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Emily Yoffe — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:15:00 GMT

Get Dear Prudence delivered to your inbox each week; click here to sign up. Please send your questions for publication to prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.)

Got a burning question for Prudie? She'll be online at Washingtonpost.com to chat with readers each Monday at noon. Submit your questions and comments here before or during the live discussion.

Dear Prudence,
I'm a 27-year-old woman who recently made friends with a nice, attractive 34-year-old man. He asked me out for drinks soon thereafter and made it clear that he's interested in a romantic relationship. He's my type, and I like him, but after our date he explained that he's in an open marriage. I have no doubt that it's a mutual agreement between him and his wife. And I'm in a situation that makes the idea especially appealing: I just got out of a two-year relationship that was sexually unsatisfying (my boyfriend rarely climaxed). It left me feeling as if there's something wrong with me. The idea of a fling with someone new, with no commitment potential and nothing to lose, seems like it could be a positive ego boost for me as I look for single, available men to date. New guy is saying: Let me be your rebound! Let's be friends with benefits! But most of my friends think it's a morally objectionable thing to do and doubt that I can get involved without getting my feelings hurt in the long run. What do you think?

—Want a Fling

Dear Fling,
I wish you’d explained why you are so certain that this guy’s wife is also party to the information that they have an “open marriage.” I’m assuming that he didn’t text a photo of you to his wife in the middle of your date with the note, “Things are going well!” I bet if you decided to have an affair with him, it would quickly become clear your relationship is surreptitious and you would have to go along with his rules. It doesn’t speak well for this this man’s character (no matter what arrangement he and his wife have) that he withheld the central fact of his being married until after the seductive banter and drinks. However, I understand the appeal of a commitment-free sex romp after coming out of a sexually frustrating relationship. But before you give him the benefit of the doubt regarding his friends-with-benefits proposal, make two counterproposals of your own. One is that you two get to know each other better first. I’m guessing he won’t want to invest too much time in activities unrelated to said benefits. Another is that given his history, you need to get a current STD status on him. Again, I assume he’s not going to be interested in generating any paperwork in order to get in the sack with you. But even if he demonstrates he’s disease free, consider that aside from the moral questions about a married man, investing your time in one does have a cost. You think you can be looking for that real partner while you are carrying on with this guy. But, as your friends have warned, you can’t anticipate what happens to your emotions once you get involved with someone. If this affair gets hot and heavy, it will likely make the available men seem lukewarm and lightweight in comparison. Keep at the forefront of your mind that your goal is to find your own life partner, not borrow someone else’s.

—Prudie

Dear Prudence: Errant Dildo

Dear Prudie,
I occasionally have to take a shower with my 3-year-old daughter in the bathroom with me. The problem is that the last couple of times she noticed that I have hair in a place that’s not my head. She starting yelling "Eewww,” backed away, and got extremely upset to the point of tears. Now I'm at a loss as to what to do in the future when there’s no one else to watch her and I need to take a shower. I'm also worried that when she reaches puberty and begins to grow pubic hair that she will feel disgusted with herself. Hopefully by then, I'll be able to reason with her. I need advice as to how to handle this the next time. (I'm not at all interested in any solution involving total landscaping, landing strips, etc.)

—Natural Woman

Dear Natural,
Despite her obvious affinity for the industry, since you’re daughter is only 3 years old she’s too young to be a lobbyist for the International Brazilian Wax Society. I don’t think the problem is that your daughter has seen too much, it’s that she’s seen too little. If your underbrush hasn’t almost always been under wraps, the sight of her naked mother would not be shocking to her. I think it’s good for very young children to occasionally see their parents naked—and comfortable in that state—so that they know what adult bodies look like and that their parents aren’t embarrassed or ashamed. For now, when your daughter backs away from you in tears, stay calm, towel off, and reassure her that while having hair there may look funny, it’s just a part of being a grown-up. At some point this summer, you might think about joining a local pool. Your daughter will learn about splashing around in the water, but her greatest instruction will probably be the eyeful she gets in the locker room. I have vivid memories of being crotch-high in such circumstances and being mesmerized by the fascinating and appalling things that lurk underneath adults’ clothes. One thing this will show your daughter is that her mother is pretty normal, after all.

—Prudie

Dear Prudence,
My wife has a habit that I find irritating. Instead of blowing her nose, she sniffs to keep the snot in, making a loud snorting sound. This isn't usually a problem, but now that the pollen has returned, this sniffing occurs every 30 seconds throughout the day. I feel this is rude habit and it must be irritating to others at the cubicles in her office. When I mention this to her, she gets defensive and thinks that I’m rude to bring it up. Is this sniffing habit truly annoying to others, or is it just me? We need another perspective so that we don’t have to resort to couples’ counseling.

—Fed Up

Dear Fed Up,
Now that chalkboards are being replaced by whiteboards a whole generation will be spared even knowing what it means to hear fingernails scraping one. It turns out there are certain sounds that drive people bonkers, and the science of how we perceive and experience sound is called psychoacoustics—or the study of acoustics that make people psycho. I know from my inbox, and life, that certain repetitive human noises—loud chewing, throat clearing, and yes, sniffing—can make some people feel as if the offending noise is magnifying and echoing through their skulls, threatening to make their brains explode. I assure you your wife’s fellow cubicle-dwellers are noticing. I do sympathize with your wife’s condition; without today’s over-the-counter allergy pills, I would spend about four months a year with a drip pan under my nose. But since there are pharmaceutical treatments for allergies, your wife has no excuse. If you can’t convince her to stop snorting and end up in couples’ therapy because of it, after a few minutes the counselor is sure to push that box of tissue towards your wife and say, “For my own sanity, please take one and blow.”

—Prudie

Dear Prudence,
Every year since they were toddlers, our two children have spent at least a week each summer visiting my husband’s parents and my parents, who each live in different states. It’s mostly been great for all concerned. However, the last few years the kids have come back complaining about staying with my parents. It started with my parents letting them watch scary, graphic, forensic crime shows when they were young, which lead to recurrent nightmares. I broached this with my parents and was told that I watched similar programming and I turned out fine. Then my parents started complaining about the cost of having them visit, how much they eat, items that were "mysteriously broken" during their stay for which my parents want reimbursement, and computers that "ceased to function" after the kids used them. When the kids play they're accused of being disrespectful and rowdy, and when they sit and read or watch TV, they're lazy. They’re now in their early teens, are enrolled in several short summer programs, and can care for themselves at home when we’re out. They don’t want to visit my parents. Do I say they won’t be visiting because of the above-mentioned problems? Or should I force the kids to suck it up and try to enjoy their grandparents for as long as they have them?

—Summer-Time Blues

Dear Blues,
Before you decide whether to force your kids to visit, I think you need to do some reconnaissance with your parents. It may be that they are getting to a point physically and mentally where they are no long able to handle the demands of having children in the house. If their extreme irritability and whining about their financial situation is new, it requires some attention. So before you decide whether to pack your kids off, go visit your parents by yourself and have a heart-to-heart about how their lives are going. That will give you enough information to decide whether the visits are no longer a good idea, or if your parents need some guidance for making a vacation with teenagers go better. If you think they can still handle it, you can tell them that it’s true that teenagers can eat like velociraptors and you’d like to pay for the expenses of the stay. In any case, a week of togetherness may be too much, so tell your parents that your kids’ many camp activities mean that they can only visit for four days this year. As for your children, a few days of crotchety grandparents will be a good lesson in dealing with adversity.

—Prudie

Discuss this column with Emily Yoffe on her Facebook page.

More Dear Prudence Columns

“Skin Deep: Should a husband tell his wife how he feels about her physical flaws?” Posted March 22, 2012.
“My Gay Husband: He’s closeted, but I don't mind. Should I set him free anyway?” Posted March 15, 2012.
“Gastric Warfare: I fear my mother-in-law is poisoning me, but my husband doesn’t believe it.” Posted March 8, 2012.
“Smell Ya Later!: Should I break up with my fiance because he thinks I have horrible body odor?.” Posted March 1, 2012.

