Table of contents for May 2020 in Reader's Digest

SKID ROW. THE very phrase conjures images of drunks passed out in gutters, lowlifes lying in wait, addicts in darkened alleys. It’s the definition of a place where dreams go to die. In Los Angeles’s infamous Skid Row, the scene can be even bleaker. There are hundreds of children living there—on the streets or in shelters—at any given time. But amid all the poverty and desperation, one couple is determined to use their own experience with loss to foster a sense of hope. In 2012, Mary Davis, who works at an enrichment center for young children, and her husband, Ari Kadin, who is in property management, were expecting their first child when Davis miscarried. They were devastated. But the couple, who were volunteering with adults in a Skid Row homeless…

On this Mother’s Day, let’s remember Mom for all the lovely things she has said to us over the years—not the rotten ones, like these: ✦ If I ever voiced disapproval of a photo of myself, my mother always had a ready reply: “Want a better picture? Get a better face.” —Maria Zagorski WAUKESHA, WISCONSIN ✦ ME: Mom, you’re invading my personal space. MOM: Well, you came out of my personal space. That makes us even. —@WVandertie ✦ “I’m leaving for the weekend, so I hid $100 in your room for food. Clean your room and you will find it.” —WATTPAD.COM ✦ On my wedding day, my mom told my bride, “No refunds, no exchanges on sale items.” —Glen Zeider SIMI VALLEY, CALIFORNIA ✦ “Be nice to your brother. You…

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST, WIRECUTTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE VERGE, BUZZFEED NEWS, USA TODAY, AND BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK YOU ARE BEING STALKED EVERYWHERE YOU GO. IN YOUR CAR. ON YOUR MORNING WALK. EVEN IN YOUR OWN HOME—BY YOUR OWN TV. In our hyperconnected world, where your phone is always with you, information is being collected—and shared—every nanosecond. “So what?” you say. “I have nothing to hide.” Don’t be so sure. As privacy expert Bennett Cyphers told a reporter for the New York Times’s Privacy Project, “The only people I’ve heard say ‘Who cares?’ are people who don’t understand the scope of the problem.” The problem is that while corporations and data brokers are hoovering up all the information they can get their sticky mitts on, there are no laws governing…

One year, we bought our mother a really cool new iron for Mother’s Day. It was still in the box on her birthday a month and a half later, so we rewrapped it and gave it to her again. It was still in the box on Mother’s Day the following year, so we rewrapped it again. Then my mother threw the box out so we wouldn’t give it to her on her next birthday. —Amy Gottlieb SUFFERN, NEW YORK One Mother’s Day, I received a sign from my son that read, “I’m sorry I haven’t moved out yet.” It made me laugh! —Sharon Stewart LAS VEGAS, NEVADA I made a cake one year for my mother and decorated it very prettily, then packed it up for the hour-long drive to…

Find the Doctor You Trust I have worked in medical clinics and wanted to add a final tip: Be respectful and helpful to your provider and the office staff. They went into practice to help people. They are overworked and as frustrated as you are with the current health-care system. —DIANE OSBORN, RN San Tan Valley, Arizona My family doctor employs people to type notes for him while he confers with patients. I find this a wonderful way for my doctor to spend more time with me, and I have his undivided attention. I would encourage other physicians to employ this technique. —CAROL HARDING Mobile, Alabama Faithful Friends What a magnificent story! Two young people who were able to become friends despite their different backgrounds. The world could follow their…

GROWING UP, I understood one thing about my dad: He knew everything. This was our relationship, in sum: I asked him questions and he told me the answers. Is there really a man in the moon? How do sailboats work? What is the highest score anyone’s ever gotten in Pac-Man? In my teen years, he taught me things I’d need to know to survive in the real world. How to drive a stick shift. How to check your car tire’s pressure (though the gauge he bought me 20 years ago still sits untouched in my glove box). The correct knife to use to cut a cantaloupe. When I moved out on my own, I called him at least once a week, usually when something broke in my apartment and I…

Teachers shared with reddit.com the most questionable questions they’d ever been asked: ✦ “How old was the average 18-year-old in 1942?” ✦ “What are those pyramid-shaped things in Egypt called?” ✦ “If the patient has a brain hemorrhage, can we tie a tourniquet around the neck to stop it?” Cashier: I think I know you from somewhere. Customer: I have a big following on Instagram. Cashier: Don’t you work at the car wash on Third? Customer: Yes. It could also be from there. —@REALOVERHEARDLA I’ve never wanted to be the kind of successful that requires getting to an airport before 7 a.m. —@TRESSIEMCPHD Marriage vows should be rewritten as “to have and to hold and to listen to stories about your workplace drama until death do us part.” —@COPYMAMA The…

