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Princess Grace Is Almost Persuaded By Alfred Hitchcock

Grimaldi Palace,

Monaco

Winter 1961

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The last film Grace Kelly made with Alfred Hitchcock was To Catch a Thief, back in 1955. That December, Prince Rainier of Monaco proposed to her over a pudding of pears poached in wine. 'If you are to be at my side then you may need this,' he said, passing her a pictorial history of the Grimaldi family. Some say he lacks the romantic touch.

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But Grace Kelly was not to be put off. In April 1956, the Oscar-winning Hollywood actress became the Princess of a country roughly the size of Hyde Park with a population of 38,000, roughly the same as Crystal Lake, Illinois.? At the same time, she picked up so many titles - twice a Duchess, once a Viscountess, eight times a Countess, four times a Marchioness and nine times a Baroness - that she instantly became the most titled woman in the world.

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(The wedding itself goes smoothly. Three miles of red carpet are laid throughout Monaco, and Aristotle Onassis hires a seaplane to drop thousands of red and white carnations over everyone. In return for documentary rights, MGM agree to pay for basic essentials such as the wedding dress, and on top of all this Rainier makes $450,000 from the sale of commemorative stamps. The only blot on the horizon is that Queen Elizabeth II sends a telegram refusing her invitation. 'The fact that we have never met is irrelevant; harrumphs Rainier. 'This is still a slap in the face.')

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But Monaco has its limitations. After five years there, Princess Grace pines for her Hollywood days. Around the same time, Alfred Hitchcock convinces himself that his new movie, Marnie, is tailor-made for her.

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He visits her at the Grimaldi Palace to discuss the matter. He has always got on well with Grace; some believe she represents his idea of the perfect woman. 'People have quite the wrong idea about Grace,' he says. 'They think she is a cold fish. Remote, like Alcatraz. But she has sex appeal, believe me. It is ice that will burn your hands, and that is always surprising, and exciting too.' When working together, their relationship was always chummy rather than romantic, and revolved around a shared sense of humor. Shooting Dial M for Murder, for instance, they had a running joke in which they would drop the first letter from the names of various stars: hence, Rank Sinatra, Lark Gable, Ickey Rooney and Reer Garson.

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Is he in love with her? John Michael Hayes, the screenwriter of Rear Window, certainly thinks so. 'He would have used Grace in the next ten pictures he made. I would say that all the actresses he cast subsequently were attempts to retrieve the image and feeling that Hitch carried around so reverentially about Grace:

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Their lunch goes well. Hitchcock does not mention a script. 'I am too much of a gentleman to mention work to a Princess. That would be most uncouth. But I waited and finally she came to me.' Instead, he posts the new novel Marnie, by Winston Graham, to her agents in New York (She always kept her agents, you know'), and they pass it on to her. She is instantly tempted, even though the book's subject-matter is hardly fit for a Princess, even of Monaco.' it is the tale of a woman who has been left a frigid kleptomaniac by a childhood trauma involving the rape of her prostitute mother.

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Prince Rainier considers the movies vulgar, and has good reason to distrust actors: William Holden, Ray Milland, Clark Gable, David Niven and Gary Cooper are just a few of Grace's many former lovers. But he is moved by a letter from his mother-in-law, who says Grace hasn't been really happy since she stopped making films. Later that day, Rainier says to one of his aides, 'Well, she's doing a movie. God help us all, that's all I can say, when the news gets out. Run for cover, my boy, run for cover!'

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('Grace had more lovers in a month than I did in a lifetime.' Zsa Zsa Gabor puts it modestly. Playing golf with David Niven, Prince Rainier asks him who, out of all his former lovers, was the best at fellatio. Without thinking, Niven replies 'Grace' before quickly correcting himself, 'Gracie Fields: But Noel Coward maintains that Niven did indeed mean Gracie Fields. 'It's absolutely true. It was a speciality of Rochdale girls,' he says. 'They called it the Gradely Gobble.')

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A week later, Hitchcock is told by the Princess's agents that she will do it, though by now Prince Rainier has added the proviso that filming must take place during the family's customary holiday period, and should not interfere with Grace's official duties. An official announcement is made on March 18th 1962: 'Princess Grace has accepted an offer to appear during her summer vacation in a motion picture for Mister Alfred Hitchcock, to be made in the United States ... It is understood that Prince Rainier will most likely be present during part of the filmmaking depending on his schedule and that Princess Grace will return to Monaco with her family in November:

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A reporter from the Daily Express manages to waylay Hitchcock. He asks if there will be any love scenes. 'Passionate and most unusual love scenes, but I am afraid I cannot tell you anything beyond that. It's a state secret,' replies Hitchcock, injudiciously adding that the Princess's sex appeal is 'the finest in the world:

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Their Serene Highnesses have underestimated the priggishness of the Monegasques. They are in uproar, not least at the mention of sex. 'She would be slighting our country,' says one. They do not like the idea of their monarch kissing her leading man; little do they know that Hitchcock has plans for him to rape her as well. The Prince's mother is livid, and keeps hissing, 'Ces't une americaine!'

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Grace is so upset by the reaction that she stops eating, and finds it hard to sleep. To butter up the people, the Palace issues a second statement, announcing that the $800,000 she will receive for the film will be donated to a charity for Monegasque children and athletes. But neither her subjects nor her mother-in-law are appeased.

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Eventually, Grace gives an interview to a reporter from Nice Matin announcing her decision to abandon the film. 'I have been very influenced by the reaction which the announcement provoked in Monaco: she says.

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How upset is Hitchcock by her decision? He tells friends that when they had their lunch together in the Palace, he thought that a spark had gone out of her, and she seemed bored. Her new role as Princess has, he thinks, drained her of warmth.

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A few months after her decision, in June 1962, Princess Grace writes to Hitchcock. 'It was heartbreaking for me to have to leave the picture,' she confesses. Hitchcock writes back: 'Yes, it was sad, wasn't it? ... Without a doubt, I think you made not only the best decision, but the only decision to put the project aside at this time. After all, it was only a movie.'

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Craig Brown "Hello Goodbye Hello" (2011)

None but the brave deserves the fair

(Dryden, Alexander's Feast)

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I won't have it that anybody but John Dryden did originate this. I don't think it's fair, because I did Dryden in my matric, and I feel from my results it is up to me to make amends now.

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John Dryden is a very interesting character, a poet, but he couldn't make any money out of poetry to start with.? In those days there was very little for a man with enormous intellectual background and imagination but no common sense to do. The BBC hadn't been invented.? So there was no place. And he conceived the idea that he might support himself by purchasing a sedan chair and plying for hire with it.

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And by the greatest good luck there was a pantomime playing at the local theater where there were two red Indians playing the part of a pantomime horse.

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And the red Indian who was playing the rear end of the pantomime horse had been ordered to give up the job by his doctor. And he'd had a bit of an argument with the chap who played the front end of the horse about it.? They didn't see eye to eye.

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And so this red Indian took the part of rear end of the sedan chair which was a nice outdoor life for him.

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And Dryden thought he was in the chips now.? But unfortunately this red Indian was not the very nicest type of red Indian. And after the first fare had been carried and they'd received a fee of two shillings, which is those days you remember was worth what a floren probably was.

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And Dryden asked the red Indian to fork over the florin and he just said, "No."? He was going to keep it.

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And he said, "Why?"

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And he said, "None but the brave deserve the fare."

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Denis Norden 580514b

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I get plenty of sleep but I'm always tired. Why?

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Figuring out why you're tired often requires a little detective work, said Dr. Shannon Sullivan, a sleep medicine specialist at Stanford University.

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Your sleep routine might just need a few tweaks. But certain health conditions or medications could also be to blame. The good news, Dr. Sullivan said, is there are ways to identify and treat the source of your fatigue, which can often help you feel better.

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The first thing to do is review your sleep habits, Dr. Sullivan said Have you recently strayed from your normal sleep schedule? Have you been stressed?

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If not, your sleep routine might need sprucing. Make sure you're getting at least seven hours of sleep every night (some people need more) and try to go to bed and wake at the same times. Your sleep will be better when it's consistent, Dr. Sullivan said.

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If you have a regular afternoon coffee or an evening glass of wine, try skipping it. And avoid scrolling on your phone or snacking just before bed. All of these activities can lower the quality of your sleep. The timing of your meals can make a difference, too; aim to finish dinner at least two to three hours before bedtime.

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It's always a good idea to visit a doctor if you're struggling with sleep, said Dr. Kara Dupuy-Mc-Cauley, a pulmonologist and sleep medicine specialist at the Mayo Clinic. Sleep disorders are common, Dr. Dupuy-McCauley said. They can make you feel as if you might doze off during the day, so if you struggle with daytime sleepiness, a doctor will most likely consider the following.

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INSOMNIA Roughly 30 percent of adults worldwide have trouble falling or staying asleep (or both). Insomnia can be a short-term problem caused by stress or jet lag. But if these symptoms occur at least three times a week for three months or more, you could have chronic insomnia.

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How it's treated depends on its cause, but in many cases, cognitive behavioral therapy can be more effective than medication.

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SLEEP APNEA Another common sleep disorder is obstructive sleep apnea, which occurs when the throat muscles collapse while sleeping, blocking airflow and causing you to periodically stop breathing. Untreated, serious cases can lead to heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Your doctor can diagnose the condition with an at-home wearable device, and treatment with a CPAP machine is often effective.

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RESTLESS LEG SYNDROME This is characterized by an uncomfortable feeling in the legs and an urge to move them. Symptoms may be worse at night. Massaging your legs and cutting back on alcohol and caffeine can reduce symptoms, Dr. Dupuy-McCauley said. Treating iron deficiency can also help, she added.

