with the new boy, encouraging him not to give up.

To me, the meaning of life includes exactly this: eyes that see those falling behind and hearts motivated to do something about it.

—Jenna Filbrun goshen, indiana

BIG DAYS ARE RIPE

torches out to lead people through the dark.”

My favorite answer, though, is the Zen-like circular reasoning attributed to writer Robert Byrne, who put it, “The purpose of life is a life of purpose.”

Some have concluded that life’s meaning is subjective. “There is not one big cosmic meaning for all,” author Anaïs Nin wrote in her diary.

“There is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.”

I agree, which is why I recommend

WITH POTENTIAL

Remembering All God’s Creatures Every day I try to do something for someone, whether human or animal.

Take spiders outside into their natural habitat, rescue stray dogs, tell someone they are beautiful or worthy, coax a turtle to water, hold the hand of a dying person, plant flowers and trees, take care of the environment, honor people of other cultures, try to be caring.

—Annette Thomas clarkston, michigan

BIG FOOD FOR

BIG DAYS

Cherishing Connections

© 2018 Kellogg NA Co.

First we are someone’s child. Then a sibling, a friend, a spouse, a parent.

Who we are to others defines us and gives us meaning in life.

—Marie Bray southington, connecticut

Reader ’s Digest How to Maintain Your Purpose in Life formulating your own answer. Taking a few moments to record your response to the question “What is the meaning of life?” is the kind of simple exercise that effectively adds meaning to your life.

And then I suggest answering it every year. Looking back at how your thinking has evolved and been influenced by experience tells you something more about yourself.

Cumulatively, it gets you closer to a deeper self-understanding.

In 1997, my answer was “The discovery, pursuit, and attainment of one’s bliss,” inspired by myth

expert Joseph Campbell. A year later, it was to make “the world a better place.” In 2002, the year I got engaged, it was simply “Love.” And the year we conceived our oldest daughter, it was the less-romantic “Continuation of one’s DNA to the next generation.” But most years, my answer is some combination of love, legacy, happiness, experience, and helping others.

If you do the annual “meaning” exercise, I suggest not looking at past answers before answering anew. I write them down on the same nowyellowing piece of paper and keep it someplace safe.

Readers Share What Brings Meaning to Their Lives (continued)

Ending Up in the Right Place

It is simple. Life is a test to determine where you will spend eternity.

—Ron Jostes ballwin, missouri

Using Your Talent Ask yourself, “What do I most like to do?” It’s what you’ll do best. I found my meaning when a cow moose ran through our yard. My husband snapped a picture, and I submitted it to the local newspaper with a caption. “Can you do more?” the publisher responded. For more than 30 years, I’ve written columns, feature

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dec 2018 ) jan 2019 | rd.com

stories, news items, and two books.

At age 95 (not a misprint), I’m still writing and using the gifts God gave me. Try using yours. You’ll learn the true meaning of life. So will the lives you touch.

—Betty Starks Case riverton, wyoming

Finding Joy in the Present I have spent many years trying to figure this out. I went through life never thinking of the future or where my life might lead me. Now I finally know what is important and the meaning of life.

Remember your blessings every day.

Be nice. Take care of each other. Too bad it took 62 years to figure this out.

—Kristi Schmidt shingle springs, california

FILL UP FOR

The last use of this experiment is to try to turn your answer into action. If you conclude, as Tolstoy and Einstein did, that the meaning of life is helping others, that should help motivate you to do more of it.

If “love” is the answer, then love more. If it’s “find your bliss,” then get searching for it.

This is not a theoretical exercise.

Whatever small step you take toward finding the meaning of life is a step toward a more meaningful, and longer, life.

BIG DAYS

cnn.com (july 20, 2018), copyright © 2018 by cable news network.

Being a Caring Partner

BIG FOOD FOR

BIG DAYS

© 2018 Kellogg NA Co.

My wife and I were having the usual tense discussions about the fair division of labor at home. Then one day at church, the sermon was about the hidden value of service to others. I challenged myself to serve my wife every day for a month and see what happened. For a month, I never walked by something that could be done; I just picked it up, put it away, emptied the dishwasher, took out the trash. No thinking about whose turn it was or who made the mess. At the end of the month, I found that our life was happier, more contented, more intimate. I kept it up and won more than the lottery.

We have been married 30 years and look forward to many more.

—Daniel Townsend hayward, california

Reader ’s Digest

A Blood Test That May Warn of Alzheimer’s Sooner

News From the

WORLD OF MEDICINE

EARLY DINERS ARE HEALTHIER A study of more than 4,000 men and women in Spain found that people who ate their evening meal before 9 p.m. or at least two hours before going to bed had a 20 percent lower risk of breast or prostate cancer than those who ate after 10 p.m. or went to bed soon after eating. These cancers may be bolstered by disruptions to the biological clock, and meal timing impacts sleep cycles.

More research needs to be done to confirm the link, but it’s worth noting that studies have already shown that eating dinner earlier can help you maintain a healthy weight and sleep better.

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The only way to catch Alzheimer’s early— allowing treatment to slow the progression of symptoms—is through expensive imaging or invasive tests. Now researchers have developed a blood test that they hope will spot the amyloid beta that forms brain plaque, a hallmark of the disease.

Working with archived blood that had been collected between July 2000 and December 2002 from participants in a study of adults ages 50 to 75, they compared samples from 65 people who were later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s to more than 800 controls. The new test correctly identified those with the disease in almost 70 percent of the cases—and it would have done so as many as eight years before they received their diagnosis using the current tests.

Photograph by The Voorhes

vladimir konstantinov/shutterstock

Treat Glaucoma While You Sleep

The 16:8 Diet Works

Scientists have long known that cannabigerolic acid, a compound from the cannabis (aka marijuana) plant, can relieve glaucoma symptoms, but the key elements don’t easily dissolve and therefore can’t be turned into effective eye drops. Researchers at the University of British Columbia may have solved that problem with a compound called a hydrogel. The hydrogel is administered as drops that then form a sort of lens upon contact with the eye, allowing the cannabigerolic acid to dissolve during the night and penetrate the cornea.

In pig corneas, which are similar to human corneas, the gel was absorbed quickly; the next step is to test the gel in human eyes.

In a small study, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago recruited 23 obese participants to spend 12 weeks following a type of intermittent fasting called the 16:8 diet. In the eight hours between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., participants could eat as much as they wanted of any food. However, for the remaining 16 hours of the day, they were allowed to have only water and other caloriefree drinks. Compared with a control group, the 16:8 dieters consumed an average of 300 fewer calories per day, lost 3 percent of their weight, and saw a significant drop in their systolic blood pressure. One reason may simply be that the 16:8 diet is easier for most people to maintain than other types of intermittent fasting.

“SENSITIVE” TOOTHPASTE ISN’T ENOUGH Many toothpastes claim to treat sensitive teeth, but researchers recently found they don’t help much. A tooth grows sensitive when its protective enamel erodes, exposing dentin, a layer with tubules that lead to the nerves.

The researchers tested nine “antierosive” and/or “desensitizing” products and found that they all caused enamel wear, just like regular toothpastes.

Some desensitizing toothpastes might help to block pain, but you likely also need to see your dentist for other treatment options.

rd.com

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Reader ’s Digest News from the World of Medicine

spiritual experience can do wonders for your soul, but does it help your brain?

To find out, researchers from the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at the Teachers College of Columbia University and the Yale University School of Medicine hooked 27 young, healthy subjects up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine to scan their brains while they recalled a “personal spiritual experience.” What’s that? It depends. One participant thought about having “a two-way relationship with a higher power” while another focused on “being in a zone of intense physical activity.”

The subjects’ experiences may have been different, but their brains responded the same way. The regions associated with emotions, sensory processing, and awareness of themselves as distinct from others were all less active.

In other words, being in a spiritual state calmed and enlivened them while increasing their sense of connectedness.

Another telling finding: Past studies on spirituality and the brain enlisted overtly religious subjects, such as Carmelite nuns.

But participants in this study defined their own spiritual situations. It seems that anyone, even nonreligious folks, can experience some transcendence—and the brain benefits that come with it.

A

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Overhead Light Kills the Flu A new study has found that continuous low doses of a spectrum of UV light called far-UVC can kill airborne flu viruses without harming human tissue. Though it’s not a spectrum found in standard fluorescent or incandescent bulbs, far-UVC light in hospitals, schools, and other public spaces could one day provide a powerful check on seasonal flu epidemics.

Antibiotics May Foster Kidney Stones A study that examined more than 280,000 U.K. patients’ records suggests that people who took five common types of oral antibiotics (sulfas, broad-spectrum penicillins, fluoroquinolones, cephalosporins, or nitrofurantoin/ methenamine) had a greater chance of developing kidney stones within a year.

shipfactory/shutterstock

HOW SPIRITUALITY MAY DE-STRESS YOUR BRAIN

Treating your COPD and still struggling?

Chronic productive cough?

Repeated antibiotic use for chest infections?

These may be indicators of bronchiectasis—a common but frequently undiagnosed condition caused by chronic inflammation of the airways.1 Half of people with serious COPD may have bronchiectasis.2

inCourage® Airway Clearance Therapy is a drug-free way to clear excess mucus from the lungs. Ask your doctor if the inCourage System may be right for you.

For a bronchiectasis information kit, call 833.208.5324 or visit www.respirtech.com/be.

We change lives. We help people breathe better.

1. Maselli DJ, Amalakuhan B, Keyt H, Diaz AA. Suspecting non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis: What the busy primary care clinician needs to know. Int J Clin Pract. 2017;71(2):e12924.

2. Martínez-García MA, de la Rosa Carrillo D, Soler-Cataluña JJ, et al. Prognostic value of bronchiectasis in patients with moderate-to-severchronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2013;187:823–831.

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

Reader ’s Digest

LIFE WELL LIVED Passed from one home to the next, a box of ornaments reminds a family of the bonds around them

The Gift of a Great Neighbor

by Nicole Burrell

y kids sit in Gee’s living room and reverently lift antique Christmas ornaments out of a wellloved cardboard box.

They gasp when they discover a tiny stuffed cat. They giggle at Raggedy Ann, who is a foreign character to them. Gee stands beside them, quietly explaining each treasure. She tells me that she and Tom built their ornament collection piece by piece during each year’s after-Christmas sale. She smiles as we leave with the box. Her precious heirlooms, gathered over

M

Nicole Burrell is a Reader’s Digest reader from northern New Jersey.

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a lifetime, have found a new home.

We first met Tom and Gee in the early days of our marriage. Someone had been returning our garbage cans to the garage each garbage day, and Jim and I had wondered who. Then one day we spotted him: an elderly man who lived across the street.

I baked cookies and left them on a stool outside the garage with a thank-you note. When we got home from work that day, a typed letter had replaced the gift. The letter was from Tom and explained how he had come to walk the neighborhood on garbage day, returning cans for people he barely knew. Back when he’d been fighting a war I wasn’t alive to see, his young wife, Gee, had found herself illustration by Tracey Long

Reader ’s Digest Life Well Lived living alone. Neighbors had taken the time to handle her garbage cans so she didn’t have to, and he never forgot. Now he paid it forward by doing the same for all of us. (It was also his way of sneaking a smoke while Gee wasn’t looking.)

WE KNOW IT’S TIME TO MOVE, AND YET WE CAN’T SEEM TO PUT THE FOR SALE SIGN UP. A few years after we’d moved in, Tom died. We photocopied that letter and attached it to one of our own for Gee. We told her how special Tom had been to us, how we grieved for her, how thankful we were to have known him—the inadequate words that come with condolence. She wrote back and told us she still talked to Tom every day. When Gee invited us over to look through Christmas ornaments, I realized how hard it must be to part with that box, a piece of Tom.

These days, we’re piling up boxes of our own. We’re planning a move.

The house that seemed so huge six years ago is filled to capacity with furniture and books and toys and, of course, people. We know it’s time to go, and yet we can’t seem to stick the For Sale sign up on the lawn. Gaining a third bedroom and maybe an office sometimes seems like a lousy trade for all we stand to lose.

It’s not just Gee. It’s the man who lets our kids pick peaches off the tree in his front yard. It’s the ladies who call Jim when their pool filter breaks and leave overflowing baskets for our kids on Easter. It’s the corrections officer directly across from us, who smiles and waves and makes me feel a little safer when Jim is away.

The moving boxes are still neatly packed in our basement, but Jim and I agree to wait until January. This Christmas, we’ll decorate our tree with Gee’s ornaments, out of the box that is labeled in Tom’s handwriting. Maybe I’ll talk to him just as Gee still does.

Thank you, I’ll say. For teaching us what it means to be a neighbor.

In the Line of Fire Jerry Parr, a Secret Service agent who helped save President Ronald Reagan’s life during a 1981 assassination attempt, was inspired to join the Secret Service after seeing the movie Code of the Secret Service. The film’s star? Ronald Reagan. wtkr.com

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Reader ’s Digest They Shared a Drink— and Then the Future

YOUR TRUE STORIES in 100 Words

By chance, I was sent to a conference in a nearby city. At the welcome reception, I reached for the same champagne glass as the man standing next to me. We struck up a conversation until dinner was called in the next room. The man asked to sit beside me. As the waiter passed, he turned to the man and said, “Sir, what would your wife like to drink?” The man looked to me and smiled. “Darling, what would you like to drink?” he asked. That was 20 years ago. We married a few years later.

—Melissa Price jupiter, florida

Fly Me I’m a flight attendant and former radio host.

One day, I was giving my predeparture spiel about the seat belts and oxygen masks. I used my deep voice to see whether I could make anyone smile. As I finished the announcement and prepared to walk down the aisle, a couple in the front row held up their hands to get my attention. I figured they were going to comment on my announcement. I bent down with a grin, and they said, “Hey, buddy ... your fly is open.” Ouch.

—Troy Hullin detroit, michigan To read more true stories and to submit your own, go to rd.com/ stories. If your story is published in the magazine, we’ll pay you $100.

The Manger’s Made Men Every Christmas season, my four-year-old granddaughter, Jordan, helps me set up my nativity scene. It has many small pieces: the stable, the manger, baby Jesus, animals, shepherds, an angel, and the three wise men.

This year, she wanted to do it all by herself.

After much arranging and rearranging of things, she started to cry. “Jordan,” I said, “what’s the matter?” She replied, “Grandma, I don’t know where to put the wise guys.”

—J.D. via rd.com

Illustration by Joana Avillez

rd.com

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Reader ’s Digest

13 THINGS

Holiday Money Savers That Work All Year By the Editors of Reader’s Digest

Finding a sale in December isn’t all that difficult—you might even say ’tis the season.

What’s tricky is taking the shopping secrets you unwrap now and making them work for you all year long. Here are some evergreen money savers.

1

Discounted Gift Cards Cardpool.com and giftcardzen.com sell cards for Lowe’s, Target, Whole Foods, and other national chains at prices below face value. The typical markdown is around 7 percent, but we found deals for up to 17 percent off. Costco also discounts gift cards for retailers, restaurants, movies, and more (example: ten movie tickets for $89.99). Don’t just give them as gifts; use them for your own shopping or pleasure.

2

Online Clearance Sections Websites have their own discount aisles, just as their brick-and-mortar siblings do. Some good

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Illustration by Serge Bloch

ones: Kohl’s, Nordstrom, Target, and T.J. Maxx. To find them, do an online search for the retailer’s name plus “clearance.”

3

Amazon Bargain Bins You can “clip” coupons at amazon.com/ coupons to save on household staples such as detergent and toilet paper as well as some bigger-ticket items ($5 off an electric toothbrush, $10 off a router).

