Phantom Gourmet Food Festival

    Saturday, September 24, noon - 4 pm

    Lansdowne & Ipswich Streets

    617-635-2120

    Ages 21+

    $40/ in advance; $50, day of event

    The Phantom Gourmet presents a giant afternoon Food Festival to take place in the streets, bars, and clubs around Fenway Park. Ticket holders will have access to several food samplings, entrance to the streets and bars, and admission to nightclub parties. Drinks are not included with tickets. Also, if you want to fit in, Phantom Gourmet suggests wearing something purple.

      The 4th annual Fashion Show

      Saturday, September 24，8 pm

    Cyclorama at Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont St., Boston 02 116

    617-426- 5000

    $50- $175

    As part of Boston Fashion week 2011, the event presents the 4th annual Fashion Show, which will show some of the best designers in the fashion industry. Contestants, Jery Tam, Maya Luz, and Keith Lissner (The Fashion Show, Bravo TV) also plan to be present.

    Regent Theatre's 95th Anniversary Celebration

    Sunday, September 25, 4 pm

    The Regent Theatre, 7 Medford St. , Arlington 02476

    781-646-4849

    All ages

    $10/ in advance, $15 / day of show, $5 / kids under 12

    The Regent Theatre presents a show in honor of their 9Sth anniversary. Entertainment for the evening will include musicians, local singers, dancers, storytellers, comedians and famous bands. The show will be hosted by Dan Foley of the Airborne Comedians.

    An Evening with Donald Rumsfeld

    Monday, September 26, 7 pm

    The Historic Old South Meeting House, 310 Washington St., Boston 02108 617-482- 6439

    $50

    WRKO AM680 presents An Evening with Donald Rumsfeld, featuring a talk by the former US Secretary of Defense. Rumsfeld will discuss details of his book Known and Unknown , including the events surrounding the September 11attacks and other topics involving the United States government. Tickets are $50 and include an autographed (签名的) copy of Known and Unknown.

    Starbucks will stop using plastic straws from its stores globally by 2020, in a nod to the growing push for businesses to be more environmentally friendly. The Seattle-based company said on Monday it will instead use straws made from other materials, and lids designed not to need straws. McDonald's also recently said it would switch to paper straws in the UK and Ireland by next year, and test alternatives to plastic straws in some US locations. In February, Dunkin' Donuts said that it would refuse polystyrene foam (塑料泡沫) cups from its stores by 2020.

    Environmental activists have been pressuring businesses to ditch plastic straws because they can end up in the ocean and hurt marine life. The push gained great support after a video in 2015 showed rescuers removing a straw from a sea turtle's nose in great detail. Local governments have also been looking at the issue. Last week, Seattle's ban on single-use plastic straws and utensils in food service outlets took effect, and Starbucks says it already offers alternative straws there. Similar proposals are being considered elsewhere, including New York and San Francisco.

    While straws have become a highly-concerned issue, they make up only about 4% of the plastic trash by number of pieces, and far less by weight. Straws add up to only about 2,000 tons of the nearly 9m tons of plastic waste that hits waters each year.

    Crossing your legs is an extremely common habit; most people don't even notice that they're doing it when they sit down. While you may find it comfortable to sit with one knee crossed over the other, it might be causing health problems that you are not aware of.

    A study published in Blood Pressure Monitoring stated that sitting with your legs crossed can increase your blood pressure. The reason this happens is because the blood in your legs has to work against gravity to be pumped back to your heart, crossing one leg over the other increases resistance, making it even harder for the blood to circulate. This causes your body to increase your blood pressure to push the blood back to the heart. You won't feel any immediate effects, but if you sit for long periods of time it's important that you take note of how long you have your legs crossed for. You shouldn't have your legs crossed for more than 15 minutes, and it's important that you get up and walk around at least once every hour.

    Crossing your legs can also lead to neck and back pain. Ideally, it's best for our bodies to sit with our feet planted flat, hip width apart, on the floor, but it's not easy to maintain perfect posture all day at the office.

    You also might notice that when you sit with your legs crossed for long periods of time your feet and legs get tingly(刺痛的) or have the feeling of being asleep. While the feeling of discomfort may only last a minute or two, repeatedly crossing your legs until they feel numb can cause permanent nerve damage.

    So next time you sit down, try to get yourself in the habit of sitting with both of your feet on the floor. Not only will it help your posture and stability, but it will also save your health in the long run.