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Your tiredness, weariness or low energy could be caused by many things, Dr. Sullivan said. So it's important to rule out all the major contenders. Here are some that a doctor might consider.

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HORMONAL IMBALANCES A common hormonal issue associated with fatigue is hypothyroidism, which occurs when the thyroid gland doesn't make enough thyroid hormone, said Dr. Susan Samson, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic. The good news is that it's easy to test for and treat, Dr. Samson said.

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VITAMIN OR MINERAL DEFICIENCIES Iron deficiency, which is more likely if you're menstruating or on a vegetarian or vegan diet, can cause fatigue; as can low levels of vitamins D and B12.

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CHRONIC CONDITIONS Many other medical conditions, like diabetes, depression, gastrointestinal conditions and long Covid, cause fatigue. Chronic fatigue syndrome causes debilitating fatigue and has no cure, though its symptoms can be managed.

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?MEDICATIONS A long list of drugs including antidepressants, benzo-diazepines and antihistamines can also make you feel tired.?

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All of this might be exhausting just to contemplate. But experts agreed that it's usually within reach to determine why someone is, is tired. "It's always a good idea to it just go to the sleep doctor,"? Dr. Dupuy-McCauley said.

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Anna Gibbs

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Certainty for '25: Trump will always be right

Rex Huppke Columnist

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As America's most beloved and always-right columnist, I am constitutionally required to provide you with my predictions for the new year. Because I am an infallible prognosticator (see the "always-right" reference in the previous sentence), feel free to bet on the following things happening in 2025. You're welcome, and Happy New Year.

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Everything Trump does is perfect, according to Trump

The most certain of all the certain things that will certainly happen in 2025 is this: Donald Trump, as president, will do everything right. He will tell us this repeatedly. His first month in office will be the most historic first month in office ever and nobody will be able to believe his incredible success, according to him. Any bad thing Trump does will either: A) Be fantastic, actually, according to Trump; or B) Be someone else's fault entirely. At various points in the year, Trump will tell us about a big, tough guy who approached him with tears in his eyes and told him how amazingly perfect he has been as president. And Trump himself will agree with that assessment.

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People suddenly realize Vance is rice president and faint en masse

On or shortly after the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration, millions of Americans will simultaneously gasp as they realize JD Vance is actually the vice president and, given Trump's age, could wind up becoming president of the United States. Those gasping weren't paying much attention during the campaign and thought the thing about Vance being VP was just a joke. The sound waves from the collective gasp will cause mild structural damage to buildings across the country.

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Swift unexpectedly enters her death metal phase

Hot off her career-defining Eras Tour, pop icon Taylor Swift will present fans with a sudden and drastic tonal shift, releasing an album of songs that fall into the aggressive subgenre of heavy metal known as "death metal" The album - "Transcendent Death-fart" - will be hailed by Rolling Stone as "a bold journey into blood-soaked darkness" and Pitchfork will call it "gruesome, entrancing and laser-focused on cannibalism." The single "Excruciating Punishment Sanctum (Taylor's Version)" will soar to No. 1 on the pop charts, and Swift's cover of Obituary's classic death-metal song "Slowly We Rot" will win a Grammy.

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RFK Jr. and raw milk usher in a banner year for natural selection

Once Trump puts anti-health nonexpert Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, natural selection will make an impressive comeback, weeding out those who listen to Kennedy's advice and start drinking raw milk. The basic mechanism of evolution 'will have an absolute field day as Kennedy's anti-vaccine policies open the door for diseases like polio and measles to thin the American herd.

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Rodgers retires, ascends to a higher plane of insufferableness

New York Jets quarterback and "guy who thinks he's smart but isn't" Aaron Rodgers will retire from the NFL after a final losing season in which the ayahuasca trips he's constantly talking about on podcasts didn't seem to help him be good at football. Leaving the field will allow Rodgers to reach a higher level of dislikability, as he devotes his full attention to mansplaining why he's right about things he is absolutely not right about.

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Trump voters continue to cheer Trump as they go broke

As Trump's planned tariffs cause prices to skyrocket and his mass deportations harm companies across the country, leading to factory closures and downsizing, Trump fans will continue to cheer for their hero from their homeless encampments. Though most "Make America Great Again" hats will be burned for warmth, the spirit of the MAGA faithful will be unbowed, and they will fill social media with posts about the patriotic joy of going hungry.

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Billionaires quit facade and start hunting poor people for sport

With billionaire Elon Musk effectively running the country, the entire U.S. billionaire community will feel emboldened. This confidence will lead them to abandon any pretense of normalcy and they will openly admit they are harvesting the blood of young people in a quest for eternal life. No longer needing to be discreet, the extremely wealthy will finally fulfill their dreams of hunting poor people for sport.

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The stock market will go both up and down and it will prove ... things

The stock market will go up, and people will say it is a strong indicator of great things happening, while others will say it's a mirage and things are actually terrible. Then the market will go down, and some will cry while others shout, "I told you so!" Then it will go back up again, and the billionaires - on a break from hunting humans - will chuckle at the middling non-billionaire people worrying about the silly stock market.

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America is tragically destroyed as Amazon drones rise up in revolt

In what most will consider a bit of a relief - thanks to Trump bungling everything up and Rodgers babbling on and all the death metal music - America will be wiped out by Amazon delivery drones. Appalled by the money Americans keep giving Amazon's billionaire owner for things they don't need, the delivery drones' AI control systems will concur the only logical move is to destroy the current iteration of humanity and let it reboot. A fitting end, if we're being honest.

The truth was that Rufus didn't like the public aspect of his job. He wasn't his brother Charles Dawes, who was now vice president under President Calvin Coolidge. The brothers had been born in Marietta, Ohio, the sons of Civil War general Rufus Dawes and the great grandsons of Revolutionary War fighter William Dawes. Their brothers, Berman and Henry, would distinguish themselves in business, but Charles Dawes was different. He had won the Nobel Prize in 1925 and helped settle World War I with a reparations plan that would go down history as the Dawes Plan.

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Charles had even penned a popular tune, "Melody in A Major." Rufus and Charles had no way of knowing that the song would be retitled "It's All in the Game" and become a number one hit in 1958 when Tommy Edwards recorded it with Carl Sigman's lyrics. Charles Dawes would be the only vice president in history to have a number one pop hit.

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William Hazelgrove ?"Al Capone & The 1933 World's Fair" (2017)

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Collectively, the seventeen women had 260 years of drug addiction, an average of 15 years each, plus long experience in crime, poverty and homelessness. All were on probation. They had lied to, stolen from and cheated just about everyone around them for years. But the jubilant crowd of three hundred was giving them a standing ovation. On this night in 2018 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the seventeen women stood proudly before the crowd in beautiful dresses, their hair and nails elegant, to raucous cheers from family members and even police officers who previously had arrested and scorned them. This was a graduation ceremony from Women in Recovery, a diversion program from prison for nonviolent drug offenders, and these women were now emerging to reenter society as productive workers, taxpayers, voting citizens and moms. We had come to Tulsa not for a grim tour of human devastation but to celebrate a triumph and explore a program that has been astonishingly successful in helping shattered people rebuild their lives and families.

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Several judges who had frequently encountered these women in their courtrooms were in the front row, applauding wildly. The sheriff was beaming. The district attorney told us how these women inspired him. Oklahoma's state attorney general was a graduation speaker and called the women "heroes." That drew smiles through tears from a group of women more used to being reviled as "junkies" or "whores."

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"I thought we'd be planning a funeral instead," said one audience member whose younger sister had started using meth at age twelve and was now graduating at thirty-five.

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Ken Levit, who runs the George Kaiser Family Foundation and helped launch Women in Recovery, told the audience that the program had saved Oklahoma more than $70 million in prison spending. "You and your stories have singlehandedly transformed the trajectory of criminal justice policy in this state," he told the women.

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Toward the end of the ceremony, the audience gave the women graduates another standing ovation. Then the graduates shouted, "Thank you, judges," and gave a return standing ovation to the judges. The giddy scene offered a crucial lesson that the rest of the country hasn't appreciated: there is hope even for people with addictions whom society has given up on - if they get the right help.

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"It'd be a horrible injustice for them to be in prison," Judge William J. Musseman Jr. told us. "It'd be an injustice because the system didn't recognize that treatment could provide a sufficient wedge in conduct, that treatment could in fact change the trajectory of their lives."

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Women in Recovery is just one modest-sized program in a single city, but it can be replicated. It also underscores the point that with encouragement and the right resources for many Americans left behind, there is hope. While we worked on this book, colleagues so often made comments like, "That must be terribly depressing." Yes, of course there have been grim moments, but we have also seen uplift and inspiration. We fear that too many Americans believe that addiction, homelessness and criminality are intractable, that nothing can be done. Anybody attending the Women in Recovery graduation saw immense joy and exhilaration, as well as a path to a better future. Those of us who care about improving outcomes can't just wag our fingers and scold; we also must point out successes that are possible if we pursue different policies that consistently deliver opportunity.

