Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2021 i Reader's Digest

WHERE I COME from, “nice” is just about the biggest compliment you can receive. “Iowa Nice” is an honor we vie with Minnesota to claim—but we don’t fight over it, of course. This summer it was affirming to hear people around the country sing the praises of my home state after the first Major League Baseball game played at the Field of Dreams aired on national TV. So what does this have to do with the Headless Horseman? Well, I know a nice place when I see one, and I’ve landed near the village of Sleepy Hollow, New York. (Yes, it’s a real place!) In fact, Sleepy Hollow used to be called North Tarrytown until residents voted to adopt its more famous moniker in honor of local literary star Washington…

✦ My colleague and I interviewed a very nervous guy. When he got up to leave, he opened the wrong door and walked into the closet. We waited for him to emerge, and when he didn’t, my coworker went to investigate. The poor man was so mortified, he was trying to climb out a window rather than go back in. SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN ✦ The candidate stated that his career goal was not to work. SOURCE: INC.COM ✦ Pointing to the employment application question “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” a job-seeker asked, “You only want the felonies?” This was for a banking position. SOURCE: MONSTER.COM ✦ I went to greet an interviewee in the lobby. I should point out that I am five foot one and she…

DRY EYE-A CONDITION that occurs when your eyes don’t produce enough tears, the tears don’t work correctly, or they evaporate too quickly—is much more than a nuisance. “The burning can feel like sand is in your eyes, and this can cause eye fatigue, light sensitivity, and blurry vision,” says Angela Bevels, an optometrist in Tucson, Arizona. Nearly 16 million Americans may have dry eye, according to the National Eye Institute. Anyone can develop the problem, but it’s more common in women and in people older than age 50. Sometimes dry eye is a temporary condition caused by a variety of irritants. But it can be chronic, too, when caused by immune system diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Skin issues on or around the eyelids and diseases of the…

The NICEST PLACES in AMERICA FOR MICHELLE AND James Hundley, it was a moment of truth. Ahead of them lay a snowy, icy road. Behind them, their cold, unheated house. In the valley below, a warm, welcoming room at the Quality Inn in Kodak, Tennessee. All the Hundleys had to do was get there, and Sean Patel, the hotel owner, would do the rest. In the freezing days to come, the Hundleys would become part of Patel’s extended family, and his modest hotel would become their temporary home. They’d be warm, they’d be fed, and they wouldn’t be asked to pay anything they couldn’t afford. So would dozens of others just like them. But first there was the little matter of getting past the snow. Winter storms aren’t unheard of…

The NICEST PLACES in AMERICA 1 Quality Inn in Kodak, Tennessee 2 Sun & Moon Ranch in Lexington, North Carolina 3 Manton, Michigan 4 Houston, Texas 5 Brooks, Georgia 6 Lake City, South Carolina 7 Littleton, New Hampshire 8 Austin Hills, Texas 9 Renton, Washington 10 Sugar Land, Texas The Road to the Nicest Places Back in March, Reader’s Digest set out on a search for Nice Places. We picked up nominations from our readers around the country, publishing the nicest of the nice on RD.com. You readers voted for your favorites, and after a thorough vetting process and some tough decisions, our editors and judges (below) named the Nicest Places in America. MITCH ALBOM Philanthropist and author of Tuesdays with Morrie and The Stranger in the Lifeboat BRUCE KELLEY…

FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS Alfredo Lopez and his wife, Marian, were asleep when the first thundering blast jolted them awake at 1:14 a.m. on Thursday, June 24. Moments later, a second boom, much louder than the first, shook the bed on the sixth floor of their Surfside, Florida, apartment. Alfredo rushed to wake his 24-year-old son, Michael, urging him to get dressed, before running to the balcony window. “All I could see was just white dust, very thick. I could barely see the balcony railing,” he says. The lights cut out and the emergency alarm came on, warning the residents of the Champlain Towers South to evacuate. Alfredo thought about putting on sneakers, but his hands were shaking so badly he knew he couldn’t tie the laces. So he settled on…

1. hypothesis n. (hi-’pah-thuh-sis) A published study B unproven theory C law of motion 2. combust v. (kum-’bust) A burn B fuse C shatter 3. vacuum n. (‘vak-yoom) A air pump B unit of measure C empty space 4. dilute v. (di’-loot) A split in half B water down C apply force 5. crucible n. (‘kroo-sih-bull) A pot for heating B simple machine C volcanic rock 6. evolve v. (ih-’volv) A die out B change gradually C pass down 7. nucleus n. (‘noo-klee-iss) A bodily fluid B observation C cell part 8. hybrid n. (‘hi-brid) A clone B hatchling C crossbreed 9. inert adj. (ih-’nert) A explosive B inactive C poisonous 10. velocity n. (vuh-’lah-sih-tee) A speed B friction C pressure 11. vertebra n. (‘ver-tuh-bruh) A green metal B back bone C reptile family 12. pathogen n. (‘path-uh-jen) A invasive species B…