    Shop with Your Doc is part of a broader and still growing movement in US medicine to shift the focus away from simply treating disease toward caring for the whole person. It is meant to help people make educated, healthy choices one grocery cart at a time. Across the country, hospitals are setting up food banks and medical schools are putting cooking classes on the curriculum. Nonprofits are connecting medical centers with community resources to ensure that low-income Americans have access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

    For centuries, Western medicine's mission was to cure disease. But over the past generation, two generation, two significant trends are of concern to the medical community, says Timothy Harlan, executive director of Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans. Healthcare costs began to soar (激增), and relatively inexpensive, poor-quality food became more common. "There's a very straightforward link between people improving their diets and improving the condition that they have," Dr. Harlan says.

    The connection drove the medical and nonprofit communities to rethink their approach to health. What emerged was the concept of the "social determinants of health"—the notion of taking into account the biological, physical, and socioeconomic circumstances surrounding a patient. A healthy person isn't just someone who is free from disease, the theory goes; he or she also enjoys "a state of complete mental, physical and social well-being."

    The question the medical community now faces is how to get patients—especially low-income families—to recognize these determinants and make it possible for them to eat and live healthier. In Boston, medical experts responded by creating an on-site pantry (食品室) at Boston Medical Center. Since its founding in 2002, the pantry has evolved into a kind of nutrition center where primary care providers at BMC send patients for food. Today the pantry, which gets 95 percent of its stock from the Greater Boston Food bank, hosts free cooking classes and serves about 7,000 people a month. The Greater Boston Food Bank has also launched its own initiatives, striking partnerships with four community health centers across the state to offer free mobile produce markets. The organization also helped develop toolkits (软件包) that map local pantries, markets that accept government food vouchers, and other resources.

    At Tulane in New Orleans, Harlan is leading the development of a curriculum that combines medicine with the art of food preparation. His philosophy: Doctors who know their way around a kitchen are better at helping their patients. And empowering patients to take charge of their own diets is one way to help them deal with the incredible costs of health care, Harlan says. The curriculum has since been adopted at 35 medical schools around the United States. Chipping away at bad habits is a good place to start getting patients to think about the choices they make for themselves and their families, say Dr Maureen Villasenor, the Orange County pediatrician (儿科医生).

    Mr. Brown was a writer. He wrote many books, and he thought they were quite good. He lived in the city. One morning, he went to a small town near the city to visit a friend. He went there by bus. When he got to the town, he saw a bookshop not far from the bus stop. As it was early, he decided to go in and have a look. There were many books in the shop. He was very happy that all the books in the shop were written by him. "Where are other writer's books?" he asked the man in the shop. The man looked up at him and answered. "Oh, they are all sold out."

    I was ten when my father first sent me flowers. I had been taking ballet lessons for four months, and the school was giving its yearly performance. As a member of the beginners' chorus group, I was surprised to hear my name called out at the end of the show along with the leading dancers and to find my arms full of red roses. I can still feel myself standing on that stage, seeing my father's big smiles.

    Those roses were the first of many bunches accompanying all the milestones in my life. Getting all those roses was wonderful, but they brought a sense of embarrassment. I enjoyed them, but I also felt they were too much for my small achievements.

    Not for my father. He did everything in a big way. Once, when mother told him I needed a new party dress, he brought home a dozen. His behavior often left us without money for other more important things. Sometimes I would be angry with him.

    Then came my 16th birthday. It was not a happy occasion. I was fat and had no boyfriend. And my well-meaning father furthered my suffering by giving me a party. As I entered the dining room, there on the table next to my cake was a huge bunch of flowers, bigger than any before.

    I wanted to hide. Now everyone would think my father had sent flowers because I had no boyfriend to do it. Sweet 16, and I felt like crying. But my best friend, Jenny, whispered, "Boy, you're lucky to have a father like that."

    As the years passed, other occasions—birthdays, awards, graduations—were marked with Dad's flowers. Those flowers symbolized his pride, and my success. As my fortunes grew, my father's health became worse, but his gifts of flowers continued until he died. I covered his coffin with the largest, reddest roses I could find.

    Often during the dozen years since, I felt an urge to buy a big bunch to fill the living room, but I never did. I knew it would not be the same.

    Then one birthday, the doorbell rang. I was feeling blue because I was alone. My husband and my two daughters were away. My 10-year-old son, Tommy, had run out earlier with a "see you later". So I was surprised to see Tommy at the door. "Forgot my key," he said. "Forgot your birthday too." He pulled a bunch of roses from behind his back.

    "Oh, Tommy," I cried. "I love flowers!"