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(HealthDay News) -- A sizable number of young video game players -- fully 8.5 percent -- exhibit signs of addiction to gaming, a new study has found.

These kids aren't just playing a lot. Their gaming interferes with school performance, disrupts interaction with family and friends and poses health problems, the study reveals.

Douglas A. Gentile, a developmental psychologist and an assistant professor at Iowa State University in Ames, said the study is the first to document the prevalence of video game addiction using a nationally representative sample of children and adolescents.

"What's most concerning to me is really the total percentage, just the vast number of kids that are having real problems in their lives because they play games, and they may not know how to stop it," said Gentile, whose study appears in the May edition of Psychological Science.

Experts don't agree on whether such a thing as "video game addiction" really exists. At present, it is not listed as a mental disorder in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The next update of that manual, which describes criteria for diagnosing various psychiatric disorders, is due out in 2012.

"I think we're at the same place now with video gaming as we were with alcoholism 40 years ago," said Gentile, noting that decades of research finally showed that alcoholism is a disease.

When Gentile began studying video game addiction in 1999, he, too, was a skeptic. "Addiction has to mean you're damaging your functioning and not just in one area of your life," he said. He was surprised to see that, in fact, the data showed that kids were exhibiting that level of damage.

The new study is based on data from a nationwide survey if 1,178 U.S. children and teens -- aged 8 to 18 -- conducted by Harris Interactive, the research firm based in Rochester, N.Y., that's perhaps best-known for its Harris Poll. The surveys were conducted in January 2007 and involved roughly 100 children at each age represented in the sample.

Children completed an online questionnaire using several scales to assess their video gaming habits. They were asked questions such as: "Have you every played [video games] as a way of escaping from problems or bad feelings?" "Have you ever lied to family and friends about how much you play [video games]?"

To measure pathological gaming in kids, Gentile adapted criteria used to diagnose pathological gambling. Gamers were classified as pathological if they exhibited at least six of the 11 criteria.

Pathological gamers played more frequently and for more time, received worse grades and were more likely to report having trouble paying attention in school than non-pathological players. They also reported more health problems associated with playing video games, such as hand and wrist pain.

They were more than twice as likely to have been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder -- 25 percent of pathological gamers versus 11 percent of non-pathological players. And they were more likely (24 percent vs. 12 percent) to report having been involved in physical fights in the past year.

"I think it does highlight that parents and kids do need to talk about game play and they do need to talk about rules," said Cheryl K. Olson, co-director and co-founder of the Center for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

However, she questioned the appropriateness of adapting questions used to assess problem gambling in adults.

"It's one thing for a child to fib to his mom about how long he's played a video game," Olson said. "It's another thing to lie to your wife about gambling."

She also questioned whether kids as young as 8 can accurately complete a self-administered questionnaire.

If parents think their kid has a problem, they're probably right and should trust their instincts, according to Gentile, who also serves as director of research for the National Institute on Media and the Family in Minneapolis.

Experts say that when playing video games becomes compulsive and results in kids skipping school or not playing with friends, that could signal other mental health problems.

"What you usually find with these kids is this [video game compulsion] is just the tip of the iceberg," said Dr. Michael Brody, a psychiatrist in private practice in Potomac, Md., and chairman of the media committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. "Underneath you usually find a lot of depression and anxiety."

"To put a label like 'video game addiction' is too superficial," Brody said.

HealthDay Reporter by Karen Pallarito

Labels: hot trends 2009, video game addiction

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Ominous developments Monday in the swine flu epidemic - a jump to 149 deaths and more signs that the virus can jump repeatedly from human to human - prompted the World Health Organization to raise its pandemic alert level, and governments around the world were taking tougher measures.

The virus has already spread to at least a half-dozen countries and half of Mexico. Trying to eliminate crowds, the Mexican government canceled school nationwide and considered closing the capital's subway system. Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said 20 deaths have been confirmed to be from swine flu and test results were pending on the others.

"We are the most critical moment of the epidemic. The number of cases will keep rising so we have to reinforce preventive measures," Cordova said at a news conference that was briefly shaken by an earthquake centered in southern Mexico.

WHO said the new phase 4 alert means sustained human-to-human transmission is causing outbreaks in at least one country, signaling a significant increase in the risk of a global epidemic, according to Mexico health department spokesman Carlos Olmos. Phase 4 doesn't mean a pandemic is inevitable, but many experts think it may be impossible to contain a flu virus already spreading in several countries.

Cordova said 1,995 people have been hospitalized with serious cases of pneumonia since mid-April, of whom 1,070 have been released. The government does not yet know how many were swine flu.

Cordova also suggested an earlier timeline for documented swine flu cases inside Mexico. The first death confirmed by the government involved a woman who succumbed from swine flu on April 13 in southern Oaxaca state. But Cordova said tests now show that a 4-year-old boy contracted the disease at least two weeks earlier in neighboring Veracruz state, where a community has been protesting pollution from a large pig farm.

The farm is run by Granjas Carroll de Mexico, a joint venture 50 percent owned by Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, Inc. Spokeswoman Keira Ullrich said the company has found no clinical signs or symptoms of the presence of swine influenza in its swine herd or its employees working at its joint ventures anywhere in Mexico.

But local residents are convinced they were sickened by air and water contamination from pig waste.

There was a widespread outbreak of a particularly powerful respiratory disease in the area early April, and some people reported being sick as early as February. Local health workers intervened in early April, sealing off the town of La Gloria and spraying to kill off flies they said were swarming through their homes.

Cordova said the community was suffering from ordinary influenza - not swine flu. But only one sample was preserved - that of the boy. It was only after U.S. and Canadian epidemiologists discovered the true nature of the virus that Mexico submitted the sample for international testing, and discovered what he suffered from.

The boy has since recovered and Cordova said there have been no new cases detected in the town, but epidemiologists want to take a closer look at pigs in Mexico as a potential source of the outbreak.

Juan Lubroth, an animal health expert at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, said a team of veterinarians was flying to Mexico. They will examine what surveillance systems are in place to detect swine flu, and review historical data on previous viruses identified in the country. Farmers will be interviewed.

Lubroth said there have been no reports of sick or dying swine in Mexico, but warned that fears surrounding the outbreak could have a devastating effect on the pork industry.

"Although the virus is reported to have a swine origin, it may have been several years ago, and it's only now that it has shown up in humans as a clinical problem that is spreading," he said.
The Mexican government has yet to say where and how the epidemic began or give details on the victims.

Cordova said the health department lacked the staff to visit the homes of all those suspected to have died from the disease. But he assured that the country had enough medicine to treat the ill.
Meanwhile, Mexico suspended all schools nationwide until May 6, extending an order already in place in Mexico City and five of the country's 32 states, and urged people to stay home if they feel sick.