SOME FOODS WERE never meant to be liked. The lima beans of the world, the licorices, the powdered coffee creamers, those black-bean-lentil cakes that call themselves burgers, all born into sad-sackery. Me, though, I am a superstar, a talented actor with celebrity charisma. I’m the one people gravitate to at the dinner party. The smooth one who inspires superlative idioms—like butter, baby!—and gets featured in dramatically lit portraits on Time magazine. So how come I’m slogging it out with those other fats just to stay relevant? This just isn’t right! When you’ve needed something silky and spreadable to moisten your bread, I’ve been there. When you’ve hankered for satiny sauces, I’ve melted myself right into them. As my old friend Julia Child put it: With enough of me, anything is…

CHOLESTEROL AND ALZHEIMER’S In a study of more than 2,000 people, researchers found that those with high LDL (bad) cholesterol levels were more likely than those with lower levels to have early-onset Alzheimer’s. Past research has shown a similar link between high LDL cholesterol and late-onset Alzheimer’s, possibly because the APOE E4 gene (the largest known genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s) raises cholesterol levels. More research is needed to determine whether high levels of LDL cholesterol actually cause Alzheimer’s and whether reducing cholesterol levels can help prevent it. Inhalers May Not Help Mild Asthma According to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the low-dose steroid inhalers recommended to patients with mild asthma don’t prevent attacks. The drugs do reduce type 2 inflammation, which was believed to be…

WARNING: In a blink, millions of young people started smoking a trendy e-cigarette and became addicted to a powerful drug. It’s time for the damage to be undone. In the summer of 2015, a newfangled vaping product came on the market. The Juul device looked unlike any other electronic cigarette and delivered a far more powerful punch—5 percent nicotine, the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes, while other e-cigarettes had only 1 or 2 percent. Another big draw: It came in fun flavors such as mango and mint. Juul’s initial marketing campaign, called Vaporized, introduced the product with glitzy parties, ads, and social media posts featuring young women in midriff-baring tops holding the sleek metal device. Pop-up “Juul Bars” at concerts offered free samples. A bright billboard display loomed over…

The morning of Good Friday started like any other for Kurt Kaser, a third-generation farmer in northeast Nebraska. The 63-year-old, taciturn and as lean as a fence post, woke around 5:30, his wife, Lori Kaser, by his side. He lit a cigarette, pulled on his muck boots, stuck an old pocketknife in a front pocket, and headed outside to start his day. With 3,000 hogs and roughly 1,500 acres of corn and soybeans, not to mention a small trucking business, Kurt’s to-do list never really shrank so much as recycled itself, though he understood all too well the dangers of rushing on the job. In sixth grade, he’d jumped down from his father’s tractor only to land with one foot inside the corn picker. Though he didn’t break any bones,…

YOU CAN LEARN anything on the Internet, so why do I so often learn things I don’t want to know? When I’m surfing the Web, I want to be drawn in by articles on Europe’s political history or the nature of quasars, but I end up reading trivia such as a menu from Alcatraz prison. Why am I not curious about the things I want to be curious about? Curiosity feels as if it’s outside your control, and trying to direct it sounds as ill conceived as forcing yourself to find a joke funny. But if you understand what prompts curiosity, you may be able to channel it a little better. Across evolutionary time, curious animals were more likely to survive because they learned about their environments; a forager that…

1. dogma n. ('dog-muh) A false belief. B perseverance. C established opinion. 2. cataract n. ('cat-uh-rakt) A waterfall. B tomb. C eyeshade. 3. toponym n. ('tah-puh-nim) A misprint. B place-name. C opposite. 4. escrow n. ('eh-skroh) A money held in trust. B gross exaggeration. C eviction notice. 5. forbear v. (for-'bair) A hold back. B go before. C carry off. 6. simoleon n. (suh-'moh-lee-un) A look-alike. B dollar. C coincidence. 7. execrable adj. ('ek-sih-kruh-bull) A discarded. B immortal. C horrible. 8. camellia n. (kuh-'meel-yuh) A flowering shrub. B horned lizard. C love song. 9. unorthodox adj. (un-'or-thuh-doks) A not conventional. B Eastern. C beneath the surface. 10. welkin n. ('wel-kin) A fleece vest. B sky. C accordion. 11. epigram n. ('eh-puh-gram) A long farewell. B witty saying. C ghostly presence. 12. malevolent adj. (muh-'leh-vuh-lent) A masculine. B spiteful. C good-hearted. 13. papeterie n.…

