Inside Our Archives
Recently, Dick Wolfsie from WISH-TV stopped by our offices to talk with our history editor/archivist Jeff Nilsson and tour our archives. Below you can watch Wolfsie’s three-part series on The Saturday Evening Post to learn more about our history, peek inside our archives and library, and see more of those beautiful cover illustrations (like Rosie the Riveter):
Big Money and Women Voters: Who Really Chooses the President?
Remember when Washington was running out of money? Just last year, Congress was threatening to shut down the government because no one could find $1.3 Billion needed to meet the annual budget.
Well, those days are gone, we’re glad to report. A fresh breeze is blowing money into town—about $6 Billion’s worth. That’s the amount that will be spent on this year’s elections.
But what will they get for that $6 Billion, beside mountains of flyers and hours of TV ads? Will it change the outcome of a presidential election?
No one can tell for certain. But back in 1948, George Gallup was convinced presidential campaigns didn’t change voters’ choices.
In a very real sense, presidential elections are over before they begin.
They are decided to a great extent by events that have occurred in the entire period between two presidential elections, rather than by the campaign.
In politics it is always later than you think.
Gallup had polled voters before and after the presidential elections of 1940 and 1944. He found very few voters switched their choice of candidates between June and November.
Of course, it would be foolish to claim that campaigns have no effect or change no votes. But they appear to have less effect and to change fewer votes than the average party leader would like to think.
Voters listen to campaigns pretty largely to confirm what they already think.
[Yet] in presidential races today, everything is made to depend on the campaign—as if the voters lived in a mental vacuum for three and a half years, and only snapped out of it between June and November of the fourth year.
The ineffectiveness of presidential campaigns prompted Gallup to ponder—
Is this wise—this pitching of all effort and money into a campaign and then coasting along for four years?
Perhaps all the hullabaloo, the verbal blasts and counterblasts, the rallies, parades, blaring of bands, kissing of babies, the feverish rushing about of stump speakers and the millions of dollars spent are not entirely necessary.
[Could] a political party give up campaigning and win? Probably not. Some kind of campaign would be needed to keep in line the voting intentions of those who do make up their minds early.
Perhaps political leaders could profitably spend more time trying to increase public acceptance of their party between elections.
Is this still true today? Will those billions of dollars and hours of politicking ultimately change no one’s mind in the 2012 presidential election?
One recent study indicates that presidential advertisements could persuade voters, but did little to inform or motivate them to vote. Another study found that campaigns could influence voters “but the nature of this influence appears to be rather complex”—a meager return for such a high cost.
Gallup’s 1948 article— “Do Campaigns Really Change Votes?” — challenged several assumptions cherished by politicians. Party platforms, for example, were useless (“most people don’t read them”) and political speeches had almost no impact on voters (“n the course of thirteen years of polling, covering more than 190 state, local, and national elections, we have found little evidence that one speech or even a series of speeches changes many votes”).
He also made this claim:
Don’t worry too much about the women’s vote or “how to win the women over.”
They don’t vote in a bloc and they don’t vote any differently from men.
The division of sentiment among women is almost identical with that among men. Rarely in recent years has it amounted to more than two percentage points. There does not appear to be any such thing as the woman’s viewpoint in politics as distinguished from the male viewpoint when it comes right down to voting on Election Day.
That may have been true in the 1940s, but the granddaughters of those women voters are showing far greater independence in their choice. The “gender gap” has become significant. In 2008, Barack Obama received 49% of his votes from men and 56% from women. Interestingly, 55% of the votes for George W. Bush came from men, 48% from women—again, a 7% difference.
The gap reached 10% in 2000 (43% of women, 53% of men voted for Bush), and in 1996, the difference between men and women voting for Bill Clinton was 11%.
When the gender gap was just 2%, Gallup made several conclusions that—we hasten to add—might have been valid for their time.
Men and women, dissimilar biologically and to some extent emotionally, tend to think almost exactly alike politically.
The reason seems to be that, on political matters, women generally accept the judgment of their men-folk. They take their cue from the opinions or prejudices of a husband, a father, a son or other male member of the family. Of course, this is not true of all women. But in the average household the woman goes on the theory that her man knows more about those things than she does.
This is 1948, remember.
Polls have found that when a change of political sentiment takes place, it almost always starts with the men, not the women. The women catch up with the trend later—after they’ve talked to the boss.
In all fairness, it should be said that there is no real reason why women should vote differently from men, even if they paid no attention to the ideas of the allegedly dominant male. No one would argue that women ought to vote differently just for the sake of being different. The only point here is that one must be cautious in talking about the woman’s viewpoint in politics. Although the average male candidate running for office usually makes quite an effort to win the feminine vote, it may be questioned whether such pains are necessary. If the male voters can be won over, the women will generally come along too.
Presumably, some of those billions of dollars are being spent right now to understand just why women don’t vote the same as men.
Classic Covers: Richard Sargent
Artist Richard Sargent (1911-1979) painted 47 Post covers between 1951 and 1962, when photographs were rapidly replacing magazine illustrations.
A Midwesterner, he was born and raised in Moline, Illinois, and went to art school there.
He later became quite the world traveler, but he always remembered the all-American folk back home and loved putting them in situations that tended to go awry.
Take, for instance, Sargent’s cover from November 1953 (below). Mr. Jones is feeling like a tin can in a trash compactor, but squeezing out of his car may be easier than explaining why he was late for work because he missed the 7:35a.m. train in to the city.
“The trouble with painters,” said Post editors of this 1953 cover, “is that they build up awful situations like this, then blithely start work on another cover, leaving the victims to get out of the mess, if possible.” And leaving the observer to wonder what happens next.
Artist Sargent was a master at the pregnant situation: Will the man above be able to squeeze out of his car and make the train? Will the dog at the buffet make off with the ham? Will the dog in this painting make a meal of the doctor?
When editors asked, “Sargent says he doesn’t know what will happen, because the dog’s hair is so long he can’t see the expression in his eyes.” The rat.