Labor Secretary Javier Lozano Alarcon said employers should isolate anyone showing up for work with fever, cough, sore throat or other symptoms. And the Mexico City government was considering shutting down all public transportation if the death toll keeps rising. Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said surgical masks were being distributed at subway and bus stops across the city.

The disease has hit hardest in the capital, but life was disrupted from Tijuana to Acapulco, a lucrative Pacific resort town where night clubs and bars were ordered closed until further notice. Acapulco Mayor Manuel Anorve Banos said he was worried about tourists from Mexico City spreading the disease.

Some city dwellers headed to the beach, taking advantage of the closed schools. But those who live day-to-day worried about making ends meet if the city completely shuts down.

"We're going to have to stop working," said Raul Alvarez Torres, who relies on the subway to get from his gritty suburb to his shoe shining stand in an upscale Mexico city neighborhood each day. "If people have no transport, getting around is impossible."

Even as Mexican officials urged those with flu symptoms to seek medical help, some complained of being turned away.

In Toluca, a city west of the capital, one family said health authorities refused to treat a relative Sunday who had full-blown flu symptoms and could barely stand. The man, 31-year-old truck driver Elias Camacho, was even ordered out of a government ambulance, his father-in-law told The Associated Press.

Paramedics complained that Camacho - who had a fever, was coughing and had body aches - was contagious, Jorge Martinez Cruz said.

Family members took him by taxi to a public hospital, but a doctor there denied Camacho was sick and told the trio to leave, Martinez said.

"The government told us that if we have these symptoms, we should go to these places, but look how they treat us," Martinez said. Camacho was finally admitted to the hospital - and placed in an area marked "restricted" - after a doctor at a private clinic notified state health authorities, Martinez said.

Jose Isaac Cepeda, who has had fever, diarrhea and joint pains since Friday, said he was turned away from two hospitals - the first because he isn't registered in the public health system, and the second "because they say they're too busy."

Labels: epidemic, hot trends 2009, mexico, pandemic, swine flu

MEXICO CITY - A unique strain of swine flu is the suspected killer of dozens of people in Mexico, where authorities closed schools, museums, libraries and theaters in the capital on Friday to try to contain an outbreak that has spurred concerns of a global flu epidemic.

The worrisome new virus - which combines genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before - also sickened at least eight people in Texas and California, though there have been no deaths in the U.S.

"We are very, very concerned," World Health Organization spokesman Thomas Abraham said. "We have what appears to be a novel virus and it has spread from human to human ... It's all hands on deck at the moment."

The outbreak caused alarm in Mexico, where more than 1,000 people have been sickened. Residents of the capital donned surgical masks and authorities ordered the most sweeping shutdown of public gathering places in a quarter century. President Felipe Calderon met with his Cabinet Friday to coordinate Mexico's response.

The WHO was convening an expert panel to consider whether to raise the pandemic alert level or issue travel advisories.

It might already be too late to contain the outbreak, a prominent U.S. pandemic flu expert said late Friday.

Given how quickly flu can spread around the globe, if these are the first signs of a pandemic, then there are probably cases incubating around the world already, said Dr. Michael Osterholm at the University of Minnesota.

In Mexico City, "literally hundreds and thousands of travelers come in and out every day," Osterholm said. "You'd have to believe there's been more unrecognized transmission that's occurred."

There is no vaccine that specifically protects against swine flu, and it was unclear how much protection current human flu vaccines might offer. A "seed stock" genetically matched to the new swine flu virus has been created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, said Dr. Richard Besser, the agency's acting director. If the government decides vaccine production is necessary, manufacturers would need that stock to get started.

Authorities in Mexico urged people to avoid hospitals unless they had a medical emergency, since hospitals are centers of infection. They also said Mexicans should refrain from customary greetings such as shaking hands or kissing cheeks. At Mexico City's international airport, passengers were questioned to try to prevent anyone with flu symptoms from boarding airplanes and spreading the disease.

Epidemiologists are particularly concerned because the only fatalities so far were in young people and adults.

The eight U.S. victims recovered from symptoms that were like those of the regular flu, mostly fever, cough and sore throat, though some also experienced vomiting and diarrhea.

U.S. health officials announced an outbreak notice to travelers, urging caution and frequent handwashing, but stopping short of telling Americans to avoid Mexico.

Mexico's Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordoba said 68 people have died of flu and the new swine flu strain had been confirmed in 20 of those deaths. At least 1,004 people nationwide were sick from the suspected flu, he said.

The geographical spread of the outbreaks also concerned the WHO — while 13 of the 20 deaths were in Mexico City, the rest were spread across Mexico — four in central San Luis Potosi, two up near the U.S. border in Baja California, and one in southern Oaxaca state.

Scientists have long been concerned that a new flu virus could launch a worldwide pandemic of a killer disease. A new virus could evolve when different flu viruses infect a pig, a person or a bird, mingling their genetic material. The resulting hybrid could spread quickly because people would have no natural defenses against it.

Still, flu experts were concerned but not alarmed about the latest outbreak.

"We've seen swine influenza in humans over the past several years, and in most cases, it's come from direct pig contact. This seems to be different," said Dr. Arnold Monto, a flu expert with the University of Michigan.

"I think we need to be careful and not apprehensive, but certainly paying attention to new developments as they proceed."

The CDC says two flu drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza, seem effective against the new strain. Roche, the maker of Tamiflu, said the company is prepared to immediately deploy a stockpile of the drug if requested.

Both drugs must be taken early, within a few days of the onset of symptoms, to be most effective.

Cordoba said Mexico has enough Tamiflu to treat 1 million people, but the medicine will be strictly controlled and handed out only by doctors.

Mexico's government had maintained until late Thursday that there was nothing unusual about the flu cases, although this year's flu season had been worse and longer than past years.

The sudden turnaround by public health officials angered many Mexicans.

"They could have stopped it in time," said Araceli Cruz, 24, a university student who emerged from the subway wearing a surgical mask. "Now they've let it spread to other people."

The city was handing out free surgical masks to passengers on buses and the subway system, which carries 5 million people each day. Government workers were ordered to wear the masks, and authorities urged residents to stay home from work if they felt ill.

Closing schools across Mexico's capital of 20 million kept 6.1 million students home, as well as thousands of university students. All state and city-run cultural activities were suspended, including libraries, state-run theaters, and at least 14 museums. Private athletic clubs closed down and soccer leagues were considering canceling weekend games.

The closures were the first citywide shutdown of public gathering places since millions died in the devastating 1985 earthquake.

Mexico's response brought to mind other major outbreaks, such as when SARS hit Asia. At its peak in 2003, Beijing shuttered schools, cinemas and restaurants, and thousands of people were quarantined at home.

In March 2008, Hong Kong ordered more than a half-million students to stay home for two weeks because of a flu outbreak. It was the first such closure in Hong Kong since the outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.

