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Medication Usage: Risk versus Benefit Decisions

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There has been much publicity lately about the hazards associated with certain medications such as antidepressants and pain-relieving drugs for arthritis. It has raised concern among parents whose children already use medications, and has made more ardent skeptics of those who already hesitate to use drugs with their child.

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All medications have risks. When making decisions about medication usage, the benefits should clearly - not marginally - outweigh the risks. Common sense dictates that drugs with a higher risk of bad side-effects should be used more carefully than drugs with a low risk. A reasonable approach is to try drugs with a lower risk of side effects first.

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To approach medication decision-making in a logical manner, it is best to adhere to the following three principles. These principles assume that non-drug approaches have been tried FIRST and proved unsuccessful in alleviating the challenge. A child should NOT be given medication as the first course of treatment when presenting behavioral challenges. Exhaust other treatments first.

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Try one medication at a time so you can judge its effect. Do not change educational programs or diet at the same time a new drug is cried. Allow a few weeks to a month between starting a medication and changing some other part of the individual's program. Keeping a journal of the child's behaviors, demeanor, and levels of activity can be helpful in spotting possible side effects and/or assessing the degree of improvement, if any.

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An effective medication should have an OBVIOUS BENEFICIAL EFFECT. Giving a child a powerful drug that renders him only slightly less hyper would probably not be worth the risk. A drug that just takes the edge off his hyperactivity, but makes him very lethargic, would be equally bad. I am really concerned about the growing number of powerful drugs being prescribed to young children. In little kids, I recommend trying one of the special diets and Omega-3 (fish oil supplements first, before giving the child powerful drugs.

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If an individual has been on a medication that is working really well it is usually not worth the risk to change it for a new medication. Newer is not always better. Pharmaceutical companies promote their new drugs while they still have patents. After a drug goes generic, they no longer promote it. Many of the older generic drug are very effective and cheap. However, use care when switching brands of generics. Find a brand that works well and stay with it; The way the pills are manufactured may affect how fast they dissolve, which may change the way the drug works.

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To make good decisions, parents need to know ALL the risks involved with the major classes of medications. The following section summarizes the uses and risks associated with the six most commonly used medications.

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1 Antidepressants (both SSRIs-selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac - and older tricyclics) should be given at lower doses to people on the spectrum than to the general population. Some individuals with ASD need only one-quarter to one-half the normal starter dose. Giving too high a dose of an antidepressant causes many problems such as insomnia and agitation. The correct low dose can have very positive effects. I know many design professionals who take Prozac and they have done some of their best work while taking it.

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However; I have heard several complaints about memory problems with Paxil (paroxenne), Prozac (fluoxetine) or Zoloft (sertraline) would probably be better choices. In a meta-analysis Prozac came out hs having the best evidence for use in individuals with autism when compared to other SSRIs. However, if you are taking Paxil and doing well, it would probably be best to keep taking it.

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Antidepressants work really well for anxiety, panic attacks, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), social anxiety, and racing thoughts. _Most antidepressants have a "black-box" warning of a slightly increased risk of suicidal thinking during the early period of use - the first eight weeks on the drug. Doctors usually prefer to try SSRIs first because they are safer. Tricyclics can cause heart problems in some susceptible individuals.

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2. Atypicals. Some examples are Risperdal (risperidone), Seroquel (quetiapine), and Abilify (aripiprazole). The side effects of these drugs are high. They include weight gain, increased risk for diabetes, and tardive dyskinesia (Parkinson's Shaker) Tardive dyskinesia sometimes causes permanent damage that may continue after the medication is stopped. There is no black-box warning on the labels of these drugs, but the long term risks are actually greater than those associated with antidepressants. Gaining 100 pounds can seriously compromise health, impair mobility, and contribute to social ostracism and low self-esteem. The risks continue and tend to get worse the longer the drug is taken. Low doses of atypicals should be used.

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These drugs are effective for controlling very severe aggression in older children and adults. Behavioral interventions should be used first before employing atypicals to control aggression. The balance between risk versus benefit favors using the atypicals for individuals with severe symptoms. For those with milder symptoms, the risks are too high. Similarly, powerful drugs in the atypical class should not be used as sleep aids or for attention problems because they have too many severe side effects.

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3. Stimulants. Some examples are Ritalin (Methylphenidate) and Adderall (combination of Dextroamphetamine and Amphetamine). These drugs are normally prescribed for children and adults with ADHD. Stimulants usually make children with autism who have had speech delay worse. However, they often improve individuals with mild autism or Asperger's where there is no speech delay. Compared to the atypicals, stimulants have fewer long-term side effects, but they should be avoided in individuals who have either diagnosed or suspected heart problems. The effects of stimulants are immediate and will become obvious after one or two doses. Other types of medicines require several weeks or more to evaluate.

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4. Anti-convulsants. These drugs were originally developed for treating epilepsy and seizures. They are also very effective for controlling aggression and stabilizing mood. Anti-convulsants are likely to be effective if aggression starts suddenly, almost like flicking a light switch. The rage may appear to come "out of the blue," with little or no provocation. It may be triggered by a tiny seizure activity that is difficult to detect. Risperdal or one of the other atypicals may work better for aggression that is more directed at certain people. Mark Goodman, a psychopharmacologist in Kansas reports that Lamictal (lamotrigine) is often very effective for aggression in autistic adolescents. Other anti-convulsants that often work well are Topamax (ropirarnate) and Depakote (divalproex sodium).

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The main disadvantage of anti-convulsants is that blood tests have to be done to make sure they are not damaging the liver in susceptible individuals. If a skin rash develops within six months after starting an anti-convulsant, the drug must be stopped immediately. Most problems with rashes occur in the first two to eight weeks. If the person continues to take the drug, the rash can be fatal. Many individuals tolerate anti-convulsants really well, provided they have no liver or rash problems within the first year of taking these drugs. Careful monitoring will prevent dangerous side effects because the person can be taken off the drug before it causes permanent damage.

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5. Blood Pressure Medications. This class of drugs was originally developed for treating high blood pressure. They have strong anti-anxiety and calming properties. I know design professionals who had terrible problems with anxiety and drug addiction who completely got their lives turned around by taking a low dose of Prozac along with the beta-blocker Propranolol. Propranolol is an old generic that is being rediscovered. The Army is doing research with Propranolol as a treatment for post traumatic stress disorder. It blocks the huge fear response that veterans experience during a "flashback." Propranolol may help control rage in nonverbal individuals who are hot and sweaty and often sound like they are out of breath.

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Other blood pressure medications may also be helpful for calming or helping a child get to sleep. Catapres (clonidine) works well as a sleep aid. Blood pressure medications have fewer long-term side effects compared to the atypicals such as Risperdal or Abilify.

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Since they are blood pressure pills, they could cause fainting if the person's blood pressure gets too low. When any blood pressure medication is first started, individuals should avoid driving until they know how they will react to the medication.

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6. Benzodiazepines. These medications are used for anxiety, but they have many disadvantages. They have huge abuse potential and getting off the drug may be very difficult to do once started. Some of the most common ones are Xanax (alprazolam), Valium (diazepam), and Klonopm (clonazepam) Usually an antidepressant such as Prozac (fluoxetine) or Zoloft (sertraline), or a blood pressure medication is better for long-term management of anxiety. Dr. John Ratey at Harvard University usually avoids the benzodiapozines when treating individuals on the autism spectrum.