Sargent had three sons, starting with a redheaded moppet with a mischievous bent named Anthony–the inspiration for many a cover.
Apparently, Little Red’s skills have not reached a level tolerable even to himself in this 1955 cover. Sargent’s own redheaded son was grown by 1954 when an excited Sargent called a Post editor and said, “Well, what do you suppose happened to me?”
The staffer guessed, “Land a painting in the Metropolitan Museum?”
“Better than that!” Sargent cried. “Listen. I’m a little guy: five feet six, 125 pounds. Always wanted to be an athlete when I was a kid—always the last kid to be picked on a team. All my life I’ve yearned to be written up in the sports news. You know the Wykagyl golf course?” (This was a famous suburban New York club near Sargent’s home.) “Well, sir, you’re talking to a champion! Anthony and I just won the Father and Son championship!”
Honestly, this guy couldn’t wait to share the family triumph with his friends at the Post. After sifting through biographical details about the artist, it seemed this little conversation told much more about the man.
Yep, confirmed the editors, the write-up in the New Rochelle paper detailed the duo’s spiffy score of net 66. So the Post ran its own photo of Sargent and family with the trophy.
The lively little redheaded Anthony was by then six feet three and playing golf in the low 80’s. Noting that his dad scored in the 90’s, the editors suggested “he plays better with a brush.”
To purchase Richard Sargent’s cover art, with or without the masthead, visit Art.com.
Aw, Shoot!
The first TV commercial in the U.S. aired on July 1, 1941, and not six months later Japanese air and naval forces destroyed Pearl Harbor. Coincidence? I’m not sure. But that first commercial began the march to a world where 20 minutes of commercials per televised hour has become common.
Some cable networks air so many commercials in a half-hour slot that shows require heavy editing just to fit. Watching a rerun of Leave It to Beaver or Curb Your Enthusiasm on a commercial channel is an exercise in filling in the blanks. Wait? Who was that guy? Why are they mad at him?
If TV advertising were water, we’d all drown before The Today Show signed off. Yet we’ve somehow survived only to learn that those who covet our coin have put some new cartridges in their clip. They’re called “secondary events”—basically they are nothing less than electronic tumors superimposed digitally on the show as it’s broadcast.
Computer-generated events can be as simple as a trademark that occupies the screen’s lower righthand corner. These are sometimes called “logo bugs,” and a great many networks use them in the apparent belief that we’re too stupid to know which channel we’re watching.
A secondary event can also be a complicated visual message promoting an upcoming show or some other happening. It can occupy a quarter of your viewing area for 10 seconds or longer. The other evening, I recorded a Law & Order re-run on TNT. The next morning I counted its secondary events, a lonely exercise but one worth doing. If you’re a masochist.
The primary advertising hit in five bursts: at 4, 13, 23, 38, 50, and 59 minutes into the show. The five breaks contained a total of 42 commercials of varying lengths and amounted to 22 minutes of viewing, leaving Jack McCoy and the New York legal system only 38 minutes to convict the accused.
During most of the hour, the TNT logo bug squatted in my screen’s lower right corner. Twice, a promotional message for season premieres materialized at the bug’s immediate left and remained there for an average of eight minutes.
On eight occasions, a silent secondary event swept from left to right across the screen. Counting the sporadic appearances of the logo bug as a single happening, I had to watch no fewer than 12 secondary events.
Having worked at three national ad agencies, I quite understand advertising’s role in a free market. But enough is enough. And then some. If I behave like an obedient consumer and sit through 42 commercials in an hour, I have given the marketers sufficient opportunity.
Neither Elvis Presley nor I ever worked as a TV critic, but now that I’ve written this piece, we share non-professional credits in the field. As an amateur critic, Elvis was superb; when a program displeased him, he was known to fire a large-caliber handgun at his TV set. Describing one such incident, an Elvis sidekick wrote, “He just put down his breakfast, drew a gun, blew the TV out, and said, ‘That’ll be enough of that [expletive].’”
So far, I’ve restrained myself from going the Elvis route.
Limerick Laughs Contest Winner and Runners-Up for Jan/Feb 2012
It could be the sailors undoing
That he is so ardently wooing.
She may miss the mark,
But a romance he’ll spark,
Unaware that hot tempers are brewing!
—Virginia Wilson, Port Orange, FL
The staff of The Saturday Evening Post is pleased to announce the winner of the Jan/Feb 2012 Limerick Laughs Contest: Rita Schilling of Fort Worth, Texas! For her poem describing the picture above, Rita wins a cash prize—and our gratitude for a job well done. If you’d like to enter the Limerick Laughs Contest for our May/Jun issue, you can submit your limerick via the entry form here. And now, without further ado, we present some of our favorite limericks:
“I’ll help you with aiming that rifle,”
Said the “tar” to the cute little eyeful.
While he savored his fate
The GIs had to wait
But their anger they just couldn’t stifle.—Mavis Hambeck, Gregory, SD
The young lady needed a rifle lesson
The sailor obliged her with a session.
It may have been a freak,
But she hit a winning streak,
Which explains each soldier’s expression.—Allen McCleskey, Graham, TX
The navy man planned for some fun,
Although medals and rank he has none.
But two vets right behind them
Would like to remind him
The battle has only begun.—Chet Cutshall, Willowick, OH
You would think there’s no enemy in sight,
Since this sailor has found his delight.
But the army boys here
Aren’t allies, my dear,
They’re just itchin’ to pick a good fight!—Gail Pritts, Duluth, GA
As the swabbie helped take careful aim,
The young miss was enthralled with the game.
Little did she know
He was putting on a show.
Sarge was waiting to put him to shame!—Mary Helvie, Chula Vista, CA
The sailor is clearly obsessed
With the girl in the plaid, pleated dress.
While two sergeants await
To find out how they’ll rate,
The sailor just couldn’t care less.—Geraldine Bedwell, Newark, DE
Much to the young soldiers’ chagrin,
The sailor is trying to win
A hit with his miss
That may lead to a kiss.