Brain Games That Really Work Years ago, I began forgetting things after returning from a trip to Australia. My husband took me to the emergency room, and four days later I awakened from a coma with a diagnosis that required me to exercise my brain. I tried to read but couldn’t understand what I was reading. But my bridge partners had me count points in aces, kings, queens, and jacks. And it worked! I just became a Gold Life Master in bridge. —CAROL SZAZYNSKI Clearwater, Florida Everyday Heroes When I turned to “Stepping Up to the Plate” and read “A longtime baseball card collector seizes the opportunity to do good after a destructive wildfire,” I questioned how much good you could do after a natural disaster with a bunch of…

I was eating breakfast at a diner, sitting near a man who had a cup of coffee but no spoon. Trying to get the waitress’s attention, he called out, “Excuse me, this coffee is too hot to stir with my finger.” It worked. A minute later, the waitress returned with another cup of coffee. “Here,” she said. “This one isn’t so hot.” — YEFIM BRODD Kirkland, Washington Former football star and TV personality Michael Strahan is known for his gap-toothed grin. But on the Mean Tweets segment of Jimmy Kimmel Live, Strahan read aloud a tweet from someone who is clearly not a fan: “Michael Strahan’s teeth are having a middle school dance, where the boys stand on one side of the room and the girls stand on the other.”…

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL AFTER HIS FATHER was rushed to the hospital with gastro-intestinal bleeding, 43-year-old Yanatha Desouvre began to panic. So he did the one thing he knew would calm himself: He wrote. “I’m so scared,” he started. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose my dad.” Over the next few weeks, Desouvre filled several notebooks, writing about his worry as well as his happy memories with his dad—the jokes they’d shared, the basketball games they’d watched, and the time they put up hurricane shutters together, then cooled down with ice cream. Sometimes Desouvre cried as he wrote. Often he laughed. “Writing allowed me to face my fear,” says Desouvre, who teaches entrepreneurship at a college in Miami. “My pen was a portal to process the…

IN EARLY 2017, a special unit of the Italian police arrested 33 members of the ‘Ndrangheta, the organized crime group based in the Calabria region. The offense for which the men were apprehended did not involve selling drugs, committing murder, or laundering money (though the group is known for those things too). It was about me, olive oil. This notorious Italian mafia had been taking low-quality olive mash, called pomace, and selling it in Boston, New York, Chicago, and New Jersey as the good stuff—extra virgin—making millions of dollars in the process. This wasn’t the first time I was at the center of some high drama; in fact, that’s been part of my deal for millennia. Take the Hanukkah story—the one in which the Jews had only one night’s worth…

For some people, freezing temperatures and harsh winds can cause more than chapped lips and dry skin. People with eczema or psoriasis—two inflammatory skin conditions—are most likely to experience flare-ups when the weather turns cold and dry. Though these skin conditions are often mistaken for each other (both can include itching, rashes, and redness), there are differences in how they affect the body and how they are treated. There are several types of eczema, but the most common is atopic dermatitis (AD), an allergic skin disease. The main symptom is itching, which can be so intense that scratching leaves the skin vulnerable to infection. “Eczema is an inherited skin condition often associated with asthma or allergic rhinitis [hay fever],” says Jeffrey Weinberg, MD, associate clinical professor of dermatology with the…

The NICEST PLACES in AMERICA SHANNAN HEARNE’S OLDEST dream was to own a ranch. From the moment she was first placed in the saddle at age two, she had always felt most comfortable on horseback. In February 2020, her dream finally came true, when she and her “ partner-in-farm,” Cory Conley, opened the gates of Sun and Moon Ranch. Then, just a month later, the country spiraled into COVID-19 lockdown. Soon Hearne’s vision began to grow into something bigger. With eight acres of pastures and an abundance of sunshine and fresh air, there was no safer way for frightened neighbors to get out of the house. The ranch, Hearne realized, should be for everybody. “It didn’t feel right to suddenly become protective of what I thought I was being a…

As the saying goes: The Internet is forever. Once you’ve put something online—a credit card number, a silly photo, a heat-of-the-moment comment on social me dia—it can come back to haunt you. But what are the risks, really? “There are two worst-case scenarios,” says Thorin Klosowski, privacy and security editor at Wirecutter, a product-recommendation service owned by the New York Times. “The most obvious one is a security issue. Everyone’s e-mail address and basic details are leaked somewhere online, and if you reuse passwords, that means a nefarious person will have an easier time getting into your accounts.” The problem is getting worse: Identity theft cases more than doubled in 2020, according to the Federal Trade Commission, with reported monetary losses from fraud overall climbing to $3.3 billion from $1.8…

