Reader’s Digest Hammett was himself a Pinkerton detective. The Sunday Long Read website ran a listicle Hammett wrote in 1923 for the magazine The Smart Set detailing some of the odd things he encountered on the job: ÊA man whom I was shadowing went out into the country for a walk one Sunday afternoon and lost his bearings completely. I had to direct him back to the city. ÊI know an operative who, while looking for pickpockets at a race track, had his wallet stolen. ÊA chief of police once gave me a description of a man, complete even to the mole on his neck, but neglected to mention that he had only one arm. When our pastor was in graduate school, the dorm cafeteria was not known for its culinary excellence. One evening, as he finished saying grace, Reader’s Digest will pay for your funny anecdote or photo in any of our humour sections. Post it to the editorial address, or email: [email protected] his friend pointed to his dish and said, “Sorry, Steve, it didn’t work; it’s still there.” —Gordon Houston Three of us peppered the job candidate with questions regarding an opening in our department. We were pleased with his answers until we got to the end of the interview. When we asked the candidate whether he had any questions for us, he replied, “Yes, I have. What job am I interviewing for?” —Karin Green Ê “Hi, I’m Captain Amanda Smith. Yes, I’m a female pilot and, as a benefit, if we get lost on the way I won’t be afraid to stop and ask for directions.” Ê “Please refrain from smoking until you reach a designated smoking area, which, for California, is Las Vegas.” Ê “I’ve just been informed that my motherin-law has passed through security and will be boarding this flight shortly. If you all sit down fast, we should be able to get out of here before she arrives.” Ê “Most of you already have your seat belts fastened. Now we will demonstrate how you did that.” Ê “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to share some words with you that my father shared with me when I turned 18: Pack your bags : Pack your bags and get out.” Ê “Please return your seats to their upright and most uncomfortable position.” —boredpanda .com FLY THE CHATTY SKIES Flight crews offer up safe travels and ad-libs: TIM MACPHERSON/GETTY IMAGES readersdigest.in 99
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Cover Story Reunited How DNA testing is bringing families together By Sarah Treleaven illustration by Nikki Ernst in 2018, jeff highsmith of texas started a Facebook page on behalf of his family. The page had one objective: to find Melissa Suzanne Highsmith, Jeff’s sister. At just 21 months, she had been abducted from Fort Worth by her babysitter 51 years earlier and the family was desperate for answers. In addition to the Facebook page, they made flyers with baby Melissa’s face and age-progression photos that indicated what she might look like now, in her 50s. Remarkably, they were convinced she was still alive all these years later and determined to be reunited with her. They knew that more tools were now available to help locate missing persons—such as genealogy kits with DNA tests. And so, the family bought kits from 23andMe, and then uploaded the results to a public database called GEDmatch. readersdigest.in 101 COVER STORY
102 september 2023 Reader’s Digest Melissa Highsmith as a baby; and today, after being reunited with her mother and father. It seemed like a shot in the dark, but it worked. In November 2022, the Highsmith family found Melissa through a key DNA match: Melissa’s daughter. By pulling the threads of DNA matches, triangulating connections on a much bigger family tree, they zeroed in on the baby snatched so long ago. The family reunion was a joyful one. Melissa described being found as “the most wonderful feeling in the world.” The story of Melissa Highsmith and her family got global news coverage. But it’s only one of many cases of people being connected by DNA analysis. In Canada, siblings separately adopted from Romania when they were babies were reunited in their 50s when both took a DNA test to learn more about their biological health; turns out they had spent much of their lives within a 30-minute drive of each other. And two sisters—one in the United Kingdom, the other in the Netherlands—met for the first time in 75 years after learning that they have the same father. There are countless stories. In Spain, a DNA database has been set up to identify the ‘stolen babies’ of the Franco dictatorship. Black Americans are using DNA tests to learn about family lineages disrupted by slavery. And stories about recent tragedies—including the devastating February earthquake in Syria and Turkey—have included details about how DNA was being used to reunite children with their parents. Much of the news coverage of DNA technology advances has focused on capturing a killer or identifying a longdead victim. But there’s another, equally compelling possibility: solving cold cases involving a living victim or missing person. In other words, someone courtesy of jeff highsmith
readersdigest.in 103 Cover Story out in the world, location and identity unknown, who can be made aware of who they really are only through DNA. Law enforcement agencies have stepped up efforts to utilize it, and private businesses have also hopped on board, creating databases and putting the tools for DNA collection into the hands of consumers. Crucially, there’s also been a rise in citizen sleuths and investigative genetic genealogists, perhaps bolstered by our insatiable love for true crime, who are helping to bring ordinary families together again. According to Michael Marciano, director of research for the Forensic and National Security Sciences Institute (FNSSI) at Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences in New York, there have been major advances in recent decades in how forensic DNA analysis is done. One has to do with sensitivity: our ability to detect lower amounts of DNA than ever before. That means researchers can now identify the DNA that’s deposited from someone touching an object or a person. It also means that mixed DNA samples (samples that include more than one person’s DNA) can be disentangled. “For example, a perpetrator enters a bank, picks up the pen where you fill out your deposit slips, writes a note and gives it to the teller,” says Marciano. “We know the perpetrator picked up the pen, but how many other people did? Their DNA might be on it too.” Now, it’s much easier to isolate the perpetrator’s genetic material. The second major development has to do with how results are analyzed. Software and computing power have improved sufficiently that we can create better models and more accurate statistics that help analysts interpret the samples they’ve collected. But still, to get a match, researchers must be able to link a sample to a DNA profile. “Forensics is about comparisons,” says Marciano. “If I have a fingerprint or DNA profile but nothing to compare it to, I can’t determine whose it is.” This is where databases of DNA profiles come in. Sometimes, those profiles are derived from court-mandated samples or samples collected from crime scenes or missing persons cases. Dean Hildebrand runs a forensics lab at B.C. Institute of Technology in Canada, and for decades he has done work for the government coroner service, running DNA samples that primarily come from missing persons or their families. Some are from remains found at scenes. Other times, he runs samples from the belongings of a missing person—a blanket the person couldn’t sleep without, or a pair of broken glasses left behind. CONSUMERS ARE BUYING THE PROMISE TO UNCOVER THEIR HERITAGE AND MAKE CONNECTIONS.
104 september 2023 Reader’s Digest “We have an avalanche of those samples coming through all the time,” says Hildebrand. Many are attached to longcold cases. More than a decade ago, Hildebrand helped develop a missing persons database so law enforcement officials can log unidentified remains and the samples from missing persons. But lately, DNA searching has had little to do with foul play. Companies such as Ancestry.com, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage have sold consumers on the idea of uncovering their heritage and making connections. It’s DNA analysis as a party game for the whole family. And it’s very popular. By the start of 2019, according to MIT Technology Review, more than 26 million people had sent their DNA to one of four commercial ancestry and health databases. These products and their analysis are the result of technological advancement; 20 years ago, it wouldn’t have been possible for you and your family to spit in tubes, put them in the mail, then receive a report on your lineage. But they also reflect a growing social phenomenon: a fascination with drawing connections and insights into the self through the use of genetic material. “When you have a lot of good quality DNA, you can capture a lot of information about an individual,” says Nicole Novroski, assistant professor in the department of anthropology at the University of Toronto. She says that the databases of private ancestry or genealogy kit companies really grew, and then came the option to put your DNA sample on public databases allowing people to make additional connections. GEDmatch is one such public database. It allows users to compare samples across a broader spectrum than a single site, looking for matches with overlapping genetic material. The bigger the overlap, the more likely the match is a close relative such as a parent, child, grandparent or first cousin. “Sometimes, it’s a dead end,” says Novroski. “But the more people in the database, the more potential there is to make a connection, even if it’s a far-out one. Then it’s the genealogists’ and the investigators’ job to kind of rebuild all that missing information for these big family trees or kinship determinations.” Novroski says that the work of armchair detectives, uploading samples and combing through DNA matches, can yield a mixed bag of implications. “It’s doing a lot of good by solving cold cases,” she says. “But some people don’t like the information they find, especially when there’s been infidelity and things of that nature that were previously not known or discussed.” TWENTY YEARS AGO, WE COULDN’T SIMPLY SPIT IN A TUBE AND GET A REPORT ON OUR LINEAGE.
