Indice dei contenuti per September 2015 in Reader's Digest

THE 180-MILE DRIVE from home to the University of Michigan was the most difficult journey of my life. I remember our Chevy van stuffed with pillows, comforters, and bags of hair products from Bernie Shulman’s. And I can still feel the knot of despair (leaving the boyfriend!) and doubt (could I cut it academically?) that twisted in my stomach. We were quiet as my dad drove along I-80, stealing tentative smiles in the rearview mirror while Mom underlined interesting classes for me to consider in the well-thumbed course guide. I think of the vans pulling out of driveways this August, and I know the pride, hope, and even uncertainty that fill them. In his essay “Unprepared,” Rob Lowe draws a beautiful picture of his family as they pack and take…

THE BEST TRAINING to be a reporter is to work the police beat because every story you cover is the worst moment in someone’s life. If you can learn to get the right information under those circumstances, you won’t be fazed by the high and mighty and certainly not by the on-the-make politicians and spin doctors—which is why I want to add a paragraph or two to the rash of stories lately about cops gone wrong. This is not about them. This is about all the cops you don’t read about. They deal much of the time with the dregs of our society: the schemers, the murderers, those who prey on the weak. And most of the time, the police deal with them humanely, and as they should. What we…

■ BELL PEPPERS AND BROCCOLI Vitamin C increases production of collagen, the skin’s building block. In other words, fewer fine lines around your eyes and mouth. Serving size: 1 cup fresh or ½ cup cooked per day ■ WILD SALMON Omega-3 fatty acids help the skin retain moisture, making it soft and supple. The nourishing ingredient also maintains the scalp’s natural oils. Serving size: 4 to 6 ounces, 3 times per week ■ BLACKBERRIES AND RASPBERRIES Ellagic acid protects against UV rays and can help prevent wrinkles. Serving size: ½ cup fresh or frozen per day ■ TOMATOES Lycopene may help prevent sun damage. The potent antioxidant works best when cooked, so homemade marinara sauce and tomato soup are both great options. Serving size: Aim for at least 1 portion…

YOUR GUT IS IN BIG TROUBLE Damage to your teeth “I often get referrals from dentists with patients who don’t feel heartburn or other reflux symptoms, but their teeth enamel is completely worn down,” says Evan Dellon, MD, a gastrointestinal (GI) specialist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Many are shocked to learn they have acid reflux. While sugary drinks wear down teeth at the front of your mouth, acid from your esophagus tends to dissolve enamel of the teeth at the back. Other subtle but suspicious symptoms of reflux include a persistent sore throat, coughing, unexplained wheezing, or a frequent foul taste in your mouth. If you or your dentist notices any of these warning signs, see a GI specialist promptly. Untreated reflux not only leads…

TEN NEW YORK City students were rushed to a hospital after they were overcome by a noxious smell. Emergency crews quickly discovered the cause: Someone had released Axe body spray in the classroom. Source: Daily News (New York) FIREFIGHTERS IN OTTAWA, Canada, had to use the Jaws of Life to free a student. Was she trapped in a car following a terrible accident? No, she was wedged into her school locker after backing into it as a prank. Now she knows how her books feel. Source: thevictorylapblog.com A HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL in Long Island, New York, has been accused of plagiarizing his yearbook letter to students. The text is nearly identical to that written by a principal in Albany, California. A clue that something was amiss with the Long Island…

I want to take one of those English as a second language courses— just go in and blow everybody away on the first day. CRAIG ANTON I’ve never been good with math, but I accepted it from an early age. My teacher would hand me a math test, and I’d just write, “I’m going to marry someone who can do this.” RITA RUDNER Nothing I learned in school prepared me for life. My first book should have read, “See Dick balance his checkbook. See Jane leave an unhealthy relationship. Run, Jane, run!” KATE MASON As long as there is algebra, there will be prayer in school. LARRY MILLER [I enrolled in] a private-detective school online, and I paid online. But then I never heard from them again. I thought, Either…

Miss Pemberton and the Bee IN APRIL 1952, I was 11 years old and in the sixth grade at William Cleveland Elementary School, in Houston, Texas. My teacher was Miss Ada Pemberton. It was spelling bee time in our city—students were issued booklets of words to study in preparation for the classroom spelldowns. They would lead to a schoolwide contest and eventual qualification for the citywide bee, where school winners competed for the honor of being the spelling champion of Houston. The day before the classroom spelling bee, my youngest brother was playing with matches and accidentally set a fire in our apartment. My mother made sleeping arrangements for all of us and called the school in the morning to inform Miss Pemberton of the accident, knowing that the class…

