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Martha Graham silences Madonna

316 East 63rd Street,

New York

Autumn 1978

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By 1978, Martha Graham has a formidable reputation. Over the course of her career, she has danced at the White House for eight US presidents, and baffled almost as many. (She unites both sides in the Cold War: after a sexually explicit production of Phaedra, her work is condemned as 'pornographic' in the House of Representatives, and in the Soviet Union she is attacked as a disturbing influence on the young.)

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Her work is adored and reviled in roughly equal measure. The Graham technique, taught at the school she founded half a century ago, is tense, percussive, sexually explicit. It is her belief that female dancers should 'dance from the vagina'. One of her acolytes explains that 'Martha's premise was that an act of lovemaking was an act of murder.'

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Aged eighty-four, she maintains a ferocious temper, storming in or out at the drop of a hat. She has been known to pull the cloth from a restaurant table, scattering everything to the floor before making her exit. Nowadays, she is spotted only rarely in her school, though rumor has it that she is always there, like a demanding ghost.

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The nineteen-year-old Madonna Ciccone has just taken her first trip in an airplane. She arrives in New York City from Michigan, with $35 and a bag of dance tights, determined to make her name as a dancer. After she tells the cab driver to take her to the centre of everything, he drops her off in Times Square.

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She auditions for a dance company, but fails. They tell her she has drive but no technique, and advise her to enroll in the Martha Graham Dance School. Within twenty-four hours she has signed up for beginners' classes, paying her way by working in a fast-food restaurant.

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'I dug this place. The studios were Spartan, minimalist. Everyone whispered, so the only sounds you heard were the music and the instructors, and they spoke to you only when you were fucking up - which was pretty easy to do around there. It's a difficult technique to learn. It's physically brutal and there is no room for slouches ... At one time in my life, I had fantasized about being a nun, and this was the closest I was ever going to get to convent life:

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The topic of Martha Graham provides the backdrop to every conversation. 'I wanted to meet the mother superior, the woman responsible for all this.' She hears that Graham visits the building often, and she even sits in on classes from time to time, either to check up on the teaching staff or to scout for talent. Madonna grows obsessed with meeting her, much as a visitor to Loch Ness might long to meet the monster. 'She stayed pretty hidden. I had heard she was vain about growing old. Maybe she was really busy, or really shy, or both. But her presence was always felt, which only added to her mystique and to my longing to meet her ... She had a serious Garbo vibe about her and seemed like she really wanted to be left alone.'

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Madonna begins to daydream about running into her. 'I was gonna be fearless and nonchalant. I would befriend her and get her to confess all the secrets of her soul.'

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With this aim in mind, she signs on for extra classes, and lingers in the hallways in the hope of catching a glimpse. Sometimes, she invents excuses to enter the offices. And then, one day, quite by chance, it happens.

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Madonna is in the middle of her 11 a.m. class. She has drunk too much coffee. Against the rules, she nips out 'with my bladder at bursting point.'

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She heaves open the heavy door to the hallway and steps outside the classroom, only to find herself face to face with Martha Graham. 'There she was, right in front of me, staring into my face. OK, not exactly in front of me, but my appearance must have taken her by surprise.' no one ever left the tomb-like classrooms until classes were over:

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Graham stops dead in her tracks. Madonna is paralysed and, for the first time in her life, and possibly the last, struck dumb. 'She was part Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. The rest of her was a cross between a Kabuki dancer and the nun I was obsessed with in the fifth grade, Sister Kathleen Thomas. In any case, I was overwhelmed, and all my plans to disarm her and win her over were swallowed up by my fear of a presence I'd never encountered before.'

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Graham doesn't say a word. 'She just looked at me with what I thought was interest but was probably only disapproval. Her hair was pulled back severely, displaying a pale face made up like a porcelain doll. Her chin jutted out with arrogance and her eyes were like shiny brown immovable marbles. She was small and big at the same time:

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Madonna waits for words to spring from Martha Graham's mouth, and daggers to fly out of her eyes. 'I ignored the aching in my lower abdomen. I forgot that I had a big mouth and that I wasn't afraid of anyone. This was my first true encounter with a goddess. A warrior. A survivor. Someone not to be fucked with.'

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Martha Graham says nothing, but flicks her long skirts and disappears into a room, closing the door behind her. 'Before I could clear my throat, she was gone. I was left shaking in my leotard, partly because I still had to go to the bathroom but most because I had encountered such an exquisite creature. I was truly dumbfounded ... Much has happened in my life since then but nothing will diminish the memory of my first encounter with this woman - this life force.'

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Ten years later, Madonna is by far the most famous female pop star in the world. Her performances incorporate elaborate dance routines: tense, percussive, sexually explicit. One day, someone from the Martha Graham Dance School contacts her office, saying that the school is facing bankruptcy. 'Give it one day.' comes the reply. The very next day, Madonna's office rings back, offering $150,000. When Martha Graham, now aged ninety-four, is presented with the cheque, she bursts into tears.

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Craig Brown "Hello Goodbye Hello" (2011)

Tis very warm weather when one is bed

(Jonathan Swift)

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I don't know what kind of fountain pen he used. We always use what you might call a proper fountain pen, not these ballpoint jobs, but the old sort of horse-driven things

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I don't know if you've ever bought a fountain pen.? They make an awful fuss about it; they have to make sure that you have the right nib, you see. And we always buy ours in the same place, a place in Bond Street called Immobile.? We call it that, because they keep stationary.

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They make an awful performance when they give you this fountain pen because they put a pad in front of you and they say, "Try it, sir, before you buy."

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And you have to write something on it.? You're sort of forced to do this.? And it's always terribly difficult to know what to write.

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Most people just sort of write their name over and over again as one does, but it' probably egotistic so you quickly cross that out. Then you do a sort of naughts are crosses framework on it.

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And this chap always says to me, "Now write some WORDS, sir."

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And I can never think of ANY word at that moment. I once wrote the word apricot and I still don't know why.? And I wrote this word apricot and I thought that's no good.

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And he said, "Why don't you write a phrase. You're a scriptwriter.? Write something."

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And I couldn't write.? My mind went blank. I wrote, "Button."

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So he said, "Why button?"

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I said, "Well, it's, you know, off the cuff."

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I was absolutely defeated by this.? And I thought well, a really good writer would be able to write something like that on the spur of the moment when invited to on testing his fountain pen, So I took this well-known novelist, Frank Muir, in there when he bought his fountain pen.?? And I said, "You buy one."

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And he bought one. And then this chap thrust the pad in front of him and said, "You write something."

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And you know, Frank took the pen and wrote, " Tis very warm weather when one is bed." Just like that.

