Inhaltsverzeichnis für November 2016 in Reader's Digest

HERE’S A QUIZ: Since 1988, Reader’s Digest has interviewed every major presidential nominee except two. Who are they? Answer: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It wasn’t for lack of trying—Trump never responded, and Clinton canceled on us (though we’re still trying for rd.com). The saga began when it became clear that the election would be a contest between two people with low favorability ratings, and I wondered: Did you even want us to cover the candidates? So, using our inner circle of readers at tmbinnercircle.com (please join!), I asked you. And surprisingly, three quarters said we should both interview and cover them—as real people. “It would be awesome to know how he or she acts with family and friends, not in the political arena,” said one. “We need to get…

SHE’S 14 NOW, a turbulent age. Everyone warned us. There will be times when she’s still your little girl, they said. And there will be other times when she lashes out with such fury, you will wonder where everything went wrong. Everyone warned us, and we believed them. We had planning sessions about the future, talks about patience and openness and firmness when needed. We were ready. We weren’t ready. Elite athletes will tell you that in their first professional game, everything moves so impossibly fast that there is no possible way to prepare for the speed and fury and violence of it all. We were ready. We weren’t ready. She gets into the car. It is nighttime, and I’m picking her up from an activity, and she is happy.…

ON THE DOORSTEP My father did shift work for a chemical company for 30 years. One afternoon, I saw him coming home. As he passed the bush near our front door, he touched a branch and continued into the house. Thinking this was strange, I later asked him about it. I’ve applied his response to my jobs and many of life’s situations since. “I try to hang all of today’s problems from work on the bush,” he said, “and not pick them up again until I go back.” GREGG TEEARS, Gloucester City, New Jersey A TOUCHING TRIBUTE Years ago, while teaching first grade, I was giving directions for a writing assignment. I described the usual format: capital letters and punctuation. I stated that this particular task would be about a…

MY THREE-YEAR-OLD granddaughter was fascinated by a family friend nursing her baby. “She’s having milk for her breakfast,” the friend explained. Intrigued, my granddaughter asked, “Is there orange juice in the other one?” V. JEAN HERSLAND, Toledo, Ohio OUR FRIEND’S FAMILY came to Virginia from Tennessee via Kentucky. I didn’t realize there were distinctions involved, till the day I heard the grandmother correct her granddaughter. “No, honey, we’re not rednecks,” she said. “We’re hillbillies.” LYNETTE COMBS, Norfolk, Virginia “I DON’T WANT a whole dessert; let’s just get two spoons.” —Former friends of mine. Actress ANNA KENDRICK SCENE: My teenage daughter and me in the car. Lauren: Dad, do you know what the most commonly used letter in a girl’s name is? Me: Hmm, is it a consonant or a vowel?…

AS A GIFT to our readers, we’ve collected the best of our Thanksgiving recipes, jokes, prayers, traditions, and more into “Eat, Smile, Share,” a free downloadable booklet (shown below) to help you and your family have an unforgettable holiday. Here’s a sneak peek: your Thanksgiving feast timeline. ■A FEW WEEKS BEFORE: Prepare two grocery lists—one for perishable items and one for nonperishable items. Order a fresh turkey, or get a frozen turkey and put it in the freezer. Buy the nonperishable items, and store them to use later. ■ A FEW DAYS BEFORE: Purchase the perishable items, including fresh turkey, if ordered. ■ TWO DAYS BEFORE: Set the table. ■ ONE DAY BEFORE: Make sauces and/or soups. Assemble the stuffing. Clean and trim vegetables (but not potatoes, turnips, or salad…

TAKE A LOOK at your mobile device. Do you see oily fingerprints and lint? Dust and crumbs? Is that a hair stuck at the screen’s edge? We take our electronics into public restrooms, hand them to runny-nosed toddlers, pass them around to share photos, and press them against sweaty skin in gyms. Repeated studies show that what accumulates is germy nastiness worse than what is on the bottom of your shoe. Like your toothbrush, “your mobile device is something you want to clean regularly,” says Dubert Guerrero, MD, an infectious disease specialist at Sanford Health in Fargo, North Dakota. And probably not something you want to pass around the table. For Basic Sanitation Cleaning your device can be tricky because you don’t want to damage it and manufacturers don’t give…