The Champlain Towers South had many desirable features: It was on the ocean, it had a pool and a gym, and it was just north of trendy Miami Beach. “I was telling my mom how this place is great, the house is great, everything is great,” Gabriel Nir, who lived on the first floor, told the Washington Post. “But when you live there, you start to notice the small creaks and the small issues the building had.” While no definitive cause had been determined for the 40-year-old tower’s collapse when we went to press, there were warning signs. The New York Times reported that in 2018, “a consultant found evidence of ‘major structural damage’ to the concrete slab below the pool deck and ‘abundant’ cracking and crumbling of the columns,…

WHERE, OH WHERE? (page 44) C. Boone County, Iowa BRAIN GAMES (pages 114-115) Quick Crossword One Too Many Cooks Aiden made the gravy. Cedric made the cornbread. Jill made the mac and cheese. Barb made the mashed potatoes. Larry made the green bean casserole, so that is the dish you’ll want to avoid. Pyramid Scheme 9 Missing Middle 15. The number in the center square of each grid is found by adding the numbers in the corners, then reversing the digits. Double Trouble Pink drink, raucous caucus, beautician tuition, equestrian pedestrian, abbreviation appreciation…

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST RENE COMPEAN WAS no stranger to Angeles National Forest. He’d hiked the park near his home in Southern California numerous times. But after venturing along a new path last April, the 45-year-old mechanic was lost. As the day faded into dusk, following several hours of aimless roaming, his concern turned to fear. The terrain was remote and rugged. With no flashlight, only a liter of water and a power bar in his backpack, and less than ten percent battery remaining on his cell phone, Compean was unprepared for anything more than the two-hour trek he’d planned. Compean climbed to a spot, some 7,000 feet above sea level, where he found at least one bar of signal. “SOS. My phone is going to die. I’m lost,” he…

She’s So Over It My daughter had a complete existential breakdown one day when she found out that she was going to have to pee every day of her life. —VIA REDDIT He’s a Wordsmith My two-year-old son calls beards and mustaches “face grass.” —@PAREENE She’s a Glass-Half-Full Gal At a gymnastics “competition,” my three-year-old was posing with her trophy. Suddenly, she tripped, and the trophy crashed, breaking in half. Everyone gasped, expecting tears. She picked it up and said, “Look! Now I have two trophies!” - —@MARVINALLEN She’s Curious After a typical rapid-fire question session with our five-year-old, my wife wondered why she asks so many questions. Her response: “Well, I don’t know anything.” —VIA REDDIT He’s a Family Man When I asked my five-year-old grandson why he was…

If I ever rob a bank, I won’t resort to guns or violence. I’ll bring in sizzling fajitas, the one distraction no human being can resist. —@samgrittner I have an idea for a hot wings restaurant: The wings are free, but napkins cost $100. —@lunch_enjoyer When I tell people I “tried a new restaurant,” I mean I went to a place which is different from where I normally get fettuccini alfredo-and I tried their fettuccini alfredo. —@notviking My dad and I went to a restaurant and the waiter pointed at the QR code on the wall and said, “That’s our menu.” And my dad looked at it really close and said, “Is this some kind of joke?” —@johnistoasted Restaurants drastically overestimate how much I care about which wood they smoke…

A man had too much to drink and needed a ride home. So he called his wife to come pick him up. “Where are you?” she asked. “Let’s see,” he said, looking around. “I’m at the corner of Walk and Don’t Walk.” -Submitted by Melanie L. Jungles Evergreen, Colorado Upon entering a store, a man noticed a big “BEWARE OF DOG” sign posted on the door. He continued cautiously until he noticed an old hound asleep on the floor near the cash register. “Is that the dog we’re supposed to beware of?” he asked a worker behind the counter. “Yep, that’s him,” the man replied. “He doesn’t look dangerous. Why do you need that sign?” “Because,” the man explained, “before I put it up, people kept tripping over him.” —STARTSAT60.COM…

When my doctor told me my blood pressure was slightly elevated, I decided to swap out coffee for green tea (which has only about one-third the caffeine of my favorite dark roast) for a week to see how I’d feel. By 3 p.m. on the first day, I was feeling groggy and had a bad headache-a sign of caffeine withdrawal. I suffered through another mild headache around noon on day two, but I had a glorious night’s sleep with no tossing or turning, no middle-of-the-night awakenings. By day three, I felt less bloated and sluggish after lunch and had a surge of productivity and alertness. By the end of the week, my complexion was glowing (thanks, antioxidants!), and I was less jittery and irritable. Green tea, you just may have…

The NICEST PLACES in AMERICA ON CHRISTMAS EVE 2020, fire trucks rushed to the Chittle home in the sleepy little town of Manton, Michigan. But it wasn’t because of a Christmas nightmare. Far from it. Winters can be long and tough this far north. Add the COVID-19 pandemic, and Scott Chittle knew something had to be done to bring some cheer to the 1,555 people who call Manton home. Chittle, 51, lives in a big yellow house with his mother and two children. When he was three, his father built an ice-skating rink in their backyard, where Chittle and his buddies would spend endless hours over the coming years playing hockey. That, thought Chittle, is what the children in this community need. One problem: Chittle had no clue how to…