Joe Vitacco, Freelance Embalmer

“I just do them. That’s all I know.” That’s how Joe Vitacco describes his life work. Vitacco is one of the last of Chicago’s freelance embalmers. He still works out of his trunk, driving from funeral home to funeral home, performing three embalmings a day, every day of the year. While most embalmers don’t make the twenty-year mark, Joe just keeps at it. Over his career of forty-one years, the bodies have piled up. Joe estimates he has embalmed 40,000 bodies. Here is the story of just one.

Recorded in Chicago, IL. Premiered March 11, 2004, on All Things Considered.

This documentary comes from Sound Portraits Productions, a mission-driven independent production company that was created by Dave Isay in 1994. Sound Portraits was the predecessor to StoryCorps and was dedicated to telling stories that brought neglected American voices to a national audience.

The Last Elevator

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Michael Nestor, Liz Thompson, and Richard Tierney were eating breakfast at Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Together, they rode in the last elevator down in the moments before American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building at 8:46 that morning. Everyone at the restaurant at the time of impact, approximately 170 men and women, perished.

Recorded in New York City. Premiered September 11, 2003, on Morning Edition.

Bernie Barker, Oldest Male Stripper

Bernie Barker, a retired nuclear engineer, was sixty when he launched his new career: dancing for women. Guinness World Records has since recognized him as the oldest male stripper. This is his story.

Recorded in Hollywood, FL. Premiered July 2, 2003, on Morning Edition.

Update on Bernie Barker, Oldest Male Stripper

Bernie Barker sent the following update on March 15, 2005.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank those that heard my documentary and found the time and interest to send me literally hundreds of e-mails. I did attempt to answer every question and it was a delight to do so. I still get e-mail, so I want to give those interested in me an update as to my activities. More important is to share some of my thoughts about why in the world would someone now 64 years old want to do the things I do. I started striptease activities at age 60, after prostate cancer surgery, as kind of a fun thing to get in shape, never having done it before. Since then, partly because of the fun I had and the health benefits I received (from exercising so much to look my best and eating more healthy foods) I have continued these activities. Over the past four years, I’ve won 42 striptease contests and received Guinness recognition. While those victories are very motivational to me, it is the audience reactions and the e-mail from just great people that are the reasons I continue. As they say, never say never.

One my current challenges is that I moved from Miami to Las Vegas a year ago. I am now truly an entertainer at heart and came to the entertainment capitol of the world to seek venues to be just that. I am also a born-competitor, having been an athlete all my life. One of my beliefs is that if a person is willing to pay the price anything is possible. Not age, not gender, not race can prevent someone with determination from achieving a lifetime goal.

My own personal goals are to continue to do striptease for ladies as long as the audience receives enjoyment from it. I will stop the day they do not. I am improving my techniques as a dancer and have aspirations for doing more of that if I can find the right venue for me. (I have had some success doing commercials and TV shows and small bit parts in film.) My heart is always that of an entertainer on stage and I hope to get more opportunities here for that. So, in closing, thanks to everyone that wrote me; please continue to do so. I hope each person who reads my little note finds the same joy in his or her life that I find doing what I do.

Best Always,

Bernie

Bernie Barker. Photo by Colby Katz.

Excerpt from Bernie Barker’s Autobiography

My name is Bernie and I want to share with you the story about my life. This book has been compiled from dozens of real life experiences and several lifestyles, I have at times been fortunate to have the luck to being involved in several exciting and meaningful occupations. It was also my good fortune to work with some very talented people. I am also proud to have been in the United States Navy, while I have no wartime experiences, I served at a difficult time during the cold war in the late 50’s. The training I received in communications while assigned to the USS Newport News also helped me become part of the Missile Test Project down range on San Salvador Island. I lived there almost one year after being discharged from the Navy and had some very exciting experiences that I will share with you in my writings. The time I spent on that Island, along with my Navy experiences helped shape me as a man, and gave me the resolve to go forward at times when most would have just given up.