CORI SALCHERT OF SHEBOYGAN, Wisconsin, sits on a hospital bed parked in the middle of her living room stroking the peach fuzz on top of her newly adopted son’s head. One-year-old Charlie is at ease in his mother’s arms, drifting off to the hum of his ventilator. His mother adopted him knowing that there was a good chance he would not live long. Serving as foster and adoptive parents did not seem feasible for Cori and her husband, Mark, a few years ago. Both worked, and they already had eight biological children. But Cori had a passion for helping families through difficult times. As a registered nurse and a perinatal bereavement specialist, she helped families cope with the loss of a pregnancy or a newborn child. If parents were too…

DEAR STRANGERS, I remember you. Eighteen months ago, when my cell phone rang, you were walking into Whole Foods prepared to do your grocery shopping, just as I had been only minutes before you. But I had already abandoned my cart full of groceries in the entryway. My brother was on the other end of the line telling me my father had taken his own life early that morning. I started to cry and scream as my whole body trembled. I fell to the floor, my knees buckling under the weight of what I had just learned. You could have kept on walking, ignoring my cries, but you didn’t. You could have simply stopped and stared at my primal display of pain, but you didn’t. Instead, you surrounded me as…

The 2016 election has been history-making in many ways, most revealing observations from writers across the including in the tremendous volume written about the two spectrum. Read this before you vote to better understand main candidates. Here are our editors’ selections of the the choice—and our next president, whoever it may be. Donald Trump … … has uncommon discipline.. ON CNN.COM, MICHAEL D’ANTONIO, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR OF THE TRUTH ABOUT TRUMP, SAID: It’s ironic to talk about Donald as disciplined when we think about the wild statements he makes … but there actually is a discipline behind it. This is a person who is single-minded in his pursuit of what he wants. You get in Donald Trump’s way and you’re going to get run over … For all of his…

Been working 25/7 on some new daylight saving time jokes. Twitter @KENJENNINGS I think sleeping was my problem in school. If school had started at four in the afternoon, I’d be a college graduate today. GEORGE FOREMAN Do you ever wake up, kiss the person beside you, and just be thankful to be alive? I did. Not really appreciated on flights, apparently. Twitter @POLLYCHROMATIK Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight. PHYLLIS DILLER When people tell me “You’re going to regret that in the morning,” I sleep till noon because I am a problem solver. ANONYMOUS I never knew how long it took a human to fall asleep until I had kids. In case you’re wondering, it’s 2 hours, 3 cups of water & 18 books. Twitter @OUTSMARTEDMOMMY…

A NEW YORK lawyer was hit with what he termed a “baseless” lawsuit. Fine, he said, before citing English common law, which he claims was never outlawed, to demand a trial by combat. While the plaintiff ’s lawyers did not find his wanting to duke it out “amusing,” the lawyer said his weapon of choice would be a medieval war hammer. Source: New York Post A FLORIDA SCHOOLTEACHER filed a workplace discrimination lawsuit against her employers for denying her a sought-after job. The fact that she can’t speak or understand Spanish, she argued, should not preclude her from a plum job teaching Spanish. Source: Miami New Times A TEXAS PLUMBER sued a Ford dealership for more than $1 million after it gave him free publicity. The plumber traded in his…

The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. AMELIA EARHART, aviation pioneer SUCCESS SHOULD BE WORN LIKE A T-SHIRT, NOT A TUXEDO. PRIYANKA CHOPRA, actress IF WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO BE ALONE, WE’LL ONLY KNOW HOW TO BE LONELY. SHERRY TURKLE, professor of science, technology, and society Nothing is scarier than the people who try to find easy answers to complicated questions. MARJANE SATRAPI, graphic novelist One good thing about music, when it hits, you feel no pain. BOB MARLEY, musician BEING FUNNY IS BEING AWAKE TO THE ABSURDITY OF NORMALCY. BOB MANKOFF, cartoon editor The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball—the further I am rolled, the more I gain.…