readersdigest.in 105 Cover Story The number of public and private databases for genetic identification is growing. In China, authorities keep a database that includes the DNA of parents of missing children, and of any children found by police. The system was thrust into the spotlight in 2021 when a family was reunited with their kidnapped son after 24 years—a case that also drew attention to the devastation of living with the uncertainty of a loved one’s disappearance. Before the family was reunited, the son’s father, Guo Gangtang, spent years criss-crossing the massive country in his determination to find his son, Guo Xinzhen, often sleeping outdoors and travelling by motorbike with flyers and a flag displaying his son’s image. Without the help of DNA, he likely would never have found his son. According to Chinese media, thousands of missing children have been found thanks to the database. The desire to connect with family members, missing or not yet discovered, has given rise to another phenomenon: Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG). IGG takes all the newly public DNA information being uploaded to genealogy websites and combines it with other sources of public and private data— such as Facebook profiles, marriage records and even worn paper copies of family trees—to infer relationships and build out networks of people. It’s as much a social phenomenon as a technological one, and a wave of IGG investigators are now working in tandem with families and law enforcement to find missing persons and solve longstanding mysteries. One famous recent example is when an IGG investigator, a retired attorney with a PhD in biology named Barbara Rae-Venter, helped police track down California’s ‘Golden State Killer’, who had eluded authorities for decades, by combing through DNA of the killer’s distant relatives. But IGGs are also being consulted to help families find long-lost relatives. In March 2022, Christa Hastie of California decided to help her mother, Vera, age 80, solve a family mystery: What had happened to Vera’s sister, Rosemarie, when she vanished from the streets of Montreal one winter day in 1954 at the age of 14? Over six months, Vera and Christa dedicated themselves to searching for any and all information Guo Xinzhen was reunited with his family 24 years after he was abducted at age 2. china daily via reuters
106 september 2023 Reader’s Digest related to Rosemarie’s disappearance. Christa already had a DNA profile on Ancestry, and now she added profiles to other major sites. She also got an investigative genealogist to help her zero in on the maternal matches. They found a DNA match close enough to be Rosemarie’s grandchild, but when Christa reached out to the person, they claimed not to know Rosemarie. Since Vera had been born in Germany, she and Christa enlisted the help of a genealogist with experience in DNA testing in that country. Carolin Becker put Vera’s grandmother’s surname into a database she had constructed, and her software found nine generations of ancestors. “A whopping 34 pages of tiny text,” says Christa. Becker cross-referenced the data with matches from DNA sites, ruling out anyone who wasn’t both a maternal and paternal match to Vera. And she helped Christa and Vera reach out to long-lost relatives, adding their DNA to the family tree and bolstering the search. Ultimately, more than 900 people fleshed out that family tree, dating to the 17th century. Using DNA Painter, a website with geneology research tools, Christa was able to re-confirm the specific match: Rosemarie’s granddaughter, who had been identified before. Christa reached out again, this time Vera (left, at age 11) with her sister, Rosemarie (at 13). courtesy of christa hastie
readersdigest.in 107 Cover Story with proof, and Christa and Vera connected with Rosemarie’s whole family. The truth was astonishing: Rosemarie had died years earlier, but her life hadn’t ended when she disappeared all those decades ago; she went on to have children and grandchildren. So while there would be no reunion, no explanation for Rosemarie’s disappearance, knowing she had not been murdered was a huge comfort to Vera. There was another upside to their search: Because the IGG helped them map out a comprehensive family tree, they were united with or introduced to relatives they now keep in touch with. Christa and Vera emerged from this exercise with an expanded sense of family. That’s exactly the promise of commercial DNA sites. And it’s easy to imagine any number of positive outcomes. We now have the capability to reunite lost family members separated by war or other circumstances. We can pinpoint the ancestral homes of adoptees or others whose biological connections have been severed. But now imagine a less rosy scenario: A family tries DNA kits as a fun activity, swabbing the inside of their cheeks while standing around the dinner table, and then eagerly awaits the results—only to have those kits show, unexpectedly, that one of the kids is not a biological match. “The more information we’re collecting from our DNA, the more we open this Pandora’s box of ethical considerations,” says Hildebrand. “Because there can be big surprises awaiting—some of them really great, and some shocking.” The privacy implications can also be astounding. At least one consumer site (GEDmatch) now has an opt-in clause allowing what you upload to be searched by law enforcement and the public. Since DNA is shared between biological family members, if a relative uploads theirs to one of these sites, they are potentially implicating you, because their DNA is linked to yours. So anyone who wants to, say, anonymously donate sperm or give up a baby for adoption could one day be identified—even if they never provide their own DNA sample. “I think it’s a very powerful thing,” says Hildebrand, adding that if only around 10 per cent of people add their DNA samples into one of these public or private databases, we would be able to identify every human on earth. And that comes with benefits and drawbacks. “As people get more into this, we’ll be closer to the point where you pretty much can’t hide,” he says. “It’ll be possible to link every family in the world.” For the Highsmith family, who were happily reunited in Texas after decades apart, DNA was the link. “Our finding Melissa was purely because of DNA, not because of any police/FBI involvement, podcast involvement, or even our family’s own private investigations or speculations,” notes one Facebook update. “DNA WINS THIS SEARCH!”
The Upsideof Anxiety HEALTH How to worry well By Patricia Pearson i am an anxious traveller. I arrive at airports and train stations extra early. I triple-check all of my documents, feel a tightness in my jaw and a slight clench in my stomach until I’ve arrived where I’m going. Non-anxious people tease me for being a ‘nervous nelly’. I used to feel bad about it, seeing it as irrational, weak. Not anymore. I could write a book on this subject— actually, I did: A Brief History of Anxiety (Yours and Mine). I’ve learnt to respect my tendency to be hypervigilant. Recently, I was driving along a rural road at the start of a long trip that would mainly be on a large highway. I began feeling that something could go 108 september 2023 illustrations by Taryn Gee
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110 september 2023 Reader’s Digest wrong. What if I run out of gas? I worried, even though I still had plenty. So when I spied a gas station just before the on-ramp I was going to take onto the highway, I gave in to my angst and decided to fill up. Just in case. And that’s when I discovered that one of my front tires was badly deflated. If I’d overpowered my unease, talked down my anxiety, the tire would have blown at speed on the highway. My urge to plan ahead even though it wasn’t strictly necessary saved me from a potentially catastrophic scenario. a growing number of psychologists and neuroscientists are getting the message out that anxiety and other negative feelings have a role to play in our lives. Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, who recently published Future Tense: Why Anxiety Is Good for You (Even Though It Feels Bad), thinks our culture goes overboard in demonizing difficult emotions. She knows what it’s like to get swamped by anxiety. “I remember a period at work when there was a lot going on,” says the professor of psychology and neuroscience at the City University of New York’s Hunter College. Worries kept waking her up at 4 a.m. “It was like a yucky cloud of free-floating anxiety,” she says, and it kept her from falling back to much-needed sleep. Instead of trying to suppress this disconcerting feeling, however, DennisTiwary leaned into it. “If you sit with the anxiety, you have an opportunity to glean information,” she says. “For me, this one important ball I’d dropped at work finally rose to the surface of my mind. When I recognized this niggling thing, and gave it space, I learnt from it. I wrote down two or three things I could do to address it.” The next morning, she felt calmer. Psychologist Todd Kashdan, director of the Well-Being Lab at George Mason University in Virginia and co-author of The Upside of Your Dark Side, is a critic of what he calls “gung-ho happy-ology.” We don’t always have to be smiley and serene, or worry that there’s something wrong with us. Sometimes, he says, it’s right to worry. Fear heights? Good, because you won’t be the person who falls off a cliff while taking a selfie. These experts wonder if the natural role that anxiety plays in our lives is being forgotten. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced in March 2022 that the prevalence of anxiety and depression had increased globally by 25 per cent over the year before (which was the earlier part of the pandemic). It called the finding “a wake-up call to all WE CAN EXPERIENCE PERIODS OF DISTRESS WITHOUT BEING CATEGORIZED AS MENTALLY ILL.
