Uncle Gus

He liked to socialize and have a good time, but he could just as easily keep to himself. If there was something to talk about, he would talk, but when there wasn’t, as often as not, he’d be out on the back porch of the house listening to the wind in the pine needles, thinking quietly his thoughts as he added twigs to the fire that almost every night he would light. He hardly ever spoke to me about his family, but I knew that he revered his brother and tended to blame his mother for his father’s suicide. Obviously, it wasn’t my great-grandmother’s fault. Being clinically depressed was almost the norm in that family, with a father and two children who eventually killed themselves. For this reason, it must have been easier for my great-uncle Gus to blame someone else for what happened than to come to terms with a kind of genetic curse.

A lot of people thought that he wasn’t as serious as his brother, and maybe it was the clothes that my great-uncle wore, the straw hats, the wrinkled guayabera shirts, or the stained pair of khaki pants that he tied together with a piece of string instead of a belt. Or perhaps it was the Fords that he drove, the secondhand jalopies with balding treads and seats that were more a mix of duct tape and newspapers than of plastic and metal. Certainly rust didn’t faze him. A car was worth keeping only for as long as you didn’t have to spend any money on it, he always said. Or maybe it was just the sheer number of jobs that he’d had, everything from selling schooners in the Caribbean to working as a cook to single-handedly writing and printing a weekly newspaper in the Bahamas.

Of course, it would have been hard to match his brother’s productivity or fame. He was in a different league altogether, but when Gus finally did put himself on the literary map with a bestseller, he blew most of the advance on The Free Republic of New Gondwana, an 8-by-30-foot barge, which he anchored just outside the territorial waters of Jamaica. The platform and the living quarters that he shared with his wife and daughter were the first phase of an island that, eventually, would double as a marine research station and center for international education. As its first president, he issued colorful stamps, petitioned the U.N. for recognition, and minted a set of silver coins with his portrait. His republic, however, came to an abrupt end a few months after its inauguration when a hurricane destroyed it.

illustration_uncle_gus_items

Luckily for Gus, his wife had taken the precaution of buying a house in Miami before Gondwana, and what was left of the book deal money disappeared into the Gulf Stream. Their elegant villa on the southern tip of Di Lido Island had Spanish tiles and was painted white, but it was hard to see from the road. Gus didn’t care much for gardening, and the vegetation that grew in the subtropical heat created an almost impenetrable wall around the property.

In the days before my parents separated, I often went to their house, but afterwards, my mother wouldn’t take us there anymore. She was schizophrenic, and her voices had begun to blame Gus for the fact that my father had met and fallen in love with another woman. When I was 13, she had a major breakdown. We were changing houses about once a year, on average, and had just moved into a new apartment in August, but by December my mother’s paranoia had convinced her that the neighborhood was no longer safe. In reality no one but the landlord and our next-door neighbor knew that we were there, but in her mind, there were always people who were out to get us.

She was so convinced we needed to run that at one point she even thought of becoming a nun and letting the Catholic Church worry about the three of us. I told her that you had to be a virgin to pass their entrance exam, but she didn’t think that was something I should joke about and went to mass that night to pray for my soul. She wanted to disappear into the protective arms of Jesus, but when the church wouldn’t let her in, something clicked in her head, and she started to drink heavily. She spent a lot of money on Jim Beam and beer and would drive away in her yellow Volkswagen, never telling us where she was going, and then in the morning, I’d see her weaving down the road towards the parking lot after an all-night binge. Every time she made it back, I was always amazed that she hadn’t killed herself or totaled the car.

I expected the worst when a policeman finally knocked on our door, but all he wanted to know was if there was anyone who could take care of us over the weekend. Our mother had been arrested for drunk driving, and they weren’t going to let her out for a day or two. I told him that we could stay at the house of one of my school friends, and after he looked up the address, he piled us in the backseat of his patrol car. They lived on the other side of town, about 20 minutes from our apartment, and driving over there, we were very quiet. We were all nervous and worried about our mother and trying to make light of the situation. He smiled and then said, “You see all those people out there? They think that you’ve been arrested.” Years later, remembering that day and the ride, I thought about how kind he’d been and how difficult it must be to be a cop.

We stayed with my friend until Sunday evening, and his mother was very generous and bought us enough groceries to fill our fridge before she took us home. My mom was out of jail, but two weeks later, she was stopped again by the police. This time, however, it was my mother’s priest who came to our house to ask if we had any relatives in Miami. Immediately I thought of Uncle Gus, and the priest said that, given my mom’s condition, if no one in the family took care of us, the state of Florida would probably have to put each of us in separate foster homes.

illustration_uncle_gus_house

Fortunately, there was never any question in Gus’ mind that we would stay with them. He was not about to let his brother’s grandchildren become the wards of the state of Florida. You took care of your own, and it didn’t matter to him if everyone else in the family thought otherwise. Gus and his wife were hardly what you could call rich, but what little they had they shared with us. In the four years that we were there, they did everything they could to make us feel at home, and while it was certainly an improvement over my mother’s voices and erratic moods, in the beginning, it was hard for me to adjust. I felt as if I had no control over my life and that even the hospitality I’d found could disappear if I didn’t behave. I wanted to be with my father, but that wasn’t going to happen. My mother was still in a hospital, and I couldn’t accept that living with Uncle Gus was the best that I could hope for. I wrote countless letters to my father, begging him to take me away, but he never wrote back, and when I’d finally given up on the idea of ever living with him again, I started to keep a journal, and the journal eventually led to stories — short pieces that I wrote for myself.

I was a skinny kid in 1973, as thin as only a 13-year-old can be, and I remember once hearing Uncle Gus joke that I would never be as tall and as strong as he was. So I asked him what he was like when he was my age. Suddenly, he lost his smile and, with a serious face, said, “Exactly like you.” Looking at me, he must have seen himself, a shy and introspective young man.

He knew what I was going through. His own father had killed himself when he was about as old as I was, and because of the financial disaster that his mother had been left with, he was sent to live with a sister and her husband in another part of the country. He never told me about this, but once when I was writing in the dining room of their house, and this was August, and it was very hot and humid, and I was wearing nothing but a pair of khaki Bermuda shorts, shirtless, and without any shoes, Uncle Gus came up behind me quietly, and he put his hands on my shoulders and said, “If there’s any truth in what they say that an unhappy childhood makes for a great artist, then you’ll go far, Mike.”

He said nothing else, but that was enough. Coming as it did from my uncle, I think that I have never received or ever will receive as great a compliment in my life. He taught me everything I know about generosity and sacrifice. He could never give me much, materially, but in his own way and through his actions, he showed me what was important in life.

Four years after I’d left their house, my Uncle Gus’ diabetes had deteriorated to the point where his doctors were going to have to amputate both his legs. Not wanting to be a burden to his family, he put an end to his life.

Loving Lavender: Sweet Smell in the Country

Who doesn’t love lavender? The spiky, flowering Mediterranean native of the mint family has it all: fragrance, form, flavor, and medicinal value. In Roman times, a pound of lavender flowers would cost about 100 denarii, which was about a month’s wages for a farm laborer. Today, you can grow lavender almost anyplace in the country as long as you have a sunny spot. Be aware, however, that lavender needs lots of light, good drainage, and proper care in the early stages.

For some tips on lavender growing in a hostile environment, the Country Gentleman visited the cottage lavender farm of Kieran “Kie” and Elizabeth “Libbe” O’Connor. Former city folk and gardening enthusiasts, the O’Connors turned eight acres of Indiana clay (a soil guaranteed to kill lavender plants) into a flourishing retirement business. They provide culinary lavender to local chefs and sell lavender sachets, bouquets, and bundles. “Lavender is really about getting it established, so in two or three years you say, ‘that looks really good,’ ” says Libbe.

“Lavender does not do well in clay or anything that holds water around it,” Kie says. “Wood mulch is not good. Use decorative rock or something that provides reflective heat and allows airflow around it.” The O’Connors nurture lavender in raised beds, which are at least 12 inches deep by 12 inches wide, with a mix of equal parts topsoil, compost, sand or pea gravel, and a smattering of lime. “The other big thing is to know how to prune them,” Kie says. “Some varieties of hybrids (Lavandula intermedia) you prune only in fall because they set buds in winter. The true lavenders (Lavandula angustifolia) you prune early in spring and throughout summer. By keeping them pruned, you get inner growth and a nicely shaped plant.”

How to Harvest and Dry Lavender

Harvest lavender just as the buds are beginning to open, when the essential oils are at their peak. This will ensure the flowers retain their scent and bluish color when used in sachets or potpourris.

1. Take a bundle of lavender and cut the stems above the leaves using garden shears. Leave a few inches of green growth.

2. Wrap several stems together with a rubber band.

3. Hang the lavender upside down in a dark dry place and allow seven to 10 days for the stems to dry.

4. To remove the buds from the stems, place the stems on a large towel and roll into a tube. Roll the tube back and forth on a hard surface. This will remove the buds from the stems without crushing them.

5. Store the buds in an airtight container for use in sachets, potpourris, or recipes.

Notes from the Field

Host a Corn Roast!

Spark a little magic among neighbors with an old-fashioned corn roast. Whether planning a barefoot affair or something more stylish, here are tips for the host:

Buy Fresh. If purchasing from a farmers’ market, ask if the corn has been picked that day. Otherwise, peel part of the husk back and prick a kernel using your fingernail. If it oozes a milky liquid, the corn is fresh.

Grow your own! Garden-friendly varieties include Peaches ’n Cream, Trinity, and Ambrosia.