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And I said, "Well, it's not awfully clever."

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And he said, "No, but it's Swift."

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Denis Norden 580507b

Ask Well

I love taking hot showers. but I've heard they can damage your skin and hair. Is that true?

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It's no secret that a hot shower can be relaxing: It can soothe sore muscles and joints, improve mood and help you sleep better.

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"There are benefits to warmer showers or baths, so I don't want to discount that," said Dr. Victoria Barbosa, an associate professor of dermatology at the University of ? Chicago. But, she added, "none of those benefits are for your skin."

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The research on how hot water affects our skin and hair is thin, dermatologists said, but most experts agree that scorching showers may strip away oils and moisture-retaining substances.

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Generally, it's best to take lukewarm showers, experts said.

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"A hot bath or shower should be a treat, not a daily occurrence," Dr. Barbosa said.

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Hot water, especially when combined with soaps that contain fragrances and harsh ingredients, may damage the outermost layer, known as the skin barrier.

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The skin barrier is made of dead skin cells, said Dr. Paola Baker, a dermatologist in Boston. Surrounding those cells is a dense matrix of fatty substances such as ceramides, fatty acids and cholesterol, she said. These substances, called lipids, help retain moisture in the skin and protect it from irritants and allergens.

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On top of the skin barrier is a thin layer called the acid mantle, which is made of amino acids, acids found in sweat, and sebum - an oily substance that retains moisture and is released from glands near the hair follicles. This layer helps keep the skin barrier strong and protects it from harmful bacteria, Dr. Baker added.

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When you take a scalding shower, some sebum may be removed, resulting in dry skin, experts said. The tightly packed lipids in the skin barrier may also "lose their organized structure," which could make the skin barrier more permeable, said Dr. Trinidad Montero-Vilchez, a dermatologist at Virgen de las Nieves University Hospital in Granada, Spain, and an author of a study published in 2022 that explored hot water's affect on skin. The study found that hot water caused skin to lose more water, weakened the skin barrier and led to redness.

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A hot shower might also leave the skin feeling tight and looking dull or ashy, Dr. Barbosa added.

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Hot water may make hair dry by stripping away sebum. After a gland on the scalp releases sebum, the oily substance coats the outermost layer of hair strands. Rinsing hair with hot water may remove some sebum, said Dr. Elika Hoss, an assistant professor of dermatology at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, getting rid of "what's keeping our hair moisturized and protected."

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If you don't have dry hair or skin, or a condition like eczema or psoriasis that hot water may worsen, you most likely can enjoy a hot shower once or twice a week, dermatologists said. If you have oily skin or hair, you may be able to enjoy them more often, said Dr. Blair Jenkins, a clinical assistant professor of dermatology at Michigan Medicine.

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And keep showers short, said Dr. Brittany Craiglow, an adjunct associate professor of dermatology at the Yale School of Medicine. Ideally, showers should last five to 10 minutes, experts said.

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Use gentle, fragrance-free cleansers. Some cleansers and shampoos contain irritating detergents like sodium lauryl sulfate and may weaken the skin barrier, Dr. Craiglow added.

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And instead of washing your hair daily, consider shampooing only when necessary, such as after exercising or using a lot of products, or when your hair generally feels oily, experts said.

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Katie Mogg

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(true story) A little girl told a Santa what she wanted for her mom, dad, and brothers. When he asked her, she finally told him what she wanted for herself. He gave her a box of peppermints. As she started to leave, her father stopped her and asked, "What do you say?" Silence. "What do you say?" Silence. "What do you say?" Silence. Finally, she said, "Trick or treat?"

Unlike our older siblings, Maryum, Jamillah, Rasheda, and Muhammad Jr., who had Muslim grandparents and grew up accustomed to the religion's traditions, Laila and I were two wild little rascals. I never called my daddy "sir" like they did. When I was three, my father tried to teach me to do that, but all I would say was, "Yes, Poopoo Head!"

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"Poopoo Head!" he said. Then he laughed and gave up.

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Hani Ali "At Home with Muhammad Ali: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Forgiveness" (2019)

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The power of empathy can be formidable. Take a high-school dropout named Mary Daly. She grew up in a small town near St. Louis and was mostly a good student. But then her dad lost his job as a postal worker, her parents fought and eventually divorced, and Mary found it impossible to concentrate on school. She dropped out at fifteen, moved in with friends and went to work at a doughnut shop operated by her grandparents; she aspired to be a bus driver. The high-school guidance counselor mentioned the case to a local college teacher, Betsy Bane, who spoke to Mary and urged her to get a GED. At seventeen, Mary passed the GED, earning a top score without much study, and Bane urged her to consider college. Daly had never thought of university and said she couldn't afford tuition, but Bane offered to pay for the first semester.

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At the University of Missouri, Daly immediately excelled and earned a degree in economics in 1985, then a master's and a PhD. After postdoctoral work, she became a research economist in the Federal Reserve System in 1996, where she was mentored by another woman economist, Janet Yellen. Daly worked her way up, often focusing on inequality, and in 2018 was named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. In that role she is, as Heather Long of The "Washington Post put it, "one of the most powerful shapers of economic policy in the United States." Daly set up a scholarship at the University of Missouri to honor Bane, who says that there are "a lot of little diamonds" who go unnoticed.

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Nicholas Kristoff "Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope" (2020)

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Higher Expectations Yield Results

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Young children with autism spectrum disorders do not learn by listening to and watching others, as do typical children. They need to be specifically taught things that others seem to learn by osmosis. A good teacher is gently insistent with a young autistic child in order to get progress. The teacher has to be careful not to cause sensory overload, but at the same time has to be somewhat intrusive into the child's world of stimming or silent withdrawal in order for the child to engage in learning.

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When children get a little older, they need to be exposed to many different things to stimulate their continued learning in different areas of life. There also need to be expectations for proper social behavior. When I look back at my life, my mother made me do a number of things I did not like, but these activities were really beneficial, They gave me opportunities to practice social skills, converse with less-familiar people, develop self-esteem and learn to negotiate unanticipated changes. None of these activities caused major problems with sensory oversensitivity. While Mother may have pushed me to do things, she understood well that a child should never be forced into a situation that includes painful sensory stimulation.

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By age five, I was required to dress up and behave in church and sit through formal dinners both at home and at Granny's. When I didn't, there was a consequence, and I lost a privilege that meant somethingto me. Fortunately, our church had a beautiful old-fashioned organ I liked. Most of the service was boring to me, but that organ made it somewhat tolerable to sit through. A modern church with loud, amplified music probably would be sensory overload to someone like me.

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When I was reluctant to learn to ride a bike, I was urged to learn.

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Mother was always testing the limits on how far she could push me. I became motivated to learn after I missed a bike trip to the Coca Cola plant.

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When I was a teenager, the opportunity arose for me to visit my aunt's ranch in Arizona. At the time, I was having non-stop panic attacks and was afraid to go. Mother made me go anyway, telling me I could come home in two weeks. When I got there, I loved it and stayed all summer. Aunt Ann became one of my important mentors. My career in livestock equipment design would have never started if I had been allowed to stay home.

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I often needed a certain amount of pushing to do new things by myself. I was good at building things, but afraid to go to the lumber yard and buy the wood by myself. Mother made me do it. She never let my autism be an excuse for not trying something she knew would be beneficial for me to learn. I came back crying from that outing, but I had the wood with me. Further trips to the lumber yard were easy. At one of my early jobs my boss made me "cold call" cattle magazines to get articles published. After I got over the initial fear, I found I was good at getting articles into national cattle publications. In all of the above cases, either my mother or a boss had to push me to do things even though I was afraid. Yet the things I learned - especially about myself - were priceless.

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After I started my freelance design business, I almost gave it up because an early client was not 100% satisfied. My black-and-white thinking led me to believe that clients would always be 100% satisfied. Fortunately, my good friend Jim Uhl, the contractor who built my systems, would not let me quit. He actively kept pushing and talking to me and asking for the next drawing. When I produced a new drawing, he praised it. Now I know that 100% client satisfaction is impossible.

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My life and career could have been derailed and wrecked if my mother and business associates had not PUSHED me to do things. Mother did not let me lie around the house, and never viewed my autism as rendering me incapable. Business associates stayed after me and made me do things. These adult mentors are a grown-up version of a good special education teacher who is gently insistent with a three-year-old child with autism. What it demonstrates overall IS that people with ASD can learn and succeed when others around them believe in their abilities and hold high expectations of them.

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Temple Grandin "The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's" (2011)

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Mark Twain Bids Farewell To Helen Keller

Stormfield, Connecticut February 1909

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As Helen Keller's carriage draws up between the huge granite pillars of Mark Twain's house, the most venerable author in America is there to greet her, though she can neither see him nor hear him. Her companion Annie Sullivan - her eyes and ears - tells Helen that he is all in white, his beautiful white hair glistening in the afternoon sunshine "like the snow spray on gray stones"

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She is, in a way, the Nelson Mandela of her age: however great you are, you can't feel really good about yourself until you have shaken hands with Helen Keller. Albert Einstein declares himself 'a great admirer'; Alexander Graham Bell feels that 'in this child I have seen more of the Divine than has been manifest in anyone I ever met before'; Winston Churchill calls her 'the greatest woman of our age'; and to H.G. Wells she is 'the most wonderful being in America'.

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Twain and Keller first met fifteen years ago, when he was fifty-eight and she was just fourteen. Struck deaf and blind by meningitis at the age of eighteen months, Helen had, through sheer force of will, discovered a way to communicate: she finds out what people are saying by placing her fingers on their lips, throat and nose, or by having Annie transpose it onto the palm of her hand in letters of the alphabet.

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Taken up as a prodigy by the great and the good, she formed a special friendship with Twain. "The instant I clasped his hand in mine, I knew that he was my friend. He made me laugh and feel thoroughly happy by telling some good stories, which I read from his lips ... He knew with keen and sure intuition many things about me and how it felt to be blind and not to keep up with the swift ones - things that others learned slowly or not at all. He never embarrassed me by saying how terrible it is not to see, or how dull life must be, lived always in the dark."

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Unlike other people, Twain has never patronised her. 'He never made me feel that my opinions were worthless, as so many people do. He knew that we do not think with eyes and ears, and that our capacity for thought is not measured by five senses. He kept me always in mind while he talked, and he treated me like a competent human being. That is why I loved him ...'

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For his part, Twain is in awe. 'She is fellow to Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Homer, Shakespeare and the rest of the immortals. She will be as famous a thousand years from now as she is today: Shortly after their first meeting, Twain formed a circle to fund her education at Radcliffe College, which led to her publishing an autobiography at the age of twenty-two, which in turn led her to become almost as celebrated as Twain himself.

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But the intervening years have struck Twain some heavy blows. One of his daughters has died of meningitis, another of an epileptic fit in a bathtub, and his wife Livy has died of heart disease. Throughout Helen's stay he acts his familiar bluff, entertaining old self, but she senses the deep sadness within.

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'There was about him the air of one who had suffered greatly. Whenever I touched his face, his expression was sad, even when he was telling a funny story. He smiled, not with the mouth but with his mind - a gesture of the soul rather than of the face:

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But for the moment, he welcomes them into the house for tea and buttered toast by the fire. Then he shows them around. He takes Helen into his beloved billiard room. He will, he says, teach her how to play just like his friends Paine, Dunne and Rogers.

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'Oh, Mr Clemens, it takes sight to play billiards:

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'Yes, but not the variety of billiards that Paine and Dunne and Rogers play. The blind couldn't play worse: he jokes.

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They go upstairs to see his bedroom. 'Try to picture, Helen, what we are seeing out of these windows. We are high up on a snow-covered hill. Beyond, are dense spruce and firwoods, other snow-clad hills and stone walls intersecting the landscape everywhere, and, over all, the white wizardry of winter. It is a delight, this wild, free, fir-scented place:

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He shows the two women to their suite. On the mantelpiece there is a card telling burglars where to find everything of value. There has recently been a burglary, Twain explains, and this notice will ensure that any future intruders do not bother to disturb him.

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Over dinner, Twain holds forth, 'his talk fragrant with tobacco and flamboyant with profanity'.? He explains that in his experience guests do not enjoy dinner if they are always worrying about what to say next: it is up to the host to take on that burden. 'He talked delightfully, audaciously, brilliantly,' says Helen. Dinner comes to an end, but his talk continues around the fire. 'He seemed to have absorbed all America into himself. The great Mississippi River seemed forever flowing, flowing through his speech, through the shadowless white sands of thought. His voice seemed to say like the river, "Why hurry? Eternity is long; the ocean can wait."

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Before Helen leaves Smithfield, Twain is more solemn. "I am very lonely, sometimes, when I sit by the fire after my friends have departed. My thoughts trail away into the past. I think of Livy and Susy and I seem to be fumbling in the dark folds of confused dreams."

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As she says goodbye, Helen wonders if they will ever meet again. Once more, her intuition proves right. Twain dies the following year. Some time later, Helen returns to where the old house once stood; it has burnt down, with only a charred chimney still standing. She turns her unseeing eyes to the view he once described to her, and at that moment feels someone coming towards her. "I reached out, and a red geranium blossom met my touch. The leaves of the plant were covered with ashes, and even the sturdy stalk had been partly broken off by a chip of falling plaster. But there was the bright flower smiling at me out of the ashes. I thought it said to me, 'Please don't grieve' "

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She plants the geranium in a sunny corner of her garden. "It always seems to say the same thing to me, "Please don't grieve:' But I grieve, nevertheless:

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Craig Brown "Hello Goodbye Hello" (2011)

Riches are for Spending

(Bacon)

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Actually, I myself wrote this phrase. It's this novel I'm writing.?? I've decided to write about people; just ordinary people like you and I. And the first character in the first chapter was a seventeen stone wrestler with a cauliflower ear. And he was finished wrestling and then made a tremendous amount of money by selling and marketing, (he really cornered the market) on second-hand, re-conditioned corn-plasters.? It's a thing that hadn't occurred to anybody and he made a fortune out of this.

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And he retired into the country and bought one of these great big, stately homes called Loughenbee Abbey and he opened it up. And he sort of WAS the national trust almost. He was sort of rich as Creosote.? He was a terribly wealthy man. That was chapter one.

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Then chapter two was about this other ordinary chap. And he was an Armenian cinema organist called Lacadio Richienne.? The other fellow his name was Spending, Arthur, his name was.? Now Lacadio Richienne, I want you to remember that name, the Armenian cinema organist, had very narrow feet, which Armenians have.

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You work the bass notes with your feet.? He got his foot stuck between the pedals.? And he went up and down on the organ when the spotlight shone. He always came up smiling.? He was a very very cheerful sort of chap.

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But he got his feet stuck and he almost starved to death. He was fast lodged there on this cinema organ and he got very depressed and broody about it, this sort of Middle-European thing.? And he got very depressed. And as the twilight closed and all the cinema closed, he suddenly thought, "If I could only free my foot.? I have the music inside me. I could play great operas, Mozart and so on. I could make a lot of money.? I could be as wealthy. . . "

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And that's where my novel stopped because I couldn't think of exactly the right phrase.? Actually I was motor mowing at the time.? The clutch had slipped and I went straight through the French windows and mowed up all the carpet and also the poodle dog, lying on the carpet. And it wasn't till months later that I realized that I HAD the phrase, the wealthy as in chapter one so I said, "He was rich as Arthur Spending."

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Frank Muir 580507a

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I get warts on the bottom of my feet. How can I treat and prevent them?

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Having a plantar wart can feel like walking "on a small rock with every step," said Dr. Steven Daveluy, a professor of dermatology at Wayne State University in Detroit.

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Unlike other types of warts ?- small, noncancerous growths that can crop up on various parts of the body - plantar warts develop only on the soles of your feet. They form small, round, rough and often flat growths on the skin, with tiny blood clots in the center that look like black dots.

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Plantar warts are common, and several treatment options are available. But they're often "stubborn," sometimes taking months to go away, Dr. Daveluy said. Here's what to know about getting rid of them.

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All warts are caused by the human papillomavirus, which can live on surfaces - especially communal ones like those in public pools, showers or gyms. If you walk around barefoot with any sort of break in the skin and you're exposed to the virus, a plantar wart could develop, said Jacqueline Prevete, a podiatrist at New York's Presbyterian Hospital in Queens.

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Plantar warts are contagious. If you get one. it's possible to develop "satellite lesions" on nearby parts of your skin, Dr. Prevete said.

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Anyone can get a plantar wart, but people with weakened immune systems or who have a history of having warts may be more susceptible, Dr. Daveluy said. They're also more common in children and teens.

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Plantar warts can go away without treatment, but it could take years, Dr. Daveluy said. And because they can be painful or uncomfortable, people usually want to remove than, Saylee Tulpule, a podiatrist and spokeswoman for the American Podiatric Medical Association, said.

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Over-the-counter liquids. gels or pads made with salicylic acid are among the treatment options, but their effectiveness is "hit-or-miss," Dr. Tulpule said. That's because they may not contain a high enough acid concentration or because they're used incorrectly.

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Another option is to visit a medical professional, like a dermatologist or podiatrist, Dr. Prevete said.

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One preferred office treatment is "painting" the wart with cantharidin, a topical medication, according to the American Academy of Dermatology. It causes a blister to form that blocks the growth's blood supply. About a week later, doctors shave the outer layer of skin and remove some of the wart tissue, Dr. lblpule said, but you might need multiple sessions.

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Cryotherapy, or freezing, is another option. However, Dr. Prevete said that using this technique can be painful. It may also require multiple treatments and is not as effective as cantharidin.

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Laser treatments with local anesthetics may be used for warts that don't respond to other methods, the A.A.D. says. Dr. Daveluy said doctors sometimes surgically remove warts.

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On TikTok, some users claim that covering warts with duct tape for several days can get rid of them. While research on this method is limited, one small study published in 2002 did suggest that duct tape might be more effective than cryotherapy. Dr. Daveluy said "there's no harm in trying it."

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The most effective strategy is to limit barefoot activities in public places, Dr. Tulpule said. Wear flip-flops in gym showers and around pool decks, and regularly moisturize your feet to prevent skin cracks, Dr. Daveluy said.

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The HPV vaccine helps protect against strains of the virus that cause genital warts, but it doesn't specifically target the variants that cause plantar warts, Dr. Daveluy said. However, some limited evidence suggests that the vaccine might help plantar warts and other wart types clear up more quickly.

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Erica Sweeney

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One morning, just after Parker had moved on to the Twentieth Century Fox lot, he gathered his staff and told them that Buddy Adler and Lou Schrieber, who were running the studio, were coming by for their first in-person meeting with the Colonel.

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Parker wanted it to be an event they'd never forget. First, he ordered a sign to read COLONEL PARKER'S WEST COAST OFFICE, which he placed over the men's room door. Then he stationed everyone in his place. Diskin and Byron were to pick up the phone and make imaginary calls, while Trude was to look studiously secretarial. Then he installed Elvis's corpulent friend Arthur Hooton, in the shower with a steno pad and a stool.

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"If anybody laughs," the Colonel said to the group, "you'll be sent back to wherever you came from." With that, he unwrapped one of the Duke of Paducah's country sausages, greased the doorknobs, and disappeared into the men's room.

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"When Adler and Schrieber came in," remembers Raphael, "Trude told them that Colonel was waiting for them in his West Coast office." She pointed in the direction of the men's room, and Adler opened the door to find "the Colonel sitting on the toilet with his pants down, and this gigantic fat guy in the shower pretending to take dictation. The Colonel said, 'Come on in, close the door, don't worry about anything."

