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Most Americans
are not alcoholics. Most of us do not smoke marijuana to get high. LSD
trips went out of style along with the flower children of the sixties.
Nevertheless, many Americans are walking and driving around with their
minds slightly out of kilter. In its attempt to cope with modern life,
the human mind seems to have evolved some defense strategies. Confronted
with inventions like the automobile, the television, and the shopping
center, for example, the mind will slip--all by itself--into an altered
state. |
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| 2 |
Last week,
a woman signing herself "Want the Truth in Westport" wrote to Ann Landers
to ask whether or not Oprah Winfrey had ever had a face-lift. Fortunately
for Ms. Winfrey’s privacy, Ann Landers refused to answer the question.
But the incident disturbed me. How awful it would be to be a celebrity,
I thought, and always be in the public eye. Celebrities lead very stressful
lives, for no matter how glamorous or powerful they are, they have too
little privacy, too much pressure, and no safety. |
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Have you
ever seen a supermarket bag crammed full of medical bills for just one
person? Well, I have. I had known that my mother was sick as a result
of a failing kidney, but I had not realized how much trouble my parents
were having in dealing with that sickness. Only when I had saved enough
money to visit them in Florida did I discover just how critical the
situation had become. The problems were so serious, in fact, that I
had to make the decision to put my mother in a nursing home. |
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| 4 |
"Fish and
visitors," wrote Benjamin Franklin, "begin to smell after three days."
Last summer, when my sister and her family came to spend their two-week
vacation with us, I became convinced that Franklin was right. After
only three days of my family’s visit, I was thoroughly sick of my
brother-in-law’s corny jokes, my sister’s endless complaints
about her boss, and their children’s constant invasions of our privacy. |
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| 5 |
Diseases
like scarlet fever and whooping cough used to kill more young children
than any other cause. Today, however, child mortality due to disease
has been almost completely eliminated by medical science. Instead, car
accidents are the number one killer of our children. And most of the
children fatally injured in car accidents were not protected by car
seats, belts, or restraints of any kind. Several steps must be taken
to reduce the serious dangers car accidents pose to our children. |
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| 6 |
Bookstore
shelves today are crammed with dozens of different diet books. The American
public seems willing to try any sort of diet, especially the ones that
promise instant, miraculous results. And authors are more than willing
to invent new fad diets to cash in on this craze. Unfortunately, some
of these fad diets are ineffective or even unsafe. One of the worst
fad diets is the "Palm Beach" plan. It is impractical, doesn’t achieve
the results it claims, and is a sure route to poor nutrition. |
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