Here's what Rhode Island's movers and shakers are reading

Here's a rundown.
David Cicilline
Rhode Island Foundation president and CEO
The book traces the slow, insidious, and ultimately deadly impact of the 'Big Lie' on the Jewish residents of a small German village ahead of World War II. It delivers a terrifying lesson about how ordinary people can become desensitized to the growing danger at their doorstep.
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Martha L. Wofford
Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island president and CEO
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Dr. Topol's book provides evidence of how lifestyle, environmental exposure, and our genes and epigenetics impact our health. He shows how dysregulation of our immune response and inflammation is driving major diseases like cancer and autoimmune conditions. As we face an aging population in Rhode Island, and as a nation, Dr. Topol's book provides hope that there is a path to improving health as we age -- through diet, exercise, sleep, social connection, and reducing environmental toxins, combined with ongoing breakthroughs in diagnosing and treating age-related diseases.
Laurie White
Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce president
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The degree to which Judge Caprio's life's purpose was shaped at a young age by the lessons imparted by his loving parents – particularly his dad, Tup,
on the milk truck delivery route on Federal Hill. The book left me in tears. It mirrors my own sentiments about the influence of my mom and dad and the small business they started together in the 1950s (and still exists today.) Judge Caprio vividly takes the reader through the lessons of hard work and everyday acts of compassion that lift your soul. It is no coincidence that he has 25 million followers on social media. These are the lessons that resonate throughout the world.
Rele Abiade
Consultant
My daughters were reading this graphic novel, and we were talking about how it had been banned in Texas. I skimmed through it because I was curious why anyone would be triggered by a book nine-year-olds loved. Of course it was one of the best books I have probably read! The main character is a gifted student who goes to a predominantly white private school and the book explores how he gracefully navigates through social dynamics. I wish I had books like this as a child because I related to Jordan (the main character) and despite some situations it really is a positive story. I think every adult should read it, especially during these interesting political times where diversity and inclusion is no longer seen as a necessity by some. Guess what? It is!
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Cortney M. Nicolato
United Way of Rhode Island president and CEO
It talks about perseverance and the power that love can have on someone. In times like this, I want to spend my spare time being inspired and celebrating love and joy wherever possible.
Kelli J. Armstrong
Salve Regina University president
Colin is a resident scholar here at Salve and leads our Nationhood Lab project. I find his ideas to be absolutely brilliant. In 'Union,' he describes how important it is for the US to have a common narrative, one that could hold its rival regional cultures together. Colin is an historian, and his ability to illuminate how we have evolved as a nation and how these patterns are affecting our current divisions is fascinating.
Neil Steinberg
Rhode Island Life Science HubBoard chair
My preferred genre is the thriller category; it started with Robert Ludlum many years ago.
Marcela Betancur
Latino Policy Institute executive director
I am a huge fan of mysteries and thrillers, and this one kept me on my toes the whole time. It's rare when I get to the end of a book without knowing what's happening or 'who did it' - but this one did it!
This story first appeared in Rhode Map, our free newsletter about Rhode Island that also contains information about local events, links to interesting stories, and more. If you'd like to receive it via email Monday through Friday,
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Los Angeles Times

a day ago

• Los Angeles Times

The monthly tab for her in-home elder care: $18,000. She can cover it, but how many others can?