As a teenager I lived a somewhat privileged life, but I did not let that affect me as an adult, while never forgetting the fun and irresponsible times of youth, I have enjoyed the challenges and uncertainty of adulthood, being daring and different has been my life, and I would not change that for a million dollars. With each new year added to the total years I have lived, I am also becoming more prone to look backward for clues to the meaning of my life, but only in occasional flash backs, when I look ahead it is always for the purpose of living a full life. When I do look backward I see the events and places not the people who were in them, I see myself as a dreamer of sorts, always romantic always searching for answers still not found. In my imagination today as always I see myself as the teenager I was more than 40 years ago, I am never concerned about my future, and remain unafraid of it, or even cancer that is trying to steal years from the total I will yet live.

I have spent the greater part of my life choosing my own pathway, often carelessly, some of the things I did, and the way I lived were ill advised, but I meant no harm to anyone. Most of those things caused no lasting harm to anyone but myself, and like my present actions only serve to amuse, and embarrass. A few of my romantic misadventures I deeply regret.

Today if you passed me on the street, you would see only a man who looks not much different than you do. I am 6′ tall and weigh 175 lbs my hair is blonde/gray. My age may be a little hard to calculate because of all the gym activities I do. Probably my most outstanding features may be the dark tan I maintain, and the slightly different clothes that I wear that has become a part of my own self-image and mystique. Each of you has your own identity also, so whatever I appear to be like or really am, is actually not much different than you.

This book will attempt to explain the strange journey I have taken, it will start off as a teenager sharing all the fun of youth. It will include the most interesting parts of my adult life. There are large blocks of it that are glossed over, these were the times I was like you, married responsible and raising a family. The most exciting thing I did then was to play golf, but I also did that with a passion, to the best of my ability. I was fortunate to have had three marriages, three children and two grandchildren. It is hard to understand how I could have failed three times, because in each marriage at the beginnings I never thought it possible they would not last.

To the wives I have had I wish you the best, I am sorry I could not be with you longer. I am sure you view me now much differently than before. To Ifa I want to say I am especially sorry, we were married for 15 years, but were really strangers. You are bright and work hard. I am sure you will do well. I really miss you and all the talks we had over coffee.

There also will be glimpses into the periods of irresponsibility I fall back into like the one I am in at present, as well as glimpses into periods of great responsibility, I have had more of them than most do in their entire lifetimes. A lesson in life I have learned is to never feel sorry for those who have their life shortened by time; only feel sorry for the old that have never really lived. Think of the young that have left us to soon like JFK and his son, the impact that both had and the experiences they shared with us in the short time they were here are like three lifetimes that most of us could ever live. Outrageous examines the sometimes humorous events that have occurred, mostly out of my own romantic nature and the foolishness that is always present.

I will give you a glimpse into the strange and unknown world of Nuclear Power as it occurs daily through out the world within the confines of the many commercial Nuclear Stations and their own containment buildings. It was within two of these stations separated by the Atlantic ocean that I reached out to become the best I could ever be having been put in the most responsible of positions, and having the trust of the talented people around me to be able to have made a difference when it really counted. The Nuclear workers, especially all the Health Physics personnel that travel as gypsy’s through out the world between these Nuclear Stations are really the heroes among us, they are unknown to most, what they do is so complex and important it is almost indescribable. How many of you could work 72 plus hours a week for months at a time locked within a nuclear station? Then after a few weeks off to recuperate be given another assignment lasting months some 1,000 or more miles away? This is the world and the talented workers I will write about, for they also are the young at heart, otherwise they could not survive.

If I were to describe myself it would be as a dreamer, a real life Forrest Gump. I dream a dream and then try to become it, how else could one explain my current actions? I am also a real life entertainer and I am writing this book to be as entertaining to you the reader as possible, I hope to bring you some joy and laughter and to help many in some way to also self reflect a little. If I can do this I will consider all the work to write this book worthwhile.

