Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2021 i Reader's Digest

IT SOUNDS ODD, I know, but I’d like to ask you to scan your life for the next minute, while you read this. You are looking for a place in your world where you’ve felt caring. Where you’ve seen people come together to help others in need, whether it’s for a meal, a laugh, or a hand when disaster struck. A place of big hearts where you feel that you belong and where others share that feeling, even if they are strangers. You know such a place because you’ve been there. It’s on a front porch in your town after something difficult has happened and help is on the way. It’s on a Zoom call with people collaborating respectfully to address a problem at work or in your city. It…

“You’re more than just a patient to me, Mrs. Melnik. You’re a potential medical journal article.” Every year for my birthday, my husband buys me a particular perfume that has a delicate floral scent that I especially love. This past year, with money tight, I told him not to bother getting me a gift. Instead, I asked that he handwrite a beautiful letter encapsulating our 25 years together. My husband leaned in, gently took my hand, and begged, “Can I please just buy you a bottle of perfume?” —Lisa Collins Rock Hill, South Carolina Scene: A morning with my six-year-old granddaughter, Emma Me: Would you like bacon and eggs for breakfast? Emma: I only like eggs when they’re mixed with something. Me: Like omelets? Emma: No, like brownies. —Elizabeth Cooper…

A Beautiful Gesture Our granddaughter was born with a pronounced facial defect. She and our daughter have endured many cruel comments. One day, while shopping, they were approached by a woman they didn’t know. Both stiffened, awaiting a rude remark. But the lady smiled and said, “This gift card is for your beautiful daughter so she can buy something special for herself.” God bless that woman for reminding them beauty comes in all forms! —Terri PharrEL CAJON, CALIFORNIA Wrong-Way Driver As I struggled to start the gray Plymouth Voyager, I noticed a lady glaring at me through the driver’s side window. I realized only then that I was in the wrong car. I got out of the minivan and apologized profusely, explaining that my vehicle was identical. I prayed she…

My husband is a physician and uses a dictation service to transcribe his oral notes. On occasion the typists have accidentally altered the sentence structure or words, resulting in something my husband had not necessarily intended. For example, one transcriber wrote, “The patient is recently married; otherwise, he is normal and healthy.” —ELAINE EHRENPREIS Kew Gardens, New York In case you’re wondering how being manager is going … no one showed up today because I forgot to make this week’s schedule. —@ARIIIGONZALEZV As she finished her dinner, my stuffed granddaughter turned to her mother and declared, “Mom, you make hamburgers so good, you could work at McDonald’s!” —LINDA RAUCH Roseburg, Oregon A client was on trial, accused of assault with a deadly weapon-a charge he vehemently denied. The state’s star…

THE SCARS THAT Pat Pribble carried through life were formed nearly 50 years ago, inflicted by fellow students in Woodland, Washington, who picked on him because he was different. Pat’s parents had held him back in the fourth grade, so he ended up in the same class as his younger brother, Leo. Forever the oldest kid in the class, Pat tried to fit in. He played sports. He went on dates. But he was always just not good enough for this; just not smart enough for that. Pat Pribble was a target. A trek through the high school years is filled with land mines. Bullies master the uncanny ability to find weakness, inflicting emotional pain with the precision of a surgeon with a scalpel in hand. Allies vanish, as being…

A teacher giving a lesson on the circulation of blood says to her class, “Now, if I stood on my head, the blood, as you know, would run into it, and I would turn red in the face.” “Yes,” the whole class agrees. “Then why is it,” she continues, “that while I am standing upright, the blood doesn’t run into my feet?” One little fellow shouts, “ ’Cause your feet ain’t empty!” —INNERWORKSPUBLISHING.COM A golfer standing on a tee box overlooking a river sees a couple of fishermen and says to his partner, “Take a look at those two idiots fishing in the rain!” —Submitted by GREG LANG Cincinnati, Ohio Reading a letter at the breakfast table, a wife suddenly looks at her husband suspiciously. “Henry,” she says, “I just…