For moist results: Soak an ear of corn, husk and all, in water for about an hour. Once the husk is fully penetrated, set directly on a medium-hot grill. Then cook, turning occasionally until the outer husk becomes brown and brittle, about 25 to 30 minutes.

Serve  with  the  fixings. Set out corny condiments such as shredded Parmesan cheese, seasoned salts, or butter infused with fresh herbs, hot sauce, or lime juice.

Spotlight on Sunflowers

Available in a dizzying array of sizes and colors, sunflowers are easy to grow and attract birds. But did you know that their seeds are packed with protein, healthy fats, fiber, vitamin E, and phytochemicals for you, too? It’s true!

To harvest these pint-sized powerhouses, allow the flower heads to dry in the garden. Just be sure to cover them with cheesecloth (or even nylons) so the birds don’t get to them first. You can tell that the seeds are ready for picking when most of the petals have dropped and the back of the flower head is brown. Cut the seed heads off and rub the seeds out by hand.

To eat, soak the seeds overnight in salt water (use 1/4 to 1/2 cup of salt per two quarts of water). Drain and dry on paper towels. Then roast them in a shallow pan at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 to 40 minutes until golden brown.

Once roasted, sunflower seeds can be added to green salads, used in baked goods, or just eaten as a snack. Plus, they’re the perfect substitute for family members suffering from nut allergies.

Water-wise Gardening

Conserving water is good for the environment, plus it saves you time and money. Here are some smart watering practices to try today:

1. Group plants with similar watering needs. This reduces the likelihood of wasting water on neighboring plants that don’t need it.

2. Apply mulch. Doing so an inch or two around plants helps conserve soil moisture. Try organic mulches such as grass clippings or shredded leaves. Eventually, these break down and enrich the soil.

3. Avoid overhead sprinklers. Use soaker hoses or drip irrigation systems instead. These devices deliver water right where it’s needed — around the plant’s root zone — and with less evaporation and runoff.

4. Select drought-tolerant plants: California poppy (Eschscholzia californica), catmint (Nepeta x faassenii), lantana (Lantana camara), snow-in-summer (Cerastium tomentosum), and yarrow (Achillea millefolium).

Relaxing Lavender Mint Tea
(Makes 1 cup)

1 teaspoon fresh or 1/2 teaspoon dried lavender buds
1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons fresh mint leaves or 2 teaspoons dried mint

Combine lavender flowers and mint in a teapot.

Pour in 1 cup boiling water and steep for 5 minutes.

Back from the Abyss

Somewhere in America, someone may have been immune from the recent economic turmoil that rocked the housing market, the stock market, the job market, and every market in-between. That someone has yet to be found.

Few — amateurs and financial professionals alike — anticipated anything like the 57 percent drop in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index over the 17 months prior to this March. No one can be sure if the worst is over. But out of this greatest sag in our economy since the Depression, some important lessons can be gleaned.

Here are a few tips from the pros to help you recover — and then some — in the years ahead.

Be True to Yourself
“It’s one thing to say you can stand to lose, say, 25 percent of your portfolio; it’s quite another to actually see it disappear,” says Matthew D. Gelfand, Ph.D., CFA, CFP®, managing director and chief investment officer of Lynx Investment Advisory in Washington, D.C. “Many investors discovered that they weren’t quite as able to handle risk in reality as they were in the abstract.” Gelfand suggests that moving forward, you seriously question how much volatility you can truly stomach. “Put market risk into very concrete terms. If your portfolio today is worth $300,000 and you have two-thirds in stocks and the stock market again tumbles by half (assuming the worst-case scenario), you will be left with $200,000. How exactly will that affect your current lifestyle and your retirement plans? Could you live with that?”

Diversify Your Portfolio Intelligently
As you know from just about any other investment article you’ve ever read, diversification is all-important. But a lot of people who thought they were well-diversified before the recent debacle really weren’t. “It’s still important to diversify within your stock holdings, but as we’ve seen, you should pay much more attention to making sure you divide your portfolio into stocks, bonds, and cash,” says Christine Benz, director of personal finance at Morningstar, a leading provider of independent investment research. Stocks offer the potential for highest return, but also position you for potential loss. Although getting the optimal mix of stocks, bonds, and cash involves many factors, a good rule of thumb, says Benz, is to not invest any money in the stock market that you might need in the next seven to 10 years. “Prior to the recent collapse, most financial professionals were saying five years, but that clearly isn’t long enough,” she says.

Trust in Uncle Sam
Within the bond side of your portfolio, diversification is also key. During the dark days of 2008, when stocks were sinking fast, corporate bonds surprisingly sank, too. U.S. Treasury bonds, in contrast, soared by nearly 14 percent. “Corporate bonds were overestimated to hold up during the financial crisis, and the diversification power of U.S. Treasuries was underestimated,” says Benz. She suggests that a good portion of your bond holdings, at least one-fourth, should be in bonds that hold the full backing of the U.S. government and tend to rally in times of financial worry. Treasury bonds come in two basic flavors — conventional and inflation-adjusted, otherwise known as TIPS. You can buy both kinds directly from the U.S. Department of the Treasury at treasurydirect.gov, or you can purchase them in fund form through a company, such as Vanguard (vanguard.com) or iShares (ishares.com), that offers various Treasury fund options at very low cost.

Don’t Lose Faith
You don’t want to go overboard and invest all of your money in the safest securities such as Treasuries or CDs, warns Frank Armstrong III, CLU, CFP®, AIFA®, founder and principal of Investor Solutions in south Florida and coauthor of Save Your Retirement. In order to recoup whatever you lost in the recent downturn, you’re going to need the growth power of stocks. “The stock market has seen serious slides in the past and has always come back to recover nicely,” says Armstrong, who has more than 35 years experience in the securities and financial services industry. “Stocks, over the long-run, have far outperformed bonds and CDs in the past, and will very likely continue to do so in the future,” he says. In only two months after the stock market’s low on March 9, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index soared approximately 35 percent — in the absence of any good economic news. Armstrong sees that as a sign of the stock market’s resilience. He recommends that you invest in stocks through low-cost index mutual funds or exchange-traded funds that track large segments of the market. Consider such fund options from Vanguard, Tiaa-Cref (tiaa-cref.org), or State Street Global Advisors (spdrs.com).

Destroy Your Debt
Perhaps one of the biggest lessons learned from the economic turmoil of late is the peril of debt, says Morningstar’s Benz. “The whole crisis, which started with our financial institutions’ overindulgence in debt, carries a strong lesson for individual households,” she says. “We all need to look at our personal balance sheets and make certain that debt doesn’t drown us.” Start by trimming your credit card use and then perhaps begin to chip away at the principal of your mortgage, suggests Benz. “As you near retirement, one of your goals should be to enter that phase of life with as little debt as possible.”

Green Building: It’s a Way of Life

Think about “green” building practices and you probably envision such things as high-efficiency windows and lighting, solar panels, or maybe paints and carpeting that leave out the noxious fumes. Those are all correct answers, but only part of the picture.

When it comes to home projects, going green is a broad philosophy that encompasses not only the products you use, but also which projects you choose, the attitude with which you approach them, the people who participate, and even the size and design of your home. That’s the advice from Steve Thomas, host of Planet Green’s Renovation Nation and former longtime host of This Old House on PBS. “You don’t have to put in $40,000 worth of solar panels or drill a geothermal well,” Thomas says. “The accumulation of smaller things — if we all do them — adds up to big numbers.”

Consider one of his recent home projects — adding a pergola to the exterior of a home in Maine. “An outdoor structure like the pergola is not as directly green as water conservation or solar panels,” he acknowledges. “But outdoor structures are a way to increase your space. It gets you outside, and you don’t need as big a house if you use the outside.”

If the house is not as big, that means it doesn’t require as much energy to heat or cool. And if more time is spent in outside spaces, the air conditioner does not need to run as much. “My general philosophy is to keep the space as small as possible and provide transitional space that gets you out of the house and into your yard,” Thomas says.

illustration_pergolaThe next green consideration in a project like this involves materials. What’s the greenest choice for building a deck or pergola? An obvious pick is Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified lumber. But perhaps the most important factor — even more important than FSC-certified status — is durability and a lack of required maintenance, says Thomas. Materials that don’t last long must be replaced more often — and that means harvesting, shipping, and disposing of more building materials. Better to choose materials that will stand the test of time, such as Western red cedar, which can survive the weather without regular painting or treating.

The downside: The most durable materials may cost more at the outset. Consider, however, that their durability pays off in the long-run through lack of required maintenance and a much longer lifespan. That was Thomas’ thinking with his Maine project, which also included a large deck.

“There is nothing that requires maintenance on the outside of the building. It’s not going to self-destruct. It will be resistant to weather and wind,” he says. And applying the less-is-more design philosophy helps with the bottom line, he adds. “If you simplify a project, you can afford to spend more on materials. I kept it simple and dialed up the detailing and materials. Luxury to me is not having a lot to take care of.”

Another important point, says Thomas, is what a home project gives the family — especially the kids or grandkids — in terms of relationships, experiences, and learning opportunities. “For me, the first green principle is to make a connection between the human hand and making things,”
he explains. “I always tried to figure out projects I could do with my son that made the connection between the human hand and stuff. You don’t have to go buy something — you can make it!”

Steve Thomas
Steve Thomas
Courtesy: Planet Green/David Johnson

For working with children, Thomas says simple projects are the best — “stuff you can put together relatively quickly and simply. These are life lessons. You plant the seed, and 20 years later, in my own son’s life, I can see trends that were established early on.”

