What a big deal this [is]: bigger than Christmas, without the presents, the carols, baubles, the tree and the nativity, the focus is unashamedly on food and family.

Not for nothing is it also called Turkey Day, a nod no doubt towards its real origin, Goose Day, the traditional English festival giving thanks for the harvest (and giving a goose to you landlord, which seems sort of the wrong way round).

I've repeatedly seen Thanksgiving called the quintessentially American feast. It is, in more ways than one. The by-word of modern chefs all over the rest of the world is Escoffier's principle "fait simple": keep it simple, let the main ingredients' purity and flavour speak for themselves. In Escoffier's case, through the medium of lots of butter.

In America less is not more, but simply less. Why have one flavour when you can have 50? Every sandwich shop establishes the principle that there's nothing wrong with a chicken sandwich that blue cheese, bacon, mayonnaise, mustard, fried onions and a bit more cheese cannot put right.

Thanksgiving is the ultimate expression of this philosophy. Everywhere I am confronted by a recipes of the wildest, heaviest fantasy - curried creamed onions; glazed sweet potatoes with marshmallow; turkey with oyster gravy (with whole oysters); green beans in mushroom soup sauce; iced cranberry relish with raw onion. Never has a cooking column been so misnamed as the New York Times' "the minimalist" with its suggestion for sliced Brussels sprouts acting as the bread in a sandwich of ham, caramelised onion and mustard - each dish an overwhelming cacophony of flavours that crowd together on a single table of sensory overload.

It is perhaps a fitting paean to bounty, and an immigrant mixture of foods and culinary styles. I am not sure what it does to the digestive system.

What of course Thanksgiving has going for it, just like Christmas, is annual repetition from an early age. Americans feel very emotional about some of these melanges just because of what they evoke. I am sure that if, once a year, for the first 12 impressionable years of life, you get to cuddle up with the dog in front of an open fire, be spoilt by grandparents, watch lots of TV, go to bed late and happy was accompanied by jellied eels in cherry custard then this food too would serve as a Madeleine to rock your heart.

But before you start throwing pumpkin pies, I am not really having a pop at my new home. I just am suspicious of doing it the way it has always been done. As much as the spicy smells of Christmas evoke a very happy childhood for me, I still got so fed up with cooking a traditional Christmas dinner that some years back I revolted. Given that Christmas was the one time that one was excepted to spend time cooking, it seemed (for someone who likes cooking) a bit of a wasted opportunity to spend ages over an essentially boring meal, that no-one else in the family was particularly enthusiastic about either.

So for a couple of years we had Chinese, Thai and Malaysian food and enjoyed it a lot more than turkey and Brussels sprouts.

But I must admit to being rather excited by Thanksgiving. So what to do about my fear of being overwhelmed by all those flavours? It'll be an evening meal as I have to be alert during the day in case Courage the turkey pardoned by the president is revealed by Mr Obama's opponents to be an enemy of the state.

But then I will be offering a bit of not so much deconstruction as simple separation - the first course: curried squash and carrots in coconut pumpkin sauce (I must start experimenting as soon as I have filed this) with James Beard's Sweet Potato Bread followed by turkey stuffed a la Julia Child with cider and vermouth gravy, sweet corn and potatoes - roast or mash, I haven't decided yet - and a British touch to the mix: Yorkshire pudding, followed by another great American tradition: the guests bring desert. A very happy Thanksgiving to you all.

