My mother was a terrific cook. Despite that fact — or maybe because of it — I am not. While she was alive, I could always count on wonderful meals, without ever having to go near a stove. So I didn’t. I figured that I could learn when it became necessary. Nothing to it. All I’d need would be recipes. Anyone who can read, I reasoned, can cook — which is true, up to a point. But how well? Ah, there’s the rub.
Living alone, I did not have in-house critics to provide feedback for my culinary efforts. Nevertheless, and not to brag, when I invite friends and most kin to dinner, they invariably lavish praise on every course. “Why not?” some of my other, less kind relatives point out; “It’s one less meal they’ve had to prepare for themselves.”
Such remarks do not inspire confidence.
Right, Actress Joan Fontaine in movie trailer forThe Women
It was with considerable trepidation, therefore, that I entered the kitchen of my hostess, the legendary actress, Joan Fontaine, one long-ago Thanksgiving morning, to offer my assistance. Acting was not Miss Fontaine’s only talent. Not by a long shot. She was also a hole-in-one golfer, a prize-winning fisherwoman, a hot air balloonist, an accomplished horsewoman, and a pilot. “When you’ve had as many husbands as I’ve had, Darling,” she’d quips, “you learn all their hobbies.” And one hobby all hubbies shared in common was a love of good food. No problem. Joan was also a gourmet cook who studied at the Cordon Bleu in Paris.
No wonder I was intimidated that day. But though my mother did not teach me to cook, she did teach me good manners, so I asked, politely, “What can I do to help, Joan?” “Can you cook?” she asked. “Not really,” I said truthfully, “but I should be able to manage some simple tasks.” “All right,” said she. “You can section the fruit for the salad.”
She handed me an apron and sat me down at a table in front of a large bowl, a bag full of oranges and grapefruit, and a paring knife. I figured, how hard can this be?
I found out. She stopped me as I was mangling orange No. 1. “No, no — not that way — this way,” she said demonstrating. Within seconds, she had removed the skin expertly, in one long piece, and then cut into the orange. With one swoop, she sliced into a segment and up the other side, removing a perfect orange slice and leaving behind only the membrane from both sides. In less than a minute, she had repeated this feat until all that was left in her hand was a complete “empty” orange-only membranes and core.
I tried to imitate her. Disaster. “Never mind,” she said, “I’ll do it. It will be faster.”
“See, that’s why I can’t cook,” I wailed. “That’s what my mother always says.”
“Good God, I don’t blame her,” said Joan. “The woman should be canonized just for letting you near her kitchen!” She then banished me to the den to write place cards.
I have never lived it down.
Thirty years later in a phone conversation, after her usual, “How’s your love life, Darling?” (which she knows never compared to hers, even in my wildest dreams), she twisted the knife: “Are you having any more success in your kitchen than in your bedroom these days?” This, in spite of the fact that a mutual friend who had dined at my home a few years ago and claimed to enjoy it (again, he didn’t have to cook it himself) wrote her a glowing review of the meal.
Instead of a letter, he inserted the message in a large mock-up of a front page of the show-biz bible, “Variety.” Echoing “GARBO TALKS,” the historic headline touting Greta Garbo’s first talking picture, his headline read, “MULA COOKS!” Unfortunately, his praise gave me a false sense of security.
It occurred to me recently that I really don’t have an accurate idea of what I looked like as a child. The only pictures of little Rosie that exist are the very rare formal poses taken in a photographer’s studio — as a toddler, with my parents…in my First Communion dress… my high school graduation portrait. Unlike today’s average kid, whose every move is documented and posted on Facebook daily, there are no candids of me emerging from my mother’s womb (thankfully), sleeping in my crib, splashing in my bath, crawling on the living room floor, playing with my teddy bear…
Come to think of it, I never had a teddy bear — or any kind of stuffed animal. Today, when kids can’t find their beds because they’re buried under mountains of colorful critters, not having a single one would trigger a visit from Child Protective Services; but way back then, I guess it wasn’t unusual because I don’t recall feeling deprived. I had my dolls, after all. No, not a cache of Cabbage Patch Kids or a bevy of Barbies, but a beautiful Shirley Temple doll and a Betsy Wetsy, who drank from a bottle and wet her diaper (a marvel for that technologically unsophisticated era).
Not only do no candid shots of my infancy-through-teen years exist, I also have no pictures of my early houses or places I may have visited. When I say “places” I mean mostly relatives’ homes down the block and occasionally a carousel when a visiting carnival came to town. No Disney World. No water parks. No mini-golf courses. No ski resorts. No anywhere. The first time I left my native Massachusetts was when I was eighteen and a friend borrowed his father’s car (a rare luxury) to take me for a ride to neighboring New Hampshire. Though I’m embarrassed to admit it, I was surprised when we crossed the state border to see that it looked just like Massachusetts. I actually expected to see an immediate dramatic demarcation. And I was supposed to be smart — an all “A” student all through school!
When I said the only pictures of my childhood were the few formal portraits taken in a photographer’s studio, I forgot the annual school picture day ritual. Maybe I was subconsciously repressing the memory because mine were always a disaster, documenting my bad hair days (every day), my self-conscious half-smile, and my ungainly posture. Talk about that awkward stage! I’m hoping to outgrow it soon.
I also often wonder about the kind of clothes I had as a child. I know I never wore jeans because no one did, except maybe for kids who lived on farms and did “chores.” (I always wondered what “chores” were.) But did I ever wear slacks or shorts? Certainly not in any of my formal photos, and certainly not to school, at least on picture days. So since no evidence exists to the contrary, I can only assume that I wore ladylike dresses all the time, even when jumping rope or hiding and seeking. As for other play, I remember sledding in the winter and running through the sprinkler on hot, summer days; but I have no pictures of any of those activities. I also remember flying a kite with my daddy one breezy autumn afternoon…walks to the library with my mom for my weekly allotment of beloved books…pigging out on lasagna at family holiday feasts… How I wish we had captured those precious times on film.
I also regret that I don’t have even one picture of Trixie, my adorable Spitz puppy, a seventh birthday gift from my big Uncle Al (I also had a little Uncle Al). Trixie was my constant companion for ten years until she went to doggy heaven, but I don’t have a single snapshot of her — or either of my Uncle Als.
Maybe that explains my latter-day obsession with cameras. Some people never leave home without their American Express card. I never leave home without a camera. Digitized pictures of the twenty-five countries and forty-plus states of America that I’ve visited since my first tour of exotic New Hampshire constantly flash on my computer monitors and digital frames throughout my home, helping me relive the magic every day. The galleries on my tablet, IPod, and phone teem with images of everything and everyone I love. I was never blessed with children myself, but none of my relatives’ kids are safe from my lens. They groan when they see me coming. They dive under beds and dash behind doors, providing some great action shots and videos. There’s no way to recapture my lost childhood, but I’ll be damned if I will allow theirs to disappear!
