By The Bookwise

Increasingly, more information is coming out about over-the-counter eye drops that may  prevent and cure cataracts, according to Russian and American researchers. The drops say nothing about cataracts on box, but contain 1 percent N-Acetyl Carnosine (NAC).  The drops are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for this use.

Most recently, according to Popular Science Magazine,  Russian and American researchers are working diligently on this need. Rajiv Bhushan, an electrical engineer, decided to look for a chemical solution when his father was diagnosed with cataracts.  His company, Chakshu Research, is working on eye drops called C-KAD, and is undergoing clinical trials right now. 

Mark Babizhayev Ph.D., http://www.innovative-vision-products.com/ a principal Russian researcher, reports there are some positive results from tests underway.  Before testing the drops on humans, the Russian scientists developed some sensitive equipment to make the measurements. Statistical analysis revealed significant differences between 6 and 24 months as an overall cumulative and positive change of the characteristics of cataracts in the NAC-treated group, when compared to the control group.

A cataract is a cloudy area in the normally clear lens of the eye, a tissue located behind the pupil that focuses light onto the retina in the back. Cataracts usually start small, with little effect on vision, but as they grow the lens becomes so clouded that many older individuals can no longer drive or read–which are so vital to their emotional well being. In fact, studies show that individuals with cataracts die earlier.  Over 20 million Americans over the age of 40 have cataracts; the numbers are similar worldwide.

Anyone who knows a friend or family member with cataracts has experienced the emotional pain these individuals go through when they have to stop driving and reading. Surgery has been very successful for many people, but there are still a large number who have this aging disease. A preventative treatment would work wonders.

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Although the usual article on http://www. blog.bythebookwise.com has to do with books or reading in the news, this will be somewhat of a digression due to the recent state of affairs in Connecticut that was recently reported in the news. This article was disturbing enough that allowances had to be made.

     For the past several years, teachers in Connecticut, have been spending a large amount of their time preparing their students on how to take the Connecticut Mastery Tests (CAT) for younger students and the Connecticut Academic Performance Tests (CAPT) for older students. (This is no different than teachers across the country who are doing the same.) With everything else they have to squeeze into a day, they have to stop teaching actual subject matter and start teaching how to take tests. As a result, their students spend valuable time learning how to take tests, such as multiple choice. This way they are better prepared for the CMT and CAPTs when administered.

    Teachers have no choice in this matter. They know that students’ performance on these tests, and therefore their performance on teaching these tests, is a very high priority in the state. Why? The “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) Act.  In Connecticut, in order to meet the performance standards required under the federal NCLB Act of 2001, schools have to meet “adequate yearly progress” (AYP). This is based on, no surprise, how the students do on the CAT and CAPT tests. If the school does not pass, then it is labeled as “in need of improvement.”  Regardless of what the financial ramifications are to this designation, no school wants to report to its constituency that it is “in need of improvement.”

    Given the tremendous disparity between the quality of education in this country, and the unfortunate situation in many schools across the nation, changes do need to be made. However, NCLB is doing more harm than good. First, as noted above, the trend is now teaching to test. The public pressure on students, teachers, principals, and school superintendents to higher scores on tests is enormous, and the tendency to restrict instruction to only that which will be tested is almost irresistible. 

     If this is not bad enough, there were a couple of additional items of interest in Connecticut recently that add to the negative results. First, students are being made to think that they are more than accountable for their results on the test. Parents talk about elementary school children who are physically ill because they are so worried about these tests—if they do poorly, what will their teacher or parents think? Teachers are afraid for their jobs. Just this week, and this is what finally led to this article, two students actually cheated on their CAPT, because their high school now stipulates if a student does not pass the CAPT, he/she will not graduate. What kind of lessons are students learning?

  A couple of weeks before the CAPTs were held in this high school, all parents and students received a letter regarding the importance of testing, the daily testing schedule and the need to eat well and get plenty of rest before the testing days. It appears that no one cares about how well the students eat and sleep the other hundreds of days in the school year. Just make sure students are fed well and put to sleep early on the day before the tests.     

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Movies always do it.  Produce prequels and sequels, that is.  There’s always part one and part two and part three, and…. Or, as with “Star Wars,” the newer movie went back in time. What about book classics? What about Anne of Green Gables?  To celebrate the centennial of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1908 original novel, Penguin commissioned Canadian author Budge Wilson to write the new book, Before Green Gables.The original book relates the fictional story of Anne Shirley, a bright, red-haired, 11-year-old girl after she was adopted from a Nova Scotia orphanage. This latest take goes back in time about Anne’s younger years.  What was she like while growing up?