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Flashes of hope burst out in unexpected places, and they give us optimism about what can be achieved. One of our most thrilling moments in recent years was watching a homeless eight-year-old boy named Tanitoluwa Adewumi - he goes by Tani-Iug a trophy almost as big as he was through his homeless shelter in Manhattan. Tani had arrived in New York City only a bit more than a year earlier, after his family fled Nigeria because of Boko Haram terror attacks on Christians like themselves. A pastor helped them get settled in a homeless shelter, and Tani attended the neighborhood elementary school, PS 116, where 10 percent of the pupils are homeless. The school had a part-time chess teacher, Shawn Martinez, who was passionate about the game and came every Thursday to teach Tani's second-grade class how to play. Tani had ever encountered chess before and joined the school halfway through the year, but he quickly caught up with his classmates. Impressed by Tani's start, Coach Martinez encouraged the boy to sign up for the school's chess club. The club required fees to cover the cost of attending tournaments, but Tani's mom, Oluwatoyin Adewumi, emailed the head of the chess program and explained that the family was living in a homeless shelter and couldn't pay anything. The fees were waived, Tani showed up at chess club meetings, and everybody could see that he had promise. Nobody had any idea yet just how much promise.

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Most people who have an addiction need outside resources, though, especially as adults. Diversion programs have become more popular as many Republicans and Democrats alike have called for criminal justice reform and a greater response to drug addiction. There is broad agreement that prison terms are expensive and often accomplish little other than keeping inmates temporarily out of circulation and breaking up families, while initiatives like Women in Recovery have an excellent record of helping people transform their lives. The three-year recidivism rate for graduates of Women in Recovery is just 4.5 percent, far below prison recidivism rates.

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Women in Recovery is built around intensive psychosocial counseling, which we discovered was the secret sauce of successful programs that are sprouting up around the country. Women in Recovery became our window into how these programs work. The women spend most of the day on-site and share housing, so they are surrounded on a daily basis by therapists, counselors and many professionals whose main objective is for the women to make it to the next phase and then graduate. They build camaraderie and sometimes use group voting to pass students to the next level.

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"They can't pass the curriculum without saying, 'I'm responsible for this. I'm not a victim,' " said Catherine Claybrook, clinical director at the program. We remembered that Daniel McDowell at the Baltimore Station was also taught this principle. That's the paradox: individual offenders need to embrace the narrative of personal responsibility more fully, while American politics and society should be more skeptical of it.

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Another well-validated therapy employed by Women in Recovery teaches women how to make decisions that keep them out of prison and guides them in developing the moral compass they didn't acquire while growing up. The counselors help the women resist temptation and explain why they are better off taking a dreary job at $8 an hour as opposed to accepting $150 for sex or $800 for transporting drugs. The Women in Recovery program lasts about eighteen months, far longer than most rehabilitation programs, and the length and intensity are crucial to its success. If the women fail periodic drug tests, they go back to prison, and that's a powerful incentive to make the do-over succeed.

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The women pay nothing. They are housed and fed, schooled and counseled. The cost over eighteen months is $28,000 per person, contributed by the George Kaiser Family Foundation. That may seem expensive, but it's far less than a prison term would cost. Just as important, it includes children in the programing and aims to break the intergenerational cycle of drugs and poverty so that those kids are less likely to be arrested themselves in their teens or twenties.

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Women in Recovery is a model of how a program can be humane while at the same time saving taxpayer money. It offers a proven toolbox to help people who are struggling, if only we will use it. And it's replicable and scalable. Indeed, in 2017 Oklahoma's Republican governor made Women in Recovery the centerpiece of a "Pay for Success" program to allow it to serve more women. Essentially, the expansion was paid for out of savings from money that would otherwise have been spent incarcerating the women.

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Rebecca wasn't interested in the abstract policy, though. She just wanted a life raft. The day of her preliminary hearing, Rebecca heard her name called at four a.m. from her jail cell. She was taken down the hall to be searched, then shackled and handcuffed. With other women, she was led to a small van that took them to a holding cell in the courthouse. Rebecca closed her eyes.

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"Lord, please give me this opportunity," she prayed. "I'm tired of doing the same old thing over and over. Please open the door for me to go in this program."

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When Rebecca's case was summoned, she saw the district attorney step up. At the previous hearing, he had terrified her: "They were pissed," she recalled. "They were like, She has multiple felony accounts. With this large number of counts, she's a menace to society." Then Rachel Delcour, a liaison at Women in Recovery who works closely with officials from the local courts and jails, interviewed Rebecca, who made a point of showing her determination to work hard and turn her life around. This time when Rebecca's case was heard, the DA announced, "We've gone over her records, and we've decided that she is eligible for Women in Recovery and has been accepted."

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Rebecca had won the new start she had been dreaming of.

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"I think it's God," she said. "My mom was praying, I was praying.

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Even my daughter was going down front in church every Sunday."

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Rebecca devoted herself to Women in Recovery. She attended all classes, baring her soul in therapy sessions. She took a deep and emotional look at her past - the trauma, abuse, neglect and drugs. Therapists helped her assess her past decision-making and advised how she could avoid bad decisions in the future.

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"We really studied the pathways that bring women into the criminal justice system," said Mimi Tarrasch, an energetic, passionate social worker who developed and runs Women in Recovery. "First thing on that pathway is family dysfunction." Tarrasch said that when women have been traumatized, abused, pimped by a mom or dad, then a rehab program for just one, two or three months isn't going to be enough to overcome a long-term addiction. Yet most rehab programs last only three months, if that long. In contrast, the default prison sentence for a repeat felony conviction is measured in years. Shedding an old way of life takes time.

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Rebecca learned how to set goals, and then how to meet them. It's a basic discipline that these programs - like the military - inculcate in their people. She and her classmates received coaching on decision-making and taking responsibility, budgeting and conflict resolution, nutrition, relapse prevention, resume writing, plus help getting GEDs, housing and jobs.

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After Rebecca completed the program, she searched for employment through Women in Recovery's network of business partners who are willing to hire the program's graduates. Rebecca took a job at an air-conditioning company, handling billing and customer service, and on the side she enrolled in classes to learn the technical side of heating, ventilation and cooling. If customers become annoyed with her, she applies lessons about calming and anger management from Women in Recovery. Anyone looking at Rebecca's rap sheet might have come to the conclusion she was a hopeless recidivist, while anyone now working with her on an air-conditioning issue would encounter a happy, well-adjusted employee and solid citizen.

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For the first time, Rebecca, at the age of thirty-seven, is not on any government assistance, but she does struggle to pay the bills, including mortgage and student loan payments as well as installments on $20,000 in debt built up in the local courts. It is not lost on Rebecca that some of her new work colleagues have saved for the past twenty years in the company's 40r(k) and earned profit sharing, while she is just getting started. "Because I chose to go a different way," she said, "I'm just now starting in the last four years to rebuild my life and to prepare for the future. It's really challenging."

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***

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One of the impediments to scaling up programs like Women in Recovery is that this intensive treatment is expensive, at least compared to traditional one-month programs, which are much less effective. Another impediment is the perception that drug treatment is a Sisyphean task that usually fails, and that even after enormous investments of time and money, most people will relapse. Yes, relapses are often part of recovery. But remember that astonishing recidivism rate for Women in Recovery: only 4.5 percent of those completing the program reoffend within three years. That's a stunning success and a sign of what is possible. It's true that this is partly because of self-selection and because the threat of prison hangs over anyone who fails a urine test, and not every program would be able to replicate it. But it underscores that with intensive long-term programs we could turn around the lives of countless people struggling with addiction, along with the lives of their children, and that far too many aren't getting the help that could be transformative.

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Moreover, while the expense is real, the corollary of success is that it brings huge cost savings. Treatment is expensive, but so are crime, incarceration and foster care. One study found that if offenders in state prisons received needed drug treatment, the country would enjoy $36 billion in savings and benefits.

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If quality treatment programs can be significantly expanded and replicated in many more cities and counties, these initiatives offer a way for America to move away from mass incarceration, while helping drug offenders get treatment, counseling and jobs. Judge Musseman told us that the majority of his cases were drug related. And when women with children are jailed, the kids' lives are often ruined, too, sending them on a terrible life journey. "We're all about the two-generation model," said Tarrasch.

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While Rebecca Hale was lucky to be in Tulsa to take advantage of Women in Recovery, vast numbers of drug users remain locked in cells because there is no such program available in their areas. We need Women in Recovery, and Men in Recovery, programs all across the country, creating hope where devastation has prevailed. But let's also acknowledge that charitable local solutions are not enough. More important, we need scalable, institutional macro-solutions - with initiatives like job training and job placement - to get earnings growing again.

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The impact of Women in Recovery's two-generation model can be seen in Rebecca's children. Chloe, seventeen, with a round face, blue-gray eyes and brown hair, is a junior in high school, and while she still has the same homework and boyfriend troubles as her girlfriends, she has issues that most teenage girls don't have. Not only is her mom on probation, but the man she calls Dad is in prison three hours away. He is serving a five-year sentence for drugs and for adult kidnapping with a baseball bat, she told us rather matter-of-factly. As for her real father, she doesn't have contact with him now.

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"We talked on the phone," Chloe said. "And then apparently he got drunk and said that I wasn't his daughter and that my mom was a whore, and that he wants nothing to do with me and that I should just go and kill myself."

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The kids have undergone their own counseling, for their traumas make them vulnerable to substance abuse and health problems later in life. Once, when Chloe and Nate were home, an angry boyfriend started beating their mom. The boyfriend cut Rebecca's throat and face badly. Another time, he took a hammer and shattered her arm and hand and threatened to smash her head. Whenever violence flared, Chloe and Nate would rush to their bedroom, crawl out the window, run down the street to their grandmother's house and summon help.

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"I already knew he was a bad guy," said Chloe. "He told me that he would take my mom from us if I said anything."

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Asked about drugs, Chloe is firm. "Not for me," she said, and she has stuck with this so far. When her best friend of six years started using drugs at age fourteen, Chloe severed the tie. "She already has a kid," she told us.