Meanwhile, I’m making sure that my second childhood is well recorded. So if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to take another “Selfie”!
I was at the checkout counter of a local supermarket last Saturday, watching as a pleasant woman rang up my groceries. In the brief pause as I wrote my check, the cashier turned to the youngster who was bagging the groceries.
“Hey, do you know if the library is open today?” she asked.
“Nah,” the bagger replied scornfully. “I don’t do libraries. I can Google anything I need to know.”
I happen to be aware that the bagger, who is the son of a friend, will be going to college next year. Once he gets there, I hope he may discover what a library can do for him, although in this age of pre-digested, easily-accessed information on the Internet, he may not feel the need.
It’s too bad that students today are rarely encouraged to discover the joys of doing library research, where not only can you find the book that you want, but can also look to the left and right along the shelf to browse among related books, thanks to the fact that the Dewey Decimal System groups books by topic.
Volumes to the side, above, or below your destination may prove to be useful, and not just to enlarge an assigned bibliography: they can also provide context, contending views, or historical perspective. How many youngsters finding odd but related books have thus been exposed to divergent ideas, and been forced to consider them? Analysis and comparison and judgment are the business of an inquiring, educated mind: just blindly accepting someone else’s opinion, even if it happens to be your professor’s opinion, is not.
Times have changed greatly since my great grandparents’ day, when books were the principal source of information and entertainment, and mothers or fathers nightly read aloud to their children (by firelight), chapters from long books by good writers. Within a short one hundred years, the electronic age pretty much doomed that charming image. An evening of television, followed by an occasional bedtime story read from a short children’s book replaced it.
Despite these changes, the function of the public library remains the same. It is a repository of information and entertainment and enlightenment, open to all readers living in its service area.
Our age has been called “the Information Age.” Computers have put swift information about almost anything at our keyboards and fingertips. But now that the novelty of computers has worn off a bit, we need to step back and consider that while electronic resources are exciting and immediate, we will be wise to continue to back up our knowledge of history and literature and art and science with hard copy.
I look at the advertisements in magazines and newspaper these days, and cannot believe that shoes with spike heels and long, pointed toes have made a comeback. How absurd! How unenlightened! How absolutely cruel!
I have a friend who swears that designers of shoes must be men, who’ve never worn a three-inch heel or, for that matter, crammed a foot into some strappy little number that strangles feet the way a garrote strangles necks. They haven’t worn shoes that jam their toes up, one against another, in an effort to fit them into the isosceles triangle that forms the so-called toe of the shoe. That triangular shape no more resembles the form of the human foot than a dunce cap echoes the shape of a human head. If you look down at your toes, you’ll see that there are three long toes (which one is longest varies from person to person) and then two toes of descending size. If you were to draw the shape with a straight edge, you’d probably get something shaped rather like a shed, or lean-to, not a church steeple.
I remember reading a quote from a shoe designer who referred to the pointed shoes as “graceful,” “elegant,” and “making the foot appear smaller.” Nonsense. How can something that elongates and defies natural shape make something appear smaller? From experience, I can state unequivocally that shoes with rounded toes make my very average size 7½ feet look positively tiny. And the pointy-toed shoes make them look like size 10’s. There’s nothing wrong with size 10’s if they are in proportion to the rest of you, but (at 5’2″) on me they’d look like clown feet.
And we’ve not even begun to discuss pain.
When I was in my mid-twenties, I quit work in my seventh month of pregnancy. Once home, I reverted to my childhood preference for bare feet or loafers, grateful to get out of the high heels I’d been wearing daily to the office, ever since graduating from college. Within a few days, I began to have strange pains in my heels. Thinking it was something related to pregnancy, I mentioned it to my OB.
“Oh,” he said, “that’s just your tendons stretching. They became shortened from wearing high heels all day.” I was stunned. In just 4 years, my shoes had shortened my tendons?
Tendons, of course, are the least of it. Calluses, bunions, malformed toenails, hammer toes: the list of woes goes on and on. Women who love shoes put up with all sorts of miseries in the name of style.
My mother was a mini Imelda Marcos. She kept upwards of 40 pairs of shoes well into her 80’s, and was crushed when she had to give up high heels following a heart attack at the age of 89. Her sole criterion in buying shoes was style, not comfort, and she was very proud of wearing size 5½ long after her feet had grown to 6½. While she had a pair of old oxfords for hiking and gardening, I never saw her wearing anything but high heels for shopping, visiting, teaching, church-going, and general around-the-house wear. She loved shoes so much that she would order a pair that caught her fancy from a catalogue. If they didn’t fit, she would give them away unworn to a friend or the daughter of a friend, to an employee or to the churchwomen’s sale. “Fit,” of course, was not a precise term for her. If she loved the look of the shoe enough, she’d cram her foot into it no matter what. As a result, her podiatrist simply shakes his head as he cuts her toenails. After almost 90 years of mistreatment, her bare feet are not a pretty sight.
I find myself wondering how on earth I escaped my mother’s mania for shoes. Certainly I like good-looking footwear, and when I’m dressed up, I find that pretty shoes help the overall effect. But having endured a few hours of torture at parties (those glamorous strappy numbers), I long ago decided to forego glamour for comfort. It may take longer to shop for good-looking shoes that are also comfortable, but for me, they’re worth the effort. And the thought of buying shoes without trying them on (from a catalogue, for instance) is anathema.
When my paternal grandfather passed away, one of the provisions of his will was that all household goods were to go to his one daughter — my mother. The three grandchildren were each to choose three keepsakes from the house. One cousin (female) was nine years my senior, the other (male) two. None of us was a child, so at the time, we were struck by the thoughtfulness of such a bequest.
Vintage jewelry, Wikimedia Commons
We arrived to have the door opened by Josephine, my mother’s sister-in-law. I’d spent many happy hours with my cousins in their house in school holidays. My uncle was a jolly, enjoyable man. The hundreds of hours spent at ‘the farm’ were still always outstanding ones during those growing-up years. The house was like a second home, partly constructed of fantasies of a completely foreign and enchanting existence after the pleasant anonymity of New York’s lower east side.
The farm was in central Ohio, and my parents and I lived in New York City. Since my aunt and her husband (my mother’s brother) and their two children lived only about ten minutes away, it wasn’t a surprise that they were on the scene before my mother and I were.
I hurried to the big china cabinet in the dining room to put in my bid for iridescent finger bowls like soap bubbles I’d never seen anywhere but on their shelf in the glass-fronted cabinet. From the time I could walk, I’d spent time on every visit gazing at what looked like something from fairy tales.