More Dear Prudence Chat Transcripts

“The Wrong Touch: In a live chat, Dear Prudence offers advice on a frisky roommate, felonious family members, and friends who become lovers.” Posted April 2, 2012.
“Whoa, Momma: During a live chat, Dear Prudence offers advice on having children after tragedy, elective surrogacy, and the demands of parenting twins.” Posted March 26, 2012.
“Should I Leave My Infertile Partner?: In a live chat, Dear Prudence advises a man who wants to bolt after learning his girlfriend can’t have kids.” Posted March 19, 2012.
“Sex Education: In a live chat, Prudie advises a student whose pregnant friend doesn’t know where babies come from.” Posted March 12, 2012.

George W. Bush’s Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Was a Slave Trader

Simon Akam — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:44:00 GMT

BUNCE ISLAND, Sierra Leone—Twelve American presidents owned slaves, eight while serving in office, and at least 25 presidents count slave owners among their ancestors. But new historical evidence shows that a direct ancestor of George W. and George H.W. Bush was part of a much more appalling group: Thomas Walker was a notorious slave trader active in the late 18^th century along the coast of West Africa.

Walker, George H.W. Bush's great-great-great grandfather, was the captain of, master of, or investor in at least 11 slaving voyages to West Africa between 1784 and 1792.

Scores of European merchants and American plantation owners grew rich on the trade that transported more than 10 million Africans to North America, the Caribbean, and Brazil between 1550 and 1850. Bush's family, like many others, has previously been identified as slave owners in the United States. In the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, at least five Walker family households, George W. Bush’s ancestors by his father’s mother, owned slaves in Maryland’s Cecil County.

But this is the first time an ancestor of Bush has been directly linked to the brutal trans-Atlantic trade in which millions perished. When I queried the New England Historic Genealogical Society, which publishes ancestries of American presidents, the only other president they flagged up with definite slave dealer ancestry was Thomas Jefferson, whose father-in-law, John Wayles (1715-1773), was a planter, slave trader and lawyer in the Virginia Colony. (The NEHGS did acknowledge that there could be other presidents with slavers as ancestors.)

The discovery of the slave-trading ancestor of the Presidents Bush was made by two men: Roger Hughes, a retired newspaper editor and genealogist in Illinois who has previously documented other Bush ancestors as slave owners in the United States, and Joseph Opala, an American historian who has spent much of his adult life in Sierra Leone, the former British colony on the West African coast.

Opala heads a project to preserve Bunce Island, a slave fort 20 miles upriver from Sierra Leone's coastal capital, Freetown, where Thomas Walker bought Africans in the late 18^th century. On Bunce Island thick jungle hems in the hulking ruins of the slave fort, abandoned after Britain banned the slave trade in 1807 and left largely untouched since then. Gravestones record the names of long-dead slavers.

As Hughes conducted genealogical research into Bush's ancestors, he began to suspect that two Thomas Walkers in the historical record—one a British-born merchant and known ancestor of the Bushes, the other a slave ship captain who journeyed to Bunce Island—might be the same man. The known Bush ancestor married in 1785 at Bristol, which along with London and Liverpool was one of the three British cities highly involved in the Atlantic slave trade. He later emigrated to the United States, applying for naturalization at New York in 1792, which he received two years later, and purchasing property at Burlington, N.J., in 1795.

At Opala's recommendation Hughes sent scans of the two Walkers' signatures to Maija Jansson, a handwriting analyst at Yale University, without any information on their provenance. Jansson confirmed that the signatures were from the same individual.

"The angle and slope of the writing is the same on all of the signatures," Jansson told Slate in an email. "The initial letter of the family name, 'W', is the same form in each, as is the initial 'T' of the Christian name."

"The decorative loop under the signature is a key and is virtually the same in the letters," she said.

Margaret White, a handwriting expert I contacted, confirmed that the signatures were from the same hand. Likewise, Keith McClelland, a research associate at the Legacies of British Slave Ownership Project at University College London, also examined the documents and came to the same conclusion. "Having examined the handwriting examples, it is clear that this was the same man,” he said. "Having seen some of the documentation, there seems to me little doubt that the connection between Walker the slave trader and the current Bush family is also undeniable."

Hughes said he was convinced, based on the historical evidence, that Bush's forebear Walker was the same man as the known slave trader. "If I had to testify to this, I'd say this is the same guy.

If it's not the same guy, I'm going to the gallows."

The Bush family's spokesman in Houston, Jim McGrath, had no comment on the findings. The George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas did not respond to multiple requests for comment, nor did Jeb Bush spokeswoman Jaryn Emhof.

The signatures of Thomas Walker, the known Bush ancestor, come from documents recording his marriage to Catherine McLelland in February 1785 in Bristol. They are preserved in the Bristol Record Office. The signatures of the known slave dealer Walker were drawn from two letters dated June 23 and July 2, 1787, the first written at Bunce Island and the second at the Banana Islands, which lie off the Sierra Leone coast. These letters are preserved in the British National Archives at Kew.

The letters, addressed to Bristol slave dealer James Rogers, show Walker complaining about the high cost of slaves. The June 23 letter states: "Times on the coast is by no means as favourable as I expected. Slaves is at the price of 150 [illegible] and the coast seemes [sic] to be lin'd with vessels of all kind."

The July 2 letter says: "I have purchased seventeen fine negroes and am this day proceeding down the coast to try what I do can there. Slaves is at a very greate [sic] price."

The Thomas Walker who married Catherine McLelland is identified as Bush's ancestor in Gary Boyd Roberts' Ancestors of American Presidents, published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

Roberts said that while he had not known of Walker's slave dealing, the finding did not surprise him, given that the Walkers were a mercantile family and Baltimore, where they established themselves in the United States, was a hub for the slave trade. "It would strike me as being perfectly logical and perfectly expectable," he told Slate.

The historical evidence suggests that Thomas Walker died at sea in 1797 when his own crew mutinied and threw him overboard. Documents in the British House of Lords Sessional Papers indicate Thomas Walker is the same man as a “Beau Walker,” whose unpleasant end is in turn recorded in the journal of Zachary Macaulay, a British anti-slavery activist, sometime governor of Sierra Leone and father of the celebrated Whig historian Thomas Macaulay.

Macaulay’s journal entry for Oct. 24, 1797, is as follows:

“You have heard of the noted Beau Walker, an English slave trader of these parts. He arrived at the Isles Du Los [off present-day Guinea] lately in an American Brig being bound to Cape Mount [in present-day northwest Liberia] for slaves. He had scarce arrived at the last place, when exercising his usual barbarities on his officers & crew, they were provoked to conspire against him. As he lay on one of the hencoops a seaman came up & struck him on the breast with a handspike, but the blow being ill directed, did not produce its intended effect and Walker springing up wd soon have sacrificed the mutineer to his fury, had not a boy at the helm, pulling a pistol from his breast, shot him dead on the spot. His body was immediately thrown overboard. Thus ended Walker’s career, an end worthy of such a life. The vessel left Cape Mount, and it is supposed has gone for the Brazils or South Seas. There could not possibly have been a more inhuman monster than this Walker. Many a poor seaman has been brought by him to an untimely end.”

Thomas Walker and Catherine McLelland had three children, Rosetta, Thomas, and George, born between 1785 and 1797. Their younger son, George’s, descendants include the Presidents Bush. After Thomas Walker’s death, Catherine moved with the three children from Burlington, N.J., to Philadelphia, where in May 1801 she remarried to a man called Robert Hodgson. While records are scarce, it seems that Thomas Walker’s slave trading did not bestow lasting prosperity on his family. George E. Walker lost property in Maryland’s Cecil County inherited by his wife, Harriet, and the subsequent rise of the Walker family began several decades later, after they moved to Illinois in 1838.