"It's great they are taking precautions," said Lillian Molina, a teacher at the Montessori's World preschool in Mexico City, who scrubbed down empty classrooms with Clorox, soap and Lysol between fielding calls from worried parents.

U.S. health officials said the outbreak is not yet a reason for alarm in the United States. The five people sickened in California and three in Texas have all recovered.

It's unclear how the eight, who became ill between late March and mid-April, contracted the virus because none were in contact with pigs, which is how people usually catch swine flu. And only a few were in contact with each other.

CDC officials described the virus as having a unique combination of gene segments not seen before in people or pigs. The bug contains human virus, avian virus from North America and pig viruses from North America, Europe and Asia. It may be completely new, or it may have been around for a while and was only detected now through improved testing and surveillance, CDC officials said.

The most notorious flu pandemic is thought to have killed at least 40 million people worldwide in 1918-19. Two other, less deadly flu pandemics struck in 1957 and 1968.

By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer

Labels: hot trends 2009, influenza, new virus, pandemic, swine flu

MANILA (AFP) - A rare rat species last seen over a century ago in the mountainous northern Philippines has been rediscovered by a team of American and Filipino biologists, a report said Sunday.

Lawrence Heaney, team leader and curator at the Chicago-based Field Museum of Natural History, said the rare dwarf cloud rat was last seen by British scientists some 112 years ago.

He said the rat was dead when the team found it in a canopy of a large tree whose branches were covered by thick moss, orchids and ferns at a national park in Mount Pulag in northern Luzon, the Philippine Daily Inquirer said.

The animal was described as small "with reddish brown fur, a black mask around its large dark eyes, small round ears, a broad and blunt snout and a long tail covered with dark hair," the report said.

"It is the animal whose existence had baffled biologists for so many years," Heaney said.

The animal has been preserved and is being prepared for shipment to Chicago for further studies.

The discovery proved a theory that the rare species lived only in high canopies with mature mossy forests in areas with an elevation of between 2,200- 2,700 metres (7,200-8,850 feet) above sea level. Mount Pulag is Luzon's highest peak at 2,922 metres above sea level.

"The cloud rats are one of the most spectacular cases of adaptive radiation by mammals anywhere in the world," Heaney said.

A British researcher, John Whitehead, first saw the rat in 1896 in another mountain region in the north, but little was known about the species.

"Since then the species became a mystery," Heaney said.

Labels: cloud rat, Field Museum of Natural History, hot trends 2009, Mount Pulag

BEIJING - China has 32 million more young men than young women - a gender gap that could lead to increasing crime - because parents facing strict birth limits abort female fetuses to have a son, a study released Friday said.

The imbalance is expected to steadily worsen among people of childbearing age over the next two decades and could trigger a slew of social problems, including a possible spike in crime by young men unable to find female partners, said an author of the report published in the BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal.

"If you've got highly sexed young men, there is a concern that they will all get together and, with high levels of testosterone, there may be a real risk, that they will go out and commit crimes," said Therese Hesketh, a lecturer at the Centre for International Health and Development at University College London. She did not specify what kinds of crimes.

The study said analysis of China's 2005 census data extrapolated that males under age 20 exceeded their female counterparts by a whopping 32 million.

The study found that China has 119 male births for every 100 girls, compared with 107 to 100 for industrialized countries.

"Nothing can be done now to prevent this imminent generation of excess men," said the report by Hesketh and two professors from eastern China's Zhejiang province.

The study found that the biggest boy-girl gaps are in the 1 to 4-year-old group - meaning that China will have to grapple with the effects of that imbalance when those children reach reproductive age in 15 to 20 years.

China imposed strict birth controls in the 1970s to limit growth of its huge population, noting that resources, especially land, were increasingly strained and that changes were needed in its new push to modernize. The government says the controls have prevented an additional 400 million births in the world's most populous country of 1.3 billion.

But families, especially rural ones, cling to traditional preferences for a male heir, and infanticide of baby girls became a problem. In response, some parts of China allow couples to have a second child if the first is a girl.

The prevalence of sonograms in recent years has allowed parents to learn the gender of their fetus about 20 weeks into pregnancy, Hesketh said, leading to a rise in abortions based on sex. Abortion is legal and widely available.

China bans tests to determine the fetus' gender for non-medical reasons but they are still commonly done, mainly by underground private clinics in the countryside.

Many countries ban abortion after 12 or sometimes 24 weeks of pregnancy unless the mother's life is at risk. China's laws do not expressly prohibit or even define late-term termination.

A debate about the extent of China's gender imbalance has brewed for years among population experts. Some families hide the births of daughters, never registering them with authorities, so they can legally try for a son, making it harder to measure the problem.

Nancy Riley, a professor of sociology at Bowdoin College in Maine who was not involved with the study, said its methodology looked fine but questioned whether selective abortion indeed counted for almost all the excess males.

"From other research, it is clear that sex-selective abortion does indeed contribute to these high sex ratios, but so do other things (such as) non-reporting of girl births, abandonment, even infanticide," Riley said.

For their study, Hesketh and professors Li Lu of Zhejiang University and Zhu Weixing of Zhejiang Normal University examined data on 4.7 million people under the age of 20 from all parts of the country.

Ratios in Jiangxi and Henan provinces were the highest in the country, with 140 boys for every 100 girls in the 1-4 age range, the study said.

Hesketh told The Associated Press she thought rates were highest there because both provinces are poor and have largely secular Han Chinese populations. China's often disadvantaged ethnic minorities are exempt from birth limits, and researchers found normal sex ratios in the minority regions of Tibet and largely Muslim Xinjiang.

Ratios were also particularly high among second children as parents again try to ensure they have a son and not another daughter.

China has launched subsidy programs and education campaigns encouraging families to have girls, but they have had a limited impact.

The study said enforcing the existing ban on sex-selective abortion could lead to normalization of the ratios.

By ALEXA OLESEN, Associated Press Writer

Labels: birth controls, British Medical Journal, china, gender gap, hot trends 2009

CHICAGO - As a bartender and trainer at a national restaurant chain, Rebecca Brown earned a couple thousand dollars in a really good week. Now, as a dancer at Chicago's Pink Monkey gentleman's club, she makes almost that much in one good night.

The tough job market is prompting a growing number of women across the country to dance in strip clubs, appear in adult movies or pose for magazines like Hustler.

Employers across the adult entertainment industry say they're seeing an influx of applications from women who, like Brown, are attracted by the promise of flexible schedules and fast cash. Many have college degrees and held white-collar jobs until the economy soured.

"You're seeing a lot more beautiful women who are eligible to do so many other things," said Gus Poulos, general manager of New York City's Sin City gentleman's club. He said he got 85 responses in just one day to a recent job posting on Craigslist.

