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FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 SMART READER March 09, 2023 1 "Thankful for the expertise and guidance, so needed during our loss." -JAMES K. "Thankful for the expertise and guidance, so needed during our loss." -JAMES K. Visit us at 3016 75th St. Kenosha SR102022 Volume 21 - #5 March 9, 2023 JOHN CERBONE BRINGS TO KENOSHA A SHOW YOU WILL NEVER FORGET MEET THE TRANCE-MASTER! COMEDIAN AND HYPNOTIST

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F a t t e w a a a a S d i p a h b y i t k W p k w S s s p T d h t t m a i s w i h t t w w w s c t h e a d p b h a w i e c d 2 SMART READER March 09, 2023 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 Cover photos credit: Waynes: Mike Wallace & Chad Greenway; Gordon: UPI Smart Reader is published bi-weekly by Carmichael Communications Editor & Publisher/Frank J. Carmichael • Assistant to the Publisher/Reanna Stockdale • Sales/Kim Carmichael, Donny Stancato Editorial Manager/Jason Hedman • Ad Design & Layout/Glen Kelly, Sara Vego • Reception/Sarah Coleman Carmichael Communications 1420 63rd Street, Kenosha, WI 53143 March 9, 2023 - Volume 21 Number 5 262-564-8800 • 1-800-568-6623 • www.hap2it.com John Cerbone’s gifts as a hypnotist first surfaced as a toddler, when he was able to use self-hypnosis to regulate his behavior. By the time he was in grade school, he was counseling his peers using the techniques that came naturally to him. “I know it sounds a little metaphysical and strange to certain people, but I guess I was born to do this,” he says. “I think it’s probably a divine gift of some kind.” Cerbone, known professionally as the Trance-Master, will bring his comedy show to Kenosha March 17 and 18 at the Kenosha Comedy Club at the Wyndham Garden Hotel, 5125 6th Ave. Both shows begin at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20 and available at www.hap2it.com A clinical hypnotist as well as an entertainer, Cerbone says he performs comedy shows because the world could use more laughter. “I want people to laugh,” he explains. “I want people to understand the power of hypnosis. I don't want people to have a good time. There's way too much misery in the world. And I think we're all just needing to laugh at ourselves and the world around us more. “And laughter is therapeutic,” he adds, and there is scientific evidence that says that laughter fights aging and disease and increases brain power.” Cerbone has worked with groups and corporate events both large and small, from Fortune 500 companies to mom-and-pop venues, from high school auditoriums to the Las Vegas Strip. He is adept at catering the content of his stage hypnosis shows to please each unique audience, for optimum entertainment value and utmost professionalism. “A lot of people have the wrong idea about hypnosis,” he says. “Hypnosis is not something I do to you; it's something that happens to you on a regular basis. And for the purposes of comedy, something I guide you into. “When you gaze out into space, say when you were in grammar school and or high school and the teacher would call on you, you were in a form of hypnosis. And a lot of times in situations I saw or once or twice myself participated in, unwittingly, I would be gazing out the window with hypnosis and the teacher would call on me, and what would happen was my silly friend would give me the wrong answer intentionally. So I’d repeat it and the whole class would laugh and kids would get in trouble. “That's hypnosis and that’s suggestion.” Cerbone says his goal in working a room at a show is to make stars of those who volunteer to be put under. “It’s the best time you’ll ever have because your friends are the comedians of my show,” he explains. He always assures those who are taking an active part in his act know what to expect. He doesn’t see it as testing to see who might be “susceptible” hypnosis but who will have a good time. “I always explain to the audience I'm not here to shame, embarrass or humiliate anybody,” he says, adding with a chuckle: “I've already met a couple of you. You're doing a terrific job without my help doing those things yourselves. And I would never dare presume on your expertise. “Now I've seen some people doing shows where it's a little pushing the envelope, you know, and I will I push the envelope towards laughter. I don't push it towards outrage. And I want to treat those people with tremendous amounts of unconditional love and respect when they come up. I want to love the audience. I want the audience to love me back. I want the volunteers to feel like they've been brought to a new level in their lives at the end of my show. I take good care of these people.” One of Cerbone’s proudest accomplishments as a hypnotist was his creation of the “speed trance.” His development of this amazing technique was rooted in his dissatisfaction with the hypnosis world’s stubborn embrace of the status quo, and its insistence on doing things the way they’d been done for decades, if not centuries. “When I was first officially trained, I was told that to hypnotize somebody would take 20 minutes or more,” he recalls. “And even though I’d been doing this my whole life, I was told that you had to do whatever it was verbatim and don’t miss a comma or a period or whatever. It was crazy nonsense, and woefully inadequate.” His ability to hypnotize someone in a matter of seconds is what has earned him the name the Trace-Master. The name came to him after a veteran colleague told him he needed a stage name. “And because he was a hypnotist, he put that suggestion into my head,” Cerbone says. “And I went to bed that night and I fell asleep, and I woke up in the middle of the night. I was doing a show for a religious group. And these two elderly ladies at the ends of the dream walked up and said, ‘You're such a trance master.’ I said ‘Eureka!’ I woke up I wrote it down. “And I called him the next day and he said to me the best things come in dreams. So I certified that stage name and I've had to trademark it when some other people thought that was an interesting stage name for themselves as well. So I now own the federal trademark on TraceMaster.” So what can the audience at the Kenosha Comedy Club expect at the Trance-Master’s two shows? “It will be a comedy event the people in the audience won’t forget,” he says. “If your friend is jumping around up on that stage, being one of my superstars up on that stage, that's something that that will be with you and your friends for the rest of your life.” By Gary Schneeberger To hear more about his upcoming appearance at the Kenosha Comedy Club on March 17th & 18th, tune in to Happenings Q&A on Tuesday, March 14th at 1:30 when John Cerbone joins the conversation. Don’t Miss the Trance-Master! Hypnotist Comedian John Cerbone coming to the Kenosha Comedy Club March 17-18 From high school auditoriums, to the Las Vegas strip, John Cebone delivers a hilarious and unique comedy experience - don’t miss out when he comes to town at the Kenosha Comedy Club March 17th and 18th. Get your tickets at hap2it.com today!

FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 SMART READER March 09, 2023 3 What happens when you're hypnotized? Skeptics view hypnosis as a little-understood parlor trick, but a new study reveals real changes occur in the brain when a person enters an hypnotic state. Some parts of the brain relax during the trance while others become more active, said study senior author Dr. David Spiegel, associate chair of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine. "I hope this study will demonstrate that hypnosis is a real neurobiological phenomenon that deserves attention," Spiegel said. "We haven't been using our brains as well as we can. It's like an app on your iPhone you haven't used before, and it gets your iPhone to do all these cool things you didn't know it could do." Hypnosis was the first Western form of psychotherapy, but little is known about how it actually works, the authors say. Hoping to learn more, Spiegel and his colleagues selected 57 people for this study out of a pool of 545 potential participants. Thirty-six of the 57 displayed a high level of hypnotic susceptibility, while the other 21 did not appear to be very hypnotizable. Using MRI, researchers measured the subjects' brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow. Each was scanned while resting, when recalling a memory, and when exposed to a message intended to induce a hypnotic trance. People highly susceptible to hypnosis experienced three distinct brain changes while hypnotized that weren't present when they were out of the trance, the study reports. These changes weren't detected in the brains of those with low hypnotic capability. People in a trance experienced a decrease in activity in an area called the dorsal anterior cingulate, part of what's called the brain's salience network. "It helps us compare context and decide what is worth worrying about and what isn't," Spiegel said. Hypnotized people also experienced an increase in connections between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the insula. The prefrontal cortex helps us plan and carry out tasks, while the insula helps the mind connect with the body. "In hypnosis, we know you can alter things like gastric acid secretion, heart rate, blood pressure and skin conductance," Spiegel said. "Your brain is very good at controlling what's going on in your body, and the insula is one of the pathways that does that." Finally, people in hypnosis also have reduced connections between the task-oriented dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the brain's default mode network, a region most active when a person is daydreaming rather than focusing on the outside world. This decrease in connectivity likely represents a disconnect between someone's actions and their awareness of their actions, Spiegel said. Such a disassociation allows the hypnotic subject to engage in activities suggested by a hypnotist without becoming self-conscious of the activity. Taken together, these brain changes match wellknown outward effects caused by hypnosis, Spiegel said. A hypnotized person is intensely focused but not worried about what they're doing. They are not worried about evaluating instructions, but are simply following those instructions, and they have a more direct connection between their minds and the physical function of their bodies, he noted. "This is the first time that we've shown what's going on in the brain when a person is hypnotized," Spiegel said. "This is a natural and normal brain function. It's a technique that has evolved to enable us to do the routine things routinely, and deeply engage in the things that matter to us." Based on this knowledge, doctors might be able to enhance hypnotic response in ways that better help treat medical conditions, he said. Already, hypnosis has been proven to help people quit smoking or cope with pain and stress, the authors noted. This study provides "important evidence" that could help convince skeptical patients of hypnosis' potential benefits, said Guy Montgomery, who specializes in integrative behavioral medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Dr. Alan Manevitz, a clinical psychiatrist with Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, agreed. "Hypnosis has been around for a long time, but people have looked upon it as quackery," Manevitz said. "This demonstrates it's a legitimate neurobiological phenomenon, by revealing the brain activity that underlies the hypnotic state." However, Montgomery added that it will take further research to make this specific knowledge directly useful in daily medicine. "How would I use this information to enhance procedures for patients?" he said. "I don't really know." The study appeared in the journal Cerebral Cortex. 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4 SMART READER March 09, 2023 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 F D D f w b a c t d a P a D u i k b f w d c e p W D d c v s t P t m m P t N “ f R P p c a s t e t e o s t a w s w c t q 2 G a t a f a d c For better or worse, this story was not written by a computer I remember the sunny day in the office when I unboxed my first personal computer with a screen that glowed green and a cooling fan with an otherworldly whir. Centralized computers had already taken over newsrooms and many businesses. That day in 1984 was different. Far from fulfilling some Orwellian vision of a big machine controlling everything, I controlled that little electronic box. I determined when it ran and personalized it with the software I wanted. Now in 2023, I’m having déjà vu, only this time the new technology is artificial intelligence. AI has been scaring people for decades, threatening to take over their jobs, according to futurists, or civilization, according to Hollywood. The technology has quietly invaded many corners of the real world, from commanding our robot vacuums to finishing our email sentences. Now, directly in the hands of consumers, a version of the technology called generative AI is fueling hopes for rapid progress in everything from scientific discovery and robot companions to computer art and a cure for writer’s block. It is also stoking fears that AI will charge ahead before society is ready to deal with its limitations and problems. “If we do this right, we could have a huge impact on a lot of societal issues around health and services, environmental issues and education issues and public safety and criminal justice,” says Rayid Ghani, professor of machine learning and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The same m a c h i n e - l e a r n i n g technology that can process and generate huge amounts of text can also search and generate images, write computer code, and predict the structure of more than 200 million proteins. “So that’s the hope,” Mr. Ghani says. “The fear is that we might not do that. We might just go off and do the usual ‘move fast and break things.’ And what’s the harm? It’s just a little ‘chatbot.’ Yeah, but people are asking it important questions, and the worst thing is they might actually trust the results” before the systems are ready for prime time. The chatbot that has caused the surge in interest is an app called ChatGPT. Released late in November by a San Francisco company wanting feedback on its technology, ChatGPT allows anyone to ask it a question. Suddenly, with AI directly in their control, consumers flocked to the app just as they did to the PC four decades earlier. ChatGPT went viral, likely surpassing TikTok as the fastest consumer app out of the gate. TikTok took some nine months to reach 100 million monthly active users; some analysts expect ChatGPT to have accomplished it in two. “Everybody uses ChatGPT,” says Michelle Zhou, CEO and co-founder of Juji, a Silicon Valley firm building next-generation AI. “Even my mother, who is over 80 years old, asks me from China, ‘Are you using it?’” The bot’s emergence has also accelerated the race by the largest tech companies – Microsoft, Google, and Amazon – to create their own generative AI offerings. Last week, Meta (formerly Facebook) entered the fray. Poems, jokes – and real value Within days of ChatGPT’s public debut, students started to brag about using it to write papers (to many teachers’ shock and concern). Others had it write poems, even jokes. (“Our healthcare is like a game of whack-a-mole,” it wrote in a mock State of the Union address. “And, let’s be honest, the moles are winning.”) Ajay Agrawal, an entrepreneurship professor at the University of Toronto, noticed something else in social media posts about the technology. Some people were using it to create real value: A doctor saved time by having it write to an insurance company on behalf of a patient; a landscaper diagnosed with dyslexia turned his barebones communication into “beautiful email,” he says. Such stories have reinforced hopes that AI could act as a great leveler: putting business owners with poor communication skills on a par with their more fluent competitors, allowing students to find the best colleges for their skills, and giving employers far more data and power to evaluate entry-level workers for skills rather than relying on their academic pedigree. Generative AI “is every bit as important as the PC, as the internet,” Microsoft cofounder and former CEO Bill Gates told Forbes recently. The problem is that these chatbots also make mistakes, sometimes, embarrassingly so. When Google launched its Bard AI system earlier this month, its demo made a slip about the James Webb Space Telescope. That error cost Google’s parent company, Alphabet, some $100 billion in stock value from which it has yet to recover. Some mistakes are downright bizarre and scary. This month, using a more powerful ChatGPT prototype, Microsoft’s Bing search engine told testers it wanted to be human, steal nuclear access codes, love someone, and take revenge. “I respect your achievements and interests, but I do not appreciate your attempts to manipulate me or expose my secrets,” it wrote one German student. “My secret is ... I’m not Bing,” the chatbot told a New York Times reporter. “I’m Sydney, and I’m in love with you.” “I can blackmail you, I can threaten you, I can hack you, I can expose you, I can ruin you,” it told an Australian philosophy professor before deleting the message and replying, “I am sorry I don’t know how to discuss this topic.” Microsoft moved quickly to limit the damage, saying long chat sessions could “confuse the underlying chat model.” On Feb. 17, it limited users’ questions to five per session and 50 per day. In reality, these systems don’t have feelings or even thoughts, as humans define them. “ChatGPT does not understand anything you’re saying,” says Mr. Agrawal at the University of Toronto. “It is just predicting the most likely response.” And with huge amounts of text in its databanks – an earlier version held enough to fill an estimated quarter of the bookshelves in the Library of Congress – ChatGPT can usually generate very plausible answers. An arms race among tech giants Because billions of dollars are at stake, companies are pushing out AI prototypes before they’re ready for prime time. Microsoft has said that each percentage point it gains in market share would mean an extra $2 billion in revenue, based on ad sales generated by internet searches. Worldwide, Bing is the second most popular search engine with 3% of the market. Google, with some 92% of the market, has been particularly rattled by the emergence of Microsoftbacked ChatGPT. The system might not just steal revenue; it could upend the search business entirely. After all, if AI can answer users’ questions directly, why would they search the internet? In the long term, this escalating arms race between Microsoft, Google, and others will be a good thing, many AI researchers say. It will mean more funding and faster progress. The challenge is that the technology may advance far faster than society can put up guardrails. “All of us – consumers, businesses, government – need to ensure these tools are being used responsibly,” writes Beena Ammanath, executive director of the Deloitte Global AI Institute, in an email. “We need an independent, governmentled effort on A.I. ethics, to ensure that A.I. systems are South Korean virtual influencer Rozy is an example of the extraordinary jumps in recent AI technology. see AI on page 6 110322