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Old Versus New

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Many new atypicals and antidepressants are coming on the market all the time. Some of these have minor advantages compared to older drugs. Many of them are slight chemical modifications of older drugs. Often the older drugs will work just as well and they are available in cheap generics. At the time of revising this chapter, there were no totally new types of conventional pharmaceuticals on the market or in the research pipeline awaiting FDA approval. Today there are effective generic drugs available for all classes of conventional pharmaceuticals used in the treatment of individuals with autism.

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In terms of real risk, the antidepressants and blood pressure medications are safer for long-term health. However, there are some situations where the benefits of Risperdal far outweigh the risk. It is a very effective drug for controlling rage. If it enables a teenager to attend school, live in a group home, or have enough self-control to learn other cognitive forms of behavior management, It would be worth the risk.

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Parents must logically assess the risk-benefit ratio when contemplating any form of medication usage with their child. Discuss the medication thoroughly with the child's doctor. Ask the doctor to provide you with a list of possible side effects of the medication. Do some research of your own on the internet to determine how widely and/or effectively the medication has been used with people with ASD. This is especially true when medication is suggested for use with younger children. Both doctors and parents must avoid increasing drug doses or adding another medication every time there is a crisis. I have talked to parents where their child was taking eight different medications and the child was a sedated zombie.

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When medications are used carefully and conservatively, they can help normalize function. When medications are just thrown at problems without using logical thinking, the child can be so drugged that he or she may not be able to function.

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

Eva Marie Saint already felt transformed by her handpicked wardrobe.

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She recalled that all Hitchcock offered her were three simple instructions:

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"Lower my voice; don't use my hands; and look directly at Cary Grant in my scenes with him, look right into his eyes. From that, I conjured up in my mind the kind of lady he saw this woman as." He must have been right:

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Saint's performance - the epitome of playful chic - stands up for all time.

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Cary Grant didn't require Hitchcock to pick out his wardrobe. Cary Grant gave grooming tips, and Hitchcock usually told him just to "dress like Cary Grant." And like Jimmy Stewart, Grant didn't need acting advice, either; he picked his roles to fit him like his custom-made Saville Row.

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During the location work in New York, Grant hid out in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, the very place where Thornhill is spotted by the thugs who mistake him for a spy. One day, the actor was summoned from his suite for the quick shot where Thornhill strolls across the hotel lobby. After he came down and did his bit, a visiting journalist, interviewing Hitchcock wondered aloud how Grant could play the scene without conferring with the director. "Oh," Hitchcock quipped, "he's been walking across the lobby by himself for years!"

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Patrick McGilligan "Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light" (2003)

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All Our Geese are Swans

(Richard Burton)

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All our geese are swans.? Now this was said to me fairly recently.? Because I have a boat in which I cruise the rivers and inland waterways and on it I take my children and my wife, whose name escapes me for the moment.? It's . . . I've been working rather hard, Polly, my wife, Polly.

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And we were on this boat with our children and my wife said to me,"You know, going up and down these canals is lovely wild life, but one thing I'd really like to have available is a water otter, or, as they're called, geezers."

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Because we had no means of heating our water at all on the boat. We actually used to boil our water in a gumboot on the stove. It's really very primitive.? My wife would get up and make the breakfast and scrub the boat down and fill the engine up with oil and run it and warm it up and cast off.

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And I would supervise from my bunk.? Very often the duty of supervising was so onerous I used to fall asleep and feel fatigued.

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And I said I really didn't think we needed an otter because just using the gumboot would be done.

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But then my son came up to me and he said, "Daddy."? His name's Jamie and he looks after himself; he's very fit; not a gray hair. And he's five and a half.? And he said, "Daddy.? Let's buy mommy a geezer and make her work easier instead of spending your money on silly things like food and clothing."

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And I sort of playfully hit him around the ear with a boat hook and passed over the awkward situation.

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Then later that night, my little daughter, who's a slim well-preserved three, she came up sadly, and she sort of rubbed, as I was lying on my bunk, I'd been very exhausted watching my wife cast off. And she ran her fingers through my hair, leaving in it a half-eaten toffee, and she said, "Daddy.? We want the geezer."

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So I knew my goose was cooked and a geezer had to be bought.

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So the following day I went into the town and sought out a geezer shop or as they call them in France, a geezerie, and I said to the man there, "I want a geezer for my boat; I don't know much about geezers."

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It was an interesting chap; sort of gray hair, sort of laugh lines under his eyes, Denis Norden had been in earlier and sort of made some jokes and written them on the chap. And he said, "We can thoroughly recommend our geezers, sir, actually."

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So I said, "How does one tell a good geezer from a bad geezer?"

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He said, "You tell it by the sound it makes.? A geezer should start out with a shhhhhhhhh and then go sort of ahhhhhhhhhh, like a water falls And end up with a crisp pssss. Now cheap geezers, pssh wssh donk donk donk bang.

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And he said, "Now, Our geezers shhhhhhh ahhhhhhhhh pssssssssst."

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Frank Muir 580618a

Mickey Rooney remained with the project until shortly before shooting began in April 1938, when he was suddenly pulled by MGM. Ignoring Paramount's casting department, Ruggles told his assistant director, Arthur Jacobson, "Find me another Mickey Rooney and we'll start the picture." It so happened that Jacobsen was scheduled to attend a benefit for the Motion Picture Relief Fund at the Biltmore Hotel, emceed by Bob Hope; in addition to movie stars, a few vaudeville acts were recruited to fill out the bill, amng them the O'Connor Family, with its sparkling twelve-year-old wunderkind, Donald.

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Jacobson made an appointment with O'Connor. "I asked him if he could act. He said, 'If it's entertainment, I can do anything. I can sing, I can dance, I can act." Asked if he could ride a racehorse, Donald replied, "No, but I'll learn," and did.? Jacobson asked him to listen to prerecordings by Bing and Fred and harmonize with them. Within days Donald knew the script cold. On Monday morning Jaco brought him to see Ruggles, who immediately advised Paramount to sign him. O'Connor had been on the stage since he was three days old. He had played every kind of theater and circus. When he Bing, he felt as though he already knew him:

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"I would see him on the screen in between shows and, like everybody else, I always thought he was a friend of mine. So when I met Bing, he was extremely nice. Had a wonderful smile. And he never said too much to me on the movie. He was very, very patient with me. I was a very small child at twelve and I was riding this big goddamned race-horse and I was scared to death of this horse. There was one scene down at the track, an exposition scene, where I tell him I've been bribed, I've got the money and I feel awful, I'm letting the family down. It's a long scene and Bing is in front leading me on the horse and he's pumping me and at the same time reassuring me not to be worried. We get right down to the end and I blow my lines. So we turn the horse around, all the way back, and it was a cold day at Santa Anita, and we have to start again with all the crying and everything. I blow the line again. We must have done that forty times. And Bing never complained, not once. I told him, "I'm so sorry, my mind just can't get this." He said, "Don't worry about it, kid, you'll get it, we have no place to go." We had a lot of fun on that movie. He treated me like a pal."

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

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Inside, children shriek with delight as they throw chips and crackers into the cages. Signs indicate not only breed but through which Kim the animal was gifted - whether directly or indirectly, via some other dubious luminary of Second and Third World politics. An elephant from Ho Chi Minh, presented to Great Leader Kim Il Sung in Juche 48 (1959). A Cuban crocodile presented to the Dear Leader Kim Jong 11 by the Cuban Embassy in Juche 69 (1980). A lion from Robert Mugabe.