On his 2003 visit to Goree Island, a former slave fort off the coast of the Senegalese capital, Dakar, George W. Bush denounced the slave trade as one of "the greatest crimes of history.”

"Small men took on the powers and airs of tyrants and masters," he said. "Some have said we should not judge their failures by the standards of a later time. Yet, in every time, there were men and women who clearly saw this sin and called it by name."

While Bush's distant ancestors may have been involved in exploiting African slaves, his own presidency won praise from many poverty campaigners for its work on the continent. Bush backed debt forgiveness for 21 African states, and his President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) pumped billions of dollars into antiretroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS sufferers, saving millions of lives in Africa.

Photos: When Segregation Reached Right Into the National Parks

Rebecca Onion — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 22:15:00 GMT

The Vault is Slate's new history blog. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @slatevault, and find us on Tumblr. Find out more about what this space is all about here.

These photographs of segregated areas in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park date to the 1930s and 1940s. Images of segregation in urban areas abound, but there’s something especially disturbing about seeing the practice carried into the supposedly utopian outdoor playground of a national park.

Within the large Western national parks, established in the early 20^th century, African-Americans weren’t particularly welcome. Geographer Terence Young reports that early 20^th-century park administrators had a “conscious, but unpublicized policy of discouraging visits by African Americans, [who were], in the opinion of administration, ‘conspicuous…objected to by other visitors…[and] impossible to serve.’ ”

Shenandoah was one of a few national parks newly created in the South during the 1930s. During this time, Americans, including African-Americans, increasingly owned cars and used them for driving vacations. Following local Jim Crow laws, facilities at Shenandoah that were reachable by car (picnic areas, auto campgrounds) were segregated.

As Young points out, some African-Americans initially welcomed these segregated facilities, as the alternative would be that they were shut out of the national parks altogether. But the NAACP, disturbed to see segregation extended to federally administered lands, protested Shenandoah’s “Negro areas,” as did many private citizens whose letters ended up on the secretary of the interior’s desk.

The official segregation of Shenandoah was short-lived. During WWII, the National Park Service, spurred by federal desires to raise morale in the African-American community, made officially desegregated facilities the norm for all national parks.

Thanks to Sherri Sheu for the tip.

The Unkindest Cut?

Troy Patterson — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 20:47:46 GMT

Please send your questions for publication to gentlemanscholarslate@gmail.com. (Questions may be edited.)

Dear Gentleman Scholar,

Circumcision: Why? Humans have done OK with uncut junk throughout the ages. I am against it due to the scar tissue and what is essentially a numb spot there. While I have come to terms with it (what other choice do I have?), I find it odd that people can cut pieces off of a child so casually (as noted in a Dear Prudence column "Ol Yeller").

My opinion:

Pros: Religious tradition, lowers chances of bacterial infections (I must note, soap and water are also effective), freedom to choose (for the parent)

Cons: Irreversible, nerve damage of varying degrees, risk of post-surgery infection, risk of catastrophic failure, no freedom of choice for the individual affected

As a parent of a young boy, what thought process did you go through to decide? And your peers?

Signed,
Cut and Numb

I very much appreciate the question, dear sir—but let it be stipulated upfront that the Gentleman Scholar is not at liberty to discuss the whereabouts of his son’s foreskin. My right to publish remarks concerning his anatomy—the movie-idol eyes, the cherubic corona of curls—does not extend into the diaper zone. Nonetheless, I will amend your list of pros and cons.

I hate to break to you the news that the American Academy of Pediatrics recently changed its position on neonatal circumcision. The organization had been on a 14-year streak of neutrality on the matter; like most other reputable medical organizations, it recognized no clear net benefit to the procedure, which caught on as a secular practice during the Victorian age. (Being Victorians, they were on a futile quest to discourage masturbation.) However, in the September issue of Pediatrics, the AAP rediscovered its disenchantment with the prepuce. (You know how it is with these doctors, always changing their minds: “Breathe in. Now breathe out.” “Look to the left. And now look to the right.”)

My layman’s reading of the relevant technical report led me to decide that the AAP arrived at its new conclusion by relying on data irrelevant to the style of life of an overwhelming majority of American citizens. The AAP based its reversal on HIV studies conducted in sub-Saharan Africa, where that virus is a plague. This is to say you would unquestionably be acting in your son’s best interests to order his circumcision if also you are raising him to have unprotected sex in Zambia.

On the pro tip, I agree with your implied valuation of respect for religious tradition. Two of the three big-time Abrahamic faiths require the procedure, and it would require supernatural powers of persuasion to dissuade the faithful from continuing the practice. Hard-line opponents of routine circumcision consider ritual-as-religious-ritual to be a vestige of the ancient world, like kosher and halal dietary practice, with the crucial difference of the species being butchered. And though the hard-line opponents have a point, it must also be said that those dietary practices are inextricably tied up with the cuisine that brings us the excellent whitefish salad so often found at a quality bris.

I will add one minor con to your list: If the child’s foreskin becomes retractable before he is old enough to clean his penis himself, you have to get under the hood every now and then. This adds further stress to toddler bath time, which sometimes resembles the Battle of Midway in any case.

People who advocate against routine circumcision argue that the procedure is contrary to the surgeon’s oath to do no harm and of the parents’ obligation to try to get the kid to adulthood in one piece. They have a strong point; however—and here is an additional con—they are very weirdly tone-deaf when they argue.

The most prominent spokesman for genital integrity, the actor Alan Cumming, was not able to resist dropping the phrase “my gargantuan girth” into his most prominent statement on the issue.
The most reputable anti-circumcision groups toss around phrases like “human rights” and “genital mutilation,” which seems a bit de trop, from a rhetorical standpoint.
Some outlets representing the cause are inadvertently hilarious, perhaps of necessity, as the penis is very clearly the most inherently comical of all bodily organs (except for wiggleable ears). Here we have a website called The Intactivism Pages, which focuses on the celebrity angle to an inane degree and in an inane fashion. Its lists of intact celebrities are rather silly; for instance, it insists that Dane Cook is a movie star. This is a realm where “frequently asked questions” include, “You say Leonardo DiCaprio is intact, but in Total Eclipse he looks circumcised.” And is it strictly advisable to include former Sen. Bob Packwood on a list of uncircumcised politicians and statesmen? Alongside Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark (“paparazzi pictures of him urinating from a yacht have been published”)? The sources of this information include “actors' dressers, sportsmen's teammates and towel boys, and people who ‘chanced on’ the celebrities at urinals.” I look askance at this reporting technique. Urinal etiquette finds the gentleman’s gaze steering dead ahead.
The comments section of this article, of course, will boil over with the stridencies of individuals who are eager to see their missing foreskins as a catch-all scapegoat, ascribing life’s every frustration to the trauma of the surgery, raging that they’ve lost all their manhood along with their man hood. Though I hesitate to psychoanalyze my rageful brethren, I cannot resist nodding to Freud in advising them not to be burdened by their fate. Don’t read too much into circumcision: Sometimes a penis is just a penis.

What Is It Like To Attend a Top Boarding School?

Quora Contributor — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:23:21 GMT

This question originally appeared on Quora.

Answer by Cristina Hartmann:

I attended Phillips Academy from 2001 to 2003 for my last two years of high school. It was at Andover where I learned that luck isn't evenly distributed.

I'm not what you'd imagine a typical boarding school student to be. I didn't even know that schools like Andover, Milton, and Exeter existed until the year before. My parents are teachers, and I ended up using scholarship money to go. I come from immigrant stock, nary a drop of blue blood to be seen. A number of my childhood friends barely finished college (if at all) and hover above the poverty line.