A romance is about to begin!—Violet Fowler, Saratoga Springs, NY
The soldiers were waiting until
The sailor’s artillery skill
Would fail to impress
The girl in the dress
Although he had looks that could kill.—Lori Weir, Las Vegas, NV
Curtis Stone’s Quinoa Salad
Celebrity chef Curtis Stone shares his preferred al fresco “take out” fare and tosses in a savory recipe for your perfect picnic!
Favorite Fare: “Marinated and grilled chicken because it’s great hot, warm or cold. Dips like baba ganush and tzatziki are also great, with crunchy veggies or baked pita chips.”
Savor the Season: “Buy fruits and veggies that are in season. They are tastier, more affordable, and help support local farms and communities.”
No Spoil Suggestions: “I love to have all types of antipasto platters at a picnic. Make a variety of salads and pack the dressing separately. Pour just before eating to keep greens nice and crisp.”
Quinoa Salad
(Makes 4 servings)
Ingredients
For the quinoa:
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 shallot, finely diced
1 clove garlic, finely diced
2 cups uncooked quinoa
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
For the vinaigrette:
¾ tablespoon shallots, finely diced
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
For the salad:
½ cup cherry tomatoes, halved
½ cup English cucumber, peeled, seeded and small diced
¼ cup red bell pepper, medium diced
1 cup baby arugula
Directions
Heat medium saucepan over medium high heat, add olive oil and sweat shallot for 2 minutes stirring constantly. Add garlic and cook for additional 2 minutes. Add quinoa and stir to coat with shallot and garlic, then add in stock and bring to simmer.
Reduce heat to simmer gently for about 15 to 20 minutes or until quinoa is tender but not mushy. Remove quinoa from pot to sheet-pan to cool. Once cool, fluff quinoa with fork and reserve.
To make vinaigrette, place shallots and vinegar in medium mixing bowl. While whisking, slowly drizzle in olive oil. Add parsley and season vinaigrette with salt and pepper to taste. In separate large mixing bowl, combine cooled quinoa, tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, and arugula and toss to mix. Drizzle in enough of vinaigrette to lightly coat and season salad to taste with salt and pepper. Refrigerate covered, then transport in cooler. To serve, spoon the salad onto 4 serving plates and serve immediately.
The Cholesterol Conundrum
Dr. Nortin Hadler refuses to let anyone measure his cholesterol. An avid cyclist who adheres to a healthy diet, does not smoke, and doesn’t have heart disease, Hadler, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina, knows that a reading above 200 for total cholesterol and/or above 130 for LDL (“bad”) cholesterol is likely to make his internist whip out the prescription pad and send him to the pharmacy for a statin, one of the widely prescribed drugs that lower cholesterol. And that doesn’t sit well with Hadler. More than a dozen studies, he points out, have shown that in an otherwise healthy person with no history or symptoms of heart disease, taking statins provides zero benefit.
That’s right. Zero. Statins—Lipitor, Crestor, Pravachol, Mevacor, Zocor, and their generic equivalents—today reside in the pill dispensers of a huge segment of the population over 45, but for heart-healthy patients, statins will not increase longevity, prevent a fatal heart attack, or avoid a life-ending stroke.
So if taking statins won’t keep you alive and healthy any longer than not taking the pills, Hadler asks—especially when you consider possible side effects ranging from muscle pain and fatigue to liver damage to increased risk of diabetes and even memory loss—what’s the point in knowing your cholesterol numbers?
Cardiologist Eric Topol is equally scathing about statins. Chief academic officer of Scripps Health, a nonprofit health care system based in San Diego, Topol has long believed that medicine must become personalized with treatments tailored to a patient’s DNA and other characteristics. Yet statins are the poster child of taking a drug that benefits some people and then prescribing it to many more. In his new book, The Creative Destruction of Medicine, Topol points out that only one or two out of 100 patients “without prior heart disease but at risk for developing such a condition will actually benefit” from a statin. To which he asks, “how about the 98 out of 100 patients who don’t benefit?”
To put these views in perspective, statins are associated with one of the greatest public health triumphs of the past 30 years: halving America’s death rate from coronary heart disease. From 543 per 100,000 men in 1980 the death rate fell to 267 deaths per 100,000 (adjusted for the aging of the population) in 2000. From 263 deaths per 100,000 women in 1980 it fell to 134 per 100,000 in 2000, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.
Looking at it another way: As a result of the lower death rate from coronary heart disease, 341,745 fewer Americans died in 2000 alone.
That sounds pretty spectacular, but the crux of the debate lies in whether statins have a benefit in primary prevention—reducing heart attacks and strokes in patients without known heart disease. There’s no argument about the benefits of statins for secondary prevention—averting a heart attack or stroke in people who have already had one. For example, the 1994 Scandinavian Simvastatin Survival Study—still considered the definitive statin study—showed that treating patients with pre-existing heart disease decreased their chance of dying over five years from 12 percent without statins to eight percent with the drugs; their chance of cardiac death, heart attack, or needing heart surgery fell from about 30 percent without statins to about 20 percent with them also over five years. “If you’re in this category, you would definitely want to take a drug that decreased your chance of dying or having a major cardiac event by a third,” says Dr. Eli Farhi, an assistant professor of cardiology at the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
Primary prevention is another matter, however. These are the people Hadler, Topol, and other critics focus on when they discuss the statin problem. Consider two of the most rigorous and widely cited clinical trials of statins: In one, three people of every 100 without pre-existing heart disease but with high cholesterol who took a placebo pill suffered a heart attack; two of every 100 such people taking the best-selling Lipitor did. In the other trial, four of every 100 volunteers taking placebo had a non-fatal heart attack or stroke while two of every 100 taking Crestor did. These results are typical of the findings of other studies. As Topol notes, the bottom line is that the most popular statins reduce the risk of having a heart attack or stroke from three or four percent to two percent.
That’s not very significant. A 2011 analysis that reviewed 14 randomized trials and over 34,000 patients compared the tiny benefit with the very real risks of diabetes and muscle pain or weakness the drugs pose and concluded, “there was no net overall benefit of statins for patients without pre-existing heart disease,” notes Topol.