I never forgot my youth, I still love music, cannot imagine seeing anyone over 30, not because of the beauty that only youth has, but because being a dreamer I am still there, Elvis is gone but I am not. I do not accept the ravages of age gracefully, I have Cancer and laugh at it, my body also sometimes protests the Exercise I force upon it, but my inner strength always prevails.

I sometimes still think about a special person who has gone from me, but I feel will someday return for only she knows me truly.

I am always still myself I have no malice towards anyone, but I still seek the fun and company of our young only because in my spirit I am still with then. If this is the last chapter in my life so be it, because I will travel forward as long as I can, looking for some other special moment or challenges. I am alone living by myself, but in my thoughts I still have my dreams to yet become, and I still feel the warmth of the sunshine, is that not really what life is all about?

When I was 60 I dreamed that I could become a male stripper, and did just that, in so doing I cemented my youth to that image, I have fun, enjoy life. I hope by my actions and skills as a human being or wherever my dreams take me, are viewed humorously as they should be, but also brings some joy and entertainment to all that know me or who read this book. If I can do that I will feel everything has been worth it, I also wonder at times how the hell I got here from there?

I believe that anything is possible for anyone in America, and good things sometimes happens to those that try hardest which I always do, in closing let me quote a few lines from My Creed.

I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon if I can. I seek opportunity not security, I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me.

I want to take the calculated risk: to dream and to build to fail and to succeed. All this is what it means to be an American.

Clemency

On Jan 8, 1990, Robert Wesley Knighton broke into the rural Oklahoma farmhouse of an elderly couple, Richard and Virginia Denney, and murdered them. He took sixty-one dollars, a pocketknife, some cigarettes, and a run-down truck. Nine months later he was sentenced to death.

This is a recording of the final clemency hearing for Knighton. In Oklahoma, a clemency hearing for a crime of this sort is little more than a formality, but this case was unusual. The only witness testifying on Knighton’s behalf was Sue Norton, the daughter of the man he had murdered thirteen years ago.

Sue Norton forgave and ultimately befriended Knighton. She and her husband will witness Knighton’s execution at his request on May 27, 2003. In this story, she walks us through Knighton’s clemency hearing, held eight days before he was executed.

Recorded in McAlester, OK, and Arkansas City, KS. Premiered May 27, 2003, on All Things Considered.

Parents at an Execution

On March 12th, 2003, Texas is scheduled to execute its 300th inmate since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1982: Delma Banks, Jr., who was convicted of murdering Richard Wayne Whitehead, a 16-year-old high school student.
Banks has been on death row for 22 years, his execution postponed thirteen times. Banks was 21 at the time of the murder and has always professed his innocence. When given the opportunity to plead guilty in exchange for a seven-year sentence, he refused, saying he could not confess to a crime he did not commit. His trial lasted two and a half days. The state’s main witness has since recanted his testimony, citing police coercion. Banks’s sentence was overturned by the U.S. District Court, then reinstated by a Court of Appeals.

Two weeks before the scheduled execution, the Whitehead and Banks families reflected on the past 22 years and what they might feel after the waiting was over.

Recorded in Texarkana. Premiered March 11, 2003, on All Things Considered.

An essay about Richard Whitehead, written by his parents

Richard Wayne Whitehead
16 Years Old
July 2, 1963 to April 11, 1980

Wayne, our first child, was a sweet, naive, typical teenager who loved life. In his naiveté, he saw no meanness or evil in others. He always saw only their goodness. Upon his death, he left a loving family of two brothers (Darren and Jason), his parents (Jackie and Larry Whitehead), grandparents, great-grandparents, as well as numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Like his brothers who are also avid bowlers, at six years of age, Wayne started bowling in a youth bowling league. He quickly developed a passion for bowling and bowled on into high school. Throughout their bowling years, Wayne and his brother Darren won numerous local and state awards and were Arkansas State Doubles Champions. In his junior year at Texas High School (Texarkana, TX), Wayne applied for and won the first scholarship awarded by the Texarkana Junior Bowling Association based on his bowling achievements and scholastic record. As a tribute to him upon his death, this scholarship was renamed, “The Wayne Whitehead Memorial Scholarship” and is awarded yearly to a deserving junior or senior high school bowler.