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The handsome and dignified Adler tried to pretend that nothing was out of the ordinary as he listened to a man on a toilet going on about how he intended to promote their motion picture. Schrieber, too stunned to say anything, remained mute.

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"After about five minutes," says Raphael, "Adler and Schrieber started to smell something horrendous on their hands, because they'd handled the doorknobs. You can imagine what they thought, but they didn't want to embarrass anybody. They just wanted to get out of there. And the Colonel just kept talking, keeping them there as long as possible. They didn't know what to do. They were in shock."

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Finally, Parker let them go, and the office erupted into hysterics, Byron and Trude realizing their new boss was the kind of man who left people dazed, walking around and talking to themselves. The next day, the manager of Fox's newest star called Ed Dodelin at RCA and had him send both of the executives a large cabinet television, courtesy of Elvis and the Colonel.

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The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley

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Suddenly, a memory stirred and shifted.

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I wondered if my father wrote those letters to my mother because of what not writing one had once cost him. Gene Kilroy, my father's old business manager and lifelong friend, told me about a girl Dad had had a crush on when he was a teenager. "It was when he flew to Rome, for the Olympics. He went over there and never wrote to her. By the time he got back, she had a new boyfriend."

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He never wrote to the girl because he didn't know how to spell "Louisville" and was too embarrassed to ask anyone in the Olympic Village.

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When he got home, he went to her house and found her sitting on the front porch with another boy.

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"I'm sorry, Cassius," she said. "I thought you lost interest because you never wrote me."

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The relationship was too new to be love, but I'm sure my father remembered the feeling of losing what might have been.

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Maybe he wrote so many letters to my mother because he didn't want to make the same mistake twice.

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Hani Ali "At Home with Muhammad Ali: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Forgiveness" (2019)

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A popular critique laments the indolence, irresponsibility and self-destructive behaviors of the working class. National Review in 20I6 urged "an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy - which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog" and concluded that "the white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles." It's true that too many working-class students drop out of high school and then have babies out of wedlock and that this is a prescription for poverty. Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution have found that of people who follow three traditional rules - graduate from high school, get a full-time job and marry before having children - only 2 percent live in poverty. So play by these rules, called "the success sequence," and by and large one can avoid poverty. In contrast, of those who do none of those three things, 79 percent live in poverty. Overall, one-quarter of girls still become pregnant by the age of nineteen, so clearly there has been irresponsible behavior, by boys and girls alike.

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Yet the irresponsibility is not entirely with adolescents. American kids have sex at the same rates as European kids, but European girls are one-third as likely to get pregnant - because European countries offer much better comprehensive sex education and easier access to reliable forms of contraception. So, yes, teen births reflect individual irresponsibility, but also collective irresponsibility on the part of society. If we're going to blame the kids, we should also acknowledge our collective failure to do a better job creating safety nets so that teenagers overcome by hormones don't damage their futures, not to mention their children's.

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Nicholas Kristoff "Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope" (2020)

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Hidden Medical Problems Can Cause Behavior Problems

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Dr. Margaret Bauman and Dr. Timothy Buie at Massachusetts General Hospital have worked with many autistic children. They both warn doctors, parents, and teachers that hidden, painful, or distressful medical problems must be ruled out before child is put on psychiatric medicines such as Risperdal. Some doctors may not even bother to look for problems that would have been diagnosed in a NORMAL child. They just assume that all behavior problems are caused by autism. Dr. Buie, a pediatric gastroenterologist, explained that 24% of normal children have distressful GI (gastrointestinal) problems. The rate in children with autism is often much higher.

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At the Autism 2008 Geneva Center Conference in Toronto, Dr. Buie we showed videos of three young nonverbal autistic children with terrible behaviors that were caused by non-obvious stomach distress. In the first video, a little girl refused to sit still to do a task. She was in constant motion and would not settle. She also had weird postures, and strangely, she did not hold her stomach. In a second video, a child was refusing to lie flat and kept flinging and flailing about. In the third video, there was severe self-injury and a weird "saluting" posture.

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All three children suffered from acid reflux (heartburn), the most common GI problem. Although none of them expressed overt signs of GI distress, such as constipation, vomiting, diarrhea, or touching/rubbing their stomach or chest, their behaviors were a direct result of their severe discomfort. Being nonverbal, their behaviors were their only means of communicating their discomfort. Some of their body movements were, undoubtedly, their attempts to alleviate the pain they felt. All three children greatly improved after they were treated for acid reflux.

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Acid reflux can be easily treated with over-the-counter medications such as Pepcid (famotidine) or Prevacid (lansoprazole). Not allowing a child to lie down immediately after eating, and raising the head of the bed to keep acid in the stomach and prevent it from burning the esophagus, are other common remedies. If brown stains are seen on the child's pillow, that usually is a sign of acid reflux. Other signs include chewing clothing or other objects, or tapping the chest.

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Other Hidden Medical Problems

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Obviously acid reflux is only one of the many physical issues that can cause behavior problems, Other GI problems such as constipation or H pylori can also cause pain. H pylori is the bug that causes stomach ulcers and it can be diagnosed with a simple stool test and treated by your local doctor. I have also talked to teachers and parents who reported that their child's behavior greatly improved after an ear infection or a toothache was treated. A severe yeast infection can also make? a child feel terrible, and should be treated.

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Dr. Bauman described other useful observations from her clinical practice with hundreds of children with autism. She has observed that girls' behaviors are often more likely to get worse at puberty than boys'.? I can really relate to this. When puberty started, my anxiety and panic attacks exploded. Dr. Bauman has found that some girls with autism have an imbalance between the hormones of estrogen and progesterone. Treating the hormone imbalance improved behavior. This problem can be diagnosed and treated by either a very good gynecologist or an endocrinologist.

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Temple Grandin "The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's" (2011)

James Dean Is Forewarned By Alec Guinness

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The Villa Capri,

Hollywood

September 23rd 1955

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A week before he is due to die, James Dean is sitting at a table in his favorite little restaurant in Hollywood, the Villa Capri. He is very chummy with Nikkos, its maitre d' from whom he has started renting a log house in Sherman Oaks.

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Looking towards the entrance, he spots a familiar figure attempting to get a table, then being turned away. He recognizes him as the English actor Alec Guinness, the star of so many of his favorite Ealing comedies, such as Kind Hearts and Coronets.

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Guinness has always been more than a touch superstitious, and in a few minutes he will be applying his sixth sense to James Dean. He regularly visits fortune tellers, and has even indulged in a little table-turning. At one time in his life he became obsessed with tarot cards, until all of a sudden one evening, 'I got the horrors about them and impetuously threw cards and books on a blazing log fire.'

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Guinness delights in recounting his psychic powers. On the afternoon of New Year's Eve, 1943, he was resting in the cabin of the naval ship of which he was a lieutenant, when he apparently heard a sinister voice saying, 'Tomorrow.' He became convinced that this was a premonition of death.

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That night, sailing from Sicily to the Yugoslav island of Vis, his ship hit a hurricane. An electrical discharge caused ribbons of blue fluorescent light, 'until the whole ship was lit up like some dizzying fairground sideshow'. Convinced that he was going to die, Guinness found the spectacle 'beautiful and strangely comforting.'

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The ship was dashed against the rocks as it entered the small Italian port of Termoli, and he gave the order to abandon ship. He had, it seems, outwitted the sinister voice - or had it been delivering less of a judgment than a warning?

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In March this year, he and his wife were on holiday in the Trossachs in Scotland when their car had a bad puncture. 'Couldn't get the wheel off.' he wrote in his diary. 'After nearly an hour's effort said a little prayer to St Anthony and the nuts came loose the very next time I tried - and with only a small effort.'

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Six months later he arrives in Hollywood, exhausted after a sixteen-hour flight from Copenhagen, in order to begin filming The Swan with Grace Kelly and Louis Jourdan.

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The screenwriter of Father Brown, Thelma Moss, has invited him out to dinner, but they have difficulty finding a table because Thelma is wearing slacks. They finally settle for a small Italian restaurant, the Villa Capri, which has a more casual dress-code, but when they get there they are told by the genial maitre d' that it is full, and so they begin to walk away.

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'I don't care where we eat or what. Just something, somewhere.' grumbles Guinness irritably, adding, 'I don't mind just a hamburger.'

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At that moment, he becomes aware of the sound of feet running down the street behind him. He turns to see a young man in sneakers, a sweatshirt and blue jeans. 'You want a table?' he asks. 'Join me. My name's James Dean.'

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'Yes, very kind of you.' replies Guinness with relief, and eagerly follows him back to the Villa Capri.

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Before they go into the restaurant, James Dean says, 'I'd like to show you something.' and takes them into the courtyard of the restaurant. There, he proudly shows them his new racing car, one of only ninety Porsche 550 Spyders ever produced. He has had it customized: it now has tartan seating and two red stripes at the rear of its wheel-well, all designed by George Barris, the man who will go on to design the Batmobile. 'It's just been delivered; Dean says, proudly. On the lower rear of the engine cover are the words 'Little Bastard: The car is so brand new that it is still wrapped in cellophane, with a bunch of roses tied to its bonnet.

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Alec Guinness is seized by one of his premonitions. 'How fast can you go in that?'

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'I can do 150 in it.'

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'Have you driven it?'

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'I've never been in it at all.'

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And then - 'exhausted, hungry, feeling a little ill-tempered in spite of Dean's kindness' - Guinness hears himself saying, in a voice he can hardly recognize as his own, 'Look, I won't join your table unless you want me to, but I must say something. Please do not get into that car.' He looks at his watch. 'I said, "It's now 10 o'clock, Friday the 23rd of September 1955. If you get in that car you will be found dead in it by this time next week."

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Despite this grim prognosis, Dean laughs. 'Oh, shucks!' he says. 'Don't be so mean!'

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Guinness apologizes, blaming his outburst on a lack of sleep and food.

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The three of them then have dinner together - 'a charming dinner' - before going their separate ways. Guinness makes no further reference to the car, 'but in my heart I was uneasy'.

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Though Dean himself has an interest in morbid premonitions - passages about death and degradation are heavily underlined in his copy of Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon - he ignores Guinness's warning. A week later, on September 30th, he is driving his new Spyder across the junction of Route 46 and Route 41 near Cholame, California, when he collides head-on with a Ford Custom Tudor coupe driven by a student with the inappropriately comical name of Donald Turnupseed.

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James Dean is taken by ambulance to Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital, where he is pronounced dead on arrival at 5.59 p.m. His last words, uttered just before impact, are, 'The guy's gotta stop ... he'll see us.'

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Fifty years after his death, this section of the road is renamed the James Dean Memorial Junction.

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'It was a very odd, spooky experience: recalls Alec Guinness of their strange meeting. 'I liked him very much. I would have liked to have known him more.'

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Craig Brown "Hello Goodbye Hello" (2011)

Scratch the Russian you will find the Tartar

(Napoleon)

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Well this was actually said by a Russian, and by a remarkable coincidence tonight, we have had the word, which is apposite word of this whole anecdote, which is pruinose, which as Nancy described, is something that you put on your nose.

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I want you to bear that in mind, because it comes in very important later on in the story and please pay attention, because I might ask questions later.

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This was a diplomatic banquet held in London at the turn of the century to which representatives of a lot of nations were invited. And they thought it would be a rather good thing if they had dishes to represent each of the nations. So, of course, the French had canard a la reine.? And the Italians had risotto a la Dante Gabrieli Rossetti and so on. And the English had boiled cod.?

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Well, it was rather a letdown, the English dish, and they said we've got to cheer this up somehow.? And so somebody suggested that they have with it a substance they have with it called tartar sauce.

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Well they were sitting there and they're all eating well all except the delegate from Finland because he was finished before he started.

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And they came to the boiled cod dish and the waiter handed the Russian delegate this tartar sauce.? Well, I don't know if you've ever seen badly made tartar sauce, which is a real bad job.

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It's not really well-made at all.? The Russian delegate looked at it and he thought, in Russian, as Russians do, he thought this can't possibly be anything to eat. And he had heard about this pruinose substance that Nancy was telling about. So he took it and he rubbed it on his nose. And the lady next to him also contemplated her boiled cod and she turned round to the waiter, and said, "Well, where's the sauce?"

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And the waiter said, "Well, scratch the Russian you will find the Tartar"

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Denis Norden 580420b

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On January 2, 1936, broadcasting over station KFI at 7:00 P.M. Pacific time from NBC's Studio B, a temporary setup on the back lot at RKO, Bing finally presided as sole host of the Kraft Music Hall, his radio home for the next decade. From the beginning, KMH juggled classics and pop, the concert stage and Hollywood. On the first show, teenage violinist Ruggiero Ricci played a classical number and director Cecil B. De Mille participated in a scripted interview. Don Wilson announced, Jimmy Dorsey's band underscored Bing's rhythmic zing, and Burns demonstrated a musical instrument of his own invention: a brass contraption made of sliding pipes with a funnel at one end, resembling a kitchen-sink trombone but sounding more like a jug. He called it a bazooka, after the sound it made, and his featured numbers became so popular that the name was later appropriated by the army for short-range rocket launchers.

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Gary Giddins, "Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams - The Early Years 1903 - 1940" (2002)

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A creek in Virginia recently turned a cloudy white color. Lynchburg Fire Department crews were called to the scene. Turns out a clogged drain line at a nearby dairy sent milk overflowing into a sewer and into the creek. The line was cleared, and fire officials said in a Facebook post that there was no public health threat, but there were some puns. Here's one. I heard there was only a 2% chance of this ever happening. I didn't say good puns.

"What's up, Mr. T?" I said, walking into my father's office. "Where's rest of the A-Team?" I must have driven him crazy asking him to repeat his signature line from the show: 'I PITY THE FOOL!" Again, and again. He always did.

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"I PITY THE FOOL!"

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As we walked through the front door that afternoon, Laila ran off find my mother. As usual, I only had one thing on my mind - my father. I raced off to where I knew he'd be waiting to sweep me into his arms He wasn't in his office, so I ran into the kitchen, where Edith, the cook, was preparing lunch. Turkey sandwiches and lemonade.

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"Are you hungry, Hana?"

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"No," I said, grabbing a pickle and a popsicle from the refrigerator "Where is Daddy?"

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"Upstairs, resting. Go comb your hair. He has-" Before Edith could finish her sentence, I ran out of the kitchen, straight upstairs into the guest bedroom where Dad usually took his daytime naps - a habit he'd acquired from years of training and fighting.

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I pushed open the bedroom door. "Daddy ... " I began, wanting to tell him that I'd swum a width of the pool all by myself. "Daddy, I ... - I stopped dead in my tracks. My father was lying in bed, under a white sheet with one hand behind his head, and sitting in a chair beside him was the unmistakable figure of Michael Jackson. Politicians, actors. even most singers might have been unrecognizable to my young eyes. but the King of Pop? He was one of my favorites, pure and simple. I was never the type to be a fan of anyone, even as a child, but this was two years after Thriller and Michael was a megastar. I didn't have any posters of MJ pinned on my wall or a pile of magazines with him on the cover, but I'd been performing his "Billie Jean" act for my father for months, and the fact that he was now at my house, sitting in the bedroom with us ... It was enough to send me into a hysterical fit.

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Michael was lifting his black fedora hat, showing my father his white bandages. He'd been injured filming a Pepsi commercial when pyrotechnics had set his hair on fire. It was a massive news story. And some believe that the painkillers he was given at that time eventually contributed to his addiction to anesthetics, which ultimately led to his death in 2009.

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I stepped out of the room for a minute and closed the door. "Michael Jackson!" I screamed. "Michael Jackson!"

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Laila came running out of my mother's room. "Where is he?" she? asked,

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"In there," I pointed. "With Daddy!"

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My mother had already told her. She had changed into her pink dress the white ruffles. I was still in my swimsuit and shorts, my curly hair reaching in all directions, as if I'd just stuck a fork in an electric socket! Michael probably thought I looked like the beast that swallowed Tokyo. And if he didn't already, he would before he left - especially after the question I asked him. But that was still an hour or so away. In this moment I hadn't marked him with any lasting impression of me. To him, I was still just Muhammad Ali's eight-year-old daughter. A wild little girl excited to find Michael Jackson in her house.

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Dad used to visit the Jacksons at their house in Encino. He'd bring his black briefcase and perform magic for them. Sometimes Michael came to the house when we were at school and sat on the sofa in Dad's office, where so many celebrities and politicians who the world admired came to admire him. I think he was their guiding light, the man the stars looked up to.

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"Hana, do you know who this is?" asked Dad as Laila and I walked back into the room. "This is the most famous singer in the world." I stood there for a second, with my mouth wide open. I knew exactly who I was looking at.

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As Michael sat smiling at me, with his hat in his hand, I couldn't stop staring at the white bandages wrapped around the top of his head.

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"Hi, Michael Jackson," said Laila.

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"Hello."

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"What happened to your head?" I asked.

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"I had an accident," he said.

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"Does it hurt?"

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"Not anymore." He smiled.

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I smiled back, then quickly shut the door and ran around the house, screaming to anyone who would listen that Michael Jackson just smiled at me and was in my daddy's bedroom. Jose, our neighbor's housekeeper's son, didn't believe me. Sara, the teenager who lived up the street who Mom let babysit us sometimes, didn't believe me. Lora and Felisha, the two girls I sometimes played with, didn't believe me. And the man sitting in his red sports car across the street couldn't be convinced either.

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I went back in and out of the room again at some point before Michael left. I wanted to call Kim and Karen to tell them who'd been at my house when they'd dropped me off.

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"Karen!" I shouted. "Guess who's here?"

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"Who?"

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"Michael Jackson!"

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"Liar!" she said.

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"It's true!" I said.

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"Hana said Michael Jackson is at her house," Karen said in the

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background.

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"Sure he is," shouted Kim, probably rolling her eyes.

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"He's here!" I said again. "Upstairs with Daddy, eating a sandwich ... ~ Their loss, I thought.

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After the excitement settled, I went back upstairs and jumped on my father's bed. I don't remember what they were talking about, but for the next hour or so I lay next to Dad, staring at Michael, wondering what really happened between him and Billie Jean.

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The first time Michael came to the house I was too young to remember. My mom had invited him back to Fremont Place as a surprise for my father. Mom casually mentioned years afterward that while we were still living at Fremont she used to eat at a vegetarian restaurant called the Golden Temple, a quaint little place on Third Street, a ten-minute drive from the house. After leaving Jane Fonda's workout studio on Robertson Boulevard she would stop there for lunch. Michael Jackson was usually the only other person eating there. Eventually he and Mom sat together, until Michael hired the chef to work for him privately and the restaurant closed. One day my grandmother was there with Mom, trying to sell Michael Avon cosmetics over lunch. I can only imagine the look on my mother's face! Michael was sweet and nice about it, but Mom was embarrassed.

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"I don't care if he doesn't come back," I fibbed. "I like Prince better anyway."

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Hani Ali "At Home with Muhammad Ali: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Forgiveness" (2019)

Back in New York City, Tani participated in his first tournament in 2018 with the lowest chess rating, 105, of any participant. He worked hard and attended a free summer chess program in New York City schools, and soon he began to win. Chess trophies began to stack up in the homeless shelter. He won chessboards as well, making it easier to practice. "He is so driven," Coach Martinez told us. "He does ten times more chess puzzles than the average kid. He just wants to be better."

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Still, it was hard for Tani. He came home from school crying one day when classmates teased him about being homeless. At an immigration hearing, he misunderstood the judge and burst into tears when he thought he was about to be deported back to Nigeria. On the plus side, Tani had an enormously hardworking and supportive family. His dad, Kayode Adewumi, held two jobs: he worked long hours as an Uber driver using a car he rented and also passed a real estate exam and became a licensed real estate salesman. His mom took a course to become a home health-care aide. It was easy to see where the boy's diligence and ambition came from. Likewise, the family was enormously nurturing and proud of Tani's achievements. Every Saturday, his mom took him to a three-hour free chess clinic in Harlem, and his dad let him use his laptop computer with chess software that the school provided free of charge. Even Tani's older brother, fifteen-year-old Austin, who aims to become an engineer, regularly took time off to accompany Tani to chess events. The family is very religious but, a bit reluctantly, allowed Tani to miss Sunday church services to attend chess tournaments.

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"Tani is rich beyond measure," Russell Makofsky, who oversees the chess program, told us - for what the boy lacked in family financial resources he received in family love and support. In 2019, with a rating that had swelled to 1587, Tani went to the state tournament. It had been only a year since he had started playing chess, but he had evolved into an aggressive, intuitive player. In one round, he boldly exchanged a bishop for a much less valuable pawn, and the school coaches worried that he had made a foolish move. But they fed the move into a computer simulator, and it declared that Tani's chances of winning had just increased: it saw, as Tani had, that the gambit improved his position several moves later. At this level, Tani was competing mostly against kids from elite private schools with their own $100-an-hour chess tutors, but in the end, Tani won that game and was undefeated in the entire tournament. He won the state championship for his age group.

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"It's an inspiring example of how life's challenges do not define a person," Jane Hsu, the principal of his school, told us. Makofsky, the chess administrator, just shook his head wonderingly. "One year to get to this level, to climb a mountain and be the best of the best, without family resources," he told us. "I've never seen it."

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We are hopeful that grit will triumph over vulnerability. In Manhattan, we walked with Tani back to his homeless shelter as he lugged his huge trophy. An elderly white woman on the street looked at this scrawny black boy with an oversize trophy and asked him, "What's that for?" Without stopping, he said matter-of-factly, "Chess. I won the state chess tournament." The woman's eyes opened wider. "Chess?" she repeated. "Wow!"

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Tani's triumph reflects his brilliance and diligence, but also a combination of circumstances that too rarely come together. It helped, of course, that Tani's family is strong and was committed to getting him into the chess club and to every practice and tournament. It was also crucial that the chess club was willing to waive all fees and admit him. None of this would have happened if PS 116 hadn't taught chess and employed a first-rate chess teacher devoted to helping Tani improve his game. Most homeless kids don't have Tani's talent, but they also don't have his opportunity or drive. "I want to be the youngest grand master," he told us.

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Nick wrote about Tani in his Times column, and the resulting outpouring of goodwill was staggering. Within hours, a handful of families had offered housing to the family. One woman had an empty furnished home that she was prepared to let them live in, another had extra space in her apartment overlooking Central Park, and another said she would help rent the family an apartment near Tani's school. Several others offered to buy Tani's dad a car so he would not have to rent the car that he drives for Uber. A company offered jobs to Tani's parents. A couple of private schools offered full scholarships. Lawyers offered immigration advice. President Bill Clinton invited Tani and his family to visit him in his Harlem office, so the boy took the morning off from school for that. And hundreds of readers contributed to a GoFundMe page that quickly raised more than $250,000 for Tani and his family.

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A few days later, we helped the Adewumis move into their new home, a pleasant two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, not far from his school. A generous reader had paid the rent for the first year, and another family had furnished it. "I have a home," Tani told us giddily, as he raced around the empty rooms. "I have a home!" He said he was particularly excited about eating a home-cooked meal for the first time in a year. "I want my mom's cooking again," he explained.

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The Adewumis were overwhelmed but grounded, They politely declined the scholarship offers from elite private schools, while saying that they might reconsider when Tani reached middle school. For now, he would remain loyal to the elementary school that had given him a chance and welcomed him onto its chess team even when he could not pay fees. "This school showed confidence in Tanitoluwa, so we return the confidence," his mom told Principal Hsu. And then, fighting tears, they hugged.

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The challenge is that when we highlight an inspiring story like Tani's, readers invariably want to support that particular child rather than the class of people similarly affected. Humans are moved to help individuals, not to address structural problems. But the solution to child homelessness is not winning the state chess championship. That's not scalable. So what the Adewumis did next was particularly meaningful. They decided not to touch the quarter-million dollars in the GoFundMe account, aside from 10 percent that they would give to their church as a tithe. The rest went into a new Tanitoluwa Adewumi Foundation to be used to help struggling immigrants like the ones they had been a week earlier. "God has already blessed me," Tani's dad explained. "I want to release my blessing to others."

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We asked Tani what he thought about handing over this vast sum rather than, say, keeping a few dollars to buy a bicycle or a video game, or simply going out for a celebratory dinner. "I want to help other kids," he said, but just a trace of wistfulness crossed his face when we mentioned the other options. So we pressed him: Wasn't there anything he wanted? After a long silence, he confessed: "Well, maybe a computer," he said. "That would be nice." As soon as Nick reported that, of course, Tani was deluged with offers of computers.

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Exactly a month after the first article appeared, Tani's parents had a Nigerian-style dinner in their home for all the people who had helped them, from the chess coach to the donor of the new car parked outside. Philip Falayi, a Nigerian pastor who had let the Adewumis sleep in his church for their first few days in New York, blessed the food, and Tani played chess in the corner with one of his school buddies. A bookshelf of donated chess books, the towering state chess trophy and a practice schedule to prepare for the national tournament completed the scene. "We are so thankful to everyone," Tani's dad told those present. "This happened because of all of you."

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To see Tani with his trophy was to sense the possibilities when needy kids are supported. It's the same sensation we had cheering the graduation for Women in Recovery, and the right policies can replicate both kinds of opportunities. We say "policies" because there's a risk that recounting such a heartwarming tale may leave the impression that charity can solve social ills entirely rather than fill gaps. The outpouring of help for Tani's family was moving, but kids should have housing even if they are not chess prodigies. What we need is not just the dazzling generosity that people showed Tani's family, although that was transformative here, but systemic solutions to help children even when they don't know a bishop from a pawn. So we should be inspired, yes, but inspired to try to build comprehensive systems to replicate that web of support as much as possible for all kids, and that requires Americans to show generosity not only in private charity but also in public policy.

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Nicholas Kristoff "Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope" (2020)