The “real” Anne of Green Gables has become a true classic, with over 50 million copies translated into 20 languages. Montgomery wrote seven sequels and two related books, after her first novel became such a success.

The question is whether a classic can or should be followed up by another author at another time. Remember the debate in 1991 when Alexandra Ripley wrote Scarlett as a sequel to Gone with the Wind.  Then, in 2000, Alice Randall’s book The Wind Done Gone, which tells the story from the slaves’ point of view, created another splash. This time it was with copyright holders who filed an injunction to stop publication. It was settled out of court, and the book became a best seller. In 2007, another sequel was published, Rhett Butler’s People, from Rhett’s point of view. Does that leave anyone out? Yes, I could write the book as one of Scarlett’s other husbands or daughters.

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My phone rang today and it was the office of  the office of Congressman Tom Cole, (R) Oklahoma, chairman of National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) . I was being nominated for the Congressional Order of Merit for my outstanding work as a small business person.  Being a public relations and marketing person, I immediately thought “This is great. I’ll get publicity and tell everyone about my business http://www.bythebookwise.com. ”

Typical of my skepticism, I immediately Googled the key words and found that, alas, I was not alone, and this was another scam. In order to get this award, I have to pledge my allegiance to stop Nancy Pelosi from ruining small businesses like mine.  Upon further investigation, I found that some have pledged to do so, since their announcement of receiving the Congressional Order of Merit is advertised in papers and online.  It does not say anywhere in their article, however, how they received this award.

My question to any legal folk out there is “Is this legal?” Can I be promised something like an honor “If” I have to pledge to help stop other person from what he/she is doing legally?If this is legal, then it surely is not ethical. I would not have to think very hard and long whether or not I would vote for an individual such as Tom Cole who has to use convoluted and unethical approaches to get support to bad mouth the other guy (gal).

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It’s easy to see how the United States is becoming more diverse and the books much wider in their subject area. The winners of this year’s National Book Critics Circle are Dominican American Junot Diaz, who took the fiction prize for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Harriet A. Washington, for her nonfiction entitled Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experientation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present. The winning biography is Tim Jeal’s Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer, the awarded poetry is Mary Jo Bang’s “Elegy,” and the criticism winner is Alex Ross’ “The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century.”

The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974, is a non-profit organization consisting of approximately 600 reviewers, who would like to honor quality writing as well as communicating with one another about issues of interest. Members receive a packet that contains the NBCC’s tips and guidelines for placing book reviews in publications around the country, which includes contact information for dozens of review editors and an outline of the critics and reviews they seek.

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Here we go again. This time, the book was not even on the market for a week before it was announced that the author, Margaret B. Jones, lied about her name and her life. Instead of being a half-Native American raised by a black foster mother, the author grew up in the San Fernando Valley in California with both her white biological parents and without drugs or gang membership.

You would think that the publishing companies would do better research on their authors before spending all the time and money on these books. It makes you wonder what other memoirs on the market are not true? Any ideas?

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Remember how Oprah’s “Suggested Reading” and “Bestseller” A Million Little Pieces by James Frey turned out to be fabricated? It’s happened again with a Halocaust memoir, of all topics. How does a reader know that a memoir is true, or does it matter if it is entertaining and interesting? All memoirs have some fabricated or at least misremembered information, because the writer is developing this from recalled memories. It’s the degree of misinformation.

Frey’s book, about his horrible struggle with drug and alcohol abuse and difficult road to recovery, was complete with exaggerations, embellishments and lies, such as reporting  that he had beat up a police officer and spent three months in jail and being involved with a fatal car accident.

Now, publisher Jane Daniel claims her 1997 book Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, about a young girl fleeing the Nazis and living with wolves is a fraud.  The book was published with an excellent blurb from Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, author of the Holocaust memoir Night. Daniel published the book, although the Holocaust scholars who reviewed it for her said they had serious doubts and suggested a number of changes. She ignored their comments.

What happened next is a story by itself. Once the book was published, lawsuits came flying from the ghost writer and author at Daniel. Then there were million dollar penalties and even jail time. Daniel, penniless, decided to find out if the story was fabricated. Now that the book is reported as a fraud, she is trying to get her money back with another lawsuit!

Holocaust scholars are livid that someone would exploit such an atrocity for financial gain. They comment that its as bad as saying the Holocaust never happened. Fray’s fakery did the same thing for the millions of people who suffer with addiction. It’s a sad state of affairs when people are scrupulous enough to profit from others’ pain and death.

How do you feel about this? Can a memoir be faked? Does it matter?

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