Not long before his death, Wayne had gotten a car and was so very proud of it. This car, a 1969 Ford Mustang, was his pride and joy. It needed some “fixing up,” but that made it even more special to him. His plans were to customize it to his liking, with his dad’s help, and have fun in the process. However, his plans for his car were never realized. He left our house on a Friday night to attend a high school dance. After the dance, he went to the bowling center. There he ran into Delma Banks, Jr. He worked with Banks at the Bonanza Steak House. The weather was rainy and messy, and Wayne gave Banks a ride home. After dropping a friend off at her house, they went to a local park. It was at this park that Banks murdered our son. He shot him in the back of the head and in his shoulder. Then, just to make sure, he shot him point blank between the eyes. This cold blooded murderer left our sweet boy in that park, took his car, and drove it to Dallas, TX, where he abandoned it on a Dallas street. The car was never found. Later, during the trial, Banks told a friend in Dallas that he “did a white boy just for the hell of it.”

Banks was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death twenty years ago. He has been on death row at Huntsville, TX, all that time. He has filed appeal after appeal, after appeal, and has the NAACP fighting for him. In August 2000, the Federal courts granted him a new punishment phase, setting aside his death sentence. Now, Wayne’s family will go through all the torment of another trial with all the painful memories resurfacing. This case even attracted national attention because of the presidential election and George Bush being a candidate.

In all this chaos, Wayne, the innocent victim, has all but been forgotten. To his family, he was a living, breathing, sweet, sweet boy before he met Delma Banks, Jr. To us he always will be just that. All we have left now are memories of Wayne, some that are nightmares and others that are oh, so sweet. That’s what Banks left us – just memories. Wayne was cheated out of so much at the hands of another person, and twenty years later his family still does not have closure and peace.

Delma Banks, Jr. was scheduled to be executed on March 2003, but he was given a stay by the Supreme Court. He is still on death row.

Blak’s Story

In March 1993, producer Dave Isay put a microphone into the hands of two young people living in Chicago’s notorious Ida B. Wells public housing projects and asked them to record an audio portrait of their lives. The result was Ghetto Life 101, and it sparked the interest of an aspiring poet and writer living in the projects: Yanier “Blak” Moore.

Blak’s life has been marked by an almost inconceivable degree of violence and death — gang-banging and drug-dealing, the murders of his parents and countless close friends — but through it all he has been able to transcend personal tragedy with the power of words.

On the tenth anniversary of Ghetto Life 101, Sound Portraits is proud to return to the Ida B. Wells and present a new story of hope.

Recorded in Chicago, IL. Premiered March 13, 2003, on All Things Considered.

Archival photos of the Ida B. Wells housing projects from the Library of Congress

A class in radio for youngsters at Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3- 000319-D.

Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-004871-D.

A childrens’ rhythm band in a music class, Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000294-D.

Children playing a game in a music class, Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000270-D.

A meeting of the Cub Scouts in the community center, Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000290-D.

An apartment in the Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USF34-038652-D.

The Carr family in their living room, Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000086-D.

In the kitchen of the Carr home, Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000085-D.

Jelna Carr and her father listen to the 6:45 news broadcast, Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000075-D.

Jelna and her sister Grace both play the piano, Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000078-D.

Ralph and Grace Carr, Jelna’s brother and sister.. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000068-D.

Jelna likes sciences, is going to be a doctor. For Christmas her parents bought her this chemistry set. Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942.. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000076-D.

Mrs. Ella Patterson, the oldest resident at the Ida B. Wells Housing Project, Chicago, Illinois, and her grandson, 1942.. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000105-D.