And amazon.com/ outlet has overstock bargains up to 70 percent off, such as five pairs of cozy women’s socks for $8 (down from $30).

4

Price Matching Home Depot, Staples, and even some local shops won’t just match a competitor’s price—they’ll beat it. These extra-generous offers mean you may get as much as an additional 10 percent off the list price. Just show proof of the competitor’s deal, such as a sales circular or a web page.

5

Trade-In Programs Take your old phones, laptops, and other electronics to Apple or Best Buy and exchange them for store gift cards.

When we checked, Best Buy was offering $80 for a Samsung Galaxy S7 smartphone in good condition. Also, Target sometimes holds car seat trade-in events, where you can swap your child’s old car seat for a coupon for 20 percent off a new model.

6

Belated Markdowns Some retailers have price-adjustment policies that allow you to get the lower price if something you buy now goes on sale later. Most of these programs give you a limited time to stake your claim: At Macy’s, it’s 10 days after purchase. At Kohl’s, Old Navy, and Target, it’s 14 days. At Sears, it’s a generous 30 days.

Just hold on to your receipts.

7

Your Age At Kohl’s, you’ll save 15 percent in the store on Wednesdays if you’re 60 “or better,” as they put it.

At Michael’s, you’ll save an extra 10 percent every day once you hit your 55th birthday.

For the younger set, students get special deals at Amazon, Eastern Mountain Sports, Microsoft, and elsewhere.

8

Your Profession Teachers who enroll in the Barnes & Noble Educator Program save 20 percent on most books, toys, and games. J.Crew and JOANN have their own teacher programs, with 15 percent off. Military personnel and veterans earn special discounts at many retailers; Lowe’s, Pottery Barn, and others extend the savings to spouses too.

9

Free Shipping Tricks At macys.com, beauty products ship gratis, so if you rd.com

41

Reader ’s Digest 13 Things haven’t met the $99 free-shipping minimum for other products, add a cheap cosmetics item (something you actually want that costs less than the $10.95 shipping fee) and you’ll get free shipping on your entire order. Another trick: joining a retailer’s free loyalty program. This works at Bloomingdale’s, Nike, and other retailers.

10

The Hidden Clearance Stash At Walmart, ask to see clearance electronics. “Most reduced items are not displayed and rarely have price tags. At the change of major seasons, many older model items will be switched out for newer ones,” an employee posted on reddit.com.

11

Haggling No, it’s not just a yard sale tactic.

If you ask (nicely) in a store for a discount, you just might get it. It can work online, too, via live chat. According to Consumer Reports surveys, shoppers who haggle succeed more often than they strike out.

12

Coupons If you’ve left a really juicy coupon at home, you might still be able to use it the next time you’re in the store. This works at Bed Bath & Beyond (within 14 days) and might also work at other stores if you ask (again, nicely, of course!). But clipping coupons isn’t for everyone. Instead, see if you can pull them up on your phone. (Also a good idea if you forget your stash of paper

coupons at home.) Just search for the name of the retailer plus “coupon,” or check Coupon Sherpa or RetailMeNot (apps or websites). Or ask the cashier whether there’s a store coupon you can use.

13

Joining the Club Membership programs such as Beyond+ at Bed Bath & Beyond, RH at Restoration Hardware, and Sephora Flash follow the example of Amazon Prime: You pay an annual fee and get exclusive perks such as free shipping or a percentage off your purchases. (At Barnes & Noble, you even get a discount at the in-store Starbucks.)

If you’re a frequent shopper, these programs can quickly pay for themselves.

What Are the Chances?

In Belgium’s St. Symphorien Military Cemetery, the grave belonging to the first British soldier killed in World War I directly faces the grave of the last British soldier killed in World War I. The placement was completely accidental. the mirror

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BRING A NEW STORY HOME WITH YOU TODAY Rhyme Rhythm Reason

Atlantis

More Than Some of the Sum of My Poems

Insights from a Lost Civilization

Paul Drakeford

Shirley Andrews

www.xlibris.com.au Hardback | Paperback | E-book $27.59 | $13.79 | $4.99

www.authorhouse.com Hardback | Paperback | E-book $31.99 | $20.99 | $3.99

Here we have a few giggles and chuckles for those who remember the three Rs and wished there were something better. Have fun reading Paul Drakeford’s Rhyme Rhythm Reason!

Shirley Andrews uncovers the living legacy in Atlantis: Insights from a Lost Civilization, a compelling new look at a legendary country once situated on the Atlantic Ridge.

Operation Wappen

Inbetweenness

A War That Never Was

A Meditative Approach to Everyday Life

Robert Maddock www.xlibris.com Hardback | Paperback | E-book $51.99 | $41.99 | $3.99

Sunnie D. Kidd/Jim Kidd www.xlibris.com Hardback | Paperback | E-book $29.99 | $19.99 | $3.99

A Story about CIA / MI6 Middle East 1957 military adventure to overthrow the Syrian Government & a return of knights to the battlefield like Osama bin Laden. The author was an eyewitness.

Sunnie D. Kidd coined the term “Inbetweenness”.

Inbetweenness is a shared resonating spiritual field of movement and vibration, which is the root of all spiritual experiences and scientific investigation.

Learning to Trust the Tiny Voice of God

When Writing Morphs into a Lifetime

Allowing Communication with the Holy Trinity and the Saints

A Novel

Billy Patty

www.authorhouse.com Hardback | Paperback | E-book $26.99 | $13.99 | $3.99

www.xlibris.com Hardback | Paperback | E-book $29.99 | $19.99 | $3.99 This poetry book is dedicated to my darling wife of sixty-nine years and my sweetheart of seventyfour years, my four children, grandchildren, great and great-great grandchildren. They have been my inspiration and my comfort in life in my old age.

Myrna Lou Jastra

This book comes from a rarified atmosphere. It is the story of hearts that dared, meant to live forever as the generations that continue to come after them will remember. It is how the journey undertaken by Lor and Ermin created through writing, morphed into life. It will be told and retold by the generations after them.

Reader ’s Digest

I Am the

FOOD ON YOUR PLATE

Potatoes

All Eyes on Me: The World’s Dream Starch

By Kate Lowenstein and Daniel Gritzer

Photographs by Matthew Cohen

T’S COMPLETE DARKNESS, through day and night, where I am. In the silence of the cool, loosely packed earth, I’m reproducing. My eyes shoot forth stems, millimeter by millimeter, into the dirt around me. Aboveground, my green leaves bask in the sunlight, photosynthesizing sugars, which ease downward to nourish nodes along those stems. The nodes then swell with flesh—new potatoes in the making, each one a perfect clone of me.

Cloning myself in the dark isn’t the only way I reproduce. My second means of reproduction is fertilization of my flowers by another potato plant, and any variety will do. This insurance policy has given me maximum flexibility as a multiplier over the ages. Today, 8,000 years since humans began cultivating my ilk near Lake Titicaca in the Peruvian Andes, taxonomists have no idea how many cultivated and wild versions of me exist.

I am the Solanum tuberosum, a member of the nightshade family and a close cousin of tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and tobacco. Don’t let our shared moniker fool you: I am no relation to the sweet potato. She’s correctly described as a root vegetable, whereas my edible part is the stem, swollen into a starchy, filling snack.

Thousands of years ago, I was but a knobby knot in the ground, hardly edible, at times even poisonous. In the dirt-caked hands of generations of farmers, I’ve been bred so that my bitter glycoalkaloids—the compounds

I

rd.com | dec 2018 ) jan 2019

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Reader ’s Digest that to this day make me go green after one too many days on your windowsill—are at safe-to-eat levels, and my edible insides have expanded to accommodate the human appetite.

As a result of this happy coexistence with my cultivators, I’ve hitched my way all over the world and adapted to life on continents outside my home turf in the Americas. I can live at 12,000 feet in the dry, chilly mountains and at sea level in the tropics.

My appearance is as varied as the places I live. I can be white, yellow, red, purple, pink, or blue; speckled, spotted, coiled, or mottled; knobby, smooth, thin, or stumpy; covered in skin that’s thick and leathery or as thin as tissue paper.

Despite this dazzling diversity, a North American shopper will encounter only a few varieties: russets, which are very starchy and thus good for baked potatoes and fries; Yukon Golds, which are moist and waxy and great for producing a silky mash; fingerlings and new potatoes, delightful when boiled; and red potatoes, perfectly tender and sweet in a potato salad.

PERFECT BOILED FINGERLINGS Put whole fingerlings in a pot and cover with cold water. Now add salt, starting with 1.5 tablespoons per 4 cups of water, and then sprinkle in more until the water tastes as salty as the sea. (Don’t worry: Most will go down the drain, and the little that’s absorbed will make all the difference.) Add aromatics: garlic, a halved onion, carrots, celery, a bay leaf, and fresh herbs such as rosemary, thyme, and sage.

Bring water to a gentle simmer and cook anywhere from 25 minutes to two hours, until you can slide a fork into a potato without resistance. (The larger the potatoes and batch, the longer they’ll take.)

Turn the heat off; leave the potatoes until the water is warm. Discard the aromatics and herbs, drain the potatoes, and toss with melted butter or olive oil and minced parsley, chives, and/or tarragon. Add black pepper and salt to taste.

Around the world, I take many more forms, from soft purees to shatteringly crisp potato chips. I’m rolled into cloudlike dumplings in Italy, bulk up Guinness stews in Ireland, and grace the tables of France’s haute temples of gastronomy, usually laden with butter and cream.

Yet I didn’t become the fifthmost-abundant crop across the globe in 2016 as an indulgence. I am a true staple, highly storable, surprisingly nutritious. Civilizations have depended on me. The Incan Empire grew on my back, its soldiers

I Am the Food on Your Plate subsisting on me as they marched through harsh mountain terrain. Europeans relied on me through lean times, sometimes too heavily. My nemesis, the fungus that produces late blight, attacked me in the mid1800s in western Europe and nearly collapsed Ireland, where about one million people died.

More recently, I’ve been identified

by NASA as a food seemingly made for astronauts on missions, as I offer all nine essential amino acids, the building blocks of proteins necessary for humans to maintain themselves. (That subplot of The Martian in which the Matt Damon character lives on potatoes alone may not be too off base.) Even the whitest and blandest of my brethren contain potassium, fiber, and an array of potentially cancer- and heart disease– fighting polyphenols in their flesh and skin. My most abundant polyphenol,

chlorogenic acid, which is associated with lowering blood sugar, is important for diabetics.

Today, scientists on Earth are breeding biofortified versions of me with double the normal iron content to feed parts of the world where anemia is pervasive. They are using genetic modification to develop a potato fully resistant to the fast-moving late blight, which is still the most aggressive threat to me. There is also a significant effort to develop varieties of me that tolerate the stresses of drought, soil salinity, and heat as climate change presses in on staple crops like me. Dare I say, that’s progress for a tuber that got its start underfoot, in the silent darkness.

Kate Lowenstein is the editor-in-chief of Vice’s health website, Tonic; Daniel Gritzer is the culinary director of the cooking site Serious Eats.

The All-American Christmas Tree-dition Pagans and Romans used evergreen trees in winter festivities long before the birth of Christianity, but it took American ingenuity to light up the idea and bring it home for the holidays. The Germans lit the earliest Christmas trees with candles, which had the dual disadvantage of being messy (the dripping wax) and dangerous (the flames dancing near those pine needles). In 1882, Edward H. Johnson, a vice president and inventor at Thomas Edison’s Electric Light Company, hand-wired strings of the company’s new electric bulbs—80 red, white, and blue bulbs in total—and layered them on the tree in his Manhattan home. By 1903, General Electric was selling sets of prestrung Christmas lights to the masses for $12. That’s more than $300 in current dollars. rd.com

47

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Reader ’s Digest

WE FOUND A FIX 9 tricks to Improve Your Life*

shutterstock (stickers)

1 Get Your Water Past Airport Security travel It’s impossible to get water through airport security, right? While it’s true that you are allowed only up to 3.4 ounces of any fluid, Transportation Security Administration regulations do let full water bottles through in one case—if they are “frozen solid when presented for screening.” The catch is serious, however: “If frozen liquid items are partially melted, slushy, or have any liquid at the bottom of the container,” you’ll likely have to toss the whole thing. * From RD.com reporting Photographs by Matthew Cohen

rd.com | dec 2018 ) jan 2019

49

Reader ’s Digest

2

4

Brighten Up Your Christmas Tree

Clean Your Teeth with Food

decorating Most people spiral their Christmas tree lights from the bottom to the top, but you lose some sparkle that way. “If you go around in a circle longways, the lights tend to go in,” says designer Francesco Bilotto.

To keep the bulbs closer to the tips of the branches, Bilotto says to hang the lights vertically. Start by tucking the part of the string that doesn’t have a plug on the top of the tree, and then weave your way down the branches in a bit of an S formation for visual pizzazz.

3 Keep Your Bananas Fresh food Can’t use the whole bunch yet?

Wait until they have started to soften, and then toss them in the refrigerator. The cold will help them stay at their peak for another week. That said, avoid refrigerating bananas that aren’t quite ripe, as it will stop the natural ripening process.

50

dec 2018 ) jan 2019

beauty There’s a reason apples are known as nature’s toothbrush— foods that are firm or crisp help clean teeth as they’re eaten. If you know you won’t be able to brush your teeth right after eating, you might want to save a cleaning food for the end of your meal.

Other choices include raw carrots, celery, and unbuttered popcorn.

5 Freshen Your Coffee Grinder cleaning If you notice a weird odor coming from your blade grinder, or if your coffee tastes muddy, pour a quarter cup of rice into the container, and then run it until the grains turn into fine particles.

Dump out the rice powder, and you’ll notice some stuck to the blades— that’s because the powder is sticking to the oil gunking up your grinder. Wipe away the ground rice with a damp cloth, and the oils should come away with it.

We Found a Fix

6 Help Your Laptop Survive a Bath technology First thing: Power it off completely.

Wipe it dry with a towel, and then open it as far as you can, turn it upside down, and let the liquid drip out. The longer you can leave it that way (up to 24 hours), the better.

And that thing about burying a device in rice to suck out the moisture?

With computers, “it really doesn’t work, and it could harm the system,” Joe Silverman, owner of New York Computer Help, told the New York Times.

“You have to clean out the rice, which could pop some of the components.”

7 mirko rosenau/shutterstock

Get a Free Gym Membership money If you’re a senior citizen and you have health insurance, check out SilverSneakers (silversneakers.com).

This national network gives you complimentary access to gyms, classes, and on-demand fitness videos.

8 Save Time Cleaning the Tank pets Cleaning the fish tank is not a pleasant job.

Luckily, you need to change only 10 percent of the water each week— and you don’t have to move the fish. But you should clean the sides of the bowl or tank with a sponge or toothbrush— never soap—every few weeks, placing the fish in a cup or separate bowl while you tidy the place up. If you have a power filter, change the filter container every month, and clean the gravel regularly.

9 Deodorize Your Bathroom Naturally home Looking for a way to eliminate icky bathroom smells that doesn’t require a daily spray?

Place five or so drops of any essential oil on the inside of the cardboard toilet paper roll, and voilà!

Every time someone grabs some paper, the movement will reactivate the pleasant but not overthe-top scent. Just be careful that the oil doesn’t get on the paper itself, which comes in contact with some, um, sensitive areas.

rd.com

51

Reader ’s Digest

LAUGHTER The best Medicine Miriam goes to the post office to buy stamps for her Hanukkah cards and says to the cashier, “May I have 50 Hanukkah stamps?”

“What denomination?” asks the cashier.

