Famous Contributors: John le Carré
In 51 years as a writer, John le Carré has published just four short stories. Two of them were in The Saturday Evening Post.
A month after le Carré’s fifth novel was released in bookstores, “What Ritual Is Being Observed Tonight?” appeared in a November 1968 issue. (Read the entire story here.)
It is a good example of the author’s skill with language, his unerring ear for dialogue, and his sharp eye for the telling detail. However, the story does not involve le Carré’s usual world of international politics and espionage. Instead, it gives us a glimpse into the world he knew during a seven-year hiatus from active intelligence work, when he earned a degree at Oxford and taught at Eton College. In 1959, le Carré—then known only as David Cornwell—joined Britain’s foreign-intelligence service. He worked undercover in Germany, directing spies, interrogating suspected double agents, and gathering intelligence on Soviet activity. He also began writing fiction and turned out two mystery stories set in the world of spies.
With his third book, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, he became a best-selling author. The book was highly successful, even before it was made into a movie with Richard Burton. His sudden fame encouraged le Carré to take up writing as a full-time career. The decision was well timed, since a top British agent had just fled to Russia, offering the Soviets the names and backgrounds of Britain’s undercover agents—presumably including le Carré’s.
Le Carré is now regarded as one of the foremost authors of spy novels. However, his spies exist in an entirely different world than the one in which the James Bond spy thrillers were set. Le Carré’s secret agents usually work in drab offices and unromantic cities, amid moral ambiguities, and their operations are as likely to fail as succeed. Yet, this more realistic view of the intelligence operations has proved very popular with readers.
While there isn’t a breath of espionage in the following story, it does center on a theme that has continually intrigued the author: the conflict between the heart and the mind, the struggle between the intellectual and the lover. It is a rare gem that a lesser writer might have stretched into a too-long novel, and it features a resolution that you might not expect from the creator of The Russia House; The Constant Gardener; A Perfect Spy; and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
Cartoons: Cooking
Great cartoons spanning 40 years to give you food for thought—and a laugh, of course.
A Dream Come True
Norman Rockwell was a child of the city, raised in the mean streets of Manhattan in the late 1800s. As a New Yorker, he idealized certain aspects of country life as only a city slicker can. The man and his dog taking a stroll in the fresh air was little more than a dream at the time this cover was created.
The idea for the painting actually originated with the model, Walter Botts, whom Norman and his new wife Mary met in 1930 in New York as the artist was introducing her to his circle of friends. Walter and Mary hit it off when they discovered that they were both from the Midwest. Walter was describing his hometown and spoke fondly of his Hoosier roots and his love of wandering the countryside of south central Indiana as a kid.
Nothing came of the meeting right away, but the idealized vision of a bracing walk in the country had lodged in the artist’s mind. Five years later, Norman, Mary, and their two sons Jerry and Tommy (third son Peter was born in 1936), left New York to vacation at Mary’s family home in southern California. This was to be a working vacation for the artist, who visited Hollywood to do a radio show and made a point of seeing a string of potential models. As luck would have it, one of the models was Walter, now living in Los Angeles.
Was it fate that brought the two men together again? Norman had already made a preliminary sketch of the man-with-a-dog scene Walter had described five years earlier, but he’d done so using a different model. It was Mary who suggested Norman redo the illustration using Walter. After all, she pointed out, it was Walter who had been the original inspiration for the idea.
Norman always loved this painting for its reflection of the country life he aspired to. Sure enough, three years after completing the work, he and his family would relocate from the New York suburbs to southern Vermont. The dream became a reality.
As an interesting footnote, in 1938, model Walter’s face became familiar to millions as Uncle Sam in the World War II recruiting posters entitled, “I Want You.” Artist James Montgomery Flagg chose the model because he had “the longest arms, the longest nose, and the bushiest eyebrows,” according to James’ widow’s memoir. As the story goes, when James asked Walter what he was going to do with those long arms, the model suggested the persuasive pointing gesture. And the rest, as they say, is history.
To order a print, visit saturdayeveningpost.com/autumn-stroll.
Do You Really Want to Live to 100?
A man asks his doctor how to live to be 100.
The doctor asked the man, “Do you smoke or drink?”
“No,” he replied. “Never.”
“Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or fool around with women?” inquired the doctor.
“No, I’ve never done any of those things either.”
“Well, then,” said the doctor, “why do you want to live to be 100?”
It was a question that might have occurred to pollster George Gallup as he concluded his 1959 study “The Secrets of a Long Life,” for The Saturday Evening Post. (Read the full story here.) For the report, the Gallup Organization had spent months interviewing 402 Americans from across the country who had all lived 95 years or longer.
When all the data was collected, Gallup drew two surprising conclusions.
First, if you wanted to live to a very ripe old age, it didn’t matter what you ate or drank or how much you exercised.
Second, you’ll live a lot longer if your life is dull.
Nothing helped the human body reach a ripe old age better than an unexciting life of regular habits, little variation, and low stress. The interview subjects weren’t motivated by driving ambitions. They hadn’t even tried to achieve a long life. (Only 9 percent of the group had ever expected to reach their 90s.) “For many,” Gallup wrote, “their only outstanding accomplishment is that they have lived longer than most other humans. … Living to be old is probably the most exciting thing that ever happened to these people.”