In the living room of this house was my mother’s piano, built specially for her when she was a serious music student in her teens and early twenties. A ‘parlor grand’ fashioned by Steinway and cased in polished cherry with deeply carved cabriole legs. It was a beautiful thing of itself.
The front hall housed an enormous grandfather clock with the phases of the moon as well as the sun rising and setting according the date and time, its Westminster chimes a cherished accent of my childhood. That house and its surroundings are still almost part of me physically. I can’t think how much more it must have meant to my mother who had grown up there, though her occasional references to events were without visible emotion. Still, that was her style about life in general.
By the time we left that afternoon, my mother had told me that Josephine had claimed the grandfather clock, the piano, and the finger bowls I so coveted. I erupted with fury. At nineteen, perhaps I should have known better, but I was livid.
“Why didn’t you point out to her the terms of the will?” I demanded.
My mother kept her eyes on the road as she drove down the driveway to the state highway. “Not worth a fight,” she said flatly.
I fumed. “But she has no right…”
My mother cut me off. “They’re only things,” she said, not for the first time I’d heard her make that remark, though never before in such a loaded (to me) situation.
My mother passed away at ninety-two. Those words were to be repeated a number of times before she died, and they always silenced me. Because I’m only six years away from her final age, now I’ve realized the implications of her by-word are important and practical. The trouble is that now I’ve also come to realize that concrete objects have a variety of values besides the intrinsic or esthetic ones to which I assume my mother referred.
In that same house was a set of golden oak library furniture in what was always referred to as the morning room. The slant-front desk had two fully three-dimensional carved gnomes sitting with one leg crossed over the other on the spiral-carved stiles that supported the drawers. Similar figures adorned the four legs of the matching library table with its curved stretchers beneath, where another little man sat where those stretchers crossed. Glass doors covered the shelves of the bookcases with spiral posts surmounted by more gnomes at each end.
Even then I didn’t like golden oak, even though I knew it had been the fashion at one time, but I was enchanted by the carving. The workmanship was museum quality. Later I learned that the furniture had been made by the German craftsmen (pattern makers, they were called) my grandfather and his brother and cousin had recruited as part of the design and manufacture of the first roller doors made for factories and large warehouses. The three men had started fortunes with the help of those immigrant woodworkers. Their wonderful art would outlast us all and our children. The furniture seemed in its aura of elegance and rarity to be examples of the prime of life of that generation of entrepreneurs; each was one of a kind. I wish I knew what had become of them.
In a corner stood a small Louis XVI vitrine. It contained a blown ostrich egg, a small opalescent flask made of Roman glass that had a strange bloom on the surface like that on a grape still on the vine, and several other small objects collected from the family’s travels.
On the mantel piece in the living room hung a tiny brass lamp. On the lid covering the oil chamber sits a tiny crudely cast mouse. It now hangs on my mantel.
In my living room is an Empire table of mahogany veneer in fairly deplorable condition. Desperate to recover some if its good looks, I took a steam iron to the blistered and cracked veneer on the top, stripped its clouded finish off, and refinished it. It’s the only piece of furniture from my father’s Memphis forbears remaining after the Civil War.
As one advances in years, one accumulates possessions the way a caddis fly larva accumulates grit. The glue that makes us carry it all along with us is in a way self-secreted as well. However, it’s psychic rather than physical — emotional rather than material.
Perhaps the most obvious example is a wedding band. There’s a string of coral beads that belonged to a great-grandmother, samplers made by an ancestress of my husband’s in 1813, the parchment doctoral degree awarded to my father, the unsigned portrait of a three times great-grandfather and his wife, the wedding presents, military medals, camp swim trophies and school athletic medals.
Every home worthy of the name is blessed, however humble or luxurious it might be, with those things that recall what’s important to us. Souvenirs of holidays we might not remember without their presence on a shelf. Plaques to remind us of a time when someone close to us was important — to other people; dozens of special gifts, and numberless photographs.
Unless memories and tradition count as ‘things,” these concrete reminders are not just things. They’re emblems. They’re absolute reminders — souvenirs in a literal sense — of what has happened in many lives, not just our own. As such, they serve as records that are apt to endure longer than any on paper.
So I choose to take a different attitude from that of my eminently practical and ordinarily completely unsentimental mother, and cherish and even show them off. I’ve begun a list of which items our children have mentioned or shown a fondness for so they may claim them. Daughters-in-law and granddaughters already have some antique jewelry. My daughter will get quite a bit more, much whose greatest value is that it was gifts to me from her father.
I try to take care of our “things.” Like the priceless photos of my late husband, they offer a surprising degree of comfort on days when nothing else can.
I hope that whoever came up with that “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” line has spent a long time in Purgatory, paying for making such a ridiculous generalization. (On the other hand, I hope that whoever came up with: “No generalization is true including this one” ascended straight to epigram heaven).
I feel indignant on behalf all the friends, acquaintances, and family members who, after the age of 50, have taken on new learning experiences ranging from Elder Hostel weekends, to career shifts, to taking up crafts like knitting or crochet, to learning new languages, to travel abroad, to rock climbing, to — well, you name it. Learning new tricks gives life some zing, and never more than when the rest of the world expects you to slow down.
Oh, I know that the phrase should be regarded as metaphor, but even then I question its truth. I don’t for a moment believe that we’re doomed to keep repeating the mistakes of our youth. I know too many people who have taken their lives in hand and reinvented themselves. For instance:
A good friend who smoked 3 packs a day for 40 years made up her mind to become completely tobacco free at the age of 60, and did it.
A married couple I know sought counseling and rescued a relationship that had become bitter and destructive.
The nephew of a friend, who had always wanted to be a wood carver, tossed his banking career away, and moved to the mountains to become a successful artist.
Mind you, there are a few tricks that we old dogs find especially hard to learn. Try, for instance, making changes that touch upon physical things, things that require muscles or nerves to learn new patterns.
Shortly after I started lap swimming, it occurred to me that continually turning my head to the left to breathe might well wear out some of the internal mechanisms, or perhaps let similar mechanisms on the right side atrophy. I decided to breathe to the right as I did my smooth crawl up and down the pool. My first attempt was a horror. I rolled like a foundering ship. I swallowed a lot of water (that is what water I didn’t breathe in). It seemed as if the far end of the pool had moved itself back by at least 50 feet as I struggled along. Maybe, I thought, I’ll try alternate-side breathing first. That, too, was not easy, but at least I had the left-breath at every other stroke in which to grab some air. At the end of a couple of weeks, I was moving along smoothly again, and soon was able to do every third lap of the pool breathing entirely on my right side. I was disgustingly proud of myself.
And then there was the matter of my pencil grip. At the age of 37, I started a new career as a kindergarten teacher. My first day on the job, the lead teacher, who was in her 70’s and scared me every bit as much as she scared the children, watched me writing a note.