readersdigest.in 111 Health countries to step up mental health services and support.” Do we know for certain this data represents a publichealth crisis? Or could it mean that millions of folks are quite rightly feeling uncertain, stressed out and afraid? The difference is important. For example, the US Department of Health and Human Services now recommends that family doctors do routine screenings for anxiety. It’s a positive development in that it recognizes the impact that anxiety disorders can have on those at risk. But what if initiatives like this funnel some of us into unnecessary treatments and medications? Could it make us lose sight of the benefits of our doubts and ‘what ifs’? We can experience healthy, often completely valid, periods of distress without being categorized as mentally ill, according to behavioural psychologists. Anxiety is an adaptive strategy in human evolution. It helps us to prepare for the uncertain future, “to remain vigilant,” DennisTiwary says. Anxiety prompts us to resolve projected unknowns by planning and imagining, by plotting out possible scenarios. “From an evolutionary point of view, anxiety is the best emotion to help us manage uncertainty because it forces us to run those ‘what-if’ simulations,” she says. “That’s what it’s good for.” Likewise, neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki of New York University (NYU) points out in her book Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion that “if we simply approach anxiety as something to avoid, get rid of or dampen, we not only don’t solve the problem it’s alerting us to, but actually miss an opportunity to leverage the generative power of anxiety.” By generative, she means that it can prompt us to move out of a situation that’s no longer working, to find the energy we need to get unstuck. When we’re in an anxious state, the amount of dopamine in our brains increases, which prompts us to take action. In evolutionary terms, millions of years ago that might have meant looking for shelter to evade predatory animals. Today, it might mean leaving
112 september 2023 Reader’s Digest s Digest a job because of a predatory boss. By not facing our anxiety, we lose its benefits and can make things worse. Case in point for me: hiding unopened envelopes from the tax department in a drawer—even if they could be just the routine updates that self-employed people like me receive—until I’ve turned it into a full-blown phobia. Says Alice Boyes, who has a PhD in clinical psychology and wrote The Anxiety Toolkit, coping with unpleasant feelings by avoiding them just reinforces your insecurity, because you’re not getting better at solving the problem: “Over time, you will feel less and less competent.” the key is to manage unease before it overtakes us, like tending a garden so the weeds don’t spread. But how? According to NYU’s Suzuki, solutions include meditation, exercise, compassionate connection such as volunteering, access to nature and mentally reframing what we’re experiencing. For example, in her book Suzuki writes about a start-up entrepreneur who was beginning to feel daunted by everything that could go wrong in his high-stakes venture. This generated all kinds of “what if?” anxiety that kept him sleepless. He was, in psychological parlance, catastrophizing. After talking to a mentor, he found a new tool: a ‘reframe’. He turned ‘what ifs?’ into a goaldirected to-do list: “If this were to happen, then what could I do? Well, I could do X.” Dennis-Tiwary agrees that reframing is crucial. She points to a 2013 Harvard study in which socially anxious people were asked to speak in public. The researchers told some of them that having sweaty palms and a dry mouth or shaky knees was a good sign, a “positive coping tool” that optimizes the body for performance. The nervous speakers who heard this message had lower blood pressure and a slower heart rate. In other words, they shifted to that sweet spot where
readersdigest.in 113 Health they were ready for the challenge, but not distracted and alarmed by their own nervousness. That’s a pretty remarkable discovery. What it says is that we can reframe our fears so that they help us. Several years ago, I was the last in a long queue of speakers at a TEDx event. The theatre was over-airconditioned. I sat there shivering and growing tense, worrying that I would forget my speech about a book I’d recently written about death and dying. The longer this mind-body feedback loop of physical tension and mental anxiety went on, the worse it got, until my legs felt so rubbery that I feared I would fall off the stage. It’s a miracle I made it through my talk. Knowing what I do now, I would have paced and stretched in the hallway to keep my body warmed up and my breathing calm while I waited, not unlike an athlete before an event. I still would have been nervous, but I would have been taking steps to manage it. “One of the key problems is that our perceptions about anxiety stop us from believing we can manage it,” says Dennis-Tiwary. She argues that anxiety isn’t the problem. “It is the messenger that tells us we’re facing uncertainty and need to rise to the challenge. Or it’s pointing us to ways that our life needs to change, or that we need support.” We can manage anxiety by “worrying well,” in Suzuki’s words. This includes meditation. It has been shown to calm the amygdala, the gland in our brain responsible for sending out alarm signals related to fear and anxiety. Exercise helps, too. Suzuki experimented with some of her students and found that even just a 10-minute workout helped them feel less anxious before an exam. So, hit the gym, enjoy the dance floor or go for a hike. Just spending time in natural light and in green spaces, what the Japanese call ‘forest bathing’, can restore our sense of psychological balance. After all, we evolved in companionship with nature. Because humour increases oxytocin, a hormone that enhances social bonding and relatedness, I sometimes listen to stand-up comedy to calm down. Social connection, touch and a grounding perspective on others’ suffering can also soothe us, which is why volunteer and community involvement helps. These are all well-founded techniques that can keep us from spiralling. The trick, as Dennis-Tiwary says, is to listen to anxiety, then leverage it to make changes—just like I did that day I set off on my road trip. “Then,” she advises, “let it go. It’s a wave that you need to learn to ride.” SPENDING TIME IN GREEN SPACES CAN HELP RESTORE PSYCHOLOGICAL BALANCE.
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Having met nearly one-fifth of all the warmblooded species on earth, a wildlife conservationist looks back on six of his most memorable encounters MY STORY Around the Mammals 1,000 World in By Vivek Menon readersdigest.in 115 A sea otter swims belly-up while eating a mollusc in California, USA.