The transition to the nightclub scene isn't always a smooth one - from learning to dance in five-inch heels to dealing with the jeers of some customers.

Some performers said they were initially so nervous that only alcohol could calm their nerves.

"It is like giving a speech, but instead of imagining everyone naked, you're the one who's naked," Brown, 29, said.

Eva Stone, a 25-year-old dancer at the Pink Monkey, said dealing with occasional verbal abuse from patrons requires "a thick skin."

Makers of adult films cautioned that women shouldn't rush into the decision to make adult movies without considering the effect on their lives.

"Once you decide to be an adult actress, it impacts your relationship with everyone," said Steven Hirsch, co-chairman of adult film giant Vivid Entertainment Group. "Once you make an adult film, it never goes away."

The women at the Pink Monkey say dancing at a strip club might not have been their first career choice, but they entered the business with their eyes wide open. The job gives them more control and flexibility than sitting in a cubicle, and "it's easy, it's fun and all of us girls ... look out for each other," Brown said.

In this economy, "desperate measures are becoming far more acceptable," said Jonathan Alpert, a New York City-based psychotherapist who's had clients who worked in adult entertainment.

For some, dancing is temporary, a way to pay for college loans or other bills. Others say they've found their niche.

Dancers at the upscale Rick's Caberet clubs in New York City and Miami can make $100,000 to $300,000 a year - in cash - even with the economic downturn, club spokesman Allan Priaulx said.

Priaulx said 20 to 30 women a week are applying for jobs at the New York club, double the number of a year ago.

Still, analysts say, the industry isn't immune to the economic recession. Business is down an estimated 30 percent across all segments, including adult films, gentleman's clubs, magazines and novelty shops, said Paul Fishbein, president of AVN Media Network, an adult entertainment company that has a widely distributed trade publication and an award show.

"In the past, people have said this industry is recession-proof," said Eric Wold, director of research for financial services firm Merriman Curhan Ford. "I definitely don't see that; maybe recession-resistant."

Strip club dancers and managers said they're drawing in the same number of customers, but fewer high rollers.

"They're not getting the big spenders," said Angelina Spencer, executive director of the Association of Club Executives, a trade group for adult nightclubs. "They're not getting the guys who come in and drop $3,000 to $4,000 a night anymore."

Still, the clubs' operating structure leaves them with low overhead and profit margins of up to 50 percent, Wold said.

Dancers are independent contractors, paying clubs a nightly flat fee depending on how long they work. At the Pink Monkey, for example, dancers who arrive at 7 p.m. Sunday through Thursday pay a $40 "house fee," while women who don't arrive until midnight pay $90. And they keep their tips.

Wold and others say it's almost impossible to estimate the size of the adult entertainment industry because few companies are publicly traded. He does pay close attention to three that are: Lakewood, Colo.-based VCG Holding and Houston-based Rick's Caberet, which own clubs, and New Frontier Media, a Boulder, Colo.-based adult film producer and distributor.

All three are profitable.

Rick's Caberet had $60 million in revenue in its 2008 fiscal year, up from $32 million the year before, Wold said, and he estimates VCG will have $57 million for last year, compared with $40.5 million in FY2007. New Frontier Media generates more than $400 million in consumer buying a year.

Larry Flynt, whose half-billion dollar Hustler empire publishes magazines, produces and distributes films and operates a casino, said he's continued to do well. But he doesn't expect those who are solely in the film business to survive.

"A lot of the small studios are out of business now, there's no doubt about that," Flynt said.

Adult magazines also are struggling along with the larger publishing industry, and have to cut pages like everyone else.

But the economic realities aren't keeping jobseekers away.

Vivid Entertainment's Hirsch said the number of women in his business has doubled in the last couple years, with roughly 800 working as adult actresses. "It is more competitive than I've seen it in 25 years," he said.

That doesn't mean all the newcomers are planning on lengthy careers in the industry.

Stone, who has a bachelor's degree in graphic design, took up dancing four years ago to help pay her student loans. She plans to go to graduate school this year to pursue a master's in education.

Brown, meanwhile, has a ready answer for those critical of her career choice.

"I have job security," she said.

By KAREN HAWKINS, Associated Press

Labels: Caberet clubs, hot trends 2009, Pink Monkey, prostitution, Strip club dancers

As this year's wedding season approaches, you may be finding fewer invitations filling up your mailbox. But don't worry; it's probably not because you've been a bad friend.

The $60 billion a year wedding industry is hurting as much as the rest of the economy, according to a recent Bloomberg article. And with couples spending an average of 24% less on tying the knot than in '07, they are scaling back on everything from the number of guests to meal selections to flowers.

A recent survey done by David's Bridal entitled "What’s on Brides' Minds" reports that 75% of weddings are being downsized in order to save money.

Sandra Chavez, who is getting married in September in Pleasanton, Calif. told Fox News:
"I would be embarrassed to spend thousands and thousands of dollars when people are losing their jobs, homes, cars etc. We understand that this is just one night."

But what happens after that night? The recession is making its mark on marriages, too ... but in somewhat surprising ways.

It's not surprising that a slumping economy puts a strain on most marriages; it's common knowledge that financial stress is one of the top causes of divorce.

But according to a recent article in Yahoo! Finance, 37% of matrimonial lawyers report seeing a decrease in divorcing couples during economic downturns. The reason, the article posits, is because getting a divorce is the "worst thing you can do financially."

"Attorney fees and court costs compete with setting up a second household as the largest expense in a divorce. A simple divorce can cost $5,000 to $25,000 in attorney fees and court costs while the average complex divorce runs $20,000 to $100,000, says Bruce Hughes, an attorney and certified public accountant in Tustin, Calif."

So maybe the frugal thing to do these days is just stay single? Not so fast.

The Economist and CNN are both reporting that matchmakers and online dating websites like eHarmony.com and OKCupid.com are prospering during the recession.

Patti Novak, owner of Buffalo Niagara Introductions, a matchmaking company in Buffalo, New York, and star of A&E's former reality series "Confessions of a Matchmaker" said her business has seen a 30% increase in clients in the last eight months.

Novak tells CNN: "I think that as people go through more difficult times, being alone becomes more difficult…[Even] if they can only afford popcorn and a six-pack on a Saturday night, they'd rather do it with somebody than alone."

Similarly, Greg Waldorf, CEO of eHarmony, reports a 20% increase in monthly registrations from September 2008 to January 2009, compared with the same time period the prior year. He also points out that the number of visits to its site was higher than average on days when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by more than 100 points.

Waldorf told The Economist, simply: "Going through difficult times with someone special is better than doing it alone."

But searching for love during a recession isn't just limited to finding that perfect soul mate. A recent New York Times article reports that sales of romance novels are up as well.