Marian Sunabe drives from her home in South Pasadena to visit her 100-year-old mother in Gardena once a week or so, and I tagged along on a recent morning to talk about the crippling cost of elder care. Sunabe, a retired school psychologist, said her mother is independent-minded, loves the comfort of her own home and doesn't want to move in with Sunabe or her brother. For the last four years, Reiko Kobata has had a daytime caregiver. But lately, after taking a fall and getting sick with pneumonia, there are times when a nighttime caregiver has been added. The daytime tab, for a 13½-hour shift, is $320. The 11-hour nighttime shift costs just under $300, bringing the daily total to $620. That adds up to a staggering $18,600 a month. When the night shift caregiver isn't needed, the amount is about half that. 'Most folks would not be able to afford this. But there aren't many options other than admitting them to a board and care facility,' Sunabe had said in an email, and even that can run several thousand dollars a month. 'I've known people who have had to quit their job … to care for their aging parent. It can easily drain all of your savings and assets — not a good system.' In fact, it's a national crisis, and the United States lags behind many developed countries at a time when the global population is rapidly aging. 'Americans are not prepared for the challenges of caregiving,' Paul Irving, a senior advisor at the Milken Institute, says in 'Caregiving,' a new PBS documentary. Families ultimately learn, he says, that essential care is not covered by health insurance, 'so incredibly, more and more middle-class Americans are forced to pay down to poverty so that they can qualify for Medicaid. That's a crazy system for them and for our federal government.' And it might not be an option much longer, given the hatchet job on Medicaid by the Trump administration and Congress. As Sunabe and I drove south, I told her about my friend Morrie Markoff, who lived to 110. He was fortunate to have saved enough for in-home care that cost $14,000 a month. But he and Sunabe's mother are not the norm. I'd also written about 102-year-old World War II vet Paul Hult, who quickly burned through his life savings after taking a fall and needing in-home care. Sunabe had neatly penciled columns of numbers for me on a sheet of lined paper, outlining the math of her mother's care. Kobata was pooling Social Security, income from a rental property she and her late husband owned, pensions, long-term care insurance and retirement savings to cover the monthly $18,600 bill. Kobata pays an agency that provides, and in turn compensates, the caregiver. In such arrangements, agencies take as much as half the total. That can leave something close to minimum wage for the caregiver, making it hard to recruit more of them to an industry with a critical workforce shortage. As a result, many caregivers are undocumented and work off the books. That saves clients money, because there's no split with an agency. And a lot of caregivers get free room and board while on duty, but sacrifice their own privacy and time with family. Women from the Philippines — some with legal status, some without — make up a sizable portion of the workforce in California. As I've reported, some of them share barracks-style housing, and many are living in fear of deportation at the moment thanks to the Trump administration's immigration raids. So what we're witnessing is a colossal public policy failure, and it's not as if the age wave — cresting for decades — could have come as a surprise. The Public Policy Institute of California projects that in 2040, the number of Californians 65 and older will hit 9 million, representing 22% of the population, up from 14% in 2020. By necessity, more and more families will resort to an approach fairly common in immigrant cultures. They'll take care of their own, live together, do a lot of juggling and hope that when the need arises, they won't be bankrupted by medical care. Sunabe exited the 110 Freeway and drove through Gardena streets where she used to walk to school. As we approached the family home, she told me her mother still likes to personally write checks to pay her bills, but doesn't keep track of the total cost of her own care. 'Sometimes she'll ask, 'What is all this money going for?'' Sunabe said. Sunabe parked in the driveway of the house she grew up in. Her parents bought it about 65 years ago for $13,000, when Harold Kobata worked as a chemical engineer and his wife was a teacher's aide and school office assistant. Kobata entered the living room with the aid of a walker, but otherwise appeared to be in miraculously good health and even better spirits. Her grandson, who stays with his grandmother when he works as a sushi chef at a nearby restaurant, was leaving for his shift. Kobata settled onto a comfortable sofa against a wall of family photos. She told me she enjoys a morning walk through the neighborhood and likes to spread out the L.A. Times each day and read the whole paper, front to back. She tends to her garden, plays solitaire on her computer, follows the Dodgers and has a favorite player — Shohei Ohtani. I told Kobata she didn't look 100. 'How do you feel?' I asked. 'I don't know,' she said. 'How are you supposed to feel?' She thought about it and said she feels about 90. We had a lovely visit, going on two hours, but I didn't want to keep Kobata from her nap. On the ride back to South Pasadena, Sunabe said her mother's situation is sustainable for the time being, but she wonders about the broader societal challenge. 'If you've been in a house for a long time, so long that you don't want to move out of it because it's so comfortable and familiar, then you probably have a fortune in equity,' she said. 'And if you were to downsize or move into a more communal setting, you'd solve the isolation problem and the care problem by cashing out that equity.' That's an option for some people, along with unpaid help from relatives or friends, and a state program providing limited care for low-income and elderly residents. But there are no easy or inexpensive solutions, according to Irving and to UCLA professor emeritus Fernando Torres-Gil, who also appears in 'Caregiving' and says that when he's asked for advice on elder care, he has a two-word response: 'You're screwed.' In the middle of the last century, Torres-Gil said, the U.S. invested heavily in institutional care, enabling 'a huge for-profit industry to take hold.' Other countries instead invested in public financing of community-based and home-centered care, including Singapore, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. 'We are behind the curve,' Irving said. 'We are the only developed country … without a system of universal health care, leading to high rates of chronic disease and shorter health spans and life expectancy … And the system — if you can call it a system — fails our elders. Assisted living communities and nursing homes are unaffordable for most Americans.' The only hope, ironically, may be the age wave itself. As more and more people wipe out, policymakers might discover the cost of ignoring their cries for help.