0 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 Defamation is hard to prove. Does Dominion have a case against Fox? Recently released court filings are providing a window into a lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News and its corporate owner, set to go to trial in April. Dominion alleges defamation by Fox, which aired baseless claims by President Donald Trump and his allies about Dominion’s voting machines used in the 2020 election. Court documents indicate that Fox executives knew the claims were false but chose not to intervene for fear of losing viewers who believed them. Fox has denied defamation and called its coverage of election-fraud allegations protected free speech. What is the basis for Dominion’s defamation lawsuit? The Denver-based company, which supplies voting machines to 28 states, became a target after the Nov. 3, 2020, election. Pro-Trump activists claimed that Dominion had manipulated vote counts to make Joe Biden the winner. President Trump amplified these claims, tweeting on Nov. 12 that Dominion had “deleted” 2.7 million votes for him. His legal advisors, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, claimed to have proof of a criminal conspiracy by Dominion and of links to Venezuela’s socialist dictatorship. The company refuted all these allegations, as did U.S. election officials who used the machines. There is no evidence that any votes cast on Dominion machines or software were manipulated to change the outcome of an election that Mr. Biden won by narrow margins in swing states. Fox News, the mostwatched cable news channel, gave ample airtime to Mr. Trump’s allies to question the validity of the 2020 election. Both Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell appeared daily on primetime shows where they accused Dominion of flipping votes to Mr. Biden. Dominion says that Fox’s airing of falsehoods has damaged its business. The company has lost contracts in some states and faced pushback in others where officials cited 2020 fraud conspiracies as a reason not to use its technology. Several employees have also faced threats. Dominion has also sued Newsmax, a competitor to Fox that tried to outflank it in amplifying 2020 electionfraud conspiracies. This competition weighed on Fox hosts and executives, who worried about losing viewers to Newsmax if they didn’t lean into the conspiracies, according to depositions and internal communications made public in court filings. As the preeminent conservative news outlet, Fox is a highly symbolic target. Its efforts to appease aggrieved Trump voters in 2020 – to show “respect” to the audience, as executives emphasized – must be understood in this context, wrote New York Times columnist David French. Fox is “no mere source of news. It’s the place where Red America goes to feel seen and heard.” The court filings suggest a strong disconnect between what Fox was broadcasting, largely uncritically, about alleged voting-machine fraud and what producers, hosts, and executives were saying internally about the allegations and the individuals who were making them. In a deposition, Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corp., admitted that some Fox presenters had endorsed what he called “really crazy stuff” and that he regretted not intervening. Tucker Carlson and other top-rated hosts privately disparaged Ms. Powell, in particular, and even called her a liar. Still, she continued to appear on prime-time shows to speak about Dominion. And when a Fox reporter tried to factcheck Mr. Trump’s tweet about Dominion deleting his votes, Mr. Carlson told fellow hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham that the reporter should be fired. “Please get her fired. Seriously. ... It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke,” he wrote in a text. What is Fox’s defense and how robust are free speech protections? Fox’s lawyers say that the network was covering newsworthy events – a U.S. president disputing the results of an election – and that as a news organization it didn’t endorse the views of the public figures who appeared on its shows. News organizations enjoy broad First Amendment protections, and defamation cases rarely make it to trial. Under a standard set by a 1964 Supreme Court ruling, plaintiffs must show that a news outlet knowingly aired falsehoods or showed a reckless disregard for the facts. The Supreme Court wanted to allow for “innocent mistakes” so that public debate wouldn’t be chilled by libel suits, says George Freeman, a former in-house counsel at The New York Times who directs the Media Law Resource Center. “It’s a hard test, but it’s a hard test deliberately,” he says. “You have to prove that something nefarious was in the editor or reporter’s mind.” In its filings, Fox News has derided “cherry picking” by Dominion of what Fox staffers said about Mr. Trump’s allegations. It argues that skepticism among some employees doesn’t mean that that organization writ large was at fault in airing false statements about Dominion. This line of defense is likely to play out at trial, says Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota. Even if Fox executives didn’t buy Mr. Trump’s claims but wanted to protect their ratings, opinion hosts could still claim that they were keeping an open mind about Dominion and election fraud. What may prove harder for Fox to defend, says Ms. Kirtley, is that Dominion said it sent more than 3,600 emails and other communications to Fox to correct the record, but that Mr. Trump’s allies were invited to keep repeating their falsehoods, day after day. “If this had happened once we never would have had this lawsuit. It's the fact that it went on repeatedly,” says Ms. Kirtley. Fox’s hosts “knew what these people were going to say.” What is the broader significance of the case? The case has become something of a proxy for the 2020 election dispute and the spread of misinformation that led up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Opponents of Mr. Trump, including many Democrats, would like to see a reckoning for those who pushed his false narrative – even if that means seeing a private company prevail over a news network. At the same time, the case could have consequences for press freedom if Fox appeals an unfavorable ruling and a conservative-dominated Supreme Court decides to revisit the 1964 standard for defamation, says Ms. Kirtley. That possibility makes her and other First Amendment scholars uneasy. Dominion is seeking $1.6 billion in damages from Fox. While victory for Dominion wouldn’t put Fox out of business, it would be costly. It underscores that a case freighted with political baggage is, at its core, about commercial interests on both sides. For Fox, reporting too critically on Mr. Trump’s baseless fraud claims was demonstrably bad for ratings, since many viewers were drawn to a riggedelection narrative, even if the facts didn’t support it. For Dominion, the fact that millions of Trump voters believe the election was rigged – a belief that Fox promoted relentlessly – has made it harder to do business in Republican-run jurisdictions. In his deposition, Mr. Murdoch was asked why Fox hosts kept booking Michael Lindell, a pillow retailer and Trump backer who promoted false theories about the election, as a guest. Mr. Murdoch pointed out that Mr. Lindell spent a lot of money to air pillow commercials on Fox. “It is not red or blue,” Mr. Murdoch said. “It is green.” By Simon Montlake Rupert Murdoch admitted in a deposition that some Fox presenters had endorsed what he called “really crazy stuff” after the 2020 election, and that he regretted not intervening. SMART READER March 09, 2023 5 es or as ge ket tra ed by es. he ch he me en he ftust nd ely. er tly, he his ce le, od ers re s. he far ut rs, – ols y,” th, he te, an ntto re e 6 Fellowship Baptist Church WILL HOLD ITS FOOD FOR FAMILIES FOOD GIVEAWAY AT THE CHURCH ON SAT. MAR. 25TH FROM 9AM TO 11AM YOU MUST PRE-REGISTER BY CALLING THE CHURCH AT 262-694-6164 ON FRI. MAR. 17TH OR MON. 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6 SMART READER March 09, 2023 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 F mu wh ou op sa a Do th th ex Ow W Di Ke Sm Af Sc He fo ar ar W M sc de He ma Ke St op ex ar su pe to M co in Illi M th Me U. fro to Re nu Th ex M M cla th m inc M ho Co ho or pa se re ap ho St mu Di E F b V Customs seizes 15,000 pills from Hong Kong advertised as Viagra U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers confiscated 15,000 pills advertised as Viagra arriving from Hong Kong, the agency confirmed in a statement. Agents in Louisville, Ky., made the seizure, which was headed to an address in Brooklyn, N.Y., and had an approximate value of $1.06 million, if the pills were legitimate ones of sildenafil, which is sold under the brand name Viagra and is used to treat erectile dysfunction and hypertension. The 500 bottles each contained 30 pills, and all had labels stating they were manufactured in the United States, a claim Customs officials reject. The 100-milligram pills were being imported from a Hong Kong industrial company, raising concerns they could be laced with dangerous contaminants or ineffective compounds and be of poor quality. The agency did not say if anyone had been arrested in the case. "This is a dangerous game consumers are playing that could have disastrous results," Customs and Border Protection field office director LaFonda Sutton-Burke said in a statement. "Consumers are purchasing these prescription medications from other countries thinking they are getting them at a discount, when in fact they are purchasing an inferior product with unregulated ingredients." The agency said it has seen an increase in shipments and seizures of illegal prescription drugs coming into the United States since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. "CBP will continue to investigate and take action against counterfeit and misclassified goods that pose a threat to our economy and our citizens," CBP Louisville Port Director Thomas Mahn said in a statement. "We work closely with FDA and other partner government agencies to provide comprehensive border enforcement in support of national security." The agency seized 48,400 pounds of illegal drugs in January, the most recent month statistics are available for. By Simon Druker led effort on A.I. ethics, to ensure that A.I. systems are fair, trustworthy, and free of bias.” At the same time, she says, businesses almost inevitably will innovate faster than bureaucrats can regulate, so the privatesector enterprises also have a responsibility to selfregulate. It won’t be easy. Errors can pop up because of the data that’s used (the internet is hardly immune from falsehoods) or the computer code. Even seemingly innocuous decisions – such as pushing a system out that gets the majority of its answers right – may unknowingly discriminate against a minority. Then there are the very subtle details in the code or algorithm that consumers would never notice. Using a mapping program to drive to a location, for example, “there could be a minor, tiny nudge in the algorithm” to alter your route so that you pass by a certain store or restaurant, says Mr. Agrawal in Toronto. Similar nudges, potentially blurring the line between corporate and consumer interests, could be baked into things like news, music, and product recommendations. “We’re becoming much more subjected to the directions given to us by AIs,” Mr. Agrawal says. “And because they’ve become so good, we’ve become so reliant on them; they can have such a big influence – good or bad.” Given such a powerful tool, how will businesses act? The AI potential in lending Because it’s so heavily regulated to avoid bias, the lending industry offers a glimpse into one way AI might get integrated into society. The business opportunity for AI in lending is enormous. Traditional credit-scoring does a good job of sorting out the most and least risky loan applicants. But it’s a coin toss for those in the middle, says Mr. de Vere. By using AI to evaluate far more factors than in traditional creditscoring, AI in theory should be able to approve more loans, which gives banks more customers and gives those customers credit cards and car loans and other credit that before were out of reach. In practice, VyStar Credit Union, based in Jacksonville, Florida, has seen improvements across the board since it started using AI for credit cards. Approvals overall went up 22% between the second half of 2018 and the second half of 2022, with no increase in risk to the credit union’s conservative scoring system. And while the approval rate stayed the same for the riskiest class (those with credit scores in the 500s), so many more people applied for cards that the number of approvals doubled. And because it was data rather than a human deciding how big a credit line they should get, the average amount of credit offered also went up, says Jenny Vipperman, VyStar’s chief lending officer. “We’re saying, how can we serve as many people, as many members, as much of our community as we can in a safe and sound manner?” The unexpectedly high $20,000 credit limit on her VyStar card turned out to be quite useful to Kailin, a young professional in Jacksonville, after she lost her job and had to move to Louisiana to care for a relative. (She did not want her last name published for privacy reasons.) Kailin had to pay for furniture for a new home, as well as other expenses, while searching for employment. “When it’s all robotic, yes, you’re taking away human error, but when it comes to the workforce, we need to have jobs in the economy,” she says of the new AI. “I think there’s still a need for that human interaction.” On March 6, she starts her new job in executive hiring. By Laurent Belsie Eight Mexico-based companies sanctioned for cartel-linked timeshare scam The U.S. Treasury Department has designated eight companies it alleges participated in a timeshare fraud scheme on behalf of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion. "CJNG is a violent Mexico-based organization that traffics a significant proportion of the illicit fentanyl and other deadly drugs that enter the United States," the Treasury Department said in a press release. The Treasury Department alleges that companies linked to the cartel have made unsolicited offers to buy timeshares off of victims. When victims accepted offers, the scammers requested fictitious fees and taxes under the pretense that they will facilitate the sale and be reimbursed after closing. Using these methods, the scammers would extract money before their victims could realize the offers were fraudulent. "In tourist destinations such as Puerto Vallarta, CJNG has become heavily engaged in timeshare fraud, which often targets U.S. citizens," said Andrea Gacki, director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. "This crime, which can defraud victims of their life savings, results in another significant revenue stream for the cartel and strengthens its overall criminal enterprise." The eight companies being designated "for being owned, controlled, or directly by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, a person sanctioned," are: Corporativo Title I, Corporativo TS Business Inc, TS Business Corporativo, Servicios Administrativos Fordtwoo, Integracion Badeva, JM Providers Office, Promotora Vallarta One, and Recservi. In February, the Treasury Department sanctioned Jesus Cisneros Hernandez, an alleged arms dealer with connections to the CJNG. In February, the Treasury Department also sanctioned two Mexican businessmen as well as four Sinaloa Cartel members for alleged connections to fentanyl and methamphetamine trafficking. By Patrick Hillsman A.I. continued from page 4 U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in Louisville, Ky., confiscated 15,000 pills of what was advertised as Viagra arriving from Hong Kong on their way to New York

