Month: November 2020

Imitation is the best kind of flattery. All creative people, whether they be writers, artists, dancers, singers or actors, know that. Think about the performers on a TV show like “The Voice,” who sometimes perform the song of a judge they are targeting. Sometimes, it is imitation that gets them on the team of their dreams. It is the same with poetry.

Once you decide to write a poem, it often feels as if you are on a quest for the perfect word, the perfect image, or the perfect idea. In many ways a poem is a treasure and the writing of a poem is a dangerous treasure hunt. You never know what you might happen upon once you start writing.

Let’s take a look at a kind of poem called the cento. Cento is a 16th-century Latin word, meaning “patchwork.” A cento is crafted from “stolen” or found sources. Each line in a cento is taken from a source and putting these lines together weaves them into a patchwork of lines.

Many people think of the cento as a sort of “collage-poem.” A collage is made by combining images, texts and textures of different mediums and sizes. Similarly, a

Until the coronavirus pandemic, their meetings took place quietly, every day, discreet gatherings in the basements of churches, a spare room at the YMCA, the back of a cafe. But members of Alcoholics Anonymous and other groups of recovering substance abusers found the doors quickly shut this spring, to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

What happened next is one of those creative cascades the virus has indirectly set off. Rehabilitation moved online, almost overnight, with zeal. Not only are thousands of A.A. meetings taking place on Zoom and other digital hangouts, but other major players in the rehabilitation industry have leapt in, transforming a daily ritual that many credit with saving their lives.

“A.A. members I speak to are well beyond the initial fascination with the idea that they are looking at a screen of Hollywood squares,” said Dr. Lynn Hankes, 84, who has been in recovery for 43 years and is a retired physician in Florida with three decades of experience treating addiction. “They thank Zoom for their very survival.”

Though online rehab rose as an emergency stopgap measure, people in the field say it is likely to become a permanent part of the way substance abuse is treated.

HONG KONG — First, it was travelers and university students bringing the coronavirus back to Hong Kong from Europe and the United States. Then, sea crews and bar patrons were the ones spreading infections.

In the latest wave, a large cluster appears to have started in ballroom dancing halls that are popular with older women, then progressed to other dancing venues and banquet-style restaurants.

For much of the year, every time Hong Kong beat back a surge of coronavirus cases, new problems would pop up weeks later, in other places and among other populations.

Similar patterns hold true in other parts of Asia that are still fighting day-by-day battles to keep their Covid-19 rates from spiraling out of control. And the latest waves of infection are proving harder to trace than earlier ones were — just as winter forces more people indoors and raises the risks of transmission.

Japan and South Korea are experiencing some of their highest single-day tallies since the pandemic began, driven largely by diffuse clusters in the Tokyo and Seoul metropolitan areas. Although still below its peak for the year, Hong Kong is facing a surge on par with its summer wave, driven in large part

Girls born extremely prematurely may have an increased risk of depression from childhood through young adulthood.

Using Finnish birth and health registries, researchers studied 37,682 people diagnosed with mild, moderate or severe depression, comparing them with 148,795 healthy controls. The children were born between 1987 and 2007, and their average age at diagnosis was 16.

After adjusting for parents’ age, depression, substance abuse, smoking, socioeconomic status and other factors, they found that in girls, but not boys, younger gestational age was strongly associated with a diagnosis of depression in childhood, adolescence or young adulthood. Girls born before 28 weeks’ gestation were at roughly three times the risk for depression as those born at full term. After 28 weeks gestation, the association was no longer significant. The study is in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

The authors suggest that the limited age range in the study of 5 to 25 years means that it was primarily early onset depression that was detected, and this may underestimate the effect in boys, who are typically diagnosed with depression at older ages.

“This is a huge sample,” said a co-author, Dr. Andre Sourander, a professor of child psychiatry

At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, with travel restrictions in place worldwide, we launched a new series — The World Through a Lens — in which photojournalists help transport you, virtually, to some of our planet’s most beautiful and intriguing places. This week, André Vieira shares a collection of images from Portugal.

The Barroso, in northern Portugal, is part of the historical province of Trás os Montes — “behind the hills,” in Old Portuguese. It’s one of the nation’s most isolated areas, known for its harsh climate, rough terrain and stunning beauty. Its residents are sometimes dismissively (and wrongly) portrayed as simple and unsophisticated. The truth is that their profound attachment to their land and traditions make Trás os Montes one of the most culturally unique parts of the country.

Isolation has made the traditions here particularly rich and diverse. Ancient Catholic rites have combined with the cultural vestiges from the many other peoples who, over several centuries, have found their way to the region: Visigoths, Celts, Romans, the soldiers of Napoleon’s army.

To survive the unforgiving geography, residents of the Barroso have, over time, developed a complex farming system that relies on the collective management of the water,