"Broken Windows" : : "Broken Letters"

      There may be an analogy between the “broken windows” crime philosophy and those half hour daily lessons they give Alzheimer’s patients in numbers, reading, writing, and simple organizing tasks.   [See post of Dec. 17, 2014.]

      Police found that arresting street guys for accosting cars at stop lights, expecting  money from drivers for wiping their windows, helped prevent larger crimes.  Repairing broken windows helps prevent a sense of deterioration creating an atmosphere that further destruction or theft is OK.

       “Take care of the little stuff that’s wrong, and the bigger stuff gets taken care of too.”

       When the “little things” that were wrong with the Alzheimer patients . . . the lost facility of  adding numbers, reading words, signing their names, putting things in rows, writing today’s date . . . when these elementary things improved, gradually they could remember better, and attend more to how they dressed, and interact more with others, and even return to former favored activities, gone for years.

       [Please visit this follow-up post of Dec. 21, 2014.]