WHEN ARIEL CORDOVA-ROJAS rode her bike to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens, New York, last November, she planned to go hiking and bird-watching. Bingo! A mile into her walk, she spotted a gorgeous female mute swan near the water’s edge. Cordova-Rojas, 30, who had worked at the Wild Bird Fund rehabilitation center in Manhattan, knew that mute swans can be aggressive. But as she approached this one, it didn’t move. She was certain that the bird needed medical attention. Cordova-Rojas draped her jacket over the bird’s head to keep it calm, gingerly picked it up, and cradled it in her arms. And then a thought struck her: What do I do now? Her best bet was the rehab center, but that was across the East River and clear on…

THE WORLD WATERFALL Database lists 17,082 falls in the United States, ranked just about any which way you can imagine: Olo’upena in Hawaii is the tallest, Oregon’s Celilo gushes with the highest volume of water, and Wapama in Yosemite is America’s highest rated, though it ranks a few notches below the Canadian side of Niagara. The little beauty pictured here, at a mere 101 feet tall, hasn’t won any contests, though it could certainly contend for dreamiest, with its elegant stone bridge above and its eerie green pool below. Gorge-ous waterfalls like this are fairly common in this part of the country. Which fall is it? (Answer on page 123.) A Hurricane Falls, New Hampshire B Hole in the Wall Falls, Montana C Rainbow Falls, New York D Teacups Falls,…

YOU MIGHT THINK of me as the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of vegetables. I am a super-healthy meat alternative and nitrogen-fixing, soil-improving wonder crop. Yet I, soybean, am also tied to world wars, one of history’s worst poisons, and deforestation and climate change–an agricultural monster incarnate. So am I primarily good or bad? Let me tell my story, and I’ll let you decide. First, the good: I am a delicious little package of nutrition that you can eat green, snappy, and salted (as with edamame, in those fuzzy bean pods), dried as a crunchy snack, or ground and processed into soy milk, tofu, or delightful tofu skins called yuba. I hide in endless American foods, including veggie burgers, soy cream cheese, soy nut butters and cheeses, and egg substitutes.…

Do you think I care what younger generations say about me? I will wear this fanny pack.—Dionne Warwick, SINGER When we look to our heroes, we agree, and that matters... We agree on our teachers and our first responders and firefighters. When we celebrate our heroes, we’re reminded of who we are as one people united.—Renée Zellweger, ACTOR Home is not where you were born. Home is where all your attempts to escape cease.—Omar Taher, WRITER At close to 99, I can tell you I’ve never lived alone. I’ve never laughed alone. And that has as much to do with my being here today as anything else.—Norman Lear, TV PRODUCER Don’t be like me. Be better than me.—Cam Newton, ATHLETE…

FROM THE ENTERPRISE-RECORD It is almost midnight. We have been pushing hard for 18 to 20 hours every day since the Bear Fire (later called the North Complex Fire) tore through our mountain cattle range on September 8, 2020. There is so much swirling in my head, I can’t sleep anyway. The fire destroyed the range where our cattle grazed, our cattle, and even worse, our family’s legacy. Someone asked my daughter if I had lost our family home. She told them, “No, that would be replaceable. This is not.” I would gladly sleep in my truck for the rest of my life to have our mountains back. I am enveloped by overwhelming sadness and grief and then anger. I’m angry at everyone, and no one. Grieving for things lost…

After we lost Indigo, I got a call from the Bed ’n’ Biscuit. One of their customers was dying, and her dog, Chloe, needed a home. Given our recent loss, they asked, might our family be interested in adopting her? They had to be kidding. After Indigo, we would never get another dog. Ever. Indigo IT HAD JUST been a few years earlier, it seemed, that Indigo—a black Lab—had first barged through our door. Her underbelly showed the signs of the litter she’d recently delivered, and between the wise, droopy face and the swinging dog teats, she was a sight to behold. She had a nose for trouble. On one occasion, I came home to find that she’d eaten a five-pound bag of flour. She was covered in white powder,…