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There is a separate house for dogs and cats. Household pets are uncommon in Pyongyang, so according to local logic, such creatures should naturally be showcased in the zoo. A trio of gray mutts stand at abrupt attention at the end of a steel cage, separating us by a waist-size concrete partition. "Go ahead, the one in the middle hasn't had one yet," a young mother instructs her toddler, who gleefully tosses in a cracker and then watches the dogs fight over the morsel before popping one into her own mouth. When another cracker lands on the concrete partition, just on the other side of the fence, Hwa approaches and nudges it with the end of his umbrella till it lands within dog reach.

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There's a long, unmoving line waiting to get inside the penguin house. Apparently, as foreigners, we're allowed to jump it, as we're immediately ushered in. Inside, we join a group of college-aged elites for whom a private viewing has been arranged. They stand around casually chatting and snapping photos and videos of the penguins, who swim back and forth in the aquarium against a painted desert island backdrop.

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Another popular attraction is the talking parrots. Min elbows her way through the crowd of children to record the creatures, which have been trained to croak out "Hi!" when you toss them a cracker. Elsewhere, a mobile photo studio offers laminated photos of your tots seated on a live pony. Sample photos show entire families weighing down the poor beast's back.

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Travis Jeppesen "See You Again in Pyongyang: A Journey into Kim Jong Un's North Korea" (2018)

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JOURNALS

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Journal entry 1995: I have to tell you that the freedom of choice is almost unbearable for me. I often find myself thinking more about the road not taken than the one I took. As a result, I am a very messy chooser. I tend to get paralyzed by the choice, then freak out, short circuit, act out and drive everyone nuts. I'm a passive person and I don't want to be ashamed of that passivity. I want to make it work.

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FAMILY

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I wanted to see my son; after all, I'd never seen him and now he was eight months old. I was completely unaware that this was a long time. I was under the impression that once a baby, always a baby.

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I guess I thought of six years old as the end of babyhood. I had no idea that eight months was quite a way along in the development of a child.

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I called Kathie and went to see them. She woke the baby, lifted him out of the crib, and he went right for her breast. When I saw that, I knew there was no need for a blood test. I saw the back of my father's head in his head. I saw my brother Rocky's eyes. I saw a distant mirror, I saw a little lust flower.

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I saw a glorious accident. I saw a completely formed, whole human being, and I experienced a perfect paradox at that moment; I knew now that I could die and that I had to stay alive to help this little guy through.

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Kathie had a radical plan. She said, "You haven't seen him for eight months, you should go bond with him. Take him off alone, to your summer house in the country."

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And I did. I thought it was a completely mad idea, but I didn't question it. I was on the train to Brewster North with this eight-month-old creature, who was in my arms. I assumed he was beautiful, because everyone on the train kept stopping to say, "Oh my goodness, what a lovely granddaughter you have." And when I got up to the house, I put him on the floor like a rug rat, a hamster, a cat or a dog - let him do his thing; while I do my thing - get out the bloody mary mix, the salmon, the green peas and prepare dinner. And then I had to change his diaper.

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Bending over him, I looked down into his eyes and I fell in.

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I did not expect the gaze that came back, it was absolutely forever. Long, pure, empty, not innocent, because way beyond innocence, mere being, pure consciousness, the observing self that I'd always been trying to catch was staring back at me; they were no-agenda eyes. Clear, open, not blinking, not judging, not tempting, not needing, not hurting, not consoling. Just pure - not old, not new, because not in time. And I just stared until I blinked. And had to pull away. I couldn't go on anymore in there.

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I took him in my arms and we were together for five hours. He ate with me, in my lap. And when I chewed my green peas, he reached into my mouth and took them out to feed himself. I got the image of Mother Bird, Mother Robin, the way they spit the food into their babies' mouths. So I took his little head and, holding it, went to spit the green peas into his mouth like a mother bird, and he gave me a straight arm. And I thought, My God, he's got boundaries! Where would he get them at eight months? I could learn something from him. His dad doesn't have them at fifty-two!

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Spalding Gray "Spalding Gray Stories Left To Tell" (2008)

They tried to distance themselves from Ban Johnson's proposal. The first and most resonant of his critics was John Tener, the National League president. "Let Ban Johnson confine his remarks to his own league. We are fully competent to take care of our own affairs," said Tener.

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"I would not go one inch toward Washington to ask President Wilson or the Secretary of War for special favors for baseball," Tener added that if any of his club owners made a request like Johnson's, he would "walk out of this office and never return." He called Johnson's suggestion "unpatriotic" and "selfish," saying "nothing could be further from the purposes of baseball." He also ridiculed Johnson's whole idea of players marching around in close-order drill with wooden bats.

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A number of dub owners in both leagues lined up to echo Tener. The National League owners who spoke out were, like Tener, quick to emphasize that Johnson was an American League guy and shouldn't presume to speak for them. "It is the misfortune of the National League that it must bear part of the stigma of this thing; said Phillies president W F. Baker. Even some American League owners took public issue with Johnson's remarks. Yankees owner Colonel Jacob Ruppert, whose title came by way of eight years of service in the National Guard, took particular umbrage, reminding everyone that his co-owner, Captain Tillinghast Huston, was then on active duty. "My partner ... is now in France dodging German shells and helping his country to win the war. I certainly am not in favor of asking exemption for a ball player, while my partner is risking his life in the service."

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Public reaction was likewise roundly critical. A few of Johnson's longtime friends in the press, most notably Joe Vila of the New York Sun, tried to spin the story to Johnson's benefit, but otherwise the president of the American League was "panned to a crisp in the leading Eastern and Southern papers," noted Fred Lieb, who then proceeded to pan Johnson to a crisp himself "The more one analyzes Johnson's plan," wrote Lieb, "the more audacious it appears. The audacity of an amusement promoter putting 'the high standards' of his particular amusement above the welfare of a country at war is shocking to the sensibilities of the average American.

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"Another brazen part of Johnson's suggestion is the manner in which he offers his bench warmers and extra pitchers to the government, saying 'we would willingly sacrifice these men.' The idea of turning his least competent players over to the government strikes at the heart of the democratic idea behind the elective draft, whose primary aim was to put the millionaire's son on the same plane with the son of the village shoemaker and the $l5,OOO-a-year Tris Speaker with $l5OO-a-year colt pitcher. Were such a plan adopted it would be favoritism of the rankest sort."

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Johnson was forced to retract. He maintained he hadn't been seeking any favors from the government. "My suggestion that eighteen men on each of the Major League teams be exempted was merely that - a suggestion." He insisted he had simply been offering his thoughts about how baseball might still be played in wartime.

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The criticism of Johnson's pronouncement was mainly focused on style rather than substance. Johnson had made the game look petty and selfish at a time when it needed all the sympathy and goodwill it could get. But the truth of the matter is that Johnson had said what everybody in baseball was thinking; when the sixteen owners convened in December, the only item on the docket was how they might persuade the government to keep their players out of the draft and playing during the 1918 season.