“You’ll have to change the way you hold your pencil,” she said.
“Excuse me?” I replied, looking down at my hand.
“You’re using your thumb and middle finger to control the pencil,” she said disapprovingly. “You’re supposed to hold it between thumb and pointer, with tall-man tucked firmly away. It would be very bad for the children to see a teacher holding her pencil like that.”
The battle of the pencil grip was bad enough, but the first time she saw me cutting a piece of paper with the blunt-nosed, child sized scissors, she threw up her hands in horror.
Captain Charles E. Yeager, the Air Force pilot who was the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound, sits in the cockpit of the Bell X-1 supersonic research aircraft – Department of Defense. Department of the Air Force, 1948. Wikimedia Commons
Just reading about Chuck Yeager’s autobiography brought to mind the number of autobiographies and/or memoirs out there (what’s the difference?) and reiterates the question of why one writes these things.
If you’ve lived an adventurous, unique, dangerous, miserable or talented life — of course. If you’ve attracted the public eye, gained fame, naturally people want to know all they can find out about you. If you’re the first to break the sound barrier, the best poet of your generation, the discoverer of antisepsis, of course what you’ve done will be interesting to strangers.
Then I think of those who feel such pressure to commit words to paper that they write with some kind of compulsion to readers they don’t know. Why is it important to them to have strangers read their words? If someone else decides to commit their deeds to history, they don’t have to worry about self-aggrandizement.
The ones I wonder about with enormous sympathy are those who are compelled to write about themselves. (Recognize anyone?) It’s too simple to make the motivation sheer egoism; some other impetus must be there.
Think of the poets and novelists and playwrights whose words sink into the consciousness of thousands and even millions and remain there, as emblems, guides, beacons of hope or warnings of disasters, and the excuse (as if one is needed) presents itself. Maybe there’s information or a revelation for some unknown viewer that you can provide, even if it’s not earth-shaking. Besides, we all know more about ourselves than we do about anyone else.
I’ve lived a life that is unique in the sense that every single one, like every single snowflake, is singular, but without any outstanding characteristics. In spite of that, I want to talk about it.
Of course, the person with whom I always did speak of it is no longer available. It’s a bit like losing part of your own hearing to lose the ear that could always be counted on to listen to what you had to say. Nothing in your own voice sounds acceptable after that. To your own ear or eye, every word is weakened by half, and I sense it would be reasonable to forget about it and try to write mystery thrillers or category romances. That way, I might even be able to make a few dollars.
And still, in spite of everything, there’s pressure to let something loose that I might know that someone else has still to learn, or something I’ve noticed that someone else hasn’t thought of, and that might tickle the imagination or stimulate the intellect or conjure a useful memory and make someone’s else’s day a tiny bit brighter.
It’s embarrassing to feel the itch forever to justify this impulse. The more years I get to feel it, though, the more insistent seems the impulse is for me to scratch it.
How many who read these entries belong to book clubs?
It’s a funny thing, probably due in part to the size of the tiny farming village where we once lived that I never even knew of a book club during my years of mothering and waiting for the breadwinner to come home. I think I’d have loved a book club. It would even have been fun to be hostess in my turn.
A year or so ago, I was invited to attend a tea given by the combined membership of all the book clubs in the town where I now live. A presentation was scheduled for the proprietor of the much-loved local independent bookstore cum gift shop. She is a legend in the area for her teas as well as author signings and the eclectic choices in her store. There were at least 300 in attendance. The place (the largest fellowship hall available in a local church) was crammed. It seems that in a town with a population under 25,000, there are dozens of book clubs!
Now I find myself surrounded by book clubs — literally.
In my innocence, I thought a book club would bear some resemblance to an English class, presumably without grades or written reports. Everyone would read the same book, and then the meeting would take place with everyone discussing the chosen volume for that session.
When I asked around and discovered that I knew no one for whom that was the accepted practice, a friend told me that in her club a single member offers a program on a book of her choice. She (or he) read the book and prepares what amounts to an old-fashioned book report for the club meeting. Any discussion inspired by the book is incidental, taking place after the program. I mentally shook my head in disbelief. As an English major and later an English teacher, I thought I’d been there and done that, and that was really enough. They invited me to talk about my newly-published novel. Of course, I was thrilled, but when I was invited to join that club, I declined.
I was invited to give a program at another book club. The member explained that she was responsible for the program a couple of weeks hence and said she had no idea what to do or of anyone to invite to present one. When I inquired about how the chosen books were used for the program, she explained that they weren’t used at all. Each member purchases a book, each book is passed around in a set rotation through the year, and nothing else concerning specific books is involved with that club. I had to bite my tongue to refrain from asking why this is called a book club.
In desperate need at the time of something — anything — to occupy my mind, I volunteered to do a program for her group. It wasn’t just because I already knew that some clubs provide varied and luscious refreshments as part of their meetings and that the hostess is a chef in her own right but I also knew she lives in a house renowned for its gardens and furnishings. I’d met her often enough to know I really like her. She accepted my offer. It dawned on me after that conversation that I had a heck of a nerve, and that she was on a dreadful spot if she preferred to make her own choice of speaker and/or subject.
Having stuck my proverbial neck in the proverbial noose, I began to cast about for a suitable subject, and naturally (I thought) hit upon a version of a book review. I named the book, gave my friend a quick blurb, and she approved. I thought about how much time (at least a half hour) I’d need to fill, and realized that my teaching days were long gone. The book was huge and fascinating, and I’d have to half-way read it again if I were to be able to talk properly about it.
Three more possible subjects were considered and rejected before I hit on one I hoped would be new to the ladies and might be something that would interest most of them. It all went off much better than I expected it might; the audience was attentive and complimentary, and I was invited to the next meeting as a guest.
This time the program was given by an author. She brought her books to the meeting for sale (something I had deliberately not done at the previous meeting, which demonstrates — again — how hopeless I am at promotion). Delicious refreshments were beautifully served with gleaming silver in a beautiful home. The whole affair was something Lillian Hellman or Claire Booth Luce might have staged, completely without any discussion of books. The presenters weren’t familiar to the audience, which meant only she could talk about them, that is, until several groups began to talk of what they’d recently been reading as they assembled to collect their umbrellas and depart.
Needless to say, I have a lot to learn about book clubs.
H.R. 9810––Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA)/Education and the Workforce (09/25/24)––A bill to carry out an early childhood educator loan assistance program.
H.R. 9811––Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA)/Ways and Means (09/25/24)––A bill to provide assistance with respect to child care infrastructure.
Equal Pay
H. Con. Res.42––Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV)/Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (09/25/24)––A concurrent resolution recognizing the significance of equal pay and the disparity in wages paid to Latina women in comparison to White, non-Hispanic men.