Not only was I a hick from semi-rural upstate New York, but I was a lazy one. I was a good student, but I wasn't at the top of my class. My winning studying technique was to watch TV with a book open on my lap, deigning to study during commerical breaks. At my previous high school, transcripts only showed the average of the quarters' grades and finals. My strategy was to slack off for the first two or three quarters, getting B's and the ocassional C, then working hard to get A-pluses on the final and the final quarter. The result was a pretty decent honors transcript with mostly A's and A-minuses.

I'm still surprised Andover even let me stand on the Knoll, let alone allowed me to attend.

Moreover, as far as I know, I am the first (and only) deaf student to attend Phillips Academy. Legally, Andover wasn't required to provide me with any services, being a private institution. Andover, however, provided the best services that I've ever gotten anywhere. I got two sign langauge interperters. Two. At most schools, I had to fight for a single mediocre interpreter. At Andover, they handed over two excellent interpreters without a blink. Money wasn't an issue.

After an inauspicious first day (September 11th, 2001), I encountered an entirely new world at Phillips Academy. It wasn't a bad world, but it was certainly different than my old world of ordinary folks.

During my first month there, I was walking along a hallway in the gym, peering into the window that oversaw the pool. I saw some girls in the pool flinging a ball to each other, wearing funny swim caps that went over their ears and had straps under their chins. I pointed at the girls and asked, "What is this?" One of my dormmates responded, "That's water polo." I answered, "Wait, there aren't any horses in water polo?" Yes, I thought that water polo was an aquatic version of polo that Prince Charles plays. Over the next two years, I also learned about crew, $100 umbrellas, and the skiing in the Swiss Alps (not from personal experience).

Don't get me wrong, not everyone at Andover came from money. One of my friends was on a full scholarship (Andover admissions is need-blind) and had to go to a state school because she couldn't afford to go to a private university without a full ride. Andover is a lot more diverse (racially, socioeconomically, and geographically speaking) than you'd expect, but there are certainly people from old money as well as no money. At Andover, it was oftentimes hard to tell the difference between the two.

Cultural shocks aside, Andover expected far more of me than any of my previous schools had. For the first time in my life, I had to study and study hard. It's not just that the material is harder (it is), but that you're measured by a bigger and fancier yardstick. Your peers are smart and driven, high performers since the age of 5. You swim with them or you don't. (I, however, recommend that you don't try to swim with the student who went to the Olympics at 13.) For someone like me, it was a wonderful and much-needed kick in the seat of the pants.

Not only did Andover have dedicated buildings for subject areas (plus its own indoor track and pool), but it also had a course offering rivaling a small college's. If you were a math genius (I wasn't), you could take college-level linear algebra classes. If you were an English whiz, you could take a class dedicated entirely to Jane Austen novels. The classes and teachers were incredibly flexible in how they taught. Andover was the first place that rewarded me for my "creative" way of expressing myself in writing. You had to attend Saturday classes once a month as payment, or as revenge, depending on how you looked at it.

Despite the fact that blue-blood money matters less and less in today's world, there's something empowering about knowing that great men and women once sat where you're sitting. It fills you with confidence that the world is yours for the taking. That confidence brings you luck and opportunities.

Plus, I knew at least a few of my classmates would make it to high places. It's a surreal feeling to know that you could be rubbing elbows with future CEOs and United States presidents. It's not just future potential; you also get to meet some pretty high-up folks at Andover. In my two short years there, I met George H.W. Bush, Desmond Tutu, and Peter Jennings, among others. Being surrounded by great men and women makes you want to be great too.

For many, Andover was just the start of a string of prestigious insitutions. When the college admissons season rolled by, everyone knew where people got in (and didn't). You see, the mailroom is a social centerpoint, one of the few places where students could just hang out. Everyone could see a fat (or skinny) envelope you took out of your mailbox. I even got a few comments about why I went to Cornell over my other options (some of which were more highly ranked and respected).

At our graduation, we didn't wear a cap and gown. Instead, the girls wore white dresses and boys wore blue blazers with khakis with bagpipes blasting as we walked. How delightfully preppy is that? It was pretty damn picturesque, which is more than I can say of most high school graduations.

After Andover, I've gotten mixed reactions, ranging from "Uh? What's a boarding school?" to "Poor you, your parents must've hated you" to "Wow, fancy-pants!"

It's the Harvard Syndrome to a lesser extent. People who know what Andover is will reassess you upon finding out your pedigree. You either rise or fall in their estimation. Some will assume that you're a terrible snob; others will assume that you're a rich genius. People, including yourself, also expect more of you. People who attend top boarding schools aren't supposed to fail. They're supposed to become presidents or something.

Ten years after graduating, I look back on my time at Andover with great fondness. It was at Andover where I discovered that I could run with the big boys. I grew more confident about my own abilities, enabling me to take calculated risks and to follow my own dreams. For that, I owe the admissions committee at Andover an eternal thanks.

...

Answer by Eva Glasrud:

I attended Phillips Exeter Academy from 2001-2005.

I did not know when I applied—nor, indeed, until I was on the bus from the Boston Airport to PEA—about the 8 a.m.-6 p.m. class schedule. I don't think I even really understood about Saturday classes, either. So that was a bit of a surprise.

But once classes started, I didn't really mind either of those things. Classes were awesome. We weren't lectured at. We weren't expected to spend hours memorizing facts and completing busywork. Classes were about thinking and communicating—and what could be more important than that? Everything was discussion-based, and we were expected to learn as much from our classmates as from our teacher.

And I think this is one of the major ways in which elite schools differ from honors programs in public schools. A lot of "honors programs" are the same as the normal program ... you just read the books twice as fast. This is not an engaging way to learn. This doesn't teach you how to think—just speed read and memorize.

Part of the problem is that most teachers aren't trained to work with gifted youth. And most public schools don't have the resources to provide the richest possible experience to them.

But top boarding schools tend to have experienced teachers, large endowments, and generous alumni. The year I started at Exeter, a brand new, $40 million science building opened. In it, we had an aquarium, touch pools, a humpback whale skeleton, and all kinds of lasers and electronics and chemicals and gadgets to make learning awesome.

Our campus also featured the world's largest secondary school library, with over 100,000 volumes. If, somehow, the book/movie/journal you needed wasn't there, you'd just tell the librarians, and they'd order it for you. We had a nutritionist, free and confidential mental health services, a wonderful music program, and about a billion languages to choose from. These are opportunities that are hard to come by elsewhere.

In spite of all that, one of the best and most beloved resources is the classmates. Think of it this way. There are a ton of really bright 13-year-olds in the world. And a lot of them end up going to college and doing great things.

But how many of those kids are so driven and so excited about learning that they can't wait until they're 18 to begin their journey? That they take the SSATs, get 4-5 teacher recommendations, fill out a very comprehensive application, submit their transcripts, and attend either an on-campus or alumni interview? Because they want a bigger challenge? When they're 13?

They are some of the most intriguing and least complacent people I've ever met—and that's awesome. It's wonderful to be around peers who want everything. Especially in a world where so many people are passive recipients of life.

Your classmates inspire you, and you form really special bonds with them. You all start out in the same boat—you're there, at this school, 14 years old and (semi) on your own. You live together, study together, play sports together, and eat every meal together. You get up at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday to eat breakfast and go to Latin class together. You get really close, really fast.

It's a special kind of relationship I haven't really witnessed anywhere else. And yet, some of your favorite friendships are with your teachers—many of whom are qualified to teach at a college or university, but who chose, instead, to work closely with a special group of kids at a truly magical place.

In the old days, they used to say, "Exeter is not a warm nest." But things have changed—Exeter is a very warm nest. If you ever need help on an assignment, your dorm is full of older students who have taken the class and can point you in the right direction. If you do badly on a test, the teacher will invite you to breakfast in her home to bring you up to speed and talk about what you can do differently next time.