Miriam thinks for a second, then says,

52 dec 2018 ✦ jan 2019

“Give me 6 Orthodox, 12 Conservative, and 32 Reform.”

—jewishmag.com

My “Don’t make love to Victoria’s Secret models” resolution is going great so far!

— @elibraden

A farmer was helping one of his cows give birth when he noticed his four-year-old son standing at the fence, watching. Thinking it might be the perfect time to broach the whole birds-and-thebees topic, he asked, “Well, son, do you have any questions?”

“Just one,” gasped the wide-eyed boy.

“How fast was that calf going when he hit the cow?” —ranchers.net

Cartoon by Harley Schwadron

According to a new report, adverse side effects occurred in over 3,000 women who used Botox last year—none of whom seemed surprised.

—Crystal Lowery McKinney, Texas

billion photos/shutterstock

Car commercials grossly overestimate how much time I spend driving around in the desert.

— @tastefactory An Englishman, a Frenchman, a Spaniard, and a German are watching a street performer.

The performer suddenly realizes that these men have a poor view, so he gets on a small platform. “Can you all see me now?” he asks them.

They respond: “Yes.” “Oui.” “Sí.” “Ja.” —justsomething.co

It’s a good thing snakes and dogs don’t interbreed. Nobody wants a loyal snake.

—Roy Blount, humorist from garden & gun

Knowing that the pastor enjoyed his drink, a hotel owner offered him a case of cherry brandy for Christmas in exchange for a free ad in the church newsletter. The pastor agreed and ran this in the next issue: “The pastor would like to thank Patrick Smith for his kind gift of a crate of fruit and for the spirit in which it was given.”

—hotsermons.com

Whoever coined the phrase “the pitterpatter of little feet” clearly never heard a four-year-old walk.

— @MYMOMOLOGUE

Got a funny joke?

It could be worth $$$.

For details, go to rd.com/submit.

AN ENGLISH MAJOR WALKS INTO A BAR … ✦ Two quotation marks

walk into a “bar.” ✦ A malapropism walks

into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs. ✦ Hyperbole totally

rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything. ✦ A non sequitur walks

into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly. ✦ A mixed metaphor

walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud. ✦ A cliché walks into a

bar—fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack. ✦ A synonym strolls into

a tavern.

—bluebirdofbitterness.com

rd.com

53

bladder (OAB) treatment in its class.

In clinical trials, those taking Myrbetriq made fewer trips to the bathroom and had fewer leaks than those not taking Myrbetriq. Your results may vary.

TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR OAB SYMPTOMS BY TALKING TO YOUR DOCTOR ABOUT MYRBETRIQ TODAY. USE OF MYRBETRIQ (meer-BEH-trick) Myrbetriq® (mirabegron) is a prescription medicine for adults used to treat overactive bladder (OAB) with symptoms of urgency, frequency and leakage.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION Myrbetriq is not for everyone. Do not take Myrbetriq if you have an allergy to mirabegron or any ingredients in Myrbetriq. Myrbetriq may cause your blood pressure to increase or make your blood pressure worse if you have a history of high blood pressure. It is recommended that your doctor check your blood pressure while you are taking Myrbetriq. Myrbetriq may increase your chances of not being able to empty your bladder. Tell your doctor right away if you have trouble emptying your bladder or you have a weak urine stream.

Myrbetriq® is a registered trademark of Astellas Pharma Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ©2018 Astellas Pharma US, Inc. All rights reserved. 057-2708-PM

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION (CONTINUED) Myrbetriq may cause allergic reactions that may be serious. If you experience swelling of the face, lips, throat or tongue, with or without difficulty breathing, stop taking Myrbetriq and tell your doctor right away.

Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take including medications for overactive bladder or other medicines such as thioridazine (Mellaril™ and Mellaril-S™), flecainide (Tambocor®), propafenone (Rythmol®), digoxin (Lanoxin®) or solifenacin succinate (VESIcare®). Myrbetriq may affect the way other medicines work, and other medicines may affect how Myrbetriq works.

Before taking Myrbetriq, tell your doctor if you have liver or kidney problems. The most common side effects of Myrbetriq include increased blood pressure, common cold symptoms (nasopharyngitis), dry mouth, flu symptoms, urinary tract infection, back pain, dizziness, joint pain, headache, constipation, sinus irritation, and inflammation of the bladder (cystitis).

For further information, please talk to your healthcare professional and see Brief Summary of Prescribing Information for Myrbetriq® (mirabegron) on the following pages.

Myrbetriq® (mirabegron) extended-release tablets 25 mg, 50 mg Brief Summary based on FDA-approved patient labeling Read the Patient Information that comes with Myrbetriq® (mirabegron) before you start taking LW DQG HDFK WLPH \RX JHW D UH¿OO 7KHUH PD\ EH QHZ LQIRUPDWLRQ 7KLV VXPPDU\ GRHV QRW WDNH WKH SODFH RI WDONLQJ ZLWK \RXU GRFWRU DERXW \RXU PHGLFDO FRQGLWLRQ RU WUHDWPHQW What is Myrbetriq (meer-BEH-trick)?

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Reader â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Digest

COVER STORY

This holiday season, we’d like to share these stories—these gifts—of wonder, faith, and eternal life

The Church That Wouldn’t Burn

By Bill Hangley Jr.

he church shouldn’t be there, but every Sunday, parishioner John Mayernick goes anyway.

He opens the door that shouldn’t be standing, walks past the pews that should have burned, and mounts the stairs to the balcony that should have been razed. As sunlight pours through the stained glass windows and gleams off the gilt-trimmed icons, he grabs three ropes and rings the bells as Mass begins and the congregation sings the hymns no one thought they’d hear again.

T

Photographs by Yasu+Junko

rd.com | dec 2018 ) jan 2019

59

of miracles,” says the church’s priest, Father Michael Hutsko. “The flash-oflightning kind, the sick person who’s suddenly healed after praying are easy to identify. But there’s the other, notso-evident miracles that take place, that perhaps you don’t even realize until you arrive at a certain place and say, ‘I was praying for this,’ and you realize that God’s hand is in it.” hen Centralia was settled, in the 1840s, the miracle of this rugged stretch of Appalachia was the coal itself. Back then, anthracite coal—jet-black, rock hard, and clean burning—was the most powerful fuel known. Its discovery in northeast Pennsylvania triggered a gold rush of sorts. Immigrant workers poured in, and Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, and Ukrainians filled booming mining towns such as Centralia.

Built in 1911, Assumption was one of many Ukrainian Catholic churches founded in the region. Centralia’s immigrants could worship within its simple wood frame and hand-laid stone walls just as they had for centuries back home. They sang in their native tongue. They celebrated the distinctive Ukrainian Catholic Mass.

They prayed beneath its three-bar crosses.

Evelyn Mushalko, an Assumption parishioner born in Centralia in 1944, remembers a town of soda fountains and penny candy stores; a town where fathers worked hard

The last church standing in Centralia

This is the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary church in Centralia, Pennsylvania. In 1962, an underground mine caught fire, its fumes and heat slowly choking the town. Over the next twenty-some years, all but five of its citizens up and left. The government flattened most of the homes and storefronts before the fire could. Today, where generations of miners once raised families, there are only a few stretches of sidewalks to nowhere. More than 56 years later, the fire is still smoldering belowground.

But thanks to an accident of geology, the church was spared from the flames and the bulldozers. Its sky-blue dome still pokes up above the trees, and its pews fill with parishioners on Sundays.

“There are many different kinds

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courtesy father john m. fields

W

Cover Story Reader ’s Digest and didn’t talk much about it; a town where you went sledding in winter and huckleberry picking in summer and ran home after school to catch Roy Rogers or Dick Clark’s American Bandstand on your family’s new black-and-white TV. “It was a good time to grow up,” she says. “It was a nice town. People were friendly.”

And then the town caught fire. o one knows for sure how or even when in 1962 it started, but the best guess is that it was after town workers burned some trash at the local dump.

The next day, something was still burning—an exposed seam of coal.

There was little worry at first; such fires are common in coal country.

But Centralia’s blaze proved relentless as it fed on other coal seams and long-sealed tunnels full of broken timbers.

Slowly, the earth began to heat up and hollow out. Smoke belched from cracks in the ground. A long stretch of Route 61 buckled and crumbled, glowing red at night. Residents reported hot basement walls and noxious fumes; one got knocked unconscious while watching TV. Local and state government spent millions trying to douse the fire, without success.

Finally, on Valentine’s Day 1981, the earth buckled in Todd Domboski’s grandmother’s backyard, almost

courtesy norman powers

N

Rockin’ Around reader miracle My stepfather, Marlin, bought a dancing Christmas tree in the mid2000s as a gimmick decoration.

Marlin passed away in 2014, and my sister, Stacy, took possession of the tree. Stacy got engaged to her longtime boyfriend on Thanksgiving night. The tree was unpacked, but it had no batteries. Later that evening, with all the ladies sitting around talking, the tree lit up and started to dance.

The empty battery pack was in hand, and the only conclusion we could reach was that Marlin was sending his blessing and dancing a jig.

—Norman Powers

sheffield, alabama Marlin’s spirit lit up his

61

swallowing the 12-year-old whole.

The fire had exposed a mineshaft hundreds of feet down. He survived by grabbing a tree root before being pulled to safety.

That was the beginning of the end for Centralia. In 1984, citing the danger to its citizens, state and federal officials began buying up properties and ordered the town evacuated. Streets were emptied. Homes were leveled. A bulldozer knocked down the Roman Catholic church, then went after the Methodists’.

But Assumption stayed. The entire property, it turned out, sat on one of the massive slabs of sandstone that forms the backbone of the region’s mountains. The stone protected the church from the burning anthracite that sat below the rest of the town. hen Father Hutsko took over Assumption in 2010, he found a building in rough shape and a small congregation badly in need of assurance. Now scattered around the region, the parishioners would drive back to Centralia every Sunday wondering, “Who keeps a church in a town that doesn’t exist anymore?”

Father Hutsko does.

A Pennsylvania native, he knew the value of the church in coal-country towns. The priest and his flock dug in for the long haul. They tore down

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the abandoned and crumbling rectory. They fixed the roof and its blue dome. They added new siding to keep vandals out of the basement. They scrubbed their jewel until it shone.

In late 2015, the archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church—its patriarch—visited America and requested to see the church in the nowfamous burning town. The archbishop had been entranced by the way its survival story echoed the Gospel of Matthew: “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

When he entered the tiny jewel box—with its gilt-framed paintings, its cozy pews and ornate sanctuary, its thick, soft carpet and scent of incense—the archbishop was moved to establish Assumption as the site of an annual pilgrimage.

“As soon as we went in, he was just in awe,” Hutsko remembers. “He said, ‘This is a holy place ... It has to be a place to call people to prayer.’”

At last, Assumption’s mission was clear. The church wasn’t to be just a final refuge for the scattered residents of a lost town. It was to be a symbol of hope for people of faith everywhere. “ The church had found its purpose,” Hutsko says.

Father Hutsko refused to abandon his flock.

courtesy bill hangley jr.

Reader ’s Digest Cover Story

Kyle (center) with his brother, Trevor (left), and mother, Connie

The Christmas Cassette

courtesy connie owen

reader miracle In June 2003, I buried my 26-year-old son. The following Christmas was the worst of my life. I was consumed with grief to my very core. As I awoke early Christmas morning, I decided to write a few Christmas cards, belated or not. I went to the drawer where I stored the boxed cards. The drawer would open only slightly; something was jamming it.

The cause of the jam was an unlabeled cassette. I had no idea what was on it or how it had gotten there. I popped the cassette in the player and waited to hear whatever mystery it held. Soon I heard my own voice.

hree years ago, at Assumption’s first annual pilgrimage, hundreds gathered on the church’s neatly tended lawn, the largest event in Centralia in years.

“As long as the church stands here, as long as the bells ring, that will be the voice of God calling you into his

T

In a whisper, I say, “It’s Christmas morning, and Kyle is still sleeping.”

Kyle awakens and sleepily comes to the realization that he gets to check the tree. His childish voice goes on to name his toys from Santa. The last words on the tape are both heartfelt and heartbreaking. They are three-year-old Kyle saying “Merry Christmas, Mom!” I know my son made this Christmas miracle happen so I could have a smile in my heart that morning.

—Connie Owen

south milwaukee, wisconsin

presence,” the archbishop told the pilgrims, “reminding you that he has not abandoned you, any more than he has abandoned the people of this town.”

But the pilgrimage comes only once a year. On the other Sundays, things go back to the way they’ve been for the past 107 years. The bells ring. The rd.com

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Reader ’s Digest Cover Story

With no more traffic in town, artists have reclaimed the main road.

A Message from a Mermaid

By Margo Pfeiff

R

Rhonda Gill froze as she heard her four-year-old daughter, Desiree, sobbing quietly in the family room that morning in October 1993. Rhonda tiptoed through the doorway. The tiny child was hugging a photograph of her father, who had died nine months earlier. Rhonda, 24, watched as Desiree gently ran her fingers around her father’s face. “Daddy,” she said softly, “why won’t you come back?”

The petite brunette college student felt a surge of despair. It had been hard enough coping with the death of her

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courtesy bill hangley jr.

people of Centralia gather with their children and grandchildren, singing and praying, and, when Mass is over, sitting in the pews with coffee and doughnuts and talking.

“Comforting is a good word for it.

It’s like your old couch,” said Mayernick. “Everything’s peaceful.”

And for those few hours, as Mayernick and Mushalko and Father Hutsko and the others worship and chat, it won’t just be the Gospel that lives.

It will be Gert’s candy store that lives.

And Bill’s pizza shop. And the sledding hill known as Rae’s, the swimming hole known as the Townie, and the music joint called the Hop where the Jordan Brothers used to play.

The fire that killed the town is still burning, but as long as the church stands, Centralia will continue to rise above the ashes.

Reader ’s Digest Cover Story husband, Ken Gill, but her daughter’s grief was more than she could bear.

Ken and Rhonda, of Yuba City, California, had met when Rhonda was 18, and they married after a whirlwind courtship. Their daughter, Desiree, was born on January 9, 1989. Ken was a gentle man whom everyone loved.

His big passion was his daughter.

“She’s a real daddy’s girl,” Rhonda would often say as Ken’s eyes twinkled with pride. Father and daughter went everywhere together: hiking, dune buggy riding, and fishing for bass and salmon on the Feather River.

Instead of gradually adjusting to her father’s death, Desiree refused to accept it. “Daddy will be home soon,” she’d tell her mother. “He’s at work.”

When she played with her toy telephone, she pretended she was chatting

with him. “I miss you, Daddy,” she’d say. “When will you come back?”

Immediately after Ken’s death, Rhonda moved from her apartment in Yuba City to her mother’s home in nearby Live Oak. Seven weeks after the funeral, Desiree was still inconsolable. “I just don’t know what to do,” Rhonda told her mother, Trish Moore, a 47-year-old medical assistant.

As a last resort, Trish took Desiree to Ken’s grave, hoping it would help her come to terms with his death. The child laid her head against his gravestone and said, “Maybe if I listen hard enough I can hear Daddy talk to me.”

Then one evening, as Rhonda tucked her child in, Desiree announced, “I want to die, Mommy, so I can be with Daddy.” God help me, Rhonda prayed.

What more can I do?

Desiree and her grandmother, Trish, on a Christmas Day in the ’90s

ovember 8, 1993, would have been Ken’s 29th birthday.

“How will I send him a card?”

Desiree asked her grandmother.