Harlequin Enterprises, the world's leading publisher of romance fiction, reported that fourth-quarter earnings were up 32% over the same period the year before. And while sales of adult fiction were basically flat last year, according to Nielsen Bookscan, the romance category was up 7% after holding fairly steady for the previous four years.

The New York Times reports: "Like the Depression-era readers who fueled blockbuster sales of Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind,” today’s readers are looking for an escape from the grim realities of layoffs, foreclosures and shrinking 401(k) balances."

So whether you're slashing your wedding budget, struggling through a financial crisis with your spouse, or searching for someone or something to help you through these dark times, it's clear the recession is affecting love all around.

Isn't it romantic?

- Allison Louie-Garcia http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_bs304

Labels: hot trends 2009, recession, romance, wedding, weddings

LONDON - Anyone searching for a sepia-tinted rugby photo, antique cuff links or a precious piece of art deco jewelry at the Antiquarius Center had better come fast.

Blink and it will be gone. The dozens of diverse, very British shops on the chic King's Road in Chelsea face eviction to make way for Anthropologie, an American-based chain planning an American fashion emporium, much like the stores it operates in St. Louis and Miami Beach.

"There used to be three antique centers in Chelsea, soon there will be none," said Sue Norman, who has sold hand-painted 19th-Century china here since 1972. "I think it's very sad. It seems the younger generation much prefers American-style things to English style."

The pending loss of the Antiquarius Center is part of the wider, inexorable Americanization of Britain, where rich veins of eccentricity are being snipped as American customs catch on.

Remember the dapper English gentleman? Shoes polished and dressed to the nines? He's often found in blue jeans, an open shirt, and sneakers these days.

And those bad English teeth, neglected for years? Tooth-whitening is catching on, a l'americaine. There has been a surge of cosmetic surgeries as more women - and teenagers - embrace the Hollywood ideal and have their breasts enhanced and wrinkles Botoxed.

Pillbox psychiatry is catching on too, with record numbers gobbling antidepressants, and Britons are turning to fast food at such an alarming pace that obesity among young people is reaching epidemic proportions.

A Prozac-popping, surgically enhanced nation of overweight slobs? Sometimes it seems dear olde England could almost be the 51st state.

The cultural mood is changing along with the physical landscape. Harried British physicians are more likely than ever to prescribe antidepressants, in part because the waiting list for individual psychological therapy under the government-run National Health Service is so long.

The mental health charity MIND reports that roughly 34 million prescriptions were written in Britain in 2007, more than a 20 percent increase over the 27 million prescribed just two years earlier.

Alison Cobb, senior policy director at MIND, said publicity from America is an important reason why growing numbers of British doctors turn to antidepressants as a first resort.

"Part of it is the literature and endorsement message we were getting from the USA," she said. "In terms of the profile, and the brand recognition, with Prozac in particular, there was an American influence in that."

Another factor is the public's increasing desire to seek treatment for depression rather than endure it with typical British stoicism. The days of the "stiff upper lip" seem numbered.

Attitudes toward cosmetic surgery have also evolved. The nonprofit British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons reports the number of operations has more than tripled since 2003, with breast augmentation increasing by 30 percent in the last year alone.

And British men are turning to the scalpel. There were only 22 male breast reductions in 2003, but that figure rose to 323 last year as more men sought a sculpted look.

Much-maligned British dentistry is changing too.

It's long been a national stereotype that many Brits have awful teeth made worse by years of neglect. There's a tendency to postpone trips to the dentist until there is a real emergency, but in recent years the use of cosmetic dental techniques pioneered in America has increased.

Dr. Jonathan Portner, a spokesman for the British Dental Association, said there is still a push to inform many Britons about the need for regular appointments and the harm caused by a sugary diet, but at the same time there has been a new zest for the use of implants, veneers, advanced orthodontics, and tooth-whitening. The goal for many, he said, is a Tom Cruise-style Hollywood smile.

Some of his adult patients did not have orthodontic work when they were young - it was not common in Britain several decades ago - and are having the work done now.

"Things have changed," said Portner. "There is a lot more elective dentistry now. People are more concerned about the appearance of their smile and the color of their teeth and the impact it has on their social life and careers and general confidence. I'm finding my male patients are more vain than the women."

The British are also eating more American fast food. The fast food chain KFC, for one, already has more than 700 chicken restaurants here, with plans to add another 200 to 300 in the next five years. Sales are up 14 percent so far this year despite the economic gloom.

Health officials in Britain blame the popularity of American-style fast food for a startling rise in childhood obesity. One of three British schoolchildren is either overweight or obese by the time they enter high school, said Tam Fry, spokesman for the National Obesity Forum.

"It is basically your U.S. fast food, which is mass processed, available everywhere, and probably comes out of some factory in Illinois," he said. "It is breaking all the rules in terms of fat, sugar and salt."

The trend toward Americanization is not new: In 1925, Time Magazine reported that dollar-rich American financiers had invaded London, infusing the postwar British capital with "American engineering and American habits and customs."

But it's picked up pace in the last decade, said Mark Glancy, a history professor at the University of London who has written about the impact of Hollywood films on the British psyche.

"It's much more Americanized now, because it's so much more affluent," he said. "People's purchasing power has gone up so dramatically in the last 10 or 15 years that they've become very caught up in the American consumer lifestyle."

He said the British infatuation with Hollywood movies - dating back to the silent film era - has shaped the public's view of glamour and style and given Britons a taste for American rebels who challenge authority.

"There are different values at work in American films," he said. "Authority in British films is respected, not challenged - partly because of British film censorship - and American films tend to challenge authority and make heroes out of ordinary people."

Today it is American urban music - primarily rap - that is setting the style agenda for British youth, Glancy said.

"The low-cut baggy jeans, the gold chains, the rap style, really extends to a huge swath of British people under 20," he said. "It's a defiance of middle class values."

It's hard to tell how far the Americanization will go, and whether it's only skin deep, essentially a fashion statement.

After all, church attendance is still very low in Britain compared to the United States, and U.S. sports have not caught on - nothing can dent Britain's passion for soccer, rugby and cricket. Tea remains very popular despite the proliferation of U.S.-style coffee bars.

But in general the move toward American ways is clear, and not just in London but also in the towns and cities of the bucolic British countryside.

Michael Harling, an American who moved to the town of Horsham in West Sussex 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of London, said small, quirky British shops have gradually been replaced by chain stores and burger shops, including many of American origin.

Most upsetting, he said, is the loss of all but one of the town's tea shops.

"It's becoming like America in that you have the same McDonald's and the same stores in every town," said Harling, author of "Postcards from across The Pond."

"It's hard to stop this American invasion because people like fast food and cheap stuff, but it's very sad. If I had wanted that, I would have stayed in America."

By GREGORY KATZ, Associated Press Writer

Labels: american style, british, hot trends 2009, younger generation

WASHINGTON - We're not finished yet. Even today, scientists say that human beings are continuing to evolve as our genes respond to rapid changes in the world around us.

In fact, the pressures of modern life may be speeding up the pace of human evolution, some anthropologists think.

Their view contradicts the widespread 20th-century assumption that modern medical practice, antibiotics, better diet and other advances would protect people from the perils and stresses that drive evolutionary change.

Nowadays, the idea that "human evolution is a continuing process is widely accepted among anthropologists,'' said Robert Wald Sussman , the editor of the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis .

It's even conceivable, he said, that our genes eventually will change enough to create an entirely new human species, one no longer able to breed with our own species, Homo sapiens.

"Someday in the far distant future, enough genetic changes might have occurred so that future populations could not interbreed with the current one,'' Sussman said in an e-mail message.

The still-controversial concept of "ongoing evolution'' was much discussed last week at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago .

It's also the topic of a new book, "The 10,000 Year Explosion,'' by anthropologists Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah , Salt Lake City .

"For most of the last century, the received wisdom in the social sciences has been that human evolution stopped a long time ago,'' Harpending said. "Clearly, received wisdom is wrong, and human evolution has continued.''

In their book, the Utah anthropologists contend that "human evolution has accelerated in the past 10,000 years, rather than slowing or stopping. . . . The pace has been so rapid that humans have changed significantly in body and mind over recorded history.''

Evolutionary changes result when random mutations or damage to DNA from such factors as radiation, smoking or toxic chemicals create new varieties of genes. Some gene changes are harmful, most have no effect and a few provide advantages that are passed on to future generations. If they're particularly beneficial, they spread throughout the population.

"Any gene variant that increases your chance of having children early and often should be favored,'' Cochran said in an e-mail message.

This is the process of "natural selection,'' which Charles Darwin proposed 150 years ago and is still the heart of modern evolutionary theory.

For example, a tiny change in a gene for skin color played a major role in the evolution of pale skin in humans who migrated from Africa to northern Europe , while people who remained in Africa kept their dark skin. That dark skin protected Africans from the tropical sun's dangerous ultraviolet rays; northerners' lighter skin allowed sunlight to produce more vitamin D, important for bone growth.

Another set of gene variants produced a different shade of light skin in Asia.

"Asians and Europeans are both bleached Africans, but they evolved different bleaches,'' Harpending said.

Despite modern medical and technological advances, the pressures that lead to evolution by natural selection have continued.

The massive AIDS epidemic that's raging in southern Africa , for example, is "almost certainly'' causing gene variants that protect against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, to accumulate in the African population, Harpending said.

When he was asked how many genes currently are evolving, Harpending replied: "A lot. Several hundred at least, maybe over a thousand.''

Another anthropologist, John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison , said, "Our evolution has recently accelerated by around 100-fold.''

A key reason, Hawks said, is the enormous growth of the world's population, which multiplies the size of the gene pool available to launch new varieties.

"Today, beneficial mutation must be happening far more than ever before, since there are more than 6 billion of us,'' Cochran said.

The changes are so rapid that "we could, in the very near future, compare the genes of old people and young people'' to detect newly evolving genes, Cochran said. Skeletons from a few thousand or even a few hundred years ago also might provide evidence of genetic change.

"Human evolution didn't stop when anatomically modern humans appeared or when they expanded out of Africa ,'' Harpending said. "It never stopped.''

By Robert S. Boyd, McClatchy Newspapers

Labels: hot trends 2009, human evolution

SYDNEY (AFP) - A list of Jews saved by Oskar Schindler that inspired the novel and Oscar-winning film "Schindler's List" has been found in a Sydney library, its co-curator said.

Workers at the New South Wales State Library found the list, containing the names of 801 Jews saved from the Holocaust by the businessman, as they sifted through boxes of Australian author Thomas Keneally's manuscript material.

The 13-page document, a yellowed and fragile carbon typescript copy of the original, was found between research notes and German newspaper clippings in one of the boxes, library co-curator Olwen Pryke said.

Pryke described the 13-page list as "one of the most powerful documents of the 20th Century" and was stunned to find it in the library's collection.

"This list was hurriedly typed on April 18, 1945, in the closing days of WWII, and it saved 801 men from the gas chambers," she said.

"It's an incredibly moving piece of history."

She said the library had no idea the list was among six boxes of material acquired in 1996 relating to Keneally's Booker Prize-winning novel, originally published as "Schindler's Ark".

The 1982 novel told the story of how the roguish Schindler discovered his conscience and risked his life to save more than 1,000 Jews from the Nazis.

Hollywood director Steven Spielberg turned it into a film in 1993 starring Liam Neeson as Schindler and Ralph Fiennes as the head of an SS-run camp.

Pryke said that, although the novel and film implied there was a single, definitive list, Schindler actually compiled a number of them as he persuaded Nazi bureaucrats not to send his workers to the death camps.

She said the document found by the library was given to Keneally in 1980 by Leopold Pfefferberg -- named on the list as Jewish worker number 173 -- when he was persuading the novelist to write Schindler's story.

As such, it was the list that inspired Keneally to tell the world about Schindler's heroics, she said.

Pryke said she had no idea how much the list was worth.

Schindler, born in a German-speaking part of Austria-Hungary in 1908, began the war as a card-carrying Nazi who used his connections to gain control of a factory in Krakow, Poland, shortly after Hitler invaded the country.

He used Jewish labour in the factory but, as the war progressed, he became appalled at the conduct of the Nazis.

Using bribery and charm, he persuaded officials that his workers were vital to the war effort and should not be sent to the death camps.

Schindler died relatively unknown in 1974, but he gained public recognition following Keneally's book and Spielberg's film.

Labels: hot trends 2009, Keneally, Oskar Schindler, Schindler's List

ROCK HILL, S.C. - Elwin Hope Wilson leans back in his recliner, a sad, sickly man haunted by time.

Antique clocks, at least a hundred of them, fill his neat ranch home on Tillman Street. Grandfather clocks, mantel clocks, cuckoos and Westministers, all ticking, chiming and clanging in an hourly cacophony that measures the passing days.

Why clocks? his wife Judy has often asked during their 49 years together.

He shrugs and offers no answer.

Wilson doesn't have answers for much of how he has lived his life - not for all the black people he beat up, not for all the venom he spewed, not for all the time wasted in hate.

Now 72 and ailing, his body swollen by diabetes, his eyes degenerating, Wilson is spending as many hours pondering his past as he is his mortality.

The former Ku Klux Klan supporter says he wants to atone for the cross burnings on Hollis Lake Road. He wants to apologize for hanging a black doll in a noose at the end of his drive, for flinging cantaloupes at black men walking down Main Street, for hurling a jack handle at the black kid jiggling the soda machine in his father's service station, for brutally beating a 21-year-old seminary student at the bus station in 1961.