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Early signs from local draft boards were encouraging. Most of the men who had had deferments - anyone with dependents mostly - retained those deferments. And in their planning for 1918, the owners were cautious. Attendance had been down in 1917 from the record-breaking 1916 season - not dramatically, but measurably. They feared a greater drop-off in 1918. They also agreed to limit 1918 rosters to eighteen players, not because Ban Johnson had suggested it but because an eighteen-man payroll was going to be less expensive than a twenty-five-man payroll. Further, they cut the season from 154 to 140 games, and cut salaries proportionately, and sometimes a bit more than proportionately. Spring training was shortened, but the 1918 season began on time with largely recognizable rosters.

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The first genuine crisis for organized baseball came on May 23, 1918, when the provost marshal of the United States, General Enoch Crowder, issued the government's work-or-fight order. The edict read that on July 1, anyone of draft age who was either unemployed or employed in a "non-useful" occupation must either find a job that somehow supported the war effort - in farms, shipyards, munition factories, and the like - or face induction into the military. Previous deferments were no longer valid. Of the 309 men on the active rosters and reserve lists of Major League baseball, 258 would be forced to leave the game in six weeks and either enlist or find work in the war industry.

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Baseball's task now was to persuade the government - Provost Marshal Crowder, Secretary of War Newton Baker, and President Wilson - that baseball was effectively an "essential industry," and that baseball players should be exempt from the draft because they were already in effective compliance with the work-or-fight order. "The game offers a field for relaxation, diversion and recreation unequaled by any amusement throughout the country," read a portion of baseball's formal presentation to Provost Marshal Crowder, and that was true not only for fans on the home front but for the troops in uniform, the Commission claimed. Giving the game up would be "a serious detriment to the morale of our forces;' read the report.

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If the morale of the country wasn't reason enough to keep the turnstiles open, baseball owners also suggested the government consider the contribution that the game was making to the war effort financially. Club owners and officials had purchased $8.5 million worth of Liberty Bonds, and players another quarter of a million dollars worth. Twenty-two thousand dollars had been collected for the Red Cross, and despite a rainy spring throughout the game, baseball had already collected more than $88,000 in the government's new war tax on tickets.

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The argument for exemption for organized baseball - which was in effect an amicus curiae brief in the case of Washington Senators catcher Eddie Ainsworth, who had had his draft status reclassified and was appealing to the War Department - had been prepared by Garry Herrmann, and baseball's emissary in presenting it to the government was Herrmann's personal friend Senator Warren Harding of Ohio. Harding presented the game's case personally to Provost Marshal Crowder on Monday June 17, and reported back to the National Commission that while Crowder was inclined to look favorably on baseball's petition, Secretary of War Baker was not. Harding urged Herrmann and the Commission to approach President Wilson directly.

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This Garry Herrmann did not do, a decision that angered Ban Johnson, and one Herrmann himself had cause to regret when Secretary Baker ruled that baseball was not an exempt industry and that players must comply with the work-or-fight ruling. Baker did, however, make one significant concession; he granted a two-month extension, ruling that players did not have to comply with work-orfight until September 1. Baseball could very nearly play out its full season.

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The immediate question was what this would mean for the World Series.

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Would the regular season have to end on August 20 or thereabouts, in order to complete the Series before September 1? Would the government give an extension to the two pennant winners and allow them to play past the September 1 deadline? The magnates of the game were of several minds on what the best course might be. John Tener was adamant that no World Series be played. So intransigent was he on this point that National League owners named Pittsburgh owner Barney Dreyfuss to replace Tener as the league's representative to the National Commission meeting to discuss the matter.

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That meeting was held in Cleveland on August 3, and while it resulted in a determination to petition the government to hold the Series in early September - a petition the War Department swiftly and happily granted - its greater legacy was that it probably marked the beginning of the end for the National Commission.

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John Tener wasn't there; after being replaced at the meeting, he had resigned. He had been restless in the job for several months, frustrated at his lack of power relative to that of his colleague Johnson, as well as with having to deal with Johnson, whom he had grown to dislike. His disagreement with the owners over their eagerness to hold the World Series was the final straw.

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But the bigger loser in the meetings was Johnson, and, again, it was a combination of hubris and his own big mouth that got him in trouble. Before the Cleveland meetings began, for the third time in a year, Johnson wandered off the reservation in his remarks and aroused the ire of the men who paid his salary. Without consulting his owners, Johnson announced that the American League season would end on August 20, and that the World Series would conclude before the War Department's September 1 deadline. Going into a meeting of American League owners in Cleveland on August 3, he reiterated to reporters that August 20 would be the end of the regular season. When the meeting in Cleveland convened, however, the owners let Johnson know that this was not the case. Their interests were at stake here, they informed him, not his, and they fully intended to play out the schedule until Labor Day. The owners were in effect unwilling to forego ten days of ticket sales, particularly when it wasn't at all certain when they might be able to sell tickets again. Johnson was contrite after the meeting when he announced officially that the season would continue until Labor Day. But he was contrite only to a point. "If the club owners wish to take a chance on acting contrary to the ruling of the war department, that is their business," he said.

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The scolding tone of Johnson's comment rankled at least three American League owners, including Charles Comiskey, who didn't need much to set him off. The three American League owners - Comiskey, Harry Frazee of the Red Sox, and Clark Griffith of the Senators - drafted a statement that was effectively a call for Johnson's ouster as president.

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"Just why President Johnson should take the stand he did in this matter is beyond our comprehension," the statement read; "he has bungled the affairs of his league in this particular case ...

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"His 'rule or ruin' policy is shelved... He has tried to close our gates several times this season, but he is through spending our money. From now on the club owners are to run the American League. If anyone is to close our gates it will be the government or club owners, not a salaried official."

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Charles Fountain "The Betrayal: How the 1919 Black Sox Scandal Changed Baseball" (2016)

Many children with autism become fixated on various subjects. Some teachers make the mistake of trying to stamp out the fixation. Instead, they should broaden it and channel it into constructive activities. For example, if a child becomes infatuated with boats, then use boats to motivate him to read and do math. Read books about boats and do arithmetic problems on calculating boat speed. Fixations provide great motivation. Leo Kanner stated that the path to success for some people with autism was to channel their fixation into a career. One of his most successful patients became a bank teller. He was raised by a farm family who found goals for his number fixation. To motivate him to work in the fields, they let him count the rows of corn while the corn was being harvested.

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Dr. Kanner also noted that an autistic person's fixations can be their way to achieve some social life and friends. Today, many people with autism become fascinated with computers and become very good at programming. An interest in computers can provide social contacts with other computer people. The Internet, the worldwide computer network, is wonderful for such people. Problems that autistic people have with eye contact and awkward gestures are not visible on the Internet, and typewritten messages avoid many of the social problems of face-to-face contact. The Internet may be the best thing yet for improving an autistic person's social life. Tom McKean said when he was a college student that computers were a godsend because he could communicate with other people and not have to concentrate on trying to talk normally.

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Temple Grandin "Thinking in Pictures" (1996)

George Lazenby on the Simon Dee Show

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He is unhappy and increasingly paranoid. He has always been prone to constructing clandestine explanations for humdrum events, but his sense of a conspiracy is escalating. He complains that he has spotted men in black hunched behind hedgerows, taking photographs of him; he is also convinced his telephone is bugged. Some blame his paranoia on marijuana, but he argues that, on the contrary, it is marijuana that keeps him sane.

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Dee greets his first guest in the green room. (Oddly enough, Dee too auditioned for James Bond; he tells friends he was rejected simply because he was too tall.) His first impression of Lazenby is that he looks nothing like he did as James Bond; he now sports a beard and long hair, and is dressed like a cowboy. But, ever the pro, Dee masks his surprise.

