Honest Truth Research Articles

Mitochondria directly boost copepods’ rosy hue

In the search for the ideal mate, many creatures keep an eye out for the brightest and best. ‘The colourful displays of an animal often tell us how strong, successful and healthy that animal is’, says Matthew Powers from Auburn University, USA. But for an animal to truthfully convey its inner strength through beauty, there must be a direct link between an attractive characteristic and their physiological prowess: enter the mitochondrial power houses of the cell. These minute organelles, tucked away inside almost every animal cell, consume glucose and oxygen to generate most of the chemical energy that powers life. The power structures also produce the ideal environment for converting colourful yellow pigments (carotenoids, consumed by creatures in their diets) into redder shades, which could trumpet the honest truth about an animal's suitability as a mate. But proving the direct link between the cellular power sources and a creature's attractiveness is tricky, because mitochondria also produce toxins that could blanch vibrant hues, diminishing the message. However, Powers and Geoffrey Hill, from Auburn University, knew of an alternative strategy, which could speed up the mitochondria, affecting an animal's hue in turn if the two were linked, so they focused their attention on a tiny rose-coloured copepod, Tigriopus californicus.The minute crustaceans dine on algae containing yellow carotenoids, which they then convert into the red keratinoid astaxanthin, so Powers, Alex Baty (Auburn University) and Hill bathed the miniature crustaceans in a drug known as DNP, which increases the mitochondria's oxygen consumption. If the copepods’ colour and the powerfulness of their mitochondria were linked directly, then increasing the organelles’ oxygen consumption could, in turn, speed up conversion of the yellow pigment into the more vivid astaxanthin, resulting in redder copepods.After collecting the tiny crustaceans after a week of bathing in the mitochondrial energising drug, Powers and Baty discovered that the male copepods were producing 70% more red astaxanthin than the copepods that did not receive the mitochondrial boosting drug. And, when the duo took transparent copepods that had been raised on colourless yeast for the whole of their lives and switched their diet to the colour-creating plankton, the female copepods that received a DNP boost produced 23% more astaxanthin than the copepods fed on the plankton alone. The team also measured how much oxygen individual copepods consumed, an indication of how active their mitochondria are, and compared that with the animals’ astaxanthin levels, discovering that the crustaceans with the most power-hungry mitochondria were also the reddest, directly linking the copepods’ mitochondrial power to their rosy hue. ‘These data support Hill's hypothesis that ketocarotenoid and mitochondrial metabolism are biochemically intertwined’, says Powers.But why do T. californicus go to such vivid lengths if they are not trying to make their appearance as alluring as possible? After all, copepods are immune to the appeal of their mates’ lustrous tint. Powers and colleagues explain that the red pigment behaves effectively as sunscreen, shading the animal from damaging UV rays. Instead of communicating their suitability as a mate, the crustaceans are simply benefiting from the protective properties of a side effect of their powerful energy-generating mitochondria.

David Liew: where communication meets medicine

“The honest truth is that I find it difficult to talk about myself. I’m really quite self-conscious.” It wasn’t what I expected to hear from David Liew, guest host of The Lancet Rheumatology's Clinical Realities podcast. Having hosted a plethora of other podcasts for RheumNow and other outlets, I thought he might be an extrovert. I wonder if he is perhaps the shy actor type who has no problem playing to the camera but who clams up when one-on-one. But when he starts talking about what he does, the easy-going person I expected begins to appear. Many people will know David from his internet presence, including his many videos, his conference reporting, his feature-type articles, and a Twitter feed that pumps out rheumatology news, but he is also consultant rheumatologist, clinical pharmacologist, and project lead of the Medicines Optimisation Service at the Austin Hospital (Heidelberg, VIC, Australia), although too modest to actually tell me much about these roles.

The Honest Truth: CNAs Speak Out on Workforce Issues

Caring for the Ages is the official newspaper of AMDA and provides long-term care professionals with timely and relevant news and commentary about clinical developments and about the impact of health care policy on long-term care medicine.

