Tag: Winter 2014
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Life at the table
Isabel AzevedoPorto, Portugal In the days when human time was organized differently and every hour had its meaning, meals were community events, mostly family events, where people met to socialize as well as dine. Someone took the task of preparing a meal seriously, paying attention to details, with dedication and without hurry. Feasts and simple…
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The unloved gut
Fergus ShanahanIreland “My brain, it’s my second favorite organ” pronounced Woody Allen.1 For many, it is the seat of the soul, the source of creativity and much more, whereas the heart represents passion, courage, and character. Fondness for other organs relates to warmth and honesty in the eyes, clarity in the skin, beauty in musculature,…
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Reading poems, saving lives
Dean GianakosVirginia, United States Men and women who tout the value of poetry like to refer to a stanza in William Carlos Williams’ famous love poem, “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”, written in 1947: It is difficultTo get the news from poemsYet men die miserably every dayFor lackOf what is found there.1 If what the physician-poet…
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Scarification: Harmful cultural practice or vehicle to higher being?
Kenneth Felsenstein Bethesda, Maryland, United States Scarification is the act of “covering, disguising and transforming the body”1 by creating wounds in one’s own flesh in order to cause indelible markings. It is perhaps one of the most misunderstood body modification procedures done today, largely perceived in Western society as a tabooed and harmful cultural practice.2 Superficially…
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Life at the table
Isabel Azevedo Porto, Portugal Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 1412 – 1416 Herman, Paul, and Johan Limbourg Musée Condé, France In the days when human time was organized differently and every hour had its meaning, meals were community events, mostly family events, where people met to socialize as well as dine. Someone…
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The unloved gut
Fergus Shanahan Cork, Ireland “My brain, it’s my second favorite organ” pronounced Woody Allen.1 For many, it is the seat of the soul, the source of creativity and much more, whereas the heart represents passion, courage, and character. Fondness for other organs relates to warmth and honesty in the eyes, clarity in the skin,…
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Lament to measles
Nazan Bilgel Bursa, Turkey I am the sorrowful, dull winter sun Resting silently on the naked branches of the trees Warming and soothing Villages, roads, and mountain stones. I saw a village far away Behind the mountains, you couldn’t know So described the poet Ceyhun Atuf Kansu himself when he saw so many dying…
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From Merdle to Madoff (Charles Dickens)
They found him sprawled out in his bath, ‘lying in it as in a grave or sarcophagus . . . the white marble at the bottom of the bath veined with a dreadful red . . . on his side an empty laudanum-bottle and a tortoise-shell handled penknife–soiled, but not with ink.’ ‘Separation of jugular…
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Schubert, Schumann, and the Spirochete
Their names sound Germanic and are somewhat similar, as are their portraits. They wrote beautiful music and rank high among the great composers of the romantic era. To confuse their names would constitute an unforgivable crime, especially in the eye of music lovers. Yet in 1956 fallible East German authorities issued a stamp featuring an…