“How about if we tie a letter to a balloon,” Trish said, “and send it up to heaven?” Desiree’s eyes immediately lit up.

On their way to the cemetery, the back seat of the car full of flowers for their planned grave-site visit, the three stopped at a store. “Help Mom pick out a balloon,” Trish instructed.

At a rack where dozens of silver helium-filled Mylar balloons bobbed, Desiree made an instant decision: “That one!” HAPPY BIRTHDAY was

courtesy desiree stutz

N

courtesy gloria arroyo

emblazoned above a drawing of Ariel from the Disney film The Little Mermaid. Desiree and her father had often watched it.

The child’s eyes shone as they arranged flowers on Ken’s grave. It was a beautiful day, with a slight breeze rippling the eucalyptus trees. Then Desiree dictated a letter to her dad. “Tell him, ‘Happy birthday, I love you and miss you,’” she rattled off. “‘I hope you get this and can write to me on my birthday in January.’”

Trish wrote the message and their address on a small piece of paper, which was then wrapped in plastic and tied to the end of the string on the balloon. Finally, Desiree released the balloon.

For almost an hour, they watched the shining spot of silver grow smaller. “OK,” Trish said at last.

“Time to go home.” Rhonda and Trish were beginning to walk slowly from the grave when they heard Desiree shout excitedly, “Did you see that?

I saw Daddy reach down and take it!”

The balloon, visible just moments earlier, had disappeared. “Now Dad’s going to write back to me,” Desiree declared as she walked past them toward the car.

Gloria and her husband, Sonny

n a cold November morning on Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada, 32-yearold Wade MacKinnon pulled on his waterproof duck-hunting gear and jumped into his pickup. Wade, a forest

—Gloria Arroyo

O

Sonny in the Sky reader miracle It was my first time flying alone since my husband, Sonny, had passed away. In spite of my fears, I decided to go. I asked God for guidance.

When we flew together, Sonny and I would each buy a drink with our meal. In exchange for my drink, my husband would give me his dessert. In the middle of this solo trip, I realized I had not eaten my dessert.

When I looked down at it, I couldn’t believe what I saw.

Printed in bold letters on the little round tinfoil cover were the words “Sonny’s Ice Cream.” phoenix, arizona

rd.com | dec 2018 ) jan 2019

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The Magic Key reader miracle The year was 1956. My first husband and I and our nine-month-old baby, Pam, moved from St. Louis to Fort Worth, Texas. He had a job there, and his family lived close by as well. We found a lovely apartment and settled in quickly. One chilly morning, I headed for the Laundromat.

I turned on the engine of our 1953 Chevy to warm up the car and put Pam in her car seat, which back then was in the front seat. I locked the car door. Then I put the basket of laundry in the back seat and locked the other door. Suddenly, I realized I had locked the keys and my baby in the car and locked myself out.

I immediately went into panic mode.

My neighbors had both gone to work, and there were no cell phones back then. As I looked up the street, I saw a red Ford pickup driving toward me.

The driver stopped when he saw me crying and waving my hands.

The man on the passenger side of the truck got out and said, “I have a car just like this one; let me see if my key will open the door.”

It did! I have told so many people that God was the passenger in a red Ford pickup in October 1956.

—Evelyn Paine

kennebunkport, maine

ranger, lived with his wife and three children in Mermaid, a rural community a few miles east of Charlottetown.

He drove to Mermaid Lake, two miles away, and hiked past dripping spruce and pine and soon entered a cranberry bog. In the bushes on the shoreline, something fluttered and caught his eye. Curious, he approached to find a silver balloon snagged in the branches of a

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thigh-high bayberry bush. Printed on one side was a picture of a mermaid. When he untangled the string, he found a soggy piece of paper at the end of it, wrapped in plastic.

At home, Wade carefully removed the wet note, allowing it to dry. When his wife, Donna MacKinnon, came home later, he said, “Look at this,” and showed her the balloon and note. Intrigued, she read: “November 8, 1993.

courtesy evelyn paine

Evelyn and her daughter, Pam

Cover Story Reader ’s Digest Happy birthday, Daddy ...” It finished with a mailing address in Live Oak, California.

“It’s only November 12,” Wade exclaimed. “This balloon traveled 3,000 miles in four days!”

“And look,” said Donna, “this is a Little Mermaid balloon, and it landed at Mermaid Lake.”

“We have to write to Desiree,” Wade said. “Maybe we were chosen to help this little girl.” But he could see that his wife didn’t feel the same way.

With tears in her eyes, Donna stepped away from the balloon.

“Such a young girl having to deal with death—it’s awful,” she said.

Wade placed the note in a drawer and tied the balloon, still buoyant, to the railing of the balcony in their living room. But the sight of the balloon made Donna uncomfortable. A few days later, she stuffed it in a closet.

As the weeks went by, Donna found herself thinking more and more about the balloon. It had flown over the Rocky Mountains and the Great Lakes.

Just a few more miles and it would have landed in the ocean. Instead, it had stopped there, in Mermaid.

Our three children are so lucky, she thought. They have two healthy parents. She imagined how their daughter, Hailey, almost two years old, would feel if Wade were to die. The next morning, Donna said to Wade, “You’re right. We have to try to help Desiree.”

In a Charlottetown bookstore, Donna bought an adaptation of The

Little Mermaid. A few days later, just after Christmas, Wade brought home a birthday card that read “For a Dear Daughter, Loving Birthday Wishes.”

Donna sat down one morning to write a letter to Desiree. When she finished, she tucked it into the birthday card, wrapped it up with the book, and mailed the gift on January 3, 1994. esiree’s fifth birthday came and went quietly with a small party on January 9. Every day since they’d released the balloon, Desiree had asked Rhonda, “Do you think Daddy has my balloon yet?” After her party, she stopped asking.

Late on the afternoon of January 19, the MacKinnons’ package arrived.

Busy cooking dinner, Trish looked at the unfamiliar return address and assumed it was a birthday gift for Desiree from someone in Ken’s family. Rhonda and Desiree had moved back to Yuba City, so Trish decided to deliver it to Rhonda the next day.

As Trish watched television that evening, a thought nagged at her.

Why would someone send a parcel for Desiree to this address? She opened the package and found the card. “For a Dear Daughter ...” Her heart raced.

Dear God! she thought, and she reached for the telephone. It was after midnight, but she had to call Rhonda.

When Trish, eyes red from weeping, pulled into Rhonda’s driveway the next morning at 6:45, her daughter and granddaughter were already

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Reader ’s Digest Cover Story up. Rhonda and Trish sat Desiree between them on the couch. Trish said, “Desiree, this is for you,” and handed her the parcel. “It’s from your daddy.”

“I know,” said Desiree matter-offactly. “Here, Grandma, read it to me.” “‘Happy birthday from your daddy,’” Trish began. “‘I guess you must be wondering who we are. Well, it all started in November when my husband, Wade, went duck hunting. Guess what he found? A mermaid balloon that you sent your daddy ...’” Trish paused. A tear began to trickle down Desiree’s cheek. “‘There are no stores in heaven, so your daddy wanted someone to do his shopping for him.

I think he picked us because we live in a town called Mermaid.’” Trish continued reading: “‘I know your daddy would want you to be happy and not sad. I know he loves you very much and will always be watching over you.

Lots of love, the MacKinnons.’”

When Trish finished, she looked at Desiree. “I knew Daddy would find a way not to forget me,” the child said.

Wiping the tears from her eyes, Trish began to read the Little Mermaid book that the MacKinnons had sent.

The story was different from the one Ken had so often read to the child. In that version, the mermaid lives happily ever after with the handsome prince. But in this one, she dies because a wicked witch has taken her tail. Three angels carry her away.

As Trish finished reading, she worried that the ending would upset her

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granddaughter. But Desiree put her hands on her cheeks with delight.

“She goes to heaven!” she cried.

“That’s why Daddy sent me this book.

Because the mermaid goes to heaven just like him!” n mid-February, the MacKinnons received a letter from Rhonda: “On January 19 my little girl’s dream came true when your parcel arrived.”

During the next few weeks, the MacKinnons and the Gills often telephoned. Then, in March, Rhonda, Trish, and Desiree flew the 2,900 miles to Prince Edward Island to meet the MacKinnons. As the two families walked through the forest to see the spot beside the lake where Wade had found the balloon, Rhonda and Desiree fell silent. It seemed as though Ken was there with them.

In the months after, whenever Desiree wanted to talk about her dad, she called the MacKinnons. A few minutes on the phone soothed her as nothing else could.

“People tell me, ‘What a coincidence that your mermaid balloon landed so far away at a place called Mermaid Lake,’” says Rhonda. “But we know Ken picked the MacKinnons as a way to send his love to Desiree.

She understands now that her father is with her always.”

I

This story originally appeared in the September 1995 issue of Reader’s Digest.

Life-Giving Touch

By Juliana LaBianca

O

On March 25, 2010, Kate and David Ogg heard the words every parent dreads: Their newborn wasn’t going to make it. Their twins—a girl and a

boy—were born two minutes apart and 14 weeks premature, weighing just over two pounds each. Doctors had tried to save the boy for 20 minutes but saw no improvement. His heartbeat was nearly gone, and he’d stopped breathing. The baby had just moments to live.

“I saw him gasp, but the doctor said it was no use,” Kate told the Daily Mail five years later. “I know it sounds stupid, but if he was still gasping, that was a sign of life. I wasn’t going to give up easily.”

Still, the Sydney couple knew this was likely goodbye. In an effort to cherish her last minutes with the tiny boy, Kate asked to hold him.

“I wanted to meet him, and for him to know us,” Kate told Today. “We’d resigned ourselves to the fact that we were going to lose him, and we were rd.com

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Reader ’s Digest Cover Story

Photo from Heaven

—Dayle Vickery

orange park, florida

Emily (left), Kate, (center), and Jamie

just trying to make the most of those last, precious moments.”

Kate unwrapped the boy, whom the couple had already named Jamie, from his hospital blanket and ordered David to take his shirt off and join them in bed. The first-time parents wanted their son to be as warm as possible and hoped the skin-to-skin contact would improve

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Dayle found this photo of her and her daughter from Christmas Day 1987.

his condition. They also talked to him.

“We were trying to entice him to stay,” Kate told the Daily Mail. “We explained his name and that he had a twin that he had to look out for and how hard we had tried to have him.”

Then something miraculous happened. Jamie gasped again—and then he started breathing. Finally, he reached for his father’s finger.

The couple’s lost boy had made it.

“We’re the luckiest people in the world,” David told Today.

Eight years later, Jamie and his sister, Emily, are happy and healthy. The Oggs only recently told the kids the story of their birth. “Emily burst into tears,” Kate said. “She was really upset, and she kept hugging Jamie. This whole experience makes you cherish them more.”

from top: courtesy dayle vickery. courtesy kate ogg

reader miracle My daughter and only child, Talena, was killed by a drugged driver in 1994.

It nearly destroyed me, but I kept going somehow.

I had a favorite picture of Talena from when she was about three—Christmas Day, me sitting on the floor and her sitting on my lap. The bond between us was so beautiful. Somehow, I lost that picture after she died. A few years later, on Christmas Day, I opened a book and found the photo inside.

I know she sent it to me as a present from heaven.

Reader ’s Digest

LAUGH LINES I hate freeloaders who join in the New Year’s Eve count-

—

—

shutterstock (3)

The Hanukkah miracle is that the menorah oil days. I re-create this miracle with every tube of toothpaste.

— @daemonic3

Call me crazy, but “dropping the ball” does not sound like a good way to start off a new year.

Reader ’s Digest

YOUNIVERSE ('yoo-nuh-vers) n.—The immediate environment of the terminal narcissist.

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DEPARTMENT OF WIT

By Bill Bouldin from the del rio news-herald

T S E HE B

P U E D A M RDS O W EVER T

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean— neither more nor less.” —Through the Looking Glass I agree with Mr. Dumpty: Words have meaning. But surely we can seize upon a meaning and then create a word to match it. The following words—some culled from the crowdsourced online dictionary urbandictionary.com and others I’ve concocted myself—don’t exist according to Merriam-Webster … but should. I call them “worderfuls.”

Illustrations by Jean-Michel Tixier

AFTERCLAPPER ('af-ter-kla-per) n.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;The last person to clap after everyone else has stopped clapping.

Department of Wit Reader ’s Digest

A a crapella (ah kra-'peh-luh) adj.— Sung (badly) while listening to music using headphones. athlethargy (ath-'leh-ther-jee) n.— The triumph of the La-ZBoy over the StairMaster.

B basebull ('bays-bull) n.—The endless litany of RBIs, ERAs, OPS, WHIP, and hits at the fingertips of every major-league basebore. beerboard ('beer-bohrd) v.—To extract secret information from colleagues by getting them drunk. blamestorming ('blaym-stohr-ming) n.—The act of attempting to identify the person who is most at fault for a plan’s failure.

C carcolepsy ('kahr-kuh-lep-see) n.— The tendency to fall

asleep as soon as the car starts moving. caroma (kah-'roh-muh) n.— The smell of that month-old bean burrito under the front seat that keeps you out of the carpool. cellfish ('sel-fish) n.—Someone who talks on the phone to the exclusion of those he or she is with. chairdrobe ('chair-drohb) n.— A chair on which one piles clothes that belong in the closet.

Not to be confused with a floordrobe. chiptease ('chip-teez) n.—A bag of potato chips that seems full but is mostly air.

D destinesia (des-tuh-'nee-zhuh) n.—When you get to where you intended to go but forget why you wanted to go there.

dudevorce ('dood-vohrs) n.— When two bros end their friendship. dullema (duh-'leh-muh) n.— The choice between two equally boring outcomes.

E epiphinot (ih-'pih-fuh-not) n.— An idea that seems like an amazing insight to the conceiver but is in fact pointless, mundane, stupid, or incorrect. errorist ('air-er-ist) n.—Someone who is repeatedly or invariably wrong.

F fauxpology (foh-'pah-luh-jee) n.— An insincere expression of regret.

I illiteration (il-lih-tuh-'ray-shuhn) n.—The mistaken impression that you know more about rhetorical devices than you really do. rd.com | dec 2018 ✦ jan 2019

77

Reader ’s Digest Department of Wit internest ('in-ter-nest) n.—The cocoon of blankets and pillows you gather around yourself for extended periods on the Internet.

nonversation (non-ver-'say-shuhn) n.—A completely meaningless or useless conversation.

M

pregret (pree-'gret) v.—To know what you’re about to do is wrong, wrong, wrong while also knowing you will do it anyway.

metox ('mee-toks) v.— To take a break from self-absorption.

N narcisexual (nahr-suh-'sek-shoouhl) n.—Someone attracted only to himor herself. nerdjacking ('nurd-jak-ing) n.— Filling a conversation with unnecessary detail about one’s passion to an obviously uninterested bystander.

P

presstitute ('preh-stih-toot) n.— A biased or one-sided journalist. preteentious (prih-'teen-shuhs) adj.—A level of drama achievable only by a 12-year-old.

S sinergy ('sih-ner-jee) n.—When

two bad acts feel as good as three. suckrifice ('suh-krih-fys) n.— Doing what you absolutely must do, even though you really, really hate it.

T textpectation (tekst-pek-'tay-shuhn) n.—The anticipation felt when awaiting a response to a text. typerventilate (ty-per-'ven-tih-layt) v.—To send messages in rapid sequence.

U unlighten (uhn-'ly-ten) v.— To learn something that makes you dumber.

del rio news-herald (june 29, 2018), copyright © bill bouldin, delrionewsherald.com.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Please Fasten Your Hula-Hoops To help launch their new product in 1958, executives from the Wham-O company started carrying early versions of the Hula-Hoop on airplane trips with them, hoping that passengers would ask about the odd toy.