The key phrase here is “without pre-existing heart disease.” But most general practitioners take their cue from cardiovascular specialists, and many of these experts believe that statins save lives, period. Theirs is a straightforward argument: Cholesterol is bad; therefore, lowering cholesterol is good. “If someone has high LDL as well as high blood pressure or a history of smoking or other risk factors such as age and gender, let’s take that one risk factor [elevated cholesterol] out of the equation,” says Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. Marc Gillinov, co-author of the new book Heart 411. (Indeed, Topol himself, once one of the fiercest advocates of statin drugs, wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine as recently as 2004 that “statin drugs have already surpassed all other classes of medicines in reducing the incidence of the major adverse outcomes of death, heart attack, and stroke” caused by atherosclerotic vascular disease.)
Statins, first introduced in 1987, lower blood cholesterol levels by affecting how much of the substance the liver produces, how much the intestines absorb, or how much circulates. Study after study, going back to the late 1980s, has concluded that statins lower the risk of heart disease, heart attacks, and stroke. Research into statins won the 1985 Nobel Prize in Medicine for Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein. No wonder statins rang up U.S. sales of $14.3 billion in 2009. One-fourth of Americans 45 and older take statins according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
“Statins clearly decrease one’s chance” of having a heart attack or stroke, agrees Buffalo’s Farhi. But the real-life importance of the decrease depends on how high your risk is in the first place. If your 10-year risk is extremely slim—a value judgment, but many clinicians regard anything under 10 percent as low—then “it would be of minimal benefit to take a statin,” says Farhi. “You could treat thousands of such people without preventing a single event.”
One useful way to look at the data is to consider something called “number needed to treat” (NNT). NNT simply means how many people must be given a medication, undergo surgery, have a diagnostic test, or have any other medical intervention in order for a single one of them to benefit from it. That number can be surprisingly high even for interventions with unquestioned benefits. For instance, 16 people with open fractures need to receive antibiotics for one to benefit; eight people need to take inhaled steroids during an asthma attack to prevent one from going to the hospital. In each case the vast majority of people would not have developed infections or needed a trip to the ER, respectively, even without the intervention. The NNT in these cases is 16 and eight.
Statins for primary prevention have a stratospherically higher NNT. Sixty people would have to take a statin for five years for one to avoid a heart attack; 60 is the NNT for avoiding this outcome. And 268 people without heart disease would need to take a statin for five years for one person to be saved from a stroke; 268 is therefore the NNT for avoiding this outcome, explains Dr. David Newman of Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, who maintains an NNT database at thennt.com.
It’s one thing to talk about population-wide research. The challenge, of course, is determining the risks or benefits to any individual. To use an extreme example, a person riding in an airplane that’s headed for the side of a mountain is at very low risk of dying from heart disease. On the other extreme, “If you’re a 50-year-old smoker with very high cholesterol and everyone in your family has died of a heart attack before the age of 40, you would probably be very interested in something that decreases the risk of a heart attack,” says Farhi. Most people fall between these two extremes. You can gauge your risk of having a heart attack in the next 10 years by visiting hp2010.nhlbihin.net/atpiii/calculator.asp.
The National Cholesterol Education Program calculator cited above can also be used to show why lowering cholesterol, as statins indisputably do, fails to make much difference in whether or not you will develop cardiovascular disease. After you’ve typed in your actual cholesterol, blood pressure, and other data, notice what happens if you change the cholesterol: In many cases, it alters the risk of a heart attack by little or nothing. A 55-year-old non-smoking woman with total cholesterol of 240 (high enough to make most physicians prescribe a statin), HDL (good cholesterol) of 50 (which is quite low), and systolic blood pressure of 110 has a 1 percent chance of having a heart attack over the next decade, for instance. Now change her total cholesterol to 190—a huge decline. Her risk is still 1 percent. A 65-year-old man with those first numbers has an 11 percent chance of having a heart attack over the next decade; lowering his cholesterol to 190 brings that down to 9 percent.
In other words, cholesterol levels are not as strongly predictive of cardiovascular disease as once thought. “This has shocked everyone,” says Newman. “Cholesterol levels are actually a fairly weak predictor of who will have a heart attack.”
Might statins provide benefits unrelated to cholesterol reduction? There is some evidence that they also decrease inflammation. (When inflammation occurs in the arteries, it is thought to increase the risk of heart disease.) A 2008 study called the JUPITER trial tested statins in about 18,000 people with normal LDLs but elevated C-reactive protein, a measure of inflammation. Statins reduced the risks of heart attack and stroke. That led proponents to conclude that by working through an additional mechanism—lowering inflammation, not just LDL—statins were helping even people with normal LDL levels. Critics of the study note that it was halted earlier than planned (when people on statins were having fewer cardiovascular events than those not taking the drugs), which can produce a misleading result.
Whether cutting your risk of having a heart attack over the next 10 years from 11 percent to 9 percent, as in our hypothetical 65-year-old man who slashed his cholesterol, is meaningful depends on your perspective. But physicians who question the benefit of statins note that no medication is without risk—and statins are no exception. One known side effect is muscle pain or weakness. About five percent of people taking statins develop this, though in most it goes away when they stop taking the drugs. Another is diabetes. One person in 167 who take a statin for five years will develop diabetes. Newman points out that among people taking statins for primary prevention, the risk of diabetes is greater than the benefit in stroke reduction. Indeed, a 2012 study by the Mayo Clinic as reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that the use of statins in postmenopausal women is linked to an increased risk of new-onset diabetes of 71 percent. And in February, the FDA announced what it called “important safety changes” in the labels required on statins. Beginning immediately, the labels will have to warn patients that the drugs have been reported to cause certain cognitive effects in some patients, including memory loss and confusion; when patients stopped taking statins, these problems disappeared. The labels will also have to warn that increases in blood sugar (hyperglycemia) have also been reported, and that the FDA is aware of studies showing that statins may increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.