As recently as 20 years ago, many boarding schools didn't have as much Internet as they do now. They had one phone per dorm, and students would call home once a week. But today, there is Internet in every building. There is one phone line per person per dorm room (in addition to the cell phones almost every student carries). It's very cheap and easy to stay in touch with your family—and even if it weren't, you'd probably be too busy to miss them, anyway.

Finally, there is a common misconception that people who go to boarding school are rich snobs. This is not so. Apparently money used to be big, and need-based scholarships used to be stigmatizing. But today, most of the top schools are either need blind, or offer generous financial aid packages to their middle- and low-income students. When I went to Exeter, something like 35 percent of us were on some form of financial aid. Today, that number is closer to 50 percent.

In fact, Phillips Exeter Academy is free to those with need. As of 2007, any student whose family makes $75,000 or less attends the academy for FREE. (Normal tuition, room, board and mandatory fees total about $46,900/year.) Moreover, the admissions office spends a lot of time and money recruiting students from rural and inner city areas. This all makes Exeter a more diverse experience.

I can't speak highly enough of my experience at Exeter. If you have any further questions, feel free to ask.

Note: Although they had Saturday classes when I was a student, Saturday classes are no mas. I was sad to hear it: I think they really added to the Exeter experience.

More questions on boarding schools:

Why Are Guys Afraid to Wear Speedos?

Simon Doonan — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:27:28 GMT

Summer is here, and again I am seething with frustration. Why? Every year I scan the beaches for men in Speedos and every year I am disappointed. The ridiculous board-shorts trend shows no sign of waning. I had high hopes for change after last year’s Olympics, when the entire nation was gripped by the spectacle of those jackknifing water sprites in their micro-briefs. (Those preposterously teensy swim skivvies worn by Tom Daley et al could only be explained by some kind of harsh polyester-rationing scheme: “Sorry, boys, but only 1 square inch of fabric per customer. Don’t worry. It is quite stretchy.”) I just assumed that, come this summer, one might see an increased willingness on the part of the U.S. male to embrace a little European savoir-faire. But, yet again, all I see are men in billowing shorts.

My interest is not entirely sordid. My primary motivation is, in fact, safety. Dudes are getting waterlogged, and dudes are sinking. In the course of my far-from-extensive research, I spoke to legendary West Coast swimwear magnate Mr. Turk. He shares my conviction that “board-shorts aficionados are drowning because their swimsuits are so voluminous.” A California lifeguard pal of Turk’s has been obliged, on more than one occasion, “to pull guys out of the surf because they get tangled up in huge baggy shorts.”

Drowning is not the only peril: Yes, I’m talking about gender misidentification. This past weekend I spotted two burly figures walking toward me wearing what I assumed were large peasant skirts. “What made these two beefy, short-haired possibly lesbians decide to go topless?” I asked myself. Upon closer inspection, they turned out to be a couple of dudes with man boobs in garishly printed board shorts, prompting the question: Why do American men insist on concealing their willies ’neath yards of fabric?

If only Freud could have lived long enough to dissect the semiotics of Speedos. What would he have made of the U.S. male’s horror of being caught in a tiny swimsuit? (I use the word “horror” advisedly. For my straight friends, the most traumatizing moments in HBO’s recent Liberace movie Behind the Candelabra occurred when Matt Damon, Mr. Bourne Identity, was forced to prance about in panty-size swim briefs.) I was raised in the U.K. and grew up thinking sassier swimwear was normal, but I then moved to the U.S. and became indoctrinated into the cult of Speedo shame. So I feel uniquely qualified to address this issue. I have, as it were, a foot in both gussets.

Clearly there is a class issue. WASPs don’t do Speedos—old money has no need to resort to gratuitous flesh exposure to achieve social currency. Butt cracks are banned at the country club. Nobody has ever come upon a cache of old Kennedy family snapshots and found images of Jack, Bobby, and Teddy strutting round Martha’s Vineyard in stretch velour leopard swim briefs (like the ones I once purchased at Frederick’s of Hollywood when I lived up the street in the early 1980s).

Speedo-wearing is also a cultural flashpoint. Revealing men’s swim garments are, for the U.S. consumer, irrevocably associated with “foreigners” and, most terrifying of all, friends of Dorothy. However, there is something even more mysterious to this issue than the persistent fear of being mistaken for a bisexual Serbian cruise-ship croupier: American dudes are driven by a Wizard of Oz–like desire to “curtain off” their genitals. They are impelled to gird up their loins with yards of fabric, thereby protecting—symbolically and literally—their reproductive equipment, while sinewy Spaniards, hard-body Greeks, bronzed Aussies, diverse Latin Americans, and pale squishy Brits take a reverse approach. These fellows prefer to wear swimsuits that say, “In case you wondered, I am the proud possessor of male genitalia, and in case you don’t believe me, here it is!”

I argue that the Puritans who colonized America are to blame. There they go again, spoiling all our European fun with their exaggerated notions of modesty. If I run into any Puritans on Long Island this summer (stranger things have happened), I intend to give them a piece of my mind: “Why do you persist in making dudes wear dirndl skirts while you allow their girlfriends to dress like vacationing strippers?”

As The Soup’s Joel McHale says every week, “Let’s talk about chicks, man.”

American women have never presented themselves with more over-the-top va-va-voom than they do now, especially on the beach. Bikinis have never been smaller. Hoochies have never been hotter. Tramp stamps have never been trampier. It’s obviously time for men to correct this inequity, join the partaay, and start channeling their inner Magic Mike … or inner Borat.

Lastly, let me address the elephant in the Vilebrequin. I am talking about lard. Are most American dudes simply too fat to wear a Speedo? Is that what’s inhibiting men from embracing this comfy, functional garment? Does it only work if you are some Tom Daley-esque Adonis? Mr. Turk weighs in: “Your moobs [man-boobs] and your widening gut are going to be visible either way. I say throw on a pair of groovy ’70s shades—like the guy in those Southern Comfort ads—and learn to strut in a nifty brief or a spiffy square-cut trunk.”

Watch out for riptides!

Shanghai Marriage Market: Where Moms and Dads Match Up Their Offspring

Atlas Obscura — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:00:00 GMT

Atlas Obscura on Slate is a new travel blog. Like us on Facebook, Tumblr, or follow us on Twitter @atlasobscura.

On weekends, the northern walkways of People’s Park are filled with middle-aged men and women affixing posters to the ground, bushes, and lengths of string suspended at eye level. The posters advertise the glowing attributes of the goods they are offering: their marriage-ready sons and daughters.

Traditionally, Chinese marriages begin with parental matchmaking—before a potential couple meets, their parents will discuss the viability of the union, swapping information on looks, interests, and finances. In 21^st-century Shanghai, the process can be difficult. Fast-paced lives, busy schedules, and a male-skewed sex ratio resulting from the country’s one-child policy all hinder parents who want to marry their children off before they hit the crucial age of 30.

The outdoor marriage bazaar draws hundreds of traders every week, each one clutching a piece of paper listing height, age, educational background, occupation, and spousal preferences. Some mothers and fathers bring a folding chair, settling in for the day of fielding offers and swapping the vital statistics of their offspring with other matchmakers. The success rate is low—there are parents who have been coming every weekend for years—but, given the social stigma facing unmarried thirtysomethings, the marriage market has nevertheless thrived since 1996.

More on the Shanghai marriage market can be seen on Atlas Obscura.

Oddly romantic:

Skyjacker of the Day

Brendan I. Koerner — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:20:00 GMT

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States suffered through a skyjacking epidemic that has now been largely forgotten. In his new book, The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking, Brendan I. Koerner tells the story of the chaotic age when jets were routinely commandeered by the desperate and disillusioned. In the run-up to his book’s publication on June 18, Koerner has been writing a daily series of skyjacker profiles. Slate is running the final dozen of these “Skyjacker of the Day” entries.