A Different Kind of Genius I got a lump in my throat reading Connie Schultz’s article about visiting the plant where her late father worked. Both of my parents held factory jobs, and my first job was also at a plant. After that first tough week, I appreciated the grit my parents had shown every day, and I was thankful for the sacrifices they made to provide for me. I’m glad that Connie now feels the same way. T. S., via e-mail Folding Like a Genius Will Change Your Life Thoroughly enjoyed the September Genius Issue, especially the article on folding clothes, socks, and underwear. I was first acquainted with proper folding techniques by the military some 50 years ago and was soon able to get an entire clothing issue…

OFFENSIVE LINEMAN Jason Brown retired abruptly from the NFL in 2012 in order to tackle something bigger than anything he’d faced on a football field: sweet potatoes. Brown, then 29, moved with his wife, Tay, and their children from Missouri, where he’d played with the St. Louis Rams, back home to North Carolina, where he bought 1,000 acres in Louisburg. Overnight, he went from football star to family farmer. “For most people, it doesn’t make sense—why would you leave an awesome NFL career?” he says. But Brown wasn’t going to become just any farmer. He would give away nearly everything he grew. “I didn’t feel I was just supposed to use my millions to buy food and donate it. I had to be out there doing the work and leading…

ON JULY 9, 2008, Renee Legro was pedaling over the final hill in a mountain bike race in the White River National Forest near Vail, Colorado. She’d had a flat tire earlier in the competition and had been left behind by the other riders. After cresting the hill, she found herself on a road in the middle of a herd of sheep. Suddenly, two massive dogs pulled her down. The Great Pyrenees—guard dogs trained to protect flocks from predators—mauled Legro. Nearby campers heard her screams and scared the dogs away. Her injuries were severe, including a broken ankle and deep bite wounds, but the most debilitating damage was not so visible. Her psychiatrist said she exhibited the worst post-traumatic stress he’d seen outside of war veterans. The dogs were euthanized.…

I don’t want to slide into the grave in a wellpreserved body. I’d rather skid in sideways, ripped up, scratched, scarred ... screaming, “What a ride!” STEVEN TYLER, musician, in GQ THE MOST extraordinary lives are often the ones lived most quietly, most remarkably, by one’s neighbors and loved ones, if we just pay attention. If you just listen, everyone has a song. LARA DOTSON-RENTA, scholar and translator, on onbeing.org THIS [tattoo I have] says “I am certain of nothing,” and that’s how I feel. I’m pretty sure that cheese and sausage are good. Other than that, it’s a world of confusion and uncertainty. ANTHONY BOURDAIN, television host and chef , in Men’s Journal AN OBSESSION with speed is also the fear of being left behind oneself— which drives the…

IF YOU WAKE UP each morning in a groggy haze, rest assured you can blame your natural body clock: “Sleep circadian rhythms are longer than a 24-hour day, so our sleep clock pushes us later,” says Rebecca Scott, PhD, a sleep specialist at the New York Sleep Institute. That means that sleep acts like a dimmer switch rather than an on/off switch. It takes time to ease into sleep at night and time to feel fully awake in the morning, which is why, says Dr. Scott, you feel like you need 10 to 20 minutes to fully wake up. These simple tweaks to your routine can get your body clock back on track faster so you face the day feeling alert, mindful, and energized. When Your Alarm Rings: Don’t Hit…

Exercise Eases the Learning Curve A new Dutch experiment shows that working out a few hours after learning something new maximizes the brain boost. Subjects who hopped onto a stationary bike four hours after a learning session retained more information than those who biked right away and those who didn’t exercise at all. Physical activity helps the body to produce catecholamines, natural compounds that may improve memory consolidation if released at the right time. Nearly Half of Heart Attacks Are Silent Heart attacks don’t always present with symptoms. An article in the American Heart Association’s journal, Circulation, concluded that around 45 percent of them go unnoticed initially. The damage is discovered only later, when patients undergo an MRI or an electrocardiogram during a checkup or after showing general signs of…