They were admirable people, Gallup argued: honest, hardworking, law-abiding citizens and parents. But these elderly men and women had shaped their lives for contentment, not achievement. They were not risk-takers. When the great tide of migration swept westward, they remained where they had been born—usually in a small town.
In their lifetimes, stress wasn’t the buzz word it is today. They might have talked instead of discomfort, worry, nerves—whatever the word used, these subjects had figured out how to avoid it.
“If this still sounds dull,” Gallup concluded, “the chances are that you’ll never make 90.”
Gallup had commenced his research by asking subjects if they could attribute their long lives to any one factor. Fully one-third of the subjects said, “I don’t know.”
Others offered these explanation:
• God’s will (22 percent)
• Adaptability and a good sense of humor (17 percent)
• Hard work (16 percent)
• Good genes—parents or siblings who lived into their 90s (11 percent)
• Keeping regular habits (9 percent)
It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that most of the interview subjects lived lives of moderation—they didn’t eat or drink to excess, and they didn’t smoke. But a significant minority broke these rules.
Take the issue of drinking, for example. Over half of the people interviewed had never touched liquor in their lives, which might seem like an argument for abstinence. And yet, there was 115-year-old Uncle Charley Washington who, throughout his life, had drank “as much whiskey as he (could) afford.” Also, there was the testimony of 101-year-old Mrs. Marie Renier. For 80 years, she had drunk a quart of whiskey, and in many decades, as much as a gallon of beer a day.
As for food, there’s no consistent answer, either. Some ate lean, others ate richly. Meals tended to be heavy on the starch and protein. If a vegetable made it to their table, it was usually overcooked. Half of them had eaten fried food regularly all their lives.
Overall, there was enough contradiction among the subjects’ answers, aside from the uniform dullness, to rule out any other “secrets” for extending lifespan.
Even adopting a healthy pattern of living—regular hours, healthy diet, regular exercise, etc.—was no guarantee. As Gallup noted, “the only apparent value of their testimony is to give some sort of comfort to those of us who do not conform to the pattern and who covet long life.”
In other words, no matter what rules you lived by, you still had a chance at long life. And if you had followed all the generally accepted rules for good health, you still had no guarantees you’d make it to 100.
Americans today have a one-in-6,000 chance of living 100 years, which is probably why there are more centenarians living in America than any other country. We of the modern age still believe we can improve our odds with a better diet and more exercise. But if the real secret is living a life that is horribly, painfully dull, would any of us truly want to live to 100?
Beaded Earrings Tutorial
Bring some glamour to your wardrobe by following the tutorial below.
How to Make Beaded Earrings
Materials
- Two head pins
- Beads and bead caps
- Two ear wires
Tools
- Round nose pliers
- Wire cutters
Directions
- Thread beads and bead caps onto head pin.
- Use round nose pliers to press pin down at right angle over top bead, then use end of pliers to make loop and cut off excess pin with wire cutters.
- Open hanging loop of ear wire and attach beaded dangle. As you close ear wire loop, add some pressure to push the ends toward each other. Push the ends past each other a tiny bit and back again until they align perfectly (so there is no gap).
- Repeat to make second earring.
Earring Giveaway
(GIVEAWAY ENDED NOVEMBER 1, 2012)
TO ENTER
To enter this special giveaway, just answer the following question in the comments section of this post.
What is your favorite thing about fall fashion?
From cozy sweaters to chic scarves, fall fashion is in full swing. What is your favorite trend or accessory?
THE RULES
Only one entry per person. Giveaway ends November 1 at 11 p.m. EST. Winners will be selected at random and announced Friday, November 2.
Classic Covers: Halloween
Jack-o’-lanterns, masks, and merriment—in the early 1900s, the ghoulish holiday wasn’t so different than it is today.
Teddy the Pumpkin
Teddy the Pumpkin
J.C. Leyendecker
October 26, 1912
Theodore Roosevelt was the U.S. president from 1901-1909. Yet in 1912, when this J.C. Leyendecker cover (left) appeared, Roosevelt was still a force of nature. That same year, he had a falling out with former good friend and then-President William Howard Taft and decided to challenge him in the upcoming election. The Republican bigwigs favored Taft though people like this youngster said “Bully!” for Roosevelt.
Halloween, 1904
Halloween, 1904
Anne Estelle Rice
October 29, 1904
In the 1930s, Anne Estelle Rice (1877-1959) left illustration and began a career designing operatic sets and costumes in London. But her passion for theater was showcased in her illustrations, such as the 1904 cover (left). Rice often drew figures in theatrical costumes and settings. This cover is one of three she did for the Post; the contour lines and simple details shown in the uncomplicated silhouette are definitive of her style.
Woman in Masquerade Costume
Woman in Masquerade Costume
C. Allan Gilbert
October 12, 1907
An invalid as a child, Charles Allan Gilbert (1873-1929) drew pictures to entertain himself. He officially took up the study of art at age 16, and at 21 he studied for a year at the Académie Julian in Paris, where greats such as J.C. Leyendecker were trained.
Gilbert chose beautiful, buxom women as subjects, much like his contemporaries: Charles Dana Gibson and Howard Chandler Christy. Besides four covers for the Post, Gilbert illustrated books, posters, and calendars, but his work is often overlooked for the one image he is best remembered for: The intriguing 1892 double image called All is Vanity.
Looking for Future Husband
Looking for Future Husband
F. Lowenheim
October 28, 1922
Country Gentleman
German-born Frederick Lowenheim (1870–1929) was a storybook illustrator in the early 1900s. Like his book illustrations, Lowenheim’s 15 covers for Country Gentleman were often scenes depicting children in amusing situations, such as the Halloween prank on the October 28, 1922, cover (left).
A poem from an early 1900s postcard explains the girl’s horrified expression: “On Hallowe’en look in the glass, Your future husband’s face will pass.”
Halloween Fiddler
Halloween Fiddler
Norman Rockwell
Country Gentleman, October 22, 1921
Norman Rockwell painted 35 covers for Country Gentleman, which like The Saturday Evening Post, was published by Curtis Publishing Company. Known as “a journal for the farm, the garden, and the fireside,” Country Gentleman‘s content included farm news, gardening and canning advice, and fiction.
Most of Rockwell’s covers for the farm centric magazine centered around a character he created: city-slicker Reginald, who visits his country cousins frequently, only to be made the butt of their jokes.
In the 1921 Halloween cover (left), however, Rockwell shows us a more peaceable side to country living.
Treasuring Memories
More than the decorations on the annual Fraser fir tree or the wrapped gifts below it, Ann Balderston Glynn’s fondest Christmas memory is of her mother’s cream pies. She remembers how her mom would crush the graham crackers for the crust, pour hot butter to set it, and then stand over the stove stirring and stirring until the pudding consistency was just right.
“That pie represented home and love and family,” Ann says. As the years passed, she realized she wanted more than the handed-down recipe card from her mother. She wanted the stories that went along with it. So one December, 17 years ago, she returned to her childhood home in upstate New York, gathered her parents in the kitchen amid the ingredients for cream pie, and hit the record button on a video camera as her mother went to work. Ann’s mother spoke about learning the recipe from her mother on their farm in the 1930s while Ann’s father reminisced about a love of cooking that led to his career as a chef. (See also “Story Basics.”)
On that raw, unedited tape, Christmas pie became the centerpiece of a permanent family record.
Ann, 53, a married mother of two, is among a group especially eager to create—and celebrate—family history and turn it into a legacy, baby boomers. “That generation is at an age where they want to pass on family history to the next generation,” says John Paolo Canton of Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource. “It gives them a sense of being, a sense of belonging. They’re finding out family stories no one knew. It’s like a treasure hunt.”
According to a Harris Interactive poll conducted last year, four in five Americans have an interest in learning about their family history. And if there’s an ideal time to bring a family tree to life, it’s during the holidays, the traditional and sometimes only occasions, when multiple generations gather. Reminiscing about the good old days comes naturally.
Peppering the family matriarch or patriarch with questions at the Thanksgiving or Christmas table is a magical moment. That’s when it hits you that your relatives are flesh-and-blood time capsules. “You don’t realize how many questions you have until you don’t have the opportunity to ask them anymore,” says Michelle Ercanbrack, a family historian with Ancestry.com. The holidays are a call to action, a time to “open the door for those beautiful conversations. If that opportunity is lost, think of the cultural heritage your children and grandchildren are being denied.”
Think about it: These conversations fill holes in understanding who you are. Scott Tims of Dallas, Texas, describes the impact of stories told by family members around the holiday table. “My grandmother graduated high school in 1933, one of the very worst years of the Great Depression,” he says. She would describe trains running through town loaded with good, honest men, shabbily dressed, looking for work.
Those stories of hard times resonated when Scott found himself dealing with his own challenges in our current recession. “There were times I really felt sorry for myself and then I thought back to the stories my grandmother and father told me about their growing up and what they had and what they didn’t. It puts things into perspective.”
Five Grain Salad
There are numerous health benefits to eating whole grains: They are low in fat, high in fiber, and one of nature’s superfoods. They have a long culinary history: Amaranth and quinoa are American heritage grains that were eaten by the Aztecs and Incas respectively.
Today these grains are widely cultivated and prized in the kitchen, not only for their nutritional value but also for their flavor and versatility.
Five Grain Salad
(Makes 6 cups, about 6 servings)
Ingredients
- 2 cups cooked wild rice (scroll down or click here for cooking directions)
- 1 cup cooked amaranth (scroll down or click here for cooking directions)
- 1 cup cooked quinoa (scroll down or click here for cooking directions)
- 1 cup cooked millet (scroll down or click here for cooking directions)
- 1 cup cooked brown Jasmati, brown basmati, or brown jasmine rice (cooked according to package)
- 1 teaspoon grated orange zest
- 1 cup fresh orange segments
- 1 cup diced fennel (small dice)
- ½ cup diced radishes (small dice)
- ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
- ¼ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
- 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh fennel fronds
- 1 teaspoon chopped fresh dill
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Directions
Combine all ingredients in large bowl. Refrigerate, covered, for at least 1 hour or as long as 3 to 4 days before serving. Remove from refrigerator and serve at room temperature.
Wild Rice
Ingredients
(Makes 2 cups)
- ½ cup wild rice
- 1 ½ cups water
- 1 tablespoon butter
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
Directions
- Combine ingredients in medium saucepan and bring to boil. Stir, cover pan, and reduce heat to simmer. Cook until all liquid has been absorbed, 50 to 55 minutes.
- Remove pan from heat and let stand, covered, for 10 minutes.
- Fluff rice with fork, adjust seasoning if necessary, and use as desired.
Amaranth
Ingredients
(Makes 1 ½ cups)
- 1 cup amaranth seeds
- 1 cup vegetable stock or canned low-sodium vegetable broth
- Pinch of salt
Directions
- Place small saucepan over medium-high heat, and add amaranth. Toast until it begins to pop, 4 to 5 minutes.
- While amaranth is cooking, bring stock to boil in medium saucepan.
- Add amaranth and salt to stock. Cover pan, reduce heat, and simmer until all liquid has been absorbed, 7 minutes.
- Remove pan from heat and set aside, still covered, to steam for 7 minutes.
- Pour amaranth into bowl and use as desired.
Quinoa
Ingredients
(Makes 2 cups)
- 1 cup vegetable stock or canned low-sodium vegetable broth
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ⅛ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- ½ cup quinoa
Directions
- Combine stock, salt, and pepper in medium saucepan and bring to boil over high heat. Add quinoa, cover pan, and reduce heat. Simmer quinoa until all liquid has been absorbed, 12 minutes.
- Remove pan from heat and let stand, still covered, for 5 minutes.
- Fluff quinoa with fork, and use as desired.
Millet
Ingredients
(Makes 2 cups)
- ½ cup hulled millet
- 1 cup vegetable stock or canned low-sodium vegetable broth
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Directions
- Place small saucepan over medium-high heat, and add millet. Toast until it has a nutty smell, 4 to 5 minutes.
- As soon as first grain pops, remove pan from heat and pour millet into bowl. Add cold water and swirl to wash millet. Then pour millet into fine-mesh sieve and rinse under cold running water for another minute or until water runs clear.
- Bring stock to boil in medium saucepan. Add millet and salt and pepper to taste, reduce heat, and simmer, covered, until all liquid has been absorbed, 20 minutes.
- Remove pan from heat and let stand, still covered, for 5 minutes.
- Fluff millet with fork, and use as desired.
Story Basics
The holiday get-together is the perfect place for beginning your family history project. Everything works better if you do a little planning. Here’s how to start preserving your family’s history.
Get Ready
Start with what you know: birth dates, marriages, deaths, etc. Write it all down.
Get set
Transfer your notes to a chart, and organize it as a family tree. You can use the free family tree at Ancestry.com and make use of their repository of 10 billion statistical records from all over the world. Select census indexes; state-specific downloadable charts and forms are available at no charge.
Before the family gathering, draw up a list of open-ended questions with specific family members in mind. These can be as simple as: “Tell us about your wedding day,” or “Where did you serve in the war?” If you have them, gather family photos, letters, memorabilia, and heirlooms. These will help jumpstart memories. (One caveat. Some memories may be difficult for loved ones to share. Don’t push. Be respectful.)
Go!
Select a relaxed moment as dinner is winding down, and start by announcing that you would like to ask members of the family to share some of their fondest memories. Pass around photographs and other collected items to get the conversation started.
Tip: Prompt young children to be the interviewers. Their innocent questions and true wonder about the mysteries of that hard-to-imagine time before they were born can open up reticent elders to share stories they might never share with another adult. Encourage one of the younger family members to record stories using a video camera or smartphone. (Create an instant audio scrapbook using the free iPhone app Saving Memories Forever available at savingmemoriesforever.com.)
Expand your search
The mission to document your family’s past can go well beyond family members you have always known. Use Facebook and other social networking sites to search for distant family members. On Facebook, you can create family-only groups or plan a reunion.
See “Tracing Family Roots” for more videos and stories related to genealogy.
Classic Art: Voting in America
We know how it is: If you hear “I approve this message” one more time, you’ll throw your shoe at the TV. Maybe both shoes. Well, we have a fresh look at some vintage election art from The Saturday Evening Post archives, and we think you’ll approve.
Norman Rockwell at the Voting Booth
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company
advertisement
Norman Rockwell
November 5, 1960
“Here I am on November 8. As you can see, it’s not easy for me to make up my mind…” Norman Rockwell says in the caption of this 1960 Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company advertisement (left).
The ad was one in a series of 81 pencil drawings Norman Rockwell sketched in the ’50s and ’60s for the insurance company. The advertisements depicted family life and ran in magazines such as Newsweek, Time, and The Saturday Evening Post. His artwork graced many ads, if not from A to Z, then at least from Acme Market to Western Union. The insurance series was Rockwell’s largest body of ad work.
Though we don’t know if he cast his vote for Richard Nixon or John F. Kennedy, we do know that he enjoyed working with both men in 1960, painting each of their portraits for The Saturday Evening Post covers. He found Nixon “as warm and friendly as the father of two pretty daughters could be.” And when he arrived to paint young Senator Kennedy, he found JFK still in his PJs. “The pajamas were rumpled, but he was wonderful,” Rockwell said. See “Post Presidential Covers” for both portraits.
Boy With Portraits of Taft and Bryan
Boy with Portraits of Taft and Bryan
J.C. Leyendecker
October 31, 1908
The third time was not the charm for William Jennings Bryan (portrait right). He lost the 1896 and 1900 presidential elections to William McKinley. And with the backing of popular incumbent Theodore Roosevelt behind William Howard Taft (portrait left) in 1908, Bryan lost again. J.C. Leyendecker, the Post‘s most prolific cover artist illustrated more than 320 Saturday Evening Post covers, from 1899 to 1943.
Leyendecker’s art ran the gamut, from lavish and elegant to humorous. Few covers were of a political nature, as Post editors preferred eye-catching portrayals of pretty girls or amusing scenes with children. However, Leyendecker depicted George Washington on five Post covers and did a memorable sketch of the corpulent William Howard Taft on the occasion of his 1909 inauguration (see “Post Presidential Covers”).
Votes for Women
Votes for Women
J.C. Leyendecker
December 30, 1911
For 37 consecutive years, J.C. Leyendecker welcomed the dawn of a brand new year with that famous New Year’s baby. Often, the cover was a reflection of the times: The 1910 New Year’s baby was flying a new-fangled biplane; the 1914 tot was riding a ship across the Panama canal. The precocious infants were aware of Prohibition and worried about the first global war and the Great Depression. The last New Year’s baby in 1943 wore a helmet and stabbed a swastika with a bayonet.
Our young lady (left) welcoming 1912 is ahead of her time; women didn’t get the vote until 1920. We’re reminded of Hillary Clinton’s quote from the 2008 primaries: “My mother was born before women could vote. But in this election my daughter got to vote for her mother for president.”
He Won’t Win!
He Won’t Win!
J.F. Kernan
Country Gentleman, October 25, 1924
J.F. Kernan illustrated nearly 30 covers for the Post and 28 for its sister publication, Country Gentleman, left. With arresting use of color, he depicted old sailors and frequently painted outdoor hunting and fishing scenes. It is indicative of his skill as an illustrator that he could move from a blue seascape or woodsy scene to a droll interior.
Four years before this issue of Country Gentleman hit newsstands, the 19th Amendment was passed, granting American women the right to vote. Women were still striving for political equality. In this cover, hubby is more than a bit skeptical of his wife’s choice. Clearly the artist was on her side: See Her Man Won! (below) which appeared on the very next cover (November 1, 1924).
Her Man Won!
Her Man Won!
J.F. Kernan
Country Gentleman, November 1, 1924
The Post’s sister publication, Country Gentleman occasionally ran two-part covers in the late 1910s and early ’20s. Part one of this scene appeared on the October 25, 1924, cover (see above). Left, the artist J.F. Kernan illustrated hubby having to eat crow after deriding his wife’s choice.
Another artist who had fun with the “wait until next week” concept was Norman Rockwell. Normally associated with The Saturday Evening Post, Norman Rockwell did 35 covers for Country Gentleman.
The Losing Candidate
The Losing Candidate
Norman Rockwell
November 8,1958
The model for this cover (left) was indeed politician Bernard T. Casey of Boston. For some years prior to this cover’s appearance, Casey, a telephone company executive, had served eight terms in the state legislature. He then quit running, but this natural-born leader with the winning smile never did quit helping other people campaign and win.
The cigar-chomping man to the right was Tom Carey, a fixture in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where Illustrator Norman Rockwell lived. Carey delivered the mail from the railroad station to the post office via horse and buggy for more than 50 years. During the summer, he also drove tourists around the countryside in his surrey, pointing out places of interest such as the Old Corner House, which served as the Norman Rockwell Museum for 24 years.
First Vote in the New States
First Vote in the New States
Constantin Alajálov
November 12, 1960
“This week, for the first time in history,” wrote Post editors in 1960, “the citizens of the Sandwich Islands and of ‘Seward’s Folly’ go to the polls to help elect a President of the United States.” It was a record-breaking ballot year, and Russian-born artist Constantin Alajálov couldn’t resist illustrating the contrast between the voters of the two recent additions to the United States, Hawaii and Alaska.
Concerning Alajálov’s subject, editors wrote, “And who knows, perhaps one of them, an orchid-picker or a seal skinner, is casting the vote that carries the state that swings the election. … This amalgam of people living together in harmony is bright evidence of the democratic way of life they’re voting to preserve.”
Understanding Adult ADHD
Brook Ochoa, 42, doesn’t fidget or squirm or bounce off walls like an 8-year-old child with ADHD. That’s primarily because she’s an adult, and adults tend to lack the hyperactivity part. The single mother of two has plenty of other symptoms, however. “I read seven books at a time, have never finished a project in my life, and when I get bored with a job I just walk away. I never knew until recently that that wasn’t normal. If it’s boring, I’m done.”
