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Justice MONTHLY
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OCTOBER 2017
POLAR OPPOSITES Growing Up With a Hellraiser of a Sister
“Mom!” I said, tears gathering in the corner of my eyes. There wasn’t much time. I was in mortal danger. “Help me!” “Trey!” My sister Ashley turned the corner with a grotesque snarl on her face, a black magician’s wand in her right hand. “Get back here so I can turn you into a frog!” She brandished the wand and began to creep toward my mom and me. I’m sure now that my mom must have stopped her from harassing me, but at the time, I wasn’t about to wait around and see what happened. I shrieked and sprinted off, determined to remain a human, 4-year-old boy. This is how it was growing up. My sister, 21/2 years older than me, tormented me at every possible opportunity. For my part, I was either fleeing from her in terror or devotedly looking up to her throughout my entire childhood. “If Ashley told you the sky was purple,” my dad once told me, “then you’d check with us to see if it was true.” For me, if Ashley said something was cool, then those were just the facts. She held tremendous influence over me in our earlier years. She was always a touchstone for what was hip, even as she fell in with the wrong crowd and was sent away to Oldfields — an all-girls boarding school outside of Townsend, Maryland — when she was 14. After that, she never returned to Albany for any length of time. Halfway through prep school, she began to really dig into her classes, realizing a knack for the written word. Soon after, she went off to college in Paris and began living the quintessential cosmopolitan lifestyle, writing and studying comparative literature and living it up abroad. You might say she’s the polar opposite of me. After graduation, she wondered how she would make a living with her writing, and decided, of all things, to go to law school
- William F. “Trey” Underwood, III I give her flack these days for not getting back to Albany often enough. “Sure,” I say, “You can fly out to France for a three-day party, but you can’t come home for Thanksgiving?” But I love her anyway, and she makes it back more and more often as we get older. Having lived in the middle of the cutthroat, rapid-fire entertainment industry, there’s something about the slower pace and the presence of family that appeals to her now. When she visits, we just sit out on the patio and shoot the breeze, drink wine, and relax. I’m thankful to have a sibling relationship that’s outlasted thousands of miles and endless change. Oh, and that she never did get around to transforming me into a frog. and become a pharmaceutical rep in Los Angeles. It was decent work, she told me, but she never felt passionate about it. She knew she needed a change. She continued with her comedy writing, getting a few pieces published in the Huffington Post, and worked with a friend from Paris on a screenplay. She knew that writing was her dream, and began to pursue it furiously. There were moments that she doubted her art, struggling against the current in hypercompetitive LA. But I just told her, if there’s something you 100 percent have to do, you should do it. Heck, live out of a car if you have to and just write as much as possible. Luckily, it didn’t come to that. These days, she’s on the cusp of a big break after networking through a friend and getting connected with a massive TV project that just started shooting. When it’s done, she’ll be listed as an associate producer in the credits. I’ve been sworn to absolute secrecy about exactly who she’s working with, but needless to say, there are at least a couple of big names. I’m happy and proud that her years of hard work are paying off in such a big way.
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Which Fears Are Instinctual,
and Which Are Learned?
Where does fear come from? As the jack-o’- lanterns show their grinning, glowing faces and skeletons, cobwebs, and gravestones adorn yards around the neighborhood, it’s a question hanging in many of our minds. When you recoil from the giant mechanical spider suspended above your neighbor’s garage, is that fear instinctual, or is it learned? Many people, spurred on by evolutionary psychology, believe that the fear of creepy crawlies, particularly spiders and snakes, is innate. Certainly, spiders and snakes are among the most common phobias in the world. But research shows that, though humans and apes may be predisposed to easily develop a fear of these poisonous animals, the fears are just that — learned. In a 2016 study, babies were presented with videos of snakes and other animals like elephants, paired with either a fearful or happy auditory track, measuring the babies’ physiological responses when the videos were interrupted by a startling flash of light. Though babies were more interested in the snakes, they weren’t more startled, indicating a lack of fear. According to the Association for Psychological Science, there are only two fears we inherit at birth: the fear of falling and the fear of loud sounds.
A 1960 study, conducted by psychologists Gibson and Walk for Cornell University, sought to investigate depth perception in human and animal species. They suspended a sheet of transparent plexiglass about four feet off the ground and covered one half of it with a checkerboard-pattern cloth, creating a simulated cliff. Infants, both human and animal, were then encouraged by their caregivers, usually their mothers, to crawl off the “cliff” onto the clear half of the platform. Animals and humans alike avoided stepping over what they perceived as a sharp drop, and pre-crawling-age infants showed heightened cardiac distress on the “suspended” side. Coupled with this innate fear of plummeting to the ground is something called the Moro reflex, one of several involuntary reflexes healthy newborn infants have at birth. Often called the “startle reflex,” it occurs when a baby is startled by a loud sound or movement, especially a falling motion. The reflex usually triggers the newborn to lift and spread their arms as if grasping for support, followed by crying. Though the Moro reflex usually disappears at around 5 to 6 months of age, our instinctive aversion to sudden loud noises stays with us throughout our lives.
