Debra Monroe is the author of six books, including the memoir “My Unsentimental Education” which will appear in October 2015. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The American Scholar, Doubletake, The Morning News and The Southern Review, and she is frequently shortlisted for The Best American Essays. This essay—which is an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir—first appeared on John Griswold‘s Inside Higher Ed blog, and our thanks to Monroe for allowing us to reprint it here.Read more…
How Sara Josephine Baker revolutionized medical care through her work in the New York City Health Department in the early 20th Century. She chronicled her experiences in a memoir, Fighting for Life:
“In her first year at the Bureau of Child Hygiene, Baker sent nurses to the most deadly ward on the Lower East Side. They were to visit every new mother within a day of delivery, encouraging exclusive breast-feeding, fresh air, and regular bathing, and discouraging hazardous practices such as feeding the baby beer or allowing him to play in the gutter. This advice was entirely conventional, but the results were extraordinary: that summer, 1,200 fewer children died in that district compared to the previous year; elsewhere in the city the death rate remained high. The home-visiting program was soon implemented citywide, and in 1910, a network of ‘milk stations’ staffed by nurses and doctors began offering regular baby examinations and safe formula for older children and the infants of women who couldn’t breast-feed. In just three years, the infant death rate in New York City fell by 40 percent, and in December 1911, The New York Times hailed the city as the healthiest in the world.”
The below article comes recommended by Longreads contributing editor Julia Wick, and we’d like to thank the author, Susan J. Palmer, for allowing us to share it with the Longreads community. Read more…
Behind the scenes of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and the debate over what policies and programs are effective when it comes to preventing suicide and saving lives in the U.S.:
“Studies done by Columbia University’s Dr. Madelyn Gould have found that about 12 percent of suicidal callers reported in a follow-up interview that talking to someone at the lifeline prevented them from harming or killing themselves. Almost half followed through with a counselor’s referral to seek emergency services or contacted mental health services, and about 80 percent of suicidal callers say in follow-up interviews that the lifeline has had something to do with keeping them alive.
“‘I don’t know if we’ll ever have solid evidence for what saves lives other than people saying they saved my life,’ says Draper. ‘It may be that the suicide rate could be higher if crisis lines weren’t in effect. I don’t know. All I can say is that what we’re hearing from callers is that this is having a real life-saving impact.'”
Christine Kim is a civil rights advocate studying at Duke University School of Law.
My favorite longread of the week is ‘What’s Killing Poor White Women,’ by Monica Potts, in The American Prospect. Health care is on the national stage. From Obamacare to health care costs to new state-run health exchanges, it seems that each news day is packed with analysis of our governmental strategy on health care. The stories of the individuals and minority groups who are suffering and—in this story—passing away without clear explanation do not often make it to the front page. Monica Potts discusses the alarming drop in life expectancy of low-income white women with humility, candidness, and understanding. Her story makes the research and data accessible all while reminding the reader to remember the women being affected. My close friend recently lost his mother suddenly without any warning or explanation. While the article is not entirely consoling, it places our grief into a greater context and made me realize that more information may be revealed to us in the future through further study and research.
A look at how a cofounder of the Home Depot started the Marcus Autism Center in Atlanta, Ga., which has been named an autism center of excellence by the National Institutes of Health. The center has hired a scientist from Yale who is looking at how eye-tracking technology can revolutionize autism treatment:
“Within ten months of arriving, Klin and his team competed with fifty-five other autism centers around the country for a National Institutes of Health award. Only three, including Marcus, won. Named an autism center of excellence, Marcus received an $8.3 million grant, much of which will be put toward continuing to research differences in ‘social-visual and vocal engagement’ among autistic infants. The center has built four eye-tracking labs in the last two years, where babies like Ansley Brane—who is low risk—can be tested for signs of autism. (The center’s fiscal health has improved too, though it still needs patrons: Since Children’s took over, operating losses have dropped from $3.2 million to $1.3 million per year.)
“‘It’s a very simple equation,’ says Klin. ‘You identify early, you treat early, you help these children fulfill their promise. It’s good for everybody. If you don’t do that, then we are stuck with the kinds of incredible treatment programs we have in the center, which I hope to put out of business one day.'”
A woman with Turner syndrome decides to participate in a study at the National Institutes of Health:
“I arrived at the NIH Clinical Center alone, early, and unprepared. The nurse responsible for checking me in wasn’t even on duty yet. I had packed my suitcase as if for a four-day business conference, not a hospital stay—slacks, blouses, and pumps rather than T-shirts, sweats, and tennis shoes. That was probably a function of my denial as well as my ‘don’t leave home without lipstick’ impulse. I’d never spent a night in a hospital, never had an MRI or CT scan.
“People generally don’t go to NIH when they have a garden-variety illness. NIH takes the sickest of the sick and offers hope. Old and young gather there. The common denominator is illness—the kind so serious that it generates platitudes and whispers. To be a patient at NIH feels like being a contestant on a reality show in which all the cameras are turned on you—or being a lottery winner when the prize is assuming a large debt at a huge interest rate.”
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As a bonus, read Steedly’s blog post about how her essay, which she worked on in a writing class in 2007, ended up being published in the Washingtonian.
Clara Bow was the original It girl, so much so that her 1927 film, titled—what else?—“It,” more or less defined the phenomenon. This piece, from Petersen’s Scandals of Classic Hollywood series, offers a perfectly juicy take on Ms. Bow.
2. “Almost Famous” (Katherine Stewart, Santa Barbara Magazine, Oct./Nov. 2006)
Stewart goes beyond the usual Edie clichés and delves into Sedgwick family lore, as well as Edie’s post-Factory return to Santa Barbara.
McInerney’s piece—a semi-seminal take on uber-It girl Chloe Sevigny in the early days of her downtown reign—captures a weird freeze-frame in time: Sevigny pre-Kids fame, and downtown New York in its last gasps of grittiness.
“Perky, pretty, and remarkably plugged-in, a pack of young publicists have become the darlings of New York’s demimonde. But be careful—they bite.” Detail-packed, with deliciously good dialogue and a healthy dollop of fun, this is classic Grigoriadis.
Cory Kennedy was just a regular high school hipster until party photographer Mark “The Cobrasnake” Hunter snapped her picture at an LA club. And then—practically overnight and before her parents had a chance to figure out what was going on—she was everywhere, a club kid, model, and message board fashion icon, with her very own column in Nylon. This is the making of an internet It Girl.
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