116 september 2023 Unlike birdwatching, w h i c h ha s b e c o m e fashionable and almost ubiquitous, mammal-watching is yet to achieve large-scale popularity. Most countries have their twitchers, tickers, photographers and voyeurs of the avian world. Mammalwatching, on the other hand, usually means going on safari and there are not too many people who travel with the intention of seeing all the world’s mammals. I am one of the lucky few to have met some of the most fascinating fauna inhabiting our planet, on and off, for over 35 years. Not that I was trying to hit a particular tally, but looking back, I’ve been fortunate enough to have encountered 1,000 mammal species and 3,500 species of birds. That’s nearly a fifth of all the mammals and almost a third of all the birds that exist! Given those numbers, and the fact that I am the author of Indian Mammals—the field guide first published nearly a decade ago, which is now out in a brand-new edition—I’ve often been asked what my favourite mammal is. But that’s like asking a parent to name their favourite child. Instead, for you, my reader, I’ll pick six experiences I’ve had on six different continents of our amazing planet. In my homeland of Asia nothing can compete with the Asian elephant, that gentle behemoth that I have worked to conserve for so many years. Watching a herd of elephants shredding a bamboo grove with great relish on the shores of the Kabini reservoir in Nagerhole, Karnataka can be a lifealtering experience. And the calves are delightful on quite another level. I remember a youngster who was rescued from a tea garden through which his family was traversing to reach the hills of Karbi Anglong. The little fellow had fallen into a ditch that had been dug to irrigate the shrubs. The herd must have tried rescuing him for several hours before moving on; its mother and relatives must have undergone terrible trauma. We brought the ‘orphan’ in, treated it for external wounds, de-stressed it with a sedative and then took him back in our ambulance to where our trackers had found the wild herd. Whether the infant, after being handled by humans, would be taken back into the fold was the big question. To boost his chances, the team attempted a never-tried-before tactic. They smeared elephant dung from the same family on the youngster, so that our human smells would not scare them off, before letting him down onto the forest floor. His frantic screams found an instant response: mighty rumbles could be heard from the matriarch and excited elephantine cheers from the rest of the family. Within moments the herd had encircled the vehicle, welcoming the lost calf back with reassuring trunk taps and strokes all over its body. One Reader’s Digest
PHOTO: (THIS AND PREVIOUS SPREAD) VIVEK MENON readersdigest.in 117 wonders if any other experience can rival the joy and relief of an elephant family reunited. In Africa, I would choose the mountain gorilla in Rwanda and Uganda. In 2008, I spent an hour with a group of these majestic apes and although we were told never to touch one, there was no stopping the gorillas. A young adolescent bounded up to me, pawed me lightly on the chest and then sunk to the ground, chin upon hand, contemplating this mysterious taxon he had just seen. I took a few quick photos, placed my camera on the ground and sank to a mimic pose. We sat there under the whirling mists of the Virunga, gazing at each other—close relatives of another kind, ruminating together. I thought of evolution, human progress and the inordinately gargantuan impact that the human footprint had on all life on earth, including this thoughtful mountain gorilla. In Europe, I would vote for the vast migrating herds of caribou that plough through the snow across the northern tundra with bands of nomadic Inuits in their wake. In Svalbard, the northern Arctic island off Norway that has been kept aside for research and conservation by the world community, I watched wild caribou grazing on the dwarf arctic flora proliferating along its slopes, which would all but disappear with the advent of fall. The massive ungulates were bent on their bellies, some An adolescent mountain gorilla takes a moment off its life to contemplate the author in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda.
PHOTO: VIVEK MENON 118 september 2023 down on their knees, blissfully gorging on the momentary manna. Their domesticated cousins, the reindeer, are probably the most familiar cervid among children, thanks to Santa Claus. I wondered how many youngsters even knew of the sparse and ice-laden northern climes that the caribou wandered. Down Under, I have seen a platypus, that conundrum of a creature, swimming happily in a waterbody. Neither mammal nor bird, it lays eggs but also suckles its young; it has a bill but fur instead of feathers—what a curiosity! I have also seen kangaroos of several species, as well as the rat-like quokka. However, nothing beats the time my wife and I encountered koalas in Kangaroo Island. What an enigmatic teddy-bear lookalike is this amazing marsupial. One of them slowly, in an almost comical, wobbly, clockwork fashion, wound its way down a eucalyptus tree, on which they spend much of their lives asleep, as we watched in astonishment. It came rather close to our heads, posed for a few photographs and then stuffed one large eucalyptus leaf slowly into its mouth and began to chew. When forest fires ravaged Kangaroo Island and its koala population plunged to critical levels, we prayed that our friendly individual had survived the flames and that its serene habitat would soon be restored to support its kith and kin. Sea otters would be my pick for the North American continent. I have seen bison and moose, a puma Caribou are large temperate zone deer that migrate long distances in the tundra to keep pace with changing climate and food sources. These deer were foraging in Svaalbad near the Arctic circle in Norway.
PHOTO: ASTER ZHANG LI readersdigest.in 119 wandering just outside a large city in California, and wolves roaming in Yellowstone. However, watching a pod of otters swimming around clutching at crayfish, as we would a T-bone steak, and chewing meditatively as they lolled in the ocean was almost a spiritual experience. Otters are friendly and inquisitive and come up to the boat if you are in their vicinity, watching you with their large liquid eyes while going about their lives. I have seen them in Alaska and I have seen them in California. I have seen them play with molluscs before eating them and just as often with human debris that we scatter so carelessly in the sea—once, it was a scuba diver’s mask that the otter seemed to be contemplating putting on! In Latin America, my most memorable encounter was with a lowland tapir, a rhino-sized beast with a wiggly nose that I helped radio collar in the Pantanal. I was the photographer nominated to capture it waking up from the sedative we had administered. And wake up it did, rather suddenly and anxiously, as it tested what we had put on its neck by shaking itself a few times and stamping its foot in anger, sending a cloud of dust into my face. The next thing I knew, he was charging towards me. I cowered behind a small excuse of a tree as it bore down, slapped me heavily on my left shoulder and ran into the overgrowth. For my excruciating bravery or silliness, the team named the animal after me, creating a terribly confused Brazilian tapir with an Indian name. That rounds up the six continents that I have been to and the amazing mammals that I have had the privilege of seeing up close. I have not been to Antarctica yet, so the seals will just have to wait for now! vivek menon is an award-winning wildlife conservationist and the founder of five environmental and nature conservation organizations. he spearheads the wildlife trust of india as its founder and executive director since 1998 and is the author of 10 wildlife books including the bestselling indian mammals: a field guide. The author at Xishuangbanna Reserve in Yunnan, China My Story
120 september 2023 DRAMA IN REAL LIFE The Deadly Swamp By Derek Burnett illustrations by Mark Smith Losing his arm to an alligator was just the start of a hiker’s three-day ordeal
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122 september 2023 Reader’s Digest The stars burn brilliant over Lake Manatee as the man backstrokes through the dark water. He’s exhausted and frustrated by his lack of progress, but he believes he can swim all night if he must. Then a bristling intuition creeps upon him and he sits up in the water and peers to his left. Just two feet away lurks the unmistakable shape of an alligator’s snout, the slitted eye yellowy in the starlight. The man whirls onto his stomach and flings out his hands to swim, but the gator strikes, seizing his right forearm in its teeth. The predator twists its powerful body, snapping the man’s arm back at the elbow. For a moment the man’s world goes black, as if lightning has struck inside his head. Then, still firmly holding its prey, the reptile dives, looking to drown its victim in the silent midnight depths of the lake. the way eric merda saw it, the past two weeks had been one long, crazy battle with God. The 43-year-old father of seven had always had his struggles—addiction, street fights, run-ins with the law—but things had recently become clear. For one thing, he’d come to accept that his relationship with the mother of five of his children was over. For another, he’d begun to realize he was running with a dangerous crowd. Intelligent, creative and spiritual, a self-described weirdo, Merda knew he’d been on the wrong track. God was telling him to clean up his act and live up to his gifts. So he’d been on a sort of ascetic quest. By day, he’d toil beneath the Florida sun in and around his home base of Bradenton, installing and repairing sprinkler systems as he’d done for 25 years. By evening, he’d wander and explore. For the first time, he had no woman or children to come home to. He spent much of his surplus time on Siesta Key Beach, where he gave himself daring challenges: How far out into the ocean can I go at night? How long can I float face-up with my head tipped back so far that my eyes stay in the saltwater? For a while now, there had been a thin line between embracing life and courting death. Which was it going to be? Sometimes he slept unsheltered on the sand of Siesta Key. One morning he awoke to see litter scattered along the beach, and felt God telling him that he ought to clean it up. He began collecting trash. It felt good, so he made a habit of picking up litter wherever he saw it, not just on the beach. It became a kind of compulsion. On Monday, 18 July 2022, he had a job up in the rural portions of Manatee County. He was finished by late afternoon. Time to explore. Near an intersection of two country byways, he spotted a dirt road with a sign that read Lake Manatee Fish Camp. He
readersdigest.in 123 Drama in Real Life nosed his old white work van down into the area, past a little country store and some folks pitching horseshoes, and followed the road. It ended at a boat ramp onto Lake Manatee, a man-made reservoir covering about 10 square kilometers, ringed by wild swampland. Trash lay strewn along the roadside. Merda jumped out of his van, leaving his phone and keys inside, and started collecting the garbage into piles. After a while, a thought occurred to him—I’ve been working all day. Nobody’s forcing me to pick up trash. I’m going to see what’s in these woods. With the abandon of a schoolboy, he ran off into the trees. Before long, he encountered a seemingly impenetrable thicket of brush, thorns and vines. Seemingly impenetrable: a nice challenge. He charged into it and did battle for many long minutes. It was exhausting, but he pushed on. When at last he emerged into a grove of scrawny orange trees, he was sweaty, cut up, and tired. He had no idea where he was in relation to the lake. He’d been pushing through the thicket for hours, and now all he wanted was to get back to his van and go home. He spent another couple of hours wandering among the orange trees, which were laid out in an endless grid. No sign of civilization. The lake and
124 september 2023 Reader’s Digest THE ALLIGATOR SANK ITS TEETH INTO HIS ARM AND DRAGGED HIM UNDERWATER. his van certainly weren’t out here in an orange grove, so he reentered the woods and soon found himself mucking around in swamp water. There seemed no way out of this bog. He laboured for hours as the sun sank. Tall, thick grasses and thorns clogged his way; mud and water filled his boots. His feet hurt so badly that he took his boots off and carried them— but the twigs and brambles lacerated his soles, so he stopped and pulled the boots back on. He tried to navigate by the sun but kept losing it. Each time he picked out a landmark or chose a beeline course, he became hopelessly lost again after just a few minutes. Darkness was falling when at last he reemerged onto the shore of the lake. There across the water stood the boat launch, now empty, and a little highway bridge, just about 400 metres away as the crow flies—or as the duck swims. He was beaten, sore and thirsty. Reenter the swamp? Out of the question. Who knew where he’d end up? He’d have to swim for it across the lake. The water was surprisingly cold, especially as it deepened. He started out paddling strongly for the opposite bank, drinking lake water to quench his awful thirst. After a few minutes he realized he’d never make it with his clothes on. He shed every stitch, letting his work duds sink to the bottom of the dark lake. He swam on, but some strange current prevented his progress. He was a good swimmer, yet he somehow kept diverging from his goal. He’d point himself at the boat launch, swim a few strokes, lift his head and find that he was way off course. It was maddening, but he refused to surrender to emotion. In a fistfight, the guy who comes into it panicking, with no self-control, he’s the one who gets whooped. The sun disappeared and the stars came out, and still he struggled, alternating between a backstroke and a crawl. And that’s when he saw the alligator. Before he could swim a stroke, before he could save himself, before he could let out a scream, the creature struck like a snake. It sank its teeth into Merda’s forearm, breaking it at the elbow and dragged him underwater. Merda went into fight mode. He flung his other arm around the gator’s middle, clutching at its heaving belly as he kicked his feet to keep from going to the bottom. Man and beast resurfaced and Merda gulped air—but just as quickly the gator yanked him under again. The third time, the alligator did what alligators do: It barrelrolled its entire body in a vicious coup de grâce, and Merda felt the flesh of his arm tearing away as the limb was
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126 september 2023 Reader’s Digest HUNGRY, THIRSTY AND IN AGONY, HE STRETCHED OUT AND SLEPT. severed. The creature disappeared into the darkness, carrying Merda’s forearm with it. No pain yet, only terror. His one thought was to get out of the water. He swam furiously, paddling with the stump, and came to rest at the lake’s edge not far from where he had entered. He paused for a time, heaving, in the partially submerged grasses. Nearby stood an enormous tree on drier ground. He dragged himself over to it and stood screaming for help across the desolate lake. Then he realized, I’m the only one who can get myself out of this. Just like I’m the only one who can fix every other part of my life. He posted up next to the trunk of the tree and waited for dawn. W h e n t h e p a i n a r r i v e d , i t was exquisite. in the morning, he spotted two airplanes. Each time, he climbed up the tree and waved and hollered, which did him no good. He was stark naked in the wilderness, bereft of his right forearm and with nothing to use for a signal. Again, he started pushing through the tall grasses and immediately became lost anew, wandering in circles. He decided the best course was to reenter the water and wade the lake’s edge, following its 400 metre curve until it reached the boat launch. But that proved nearly impossible too. Submerged logs, tallgrasses, saw grasses, overhanging brush and sudden drop-offs stymied his progress. He howled in pain when he blundered into a stick that poked into the exposed muscle of his right arm. Chest-deep in the murky water, he looked behind him, and there, 100 feet away, stared the bumpy eyes of the alligator—or anyway an alligator—silently following him. He moved to shallower water and the gator eyes sank beneath the surface. All through the long day, as he struggled along, the creature dogged him. Maddeningly, thanks to the meandering shoreline, the boat launch appeared farther away than ever. As night fell, he happened upon a concrete structure at the lake’s edge, no doubt part of the reservoir system. Hungry, thirsty and in agony, he haltingly climbed onto it, stretched out and slept. He awoke in darkness with the horrifying awareness that he was only a couple of feet above the swamp water with his left arm dangling off the structure like a second proffered morsel. That was enough. He wanted out of the swamp. He wanted dry land. Up till then, Merda had been ambivalent about life and death. Now he