As we were going to press, a new study was reported in The New York Times suggesting that taking statins makes it harder to exercise. The study, by French scientists, found that lab animals taking statins couldn’t run as far as a control group on a placebo. And a 2005 study that looked at human subjects had similar findings: “It seems possible that statins increase muscle damage” during and after exercise “and also interfere somewhat with the body’s ability to repair that damage,” Dr. Paul Thompson, the chief of cardiology at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut and senior author of the study, told the Times.
How many people might be taking statins despite having only a slim chance of benefiting? Experts can give only rough estimates, but the numbers are clearly in the millions. No one currently taking a statin should stop the medication without talking to his or her doctor, of course, but “it doesn’t make sense to treat all these low-risk people with statins,” says Farhi. “The effect is indeed ‘cosmetic,’ improving their cholesterol numbers without producing any measurable difference in clinical outcome.”
He adds: “Doctors who put everyone on a statin without considering whether they’re likely to benefit are doing their patients a disservice.”
29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life
In our May/June 2012 issue, Cami Walker talks to the Post about her book 29 Gifts and how a month of giving small gifts transformed her life. You can learn more about the 29 Gifts experiment in this video, and be sure to read the article here.
Classic Covers: Robert Robinson
“Men Arguing About Teddy Roosevelt”
We don’t know much about artist Robert Robinson (1886-1952) and even less about the white-bearded models who posed for at least 15 of the illustrator’s 38 Saturday Evening Post covers. The delightful old geezers argued politics, drove like demons and tried to understand new-fangled things like biplanes and modern art. Enjoy!
“Elderly Couple in Automobile”
“Watching Airplanes With Binoculars”
“Cubist Painting”
“Subzero”
“Cool Drink”
Reprints of these and many other Saturday Evening Post covers are available at Art.com.
“Help, Robot! I’ve fallen and I Need You to Pick Me Up”
A look inside the future of caregiving
Imagine having a robot around the house that can lift a frail elder if they fall when you are not around. Now visualize automated dresser drawers that can literally talk and guide a dementia patient through the complex—and often stressful—act of getting dressed in the morning. You are seeing what could very well be the future of caregiving.
Diane F. Mahoney, PhD, Professor of Geriatric Nursing Research at MGH Institute and her team were among the first to study wireless monitoring technologies for caregiving. Frustrated with so-called “alert” bracelets that patients frequently fail to activate, she became interested in high-tech devices that not only monitor patients in the home, but can provide an assist to the harried caregiver. Mahoney’s research is at the bleeding edge of caregiving technology. I spoke with her recently to find out what’s coming next.
Q: Robots in the home? What sparked this concept?
A: I got the idea when I heard that people are falling and not getting up, and they are not pushing the alert button on their alert bracelet or calling for an ambulance. I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if we had some kind of personal lifting device for elders?
Q: Is it feasible?
A: The concept already exists. The military has some neat robotic devices that they use to go into the battlefield and lift downed soldiers and remove them under fire. So I wound up getting involved as a consultant to a couple of robotic companies that are indeed working on devices that can move and lift a person. I am helping companies to develop a product for in-home use, for a future version when the technology becomes affordable.
Q: So, robots in the house? I guess, to appeal to baby boomers, you just put a BMW label on the thing.
A: [Laughs] Right! I’m a baby-boomer and, I’ll tell you, 20 years from now, I’d like a little robot running around the house.
Q: Yes definitely, me too. So, will we start seeing robots soon?
A: iRobot already has the Roomba, a robotic vacuum device, and they are very entrepreneurial. There are also other companies around that are working on components of robotics for in-home use. So in the near future they could merge together, combine developments, and solve potential safety issues. I’m sure these companies will be able to overcome the technology challenges in the next decade. And wouldn’t that just be great?
Q: A lot of your work has focused not just on the patient, but on the caregiver’s need for respite, for just a small break during their 24-hour workday. Can you tell us a little about that?
A: After years spent listening to Alzheimer’s caregivers talk about their needs, one of the themes that kept coming up was, “if only I had 10 minutes to myself, if I could just breathe or go to the restroom without my husband or wife banging on the door!” So I designed an automated telephone call; I called it a respite call. To make it effective, we interviewed the caregiver for their patient’s favorite hobbies, foods, smells, songs, and so forth. The phone call was all computerized, and the caregiver could call in anytime and put their patient on the phone—even at two in the morning when they were being driven crazy. And by calling in and putting in the password the conversation would come up and the voice on the phone would say, “Oh, hello Harry. Oh, it’s so nice to talk with you now. You know, I understand you really like brownies…” And of course, for someone else, it could be chocolate candy.
Q: Would this keep them busy for the magic 10 minutes?
A: Actually I designed it to be 28 minutes long and it was able to repeat once. So we put it out there; I had no idea if this would work or not. Many people don’t let their person with dementia use the phone anymore. But others tried it and it gave people more than their 10-minute break. They got a 28-minute break. Some of them went around twice, for a total of 56 minutes.
Q: I bet caregivers were pleased with that.
A: Yes. One caregiver said to me, “The day is very long. And I need a tool box. And in my tool box I need a whole bunch of things to keep him occupied. This is a very important tool in the box.”
Q: What other tools have you developed?
A: I’m starting another project with a colleague who has been using motion sensor technology for children with autism. We just got funded a few months ago by the Alzheimer’s Association to build what I call DRESS – Development of a Responsive Emotive Sensing System—to help people with dementia get to a state of rest. The project grew out of our observation that, for people with dementia, getting dressed is often a trigger activity for becoming extremely upset. The person gets in the drawer and rummages and gets stuck and keeps on rummaging.
Q: What is the solution?
A: For the prototype we are going to put iPhones on each drawer. So if they get stuck in one drawer too long, the iPhone on the next drawer they should go to will turn green and flash, and if they open it, fine. If they don’t open it, the phone will speak, and actually say “Open this next.” It will continue with verbal cues until they perform the requested activity.
Q: This is not just to help them get dressed, right? Again, this is partly about caregiver respite.