Multisite randomized efficacy trial of educational materials for young children with incarcerated parents.

Although children with incarcerated parents exhibit more behavior problems, health concerns, and academic difficulties than their peers, few interventions or resources are available to support affected children. This randomized, controlled, multisite efficacy trial evaluated Sesame Street's "Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration" initiative with children aged 3 to 8 years with a jailed father. Seventy-one diverse children and their caregivers were randomized to an educational outreach group (n = 32) or wait list control group (n = 39). Researchers observed children during jail visits and interviewed caregivers by phone 2 and 4 weeks later. The effects of the intervention on children's behavior and emotions occurring during a jail visit depended on what children had been told about the father's incarceration. Children who were told honest, developmentally appropriate explanations showed less negative affect at entry, an increase in negative affect when the intervention was administered, and a decrease in negative affect during the visit. Intervention group children who were told distortions, nothing, or explanations that were not developmentally appropriate showed more negative affect initially, and their negative affect remained relatively stable during their time in the jail. In addition, children who were told the simple, honest truth about the parent's incarceration (a recommendation in the educational materials) exhibited more positive affect during the visit, with a medium effect size. Caregivers in the educational outreach group reported more positive change in how they talked to children about the incarceration over time compared to the control group.

Mostly the Honest Truth by Jody J. Little

Mostly the Honest Truth by Jody J. Little

The Makings of a Leader: A Review of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Leadership in Turbulent Times

The Makings of a LeaderA Review of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Leadership in Turbulent Times Madison Stern (bio) Doris Kearns Goodwin. Leadership in Turbulent Times. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018. 473 pages. Hardcover $30 From red apparel emblazoned with the phrase "Make America Great Again" to increasingly divided rhetoric in American politics, any citizen of the world cannot help but watch as the United States devours itself with its own polarized system. Some argue that the era of American hegemony is over in part due to isolationist policies.1 As the future begins to look less certain for the country, one must ask: what American era are we hailing as great, and what made it so? In Leadership in Turbulent Times, Doris Kearns Goodwin examines the effects that four leaders in American history had on the country in some of its darkest hours. Good-win, a Pulitzer Prize winner and renowned historian with over fifty years of experience, follows Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson through their lives. The book, enlivening history with its heavy reliance on firsthand accounts of the four men in action, begins with the ripples of their upbringing and their interest in politics and travels with them all the way to their deaths. All four have very divergent experiences, though Goodwin identifies certain facets of their lives, such as personal tragedy and good timing, as key in their success as leaders. Though the book focuses entirely on the past without reference to the modern day, Goodwin's critique of modern leadership shines through the prose. Goodwin's book examines the importance of adept leadership in times of division, though the traits that make these leaders well-suited for their times vary. Becoming the Man Goodwin's stories of the four men's vastly different childhoods show the importance of character that goes beyond formation by mere circumstances. Abraham Lincoln, her first study, displays humility and a voracious mind as he grows up in poverty, with anecdotes of the future president walking miles to find a proper English grammar book or borrowing books and candlelight from neighbors.2 She particularly highlights his empathy, noting his "ability to put himself in the place of others, to imagine their situations and identify with their feelings."3 For Goodwin, this early empathy, mixed with a growing ambition and an unsurpassed eloquence, would later become one of the key features of his leadership style that she applauds. In Franklin Roosevelt, she recognizes his adaptability, gained through continual shifts in his life circumstances after his father's health declined.4 For Goodwin, these vignettes of the great men's youths aim to provide the reader both a vivid, engaging story and the honest truth that no single formula made these men. Each grew up in his unique situation, with varying degrees [End Page 154] of parenting and wealth and different paths that led them eventually to politics. Living Up to the Challenges A key aspect of the narrative of each life that Goodwin focuses on is the personal tragedy that befalls each leader in turn. From these tragedies, Goodwin asserts, these men learned some of their most critical lessons as they dragged themselves up through the darkness and came out the other end. Certainly, just as their early lives are different, so too are their tragedies. Lincoln copes with crippling depression, while Theodore Roosevelt says that "the light has gone out" of his life after losing his mother and wife within twenty-four hours, and Franklin Roosevelt is paralyzed by a sudden polio infection.5 In this, Lyndon B. Johnson's narrative of losing an election to the Senate seems a little bit out of place. It particularly stands out since the other men had experienced their own failures in politics, and those failures did not break them down, only pushed them to question their previous tactics. However, the ability to overcome adversity through reflection and personal strength remains a theme that Goodwin identifies in their later successes as leaders. This section also helps to humanize these revered men by telling some of the lesser-known stories of their struggles as they moved toward their leadership...

