Day: December 16, 2021

This holiday season, a local pediatrician is being peppered with questions from parents on protecting their vaccinated children from COVID: Is it safe to get together with loved ones? How can we reduce our risk?

“Every decision you make as a parent is really weighing those risks and benefits. So, indoor activities with masks off are going to be are your highest risk,” said Dr. Christina M. Brown, a pediatrician with Kaiser Permanente in white Marsh, Maryland.

Brown said going to outdoor concerts or parades is a little higher risk if you and your children are closer to others.

“But still, an outdoor concert is going to be lower risk than an indoor concert,” she said.

Higher-risk activities include going to indoor restaurants or participating in contact sports. More extended periods with people outside of the home can also increase risk.

“So, for example, sleepovers are going to be one of your highest risk activities for kids. If you have masks off and prolonged time together, as well as multiple meals together — those are going to be higher risk,” she said.

Some activities considered to be medium risk include cookie decorating, making gingerbread houses or other craft activities, or shopping indoors while wearing a mask.

Brown’s ideas on how families can get together and celebrate safely include visiting outdoor light displays, going to an outdoor Christmas tree farm, spending time outside around a campfire, or taking a walk.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants everyone eligible to be vaccinated for COVID-19 (five years old and up) and against the traditional flu (six months old and up).

The CDC has not approved children younger than 16 for COVID-19 booster shots after their initial vaccination. Those ages 5 to 15 can receive a two-dose series with a three-week break between shots. They are considered fully immunized two weeks after their second dose.

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While the vaccine is highly effective at preventing COVID-19 and reducing the risk of severe illness and death, there are still breakthrough cases when sick or asymptomatic people might pass on the virus to others unknowingly.

“So we still want to make sure that you’re weighing those risks and benefits in every situation. Wearing your mask when you can, social distancing, hand washing and also testing is extremely important.” Brown said.

Getting tested is vital for anyone with signs or symptoms — even if they’ve been vaccinated.

“You should make sure that you do not have Coronavirus,” Brown said. “At Kaiser Permanente, we have some drive-through testing as well as home test kits that you can do. So everyone should speak with their physician if they have any questions at all about it. That’s what we’re here for.”

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Concerned neighbors at a community meeting Monday ripped apart a city plan to send homeless people from the Mass and Cass open-air drug market to the now-vacant 200-room Best Western Roundhouse Hotel.

Residents and business owners said they’re worried that the location of the hotel in the middle of the Mass and Cass crisis would be a public safety issue, that the services would extend from temporary to permanent, and that a new center would go against the goal of decentralizing services from the area.

“Everybody on this call sympathizes with the struggles that these people at Mass and Cass are facing every day, but the reason we’re even on this whole call in the first place is due to this whole over-centralization of services,” said Christopher Corey, who owns property along Northampton Street, “Which is basically what using the Roundhouse as a service center is doing all over again.”

The area can’t afford to add any more services there, he added during a meeting of the South End, Newmarket, Roxbury Working Group on Addiction, Recovery, and Homelessness.

“It’s just very confusing to me why we’re reevaluating this in the first place,” Corey said, later adding, “This just has disaster spelled all over it.”

Mayor Michelle Wu’s administration is working with Boston Medical Center to turn the now-vacant hotel into a multi-pronged treatment center.

It would include up to 60 housing beds and a medical triage area. People who have taken drugs could be monitored there under medical supervision. Staffers would work to connect people to more permanent services.

This plan would try to “stabilize the most challenging patient population, which is the folks who are in the encampments right now,” said Miriam Komaromy, medical director of the Grayken Center for Addiction at Boston Medical Center.

“They’re the ones who have the greatest challenges facing them, and they’re obviously the ones for whom the existing services have not succeeded in helping them to move out of the area,” she said. “So we designed this model with the specific goal of meeting these folks where they are in this neighborhood, and then having a clear plan for how to move them on from here.”

But nothing will change until the open-air drug trade is stopped in the area, said Sue Sullivan of the Newmarket Business Association.

“The fact they want to triage them right here and then go right back out on the streets … they’re not going to get better until that stops on the street here,” she added.

Resident Yahaira Lopez said she’s “really frustrated” by the city’s response to this Mass and Cass crisis, and what she said was a lack of attention to the community’s needs.

“This is a major safety issue,” she said. “Where is the civilian plan? Where is the safety plan?”

Wu responded to the neighbors’ concerns, emphasizing that “there cannot be an open-air drug market.”

“This is truly about transforming the area,” the mayor said, “Working with stakeholders to beautify, put resources into the streets and small businesses, and change that whole situation.”

This week, the city plans to announce the timeline for taking down encampments and transporting people to the Roundhouse Hotel.

You want to give the gift of local music. But maybe people on your list don’t have CD players or aren’t going to shows or love maple syrup a little more than music. No problem.

Here’s all the best, weirdest, most awesome merch from local(ish) artists. And yes, there’s rock ’n’ roll maple syrup in this gift guide!