And if those life lessons include an appreciation for things homemade rather than assembled in China, packaged, loaded onto container ships, and sent to the local discount store for impulsive purchases — well, that’s a green lesson. “I would argue that in and of itself is green.”

A great green family project is constructing a raised garden bed and planting it with vegetables. (It’s not hard to do — see the sidebar.) Add another green component by building a garden bench nearby. Kits make the project easy for completion with kids.

And consider installing a rain barrel for watering the garden, Thomas suggests. Kits are available for this project, too, though some people recycle barrels from food or drink manufacturers. Either way, they can be hooked into a downspout and outfitted with a spigot and hose at the bottom. “It’s deeply
satisfying to use water that you have harvested from the sky,” he says. “I like to call it ‘cloud juice.’ ”

Green projects are great, but it’s clear that Thomas sees green building as a way of life, not just the way families fill their time on weekends. “This is not adding onto an existing lifestyle,” he says. “This is going back to — or forward to — a different lifestyle where we recognize that we’re stewards of the planet, not consumers of it.”

Raised Garden Bed: A Green Project for the Family

illustration_raised_bedLooking for a weekend project that’s good for kids and grandkids, easy to accomplish, and pays lots of dividends? Thomas recommends a raised garden bed. It’s a project that’s green in a number of ways.

It’s a simple project — basically a lumber frame that holds soil deep enough (about 12 to 16 inches) for planting vegetables. Plus, you don’t need very many tools, Thomas points out. “Most of the big home centers will cut lumber to fit. You can load it into your station wagon and bring it home.” Just determine how big you want your raised garden to be and have lumber cut to fit. You can pick something grown to last, such as Western red cedar. Or, if cost is an issue, try a less durable wood.

It will likely hold together for a few years — long enough to provide a lot of enjoyment and bushels full of vegetables.

Assemble the lumber into a sturdy square frame using stainless steel screws or timber screws. Line the bottom with geotextile or landscape fabric, then fill it with fresh loam — a soil comprised of clay and sand containing humus (available at home centers in large bags). “Off you go,” Thomas says, “and you can plant immediately.”

Breakthroughs on the Brink: Turning the Tide on MS

Richard Burt, M.D., chief of immunotherapy for autoimmune diseases at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, and his research team appear to have reversed the neurological dysfunction of early-stage multiple sclerosis patients by using the patients’ own adult stem cells, thereby “resetting” their immune systems.

In May one of the study participants, Edwin McClure, walked across the stage to receive his degree after completing a rigorous graduate program at Virginia Commonwealth University. The young man appeared strong, healthy, and confident.

The scene was in stark contrast to four years earlier when the high school star football player was battling a severe cold, fatigue, and inexplicable visual changes.

“It was like someone turned down a dimmer switch,” he recalls. “My mom thought the problems were due to sinus pressure and would eventually go away, but when I got over the cold and still had difficulty seeing, she took me to an optometrist.”

When nothing surfaced during visits to an optometrist and an ophthalmologist, McClure was referred to a neurologist for follow-up.

After a series of tests and an MRI scan, the doctor delivered the diagnosis — multiple sclerosis (MS). The visual changes the young man was experiencing were due to optic neuritis, an inflammation of the optic nerve that occurs in approximately 50 percent of patients with the disease.

McClure was placed on steroids and interferon injections — a regimen that successfully controlled symptoms for two years. But when the MS started to break through, his physician switched to another medication.

“Over the course of four months, I started to develop an allergic reaction to the drug,” McClure says. “Meanwhile, my disease was still progressing.”

McClure was at a crossroads: begin medications with significantly greater risk of side effects or, as his neurologist suggested, investigate a promising clinical trial underway at Northwestern University in Chicago.

He chose the latter, qualified, and enrolled in Dr. Burt’s study. McClure was one of the 21 patients in the trial, ages 20 to 53, who had relapsing-remitting MS for an average of five years and had not responded to at least six months of treatment with interferon beta. After an average follow-up of three years posttreatment, 17 patients (81 percent) improved and none got worse, according to Dr. Burt, whose findings were published in the March issue of The Lancet Neurology.

Resetting the Immune System

Dr. Richard Burt, M.D.
Dr. Richard Burt, M.D.
Courtesy Dr. Richard Burt, M.D.

“The concept is that your immune stem cells — your blood stem cells — could be used to regenerate a new immune system in virtually any autoimmune disease,” Dr. Burt tells the Post. “If we treated patients in the early relapsing-remitting phase of MS who were experiencing frequent acute attacks despite the use of interferon, patients got better. Six months after the procedure, they were even better. By two years, they seemed to have reached their peak improvement in neurological function. Most people tend to be early- to mid-range in their disability, and that’s when this therapy is really effective. But if you treat MS in a later stage, called secondary progressive MS, it doesn’t really help. In this stage, patients experience a steady worsening of irreversible neurological damage.”
In the procedure, Dr. Burt and colleagues first push immune stem cells from the bone marrow into the blood by using a growth factor and a drug called Cytoxan (cyclophosphamide). Ten days later, they harvest cells from the blood via catheter. The cells are then separated, frozen, and cultured to ensure that none are contaminated with bacteria during the process. Next, the patients are treated with drugs to inhibit the old immune system, and then the frozen stem cells are thawed and infused back into the patients to make a new immune system.

Reversing the Tide

 

Edwin McClure

“I started to feel improvement while I was in the hospital,” McClure says. “I realized that I didn’t need my glasses to see. At home my parents noticed that my balance was improving and that I didn’t seem as fatigued as before. Honestly, these changes started within the first month after coming home. My life continued to improve. By the third month, I was actually going to the YMCA to exercise.”

Three years after treatment, McClure remains off medication and now experiences no symptoms of MS.

Like McClure, the majority of trial participants experienced benefits.

“We’ve seen patients who have had marked improvement in symptoms,” notes Dr. Burt, principal investigator of the clinical trial. “Your nervous system controls everything, so the part of the brain attacked by MS determines where you have a problem. Some patients had trouble walking — falling down and having to hold on to things — but after the procedure, they had marked improvement. Others had issues with incontinence, and that’s gone away. If you’re worried about incontinence, that’s quite remarkable. Numbness, tingling, inability to feel things, visual problems — blurred and double vision — can all reverse. Basically, any type of deficit can reverse. In some patients, we actually had complete reversal — everything went away, and they were completely normal in all functional exams.
In others, symptoms never completely reversed, but improved dramatically.”

The study participants are also off all conventional disease-modifying medications now used to slow the rate of disease progression.

While the small trial is only a first step, the results offer a completely new way to treat MS. “This is the first time in the history of any therapy used to treat MS where it actually reverses neurological deficit,” stresses Dr. Burt.

“All other therapies were studied or approved for their ability to slow the rate of progression — in terms of clinical deficits or MRI load of lesion burden — but nothing has, up to this time, reversed deficit. That’s what’s exciting. However, I want to stress that we cannot say it is a cure and current results with three years of follow-up are encouraging.”

Dr. Burt and colleagues are enrolling patients in a larger trial to test the procedure in a randomized setting. “If the results of the trial hold up, I believe it will help open the door for it to be accepted as standard therapy,” adds Dr. Burt.

At present, clinical trials are underway at the University of Calgary in Canada, the University of São Paulo in Brazil, and at Northwestern University. If interested in learning more about the trial, e-mail [email protected].

A Different Approach

Sergeant Preston Walker
Sergeant Preston WalkerCourtesy Sergeant Preston Walker

After undergoing conventional therapy for MS for several years, Fort Worth police sergeant Preston Walker learned about a new treatment for autoimmune disorders. Researchers were utilizing adult stem cells derived from cord blood at The Institute of Cellular Medicine in Costa Rica. Walker inquired about the potential of the treatment for multiple sclerosis.

“We knew that if the treatment worked, the potential benefits for multiple sclerosis patients could be limitless,” says Walker.

Dr. Neil Riordan, CEO of the Institute, suggested a therapy under consideration — using stem cells derived from a patient’s fat tissue. In May 2008, Walker flew to the clinic where doctors removed samples of his abdominal fat through a mini-liposuction, drawing out stem cells, which were later re-injected. According to Dr. Riordan, Walker and a colleague were the first to undergo this treatment protocol. “My quality of life has improved significantly,” Walker told the Post. “The problems with depression, fatigue, and balance have been corrected. I feel really good.”

In June 2009, Walker, who continues to take Avonex as a maintenance drug, plans a return trip to Costa Rica for a “tune-up,” as he puts it. “I’m curious to see if they can further improve my cognitive abilities.”

The American State Fair

Who can forget their first visit to the fair — a magical land of sights and sounds and smells beyond the reach of teachers, bosses, worries, and chores? There is nothing quite like that strange, veritable city that rises anew year after year on the outskirts of town to fill youths with wide-eyed wonder and adults with vivid memories of their own childhoods. For many people and many generations, the fair has occupied its own special place on the calendar and in the heart.

The American state fair is a conceptual curiosity, a celebration of agriculture that is at once a fantastic departure from the discipline and labor of the farming life. Even at the earliest fairs, agricultural displays and discussions competed for space and attention with horse races, carnivals, and shows. And innovations only widened the gap. The plowing contest became the tractor pull, and the horse race led to auto and motorcycle races and automobile stunt shows. Horse and hog contests blossomed into competitions among every kind of animal and vegetable, with baking and sewing contests right alongside. Like the prizewinning livestock and produce they showcased, state fairs expanded in size and number, becoming a national institution.

Agricultural fairs reach back to biblical times and promise to stretch far into the future. In America it was around the time of the Civil War when many of the country’s best-known and largest state fairs were first held. Before that, fairs were mostly local or county-wide affairs, more serious and less entertaining. But after the Civil War, the thrill shows, contests, and pageants that became such an integral part of our fair experience appeared to enliven the event.