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The interview begins very slowly. Lazenby is perhaps a little distant, but Dee sees no real cause for alarm. Then, out of nowhere, Lazenby dips into his pocket, pulls out a piece of paper, turns to the camera and shouts: 'I would like to draw everybody's attention to the fact that the following senators were involved in a plot to kill President Kennedy!'

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He starts reciting a long list of names. Dee attempts to steer the interview onto another topic by bringing in Diana Rigg. 'That's very interesting' George. What does Diana make of all that then? Isn't she lovely!'

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But Lazenby is furious at the interruption, and continues to read his list of murderous senators in a louder and louder voice. An enthusiast for conspiracies, Dee nevertheless realizes that naming individual senators as conspirators in a presidential assassination is taking things too far. Across Lazenby's shoulder, he sees the studio floor manager making furious 'wind up' signals to him, but Lazenby proves unstoppable.

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Dee attempts to distance himself from Lazenby's rants by saying, 'I really don't know anything about this subject, folks; and finally says, 'Fascinating stuff, George. Thank you. And we'll be talking to two more fascinating people, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, in just two minutes!' This is the signal for an advertising break.

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The show is recorded a few hours before transmission, so Dee imagines that any offending passages will be edited out. But for some reason they are not. On Monday morning, the newspapers are full of it.

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Dee is summoned by Stella Richman, Managing Director of LWT. 'Who said you could talk about Kennedy?'

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'I didn't talk about Kennedy. Lazenby did, and it happens to be his right as a guest to talk about anything he likes:

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Richman behaves, in Dee's opinion, 'like some demented puppet', accusing him of plotting the incident. 'If you ever mention Kennedy on air again I shall tear up your contract. Now leave!'

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Dee is affronted. 'It really was an amazing moment. Here was this female terrier telling me that she had the right to tell me who I could or couldn't book on my show and what I was supposed to say to them! And if I disagreed with her then I was out of a job!'

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The incident fuels Dee's already highly developed sense of conspiracy.

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Has he fallen into a carefully laid trap? Conspiracy piles upon conspiracy: he suspects Lazenby was put up to it by his old enemy Ronan O'Rahilly, who also talked Lazenby out of renewing his James Bond contract ('All that Bond stuff's on the wane, man. Look at Easy Rider and things, that's the way to go').

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But Dee remains bullish. 'I don't give a damn. Last night, for this so-called disastrous program, I had the highest viewing figures ever for a Sunday-night show. I'm supposed to feel ashamed of that? ... So George made a fool of himself, not me. He died the death, baby, not me! It doesn't worry me, baby! I'm running my show, not anybody else:

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It is the beginning of the end for both host and guest. Soon afterwards, it is announced that this first series of The Simon Dee Show on LWT will also be the last. Dee blames this on his opposition to Britain entering the EEC.

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A brand-new late-night chat show is hosted by a relative unknown, whose name is Michael Parkinson. Dee's slot on the BBC is given to the actor Derek Nimmo, in If It's Saturday, It Must Be Nimmo. Among Nimmo's first guests is Basil Brush, a leading glove puppet.

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Craig Brown "Hello Goodbye Hello" (2011)

I won't quarrel with my bread and butter

(Jonathan Swift)

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Well of course this WAS said by Jonathan Swift.? I'm not denying that and my case does not rest on that at all.?? But it was said at another time by another man whom I think some tribute at this point or juncture.

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The man is Edward J. Mason, who every week compiles the programs, compiles all the questions. And what people don't know is that Edward J. Mason, Captain Edward J. Mason, as he is known, had a very distinguished war record.

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In fact, they were going to film his war record.? He was going to be played by Anna Neagle But all I heard when I asked about it was that it fell through. They didn't tell me what fell through but Miss Neagle is all right, so it must have been something to do with Edward J. Mason

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But this war experience of his is rather interesting because although a young man, he'd only been in the army about eighteen months and already he'd earned quite a name for himself. He'd blown up three ammunition dumps and two air fields and then he was sent overseas.

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And the idea was that he was to work in France creating alarm and despondency among the occupying troops by broadcasting on the Freedom Radio panel games. So, he was dropped into France what the service called the hard way; that's without a parachute.

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And he set up these programs and he did hit on one program, which was called Mon Mot, which is quite untranslatable into English.? The idea was that certain people were asked to name the origins of phrases or the next line of a quotation.? But what wasn't generally known was that the quotations that were chosen had a special meaning to British intelligence who monitored them.

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So if they said, "Earth has not shown anything to show more fair," then that would mean that three troop transports coming through; be ready for it on the nineteenth.

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They had this whole code. And it was listened to in a little room in Maedervale.? You know that all sorts of odd things go on in little rooms in Maedervale.? At this time it was listened to.

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And he did very well and passed a lot of information back until one day he had this very important message that was coded into the quotation "I won't quarrel with my bread and butter."

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And he had this on a slip of paper and was just about to broadcast it when there was a knocking on the door [I mustn't forget that loaf of bread to take back.? You will remind me.? And the Petri dish.] and in burst the enemy.? Well, luckily, Mason knew that whatever happens to the code mustn't be captured.

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So he took this piece of paper with "I won't quarrel with my bread and butter."? And he swallowed it.? Well, it's not a very nice death being choked to death by a quotation.? And when the news got back.? And they said, Mason's had it, choked to death on "I won't quarrel with my bread and butter."

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Thank heavens, it may have been brutish, but it was Swift.

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Denis Norden 580616b

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I've heard that drinking hot lemon water first thing in the morning can have various health benefits. Is that true?

In a video on TikTok, a woman has a lemon in one hand and a mug in the other as she espouses the benefits of her beverage: Within a week of drinking hot lemon water daily, she said, you can expect to burn more calories, become more hydrated, harbor fewer toxins and have an improved immune system, better digestion, less bloating, smoother skin and more energy and focus.

But while sipping warm lemon water can be a refreshing and healthy way to start the day, the evidence for many of its benefits does not hold up, said Emily Ho, a professor of nutrition and the director of the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University.

Hot lemon water's main nutritional asset is that it's hydrating, Dr. Ho said. That's especially beneficial first thing in the morning, she added, when "you haven't had anything to drink all night."

The body needs to be hydrated to maintain its temperature, lubricate and cushion the joints, and remove waste through processes like sweating and urination. Good hydration is also associated with healthier skin, better mood and sharper thinking.

That said, there isn't anything special about lemon water, said Joan Salge Blake, a dietitian and clinical professor of nutrition at Boston University. "Any fluid is going to hydrate you," she said.

Fluid is essential for keeping your digestive system moving, whether it's spiked with lemon or not, said Judy Simon, a clinical dietitian and instructor at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle.

In a 2020 study of more than 4,500 adults in Turkey, researchers found that those who drank the most water - more than eight cups per day - had a 29 percent lower risk of developing constipation compared with those who drank the least water - less than four cups per day.

We couldn't find any studies that looked into how lemon water influences constipation, but there is some limited evidence that lemon juice might help break down food in the stomach by stimulating stomach acid secretion. In a study published in 2022, researchers found that lemon juice increased the rate at which the stomach emptied. But this study was small, Dt. Ho said, so the results should be taken with a grain of salt.