A: Yes, even if we can’t get them fully dressed, the caregiver can use this as a safe activity. We might be able to convert what would have been an annoyance into a distracting respite activity for 20 or 30 minutes. Worst case, the caregiver gets a break; best case, the person actually gets dressed alone.
Q: Either way, sounds like a victory.
A: Certainly! The respite part is central. Caregivers themselves are often so focused on their loved ones that they often don’t take the time to take care of themselves. I’m in this field because I really appreciate the role caregivers play. They make such a vital contribution that sometimes I don’t think our society fully appreciates.
Steve Slon is the editorial director for The Saturday Evening Post. This article was originally published by Beclose.com
The Rock Revolution in the Dick Clark Days
The recent passing of Dick Clark reminded us of the early days of rock music—back when it was alternately called “rock and roll” and The End of Civilization.
Though we remember Clark as a perennially nice, inoffensive guy, he was a force for change in the ’50s. Not only did he play the teen music that parents disliked so much, he insisted on welcoming black teens into his studio audience, and traveling through the South in a racially mixed tour. His “Caravan of the Stars” bus was often denied service and even threatened by armed segregationists.
Just as significant, though, was his promoting of rock ‘n’ roll, which helped integrate black and white traditions and audiences.
When it emerged unexpected in the 1950s, many Americans were shocked and suspicious of this strange, energetic new sound.They were accustomed to “pop” music. But rock ‘n’ roll was, in fact, true “pop” music if the word is meant as an abbreviation of “popular.”
Up to that time, the musical tastes of Americans had been largely shaped by a big industry with a few record labels, which determined much of the music America heard.
As a 1959 article reported, however, the predominance of these companies fell when a few small, independent studios, with little budget and no advertising, produced enormous hit records.
Up until a few years ago there was a fairly orderly sequence that took place in the launching of a new “pop” record. Everything was done big. Whenever one of the major recording companies came across a catchy tune, the company assigned it to a big-name singer, backed him up with a big-name band, then unleashed a barrage of publicity.
Today the popular-record business… is dominated by the smalls and the unknowns.
Knowledgeable men in the field agree … the record revolution started on a hot day in 1953 when a slim high-school boy, with his hair nearly down to his shoulders, fidgeted with a beat-up guitar below the windows of the newly opened Sun Recording Studios in Memphis, Tennessee.
The boy, who had taken time off from his after-school job at the Crown Electric Company, spent an hour of indecision out on the sidewalk before he got his courage up and walked one flight up to the small one-room studio. When Sam Phillips, [Sun’s] owner, approached, the boy gulped and said, “Please, mister, I’d like to make a record for my mother.”
“Sure, buddy, just relax and we’ll give it a try,” Phillips said encouragingly.
Phillips was impressed, “the boy was just a raw kid with no training, but he had an interesting sound.” Phillips eventually found the “right song” for Presley —“Without Love.” As Phillips told the reporters, they “had to work hard to get the best out of his style”.
And even when we got something that sounded right, we had a terrible time getting any disc jockey to play it. The only place we got his records played at first was in the Negro sections of Chicago and Detroit and in California.”
But the sound eventually drifted into the hearing of America’s teenagers, where it struck a resounding chord.
After Presley’s overwhelming success [selling 35 million records by that year], unknown studios and artists were eager to try their luck, completely bypassing the big record labels.
Buddy Holly was another star-out-of-nowhere. Throwing together a few songs with a combo he’d assembled in Lubbock, Texas, he drove with his band—The Crickets—out to a tiny recording studio in Clovis, New Mexico—as far from the heart of the recording industry as you can get in the lower 48 states. By the time of his death, 30 months later, he had sold 6 million records—most of which had been recorded in the shadow of the big grain elevator in ‘downtown’ Clovis.
[Inspired by these successes,] youngsters with dreams of glory and gold pooled their talents. A singer would write his own song, hunt up a couple of instrumentalists, and they’d bang out tunes in rumpus rooms, living rooms or basements until they had something they thought was worth recording. Then they’d try to peddle their tapes. If a producer thought they had a “sound,” some unusual quality, either instrumental or vocal, that might drive the teen-agers wild, he’d take a gamble and make records.
This pattern, repeated over and over, revolutionized the popular-record field.
Today 70 to 80 per cent of the hits are being turned out by youngsters you never heard of a month or two ago, and who may disappear from the public scene just as abruptly as they came.
The major companies [are]… still turning out many records, but their hits don’t come as easily as they used to.
The biggest [obstacle] is the inflexibility of the major record companies. The independents are able to adapt quickly to any shift in teen-age tastes; the big organizations, saddled with protocol and chains of command, can’t move as fast.
Many record companies have found, too, that it’s a risky business to buy a new hit and re-record it with big-name singers and musicians. The teen-agers almost always prefer the original recording… [they] refuse to be impressed by the big-name approach.
As the early sounds of rock music poured out of teenager’s radios and record players, adults who were accustomed to ‘big name talent’ (Tony Martin, Jo Stafford, Kay Starr) created their own ‘new sound’: a strident, continual chorus of complaints about that ‘gawdawful music.’
As the Post authors noted, their criticism could actually ensure the survival of rock ‘n’ roll.
According to many teenagers, rock ‘n’ roll never would have got as popular as it is if their elders didn’t hate it so violently. It’s something to think about. The young parents of today compose the generation that went all out for swing against the noisy objections of their parents; and their parents used to get all giggly over ragtime. And so on and so on, back to the day some Neanderthal father listened in outrage as his son got off some hot licks with matched dinosaur-bone drumsticks on the family tom-tom. It must have seemed to that early man that the kids were going absolutely to the dogs.
Today the budding Elvis or Buddy doesn’t even need a small-town recording studio. They can put together their own hit in front of their computer, launch it on YouTube, then sit back and wait for the agents and record companies to show up.
The no-studio viral-marketing approach might have given us Justin Bieber, or any number of other rising artists you don’t like, but if the music industry was still controlled by a few record labels, we might still be listening to Frankie Laine and Rosemary Clooney.