The honest truth about deception: Demographic, cognitive, and neural correlates of child repeated deceptive behavior

This study examined situational, psychological, and neurobiological factors associated with deceptive behavior in 8-year-old children. By assessing deception in low- and high-risk conditions, we differentiated between children displaying some dishonesty and children who deceived repeatedly, and we assessed the correlates of deception in 163 children. A large majority of the children were deceptive in the low-risk condition (n=121, 74.2%), but most children refrained from deception when at risk for getting caught (69 of 121). Using an aggregate score, children who continued deceiving could be discriminated from other children based on gender, lower age, lower IQ, less effortful control, and lower educated mothers. Compared with honest children and high-risk deceivers, low-risk deceivers differed on an aggregate score, suggesting that they were more likely to be girls and to come from higher income families. Compared with the other children, high-risk deceivers showed decreased activation in the bilateral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and right frontal pole during the low-risk condition, suggesting decreased engagement in conflict monitoring and error detection during opportunities for deception. In high-risk deceivers, high-risk deception was associated with increased bilateral ACC and right paracingulate gyrus activation compared with low-risk deception. High-risk deceivers may require a higher level of risk to engage the ACC to the same degree as low-risk deceivers or honest children. Our results suggest that deceptive behavior in children seems to be largely dependent on the estimated likelihood of getting caught. High-risk deceivers form a distinct group with different cognitive and neurobiological characteristics compared with honest children and low-risk deceivers.

Two poems

two poems Anders Carlson-Wee (bio) Dean Interrupts My Dream Oconto, Wisconsin Hey fella, you asleep? I hate to wakeyou up like this, but I gotta warn you:the heater's broke. Darn thing went limpoutta nowhere and it's gonna get cold.I can't tell you how cold it's gonna getbut it's gonna get cold. You best dolike me and walk some of the night out,pace the house and get your enginerevved up and that. And if you hearwhat sounds like a ruckus upstairs,don't worry: that's just me hoppin for heat.I hop as high as a man can get and landin a full squat and do that on repeat.I know it sounds loony but it works,pumps the blood good enough to give Goda boner. Shadowboxin works tooif you pretend the fight's real and dealthe guy grief, but that takes imaginationwhile hoppin is a sure thing. And buddy,if you get so you're just too darn cold—and I mean balls-turned-into-stones cold—don't suffer it. You let me know [End Page 463] and we'll see what body heat can do.Mind you, I aint sittin around dreamin ofthrowin sausage fests anymorethan the next man. A man's a man'sa man's a man and all that, but I'll just come outand say it: I like ladies. We'll stick tothe hoppin and the boxin and see howwe last. But if you get so you're justtoo darn cold—and god's honest truth,I'd as soon balloon into an ice cubeas share sheets with a fella—but if you getso you're just about set to petrify . . . [End Page 464] Lyle Clears My Throat Boone County, Kentucky Fair warning: I gotta roll my motherevery half hour or so to curb bedsores,but I wanna hear this story. Just keepit down cause she's asleep and I needthe door cracked to hear her heart.Well, not her heart. The monitor is whatI listen to. It's been a year this June.I come upstairs and found her on the floor,drove her to local before they coptered usto the U. Let me roll her quick and youcan start your story, which I'm dyingto hear. Where we're at now, she can't lifther own arm, but if you lift it to start withshe can ease it back down real slow,controlling the speed and choosingwhere it lands, you know? They got heron a food tube and all that, machinestracking her heart and lungs, the works.She's basically comatose, but she can shakeher head for no and you'd be surprisedhow much power that gives you.They had her hooked up to this thing—I don't know what you call it—a shocktreatment kind of thing they hopedwould give her back her speech. But whenthey explained all this she shook her head.Doc said shake once for yes and four for no.If the math wasn't happening I coulda [End Page 465] called the shots, but you know damn wellthat head shook exactly four times.So they sent us home. Somehow she bossesme around with that headshake, gets acrossevery little message. And it's weird,I've started talking. Used to be as quietas a mule, but with her gone mute I feelit's my duty to put something in the air.And now I can't seem to shut up.I tell her every little thing, even tell herwhat I'm doing while I'm doing it,which I never used to do. But enough of meclearing your throat. Just let me roll heronce more—No, that's mighty kind of you,but I'd just as soon roll her myself,plus I get a decent workout doing it.Friends ask me how I'm holding up.That's what they say...