When my husband was hospitalized for almost a year, my house was left to fend for itself. One day, I came home from another long day by my husband’s bedside to discover our flower boxes brimming with beautiful flowers. A neighbor did this for me. She wanted me to have something nice to look at when I came home. RUTH BILOTTA, Churchville, Pennsylvania Thirty years ago, my world almost fell apart. I had surgery, was fired, and was informed by the IRS that my employer had not paid employment taxes. After a few weeks, I saw a flyer about a Japanese festival. Although a physical and emotional wreck, I decided to go. There, I met a Japanese gentleman with whom I chatted for hours. A few months later, I came…

Hostage Taker BY STEFANIE PINTOFF ZERO HOUR, 6:47 A.M. Good day, New York! It’s 41 degrees right now in Midtown, with heavy rain and fog for your morning commute. Luckily, we expect these soggy conditions to be out of here by lunchtime. But bring a fleece lining for those raincoats, because temperatures will continue to plummet throughout the day. Today is a Gridlock Alert Day, due to tonight’s tree-lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center, which we’ll have live coverage of beginning at 7 p.m. We expect tens of thousands of people in the area, so do yourself a favor and take mass transit today ... CRISTINA SILVA HAD never been a believer. When she was a girl, she didn’t believe in fairy tales or Santa Claus. Then she grew up and…

1. bugbear ('buhg-bair) n.—A: petty crime. B: character flaw. C: object of dread. 2. sopor ('soh-puhr) n.—A: salty taste. B: deep sleep. C: second-year cadet. 3. parlance ('par-lunts) n.— A: manner of speaking. B: secret meeting. C: equality. 4. prate ('prayt) v.—A: chatter. B: criticize. C: make a grand show. 5. bireme ('biy-reem) n.—A: ancient ship propelled by oars. B: marshy tract. C: case of illogic. 6. tiki ('tee-kee) n.—A: kitschy cocktail shaker. B: wooden or stone image of a Polynesian god. C: curry sauce. 7. weir ('wair) n.—A: ghost. B: mirror image. C: dam in a stream or river. 8. ovine ('oh-viyn) adj.—A: of eggs. B: of sheep. C: of grapes. 9. anathema (uh-'na-thuh-muh) n.—A: main topic or theme. B: total opposite. C: someone or something intensely disliked. 10.…

FOOD SPECIAL WHEN SHE WAS 18, Komal Ahmad had her future figured out: “I was going to study integrative biology in college, I would fall in love while I was there, I’d get engaged one year after graduation, and then I was going to medical school.” In reality, “nothing worked according to my plan,” Ahmad, now 26, says with a laugh. “Except I did fall in love, but it wasn’t with a person. It was with an idea.” That idea was feeding the hungry by redistributing wasted food. Ahmad is the founder and CEO of Copia, which she describes as “match.com meets Uber for food recovery.” Companies use the Copia app to report when they have leftover food, what kind, and how much. When recipients such as shelters, soup kitchens,…

FIRST, PAUSE! A tattoo, drawn in permanent ink, will stay on your body forever, so you need to make the RIGHT CHOICE. You need time to think about the possibilities, contemplate what has meaning for you, and consider how the image will age with you. With this in mind, we have the three criteria you should follow for tattoo hunting: 1. Do not be in a hurry. 2. Do not be drunk. 3. Do not be drunk and in a hurry. These are simple directives, but if you cannot follow them, we understand. It’s very common for these simple rules to be discarded in the face of the notion of getting a permanent tattoo permanently drilled into your skin forever and ever. So you’re set on it, are you? You…

ON A PERFECT and bright July morning, I had just seen Steve and the girls drive off for five days in Cleveland without me. It had been one of those goodbyes where you hug your kids, then re-hug everyone, then get summoned back for one last embrace. Olivia had hopped into my arms and wrapped her gangly 11-year-old legs around my waist. Sophia had whispered, “Make sure I’m the last person you touch before we drive away.” I turned toward the house feeling light and happy. I was looking forward to five days alone. In the kitchen, I flipped open my laptop and clicked the first e-mail that caught my attention. It was from a reader named Julie Rubini, who’d read about my purple childhood bedroom in the July/August issue.…