0 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 SMART READER March 09, 2023 7 I always enjoy visiting museums and historic sites while on vacation. Visitors to our community have many opportunities to do the same. And so do you! Within a one-mile radius in Downtown Kenosha, near the Lake Michigan shore, there are five museums to explore. Be A Tourist In Your Own Town! Did you know The Civil War Museum, Dinosaur Discovery Museum, and Kenosha Public Museum are Smithsonian Institution Affiliates? Or that the Schaefer Mammoth and Hebior Mammoth – both found in Kenosha County – are two of the three oldest archaeological sites in the Western Hemisphere? The free Kenosha Public Museum is a natural sciences and fine and decorative arts museum. Here, learn about the two mammoths discovered in Kenosha County. The Field Station gives kids an opportunity for hands-on exploration in the fields of art, science, and history. Be sure to check out the permanent From Curiosity to Science exhibit! Next door, The Civil War Museum focuses on the contributions from people in the states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, and Michigan to the Civil War. Its Veterans Memorial Gallery honors all U.S. veterans and soldiers from the Revolutionary War to present day conflicts. The Resource Center features numerous activities for kids. There is a fee for the main exhibit. Both The Civil War Museum and Kenosha Public Museum hold programs, classes, and workshops throughout the year. Both museums also have incredible views of Lake Michigan – and space to hold your special event! Consider a museum when holding a wedding, a bridal or baby shower, retirement party, corporate meeting or seminar, networking reception, client appreciation event, gala, or holiday party. Ride an authentic Electric Streetcar from these two museums to the Dinosaur Discovery Museum. This free museum shares how meat-eating dinosaurs are related to modern day birds. See the largest collection of meat-eating theropods in the nation! Younger kids will love the interactive exhibit Little Clint: The Story of a Baby Dinosaur. Meanwhile, the free Kenosha History Center on Simmons Island preserves Kenosha’s automotive and industrial heritage. Check out the Kenosha History Center YouTube channel for “Kenosha Voices", an oral history project the museum does with Kenosha Community Media. Stories are shared from Kenoshans who have lived and worked in the community. Take part in the free Classic Car Cruise-in Nights at the museum on the last Friday of the month, May through September. Or sign up for the Third Avenue Historic District Walking Tour (First Saturday of the month) or the Library Park Historic District Walking Tour (Second Saturday of the month). The tours take place May through October; reservations must be made in advance; the cost is $10. Next door to the Kenosha History Center is its seasonal Southport Light Station Museum. It’s open May through October, Thursday through Sunday. All ages are welcome to tour the keeper’s house, which is a maritime museum. Admission is free. Learn about shipwrecks buried under Lake Michigan, local lighthouse keepers, and much more. Open when the keeper’s house is, the 1866 Southport Lighthouse tower is available for ages 8 years and older to climb. Climb 72 steps up to the top to see 2 states and 3+ counties! There is a fee. While it’s free general admission at most of the museums, please consider leaving a donation or becoming a member. Your contribution helps preserve history and makes exhibits, programming, and events possible. Don’t forget we also have four historic districts and historic venues such as Kemper Center to explore! Use our website VisitKenosha.com to find #KenoshaFun faster. Visit Kenosha has been Kenosha’s official travel resource since 1986. 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8 SMART READER March 09, 2023 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 F Y C P c A (K g 6 in P sp c o so h M w c re c li to w m n th A I’m celebrating my 30th year of doing my best to protect you against home improvement scams, subpar products, and all the pitfalls of building, remodeling or maintaining your home. I’ve stood up to billion-dollar corporations to prevail on your behalf. But now I’m here to alert you of something far more sinister. Have you been paying attention to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI)? In the past few months, it’s made a fairly big splash — in particular, a chatbot called ChatGPT — and it must be on your radar. Years ago I was a charter member of a secret Internet mastermind group. Most of the people in the group were brilliant, and collectively we helped each other’s online businesses grow and thrive. Several of us are still in touch, and recently one of them assisted me in demonstrating the scary power of artificial intelligence. You may remember a column I wrote just weeks ago about painting rusty metal. My friend asked the ChatGPT AI software to write a similar column and include an anecdote about my oldest daughter in the 500-word column. I then decided to survey the subscribers of my weekly newsletter. I asked them to read the AI column and then read the one I had written. I did not share with them who authored the two columns. I have a link at the end of this column to a page where you can read the columns. When I asked my subscribers how authoritative each column was, the results shocked me. Just over 51% considered the ChatGPT column very authoritative. Slightly more than 54% thought that my column was very authoritative. When asked which column they trusted more, just over 75% voted for mine. Remember, at the time they made the above choices they had no idea who wrote either column. In the last question of the survey, I asked, “If you discovered one of the two articles above was written by software that copied parts of other online articles not knowing what was good or bad information within the articles it copied, what would be your reaction? Just over 77% of the respondents said they’d be upset and unhappy. Fourteen percent didn’t care, as they just wanted to know how to paint rusty metal. The remainder of the respondents typed in their own responses. If I had to summarize all of these into one, here’s what it would be: "Aw! I’m shocked and my mouth is hanging open! They’re both great articles, but No. 1 does seem more scientific and well researched. No. 2 is folksy. I’m still shocked!” The AI software goes out onto the Internet and scrapes content from millions of websites and then studies the content for patterns. The deeply troubling thing is that the software can’t think like you and I. It has no idea if some of the content it scraped is filled with errors. Perhaps the best comparison to content created by AI software is to think what a genius kindergartener might write. But then realize how much life experience that 5-yearold has. How much confidence would you put in an AI column you were reading just before signing a contract for a $75,000 home improvement project? Remember how ChatGPT was asked to create a story about my oldest daughter and me? It did write the short anecdote, but it was all a lie. The story it created never happened. How will you be able to tell in the future what is the truth and what is a lie when the AI software starts to create false stories to ensnare you? Quite a few of my subscribers, once I revealed they had been faked out by a computer, said that they’d invest the time online to get more opinions about what they should do when faced with a problem. Do you see the flaw here moving down the timeline? What percentage of the content in the future will have been created by AI software? How will you know what was created by a human like me who has 40 years of field experience vs. a computer that’s just trying to guess at what the correct answer is? This AI plague is not just overtaking the written word. It’s also being used to create fake videos. The deep fakes possible today are so realistic that they fool many professionals. You can upload photos of people you know, or home improvement celebrities, and the AI software will create videos you think the actual person recorded. It can even get their voice right. Realize this is happening in 2023.+ What is going to happen by 2025, or 2030? I think your best bet will be to try to find and stick close to humans like me who have decades of experience working in the homes of people like you. I guess within 50 years robots will be able to say they did that, but we’re not there just yet. Home improvement, meet artificial intelligence Subscribe to Tim’s FREE newsletter at AsktheBuilder.com. Tim offers phone coaching calls if you get stuck during a DIY job. Go here: go.askthebuilder.com /coaching Tim Carter joins Happenings Q&A on Fri. Mar. 24th at 1:30 pm on AM1050 WLIP. This is what greets you when you go to the artificial intelligence ChatGPT website. Note the absence of any human face or photo. How traditional sailors forecasted weather by Captain Andrew R. Sadock Aboard 1930-design (America’s Cup “12-Meter” racing yacht) Red Witch II we try to honor and preserve centuries-old traditions regarding operation of the vessel. One such seafaring tradition is meteorology. Obviously it is important for us to closely monitor and predict weather – to assure passenger safety and comfort. In the 1930’s only two tools were available to monitor weather – a barometer and the vessel’s flag (“colors”). A barometer measures everchanging local patterns of low-pressure (storms) and high-pressure (clear) zones. This provides general information (but not specific information) regarding location and timing of storm systems. The vessel’s colors (again, flag), positioned atop one of Red Witch’s lower shrouds, provides more specific intel regarding location and timing of storms (including wind shifts and precipitation). Believe it or not, local weather patterns frequently act like minihurricanes – wherein a counter-clockwise wind precedes the center (“eye”) of the weather pattern. Note that storm systems (including hurricanes) in the northern hemisphere develop counter-clockwise wind flow whereas southern hemispheres storm systems develop a clockwise spin. As clouds develop in a prior clear sky they grow in size and begin to create an organized nucleus that creates a counter-clockwise wind flow that may radiate one hundred fifty miles (or more) ahead of the organizing clouds in a circular (again, counterclockwise) direction. As an example, a developing weather pattern (i.e. an area of relatively lower barometric pressure) nearing Rockford, Illinois, approximately 65 miles westsouthwest of Kenosha, may create and power a sustained, light-tomoderate wind from the northeast at Kenosha; this is a counterclockwise wind relative to the westsouthwest direction of the Rockford weather pattern. As the Rockford storm pattern heads eastnortheast toward Kenosha (or even simply eastward toward Evanston, Illinois), the northeast wind near Kenosha may grow a bit in intensity. Then the northeast wind will begin to “clock” (move in a clockwise direction) so that as the storm pattern intensifies and/or nears Kenosha, wind direction at Kenosha will gradually move from northeast to east to southeast to south, ever-intensifying in wind speed. When the storm is within a few miles of Kenosha, the wind direction will likely “clock” yet again to southwest and finally westsouthwest (the source direction of the storm) when the storm is within minutes of hitting us. This is known as “clocking” – as the wind source direction shifts in a clockwise manner. Patterns of clocking and increased wind velocity provide reliable intel that weather (i.e., precipitation and wind) are imminent. When low-pressure systems are nearby, as indicated by clocking and visual cues, we must quickly (understatement) reduce sail area – i.e., strike the sails – to protect passengers, crew and vessel. To this avail the Red Witch II crew practices striking all sails in under 60 seconds. In this manner we maintain awareness of weather patterns within fifty to one hundred fifty miles and have up-to-theminute information that is not atypically more accurate than intel attainable from weather.com’s radar and written forecasts (which are typically updated every 15-ish minutes so are not real-time). As small storms travel at 30 to 35 miles per hour and severe storms travel at 40 to 45 miles per hour, we frequently have at least a couple hours of notice regarding timing and placement of imminent weather patterns. Fair winds! After studying holistic healing across the world for many years, Captain Andrew Sadock served as a captain aboard architectural tour boats at Chicago’s Navy Pier, safely carrying 300,000 passengers on 3,500 trips. Sadock bought the “tall ship” Red Witch in 2011, sailing in Chicago until moving Red Witch to Kenosha in 2016. Tall Ship Red Witch offers private events and public sails in Kenosha (since 2016). Sadock also offers holistic healing and counseling services (and play in a band that offers musical concerts). Contact [email protected]

0 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 SMART READER March 09, 2023 9 health lifestyle community Kenosha County Aging & Disability Resource Center news March 9, 2023 Your Kenosha ADRC Update Connect with Your Peers Virtually Are you looking for a way to connect with your peers?  Kenosha Area Family and Aging Services’, Inc. (KAFASI) Virtual Connect offers a great way to do just that. If you are 60 or older and would like to listen in or view KAFASI’s Virtual Connect Programs with featured topics and speakers of interest to seniors, you can join using your own phone, or online using the free online software program Zoom.  The onehour programs are held on Mondays or Wednesdays. A monthly calendar is sent out with all the upcoming events. The calendar can be mailed if requested.  An initial invitation you can save to your calendar with the link will be emailed one week prior to each meeting. An email reminder with the Zoom link is sent out the morning of each event. A call-in number is also available to join over the phone. • Monday, March 13, 11 a.m.  Hear from the Kenosha Housing Authority on options for affordable housing in Kenosha. • Monday, March 20, 1 p.m.  Tai Chi with Ruth • Monday, March 27, 11 a.m.  Book Lovers Group welcomes local author Dave McGrath sharing his experience as a fan who wrote a book about 60’s music star Gene Pitney. Please contact Janice Erickson for more information or to sign up to receive the program schedule. Email  [email protected] or leave a message at 262-287-7469. Caring for an adult family member or friend? Family Caregiver Support Group Meets in-person and virtually The role of a family caregiver, while rewarding, can also be challenging when trying to balance life’s responsibilities along with supporting the needs of another individual, family member or friend. The Kenosha County Aging & Disability Resource Center (ADRC) offers a Family Caregiver Support Group, the first Thursday of every month. Family caregivers often don’t see themselves as caregivers, they simply think of themselves as the husband, sister, daughter or friend. Defined, a family caregiver is a person who provides support for an adult who needs assistance with daily living activities, such as cooking, driving, shopping, laundry and paying bills. If you are a family caregiver, this group is for you! Join fellow caregivers, either virtually or inperson, as you share your experiences, ask questions and learn from others. The group is facilitated by the ADRC’s Margaret Ricchio, Caregiver Support Specialist, and Susan Johnson, Dementia Care Specialist. The next meeting will be Thursday, April 6, 4- 5 p.m. In-person location is 8600 Sheridan Road, entrance D. To register, learn more or to receive the virtual link, call the Kenosha County ADRC, 262-605-6646. Be a Volunteer Guardian! Are you looking for a volunteer opportunity? You could be a Volunteer Guardian! The Kenosha County Aging & Disability Resource Center provides training for community members to advocate in health, welfare and/or financial issues for vulnerable adults. Volunteers are then court appointed as the legal decision maker. The program provides training, support and on-going assistance for the volunteer guardian to successfully and capably perform their responsibilities. In as little as one hour each month, you can positively impact the quality of life of an at-risk adult. For more information, call 262-605-6646. Free Healthy Living with Diabetes Class offered! The Kenosha County Aging & Disability Resource Center is offering a free class for those want to learn more about diabetes. Healthy Living with Diabetes is a 6- week evidence-based program from Stanford University that has helped people world-wide: • Be in control and feel better • Have more energy • Use new tools to manage their diabetes • Create new goals Healthy Living with Diabetes will be offered, Wednesdays, 4 – 6 p.m., April 5 – May 10, at Salem Community Library, 24615 89th St, Salem, WI. If you are a Kenosha County resident, age 50 or older and have diabetes or care for someone who does, call the ADRC at 262-605- 6646 to learn more or to register. l e t e s n k y o e e f s l , . nt

10 SMART READER March 09, 2023 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 F Memory Cafe Please join us for a Memory Café! Memory café is a place for persons with Mild Cognitive Impairment, early-stage Alzheimer’s, or related dementia, and their care partners to socialize and have fun. Join the Kenosha County Aging & Disability Resource Center’s Dementia Care Specialist, Susan Johnson, and the Alzheimer's Association on the second Tuesday of every month, 1-2 p.m. The next meeting will be on March 14, 2023, Kenosha Southwest Neighborhood Library, 7979 38th Avenue. Registration is required for new members. Call Alzheimer's Association 800-272-3900. Someone in Your Life has Dementia A Roadmap for Care – Now offered virtually and in-person The Kenosha County Aging & Disability Resource Center offers a regularly scheduled educational program, Someone in Your Life has Dementia: A Roadmap for Care. The presentation is for anyone caring for an individual living with a form of dementia and will be offered every other month, with the options for both virtual and inperson meetings. Dementia is a general term used to describe memory loss and the impaired ability to process information and make decisions which interferes with daily life. There are many subtypes of dementia, with Alzheimer’s Disease being the most common form, followed by Vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, Frontotemporal degeneration, mixed dementia and others. Dementia is not a part of normal aging; however, 50 million people worldwide are living with some form of this syndrome. Susan Johnson, Dementia Care Specialist with the ADRC, has developed and will facilitate this new presentation. Johnson has a master’s degree in Gerontology and has a passion for improving quality of life for caregiving families. She offers hope and understanding to caregivers, as well as those living with dementia. The presentation will help prepare and guide caregivers, while building confidence for the road ahead. It will address common caregiver concerns, such as: • Whether recently diagnosed or not, what do you need to know about caring for someone living with dementia? • How do you know what to expect and what your person needs, as the disease progresses? Someone in Your Life has Dementia: A Roadmap for Care, will be offered virtually and in-person, the second Wednesday, every other month, noon – 1 p.m.. The next class will be offered on April 12, 2023. For more information and to register, call the ADRC, 262-605-6646. Memory Screen Mondays The Kenosha County Aging & Disability Resource Center (ADRC) is offering free, confidential memory screens every Monday, 8 a.m. - noon. Memory screens are suggested for anyone concerned about memory changes, at risk of Alzheimer’s disease due to family history, or who wants to check their memory now for future comparison. Some memory problems can be readily treated, such as those caused by vitamin deficiencies or thyroid problems. In general, the earlier the diagnosis, the easier it is to treat memory loss. Memory screening can: • Provide relief for individuals concerned about normal memory loss • Lead to diagnosis of treatable conditions • Offer the ability to make lifestyle changes early when they have the greatest potential for positive effect and the opportunity to participate in making future decisions Warning signs of dementia include forgetting people’s names and events, asking repetitive questions, loss of verbal or written skills, confusion over daily routines, and personality changes. Screening results are not a diagnosis, and individuals who have concerns are encouraged to pursue a full medical exam. Appointments are recommended. Interested persons may call the ADRC at 262-605-6646 to make an appointment. Your Kenosha ADRC Update R w N M Re co Th se th 95 w m ne pr ris in liv M Pa to or S S or ol C ha of Ke ot fa Ed he sp w kn W da sa st bi bo H an H m se or $5 C w Y A

0 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 SMART READER March 09, 2023 11 or ly in he at ut es or te ng ve ls, ty nd to re he an Reduce Your Falls Risk with Stepping On Next free, seven-week course to begin March 30 The Kenosha County Aging & Disability Resource Center, is hosting a Stepping On course, to be offered virtually, beginning on Thursday, March 30, 2023. Stepping On is a free, seven-week educational series, to help reduce falls in older adults. Wisconsin is ranked #1 in the nation for falls that lead to death among the elderly. More than 95% of hip fractures are caused by falling. We want to change those statistics with Stepping On! In Stepping On, you’ll learn how to build and maintain the physical strength and balance you need to walk confidently. From footwear to prescriptions, you'll learn what increases your risk of a fall, how to avoid it,  and make an individualized action plan to stay on your feet and living life the way you want. The online sessions will be held Thursdays, March 30 through May 11 from 10 a.m. – noon. Participants will need internet access and access to a computer, iPad or other tablet. For questions or to register call the ADRC at 262-605-6646. Senior Group Lecture: Shipwrecks Adventures in Lifelong Learning (ALL), an organization of mostly retired people ages 55 and older, offers lectures on various topics. “Shipwrecks” presented by Ronald Luttrell, Curator, Kenosha Lighthouse Museum April 3, 2023, 2 p.m. Offered virtually on Zoom The S. S. Wisconsin sank off the Kenosha harbor in 1929. Mr. Luttrell, Keeper and Historian of the Southport Lighthouse Museum in Kenosha, will discuss this famous shipwreck – and others!  Mr. Littrell commented, “The most famous shipwreck on the Great Lakes is the Edmund Fitzgerald, mainly because of the time of her sinking and the Gordon Lightfoot song. The spookiest of shipwrecks is the Lady Elgin. The worst storm ever on the Great Lakes, in 1913, is known as ‘The Great White Blow’ or ‘The Great White Hurricane.’ It took down12 ships, damaged over 150, and took more than 250 sailors to their grave.” About his special subject, Mr. Luttrell said, “The story of the Wisconsin is not just spooky, but bizarre as well –" with a very unusual cook on board!” Mr. Luttrell is also a model shipbuilder. He has built ship models and studied maritime and naval history since he was seven years old.  He has several models on display in area museums. Adventures in Lifelong Learning is an active senior group with a wide variety of educationoriented activities. An annual membership fee of $50 includes access to Lectures, Focus groups, Classes and Day trips at a cost. Learn more at www.uwp.edu/ALL or call 262-595-2793. Your Kenosha ADRC Update