Book Review: Dan Ariely, The Irrational Bundle: Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty, Kindle edition

Dan Ariely, The Irrational Bundle: Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty, Kindle edition. UK: Harper Collins, 2013, 960 pp., ₹1,121.39

The Problem of Intransigently Biased Agents

In recent years the social nature of scientific inquiry has generated considerable interest. We examine the effect of an epistemically impure agent on a community of honest truth seekers. Extending a formal model of network epistemology pioneered by Zollman, we conclude that an intransigently biased agent prevents the community from ever converging to the truth. We explore two solutions to this problem, including a novel procedure for endogenous network formation in which agents choose whom to trust. We contend that our model nicely captures aspects of current problems in medical research and gesture at some morals for medical epistemology more generally.

The Honest Truth by Dan Gemeinhart (review)

The Honest Truth by Dan Gemeinhart (review)

Book Review: The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves

Dan Ariely, The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves. HarperCollins Publishers, 2012, 285 pp., ₹ 399, ISBN 978-0-00-749056-1

Inspire and Expire: On Tim Winton's <em>Breath</em>

ESCAPING THE MUNDANEAs retrospective tale, Breath opens with the narrator-protagonist, Bruce Pike (known as Pikelet) as paramedic arriving at the scene where teenage boy has hanged himself with autoasphyxiation. Unlike his younger colleague, with an ominous sense of foreshadowing, Bruce knows that it isn't suicide. Then the novel shifts to 11-year-old Pikelet, living in Sawyer, mill town not far from the mid-sized provincial city of Angelus and the coast, and his early friendship with the publican's son, Ivan Loon, (or Loonie), a mouthy urchin who roamed the town at will. For Bruce Pike, flashing back to his turbulent adolescence, the reader sees that his past has haunted him for years.Two friends, Bruce Pike and Loonie discover surfing, drawn to its intoxicating thrill in way that is new to them. boys are determined to throw off the stifling constraints of smalltown life, to escape the mundane, to transcend ordinariness, their high jinks a rebellion against the monotony of drawing (41). They engage in competitive feats of daring-seeing who can hold their breath underwater the longest, deliberately hyperventilating, and finally risking life.Curiosity and suspense are the two basic affects aroused by Winton's narrative. two boys hunt adventure with sort of desperation, hungry for the exhilaration of fear, the vitality of excess and extremity. Both endure their spills, but both want to achieve the highest success they can. sensitivities and vulnerabilities of adolescence are depicted here with deft and painful accuracy. When they meet mentor, Bill Sanderson (Sando), surfing maestro in his thirties, triangle of male yearning, rivalry, and betrayal develops. Through Sando, Pikelet, and Loonie meet, as it were, the fourth side of that triangle: Sando's wife, Eva.Sando is man who seems not to need to work for living, and who does nothing but surf. He is in fact also powerful surfer who knows the location of all the secret beaches and loves to take risks as much as they do. Under Sando's tutelage, the boys get to surf the legendary Old Smokey, Barney's Beach, and finally the Nautilus, where the fearsome waves are big enough to break rock cairn many miles off the coast and giant white shark is their sole observer. There is whiff of Hemingway's masculinist grace under pressure credo about this whole construct. Indeed, during one sermon Sando proclaims that denying fear is unmanly, and he takes the boys to surf Barney's, so he can make men of you.Loonie is reckless, dangerous, and the town's scapegoat for trouble. Pikelet attaches himself to Loonie with all the longing of boy who just wants friend, no matter how little the friendship is returned. However, Loonie's dysfunctional family life means he needs to prove himself, to have someone think he's worthwhile. He becomes more and more reckless out on the water, facing down twenty-foot waves with contemptuous defiance. As the waves they surf grow larger, the breaks more dangerous, Pikelet grows less easy with Loonie and Sando's patronage, until finally Sando and Loonie disappear overseas on surfing trip in Indonesia and Thailand.It is important to offer the female character Eva in contrast here, since she is, in an almost perverse sense, foil to the traditionally masculine in this novel. Sando's wife Eva, an American former champion freestyle skier with an irreversibly ruined knee from her last jump, feels herself to be nothing without the extreme thrill of her sport. I miss being afraid [. . .] That's the honest truth (178). Every young person wants to challenge himself; so Sando takes his disciple Loonie off to Indonesia and Thailand surfing. Eva, in her ennui, slips almost heedlessly into sexual relationship, something Pikelet believes is love and Eva sees as something quite different. During that period, he is consumed with self-loathing, convinced Eva holds him in contempt, too, but he later concedes, The disgust might have been reserved for herself' (172). …