Jonathan Frid 1924 – 2012
Long before Anne Rice, the Post had its own interview with a vampire: Jonathan Frid—the brooding, tortured, but definitely romantic lead in the most popular soap opera in 1968.
Dark Shadows… the top-rated daytime attraction with females between the ages of 12 and 34… has become something of a national fad. Barnabas Collins board games, posters, Halloween costumes, masks, capes, coloring books, and bubble-gum cards are being rushed on the market. One entrepreneur is even preparing Barnabas Collins plastic fangs, adjustable to any juvenile mouth.
Until the character of Barnabas was introduced last year, the program’s darkest shadow of all was a cancellation notice lurking in the wings. Surveys made early in 1967 showed that it was being watched in only 2,750,000 homes, as against a whopping 4,480,000 today. The story had originated as a straight “‘soap” with Gothic trappings and old, dark house on the Maine coast; a young governess menaced by unspecified evils, etc. Topping the cast was former movie actress Joan Bennett.
“We were really bombing,” admits Dan Curtis, the independent producer who packages the show, “so I figured, to hell with it. If I’m going to fail, I’ll at least have a good time. I went wild, tossed in witches and ghosts, you name it. But that vampire made the difference. Two weeks after he came on, the ratings began to climb.”
“That vampire” is, in reality, a 44-year-old Canadian actor named Jonathan Frid, a tall, attractively homely man with a face like a gardening trowel.
I first met him in the Dark Shadows studio.
Frid was in full costume: black Inverness cape; long hair plastered down in spiked bangs; tombstone-white skin; large, slightly cruel gray neyes. He was asked if he had any personal theories on why his character bad become such a success. “To be frank, I haven’t thought about it much.” he said in his somber, dramatic voice.
Paradoxically, his off-screen mannerisms—sweeping gestures, eyebrows arching almost to the hairline—are more florid than his acting style. Frid’s vampire is restrained almost to the point of rigidity, as if fighting to hold himself back from some dark, nameless act. “There is the fan mail, of course,” he went on. “It’s up to two thousand letters a week now, mostly from women. They even send me nude pictures of themselves.“I suppose women see Barnabas as a romantic figure because I play him as a lonely, tormented man rather than a Bela Lugosi villain. I bite girls in the neck, but only when my uncontrollable need for blood drives me to it. And I always feel remorseful later. In the story,
I was murdered and turned into a vampire by a jealous witch back in 1796. Actually, my main interest is curing my condition. It’s even happened occasionally, like the time I was given massive transfusions by mistake. They made me a normal human. Unfortunately, there was a side effect—I actually looked 172 years old. It was either bite girls in the neck again or die of old age. , ,
The scripts of Dark Shadows are tailored to make Barnabas Collins sympathetic in spite of his more antisocial tendencies. “He does terrible things,” says Gordon Russell, one of the writers, “but we always give him a good reason ”
“Personally, the success of the show hasn’t meant all that much,” he said… “The trouble, I guess, is that soaps are rather subterranean. The people you want to impress are working while you’re on. Somehow, this sort of thing just isn’t real…”
If Jonathan Frid can’t quite come to grip with his offbeat celebrity, it’s understandable. Born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario, trained m his craft at London’s Royal Academy and the Yale Drama School, he’d spent nearly two decades as one of the hundreds of New York-based actors who, somehow, just never make it. Respected by other professionals, they fill out the years between Broadway roles in regional theaters, touring with road companies, playing small parts in Shakespeare summer festivals.
During the four days I’d followed the shooting, he bad been in virtually every scene, a feat requiring countless hours of rehearsal and memorization. “The worst part is that I’m a slow study,” he said, “You can’t always be looking at the Teleprompter. The audience notices.”
On Monday, after a weekend’s rest, be had delivered his lines with energetic authority. By Thursday, the accumulated strain showed in slurred or misread speeches and ill-timed movements. “I was awful today,” he said. “We never retape, no matter how many fluffs the cast makes. Not even when scenery falls over. Costs too much.”
He collapsed into an armchair. His face was still pale and haggard, his eyes shadowed. It was the first time I’d seen him without makeup.
He looked remarkably the same.
Next month, Johnny Depp will play Barnabas Collins in a movie version of Dark Shadows. Fans of the old soap opera—who, of course, don’t look nearly old enough to have been alive back then—will be measuring his performance against the high standards set by Mr. Frid.
Classic Covers: The Grocery Store
Remember turning in pop bottles for change? How about having a few cents for candy and taking forever to decide? These Post covers remind us how much shopping has changed.
Lunchtime at the Grocery by Albert W. Hampson
The grocery cart was only a 3-year-old invention when this 1940 Post cover was painted. Invented in 1937, the “double basket” didn’t immediately catch on. People were used to carrying a woven basket, but to some women the cart seemed a bit much. Older people were afraid they’d appear feeble and men wanted to appear manly, as if handling a few groceries were no big deal. The inventor of the cart, Sylvan Goldman, finally hired models of all ages and both sexes to use the carts while shopping. It caught on enough by 1940, that a Saturday Evening Post cover featured the now ubiquitous baskets on wheels.
Thoughtful Shopper by Norman Rockwell
Before the days of the shopping cart, grocers went around the store fetching items according to your list. According to Norman Rockwell’s 1924 cover, sometimes they had to do so much more. The gentleman in this painting was J. L. Malone, who appeared in at least one other Rockwell cover. The artist appreciated Malone’s reading voice and the model sometimes read aloud for hours while Rockwell worked on an illustration such as this. The usual fare? Classic Dickens.
Penny Candy by Frances Tipton Hunter
No one promised the grocer an exciting career. Even the dog has fallen asleep while the children try to decide which candy to get. In 1939, a penny was a lot to a little kid. For more covers by Frances Tipton Hunter — guaranteed sweeter than penny candy — see The Art of Frances Tipton Hunter.
