• Meet The Authors: July

Meet The Authors: July

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NEWS FLASH: This month sees the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the most inspiring novels of our era, written by a young woman who is now 84 years old. Harper Lee lives in what is known as ‘sheltered housing’ in her old home town of Monroeville, Alabama, and in addition to being famous for having published just that one novel in her life, is also a determined recluse. She has typically refused to take part in any celebrations of the anniversary and will spend the day in her apartment. Of her overnight success with To Kill a Mockingbird, she says: ‘It was like being hit over the head and knocked cold. I didn’t expect the book to sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of reviewers but at the same time I sort of hoped that maybe someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening …’

Encounters Author of the Month

Jill Bolte Taylor

What would you do if you were alone at home and suddenly felt the world change around you—except that it’s you who is changing, losing the ability to think straight, to control your limbs, to use your mind? For Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard neuroanatomist in her thirties, the symptoms that hit her on a December morning in 1996 were not as confusing as they would be to most of us—they were unmistakable: she was having a stroke. ‘As blood swept over the higher thinking centres of my left cerebral cortex, I began losing my skills of higher cognition—one precious ability at a time. It was fortunate that I could remember that the best prognosis for someone having a stroke was to get him or her to the hospital as quickly as possible. But getting help was challenging because I found it almost impossible to concentrate or keep my mind on a task. I caught myself chasing ­random thoughts as they danced in and out of my brain, and sadly, I was fully aware that I was inept at holding a plan in my mind long enough to execute it. Where were my numbers? Where was my language? Repetitively, I was obsessed with the only message my brain could sustain: What am I trying to do? Get help. I’m trying to make a plan and get help. What am I doing? I have to come up with a plan to get help. Okay. I have to get help.’ Amazingly, over eight years, she did emerge from her life-changing experience, armed with a new appreciation of the brain’s function and resilience. She also gained a rare vision into human consciousness and all its possibilities. You can see Jill explaining some of her astonishing insights in a video from TED.com



Lawrence Anthony, elephant whisperer

Lawrence Anthony, owner of Thula Thula, a game reserve in central Zululand, once received an extraordinary telephone call from Marion Garaï of the Elephant Management and Owners Association in South Africa. Lawrence writes: ‘Her warm voice instantly inspired empathy. She got straight to the point. She had heard about Thula Thula and the variety of magnificent indigenous Zululand wildlife we had. She said she had also heard how we were working closely with the local population in fostering conservation awareness and wondered ... would I be interested in adopting a herd of elephants? The good news, she continued before I could answer, was that I would get them for free, barring capture and transportation costs. You could have knocked me over with a blade of grass. Elephant? The world’s largest mammal? And they wanted to give me a whole herd? For a moment I thought it was a hoax.’

Lawrence was both thrilled, and wary of the elephants’ reputation for being ‘troublesome’. As expected, they escaped from his property, and the deal was that if they broke out again, they would be shot. To avert this fate, he risked his own safety by living with the animals to rehabilitate them. Encounters readers this month will relish the happy ending to Lawrence’s story: a special bond develops between him and the elephants, of mutual trust, respect and affection.

From Reader's Digest Interactive