It worked. Americans bought more than 20 million Hula-Hoops in six months. smithsonian

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Reader ’s Digest

Humor in

UNIFORM

“Three wise men radioed in to say the enemy can now see us.”

At the outpatient surgery center where I work, the anesthesiologist chats with patients before their operations to help them relax.

One day, he thought he recognized a woman as a coworker from the VA hospital where he had trained.

When the patient confirmed that his hunch was correct, the anesthesiologist said, “So tell me, is the food there still as bad as it used to be?”

Cartoon by Bill Thomas

“I suppose,” she replied. “I’m still cooking it.” —gcfl.net Our home number is very close to one at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, and we often get calls meant for them. Like this one …

Caller: This is [military rank and name].

I’m at the St. Louis airport. When is someone going to pick me up?

Me: I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.

Caller: Isn’t this

[phone number]?

Me: Close, but we’re hundreds of miles away from the airport.

Caller: (after a pause) So you don’t know who’s going to pick me up?

—notalwaysright.com

Got a funny story about the military or your military family?

It could be worth $$$. For details, see page 124 or go to rd.com/submit. rd.com

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Reader â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Digest

FIRST PERSON

THE

MAGIC TRICK

matthew cohen (cards). courtesy nate staniforth (portrait)

THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

By Nate Staniforth from the book here is real magic

I

became a magician by accident. When I was nine years old, I learned how to make a coin disappear. I’d read The Lord of the Rings and ventured into the adult section of the library to search for a book of spells—nine being that curious age at which you’re old enough to work through more than 1,200 pages of arcane fantasy literature but young enough to still hold out hope that you might find a book of real, actual magic in the library. The book I found instead taught basic sleight-of-hand technique, and I dedicated the next months to practice.

Staniforth’s early shows were painful, but from the beginning, he was hooked. rd.com | dec 2018 ) jan 2019

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At first the magic wasn’t any good.

At first it wasn’t even magic; it was just a trick—a bad trick. I spent hours each day in the bathroom running through the secret moves in front of the mirror. I dropped the coin over and over, a thousand times in a day, and after two weeks of this my mom got a carpet sample from the hardware store and placed it under the mirror to muffle the sound of the coin falling again and again.

I had heard my dad work through passages of new music on the piano, so I knew how to practice—slowly, deliberately, going for precision rather than speed. One day I tried the illusion in the mirror and the coin vanished. It did not look like a magic trick. It looked like a miracle.

One of the lessons you learn very early on as a magician is that the most amazing part of a trick has nothing to

As a kid, Staniforth practiced for hours.

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do with the secret. The secret is simple and often dull: a hidden piece of tape, a small mirror, a duplicate playing card. In this case, the secret was a series of covert maneuvers to hide the coin behind my hand in the act of opening it, a dance of the fingers that I learned so completely I didn’t even have to think. I would close my hand, then open it, and the coin would vanish not by skill but by real magic.

One day I made the coin vanish on the playground. We had been playing football and were standing by the backstop in the field behind the school. A dozen people were watching. I showed the coin to everyone.

Then it disappeared.

The kids screamed. They yelled, laughed, scrambled away. Everyone went crazy. This was great. This was Bilbo Baggins from The Lord of the Rings terrifying the guests at his birthday party by putting the One Ring on his finger and vanishing.

The teacher on duty crossed the playground to investigate. Mrs. Tanner was a wiry, vengeful woman who dominated her classroom with an appetite for humiliation and an oversize plastic golf club she wielded like a weapon, slamming it down on the desks of the unruly and uncommitted.

She marched toward me and demanded to know what was going on.

The coin vanished for her too.

“Do it again,” she said, and I did.

I’m sure my hands were shaking, but when I looked up, everything had

courtesy nate staniforth

Reader ’s Digest

First Person changed. I will remember the look on her face—the look of wide-eyed, openmouthed wonder—forever.

Two certainties. First, this was clearly the greatest thing in the world.

I kept seeing my teacher’s face—the stern, authoritarian facade melting into shock, fear, elation, and joy, all at once. The kids’ too. My classmates had been transformed for a moment from a vaguely indifferent, vaguely hostile pack of scavengers and carnivores into real people.

If you could make people feel like this, why wouldn’t you do it all the time? Why didn’t everyone do this?

For anyone—but especially for a nine-year-old boy at a new school— this transformation is almost indistinguishable from real magic.

The second certainty was harder to reconcile. The more I thought about it, the stranger it became, and even now it intrigues me as much as it did that day on the playground. Here it is: All of it—the chaos, the shouting, the wideeyed wonder—came from a coin trick.

I knew that it was just a trick and I was just a kid. But the reactions of the students and the teacher were so much greater than the sum of these modest parts that I didn’t know how to explain them. Something incredible had happened. I might have caused it, but it had not come from me. I had inadvertently tapped into something visceral and wild: the teacher’s face, the shouts of fear, astonishment— and joy. The joy was the hardest to

explain. Surprise comes easy, but joy never does. I was an alchemist who had somehow—unknowingly, unintentionally—discovered how to turn lead into gold. Even a nine-yearold knows this is impossible. You could only do that with real magic. he gulf between wanting to become a great magician and actually doing it is enormous, however, and the career of a young magician is marked as much by humiliation and public failure as it is by the occasional success. In high school, I staged a show in the auditorium and my entire world came out to watch— 600 friends, family members, girls from school, everyone I wanted to defy or impress. They all looked on in horror, fascination, and pity as I twirled about the stage, frantically trying to remember every bit of choreography from every David Copperfield special I had ever seen. The audience sat mute, aghast, enduring the spectacle and waiting for the catastrophe to end.

A few years later, I staged a Harry Houdini–style underwater escape in the river that flowed through the middle of the campus of the University of Iowa, where I went to school. I stood on a boat in the middle of the river wearing nothing but biking shorts and a thick snarl of chains, padlocks, and weights around my wrists and ankles.

The sky was dead and gray, and the water was dead and gray, and a frigid

T

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Reader ’s Digest

IF YOU COULD MAKE PEOPLE FEEL LIKE THIS, WHY WOULDN’T YOU DO IT ALL THE TIME?

to midnight and I like it.” This quote lived on a scrap of paper stuck to the wall by my bed for ten years. I had hit Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours of dedicated practice by the time I turned 22, and he’s right—I got pretty good.

The week after I finished school, I drove to Los Angeles to begin my career as a professional magician. I have never held another job. or years I have traveled the country performing. Every crowd is different. Sometimes you have to charm them or cajole them, sometimes you have to entice or fascinate, and sometimes you have to roll up your sleeves and fight, winning the room with a careful blend of intensity and goodwill, convincing the audience that you’re either a genius or a madman and that, either way, they should probably stop and listen.

Tonight my arrival onstage at a college in Chicago was met with a mixture of applause and disdain, the audience being equal parts people who came to see a magic show and people who came to drink. One six-foot, 250-pound bruiser with a crew cut started booing even before they finished my introduction.

Now I am standing

F

matthew cohen

breeze blew across its surface. I had delayed this stunt by two weeks because the river was frozen. Now the ice had cleared and spring had come, reluctantly, but the water was still only 52 degrees at the surface, and colder in the depths below.

Technically, I succeeded. I jumped into the water, sank to the bottom, and escaped from the locks and the chains before swimming to the surface. But it didn’t feel like a success.

When Houdini did it, thousands of people turned up to watch. I had about a dozen who stopped on their way to class, and the police showed up because someone thought it was a suicide attempt.

I am living proof, though, that if you throw enough time and effort at something—maybe even anything—you can become good at it. I found inspiration in a quote attributed to Houdini: “The real secret to my success is simple: I work from seven in the morning

First Person on a table—his table—in the basement of the student union.

“Listen,” I say, scanning the room.

“In a minute, you are going to see something impossible. Some of you are going to scream. Some of you are going to yell. This gentleman right here is going to soil himself.”

Crew Cut is looking at me like he wants to fight, but I have him pinned in his seat with the gaze of 300 people who are finally paying attention. For the moment, he can only glower.

“I’m not doing this for the money.

I’m not doing this for the glory. If I were, I sure wouldn’t be here. I’m here because I’ve spent my entire life learning to do something incredible, and tonight I’m going to share it with you. When I’m done, you can clap, you can boo, you can stay, you can leave—I don’t care.”

This succeeds in shocking them.

Now the entire room has turned to watch.

“I’m going to give this gentleman my wallet,” I say. “I’m choosing him because he’s the biggest guy here and I need someone to keep the wallet safe.”

I look down at Crew Cut. “What’s your name?”

He looks at me like he wishes he’d gone somewhere else this evening.

“Marcus.”

I hand him my wallet. “Marcus, I want you to put this on the table and put both hands on top of it. Don’t open it yet. But make sure that no one else opens it either. Got it?”

Marcus nods. I know that if this works, he will remember this experience for the rest of his life. He will tell his children about this moment. I’ve spent six years developing this illusion, and it has been worth the effort. If I had five minutes to justify my entire existence as a magician, this is what I would perform.

I turn to the rest of the room. “I’m going to need six random people to help. If I just asked for volunteers, you might think that I had confederates in the audience, so I’m going to take this gentleman’s hat”—and here I reach down and snatch a baseball cap from someone’s head—“and throw it out into the room. If you catch it, stand up.”

Thirty seconds later, six people are standing and the man has his hat back.

“I need each of you to think of a number between one and fifty. When I point to you, call your number out loud so everyone can hear.”

“Sixteen.”

“Thirty-two.”

“Nine.”

“Forty-three.”

“Eleven.”

I pause before the last person, a girl standing in the back of the room. When the hat flew toward her a minute ago, she jumped up to catch it.

“What’s your name?”

“Jessica.”

“Jessica, before you tell me your number, I just want to say this: When you go home tonight, you are going to be unable to sleep. You’re going to lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, driving yourself crazy rd.com | dec 2018 ) jan 2019

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Reader ’s Digest First Person wondering what would have happened if you had named a number other than the number you are about to name.”

The audience laughs. Jessica just listens.

“Before you give me your number, I want you to know in your heart of hearts that it was a free choice, that there is no way I could have gotten inside your head to make you give me the number I wanted. Right?”

She nods slowly.

“What number are you thinking of?”

“Fourteen.”

Every great illusion has a moment of calm before the build to the end, and right now the room is completely quiet. At some point the bartender had started watching and turned off the music. Everyone is still.

“I want to point out that the odds of this working by chance alone are in the trillions. What are the numbers again? Sixteen, thirty-two, nine, fortythree, eleven, and fourteen, right?”

Marcus has been sitting at the table the entire time, holding the wallet and watching the performance. I point to the wallet.

“Marcus, could you stand up for a second?”

He stands. I ask him to hold the wallet up above his head so everyone can see, and he does.

“You have been holding my wallet the entire time. Open it and look inside. You should find a lottery ticket.

Take it out.”

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Marcus opens the wallet and removes the lottery ticket.

“This isn’t a winning ticket. I’m not a millionaire. But I want you to look at the numbers. I’m going to hand you the microphone. Read them out loud.”

I am watching his face now, waiting for him to see it.

“Oh,” he says quietly. “Oh no.” He looks at me. His eyes are very wide.

He looks back at the lottery ticket.

“Read the numbers, Marcus.”

Marcus raises the microphone.

“Sixteen, thirty-two, nine, forty-three, eleven, and fourteen.”

The room explodes. People are on their feet, screaming and jumping and turning to one another. Someone runs for the exit, knocking over a table. Jessica has her hands on her face, her mouth open. Marcus has dropped the microphone. He is reading the ticket over and over again, shaking his head and laughing.

I want you to see his face. I want you to see the joy, the open, unaffected joy. It’s the kind of joy that reminds you for a moment that when the weight of worry, of pain, of anxiety, of the world, has gone, the face that shines without it is extraordinary.

Magicians get to see people at their very best, and in this transformation you can see through the illusion what can only be described as real, actual magic. from the book here is real magic by nate staniforth, copyright © 2018 by nate staniforth. reprinted with permission from bloomsbury usa. all rights reserved.

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Reader â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Digest

HEALTH & MEDICINE

The

LIFE SAVER on Dad’s Computer Screen A daughter caring for her aging father finds help—and peace of mind—from a virtual companion named Pony

By Lauren Smiley from wired

Photographs by Grant Cornett

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Reader ’s Digest

Arlyn Anderson

grasped her father’s hand.

“A nursing home would be safer, Dad,” she told him. “No way,” Jim Anderson interjected. At 91, he wanted to remain in the woodsy Minnesota cottage he and his wife had built on the shore of Lake Minnetonka, where she had died in his arms just a year before.

Arlyn had moved from California back to Minnesota two decades earlier to be near her parents. Now, in 2013, she was fiftysomething and finding that her father’s decline was all-consuming. (controlled remotely by a Her father—an invenhuman caregiver) would tor, pilot, sailor, and watch over a homegeneral Mr. Fix-It— bound person 24 hours started experiencing a day; Arlyn paid that bouts of paranoia, a sign much for just nine hours of Alzheimer’s, in his of in-home help. She mid-eighties. signed up immediately.

Arlyn’s house was a A Google tablet ar40-minute drive from the cottage, and she had Jim and his seven-year-old rived a week later. Following the instructions, been relying on a patch- daughter Arlyn, at home Arlyn uploaded dozens work of technology to in 1968 of pictures to the serkeep tabs on her dad.

She set an open laptop on the counter vice’s online portal, including images so she could chat with him on Skype. of family members and Jim’s boat.

She installed a camera in his kitchen Then, she and her sister Layney Anderand another in his bedroom so she son presented the tablet to Jim. “Here, could check whether he had fallen. Dad. We got you this.”

An animated German shepherd apWhen she read about a new eldercare service called Care.coach a few weeks peared and started to talk in the same after broaching the subject of a nursing female voice you hear when using home, it piqued her interest. For about Google Maps or other Google apps. $200 a month, a computerized avatar Before Alzheimer’s had taken hold,

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courtesy arlyn anderson (2)

Health & Medicine Jim would have wanted Jim, an avid sailor before his to know exactly how the illness, at Lake Superior service worked. Now he simply chatted back.

Within a week, Jim and his dog, whom he named Pony, had settled into a routine. Every 15 minutes or so, Pony would look for Jim, calling his name if he was out of view. Sometimes Jim would “pet” the sleeping dog onscreen to rustle her awake. His touch sent an alert to the Care.coach worker behind the avatar, Care.coach dashboard to make his who would launch the tablet’s audio rounds. He talks baseball with a New and video stream. Pony reminded Jim Jersey man and chats with a woman in which caretaker would be visiting to North Carolina, who places a cookie do the tasks that a virtual dog couldn’t: in front of her tablet for him to “eat.” preparing meals, changing sheets, driv- And he greets Jim, one of his regulars. ing him to a senior center. Pony would Rochin is 35 years old, a fan of the read poetry aloud or discuss the news. Spurs and the Cowboys, and a bit of Sometimes she’d hold up a photo of an introvert, happy to retreat into Jim’s daughters or his inventions be- his home office each morning. He tween her paws, prompting him to talk grew up crossing the border to attend about his past. The dog complimented school in McAllen, Texas, honing the Jim’s sweater. He reciprocated by pet- English that he now uses to chat with ting the screen with his finger, send- elderly people in the United States. ing hearts floating up from the dog’s Rochin was hired in December 2012 head. “I love you, Jim!” Pony told him. as one of Care.coach’s earliest conJim turned to Arlyn and gloated, “She tractors, role-playing 36 hours a week thinks I’m real good!” as one of the service’s avatars.