 “PLEASE FIND A CHECK for $55,000 to fulfill the Molalla High School 2020 Share the Love goal.” If that school’s name sounds familiar, perhaps it’s because Molalla High was featured in last year’s “Nicest Places in America” cover story. It turns out that the anonymous person who wrote that big check read the story too. “In December I was at a doctor’s appointment, and in the waiting room was a Reader’s Digest,” the donor explained in his (or her) letter to the school. “I was excited to read about Molalla High School, researched Share the Love, and decided to attend the opening assembly. Wow, I was so moved.” No kidding. When we started Nicest Places four years ago, we hoped that the stories of people coming together would touch readers,…

I asked the kids in my nursery school class what they needed in order to grow up nice and strong. One little girl answered, “Birthdays!” —ABIGAIL GEORGE Clywd, Wales ✦ An Oregonian came home, heard rustling sounds from inside a bathroom, and could see a shadowy figure moving about underneath the closed door. The resident called police. They arrived, drew their guns, and ordered the prowler to come out with hands up. Receiving no response, they burst into the bathroom, where, according to a deputy, “We encountered a very thorough vacuuming job being done by a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner.” —5NEWSONLINE.COM ✦ Peanut allergies are nothing to sneeze at, and one mother whose son is highly allergic wasn’t taking any chances. She called 911 after opening an Amazon package at…

1 WHY IS it called a “commencement” speech? The historical answer is that students in medieval times entered universities as apprentices and left able to “commence” their professions. The word commencement isn’t the only relic from graduation ceremonies of yore. We’ve also kept the caps, the gowns, and, yes, the speeches. 2 THE EARLIEST commencement speakers were graduating students who delivered their speeches in Latin. At Princeton University, the senior chosen to give the salutatory address still does it in Latin. The graduates receive special copies of the speech with instructions—in English—on when to laugh, in the hope that the rest of the audience will be impressed with the students’ Latin “fluency.” 3 WHILE A commencement speech is meant to be significant to the graduates, sometimes it actually makes history.…

For an essential topping to fish, blanched vegetables such as asparagus or carrots, or roast chicken or duck, combine 6 tablespoons dry white wine, 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar, and 1 very finely minced large shallot in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Lower heat to a gentle simmer and cook until liquid is reduced to about 2 tablespoons. Cut 1 stick cold unsalted butter into 1-tablespoon pieces. Reduce heat to lowest setting and add 1 tablespoon butter. Whisk constantly until almost melted, then add another piece of butter. Make sure heat remains low, briefly removing saucepan from heat if necessary, so that butter pieces just barely melt. Continue whisking in butter one piece at a time until all of it is incorporated and a…

TWENTY YEARS AGO, I became involved in pet therapy work with our golden retriever, J.J. After J.J. passed away, we got another golden retriever puppy, whom we named J.J.’s Angel. As she matured and went through obedience training, we realized that she, too, would be a good therapy dog. Angel is ten now and works every week. She visits two hospitals, a day care for the elderly, and our library’s PAWS for Reading program. At the library, six to ten dogs lie on the floor, and the kids pick a book to read to a dog. After they finish, they get a trading card with the dog’s picture and history. Angel has also helped out at a children’s special-needs camp. She is so popular that everywhere we go people recognize…

WHEN TAL Golesworthy (above) was told he needed lifesaving heart surgery in 1993, he said no. Golesworthy has Marfan syndrome, a genetic condition affecting the strength and elasticity of connective body tissues, including blood vessels. Back in 1993, when he was living in Cheltenham, in the west of England, his doctor told him that a major artery in his heart, the aorta, was so enlarged that it would inevitably rupture unless he underwent major surgery. “They talked through the surgical options,” says Golesworthy, “and I was not interested. The operation really didn’t look attractive.” What he particularly didn’t like was having to be on blood thinners after the operation, something that would prevent blood clots but presented its own risks: “I was riding motorbikes then, and skiing, so my whole…

By 1952, Americans were smoking approximately 3.94 trillion cigarettes annually, or 2,500 for every man, woman, and child. It’s a shocking number today—2.5 times what adults burn through now—but it shocked a few people in the smoke-filled 1950s too. One of the most affected was DeWitt Wallace, cofounder of Reader’s Digest. Wallace was himself a two-pack-a-day smoker, but he had long worried about the media’s luring people into unhealthy behaviors. He refused to run advertisements that profited from vices. “I don’t want to feel that we are taking an active part in introducing millions of people to smoking and drinking,” said Wallace. He also used the magazine as a kind of antitobacco bullhorn. Way back in 1944, RD published “Are You a Man or a Smokestack?” by a writer who’d…

You might think the Canary Islands were named for canaries—after all, the yellow finches are indigenous to the Spanish archipelago. But “Canary” here actually refers to another animal: the dog. In Spanish, the islands are called Islas Canarias, derived from the Latin word for dog, a moniker bestowed by ancient explorers who reported seeing large canines there. The native songbirds were named, in essence, after dogs!…