Name: Louis Moore

Date: Nov. 10, 1972

Flight Info: Southern Airways Flight 49 from Memphis, Tenn., to Miami, with scheduled stops in Birmingham, Ala., Montgomery, Ala., and Orlando, Fla.

The Story: The airlines long viewed hijacking as a manageable risk. They believed that if they acquiesced to all of a skyjacker’s demands, a favorable outcome was guaranteed—the passengers would go unharmed, the plane would be returned intact, and any ransom would likely be recovered after an arrest was made. Based on this assumption, the airlines were convinced that it was cheaper to endure periodic skyjackings than to implement invasive security at all of America’s airports. The Southern Airways Flight 49 incident revealed the folly of this mindset.

The hijacking traced back to a dispute between 27-year-old Louis Moore and the city of Detroit. In November 1971 Moore had sued the city for police brutality. Then in October 1972 Moore and one of his friends, Henry Jackson, were arrested for sexual assault—a charge the two men alleged had been trumped up in retaliation for the lawsuit. Moore and Jackson fled the city after posting bail, joined by Moore’s half brother, Melvin Cale, a burglar who had escaped from a Tennessee halfway house. The fugitive trio made a pact to teach Detroit’s authorities an unforgettable lesson.

Armed with guns and hand grenades, which they smuggled aboard the DC-9 in a raincoat, the three men commandeered Flight 49 over central Alabama. Their demands were unprecedented: 10 parachutes, 10 bulletproof vests, and $10 million in cash, along with a White House letter certifying the money as an irrevocable “government grant.”

Flight 49 headed for Detroit, where the hijackers wanted the ransom delivered, but heavy fog forced the plane to land in Cleveland instead. The hijackers, who had consumed much of the plane’s liquor during the northbound journey, next asked to go to Toronto, where Southern Airways offered them $500,000. Moore rejected this sum and ordered the plane to fly to his hometown of Knoxville, Tenn.

“This is going to be the last chance,” he radioed Southern officials as Flight 49 soared over Lake Ontario. “If we don’t get what we want, we’re going to bomb Oak Ridge.” Moore was referring to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 20 miles west of downtown Knoxville. The facility’s centerpiece was a nuclear reactor powered by highly enriched uranium-235, a primary component of many fission bombs.

As Flight 49 circled over Oak Ridge, Southern scraped together every last nickel it could—$2 million in all. The airline had no choice but to gamble that the hijackers would be so overwhelmed by the sheer heft of the ransom—approximately 150 pounds—that they wouldn’t bother to count it.

Flight 49 landed in Chattanooga, Tenn., to pick up the money. Just as Southern had hoped, Moore, Jackson, and Cale were too awestruck by the abundance of cash to realize they had been duped. The hijackers celebrated their new wealth by handing out wads of cash to passengers and crew members; the captain and co-pilot alone received $300,000.

But the ecstatic hijackers reneged on their promise to release the passengers in Chattanooga. They instead demanded to be flown to Havana, where Cuban authorities refused to let them disembark. The flight then went to an Air Force base near Orlando, where FBI agents severely damaged the DC-9’s landing gear with gunfire. Yet the hobbled plane still managed to take off and head back to Havana. This time, after a harrowing landing, Cuban soldiers arrested the hijackers and impounded their ransom so that it could be returned to Southern. A furious Castro promised one of pilots that the three men would spend the rest of their lives in tiny boxes. (A full map of Flight 49’s bonkers journey can be seen here.)

The Upshot: In direct response to Flight 49’s flirtation with nuclear catastrophe, the physical screening of all airline passengers began on Jan. 5, 1973. Cuba returned Moore, Jackson, and Cale to the U.S. in 1980, much to the hijackers’ relief. “The [U.S.] jails will look like a country club, a paradise,” Cale told reporters. Moore, who served another seven years in the U.S., now lives in Knoxville.

The Messiah Will Be Tweeted

Rebecca Finkel — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:00:00 GMT

On a Sunday evening in early June, thousands of Hasidic men in long coats and black hats braved the heat to attend two outdoor anti-Internet asifas (or gatherings in Yiddish) organized by leaders of the ultra-Orthodox Satmar community of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, N.Y. Women were forbidden, but the real temptation for the men was already in their laps, where they covertly thumbed their smartphones.

The Hasidic war against the Internet has been an ongoing campaign—in May 2012, a massive asifa held by the anti-Internet rabbinical group Ichud Hakehillos sold out Citi Field in Queens, N.Y.—but this year’s asifa came with a new threat, almost biblical in tone: Those caught using the Internet for nonbusiness purposes, or without content filters, would have their children expelled from the Satmar yeshiva.

The cost of having large families has forced many ultra-Orthodox Jews to do business outside of the community. Often, this means adopting technology that plunges people with 19^th-century values into the aggressively uncensored world of Chatroulette and Reddit. While some rabbis are convinced that this is a gateway to pornography addiction (or worse: secular life), many Hasids, from the media-savvy Lubavitch to the ultraconservative Satmar, use the Internet regularly without detracting from their customs. In many cases, it has fostered connectedness among the ultra-Orthodox and boosted their economy. And, most importantly, it may prove to be a remedy for the unchecked sexual abuse that has plagued the community.

The Chabad-Lubavitch sect, headquartered in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, has embraced media for years, with radio broadcasts, public access TV, and now a dynamic Web presence, including Facebook and Twitter. This is part of their interpretation of Ufaratzta, the imperative to spread Hasidism to secular Jews, which, they believe, will hasten the return of the Messiah.

“We’ve always been at the forefront of communication,” says Mordechai Lightstone, a Lubavitch rabbi and social media director for the Lubavitch News Service. Lightstone is also a regular at SXSW, where he draws Jews seeking a Sabbath meal with the hashtag #openshabbat. “There’s actually a midrash, a Jewish teaching, that says ‘Why was there gold in the temple in Jerusalem? Why is there gold in the world? Gold is a source of greed; idols are made out of gold. In this case, gold was there to glorify God’s name and to make a beautiful structure that can be used as a place to encourage people to come together to unite, to pray, and not as a source of greed, fighting, and then war.’ The same idea would exist within social media, that it can be used for very negative things and for very positive things.”

He adds, “I’m convinced that when the Messiah comes, there’s going to be a tweet.”

While the Internet can be a doorway to faith, it can also show others out, as Libby Copeland wrote last year in Slate. But the most likely to drop out may be the ones who are already looking for an exit. At 24, Ari Mandel left the Nikolsburg sect, a branch of Satmar, and spent the next five years in the U.S. Army. The Internet, he says, was instrumental to him leaving the fold, but it wasn’t the cause.

“I was kind of bored,” he says. “I had outgrown the books that were available in the community, and I just wanted more variety.” At 20, Mandel began sneaking into the public library. Reading was a gateway to the Internet, where he found other Hasidim who similarly questioned their faith.

To Mandel, now 30 and a full-time student at New York University, banning the Internet is not only ineffective, it’s illogical. “The Internet is a tool,” he says. “If you’re going to ban the Internet, you should ban the Bible, because there are bad books. You should ban all Orthodox magazines because there is Playboy—that’s just silly. It just makes no sense.”

This recent wave of anti-Internet activity coincides with the release of the Venishmartem Cloud Filter, a software developed in Romania (where the Satmar originated) by the company Livigent “at a cost of six million dollars and specifically designed to cater to the sensitivities and needs of the Jewish community,” according to their website.

In Late May, Venishmartem held a “Filterthon” in Midwood, Brooklyn. Orthodox men were invited to bring their electronic devices for free installation of filtering software with features such as “skin color blocking,” which scans Web pages for immodest quantities of human skin tones, and “accountability solutions,” which send a user’s browsing history to a third party.

For $7.99 a month, Venishmartem will control their customers’ access to certain content as well as their ability to activate and deactivate the filter itself. This effectively creates a virtual Orthodox enclave by shrinking the World Wide Web down to a tiny neighborhood of frum-friendly sites. “Guard Your Eyes,” Venishmartem’s Internet addiction treatment and prevention wing, offers images of naked Holocaust dead to turn off users who are tempted to seek sexually arousing pictures, among other “Practical Tips.”

But the focus on schmutz, the Yiddish colloquial for porn, is misguided. Last year, in advance of the Citi Field asifa, many were shocked to learn that tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews were rallying against online porn while ignoring what many believe to be the biggest reason why children leave their community: unchecked sexual abuse. Mandel organized a counter-rally at the asifa called “The Internet Is Not the Problem.”

The problem, some say, is mesirah, a rabbinic law dating back to Maimonides that prevents Jews from turning in other Jews to Gentile authorities. For this reason, many abuse cases are never brought to light, even within Orthodox news circuits. Additionally, communities with large populations of Holocaust survivors, such as the Satmar, are wary of secular authorities (who themselves are hesitant to get on the bad side of the politically powerful Hasidim). Some victims and their families are shunned by their neighbors. Victim advocates, seen as “informants,” have been expelled from their temples and physically attacked. Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, who runs a hotline that provides information on abuse cases, was badly injured in December when a neighborhood fishmonger threw a cup of bleach in his face.

Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, the dean and founder of Yeshiva Darchei Noam of Monsey and the author of a parenting book, says that the power of the Internet to lead Orthodox kids off the path is “not even close” to that of abuse.

Writing about the protests at the Citi Field asifa, Horowitz cited Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to explain how sexual abuse affects children’s social development. The abused are stalled at Level 2, the need for safety and security, he wrote, because they can no longer feel safe in their community. This is certainly the case when the leadership penalizes the abused and not the abusers—especially when the abuser has been appointed by the community to work with children.

This January, Rabbi Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed youth therapist from Williamsburg’s Satmar community was sentenced to 103 years in prison for repeated sexual abuse of a 12-year-old girl. It was an unprecedented case, not only because of the severity of the punishment, but because it reached the secular courts at all.

In his essay on the asifa protests, Horowitz says that abuse survivors “credit the connectivity of the Internet for finally raising awareness of abuse in our community.” The Internet has given a voice to what was formerly a silent majority, as individuals on social media or as victim advocacy organizations such as Survivors for Justice.

A new generation of rabbis helps, too. “I, personally, have noticed that the younger rabbis, even in the most Hasidic communities, the younger rabbis are far more likely to be comfortable going to the authorities,” says Horowitz. He notes that these younger rabbis grew up in free countries and “don’t have the cultural reticence to go to the police.”

On June 12, in anticipation of summer camp season, Horowitz released a series of YouTube videos on child safety. “I’m a big believer in using the Internet for whatever one can,” he says. “Whatever good we can do with it, we should be—we have a responsibility to.” The videos have so far had between 300–600 views each. Horowitz marvels at the efficiency of online media at spreading a message that would have taken a tremendous amount of time and effort to personally deliver to families. Ari Mandel offered his kudos on the hits via Twitter: “That equals countless thousands of potentially saved lives. Bravo!”

Nuchem Rosenberg’s efforts have also expanded online, with a website and Twitter account. He still records his hotline, the most recent of which addresses the trial of Yosef Kolko, who admitted to abusing multiple victims while working as a camp counselor in Lakewood, N.J. He is the son of Yehuda Kolko, who abused multiple students during his tenure as a teacher at a Brooklyn yeshiva. (To hear the report in English, follow directions on his website. Be warned that it contains graphic description of the sexual assault of a minor.)

A Facebook account in Rosenberg’s name has not been active since 2008. But on May 9, a young man posted a simple “Thank you” on the page.

Angel or dybbuk, the Internet has become part of Hasidic life. “It’s here, its influence is going to continue to grow,” says Horowitz, “and if we’re going to be effective in transmitting our tradition, our religious beliefs, our culture, to our children, we’re going to have to figure out a way to do it with the Internet being part of their lives.”

And it already is: Every day, Hasidim log on to popular Orthodox blogs, such as The Yeshiva World and Vos Iz Neias. Sidebars blink with ads for “The Perfect Shaitel for the Perfect You” and breathable mesh tzizit for boys to bring to summer camp. Yentas have been automated, with matchmaking sites advertised as “100% FRUM/100% FREE.” Even B&H, the Satmar-owned and run photography and video supply store, does a brisk online business. Over the phone, director of corporate communications Henry Posner is hesitant to reveal what percentage of their sales are made online, but he is eager to describe their “slick as a whistle” iPad app released in late May. “It’s getting killer rave reviews on Twitter.”

Correction, June 19, 2013: This article originally misspelled the name of the Hasidic sect Lubavitch.

Approaching Death

Kimberly A. Condon — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 09:30:00 GMT

This essay originally appeared in I Wasn’t Strong Like This When I Started Out: True Stories of Becoming a Nurse, a collection edited by Lee Gutkind, out now from In Fact Books.

A child is dead.

There is a terrifying, soul-piercing scream that a mother makes when she loses a child. This scream is so universal that everyone, in every corner of the emergency department, knows what has just happened when they hear it.

On a sunny summer morning, a young mother of a 3-year-old watched, stunned by ultimate dread, as her little boy ran out into the normally quiet street. On that day, however, the driver of a rainbow-painted Volkswagen bus careened through the neighborhood; 20 minutes later the mother stood in our trauma room, looking as if she might collapse. She told us, through tears and broken English, how she had heard the screech of tires, the crumpling thud. She ran into the street, knelt down to her son, and gathered the little boy into her arms.

It may have been clear to the paramedics, when they arrived, that this child had no life left in him, yet they knew to move with the kind of energy that infuses hope into impossible situations. They did everything in their power—oxygen, monitors, IVs—an all-out resuscitative effort. It is hard to imagine anything worse for a parent than to watch an aggressive attempt at her child’s resuscitation. Except, I suppose, to see no effort at all.

The little, broken body was transported to our emergency room, and we put on a similar show—a collective swoop of doctors and nurses and technicians. We focused the exam lights on him and looked, listened, strained to detect some tiny morsel of life with which to run; it’s not just for the benefit of the parents that we go all out, even when mottling has set in. We, too, need this cathartic effort in order to begin to grieve. Seeing a child die is never easy.

Years ago, it was customary to keep families out of the room when a crisis was in progress. But nowadays we know that one last look, one more moment of hope can be vitally important to the process of saying goodbye. The mother, looking stricken and white, stood by the door and held onto the arm of a nurse. When the initial moments had passed, the chaotic energy in the room suddenly changed. The doctor lowered his voice and called the time.

And so, the scream.

I left the room to find the father in the waiting room down the hall. I paused at the door before entering, wanting to wait as long as possible before destroying his world. He took one look at my face and fell to his knees, his forehead slapping onto the scuffed white floor. I waited while he groaned to his feet, then led him to his wife and dead child. So the parents could sit with the little boy, the team had tried to clean him up and had pulled the tube from his nose. I motioned the father into the room and left them alone to say their goodbyes. I had to rush to the next emergency.

That was the moment when my edges began to wither and I felt a hardness creeping in. Was it really possible that my response to the intense anguish of two broken parents was to push them into a room and run off to finish my job? When had I become so callous? I remembered myself as a new nurse—one who made it a point to touch every patient, even when she wasn’t examining them; who had a gift for sensing what a psychotic patient needed in order to de-escalate; who was known as the one to call when a battered woman needed to feel safe enough to talk—but this memory was distant and faded.