In person, Rochin is soft-spoken, bout 1,500 miles south of with wire spectacles and a beard.

Lake Minnetonka, in Monter- He lives with his wife and two basset rey, Mexico, Rodrigo Rochin hounds. But the people on the other opens his laptop and logs in to the side of the screen don’t know that.

A

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Reader ’s Digest Health & Medicine They don’t know his name—or, in the case of those who have dementia, such as Jim—that he even exists. It’s his job to be invisible.

Rochin is one of a dozen Care.coach employees in Latin America and the Philippines. Like all the company’s workers, Rochin keeps meticulous notes on the people he watches over so he can coordinate their care with family members and other workers.

Arlyn started checking Pony’s log and watching her dad interact with Pony.

Any reservations Arlyn had had about outsourcing her father’s companionship vanished. Pony eased her anxiety about leaving Jim alone, and the virtual dog’s small talk lightened the mood. ictor Wang, care.coach’s CEO , was studying humanmachine interaction at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when his grandmother in Taiwan was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, a disease that affects memory and movement. On Skype calls, Wang watched her grow increasingly debilitated. After one such call, a thought struck him: Could he tap remote labor to comfort her and others like her?

V

In 2012, he launched Care.coach with a fellow MIT student. The company’s tablets are now used by hospitals and health plans across the country. In a study conducted by Pace University, Care.coach’s avatars were found to reduce subjects’ loneliness, delirium, and falls. A health provider in Massachusetts was able to replace a man’s 11 weekly in-home nurse visits with a Care.coach tablet. (The man said the pet’s nagging was like having his wife back in the house—in a good way.)

Some critics, such as Sherry Turkle, PhD, a professor of social studies, science, and technology at MIT , view roboticized eldercare as a cop-out.

“This kind of app is making us forget what we really know about what makes older people feel sustained,” she says— caring interpersonal relationships.

For many families, though, providing long-term, in-person care is simply unsustainable. Between 2010 and 2030, the population of those older than 80 is projected to rise 79 percent, but the number of family caregivers available is expected to increase just 1 percent. Among eldercare experts, there’s a resignation that the demographics of an aging America

“I LOVE YOU, JIM!” PONY TOLD HIM. JIM TURNED TO ARLYN AND GLOATED, “SHE THINKS I’M REAL GOOD!” 92

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will make technological solutions unavoidable. Joseph Coughlin, PhD, director of MIT’s AgeLab, is pragmatic.

“I would always prefer the human touch over a robot,” he says. “But if there’s no human available, I would take high tech in lieu of high touch.” are.Coach is an amalgam of both. The service conveys the perceptiveness and emotional intelligence of the humans powering it but masquerades as an animated app. One concern is how cognizant seniors are of being watched over by strangers. By default, the app explains to patients that someone is surveilling them when it’s first introduced. But if a person is incapable of consenting to Care.coach’s monitoring, then someone must do so on his or her behalf.

Arlyn didn’t worry about deceiving her dad. Telling Jim about the human on the other side of the screen “would have blown the whole charm of it,” she

C

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says. Even Care.coach users who are completely aware of the person on the other end of the dashboard tend to experience the avatar as something between human, pet, and machine.

When Arlyn first signed up for the service, she hadn’t anticipated that she would end up loving—yes, loving, she says—the avatar as well. She taught Pony to say “yeah, sure, you betcha” and “don’t-cha know” like a Minnesotan, which made her laugh even more than it did her dad. When Arlyn collapsed onto the couch after a long day of caretaking, Pony piped up: “Arnie, how are you?” (“Arnie” is the family’s nickname for Arlyn.)

Alone, Arlyn petted the screen— the way Pony nuzzled her finger was

courtesy arlyn anderson (2)

Jim at Flying Cloud Airport in Minnesota (left), and with his wife, Dorothy (below)

Health & Medicine Reader ’s Digest

ARLYN TAUGHT PONY TO SAY “YEAH, SURE, YOU BETCHA” LIKE A MINNESOTAN, WHICH MADE HER LAUGH. weirdly therapeutic—and told the pet how hard it was to watch her dad lose his identity. “I’m here for you,” Pony said. “I love you, Arnie.” s time went on, the father, daughter, and family “pet” grew closer. In the summer, Arlyn carried the tablet to the picnic table on the patio so they could eat lunch overlooking the lake. When Arlyn took her dad sailing, Jim brought Pony along. (“I saw mostly sky,” Rochin recalls.) One day, Pony held up a photo of Jim’s wife, Dorothy Anderson, between her paws. It had been more than a year since his wife’s death, and Jim hardly mentioned her anymore. That day, though, he gazed at the photo fondly.

“I still love her,” he declared. Arlyn rubbed his shoulder, clasping her hand over her mouth to stifle her crying. “I am getting emotional, too,” Pony said.

Then Jim leaned toward the picture of his deceased wife and petted her face with his finger, the same way he would to awaken a sleeping Pony.

In early March 2014, Jim fell on his way to the bathroom. He was checked into a hospital, then into the nursing home he’d so wanted to avoid. The

A

Wi-Fi there was spotty, which made it difficult for Jim and Pony to connect.

That July, in an e-mail from Wang, Rochin learned that Jim had died in his sleep. Sitting before his laptop, Rochin bowed his head and recited a silent Lord’s Prayer for Jim. Even now, when a senior will do something that reminds him of Jim, Rochin feels a pang. “I still care about them,” he says.

On July 29, 2014, Arlyn carried Pony to Jim’s funeral, placing the tablet facing forward on the pew beside her.

She invited any workers behind Pony who wanted to attend to log in.

A year later, Arlyn finally deleted the Care.coach service from the tablet—it felt like a kind of second burial. She still sighs, “Pony!” when the voice of her old friend gives her directions as she drives around Minneapolis, reincarnated in Google Maps.

After saying his prayer for Jim, Rochin logged in to the Care.coach dashboard to make his rounds. He ducked into living rooms, kitchens, and hospital rooms around the United States—seeing if all was well, seeing if anybody needed to talk. wired (december 2017), copyright © 2017 by lauren smiley, wired.com.

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Reader ’s Digest

All in a Day’s

WORK I’m a nurse in a hospital’s children’s ward.

One night, I was at the nurses’ station when I heard a little boy in his room talking. He kept the patter up for some time.

Finally, I got on the intercom and said softly but firmly, “All right, Johnny, it’s time to go to sleep now.”

There was quiet in the room, and then he said, “OK, God, I will.”

I didn’t hear a peep from him until morning.

—J.C. via e-mail I was in a small store in a nearby town one evening. Wanting to find out when it opened the next morning, I stopped

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“I have to hang up now. I have an hour to get these reports done.”

a teenage staffer on her way out and asked, “What are your hours?”

Her reply: “Right now, six to nine because I’m in school.

But next month it will be full-time.”

—Darlene Query Edmonton, Alberta

The process of interviewing for a new job is an important step.

Don’t screw it up like these job candidates did: ✦ Interviewer: What’s your greatest weakness?

Candidate: Women.

That’s kind of why I’m cartoon by Dave Carpenter

looking for a new job.

I had an affair with my boss’s wife. ✦ Interviewer: Did you bring your references with you?

Candidate: I tried; they couldn’t get the time off work. ✦ Interviewer: What makes you think you’re right for a job working at a fast-food restaurant?

Candidate: I’m great with animals. ✦ Interviewer: Where do you see yourself in five years?

Candidate: Probably some sort of exotic beach somewhere.

We asked prospective job applicants at our company to fill out a questionnaire.

For the line “Choose one word to summarize your strongest professional attribute,” one woman wrote, “I’m good at following instructions.”

—theclever.com

TAILS FROM THE OFFICE

charles mackinnon/solent news

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When you lied on your CV about having previous sheepdog experience.

— @BoringEnormous rd.com

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MILITARY LIFE

You Own Every Bullet

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Reader â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Digest

In the midst of a tense ambush in Iraq, a soldier recalls his fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s valuable lesson

By Matt Susko from reddit.com

Illustration by Francesco Bongiorni

Reader ’s Digest Military Life

I

remember the first time I ever pointed a weapon at someone with the intent to kill them. The experience was very different from how I had imagined it would be—far more ambiguous, confusing, and subjective. The training scenarios and exercises had never really covered situations like the one I found myself in.

I hadn’t been in Iraq that long, maybe 60 days. My assignment: gunner for a troop transport vehicle known as an MRAP. There were 30 or so troops in the platoon, and our mission this evening was a reconnaissance patrol taking us to the edge of our battle space, the dividing line between the areas of responsibility for military units.

That was where the bad guys tended to collect, much in the same manner that the space between tiles in a bathroom collects mold and grime.

For this assignment, we were the Mr. Clean. The plan: look around, talk to the locals, try to winkle out some actionable intelligence, and then start kicking the hornets’ nest. Depending on where we went, this was either super successful (quite a few of the locals actually hated the insurgency) or a total bust.

The village had only one road in.

Just like so many other stories in Iraq, bad things happen when you are at the far end of your leash, late at night, on the only ingress/egress route. As we mounted up to head back to camp, I heard some of my buddies muttering, “Ugh, we are getting hit tonight.” I tried (and failed) to play it cool. We’re getting hit? I was excited and nervous.

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These guys had been here longer than I had and clearly knew what was up, but they seemed strangely unconcerned by it. “Getting hit” was spoken of in the same tones as “It’s gonna rain” or “We’re gonna be late.” An inconvenience, but not the end of the world. For a green kid on my first deployment, “getting hit” was a pretty big deal! I hopped into my turret, checked my machine gun, secured all my other gear, and settled in.

It turns out the grunts were only half right. About one mile out of the village, our lead vehicle slammed to a stop. It missed running over a pressure-detonated IED (think of a mousetrap wired with three artillery shells) by mere feet. The platoon sergeant prepared to call for the explosive ordnance disposal unit to come remove the bomb, but the platoon leader cut him off. The leader had had enough. Too many IED s, too many broken vehicles, too many broken men. He issued a new order: Dismount a squad, to be led by the leader, to take cover and watch the site. He then ordered the vehicles pushed back half a mile and hidden in a ditch beside the road with the engines and lights off. We

were to wait and see whether anyone came to collect the IED. After we pulled back, my vehicle was positioned in a depression with just the turret peeking out at ground level. We shut everything down and settled in for a long night. After about three hours, through my night vision goggles I saw a pickup truck exiting the village. This wasn’t all that unusual in itself, but the vehicle was traveling across the field, not on the road, with no lights on. Naturally, this twitched my mental antennae. The vehicle was a little over a mile away and heading in our direction. Over the intercom, I let the vehicle commander know that we had company incoming. He passed the word to the platoon sergeant, who passed it to the platoon leader, who was on the ground near the IED. At about 1,500 meters, the order was given to me: “If they get within 300 meters, engage at your discretion.”

It was that simple. No warning shots, no flares, no second chances.

Waiting for the vehicle to approach the 300-meter mark was the longest 15 minutes of my life. “At your discretion” wasn’t something I heard very often as a 21-year-old specialist. I was being given the power of life and death over the occupants of that truck, and they didn’t even know it.

My brain raced. Are these insurgents? What if they are doing farmwork in the middle of the night? (Not that uncommon in a desert country.)

What if they are driving off-road to

I HEARD SOME OF MY BUDDIES MUTTERING, “UGH, WE ARE GETTING HIT TONIGHT.” avoid the insurgents and IED s they fear may be on the road? What if it’s some guy taking a family member to the hospital? What if they are insurgents and the truck explodes when I shoot it? Hopefully 300 meters is far enough away …

But what played through my mind, over and over, was a lesson my father had taught me ten years before: When you pull the trigger, the consequences are yours—forever.

When I was a boy in Sandwich, Massachusetts, I became interested in firearms and hunting and asked my father to take me shooting. After some haggling with Mom, he agreed. I remember sitting down at the dining room table prior to heading to the range. He had removed some rifles from the safe in the basement and instructed me on rd.com

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“I’M GOING TO TELL YOU SOMETHING IMPORTANT. YOU CAN’T TAKE A BULLET BACK ONCE YOU PULL THE TRIGGER.” their proper handling. After I gained his confidence, he fixed me with his loving, firm gaze and said, “I’m going to tell you something very simple but very important. You can’t take a bullet back once you pull the trigger.”

I smiled and said, “Yeah, Dad, I know.”

He didn’t even blink. “No, you don’t.

I mean this. You can’t take a bullet back. Once you pull the trigger, it’s forever. It’s not a movie; it’s not a video game. No matter how many times you say ‘I’m sorry,’ ‘It was an accident,’ ‘I didn’t mean to,’ that bullet Never.

Comes. Back. Do you understand?” He reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “I’m not trying to scare you, but rifles are for men, not boys. If you take this, and we go shooting, you need to accept responsibility every time you

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pull the trigger. Every bullet. Forever.”

I nodded my head. I remember tearing up because the enormity of what he’d said had finally gotten through. I’d have the power of life and death over other people. It’s an awesome and terrifying responsibility, and the person I loved and wanted to impress most in the world had entrusted me with this responsibility.

That night in Iraq, I performed mundane little tasks as the last five minutes of the lives of those strangers in the truck ticked down. Checking the safety, straightening the ammo belt so the rounds would feed correctly and not jam, securing my earplugs, spitting out my gum. Over the radio, I checked my clearance to fire. The platoon leader broke in with a yelling whisper: “Check fire, repeat, check fire. DO NOT SHOOT.” That was weird, I thought. I popped back up to check the truck. Still coming.

Suddenly, a loud burst of machine gun fire erupted from the squad situated near the IED . Tracers arced across the night sky toward the truck, low, fast, and deadly. A few scattered rifle shots barked out. Then silence. The truck cut a sharp turn back to town and roared off. Our MRAP raced to where the truck had turned around, spotlights piercing the darkness, guns up and out. Two men—dumped from the truck—lay on the ground, one twitching and bleeding. The platoon medic kept them alive until a medevac helicopter

Military Life Reader ’s Digest arrived and ferried them to a hospital.

Though I never learned who they were or what they were doing, I was 90 percent sure that night, as I am now, that they were coming out to pick up the IED and use it later. The other 10 percent of me sometimes wonders. If I had shot, regardless of who was in the vehicle, under the rules of engagement I would have been cleared legally. Ethically I believe I would have been cleared, too, given the circumstances. Morally, I’m not so sure. Morally, I believe we answer to a higher power than rules of engagement, or even the letter of the

law. Morally, I believe someday I’ll be called to account for the things I’ve done or neglected to do. Some days, I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to do that.

What I am sure of today in my early 30s—the same way I was sure of it on that moonless March night when I was 21 and when I was a wide-eyed child at my family dinner table taking in one of life’s most important lessons—is that once you pull the trigger, you own it forever. Because the bullet never, ever, comes back. reddit.com (march 2018), copyright © 2018 by matt susko.

Inspirational Quotes (Updated for Modern Life) “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step costs way too much gas money.” lao-tzu

“If not us, who? If not now, when maybe after this next episode?” john f. kennedy

“The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction you are moving where we lie down to take a nap.” oliver wendell holmes

“It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you delivers pizza to you.” roald dahl

“Education costs money. But then so does ignorance boxed wine.

I know which one I’d prefer.” sir claus moser rk pendergrass for mcsweeneys.net

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INSPIRATION

FOUR-LEAF

CL VER One woman’s knack for finding good fortune

By Teva Harrison from the walrus

W

hen I was in the third grade, we had a scavenger hunt at school. We gathered up chalk, pencils, stones, and poorly hidden tchotchkes, rapidly filling our checklists. It was a very close race. I was out of breath when I reached the clover patch in search of the last, most hard-to-find item: a four-leaf clover.