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STRESS, PAIN, OR SICKNESS? Diffuse Essential Oils If you’ve stopped by a health store recently, you’ve no doubt seen a huge selection of essential oils. These liquids, which contain concentrated, natural aroma compounds found in plants, are the basis of aromatherapy, one of the most popular trends in holistic health. Aromatherapy involves applying these oils to the skin or spraying them into the air. Skin application requires that you use diluted oils, because aromatic compounds are strong and can cause irritation. As a result of these concerns, many essential oil acolytes have turned to diffusers to get the benefits of aromatherapy in a safe, wonderful-smelling manner. Cinnamon oil can clear congestion and has a homey, autumnal scent. Eucalyptus oil is an air purifier, but its scent is strong and not for everybody. If you want to de-stress, try rosemary oil, which decreases your cortisol levels. Take note that you should alert your doctor before partaking in aromatherapy if you’re pregnant, nursing, or on any medication. While most essential oils are perfectly safe to diffuse, the compounds in certain oils can combine with medication and trigger adverse side effects. Once you begin diffusing, you’ll never go back to commercial, chemical scent sprays. The benefits are evident, and the results smell sweet.
In addition to filling your house with an all-natural, appealing perfume, aromatherapy has been touted as a way to help with everything from stress and insomnia to cognitive function and mood enhancement. To receive these benefits, you’ll need to pick up a diffuser and some oils. With so many options, though, how do you know which one is right for you? There is no shortage of methods to diffuse essential oils. Nebulizing diffusers don’t require any heat source, instead atomizing the essential oils. They are extremely effective, but they are also large and expensive. Ultrasonic diffusers are similarly heatless, preserving the oils. This type of diffuser can also work as a humidifier, making it a valuable multitasker. Heat and evaporative diffusers are cheaper options, but they tend to alter oils or separate particles according to size. Once you decide on the best diffuser for your home, you need to select a few essential oils and put your new toy to use. Lemon oil is antibacterial and antiseptic, and will freshen your environment.
Have a Laugh!
Sausage and Barley Soup It’s a great time of year to warm up with a cup of soup, and this comforting dish is guilt-free and comes together in a flash.
Ingredients • Cooking spray • 6 ounces turkey
• 2 cups water • 1 (141/2-ounce) can
• 1/4 cup uncooked
quick-cooking barley
Italian-style stewed tomatoes, undrained and chopped
• 1 cup coarsely
breakfast sausage • 21/2 cups frozen bell pepper stir-fry (such as Birds Eye)
chopped fresh baby spinach
Directions 1. Heat a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add sausage; cook 3 minutes or until browned. Remove from heat. 2. While sausage cooks, place stir-fry and 2 cups water in a blender; process until smooth. Add stir-fry puree, tomatoes, and barley to sausage in pan. Bring mixture to a boil over high heat; cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer 10 minutes. Stir in spinach; cook 1 minute or until spinach wilts.
Recipe Courtesy of CookingLight.com
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inside Growing Up With My Hellraiser Sister PAGE 1 The Origins of Fear PAGE 2 Here’s What They’re Saying PAGE 2 The Benefits of Essential Oils PAGE 3 Sausage and Barley Soup PAGE 3 Insight Into Nike’s Success PAGE 4
‘Shoe Dog’ Gives Insight Into Nike’s Success
“We wanted Nike to be the world’s best sports and fitness company. Once you say that, you have a focus. You don’t end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour.” –Phil Knight When an entrepreneur or company becomes massively successful, it’s easy to construct a narrative that makes that success seem like destiny. They look back on the past with rose-colored glasses, interpreting every decision as a stepping stone on their way to eventual victory. Of course, real success stories are never this linear. Honest accounts of what it takes to dominate an industry are hard to come by, which makes Nike CEO Phil Knight’s “Shoe Dog” a refreshing change of pace from the standard business memoir. If there’s one word that best describes “Shoe Dog,” it’s “candid.” Knight gives equal space to his successes, failings, and insecurities. He also isn’t afraid to admit when luck was the deciding factor. Take the story of famous Nike swoosh, for example. These days, it’s universally regarded as one of the greatest logos ever conceived.
Knight could easily claim that he saw its brilliance from the get-go, but that’s not what happened. When an art student came up with the design — for the meager price of $35 — Knight’s response was, “It’ll have to do.” That’s not to say that Knight isn’t a visionary in many ways. In the early days of Nike, Knight hustled to an extreme degree. Even when he was selling track shoes out of his trunk, his belief never wavered. Signing Michael Jordan in 1984 revolutionized not just the athletic shoe industry, but celebrity sponsorship in general. He surrounded himself with smart, capable people, expanded sensibly, and never lost sight of his vision. If you want a book that gives you simple, cliché takeaways about how to become massively successful, “Shoe Dog” is not the book for you. If, instead, you crave what Bill Gates calls an “honest reminder of what the path to business success really looks like,” then you should check it out. With a personal perspective, suspense, and more than a few wild anecdotes, “Shoe Dog” soars in a way few business books manage to. But, then again, that’s what Knight’s shoes have always promised to help athletes do.
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