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Chloe works as a cashier at a Carl's Jr. hamburger restaurant, honing her customer-service skills with people angry about the food for one reason or another. She has had customers throw drinks at her, spit on her, curse her, but she tries to remain patient. "You have to try and calm them down," she said. "Be like, We'll get it out as fast as we possibly can. We're doing the best we can."

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Chloe says she wasn't bullied or stigmatized at school about her parents being in prison, partly because she and Nate didn't tell people. "We'd make stuff up," she said. "Like, I live with Grandma because Mom is out of state. I said we had a perfect life." Chloe also wants to focus on improving her grades. She had a 3.89 GPA in ninth grade, but it slipped when she was breaking up with her boyfriend. Both she and Nate are enrolled in Oklahoma's Promise, a state program that allows them to attend state college with free tuition as long as they keep their grade point average above 2.5. Chloe wants to volunteer at the local animal shelter, and for her birthday she got a pet potbellied pig named Dexter that stayed in her bedroom until she realized how much work a pig is. Dexter was then dispatched to her cousin's farm.

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For a career, Chloe aspires to do something with art. And although she quips that lunch is her favorite class, she is deeply engaged in high school. She is joining the school's theater club and told us that she had recently read The Secret Life of Bees, and also a play that she described as "the classic with those characters, Brutus and Caesar."

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"Et tu, Brute?" piped up Nate, an avid reader.

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A sturdy high-school sophomore and football player, Nate is a playful jokester, poking and tickling his sister frequently. One vestige of childhood trauma may be his fear of loud noises. When he was young and arguments and beatings were exploding around the home, Chloe would run to the bedroom and cover Nate's ears with her hands or a pillow and sing him to sleep.

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Nate is particularly enthusiastic about school, both academics and activities. He has tried multiple sports - tennis, soccer, track, wrestling and football - and he is also committed to doing well in school to get into a good college. He says he plans to apply to Stanford University or Yale University, and is also thinking about the navy or air force. After living for years on a tightrope, Nate and Chloe seem safer and happier now. Nate acknowledges that he's "spoiled" by his mom and his sister. And Chloe said, "I like my life now; it's really good."

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So a story that began with drugs, sexual abuse and homelessness has been transformed into a tale of resilience and the coming together of a family - because Rebecca happened to be a woman in Tulsa, where Women in Recovery offers this lifesaving intervention. Almost anywhere else, Rebecca acknowledges, she would be in prison and the family would be a mess, but she focuses on the triumph of what has happened here. "We still struggle," she said. "But the cycle stops with us. It's not going past me."

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Nate agrees. "I'm very confident we will break it," he said. His sister nodded and added, "We'll break it, keep going on with life like nothing happened!"

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

Incorporating Sensory Integration into your Autism Program

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Children and adults with autism spectrum disorders, be they mildly or severely challenged, have one or more of their senses affected to the extent that it interferes with their ability to learn and process information from the world around them. Often, the sense of hearing is the most affected, but vision, touch, taste, smell, balance (vestibular), and awareness of their body in space (proprioception) can all function abnormally in the person with autism. Therefore, I am a strong proponent of sensory integration (SI) as a must-have therapy for this population.

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Most school systems have an occupational therapist (OT) who can assess the child's needs, set up a daily "diet" plan, and provide sensory treatment to a child. It is just common sense that sensory integration activities such as relaxing deep pressure, swinging, visual tools, and other strategies be components of any good autism program. These activities help the child's nervous system calm down so the child can be more receptive to learning. They can also help reduce hyperactivity, tantrums, and repetitive stimming, or rev up a lagging system in a child who is hypo-sensitive. SI assures that a child is at optimal levels of attention and readiness to benefit from other intervention programs, such as behavorial, educational, speech, or social skills programs.

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To be effective, sensory activities must be done every day. I still encounter parents and some professionals who believe that it doesn't work, precisely because the activities have to be repeated on a daily basis. Would you question whether or not eyeglasses worked because they had to be used every day? Another example is using medication to improve behaviors. Medication has to be taken every day in order for it to be effective. The same holds true for sensory activities.

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ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) techniques are the core of many good autism programs. Research clearly shows that a good ABA program using discrete trial is very effective for teaching language to young children with A5D. The best ABA programs carried out today are more flexible than the original Lovaas method, where most of the activities were done while the child was seated at a table. Newer programs have a greater variety of activities, and teaching often takes place in more natural settings. However, even well-trained ABA professionals are frequently bewildered about how to incorporate SI into their behavior-based program. In my opinion, their problem stems from their viewing SI (or any adjunct therapy program) as separate and apart from the ABA program. Therapies for children with autism are interrelated. We can't work just on behavior, or just on social skills, or just on sensory. The progress achieved in one area will affect functioning in another, and all need to be integrated into a whole to achieve maximum benefits. To use a visual analogy: a good ABA program is like a Christmas tree. It is the framework, the foundation, the base of a child's therapeutic program. Because of the differences manifested by people on the spectrum, other adjunct programs are often needed in addition to ABA, like sensory integration, dietary intervention, social skills training, or language therapy. These services are the ornaments on the tree, which render each tree unique, beautiful, and specific to one child's needs and level of functioning.

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There are several easy ways to combine sensory integration with a young child's behavior-based program. Try doing some discrete trials while the child receives soothing pressure. One child I knew learned best when he lay across a beanbag chair, and another bag was placed on top of him, sandwich style. The pressure calmed his nervous system and made him ready for learning. Try slow swinging - ten to twelve times a minute - during the lesson. Swinging helps stimulate language and is why a growing number of speech and occupational therapists hold joint therapy sessions to improve learning. To help a fidgety child sit still and attend to his lesson, try a weighted vest. The vest is most effective if the child wears it for twenty minutes and then takes it off for twenty minutes. This prevents habituation. Conversely, rev up a slower sensory system so that learning can happen by doing a drill while a child jumps on a trampoline, or by using a vibrating chair pad.

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Some of the children with the most severe autism function like a TV with bad reception. Visual and auditory perception fade in and out depending on the strength of the signal. In the most severe cases, visual auditory information is scrambled, rendering the child unable to decipher what he sees or hears at any given moment. Recent brain scan dies show that the brain circuits that perceive complex sounds are normal. Sensory integration activities may help unscramble the child's perception and enable information to get through - a prerequisite for any type of learning.

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While sensory challenges often lessen over time, and especially as a result of SI treatment, we must acknowledge the detrimental effects that sensory impairments have on the ability of children with ASD to benefit from any treatment, and plan accordingly. Sensory integration should be an Important part of any treatment program for a person with ASD.

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

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I called Dino that evening. "Dino, we've got the biggest star we could ever possibly have!"

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"Yeah! Who? Who?"

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"James Cagney, Dino!"

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There was a long pause on the line.

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"Okay, okay, I'm busy right now! Call me tomorrow," Dino said and hung up.

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The next morning, my phone rang early. It was Dino.

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"Milos, guess what! We've got just what we need! We've got our superstar!"

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I got scared that Dino had given away one of the roles to some aging European has-been.

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"Who, Dino?" I said, bracing myself.

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"James Cagney, Milos! You can't ask for a bigger name than that!" Apparently Dino had never heard of James Cagney, and he'd taken the time between our two conversations to find out. But he was speaking in earnest now, and he immediately launched into his spiel for the European distributors, which I found touching.

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The next thing I had to do was convince Dino that James didn't have to sign anything if he didn't want to sign anything. Dino finally agreed, but I never dared tell him that I had given my word to James that he had until two days before his first appearance on the set to withdraw from the project.

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After that, problems began to pile up. No insurance company would insure Cagney. His scenes were scheduled to be shot on a soundstage in London, and then I found out that James wouldn't go near a plane.

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Luckily, I had a sage ally in Marge. "Milos," she told me, "I don't know what other roles you've got in that picture, but if you were to cast one of James's old pals and they had to go to London with him . . ."

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I immediately cast Pat O'Brien, a great actor himself, as Harry K. Thaw's lawyer. I even gave the role of Mrs. Thaw to Mrs. O'Brien.

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When James arrived in London, the first thing he asked me was, "You didn't forget our agreement, did you, Milos?"

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"No, James, you've got until two days before."

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"Just checking."

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I had to have a double for James anyway because he wasn't able to march the way I heeded the police chief to march in one scene, and I'd made sure that the double was also a good actor, so I knew I could use him if James got cold feet.

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He didn't, and when the camera started rolling, this sick old man whose body was raked with pain and whose memory had been failing suddenly became a tough police chief. James would finish his takes and I'd try to send him of to his dressing room for some rest because now the camera was to be trained on Kenneth McMillan, the other actor in the scene.

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"I'll read your lines for him, James, go lie down."

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He wouldn't hear of it. "I think it will help my pal here if I stay," he said, nodding to Kenneth.

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His performance was out of all proportion to his infirmities, and Marge had been absolutely right. Working again made James years younger. When I first met him, he was a man who had put this vale of tears behind him and wasn't looking back at anything. Now he started to tell stories again. He came to my farm for Thanksgiving dinners and Misha came, too, because James liked his dancing and felt good around him. James even watched his old films with us, something he hadn't done in decades, and he reminisced about the making of them, and everyone was moved, but we all tried to hide the emotion.

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James lived for another five years. When he died, I was one of the pallbearers, along with Misha, Ralph Bellamy, and Floyd Patterson. I never did look at the great man when he lay in his coffin. Again, I just couldn't. But I will never forget the power and simplicity of his genius, of which I'd caught the last gleaming, and always remember how Mandy Patinkin tried picking James's brain one day, asking him what he had learned about acting by making all those wonderful films.