I was pretty sure that I was going to win. I had a trump card.

The thing is, I have always been able to find four-leaf clovers.

I just see them.

I spent my childhood collecting and pressing four-leaf clovers into books at my mother’s house. I started with big cloth- and leather-bound books. Joyce’s Ulysses, the complete works of

Re ad er â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Di ge st

Photograph by Matthew Cohen

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Reader ’s Digest Shakespeare, my great-grandmother’s copy of Les Misérables. When I ran out of romantically bound volumes, I began to slip my treasures into anything I could find: well-thumbed fiction paperbacks, cookbooks. The same is true in my house today. Shake a book, and a papery treasure just might fall into your hand.

I BELIEVE THERE IS CASUAL MAGIC IN EVERYDAY ACTS. A few years ago, in Nova Scotia, my husband and I pulled off the road for a picnic. The ground was thick with clover. Some shoots had four, five, even six leaves. I lined them up on the picnic table to admire as my husband, never yet having found one four-leaf clover, looked on with awe.

To me, it was simple. The differences in their shapes popped out, breaking the pretty pattern of the conventional clovers with their three perfect leaves.

Two summers back, while waiting for an airport shuttle in Munich, I found a tiny four-leaf clover in a traffic circle and tucked it into my passport. On the way home, my husband and I were upgraded to business class.

Friends attributed our good luck to the clover. I think it’s more likely that we were upgraded because a flight cancellation left us stranded in two cities on as many continents on subsequent

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nights and a kind customer service rep took pity on us.

People disagree about whether the luck lies in the finding or in the possession of a clover. Some believe that the luck is lost if the four-leaf clover is even shown to somebody else, while others think the luck doubles if it is given away. I believe that positivity is compounded by sharing. I feel lucky to find the clovers so often, but I don’t think they influence my life any more than it does to share anything a little special—that momentary closeness between you and a friend or a stranger, as you all lean in to wonder at a rare find. hat is luck, anyway? Does it mean you can’t take credit for the things that happen to you? Should I have kept all the clovers I found instead of giving them away?

I believe that there is casual magic in everyday acts. It’s lucky simply to know what it is to seek out and love a genetically deformed clover—to know how to treasure difference. Every time I see a patch of clover, I feel a compulsion to search that cannot be satisfied until I hold a four-leaf clover in my hands. It’s a sort of mania.

I had always thought that, being a simple genetic anomaly, four-leaf clovers would be fairly common. I have since learned that one in 10,000 clovers has four leaves. It could be the result of a recessive gene, a somatic mutation, the influence of the

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Inspiration

The author lets her eyes relax, and the distinct shapes of four-leaf clovers pop out.

environment, or any combination of the three. But isn’t this where science meets magic? hough I find clovers all the time, I’m not exceptional in this skill. The Guinness World Records holder, Edward Martin Sr. from Cooper Landing, Alaska, had found 111,060 four-leaf clovers when he took the record in 2007.

It’s the finding I love, not the collecting. I’m happiest to give my “lucky” clovers away. I pass them on to mothers in parks, who show them to their wide-eyed kids. I delivered one to the man at my corner store, where it hangs above the register. Friends slip them between the business cards in their wallets for safekeeping.

People ask how I do it. Well, I love clover: the sweet smell, the common variant with its cute trio of leaves. I

david p. leonard/courtesy teva harrison

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look at it more than most people do. I expect that’s the first reason I find so many. I have a habit of dragging my fingers or toes across a patch, momentarily separating the individuals, which brings irregularities into focus. That’s part of finding them: not a hardening of focus, but a softening.

The other reason is artful. Do you remember those posters from the 1980s made up of thick dots? If you looked too hard, all you’d see was the pattern.

But if you let your eyes slip out of focus, scenes would appear: dinosaurs, landscapes, butterflies—a trick of the eye.

It’s the same with four-leaf clovers.

If you try too hard, you will only ever see the patch. Instead, slip into a lazy, soft-focus, summer state of mind.

Drift your hand across a thick patch, letting the clovers reveal themselves.

Appreciate the ones that have only three leaves. Common things are beautiful too. And a four-leaf clover may show itself to you. Just like that.

That day in third grade, I dived into the clover patch, skimming the surface with my hands, softening my eyes to look for irregularities. It took only moments for a four-leaf clover to fall into my fingers. Just like that.

Whatever little toy I won that day, my real prize was the gateway that the simple act of looking for clovers opened for me into a lifetime of joy derived from looking closely. The magic of nature coming up as it pleases. the walrus (august 10, 2017), copyright © 2017 by teva harrison, thewalrus.ca.

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TRUE CRIME

The Man Who

RIGGED the Lottery He got hold of the winning numbersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;five times. But how?

By Reid Forgrave from the new york times magazine

illustrations by Francesco Francavilla

Reader â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Digest

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he video was grainy, but it showed enough to possibly crack open the biggest lottery scam in American history. A heavyset man walks into a QuikTrip convenience store just off Interstate 80 in Des Moines, Iowa, two days before Christmas 2010. The hood of his sweatshirt is pulled over his head, obscuring his face. He grabs a fountain drink and two hot dogs.

“Hello!” the cashier says brightly.

Head down, the man replies in a low-pitched drawl: “Hell-ooooh.”

They exchange a few more words.

The man pulls two pieces of paper from his pocket. The cashier runs them through the lottery terminal and then hands over some change. Once outside, the man pulls off his hood, gets into his SUV, and drives away.

The pieces of paper were play slips for Hot Lotto, a lottery game that was available in 14 states and Washington, DC. A player (or the game’s computer) picked five numbers and then a sixth, known as the Hot Ball.

Players who got all six numbers right won a jackpot that varied according to how many tickets were sold.

At the time of the video, the jackpot was approaching $10 million.

The stated odds of winning it were 1 in 10,939,383.

Six days later, on December 29, the Hot Lotto numbers were selected: 3, 12, 16, 26, 33, 11. The next day, the Iowa Lottery announced that a QuikTrip in Des Moines had sold the winning ticket. But no one came forward to claim the now $16.5 million jackpot.

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After a month passed, the Iowa Lottery held a news conference to note that the money was still uncollected. The lottery issued another public reminder three months after the winning numbers were announced, then another at six months and again at nine months, each time warning that winners had one year to claim their money.

True Crime In November 2011, a man named Philip Johnston, a Canadian attorney, called in with the correct serial number from the winning ticket. But when asked what he’d been wearing when he bought it, his description of a sports coat and gray flannel dress pants did not match the QuikTrip video. Then, in a subsequent call, the man admitted he had “fibbed”; he said he was helping a client claim the ticket so the client wouldn’t be identified.

This was against the Iowa Lottery rules, which require identities of winners to be public. Lottery officials were suspicious: The winner’s anonymity was worth $16.5 million?

“I was convinced it would never be claimed,” says Mary Neubauer, the Iowa Lottery’s vice president of external relations, of the jackpot.

And it wasn’t, until exactly a year after the drawing—less than two hours before the 4 p.m. deadline—when representatives from a Des Moines law firm showed up at lottery headquarters with the winning ticket. The firm was claiming the prize on behalf of a trust whose beneficiary was a corporation in Belize. Its president was Philip Johnston—the same man who said he’d worn a sports coat to buy the ticket.

“It just absolutely stank all over the place,” says Terry Rich, chief executive of the Iowa Lottery. So they held on to the jackpot while the attorney general’s office opened an investigation.

But it went nowhere.

wo years later, a baby-faced district attorney named Rob Sand inherited the languishing lottery file. In college, Sand had studied computer coding before going to law school, where his specialty was white-collar crime. Still, this case stumped him. His best evidence was

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FRIENDS WONDERED HOW HE COULD AFFORD SUCH A BIG HOUSE ON HIS SALARY. that grainy video of a man in a hoodie, so he decided to release the footage to the media, hoping it might spark leads—and it did.

The first came from an employee of the Maine Lottery who recognized the distinct voice in the video as that of a man who had conducted a security audit in their offices. A web developer at the Iowa Lottery also recognized the voice: It belonged to a man she had worked alongside for years, Eddie Tipton. Eddie was the information-security director for the Multi-State Lottery Association, based in Des Moines. Among the games the association ran: the Hot Lotto. ddie cut a big figure around the lottery office. He wrote software, handled network firewalls, and reviewed security for games in nearly three dozen states. His life revolved

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Reader ’s Digest around his job; he sometimes stayed at his desk until 11 p.m. When a coworker was in a bad mood, one colleague said, Eddie would pat him on the shoulder and say, “I just want you to know I’m your friend.”

But he was also a paranoid sort. He rarely paid with credit cards, worried about people tracing his identity. In private moments, Eddie told friends

“DID Y’ALL KNOW?” THE TIPSTER ASKED. “EDDIE’S BROTHER WON THE LOTTERY TOO.” he was lonely and wanted a family more than anything. He built a 4,800-square-foot, $540,000 house in the cornfields south of Des Moines, complete with five bedrooms and a stadium-style home theater. Friends wondered why a single man needed such a big house and how he could afford it on his salary. Eddie told them he had poured his savings into the house in hopes of filling it with a wife and children. But the right partner never came along.

Among Eddie’s friends was a colleague named Jason Maher. They spent hours playing the online game World of Tanks. When Maher saw the Hot Lotto video that DA Sand released, Maher immediately recognized that familiar, low-pitched voice, but he didn’t want to believe it. “That

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night I sat down—there’s no way Eddie did this,” Maher says. “There’s got to be something wrong.”

So he did what a computer whiz does: He put the file into audio software, removed the white noise, and isolated the voice. Then he took footage from security cameras in his own house—Eddie had just visited the night before—and compared the voices. “It was a complete and utter match,” Maher said. The next day, he went to the QuikTrip and measured the dimensions of the tiles on the floor, the height of the shelving units, the distance between the door and the cash register. He used the results to compare the hand size, foot size, and height of the man in the video with his friend’s. Maher wanted to be able to tell law enforcement that it wasn’t his pal Eddie. “Once I did this, it was like, ‘Well, [expletive]—it’s Eddie.’ ” n January 2015, state investigators showed up at Eddie’s office.

He was arrested and charged with two felony counts of fraud. Half a year later, on a hot, sticky July morning, Rob Sand stood before a jury at the Polk County Courthouse. “This is a classic story about an inside job,” he began. “A man who by virtue of his employment is not allowed to play the lottery—nor allowed to win—buys a lottery ticket, wins, and passes the ticket along to be claimed by someone unconnected to him.”

The prosecution knew Eddie had

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True Crime inserted a thumb drive containing a string of coded instructions he’d written. The clandestine software, called a rootkit, allowed Eddie to restrict the pool of numbers that could hit—and then it deleted itself.

The prosecutor told the jury members that they didn’t have to understand the exact technology to convict Eddie. They just had to realize the near-impossible coincidence of the lottery security chief’s buying the winning ticket. After deliberating for only five hours, the jury found Eddie guilty. He appealed.

Then the case took a very strange turn. ne morning a few months after the original trial, Sand’s office phone rang. The call came from area code 281, in Texas, where Eddie grew up. The caller said he’d seen an article in the newspaper about Eddie’s conviction.

“Did y’all know,” the tipster asked, “that Eddie’s brother Tommy Tipton won the lottery, maybe about ten years back?”

Sand contacted Richard Rennison, a special agent at the FBI office in Texas City, Texas. Rennison said he remembered the case well: In 2006, a man named Tom Bargas had contacted local law enforcement with a suspicious story.

Bargas owned 44 fireworks stands. Twice a year—after the Fourth of July and New Year’s—he handled enormous amounts of cash. A man he knew, a local justice of the peace, called Bargas around New Year’s and said, “I got half a million in cash that I want to swap with your money.”

What’s a justice of the peace who

O bought the winning ticket—the video made that pretty clear. So did cell phone records, which showed Eddie was in town that day, not out of town for the holidays as he had claimed. Investigators believed he’d fixed the lottery. But if the numbers are supposed to be generated randomly, how did he do it?

Based on his research, Sand theorized that before the Hot Lotto jackpot, Eddie had managed to gain access to one of the two computers that select the winning numbers and

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Reader ’s Digest makes around $35,000 a year doing with that much cash? Bargas thought.

Suspicious, he called the police, who called the FBI. Soon, agents listened in as Bargas met with the justice of the peace, Tommy Tipton. Tommy pulled out a briefcase filled with $450,000 in cash, still in Federal Reserve wrappers, and swapped $100,000 of it for Bargas’s worn, circulated bills. The FBI then went to work investigating the serial numbers on the new bills.

A few months later, Rennison went to see Tommy. He said that he had hit the lottery but was on the outs with his wife and trying to keep the winnings from her. A friend had claimed the $568,990 prize in exchange for 10 percent of the money. At the time, it all seemed to add up, and the Tommy Tipton case was closed.

Now Sand suspected that there were even more illicitly claimed tickets out there. He knew from experience that white-collar criminals aren’t usually caught on their first attempt.

In fact, a $783,257.72 jackpot from a Wisconsin Lottery drawing on December 29, 2007, had been claimed by a Texas man named Robert Rhodes— Eddie Tipton’s best friend. On November 23, 2011, Kyle Conn from Hemphill, Texas, won $644,478 in the Oklahoma Lottery. Sand saw that Tommy Tipton

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had three Facebook friends named Conn. He got a list of possible phone numbers and cross-referenced them with Tommy’s cell phone records. Another hit.

Two winning Kansas Lottery tickets with $15,402 payouts were purchased on December 23, 2010—the day Eddie bought the Iowa ticket. Cell phone records indicated he was driving through Kansas on the way to Texas for the holidays. One of the winning tickets was claimed by a Texan named Christopher McCoulskey; the other, by an Iowan named Amy Warrick.

Each was a friend of Eddie’s.

One morning, Sand and an investigator knocked on Warrick’s door. She told them Eddie had said he wasn’t able to claim a winning lottery ticket because of his job. If she could claim it, he’d said, she could keep a portion as a gift for her recent engagement.

“You have these honest dupes,” Sand says. “All these people are being offered thousands of dollars for doing

True Crime something that’s a little bit sneaky but not illegal.” Investigators in Iowa now had six tickets they figured were part of a bigger scam. But the question remained: How did it work? ortunately, the computers used in the 2007 Wisconsin Lottery jackpot were sitting in storage. A computer expert, Sean McLinden, unearthed some malicious computer code. It hadn’t been hidden; you just needed to know what to look for.

“This,” says Wisconsin assistant attorney general David Maas, “was finding the smoking gun.”

Eddie Tipton pleaded guilty, as did his brother, Tommy. Now facing ten years in prison, Eddie agreed to spill his secrets, which lottery officials hoped would help them safeguard the games in the future. He explained that the whole scheme had started fairly innocently one day when he walked past one of the accountants at the Multi-State Lottery Association. “Hey, did you put your secret numbers in there?” the accountant teased Eddie.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know, you can set numbers on any given day since you wrote the software.”

“Just like a little seed that was planted,” Eddie said. “And then during one slow period, I tried it.”

To ensure that the winning numbers were generated randomly, the computer took a reading from a

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Geiger counter that measured radiation in the surrounding air. The radiation reading was plugged into an algorithm to come up with the winning lottery numbers.