1 If your handyman says he can “do it all,” that’s a red flag. I’ve seen a guy who advertises on his truck that he mows grass, paints, does renovations, and builds houses. That’s not the guy you want to hire. Actually, a sure sign that you can trust me is if I tell you I’m not the best person to do a particular job and give you the name of someone else. 2 Before you call me about your clogged sink or shower drain, try a plunger or a Zip-It drain-cleaning tool. Neither requires you to take anything apart, and both often do the trick in just a minute or two. 3 Offering me water or some cookies is great, but if you really want to show me hospitality,…

50 Secrets Food Manufacturers Won’t Tell You While we may spend a relatively small portion of our disposable income on food, we pay dearly in other ways. I would not mind paying a little more at the grocery store in exchange for federal policies that ensured healthier people, ecosystems, and communities. JANICE F. DYER, Madison, Alabama Too much information! TERRI L. HORNE, Shallotte, North Carolina When I was growing up, we had food growers and food preparers; nowhere do I recall the phrase food manufacturer. We would all be healthier if more food was purchased directly from growers and prepared at home. RICHARD POTENSKI, Woodland, Washington What information do you have to support number 48, which says farmed fish have more omega-3s than wild salmon? We make a living by fishing wild salmon,…

A YEAR AFTER my husband and I moved to the New Jersey suburbs, where we’d planned to start a family, I realized that in order to be fulfilled, I needed one thing: a book club. It was odd to yearn for one. I’d never been in a book club, although I knew people who made remarks like “When I had a baby, my book club brought dinners for a month!” or “If it weren’t for book club, I’d murder my husband in his sleep.” I felt the yearning most when my as-yet-unmurdered husband, Thad, and I had dinner in a restaurant and saw couples our age laughing as the two of us ate our Loaded Nachos, alone. On the ride home, I’d announce, “I need a book club.” “I know,…

IN 2006, Heather Peters paid $30,486 in cash for a new Honda Civic Hybrid at a Santa Monica, California, dealership, expecting to get the fuel economy advertised on a sticker on the car’s window and in its sales brochures: 49 mpg in the city and 51 on the highway. However, Peters noticed that she never got more than 42 mpg, so in March 2008, she took the car to the dealer for a tune-up and continued to get repairs of all kinds there until 2011. During this time, in 2010, Peters received a free software update from Honda to “help prevent … battery deterioration.” After the upgrade, her gas mileage got even worse—less than 30 mpg. In October 2011, Peters received notice of a class action lawsuit filed against Honda…

“WHENEVER I WAS about to do something foolish or dangerous— or something, I suppose, that simply displeased my father—he would say, ‘Don’t let a little fear and common sense stop you.’” TODD, son of Ron “Before you speak: Is it kind? Is it true? Is it necessary?” DAVE, father of Wendy “The universe is full of magical things, waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” MATT, father of Sarah “My father on all his children: ‘Between the hell of their living and the fear of their dying, there’s never a dull moment.’” OLIVE, daughter of Tom “In the ’60s, when my brothers would bring their long-haired hippie friends home to dinner, my father would sit at the end of the dining room table and ask, ‘So, any news on the barber strike?’” AMY, daughter of…

WHEN I ENTER a family reunion, relatives crank up their hearing aids. Last summer, I worked in a jewelry shop, cheerfully greeting customers, then wondering if they were ignoring me or simply couldn’t hear me. At parties, I’m often asked to repeat myself to the point of just smiling and giving up. This scares me because my mother’s puny voice eventually became so small that phone calls were torturous, then impossible. While hearing and vision issues are prominent in many discussions of aging, there’s often silence on how our voices age. In fact, after 65, about three in ten people have speaking difficulty serious enough to be diagnosed as a voice disorder. Problems can start with retirement, at menopause, or at even younger ages in those with certain diseases or…

1. Unintentional weight loss. If you’ve lost more than ten pounds with no diet or exercise changes, get it checked out, says Richard Wender, MD, chief cancer control officer at the American Cancer Society. This happens most often with pancreatic, stomach, esophageal, or lung cancer. 2. Fatigue. “This means being more tired than what you’d expect for what’s going on in your life,” says Dale Shepard, MD, a Cleveland Clinic oncologist. If you’re under short-term stress, feeling more tired than normal is understandable, but if you’re struggling to get through work or can’t make it through every day without a nap, that’s a warning sign. Fatigue can indicate some colon and stomach cancers as well as certain blood cancers like leukemia. 3. Unexplained bleeding. Anything strange—coughing up blood (lung cancer),…