“Boring” is the kiss of death to adults with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or just ADD if they lack the hyperactivity component). And her inability to stay interested in any one subject for long may explain why Brook quit several jobs as manager and assistant manager of stores like Target and Wal-Mart. Brook is certainly competent enough to handle a heavy workload. She did well in school and earned a master’s degree in human resources; she can focus and finish assignments when they interest her. But around the house, she struggles with such simple tasks as washing dishes after meals. “Every dish in the house has to be dirty before I notice,” says Brook with a sigh. (See also “Symptoms of ADHD.”)
But at least she knows where her demons lie. For adults who were not diagnosed as children—and anyone who was already an adult when ADHD became widely recognized in children in the 1990s is unlikely to have been—having a label affixed to their struggles allows them to finally seek help. Perhaps even more important, it lets them make sense of a lifetime of bewildering experiences, of feeling hopeless or helpless in the face of their mental dysfunction, and, in many cases, wondering why they never achieved what they felt they could have.
“The more she described ADD the more the light bulb lit up for me,” recalls Robin Bellantone, 61, a mental health counselor in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She had no idea adult ADD existed when she had the life-altering conversation during her graduate-school internship at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 1999. It was there that she heard a fellow staffer who specialized in working with artists with ADHD talking about the disorder: “It explained so much about my own history”—her inability to focus, her difficulty paying attention, her constant search for new stimulation.
Stories of adults who finally learn they have ADHD are as unique as the people themselves, but they have at least one thing in common: a sense that what was once shrouded in mystery is now lit with understanding, that a weight has been lifted and a puzzle solved. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that 4.1 percent of adults have ADHD in any given 12-month period (compared to 9 percent of children). In the young, three times as many boys as girls have ADHD, but by adulthood the prevalence is the same in both sexes.
For adults, having the ADHD label affixed to their struggles allows them to finally seek help.
If it sometimes seems that everyone has some form of ADHD in today’s disjointed world of smartphones, tablets, and the like, the formal diagnosis is indeed on the verge of becoming more common. The newest edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, scheduled for release in May 2013, is expected to loosen the diagnostic criteria for the disorder substantially, lowering the number of symptoms required. (See chart, “Symptoms of ADHD,” next page.) But, even so, there are misconceptions about what it takes to qualify. For example, inability to focus and being easily distracted—with no other symptoms—wouldn’t be enough. You do not have ADHD if you simply like to flit from task to task at work. You do not have ADHD if you get bored doing housework. You do not have it if your mind wanders when reading dense, boring prose on a topic you have no interest in; if you get fidgety during boring sermons or hours-long presentations from a financial planner; or if you start reading another book or magazine before you finish the previous one you’ve started.
Moreover, the symptoms must appear in at least two settings: If you only show these behaviors at work, then you do not have ADHD. You probably just don’t like your job.
Still, the condition is underdiagnosed. Today, for every adult whose ADHD has been identified, there are at least three adults whose ADHD has not, according to Dr. Mary Solanto of Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. Underdiagnosis reflects that adults can compensate for ADHD by choosing jobs that fit their brains—for instance jobs that present constant new challenges rather than jobs where one does the same task over and over.
That probably explains why Ruth didn’t receive her diagnosis until age 74. As a young woman she had few friends, felt isolated, and often blurted out what she felt without much thought for the consequences. Then, after marrying and raising a family, Ruth—who did not want her full name used—went to nursing school at age 46. She adored her new career. “I was busy all of the time. It’s never boring,” she says.
Symptoms of ADHD
We’re all distracted at times but that doesn’t mean we have ADHD. Like all psychological illnesses, ADHD falls at the far extreme of a spectrum of behaviors. A diagnosis of adult ADHD currently requires that at least six inattention symptoms and six hyperactivity-impulsivity symptoms be present for a minimum of six months, with harmful effects on social, academic, or work activities. New diagnostic guidelines coming in May 2013 will only require three inattention symptoms and four hyperactivity-impulsivity symptoms for a diagnosis.
Inattention Symptoms
• You fail to pay close attention to details or make careless mistakes.
• You often have trouble remaining focused during lectures, conversations, or while reading.
• When spoken to directly, your mind seems elsewhere even in the absence of any apparent distraction.
• You often do not follow through on instructions and fail to finish work or chores.
• You often have difficulty organizing tasks and activities, so you fail to meet deadlines.
• You often avoid, dislike, or are reluctant to undertake tasks that require sustained mental effort, such as preparing reports or completing forms.
• You often lose things you need for tasks, such as books, wallet, paperwork, or cell phone.
• You are often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli.
• You are often forgetful in daily activities such as running errands, returning calls, paying bills, and keeping appointments.
Hyperactivity-Impulsivity Symptoms
• You often fidget with or tap your hands or feet, or squirm while seated.
• You often get up when remaining seated is expected, such as at work.
• You often run around where it is inappropriate.
• You are often unable to quietly engage in leisure activities, such as reading or gardening.
• You are often unable or uncomfortable sitting still for an extended time, as in restaurants or meetings.
• You often talk excessively.
• You often blurt out an answer before a question has been completed, finish other people’s sentences, or cannot wait your turn in conversation.
• You often have trouble waiting your turn, such as in line at a bank or store.
• You often interrupt others by butting into conversations or activities.
More on ADHD from the Post:
• “If It’s Boring, I’m Done!”