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There is a kernel of truth to the idea that hot lemon water can benefit the immune system. Lemons are loaded with vitamin C, Dr. Ho said. If you squeeze half of a large lemon into your cup, as many recipes suggest, that provides about a quarter of the recommended daily amount.

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Vitamin C is essential for immune function and healing, and it acts as a powerful antioxidant that can thwart DNA damage.

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But there isn't much evidence that you'll improve your immune system by consuming more vitamin C - whether through supplements or hot lemon water.

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If you're drinking hot lemon water in place of a higher calorie beverage, like a sugary coffee drink, for example, it might help you lose weight, Ms. Simon said. However, there's no solid evidence that hot lemon water has any measurable effect on weight or metabolism, she added.

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Some research suggests that eating lemons and other citrus fruits could help stabilize blood sugar, Dr. Ho said. And long-term studies have found associations between citrus consumption and reduced risks for Type 2 diabetes. But that evidence is still weak, Dr. Ho said.

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Isobel Whitcomb

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Suitcase Orchestra

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The final step in making a film is the music. I love music, but I have no musical education and need a lot of help to find out exactly what I want for my film. I only know it when I hear it.

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The claim can be made that music has greater power than any other element in a film. It sometimes strikes me as an altogether higher form of communication, a pure flow of feeling, so sudden and immediate that at times it's as if a character ripped his heart out and handed it to the audience. At the same time, music is so abstract that I never know how to talk about it. And I have found out that most composers don't really know how to talk about their art either, at least not to a layman like me.

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John Klein had taken the job of a stand-in in Cuckoo's Nest so he could hang out with me in Salem and San Francisco. John knows about music. One day he brought me a record he liked. The LP was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, even though its composer, Jack Nitzsche, was now working mostly in pop music. He had scored the film Performance, and John knew him personally.

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I liked Nitzsche's music a lot, so in the editing room I played sections of his record with our scenes they seemed to fit wonderfully. In fact, I even cut a few sequences to the strains of Nitzsche's record. When I had the rough cut, I asked John to invite the composer to a screening. I proudly played my selections from his record, expecting him to be flattered, but Nitzsche got so furious that he nearly stopped talking to me.

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"What is this! This is all wrong! This is nonsense!" he screamed.

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I was close to panic. We had deadlines and delivery schedules to meet. We were running out of time and now I was afraid I had mortally offended Nitzsche and would wind up with some by-the-numbers hack composing the score. Mercifully, John Klein was able to smooth things over. Jack agreed to have new music by the deadline.

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He went away and worked, but he didn't bother to give me any progress reports. Our recording date was fast approaching, so I collected my courage, called Nitzsche, and gingerly asked him what he would require in the way of studio musicians for the upcoming session.

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"I don't know yet," he snarled.

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"Okay, fine, sure, sorry," I said and hung up.

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We never got an answer about his musician requirements, so to be safe we ordered a complete orchestra for our recording date. The session was to take place at Fantasy Records, where we were still polishing the final cut, so on the appointed day, from an upstairs window, I watched Nitzsche arrive. He came in a cab, accompanied by an old man lugging a huge suitcase.

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We got to the recording studio at the same time. Jack strolled in, took one glance at the army of musicians waiting for him there shook his head, and sent the entire orchestra home.

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"Jack, listen, are you sure you don't need ANYBODY?" I asked.

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"Yes, I am," he said.

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"You want ALL these people to go home?"

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"They can stay here, but I don't need them."

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"Not even a drummer, or, I don't know, a piano player?"

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"No."

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"Okay, Jack."

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While we talked, the old man opened his suitcase and started pulling out glasses of different height, thickness, and size and spreading them around the table in the recording studio. "Oh, I do need something after all, Milos Nietzsche said suddenly. "We'll need some water."

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We got a pail of water, and the old man poured it into his glasses, carefully creating columns of different heights. He then wiped off the table and was ready to go to work. He rubbed his fingers around the rims of his glasses, coaxing strange, mournful sounds out of the tap water and glass.

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The effect made your hair stand on end. jack later added some more traditional passages as well as some music of buzz saws and other imaginative instruments, but he recorded most of the soundtrack that morning with only the old man and his suitcase orchestra. I loved the music.

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Milos Forman, "Turnaround: A Memoir" (1993)

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CAREER

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I answer the phone and it's Gregory Mosher, the director of Lincoln Center Theater, saying, "Listen, Spalding, how would you like to play the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's Our Town on Broadway?"

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I can't believe what I'm hearing and I say, "Gregory, listen, thank you very much. I am honored, but I don't think I could do it. I simply don't think I could say those lines. They're too wholesome and folksy. Get Garrison Keillor."

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"We don't want Garrison Keillor, we want you. We want your dark, New England, ironic sensibility."

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"Well, Gregory, you got me there. I'll tell you what. Give me a day to think about it."

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I hang up. I think, My God! This is a chance of a lifetime. Here it is. It's a limited run. The role is great. I could speak from my heart at last - provided I could memorize the lines - and I could at last use my New England accent.

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So I think I'd better just call my Hollywood agent, see if she has any opinions on this before I say yes or no.

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I call her up and she says, "Dear heart, dear heart! No way! Why, after all these years of acting, would you want to be a stage manager?"

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So I say yes.

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Much to my surprise, I find that I love doing the play because I'm able to get in touch with Thornton Wilder's language. I get swept back to New England where I came from. I get swept back to New England where I used to believe in God and eternity and all the things the play is about.

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The cemetery scene is the most powerful for me. You see, Emily dies in childbirth and her funeral takes place on stage in the third act. And when the mourners exit, Emily dressed in a simple white dress walks across the stage to sit in the straight-backed chair that represents her grave.

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And she sits down amongst all the other recent dead who are all sitting bolt upright, staring up at the stars above. Everyone is so peacefully concentrated. Franny Conroy, who is playing Mother Gibbs, is sitting in the front row. She has been doing transcendental meditation for the past fifteen years and she's in a deep trance.

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The little boy playing Emily's brother, Wally Webb, is an eleven-year-old boy, and he is sitting there, as well, not blinking for forty minutes while I talk about eternity. And in the play I say, "And they stay here while the earth part of them bums away, bums out. .. They're waitin' for something they feel is comin'. Something important, and great. Aren't they waitin' for the eternal part in them to come out clear?"

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And every night I would perform this and every night it would basically be the same.

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Except often, when you do a long run of a play you have what I call a unifying accident, in which something so strange happens in the play, that it suddenly unites the audience in the realization that we are all here together at this one moment in time. It's not television. It's not the movies. It happened as I was speaking of the dead and I say, "And they stay here while the earth part of them bums away, burns out. .. They're waitin' for something they feel is comin'. Something important and great..." As I say this, I turn and gesture to them, waiting, and, just as I turn and gesture, the little eleven-year-old boy playing Wally Webb projectile vomits! Like a hydrant it comes, hitting some of the dead on their shoulders! The other dead levitate out of their chairs, in total shock, around him and drop back down. Franny Conroy, deep in her meditative trance, is slowly wondering, "Why is it raining on stage?" The little boy flees from his chair, vomit pouring from his mouth. Splatter. Splatter. Splatter. I'm standing there. My knees are shaking. The chair is empty. The audience is thunderstruck!

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There is not a sound coming from them, except for one little ten-year-old boy in the 8th row. He knows what he saw ... He is laughing!