The farming community began to shrink after World War I — a trend that accelerated after World War II. At the time of the Civil War, the vast majority of Americans supported themselves through agriculture; by 1940, only a quarter of all Americans lived on farms, and by 1980, that number was down to three of every hundred. Rural America was disappearing, and although fairs were thriving, the crowds in attendance were more often city or suburban dwellers who saw livestock about as often as they saw animals in zoos.

Fairs have changed with the people who have sponsored them, but tradition and innovation remain constant. In the 1860s and 1870s, fairs closed at dusk because gaslights and electricity were still decades in the future. Implements from that time, then considered revolutionary, live on in exhibits of agricultural history. By the 1950s, the Texas fair was installing a monorail, and the Indiana fair was displaying a replica of an atomic pile at an exhibit of nuclear energy. But at both fairs, the venerable Ferris wheel, invented at the turn of the century, was still a centerpiece of the midway. New meets old at the fair, and always takes something fresh from the encounter.

A retrospective of state fair snapshots and anecdotes includes a cavalcade of exciting, old, funny, heart-warming, startling, and amazing things. Monkeys dressed in hats danced to minstrel music at the Ohio State Fair in 1853. Monkeys drove miniature hot rods in California in the 1950s (the first aid tent, one year, treated 10 people for monkey bites, along with the usual hundreds of stomachaches and dozens of lost children).

Fairs held butter-making contests. A dairy company presented a butter sculpture of Teddy Roosevelt, posed with his foot on a dead lion; a live lion once rode in a racecar. Elsewhere, a butter sculptor carved a John Deere tractor. Fairs featured tractors when they were newfangled inventions that some farmers figured would never replace horses. Those same tractors appeared at displays of antique farm equipment 100 years later, where they evoked nostalgia for a simpler time.

Sure, fairs are corny — that’s why folks love them. Where else could you see a replica of the Statue of Liberty made of ears of corn? Or the state’s tallest corn stalk? Or watch contestants vie to slice off the longest apple peel? Or see a Liberty Bell made of apples?

Such attractions were irresistible.

Pretty girls wore new styles during fashion shows. Pretty girls in coochie shows wore not much at all. Pretty cows had their own events, as did fat cattle.

You could see the eruption of Mount Vesuvius depicted on a huge mural. The Battle of Manila in fireworks shot high into the night sky. A daredevil shot from a cannon. A car (the Torpedobile) shot from a cannon.

Big shots gave speeches. Trick shots entertained the crowds. Suffragettes rubbed elbows with prohibitionists; bootleggers offered shots of illicit liquor. Bamboozlers thrived. Bamboo novelty canes sold like hotcakes.

Parched fairgoers swilled draft beer and eyed draft horses. Draftees poured into fairgrounds during four wars, turning barns into barracks. One fairground became a prisoner-of-war camp during the Civil War. At another fairground, a huge family campground has been popular for generations.

At fairs from Florida to Alaska, farmers and ranchers have shown enough livestock to fill 10,000 Noah’s arks, and gardeners enough jars of fruits and vegetables to build a pyramid for a pharaoh.

You can see cages of pigeons with names you’ve never heard: Oriental Frills, Modenas, Fantails, Birmingham Rollers, and White Kings.

You could have seen Blue Boy (the prizewinning hog in Phil Stong’s novel State Fair) or Old Oscar (the Iowa State Fair’s famous sturgeon, who spent 28 years as an attraction at the fair before dying in his tank on the last day of the fair in 1954). You can still peer up at Big Tex, the giant robot who greets people (in English and Spanish) at the Texas State Fair.

Honest Abe spoke at the Wisconsin State Fair in 1859 (he was paid $150, which included his expenses). A century later, the Kentucky State Fair held Abraham Lincoln look-alike contests.

Racers galore vied for ribbons, trophies, and loot; events featured horses, mules, camels, burros, dogs, boys, people riding on bikes or riding in wheelbarrows. Ostriches raced. At the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, an entrepreneur named E. R. Johnson of Fallbrook, California, did a steady business by serving omelets made from the eggs laid by his flock of 28 ostriches.

For generations, Americans took fairs to heart and expanded them in an unprecedented fashion. Along the way, the state fair became a piece of bedrock Americana, with elements so familiar that they seem quintessentially domestic.

The reason for this popularity is that, throughout their sprawling, tumultuous history, state fairs have always reflected the basic elements of the national character: the strengths and weaknesses, the common sense and faddishness, the unities and discords that have long marked Americans’ unique development as a culture.


Gallery


You may also like:

State Fair State of Mind with 2009 State Fair Directory
Six-hundred-pound buttered cows, walleye-on-a-stick snacks, cow-birthing tents, and alligator wrestling can only mean one thing: It’s state fair season in America.



Reprinted from The American State Fair by Derek Nelson, © Derek Nelson 2003.

Charles Osgood: As I See It

To me America is as beautiful as ever in more ways than one. Our land is filled not only with natural beauty, but also with the beauty of people whose faces reflect every corner of this earth and whose character is distinctively American and recognizable as such anywhere on the planet. In that sense our nation has grown more beautiful with age. I mean no disparagement of the past. The American story has been inspiring and continues to be. The central and enduring theme of that story remains the quest for freedom and opportunity in a land where each person can think and dream and create new possibilities for a better life. Craig Ferguson, the Scotsman who hosts CBS Television’s The Late, Late Show, has become a proud American citizen because, as he once said in an interview, “America is the best idea for a country anybody ever had.”

We’ve had setbacks along the way of course; hard times and wars, struggles against the enemies of human liberty including ignorance, intolerance, injustice, and even slavery. We’ve come through though. We have “overcome” as the song says. And, taking full advantage of our birthright, we’re still here in every part of this country, thinking, working, playing, praying, and pursuing happiness in our own ways. The journey isn’t over, but look how far we’ve come!

The people of France grasped the essence of what this country is about more than a century ago when they gave us Bartholdi’s famous statue that stands in New York Harbor, a woman holding high a lamp. We call her the Statue of Liberty. They named her La Liberté éclairant le Monde or “Liberty Enlightening the World.” I think she’s still beautiful, don’t you?

So did a man I knew who spent years on the road, traveling to every state in the union, discovering America and Americans. Charles Kuralt died on the Fourth of July, 1997. He was my friend, longtime CBS colleague and predecessor on CBS News Sunday Morning. The “road” for him did not mean the interstate. And the people he sought out were not in the big-city centers of finance, industry, and mass media. Kuralt and his camera crew used the back roads to get to the small towns where they found those wonderfully colorful individuals whose stories would often end the CBS Evening News. Kuralt believed that these Americans could tell us at least as much about the character of this country as the politicians and other supposed leaders who populate most of the rest of the news stories on a given day.

When people asked Kuralt about the mood of the country or how Americans felt about some burning issue of the day, he would always smile and tell them that America is much too big a country, too diverse, too free to pigeonhole people the way the pollsters try to. “It depends on who you are and where you are, what’s going on in your life, and what your dreams are,” he’d say. Kuralt hated the idea of dividing the people of this country into voting blocks or into red states and blue states.

After traveling around this country so much, Kuralt used to say he didn’t think in terms of state borders anymore. He thought instead of geography and geology. He thought of the great natural formations of rock and water, the mountain ranges, the lakes and rivers. He thought of canyons and forests, starkly beautiful deserts, and fertile plains. These were what shaped not only the land, but the people too, and determined what was important to them, how they would live, what they would love, the mouth-watering regional foods they’d eat, and the delicious accents in which they’d speak. These things meant much more than lines on a map. With modern technology comes some creeping homogenization of course. You’ll see the same signs in the airports and on the interstates, hear the same accents on the radio and TV, and eat the same burgers, pizzas, and fried chicken at the fast-food chains coast to coast. But you can still find the real thing, the real accents, foods, music, and people of the real America. They’re out there if you look for them. Kuralt was always looking for them.

As Kuralt and his crew would pull into a small town, there’d be a welcome sign telling travelers what the locals wanted to boast about. What year it was founded in New England, population in the rural south, elevation in the mountain states. Once at a CBS Radio convention in Phoenix, a station owner from Montana came up to Kuralt and me, introduced himself, and said, “I want to ask you two Charleses a question. How far can you see from your house?”

I was living in New Jersey at the time, and Kuralt in Greenwich Village. “Not much more than across the street,” we admitted.

The Montana man beamed and told us, “Well, I can see four states from my house.”

Kuralt nodded and said, “Elevation is important!” and went on to tell us about how he and the crew went up to Pikes Peak in Colorado, 14,000 feet. “Great view from there,” he said, “makes you feel you were looking clear across the country!” He then told us how in the summer of 1893, an English instructor named Katharine Lee Bates from Wellesley College went west to teach a short summer course at Colorado College. And one day a group of teachers took a covered wagon ride to Pikes Peak. Miss Bates was worn out from the wagon ride and the walk to an observation deck at the pinnacle. But when she looked out and saw the sight, she was so thrilled and inspired that she pulled a piece of paper out of her bag and started writing a poem which she called “Pikes Peak” to be published two years later in the Fourth of July edition of The Congregationalist newspaper. The poem has since been engraved on a tablet at that viewpoint, and when visitors see it they smile in recognition because they already know the words. And so do you:

photo_rockies1

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

The whole country got to know those words when they were combined with the music of a Samuel A. Ward hymn into the song we now know as “America the Beautiful.” Miss Bates wrote several more stanzas. If you’ll indulge me, it may be time for another:

O beautiful for liberty
Whose light shines for us now
As through the years of pioneers
It shined to show them how
America! America!
God’s Grace is with us still
With brotherhood each dream of freedom’s promise
We’ll fulfill.

One-on-One with the Author: John Hemingway

The Saturday Evening Post enjoyed a long tradition for publishing short fiction. Historic contributors have included Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Agatha Christie, William Saroyan, and J.D. Salinger — among many others.

When we decided to restore fiction to the Post, it seemed appropriate to turn to the current generation of writers, progeny of our long-ago contributors. So, we asked John Hemingway, grandson of Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway, to write an original story for you.

Imagine our surprise when we checked our files and could find no evidence that the Post had ever published any writing by Ernest Hemingway. The magazine was a mainstay for his friend Fitzgerald, but records show that the editors rejected at least three stories submitted by young Hemingway.

That was ironic, for biographers point out that Hemingway used fiction in the The Saturday Evening Post as a model for his early writing.

Ernest Hemingway did grace the cover of the <em>Post</em> in 1966, but only to promote a biography on him.
© SEPS

Hemingway recalled that in 1919 he was writing “stories which I sent to The Saturday Evening Post. The Saturday Evening Post did not buy them, nor did any other magazine. … I was always known in Petoskey as Ernie Hemingway who wrote for The Saturday Evening Post, due to the courtesy of my landlady’s son, who described my occupation to the reporter for the Petoskey paper.”

Ernest Hemingway did appear on the cover of the March 12, 1966, Post, but it was merely to promote a bio of him by his friend A. E. Hotchner.

Thus, this inaugural fiction by John Hemingway is a small recompense for our historical oversight.

John’s story of “Uncle Gus” may seem familiar to those who know his family history. He says, “It is, as I’m sure you figured out, based on my great-uncle Leicester, Ernest’s younger brother. He really was a generous person, a man of character.”

When we described it as a “pseudomemoir,” he acknowledged that as a “fair description,” adding that, “Fiction is often an embellishment of life.

“When I wrote Strange Tribe, it was a memoir dealing with my grandfather. That was a difficult book. Very stressful. If you get one detail wrong, they will crucify you. Therefore, it had to be rather scholarly. I had to stick with the facts.”

Short stories are another matter. They allow you to enhance the truth. “A short story is a very difficult form of literature, so concise, so compact, a kind of a poetry,” he observes. “With a novel or a memoir, you have the ability to take a break. You can’t do that with a short story. Every word counts.”

John wrote a number of short stories as a young man. “I’ve always liked short fiction,” he says. “I think my grandfather’s short stories were among his best writing.”

Turning serious, he says, “My objective is to write at least one story in my life as good as his.”

“Uncle Gus” was a daunting story to write. “It wasn’t the easiest choice,” he says.

John lived with his great-uncle Leicester for four years as a teenager. His mother was schizophrenic. His father had married another woman. “Les tried to make me feel like a part of the family, but I knew I had a father of my own.”

Nevertheless, this big bear of a man became an important role model for young John. “I’ll always remember his sense of family; his generosity.”
The memories come swirling back as he speaks. “I think of Les as being enormous. All that compassion.”

Ernest Hemingway's younger brother, Leicester, was also a writer in his own right.
Ernest Hemingway’s younger brother, Leicester, was also a writer in his own right. Courtesy John Hemingway

But Leicester’s own life was complex. “He was an eccentric, someone who lived in the shadow of his brother. He found it a challenge to live up to the image, to the greatness of the name.”

John faced the same challenge. “There was a difficult period in my 20s. I knew I was capable of writing, but I had to find my own voice. Then, I remembered something Les said his brother had told him, ‘You know you’ve written something great when you can make a person cry.’ ”

You will find a certain sadness in “Uncle Gus,” as well as the optimism of a young boy learning about the qualities of manhood.

“These values are not old-fashioned,” says John, his thoughts drifting back to 1977 when he was a boy of 17. “In fact, they’re extremely relevant today.”

Dr. Bob Arnot: Back in Action

A familiar face to millions of Americans, Dr. Bob Arnot is an award-winning medical correspondent, sports enthusiast, best-selling author, and physician.

Throughout his busy career, Dr. Arnot remained a passionate athlete, competing in marathons, bike races, ski competitions, and big wave surfing.

Eventually, the wear and tear took its toll. At age 60, the medical journalist discovered that both of his hips were, in his words, “completely shot.” For years, he tried to disguise the pain.

“I couldn’t really walk more than a couple of blocks without severe pain,” Dr. Arnot recalls. “When my youngest son was 3 years old, I couldn’t bend down to pick him up or play with him on the floor. I had unwittingly given up a large part of life.”

Follow-up tests confirmed his suspicions.

“The x-rays showed pure bone on bone,” Dr. Arnot told the Post. “One prominent surgeon said, ‘Your hips are too far gone, so you’ll have to have a total hip replacement.’ ”

But a total hip replacement at his relatively young age and level of conditioning would place limitations on his
activities. After hip replacement surgery, patients are advised to avoid certain activities, including jogging and high-impact sports for the rest of their lives, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

“With a total hip replacement, I would never consider running again,” the avid sports enthusiast says. “But I feel young, like to be active, and wanted to run and ski again without limitations.”

Dr. Arnot wasn’t ready to make that sacrifice without exploring alternatives.

Faced with a difficult decision, Dr. Arnot applied his journalistic skills and met with leaders in the field, from the inventors of the Birmingham hip resurfacing operation in England to top orthopedic experts in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. By the time he reached a decision, he knew the best option for him.

“The more I investigated the hip resurfacing procedure, the clearer it became that I would have a perfect biomechanical result,” the television host explained. “I would be able to run, ski, and do virtually anything I wanted to do.”

In April 2008, Dr. Arnot underwent the hip resurfacing procedure on both hips.

“The operation was the closest thing I could imagine to one of medicine’s modern miracles,” he says. “Within four days, I was walking a mile. Within 10 days, I was walking three miles, even though on crutches. I couldn’t believe it was possible. Within three weeks, I was back on a stair machine, and at one month on a bike. This past summer, I did a 100-mile bike ride or race almost every weekend against people one-third my age and still came out in the top. This winter, I’m back into ski racing.”

He also resumed routine activities — putting on a shoe with a heel, straddling a surfboard, or sleeping through the night — without pain.

However, if the hip resurfacing fails, the replacement option remains open.

“If at 72 my hip needed to be revised, I preserved my femoral head, so I still have the bone and could still undergo a total hip replacement and start the clock at zero,” adds Dr. Arnot. “With hip resurfacing, I put off having the total hip replacement for years.”

Miracle on the Hudson

It was January 14th, 2009. The New Year was in full swing. Something was different for me this year. It was something I could not quite put my finger on. It was something that made me pensive and reflective.

I had been traveling to New York on business almost every week for the past few months. The week of January 11th, however, I was not scheduled to go. On Wednesday the 14th, right after a conference call about a project that was coming to a close, I felt it was important for me to finish the task in person. I discussed it with my manager and informed him I would take a mid-afternoon flight and be there for the meetings that evening.

My assistant quickly reviewed the flight options with me as I multi-tasked, replying to e-mails and gathering materials for the trip. On most trips to New York, I returned on an evening or night flight. When my assistant walked into my office and asked me my preference, I said to book me on the afternoon flight and I could always push it back, if needed.

As I did not have a change of clothes, I hurried home to pack. I pulled into my driveway, ran up the stairs from our garage, rushed to fold an extra suit and change of clothes, threw my dopp kit into my briefcase, and shot out the door. Strangely, I felt slightly uneasy about the trip, probably due to the concern of whether the meetings would go well or not.

The weather was clear and sunny, but cold. I arrived in New York and made my way into Manhattan. I usually took time in the morning to commit to 15 or 20 minutes of meditation and prayer, in keeping with my New Year’s resolution. That day I had skipped it and decided to make up for it while waiting for the time to leave the hotel for my meetings. I did not have much time, but enough to say some kind of prayer. As I looked at my briefcase, it occurred to me that it was also a good time to clean it out.

As I removed paperwork and emptied all the contents of my briefcase, I found two old prayer booklets. I had forgotten about them and glanced over each. One was called the Pieta, which contained a variety of devotional prayers, some of which were many centuries old. The other was a small booklet on the Divine Mercy Chaplet. On the cover was a picture of Christ from a painting with two rays of light shining out from his chest; one red, the other pale white. The booklet contained excerpts from a diary kept by a Polish nun in the 1930s. She claimed to have had visions of Jesus and even dialogue with him. There were several quotations from her diary, but one in particular struck me. It was regarding the 3 o’clock hour, the hour in which Christ died on the cross: “In this hour,” Christ told her, “I will refuse nothing to the soul that makes a request of Me in virtue of My Passion.” As it happened to be the 3 o’clock hour, I reflected on that and began to pray the chaplet. I prayed slowly and with devotion, in a way that was unusual for me.

By 11:45 the next day, after an attempt to connect with a fellow associate for lunch whom I could not reach, I decided to go ahead and make my way to the airport.

I headed to the corner of Fifth and hailed a cab. By the time I finished a call, I arrived at LaGuardia. I checked in at the computer kiosk and examined the available seats to see if I could move farther up, as I was reserved in seat 16A, a window seat on the left side of the plane just behind the wing.

I sat down in the waiting area and continued reading and periodically checking e-mails. Zone 1 was called to board, so I took my place in line and boarded. I had been hoping I might be called to take an open first class seat, but the flight was completely full.

