Real-Life Stories to Make You Think, Wonder, and Smile, from the Pages of The New York Times Lisa Belkin
Everyone loves a human interest story. Recognising this, Lisa Belkin, a well-known columnist, has collected the cream of the crop from the pages of The New York Times. Some of the stories are US-specific, but more are about people from all over, like Notrees, Texas, where one citizen tries to keep two trees alive, in contrast with the goings-on in Austin, where a saboteur is trying to kill a 500-year-old live oak whose picture once hung in the tree Hall of Fame.
For most readers, the biggest hero in the collection will be Lance Armstrong, the first American racing for an American team to win the Tour de France after his recuperation from testicular cancer. Cancer had gotten to his brain, requiring extensive surgery and chemotherapy, and as soon as he realised
he was going to live he started training for the race.
But there are others less sung. One girl deserves an award for refusing to compete with her injured friend in a Tae Kwan Do match, thus giving up her medal and helping to ensure that her friend would be eligible for the Olympic Team. This incident brought into question the Olympic policy regarding injured players – if their record is sound,
why shouldn't they be on the team, injured or not?
There is this interesting tale of the Mayor of Husavik, Iceland, who wants to import alligators to swim in the natural hot pools that have formed there from steam genera-ted by volcanoes: "Tourists who come to see the whales would really love the alligators." And as the alligators get too big from eating the waste from the fish processing plant, the citizens of Husavik will eat them – a perfect ecosystem, according to him.
Some of the memorable stories are of the couple who got married in the nursing home after the passing away of their respective spouses and live for the day they can get a shared room, the twins separated at birth who found each other in their twenties, and the often accounting of life as a street dentist, ripping out teeth with pliers while the world watches.
Everyone will find a favourite or two in this collection. It could be the kid who is dedicated to riding through every stop on the New York subway, or the man who sent an itemised bill for US$14,000 to the restaurant that lost his briefcase. It could be the story of the three old ladies who sold their cows and finally enjoy a life of relative freedom, or the vignette about Ronald Reagan saving acorns from Camp David to feed to the pesky White House squirrels. One sad and thoroughly engrossing segment concerns the man who lived for so long as a refugee at the Charles de Gaulle airport that when finally granted his walking papers, he was afraid to leave the mini-metropolis where he had become completely acclimatised.
The book is a reminder that even in the most parlous times, and even in the prestigious Times, it is the little guy and the human angle that get our attention. It isn't always good news, but it has as much sticking power as the big headlines.
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