New York Post

4 days ago

• New York Post

Lock into longevity at Lanserhof Sylt, the iconic German wellness retreat

Before there was Michael Pollan and his 'intentional eating' MasterClass, before there was 'intermittent fasting' and the Wim Hof Method, there was Franz Xaver Mayr, the early-20th-century Austrian physician. His revolutionary Mayr Method was grounded in the belief that the secret to health and beauty starts in the gut. His cult-like following led to the opening of his own clinic, and, eventually, to Lanserhof, a wellness and longevity retreat at whose fourth outpost I presently find myself. Somehow by my own choosing. Arriving to the remote German island of Sylt, considered by some to be the Teutonic version of the Hamptons, if the Hamptons had fewer beach clubs and more colonics, takes some effort. Which is, of course, the point. Guests must take a four-hour train ride across the Hindenburg causeway from Hamburg to arrive at the town of List, where, among the waves and heather, Lanserhof Sylt seems to levitate above the dunes. The whisper-quiet, thatch-roofed structure (the largest of its kind in Europe) designed by architect Christoph Ingenhoven offers no check-in desk, no custom scent, no chipper guide to assuage your fears of eating only 750 calories per day. This, too, is the point. At Lanserhof, escaping the pressures of the real world, tuning your senses to your body and your environment, is also part of the treatment. 5 Lanserhof is tucked on the remote German island of Sylt. Courtesy of Lanserhof Sylt I arrived from New York depleted — existentially tired in a way that no spa day or vacation could possibly resolve. Time had no meaning, I was exhausted, unfocused, unable to sleep. Relentless deadlines, continental moves, the news cycle… it was enough to throw me into a midlife spiral that, I decided, only a week away, alone, could heal. So, no, I hadn't booked myself into Lanserhof to lose those few winter pounds (as one gentleman guest revealed) or to keep a chronic illness in check (as a sufferer of 'leaky gut syndrome' told me). I was here to sleep without meds and to enlist in Lanserhof's Longevity Program, one that would sustain my body on this mortal coil for as long as possible, in peak(ish) fitness. In other words, I was here for what Lanserhof promises at its core: a scientifically rigorous, medically monitored reset. 5 A weeklong visit at the retreat begins with a series of health tests to gauge visitors' wellness needs. Courtesy of Lanserhof Sylt The clinic's approach, the Lanserhof Cure, is rooted in what practitioners call 'Medicine 3.0' — an evolution of preventive medicine that sees aging itself as a treatable condition. That translates to personalized diagnostics, one-on-one consultations and daily interventions calibrated to your own genes, cells and metabolism. It also means that a weeklong stay begins with a series of tests (blood panels, body composition scans, a fragility score assessment) and meetings with medical directors Jan Strizke and Christina Haeggberg, who walked me through my data with clinical candor. Turns out, my vitamin D was low. My calcium, borderline. My posture? Protective. My hips and knees and shoulder were subtly rotating to shield an overworked psoas muscle — a compensation I would never have known about if not for the wizarding osteopath who, in a single session, released my lower back and relieved a steady pain I'd endured for two decades. If the diagnostics and physical therapies were hardcore, the protocols were equally so. I received an infusion of something yellow (Vitamin D?) during two CellGym sessions, designed to mimic altitude training and increase my mitochondrial health. I braved five stints in a cryo chamber chilled to -110°C, my breath slowing as the technician danced along with me outside the glass door to three-minute classics. ('Time Warp' seems to know no language barrier, and certainly speeds along the endless 180 seconds, as its title suggests.) My massage therapist insisted I was too tight for a conventional massage. 'You need abyanga,' she said. 'Something deeper.' No kidding. 5 Regimens at Lanserhof are designed to recalibrate your body, from posture to digestion. Courtesy of Lanserhof Sylt Deeper was a theme. At Lanserhof Sylt, the body is treated as a system of interdependent parts, not a series of symptoms to manage. You have to get to the cellular level to manifest change. Nutrition was no exception. I met with the clinic's quietly formidable dietitian, who analyzed not just what I ingest, but how. Her verdict: I wasn't eating enough, and when I did, it was inconsistent. Worse, I wasn't chewing properly — an offense here of almost spiritual magnitude. Dr. Mayr believed that each bite of food requires 30 to 40 chews, and, rather shamefully, Dr. Haeggberg had to teach me how to chew properly. 'Digestion begins in the mouth,' she insisted. Other beads of wisdom: No talking while eating. No water for thirty minutes on either side of a meal. Nothing but tea after supper, which should end by 7:30 pm. To ensure my colon was cleared by week's end, every day began with a swig of Epsom salts. Thank goodness I sat alone, not complaining to my table neighbors at lunch. Instead, each meal forced me to reflect on my choices, on the wind, on my relationship to food and people. Sparse but elegant, meals consisted of a dainty serving of coconut yogurt, a small plate of spelt pasta with vegan Bolognese, smoothies presented in bowls with tiny spoons. By day four, my headache and my hunger faded. My appetite recalibrated. I began to taste food again — not just consume it. It's amazing what 40 chews can do. 5 Guests work with experts to regulate their sleep schedules. Courtesy of Lanserhof Sylt Not everything was about food or fascia. I spent quality time with Heide, a therapist who gently suggested I schedule a daily 'worry window' to contain my anxiety around falling asleep. (Good sleep hygiene is critical to longevity.) Her sleep retraining strategy required me to lie in bed and observe my breath for 30 minutes, then get up and read in another room. It felt punitive at first, leaving my nerves threadbare and my body tired. But by Wednesday, my brain had learned how to self-soothe, how to surrender. Months later, I remain Ambien-free. Other than running on treadmills strapped to some tubes or sitting in on lectures about gut health or group yoga sessions, there's little to do at Lanserhof Sylt. At least, that was what I entered this journey thinking. Once my sleep and my hunger were regulated, I made myself available to nature. One day was marked by a lengthy bike ride into town. Another included a 10-mile run on the boardwalk, resisting the urge to buy a beer at a café. I read three books by the fireplace. (No electronics allowed!) One night, I sipped kombucha and watched the sky blush pink and gold as the sun melted into the sea through the glass wall, a scene so quietly introspective, it resided a world apart from offspring and deadlines. Conversations with my fellow guests — in the pool, on a morning walk, by that fireplace — were deeply personal and earnest. It was easy to forget that most of us had arrived here feeling broken, hoping 'The Lanserhof Cure' would cure us all. 5 Forcing you away from electronics and deadlines, retreat guests rediscover nature and mindfulness through holistic practices. Courtesy of Lanserhof Sylt On my final morning, confident in my newfound 'wellth,' I layered my coat over my swimsuit, stripped down, and marched into the North Sea. The sting of the salty 2°C water was instant. My extremities went numb, my core felt hot. For a full minute I fought the urge to run. Or to cry. And then, without fanfare, the pain passed. I emerged euphoric, unreasonably proud of my silly, self-imposed achievement. I can do hard things! Even sleep without meds. Even chew a bite of spelt bread 40 times. Maybe I can even live in health forever. 8-night Lanserhof Classic Plus from €4,046, not including accommodation. Rooms from €649 per night; Lanserhof