readersdigest.in 127 Drama in Real Life could hear God telling him, “All right. After this, I don’t want to hear any more. If you choose to die, you choose to die. If you choose to live, then good luck to you, because it’s not going to be easy.” He’d always figured his concept of God would get him kicked out of most churches: By his philosophy, since we’re all made in God’s image, God is part of each of us, and each of us is part of God. Thus, to have faith in God is to have faith in oneself, and to quarrel with God is to quarrel with oneself. And he was done quarrelling with himself. I n t h e d a r k , h e blundered his way through an eternity of 10-foot-tall grasses whose roots lay beneath knee-deep water. Disoriented again. The sun dawned on a new day, his third out here, and before long the Florida heat set the swampland to broiling. Green horsef l i e s s w a r m e d h i s injury where the naked muscle twitched and the bare bone gleamed. The land was so soggy that even when he wasn’t standing in water, he could scoop at the earth with his good hand and a little puddle of filthy drinking water would fill the depression he’d made. He nibbled at some tiny purple flowers growing throughout the swamplands. He began to fade, utterly spent and bloodied. But he’d made his decision. He’d chosen life, even if it meant the pain and frustration of endless struggle. Whenever his fatigue overwhelmed him, he pushed over the tall grasses to make a mat on which to sleep. His quest was dry land, and at last he found it—only to discover it overwhelmingly choked with thorny
128 september 2023 Reader’s Digest vines. It was either the swamp or this endless wall of thorns—no getting around it, over it or under it. He must push through. It’s just a little pain, he told himself. You aren’t even going to remember it once it’s gone. So he dragged himself into the bramble, crab-walking at times, getting sliced and punctured, pausing periodically to psych himself up for more pain. in late afternoon, he came across a brown quart beer bottle lying in the mud like a signal from civilization. He knew now that he was saved. How far can somebody throw a beer bottle—40 feet? That meant just 40 feet to the road. You can go another 40 feet. He did, and when he exited the thorns he found that he was staggering alongside the road near the turnaround spot for the boat launch. On the other side of a wire fence, a man stood beside a red car. “Hey! Hey!” Merda yelled. The man goggled at the stranger, naked save for the blood and mud that covered his body. “What are you doing back there?” he said. “A gator got me!” Merda answered,
readersdigest.in 129 Drama in Real Life waving his stump. “You got any water?” “Holy … ! I don’t have any water, but I’ll get you some, for sure.” The fence was the final obstacle between him and civilization. Merda had had enough. He lay down in the weeds on the swamp side of the divider and waited for the EMTs, who would cut the fence wire and carry him over to the helicopter that would whisk him away to the rest of his life. merda spent nearly three weeks in a Sarasota hospital. His wound had become infected in the swamp, so surgeons removed considerably more than the alligator had taken, leaving him with only about six inches of arm past the shoulder. It’s incredible that he didn’t bleed to death—but, by some miracle, he says, the wound barely bled. He ate like a machine in the hospital, and sent a buddy out for one entree not on the kitchen’s menu: gator bites. On his release, he tried to return to work. “I can still dig a hole,” he says. “But it’s with one hand, very slowly.” It wasn’t practical to take up his old trade. So now he’s casting about for some way to make a living while sharing the things he’s learnt. Consult? Teach? Write a children’s book? Take up public speaking? Try to become a comedian? He says he wants to inspire people to think: If a skinny little dude from Sarasota, Florida, can fight a gator and walk out of the swamp, why am I afraid to open my own business, go to college or get a contractor’s licence? The road ahead won’t be easy. But then again, that was part of the deal with God. Sometimes he feels at a loss, as if his dreams sound too ambitious, too ridiculous. But, Merda says with the wisdom of a man who has done battle with the divine, “It sounded pretty ridiculous that I was going to make it out of that swamp alive too.” A Real Head-Scratcher Scientists recently discovered the oldest written sentence in the world’s first alphabet—and it describes an issue that still plagues us today. The message, carved into a tiny ivory comb, reads, “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.” smithsonian magazine
130 september 2023 Photographs by Dale May By Gary Rudoren from MCSWEENEYS.NET DEPARTMENT OF WIT My Catalog of Dad Jokes I still remember the first time I told my then-six-year-old son, Lev, that a clam makes calls with its ‘shell phone’. The laugh of recognition when he first got the joke was a moment I won’t ever forget. When I told it a second time in front of his friends Henry and Amir, I could see how proud he was that I had made his friends laugh. Excuse the bragging, but I was the cool dad. Once your kid stops laughing a id stops laughing at “Why didn’t Han Solo enjoy his “Wh steak dinner? It was Chewie!” it’s time to move on
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132 september 2023 By Lev’s ninth birthday party, things had begun to change. After the seventh or eighth time I asked him “What do you call someone with no body and no nose?” he dismissively rolled his eyes. “I get it, Dad ...” “... Nobody knows!” “Stop it, Dad!” I immediately shifted gears into food puns, reminding him and his friends that melons have weddings because they ‘cantaloupe’, but I got nothing except head shakes and averted eyes. I’m pretty sure I heard him say “Sorry about my dad” to his friends as they all ran off to play on their phones together. I used to be the life of every kids party. When I was only an uncle, all the toddlers loved my ‘got your nose’ bit. I was the one who always had a knockknock joke at the ready. (“‘Knock, knock.’ ‘Who’s there?’ ‘Nobel.’ ‘Nobel who?’ ‘Nobel, so I knock-knocked.’”) reader’s digest
readersdigest.in 133 Other parents loved that I could show up at any event and distract their kids with age-appropriate, groan-worthy wordplay, such as the ever-popular “Did you hear about the guy who froze to death at the drive-in? He went to see Closed for the Winter.” Sure, there were other dads with their bits, but I felt as if no one ever stole my crown. My wife long ago tuned me out, but she knew that my never-ending quest for laughter from kids, no matter how unashamedly, was in my blood. I believe as the kids got older, they took their cues to be embarrassed by me from their mom’s head-shaking disdain. We’re working through the issue. I tell you all this because after a lot of soul-searching, I believe it’s time. My kids aren’t grown and out of the house, but I’ve come to realize that I’ll never be able to compete with my past success. I need our relationship to grow. I need to be able to talk to my children about topics other than how a witch’s car goes ‘broom, broom’. Thus, I’m offering my entire catalogue of jokes for sale on the open market. Puns, threatening tickling bits, knock-knock jokes, goofy faces, fart noises not from my butt, double takes and even borderline inappropriate spit-take lines. I’m done with them all, and it feels like the right time to sell my legacy to some deserving new dad. The catalogue includes my most The g famous work—including my killer aside at my days-old nephew’s bris, “After my bris, I couldn’t walk for like a year!” and my faux indignant kindergarten graduation routine, “Well, now he better get himself a job!” I could go on. As with all great works of art, my collection is priceless. But I can tell you that the first time you get your toddler to laugh at the line “I don’t trust stairs. They’re always up to something,” you’ll feel it’s worth any price tag. from MCSWEENEYS.NET. WHY I’M SELLING MY CATALOG OF DAD JOKES by gary rudoren © 2021. Department of Wit robynmac/getty images (3) And for My Next Act ... Did the person who invented the phrase “one-hit wonder” invent any other popular phrases? @honeycuttart PUNS, KNOCK-KNOCK JOKES, GOOFY FACES, DOUBLE TAKES ... I’M DONE WITH THEM ALL.
THE BEAT 134 september 2023 Meet the music custodians working to save recordings from destruction— or oblivion CULTURE By Simon Button
GOES ON ILLUSTRATION BY EVA BEE readersdigest.in 135 Reader’s Digest
136 september 2023 Reader’s Digest “IF ANYONE CAN SALVAGE A BATTERED OLD TAPE, IT’S OUR ENGINEERS. ” D eep in the vaults of the British Library lies a veritable treasure trove for lovers of popular music. Housed across two sites in London and Yorkshire are more than 3,50,000 CDs and 2,50,000 vinyl LPs, around a quarter of a million 78 RPM discs, and some 2,00,000 reel-to-reel and cassette tapes. All genres and eras are covered, from jazz to heavy metal, from the 1920s to the 2020s. Throw in an array of wax cylinders— the first commercially available medium for music—along with old issues of music magazines, books, newspaper clippings, catalogues and recorded interviews, and you have a vast collection that Andy Linehan, the library’s former Curator of Popular Music Collections, is understandably proud of. The Popular Music Collections team is not only preserving music but also honouring history. “One of the British Library’s functions is to be the cultural memory of the nation,” Linehan says. “We do that with books, journals and newspapers, and it’s absolutely right that we should also do it with music.” The collection relies on donations from record labels, distributors, artists and members of the public. As Linehan notes: “If you publish a book, newspaper, or magazine in the UK, you’re legally obliged to send a copy to the British Library. But that law does not apply to sound recordings.” Among the treasures are an 1890 recording of a fundraising appeal by pioneering nurse Florence Nightingale and a cassette tape that was sold at gigs in the 1980s by a British high-school band called On A Friday, whose members eventually formed Radiohead. There are also old blues 78s, rare LPs from the 1950s with covers designed by a pre-fame Andy Warhol, and promotional copies of Beatles’ singles that had only a couple of hundred pressings. Music fans can listen to much of the collection at the British Library’s Reading Rooms, and some selections have been posted online (sounds.bl.uk). To preserve the collection, the team works tirelessly digitizing music. “So long as it is stored correctly, most media remains stable, but certain types of tape can deteriorate faster than others,” Linehan explains. “But if anyone can salvage anything from a battered old tape, it’s our engineers. They have the know-how as well as the equipment to play back almost everything.” Private companies and specialist record labels are also doing their part to ensure music is safe-guarded ALL PHOTOS: @BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD
From top: Part of the British Library’s vast collection of records; Kelly Pribble preserves music at Iron Mountain Entertainment Services; Alan Wilson, Cliff Cooper, and Iain McNay lead Cherry Red Records’ musical “rescue and recovery.” readersdigest.in 137
138 september 2023 Reader’s Digest “IT’S ALL ABOUT LOOKING AFTER THE MATERIAL AND LETTING IT SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY. ” for generations to come. One of them is Iron Mountain Entertainment Services (IMES), which has branches in London, Paris, Belfast and several cities in the United States. It does digital transfer and preservation of music and other media. Kelly Pribble leads the company’s Media Recovery Technology Program. Projects he has worked on include a partnership with the Bob Dylan Archive to save more than 60 of the singer’s recordings that suffered from so-called adhesion syndrome. “With this problem the tape is in a state of decay or degradation and starts binding to itself,” Pribble explains. “If you don’t know this is happening, you can permanently damage the tape the moment you try to rewind or play it.” Having already developed a way to safely unbind affected tapes, he was able to apply the process to the Dylan tapes and archive the entire collection. Pribble also helped Mariah Carey with her 2020 album The Rarities, going through countless master tapes of unreleased songs from the last three decades. And IMES partnered with Prince’s estate to preserve and digitize all the unreleased music from the prolific artist’s vault. Over at Cherry Red Records in London, chairman Iain McNay describes the record label’s efforts to preserve and release music as “historical rescue and recovery.” “When we buy the tapes there is an initial process of discovery because we know roughly what we’re going to get, but there are all kinds of things that aren’t listed,” he says. “Then it’s about looking after all that material and letting it see the light of day. We’re music fans who are also custodians.” Musicians are often involved in the process. Mark King, of the British dance-rock group Level 42, recently helped promote a 10-CD boxset that included four of the band’s albums, singles remixes, B-sides and bonus tracks. And the sets are handled with great care. “We try and use experts in the field who are really engaged and want the releases to best reflect what a real fan would like,” McNay says. Mastering engineer Alan Wilson from British music label Western Star Records recently went through nearly 2,000 items from legendary English producer Joe Meek, which were acquired by Cherry Red. They included songs Meek worked on with Tom Jones and Ray Davies of The Kinks.
readersdigest.in 139 Culture The tapes, which date back more than 50 years, had been carefully stored, otherwise they might have deteriorated too much to be usable. But they were dirty and had mould on them, so they had to be painstakingly cleaned before they could be transferred from analogue tape to digital files. Selected tracks were then restored, remastered and released commercially. It was a mammoth task, but Wilson was thrilled with the assignment. “It’s a massive chunk of British rock-androll history and important in so many ways because Joe Meek was such an innovative engineer and producer. He beat the music industry at its own game on a shoestring budget in a flat above a leather-goods shop.” Another British company that curates and reissues carefully restored recordings is Demon Music Group. “I’m a big music fan and I’m disappointed when things are reissued and they don’t sound or look up to scratch,” says head of product and marketing Ben Stanley. “We’re all about creating premium, definitive versions.” Casual purchases of CDs may be on the decline, possibly because buyers have switched to streaming music services. “But then you have a person who wants to own a 33-CD Donna Summer boxset,” Stanley adds, referring to Encore, an epic collection from the ‘Queen of Disco’ that was released by the company’s Driven By The Music label and took more than three years to compile. “There are huge challenges in bringing these things to market, whether it’s dealing with estates, record companies, licensing issues, publishers, etc.,” he says. “But the heritage and history of popular music is so important. People will still be playing The Beatles’ Revolver Station to and David Bowie’s Station in 50 or 100 years and it’s important they’re taken care of.” Pribble at IMES agrees: “We can go to a museum and see a book or painting that is 500 years old and is in amazing shape, but we have music recorded on formats 40 years ago that is rapidly degrading. It keeps me up at night pondering how I can help ensure that all of this recorded history is saved.” For the Love of a Laugh Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humour? F R A N K M O O R E C O L BY, ENCYCLOPAEDIA EDITOR AND ESSAYIST I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician. CHARLIE CHAPLIN, A C TO R , F I L M M A K E R , C O M P O S E R
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readersdigest.in 141 Even grown men in the wilderness love to be read to when the lights go out by L.W. Oakley from the globe and mail Illustration by Cristian Fowlie AT NIGHT AFTER everyone climbs into their bunks and the lights are turned off, something unusual occurs at our hunting camp—something that I believe never happens in any other hunting camp anywhere: I read a bedtime story by flashlight to grown men until everyone falls asleep. This ritual began about five years ago on a moose-hunting trip. One night while we lay on our army cots in the tent that we used back then and Bedtime Stories HUNTING CAMP at the HEART readersdigest.in 141
142 september 2023 talked quietly in the dark, I raised my voice slightly and asked, “Does anyone want to hear a bedtime story?” To this day, whether we’re there to hunt, fish, work or just relax, I tell a story every night we’re at our camp at Mitten Lake, about 60 kilometers northwest of Kingston, Ontario. The ritual is always the same: everyone must be in bed and all lights must be off except my flashlight. I tell one story per night in a small room with three sets of double bunks. I read from one of the top bunks in the corner while resting my back on a pillow propped up against the wall. These days, I use a headlamp, which I put on before I climb up my ladder in the dark. The light allows me to hold my book with both hands while reading. But when I started out, there was no book. My first bedtime story was one of the greatest survival tales of all time: Ernest Shackleton’s 1914–16 expedition to Antarctica. When his ship, Endurance, was destroyed after becoming trapped in the ice, the British explorer led his crew of 27 men to Elephant Island. Facing imminent starvation, Shackleton and a smaller group sailed a tiny whaling boat across the open ocean in search of help. Eventually, everyone was rescued. Another night I asked everyone if they wanted to hear the story of how Satan ended up in Hell. Then I told the tale of Paradise Lost, the epic poem written by the English poet John Milton. It’s the story of man’s first disobedience, the battle for Heaven, the creation of Hell, the temptation of Adam and Eve, the eating of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and, of course, the loss of paradise. Sometimes while telling a story like Paradise Lost I can’t remember exactly what happened, what was said or who said it. So like any good storyteller, I make it up as I go along. On yet another night I started by saying, “I’m going to tell what may be the greatest story ever told, because storytellers have been sharing this one for more than 3,000 years.” Then I recounted the ancient Greek myth of Helen of Troy, the woman with a face that launched a thousand ships. It begins with a golden apple and ends with a wooden horse, and includes great warriors like Ajax, Achilles and Hector, who join the fight after Helen is carried away by a Trojan prince. Eventually, I ran out of stories. So one Reader’s Digest MY FIRST BEDTIME STORY WAS ONE OF THE GREATEST SURVIVAL TALES OF ALL TIME: ERNEST SHACKLETON’S EXPEDITION TO ANTARCTICA.