THE PATH  TOWARD PARTNERSHIP: The U.S.-China relationship is shaping up to be one of the most important bilateral relationships of this century. Instead of fear-mongering or putting the America on a confrontational footing toward China, as many neoconservatives suggest, a recent report from the Center for American Progress explains that growing interconnectedness between the two countries means the basis of U.S.-China policy should be on finding areas of cooperation and encouraging China to take on more responsibility on the international stage. The Obama administration has recognized this fact and instead of emphasizing areas of disagreement, Obama "sought at every meeting to focus on common ground, hoping for what he once described as a clearing away of 'old preconceptions or ideological dogmas' so that nations will be more likely 'to cooperate than not cooperate.' This strategy is a conscious rejection of the Bush Administration's approach." Liu Jiangyong, a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, concluded that "just by showing that he'll listen, Obama has won credit that will give the U.S. a boost (in the region)." Furthermore, most of the coverage of the trip overlooked the many notable agreements that were reached. On climate change, the U.S. and China surprisingly announced a comprehensive plan for cooperation that was "much more ambitious in scope and depth" than anticipated. The U.S. and China both committed to strengthening the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty at a conference next spring -- a treaty that is critical to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. On North Korea, China supported U.S. efforts to bring them back to the bargaining table. And finally, the trip saw a major expansion of bilateral relations, especially in developing military to military ties. There is much more to do, but as Nina Hacigian, Asia expert at the Center for American Progress, explained, "[N]o one said it would be easy to cooperate with China's leaders -- or thrilling."

~thinkprogress.org

I finally got around to finishing this gritty little novel by the author of the acclaimed “Raise the Red Lantern," Nanjing resident Su Tong. The novel will probably stick with me for some time, albeit perhaps for the wrong reasons. Here is how it begins:

The main character in the novel, Five Dragons, is an orphaned vagabond from semi-rural provincial life, and he becomes a clerk in the Feng family's urban rice shop and marries widower Feng's loose daughter, Cloud Weave, who is pregnant by a thug. Things go steadily downhill from this point forward. In the words of Publisher’s Weekly, “Su Tong employs rice, symbol of Chinese civilization and heaven's bounty, to daring, iconoclastic effect throughout the novel: a dead baby tumbles out of a new rice shipment; Five Dragons, who becomes the Feng clan's domineering patriarch, uses rice to sexually disfigure prostitutes whom he murders in revenge for the venereal disease he has contracted; a boy suffocates his baby sister in rice because she squeals on him. Spinning a plot featuring blackmail, adultery, incest and scandal, Su Tong creates visceral drama that moves rapidly in Goldblatt's fluid translation. The dialogue is raw, the sex is related with violent candor. There's nothing pretty in Su Tong's picture of poisoned family and social life, but there's much that's beautiful in the way he portrays it-with seething energy and anger.”

This is not happy reading, and I certainly would not recommend it to anyone with an even moderately weak stomach. The ugly realities of families in decline that are depicted are relentless, gut wrenching, and sometimes of dubious literary value, at least to this reader. On the whole, however, one can only admire the consistency of tone and imagery that Su Tong employs throughout the work.

Obama is spending weeks trying to decide what is best for American policy in Afghanistan. In a way, I am happy to see this foot dragging, and I would like it to continue. In fact, I would like the decision to go away, and see all of those troops come home where they belong. Soldiers were sent to Afghanistan immediately after 9/11, for good reason. They were looking for Al Qaeda, and trying to destroy their supporters in Afghanistan, the Taliban. To a great extent they had considerable success in the mission. Unfortunately, Dick Cheney and George Bush decided to be the reckless cowboys their Texas upbringing instilled in them, so they created fake reasons to lie themselves into another belligerent war front, in Iraq. It was the mistake of the century, and they have never yet paid the price for their crimes. More than 4000 dutiful soldiers have paid the ultimate price, not to mention the tens of thousands who were permanently injured, and the families who were left in pain and sorrow.

Meanwhile, Bush took his eye off the ball in Afghanistan, and the country has now become an ungovernable mess of poppy crops and corruption. We do not belong there, and can gain nothing from our presence there.

Yet, the warmongers of this country, mostly the Republican Party, are intent on seeing Pres. Obama commit another 40,000 American troops to Afghanistan, in a war that has no purpose, no rationale, and no possible end in sight. As for Al Qaeda, it is well known that fewer than 100 Al Qaeda members remain in Afghanistan. The remainder are mostly in Pakistan, and scattered around the globe in their own secret planning cells, perhaps even in a neighborhood near you. I have a feeling from the delay in Obama’s making the decision to commit these troops that he has privately concluded that it is the wrong decision to make. However, to call for an end to the war means he will face the outrage of the war-mongering Republicans, under the leadership of Dick Cheney, Fox news, Rush Limbaugh, and the rest of the nut cases who dominate the so-called minority party. Did I forget to mention Sarah Palen? These are people whose mouths drip daily with blood like insatiable vampires. Their idea of supporting the troops is to commit as many soldiers as possible into harm’s way. After all, here at home in their comfy mansions, they have nothing to lose.