Editorial: The Next Practice

Every summer, the same news occurs again. In the blur and chaos of our crazy lives, we hardly stop to take notice that another athlete has died after performing intense exercise in the heat. When parents drop their sons and daughters off for practice, they wish their children well and establish plans for a pick-up. Yet sometimes the pick-up never happens, replaced instead by a furious rush to the hospital after a frantic call from an assistant coach: “Your child collapsed during practice and became unconscious and is currently being taken to the hospital.” Parents arrive at the hospital to learn that their child had an exertional heat stroke (EHS), a sudden cardiac event, exertional sickling, asthma attack, severe head injury, or any of a myriad of other injuries and conditions that can cause an otherwise healthy child or young adult to go from extremely vibrant to death's door in a matter of minutes.Tempting as it is, looking away will not make the problem disappear. The shock only becomes more personal when such an event occurs to your athlete. Sudden death is occurring more frequently, at a pace that we cannot completely explain.I once had an EHS. I was 16 years old, running a 10-K race on the track at the Empire State Games in upstate New York. Looking back, as I have for the past 24 years, in a daily ritual to examine the seminal moment that shaped every subsequent action, I know that many factors leading to my EHS were preventable. The 25-lap race began in the middle of the day during a heat wave, even though events with much less risk were being run under the lights in the evening. Hydration was not allowed during the race. (Today, it's almost impossible to imagine teenagers running 6+ miles “all out” in extreme heat and not being allowed fluids.)I first contemplated all this as I lay in my hospital room, and I have spent my career as a professor at the University of Connecticut dedicated to preventing sudden death in sport. Here is my simple message: most cases of sudden death in sport are preventable, whether through better prevention strategies or enhanced treatment plans. Exertional heat stroke is the perfect example, with 100% survival possible if immediate, on-site cooling via cold-water immersion is provided. Surprisingly, athletes continue to die from EHS. This message is not meant to depress you but rather to inform and motivate you. When a parent drops his or her child off at the next practice, the school assumes responsibility for the child's health and well-being during that practice, but is the school ready to assume this responsibility?As we have learned from the very high-profile case of a Kentucky high school football coach who was arrested in 2009 as a result of his alleged involvement with an EHS death, public health is at stake. The Kentucky legislature responded in an impulsive manner, mandating that coaches receive enhanced education and training regarding emergency medical care of athletic injuries. As a result, coaches, who may be largely responsible for the condition in the first place, are now in charge of providing care to help their athletes survive. This is the gut reaction of a sympathetic and caring legislature, but it does not solve the core problem. Coaches are great at coaching, and they should be encouraged to continue that pursuit with all the vim and vigor they can muster. However, athletic health care should be left to the medical professionals—athletic trainers and team physicians, who work tirelessly to create the safest environment possible. If a serious condition does occur, we are prepared to determine the exact condition that is causing the medical emergency and invoke a life-saving plan to maximize the odds of survival. I have long said that we should do whatever we can “before they die,” as the gut-wrenching reality of my everyday existence is that most of the people who contact me do so after a tragedy. I lend a sympathetic ear to the traumatized parent, coach, or friend. Yet I ultimately must deliver the truth to the family and friends, that the death from EHS was completely preventable. Crushing to hear but the honest truth. It is long overdue for the knowledge we have gained from research regarding the prevention of sudden death in sport to become a greater part of our clinical practice, and the first step in that process is being sure that every high school has an athletic trainer on-site who can assume responsibility for athletic health care.