The wheels lifted off runway four, and I heard the familiar sound of the landing gear retracting, followed by the slight feel of them tucking themselves into the wings. The takeoff felt smooth and perfect, and I reclined my seat just slightly to make a little more room to adjust to the confinement of a coach window seat.

Then, I heard a noise I had never experienced before on a plane. It was like a thud of something impacting the fuselage somewhere, but exactly what it was or where it hit, I could not discern. Within an instant, I was jolted out of my quiet, personal sojourn by a loud explosion. I heard it come from the left, but it also seemed to be everywhere at the same time. The plane shook violently from side to side and then settled back to normal.

3:27:32 New York TRACON: “Cactus 1549, turn left heading two seven zero.”

3:27:36 Captain Sullenberger: “Ah, this is … Cactus 1549 hit birds. We lost thrust in both engines. We’re turning back towards LaGuardia.”

3:27:42 New York TRACON: “OK yeah, you need to return to LaGuardia. Turn left, heading of, uh, two two zero.”

The pilot began to level off and make a left turn, gradually at first, then more pronounced. I continued looking at the engine, hoping it would not set the wing on fire or explode. I could hear passengers asking each other what was going on, not frantically, but with intensity and raised voices. I looked at the man to my right and indicated that we had lost the left engine. He was trying to look at it from his vantage point as well. I turned back and just kept staring at it, knowing any second the Captain would tell us what had happened, that we had lost the left engine and were making our way back to LaGuardia.

3:28:05 New York TRACON: “Cactus 1549, if we can get it to you, do you want to try to land runway one three?”

3:28:11 Captain Sullenberger: “We’re unable. We may end up in the Hudson.”

As we continued to bank to the left, then level off, I heard the second sound that I had never heard on a plane before: silence. There was no sound, just the faint hint of the wind passing by outside and a very slight puffing noise, ever so soft, still coming from the left engine.

At that moment, I felt a surge of something in my blood, perhaps adrenaline, perhaps fear, but nothing that made me feel good. I looked again out my window and then at the man to my right. We were just stunned, sitting there in an eerily quiet atmosphere that we knew conveyed some kind of doom.

3:28:55 New York TRACON: “OK yeah, off to your right side is Teterboro airport.”

3:29:02 “Do you want to try and go to Teterboro?”

3:29:03 Captain Sullenberger: “Yes.”

3:29:21 New York TRACON: “Cactus 1549, turn right two eight zero. You can land runway one at Teterboro.”

3:29:25 Captain Sullenberger: “We can’t do it.”

3:29:26 New York TRACON: “OK, which runway would you like at Teterboro?”

3:29:28 Captain Sullenberger: “We’re gonna be in the Hudson.”

3:29:33 New York TRACON: “I’m sorry, say again, Cactus.”

I knew we could not be far from LaGuardia, but we were descending toward the city skyline, and I still could not make out anything that resembled an airport. Just then the plane made what I recall to be a simultaneously descending right turn, and we were squarely over the Hudson River. I heard the distinctive sound of the flaps being extended a notch. The captain had still not said anything to us, and it seemed like an eternity had passed, even though it was only a few minutes, perhaps no more than three.

As the river approached, the voice we were all anticipating with every fiber of our beings, the one we would cling to for every answer to our frantic minds, finally came over the intercom. Commanding but calm, intense but in control, it uttered only three words: “Brace for impact.”

As the reality of those three words and our situation began to fully sink in, I knew then we were not headed for any airport. I could see the water approaching, and the Captain had said, “impact” and not “landing.” I looked at the man to my right, and I knew where we were going. I shook my head and said, “We’re going in the water.” He glanced out the window and then stared straight ahead. I saw the same look in his eyes I knew had been in mine. The full range of emotions, captured in an instant, like a mirror into the soul, the soul of a man facing death.

I glanced back at the men in my row, made eye contact, and thought I should say something, but what? We just looked at each other, with shocking stares, and then went into our own worlds, for whatever time we had left.

At those moments, the atmosphere on board the plane, the serene view of Manhattan, and the deep blue of the clear sky made it all seem peaceful in a strange way. I thought about my family, my wife and four children, and my eyes started to water. I thought about how hard it would be for them, and I felt so sad about leaving them, halfway through my life. I just shook my head and closed my eyes.

While I cannot say I witnessed my life flash before my eyes, I suppose I did experience a hybrid version of that. I thought about my life holistically for a few seconds, as a boy, an adolescent, and as a man. I knew I had tried to do my best and had made mistakes. Having been to confession the weekend before and having just received the Eucharist, I felt I could meet God as I was, but desperately wanted more time.

As we continued to descend, I thought I should try to find my BlackBerry and call home. I had forgotten it was in my pocket, thinking I had stowed it in my briefcase. There wasn’t time, I thought.

Then a small epiphany occurred in my mind. I thought about the Chaplet of Mercy I had prayed the day before, and I recalled the words of Jesus to Sister Faustina. Nothing would be refused if prayed in the 3 o’clock hour. I could see the image of Jesus, smiling, on the front of the cover, and I wanted to retrieve that booklet too, but I knew we had just seconds left until we hit the water. I just didn’t have time, so I just thought about the image.

In my mind, and with all the devotion and intensity I could muster, I said, “God, please be merciful to us, for the sake of your Son. Please spare us. I trust in you. Jesus, I trust in you. Mother of God, help us.” I then said the Lord’s Prayer and a Hail Mary, or maybe two. I looked out the window again, and we were below the skyline rooftops, the river approaching fast.

Then, I knew I needed to accept the outcome, whatever it may be. I needed to reconcile to the fact that I was not in control, and I had to make a decision. I did not want to go into that river in anger or denial, and my conscience was being moved to make a decision. Like the Captain who had to decide in a few seconds where to glide a 73-ton jetliner to minimize loss of life, I had to make a decision on where to point my soul. I closed my eyes, trying to envision the image of Jesus I had seen the day before on the Mercy booklet, and said again, “Please be merciful to us. … But it’s OK, it’s OK.”

“Ten seconds!” a man shouted. I bowed my head, clutching the left armrest and placing my right hand over my chest. With my right hand I felt the smooth side of the prayer booklet in my pocket, and then I closed my eyes.

The sleek plane finally met the water, which felt like concrete, with landing gear up and no wheels to absorb the impact, and it felt tremendous. My head smashed into something twice, but I kept my eyes shut. The jolt of the crash landing and the sound of the explosion of water seemed surreal. The plane shook back and forth, and at any second I thought death would come. Would it be from splitting apart and water hitting us at over a 120 miles per hour? Would we cartwheel across the river and all be thrown out of the plane, dying instantly or drowning within seconds? My senses strained to feel it coming, as if I could somehow prepare for it and defend myself.

Then, midst the sound of a rushing waterfall, I felt gravity pulling us hard to the right as the back of the plane moved counterclockwise. The centrifugal force was similar to some twisting and turning amusement ride, though it lacked the surety of a positive ending. As we slid, I felt this was it at last. These were finally the culminating moments. We were about to roll over and break up.

Suddenly, the turning stopped, and the splashing sound of water slowly subsided. The plane rocked a little, and I looked up, and I was simply astonished at what I saw. I could tell we were floating, with the nose pointing out of the water slightly, and the fuselage was fully intact!

Once the shock of still being alive and seeing the plane floating, seemingly in one piece, wore off, I said to the man on my right, “We can do this! We can get through this!”

As I slid down the shoot into the raft, I could feel the cold penetrate me, and my right hand in particular was trembling. The raft was crowded, and I worried that some passengers might panic, and we would tip over.

I glanced back at the open door, and then it struck me. As I looked down into the water, two tether cords connected the raft to the plane. I sort of froze as I looked at them. Not having any idea how long the rescue would take for the passengers on the wing and seeing the plane continue to sink, the wave of fear came over me once again. If we could not be rescued in time, the plane would sink, dragging the lifeboat with it, and we would all be in the river, fighting for our lives in the frigid waters.

I shouted to the few men who stood on the deck of the bow, as they began throwing life preservers to us, some making the raft, others going into the water. “We need a knife! We need a knife! Can you find a knife or something to cut?”

Finally, one of them realized our predicament, and there was a discussion among them. One approached the rail of the bow and looked at me, holding a pocketknife in his hand. I knelt down in the raft and looked right at him. He slowly made the pitch, and I prayed with all my might to not miss the catch. The knife met my hands, and I clutched it. Quite cold and numb, I could not make my fingers work to open the knife. I gave it to another passenger, and he opened it and handed it back. I cut the tether, and we were free of the plane.

I looked up, and a man on the deck of the ferryboat several feet above me must have read my mind. He lowered the loop end of a very thick rope. I would hold one end, and he would hold the other, stabilizing the raft and keeping it as close as possible to the ferryboat.

The women exited one by one, and we made a makeshift stairway out of the seat cushions so the step onto the edge of the raft was less precarious. We worried that someone might fall, just as they left the raft and leapt forward to the ladder.

Finally a tall man, the last one on the raft except myself, looked at me and gestured to go ahead. I nodded and just said, “I’m fine, wanna keep the raft tight.” I was worried if I let go of the rope, we might push back from the ferryboat. He went up the ladder and disappeared.

I slid the looped rope off my right arm and grabbed onto the rails quickly. Not wanting to be too hasty and risk slipping, I made sure my footing was secure on each rung. Step by step I climbed, shivering to the bone.