Gene Dante’s ‘DL/UX’ on cassette

Still living with 1985 tech? Gene Dante has you covered. Just pop this $11 cassette of Dante’s new album into your Sony Walkman or the tape deck of your Dodge Caravan. Don’t have a Walkman or Caravan? Well, splurge on the $28 40-page glossy art and lyric book of “DL/UX” created by the Secret Bureau of Art & Design, which comes with the album on CD (vinyl editions arrive in 2022). Walkman, boombox or streaming through your phone, this album delivers all the glam rock, power pop, dark ballads and dirty disco you need this holiday season. genedante.com

‘Juno’ transcription book

Lyle Brewer’s solo guitar album “Juno” came out of sobriety and snow. In 2015, during a winter of epic storms, the newly sober Brewer wrote a tune for every bit of inclement weather that rolled through Boston. It’s an amazing album and you can play it. Not play through speakers but actually play it on your guitar. This transcription book features standard notation and tablature, tempo markings, fingerings and a collection of wonderful illustrations. lylebrewermusic.com

Jittery Jack steam shave, beard trim or classic razor bald fade

Shave and haircut, two big items on anybody’s holiday gift list, right? North Shore native and rockabilly king Kevin “Jack” Patey has a barber shop in Manchester-by-the-Sea. Why not gift somebody a clip from that man that knows a little something about rock ’n’ rock and great hair (see Elvis, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran)? While you’re there, punch in a tune on the jukebox full of 45s or go head-to-head with a pal on the vintage Slot Car Set. jacksbarbershack.com

Blood Lightning ashtray

Smoke ’em if you got ’em. Blood Lightning is Boston’s latest supergroup (members of volume warriors Set Fire, Sam Black Church, Gozu and Worshipper make up the lineup). No better way to celebrate the band’s stoner metal meets fire rock (that’s a genre I just made up!) than with this $8 ashtray. Don’t smoke? Smart move. Store your guitar pics, random Canadian coins and keys in it. bloodlightning.bandcamp.com

Kid Gulliver’s maple syrup

What, did you think the syrup thing was click bait and we’d never get to it? The sweetest little indie rock band on the scene adds even more sugar to your life. The legit Vermont gold comes from trees on singer/guitarist Simone Berk’s property. Pick up a pint for $15 or a quart for $30 at Kid Gulliver’s Dec. 17 gig at Somerville’s Crystal Ballroom. kidgulliver.com

‘Bedford Falls’ T-shirt

All your loved ones hate music. It’s a sad state but warm their hearts with this “It’s a Wonderful Life” T-shirt from your favorite non-profit art house theater, the Brattle. And remember each gift of art touches so many other lives. When art isn’t around it leaves an awful hole, doesn’t it? brattlefilm.org

 

VENICE LIDO, Italy — By going behind the cameras for her feature writing-directing debut with Netflix’s “The Lost Daughter,” Maggie Gyllenhaal has recharged her career.

Freely adapted from the pseudonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante’s novel of the same name, “The Lost Daughter” has been racking up awards and praise since it premiered at September’s Venice Film Festival, where Gyllenhaal, 44, was awarded best screenplay.

“The Lost Daughter” is expected to place in Motion Picture Academy and Critics Choice nominations for star Olivia Colman and Gyllenhaal’s direction and screenplay adaptation.

As to how this career change happened, “I read these (Ferrante) books years ago and I thought, ‘This woman is so (expletive) up’ — and then a minute later I related to her. Am I (expletive) up? Or is this an experience that nobody is talking about?”

In “The Lost Daughter,” Colman’s Leda Caruso, a Cambridge professor, is on holiday in Greece, where her history as an imperfect mother is revealed in flashbacks while her interactions with visiting vacationers threaten violence.

For Gyllenhaal, Ferrante’s writing reveals “these secret truths about a feminine experience in the world, spoken out loud.”

“I wondered: What if instead of sitting in a room with this book, what would happen if you had to sit with strangers or your mother and have these secrets revealed?

“Where most people have a huge spectrum of things inside them, often we as women are presented with this fantasy version of ourselves. We wanted to show the overwhelming love and joy — and Leda is full of love — that’s a mom.

“But also to do this dangerous thing by opening the truth — of a degree of darkness, perversity, desperation and terror that is also being a parent.

“I would be shocked,” she added, “if there wasn’t one mother who thought, ‘I would like to walk out the door.’ Here (in Leda) is someone who did. I hope the movie asks whether you like her. Or find it comforting that, ‘I wish I had these thoughts.’”

Her relationship with Ferrante, Gyllenhaal clarified, is restricted. “I don’t know who she is. We spoke only through letters. I wrote her a letter first to get the rights for the book and she said, ‘The contract is void if you don’t direct it.’ That was scary!

“I took it as this cosmic vote of confidence from across the universe. She read the script and gave me notes. One was: Take out the sex scene, which I did.

“And she said, ‘It’s important for Leda not to be crazy. If she’s not crazy, we can love her and care about her.’”

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“The Lost Daughter” opens Friday.