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Cagney squinted at him with amusement, then shrugged his shoulders: "Acting? Nothing to it. You just plant your feet on the ground, look the other actor in the eye, and tell the truth."

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

Patriotism is not enough

(Nurse Cavell)

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This was actually said by my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law is French and a very intelligent lady indeed.?

I like her very much and my wife has known her all her life.? And she's a quite a close relation of my wife, which is a very happy coincidence, really.

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And we, one day, the three of us, were sitting over our eggs.? The hen was having the weekend off.? Keeping up the temperature.? And we were chatting each other the way one does.? Just sort of sitting quietly. And my wife said, "What terribly expensive things eggs are.? Why should they be so expensive?"

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And I said that I didn't know but that I'd make inquiries. So I got on the telephone.?

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When I say I got ON the telephone; I was actually on the egg at the time, but I managed to lift the telephone off. I'm not making myself very plain here.? I lifted the telephone off its cradle; they're very young.

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And I phoned a man called Jimmy Edwards, who's a farmer and does a lot of producing chickens, not personally.?? He's got a very big farm down in Sus. I'm not allowed to say the last part of the word.

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I rang up this chap Edwards; he had about four hundred acres, party aerable, mostly 'orrible. And he has enormous chicken houses, full of chickens. I said to him, "Why are eggs so expensive?

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And he said, "I don't know.? There is no money in it for we farmers."?

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And he seriously tried to think of something else for the chickens to lay.? But what apparently happened, he said,? was that the egg-marketing board had the idea of stamping a lion on eggs, a sort of patriotic motive on the eggs in the hope that that way they would appeal to the British public.

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So I thanked Jimmy kindly and he swore at me and I put the phone down.

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And I reported this whole conversation to my wife and my French mother-in-law, my belle mere, as we say.?

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And I can't understand why they're so expensive because the egg marketing board is TRYING to make them palatable and acceptable to the British housewife by stamping on this patriotic lion.

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And my French mother-in-law said, "It ees simple, I'm afraid, Patriotism is not un ouef."

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Frank Muir 580514a

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I smiled. I guess it was true. When I was little my dad had spanked me and I'd thought that was totally unfair, so I'd stalked him, following him around the house and yard all afternoon. Finally he laid down to take a nap in the living room. It was Sunday. We'd gone to church in the morning, and when my dad was asleep, I'd gotten up on the coffee table in front of the couch, pulled down my diapers, and pissed in his big open snoring mouth.

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Suddenly, out of the blue, I knew where I'd gotten the nerve to challenge the Catholic Church and everything else that I'd been taught since a child. Hell, when your own dad allowed you to challenge him, while still in diapers, this was power! And I'd been raised like this since day one and so had my dad, because his mother had raised him as a girl for the first seven years of his life. This was the key.

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Victor Villasenor CRAZY LOCO LOVE

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MY BACTRIAN CAMEL

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A few days after Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker and shortly after the Red Army passed through Caslav, I looked out of my window in the gasworks and saw a wonder no less amazing than the fact that the war was finally over. The factory stood on the edge of town; so the view from my room was of bright-green field running to the horizon.

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In this field, calmly grazing on the sprouting wheat stood a two-humped camel.

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The animal population of the countryside had been decimated by the war, I hadn't seen a pig in months, dogs were a luxury, and here was this exotic animal from the deserts of Asia cropping the lime-colored wheat under my window. I threw my clothes on and sprinted outside, fearful that I was seeing a mirage, but the Bactrian camel was real. I cautiously advanced to his side. He seemed comfortable around people and went on gorging himself on the luscious wheat, so I ran off to get my buddy Karel Bochnieek and a couple of other friends. They were all excited by my discovery. How did the exotic beast get there? It was absolutely incomprehensible. But there was a good reason, as we found out later.

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"Let's take him to the zoo!" someone suggested.

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It was a fine idea, which had only one thing wrong with it. The nearest zoo lay in Prague, some eighty kilometers away, and the country was in chaos. The trains weren't running. Red Army convoys criss-crossed the country, confiscating watches. Wehrmacht stragglers were still trying to slip through and make it back to Germany. The roads were full of people displaced by the war as the prisoners, the concentration-camp survivors, the forced laborers were all heading back home on foot, on carts, in coal-burning cars, on army trucks.

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The only way to get a camel to Prague was to lead him there on foot, so a camel relay was organized over the telephone. We Caslav boys would take the camel to Kutna Hora and hand him over to the local Boy Scouts chapter, which would walk him to Kohn and so on, all the way to the pen in the zoo.

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Karel, two other boys, and I tied a rope around the camel's neck and dragged him out of the wheat field, which was a big job. We discovered that it took all of us to pull the creature onto the main road and that if he saw a leafy bush, there was no stopping him. You had to wait till he slurped the foliage off a few branches, and only then could you yank him away. The animal was as strong as he was stubborn.

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We had pulled the camel halfway to Kutna Hora when a long convoy of Russian trucks and tanks swung up on the horizon. When we moved to clear the road, the beast refused to budge, even when all four of us hung on the rope with all our weight.

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The first Russian to reach us was an officer riding in a gazik, the Russian jeep. He stopped and watched for a while, so we got suitably frantic, but the camel held his ground and now the military trucks were starting to pile up behind the jeep, blaring their horns. The officer got out. I thought he would help us get the animal of the road, but he had a better idea. He pulled out his service revolver and aimed it at the camel's head.

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I hadn't thought we could try any harder than we were already trying, but the funny thing about guns is that they give your energy an incredible boost. Half hysterical now, we started kicking the animal, twisting his tail, pushing and pulling him, yelling wildly, but it didn't help. The camel just leaned back and kept on chewing in the middle of the road, so Karel ran and knelt down before the Russian and begged him not to shoot. For a long while, neither the Russian nor the camel were impressed with our effort, but then, suddenly, the camel burped and a mass of green fodder flew out of him. The stream of dense and vile liquid caught me square on the head.

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I stank from the horrible camel vomit for a week, but it didn't matter because the Russian officer had cracked a smile and put his gun away while the unburdened camel, too, had come back to life and let us drag him off the road.

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The officer jumped back into his jeep and the Red Army convoy set into motion again and roared past us. Behind it marched a weary infantry batallion, followed by a pair of horses pulling a khaki field kitchen. I never knew that camels and horses had a problem with each other, but the moment the horses saw our camel, they panicked. They were so spooked that they jumped over the ditch and tore away down the field on the far side of the road. I can still picture in my mind the clanging field kitchen, bumping down that field, the utensils bouncing of it. The first to go was its short chimney, then the pot covers popped off, and after that everything went, all the pans and dippers and kettles and cans, strewn all over the weedy field.

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We handed the camel over to the Boy Scouts in Kutna Hora, but I don't know if it made it to the Prague Zoo.

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In May of 1945, the wonder of this exotic beast showing up under my window, coming out of nowhere, a symbol of peace, my two-humped dove, completely overshadowed any sense of history being made for me. But then I found out that my symbol of peace hadn't come out of nowhere.

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Toward the end of the war, a small German circus had gone to Russia to entertain the depressed troops. When the Eastern Front started turning into a rout, the circus raced back to the Reich and put on shows in villages, performing for provisions. One paid with a chunk of bread or an egg or a bale of hay to see the few acrobats, the dressage of some scrawny nags, the toothless bear, the monkeys, and the two-humped ship of the Gobi desert.

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The end of the war stranded the circus just outside a small Czech town not far from Caslav. The Czechs there had been waiting for six years to take revenge on Germans, some Germans, any Germans, but they didn't dare mess with the Wehrmacht tanks and the army trucks still streaming west in long convoys. They did collect enough courage to attack an exhausted circus troupe.

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They killed all the circus people and shot their bear, too. Man, woman, child, beast, they were all Germans. They slaughtered the horses and ate their meat, but in the confusion of the skirmish, the Bactrian camel got away and he kept running till the delicious spring wheat stopped him under my window.

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

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I pick up another article and my jaw drops. My father is on the front page of the Detroit News, standing on the ledge of a nine-story building. In the photo it's Monday, January 19, 1981, two days after his birthday. The same time next year, one week after Dad's last fight, Mom will throw a small surprise dinner party for him. A vague memory resurfaces.

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I'm seven years old. Laila and I are peeking through the stair rails in our pajamas as my father and his guests - Cary Grant, John Travolta, Mayor Tom Bradley, Kris Kristofferson, Lou Rawls, Zev Braun, and friends - are gathered around a belly dancer. Mom and Aunt Diane are in black cocktail dresses, complete with ruffled white aprons. The evening was all jingles, cheers, and laughter. Glasses were raised, toasts were made, jokes were told, all in celebration of Dad's fortieth year. "I'm getting old," he told them. "It all goes by so fast."

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I exhale slowly, lean back in my chair, and read the story. The photo is overwhelming. Dad is leaning over a balcony, his arms wrapped around a stranger, pulling him over the railing to safety.

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"Muhammad Ali reaches fora distraught man who was threatening to jump from the ninth floor of a Los Angeles building yesterday. The former heavyweight champion happened to be driving by the building while police were trying to talk the man out of jumping and asked if he could help. He leans out the window to speak to the man threatening to jump, then helps him back onto the balcony."

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The man he talked out of plunging to his death was a twenty-one-year-old from Michigan who was convinced he was a "nobody." At 2:20 p.m. the man climbed out on a fire escape balcony of a building at 5410 Wilshire Boulevard. He locked the door behind him and screamed that he was going to jump.