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At this point, I don't know whether to be loyal to Thornton Wilder and go on with the next line as written, or attempt what might be one of the most creative improvs in the history of American Theater. At last I decide to be loyal to Wilder and simply go on with the next line, and I tum to the empty chair and say, "Aren't they waitin' for the eternal part in them to come out clear?"

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Spalding Gray "Spalding Gray Stories Left To Tell" (2008)

St. Paul had been a middle-of-the-pack team under Comiskey, and it was beginning to see its attendance numbers slip. Comiskey wanted to come home to Chicago; Johnson helped him get there. Over drinks, Johnson talked about the matter with Cubs owner James Hart, who was not at all interested in sharing his city with another ball club, least of all a team - minor league or not - operated by a well-known and popular hometown boy like Comiskey. But Johnson kept pouring and kept talking. Comiskey could open a ball field down by the stockyards, Johnson told Hart, far away from the Cubs West Side Park and the city's Gold Coast fans. Hart agreed to that. He also agreed to let Comiskey call the new team the White Sox, a new-century version of the historic name of Cap Anson's White Stockings, the National League predecessors of Hart's Cubs. The one concession Hart won from Johnson was that Comiskey would not use "Chicago" as part of the team name. Johnson and Comiskey agreed, knowing that whatever the official name of the franchise, Hart could not stop newspapers from identifying it by its home city.

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Charles Fountain "The Betrayal: How the 1919 Black Sox Scandal Changed Baseball" (2016)

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Learning Social Rules

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Children and adults on the autism spectrum are concrete, literal thinkers. Ideas that can't be understood through logic or that involve emotions and social relationships are difficult for us to grasp, and even more difficult to incorporate into our daily lives. When I was in high school, figuring out the social rules was a major challenge. It was not easy to notice similarities in people's social actions and responses because they were often inconsistent from person to person and situation to situation. Over time, I observed that some rules could be broken with minor consequences and other rules, when broken, had serious consequences. It perplexed me that other kids seemed to know which rules they could bend and break and which rules must never be broken. They had a flexibility of thinking that I did not have.

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I knew I had to learn these rules if I wanted to function in social situations. If I had to learn them, they somehow had to be meaningful me, to make sense to me within my own way of thinking and viewing the world. I started observing others as would a scientist and discovered I could group the rules into an organizational format to which I could relate: into major and minor categories. By the time I was a senior in high school, I had a system for categorizing some of the social rules of life. I still use the same system today.

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I developed four rule categories: 1) Really Bad Things; 2) Courtesy Rules; 3) Illegal But Not Bad; and 4) Sins of the System.

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Really Bad Things

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I reasoned that in order to maintain a civilized society, there must be prohibitions against doing really bad things such as murder, arson, rape, stealing, looting, and injuring other people. If really bad things are not controlled, a civilized society where we have jobs, food in the stores, and electricity cannot exist. The prohibition against really bad things is universal in all civilized societies. Children need to be taught that cheating - in all forms, not just on tests - is bad. Learning to "play fair" will help a child grow into an adult who will not commit really bad things. The child can be taught the concept of playing fair with many specific examples.

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Courtesy Rules

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All civilized societies have courtesy rules, such as saying "please" and "thank you." These rules are important because they help prevent anger that can escalate into really bad things. Different societies have different courtesy rules, but they all serve the same function. In most countries, some common courtesy rules are: standing and waiting your turn in a line, good table manners, being neat and clean, giving up your seat on a bus to an elderly person, or raising your hand and waiting for the teacher to point to you before speaking in class.

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Illegal But Not Bad

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These rules can sometimes be broken depending upon the circumstance. Rules in this category vary greatly from one society to another and how an individual views these rules will be influenced by his or her own set of moral and personal beliefs. Be careful though: consequences for breaking some are minor; for others, there may be a fine. Included in this category is slight speeding in cars. One rule I often recommend breaking is the age requirement for attending a community college. I tell parents to sign up the child so he can escape being teased in high school. However, the parent must impress upon the child that this is a grown-up privilege and he must obey all the courtesy rules. An example of a rule that would not fall in this category would be running a red light. Doing this carries the possibility of injuring or killing someone, which is a Really Bad Thing.

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Sins of the System

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These are rules that must never be broken, although they may seem to have little or no basis in logic. They must simply be accepted within our country and our culture. For instance, a small sexual transgression that would result in your name being added to a sex-offender list in the U.S. may have little or no consequence in another country. In the U.S., the four major sins of the system are sexual transgressions, drug offenses, making fake IDs, and playing with explosives. In a post-September 11th world, pranks that used to be considered kids being naughty are now being prosecuted as serious crimes. Never commit a "sin of the system" because the penalties are usually very severe.

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This method of categorizing social rules has worked well for me. However, each person with autism may need different rule categories that make sense for him or her.

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

"Mr. President, we've got something that Biegun and Azar need to run by you," Mulvaney said.

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Biegun opened with what he and the group thought would be a basic overview of the effort to bring home diplomats and permanent residents. as well as protections to ensure the evacuated Americans didn't spread the virus after returning. The president wanted to know how many people. Biegun estimated it would be several hundred right away, and eventually could be a couple of thousand.

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Trump exploded.

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"We're not letting them come back," he said. "You risk increasing my numbers. You won't increase my numbers."

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Trump didn't want sick Americans landing on U.S. soil, even if they were working for the State Department, or else the government would have to report a rise in infections, and that would make the public - the voters - nervous. The president was always thinking about the political ramifications for himself, even during a crisis.

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Biegun and Azar explained the measures under way to screen and isolate the passengers who had already landed in California.

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"The first flight was a mistake," Trump said. "Those people shouldn't have been in China in the first place."

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Azar and Mulvaney exchanged a look. The president was talking about Americans who had gone to China to serve the U.S. government as if they had irresponsibly or illegally crossed into a foreign country. Biegun compared their situation in Wuhan to a war zone. United States government employees deserved protection and services that could not reliably be provided to them in a city where the virus had overrun hospita1 wards and created a true emergency.

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"It would be like leaving a man on the field of battle," Biegun added.

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Azar urged the president to consider his mantra of placing America - and thus Americans - first.

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"This would be contrary to your brand of protecting Americans, Mr. President," he said.

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O'Brien walked into Mulvaney's office midconversation. Trump said he thought doing so amounted to a dangerous risk. But Biegun and Azar stuck to their guns. They appealed to Trump's media instincts, telling him it would look horrible not to bring Americans home when there was a relatively safe way to do so. Trump gradually eased back, and by the end of the call he described himself as supporting the flights. The president said there was no other choice. Then he hung up. In the coming weeks, Tramp would fully embrace the repatriation of Americans after hearing it first-person accounts of some of the early evacuees.

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"All right," Mulvaney said, turning to the group. "The president approved the flights."

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Azar warned Mulvaney he wasn't sure the president was entirely on board. After his painful e-cigarette experience with Trump, Azar wondered who the president would blame for this later down the road.

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"Mick, the president is not at rest on the issue," he said.

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Carol Leonnig "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year" (2021)

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I have you on the hip

(Shakespeare, Othelllo)

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Do you know, I don't think there's anybody, from Mozambique, to the cold gray harbor of Reykjavik who doesn't know the story of old Sticky Walberton, so, as everybody knows it, I want to tell you another story.

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This is about a wedding I went to.? Now I don't normally like going to weddings. I went to my own.? I think one has to.? But I don't normally like it, but on this occasion I went with a friend of mine called Jimmy Edwards.? You probably haven't heard the name. He's a kind of comedian, very inconspicuous, kind of gentle sort of chap.