Please Mr. Obama, forget the 2010 and 2012 elections for now. Make the right decision -- bring all the troops home, spend the hundreds of billions of dollars you will save by rebuilding our broken nation, and thereby earn the Nobel Peace Prize you were so surprised to receive. You will make the warmongers angry, but you will make peace loving citizens around the world, not to mention decent rational humans, regain their confidence in you and the country you represent. If it costs you an election, at least you will go down in history as the most heroic loser ever.   ~Richard

None of Vladimir Nabokov’s earlier novels quite prepared the world for the one that opens: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul." Originally brought out in Paris by a publisher who specialized in erotica, Nabokov's "Lolita" (1955) is now considered by many readers to be the most beautifully composed novel of the mid-20th century.

The story of Humbert Humbert and poor Dolores Haze was followed, a few years later, by "Pale Fire" (1962), the most formally intricate and playful of Nabokov's books. It consists of John Shade's long, rather traditional poem of that title, edited with extensive annotation by his erstwhile colleague Prof. Charles Kinbote. Its opening couplet is another of Nabokov's striking first lines: "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane." 

In a posthumously (unfinished) now published work by Nabokov’s son, "The Original of Laura" was never intended to be shuffled into any sequence whatsoever. As we have it, the novel revolves around two characters: The promiscuous Flora and her obese husband, Dr. Philip Wild, "a brilliant neurologist, a renowned lecturer [and] a gentleman of independent means." One of Flora's lovers, we discover, has written a roman a clef about her entitled "Laura." He is described as " a neurotic and hesitant man of letters, who destroys his mistress in the act of portraying her." We also learn that in her girlhood the young Flora was pursued by her stepfather, a Mr. Hubert H. Hubert:

"She was often alone in the house with Mr. Hubert, who constantly 'prowled' (rodait) around her, humming a monotonous tune and sort of mesmerizing her, enveloping her, so to speak in some sticky invisible substance and coming closer and closer no matter what way she turned. For instance she did not dare to let her arms hang aimlessly lest her knuckles came into contact with some horrible part of that kindly but smelly and 'pushing' old male." In the sections dealing with Wild, the scientist tells us that he has taken to playing a game in which he imagines various parts of his body dying and dropping away. According to Wild, such "auto-dissolution afforded the greatest ecstasy known to man." Hence this novel's subtitle: "Dying Is Fun."

In many of Nabokov's late works, he seems to be reflecting on his own life and earlier fiction. For instance, in his last completed novel, "Look at the Harlequins!," he focused on a writer whose bibliography closely resembled his own. Nabokov appears to be playing a similar game here, offering riffs on "Lolita" and his somewhat underappreciated novel about literary biography, "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight." One passage even recalls the wistful, haunted tone of the famous short story "Spring in Fialta":

"Every now and then she would turn up for a few moments between trains, between planes, between lovers. My morning sleep would be interrupted by heartrending sounds -- a window opening, a little bustle downstairs, a trunk coming, a trunk going, distant telephone conversations that seemed to be conducted in conspiratorial whispers. If shivering in my nightshirt I dared to waylay her all she said would be 'you really ought to lose some weight' or 'I hope you transferred that money as I indicated' -- and all doors closed again."

Makes me want to go back to Nabokov and rediscover his writing genius. ~Richard

Beijing - President Obama and his entourage visited the Forbidden City in splendid isolation Tuesday, admiring the centuries-old palace complex that was off limits to Chinese visitors for the day.

"Special foreign affairs" explained the closure to the public, in a curt notice taped to a window of the police car that blocked the entrance to the symbol of China's splendid past. Disappointed would-be visitors were left to guess that the president of the United States was coming.