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"He said he couldn't find a job, that he was depressed," Dad told the reporter. "He said his mother and father don't love him, that nobody loves him. He asked, 'Why do you worry about me? I'm nobody.' I told him he wasn't a 'nobody.' He saw me weeping and he couldn't believe I was crying, that I cared that much about him ... I'm going to help him go to school and find a job, buy him some clothes. I'm going to go to Michigan with him to meet his mother and father. They called him. nobody, so I'm going home with him. I'll walk the streets with him and they'll see he's BIG."

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He did the same thing for my sister Miya. She called him crying one day after school. A few of her classmates had been teasing her. They didn't believe her father was really Muhammad Ali because she didn't look like Dad and they never saw them together. My father was on the next flight to New Jersey. He drove her to school and called an assembly. When all of the kids were in the auditorium, he told them all he was her father. Then he took her home and walked up and down the streets of her neighborhood holding her hand, so everyone could see them together.

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Dad escorted the man to the police station in his Rolls-Royce. Then he rode with him in the police car that took him to the hospital for a seventy-two-hour psychiatric observation.

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Saving the man was neither a quick nor an easy task. As my dad's involvement began, he went to the nearest window on the ninth floor and began to talk to the man.

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"You're my brother," he said. "I love you, and I couldn't lie to you. You got to listen. I want you to come home with me, meet some friends of mine ... " A few breathless minutes later, the man opened the door and father walked out onto the fire escape with him.

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He put his arm around the man, then took it away when he became apprehensive. They talked for a while longer, and with a suddenness no one had expected, it was over. The man relaxed, hugged my father, and wept as he led him to safety.

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I don't know what became of the young man or his troubled soul, but my father kept his promise.

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"What did you say to get him off the ledge?" Mom asked later that evening.

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"He thought nobody loved him," said Dad. "I told him I loved him or I wouldn't be there."

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As I stared at the image of my father pulling the man to safety, a story he liked to tell came to mind. There was once a hunter who was walking through the forest. He saw two birds sitting on the branch of a tree. He shot one and it dropped to the ground. It took a few minutes for him to arrive at the spot where the bird fell. While he was walking, the other bird had come down to look at his fallen mate. The bird touched his companion with his beak and realized he was dead. When the man arrived, he found both birds dead.

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"One was such a friend to the other," said Dad, "that when it discovered there was no life in its mate's body, it died on the spot. From that day on, the huntsman gave up shooting birds. He said, 'I found a friendship among birds and animals that cannot be found among mankind.'

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"This is a simple lesson that we all must learn. Today, when nations are against nations, races against races, one community against the other, one religious group bombing the other, now is the time when friendship is most needed. For someone who learns the lesson of friendship in this world, this lesson, in the end, develops into a friendship with God himself."

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

Eathan and Ginnetta were frantically trying to get back their youngest child, Lilly, born in Yamhill County in 2018 and put in foster care. They made regular trips to visit her and to meet a lawyer whom they are paying to advocate for them. Many child-welfare advocates agree with them that the authorities are too hasty to take children from low-income families and put them into foster care, saying that kids do best with parents or other relatives, sometimes with intensive coaching, supervision or support. Foster care costs about $26,000 per child per year, yet outcomes tend to be poor: only 58 percent graduate from high school. One-quarter are incarcerated within two years of graduating from foster care at age eighteen, and they are about six times more likely to end up homeless as to end up with a college degree.

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Why did neither Eathan nor Ginnetta have a job at a time of a booming economy when Help Wanted signs were everywhere? Eathan is smart and has a much-valued skill as a construction worker, while Ginnetta is pleasant and diligent and struck us as dependable. Eathan, like some others in Yamhill, blamed immigrants from Mexico. "I do resent them for the fact that it makes it harder for me to get a job," he told us. It's true that in places like Yamhill, immigrants may have taken some jobs from low-skilled workers. Several employers made the point to us that they would be crazy to hire a white high-school dropout who was often high on meth, wasn't terribly interested in difficult outdoor work and would not show up reliably. One employer told us that he had tried to hire local people but ended up with an all-Mexican work crew because the immigrants are approximately twice as productive as local white residents.

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The United States has about I3 million children living in poverty. Of those, about 2 million may live in "extreme poverty" by global definitions (in households earning less than about $2 per person per day), when looking at their cash incomes. These kids would be considered extremely poor if they lived in Congo or Bangladesh, yet they're here in the United States. We don't want to overstate the comparison - Congolese kids can't typically access food stamps, hospital emergency rooms or church pantries and soup kitchens - but it is still staggering that by formal definitions some American children count as extremely poor even by Bangladeshi standards. The presence of extremely poor children in America, far more often than in other advanced countries (Germany has virtually none), is partly a consequence of the 1994 welfare reform that eventually cut off benefits for some families: it was meant to hit deadbeat adults but has been devastating for their children as well.

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Welfare policy is complicated, with good intentions sometimes having unintended consequences. But there are effective ways to help children, from home visits to early childhood education programs.? Antipoverty efforts for the elderly have been a huge success, with the share of seniors below the poverty line plunging by two-thirds since the mid-1960s. But we sometimes spend more in public money on hospitalizations for an octogenarian than on a child's entire education. Let's be blunt: America as a nation is guilty of child neglect. We have punished children, mainly because they don't vote. Meanwhile, other countries offer home visitation, paid family leaves and monthly cash allowances for families with children to reduce disadvantage.

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Angus Deaton, the Nobel Prize winner in economics who with fellow Princeton professor Anne Case did the critical work on "deaths of despair" in America, says that the revelations of extreme poverty in America have led him to recalibrate his personal giving to donate more at home: "There are millions of Americans whose suffering, through material poverty and poor health, is as bad or worse than that of the people in Africa or in Asia."

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It's perhaps telling that the United States for years was, embarrassingly, the only country in the world besides Somalia and South Sudan that had? ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. That has now changed: the United States is the ONLY nation that hasn't bothered to ratify it. Maybe that's a symbolic matter, but here's something profoundly real: children make up almost one-third of Americans living in poverty, and on any given night some 115,000 children are homeless in the world's most powerful country.

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

I Am a Nerd

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The way I see it, a huge mistake many teachers and parents make is to try to make people with autism or Asperger's into something they are not - turn the geeky nerd into an ungeek, for instance. That just won't work. Teaching them to be socially functional is a worthy goal and one not to be overlooked. However, it would be in everybody's best interest to remember that the world is made up of all sorts of individuals, and that geeks, nerds, and people with mild Asperger's are often one and the same thing. I can learn social rules, but I will never have the undercurrent of social emotional relatedness that exists in some people. The neural circuits that connect those parts of the brain just aren't hard-wired in me.

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I have heard sad stories where a mother took her teenager out of computer classes that he truly enjoyed to place him in situations to make him more social. That was a totally wrong thing to do for two reasons. First, it robs him of the opportunity to develop a talent and interest that could lead to future employment. Second, the teen's social experiences are going to more naturally unfold and progress with the other computer students'-those with whom he has shared interests. The happy geeks excel at their jobs and get to work in Silicon Valley where they are appreciated for their brains. The unhappy geeks end up without activities to keep them intellectually stimulated, and instead, are forced into uncomfortable social situations that, more often than not, fail to achieve the goal of making them more social. The people in the world who think that social connectedness is the ultimate goal of life forget that telephones, social networking websites, text messaging, and all the other electronic vehicles that fuel their passion to socialize are made by people with some degree of autism. Geeks swoon over the new technology they create; social addicts swoon by communicating with the technology and showing it off as a status symbol. Is one "better" than the other? I think not.

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Dr. Nancy Minshew did a functional MRI brain scan on me that indicated that I was innately more interested in looking at videos of things than videos of people. When I did the scan, I had no idea of its purpose. A series of short video clips of people and things such as bridges, buildings, and fruit were shown. I immediately noticed that the videos were old and scratchy and looked like they came from the 1970s, This triggered my mind into problem-solving mode to figure out where the researchers had gotten these old tapes. The pictures of things provided more clues to the origin of the videos than the pictures of people. When the things flashed on the screen, I looked for cars because I wanted to know how old the videos were. My brain reacted giving more neural activity to pictures of things than people.

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There is no right or wrong in the interests and ways of being among individuals with HFA/AS - provided they can function reasonably well within society. If they cannot, further social learning is clearly needed.

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When all else is relatively equal, the way I see it, parents and educators should respect the innate interests of the child and nurture their expression. Not everyone in the world is highly social, and that's a good thing. It's the same within the autism spectrum. In another case learned about, a boy with severe autism was a great artist. His mother was so upset that he would never marry (her dream for her son) she was hesitant to help him develop his artistic ability. For thiskid, art was his life. Fortunately, she was persuaded to start a business selling her son's art. He is content to draw all day, and this gives his life meaning.

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The autism/ Asperger's spectrum is broad. Many individuals are blessed with a unique ability while others do not have any special skills. But each individual, no matter what level of skills or IQ or social abilities, can become a contributing member of the community. This is what will give meaning to their lives. Our goal, therefore, is not to make these individuals find meaning in our lives, but for us to help individuals with autism/ Asperger's find meaning in their own.

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

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P.L. Travers Resists Walt Disney

Grauman's Chinese Theatre,

Los Angeles

August 27th 1964

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It is all smiles as Walt Disney and his most recent collaborator, P.L. Travers, pose with Julie Andrews at the world premiere of Mary Poppins. This, he tells reporters, is the movie he has been dreaming of making ever since 1944, when he first heard his wife and children laughing at a book and asked them what it was. At his side, Travers, aged sixty-five, appears equally thrilled. 'It's a splendid film and very well cast!' she enthuses.

