category_outlined / News & Politics
Reader's Digest
September 2019In this era of information overload, Reader’s Digest offers something unique: the very best advice, information and inspiration from multiple sources, condensed into an easy-to-read digest. In each issue you’ll get trusted, time-saving insights about Health, Personal Finance, Work, Family, and National issues, PLUS exclusive book excerpts, news-making interviews, and humor.
IN THIS ISSUE
laughs ahead
I AM NOT A funny person, but I am very good at half of humor. When I die, I wouldn’t mind if my epitaph said, He sure knew how to laugh. As a kid, I laughed at my two older brothers’ gags and sealed my bond with friends via my loud honk at inside jokes. I’ve been a serious fan of comedy since I was a teenager, when I actually saw Richard Pryor perform live. Today, I take in as many Netflix specials as I can find. I’ll laugh at anything. Case in point: My friend Karl wrote me an e-mail. His wife was about to miss a party his parents were throwing for him—she’d decided to run in the Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco instead. “Imagine taking up running…
letters
Your Amazing Body! When I read that the body gets an almost entirely new skeleton every ten years as old bone cells get replaced by new ones, I said to my friend, “Can I have your old skeleton?”—CHERYL MURPHY Commerce City, Colorado Family Secret I could identify with how editor-in-chief Bruce Kelley discovered that he had type 1 diabetes. When I was 36 years old, I began losing weight, drinking water excessively, and urinating profusely. My doctor had me get a blood test. A short time later, he called and said that I had diabetes. I was in the hospital for five days as they tried to regulate my blood sugar with insulin shots. I thought I was going to die. That was 43 years ago. Thanks for sharing your story. I think…
surprising facts about skyscrapers
♦ I’m surprised the Burj Khalifa in Dubai wasn’t mentioned. It’s the tallest building in the world, with 160 stories. —William P. Alkire SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA ♦ You missed the world’s littlest skyscraper, in Wichita Falls, Texas [shown above]. In 1916, a speculator named J. D. McMahon got investors to buy stock in a new multistory office building. But he failed to mention that his blueprints were drawn in inches, not feet. The completed building was only four stories high! The investors wanted to sue McMahon but were told they had no case, as he had built exactly according to the blueprints they’d signed off on. —Diana Costello WICHITA FALLS, TEXAS…
kindness genie
IF YOU COULD have any three things, what would you want?” Eleven-year-old Ruby Kate Chitsey loves asking that question, but it’s not a game she plays at recess. She asks it at nursing homes in the Harrison, Arkansas, area, where she lives. Even more amazing, she then sets out to make the residents’ wishes come true. Ruby Kate has long been close to older folks. Her mother, Amanda Chitsey, is a nurse practitioner who works at nursing homes in northwest Arkansas, and Ruby Kate often tags along with her in the summer. “I’ve never found them scary at all, so I’m able to just go up to them and ask if they need anything,” she says. Last May, Ruby Kate noticed a resident named Pearl staring out a window. She seemed sad. “What…
“i had to get him out”
THE SOUND THAT woke Damian Languell at 8:15 in the morning was so loud he assumed it came from inside his house in Wade, Maine. As he got up to investigate, he heard another sound, this one coming most definitely from outside. Peering out his bedroom window, he spied a tree engulfed in smoke about 500 yards away. A car was wrapped around the tree’s base, its engine on fire. “I grabbed buckets of water,” Languell told thecounty.me. Then he and his girlfriend ran to the crash site. The wreck looked worse up close. The car, a 1998 Buick Regal, was split nearly in two, and the tree was where the driver’s seat ought to have been, as if planted there. No one should have survived this crash, and yet there…
life in these united states
My mother and I suffered through an overlong, confusing movie at an art theater. Apparently we were not the only dissatisfied patrons. Walking back to our car afterward, we overheard a man complain to his wife, “We left the dog home alone for that?” —MICHELE BURGESS Huntington Beach, California After my kids bragged about what levels they’d attained in a video game, I decided to give it a try. Soon, it was my turn to boast that, in spite of being a newbie, I’d already managed to get to level 11. That’s when my youngest son pointed out that the “11” I was seeing on the screen was actually the game’s pause button. —FRAN BROWN West Granby, Connecticut When the new activities director for the rec center walked in, all us retirees quickly took…