The vague wording of the notice was in keeping with the official tone that the Chinese authorities have adopted for Mr. Obama's first visit here. Tuesday's People's Daily, the official organ of the ruling Communist party, for example, relegated coverage of the president's activities in Shanghai to the bottom left-hand corner of the front page.

It splashed coverage of the funeral of a former deputy prime minister across the top of the page.

"They don't want this trip to be about Obama," says Russell Leigh Moses, a political analyst here. "They want it to be about China's rise."

On a day that mixed high affairs of state with simpler tourism, the president got his only chance to speak directly to the mass of the Chinese people. Alongside Chinese President Hu Jintao, he made televised comments at the end of the two leaders' three hour meeting.

No displays of charm allowed

On his three-day trip to China, Obama will not be afforded the opportunity he has enjoyed on other foreign tours – such as when he addressed a rapturous crowd of 200,000 in Berlin – to project his personable charm.

This is not altogether unsurprising. Chinese political protocol and tradition leave little room for rock stars, or even for much direct contact between leaders and their people. Chinese citizens do not expect to get close to their top leaders.

The current crop of Chinese rulers seems especially attached to the pomp of major speeches and parades in preference to the give-and-take of debate with the citizenry.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, sometimes known popularly as "Grandpa Wen," has been known to display the common touch; it was he who waded into earthquake stricken villages in Sichuan last year to comfort grieving families and reassure them that their government cared.

Hu doesn't warm to spontaneity

Mr. Hu, however, generally seems highly uncomfortable on the rare occasions on which he is shown talking to ordinary people. So uneasy is he with unscripted public events that he has reversed the policy of predecessors such as Jiang Zemin and Deng Xiaoping, and does not give press conferences. Tuesday's "joint press conference" with Obama was in fact simply an opportunity for the two leaders to read prepared comments. No questions from the assembled journalists were permitted under rules the Chinese hosts imposed.

White House officials say they did not push to give their boss the kind of opportunities for public interaction in China that he has relished elsewhere.

"Once we had internally settled on wanting to do a town hall [meeting], that is the only outreach event we discussed and worked out with the Chinese hosts," said a senior administration official.

A carefully screened 'town hall'

Asked whether the Chinese side had deliberately curtailed Obama's chances of showing how popular he is here, deputy Foreign Minister He Yafei insisted that "Obama's agenda was agreed by both sides," and that the town-hall event in Shanghai on Monday offered the US leader an opportunity for "exchange with the Chinese public."

That meeting, with about 400 students, was televised only on local TV, however, and only around 7,000 people in China managed to log on to the live streamed version carried on the Internet, according to ConnectSolutions, the firm that helped the State Department organize the webcast.

The US president has one more chance to make his views known to a wider audience than the senior officials with whom he has scheduled meetings on Wednesday. He will be giving an interview to Southern Weekly, one of the bolder Chinese newspapers that has regularly clashed with the authorities, in what is clearly a sign of US support for a freer flow of information in China.

OK is without doubt the best-known and widest-travelled Americanism, used and recognised even by people who hardly know another word of English. Running in parallel with its popularity have been many attempts to explain where it came from — amateur etymologists have been obsessed with OK and theories have bred unchecked for the past 150 years.

Suggestions abound of introductions from another language, including the one you mention. Others include: from the Choctaw-Chickasaw okah meaning “it is indeed”; from a mishearing of the Scots och aye! (or perhaps Ulster Scots Ough aye!), “yes, indeed!”; from West African languages like Mandingo (O ke, “certainly”) or Wolof (waw kay, “yes indeed”); from Finnish oikea, “correct, exact”; from French au quais, “at the quay” (supposedly stencilled on Puerto Rican rum specially selected for export, or a place of assignation for French sailors in the Caribbean); or from French Aux Cayes (a port in Haiti famous for its superior rum). Such accidentally coincidental forms across languages are surprisingly common and all of these are certainly false. Many African-Americans would be delighted to have it proved that OK is actually from an African language brought to America by slaves, but the evidence is against them, as we shall shortly learn.

more........
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-oka1…