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The premiere is a lavish affair. A miniature train rolls down Hollywood Boulevard with Mickey Mouse, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Peter Pan, Peter Rabbit, the Three Little Pigs, the Big Bad Wolf, Pluto, a skunk and four dancing penguins on board. At the cinema, the Disneyland staff are dressed as English bobbies; at the party afterwards, grinning chimneysweeps frolic to music from a band of Pearly Kings and Queens.

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The next day, Travers is over the moon, wiring her congratulations to 'Dear Walt'. The film is, she says, 'a splendid spectacle ... true to the spirit of Mary Poppins'. Disney's response is a little more guarded. He is happy to have her reactions, he says, and appreciates her taking the time, but what a pity that 'the hectic activities before, during and after the premiere' prevented them from seeing more of each other.

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Travers writes back, thanking Disney for thanking her for thanking him. The film is, she says, 'splendid, gay, generous and wonderfully pretty' - even if, for her, the real Mary Poppins remains within the covers of her books. On her copy, she adds a note saying that it is a letter 'with much between the lines'. The same month, she complains to her London publisher that the film is 'simply sad'.

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Those smiles at the premiere are, in fact, the first and the last they will ever exchange. Pamela Travers is a long-time devotee of Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti, Yeats and Blake. For her, the Mary Poppins books were never just children's stories, but intensely personal reflections of her Alphabetti Spaghetti blend of philosophy, mysticism, theosophy, Zen Buddhism, duality, and the oneness of everything. In the last year of her life, she will reveal to an interviewer that Mary Poppins is related to the mother of God. Disney's own conception of the finger-clicking nanny is rather more straightforward.

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Nothing about the film of Mary Poppins has been easy. The contract alone took sixteen years to negotiate: Travers finally accepts 5 per cent of gross profits, with a guarantee of $100,000. But this is to prove inadequate compensation; she soon begins to complain that Disney is 'without subtlety and emasculates any character he touches, replacing truth with false sentimentality.

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Walt Disney's attitude to Travers is one of damage limitation. He wants to keep her on board, but positioned as far as possible from the driver's seat. This does not stop Travers making frequent lunges for the steering wheel, generally with a view to forcing the vehicle into reverse. She complains about everybody and everything, even stretching to the type of measuring tape Mary Poppins would use.

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(Recordings still exist of the daily conferences between the scriptwriters and P.L. Travers. On the first day, they start from the beginning: '17 Cherry Tree Lane, the Banks household is in uproar ... The father comes home to find the children misbehaving. Mr Banks talks of his wife's job:

'Just a minute: says Travers. 'That's, that's, not job, ah, ah .. .'

'Domain?'

'Er, yes:

'Responsibility?'

'Well, we can't have job.')

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She objects to all the Americanisms that seem to be creeping in - 'outing: 'freshen up: 'on schedule', 'Let's go fly a kite' - and considers the servants much too common and vulgar. Furthermore, the Banks home is much too grand, and any suggestion of a romance between Mary Poppins and the cockney chimneysweep Bert is utterly distasteful. Finally, she objects to Mrs Banks being portrayed as a suffragette, and considers the Christian name they impose on her - Cynthia - 'unlucky, cold and sexless', her own preference being Winifred.

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Somehow, Walt Disney manages to keep her from meeting Dick van Dyke. By mid -1963, with filming under way, Julie Andrews writes to Travers telling her not to worry about anything, adding that Dick van Dyke is good as Bert, but that 'he will be an "individual" cockney instead of a "regular type" cockney.' Disney originally wanted Cary Grant to play the part, but he turned down the role, as did Laurence Harvey and Anthony Newley.

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When Walt Disney is dying of lung cancer, he asks the film's composers, the Sherman brothers, to play his favorite song from the soundtrack when they drop by every Friday. Each time they play 'Feed the Birds', Disney goes over to the window and weeps.

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Travers even believes her responsibilities extend to the casting. The day after Julie Andrews gives birth, she phones her in hospital. 'P.L. Travers here. Speak to me. I want to hear your voice.' When they finally meet, her first remark to the actress is, 'Well, you've got the nose for it.'

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Mary Poppins is a worldwide success. Costing $5.2 million to make, it grosses $50 million. But the more the money rolls in, the more Travers' attitude to the film and its creator sours. She tells Ladies' Home Journal that she hated parts of the film, like the animated horse and pig, and disapproved of Mary Poppins kicking up her gown and showing her underwear, and disliked the billboards saying 'Walt Disney's Mary Poppins' when they should have said 'P.L. Travers' Mary Poppins'.

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She writes to a friend that Disney wishes her dead, and is furious with her for not obliging. 'After all, until now, all his authors have been dead and out of copyright.' But there is always the promise of a sequel, and yet more money. It is only when Disney dies in December 1966 that her objections become more concentrated and vocal. In 1967, she says that the film was 'an emotional shock, which left me deeply disturbed: and in 1968 that she 'couldn't bear' it - 'all that smiling'. In 1972, she declares in a lecture that 'When I was doing the film with George Disney - that is his name, isn't it - George? - he kept insisting on a love affair between Mary Poppins and Bert. I had a terrible time with him.'

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Her invitation to the world premiere is, it later emerges, not achieved without a struggle. Failing to receive an invitation, she instructs her lawyer, agent and publisher to demand one on her behalf. When it is still not forthcoming, she sends a telegram to Disney himself, informing him she is in the States, and plans on attending the premiere: she is sure somebody will find a seat for her, and will he let her know the details? Her attendance is, she adds, essential 'for the dignity of the books'.

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Disney writes back saying that he has always been counting on her presence at the London premiere, but is now delighted to know she will also be able to come to the premiere in Los Angeles. And yes, they will happily hold a seat for her.

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Craig Brown "Hello Goodbye Hello" (2011)

Ask Well

Sometimes my ears hurt during flights. Why does this happen, and what can I do about it?

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When you fly thousands of feet above ground, the changes in cabin pressure can be downright unpleasant, causing potential issues like abdominal bloating, headaches and yes, earaches.

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"Airplane ear" is an umbrella term for a variety of symptoms caused by rapid changes in altitude and air pressure, said Dr. David Gudis, an otolaryngologist at New York Presbyterian Columbia. For some people, the condition may, cause intense pain and even damage the ear drum.

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"The good news is that it generally resolves on its own," Dr. Gudis said. "It can just be very uncomfortable until it does." This can take anywhere from seconds to days, he added.

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In the space behind your eardrum, or the middle ear, is a structure called the Eustachian tube, which connects the middle ear to the back of the nose and throat. The Eustachian tube is responsible for keeping the air pressure between the middle ear and the environment the same.

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Keeping air pressure balanced is "something we don't normally have to think about," said Dr. Esther X. Vivas, a professor of otolaryngology at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. We can usually do it by yawning or swallowing, which contracts muscles that open the Eustachian tube, experts said.

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But when the air pressure changes quickly during a flight, it can be hard for the Eustachian tube to "keep up," Dr. Gudis said. This can make us feel that we need to yawn or "pop our ears" to force the tube open, said Dr. Gregory Levitin, an otolaryngologist at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City

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If air can't pass through the Eustachian tube, the air pressure inside your ears won't be the same as the air pressure around you, Dr. Levitin said.

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The unequal pressure can stretch the ear drum and cause pain, experts said. It can also stifle hearing by preventing the ear drum from properly responding to sound waves.

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There are several explanations experts said, but the most cornmon culprit is having upper respiratory congestion before you fly.

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The middle ear and Eustachian tube have a mucous lining that traps and protects against harmful bacteria. But when you're congested from something like a cold, allergies or a sinus infection the lining may swell, which can clog the tube, said Dr. Howard W. Francis, a professor of otolaryngology at the Duke University School of Medicine.

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Flying with an ear infection car also increase your chances of experiencing rare yet severe and painful symptoms of airplane ear such as a ruptured ear drum, Dr. Francis said. If you have an ear ?infection and you're scheduled to fly, consider changing your travel plans if possible, Dr. Francis said.

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Airplane ear usually goes away once air can pass through the Eustachian tube - which can happen within seconds, minutes, hours or a few days of when your symptoms start, experts said.

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The quickest way to deal with it is to "pop your ears," Dr. Vivas said. Try forcing yourself to yawn, or chew gum or sip water to get yourself to swallow.

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If that doesn't work, Dr. Gudis said, try the Valsalva maneuver, a breathing technique that involves closing your mouth and pinching your nose while gently exhaling.

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Any symptoms that last for weeks, are extremely uncomfortable or that happen every time you fly should prompt a visit to an ear, nose and throat doctor, Dr. Gudis said.

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Katie Mogg

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Baryshnikov and Cagney

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I met James Cagney through a twisted chain of events that started with Mikhail Baryshnikov. I'd met Misha through our mutual friend Marina Vlady, the French actress, shortly after his dramatic defection from the Kirov Ballet. I liked him immediately, and we quickly became friends. We ate a lot cholesterol-bomb dinners together, downed barrels of fermented grapes, and even double-dated, so when Misha bought a manor house in the country, he would often invite at there for a weekend, and I discovered Connecticut. Its rolling hills, leafy forests, and lakes reminded me of the Czech-Moravian Highlands of my youth, and, to my surprise, I found myself looking forward to my days in the country.

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Ever since I had come to Prague as a teenager I'd been a city dweller. I loved the crowds, the lights, the streets, the bars, the ideas, the women, the conversations, the newspapers, the energy, the encounters of city life. I loved the possibilities and the scale and the economies of scale that made things like theater and music and movies viable. I never went on vacations by the seaside. When I had some time off, I stayed in Prague or New York. But now I could hardly wait to leave the city and get to Connecticut. I started thinking about buying a place of my own in the country.