Eddie’s scheme was to limit the random selection process as much as possible. His code kicked in only if the coming drawing fulfilled a narrow set of circumstances. It had to be on a Wednesday or a Saturday evening, and one of three dates in a non–leap year: the 147th day of the year, the 327th day, or the 363rd day. Investigators noticed those dates generally fell around holidays—Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas—when Eddie was often on vacation.

“PLAY THESE NUMBERS,” HE TOLD HIS BROTHER, HANDING HIM A LIST. “PLAY THEM ALL.” If those criteria were satisfied, the random-number generator was diverted to a different track that didn’t use the Geiger counter reading. Instead, the algorithm ran with a predetermined number, which restricted the pool of potential winning numbers to a much smaller, predictable set of options: Rather than millions of possible winning combinations, there would be only a few hundred.

The night before the first lottery he rigged, a $4.8 million jackpot in rd.com

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Reader ’s Digest True Crime Colorado, Eddie stayed late in his Robin Hood, stealing from the lotmessy, computer-filled office. He set tery and helping people in need: his a test computer to run the program brother, who had five daughters; his over and over again and wrote down friend who’d just gotten engaged. “I all the potential winning numbers on didn’t really need the money,” Eddie said. The judge noted a yellow legal pad. that Eddie seemed to The next day, Norationalize his actions— vember 23, 2005, he that he didn’t think it handed the pad to was necessarily illegal, his brother, who was just taking advantage headed to Colorado on of a hole in the system, a trip. “These numbers sort of like counting have a good chance of cards at a casino. winning based on my The judge sentenced analysis,” he said. “Play Eddie to a maximum of them. Play them all.”

Eddie Tipton at his 25 years in prison. The sentencing hearing in a brothers’ restitution to n a clear summer Des Moines courthouse the various state lotterday in Des Moines last year, Eddie Tipton, who was ies came to $2.2 million, even though, then 54, trudged up the stairs of the according to his attorney, Eddie himPolk County Courthouse. His hands self pocketed only around $350,000.

Sand expects Eddie to be released were shoved in his pockets, his head down. He had accepted a plea deal on parole within seven years. Reflectfor masterminding the massive lottery ing on the case, the prosecutor says he scam—one count of ongoing criminal felt a deep intellectual satisfaction in conduct, part of a package deal that solving the puzzle: “The justice sysgave his brother only 75 days. Eddie tem at its best is really about a search for truth.” was here for his sentencing.

In statements to prosecutors, he new york times magazine (may 3, 2018), copyright painted himself as a kind of coding © 2018 by new york times co., nytimes.com.

The Luckiest Town Around Were the 31 oil-refinery employees who shared a $46 million lottery jackpot this year destined to win? Maybe. After all, they work in a Canadian town called Come By Chance. cnn.com

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THE GENIUS SECTION 10 Pages to sharpen Your Mind

UNFREEZE YOUR BRAIN Can you use these items to attach the candle to the wall and light it? Step one is to jettison tired thinking patterns, which derail even the most intelligent among us.

By Leonard Mlodinow from the book elastic

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Photographs by Matthew Cohen

Reader ’s Digest n life, once on a path, we tend to follow it, for better or worse.

What’s sad is that even if it’s the latter, we often accept it anyway because we are so accustomed to the way things are that we don’t even recognize that they could be different.

This is a phenomenon psychologists call functional fixedness. This classic experiment will give you an idea of how it works—and a sense of whether you may have fallen into the same trap: People are given a box of tacks and some matches and asked to find a way to attach a candle to a wall so that it burns properly.

Typically, the subjects try tacking the candle to the wall or lighting it to affix it with melted wax. The psychologists had, of course, arranged it so that neither of these obvious approaches would work. The tacks are too short, and the paraffin doesn’t bind to the wall. So how can you accomplish the task?

The successful technique is to use the tack box as a candleholder. You empty it, tack it to the wall, and stand the candle inside it.

To think of that, you have to look beyond the box’s usual role as a receptacle just for tacks and reimagine it serving an entirely new purpose. That is difficult because we all suffer—to one degree or another—from functional fixedness.

The inability to think in new ways affects people in every corner of society.

The political theorist Hannah Arendt

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coined the phrase frozen thoughts to describe deeply held ideas that we no longer question but should. In Arendt’s eyes, the complacent reliance on such accepted “truths” also made people blind to ideas that didn’t fit their worldview, even when there was ample evidence for them. Frozen thinking has nothing to do with intelligence, she said. “It can be found in highly intelligent people.”

Arendt was particularly interested in the origins of evil, and she considered critical thinking to be a moral

THE INABILITY TO THINK IN NEW WAYS AFFECTS ALL CORNERS OF SOCIETY. imperative—in its absence, a society could go the way of Nazi Germany.

Another context in which frozen thinking can turn truly dangerous is medicine. If you land in the hospital, it’s natural to want to be treated by the most experienced physicians on staff. But according to a 2014 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), you’d be better off being treated by the relative novices.

The study examined nearly ten years of data involving tens of thousands of hospital admissions and found that the 30-day mortality rate among high-risk patients with acute heart conditions was a third lower when the rd.com

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Reader ’s Digest top doctors were away at conferences.

The JAMA study didn’t pinpoint the reasons for the decreased death rate, but the authors explained that most errors made by doctors are connected to a tendency to form opinions quickly, based on experience. In cases that are not routine, the expert doctors may miss important aspects of the problem that are not consistent with their initial analysis. As a result, although

junior doctors may be slower and less confident in treating run-of-the-mill cases, they can be more open-minded with unusual cases.

Fortunately, psychologists have found that anyone can unfreeze his or her thinking. One of the most effective ways is to introduce a little discord to one’s intellectual interactions.

Consider a study performed about

HOW TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX In addition to being open to dissenting opinions, here are some techniques that could help broaden the way you think

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Change Environments A disruption in your everyday life may provide the force needed to alter the direction of your thinking. For some people, small changes might help (reorganizing your desk or taking a new route to work), whereas for others, more upheaval (a new job or a divorce) is required.

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Look as if You’ve Never Seen A Zen Buddhist concept for approaching even routine situations as if you were encountering them for the first time,

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“beginner’s mind” allows you to remain open to new experiences despite any expertise you may have. For instance, when you brush your teeth, take a moment to look at the toothbrush as if you’ve never laid eyes on such an object and notice its color and shape. Think about the flavor of the toothpaste and notice how your mouth feels as you move the brush back and forth.

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Vive la Différence The mere presence of individuals from different backgrounds with different points of view in your everyday

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life creates an atmosphere in which people can better respond to change.

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Shift into Positivity Unlike negative emotions that trigger specific reactions (e.g., fear propels us to flee), positive emotions prompt us to broaden our attention, explore our environment, and open ourselves to absorbing information.

Take a few moments to think about the things in your life that are going well and for which you are grateful; this will automatically brighten your mood—and free your brain.

The Genius Section half a century ago. The researcher showed two groups of female volunteers a sequence of blue slides. In both groups, he asked each individual to state the color of each slide. In the experimental group, he had planted some actors who called the color green rather than blue. Whom were they fooling? Nobody. The experimental subjects ignored the deviant responses. When their turns came, most of them answered blue, just as the control group had.

Then the subjects were asked to classify a series of paint chips as either green or blue, even though their color lay between those two pure colors. Amazingly, the people who’d been in the experimental group identified many chips as green while those from the control group called the same ones blue. Even though no one in the experimental group had been convinced by the actors before, their exposure to the earlier misidentification had shifted their judgment and made them more open to seeing a color as green.

Other experiments have shown that dissent can not only sway us with regard to the issue at hand; it can also thaw frozen thinking in general, even

TALKING TO PEOPLE WHO DISAGREE WITH YOU IS GOOD FOR YOUR BRAIN. in contexts unrelated to the original discussion. What this all means is that, as difficult as it can sometimes be, talking to people who disagree with you is good for your brain. So if you hate conspiracy theories and run into someone who believes that we faked the moon landing, don’t walk away. Have tea with him or her. It can broaden your thinking in countless ways. excerpted from elastic: flexible thinking in a time of change by leonard mlodinow, copyright © 2018 by leonard mlodinow. reprinted with permission from pantheon books, an imprint of penguin random house llc.

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The names and addresses of the publisher, editor-in-chief, and managing editor are: Publisher, Lee Zellweger; Editor-in-Chief, Bruce Kelley; and Managing Editor, Lorraine Burton, of 44 South Broadway, Floor 7, White Plains, Westchester County, NY 10601.

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Reader â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Digest

BRAIN GAMES Win or Lose difficult The Reds, the Grays, the Blues, and the Blacks have a round-robin tournament wherein each team plays each other team once, for a total of six games. The Blacks won more games than the Blues, and the Grays lost more games than the Blues. The Reds tied the Blacks, the only tie in the tournament (a tie counts as neither a win nor a loss).

Who won the game of the Reds versus the Blues?

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Word Sudoku medium Complete the grid so that each row, each column, and each threeby-three frame contains the nine letters from the black box below. A hidden nine-letter word is in the diagonal from top left to bottom right (it may contain repeated letters).

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For more Brain Games, go to games.rd.com.

win or lose: darren rigby

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The Genius Section

Quick Crossword easy Place the words listed below in the crossword grid.

DUBLIN TOKYO DENVER CAIRO PARIS LILLE LYON NICE BOGOR

jake loves steak: samantha rideout

100-Word Mystery medium Lois and Helen, widowed sisters, lived together out in the country. Their habits never changed: up at dawn, breakfast, some housework and gardening until lunch. In the afternoon, Helen napped while Lois watched her shows—Helen never watched TV. Then Helen would clean the vegetables for dinner and Lois would cook.

In the evening, they’d read before bed. One night before they turned in, a storm knocked out the power. Everything was pitchblack, and Lois began to panic.

“What should we do?” she cried.

Helen just smiled and kept reading. Why did Helen stay calm while her sister did not?

Jake Loves Steak; Trish Loves Fish medium Jacob enjoys steak so much that the probability that he’ll have it for dinner on any given evening is one in three. The favorite dish of his wife, Patricia, is fresh fish. The probability that she’ll have it for dinner on any given evening is one in two.

Because Jacob and Patricia always dine together, they’ll never have steak and fish on the same night. On average, how many times in a 30-day month will they be having either steak or fish?

For answers, turn to the next page. rd.com

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Reader ’s Digest

make us ! a l ugh

BRAIN GAMES ANSWERS See page 122.

Win or Lose the reds. The Blacks tied one game, so they won a maximum of two games.

They won more than the Blues, so the Blues won a maximum of one game.

Since the Grays lost more times than the Blues, the Grays must have lost all three matches. The match that the Blues won must have been against the Grays, so the Blues lost the match against the Reds.

Word Sudoku H N G P E U L D B

D E P B H L U G N

G U N L B H D P E

P H D E U N B L G

B L E D P G H N U

What’s your clever description for this picture? Submit your funniest line at rd.com/captioncontest. Winners will appear in a future Photo Finish (page 128).

Quick Crossword

E D B N L P G U H

N G U H D B P E L

L P H U G E N B D

S P T N

L Y O N

D U B L I N L S O I I U G G C O K Y O D E N S G R

100-Word Mystery helen was blind.

S C O P A R U P I E V E R A P O D

L I L L E

S L T O

Jake Loves Steak; Trish Loves Fish 25 nights.

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emilia wilgosz-peter

U B L G N D E H P

Caption Contest

The Genius Section

WORD POWER You’re busy at this time of year, so we made

this quiz as easy as a, b, c. All these words include those letters—in order (ignoring some repeats). You’ll find this aerobic mental exercise more fun if you don’t fabricate the answers, which are on the next page.

By Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon

9. lambency n. ('lam-ben-see) a meekness. b desperation. c radiance.

10. abdicate v. ('ab-dih-kayt) a give up. b start. c decline to vote.

11. Malbec n. (mal-'bek) a coffee blend. b French pirate. c red wine.

1. ambience n. ('am-bee-ents) a act of listening. b stroll. c atmosphere.

5. swashbuckler n. ('swahsh-buh-kler) a studded belt. b daring adventurer. c threshing blade.

12. abeyance n. (uh-'bay-ents) a following orders. b barking. c temporary inactivity.

2. diabolical adj. (dy-uh-'bah-lih-kuhl) a devilish. b two-faced. c acidic.

6. abacus n. ('a-buh-kuss) a sundial. b magic spell. c ancient counting tool.

13. shambolic adj. (sham-'bah-lik) a misleading. b disorganized. c widely shunned.

3. sabbatical n. (suh-'ba-tih-kuhl) a prayer shawl. b strict command. c extended leave.

7. rambunctious adj. (ram-'bunk-shuss) a goatlike. b unruly. c wide-awake.

14. abscond v. (ab-'skond) a steal away. b trip and fall. c fail to rhyme.

4. abject adj. ('ab-jekt) a lofty. b lowly. c central.

8. ambivalence n. (am-'bih-vuh-lents) a medical aid. b contradictory feelings. c left-handedness.

15. sawbuck n. ('saw-buk) a horse trainer. b ten-dollar bill. c tree trimmer.

To play an interactive version of Word Power on your iPad, download the Reader’s Digest app. rd.com

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Reader ’ (c) red wine.

By the Letters identify what it is in each case?

4. almost

Word Power

ANSWERS 1. ambience (c) atmosphere. “Randy’s Slop House” isn’t much of a name, but the place actually has a nice ambience.

2. diabolical (a) devilish.

Wile E. Coyote’s diabolical schemes usually end as spectacular failures.

3. sabbatical (c) extended leave. Dr. Klein is taking a sabbatical this semester to finish her book.

4. abject (b) lowly.

The sight of a spider in the bathtub made Big Joe act like an abject coward.

5. swashbuckler (b) daring adventurer.

Robin Hood and Zorro are two famous fictional swashbucklers.

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6. abacus (c) ancient counting tool. I couldn’t do my homework, because my dog ate the beads off my abacus.

7. rambunctious (b) unruly. Is there anything more exhausting than babysitting a group of rambunctious five-year-olds?

8. ambivalence (b) contradictory feelings.

I do have some ambivalence about trapping the chipmunks in my attic.

9. lambency (c) radiance.

By the moon’s lambency, the lovers staged their secret rendezvous.

(c)

13. shambolic (b) disorganized. Kyle’s bachelor pad is always in a shambolic state, with dirty socks on the floor and dishes in the sink.

14. abscond (a) steal away. Where’s that knave who absconded with the queen’s tarts?

15. sawbuck (b) ten-dollar bill. “In the old days, you could buy dinner and a movie for just a sawbuck,” Jean grumbled as she pulled out her wallet.

Vocabulary Ratings 10. abdicate—(a) give up.

Having failed her accounting course, Paulina was forced to abdicate her role as class treasurer.

9 & below: able competitor 10–12: fabulous contender 13–15: absolute champ

By the Letters Answers: 1. All five vowels are in alphabetical order.

2. All letters are from the second half of the alphabet. 3. No letter is repeated.

4. Letters are in alphabetical order. 5. Letters are in reverse alphabetical order.

matthew cohen

1. facetious 2. nonsupports 3. uncopyrightable

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Reader ’s Digest The Genius Section

Winner Quick, take the picture before those cute humans move!

—John Beck Omaha, Nebraska Runners-Up Meet Happy, the Loch Ness squirrel.

—John Hunt Arcadia, Nebraska

And here we find the elusive humans in their natural habitat ...

—Darline Reynolds St. Johnsbury, Vermont To enter an upcoming caption contest, see the photo on page 124.

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melissa brandts/national geographic my shot

PHOTO FINISH Your Funniest captions

Chronic neck or back pain? ®

Stand Tall with a less than 1-inch incision.

Peter M. Professional Fisherman and TV Show Host Actual Patient

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