Photos of the Ida B. Wells housing projects, by John Brooks

Willie Young, Rabbit Hunter

Each winter in Florida’s sugar cane country, farmers set fire to their crops to clear away the dead stalks, and in the town of Pahokee, on the shores of Lake Okechobee, it’s a tradition for young people to hunt the rabbits that are smoked out by the fires. Groups of boys stand by the side of the road, armed with broken sugar cane stalks, waiting for the flame thrower trucks to approach.

Dodging the heavy machinery of the growers, the boys work in teams, cornering the rabbits and striking them with the cane. The boys disembowel the rabbits on the spot, and at the end of the day they bring them home to their families for dinner or sell them to neighbors for two dollars a piece. Thirteen-year-old Willie Young, takes us into the smoking fields.

Recorded in Pahokee, FL. Premiered February 11, 2003, on All Things Considered.

Photos of rabbit hunters by Colby Katz

Florida rabbit hunter.

Wind in the sugar cane field.

Boys running from the smoke, Belle Glade.

Dinodre Thompson, 13, Belle Glade.

George Knox, Hypnotherapist

Dr. George Knox may be the oldest practicing psychologist in the country. At 91, he’s been hypnotizing patients at his private practice in Gahanna, Ohio, for over half a century. And for the last 40 years, his stress-free lifestyle has centered on running ultra-marathons and practicing auto-suggestion — sometimes at the same time.

Recorded in Washington, DC. Premiered January 4, 2003, on Weekend Edition Saturday.

Anti-Aging: A Triple Approach to Longevity

by George W. Knox, Ph.D.

I am frequently asked to talk about aging. I start by bragging that I know a lot about aging because I have been doing it for a long time. Actually, I am more interested in anti-aging — slowing it down, and even, for short period of time, reversing it. Is this going against the way things were planned for us? Is it an attempt to sneak beyond the traditional three score and ten?

No, it may be just the opposite. It may be stretching toward what the Creator intended for us to have. Recent research indicates that the average human being has the potential to live for about 120 years: six score. We don’t reach the allotted time because of the many errors in the way we live — the thoughts we have, the substances we put in out bodies, the activities we do.

If most of us reduced our errors and approached the life span intended for us, ours would not be a society of biologically old people. More people would stay young longer. Ideally, we would die healthy, and we would stay healthy and active until our programmed genes had run their course. It would not just be more years, it would be better years — high quality years as well as mere quantity of years. Most of us die prematurely.

I began to get these notions in my head about thirty years ago when doctors gave me an estimated five more years to live after my first and only heart attack. I had been making all kinds of errors. I ate too much, exercised too little, smoked a pipe, had too many negative thoughts, etc. All my male relatives had died in the ’50s and ’60s of heart attacks. Was it bad genes or was it lifestyle? I couldn’t change my genes, but I could change the way I lived. So after studying what was available on longevity and anti-aging, I began a triple approach toward living beyond those five years. So far, it has worked for thirty years! The approaches are 1) exercise, 2) nutrition, and 3) the power of the mind.

Exercise

“Age slows running, but running slows aging.”

Nowadays, cardiologists have rehab exercise programs that gradually increase in intensity and duration. The trouble is, too many people do not keep at it after the supervised program is over. Not only should the exercise be continued, but in most cases it should be gradually increased in intensity and duration. The most beneficial exercise heart rate is 60-80% of your maximum (220 heartbeats per minute, minus your age in years).

Thirty years ago, most doctors said to eliminate activity after a heart attack — Don’t do this, Don’t do that, Don’t walk so fast, Don’t climb stairs. My relatives all followed this prescription and died early. So I went in the opposite direction and began walking, then jogging, then running around our backyard pool. Soon, I graduated to running the charity walks, then to five- and ten-kilometer and five-mile races each weekend. I got into marathons and ultramarathons — fifty kilometers, fifty miles, and 100 kilometers. All this was more than I needed, and my wife Lorena said I didn’t have sense enough to stop. I reached my peak at age seventy in a 100-km run and have been slowing down ever since. So now the jersey I wear reads, “Slowing but still Going,” front and back. Lorena once asked, “Why do you wear it on the back? There’s no one running behind you anymore!” I did, however, end up with several age-world records.

Running a marathon probably does not improve your health, but the months of preparation certainly do. When I see top runners at a race, most of them look a decade younger than their chronological age. One of the closest measurements of the rate-of-aging process is called VO2 Max. It normally decreases at 1% a year. Consider the findings of J.L. Hogson, Ph.D., at Penn State: “If a seventy-year-old were to begin an exercise program at the level of moderate exercise, he could expect to improve his VO2 Max by about fifteen years. However, if the same sedentary seventy-year-old were to achieve an athlete’s level of conditioning, he could regain forty years of his VO2 Max.” Any aerobic exercise is equally beneficial, and can be supplemented by short, intense intervals.

Nutrition

“You are what you eat.”

What should I eat? It’s a common habit to ask your doctor about almost anything concerning health. Yet our family doctor of many years admits that all he knows about nutrition, he learned from reading Prevention magazine. Many doctors did not have a single course on nutrition during medical school, so you may have to be on your own and start studying. Fortunately, some doctors and even medical schools are beginning to listen to voices outside of mainstream medicine. They are combining what they already know about medicine and are studying and using what is called alternative medicine (the kind that insurance companies don’t pay for). There is now a large organization of alternative medicine practitioners consisting of several thousand doctors. They include not only nutrition in their practice, but all other forms of therapy not found on mainstream medicine. So keep studying on your own, learn what you can from your health store and, if you wish, find an alternative medicine doctor. If you want to find a doctor in your area who practices alternative medicine, write to the American College for Advancement in Medicine, 23121 Verdugo Drive, Suite 204, Laguna Hills, California, 92653, (800) 532-3688.

Your total nutrition includes much more than what you eat and drink. It involves the amount you eat or drink, what supplements you take, and whatever substances you take in through your nose or through your skin (patch or injection). Many doctors and dieticians still cling to the notion that three square meals a day will give us all the nutrients we need. More emphasis is put on vegetables and fruits, and less on meats and reduction of fats (polyunsaturated rather than saturated fats). The American Heart Association reduced their recommended intake of calories from fat to about 30%. The book, The Pritikin Diet for Runners, cuts the fat to 10%. I followed mainly this program, and added a few items, which I refer to as super foods. There are many substances we generally do not get enough of from the usual three square meals a day. There are so many that I found it easiest to take a large sheet of paper and mark letters A through Z. Then I fill in the list with health-producing substances, special foods, and supplements, along with their optimum amounts. If you have an alternative-medicine doctor who believes in using health supplements, a comprehensive blood test can yield the information to determine the amount of each substance your body requires for best health and longevity.

The Power of the Mind

“As the man thinketh, so is he.”

For many years, doctors have talked about psychosomatic disorders: bodily disorders produced or made worse by the state of mind. The most common of these physical disorders include high blood pressure, heart and vascular disorders, tension headaches, and digestive disorders. Almost any disorder, however, involves a mind (psycho), body (soma) circular causation. The physical disorder causes worry, anxiety, pain, or discomfort. These states of mind diminish the power of the immune and healing systems. In study after study, patients with a positive attitude, using guided imagery, positive autosuggestion and positive suggestion by others, get well more often, more quickly, and more completely.

This brings up a major point. Through the years, psychosomatic medicine has emphasized only the negative effect on the body of negative mental states like worry, anxiety, fear, anger, depression, etc. When talking about psychosomatic medicine, doctors almost always mean negative psychosomatic. The phrase “positive psychosomatic,” the healthy power that positive states of mind have on bodily functions, is hardly ever mentioned. In hypnotherapy, the phrase Ideo — motor principle — is used. This means that every state of mind constantly sends its influence — good or bad — through the body. So the state of mind is constantly changing the condition and chemistry of the body.

