Table of contents for November 2019 in Reader's Digest

HERE ARE SOME things I am thankful for as we present the winners of our third Nicest Places in America search: Harding Park, New York. For years, I’ve driven south to JFK airport from my home and looked down from the Whitestone Bridge between Queens and the Bronx to wonder about the tangled little neighborhood sticking out into the East River, with views of Manhattan. Out of nowhere, a resident named Lydia Clark-Sumpter solved the mystery—and gave me a smile—by going to rd.com/nicest to nominate that collection of 236 homes. Turns out Harding Park began a century ago as vacation tents leased to blue-collar families and evolved, through remarkable twists and turns, into an exemplar of diversity and neighborliness—not to mention our winning place in New York State. Thank you,…

When people hear that my husband and I just celebrated our 60th wedding anniversary, they inevitably ask us the secret to our long, successful marriage. In response, my husband will smile sweetly, nod my way, and explain, “We both love me.” —MARIAN PITCHER Sun City Center, Florida My friend took her teenage daughter to a new doctor for a checkup. The nurse asked the usual questions, including if she had an STD. “No,” said the teen. “We have a Toyota.” —BARBARA GAVLICK HARTNETT Swoyersville, Pennsylvania One day, my physician father treated himself to a plate of raw oysters and offered to share them with me. Just as I was about to dig in, he picked up an oyster, examined it, and commented, “They remind me of infected tonsils.” And that’s…

SHORT ON SLEEP? DON’T FORGET TO DRINK WATER In a Pennsylvania State University study involving more than 20,000 participants, people who said they got only six hours of sleep regularly ran a greater risk of dehydration than those who got eight hours. The reason might lie with a hormone called vasopressin, which helps regulate the body’s fluid levels. It’s released in greater quantities later in the sleep cycle, so people getting less shuteye might not have the optimal amount of it. If you know you’re short on slumber, make a point of drinking water. Ten-Minute Cancer Test Australian researchers have developed a test that can detect cancer cells in ten minutes with 90 percent accuracy. Healthy DNA and cancer DNA, it turns out, stick to metal surfaces differently. When cancer…

Bruce Kelley Editor-in-chief of Reader’s Digest Madeline Rogero Mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee, home of Yassin’s Falafel House, the 2018 Nicest Place in America Sarah Friar CEO of Nextdoor, a social network for neighborhoods Geri Weis-Corbley Founder of the Good News Network, an online publication that tells positive stories Gary Dixon President of the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation and the Foundation for a Better Life David Brooks Op-ed columnist for the New York Times and founder of the Aspen Institute’s Weave project, which aims to strengthen America’s social fabric Claire Babineaux-Fontenot CEO of Feeding America, the nation’s largest hunger-relief organization Steven Petrow Award-winning journalist and contributing writer on civility issues to the New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post Bonnie Kintzer President and CEO of Trusted Media Brands…

DEATH BLEW EAST on a savage wind, driving flames over foothills and across a river, spitting glowing embers and scrubbing the earth bare. It was coming for Don Andrews. The firestorm shook the ground and roared as loud as a passing train. The windows on Andrews’s bulldozer shattered, flinging glass into his face. The blue-green shards were everywhere: on the floor, inside his helmet, in his skin and eyes. He was alone and blinded. I’m not going to survive this, he thought. Andrews, 60, wasn’t supposed to be this close to the edge. He’d been hired that day, July 26, 2018, by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) to work with two other bulldozer drivers to carve a thick ring of dirt around a subdivision of…

Winner “Hello, Tech Support. This is Jason. How can I help you?” —Ken Lyons Irwin, Pennsylvania Runners-Up “Grandpa, just turn it off and then back on. That should fix it.” —Ed Gasaway Vicksburg, Michigan “All right, Jim, let’s talk numbers, and keep in mind I can only count to three.” —Cory Ogata Mililani, Hawaii Make us Laugh! Caption Contest What’s your clever description for this picture? Submit your funniest line at RD.COM/CAPTIONCONTEST. Winners will appear in a future Photo Finish…

Human connection is the only way we will win in our eventual war with the robots.—Amy Poehler, COMEDIAN One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, WRITER All your troubles will disappear with Chanel No. 5 perfume on your neck. Well, they won’t. But your troubles will smell delicious.—Camila Cabello, SINGER Slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be.—André De Shields, ACTOR I don’t understand why people say, “I don’t want to live forever.” Why not?—Alan Alda, ACTOR Bloom where you are planted.—Mary C. Daly, ECONOMIST Love is like an endless cup of coffee at a crappy diner, only it…