As my eyesight cleared the top rung, I looked up and saw two men, like sentinels of mercy, each with an arm outstretched toward me. I looked down at my feet to see if they were making their way squarely on the steps. As I reached the top of the ladder and moved forward onto the deck, the men half hugged me, patting me on the back as I walked by them. My eyes welled up for the first time, and I fought off the tears. They said, “Great job! You’re OK, you made it, you made it, you’ve all made it!”

photo_frederick_berettaFrederick Berretta works in the asset management and financial services industry and holds a private pilot’s license. He is a survivor of the crash landing of Flight 1549 in the Hudson River on January 15, 2009. His book, Miracle on the Hudson, about the crash and how it affected his life and faith can be purchased through the BookSurge program on Amazon.com.

Unraveling Clues to Multiple Sclerosis

If you were asleep for the past decade and a half, you would surely be surprised to wake up in the world of iPods, smart cellular phones, and Global Positioning Systems. What we know about multiple sclerosis (MS) has changed about as much as consumer electronics in that same time frame.

“It’s a fascinating time in MS research,” says Patricia O’Looney, Ph.D., vice president of biomedical research at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. “The knowledge is so great now.”

Multiple sclerosis is an unpredictable and often disabling disease of the central nervous system. It is believed to be an autoimmune disease, which means that the immune system reacts against itself. One of its quirks is that its progress, severity, and symptoms are different in everybody.

An estimated 400,000 people in the United States are affected by MS. Someone is diagnosed with MS every hour, every day of the year.

Symptoms that might send someone to a neurologist for tests include: loss of mobility; numbness, tingling, or pain; and sudden, often temporary, blindness. People may have mysterious, erratic symptoms for years before diagnosis. Most people — two to four times as many women as men — are diagnosed between ages 20 and 50.

Not surprisingly, genetics plays a major role in current research. “So far, researchers have found as many as 12 genes (out of about 20,000 in the human genome) that are linked to MS. Most of these are connected to the regulation of the immune system, which is inherited from our parents. In the end, we may find as many as 80 MS genes,” says Dr. O’Looney. “Identifying these genetic markers will help us understand why there’s such variability and unpredictability in the disease. There might even be some genes linked to particular types of MS. When you identify genes, it may lead to targets for new therapies.”

By eating away myelin - the protective nerve coating - MS shorts out the flow of information within the brain and between the brain and body, similar to how a stripped electrical wire can short out an appliance.
By eating away myelin – the protective nerve coating – MS shorts out the flow of information within the brain and between the brain and body, similar to how a stripped electrical wire can short out an appliance.
Image © 2009 RelayHealth and/or its affiliates

Being able to predict the course of disease might mean being able to tailor treatment to each patient. But finding these genes (80 out of 20,000) is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The best way to find the needle is to look at a large number of samples from people. To that end, researchers here and in the U.K. are collecting and studying blood samples from MS patients and their family members.

Even with genetic susceptibility, something has to trigger the disease, and researchers are looking for these catalysts. One hypothesis is that a lack of sunlight and vitamin D — which, in part, regulates the immune system — might play that role. One bit of evidence is a higher prevalence of MS the farther you live from the equator in your early years. What complicates this research is that there may be different triggers in different people. If a virus is the culprit, as many suspect, it likely has vanished from the body years before the onset of symptoms.

With more than 130 clinical trials under way around the world, including more than a dozen phase 3 (late-stage) trials in process, nearing completion, or finished, MS research is making huge strides toward solving these unknowns. Many of these trials focus on treatment. The vast majority of people with MS have a type called relapsing-remitting and take one of the FDA-approved disease-modifying therapies. Fifteen years of data demonstrate their effectiveness. “What research has told us is that the disease is much more active than originally thought,” Dr. O’Looney explains. “Even if a person is aware of one or two flareups a year, the disease could still be active, although asymptomatic, particularly in the brain. There are times when a person feels OK, but damage is taking place. That’s why the National MS Society advocates so strongly that people diagnosed with MS should be on drug therapy.” Not everyone responds the same to these medications, so having several to choose among is important. One option we can expect to see within a year or so is an oral medication, which may be offered alongside or as a replacement for the injectable medications.

Another promising line of inquiry is understanding how sex hormones may regulate the immune system in people with MS. For example, levels of the hormone estriol typically rise significantly during late pregnancy. This is also when most women’s MS activity declines, leading some scientists to suspect that estriol may be responsible for the easing of symptoms during pregnancy. Preliminary results in a small pilot trial showed that oral estriol treatment decreased disease activity in women with relapsing-remitting MS. To further explore this, a larger trial has begun at the University of California at Los Angeles and several sites throughout the United States.
“Five or 10 years from now, it is certainly our hope that more and increasingly effective MS therapies will be available,” Dr. O’Looney concludes. “Our goal is to find a cure for everyone, and we will, eventually.”

To learn more, call 800-344-4867 or visit www.nationalmssociety.org.

Terri Garr

<br /><em>Courtesy: National Multiple Sclerosis Society</em>
Courtesy: National Multiple Sclerosis Society

Teri Garr is probably best known for her Oscar-nominated role in Tootsie. These days she has an equally compelling role as an advocate for people with MS. She’s also working on a sequel to her autobiography, Speedbumps.

Garr takes one of the MS disease-modifying therapies, which has slowed the progression, she says. She also exercises for an hour a day on a recumbent bicycle. “It helps strengthen both my arms and legs and is aerobic as well. Plus, I can read or watch TV while I’m on it. In the summer, I swim, which I really love. It’s vital to keep moving.” She eats healthy, balanced meals and “was blessed with a dancer’s metabolism. I eat pretty much what I like, but in moderation.

“I decided to go public with my diagnosis partly because rumors had begun circulating about my health, and I wanted to be the one to set the record straight. Besides, what’s worse? Being disabled or being a woman over 50 in Hollywood? Once I went public about my MS, I quickly realized that I would be able to help people in the same condition, and there was nothing to be ashamed of. If people could relate to me through my work, why not in my real life? I became a spokesperson for MS Lifelines, a patient education program, and traveled the country speaking to people with MS, trying to encourage them to find out everything they could about the available therapies and how they could move forward with their lives. I still receive e-mails and fan letters that thank me for sharing my story and helping take the stigma and mystery away from MS.

“The most important thing I tell people with MS is to have a positive mental attitude and keep moving! I also advise anyone
recently diagnosed to relax. The status of MS research has never been more exciting. People talk about the ‘war’ against MS; this isn’t a war, but a movement by and for people with MS.

“Together we will create a world free of multiple sclerosis.”

Montel Williams

<em>© Montel Media Group</em>
© Montel Media Group

MS is heinous. All of us suffer,” says Montel Williams, Emmy Award-winning talk show host, author, decorated naval officer, and philanthropist. He has also been, since 1999, a public face of multiple sclerosis.

Without a trace of self-pity, Williams admits he has 24-hour pain in his feet and side, and that it has recently migrated to his face. He’s tried many remedies, from over-the-counter painkillers to opiates, and from acupuncture to biofeedback. He deals with his condition by raising awareness and funds for MS research through the Montel Williams MS Foundation. “MS is a lifelong battle. There’s no wonder drug that arrests it with true efficacy,” he says. “We’re in a battle of time.” He also actively supports the Partnership for Prescription Assistance (pparx.org), which matches patients with free or nearly free prescriptions.

“The most important thing you can do as a patient, no matter the illness, is educate yourself,” he adds. “There is nothing more profoundly assuring and calming than knowledge.”

Gatlinburg, Gateway to the Smokies

Located at the northern entrance to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, Gatlinburg has become as much a family destination as the park itself. While the park offers a tranquil nature experience, the bustling mountain town reverberates with a theme-park atmosphere. From the Earthquake Ride, Hollywood Wax Museum, and Hillbilly Golf to pancake houses, fudge shops, and T-shirt stores on every block of the entertainment district, Gatlinburg is perfect for strolling and shopping.

Beyond the thrills and souvenirs, Gatlinburg offers world-class attractions. Plan to spend several hours with the 10,000 exotic fish and sea creatures at the Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies, rated as one of the top three aquariums in the nation. The jellyfish exhibit mesmerizes as the delicate creatures drift through the water like clouds on a breeze. An underwater tunnel leads through a 700,000-gallon tank filled with sharks, swordfish, and schools of rainbow-colored reef fish. Children thrill at the touch of stingrays and horseshoe crabs in the touch tank.

For a sample of authentic mountain culture, take the eight-mile Arts and Crafts Trail, which loops through the hills just beyond the city limits sign. You can chat with more than 100 artisans that display handmade furniture, carvings, paintings, textile, jewelry, and ceramics in their studio/galleries. The guild of artists, the largest in the nation, dates back to 1937 when the group organized to preserve and promote their traditional skills.

Joint Decisions: Hip Resurfacing

Arthritis ain’t for sissies. As cartilage wears thin over the years, and bone begins to grind against bone, the ache of an arthritic joint can blossom into debilitating agony, hindering not only movement but, in the worst cases, sleep as well. This is especially true when the offending joint happens to be of the load-bearing variety, like the one in the hip. Orthopedic surgeons have long advised patients at such extremes of discomfort to get a total hip replacement and swap their offending joints for prostheses.

Today, they also offer an alternative procedure: the hip resurfacing surgery. The main advantage of the procedure, practiced for years abroad and approved by the FDA in 2006, is that it involves virtually no loss of bone. This means that when the resurfacing prosthesis wears out, patients are eligible for a total hip replacement that can last an additional 15 to 20 years. On the other hand, not everyone is eligible for resurfacing.

“In general,” says Dr. Craig Della Valle, a specialist in joint reconstruction at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, “the best candidates for the procedure are young, active men, which is great. Those are the same patients who are at highest risk for failure with a conventional hip replacement. It’s nice when things work out that way.”

In total hip replacement, the orthopedic surgeon lops off the bulbous head and angled neck of the femur and puts in its place a ball-like prosthesis that is secured by a spike inserted deep into the lower portion of the bone. Resurfacing, meanwhile, spares bone because it leaves the head and neck of the femur intact. The surgeon instead reshapes the head of the femur to fit a toadstool-shaped prosthesis — a metal cap that is snapped onto the femoral head and held in place via a relatively short stem that slips into the femoral neck. The surgeon then inserts a metal cup into the socket as well. No one is sure yet how long these prostheses last on average.

Time isn’t the only thing resurfacing buys. Proponents say that people with resurfaced joints are capable of more vigorous activity than those who get total joint replacements. They are also more likely to recover their natural gait and enjoy a greater range of motion with the resurfaced joint. But the conservation of bone is probably the greatest advantage offered by the newer procedure. Dr. William Macaulay, a professor of orthopedic surgery at Columbia University Medical Center who trains other surgeons in resurfacing, notes that the relatively short length of the pin used to secure the femoral cap also preserves marrow, which is the source of all blood cells, and is particularly abundant in the femur.

illustration_hip_resurfacing Hip Resurfacing:
Surgeons reshape the head of the femur (large thigh bone) where it connects to the hip socket, then place a metal cap on the femoral head, which is held in place by a short stem drilled into the femur.
illustration_total_hip_replacement Total Hip Replacement:
Damaged cartilage and bone, including the head and neck of the femur, are removed
and replaced with a prosthetic ball and metal stem inserted into the femur bone and an artificial hip socket.
Images: © Edwards Lifesciences

Like any other procedure, resurfacing comes with its risks. For the most part, they’re identical to those that accompany total replacement. But there’s one major risk unique to resurfacing: the fracture of the femoral neck, a complication only remedied by a second surgery to perform a total hip replacement. To find out just how frequently this and other complications occur, Dr. Della Valle led a study of the outcomes of the first 537 hip resurfacing procedures performed in the United States since the resurfacing prosthetic devices won FDA approval. “This is something new, and it’s a pretty difficult procedure,” says Dr. Della Valle. “We wanted to make sure that the complication rate in adopting this technology wasn’t horrendous.”

The 89 orthopedic surgeons who conducted the procedures had varying degrees of experience in hip surgeries. Further, they had done resurfacings on average just six times. “These guys were your average orthopedic surgeons who were trying a new procedure,” says Dr. Della Valle. He and his colleagues reported in the December issue of Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research that of the 32 serious complications they tallied, 10 were fractures of the femoral neck.

The details are revealing. Nine of those 10 fractures were in patients who were either female or were 55 or older when they received the implant. That underscores the importance of patient selection to the success of resurfacing: The ideal candidate needs to have relatively dense and strong bones to reduce the risk of femoral neck fractures. This requirement eliminates most postmenopausal women, and men over the age of 55 as candidates for the procedure.

Dr. Della Valle’s results confirm the findings of a study published in PLoS Medicine earlier this year of 76,576 replacement and resurfacing surgeries conducted in the U.K. between 2003 and 2006. The researchers found that 1.4 percent of the patients had to have surgeries within three years to repair failed hip procedures of both types. But the overall revision rate for resurfacing was almost twice as high, at 2.6 percent. Among women, it was even higher, at 3.7 percent, as opposed to just 1.9 percent of men.

Surgeons, however, stress that patients need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis — some women may in fact be perfect for resurfacing. Still, even experienced orthopedists can only be sure about any particular patient after inspecting the femoral head and socket directly. On the plus side, making that decision in midsurgery adds neither expense nor risk to the procedure, says Dr. Macaulay. The two surgeries, he says, can be started in essentially the same way.

The resurfacing procedure is, however, more technically demanding than total joint replacement. Retaining the neck and head of the femur, for instance, makes it much harder for the surgeon to expose the socket. Shaping the femoral head appropriately also takes practice — and if the surgeon does that poorly, the patient is far more likely to suffer a femoral neck fracture. Indeed, Dr. Della Valle and his colleagues found that eight of the 10 femoral neck fractures they counted were in patients whose surgeons had done fewer than 10 resurfacing surgeries.

So what should you look for in a surgeon if you’re shopping for a hip resurfacing?

Expertise matters, of course — and the more resurfacing procedures your surgeon has done the better. “I think the learning curve is somewhere around 50 cases,” says Dr. Macaulay. When you find one with at least that much experience, he says, it’s wise to ask to speak to some of the surgeon’s former patients. Finally, make sure that the surgeon is the sort who’s likely to pay attention to you both before and after the procedure. This is, after all, a major surgery.

“If they don’t have much time for you before the surgery, they’re going to have even less time for you after,” says Dr. Macaulay. “I would choose my surgeon at least partly on the basis of which one sits down with me for 20 or 30 minutes and explains all the risks and benefits.”

Remember, you can’t change your mind under anesthesia.

Classic Covers: America the Beautiful

Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful banquet. We are still in Eden,” said Thomas Cole, the first great American landscape painter. Post artists have taken stock in that Edenic scenario. They’ve captured the grandeur of mountain majesties and the fruits of the fruited plains, and they haven’t forgotten the amber waves of grain or the diamond deserts, either.

But things aren’t always hunky-dory in paradise — especially when you are counting on it to be that way. The tent you and the family set up to enjoy the forest primeval can have a mind of its own. A little lightning can crash a delightful beach party, and that gorgeous ocean view can come too close for comfort. Our roaming artists have captured these scenes and more, as they portray the natural wonders of traveling America. We invite you to grab some sunscreen and mosquito spray and come along for the ride!

Click thumbnails to view gallery.

Emeril Lagasse: What in the World Is He Cooking Up Now?

Before the TV shows, celebrity guest appearances, cookbooks, restaurants, and “Bam,” there was a time when the celebrity chef we know today, Emeril Lagasse, was but a teenage drummer, baking bread in a Portuguese bakery in his hometown of Fall River, Massachusetts. Declining a full scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music, he took the first step to following his heart, marching to the beat of his own drum on a culinary journey that would lead him to stardom.

Upon earning a degree and honorary doctorate from the highly respected Johnson & Wales University, Lagasse traveled to France to refine his skills and master the techniques of classic French cuisine. Shortly after returning to the United States, he opened his first restaurant in the Big Easy, aptly called Emeril’s. Two years later, he launched his second restaurant; three years later, his third; three more years, his fourth …

Today, Emeril has essentially become a brand name gracing the labels of spices, cookbooks, TV shows, restaurants, cookware, and a host of assorted kitchen products. With the release of his 13th cookbook in May, the opening of Emeril’s Chop House in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (featuring a new green menu), and his new series on Planet Green, the Emeril empire thrives. But if you think he’s merely capitalizing on the green trend, think again. During a recent interview with the cooking king himself, the Post discovered just how down-to-earth this celebrity chef really is—and always has been.

SEP: Tell us about your newest show.

EL: Basically, Emeril Green takes place in a 60,000-square-foot Whole Foods Market in Fairfax, Virginia. We respond to folks who e-mail or write in about having an allergy, celiac disease, or diabetes. It could also be a food challenge like they have never cooked fish before, or they want to know more about organic products, grass-fed beef, or farm cooperatives.

SEP: Have you always been focused on green living?

EL: I’ve been farming organically for over 30 years. My family had a big farm outside of Fall River, so as a young boy, I was always connected to the soil. About 28 years ago, I started a farm cooperative in Mississippi, raising livestock, vegetables, and herbs for Emeril’s restaurant. I’ve been working for years with farmers and farmers’ markets and have been doing things organically since before people knew what the movement was. I’ve been green — I should say greener — for a long time.

SEP: How has the new show influenced your cooking?

EL: My style of cooking has been getting much cleaner. I’m using more grapeseed oil, a lot more canola oil; I’ve been very sensitive to sodium, and I’m reading the label more often.

SEP: Do you prefer gas or charcoal?

EL: I started using old-fashioned charcoal, then I went to gas. With gas, you get spoiled because you just go out, turn it on and “poof,” there you go. Lately, I’m using pressed charcoal that’s good for the environment. The heat is fantastic.

Emeril’s Five Tips & Tricks

1. If It Smells Like Fish, Choose Lamb
Fish should never smell like fish. It should smell like the sea, salt, or brine. To guarantee the freshest picks for seafood, meats, and vegetables, establish friendly relationships with your local fishmonger, butcher, and farmers.

2. Marinades Made Healthy
Using a low-sodium broth can reduce the sodium content by half. Also consider more herbs, and for a perfect marinade, use citrus — including the peel.

3. Master the Heat
It’s not necessary to crank the heat full blast. Have one side that is medium-heat and another side that is a little hotter. This allows you to switch back and forth to prevent food from charring.

4. Know When It’s Done
Even professionals have a hard time gauging when meat has reached the proper temperature. Always have a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature. This ensures your food is not only safe, but that it’s cooked properly.

5. Factor in the Weather
If it’s cold and windy outside, your grill may not get as hot as it normally does, and your food may take a little longer to cook. Trust your common sense (and your thermometer).

Recipes from Emeril

Grilled Swordfish Kebabs with Mixed Herb Pesto
Emeril’s Sardines Portugese-Style
Grilled Vegetable and Goat Cheese Sandwich
Grilled Peaches with Mascarpone and Honey
Caribbean Pork Tenderloins
Spiced Buffalo Burgers
Emeril’s Mint Julep

Recipes courtesy of Emeril Lagasse from Emeril at the Grill: A Cookbook for all Seasons, New York, 2009, courtesy Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc.