In November 2018, a 66-year-old man named Tommy Thompson was wheeled into Judge Laurel Beatty Blunt’s courtroom in Columbus, Ohio, clad in a dark blue suit and looking like he had just served four years in federal prison. Thompson’s hair, once thick black curls, had given way to a bald pate, and with a long white beard and piercing eyes, he looked like a slightly hairier Christopher Lee, the actor who played the wizard Saruman in The Lord of the Rings.
Throughout the trial, Judge Blunt interrupted Thompson’s testimony to reprimand him for veering wildly off course. Thompson had long insisted that he suffers from neurological problems and chronic fatigue syndrome, which impairs his memory, and that his meandering explanations were a symptom of the distress foisted upon him.
But Judge Blunt, like other officials who’d presided over civil and criminal cases against Thompson, claimed that his malingering was the maneuvering of a hyper-intelligent con man. Indeed, Thompson’s legs were shackled as he sat through his trial. As everyone knew, he’d already fled from authorities once.
When I visited Japan recently, I witnessed the 66th cycle of a ritual that began more than 13 centuries ago. I watched as Crown Princess Masako led a procession of Shinto priests carrying treasures from the old temple to the new. In Ise, they have been rebuilding the grand Jingu shrine with wood and thatch every 20 years since at least the 7th Century. As part of Shinto ritual, this not only keeps the structures intact even when made out of relatively ephemeral materials, but it allows the master temple builder to train the next generation.
Japan is also home to most of the oldest companies in the world, and has a singular affection for maintenance that allows it to sustain structures and rituals for millennia. But many other cultures have created long lasting artefacts and buildings, and each one can teach us something.
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The Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, nestled inside a mountain, can only be rarely visited (Credit: Getty Images)
This past March, on a Thursday morning before dawn, more than 70 bleary-eyed parents lined up in front of the Parks and Recreation building in South Windsor, Connecticut. Wrapped in heavy coats and clutching Dunkin’ Donuts cups, many of them slouched against the building’s cement walls, while others, exercising a tad more foresight, lounged in foldable camping chairs. Most had arrived around 3 in the morning. The first in line had been there since 11:30 p.m. the night before.
The scene closely resembled the crowds that gather before the release of a new iPhone or outside the box office for Hamilton tickets, but the reward for waiting wasn’t anywhere near as flashy. The parents had lined up for the chance to register their kids for a before- and after-school program sponsored by the town. The 4th “R,”—a play on the old-fashioned saying “reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic,” with the added “recreation”—serves elementary-school students whose parents’ work schedules don’t align with the school day’s 8:45 a.m. start and 3:20 p.m. finish. And braving the cold to stand in line didn’t even guarantee the parents a spot for their kids—the program had filled up earlier that week, thanks to a rule that prioritized siblings of current attendees. When the office opened its doors and began accepting registration requests at 8 a.m., many of the parents knew they’d endured the line simply to put their child on the wait list.
After Katie Tomaszewski divorced at the age of 28, she felt ashamed to be alone. So she did what she thought a single person should do: She over-dated, over-worked and over-socialized, inviting friends over for dinner nearly every night because she was afraid of being lonely.
“It was constant socializing and constant distraction,” says Ms. Tomaszewski, now a 36-year-old Pilates instructor in Chicago. “I became desperate and depressed, looking for someone—anyone—to save me from being alone.”
Yes, it can be tough to be single. But a new study published this past December in the Journals of Gerontology offers hope for those who are struggling. Singles today are more satisfied with their lives than singles in the past, the study found. And people who are single become more satisfied with their lives as they grow older, according to researchers from the German Centre of Gerontology in Berlin, who analyzed data from the German Ageing Survey, a nationally representative sample of people between the ages or 40 and 85. Experts say the findings ring true for Western countries broadly.
The case against processed food just keeps getting stronger. But, amazingly, we still don’t understand exactly why it’s so bad for us.
In two new papers published in the BMJ, the more ultraprocessed — or industrially manufactured — foods a person ate, the more likely they were to get sick and even die. In one study, they were more likely to suffer from cardiovascular problems. The other linked an ultraprocessed diet to a higher risk of death from all causes.
Those studies followed a first-of-its-kind randomized controlled trial, out of the National Institutes of Health: Researchers found people following an ultraprocessed diet ate about 500 more calories per day than those consuming minimally processed, whole foods.
Sure, potato chips, cookies, and hot dogs are chock-full of salt, sugar, fat, and calories. They can cause us to gain weight and put us at a higher risk of diseases such as diabetes and obesity. But why? What if there’s something unique about ultraprocessed foods that primes us to overeat and leads to bad health?
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“These refined carbohydrates could be feeding the bad bacteria in the small intestine,” said researcher Marit Zinocker, “and that’s where inflammation starts.”Getty Images
It was a fire that crossed mountain ranges and valleys, that spanned multiple counties and shocked Californians by its sheer scale — by far the biggest wildfire in modern state history. And yet a newly disclosed investigation suggests it was probably started by a single man and a single spark.
In a report released in recent days, forensic investigators found that a rancher started the fire when hammering a metal stake in his backyard to snuff out a wasp nest. Sparks flew, igniting dry grass stalks and spreading fire quickly across the desiccated landscape.
The rancher’s name was not disclosed, but a review of records led to the home of Glenn Kile, a former heavy equipment operator in his mid-50s, who had no inkling of the devastation he would unleash on a Friday morning last July while tinkering in his backyard. Seeing the fire, he said, came as a shock.
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Firefighters battled the Ranch Fire near Ladoga, Calif., in August. The blaze was part of the Mendocino Complex Fire, which burned around 460,000 acres.CreditCreditNoah Berger/Associated Press
My father was born in Englewood in a house at 63rd and State Street in December 1950, seven months after the tragic Green Hornet streetcar crash at the same corner. My mother was born in November 1953 in Yazoo City, Miss., but moved to Chicago when she was 7 years old, along with millions of other Black folk who moved north during the Great Migration.
My dad moved to 66th and Carpenter Street when he was 3 or 4 — as I was growing up, he’d always point out the street sign to me and my sister and joke about the Carpenters living on Carpenter — and my mom spent her middle and high school years living about 2 miles away at 424 W. Tremont St.
Though I grew up in the south and southwest suburbs, I was born at Michael Reese Hospital in Bronzeville. I’m a proud Hyde Park resident now, and while I don’t know if I’ll ever feel I’ve earned the right to call myself a South Sider, my South Side roots run deep. As a kid, I looked forward to trips to the city in part because these drives involved a new assortment of dishes to try, from smoky barbecue sauce-smothered rib tips and fries from Lem’s Bar-B-Q, to soul food from the legendary (and since closed) Park Manor institution Army and Lou’s.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Curse of the Ship of Gold
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James' World 2 