ALTRUISM WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM TINA JENSEN has seen a few daisy chains of kindness in her day, but nothing like this. A manager of two Dairy Queens in Brainerd, Minnesota, Jensen says that a drive-through customer will occasionally pick up the tab for the strangers in the next car, and then those grateful strangers will do the same for the car behind, and then the following car does the same. Sometimes the chain can last for 20 cars before petering out. Last December—in the heart of the holiday season and the third wave of COVID-19 illnesses—the kindness almost never stopped. In fact, it lasted for two days and over 900 cars. Or, put another way, people bought $10,000 worth of ice cream for strangers. “During times like…

Sophie & the Chicks DELMAR, NEW YORK FROM THE MOMENT my husband brought home a box of six chicks from Tractor Supply Company at the start of the pandemic, our nine-year-old, Sophie, hasn’t let them out of her sight. She named them Trixie, Bearty, Sweet Pea, Speedie, Captain Flint, and Adrian (we were reading Treasure Island and watching Rocky at the time) and was very upset when we wouldn’t let them sleep in her bed. Sophie takes at least one chicken everywhere we let her and has done incredible things with her flock. One hot day, she wanted to take Captain Flint to the creek. I wasn’t so sure about it: Could chickens swim? Sophie balanced a stick on her river tube for Captain Flint to perch on, and the…

1 WHEN AMERICANS were asked in 2018 which sense they would miss most if they lost it, smell came in dead last—only 2 percent of respondents picked it. Then came COVID-19. In early 2020, ear, nose, and throat doctors around the world saw an unusual number of patients who had unaccountably lost their sense of smell. Many of these specialists then developed the same condition, and some became very ill. Suddenly, the stepchild sense took center stage. 2 RESEARCHERS SOON realized that smell loss is a leading indicator of COVID-19. Those infected with the virus are 27 times more likely than noninfected people to exhibit smell dysfunction—but only two and a half times more likely to run a fever. Some public health experts started proposing using smell tests—not temperature checks-to…

Remember way back when phones could only transmit our voices? Or when they got an upgrade to send brief written messages we now cleverly refer to as “texts”? At this point, those essential functions are only a fraction of what the smartphones in our hands can do. They are really mini computers, and they’re packed with more superpowers than a Marvel movie. Some are built-in features; some are apps you download. Most are free. All are worth a try, and might even change your life—or at least help you sleep better at night. HEALTH & WELLNESS SLEEP COMPANION Do you toss and turn endlessly, or do you just wake up some mornings feeling as if you do? A sleep-tracking app can help. The product-testing company Wirecutter tried out a bunch…

FROM ELEMENTAL.MEDIUM.COM DURING WORLD WAR II, an American woman named Shelley Smith Mydans reported on the conflict for Life magazine. Along with her husband, the photographer Carl Mydans, Shelley documented battles in both Europe and the Pacific. Midway through the war, the Mydanses were captured in the Philippines. The Japanese held them in POW camps in Manila and Shanghai. But despite spending two years as prisoners of war, both Mydanses survived and went on to live long and productive lives. Shelley lived to 86, while Carl made it all the way to 97. Many who survived the war were not so fortunate. A U.S. serviceman named Philip was also in the Pacific theater during World War II. Even before the war, Philip was prone to anxiety and “catastrophizing”—always predicting the…

Fact or Fiction? MEDIUM Determine whether each statement is fact or fiction. To reveal the solution to the bonus question at bottom, write the letter indicated in each of your responses in the corresponding numbered blank. Turn page upside down for the answers. BONUS QUESTION Which famous industrialist spent millions trying to turn soybeans into textiles and paints? (Need help? Turn to The Food on Your Plate on page 32.) Answers: 1. Fact. 2. Fiction; he was five. 3. Fiction. 4. Fiction; it’s Gummo, not Gumbo. 5. Fact. 6. Fiction; they were first coined by William Shakespeare. 7. Fact. 8. Fiction; the United States has invaded Canada a few times, most notably during the War of 1812. 9. Fact. Bonus Question: Henry Ford Quick Crossword EASY To commemorate D-Day on…