• ADHD: Living in Overdrive
• Identifying ADHD
America’s Wealth Gap
Will 2012 go down in history as the year money took over politics? Both parties will have spent more than a billion dollars electing the next president. More and more of that money comes from a handful of the wealthiest Americans and the corporations they run. On the Democratic side, Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks, telecommunications pioneer Irwin Mark Jacobs, and hedge fund manager James Simons have donated millions to re-elect the president, but the amount of money the Democrats have received from deep-pocketed supporters pales in comparison to what Republicans have received. A single billionaire, business magnate Sheldon Adelson, had by August spent more than $41 million and promised to spend up to $100 million defeating President Obama and other Democrats. All told, the top .07 percent of donors give more money than the bottom 86 percent. And it pays off. Candidates spend ever more time courting the super rich and then, once in office, try to keep them happy. This summer, for example, Mitt Romney held two fundraisers at which he raised almost $10 million from the oil and gas industry and then announced that as president he would end more than 100 years of federal restraint of oil and gas drilling on public lands. Things like that happen on both sides. How did we get into such a situation? What is to be done about it? Is it threatening our democracy? And doesn’t it go against everything the founding fathers stood for?
Those are big questions. The last one is the easiest to answer. Control of government by the richest wouldn’t have bothered the founders at all. It was just what they believed in. John Jay, the first Chief Justice, put it most directly: “The people who own the country ought to govern it.”
Many of the founders, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, were themselves among the wealthiest people in the country. They felt their prosperity made them obliged to serve their nation at the highest level. Yes, they declared independence and fought a Revolution to escape the tyranny of English monarchy and might, but they expected to replace aristocracy of birth with aristocracy of accomplishment, rule by elites who had created their wealth and influence, not inherited it. That was why they wrote a Constitution that stated the president was to be elected not by the people but by an elite Electoral College, and the Senate was to be chosen not by the people but by state legislatures. And that was why in most states only men who had money and property were allowed to vote at all.
It didn’t take long for the 99 percent of the day to rebel against that status quo. The notion of true democracy, rule by ordinary people, grew popular in the early 19th century. It was spearheaded by President Andrew Jackson, who hated bankers and banks, especially the national bank that had been founded by Alexander Hamilton. He destroyed the bank, partly to counter the power of the richest Americans. At the same time, a new generation of wealthiest Americans emerged, and they were a breed that had never existed in Europe—industrious, self-made men of humble origins, such as John Jacob Astor, a German immigrant who began working in a menial job for a fur merchant but came to dominate the trade in furs from the West, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, who rose from ferryboat captain to steamboat owner and then railroad baron. In 19th century America, the wealthiest really did have something in common with the common man.
Or at least that was true in the American North. The elite of the South were a breed apart. They grew fantastically rich and powerful from growing rice and cotton with all the hardest labor done by slaves. Seven of the first 12 presidents were from Virginia, the most prosperous part of the South. When the Civil War came, it was a fight not only over slavery but between the power of new Northern industry and urban wealth and the spoils of the Southern slave economy as well.
As extreme as the power of the wealthiest is today, it pales before that of the rich in the pre-Civil War South, for they could own human beings who had no rights whatsoever. Slave owners had such full support of the law that the Constitution originally counted each slave as three-fifths of a man for voting purposes, not so that slaves themselves could vote, but to add to the headcounts on which Congressional districts were based, giving their owners even more political and electoral power than anyone who didn’t keep slaves. Slavery was by far the highest point of the tyranny of the wealthiest in the United States.
But the kind of abuse of power that’s more familiar to us today took off after the Civil War, when four years of bloodshed costing more than a million lives left the South crippled and the North as a new industrial world power. That power corrupted, as it always does. The Gilded Age—which lasted from the end of the Civil War to 1900—was a festival of power grabs among the wealthiest. For instance, to build the Transcontinental Railroad, the owners of the Union Pacific Railroad set up a construction firm called Credit Mobilier to wildly overcharge for the work it did, just so they could bleed their own company and bondholders. Then, to make sure Congress didn’t complain, they gave assorted Congressmen both cash bribes and stock that paid huge dividends. The scam got exposed in 1872. It was estimated to have stolen $42 million in government and bondholder money, and it led to the disgrace of public figures as high up as the vice president, Schuyler Colfax.
By the 1880s the Senate was dominated by millionaires. And by 1892, wealth-fed scandal had become so commonplace that opposition to it gave rise to a new political party, the Populists, whose platform announced, “We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. … The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few. … From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes—tramps and millionaires.”
When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, he ushered in the Progressive Era, one of two major periods in U.S. history when the political tide turned strongly away from the wealthiest—the other was during the presidency of his distant cousin Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt railed against what he called “malefactors of great wealth” and the “criminal rich,” and he pushed through reforms like strengthened railroad regulations and the creation of the Department of Labor. A decade later, President Woodrow Wilson cemented Roosevelt’s accomplishments by establishing the federal income tax and the direct election of senators.
