Índex per December 2018/January 2019 a Reader's Digest

As 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. 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…

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 five-month-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…

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. A Blood Test That May Warn of Alzheimer’s Sooner The only way to catch Alzheimer’s early—allowing treatment to slow the…

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 ones:…

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.…

✦ 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…

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. In a whisper, I say, “It’s Christmas morning, and Kyle is still sleeping.” Kyle awakens and sleepily comes to the…

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…

Happy Holi-dazed! I hate freeloaders who join in the New Year’s Eve countdown for the last ten seconds. I’ve been doing this all year. Where were you back in May? — @ TheNewsAtGlenn “It is way too early for Christmas music.” —people in the year 75 BC — @online_shawn The Hanukkah miracle is that the menorah oil lasted eight extra 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. — @Book_Krazy I don’t know who’s worse, the people who sign their cats’ names on Christmas cards or the cats who refuse to sign. — @Cpin42 To all those who received a book from me as a Christmas…

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. 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…

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? Word Sudoku MEDIUM Complete the grid so that each row, each column, and each three-by-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). B D E G H L N P U…

Old-Time Doctor Remedies That Work 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 How to Conquer Panic Attacks I had panic attacks for 28 years, took…

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 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…

FROM CNN.COM EVERY 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 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…

MY KIDS SIT in Gee’s living room and reverently lift antique Christmas ornaments out of a well-loved 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 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…

IT’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,…

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. 2 Brighten Up Your Christmas Tree 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…

THE 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. 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…

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 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…

FROM THE DEL RIO NEWS-HERALD “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.” 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-Z-Boy 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…

“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…

FROM THE BOOK ELASTIC IN 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…

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 about a mother panda leaving her cubs. “I told him that the cubs would be homeless for a while,” TJ says.…

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 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 My three-year-old son: I don’t…

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 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…

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 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…

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…

READER MIRACLE My stepfather, Marlin, bought a dancing Christmas tree in the mid-2000s 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…

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.” —Gloria Arroyo PHOENIX, ARIZONA…

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. —Dayle Vickery ORANGE PARK, FLORIDA…

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 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…

1 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. 2 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, “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…

1. ambience n. ('am-bee-ents) A act of listening.B stroll.C atmosphere. 2. diabolical adj. (dy-uh-'bah-lih-kuhl) A devilish.B two-faced.C acidic. 3. sabbatical n. (suh-'ba-tih-kuhl) A prayer shawl.B strict command.C extended leave. 4. abject adj. ('ab-jekt) A lofty.B lowly.C central. 5. swashbuckler n. ('swahsh-buh-kler) A studded belt.B daring adventurer.C threshing blade. 6. abacus n. ('a-buh-kuss) A sundial.B magic spell.C ancient counting tool. 7. rambunctious adj. (ram-'bunk-shuss) A goatlike.B unruly.C wide-awake. 8. ambivalence n. (am-'bih-vuh-lents) A medical aid.B contradictory feelings.C left-handedness. 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. 12. abeyance n. (uh-'bay-ents) A following orders.B barking.C temporary inactivity. 13. shambolic adj. (sham-'bah-lik) A misleading.B disorganized.C widely shunned. 14. abscond v. (ab-'skond) A steal away.B trip and fall.C fail to rhyme. 15. sawbuck n. ('saw-buk) A horse…