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It was during the period when he was engaged, one of the periods when he was engaged

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He wanted me to go along with him because he wanted to see what happened at weddings.? What's going to happen to him. And I went along.

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Now, I don't know if you're the same, but most of us have compulsions.?? I mean some people, for instance, at this sort of function are "us'ns"

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When people sing, "For he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow," when it comes to "and so say all of us," they always go, "us us",? "and so say all of us", "us us."? You see??? Well, they're "us'ns."

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Later on in these functions you have have the deen'ahs.?? When the wine has flowed a little and they sing Nellie Dean. When they sing Nellie Dean, he's the one that also sings, "Nellie Dean-ah" They're deeners.

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I'm a "hip-hip-hipper".? At any function I can't be restrained from saying, "Three cheers for the bride.? Hip hip hip."

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And the trouble is I HAVE to be restrained, because on the hooray I always spill my champagne over somebody. The only time I don't spill my champagne over somebody is when there isn't any champagne and I spill something else over somebody.

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So Jimmy Edwards said, "Now, I'm going to ask you to come to this wedding with me, but for heaven's sake, don't start raising cheers to the bride or you'll spill champagne over everybody and there'll be the most fearful mess. And I promised.

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And I went to the church with him and we sat through the service.? Very nice it was too.? The nice sentimental atmosphere of a wedding is like breathing golden syrup.? When we got to point in the service where the bridegroom said, "With all my worldly goods I thee endow," Jimmy Edwards went white and had to be helped out of the church. And that's the last we saw of him.

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So I went on to the reception on my own without Jimmy's restraining influence.

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And they were jolly nice people, the bride and groom. The groom was an advertising chap, for Pericles Tires.?? I don't know if you know them.? He was the one who did the slogan Perciles, the Prince of Tires. And she was a sort of artist, very artistic girl. She did very primitive things with damp globs of clay.

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And there they were, very happily married, and there was a photographer standing by and of course the old compulsion came over me.?

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And I said, "Everybody, three cheers for the bride. Hip Hip Hip hooray."

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And on the "hooray,"? of course, as usual, I whisked up my glass of champagne. It caught in the fountain pen clip in the pocket of the bride's father and all down the bride's dress went the champagne.

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And the flashbulb went.? And there was the photographer and he came over and said, "I've taken a very nice photograph of you."

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And I said, "Oh no.? What's your name?"

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And he said, "My name is Sticky Wolberton, as a matter of fact.? Why do you ask?"

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I said, "I just wanted to know, because, please destroy the photograph. Because on the hooray I went like this."

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And he said, "Oh, that's all right.? I didn't take you on the hooray.? I have you on the hip."

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Frank Muir 580616a

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Ask Well
I've heard there are microplastics in tea bags. Is that true? How can I stay safe and still enjoy my favorite beverage?

Clothing, water bottles, takeout containers, cutting boards — it's challenging to keep up with the growing number of items that expose us to tiny plastic particles.

Now some tea bags have joined the list. In a 2024 study, scientists found that brewing tea with a tea bag made from the plastic polypropylene released about 1.2 billion small pieces of plastic per milliliter of tea.

"That's a fair amount," said Mark R. Wiesner, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Duke University.

But experts said that while it's good to be cautious, there isn't enough evidence to ditch your favorite tea just yet.

Tea bags are made from various types of material. Many are composed of paper (itself made from plant fibers like cellulose, wood and hemp) and flexible plastics (like nylon and polypropylene). Some tea bags are also made from a new kind of material called biodegradable plastics, like polylactic acid.

Tea bags made from paper will theoretically shed fewer (or no) microplastics when compared with plastic versions, said Hailey E. Hampson, a postdoctoral fellow who studies microplastics at the University of Southern California and the University of Washington. But it's not always easy to figure out what your tea bag was made from.
Of the 12 tea companies we contacted for this article, six responded: Bigelow, Lipton, Twinings, Yogi, Traditional Medicinals and Stash. They all said that their tea bags were free of microplastics, mainly because they were made from paper or other plant-based materials.

However, even paper tea bags aren't guaranteed to be plastic-free, Dr. Hampson said.
"There are lots of little hidden ways plastic can get into the tea bags," Dr. Hampson said.
Microplastics can enter our blood and tissues from the food we eat and the air we breathe. "They're not just going through the digestive tract and being excreted," Dr. Hampson said.
Scientists have found potential links between microplastic exposures and health conditions like inflammatory bowel disease, cardiovascular disease and cancer.

But these studies have limitations. and it's unclear if the microplastics themselves caused these health effects, Dr. Hampson said.

If you're concerned, experts offered several ways to reduce your exposure.

CHOOSE THE RIGHT TEA Drinking loose-leaf tea is probably the best way to limit your exposure to microplastics. And while paper tea bags aren't guaranteed to be plastic free, Dr. Hampson said, they're probably a safer bet than plastic.

CONSIDER A PRE-WASH There's some research suggesting that briefly soaking your tea bag in room temperature water, then discarding that water before brewing, can help reduce the microplastics in your tea, Dr. Hampson said.

AVOID REHEATING YOUR TEA BAG If you do so with the tea bag still present, it could potentially release even more microplastics, Dr. Wiesner warned. If you need a warm-up, he suggested removing the tea bag first.

TRY NOT TO SWEAT IT If worrying about microplastics in tea is causing stress, think about other, easier ways to reduce your exposure, Dr. Li said. You might replace plastic cutting boards with wooden ones, or plastic food storage containers with glass versions. "You shouldn't overworry about how many particles you're drinking," Dr. Li said, "especially if tea makes you happy"

Caroline Hopkins Legaspi

"Mr. President, we've got something that Biegun and Azar need to run by you," Mulvaney said.

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Biegun opened with what he and the group thought would be a basic overview of the effort to bring home diplomats and permanent residents. as well as protections to ensure the evacuated Americans didn't spread the virus after returning. The president wanted to know how many people. Biegun estimated it would be several hundred right away, and eventually could be a couple of thousand.

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Trump exploded.

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"We're not letting them come back," he said. "You risk increasing my numbers. You won't increase my numbers."

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Trump didn't want sick Americans landing on U.S. soil, even if they were working for the State Department, or else the government would have to report a rise in infections, and that would make the public - the voters - nervous. The president was always thinking about the political ramifications for himself, even during a crisis.

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Biegun and Azar explained the measures under way to screen and isolate the passengers who had already landed in California.

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"The first flight was a mistake," Trump said. "Those people shouldn't have been in China in the first place."

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Azar and Mulvaney exchanged a look. The president was talking about Americans who had gone to China to serve the U.S. government.

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Carol Leonnig "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year" (2021)

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JOURNALS

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Journal entry 1992: I went to a Chinese deli to buy water and when I walked out I had a very blissful moment, could almost call it a perfect moment. I watched a fast-blowing cloud break up and go through the most extreme colors of turquoise to magenta. I felt suddenly free and open and not in need.

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For me, the bubbles are often perfect moments that lift me out of my sadness and despair.

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I can't be creative without being self-destructive because I'm like Humpty Dumpty. There are two me's deeply built in. The smasher and the rebuilder. I am both Humpty and the king's men. I am both lost and found.

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Spalding Gray "Spalding Gray Stories Left To Tell" (2008)

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