H. Con. Res.131––Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM)/Education and the Workforce (09/25/24)––A concurrent resolution recognizing the significance of equal pay and the disparity in wages paid to Latina women in comparison to White, non-Hispanic men.
Health
S. 5141––Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)/Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (09/23/24)––A bill to provide for health coverage with no cost-sharing for additional breast screening for certain individuals at greater risk for breast cancer.
H. Res. 1494––Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-CA)/Energy and Commerce (09/24/24)––A resolution recognizing the threat of air pollution and extreme heat to maternal and infant health, and expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that meaningful interventions must be rapidly and equitably developed and deployed to address the unique vulnerabilities of pregnancy in Latino communities.
S. 5202––Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM)/Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (09/25/24)––A bill to require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to issue guidance on best practices for screening and treatment of congenital syphilis under Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
H. Res. 1507––Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)/Oversight and Accountability (09/25/24)––A resolution recognizing the importance of diapers to infant health and family well-being, and expressing support for the designation of the week of September 23-29, 2024, as “National Diaper Need Awareness Week.”
H.R. 9866––Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA)/Energy and Commerce (09/27/24)––A bill to conduct a study and submit to Congress a report on contraceptive access at community health centers in health care deserts.
As I walked the streets of Milwaukee, viewing some elegant old churches, I thought about its civil rights legacy. One street is named Dr. M.L.King Jr. Drive, though I don’t think Dr. King ever spoke in Milwaukee. Another is named Vel R. Phillips Ave. A Milwaukee native, she was a multiple first. The first Black woman who: graduated from U. Wisconsin Law School, elected to the city council, judge, elected Secretary of State, served on the Democratic National Committee. She was also active in the NAACP, leading open housing marches and getting arrested.
Shortly after she died in 2018, N. 4th St. was renamed in her honor. That’s why the official address of the Fiserv Forum, where the Republican convention was held July 15-18, is 1111 N. Vel R. Phillips Ave.
Less well known in Milwaukee, but better known to civil rights activists, is Father James Groppi, also a Milwaukee native. A few years after ordination in 1959, he was assigned to St. Boniface Church in the segregated Black community of north Milwaukee. There he developed an empathy with the Black poor. He took several of his parishioners to the 1963 March on Washington and the 1965 Selma march. On June 4, 1965 he and four other clergymen were arrested when they blocked a school bus. They were among 50 demonstrators protesting the Milwaukee School Board’s policy of keeping Black children in separate classrooms in otherwise white schools. The Board was under court order to bus children from overcrowded Black schools to white schools to foster integration, but it didn’t want to integrate the classrooms.
Groppi’s influence brought quite a few Catholic youth, Black and white, into the civil rights movement. Ten of them worked with SCOPE, SCLC’s 1965 summer project. Fr. Groppi drove seven to Atlanta, where they helped set up for orientation. One of those was his future wife. Fr. Groppi couldn’t stay in the South for the entire summer. But he spent his two-week vacation in August in Bullock County, AL working with those he had brought South in June. St. Boniface Church was razed in 1975 to make way for a new high school. Fr. Groppi was not reassigned to an African-American parish. Instead, he married in 1976 and became a bus driver. Always an activist, he led fair housing marches across the 16th St. Viaduct, which spans the Menomonee River Valley. This bridge separated north Milwaukee, where poor Blacks lived, from south Milwaukee, home of middle-class whites. James Groppi died of brain cancer in Milwaukee on November 4, 1985. In 1988 the Viaduct was renamed the James E. Groppi Unity Bridge.
Then there’s America’s Black Holocaust Museum, further north into the (still) poor Black neighborhoods of Milwaukee. It’s a purely private endeavor. Founded by James Cameron in 1988, the ABHM was inspired by the Holocaust memorial museum in Israel. It interprets the Black experience in the US as an ongoing series of mass atrocities. Cameron teamed up with philanthropist Daniel Bader to open the Museum. After Cameron died in 2006, the physical museum closed due to lack of funding. The museum went online as a virtual museum in 2012. After additional funding was secured, it reopened in 2022, but is only open a couple days a week. One of its seven History galleries is about the Civil Rights Movement – nationally, not Milwaukee.
Bringing women policymakers together across party lines to advance
issues of importance to women and their families.
Weekly Legislative Update
July 22, 2024
Bills Introduced: July 15-19, 2024
Child Care
H.R. 9068 –– Rep. Josh Harder (D-CA)/Education and the Workforce (07/18/24) –– A bill to assist states in carrying out projects to expand the child care workforce and child care facilities.
Child Protection
H.R. 9047 –– Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX)/Judiciary (07/15/24) –– A bill to modify provisions relating to kidnapping, sexual abuse, and illicit sexual conduct with respect to minors.
Reproductive Health
H.R. 9049 –– Rep. Zachary Nunn (R-IA)/Energy and Commerce (07/15/24) –– A bill to provide states with the option to provide coordinated care through a pregnancy medical home for high-risk pregnant women.
Violence Against Women
H.R. 9051 –– Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)/Energy and Commerce (07/15/24) –– A bill to expand trauma-informed training for law enforcement personnel related to sexual assault cases.
Congressional Schedule: July 22-26, 2024
Floor Action: The House and Senate are in session.
Appropriations – This week, the House is scheduled to consider H.R. 9027, the FY2025 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies spending bill. The legislation includes funding for several domestic and international nutrition assistance programs and FDA user fees.
This week, the House is scheduled to consider H.R. 8998, the FY2025 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies spending bill. The legislation includes funding for the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.
Also this week, the House is scheduled to consider H.R. 8773, the FY2025 Financial Services and General Government spending bill. The legislation includes funding for women-owned business programs at the Small Business Administration.
Mark-Ups:
On Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee will mark up the FY2025 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies spending bill (as-yet-unnumbered). The legislation includes funding for programs to combat violence against women and encourage women to enter STEM-related professions.
On Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee will mark up the FY2025 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies spending bill (as-yet-unnumbered). The legislation includes funding for housing programs for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and to support affordable housing for women with dependents.
On Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee will mark up the FY2025 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies spending bill (as-yet-unnumbered). The legislation includes funding for the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.
Also on Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee will mark up the FY2025 Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs spending bill (as-yet-unnumbered). The legislation includes funding for several international assistance programs supporting women and girls.
Every national nominating convention has plenty of auxiliary events, some authorized, some not. Getting space can be a challenge; getting the word out even more so. But they do it nonetheless.
Press were given a RNC 2024 Master Event Calendar, which was updated a few days later. Events began on Sunday and ended on Thursday. The actual convention sessions were just one item on the list. The calendar said if an event was Open or Closed to press, and also whom to contact to register. I’m going to describe some of the events, including a couple I went to, and a couple I was turned away from.