Cowboy & Octopus (review)

Reviewed by: Cowboy & Octopus; Deborah Stevenson Scieszka, Jon Cowboy & Octopus; illus. by Lane Smith. Viking, 2007 [34p] ISBN 978-0-670-91058-8$16.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 2-4 Ah, the legendary friendship of the cowboy and the . . . octopus? Okay, it's certainly a new pair of buddies, but they're solid friends for all that, as readers will see in seven brief stories chronicling their interactions. Dimwitted, literal-minded Cowboy, a descendant of the silly protagonists of noodlehead folktales, is both straight man and source of humor here: he's confused by a "broken" seesaw (Octopus shows him that it works better with two), he cracks up at the wrong part of the knock-knock joke ("Lettuce can't knock on a door"), and he gives Octopus the honest truth about his new hat ("Your new hat looks like something my horse dropped behind him"). Though this would certainly make an entertaining readaloud, its simple vocabulary, episodic nature, and skewed sense of humor make it particularly effective as an early reader. Illustrations offer Smith's usual cornucopia of realia, drawing/painting, and collage or faux-collage; in fact, the art opens the story and explains the framework as Cowboy is cut out of a book of paper "Western Heroes" and Octopus out of the comics, and old paper and newspaper borrowings keep them company throughout. [End Page 53] Newly jaded youngsters will cheerfully throw over old easy-reader friend pairings to hang with this edgily whimsical twosome. Copyright © 2007 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Point of View: The Honest Truth About Vertebroplasty

Point of View: The Honest Truth About Vertebroplasty

The mole theory: primary function of melanocytes and melanin may be antimicrobial defense and immunomodulation (not solar protection)

Physician: “No one has the foggiest notion why God gave us moles on our skin ... and that’s the honest truth.” Melanocytes are derived from melanoblasts that arise from the neural crest. Melanocyte numbers vary little between human populations, although they differ in size, number, and the structure of melanosomes. 1 In the human epidermis, they have a close association with keratinocytes via dendrites. Although well known for their role in skin pigmentation, this is probably not the only function of these cells. Indeed, melanocytes have numerous enzymes with capabilities in antimicrobial defense, as well as genetic, biochemical, and functional links to the immune system. 2 Melanin, endogenously produced by melanocytes, is able to interact with enzymes and modulate their behavior, is a powerful cation chelator, and can bind and neutralize oxidants, microbicidal peptides, and antimicrobial drugs. 3–6 A better appreciation of the biological effects of melanocytes may assist in all aspects of the evaluation, understanding, and treatment of diseases associated with this cell line, such as vitiligo and melanoma. There are definite flaws in the media dogma that melanin’s main role is in protection against ultraviolet light. To begin with, it fails to explain the increase in the prevalence of melanin and melanocytes in skin not normally exposed to the sun, such as the genitalia, 1 and other body tissues, such as the epithelium of the inner ear, uveal tract of the eye, brain tissue, and the peritoneum. 7 Moreover, many nocturnal animals, such as bats, are highly melanized on their exterior surface. In addition, African albinos, despite the absence of melanin’s sun protection, do not have an increased incidence of melanoma. 2

Cannabis — the honest truth!

Medical Journal of AustraliaVolume 180, Issue 12 p. 639-639 Book Review Cannabis — the honest truth! David McDonald, David McDonaldSearch for more papers by this author David McDonald, David McDonaldSearch for more papers by this author First published: 11 May 2004 https://doi.org/10.5694/j.1326-5377.2004.tb06114.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume180, Issue12June 2004Pages 639-639 RelatedInformation

Piri Thomas: An Interview

Born in Harlem in 1928, Piri Thomas was child of the Depression. His mother was light-skinned Cuban; his father Puerto Rican whose darker complexion Thomas alone of all the children inherited. The cruel racism that he experienced within his own family, in the dehumanizing environment of New York City's ghetto streets, and in the white suburbs, impelled the youthful Thomas to search for his true racial identity, first in the American South and then traveling the worm in the Merchant Marine. Thomas pursued this quest with total and searing honesty. Later he was driven by rage, poverty, and despair into involvement with crime, including armed robbery. In 1955 he ended up in prison. There he found both the inner strength to survive this ordeal and his own voice. Now he was able to write with tremendous candor and integrity and to free himself from his past. Emerging as parolee in 1961 after six horrifying years in prison, Thomas joined the Harlem Writers' Guild. His electrifying, psychologically penetrating autobiographical novel Down These Mean Streets was published in 1967 and won him instant and lasting acclaim. Since then he has published Savior, Savior, Hold My Hand and Seven Long Times, both autobiographies; and Stories from El Barrio as well as numerous articles, many in The New York Times. In addition to his writing, Piri Thomas has devoted much time and effort to helping troubled youths and prison inmates overcome the terrors and burdens of their past and of the oppressive prison system that he, too, knows from the inside. A popular speaker, Thomas has addressed audiences at many universities including Columbia, Yale, Cornell, Howard, Rutgers, Fordham, Brown, and Erlangen in Germany. This interview was conducted on January 28, 1998, in an apartment at 410 East 6th Street in Manhattan and supplemented by telephone conversations with him at his home in Berkeley, California, on March 8; and in El Cerrito, California, on April 12 and 23, 1998. Interviewer: At what point in prison did you begin to write about your experiences? Piri Thomas: I had kept diary in the Merchant Marine, and it was stolen with my duffel bag from the Seamen's Home in lower Manhattan. The main work in prison was surviving, and I was learning another language, the language of positive thinking, and I began to want to write to find expression for what my life was all about. I was always storyteller. I came from long, long, long line of storytellers. We passed our history on by word of mouth, for centuries and centuries. Slave masters would have us killed for even learning how to read, and it was the same in Puerto Rico. If we learned some history, we passed it around. We had no books. We passed it down to little children so that we wouldn't forget. Those who were found expounding these thoughts in those days were immediately killed. So our minds were programmed that way. Interviewer: So you knew that you had slavery in your background? Piri Thomas: Of course. Anywhere you went in the street or wherever you talked to someone, they would tell you what happened. The reason they didn't talk about it in front of white men: the white men would kill them. The white men didn't even want them to talk English and to be able to say things like a conglomeration of manifestation. No, they wanted you to say yousah, boss; yes, sir, boss. You had to play part to survive. You did things that you didn't want to do because you had children, and besides, people who had hatred like that, they would kill you just from boredom. You didn't count as human being simply because they had learned how to dehumanize people by making them sub-humans, varmints. That's the God's honest truth. Racism comes in all the colors. Just like greed. Greed comes in all the colors; it's just that some colors who have the power to make right by might took it all. So we had democracies that were military democracies. …

Change of Pace

On this one Sunday Lenny baron hit one that went 420 feet, clear over the fence in left center where they say nobody ever hit one before. I'll have to admit that it was a pretty good shot, but in all honesty I got to say too that there was a wind blowing out in that direction. But when everybody was talking about it that night in the drugstore I didn't say anything about the wind because I figured there's no harm in letting them have a good time talking about it. Then the next Sunday Lenny pulled one on the line over the left field fence. He hit that one pretty good. Soon as he hit it I licked my finger and held it up in the air to see if there was much wind. To tell the honest truth there wasn't much wind at all. Anyway, the ball shot over the left field fence as quick as anything. We wouldn't have known how far it went--it took off over the 350 sign Out there and it looked to me like it was beginning to die then but all the other fellows on the bench said no, that she was just beginning to rise going over the fence. I said to them: couldn't have gone more than three seventy-five. It was just a liner that's all. Anyway, about a half hour later George, the attendant in Reilly's gas station, came walking in through the gate with a ball in his hand. This bounced in, he said. Right away Lenny's father jumped up and grabbed George and said: me where it hit, George. Show me the exact spot. You never saw anybody so excited. He took George by the arm and shook him and took the ball and put it in his own pocket. As luck would have it (that Lenny had all the best kinds of luck) Woody was there. Woody was the one who had written the story in the previous week's paper about the 420 clout, mainly I think because he wanted to get on the good side of Mr. Baron, who owns just about everything in town except the clock on top of the post-office. So Lenny's father and George and Woody the phony and a couple of other men took off, right in the middle of the game. Lenny's father had a tape measure or something in his car and they began by measuring behind the 350 sign and then went across the street with the thing and through the empty lot and under a couple of cars and over a fence and into Reilly's. That's the spot, George said, pointing to a mark on the ground. Woody the great reporter got him to tell the whole story and we read it in the paper that week. 'I was standing there hosing down Mr. Fletcher's Buick,' George said in the paper, 'when all of a sudden I heard the crack of the bat and I said to myself, that one is surely hit, and a second later the ball landed with a smack and took one skip-hop and flew into the garage. I marked the spot with my heel and carried the ball back to the field.' Woody took pictures of the place where the ball had hit and had a picture of George and Mr. Reilly and Lenny's father all standing there holding the ball up in the air and grinning like three kids eating jellybeans. Well it measured close to 480, although I personally don't believe it went that far. I believe that George was either mistaken or bribed, or that Mr. Baron cheated with the tape measure thing, or that maybe there was more wind than anybody figured. I told everybody that 480 was an awful lot and that there were a lot of big leaguers that couldn't even pole one that far, much less a mere sandlotter like Lenny. But my voice was just a murmur in the crowd you might say. The paper ran it all over the front page, all about Lenny Baron's colossal clout. Malarky like that. I don't know how they can get away with it. Well, let me tell you something else. 420 and 480 are all right -- but they don't mean a thing. I'll tell you why. Who did he hit them off? He hit them both off of Skinny Wilson who can't pitch baseball any better than your grandmother. I'll tell you this -- he never hit anything like that off of old Henry Price, because I know how to pitch him. Anybody can hit a long ball today if the pitcher is second-rate. …