When we worry and are anxious (mental states), impulses travel to our adrenal glad, which then secrete excessive adrenaline, raising our blood pressure, heart beat, and blood sugar and stops or diminished out digestive functions. This can cause serious bodily conditions and sickness over time.

It is the last moment of a championship basketball game; the biochemistry of the two teams is roughly equal. One shot occurs, and one team wins by a point. Immediately, one team is in a state of extreme happiness. Healthful endorphins saturate their bloodstreams. The other team immediately goes into intense depression and their bloodstreams become saturated with depression-associated harmful substances.

Psychiatrists give anti-depressant or anti-anxiety drugs, which affect the state of mind in the desired direction. Others train themselves by biofeedback, hypnosis, autosuggestion, meditation and prayer which influence or control their state of mind and health. This is positive psychosomatics. If physicians and their patients would pay as much attention to the daily use of positive psychosomatics as they do to negative psychosomatics, we would be a much healthier, longer-lived people than we are now.
Where do anti-stress techniques, such as self-hypnotic programming, autosuggestions, positive self-talk, relaxation training, etc., come into the picture? By a person’s own conscious direction he or she can train himself or herself to let the stress roll off like water from a duck. Then that person can deal more efficiently with the problem situation. This self-programming may be started with the help of another person trained in the techniques of stress management.

What is in your mind is constantly sending its influences through your body. Through the limbus area at the base of the brain, impulses are carried down to every muscle, organ, and gland. The substances of the blood are determined by the exercise we do or do not do, by what we eat and drink, by the supplements or pills we take, the air we breathe, and by our state of mind. By conscious decision, we can largely determine what each of these shall be. At any age that we decide to, we can help extend out years beyond the traditional three score and ten, toward the six score that recent research indicates the Creator has endowed for us in our genes. It is the quality, not just the quantity, of years that we should strive for. We do not want to be old longer, we want to stay young (physically and psychologically) longer. You may not only add years to your life, but also more life to your years.

A photo of Knox with his running trophies

Strates Carnival

When the James E. Strates Carnival staked its tents near downtown Washington, DC, in the spring of 1941, Library of Congress archivist Charles Harrell was there to meet it. He was part of the Library’s Radio Research Project, a small group dedicated to recording Americans “speaking without script, discussing their problems, telling eloquently the story of their regions, the story of their own experience — their songs — their folklore.” The carnival, basically in the Library’s backyard, was a perfect opportunity.

The Strates carnivals are still in existence — it is now the only remaining carnival company that travels the country by railroad — but the show itself has changed a great deal over the past six decades. Fortune tellers and weight guessers, burlesque dancers and two-headed babies, Harrell’s recordings capture the sounds of an era long gone.

Recorded in Washington, D.C. Premiered September 3, 2002 on Morning Edition.

Baby Betty, one of the carnival’s attractions.

Bergen-Belsen

On April 15, 1945, British forces liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany. Sixty-thousand prisoners were living in the camp when the troops arrived, most of them seriously ill. Thousands more lay dead and unburied on the camp grounds.

BBC reporter Patrick Gordon Walker was among the press corps that entered Bergen-Belsen with the British troops that day. Over the next few weeks, he documented what he saw, recording the first Sabbath ceremony openly conducted on German soil since the beginning of the war, interviewing survivors, and speaking to British Tommies about what they had witnessed at liberation.

One of the people who heard Walker’s radio dispatches was soon-to-be-legendary folk-music producer Moe Asch. An engineer at the time at New York radio station WEVD, Asch recorded the shortwave broadcast onto an acetate disc. Decades later, the record was re-discovered at the Smithsonian Institution by historian Henry Sapoznik.

Recorded in Near Celle, Germany. Premiered April 20, 2002, on Weekend Edition Saturday.