In the final chapter of his life, Wilson is seeking forgiveness. The burly clock collector wants to be saved before he hears his last chime.

And so Wilson has spent recent months apologizing to "the people I had trouble with." He has embraced black men his own age, at the same lunch counter where once they were denied service and hauled off to jail as mobs of white youths, Wilson among them, threw insults and eggs and fists.

Wilson has carried his apology into black churches where he has unburdened it in prayer.

And he has taken it to Washington, to the office of Congressman John Lewis of Atlanta, the civil rights leader whose face Wilson smashed at the Greyhound bus station during the famed Freedom Rides 48 years ago.

The apologies have won headlines and praise. Letters have poured in, lauding Wilson's courage. Strangers, black and white, have hailed him as a hero.

But Wilson doesn't feel like a hero. He feels confused. He cannot fully answer the lingering questions, the doubts. Where did all the hate come from? And where did it go?

And the question he gets asked most often: Why now?

"All I can say is that it has bothered me for years, all the bad stuff I've done," Wilson says, speaking slowly and deliberately. "And I found out there is no way I could be saved and get to heaven and still not like blacks."

If you do get to heaven, his wife points out, they're going to be there with you.

------

All his life, Wilson has brandished his meanness like a badge of honor. To mess with Elwin Wilson, he says, meant a fist in your face. Especially if you happened to be black.

"I wasn't ever scared of no one, or nothing," says Wilson, still a tall, strapping man despite his illness.

"You were scared of the ghost of that black man you saw rocking in the chair," his wife reminds him, describing the nightmare several years ago when he furiously beat his fists into thin air.

Wilson narrows his eyes and scowls at her.

Wilson has a pale face, thin white hair and small pursed lips that rarely smile. Even recent fame hasn't encouraged him to be sociable. He doesn't care what people think of him and bluntly declares, "I might like you one day and not the next."

Wilson's 49-year-old son, Chris, describes his deep embarrassment growing up with a father who was always bracing for a confrontation. He would holler at blacks in restaurants, sneer at them in public, brazenly use the N-word in front of Chris' teen friends.

"He was real hard to live with," Chris Wilson says.

The recent apologies have stunned the son as much as anyone, inspiring a genuine pride in his father he never felt before.

For his part, Wilson seems unsure where his racism originated. It certainly wasn't inherited, he says. He was an only child; his parents treated everyone equally, though Wilson says his father, who owned several gas stations in town, once told him that his grandfather and grandfather's brothers had been involved with the Klan.

"I guess it was just the crowd I ran with," Wilson says with a shrug. "It was sport."

Sport was running moonshine with the likes of Junior Johnson, the famed NASCAR driver who honed his skills outracing police on the back roads of Wilkes County, N.C. Sport was gunning his 1955 Chevrolet - his "little red wagon" - in drag races all over the state.

Sport was marching down Main Street behind hooded members of the KKK. And taunting the young black students who, week after week, walked silently to the segregated lunch counters of Woolworth's and McCrory's only to get arrested by police.

Sport was drunkenly releasing flying squirrels in the bedroom where his young wife slept. Or dragging her to a black speakeasy after a day of catfishing, to show off his skills dancing shag.

"He could dance real well," she says. "But I was scared to death."

Sport was heckling the black protesters on Main Street as they solemnly held placards in front of the segregated stores. "Segregation, America's shame," the handwritten signs read. "No color line in Heaven."

And sport was lying in wait for a certain bus to pull into the Greyhound depot on May 9, 1961. Freedom Riders, they were called, black and white students traveling through the South, testing the new desegregation laws at bus station restaurants and restrooms.

Lewis described what happened in his autobiography, "Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement."

"I approached the 'WHITE' waiting room in the Rock Hill Greyhound Terminal, I noticed a large number of young white guys hanging around the pinball machines in the lobby. Two of these guys were leaning by the doorjamb to the waiting room. They wore leather jackets, had those ducktail haircuts and were each smoking a cigarette.

"Other side, nigger," one of the two said, stepping in my way as I began to walk through the door. He pointed to a door down the way with a sign that said 'COLORED.'... The next thing I knew, a fist smashed the right side of my head. Then another hit me square in the face. As I fell to the floor I could feel feet kicking me hard in the sides. I could taste blood in my mouth."

Wilson winces as he reads the passage from an autographed copy of the book that Lewis gave him. "I don't ever remember kicking him," he says. "But I know he got my fist."

For years Wilson didn't know the identity of the man he had beaten, though he says that over time, guilt began weighing heavy on his heart.

It was only recently, he says, that things became clear.

-----

Willie McCleod. Robert McCullough. John Gaines. W.T. "Dub" Massey. Thomas Gaither. Clarence Graham. James Wells. David Williamson Jr. Mack Workman.

These are the men whom Wilson taunted all those years ago. The men to whom he has been apologizing in recent months, asking their forgiveness and blessing.

Their names are engraved on the stools at the counter of the Old Town Bistro on Main Street. The former McCrory's is now a family-run restaurant that bustles with hospitality and charm. Waitresses greet regulars by name and pour endless cups of coffee for patrons, black and white.

And yet it is impossible to walk in and not feel transported in time.

Sepia-toned photographs hang on the walls, images of young black men at this very counter, where "temporarily closed" signs went up as soon as they sat down.

Outside, a historic plaque marks the spot where nine Friendship Junior College students took an extraordinary stand on Jan. 31, 1961, choosing jail rather than bail after being arrested for ordering hamburgers and sodas. Convicted of trespassing and breach of peace, the students endured a month's hard labor in a chain gang rather than allow civil rights groups to pay $100 each for their release. The case of the "Friendship Nine" drew national headlines and soon the policy of "jail, no bail" was being emulated all over the South.

Today, the eight surviving members are hailed as celebrities every time they walk in the door. "They're our history," says a young white waitress one recent afternoon as she serves coffee to Massey and McCleod. She tells them it's on the house.

The men, now in their 60s, smile as they recall those heady days — how young and foolish they were, how filled with conviction and pride. They describe weeks of nonviolent training with the Congress of Racial Equality, a Gandhi-inspired civil rights organization that taught them not to respond when men like Wilson dumped soda on their heads, or stubbed lit cigarettes into their skin, or flung ammonia at the counter.

And they describe the swirl of emotions they feel, even now, when they return to this place. There is joy and sadness, says McCleod, who owns a plumbing and septic business. Joy at what they accomplished. Sadness that there was such hate.

Says Massey, a retired minister who works with special education students: "There is always a small part of me goes back to that day."

The men say they never thought about their tormentors as individuals with real lives and real names. They forgave them a long time ago.

So it has been strange and somewhat discomforting to suddenly be confronted by a real name, a real man, a white bigot who wants to repent.