LAST YEAR, my mother turned 70, and, in a mood of giddy nostalgia, she brought out an old college-ruled notebook: one of the journals in which she has kept a record of all the dinner parties she has hosted since 1976. Ever my mother’s son, I have a similar journal. But I am a writer, and she is a chemist. Mine features narratives and feelings about the dinners I’ve hosted, whereas hers reads like laboratory notes—just the meal plan and who was invited. No digressions. “Salmon mousse,” she announced, reading the first entry. “My God, I must have made that a hundred times. For the Kaufmans and Hurleys; do you remember them?” I did not. But I did remember that salmon mousse. Pink, jiggling, molded in the curved shape of…

■ YOU EAT MORE SIMPLE SUGARS ’Tis the season for mini chocolates, apple pie, and pumpkin-spice lattes, but cold-and-flu season is the worst time to dig in. “Sugar consumption lessens our ability to fight off infections,” says Kathryn Boling, MD, a primary care physician at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore. Phagocytosis, in which white blood cells attack and engulf viruses and bacteria, is significantly reduced when you eat simple sugars. Indulge in moderation and opt for sugar-free beverages. ■ YOU ARE IMMERSED IN DRY AIR “A virus replicates much more effectively on a dry mucous membrane than it does on a moist mucous membrane, so colds and the flu spread like crazy in dry environments,” says Dr. Boling. Turn on a humidifier when you go to sleep at night, and…

DURING THIS PAST YEAR, I’ve had three instances of car trouble. Each time these things happened, I was disgusted with the way most people hadn’t bothered to help. One of those times, I was on the side of the road for close to three hours with my friend’s big Jeep. I put signs in the windows, big signs that said NEED A JACK, and offered money. Nothing. Right as I was about to give up and start hitching, a Mexican family in a van pulled over, and the father bounded out. He sized up the situation and called for his daughter, who spoke English. He conveyed through her that he had a jack but that it was too small for the Jeep, so we would need to brace it. Then…

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE OUR SECRET. My hairdresser claimed to possess a special elixir that could subtly, naturally, almost undetectably “blend away” gray hair, which, at 45, I had a touch of. Sitting before the mirror in her chair, uncertain whether to start the masquerade, I examined my head in a way I shied away from when I was alone at home without support. I looked at myself from angles I wasn’t used to, discovering that the gray was more extensive than I’d been willing to admit. Instead of threading its way between the darker hairs, it had consumed whole sectors of my head, especially on the sides and in the back. It was advancing the way frost does, or mold. “I suggest we leave some in,” my hairdresser…

OUT THE WINDOW TO MY LEFT, palm trees bent in the breeze from the South China Sea; to my right, green fields stretched in the distance. As our tour van headed south on a bumpy road near Nha Trang, I kept reminding myself, This is Vietnam. I even tried superimposing scenes from Platoon and Full Metal Jacket on the landscape, but they wouldn’t stick. Everything was too peaceful. I had come to Vietnam to solve a mystery: What had happened to my father here? My father, Sgt. Jimmy Godwin of the U.S. Army Special Forces, married my mother in 1968, just before he’d shipped out for Vietnam. When he’d returned, he was “messed up”—that’s what my mother said, though I’d never understood what that meant. She and Jimmy divorced when…

WHILE WORKING as an advertising copywriter, I was invited into a conference room for a meeting on Nestea and told to generate alternative uses for the iced-tea mix. I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever been asked to do. An account manager in the meeting told us that one weekend while sailing in New York Harbor, he had been badly sunburned. So he’d gone home, poured an entire jar of Nestea powdered mix into his bathtub, filled the bath with water, and soaked in it. We all thought he’d lost it. “That’s not what they meant by ‘Take the Nestea Plunge,’” I said. “No, really,” he insisted. “The tannin in the tea relieves sunburn pain. If you’re ever badly sunburned, try it. You’ll thank me.” In the years…