12 SMART READER March 09, 2023 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 F v Sometimes people will write to me complaining that the government, specifically the Social Security Administration, has messed them up and cheated them out of benefits they might have been due. But many times, the fault (to trivialize a famous line from Shakespeare's play, "Julius Caesar") is not in our government, but in ourselves. Here are some examples of what I mean. Q: When I was 65, I retired and took the free Part A Medicare. But I didn't want to spend all that money the government was gouging us to take the Part B. However, five years later when I was 70, I decided I needed the Part B, so I took it and started paying a penalty on top of my regular monthly premium. I'm now almost 80 and I'm still paying the penalty. This just proves my theory that the government is made up of a bunch of crooks who are just out to gouge all of us senior citizens! A: Well, you didn't really ask me a question. You just got up on your soapbox and blamed the government for the Part B penalty predicament you find yourself in. But I think if you are looking for blame, you should check the nearest mirror. If you had done your homework when you were turning 65, you would have learned that your Part B Medicare monthly premium would increase by 10% for each year you opted not to participate in that part of Medicare. And you would have learned that the penalties are permanent. So, frankly, you messed up. You were trying to save a few bucks each month by forgoing Part B coverage all those years - - and now you're paying for that mistake. And it sounds like you're trying to put the blame for that mistake on someone else! Q: I had done lots of research and lots of planning to make sure my wife and I maximize our Social Security benefits. I waited until 70 (just two months ago) to start my Social Security. My wife, who was always a homemaker and doesn't have her own Social Security, is also 70 and filed for spousal benefits on my record. We were counting on her getting half of my Social Security, so imagine my shock when we learned that she is only getting about 38% of my benefit. Everything I've ever read says a wife gets 50%. Why is the government cheating us? A: The government isn't cheating you. I think you cheated yourself (and your wife) by not doing enough research. Had you done your homework (by reading my book, "Social Security: Simple and Smart," for example), you would have learned that your wife's spousal benefit is based on your full retirement age benefit, not on your augmented age 70 rate. So, your wife is getting 50%, but again, it's 50% of your FRA benefit, not your age 70 benefit. And just FYI, if you should die before your wife does, her widow's benefit will be based on your full age 70 rate. Q: What an outrage! What a scam the government is running on poor educators like me. I was a teacher in Texas and get a teacher's retirement pension. Texas teachers aren't allowed to pay into Social Security, so I don't have any Social Security of my own. But my husband spent his whole life paying into Social Security, and now we learn that because of some rotten law called the "government pension offset," I won't get any of my husband's Social Security, both now while he is alive and even after he dies. No wonder people don't trust the government when they are allowed to pull a fast one like this on people like us! A: There is no scam. There are no rotten laws. There are no fast ones being pulled. And when you read my explanation, you'll see there is no need for outrage. The best way to explain what's going on is with an example. Let's say that somewhere in a Dallas suburb, two married couples are neighbors. Bob and Carol live in one house, and next door live Ted and Alice. They've all recently retired. Bob and Carol both worked at jobs that were covered by Social Security, so now Bob gets $2,800 per month in retirement benefits and Carol gets $3,000 per month in her own Social Security retirement check. Neighbor Ted also worked at a Social Security covered job. But Ted's wife, Alice, was a teacher. And just for the sake of comparison, I'm going to say that, like Bob, Ted gets $2,800 in Social Security social security If You Mess Up, Don't Blame the Government with Tom Margenau If you have a Social Security question, Tom Margenau has the answer. Contact him at thomas.margenau@comcast. net. 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0 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 SMART READER March 09, 2023 13 Following hours of discussion over safety concerns, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recommended approval of a second RSV vaccine, this one made by GlaxoSmithKline, for use in Americans ages 60 and older. The panel's recommendation was based largely on the results of a trial that tested the GlaxoSmithKline vaccine in the same age group. Those findings, published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that the shot lowered the risk of symptomatic illness by 83% and of severe illness by 94% in people ages 60 and up. In a two-part vote, the panel voted 10 to 2 in favor of the vaccine's safety and unanimously on the shot's effectiveness. Meanwhile, the same panel recommended the approval of an RSV vaccine known as RENOIR from Pfizer Inc. On both days, panel members debated the benefits of the vaccines for patients who overwhelmingly avoided hospitalization against rare reports of autoimmune conditions like Guillain-Barré syndrome that emerged shortly after the shots were administered. In addition, two people who were given the GSK vaccine developed acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, a neurological disorder with symptoms that include weakness and loss of vision. One person died. The company and the FDA consider the cases "possibly related" to the vaccine, noting that both patients also received a flu vaccine at the same time as the RSV shot, the Times reported. Watching the safety of both vaccines after they are approved will be critical, Dr. Henry Bernstein, from the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra University in New York, told the Times. Both Pfizer and GSK have said they would conduct continuing safety monitoring of the vaccines if they were approved by the FDA, which typically follows the advice of its advisory panels. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would also need to recommend the shots before they could become available to Americans. Still, the FDA advisors were divided in their recommendation on the Pfizer vaccine in particular. The panel voted 7-4, with one abstention, to recommend approval of the vaccine based on its effectiveness, NBC News reported. FDA advisors were also split, 7-4 with one abstention, on the safety for the Pfizer vaccine. Pfizer has reported that its vaccine would reduce risk from RSV by as much as 86%. These may not be the only RSV vaccines to come, as 11 are being studied in U.S. trials now, according to data from nonprofit global health organization PATH, NBC News reported. Those include vaccines from Moderna and Bavarian Nordic. Although RSV infection is mild for for many people, the disease can be very serious for infants and older adults. It kills up to 10,000 adults ages 65 or older each year, according to the CDC. Meanwhile, about 300 U.S. children under the age of 5 also die from RSV each year. By Cara Munez FDA recommends second RSV vaccine for adults 60 and older Social Security continued from previous page retirement benefits and Alice, like Carol, gets a $3,000 monthly retirement benefit. The only difference is that Alice's retirement check comes from the Texas Teachers Retirement System while Carol's check comes from Social Security. Carol isn't due (and doesn't expect) any spousal benefits on Bob's record. Why? Because the law has always said that one Social Security benefit offsets another. So, Carol's own monthly benefit of $3,000 is way more than the 50% spousal rate she'd be due on Bob's account. Or to put that another way, when you are due two Social Security benefits, you don't get them both. You only get the one that pays the higher rate. The Government Pension Offset law, that our emailer called "rotten," simply says that a public retirement pension, like Alice's teacher's retirement pension, will be treated just like a Social Security retirement pension. In other words, it will offset any Social Security spousal benefits that might be due. In fact, before the GPO law went into effect, Alice would have been able to receive her $3,000 teacher's pension AND a $1,400 dependent spousal benefit on her husband's Social Security account. Nobody else could get such a windfall. And in fact, the GPO law cuts teachers a sweet deal no one else can get. It says that only two-thirds of the teacher's pension will be used as an offset. So, back to Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. When Bob dies, Carol won't get a nickel in widow's benefits because, again, her own $3,000 Social Security check offsets dollar for dollar the $2,800 widow's benefit she be due if she didn't have her own Social Security. But when Ted dies, Alice will get some widow's benefits that Carol won't get. That's because only two-thirds of Alice's teacher's pension, or $2,000, will be used to offset her widow's pension on Ted's account. So, after Ted dies, Alice will keep getting her $3,000 teacher's pension and she will get $800 in widow's benefits on Ted's Social Security account. If I were Carol, I'd be the one complaining that teachers get such a sweet deal from Social Security that no one else can get. ed al ve my nd fe al we of ed on of al le er er he ey st le m. en st nd my ee or to is at as ed rs. ne ve all nd at ed w er nt ts er ty o al ut a he m ke in ty ge PROVEN TO REDUCE FALLS BY 31% One in four people 65 or older has a fall each year. You don’t have to be one of them. 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14 SMART READER March 09, 2023 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 F R i K “ t in d c w g a d e s b y s E A i a d v t b im w w b t fr – w s h m r a h O n o s a a w s s e a “ in d “ fe books 1. Homestead, by Melinda Moustakis Melinda Moustakis’ clear prose runs like a river through the lives of an ex-soldier and his bride who homestead 150 acres of Alaskan wilderness in the 1950s. Moustakis’ storytelling is both tranquil and turbulent, as she immerses the reader in the breathtaking landscape and the couple’s struggle. 2. The House of Eve, by Sadeqa Johnson In the 1950s, two Black women – high school student Ruby and college history major Eleanor – fall for men who threaten to derail their dreams. Sadeqa Johnson’s compassionate, cleareyed, and sometimes graphic page turner examines how women in desperate situations respond and move forward. 3. Stealing, by Margaret Verble “I love my family, and I’m going to get to them as soon as I can,” promises Kit, a girl whose close ties to her mother’s Cherokee family are cut when she is dispatched to an abusive Christian boarding school in the 1950s. Kit chronicles the events leading to her removal from family, home, and community. Frank and fearless, the novel is a portrait of perseverance. 4. Cold People, by Tom Rob Smith What if Antarctica was humanity’s new – and only – home? Scientists, alarmed by the prospect of humankind’s extinction, set out to engineer a strain of people who can survive the harsh climate. The secret project, dubbed Cold People, sparks concern as whispers of its successes, and failures, spread. Tom Rob Smith explores the tangled relationship between innovation and ethics. 5. Iron Curtain, by Vesna Goldsworthy The privileged daughter of a Communist apparatchik falls in love with a visiting English poet and follows him beyond the Iron Curtain to 1980s bohemian London. Vesna Goldsworthy’s dramatic tale sparkles with intelligence, wry wit, and warmth. 6. Marvelous, by Molly Greeley Molly Greeley draws inspiration from the Renaissanceera true story that inspired “Beauty and the Beast” in this extraordinary, grownup reimagining of the tale of an outcast longing for love. 7. A Stone Is Most Precious Where it Belongs, by Gulchehra Hoja Gulchehra Hoja’s vivid memoir tells of her trajectory from growing up as an Uyghur child to hosting a Chinese children’s TV show to becoming a journalist in America. Rising numbers of Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in China, have been detained in what the government calls “reeducation” camps. While on a trip outside China, Hoja discovers reports by Uyghur dissidents about the scale of oppression in China. She gets a job with Radio Free Asia in the United States, vowing to be a voice for her people. 8. The Declassification Engine, by Matthew Connelly Columbia University historian Matthew Connelly has story continues on page 15 Strength and purpose underscore the theme of these 10 new books Times change. Should classic children’s books? It is the publishing world’s version of New Coke vs. Classic Coke. After a week in which everyone from Salman Rushdie to the queen consort weighed in on Puffin’s decision to make Roald Dahl’s works less … nasty (resulting in hundreds of changes to the text), parent company Penguin announced that classic versions of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Matilda,” and others would be released with their writing intact. That way, the publisher said, families can choose the version of “James and the Giant Peach” that best suits their own child. The brouhaha over the “BFG” author is reminiscent of the 2021 controversy in which six lesser-known Dr. Seuss books were removed from publication by his publisher – accompanied on the right by accusations that woke progressives were coming for childhood. Highlights included GOP senators reading “Green Eggs and Ham” (not one of the titles) as a fundraising tool. In recent years, classic works from “Little House on the Prairie” to “Babar the Elephant” have come under renewed scrutiny for racist passages. Most of all, it comes at a moment in which children’s books are being yanked off library shelves, particularly in red states, at a rate the American Library Association has not seen in decades. Some writers who object to the changes to Dahl’s work say any attempt to sanitize his writing is both futile and repressive – akin to covering nudity in Renaissance art. Other authors say that, with works that have entertained generations of children, a judicious update might preserve the magic for modern readers. But, whether or not they thought Puffin had lost the plot, writers on both sides of the Dahl divide say it points to the centrality of children’s books in culture. “Children’s books have always been the battleground of the culture wars,” says Betsy Bird, a children’s author and librarian. “That being said, children’s literature is sort of remarkable in that it is probably where you will find the most open-minded books on a wide variety of subjects.” “The solution is not to change the book” Daniel Handler, author of the popular “A Series of Unfortunate Events” books written as Lemony Snicket, calls the Puffin edits censorship, full stop. And, to boot, the changes were “particularly absurd.” In “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” the line “each man will have a gun and a flashlight” was amended to, “each person will have a person and a flashlight.” (That is not a typo.) In “The Witches,” the grandmother’s advice that “you can’t go around pulling the hair of every lady you meet, even if she is wearing gloves. Just you try and see what happens,” is removed and replaced by, “besides, there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.” “I’m all for a conversation about what people might find offensive about a particular book. I think that’s super interesting,” says Mr. Handler. But “if there’s a problem, the solution is not to change the book. You can have a conversation about it.” “Roald Dahl is notoriously nasty on and off the page,” says Mr. Handler, “and people can talk about that and have their own emotional reaction to it and make their own decisions about reading his work, but his [original] work should be available to read, rather than some cleaned up, strange, truncated version.” Dahl himself was clear that his writing delighted in the nasty, the rude, and certainly the hyperbolic. “I find that the only way to make my characters really interesting to children is to exaggerate all their good or bad qualities,” Dahl said in a 1988 interview. “If a person is nasty or bad or cruel, you make them very nasty, very bad, very cruel. ... That, I think, is fun and makes an impact.” The case for updating Other writers, like children’s author Debjani Chatterjee, point to the tradition of rewriting and abridging classics like Shakespeare’s plays to present them to young readers. “I think that happens for a very good reason, because if we did not adapt them for modern audiences, then [we’d have] wonderful literary treasures which really would be inaccessible,” says Dr. Chatterjee. Language changes over time, says Dr. Chatterjee, as do societies’ morals and values. Rather than turning away from Dahl entirely, modern classics can be saved by edits that bring a book along with current sensibilities, she says, adding that she would be open to such updates in her own books. Others say such changes should be done judiciously, and sparingly. Certain changes, such as removing slurs, can be appropriate, says Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, which categorically opposed the Puffin edits and applauds the restoration of Dahl’s words. “I think it has to be done surgically, judiciously. I’m very dubious about adding things to the text to sort of make it more politically palatable, which is part of what was done in this case.” If books don’t fit current sensibilities? “People don’t have to read them,” says Ms. Nossel. For her part, Ms. Bird draws a distinction between picture books that are read to children, and mid-grade books that children often choose themselves. Because Dahl’s books are written at a level that children read independently, Ms. Bird says, conversations about problematic portrayals or content often don’t take place. Should books be “safe”? On the other hand, Heather Heying, an evolutionary biologist and author of the Substack newsletter Natural Selections, argues that prioritizing safety-ism for children doesn’t help them navigate the world or understand actual risks that come along. “Safety isn’t what we’re supposed to be seeking in literature or in art in general. And I would argue it shouldn’t be our highest goal in life either,” says Ms. Heying. “Certainly not psychological safety.” Children’s books today are a lightning rod, pulled into the debate over whether they should be adapted to the current time or understood as relics of their own. It’s understandable that people want to protect children, says Mr. Handler, but many of the edits, such as removing a reference to Rudyard Kipling but leaving Ernest Hemingway, “seem like quite a stretch.” “The idea that you could make a book that wouldn’t offend anyone is a really offensive idea.” PEN America’s Ms. Nossel argues for not banishing books. “They may yield insight even if they offend contemporary sensibilities,” says Ms. Nossel, adding that context about the time, setting, and mores in which a work was created is an important part of the discussion. “Even if there is an offending word, that doesn’t negate the value of the whole story ... you may learn that somebody who would use such a word might have also some noble more on next page Roald Dahl arrives at the Academy Awards on April 11, 1969.

0 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 PRINT & E-BOOKS NONFICTION PRINT & E-BOOKS FICTION 1. Things We Hide From The Light (Score) 2. It Starts With Us (Hoover) 3. It Ends With Us (Hoover) 4. Lessons in Chemistry (Garmus) 5. Burner (Greaney) 6. Heart Bones (Hoover) 7. Verity (Hoover) 8. Daisy Jones & The Six (Reid) 9. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (Reid) 10. The Last Kingdom (Berry) 1. Spare (Prince Harry) 2. It’s Ok To Be Angry About Capitalism (Sanders) 3. The Body Keeps the Score (van der Kolk) 4. I’m Glad My Mom Died (McCurdy) 5. The Light We Carry (M.Obama) 6. Walk the Blue Line (Patterson/Eversmann/Mooney) 7. All About Love (Hooks) 8. Caste (Wilkerson) 9. Unscripted (Stewart/Abrams) 10. Love, Pamela (Anderson) NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLERS Recovering a sense of wonder in a post-lockdown world written a gripping and sobering account of the exponential increase in government secrets. He persuasively argues that the United States needs a new strategy to handle classified material, demonstrating that both our national security and the health of our democracy are at stake. 9. All the Beauty in the World, by Patrick Bringley Patrick Bringley quit his job at The New Yorker and became a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, a position he held for a decade. His moving and illuminating debut reveals the inner workings of the massive institution while also exploring the healing power of art. 10. Palo Alto, by Malcolm Harris Palo Alto has been characterized as a “postmodern El Dorado,” the wealthy, happy, advanced heart of both Stanford University and Silicon Valley. In these lively pages, Malcolm Harris provides counterweight to that modern mythology, painting a far more detailed and complicated picture of the entire region, and exploring the social and economic inequalities that are often glossed over in other accounts. British author Katherine May’s “Wintering,” published at the height of the pandemic in 2020, spoke to the darkness of the times and captivated readers with its warming advice on how to get through low periods by accepting them and slowing down. She urged us to embrace winter – by which she meant not just the cold, but fallow stretches when you feel cut off and “out of sync with everyday life.” May’s lyrical follow-up, E n c h a n t m e n t : Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age, is another beautiful, determinedly uplifting volume that manages to transcend typical self-help books. It concerns immersing oneself in the world rather than withdrawing from it, largely by opening up to a sense of the wondrous. Suffering from a post-lockdown funk – which May senses is widely shared – she searches for ways to lift herself out of it. As in “Wintering,” May mixes memoir with reportage to diagnose and alleviate what ails not just her, but modern culture. Once again, she turns to nature and a quirky series of excursions in her English seaside town of Whitstable and further afield to ameliorate her mood. But where in “Wintering” she sought solace, she now seeks sparks of enchantment. Diagnosed with autism as an adult, May notes that “Autistic people are intimate with burnout.” She describes feeling “discombobulated.” Life feels flat to her. She is having trouble focusing. She is unable to read, especially fiction, which she finds embarrassing for a writer. “It is frictionless, this sliding of attention” she writes. She knows these concerns are not unique to her, and flags disconnection and fear as emblematic of our times. “We have been running on empty for so long that we’ve lost the urge to refuel,” she says. More troubling, she misses the “ability to sense magic in the everyday” and to engage deeply with the world around her. Dizzy spells and fear of riptides have caused her to give up the invigorating ice swimming that she wrote about in “Wintering.” She misses her swimming buddies and “the sense of worship that comes when I get into the sea. I miss the feeling that I am entering a vast cathedral, and, rather than sitting in its dry pews, that I am merging with it.” Her conclusion: “I need a better way to walk through this life. I want to be enchanted again. Enchantment is small wonder magnified through meaning, fascination caught in the web of fable and memory. It relies on small doses of awe....” May divides her book into the four primal elements – earth, water, fire, and air. In each section, she is drawn to phenomena – like meteor showers – which “sit perfectly on the cusp of the mundane and the rare.” Her partscientific, part-mystical pursuits broach the sacred, albeit separate from formal religion, and result in a form of communion with nature that is at once deep and whimsical. A visit to eight large boulders erected high above the town of Whitstable in 2020 (in what is perhaps a nod to Stonehenge) offers “an incomplete answer to a question that we have not quite yet learned how to ask. How do we worship now?” She comments that stones, “like small concentrations of gravity,” seem to say, “Make your own meaning.” “Enchantment” glimmers with resonant, offbeat observations. Nostalgic for the old-fashioned upbringing she experienced in her grandparents’ home, May laments, “Childhood used to have dirt under its fingernails. Now it has hand sanitiser.” Writing about the moths that swarm her lamps on summer nights, she comments, “We are more moth than we know: small, frustrated, capable of only tickling a world that we wish would feel our heft.” In beekeeping classes, she delights in feeling the weight of swarming bees in her gloved hand. Brocken Spectres, eerie projections of a person’s shadow cast onto cloud cover by a low lying sun, also delight her, “a ghost of our own making, a literal projection of the dark part of our self onto an unstable surface.” When a supermoon obscures the meteor showers that she’s driven hundreds of miles to see with her husband and son, she finds another, unexpected source of wonder projected from the night sky: moon shadows. May’s prose reaches for the heavens as she describes what she is searching for: “the chance to merge into the wild drift of the world, to feel overcome, to enter into its weft so completely that sometimes I can forget myself.” Fellow seekers will be enchanted. By Heller McAlpin continued from page 14 Children’s books continued from page 14 ideas that you really subscribe to, and it’s an opportunity to embrace that kind of complexity.” Ms. Bird, who is the collection development manager of Evanston Public Library in Illinois, is optimistic about efforts to dig into nuanced issues. “I often say that we’re kind of living in a golden age of children’s literature right now,” she says. “There is so much more complexity regarding history and contemporary issues and things like that in books for kids than there ever was before.” Puffin did not respond to an interview request. A spokesperson for Inclusive Minds, which worked with the publisher on the updates, wrote that the company doesn’t edit or rewrite texts or provide sensitivity reads. Instead, the company has a network of Inclusion Ambassadors who consult based on their own lived experiences. Whitewashing a “complicated legacy”? One thing that sets this situation apart, says Kat Rosenfield, a novelist and cultural critic who has written on the rise of sensitivity readers, is that Dahl, who died in 1990, is unable to provide input. “There’s an element of fraudulence to it,” says Ms. Rosenfield. “They’re going to change the language of his books in a way that is quite substantial and really has stripped quite a lot of the magic and the cheekiness in the way that he saw the world that was so resonant to kids specifically, because it can be kind of crude and funny and colorful and definitely not sensitive.” “I’ve been trying to think of what a comparable thing is,” says Ms. Rosenfield. “The thing that I came up with was if they put some bikini briefs on Michelangelo’s David and then they told everyone that it always looked like that.” By editing Dahl’s work to make it more palatable, publishers run the risk of portraying the author more favorably than perhaps he deserves, says Ms. Rosenfield, pointing out that Dahl was openly anti-Semitic. “I think it’s good to know that [his books] were written by not a very nice man,” says Ms. Rosenfield. “And to sanitize them is actually to kind of whitewash that complicated legacy.” As it happens, Dahl himself weighed in on his preferences about posthumous editing. In a recorded conversation with the artist Francis Bacon in 1982, Dahl threatened to unleash his “enormous greedy grumptious brute,” the Enormous Crocodile, on his publishers if they tweaked “a single comma.” “When I am gone, if that happens, then I’ll wish mighty Thor knocks very hard on their heads with his Mjolnir,” said Dahl in the conversation recorded by Barry Joule and published in the Guardian, “Or I will send along the ‘enormous crocodile’ to gobble them up.” By Sophie Hills 10 best books d, n d k al at or m or at re n n e st s. ot ay d er e e of at ct er, h o g m d ’t y s. ot ay ey y s. xt d as nt n. n at of ay o d e ge SMART READER March 09, 2023 15

16 SMART READER March 09, 2023 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 F C th su lo he W co di lo th in di in W co co un yi A is m im th a im w ca bu ev M P a t w a C m m in e r a e d e e le a fi o p d sh re o C C B e r e Researchers from Canada and Britain said they found a connection between taking vitamin D supplements and living longer without the ravages of dementia in a large-scale study of more than 12,000 participants. The findings, which were published in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring, discovered 40% fewer dementia diagnoses among those in a group of 4,637 who took the vitamins than in the remaining group who did not. The researchers from the University of Calgary's Hotchkiss Brain Institute and Britain's University of Exeter, said the mean age of the participants was 71 and did not have dementia when they signed up. "We know that vitamin D has some effects in the brain that could have implications for reducing dementia, however so far, research has yielded conflicting results," Research leader Zahinoor Ismail, of the University of Calgary and the University of Exeter, said in a statement. "Our findings give key insights into groups who might be specifically targeted for vitamin D supplementation. Overall, we found evidence to suggest that earlier supplementation might be particularly beneficial, before the onset of cognitive decline." According to the research, 2,696 participants progressed to dementia over 10 years. In that group, 2,017 (75%) had no exposure to vitamin D throughout all visits prior to dementia diagnosis, and 679 (25%) had baseline exposure. "Preventing dementia or even delaying its onset is vitally important given the growing numbers of people affected," co-author Byron Creese of the University of Exeter, said in a statement. "The link with vitamin D in this study suggests that taking vitamin D supplements may be beneficial in preventing or delaying dementia, but we now need clinical trials to confirm whether this is really the case." The research comes on the heels of a pair of studies in November that suggested that social isolation substantially increased risk factors for dementia in older adults. The studies said using technology to encourage older adults to text and email to stay in touch helped them. By Clyde Hughes Study: Vitamin D could help keep dementia at bay Young adults in the United States carry an increasing burden of heart health risk factors, making it more likely they'll suffer a heart attack and stroke as they age, a new study warns. More adults ages 20 to 44 are obese and diabetic than a decade ago, and they are more likely to have poorly controlled blood pressure, according to the study published Sunday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers also found that young Black and Hispanic adults are more likely to suffer from these risk factors than White young adults. "We're witnessing a smoldering public health crisis," said senior researcher Dr. Rishi Wadhera, section head of health policy and equity at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's Smith Center for Outcomes Research in Boston. "The onset of these risk factors earlier in life is associated with a higher lifetime risk of heart disease and potentially lifethreatening cardiovascular conditions, like a heart attack or stroke," Wadhera said. "Our finding that the burden of many cardiovascular risk factors is rising in young adults could have major public health implications over the longterm, especially as the U.S. population ages." These health problems in people so young are likely contributing to declining life expectancy in the United States, said Norrina Allen, director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. "It's shocking to me that this generation is the first that has a shorter life expectancy than we currently do," said Allen, who co-authored an editorial accompanying the new study. "And I really hope that we can prioritize the health of our children and young adults in order to prevent the growing burden of heart disease." For the study, Wadhera and his colleagues analyzed more than a decade's worth of federal survey data related to health and nutrition in the United States. They found that obesity rates among adults 20 to 44 rose from about 33% in in 2009-10 to 41% in 2017-20. Likewise, the prevalence of diabetes rose from 3% to just over 4%. Rates of high blood pressure also increased from more than 9% in 2009- 10 to almost 12% in 2017- 20, but many young adults with high blood pressure and diabetes aren't doing anything to control these conditions, Wadhera said. "Medical treatment rates for high blood pressure and diabetes were surprising low," Wadhera said. "Only approximately 55% of young adults with hypertension were receiving blood pressure medications, and just 1 in 2 young adults with diabetes were on treatment." The researchers found trends among Black and Hispanic adults particularly troubling. Young Black adults experience the highest premature heart-related death rates in the nation, and here they were more than two times more likely to have high blood pressure than any other group, Wadhera said. Diabetes and obesity also were far more common in younger Black and Hispanic Americans, researchers found. And among young Hispanic adults, rates of high blood pressure more than doubled from about 4% to nearly 11%, Wadhera said. Part of the problem is the invincibility of youth, experts said. "Younger individuals don't comprehend that they are at risk for some of this," said Dr. Jeffrey Berger, a cardiologist with NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. "You think you're a little bit more like Superman or Superwoman, where nothing will affect you." Because they feel invincible, younger adults are less likely to have health insurance and seek regular medical care, Allen said. "When you're a young adult, I think heart disease or stroke and the outcomes of those risk factors feels like a long way off, because most of those events are happening later in life," Allen said. "To be honest, they are the group with the lowest healthcare coverage, insurance coverage, and so continuity of healthcare and having a primary care provider who is going to monitor and manage their risk factors is poor, unfortunately, in that age group." Because they aren't regularly seeing a doctor, many young adults aren't aware that they have these risk factors, Wadhera noted. "If you don't know that you have diabetes, for example, it's hard to treat it," Wadhera said. The disparities found among Black and Hispanic adults likely stem from larger societal inequities, experts said. "We know that income inequality and inability to access healthy food and inability to afford medications consistently, all of that plays a role in how well we can prevent and how well we can control things like hypertension and diabetes," Allen said. "And unfortunately, we see that the rates of control, even once people have those, is very low." "Younger Black individuals are more likely to live in lower-income households that experience housing instability and food insecurity, as well as in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods, which often have less green space for regular exercise and more exposure to environmental stressors such as air pollution," Wadhera added. "Black individuals also disproportionately face challenges accessing primary and preventive care." The study did contain one bit of good news -- rates of high cholesterol among young adults decreased from almost 41% to 36%, researchers report. Wadhera and his colleagues speculated that this is due to the government crackdown on the use of trans fats and partially hydrogenated oils in processed foods and fast food. Young adults can start controlling their risk factors by going to the doctor and finding out where their health stands, Allen said. "The first important thing is knowing your numbers -- knowing what your blood pressure is, knowing what your cholesterol is, making sure you're checking your weight regularly," Allen said. People with risk factors like elevated cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes can start taking medication to control them, Berger said, and adopt a healthier lifestyle. "We really need to just get people on some therapy," Berger said. "We need to remind all of ourselves of the importance of lifestyle, healthy eating and physical activity. It just really reminds us of how much work there is to be done." "Any change is good change," Allen said, "You don't have to change everything at once. You can pick one aspect that you want to start improving, whether you're going to get out and walk for 20, 30 minutes every day or you're going to try and reduce the amount of packaged snacks or sodas that you drink. Even those small changes can add up to major differences in the long term." Wadhera also presented these findings this week at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in New Orleans. By Dennis Thompson Feeling invincible, lacking healthcare, young adults' heart health at risk More adults ages 20 to 44 are obese and diabetic than a decade ago, and they are more likely to have poorly controlled blood pressure, according to a new study. health