An unease creeps into their conversation when it turns to the subject of apologies. There have been several in recent years - when Mayor Doug Echols officially apologized to Lewis during the congressman's January 2008 return to Rock Hill, when the York County Council apologized to the Friendship Nine at the dedication of the plaque. And now Elwin Wilson.

His apology, offered in the restaurant in January, was facilitated by the local newspaper, The Herald, which Wilson called after reading an article about the Friendship Nine.

Not all the men agreed to meet with him. Privately, some questioned his motives, his timing, his sincerity.

David Williamson, for one, had no qualms. He understands a man wanting to put his affairs in order before meeting his maker. "I think it is a testament to how the world has changed and how hearts have changed," Williamson says.

McCleod went too, saying it was not for him to judge another man's heart. Massey demurred, saying he couldn't take time off work.

It was at the January meeting that Wilson finally discovered that the student he had beaten at the bus station had gone on to become a congressman - a discovery that eventually led to his well-publicized apology to Lewis in Washington.

Mack Workman, another member of the Friendship Nine who now lives in New York, watched the apology on television, listened as the congressman praised Wilson's "raw courage." And yet Workman felt dissatisfied.

"In the back of my mind I just keep thinking, `Why now?'"

-----

Wilson says he gave up drinking in 1976. He is less sure of when he gave up hating blacks.

"By the time I went to college I had dropped all that jumping on them," he says. "I still didn't want to marry one or anything like that."

That was in the 1970s when Wilson was in his late 30s. Over the years, he had drifted through different jobs - construction foreman, welder, millwright. He had joined the Air Force where, in Biloxi, Miss, he began associating with blacks as equals for the first time. And he had returned to Rock Hill, where he enrolled in the Friendship Junior College under the GI bill.

He saw no irony in the fact that the college was black. It was convenient, he says. And times had changed.

And yet there was a hardness in Wilson's heart that hadn't changed - a hate that boiled over frequently, especially when it came to race.

In the 1980s, when the local cemetery began burying blacks alongside whites, Wilson became so incensed he threatened to disinter the bodies of his parents. When a black family bought a house in the neighborhood around the same time, Wilson accosted the real estate agent and demanded that the sale be rescinded.

He yelled racial insults whenever his grandson, Christopher, whom he raised, talked on the phone to his black wrestling buddy. When a garden ornament - a stone statue of a black boy in straw hat - was vandalized in Wilson's front yard, he strung up a black doll with a noose around its neck, and threatened to use an AK-47 against a neighbor who complained.

As late as 1999, when his Baptist pastor began encouraging more black participation, Wilson got so upset he left the church.

Wilson says now he is ashamed of his behavior. He has since apologized to his grandson and to the neighbor he threatened. And he has been surprised by how liberated the apologies have made him feel. People don't understand the burden of carrying all that hate, he says.

The burden only grew as Wilson got older and began to put his affairs in order, buying burial plots for himself and Judy, dolefully pondering the afterlife.

"I'm going to hell," he told Clarence Bradley one day in January, when, feeling poorly after yet another doctor visit, he stopped by his friend's auto paint and body shop on Eastview Road. The two have long shared an interest in antiques and cars.

Slumped on the sofa, surrounded by mementoes from the 1950s - a vintage soda machine with bottles of Coca Cola and Orange Crush, dusty photographs of old cars and old times - Bradley had never seen his friend so sick or so low.

Bradley is a solidly built man of 62 with a serious manner and firm opinions about the urgent need for more people to invite the Lord into their lives.

"If you truly ask forgiveness and you mean it in your heart, you can be saved," he told Wilson. "You just have to let the Lord guide you."

They talked about it some more. Another friend, a part-time preacher, walked in. For the next five minutes the three men bowed their heads in prayer.

"Only God and Elwin know what's in his heart," Bradley says. "But I can tell you something in that man changed that day."

Wilson says he felt it too, a profound sense of peace, a feeling he was no longer doomed.

"It's not like I stopped cussing or anything," he says. "But I didn't feel the same hate."

A week later, Wilson spent the day watching the inauguration of the nation's first black president. He saw the local newspaper article about the Friendship Nine as they watched too. He knew exactly what to do.

-----

Wilson's two-car garage is an ode to another era, stacked with old soda and pinball machines, vintage phones, an old gas pump, trophies from his drag-racing victories, photos of his father's gas stations in the 1950s.

Nailed to one wall is the "colored" sign that once hung over the restroom in the bus station. For years Wilson thought about selling it, or even donating it to a museum. Lately, he decided he must keep it. He needs to look at it now and then, he says, "to remind me what I did wrong."

In his living room is another reminder, a framed newspaper photograph from 1961. It shows a stylishly dressed black man wiping egg off his hat, surrounded by a bunch of sneering white youths. The muscular young man who threw the egg smirks for the camera.

"That was me," Wilson says, staring intently at the 48-year-old image, trying to remember the specifics of the day. He can't. There were so many like it.

"I am a different man now," he says.

He leafs through some of the recent letters that have poured into his mailbox and starts reading them aloud.

"When I read about your courageous apology, I was moved to tears," wrote a woman from North Carolina. "Your action in seeking forgiveness and the others in forgiving you is now a blessing for others."

"I am African-American and I just want to tell you how grateful I am to hear your story and to know that there are heroes like you in the world," wrote a woman from California. "Your apology touched my heart."

Not everyone was so moved. Wilson says he received one threatening phone call from a man accusing him of betraying the KKK. Another accused him of being a liar. His son, who accompanied Wilson to Washington, still receives racist text messages.

"It hasn't been easy," Wilson says with a sigh.

On this chilly Wednesday evening Wilson had been scheduled to speak at a local black church. But he has been feeling ill all day, so he calls the pastor at the last minute to say he can't make it. His health has to come first, he explains.

Putting down the phone, Wilson complains about being worn out by all the demands. He never thought one man's apology could trigger so much interest, so many invitations and calls. He has been asked to attend several events with Lewis, including one in Selma, Ala., but he is not sure if he will go. He has to consider his safety.

Wilson finishes his liver and okra and turns on his flat-screen television. He says he's tired of talking about the past. He just wants to watch his favorite true-crime show, "Nancy Grace," and catch the latest on the Florida toddler whose mother has been charged with her murder.

His wife says he is obsessed with the case. He follows each twist and turn, every day.

Wilson says he feels like crying when he thinks about the little girl and her terrible fate. "There's just so much bad in the world," he says, shaking his head. "Makes you wonder where it all comes from."

It's 8 p.m. Outside, Wilson's German shepherd, Heidi, barks into the night. Inside, a hundred clocks note the hour, chiming and clanging and vibrating through the house, drowning out the television as they mark the passing of time.

By HELEN O'NEILL, AP Special Correspondent

Labels: Elwin Hope Wilson, Freedom Riders, Friendship Nine, Hollis Lake Road, hot trends 2009, racism