Since my focus is on women, I obviously wanted to go to those events – if I could.
The National Federation of Republican Women is the largest grassroots Republican women’s organization in the country with hundreds of clubs. Founded in 1938, its members made the phone calls and knocked on the doors that elected Republican candidates for decades. It’s Tuesday luncheon featured Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders. The Master Calendar said it was SOLD OUT and they wouldn’t let me in. I was able to get into their lounge at the Fiserv Forum Wednesday evening, where I was repeatedly asked if I was a member, and if not, would I join. “I’m press,” I said. “I can’t join anything partisan.” I then said: “What brings you here?” On hearing that, finding anyone willing to chat with me was like pulling teeth.
Moms for Liberty met in a concert hall that afternoon. I had pre-registered, and I got in. From high in a balcony seat I listened to several people talk about the evils of transgenderism. It’s webpage says WE BELIEVE Power Belongs to the People. Sound Familiar? With a focus is on parental rights, it wants to “STOP WOKE indoctrination.”
I had pre-registered for a Monday event on “How AI Affects Women, Democracy and Elections” presented by Microsoft. However, it was so far outside the security zone that I couldn’t get there and go to the protests I described in my Third Dispatch.
Every national nominating convention has plenty of auxiliary events, some authorized, some not. Getting space can be a challenge; getting the word out even more so. But they do it nonetheless. Press were given a RNC 2024 Master Event Calendar, which was updated a few days later. Events began on Sunday and ended on Thursday. The actual convention sessions were just one item on the list. The calendar said if an event was Open or Closed to press, and also whom to contact to register. I’m going to describe some of the events, including a couple I went to, and a couple I was turned away from.
Since my focus is on women, I obviously wanted to go to those events – if I could.
The National Federation of Republican Women is the largest grassroots Republican women’s organization in the country with hundreds of clubs. Founded in 1938, its members made the phone calls and knocked on the doors that elected Republican candidates for decades. It’s Tuesday luncheon featured Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders. The Master Calendar said it was SOLD OUT and they wouldn’t let me in. I was able to get into their lounge at the Fiserv Forum Wednesday evening, where I was repeatedly asked if I was a member, and if not, would I join. “I’m press,” I said. “I can’t join anything partisan.” I then said: “What brings you here?” On hearing that, finding anyone willing to chat with me was like pulling teeth.
Moms for Liberty met in a concert hall that afternoon. I had pre-registered, and I got in. From high in a balcony seat I listened to several people talk about the evils of transgenderism. It’s webpage says WE BELIEVE Power Belongs to the People. Sound Familiar? With a focus is on parental rights, it wants to “STOP WOKE indoctrination.”
Tuesday I went to “The New Mavericks” reception co-hosted by the Black Republican Mayors Association and the Georgia Republican Party. They honored Sen. Tim Scott, four Congressmen and two Georgia delegates – all male. There was only one mayor on stage, from Aurora, IL. The chair of the Georgia Republican Party was the one white man on the stage. At that event, women served; they didn’t speak. The RNC reported that 55 delegates to the 2024 convention are Black, up from 18 in 2016.
I missed the Independent Women’s Forum toast to “Women Who Make Our Country Great” because I went to Convention Fest: The Official Delegate Experience, which was held in the streets outside the Fiserve Forum and Baird Hall as well as some space inside Baird. To get to that one you not only needed a credential of some sort, but a USSS pass (which I have).
Concerned Women for America parked its pink bus across from the Baird Center the week before the RNC. No one was home. When Convention Fest opened on Tuesday afternoon, they set up a pink tent, from which its leaders preached to whomever passed by. It calls itself “the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization” but its focus is evangelical Christian. The slogan on the side of its pink bus captures this emphasis: “She Prays, She Votes.” A prayer precedes each sermon.
“It’s for security” is the repeat answer every time you try to get information that was freely available at past conventions.
To start with, the US Secret Service has created a double security perimeter around the Fiserve Forum where the actual convention is being held July 15-18. The larger perimeter is roughly a ten square block area that is open to pedestrians, but any vehicle entering it must be screened. The smaller perimeter is restricted to those who have convention credentials; they must enter through a security checkpoint. You can see the security map with its boundaries online, but trying to get a paper copy you can carry with you is a study in frustration. Even the online version downloads as a webpage. Too small to see on a phone screen, you’d have to carry your laptop with you to see where the perimeter is and the checkpoints are located.
This is similar to the double security boundaries created around the Capitol and the White House for the 2020 inauguration, with one big difference. In DC, streets in the outer security perimeter had concrete bulwarks. You could walk between them or carry bikes over them. Only the inner perimeter had ten foot high fences forcing you to go to the very few checkpoints. In Milwaukee, the outer perimeter is high fencing. Pedestrians can only get in where cars can go, and there aren’t many of those.
Worst, the fencing seems to change every day. One day you can use one route; the next you must find another. I can see the Fiserve Forum from the AB&B where I am sleeping, but I can no longer get there from here. Each day is an adventure (and a waste of time) trying to get from one place to another.
The Baird Center is where things are happening other than the actual convention meetings. It occupies two city blocks not far from the Fiserve Forum. I was emailed to go there to pick up my pre-convention credentials – which are necessary to get into anything inside the inner security ring. But when I got there on Wednesday, no one could tell me where to go. After three hours of being told Not Here, and escorted hither and yon, I finally found the right place in a nearby hotel.
On Thursday, I took a walk to the Federal Building, which occupies an entire city block in West Milwaukee, well outside the security zone. Nonetheless, it was surrounded with the same ten foot fences that partitioned the security zone. I walked around the entire block looking for an opening before finally finding one on one side of the building. It was unguarded.
Once inside the fence I entered the front of the building to go through a security scrutiny that makes TSA look tame. Items were confiscated that I could carry on an airline. (They were returned when I left). In the atrium I saw three tables occupied by older women. They were registering voters for the League of Women Voters. They told me that a couple dozen new citizens were taking their oaths upstairs and they hoped to register them when they descended. I could only imagine what these new citizens thought about their new country after negotiating “security” to get into the building.
Even with pre-convention credentials, some places are closed. The North building of the Baird Center is open to press. The South Building is not. I was turned away completely before getting my pre-convention credentials. Once they were hanging from my neck, security let me in. I discovered that the convention committees (Platform, Bylaws, Credentials) were meeting in that side of the Baird Center. But they were closed to press. Indeed on my way out, when I happened to mention to the two Security guards that I wrote for a small online magazine, they told me that I wasn’t allowed into the South building at all. They let me in initially because I don’t look like press and they thought I was one of many volunteers
Special buses will carry delegates and others with the right credentials to and from the Fiserve Forum for each of the five official meetings (one day, four nights). Since those with press credentials can ride those buses (or so they could at past conventions), I thought it would be easier than walking late at night to take a bus to the hotel a block from where I’m staying. But which bus? When I asked the desk clerk at the nearby hotel which delegations were staying there, he said he couldn’t tell me. “It’s for security,” he said. “You understand that we have to protect people.” That approach certainly doesn’t protect me!
