{"id":29259,"date":"2019-11-22T17:52:14","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T22:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=29259"},"modified":"2019-11-22T18:16:08","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T23:16:08","slug":"readers-digest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=29259","title":{"rendered":"Reader&#8217;s Digest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/49106948642_bf1d9de454_z.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<em>The beginning of a \u201cDrama in Real Life\u201d published in the Reader\u2019s Digest magazine exactly 70 years ago this month, November 1949 four months before Harry Welty came into existence as a zygote.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A couple years ago my friend Donna repaid the snow sculpture I made for her as she was undergoing chemotherapy. She had found a collection of a dozen old Reader\u2019s Digests from the period between 1945 and 1953. These were the years of Harry Truman and the courting and marriage of my parents. It was also the when I came into existence. Although it was only last week that I began to peruse them it was the perfect gift.<\/p>\n<p>In 1963 I was the new kid in my junior high. I had a funny Kansas accent. My seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. Jones, may have recognized this. <!--more--> After we read <strong>Treasure Island<\/strong> and she administered a long test on the novel she announced to the class that one student had gotten a perfect score. She asked us to guess who the student was and many top-notch scholars were suggested. I\u2019ve never forgotten my surprise and quiet delight when she announced that I was that scholar. The \u201cReb\u201d had done OK.<\/p>\n<p>I was never much of a reader in grade school with the exception of the newsy Weekly Reader. To this day I\u2019m not much of a fiction reader. I did eagerly page through my Dad&#8217;s photo magazines Life and Look as a kid. I like to get things done quickly. I&#8217;ve always much preferred watching movies distilled from books that would have taken me ten or twelve hours to  read. As it happened Mrs. Jones had the next best thing to Cliff&#8217;s Notes. It was a classroom subscription to the Reader&#8217;s Digest. She pulled them out frequently to have us read. I particularly remember reading \u201cThe snow goose\u201d an affecting short story about saving the British army at Dunkirk and a gripping account of the Congo\u2019s \u201cStanleyville Massacre.\u201d Whenever we finished our work we were encouraged pick up a Digest and read in our free time. I particularly liked its jokes and anecdotes that anyone could submit to the Digest for a quick ten bucks. Mrs. Jones always had us attempt to answer the twenty tough vocabulary in each Digest to increase our &#8220;word power.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The summer following seventh grade my Mother rented a cabin on Lake Pokegema near Grand Rapids for two weeks. We found it full of old Digests. I spent a lot of my free time pouring through them. The Reader&#8217;s Digest was founded in 1922. It took interesting articles from hundreds of other magazines and whittled them down (digested them) significantly. They also published pieces submitted directly to them. The Digest was my entr\u00e9e into a world not unlike today&#8217;s where I can read eclectically my cell phone..<\/p>\n<p>My Grandmother, also a middle school English teacher, got wind of my enthusiasm for RD and got me a subscription for my birthday. I read it avidly through my high school graduation and only tore myself from it as my snobby college years made it seem bit unsophisticated. Looking at these old Digest\u2019s has renewed my appreciation for the magazine. Like me, RD is wildly eclectic. <\/p>\n<p>The page top above was the second story in the November 1949 issue, being named Harry myself, I couldn\u2019t resist reading it. I have no idea it its author changed the names of people in his story or not. I\u2019m not sure if journalistic ethics were much different 70 years ago. Told in a straightforward way the story brought me to tears in five pages. (Now that I\u2019m an old fart I don\u2019t have to prove my tear-free manhood like I did when I was thirteen.)<\/p>\n<p>I thought about taking this long-forgotten story and putting it in my blog. I wasn\u2019t certain how the copy-write laws worked and did a little research even looking up the contact information for the Digest which is now also online. I have no idea how protective of neglected old content today\u2019s Digest is but they probably wield a republication veto over everything they\u2019ve published since 1924. I intend to make an inquiry soon. If the Digest permits it I\u2019ll likely digitize the prose and share it. <\/p>\n<p>As a tease I\u2019ll just mention the story\u2019s ingredients. An artist drawing veterans to honor their actions in war, something that is being repeated today. The way children of the past were passed from family to family. An astoundingly., remarkable coincidence. Aching loss.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the table of contents from the entire November, 1949 issue:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/49106927232_5bb6302d3b_c.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The beginning of a \u201cDrama in Real Life\u201d published in the Reader\u2019s Digest magazine exactly 70 years ago this month, November 1949 four months&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,62],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29259"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29264,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29259\/revisions\/29264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}