Grocery Line by Stevan Dohanos
As sure as you just want to pay a bite to eat and get on with your day, a slow-moving line looms ahead. Artist Stevan Dohanos had everything he needed in this painting except for just the right guy to portray the stalled shopper. To heck with it; the artist just went ahead with his summer vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. There he spotted a fellow vacationer in shorts and a fishing hat, yelled, “Hey, wait!” and proceeded to explain his Saturday Evening Post cover predicament. Sure, I’ll pose, the stranger said, and headed home to put on his city clothes. The man, H.R. Knickerbocker, was already known as an illustrious war correspondent, but now he was immortalized on a Post cover. The shopping carts are unique, quite different from the below cover from three years later.
More Money, Honey by George Hughes
This 1951 cover with the sleek metal cart looks more like today’s groceries, except perhaps for the milk bottles and the gentleman’s fedora. Oh, and the fact that she’s using a strange thing called cash rather than a credit or debit card.
Babies and Bananas by Stevan Dohanos
This is not an example of how a grocery store operates these days, but this 1952 cover is a fine example of why artist Stevan Dohanos is a Post favorite. Dohanos had done some farm scene murals for the grocery store and decided to use the actual grocer in a painting destined for The Saturday Evening Post. The artist just happened to have a cute baby to use for the cover — his own little tyke, Tony.
How to Buy a TV Today
Remember when buying a TV was easy? You walked into a store, chose the best screen size and picture for your budget, and lugged home a heavy tube in a box. Shopping for a TV today is a bit more complex. Your local big-box retailer has dozens on the wall—svelte, high-definition sets with gorgeous displays. And then there’s the cryptic terminology: LCD, LED, plasma—not to mention 60Hz, 120Hz, and 240Hz. Help! Here are the basics you need to know:
Essentially the choice is between LCD and Plasma. (LED is a subset of LCD, but we’ll get to that in a minute.) LCD (liquid crystal display) screens are brighter and reflect considerably less light than plasma TVs, making them better for sunlit rooms. They’re the more popular choice and, for that reason, slightly more expensive. Plasma TVs, on the other hand, show more vibrant colors and deeper shades of black, and are often preferred by home theater buffs.
LED TVs are really just LCDs, but with LED backlighting. LED stands for light-emitting diode, but the practical bottom line is that LED TVs can be wafer-thin, often less than an inch thick. LED TVs also use less energy than regular LCDs. If cost is a factor—and when isn’t it?—you can get some great deals on LED TVs.
When shopping, you’ll also want to consider the “refresh rate,” measured in Hz (for hertz or cycles per second). A higher refresh rate means less blurring in action sequences. You want the highest refresh rate possible for sports, but it’s not so important for watching talking heads. Shoot for at least 120 Hz.
Famous Contributors: Herbert Hoover
Long before he became president of the United States, Herbert Hoover had experience helping people during large-scale crises. He engineered protective barricades in China during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. In the onset of World War I, he was selected by the American Consul General to coordinate the evacuation of 120,000 American tourists from Europe. As U.S. Food Administrator he developed a plan that fed Allied soldiers in Europe and avoided rationing at home, and after the Great War, he organized food shipments to millions in central Europe and Soviet Russia.
But Ill-fated words from his 1928 campaign speech, “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land,” the subsequent stock market crash, and what some view as bad economic policies have branded him as one of the worst presidents in our nation’s history.
Herbert Hoover was a long-time contributor to the Post. His article, “Some Notes on Industrial Readjustment,” published 10 years before the Great Depression, may provide some insight into Hoover’s conservative approach to problems during the Great Depression. The following excerpts are taken from this article:
…[T]he attempt to solve great human and economic problems by governmental use of the courts instead of seeking solution from the legislatures is indeed further evidence of need for careful thinking.
When all is said and done, labor, whether with hand or mind, is the only excuse for membership in the community.
No scheme based on political appointment has yet developed the ability to replace competition in its selection of ability and character in management, and no government under the pressure of local political influences can properly conduct the risks of initiating extension and improvement.
In any event, until our Government abandons its method of war finance by way of gigantic inflation of credit and consequent stimulus to speculation there will be little relief from profiteering and its bitter interpolation into the cost of living.
You can read “Some Notes on Industrial Readjustment” in its entirety below:
[embedpdf width=”700px” height=”900px” ]http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Hoover.pdf[/embedpdf]
Classic Art: Dog Wanted
A 1932 poem by Margaret Mackprang called “Dog Wanted” was just, ahem, begging for our attention, so we found some fabulous canine art by Robert L. Dickey to go with it.
“Digging Doggy” by Robert L. Dickey
I don’t want a dog that is wee and effeminate.
Fluffy and peevish and coyly discriminate;
Yapping his wants in a querulous tone,
Preferring a cake to a good honest bone.
“Dog and his Bone” by Robert L. Dickey
I don’t want a beast that is simply enormous,
Making me feel as obscure as a dormouse
Whenever he hurtles with jubilant paws
On my shoulders, and rips with his powerful claws
My sturdiest frocks; the kind of a mammal
That fits in a parlor as well as a camel.
That makes the floor shake underfoot when he treads,
And bumps into tables and bounds over beds.
“Dogs Eating Hat” by Robert L. Dickey
The sort of a pet that I have in my mind
Is a dog of the portable, washable kind;
Not huge and unwieldy, not frilly and silly,
Not sleek and not fuzzy, not fawning, not chilly—
“Poodle Tricks” by Robert L. Dickey
A merry, straightforward, affectionate creature
Who likes me as playmate, respects me as teacher.
“Cat Guards Bowl of Milk” by Robert L. Dickey
Arid thumps with his tail when he sees me come near
As gladly as if I’d been gone for a year;
Whose eyes, when I praise him, grow warm with elation;
Whose tail droops in shame at my disapprobation;
No pedigreed plaything to win me a cup—
Just a portable, washable, lovable pup!
— Poem by Margaret Mackprang
© The Saturday Evening Post – March 5, 1932
“Soots 1926” by Robert L. Dickey
Robert Dickey illustration from 1926 Post story, “Soots” by R.G. Kirk.