DESIGN: PAULO ESTRIGA, TATJANA DUBOVINA, FABIO BERGAMASCHI RESEARCH: JAMES KENNEDY, MIRIAM QUICK, ELLA HOLLOWOOD, PEARL DOUGHTY-WHITE COPYRIGHT © INFORMATIONISBEAUTIFUL.NET Napoléon Was Short A tall tale. At five six, he was slightly above average height for a Frenchman of the time. Oil Stops Stuck Pasta Nope; it’ll only make it greasy. Stirring prevents sticking. Three Wise Men Nowhere in the Bible does it specify that there were three. Great Wall of China It’s not visible from space. No single human structure is visible from orbit, but you can see cities at night. Don’t Eat and Swim This doesn’t increase the risk of cramps; alcohol is the biggest risk increaser. But a full stomach will make you short of breath. Left and Right Brain There’s no solid division between the talents of…

I HAVE NEVER MET GRACE MONTE. But not a day goes by when I don’t think about her and what her life was like, her few happy moments along with her many difficult ones. I’ve always wondered about the sound of her voice and the kind of life she had once imagined having before she married my father. Her actual life was short and troubled, stuck on a dead-end path with a deadbeat man, with a child to raise and the threat of physical violence a constant presence. In late October 1946, Grace was 24, and my father, Mario Carcaterra, was 29 and already set in his troubled ways. Their daughter, Phyllis, was six. Grace and my father were separated for the third or fourth time—their few friends couldn’t keep…

1 Forensic Botanist In 1932, Bruno Hauptmann propped a homemade ladder against Charles Lindbergh’s house, climbed up to one of the bedroom windows, and snatched the aviator’s 20-monthold son. When Hauptmann was brought to court, forensic botany helped lock him away. Arthur Koehler, a wood technologist, discovered that one of the ladder rails had formerly been part of a floor. He later matched the tree rings on that ladder with a missing floorboard in Hauptmann’s attic. Since then, botanists have used pollen (which clings to clothes and hair) to link suspects to crime scenes, soil and plant samples to determine when unmarked graves were dug, and algae blooms to identify where drowning victims died. So avoid committing crimes in front of your ficus. It’s a snitch. 2 Forensic Linguist From…

MY NEPHEW was in the bathroom shaving when the phone rang, so his four-year-old daughter, Amanda, answered. It was her father’s sergeant. Hearing a child’s voice, the sergeant said, “Hello. I’m your dad’s boss. May I speak to him?” Amanda turned toward the bathroom and shouted, “Dad, the president’s on the phone.” JUDY NEWBERRY, Yorba Linda, Cal i fornia I LEFT THE MESS TENT of our northern Iraq base, carrying a piece of triple-chocolate fudge cheesecake. Just then, an enemy mortar exploded nearby. I hit the ground with one thing in mind—protecting my dessert! My sergeant saw me and demanded, “Soldier, where is your weapon?” “Don’t worry, Sarge,” I said. “I can always get another M16. But we rarely have cheesecake.” JAY BISPING, Atchison, Kansas Send us your funniest military…

THE BRIGHT MORNING sun glistened off four- and five-foot waves as old friends McKenzie Clark and Brian Wargo slid their surfboards into the warm water and paddled out to sea. It was Halloween 2014, in Hawaii’s Keawaeli Bay. About 400 yards from shore, McKenzie’s board hit what she thought was a rock. When she looked down, instead she saw the outline of a shark easily 12 feet long. She screamed as she felt the board rise, the shark’s body breaching the surface. “I was perched on its head and getting pulled out to sea,” says McKenzie, 35. From where he sat on his board about 20 feet away, Brian, 45, saw the tiger shark. As an avid outdoorsman, he knew the species was aggressive and paddled frantically toward his friend.…

AS SOON AS a large group of people or citizens laughs at something, it’s never the same. That’s the most powerful thing in the world. They say laughter is the best medicine, but it’s the best revolution too. ROSEANNE BARR, comedian, on salon.com [I’M] DISSATISFIED with the answer “I don’t really like to put labels on things” ... Putting labels on things is how people find the exit during a fire and make sure they’re adding vanilla extract to the cake instead of arsenic. ALANA MASSEY, writer, on medium.com [SCRIPTURE’S] POWER comes from its malleability. You can read it in any way that you want to. If you are a violent misogynist, you will find plenty in the Koran or in the Bible to justify your viewpoint. If you are a peaceful…

LOVE, EDITED When I was raising my 14-year-old son as a single mother in Toronto, he helped me publish a magazine. One day, an incredibly handsome, soft-spoken, well-mannered visitor from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, visited my office. We shared our experiences as volunteer editors. When he left, my son whispered, “Mom! Now, that’s the kind of man you should marry!” I blushed and laughed it off and didn’t think about it again. Eight years later, I met the same man again. He was now a widower. We married and are still together nine years later, coediting an international magazine. MAHJABEEN DAYA, Brampton, Ontario THE YELLOW HOUSE I’ve lived in my condo 15 years now—long enough that I don’t even see it anymore. I started dreaming about moving into a house, where…

■ TO BOIL INSTEAD OF SIMMER? Really Bad. A simmer consists of small yet constant pockets of bubbling and a few wisps of steam (roughly 180°F). A boil produces constant steam, with large bubbles quickly rising to the surface (212°F). Boiling destroys the protein in meat, drying it out. However, a boil followed by a cold rinse is best for colorful vegetables like green beans, which can fade when simmered. The takeaway? Closely follow the method the recipe calls for. ■ TO COOK BEFORE THE OVEN IS PREHEATED? Somewhat Bad. This shortcut could raise your risk of food-borne illness, especially if food has been out at room temperature for a while. When food is in the danger zone of 40°F to 140°F, bacteria multiply quickly. To be safe, it’s better…

Create a Big To-Do In 1987, in an effort to entice tourists to travel Tennessee’s back roads, Fentress County officials distributed a map of 300 attractions, including yard sales, that dot the area along Highway 127. As demand for cheap, local wares grew, so did the number of vendors. Twenty-eight years later, the World’s Longest Yard Sale spans nearly 700 miles from Alabama to Michigan and attracts more than 100,000 visitors the first Thursday through Sunday of August every year. Give Away a Car Last winter, the Minneapolis tourism board gave away a 2015 Chevy Volt at a March auto show and offered a 10 percent discount on a stay at the Hilton downtown during January. Bonus attraction: Minneapolis’s heated skyway network lets visitors (and locals) travel, coatless, along 80…

Song Stuck in Your Head? Try This Can’t stop singing the latest pop ditty? Chew it out. British researchers played a popular song for nearly 100 students. Subjects were asked to not think about the song and to chew gum vigorously, tap their fingers, or do nothing. On average, the students chewing gum heard the song about 30 percent less often than the others. The part of the brain that controls oral motor activity may interfere with the memory process that replays songs. Flex for Fewer Headaches A Danish study compared 30 healthy adults with 60 adults who regularly experienced tension headaches. Researchers tested the strength of participants’ various neck muscles and the strength of their shoulders when raising their arms. Healthy people had 26 percent stronger extensor muscles (in…

ONE JUNE EVENING in 2004, Stephen Sumner was riding a scooter down a quiet road in Tuscany when a motorist crashed into him and sent him flying. He broke his collarbone and ribs, and his arm and leg were crushed. The doctors saved his arm, but his left leg had to be amputated above the knee. As Sumner, now 54, recuperated, he knew he’d lost the limb: He received gruesome visual reminders when the stump was cleaned. Yet still, he felt the leg. It began in his dreams. In a particularly vivid one, he was lying on his back on a wooden cart, his left leg visible till just above the knee. The rest of the leg was hanging through a gap in the slats, swinging in time to the…

1. ameliorate (uh-'meel-yuh-rayt) v.—A: make better or more tolerable. B: make worse. C: turn upside down. 2. tack ('tak) v.—A: switch horses. B: follow a zigzag course. C: tailor a suit. 3. ferment (fur-'mehnt) n.—A: state of unrest or disorderly development. B: improvement. C: evaporation. 4. synchronize ('sin-kreh-niyz) v.—A: cause to coincide. B: increase speed. C: move one’s lips. 5. static ('sta-tik) adj.—A: in a frenzy. B: unchanging. C: moving through space. 6. flux ('fluhks) n.—A: series of failures. B: continued flow. C: rapid rise. 7. vicissitudes (vuh-'si-suh-toods) n.—A: exact opposites. B: minor adjustments. C: ups and downs. 8. fickle ('fih-kuhl) adj.—A: beginning to decay. B: marked by a lack of constancy. C: stuck in a rut. 9. immutable (ih-'myu-tuh-buhl) adj.—A: in motion. B: not susceptible to change. C: becoming…

IF YOU CHASE TWO RABBITS, YOU WILL LOSE THEM BOTH. NATIVE AMERICAN PROVERB Discipline is doing the same thing the right way whether anyone’s watching or not. MICHAEL J. FOX Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. STEPHEN R. COVEY, author YOU WILL NEVER BE COMPLETELY FREE FROM RISK IF YOU ARE FREE. EDWARD SNOWDEN, privacy advocate Being a nerd just means there is something in the world that you care deeply about. OLIVIA MUNN, act res s EVERYBODY WANTS TO SAVE THE EARTH; NOBODY WANTS TO HELP MOM DO THE DISHES. P. J. O’ROURKE History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. KURT VONNEGUT…