We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Though none of that prevented the wild financial bubble fed by coziness between the wealthy and the government in the 1920s. So in the wake of the Great Crash that followed, Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 as a rich New Yorker determined to look out for the common man. He wrote to a friend, “The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government since the days of Andrew Jackson. … The country is going through a repetition of Jackson’s fight with the Bank of the United States—only on a far bigger and broader basis.” He raised taxes on the rich and used much of the money that came in to put the unemployed poor back to work. In 1936 he wrote: “We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. … I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it, the forces of selfishness and lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.”
Voting Back in the Day
We are thick in the middle of a presidential election, which has been a rancorous affair, causing many Americans to long for the olden days when we were governed by clueless English kings. I wonder if it’s too late to apologize to the British, abolish Congress, and ask the queen to take us back?
When I was a kid, elections were a happy event, earning us a day off school if we assisted the candidates by passing out their pencils, pens, matchbooks, and rulers. Naturally, as the date neared, every child in town took a sudden interest in the body politic and its attendant obligations. We would rise early and hurry to the voting sites to eat the doughnuts intended for poll workers who were overweight and should have been grateful for our intervention but seldom were. At noon, we would walk to the Dairy Queen and eat hot dogs cooked by a light bulb and revel in the democracy that was America.
At 6 o’clock, when the polls closed, we would gather in the courthouse on the town square and watch through the evening hours as the county auditor climbed a stepladder every few moments to write the latest votes on a chalkboard hung high upon the wall. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, making me queasy, causing me to associate nausea with politics, a pattern that persists to this day.
Around 10, the results from the outlying polls were called in, the numbers adjusted to allow for chicanery and error, and the victors announced. They would step to the podium and humbly thank, in order, God, their family, the long-deceased founders of our town, then end with an unrehearsed and lengthy speech on the general wonders of America and the specific virtues of Danville and Hendricks County, Indiana.
My father, the town board president, had raised the speeches to an art form. In my mind it was the acme of representative democracy, watching the votes accrue beside my father’s name on the board overhead, then listening to him extoll the town that had opened its arms to our family in 1957. With the presidency came the responsibility of keeping the groundhog population at bay, lest they destroy the backyard gardens that everyone had in those days. My father was a crack-shot, like Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, and the terror of groundhogs everywhere. Most townspeople thought any man unable to exterminate rodents was unfit for public office. To this day, I still half expect presidential candidates to tell us their stance on groundhogs.
Being Indiana, everyone in our town was Republican, except for Bob Pearcy who owned The Danville Gazette newspaper. He also had a maple tree in his front yard that had been twisted a quarter-turn by the 1948 tornado. Pug Weesner, the owner of The Republican newspaper, lost his house in the same tornado, causing some in our town to believe God was a Democrat, temporarily swelling the ranks of that party and ushering Harry S. Truman into the White House.
There was a luster to government service in those days—a regard not only for the office, but also for those who held it. World War II was still fresh in our collective memory, a cataclysmic event resolved by government’s know-how and young men’s courage. If today the less capable are attracted to office, and there does seem to be a weakening in the strain, that was not the case then. The words, “I work for the government” were a statement of pride. One did not run for Congress for the lifetime healthcare; one ran to serve, to help, to make America the “shining city on the hill.” Service to the country was a calling, not a last resort when employment in the private sector didn’t pan out.
Election night, that holy night, was the one school night my parents let me stay up late. By 9 o’clock I would be flagging, so would curl up behind the pillar next to the marble staircase and fall asleep in that cradle of democracy. At 10 o’clock, the last precinct would phone in, and the cheering would waken me.
I would listen to the victory speeches, as one would a bedtime story, lulled to sleep by the soft cadence of freedom.
Brain Fitness
Our brains routinely sort and store information along billions of nerve cells connected in trillions of ways. As we learn more about how the brain works, research shows a digital gaming system called the Interactive Metronome or IM may circumvent timing glitches that can occur in the brain’s basic wiring. The treatment (often guided by an occupational therapist) combines movement and sound to boost cognitive, language, and motor skills in people with ADHD, autism, stroke, and Parkinson’s disease.
How IM Works
Interactive Metronome therapy challenges users to precisely match a computer generated rhythm by clapping and tapping. The series of progressively challenging movements are designed to improve timing, focus, and concentration. Training typically consists of 15 one-hour sessions over a three to five week period.
The Theory
Auditory training is based on the theory that timing in the brain is disrupted by conditions such as ADHD, autism, stroke and Parkinson’s, and that improving neural timing helps kids and adults improve behavioral, social, cognitive, and motor skills.
The Evidence
American Journal of Occupational Therapy:
IM training for ADHD improved attention, concentration, motor coordination, language processing, and reading and math skills in pre-teen boys with the condition.
IM training for chronic stroke resulted in significant functional gains for two patients with arm weakness—even though their strokes occurred years earlier.
For more about the science, patient stories, and to find a provider, go to the Interactive Metronome website.
Related Articles
- Understanding Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Science has finally come to understand adult ADHD, a frustrating disorder once shrouded in mystery.
- ADHD: Living in Overdrive The Post profiles several well-known individuals who share their struggles and triumphs in coping with ADHD.
- Autism: An Unexpected Life A testimonial about having a grandchild with autism.
Cartoons: Not All There
Ever have one of those days when you apparently forgot to pay your brain bill? Thinking of these characters should help you feel smart again.