The federal government gives each convention $75 million dollars for security. They use part of that to feed and house police imported from all over. This year cops are coming from 15 Wisconsin police departments, and 25 out of state PDs. A list supplied by the Milwaukee press office lists cities mostly from Southern states – especially Florida and North Carolina. At the 2016 RNC in Cleveland, they were housed in college dorms. Milwaukee has enough residence halls to house several thousand cops.
I spoke to a group of four police sitting on very large horses, hoping to find out where they were staying. One told me they were from Louisville, KY. “You brought your horses?” I said. “Yes,” he replied. “We drove them from Louisville.” “Where are you staying,” I asked. “In the Milwaukee PD barn.” he said. “You mean your horses are staying there. Where are you staying?” “With them,” he responded. “On cots we brought with us.”
The analysis used data from electronic health records of 3.1 million Americans who are part of the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C). Researchers focused on 212,984 people who reported a reinfection. Those individuals were originally infected between March 1, 2020-Dec. 31, 2022, and experienced a second infection by March 2023. Most participants (203,735) had COVID-19 twice, but a small number (478) had it three times or more. COVID-19 vaccines, though not available during the entire study period, correlated with a protective effect(link is external).
About 27% of those with severe cases, defined as receiving hospital care for a coronavirus infection, also received hospital care for a reinfection. Adults with severe cases were more likely to have underlying health conditions and be ages 60 or older. In contrast, about 87% of those who had mild COVID cases that did not require hospital care the first time also had mild cases of reinfections.
Reinfections were defined as having occurred at least two months after a first infection. They were found to occur most frequently when omicron variants were circulating in late 2021 and early 2022. Waning immunity and increased exposure to the coronavirus, including the highly-infectious variants, likely accounted for the uptick.
Scientists also discovered that regardless of the variant, long COVID cases were more likely to occur after a first infection compared to a reinfection. Long COVID(link is external) was defined in the review as those experiencing long-term COVID-19 symptoms, such as feeling tired, coughing, or having problems sleeping, breathing, or thinking, after an acute coronavirus infection.
Researchers also found that lower levels of albumin, a protein made by the liver, may indicate a higher risk for reinfection. This finding could indicate lower albumin as a possible risk marker for reinfection. Scientists believe this deserves further attention, such as by considering trials to test if nutritional interventions may prevent reinfection or its severity.
David C. Goff, M.D., Ph.D., a senior scientific program director for the RECOVER Observational Consortium Steering Committee and director of the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of NIH, is available for interviews on this paper.
Study
Hadley E, Yoo YJ, Patel S, et al. Insights from an N3C RECOVER EHR-based cohort study characterizing SARS-CoV-2 reinfections and Long COVID. Commun Med. 2024; doi: 10.1038/s43856-024-00539-2.(link is external)
Published on: 2 July 2024 – Melting of glaciers in a major Alaskan icefield has accelerated and could reach an irreversible tipping point earlier than previously thought, research led by Newcastle University suggests; Dr Bethan Davies: “This work has shown that different processes can accelerate melt, which means that current glacier projections may be too small and underestimate glacier melt in the future.”
Taku Glacier and the flat plateau area of Juneau Icefield, Alaskashow that different processes can accelerate melt, meaning that current glacier projections may be too small and underestimate glacier melt in the future; Image credit: Bethan Davies;
Dr Bethan Davies: The research found that glacier loss on Juneau Icefield, which straddles the boundary between Alaska and British Columbia, Canada, has increased dramatically since 2010.
The team, which included universities in the UK, USA and Europe, looked at records going back to 1770 and identified three distinct periods in how icefield volume changed. They saw that glacier volume loss remained fairly consistent from 1770 – 1979 at between 0.65- 1.01 km3 per year, increasing to 3.08-3.72 km3 per year between 1979-2010. Between 2010-2020 there was a sharp acceleration when the rate of ice loss doubled, reaching 5.91 km3 per year.
In particular, the research, published in Nature Communications, found that icefield-wide, rates of glacier area shrinkage were five times faster from 2015-2019 relative to 1948-1979.
Overall, the total ice loss across the Juneau icefield between 1770-2020 (315.3 ± 237.5 km3) equated to just under a quarter of the original ice volume.
The increased rate of glacier thinning has also been accompanied by increased glacier fragmentation. The team mapped a dramatic increase in disconnections, where the lower parts of a glacier become separated from the upper parts. Additionally, 100% of glaciers mapped in 2019 have receded relative to their position in 1770, and 108 glaciers have disappeared completely.
Study lead, Dr Bethan Davies, Senior Lecturer, Newcastle University, said: “It’s incredibly worrying that our research found a rapid acceleration since the early 21st century in the rate of glacier loss across the Juneau icefield.
“Alaskan icefields – which are predominantly flat, plateau icefields – are particularly vulnerable to accelerated melt as the climate warms since ice loss happens across the whole surface, meaning a much greater area is affected. Additionally, flatter ice caps and icefields cannot retreat to higher elevations and find a new equilibrium.
“As glacier thinning on the Juneau plateau continues and ice retreats to lower levels and warmer air, the feedback processes this sets in motion is likely to prevent future glacier regrowth, potentially pushing glaciers beyond a tipping point into irreversible recession.”
Alaska contains some of the world’s largest plateau icefields and their melting is a major contributor to current sea level rise. The researchers think the processes they observed at Juneau are likely to affect other, similar icefields elsewhere across Alaska and Canada, as well as Greenland, Norway and other high-Arctic locations.
They also say current published projections for the Juneau icefield that suggest ice volume loss will be linear until 2040, accelerating only after 2070, may need to be updated to reflect the processes detailed in this latest study.
Dr Davies said: “This work has shown that different processes can accelerate melt, which means that current glacier projections may be too small and underestimate glacier melt in the future.”
The team used a combination of historical glacier inventory records, 20th century archival aerial photographs, and satellite imagery as well as geomorphological mapping conducted during fieldwork in 2022 to piece together a comprehensive picture of changes over the past 250 years.
Dr Robert McNabb, Lecturer in Remote Sensing, Ulster University, said: “What was really exciting about this research was piecing together thousands of archived aerial photographs to extract elevation, which gave us a really detailed insight into the long-term behaviour of the icefield.
“Putting together this archive of photographs, collected 70 and 50 years ago, was a little like doing the world’s hardest jigsaw puzzle but the quality of the imagery meant we were able to reconstruct the icefield elevation in the pre-satellite era for the first time. Longer term archives like this one are an incredibly valuable resource, as they give us a much better understanding of the thresholds for accelerating change, as we’ve seen on the Juneau Icefield.”