I was overly sensitive, even as a child, to the suffering of others. When I watched Westerns, I would get teary when the cowboys yanked at the mouths of their horses. “Think about how lucky those horses are,” my father had said, trying to console me. “They get to run all day.” I became so upset when I read Black Beauty that I hid in my room and cried for hours. I know the story has a happy ending only from secondhand accounts as I’ve never been able to bring myself to finish it. In the fourth grade, I jokingly pulled the chair out from behind a shy and quiet classmate, the way I had seen it done on The Three Stooges. The boy fell and hurt his back, and I was so distraught over his tears that I never spoke to him again. While working in a bookstore, years later, I happened to glance through the pages of an autobiography written by a man who had been viciously abused as a child. I went home sick that day because I simply couldn’t function with those pictures in my head.

How does someone with these pathological, debilitating reactions to distress function in a world of endless pain and struggle? Easy. Build walls and stay busy.

I had been involved in emergency medicine for 14 years—first as an emergency medical technician, then as a paramedic, and finally as a nurse. The crackling energy and hot, white lights of the ER seemed like a perfect fit for my frenetic nature. I’d always had enormous reserves of energy; reading was the only thing that ever slowed my racing thoughts, and my mother would hand me a book the way another might hand her child a lollipop. So, there I was, a center stage participant in a vital dance, and the result was a matter of life and death. I felt completely at ease. When I speed-walked down the halls, I often heard the joke, “Where’s the fire?” There were never charts waiting on the desk when I was working, and my inability to sit still, or to even slow down, lessened the workload for everyone as I zipped through the incidentals, the standard protocols, the well-worn paths of action. Everyone around me thought I was doing a great job.

But nonstop motion is not always as productive as it seems—the best emergency workers, in fact, move slowly, carefully. I eventually realized I was missing something. I felt like I was floating through someone else’s life, as if I wasn’t actually feeling compassion. I felt like a fraud.

I went to nursing school partly because I liked being the one whom people looked to and leaned on in times of crisis. Like many people I met in emergency medicine, I had the proverbial need to be needed. I took pride in caring for my patients, but my urgency to be in the next moment prevented me from really seeing them. My co-workers liked to work with me, of course, and my employers thought I was excelling. But what about the patients? I didn’t know how to find my buried compassion, nor did I know what to do next. But I knew the time had come to move on.

The ability to change specialties is one of the best aspects of nursing. I assumed, because I had seen so much, because my critical care skills were the envy of some physicians, and because I knew exactly how to react in the direst of situations, that I was qualified to do anything. I had seen things most people would never see, having been at the center of a pounding, bloody battle where we won as often as we lost. I needed something completely different. Of course, any other type of nursing would be, if not a step down, at least less challenging. I walked around a job fair, aimless and uncertain, until I found myself standing in front of a hospice booth.

I had been, in my childhood, a distant witness to several deaths. When my great-grandfather died, I watched my mom cry and was sad he would never finish teaching me to play pinochle. I was heartbroken for my friend when her mother died, and I cried and cried when a car hit my golden retriever. But I was never afraid. This is not to say that I was evolved or anything. When I was 13 years old and square in the middle of that most awkward, terrifying slice of adolescence, I actually looked forward to death. Perhaps it was a brief, pathological, adolescent-induced depression that made me wish for it. As I matured, however, the feeling that death was a lovely way out stayed with me. Nothing could ever get me really down, or be too serious, because I would eventually die. It may sound like a strange consolation, but I had become quite comfortable with my old friend, Death.

Maybe hospice would be the fit I was searching for. During my first month of the new job, I agreed to work the weekend on-call shift. Two 12-hour days of nonstop calls took me from one end of the spectrum to the other: reinsert a urinary catheter, teach a family what CPR really entails, hold a child’s hand as his mother takes her final breaths. I constantly switched gears, depending on where a particular patient or family happened to fall on the timeline of life and death. Caring for the dying, as well as their families, I hardly noticed that I had somehow chosen the one shift in hospice that fit my old profile.

Over one weekend, I ordered antibiotics for a 98-year-old woman who lived alone and refused help with anything, comforted a woman who had to place her elderly husband in a nursing home against his will, and started an IV on a young woman who insisted she was not ready to die, though every system in her body was decaying from cancer. I spent two hours talking a wildly delirious patient into allowing his wife to give him his meds; I ran back to the office for supplies, twice; and I spent several hours with family members as they waited for the mortuary to pick up their matriarch.

It was five o’clock on a crisp, chilly Sunday evening when my pager beeped again: “Six-week-old patient in crisis.”

Six weeks?

A tiny flaw in the genetic makeup of a developing human can result in a life just incomplete enough—after nine months of gestating, 16 hours of birthing, and a few hours of bonding—to be afflicted with multiple congenital anomalies. “Take him home,” the doctors said, “and hospice will help you keep him comfortable. We are probably talking about weeks.”

The baby would suffer from longer and longer periods of status epilepticus, and drugs would become less and less effective. His tiny frame would flail in violent, disorganized muscle contractions 10, 15, 20 times a day. The hospice team—a nurse, a social worker, a chaplain, and a CNA—visited the parents every day to comfort them, to teach them to care for him, and to support their grieving process. The family had gotten to know this team, but I was the nurse on call that day.

Thirty minutes after I got the page, I drove up a bumpy dirt road to a little green house on the side of a mountain. The neighborhood was quiet, private, and filled with golden aspens changing colors for the season. The door opened before I knocked. The father’s eyes were teary, and his parchment skin looked drained and hollow. He led me silently through a hallway, one entire wall of which was covered with books—perhaps the ones they had hoped their son would read. The mother was sitting in a rocking chair, holding her seizing infant. “It hasn’t stopped for twelve minutes.”

All I could do for him, for them, was be calm and present as this tiny creature worked his way toward the end we all come to. My heart broke for them, but I stood by and fought the urge to rush in. I couldn’t intrude on this precious process. I waited with them, moving only to help with positioning or to offer gentle suggestions. In the air, I felt his tiny presence slip away, slowly and peacefully. He stopped moving, his breathing slowed until it was imperceptible, and for a moment his complete stillness made me hold my own breath. I reached for the pediatric stethoscope around my neck, warming it in my hand so as not to startle him. As I pressed it against his chest, his mother said, “His name is Christopher.”

“Hi, Christopher,” I whispered as I listened.

I didn’t need to say the words. I knew from her expression that she knew. A slow, fat tear dripped down her face, and I backed away, just far enough out of the picture, in my attempt not to invade this moment of goodbye between the three of them. There was nothing for me to do but be still. I crept back, found a chair, and sat to wait.

And then I began to sob.

I felt myself losing control, choking and sobbing as if he were my child, my loss. I didn’t even have children. I tried not to make noise, tried not to trespass on their moment. I was so ashamed! I was supposed to be their support, their rock. I moved to quietly slip out of the room, but I felt the husband’s hand on my shoulder. His eyes were wet and kind. He handed me a tissue.

I couldn’t believe what a failure I was.

I got it together, finally, and helped them decide what to do. I called the physician, the coroner, and the mortuary. At the mother’s request, I got permission from the mortuary for the couple to drive the tiny body themselves. I helped them into the car by holding the baby, who now had a little blue cap on his head, while his mother settled herself in the passenger’s seat. I placed Christopher on her lap, hoping they wouldn’t get pulled over and have to explain why their baby was not in a car seat.

I was watching them ease down the driveway when the car suddenly stopped. The mother gently handed her little bundle over to her husband and got out of the car. Before I could react, she’d wrapped her arms around me. I was so stunned by the gentle, intimate comfort she offered that I barely moved. She finally let me go, looked at me, then got back into the car. They drove off. As I watched them go, I wondered if maybe I hadn’t failed. I hadn’t swallowed my grief. I hadn’t patronized them or tried to explain “the process.” I had been absolutely present with them in that agonizing, priceless moment. It was the best I could do.

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This essay originally appeared in I Wasn’t Strong Like This When I Started Out: True Stories of Becoming a Nurse, a collection edited by Lee Gutkind, out now from In Fact Books.