readersdigest.in 143 night I asked if I could read the next bedtime story from a book. I asked because you don’t just bring a book to a hunting camp and start reading it out loud. I knew the first story from a book had to be a good one, so I chose the short story To Build a Fire by Jack London, an adventure that pits a man against the wilderness. They liked it so much that I later read from two of London’s novels, The Call of the Wild and White Fang. Each night, I read for five-minute intervals. Then I stop and ask the same question every time: “Is anyone still awake?” By then some people are snoring, but usually at least one person answers: “I’m still listening.” I’ve read stories like The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Ernest Hemingway and The Bear by William Faulkner. Not because both men won the Nobel Prize in literature, but because they wrote about hunting and wild animals. We usually discuss the story the next morning while preparing and eating breakfast. People recount what they remember and what they liked. Someone usually recalls at what part of the story he fell asleep. A person who stayed awake longer may say something like, “You missed the good part about how he panicked and froze to death after he couldn’t start the fire.” Today, storytelling for adults is gradually disappearing, like the wild animals that inspired early hunters to tell stories around the warmth of open fires. Sadly, screens have replaced the storyteller. I shouldn’t have been surprised the bedtime stories were so well-liked by my hunting friends, now all in their 60s. Maybe the tales reminded them of the stories their mothers and fathers read to them when they were children. All good stories, like the ones I read at our hunting camp, will live on forever because they become a part of the people who hear them. They remain in your memory because as you listen you use your imagination to bring the tales to life. You feel the emotions and experience the adventures like the characters in the stories. From time to time, you retell them to others and even to yourself. They become real to you; it’s as if you were in the stories too. On those storytelling nights, sitting upright in the dark in my bunk, I keep reading until no one answers when I ask if anyone is still awake. Then I mark the page, put away my book, turn off my headlamp and go to sleep. © 2022, LARRY OAKLEY. FROM EVEN GROWN MEN ON A HUNTING TRIP LOVE A BEDTIME STORY WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT, THE GLOBE AND MAIL (3 NOVEMBER 2022), THEGLOBEANDMAIL.COM Heart ALL GOOD STORIES LIVE ON FOREVER. THEY BECOME A PART OF THE PEOPLE WHO HEAR THEM.
144 september 2023 ENVIRONMENT For the residents of Schoonschip, the chance to go swimming is just a few steps from home.
FLOATING LIFE A unique Dutch neighbourhood is showing how cities can prepare for rising sea levels By Shira Rubin from the washington post Photos by Ilvy Njiokiktjien readersdigest.in 145 Reader’s Digest
Reader’s Digest Marjan de Blok readjusts her body weight as she treads along the jetty linking a floating community on a canal off the River IJ. Through the whipping winds, she shouts greetings to many of her neighbours. On the day I visited in autumn 2021, heavy rains and 80 kilometeran-hour winds put Amsterdam, just a short ferry ride away, on alert. But in the northern neighborhood of Schoonschip, life carried on mostly as usual. De Blok visited with neighbours while the homes glided up and down their steel foundational poles with the movement of the water below. “It feels like living at the beach, with the water, the saltiness of the air and the seagulls,” she says. “But it also feels special because, initially, we were told that building your own neighbourhood, it’s just impossible.” A long list of European lawmakers, urban planners, entrepreneurs and citizens have visited Schoonschip to see the real-life manifestation of a once science-fiction idea. De Blok, a Dutch reality-TV director, has shown them Schoonschip’s patchwork of environmentally focused social projects: lush floating gardens beloved by the water birds; a community centre featuring floating architecture diagrams; and a nearby on-land vegetable patch. But the homes’ industrial-chic design and their immediate proximity to the city, she says, are what surprise visitors most. Schoonschip can serve as a prototype for the more than 600 million people—close to 10 per cent of the world’s population—who live near the coast and less than 10 metres above sea level. As the effects of climate change intensify, sea levels are forecast to rise somewhere between 30 and 240 centimetres this century, and storms are expected to increase in frequency and intensity. In the summer of 2021, at least 220 people died in Marjan de Blok with her family in her floating home. 146 september 2023
readersdigest.in 147 Dummy Dummy Germany and Belgium from a oncein-400-year rain event. In Zhengzhou, China, 630 millimetres of rain fell in one day, killing nearly 300 people. By the end of this century, the kind of intense precipitation events that would typically occur two times per century will happen twice as often, and more extreme events that would occur once every 200 years would become up to four times as frequent, according to a study published last year by a team at the University of Freiburg. T he Netherlands has long contended with water—nearly a third of the country is below sea level and close to two-thirds is flood-prone. Since the Middle Ages, Dutch farmer collectives have drained water to make room for agricultural land. The groups evolved into regional water boards that keep the land dry using canals, dikes, dams and sea gates. Water management is such a normal part of Dutch discourse that many citizens are surprised to be asked about it, assuming it is common in every country. The Dutch have historically lived on water. As international commerce flourished in the 17th century, foreign tradespeople moored their boats to the land to sell their goods. In the 1970s, people started converting boats into homes. And over the past decade, Dutch water management strategists have sought to embrace, rather than resist, the rising sea levels brought on by climate change, with floating communities emerging in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht. Schoonschip is setting an example for communities coming to grips with rising sea levels around the world.
Reader’s Digest These homes are relatively low-tech, constructed off-site and weighted by basins filled with recycled, waterresistant concrete, then pulled across the water by tugboats and moored in place. Heavy pieces such as pianos are counterweighed with bricks on the opposite side of the house, and interior design is carried out in line with the Dutch principle of gezelligheid, or ‘coziness’. Many rooms are outfitted with modular furniture that can be easily disassembled or reassembled to accommodate life changes such as the birth of children. “It’s evident that sea waters will rise, and that many big cities are really close to that water,” says Schoonschip resident Sascha Glasl, whose architectural firm, Space & Matter, designed several of the community’s homes. “It’s amazing that not more of this innovation and building on water is being executed.” De Blok, who has no engineering, architecture, or hydrological training, says that she never intended to spearhead a movement in floating urban development. In 2009, she had become disenchanted with her life in Amsterdam. She worked all the time, bought things she rarely used and had little time to see friends. On a cold winter day, she visited a solar-paneled floating event venue called GeWoonboot as part of a series of short documentaries she was shooting on sustainable living. She was stunned by its contemporary feel, its immediacy to the water and the city, and its use of experimental sustainability practices. “Before I visited that boat, I wasn’t really conscious that I didn’t like the way I was living,” she says. When she asked friends if they had interest in building a floating community, she was unprepared for the deluge of responses. She cut off the list at 120 people. She scouted waters around Buiksloterham, a 100-hectare, postindustrial area that had been largely abandoned after manufacturers—including Shell and the Fokker airplane factory—left the city for lower-wage countries in the second part of the 20th century. When she learnt that Eelke Kingma helped design Schoonschip’s renewable-energy grid. 148 september 2023