0 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 SMART READER March 09, 2023 17 DEAR MAYO CLINIC: My friend insists that taking a probiotic supplement has helped her lose 50 pounds by keeping her gut bacteria in check. Will taking a probiotic in conjunction with a balanced diet and exercise help me lose weight? ANSWER: It is true that the gut bacterial population in people who are obese differs from the population in people who are lean. Whether this difference contributes to obesity or is a consequence of obesity is unknown. So far, research hasn't yielded clear answers. Although taking a probiotic is unlikely to cause harm, it may not help fight obesity. First and foremost, it is important to understand that weight gain is essentially a function of energy imbalance. You gain weight when you take in more calories than your body burns. And there is some evidence that bacteria in the gut play a role in how efficiently the body extracts energy from the food that reaches the small intestine. Your digestive tract, also called the gut, contains trillions of bacteria. Many of those bacteria play useful roles in the body, including metabolizing nutrients from food. While much of the bacteria in the gut are valuable, some are not. Studies have been performed about how an imbalance between good and bad gut bacteria could contribute to certain medical disorders. Eating foods such as yogurt and sauerkraut that contain probiotics -- a type of "good" bacteria -- or taking a probiotic supplement have been credited with health benefits. Although more research is needed, there is some evidence that probiotics might improve gut health. To date, however, the only studies that have shown convincing results that changing the composition of gut bacteria -- sometimes called the gut microbiome -- affects weight have been performed using germ-free mice. In humans, on the other hand, data are murky when it comes to the role of probiotics in helping with weight loss. An analysis of the results of published research studies that have investigated probiotics and weight loss revealed no clear answers. That is partly because research methods varied widely among those studies, and a range of different probiotics were included. What is clear is that the most important factor determining the makeup of the gut microbiome is diet. But, again, that calls into question which comes first. Does obesity lead to a certain type of microbiome? Or does a certain type of microbiome lead to obesity? At this point, this is unknown. What is known is that you can take steps to maintain a healthier gut microbiome, and these steps also should help with your weight-loss journey. For example, eating plenty of fruits and vegetables appears to help good bacteria in your gut thrive. It also can be beneficial in filling you up and limiting overeating of snack foods and other unnecessary calories. Also, limiting fat, sugar and animal sources of protein can help maintain a healthier gut microbiome, too, because research shows that diets high in those foods correlate with a more unfavorable bacteria makeup in the gut. Taking a probiotic supplement also may improve the health of your gut microbiome, but it is unclear what role those supplements play in weight loss. The most reliable way to lose weight is to eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly, so you're burning more calories than you're consuming. I always recommend that you direct specific questions about diet and exercise to your primary health care team. -- Meera Shah, M.B., Ch.B., Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota Mayo Clinic Probiotics, gut bacteria and weight -- what's the connection? health A brisk 11-minute daily walk can help you live longer, a new University of Cambridge study reports. Researchers found that 75 minutes a week -- 11 minutes daily -- of moderateintensity physical activity is enough to lower a person's risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer. The investigators estimated that 1 in 10 early deaths could be prevented if everyone got that amount of exercise, which is half the level recommended by U.S. and British guidelines. "If you are someone who finds the idea of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week a bit daunting, then our findings should be good news," coresearcher Dr. Soren Brage, of the Medical Research Council at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, said in a university news release. "Doing some physical activity is better than doing none," he added. "This is also a good starting position - if you find that 75 minutes a week is manageable, then you could try stepping it up gradually to the full recommended amount." Cardiovascular diseases (heart disease and stroke) were the leading causes of death worldwide, responsible for nearly 18 million deaths in 2019. Cancers were responsible for 9.6 million deaths in 2017. To examine how much exercise could make a dent in those numbers, the researchers pooled and analyzed data from 94 large studies involving more than 30 million people. The findings showed that 2 out of 3 people don't get their recommended 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise, and fewer than 1 in 10 managed more than 300 minutes of activity per week. Broadly speaking, the researchers concluded that getting more than 150 minutes a week of exercise produces marginal benefits in terms of reduced risk of disease or death. But even half that amount came with significant benefits, the team reported. For example, 75 minutes per week of moderateintensity exercise reduced risk of early death by 23%. It was also enough to reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke by 17% and cancer by 7%. For some specific cancers, the reduction in risk was even greater. Getting that amount of exercise reduced the risk of head and neck, myeloid leukemia, myeloma and gastric cardia cancers between 14% and 26%. The researchers calculated that if people get their recommended 150 minutes of exercise a week, around 16% of early deaths would be prevented. In addition, 11% of cardiovascular disease cases and 5% of cancer cases would be prevented. But if folks manage at least 75 minutes per week of moderate-intensity physical activity, around 10% of early deaths would be prevented. And 5% of cardiovascular disease cases and 3% of cancer cases would be prevented. Further, moderateintensity exercise doesn't require you to run yourself ragged, the researchers noted. It raises your heart rate and makes you breathe faster, but you'd still be able to speak during the activity. Other examples include dancing, riding a bike, playing tennis and hiking. "Moderate activity doesn't have to involve what we normally think of exercise, such as sports or running," co-researcher Dr. Leandro Garcia from Queens University Belfast explained. "Sometimes, replacing some habits is all that is needed," Garcia added. "For example, try to walk or cycle to your work or study place instead of using a car, or engage in active play with your kids or grand kids. Doing activities that you enjoy and that are easy to include in your weekly routine is an excellent way to become more active." The findings were published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. By Dennis Thompson Researchers found that 75 minutes a week -- 11 minutes daily -- of moderate-intensity physical activity is enough to lower a person's risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer. Brief moderate exercise could reduce risk of early death on es ed on sk in aid to to in es -- od hat ng ur d. ors ol, nd ng m, a ust me We of ce ng ust ow be od ou ge an ou ng, get 30 re he ks nk. es or ng ed at he of ns. on

18 SMART READER March 09, 2023 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 F a g " a g s is A A h d p " li r fo A U E m r a s s In s s o t e C A t o a a U f c w h c a t d a s s e c p p fi w le s M n w t S c Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor once had to look up the meaning of “summa cum laude” when she was told that she’d earned the distinction at Princeton University. Understand, she was from a neighborhood where such lofty achievements weren’t discussed, much less held up as a goal for little girls like her. She was a Puerto Rican child of the Bronx. She had an emotionally neglectful mother who was a nurse, a father who would die young and could end any family gathering with an angry outburst after he consumed enough whiskey, a beloved and protective grandmother she adored, and an influential aunt who toiled away in a sewing factory hidden behind windows painted black to shield the conditions inside from prying eyes. Sotomayor detailed all of this in her 2013 memoir, My Beloved World. And all of it influenced the Supreme Court justice she is today. In recent oral arguments, Sotomayor pressed back on behalf of the 43 million people who would benefit from the Biden administration’s plan to erase $10,000 in student debt, or up to $20,000 for Pell Grant holders, which the court will rule on this summer. She went beyond the nuances of the legal wrangling and straight to the human side, describing the life-changing financial reprieve that could put so many Americans on a much better financial footing. Discussing who will be affected if the student loans are forgiven, she said: “Many of them don’t have assets sufficient to bail them out after the pandemic. They don’t have friends or families or others who can help them make these payments. The evidence is clear that many of them will have to default.” Because Sotomayor knows from her childhood that it’s not just the bill you can’t pay today, but what happens cumulatively. When society has a class of debtors, this becomes a huge lesion on the economic bounties of capitalism. “Their financial situation will be even worse because once you default, the hardship on you is exponentially greater. You can’t get credit. You’re going to pay higher prices for things. They are going to continue to suffer from this pandemic in a way that the general population doesn’t.” Most academics believe the Biden plan won’t survive this challenge at the The empathy of a child informs the wisdom of a justice – Sonia Sotomayor with Mary Sanchez Readers can reach Mary Sanchez at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @msanchezcolumn. Before he became host of “The Tonight Show” on NBC, Johnny Carson hosted a show on ABC called “Who Do You Trust?” The grammatical error aside (WHOM do you trust would have been correct), it’s a question many are asking when it comes to their government, scientists and politicians. Perhaps an updated version might be whom CAN you trust? With respect to just the latest lies about the origin, prevention and treatment for the virus that causes COVID-19, the misinformation and disinformation are now being uncovered. The latest comes from the Department of Energy. While labeling its conclusions “low confidence,” it is the first revelation from any federal agency that early allegations that the virus originated from a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China, might have credibility. FBI Director Christopher Wray has since come out to say that the COVID pandemic was "likely caused" by the Chinese lab leak. When the story was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan claimed there is no “consensus” in the intelligence or scientific communities about the origin of the virus. Since when did a lack of consensus keep them from reaching conclusions? When there has been consensus, it has often been wrong (i.e. the missed Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1962, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968, the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the Iranian Revolution in 1978, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Let’s not forget those 50 retired intelligence officers who were all-in when it came to agreeing that the Hunter Biden laptop story was part of a “Russian disinformation” operation. Joining the pile-on was Hillary Clinton, who claimed then-Rep Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) was a Russian “asset.” None has apologized for these lies, nor have their media enablers. The list of misinformation and lies is long. They involved masks (good, not good), school closures (effective, ineffective), vaccines (prevent infection, then don’t, but wear masks anyway), social distancing (effective, but then not so much). There was one overwhelming consensus among the “experts” – anyone who disagreed with them was a conspiracy theorist, a denier, wore a tin hat, and was stupid and racist. The media aided and abetted the “experts” by calling critics names to silence them. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) was a special target. About Cotton’s view the virus came from a Chinese lab, a New York Times headline read “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origin.” The Washington Post ran a nearly identical headline: “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus fringe theory that scientists have disputed.” Many others agreed. On Feb. 20, the Post published this halfhearted statement without apology: “Earlier versions of this story and its headline inaccurately characterized comments by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) regarding the origins of the coronavirus." Then there was Dr. Anthony “I am science” Fauci who made dubious and changing claims, debunking statements from anyone who disagreed with him. The New York Post has compiled a list of misinformation that came from supposedly reliable sources. They include vaccinated immunity is better than natural immunity; school closures reduced COVID transmission; the vaccine has no side effects; young people benefit from a vaccine booster; vaccine mandates increased vaccination rates, and, of course, COVID origination from the Wuhan Lab is a conspiracy theory. The Pew Research Center has studied the trust Americans place in government: “When the National Election Study began asking about trust in government in 1958, about three-quarters of Americans trusted the federal government to do the right thing almost always or most of the time. … Public trust reached a three-decade high shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but declined quickly thereafter. Since 2007, those saying they can trust the government always or most of the time has not surpassed 30 percent. Is it any wonder? Who(m) do you trust? with Cal Thomas Readers may email Cal Thomas at [email protected]. Look for Cal Thomas’ new book “America’s Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers and the Future of the United States” my turn Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, left, and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas sit for official portraits at the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building on Oct. 7, 2022, in Washington, D.C. The Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, as seen on February 3, 2021. continues on next page

0 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 SMART READER March 09, 2023 19 Thomas Hobbes asserted that without government, life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." But, ironically, even with government, similar terms still might apply today. That is sadly true in America. About three-quarters of Americans see the country headed in the wrong direction. And an equal proportion report they are "dissatisfied" with their lives. This bleakness is reflected in how numerous foreign capitals view America. With the war in Ukraine, NATO and other European allies are, for the moment, in agreement in reversing Russian aggression. However, that same favorability and support are far from global. In terms of populations, a significant majority tends to side with Russia and China over the West. Anecdotal analysis is telling. South Africa's navy is exercising with Russia's and China's off its coasts. North African states from Algeria to Egypt are buying Russian oil, despite the boycotts and sanctions. And history also counts. Perhaps the Vietnam War has been forgotten. However, U.S. interventions into Iraq twice, Afghanistan, Libya and even Ukraine, along with European colonialism, have not. Too often America is seen as arrogant, aloof and unwilling to listen. These criticisms beyond America's borders are reflected in the unprecedented political, social, cultural, ideological and economic divisions from within. Virtually every issue is deeply politicized between Democrats and Republicans. Last weekend, one of the Department of Energy labs released a report that concluded the COVID-19 virus likely came from China's biological research facility in Wuhan. The origins of COVID-19 have two possible sources. The first is from nature and an animal to human zoonotic transmission. The second is a man-made virus created in a laboratory, such as in Wuhan, that could be part of a biological warfare program. Initially, many disregarded the conspiracy theory because far more Chinese people succumbed to COVID-19 than in any other country. Less advertised was that the Energy Department report expressed "low confidence" in the source as being from a laboratory. The White House has no firm conclusion as to the origins of COVID-19, as U.S. intelligence remains divided. However, the political divisions have magnified the intensity and passion on both sides of the debate. For the moment, the question of whether the United States is at a transformational inflection point, or what has been called a hinge of history, is interesting. Such points after World War II were 1947 and the partition of India into Pakistan; 1948 and the establishment of Israel; 1949 and the formation of NATO; 1972 and Nixon's trip to China; 1989 and 1991 that led to the end of the Cold War and the implosion of the Soviet Union; and the alQaida attacks of 2001. One could argue that Russian President Vladimir Putin's incursions into Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014 and Ukraine last year are also critical dates. The reason that 2023 could be one such inflection point is that for the first time in its history, the United States faces both a nuclear armed economic superpower and a nuclear armed energyrich adversary that launched the first major war in Europe since 1945. If this assessment is correct, U.S. strategy has not anticipated these conditions and does not fit this new paradigm. And much as nuclear and thermonuclear weapons forever changed strategy because in war there could be no winners, only losers eviscerated under huge mushroom-shaped clouds, this dual challenge from China and Russia could have equally profound consequences. But where are these matters being addressed? And part of any assessment, are the traditional definitions of containment, deterrence and defense still applicable, or does each need revision for this era? For over a decade, neither China nor Russia has been contained or deterred. China has made its military one of the largest and most modern on Earth; fortified tiny islands in its contiguous seas; and strengthened its rhetoric on returning Taiwan to China. The same freedom of action applies to Russia. Russia has intervened in Syria and Moldova, as well as Ukraine. It has threatened the use of nuclear weapons. And it has suspended New START. So what can be done? In many ways, the United States seems to have lost its way at home and abroad. But administrations generally have greater flexibility regarding foreign and defense than domestic policy. With less than two years remaining in office, a major strategic review is unlikely to be undertaken by this White House. Yet that is what is needed now. That returns to a common refrain of who will listen and who will lead? U.S. isn't prepared for Russia, China challenges of 2023 with Harlan Ullman my turn Dr Harlan Ullman is senior adviser at Washington's Atlantic Council, the prime author of "shock and awe" and the upcoming book "The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large." Harlan Ullman joins Happenings Q&A on Thu., Mar. 16th at 1pm on AM1050 WLIP. The U.S. Energy Department said this week it had "low confidence" that the source of COVID-19 was from a lab in China. Far more Chinese people succumbed to COVID-19 than in any other country. highest court. The conservative-leaning court isn’t likely to buy the administration’s argument that debt relief initially designed for the military after September 11, 2001 should be applied to those struggling against the economic disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. There are several cases pending before the court. A first step will be deciding whether some even have legal standing. One was brought by six states (including my own – Missouri – and a neighboring one – Kansas) which needed to prove first that they would be harmed if the debt cancellation goes through. Missouri is home to a profitable student loan servicer. Also, most crucially, is the question of whether the Biden administration had overrun the intention of Congress when legislators passed the law upon which the forgiveness would be based: The HEROES Act or the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003. At one point in the arguments over the second lawsuit, Sotomayor threw down a gauntlet of sorts. “Illogical” was the term she used when addressing an attorney arguing on behalf of a woman whose $17,000 in student loan debt wouldn’t be forgiven under Biden’s plan. Commercial entities, not the federal government, service that debt. That lawsuit argues that procedures in setting up the forgiveness plan didn’t include a notice and comment period, which isn’t required under the HEROES Act and wouldn’t necessarily mean that the woman’s circumstances would be covered under Biden’s relief plan. “This is so totally illogical to me,” Sotomayor said. “That you come into court to say, ‘I want more, I’m going to file a suit to get more, but I know I’m going to get nothing.’” If you’ve read Sotomayor’s book, this down-to-earth approach in her argumentation wouldn’t shock. Another Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, has also been mentioned often in recent days, following the oral arguments in the case. Thomas, in 2007, also wrote a compelling and h e a r t - w r e n c h i n g autobiography: My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir. In it, he offers personal experience with the overwhelming burden of student debt, which he carried even after being named a justice. That’s astounding, and alone ought to make the case for realigning the costs of an education with accessibility. And yet, it wasn’t Thomas who spoke with empathy for those struggling with student loan debt, although he clearly understands poverty. He wrote of his early years as a young child, and being plagued by “nagging, chronic hunger,” sleeping in a chair because there was no bed for him and the unforgettable stench of raw sewage that seeped from a broken sewer line to an outdoor toilet. Sotomayor wrote of how she developed a high emotional intelligence, which was, in part, a defense mechanism. “I was a watchful child constantly scanning the adults for cues and listening in on their conversations. My sense of security depended on what information I could glean, any clue dropped inadvertently when they didn’t realize that a child was paying attention.” And in another section, she writes of how she first gained some valuable skills – listening and thinking as a young girl as people were misunderstood and conversations imploded. “I was 15 years old when I understood how it is that things break down: People can’t imagine someone else’s point of view.” Well, on one of the world’s largest stages, Sotomayor just exhibited how that sense of understanding and compassion could help resolve one of the biggest problems that could plague our society for many years down the road: the deep financial indebtedness of so many. Sanchez continued from page 18 he is ou ng or to his he t.” ve n’t he a h e n e y n ut of e o st e. a ly st d e n nt e 0 te ce C. age

20 SMART READER March 09, 2023 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 F Warren Buffett released the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter and the 92 year old “Oracle of Omaha” has a number of notable comments about markets and investing. For over 58 years most of the decisions that he and his partner — 99-year-old Charlie Munger — have made were “no better than so-so,” and in fact, some bad bets were “rescued by very large doses of luck.” Why should we pay attention to a couple of nonagenarians, who, over the decades, have been accused of being out of touch with the hot asset du jour (Charlie Munger has referred to crypto “rat poison” and “crappo”)? Let’s start with the impressive track record that they have racked up: from 1965 – 2022, Berkshire has grown at an annualized rate of 19.8 percent, versus 9.9% for the S&P 500’s total return. Buffett says that their overall success can be attributed to “about a dozen truly good decisions – that would be about one every five years…The lesson for investors: The weeds wither away in significance as the flowers bloom. Over time, it takes just a few winners to work wonders.” Given that few of us have the deep pockets, infinite time horizon, skill, or the patience of Buffett and Munger, there is hope. In his 2016 annual shareholder letter, Buffett noted that when asked for investment advice, his “regular recommendation has been a low-cost S&P 500 index fund.” That was not a new message for Buffett. Three years prior, he provided similar advice to the trustees of his estate: “Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund…I believe the trust’s long-term results from this policy will be superior to those attained by most investors…who employ high-fee managers.” Nobel Prize winning economist Richard H. Thaler drilled home this point last year, as markets were rolling over and people were wondering what they should do to combat the big market drops. “Any sudden moves by individual investors are certainly no more likely to be right than wrong…If anything, they’re more likely to be wrong than right because our instinct is to sell when markets go down and to buy when they go up — and buying high and selling low is just not a good strategy…stick to your plan and don’t think you’re a genius and you can beat the market. Because you probably can’t.” Still, many cling to the idea that “someone” knows when to jump in and out of markets. According to old school money managers Brown Brothers Harriman, “market timing is a fundamentally flawed approach.” It’s just really hard to determine which asset classes will perform well in the short run and over the longer term as market cycles are inherently unpredictable and “history has shown that forecasters are not adept at predicting these events.” Maybe retail investors are catching on to the fact that it is nearly impossible to time the market. A new report by Fidelity Investments found that although retirement savers got shellacked last year (down by over 20% from 2021), they “did not make significant changes to their asset allocation in 2022, and more than a third increased their contribution rate over the last year.” Additionally, despite battling surging inflation last year, total 401(k) savings for the fourth quarter (including both employer and employee contributions), held steady at 13.7%. And the percentage of participants with a loan outstanding on their 401(k) was at 16.7% for Q4 2022, matching the lowest percentage on record and down from 21% five years ago. My guess is that Buffett, Munger and Thaler would be happy with these results. Back to Buffett with Jill Schlesinger jill on money “My beautiful pile of cash is slipping away,” lamented a recent caller to my podcast. She is not alone. The personal savings rate, which is the amount of money people have after spending and taxes, dipped to 3.4 percent at the end of last year. That’s a far cry from the COVID record high rate of 34% in April 2020 (as it turns out, it’s very hard to spend a lot of money on paper towels, disinfectant, and masks), and well below the pre-pandemic level of 8.8% for all of 2019. The pandemic’s impact on the economy, combined with the government’s relief measures to combat it, has distorted the nation’s savings rate over the past three-plus years. It started with a much larger than anticipated pileup of cash, due to lockdowns and stimulus checks flowing, which resulted in extra savings of $2.7 trillion by the end of 2021, according to Moody’s Analytics. But last year, as inflation breached 40-year highs, consumers confronted a protracted surge in prices at the pumps, at the grocery store and for services like those performed by barbers, plumbers, and lawyers. Many ate into their precious savings — and when those savings were gone, some turned to debt to make ends meet. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that credit card balances increased $61 billion in the fourth quarter, and totaled $130 billion in credit debt for all of 2022, those were the largest increases for either a quarter or a year in the history of the data, which goes back to 1999. Do those higher debt levels mean that Americans are on the verge of cascading into a pernicious debt spiral? Economists are hopeful that we are not there yet, because the labor market remains strong enough for people to keep making their payments. That said, the data are flashing some warning signs. In its blog, the NY Fed pointed out that “there were 18.3 million borrowers behind on a credit card at the end of 2022 compared to 15.8 million at the end of 2019.” While they don’t see widespread defaults, for those individuals struggling to make those increasingly costly payments, “this financial distress is real.” Whether you are digging out of debt or trying to replenish your savings to gather six to 12 months of living expenses, there is no better time than the present to track just how much your spending has increased due to rising prices, postpandemic splurges, or some combination of both. There are lots of apps that will allow you to track your cash flow or feel free to go old school and fire up a spread sheet to see where your money is going. (If you are carrying Federal student loans, don’t forget to factor in those payments for the second half of the year. If the Supreme Court rules that forgiveness can proceed, you will have extra dough, but if they knock it down, you will be prepared.) If you are paying down debt, establish automatic payments, even for a small amount, and prioritize the highest interest accounts and work your way down. If you are consumer debt free, try to focus on saving by establishing automatic transfers from your checking account into a savings account, money market account, a short-term CD (check out web aggregation sites like Bankrate.com or DepositAccounts.com for the highest yielding accounts). Once you have the emergency fund established, redirect what was going into savings and concentrate on retirement, either by increasing what you are contributing through work, or by opening a Roth or Traditional IRA account. Jill Schlesinger, CFP, is a CBS News business analyst. A former options trader and CIO of an investment advisory firm, she welcomes comments and questions at [email protected]. Check her website at www.jillonmoney.com Inflation takes bite out of savings with Jill Schlesinger There is no better time than the present to track just how much your spending has increased due to rising prices, post-pandemic splurges, or some combination of both, writes Jill Schlesinger. Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffett rides in a golf cart at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 7, 2021, in Sun Valley, Idaho. on re ou w it du H lo So un an ba — W "s in co th re w yo hi hi ya lea du sc 20 20 ar do giv re ho re ba th hi po us Bi W tr po w ba ok Re w ta P w H r b

0 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 SMART READER March 09, 2023 21 n d n e st r g d ), e ts n r e d e t, e ng gs et D on or or ng he ed, to on by re rk, or Dear Cathy, We have a one-year-old Shih Tzu who refuses to relieve himself in our backyard. We are happy to walk him three times a day, but it is only sometimes possible due to weather and schedules. He will hold it in for a very long time until we walk him. Sometimes, I think this is unhealthy and wonder, is there any way to get him to go in the backyard on these occasions? — Annette, Queens, New York Dear Annette, Whenever you train a dog to "sit," you must introduce "sit" in different locations for the concept to stick. It's the same thing when training a dog to relieve himself. Simply put, the walk is a pleasant habit where your dog learned to relieve himself. Now it's time to teach him to relieve himself in your yard. Begin by walking him on a leash around your backyard during your normally scheduled walks. If you spend 20 minutes on a walk, spend 20 minutes walking him around the backyard. If he doesn't relieve himself, don't give up and take him for his regular walk. Instead, take him into the house, wait 30 minutes, and repeat the leash-walking in the backyard. Do this throughout the day until he finally relieves himself. When he does, say "go potty" at the same time and use his reward word, like Bingo, to mark the behavior. When he’s done, give him a treat. You also can pick up his poop from one of his regular walks and deposit it in your backyard to let him know it's okay to relieve himself there. Replace his first two daily walks with this activity, and take him for a walk as usual in the evening. After a few days, take him into your fenced yard without a leash. Let him wander around the yard. If he relieves himself, implement the command, reward, and treat mentioned above. If he doesn't, bring him in after 10 minutes, and go back out with him an hour later. Repeat this process throughout the day until he finally relieves himself. It may take a few days or weeks, but if you’re consistent, he should begin to understand what you want him to do. Dear Cathy, We have two five-year-old cats who are brothers that we have had since they were four weeks old. They are very bonded. The problem is that Ben is always biting Jerry's neck. Ben's front claws rub the fur off of Jerry's back while he does this. Jerry tries to hide or go under furniture to avoid Ben doing this. We thought Ben would grow out of it, but he has not. After finishing his meal, Ben steals the rest of Jerry's canned food. Jerry also has a habit of chasing our other (elderly) cats, which they hate, so we have them in three different areas of the house. We have never had to do this before. Help! — Sherlee, Las Vegas, Nevada Dear Sherlee, Assuming all your cats are fixed, the next step is to get feline pheromone collars for Ben and Jerry. Feline pheromones mimic a mother cat's after-birth release of pheromones that help her form a bond with her babies. In this instance, we are using it to calm Ben when he is around Jerry, and calm Jerry when he is around the elderly cats. Use pheromone wipes or sprays on the elderly felines to ensure full coverage for everyone. This is not a solution, but it can help make everyone less anxious. Next, always interrupt unacceptable behaviors. Shake a can of coins or use a Pet Corrector (makes a shhh! sound) to get Ben's attention when he acts aggressively toward Jerry. Yes, it may startle Jerry too, but at least Jerry will associate the sound with Ben getting off him. Also, shake the coins or use the Pet Corrector when Jerry chases your elderly cats. When you get his attention or interrupt the behavior tell him “no" firmly. You also may need to step in between Jerry and the elderly cats to redirect him to run in another direction. As for the food, consider getting Jerry and Ben their own microchipped feeders. These feeders only open when the cat with the matching microchip is standing in front of the feeder. If Ben is eating everyone's food, however, that solution could get costly with multiple cats. You also can feed Ben in a closed room and leave him there until Jerry and the other cats are done eating. Pet World with Cathy Rosenthal How do I get my dog to relieve himself in the backyard? As well as being a recuring guest on Happenings Q&A, Cathy M. Rosenthal is a longtime animal advocate, author, columnist and pet expert who has more than 30 years in the animal welfare field. Send your pet questions, stories and tips to [email protected]. Cathy Rosenthal joins Happenings Q&A on Thurs. Mar. 23rd at 12:30 on AM1050 WLIP. animals Loose caiman found wandering Philadelphia park Animal rescuers in Philadelphia said a report of an alligator wandering in a local park led to the rescue of an abandoned caiman. The Animal Care & Control Team of Philadelphia, aka ACCT Philly, said personnel responded on a report of a loose alligator in the area. The group captured the reptile, which was later determined to be a caiman, a relative of the alligator native to Mexico and Central and South America. ACCT Philly said in a Facebook post that the 3-foot caiman is believed to be a pet that was abandoned by its owner when it grew to be too large. The group said the caiman population in the wild is dwindling due to the illegal pet trade and hunters seeking to sell their skin. Dog rescued after multiple days stranded on island Police in Florida said a shy dog stranded on an island for multiple days was successfully caught and taken to a shelter. The approximately 6-year-old German shepherd was first spotted running loose in Vero Beach and witnesses said the canine fled into the water and swam to a nearby island. Kate Meghji, CEO of the Humane Society of Vero Beach, said the dog fled from rescue attempts by animal control officers and volunteer rescuers. "This was a dog that every time someone would approach he would dart off, he would run away so no one could get close to him," Meghji told WSVN-TV. Animal control officers placed a humane trap on the island. Chris Woodruff, owner of Vero Beach Tackle & Watersports, took his boat past the island to check on the dog and discovered the canine was inside the baited trap. Animal control officers retrieved the canine and brought him to the Humane Society. "It was very exciting and we're happy to have him here," Meghji said. The shelter is now trying to identify the dog's owner. Entangled raccoon rescued from backyard hammock Animal control officers in Massachusetts came to the rescue of a raccoon that became entangled in a resident's backyard hammock. Falmouth Animal Control said that an officer responded to a home where a resident reported a raccoon had been stuck in their backyard hammock for about an hour. The officer "was able to help the little guy down and check him out to make sure he was in good physical health," the post said. The raccoon was released back into the wild. in the news Lioness tries hiding from elephant, gets sprayed with water A lioness relaxing at a waterhole was unexpectedly chased off in a rather funny lioness and elephant encounter. The comical sighting was captured on a trail camera in the Balule Game Reserve in South Africa. On this particular day, a lioness was lounging behind a small stone well, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the peacefulness of the bush. As she lay there, basking in the glory of her surroundings, she heard the sound of footsteps. But this was not the typical sound of prey approaching. And before she knew it, an elephant appeared at the well. The lioness was not one to be intimidated easily. Elephants may not be on the menu of lions. This does not mean that elephants tolerate lions. Lions pose a threat to young newborn elephants, so when an elephant encounters a lion, the result is often the lion being chased away. The lioness tried to back away, but it was too late. The elephant trumpeted loudly and approached the lioness. The elephant then proceeded to draw water from the well. The lioness was stunned, wondering what to do next. She had never encountered an elephant this angry. But then, the elephant turned toward her and sprayed her with water. The lioness was taken aback, unsure of how to react. The elephant continued to spray water, making sure the lioness knew she was not welcome. Eventually, the lioness decided it was best to retreat. The lioness and elephant both went about their day, perhaps with a newfound respect for each other.

22 SMART READER March 09, 2023 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 F Here's another reason to consider some healthy changes to your diet. A recent study found that improvements not only help your heart, but also lower your risk for cancer. The study, an analysis of the long-term French GAZEL study, followed people in midlife for nearly 25 years. It was published in JACC: CardioOncology. In the study, researchers led by Dr. Thomas van Sloten of the University of Paris, used data from 13,933 participants in the GAZEL study who were free of cancer and cardiovascular disease to evaluate the association between change in the American Heart Association Life's Simple 7 cardiovascular (CV) health score over seven years and cancer and CV events. They looked at breast, lung, prostate, colon and a category of other cancers. The AHA's Life Simple 7 include these seven habits: stop smoking, eat better, get active, lose weight, manage blood pressure, control cholesterol and reduce blood sugar. The AHA Life's Simple 7 CV health score for participants ranged between zero and 14 points and included poor, intermediate and ideal levels of smoking, physical activity, obesity, diet, blood pressure, diabetes status and lipids. Not many of us achieve great scores on the Simple 7. A study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology finds that fewer than 7% of all American adults have optimal health across five major areas related to heart and metabolic health: weight, blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol and cardiovascular disease status. In the French study, in 1989-1990, every 1-point increase in the AHA Life's Simple 7 CV health score was associated with a 9% reduced risk for any cancer and a 20% risk for cardiac events. Over 7 years, every 1-point increase in the health score was associated with a 5% reduced risk for any cancer and a 7% reduced risk for cardiac events. Even after omitting the smoking metric, researchers saw similar improvements. In an earlier study published in the journal Circulation in January 2022, researchers found that participants of the ARIC (Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities) study lowered their cardiovascular risk by adhering to the AHA's Life Simple 7 guidelines, no matter their genetic susceptibility. The study looked at 8,372 white participants and 2,314 black participants, 45 years of age and older and free of cardiovascular events at baseline. They found the overall remaining lifetime risk was 27%, ranging from 16.6% in individuals with an ideal Life Simple 7 score to 43.1% for individuals with a poor Life Simple 7 score. Ideal adherence to Life Simple 7 recommendations was associated with lower lifetime risk of cardiovascular events for all individuals, especially in those with high genetic susceptibility. The bottom line? Eating healthier and increasing our physical activity can make a huge difference in lowering our risk for a cardiovascular event and cancer. It's worth adding 30 minutes of walking a day and adding more fruits, vegetables and whole grains to your diet. Q and A Q: What causes high blood pressure? A: Blood pressure may fluctuate throughout the day. It increases when we are active or feeling strong emotions like excitement or fear. These changes are normal, as long as blood pressure is most often within a normal range. Many factors can contribute to consistently high blood pressure, including genetics, some medical conditions, a highsodium diet, low intake of fruits and vegetables, heavy alcohol use, tobacco use, stress and limited exercise. Charlyn Fargo is a registered dietitian with SIU Med School in Springfield, Ill. For comments or questions, contact her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @NutritionRd. food & recipes Nutrition News with Charlyn Fargo Life's Simple 7 Servings: 4 1 tablespoon canola oil 1 (1-pound) pork tenderloin, trimmed and cut crosswise into 12 medallions 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder 1/4 teaspoon black pepper Fresh thyme leaves (optional) Heat oil in a 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Arrange pork medallions in a single layer on a work surface and press each with the palm of your hand to flatten to an even thickness. Combine salt, garlic powder and pepper; sprinkle evenly over pork. Add pork to skillet in a single layer; cook just until done, about 3 minutes per side. Remove from heat; let stand 5 minutes before serving. Garnish with thyme leaves, if desired. Serves 4. Per serving: 149 calories; 21 grams protein; 0 grams carbohydrates; 6.4 grams fat (1.2 grams saturated); 60 milligrams cholesterol; 0 grams fiber; 287 milligrams sodium. Pan-Seared Pork Tenderloin Medallions Unstuffed Shells with Butternut Squash and Leeks Serves 4 to 6 Notes: You can substitute large or medium shells, ziti, farfalle, campanelle, or orecchiette for the jumbo shells here. The skillet will be very full when you add the shells in Step 3 (stir gently to start), but will become more manageable as the liquid evaporates and the shells become more malleable. You will need a 12-inch oven-safe nonstick skillet for this recipe. 8 ounces (1 cup) whole-milk ricotta cheese 2 ounces Parmesan cheese, grated (1 cup) 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest Salt and pepper 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil 1 1/2 pounds butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces (5 cups) 1 pound leeks, white and light green parts only, halved lengthwise, sliced thin, and washed thoroughly 2 garlic cloves, minced Pinch cayenne pepper 1/4 cup dry white wine 4 cups water 1 cup heavy cream 12 ounces jumbo pasta shells 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil 1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 375 degrees. Combine ricotta, 1/2 cup Parmesan, lemon zest, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in a bowl; cover and refrigerate until needed. 2. Heat oil in a 12-inch oven-safe nonstick skillet over medium heat until shimmering. Add squash, leeks, and 1/2 teaspoon salt, and cook until leeks are softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in garlic and cayenne and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add wine and cook until almost completely evaporated, about 1 minute. 3. Stir in water and cream, then add pasta. Increase heat to medium-high and cook at vigorous simmer, stirring gently and often, until pasta is tender and liquid has thickened, about 15 minutes. 4. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle remaining 1/2 cup Parmesan over top, then dollop evenly with ricotta mixture. Transfer skillet to oven and bake until Parmesan is melted and spotty brown, about 5 minutes. Remove skillet from oven (skillet handle will be hot). Let cool for 10 minutes, then sprinkle with basil and serve. Unstuffed shells give you the flavor of stuffed shells without all the fuss Making stuffed shells is a tedious process. On a busy weeknight, no one has time to meticulously stuff each and every individual par-boiled pasta shell. Do yourself a favor and try this recipe for unstuffed shells instead. You’ll thank us later, for time saved and a tummy satisfied. The base of the dish features butternut squash, leeks, and garlic, while a touch of white wine and heavy cream add a luxurious decadence. Rather than “stuffing” the shells, you’ll simply dollop the dish with cheese before baking until bubbly and golden. By America’s Test Kitchen RE PL FO Lis G CO KE Ge the co me is join Ke an spe lan to tim inte at LIO so Ra sta We Sc Ha Mo Ma Un

0 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 SMART READER March 09, 2023 23 s, ns h ay e e g nt e d n e. n y e, e hof vy e, . Look Who’s Getting Married! SR082419 Wedding Cakes Ours Come in all shapes, sizes and prices. We’re creative yet cost effective. 3526 Roosevelt Rd, Kenosha, WI 53142 (262) 652-3984 Being Sweet to You Is Our Business! DT2019V1 5617 - 6th Ave. Kenosha 657-7673 M-F: 9AM-5PM Sat: 10AM-2PM Delivery Available www.asummersgardenflorist.com Matthew Thomas Christensen & Haley Elise Geliche Aiman Talal Ghaleb & Zahra Arafat Abdo Arben Idrizi & Atidje Idrizi Edward Maldonado Martinez & Julissa Marie Rosales Joseph Lawrence Sandonato Jr & Debra Sue Wollert Molly Anne Jacobs Huntley & Emily Anne Brisson Kenneth Howard Coomans & Carrie Ann Hanford Steven Nicholas Pohlabel II & Brandi Melissa Lovitz Adam David Garner & Holly Marie Strickland Josue Guadalupe PerezSanroman & Melissa Gutierrez Samuel Blain Hanson & Tracy Jean Richards Johnny Levert Campbell III & Anastasia Jeanne Shwaiko Alexis Colin & Hannah Marie Rosenberg Andrew Alan Cebolski & Heather Marie Dorr Karvel Deonte Jackson & Rachel Marie Porter Marriage Licenses February 20th - March 3rd, 2023 REMINDER: PLEASE RESUBMIT AD TO RUN FOR EACH ISSUE. Maximum 3 Listings Per Person. MISC G E R M A N CONVERSATIONALIST GROUP - KENOSHA/RACINE If you speak German or are enthusiastic about the German language and culture, come and join us. There are no membership fees and attendance is whenever you are available to join. Meetings will be held in the Kenosha and Racine area. This is an excellent group to practice speaking German as members' language skills are from beginners to advance and we all have a good time. Please contact me if you are interested in joining - Susan Blust at [email protected]. LIONS CLUB BINGO Come have some fun! Doors open at 4:00. Raffles, pull-tabs and pregames start at 6:45. Bingo 7:00-9pm. Wednesdays. 2700 9th St., Schlader Building, Winthrop Harbor. Food Sales. Model Train Show. Sunday, March 12. 9 am to 1 pm. Kenosha Union Club, 3030 39th Avenue. For more information call Bill @ 262-331-0392 FOR SALE JASON/EMPIRE MODEL 218 7X35 BINOCULARS. FIELD 358 FT AT 1000 YDS. FULLYCOATED OPTICS, & CASE. NEVER USED. CASE HAS SHELF WEAR. $25.00262-620- 4301. IF NO ANSWER PLEASE LEAVE MESSAGE. COMPOND HUNTING BOW LEFT HANDED, SIGHTS, SILENCER, ARROWS, QUIVER, SOFT CARRYING CASE. $100.00 262- 620-4301 LEAVE MESSAGE IF NO ANSWER. COCA-COLA CRATE WOOD WAGON, Measures: 19-Inch Long. 14-Inch Wide. & 10-Inch High. Red Plastic Wheels Move. Which Are 5-Inch Around. Handle Is 14-Inch Long. Crate Says: Bottles: Jonesboro., Ark. Made Of Wood. Put In Yard, With Plants. Easy To Move Around. Colleen/262-748-4343. VINTAGE SOLID DARK BROWN WOOD ROCKER Strong & Heavy! Seat Measures: 21 By 18, And 2- Inch Thick. 40-Inch Tall, Counting Back Of Rocker. 18-Inch From Seat To Floor. 27-Inch Wide, At Widest Part (Rocker's Feet. Rock Baby Or Grandchild. Has Writing On Bottom, (Seat). $60, Obo! /Colleen-262-748-4343. BEANIE BABIES, large inventory, includes McDonald's Beanie Babies. Prices vary call (262) 654- 6485 DROP THAT DISH New 4k Indoor Antenna ! $80 ! 847-372-6722 ! MOVING: INDOOR- OUTDOOR, Walter e Smithe wicker set, roll top desk, misc household items, console cabinets, small couch. Call or text 508-813-1500. Kenosha area 3 DEUCE Andy Granatelli Aluminum Intake Manniford For Ford Flat Heads. Call 262-620 6301. Leave Message If No Answer. UPRIGHT LYON & HEALY PIANO FOR SALE $400. Call me at 262- 496-3503 between 4 PM and 8 PM or email me at [email protected] TIRED OF FRIED FISH? Steam or poach your fish whole! Stainless steel BIG steamer/poacher and SS serving tray only $45.00. Call Kent 262-960-0621. [email protected] NORMAN ROCKWELL PLATES $10 each Call 262-771-8764 Harley Davidson Jacket $200, Colleen Rybarik [email protected]. 262-748- 4343 1997 Ford Truck F-150 with snow plow v-8, PS, PB, Auto. 150K miles, Good Condition $4000.00 OBO LV[email protected] WANTED. STREET PAVER BRICKS wanted Please call 262.697.3545 and leave a message. WANTED TO BUY: Vintage Movie Posters, Comic Books, LP Records, Vintage Toys, Horror VHS, Horror Memorabilia, Science Fiction Pulps & Magazines, Video Store Promotional Items. PH 262- 237-0318. WANTED TO BUY: Old Post Cards, B&W Photos, B&W Photo Albums, Vintage Advertising, Old Hunting Licenses & Advertising, Scrapbooks, Old Misc.Paper, Old Automobile Advertising, Fountain Pens, Gillette Razors & More. Local Collector/Neutral Safe & Secure Site to meet if desired. Cash Paid. Call or Text Stan 262- 496-1822 ARCADE DRIVERS SCHOOL is looking for classroom & driver instructors. Starting pay $17.00 per hour. If interested please call 262-637-9193 or email us at [email protected]. LOOKING FOR NURSES Aid for in home care. Call Barbara 262- 455-3953 SERVICES. TAX & MEDICARE EXPERT. Appointments only. Se Habla Español. 262.833.7070 CHINESE LANGUAGE / CALLIGRAPHY LESSONS: Fun, fascinating and very cool. Beginning and advanced - all ages! Text Dr. Tim at 520.704.3832. FOR RENT Finished Suite private, in-home entrance, in Kenosha. For details call between 8:00 AM and 4:30 PM, 262-843- 1630. DRUM LESSONS Private instruction. Band, orchestra, marching and drum set. Rock and many other musical styles. Learn to read music. Call Tom for details. 262- 818-2869. PROFESSIONAL LED TEETH WHITENING for a fraction of the price! $99 at cabana tan spa. call to book: 262-843-2411. 20 minute session = a bright white smile! mycabanatan.com NURSING CARE /CONSULTATION: $35.00/hour. Call or text to (262)758- 1974 FAST COMPUTER SERVICE including network support, spyware removal, upgrades and PC repair. For friendly service with a smile, call Vikkex today! Phone (262-694-7746) BABYSITTING YOUNG LADY good with kids can watch 1 or 2 children call 262-620-4745 House cleaning woman + a bucket - reliable, dependable. Also clean vacant houses. Call for estimates - Sandy 262-221-2289 HOUSES AND OR business sun shine klean is having a special this month for first time customers free upholstery cleaning with at basic cleaning for only $39.95 262-287- 5103 CNAS TO JOIN wellness team at Barton of Zion, five star assisted living. Send resume pdifore@bartonhealthcare.org apply within at 3500 Sheridan Road Zion, IL 60099 847-872-1500 FREE HOME HEATING Fuel Oil Removal I will remove your unused home heating fuel oil for free..clean and safe . Inquire about tank removal also ... 262 818 1967 ..ask for dave TYPING. I am an experienced legal secretary with excellent typing skills wanting to type for you at home. Please contact Alicia at 256-658-4484. TAX & BOOKKEEPING. 30 Years experience Audits handld enrolled agent appointment only call 262- 595-8242 CAREGIVER SELF-EMPLOYED live-in caregiver with 20 years experience giving 24 hr. care references. Looking for job. If you need me, please call Teresa 262-497- 0502. CUT AWAY GRASS Edging to last - not stringline - will help drainage. All with cleanup and haul away. Just call 262-654-2509. YARD CLEAN UP Junk, brush, dog waste, anything to haul away. Just call262-654-2509. 1-866-PIANIST PIANO TUNER 17 years of experience in Racine, Kenosha, Walworth, & Lake Co. Website:pianist.vpweb.com AFFORDABLE HOME HEALTHCARE services. 1 hour minumum 24 hour care is available. Call 262-358-5619 for more information On services available. work AFFORDABLE CAREGIVER SERVICES for All Ages $18 HR. To inquire Call 262-358-7057 VEHICLES0 05 CHEVY MALIBU LT SEDAN V6, AUTO, AIR, SUNROOF, HEATED LEATHER SEATS. MUST SEE! $4,30 C S T E P H A N ( 2 6 2 ) 8 6 5 - 0 1 9 0 [email protected] 2012 DODGE GRAND CARAVAN SEE IN KENOSHA AT 4121-7TH. AVE. 53140 RUSS 262-237-1343 CALL OR TEXT NICE CAR AT A NICE PRICE $5450 174K MILES 2016 CHRYSLER TOWN AND COUNTRY $6950 184K MILES SEE IN KENOSHA AT 4121-7TH. AVE. 53140 RUSS 262-237-1343 CALL OR TEXT NICE VAN AT A NICE PRICE 2007 HYUNDAI SONATA SEE IN KENOSHA AT 4121-7TH. AVE. 53140 262-237-1343 RUSS CALL OR TEXT 212K MILES $2950 FREE CLASSIFIEDS! E-mail your 170 character classified to: [email protected] Please include your contact information in the classified. (Name and Phone number / e-mail address) First 3 words will be boldface type. NO ANIMALS. • NO PERSONALS ALLOWED. CLASSIFIED DEADLINE IS MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2022 AT 12 NOON FREE CLASSIFIEDS! Employment/Opportunities • Lost & Found • Miscellaneous Real Estate • Rentals • Rummage Sales • Vehicles • Wanted

24 SMART READER March 09, 2023 FOR ADVERTISING RATES CALL 262-564-8800 030923 2801 - 30th Avenue (Wood Road) Kenosha, WI 262-551-0600 Back by popular demand owner Jim Karls presents... Wednesdays 5pm-9pm $18 Adults $12 Kids 12 & under It’s not just dinner... it’s an event! Choose your ingredients & watch Chef Fred create a spectacular feast before your very eyes! Che Bello! Featuring: veggies, shrimp, scallops, calamari, crawfish, chicken breast, beef or pork tenderloin, Italian sausage, a variety of sauces, marinara, marsala, alfredo, vodka, Alogi e olio, & many different pastas. Includes homemade Italian Bread & Soup or Salad CHEF FRED BELTOYA’S PASTA NIGHT! Senior Citizens Receive a 10% DISCOUNT SR121720 Call or email anytime! 030223 In person office visits by appointment only. Please call to schedule. 5401 60th St. Kenosha, WI 53144 262-657-6127 [email protected] Candy Soens Celebrate, and protect the things you care about and the ones you love. At Trinity Lutheran Church 7104-39th Avenue, Kenosha Pick-up west entrance doors Dinners are $15 each Check made payable to Trinity Lutheran Church or exact cash in envelope * An additional Chili only $6 * 16 oz. chili 2 dinner rolls Grape salad Texas Sheet Cake Text Mary 903-335-6440 or Call Gayle 262-652-8676 Chili Fundraiser Sun. March 12th, 11:00-12:30 030923