The test question asked: What do you think is the best answer to overpopulation? The student’s answer: the Hunger Games. —WEARETEACHERS.COM A man came through my lane at the grocery store with a jug of wine and a bouquet of roses. But before paying, he set the two items aside and said, “I’ll be right back.” He ran off, only to return a minute later with a second jug of wine and another bouquet of roses. “Two girlfriends?” I asked. “No,” he said. “Just one really angry one.” —JOHN H. FLYNN Marshall, North Carolina I grew up above my father’s tavern. When we were kids, we would race each other down the stairs every morning to sweep up the bar and find the change customers had dropped during the night.…

Quick Crossword EASY On November 10, 1969, the first season of Sesame Street debuted. Its puppet and human residents—even a notoriously grouchy one—have been sweeping the clouds away since. Place their names in the grid. BERT COUNT OSCAR BIG BIRD ELMO ERNIE GROVER KERMIT COOKIE Shape Shuffle MEDIUM Rearrange the shapes into a new sequence that follows these rules: The triangle is to the immediate left of the pentagon. The circle is to the left of the square and to the right of the triangle. The octagon is not the last figure in the sequence. No shape remains in its original position. Take the Stairs EASY Proceeding up the staircase, the numbers form a logical sequence. What number belongs on the top step? Bacon or Eggs? MEDIUM Gwen has very…

OUR FAMILIES LIVED more than 450 miles away, so a few weeks before Thanksgiving one year, my then husband and I decided to invite a guest over for the holiday. I called a senior center in the Dallas area and they suggested Ilse, a woman I imagined would be quiet, soft-spoken, serene. I was wrong. Ilse was a stubborn 78-year-old force of nature. She enjoyed complimentary gambling junkets to Las Vegas and kept a local bookie on speed dial. She favored sequined T-shirts; her tiny wirehaired mutt, named Speckles; and spending time at the senior center. Describing this opinionated, four-foot-four woman as a firecracker would be like referring to the Olympic torch as a disposable lighter. On Thanksgiving, within minutes of arriving, Ilse plopped her oversize purse on the kitchen…

SHEEPISHLY, KEVIN ADKINS admits that when he’s insecure, he uses big words to appear smarter. “Only when I need to impress the person,” says the 45-year-old. “Dates with women? Definitely. At the grocery store? Not so much.” A few years ago, when flirting with a stylist at the barbershop, he asked her to give him a “symmetric” haircut instead of just requesting that she trim it evenly. And when he gave an attractive woman directions, he made a point of telling her that the two options they’d discussed were “equidistant” rather than simply saying that both were about the same distance. Adkins is among the myriad Homo sapiens who suffer from periphrasis. Translation: Many of us use longer words in place of shorter ones. Because folks know, consciously or unconsciously,…

EVERYONE IN TOWN knows Ryan Houck, but not for the reasons you’d expect. He’s not the businessman who helped revitalize the downtown. He’s not the bakery owner who donates doughnuts and hot dog buns to local fund-raisers. He’s not the woman who dug into her retirement money to help rebuild Columbiana’s beloved Firestone Park. He’s just a kid, and he has a lot of challenges. Ryan, five, has a rare disease called Miller-Dieker syndrome, a devastating developmental brain disorder that makes it impossible for him to speak or move. In fact, the doctors said Ryan wouldn’t live to see age two. For a long time, his parents, Dan and Meghan Houck, were stunned and heartbroken. “All the dreams and aspirations you had for your child kind of vanish,” Meghan says.…

A friend paid my mother a visit. Later, I spoke with Mom. “I was very nervous,” “I was very nervous,” she said. “Why?” I asked. “Because he’s a captain in the Air Force.” “Mother, as you know, I, too, am a captain in the Air Force.” “Yes,” she said. “And you also make me nervous when you visit.” —COL. RICHARD A. Virant (Ret.) Bothell, Washington In San Diego to work with military linguists, my colleague and I checked into a hotel and ordered a 5 a.m. wake-up call. The next morning, the phone didn’t ring until 5:30. “You were supposed to call us at 5 a.m.!” I admonished the desk clerk on the other end of the line. “What if I had to close a million-dollar contract this morning? Your…

We combed the latest research and talked to health, financial, and wellness experts to uncover the most important things you can do to keep the spring in your step and a healthy balance in your bank account through the years. Start by taking the Live Long & Prosper Quiz to get a sense of how prepared you are now, then read on to see what the experts recommend for everyone—including themselves. (Yes = 1 point, No = 0 points.) PART ONE THE LIVE LONG & PROSPER QUIZ 1) Do you claim your employer’s401(k) match? Americans miss out on an estimated $24 billion in unclaimed matches. 2) Do you eat beans three times a week or more? When longevity researcher Dan Buettner was studying the earth’s longest-living people, located in so-called…