Reference: Bethan Davies et al (2024) ‘Accelerating glacier volume loss on Juneau icefield driven by hypsometry and melt-accelerating feedbacks’, Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49269-y
Findings come from an NIH analysis of more than two decades of dietary data from 390,124 U.S. adults,questions the benefits of regular multivitamin use. Credit: iStock/bert_phantana
What
A large analysis of data from nearly 400,000 healthy U.S. adults followed for more than 20 years has found no association between regular multivitamin use and lower risk of death. The study, led by researchers at the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute, was published June 26, 2024, in JAMA Network Open.
Many adults in the United States take multivitamins with the hope of improving their health. However, the benefits and harms of regular multivitamin use remain unclear. Previous studies of multivitamin use and mortality have yielded mixed results and been limited by short follow-up times.
To more deeply explore the relationship between long-term regular multivitamin use and overall mortality and death from cardiovascular disease and cancer, the researchers analyzed data from three large, geographically diverse prospective studies involving a total of 390,124 U.S. adults who were followed for more than 20 years. The participants included in this analysis were generally healthy, with no history of cancer or other chronic diseases.
Because the study population was so large and included lengthy follow-up and extensive information on demographics and lifestyle factors, the researchers were able to mitigate the effects of possible biases that may have influenced the findings of other studies. For example, people who use multivitamins may have healthier lifestyles in general, and sicker patients may be more likely to increase their use of multivitamins.
The analysis showed that people who took daily multivitamins did not have a lower risk of death from any cause than people who took no multivitamins. There were also no differences in mortality from cancer, heart disease, or cerebrovascular diseases. The results were adjusted for factors such as race and ethnicity, education, and diet quality.
The researchers noted that it is important to evaluate multivitamin use and risk of death among different kinds of populations, such as those with documented nutritional deficiencies, as well as the potential impact of regular multivitamin use on other health conditions associated with aging.
Who:
Erikka Loftfield, Ph.D., M.P.H., Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute
The Study:
“Multivitamin Use and Mortality Risk in 3 Prospective US Cohorts” appears June 26, 2024, in JAMA Network Open.
About the National Cancer Institute (NCI): NCI leads the National Cancer Program and NIH’s efforts to dramatically reduce the prevalence of cancer and improve the lives of people with cancer. NCI supports a wide range of cancer research and training extramurally through grants and contracts. NCI’s intramural research program conducts innovative, transdisciplinary basic, translational, clinical, and epidemiological research on the causes of cancer, avenues for prevention, risk prediction, early detection, and treatment, including research at the NIH Clinical Center — the world’s largest research hospital. Learn more about the intramural research done in NCI’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. For more information about cancer, please visit the NCI website at cancer.gov or call NCI’s contact center at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237).
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit nih.gov.
Reference
Loftfield E, O’Connell CP, Abnet CC, et al. Multivitamin Use and Mortality Risk in 3 Prospective US Cohorts. JAMA Network Open. June 26, 2024. DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.18729.
National Cancer Institute’s original title: “For healthy adults, taking multivitamins daily is not associated with a lower risk of death was originally published by the National Cancer Institute
To more deeply explore the relationship between long-term regular multivitamin use and overall mortality and death from cardiovascular disease and cancer, the researchers analyzed data from three large, geographically diverse prospective studies involving a total of 390,124 U.S. adults who were followed for more than 20 years. The participants included in this analysis were generally healthy, with no history of cancer or other chronic diseases.
Because the study population was so large and included lengthy follow-up and extensive information on demographics and lifestyle factors, the researchers were able to mitigate the effects of possible biases that may have influenced the findings of other studies. For example, people who use multivitamins may have healthier lifestyles in general, and sicker patients may be more likely to increase their use of multivitamins.
The analysis showed that people who took daily multivitamins did not have a lower risk of death from any cause than people who took no multivitamins. There were also no differences in mortality from cancer, heart disease, or cerebrovascular diseases. The results were adjusted for factors such as race and ethnicity, education, and diet quality.
The researchers noted that it is important to evaluate multivitamin use and risk of death among different kinds of populations, such as those with documented nutritional deficiencies, as well as the potential impact of regular multivitamin use on other health conditions associated with aging.
Who
Erikka Loftfield, Ph.D., M.P.H., Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute
Study
“Multivitamin Use and Mortality Risk in 3 Prospective US Cohorts” appears June 26, 2024, in JAMA Network Open.
About the National Cancer Institute (NCI): NCI leads the National Cancer Program and NIH’s efforts to dramatically reduce the prevalence of cancer and improve the lives of people with cancer. NCI supports a wide range of cancer research and training extramurally through grants and contracts. NCI’s intramural research program conducts innovative, transdisciplinary basic, translational, clinical, and epidemiological research on the causes of cancer, avenues for prevention, risk prediction, early detection, and treatment, including research at the NIH Clinical Center—the world’s largest research hospital. Learn more about the intramural research done in NCI’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. For more information about cancer, please visit the NCI website at cancer.gov or call NCI’s contact center at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237).
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
Right, Nora D. Volkow, M.D., Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse
Researchers from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that among a cohort of 137,000 Medicare beneficiaries who experienced a nonfatal overdose in 2020, almost 24,000 (17.4%) experienced a subsequent nonfatal overdose, and about 1,300 (1%) died from overdose in the following year. Results were published today in JAMA Internal Medicine(link is external), identifying both effective interventions and significant gaps in care.
“People who have experienced one overdose are more likely to experience another,” said Miriam E. Delphin-Rittmon, Ph.D., HHS Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use and the leader of SAMHSA. “But we found that when survivors received gold-standard care such as medications for opioid use disorder and naloxone, the chances of dying from an overdose in the following year drop dramatically. In short, medications for opioid use disorder, opioid overdose reversal medications, and behavioral health supports save lives.”
The study identifies effective, lifesaving interventions following initial nonfatal overdoses. The odds of dying from a subsequent lethal overdose decreased among cohort members who received methadone (58% lower odds), buprenorphine (52% lower odds), or behavioral health assessment or crisis services (75% lower odds). The risk of overdose mortality among those who filled a prescription for naloxone was also reduced by 30%.
However, significant gaps in care were also noted. Only 4.1% of the cohort received medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD), and only 6.2% filled a prescription for naloxone, commonly known as Narcan, despite these being gold-standard interventions. Beneficiaries receiving MOUD waited a mean of 72 days between their nonfatal overdose and receiving medication.
Overall, 89% of beneficiaries in the cohort received behavioral health services in the 12 months following their nonfatal overdose for a median duration of 15 days throughout the year.