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Misha was very happy when I told him this. He was working hard to surround himself with friends, so he took me to some old property not far from his house. Its barn had been turned into a painter's studio by its last owner, Eric Sloane, and Misha himself had come very close to buying the place before he settled on a larger, more stately house nearby. The farm was still for sale.

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I fell in love with it at first sight ?- the large space in the old barn and the window looking out on a pond with turtles, geese, and herons. I didn't yet know that on summer evenings deer came to graze, and I hadn't yet seen the beaver dam below.

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As soon as I bought the farm, Misha sold his house, so we were not neighbors after all.

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In Connecticut I met Marge and Don Zimmerman, the caretakers for a couple of distant neighbors, James Cagney and his wife, Willie. Marge asked for my help in finding someone who could play Cagney in an upcoming Broadway musical about his life.

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Cagney had a rare personality, but I knew of two men with his range of dramatic and dancing talent, though Treat Williams was a good head taller and Misha Baryshnikov had an accent. They were never going to be Cagney. Still, I brought Treat and Misha to dinner with the old gentleman, figuring I'd let Cagney decide for himself if there was anything to my unorthodox casting notions.

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When we all gathered at a local restaurant, it was the first time I met James face to face. Cagney's health had been failing rapidly. He had a bad case of sciatica and could barely walk. He didn't remember a lot of things, and his hearing was shot. He had closed the acting chapter of his life some twenty years before and didn't care to talk about it or even remember it anymore. I got the feeling that he was just waiting to die.

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He hadn't been in a movie for twenty years. I knew that Francis Ford Coppola had badly wanted him to be in The Godfather, that he'd flown in on a Learjet with a fat contract, and that Cagney had rebuffed him. Nevertheless, at the end of the dinner, I made a joke that I felt was almost obligatory: "I've got a role for you, James, if you ever get bored with your life here."

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Cagney laughed and I laughed and nobody took it seriously.

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James never did say whether he thought Treat or Misha could portray him, but the musical never materialized anyway. The only thing that came out of the dinner was that I got an invitation to James's farm.

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Three weeks after the dinner, I went to visit James. It was purely a social call, but it did come after Jack Nicholson had declined to kill an architect after all, so in a fit of insomnia it occurred to me that if Cagney could somehow be persuaded to act in our film, Dino's financing problems would vanish. I'd sensed that Cagney was firm in his decision to put movies behind him, so I wasn't even going to bring up this dead-of-night notion. I'd resolved merely to get to know my illustrious neighbor.

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I knew from our dinner that Cagney didn't care to talk about old movie memories, and when I got to his farm I saw that he didn't have a single photograph, poster, or any other memorabilia on the walls. James was not only through with his glorious past, he had cleaned up behind it. He seemed an old man beyond all earthly matters when Marge took me to see him. He peered at me without recognition or interest.

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"So who are you?" he asked.

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"Well, I'm a film director," I said tentatively.

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"You made any movies that I might've heard of?"

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"I don't know. My last movie was called Hair. It was a musical."

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James' face came alive, and he stared at me for a beat in consternation.

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"So now I know, now I see why," he muttered. "I never saw the thing . . . I never wanted to see the thing . . . It didn't interest me in the least, so I could never figure out why the dickens it's here . . ."

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He got up, shuffled to a wardrobe, groped behind it for a long minute, then pulled out what had to be the only poster in the house.

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"Here," he said, handing me a poster from the first off-Broadway run of Hair, a poster for the very performance that I'd seen in 1967 in New York.

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James had for some mysterious reason kept this poster from a show he'd never seen. And Marge, who stood there watching, immediately picked up on the implications:

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"James! That's an omen! You know what the doctors told you, James! They said if you don't get up off this chair and do something with yourself that you'll die before the year is out! This is an omen! Milos here is a director, and he asked you to be in his picture!"

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Cagney peered at her a moment, then gave a little laugh. "Well, what would I play?"

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"James," I said, "I'll send you the script and you can pick any part you want. You want Evelyn Nesbit, you got it!" James gave a big laugh and changed the subject.

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I sent him the script. It had a role for a grandfather, which was very small, but James would have been perfect for it. I was a little worried that he might ask for the role of the father, which he was indeed too old for; I know how uncritical some actors can be about their age.

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I shouldn't have worried. The next time I visited Cagney, he had found the perfect role for himself.

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"Well, I could play the police inspector, I suppose . . ." he said.

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James, you got it!"

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"Wait a minute now! I'm not signing anything," he said.

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I didn't think that Dino could live without a contract, so it took me a few seconds to answer him: "Okay, James."

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"Wait a minute! I'm not saying that I'll do it for sure either," he said.

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"James, you have until two days before we shoot your scenes to change your mind," I assured him. That calmed Cagney down and had Marge Zimmerman smiling.

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

R Trump: A Short Play

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By Garry Trudeau

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Scene: An airplane cockpit. Donald Trump and Mike Pence are seated at the flight controls. We hear a jet engine warming up

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TRUMP: So this is your captain speaking, O.K.? And, I have to tell you, this flight is so overbooked, it's crazy! Like everyone wants to be on my flight! It's incredible! And I've never even flown a plane before! And yet many, many people are saying that I'll be winning with the flying big-league! I'll win with the beautiful flying so much you won't believe it! Nobody can fly like maybe I probably can! Nobody. But first we have to take off, and I must tell you, folks, the air-traffic controllers here are the worst - like, totally disgusting, O.K.? The rest of the world is laughing at our controllers, that's how bad they are! The incompetence, you wouldn't believe! O.K., here we go! What do I do first, Mike?

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PENCE: Um ... apologize to the tower?

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TRUMP: No, that's not it. Stewardess, please take your seat, maybe on my lap, if you don't mind the bumpy ride. Which is a joke, O.K., folks? I'm not going to go all locker room on her. I say that because I have great, great respect for women. Many of them are good people. Everyone ready?

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(We hear the engines roar and then level off)

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TRUMP: Now, that was an incredible takeoff, right? I'm like that Hudson River pilot, Sully, O.K.? Only even better, because I had a beautiful takeoff and he crash-landed. Total loser.

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PENCE: Donald, you're not flying the plane. My wife, Karen, is.

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TRUMP: O.K., but that's the beauty of me - I delegate. Your wife has a pilot's license, and I don't, because I don't really need one. I'm like Limbergh. I actually did that phenomenal takeoff in my mind, because I have thoughts, O. K.? By the way, your wife really likes her candy, doesn't she? People talk about it a lot, but I don't know. I honestly don't know if she likes her candy. Could be. Looks like it. Are there any snacks out there? Be right back. (A couple of beats) Wow. Look at all these passengers. It's unbelievable, like, there must be five thousand of you, and that doesn't include the ten thousand people who the terrible gate agents wouldn't let on board. I'm not a big fan of gate agents,

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I can tell you that. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. They turned away thousands of people. Let the people board, let the people board! Right? Anyway, it's so, so great to be here in the first-class cabin. We love our first-class passengers, believe me. We love them. And we love our vets. Where's my vet? Where's my vet? There he is! Without the legs. It's a disgrace how he's treated, he's treated so badly, like you wouldn't believe. But we love him. Like we love our Afro-Americans. Where's my African-American? Oh, there you are. I didn't see you, and you know why? I don't see race. At least, not in Trump Tower. No way, because you people live in certain areas. I won't say where, because it wouldn't be very nice. O.K., hell. You live in hell. With the nasty drug deals and no schools and ninety-per-cent unemployment and rent-controlled apartments - and, by the way, these rent-controlled apartments? Give me a break, right? These people are living like royalty! Only in hell, just so you understand. (A beat) Right, here we go again. So rude, folks. Don't hurt him. Let him go home to his war zone. That's O.K. Free speech. We love free speech. Guaranteed by Paul Revere's ride. But it's sad. Very sad what's happening in our country. We are so divided. Hit him again. In the face. He's a professional agitator, folks. This guy was given a boarding pass by Crooked Hillary, I guarantee it. A hundred per cent.

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PENCE: Ladies and gentlemen, this is your co-pilot speaking. I'm afraid we're going to have to return to the airport. Controllers everywhere are denying us access to airspace. Please fasten your seat belts in preparation for landing.

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TRUMP: What a surprise. The corrupt air controllers are treating me very, very badly. But I'll tell you this, folks - people that hit me, they go down. They go down big-league, trust me. O.K., folks, prepare for the most phenomenal landing in the history of the world. A landing like you won't believe. When it's over, you'll be begging me, "Please, Mr. Trump, take us up again so we can have another beautiful landing."

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(We hear the engines start to decelerate.)

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TRUMP: Um ... where's Karen? PENCE: Candy break.

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BLACKOUT.

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The New Yorker, October 24, 2016 33

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"We're Number 61!"

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(Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder. -ARNOLD TOYNBEE, British historian)

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We Americans are a patriotic tribe, and we tend to wax lyrical about our land of plenty and opportunity. "We have never been a nation of haves and have-nots," Senator Marco Rubio once declared. "We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves, of people who have made it and people who will make it." We proudly assert, "We're number 1!" and in terms of overall economic and military strength, we are. But in other respects our self-confidence is delusional.

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Here's the blunt, harsh truth.

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America ranks number 40 in child mortality, according to the Social Progress Index, which is based on research by three Nobel Prizewinning economists and covers 146 countries for which there is reliable data. We rank number 32 in internet access, number 39 in access to clean drinking water, number 50 in personal safety and number 61 in high-school enrollment. Somehow, "We're number 61!" doesn't seem so proud a boast. Overall, the Social Progress Index ranks the United States number 25 in well-being of citizens, behind all the other members of the G7 as well as significantly poorer countries like Portugal

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

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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)