Newsweek

5 days ago

• Newsweek

Woman Sets Out on 'Mental Health Walk,' But Dog Had Other Plans

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The internet couldn't stop laughing at a woman's attempt to clear her mind during a refreshing walk outside, being interrupted by her dog. Chamee Barkman, who is known on TikTok as @chameebarkmanx, needed to get outside for some fresh air and a "mental health walk." But as a dog owner, it only made sense to attempt to hit two birds with one stone and take her German shepherd with her. Getting in your daily steps is known to boost your mood, as it increases blood flow to both the brain and body. It helps support an active and healthy lifestyle. Additionally, walking can improve sleep, reduce stress, increase energy and mental alertness, aid in weight loss, lower cholesterol, and enhance heart health, according to WebMD. And while this was the intent for Barkman's walk, as well as to get her canine out of the house, her dog decided he wasn't interested. He needed the walk to release his energy. In her June 9 video, she filmed herself walking and holding the dog's leash. All seemed calm until she flipped the camera around to show what she was dealing with: her dog sprinting around her in circles. He hopped through the tall grass, taking a quick breather and looking at Barkman before running past her for rounds two, three and four. It wasn't what Barkman imagined for a mental health walk. In fact, she wrote on the clip that her dog was "making it worse." Newsweek reached out to @chameebarkmanx via TikTok for comment. Screenshots from a June 9 TikTok video of a woman trying to go on a "mental health walk" but her dog running around and making it a bit worse. Screenshots from a June 9 TikTok video of a woman trying to go on a "mental health walk" but her dog running around and making it a bit worse. @chameebarkmanx/TikTok Viewer Reactions The dog's total disregard for a calm walk left people in stitches, bringing in over 3.3 million views and 438,900 likes on TikTok as of Tuesday. "I'm laughing at how horrible it feels to be in this situation because it's your last straw and they're just vibing," commented a viewer. "And then you can't go on a walk by yourself because you'll feel guilty that your dog should be getting a walk too," a second viewer commented. Another commenter pointed out: "The dog even looked back like, 'You good?' and then carried on." Others defended the dog's behavior: "To be fair, that's his mental health walk too, and he seems to be enjoying it." Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share? Send them to life@ with some details about your best friend, and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup.