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Some stoves are made for Thanksgiving. My stove in New York is one of them. It has six burners and two ovens, which began to coöperate, more or less, in 2002, after five years of stealing each other's heat—with the result that the people who love sweet potatoes (my daughter, for one) and the people who can't manage Thanksgiving without mashed potatoes (my son-in-law) are finally happy, along with the ones who demand Brussels sprouts (my husband) and the ones (I won't mention them) who ask for string beans. I am the only person at my Thanksgiving dinner who insists on braised red cabbage, but then I am the cook with six burners and two ovens, and I always get it.
I bought my stove with Thanksgiving in my head. I imagined large birds, basted and browning nicely at four hundred and twenty-five degrees in one oven, while apple and pear cakes rose, untroubled, at three hundred and fifty in the other, and the stock for my bourbon gravy simmered on top, surrounded by pots and pans of everyone's favorite fixings. There was some discussion at home about the price of my new stove, but I didn't listen. By my logic, I was saving money, having dropped my long-standing campaign to replace the painted-plywood kitchen shelves with serious maple cabinets. The stove arrived in the fall of 1997, and broke down for the first time a month later, on Thanksgiving Day, leaving sixteen irritable people eating tuna sandwiches and cranberry sauce at two long laundry tables from the building's basement which I had squeezed diagonally, end to end, across my dining room, disguised under my mother's creamy Belgian linens, circa 1930. The emergency repairman appeared in February. With my stove functioning again, I had what would now be called a transformative thought: Thanksgiving but not Thanksgiving. No one would get to vote on the Brussels sprouts or veto the cabbage. No one could say "What? No turkey?" if my corn-bread-and-pecan stuffing came spilling out of a couple of juicy capons instead of a turkey that was bound to be stiff by the time it was carved and on a platter. No one could possibly sniff if the sweet potatoes turned out to be butternut squash—so much lighter—cooked in crème fraîche and maple syrup, with a dab of chipotle sauce. No one would be disappointed if the pies and cakes transmogrified into an apple charlotte out of Julia Child, or even a plum pudding, spared that Christmas, when the family voted bûche de Noël, albeit with a side of hard sauce.
The next morning, I got on the phone and reassembled my Thanksgiving table for the last Thursday (a traditional touch) in February, at eight o'clock (a civilized one). Everyone called it the best Thanksgiving dinner they had ever eaten, perhaps because the people gathered at my table that slushy February night included an English historian, an Italian judge, a German politician and his wife, and two French journalists. They were all fine sources in my writing life, but none were what I would call heavily invested in the menu offered up at the beginning of a brief Pilgrim-Indian rapprochement that, if it lasted at all, was mainly owing to the good manners of a party of Wampanoag braves, who, having diligently gorged on wild turkey for three days at the Pilgrims' harvest feast (by all accounts, in early October, 1621), burned off the calories deer-hunting in the Cape Cod woods—thus keeping the Plymouth colony in meat for the long winter. The capons were splendid, though not, as my family said, something you would have found lounging on a rock in seventeenth-century Massachusetts—which probably explains why, when I suggested capon again in November, I was voted down.
A few months ago, when my husband and I were driving to Paris from the farmhouse in Umbria where we write in the summer, we stopped in the village of Saint-Père-sous-Vézelay, in Burgundy, for dinner at the restaurant L'Esperance, and over a drink at the bar afterward I mentioned those annual family votes to the owner and chef, Marc Meneau. He snorted at the word "turkey." He was bewildered, he said, by America's devotion to turkey. "Un plat bas," he called it. "Pas du tout festival." He would have voted capon—a plump Bresse capon that had spent the last two months of its life reclining on cushions in a private cage and eating soft, "secret" food—but when I pressed him he allowed that if he were forced to serve a turkey he would stuff it with petit-suisse cheese and sautéed apples, simmer it sous vide for an hour, and then roast it, with little basting splashes of Perrier to brown the skin. I wrote it all down.
I am what you might call an amateur of Thanksgiving. My family prefers the phrase "regrettably hospitable," but I would add strategically hospitable, because Thanksgiving dinner has turned out to be the stealth weapon of my reporting life. Everybody knows something about Thanksgiving, though not necessarily what we eat or why we eat it. The word has entered the global lexicon; like Mickey Mouse, Elvis, and Obama, it opens doors. I discovered this as a young reporter, attempting to interview a Berber woman in a tent encampment a few hundred miles into the western Sahara, where I was pursuing a misbegotten story about nomadic women's rights. Her name was Fatma, and she was squatting beside a charcoal brazier, cooking her family's dinner and answering my questions about oppression with the terse forbearance of an earthling suddenly confronted with a chatty alien, when I thought to ask her what was in her pot. She said it was goat—or, rather, pointed to a goat tethered outside her tent—and, smiling for the first time, asked if Americans ate goat at "the big feast of the hunters and the Christians." We talked for an hour, through my increasingly bewildered (male) interpreter, during which time I learned that there was no word for "feminism" in her language, or, for that matter, for "recipe." But she knew about the big feast. I stayed for the goat. It was very tasty.
By now, I can say that most of the people whose lives I've invaded since then, notebook in hand, sooner or later asked me about the big feast, and, if they didn't, I told them. (The exceptions tend to be politicians, who, being not much given to what I would call a fruitful exchange of thoughts, will talk about food only if it's their food and reflects highly on their status: Silvio Berlusconi, say, enthusing over the white truffles slathered on his pasta, or François Mitterrand, whose bird of choice was a two-ounce songbird, plumped for a month on figs and millet, drowned in Armagnac, and then roasted and eaten whole, beak optional, with your head draped in a linen napkin—the better to inhale the perfume of steaming brandy.) The subject of food, and kitchens and cooking, can lull even the most reluctant and suspicious people into conversation, and when I add Thanksgiving, where the food is not only plentiful but familial and friendly, to that conversation, they will shed any lingering doubts as to my good intentions and tell me what I came to hear. But it also means that at the end of the day, when my notebooks are full, I tend to be so overcome by the sense of friendship I have engineered—or so grateful, or perhaps so guilty—that I invite everyone to join my family for a Thanksgiving dinner. Anytime. Anywhere. Sometimes they come. Once, our doorman buzzed on Thanksgiving morning to say that my "guests" had arrived from Italy. I opened the door to a rustic couple whom I had last set eyes on years earlier, writing about a group of Communist peasants with a dairy coöperative (you turned in your cow, and got back a stock certificate with her name and her snapshot on it). They had recently sold their farmhouse to a rich German, left the Party, and, never having been on a plane before, decided to take me up on my invitation. They picked at the food. The next night, I made spaghetti.
I inherited my Thanksgiving strategy from my mother. It is said that families produce a good cook, or a good gardener, only every second generation, but, given that I am a good cook and my daughter a spectacular one, I have to assume that we are correcting a generational imbalance—making up for the fact that my mother, whose talents lay more in pruning rosebushes than in stirring pots, was a terrible cook and my grandmother worse. My mother's one culinary achievement was a bland but passable Thanksgiving dinner. (Her stuffing was onions, celery, white bread crumbs, and a pinch of salt.) But it was memorable compared with what usually passed for culinary excitement in Providence, Rhode Island, in the Eisenhower fifties—a place where ordering Frenched chops at the butcher was considered flashy or, as my mother put it, "something they do in New York." And part of what made it memorable was the collection of hungry foreign people—professors from Brown, musicians in town for a concert, war-refugee doctors my father had met on his hospital rounds—who sat in our dining room then, praising my mother's stuffing as something exotic and American, or, you could say, authentically bland. It was a beautiful room, a room for feasting—the result of years of assaults on estate sales and hapless dealers who, as she liked to say, arriving home with a twenty-five-dollar cache of Georgian silver or an eighteenth-century Connecticut corner cabinet, "didn't know what they had." After she died, I moved almost everything in her dining room to my apartment in New York, hoping to move the spirit, if not the stuffing, of those Thanksgivings with them. My husband is an anthropologist, and it took a while for all that mahogany and silver to settle in with the Sepik River ancestor masks and assorted Pacific totems in their new room, but, once they did, I wrote "Thanksgiving" on a manila folder and started clipping recipes.
My stuffing began as a recipe from the Times, circa 1974: onions, green bell pepper, and celery hearts, sautéed in butter, mixed with corn bread and some crumbled toast, and bound by a cup of chicken broth and a few raw eggs, according to the yellowed page that is now disintegrating between my daughter's Indian-pudding recipe and one for parsnip-and-pear purée. (Thanksgiving that year was "Southern," the paper said, "plus a few trimmings of European inspiration"—which may or may not explain the red cabbage I started making then.) The stuffing has expanded over the years, with my kitchen confidence, to accommodate sausage, orange juice, parsley, thyme, sage, and an extravagant amount of toasted and chopped pecans. It is still expanding, but in 1976, when I got out my mother's stuffing spoon and served my first Thanksgiving dinner at her table, I followed every recipe I used down to the quarter teaspoon. Clearing out a closet the other day, I discovered a box of snapshots from that Thanksgiving, taken by my friend and, at the time, downstairs neighbor Jane O'Reilly, who had appeared at my door at nine in the morning, bearing fresh coffee cake to fortify us for a long day's cooking. One of those pictures is on my desk now; I am basting what looks like a twenty-pounder, balanced precariously on the open door of the oven that preceded my new stove. There are children and dogs underfoot, and grownups hovering with pot holders and coffee cups in their hands. We are all laughing. Thanksgiving looks easy, and it probably was, back in those early feminist days before the idea of the perfect meal invaded the heads of otherwise accomplished women, convincing them that voluntary servitude in the kitchen was the secret of their liberation.
At last count, I have cooked Thanksgiving dinner in seven countries, starting with Morocco. The year was 1968. The city was Meknes. The bride—me—was cooking without benefit of silver, recipes, or a table. And the groom, deep in field work with a brotherhood of hospitable Sufi curers and musicians who danced their patients into trance in amiable, if occasionally bloody, exorcistic rituals, had decided, by way of reciprocation, to introduce them to Thanksgiving. Our larder, when I got this news, consisted of bread, Boulaouane wine, and several sacks of eggplants, Meknes being some months into an eggplant season that threatened to last all winter—and did. I had never tasted an eggplant in Providence, or, for that matter, at Vassar, where I went to college. My first experience with eggplants was in New York, at graduate school, and they were still as exotic to me as my mother's stuffing was to the Europeans at her Thanksgiving table. I had already made grilled eggplant, tagine with eggplant, couscous with eggplant, soup with eggplant, and even eggplant stuffed with eggplant, and whenever I was tired of eggplant we would drive to Rabat for a steak smothered in pizzaiola sauce—the specialty of a restaurant called La Mamma, which was frequented that fall mainly by diplomats who were also tired of eggplant but not, in my experience there, by Sufi exorcists. So I made do.
I concocted an eggplant flan so thick with onions, cheese, and spices that the taste of the eggplant faded, though not, I have to admit, into the taste of red cabbage or sweet potatoes or Brussels sprouts. Everybody said they liked it. They said they liked my chicken, too—the only poultry within a hundred miles was chicken—and even my stuffing, which I had put together with onions, dates, and flatbreads from the local market. We sat in a circle on the floor (around a large brass platter that, along with a rug, two cushions, and a straw-filled mattress, amounted to the family furniture) and scooped up everything with our fingers, just like Pilgrims and Indians, and drank a good deal of mint tea and told stories. I would count that Thanksgiving as my first success. If the Sufis were a bit bewildered by my household arrangements—men and women eating together, sharing the best parts—they were too kind to say so. I was known thereafter, and not without affection, as the woman who chopped up bread and put it inside her chickens instead of leaving it on the platter, to wrap around the eggplant and sop up the sauce.
Over the next several years, I managed to cook some semblance of Thanksgiving dinner whenever I was off reporting, trying to win the hearts and minds of unlikely people. The worst was a dinner I put together in Södertälje, Sweden, in the fall of 1975, for the families of three Yugoslav workers from the local Saab-Scania factory. It wasn't the food that failed. My cranberry (well, lingonberry) sauce was good, and the turkey, fresh from my babysitter's boyfriend's mother's oven, across the street, even better. But my guests, as history soon showed, didn't really think of themselves as Yugoslavs. They thought of themselves as Serbs, Slovenes, and Croats, and, while they had always been agreeable and even effusive when we talked alone, they were not in the habit of breaking bread together. The conversation was, putting it nicely, strained; it flowed with the slivovitz that the men had brought, and each of them brought two bottles. They were close to brawling when the Slovenian's wife opened a box of homemade pastries—flaky, buttery mille-feuilles layered with thick whipped cream. Peace returned to the kitchen table in my borrowed flat and lasted until, flushed with compliments and brandy, she smiled at the Serbs and Croats and said, "Slovenians make the best cakes."
Then, there was the Thanksgiving dinner I cooked for a family of Ugandan-Asian refugees in Southhall, an outlying London neighborhood where, in the early seventies, tens of thousands of South Asian immigrants lived. I shopped with the lady of the house—who, having vetoed a turkey of suspicious provenance (Harrods), had ordered her own from a halal butcher—and cooked in her tidy kitchen, monitored by her son, an excruciatingly pious eleven-year-old who, on his imam's instructions, had stayed home from school to glare into my pots and pans, hoping to catch his mother and me in some unpardonable culinary indiscretion. (I repressed the urge to sneak some bourbon into his mother's roasting pan, to capture the last sticky bits, and then into the pot of gravy, where all the alcohol would have evaporated in eleven minutes at a brisk simmer: a trick I had learned from a New York neighbor who had learned it in A.A.) My daughter, who was in London with me—"missing a whole month of important peer-experience," her nursery-school teacher had protested—still remembers the perfume of Gujarat spices rubbed into turkey skin, and I came home with the recipe that transformed my dull creamed spinach into a marvellous saag paneer that I still serve, though not, admittedly, with Thanksgiving turkeys.
But none of my foreign Thanksgivings were as strange as the one I cooked in 1990, on the Rue du Cherche-Midi, in Paris, where I kept an apartment-cum-office for sixteen years. It wasn't the food. I had shopped for a week. There were no mice sheltering behind the stove, as there had been the Thanksgiving before. (They roasted, sadly, with the turkey.) And I had discovered a table leaf in the cave, which gave me the space to invite fourteen people, if some of them brought chairs. The problem was my guests and their finicky European palates. The teen-age son of some French friends sat down, announced that he ate only "white things," and helped himself to the lion's share of turkey breast and mashed potatoes. My daughter's boyfriend of the moment, a German student she had acquired on her last vacation, explained that he ate only "separate things"; he tackled his dinner dish by dish, disappearing into the kitchen after each one to wash his plate. My husband insists that the banker at his end of the table actually divided his meal into three mysterious sections—on the same plate but not touching—and ate them separately. I hadn't noticed. By then, I was at the glacier on the Rue du Bac, buying vanilla ice cream.
The problem with cooking Thanksgiving dinner away from home is never just the shopping, though that can drive you crazy: buttermilk (for corn bread) in Italy? chipotles in France? fresh pecans in Germany? The problem is what I would call the local culinary aesthetic. (Reinold Kegel, who cooked at the American Academy in Berlin when I was a fellow there, read up on the big feast and, inspired by the idea, and perhaps by the availability, of pumpkins, produced a Thanksgiving dinner that, barring the turkey, was almost entirely orange: pumpkin soup, pumpkin purée, pumpkin pie.) The fact is that a lot of Europeans are like my daughter's friend. They find it at best peculiar, and at worst revolting, to be expected to sit down to a groaning board of Thanksgiving dishes and, more to the point, to eat them smushed together into one big glorious taste—preferably under enough gravy to insure that no food, as it were, sits alone. They like their tastes one at a time. Try going to a Chinese restaurant with a Frenchman or an Italian; he will order separately, guard his plate, and refuse to share his lemon chicken in exchange for a helping of your Hunan beef. One Frenchman I know even cleans his fork with an alcohol wipe between courses, and I remember a Thanksgiving in Umbria where two of my neighbors paled when I handed them pumpkin ravioli and turkey on the same plate. "In Italy, we eat our pasta first," one of them said tartly—after which they swept their turkey back onto the serving platter, and proceeded to do just that. ****
Last month, thinking about that Thanksgiving, I called up Ron Suhanosky, who owns the restaurant Sfoglia, across the Park from me in New York, and asked him how he cooked "Italian" Thanksgivings for his customers. He said he didn't. He took his family to Nantucket; brined a turkey for four days; stuffed it with hazelnuts, "drunken prunes," and sweet Italian sausages; and generally "put a spin on Thanksgiving that's Italian." Homemade mostarda. Raw-kale salad. Brussels sprouts with crispy mortadella. A crusted sweet-potato sformata (he described it as "kind of a sweet-potato quiche") with béchamel, bread crumbs, Parmesan, and cream. And for dessert, his wife's department, Italian bread pudding or a panna cotta. It sounded good—all but the part about "no gravy, just a drizzle of olive oil."
Then, there is the problem of whose turkey you are cooking. A good French turkey is either a wild turkey, shot on the wing, or a turkey raised especially for Christmas—which amounts to the same thing: eight or nine pounds at most. And in Paris those eight pounds can set you back a hundred and fifty dollars, because your butcher knows that at Christmas the French will spend as lavishly on fish, fowl, caviar, foie gras, and champagne as we do on stocking stuffers and prime ribs. Last summer, I asked my friend Catherine McGurn, a French dentist married to an American lawyer, if she had ever found a turkey big enough to satisfy the Americans in the Paris office of her husband's firm. She consulted a notebook in which she had recorded the menus, and travails, of her Paris Thanksgivings, and told me, "Once. 1991. Seventeen pounds." She said that the Americans ate everything in sight, down to the last cranberry and sweet potato, while the French friends whom she'd invited "took these little plates" and nibbled politely at everything except her stuffing, which they wolfed down, recognizing it as the same stuffing (known grandly as La Farce) they eat at Christmas: pain de mie mixed with pork sausage, ground veal, crumbled chestnuts, foie gras, and truffles. The McGurns live in Rome now, a city that, from the point of view of Thanksgiving, makes Paris seem like Plymouth. Last winter, finding herself in Paris the day before a belated holiday dinner, she flew home with a hundred Belon oysters in an ice bag in her suitcase, along with some good French cheeses, rillettes, pâté de campagne, and a couple of blocks of foie gras from Les Landes. The lawyers in Rome loved it. No one noticed that there was no bird.
Last summer, I decided to try an other Thanksgiving dinner in Italy. Don't ask why I was even thinking about Thanksgiving—in Italy, in the heat, with a deadline looming and the garden outside my windows full of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, zucchini, basil, garlic, arugula, baby lettuce, and a dozen other fresh, ripe, lovely Italian things that I can only dream about, at home in New York, in November. Or how I was going to cook it, given that my Italian stove is even more temperamental than my New York stove ever was. True, it also has two ovens, and the bigger one—call it the turkey oven—also stopped working in 1997; the difference is that my Italian oven still sits there, twelve years later, waiting for the technician who can figure out how to fix it. As for my stovetop, it is made entirely for pasta. There is a huge burner in the middle—which ignites with a whoosh of flame that laps at the handles of even the tallest pots and has to be coaxed down into submission before you can turn around—surrounded by four tiny burners whose only possible purpose is simmering pasta sauces that have already taken an hour or two to heat.
Still, it would be my first summer Thanksgiving anywhere. I was determined to cook it. The only summer Thanksgiving I had ever been to, let alone cooked, had taken place in 1974, at Mary McCarthy's house in Castine, Maine, to celebrate Richard Nixon's resignation. Mary was a serious hostess and a splendid cook, and, more to the point, the only other person I knew who served Thanksgiving dinner out of season. Even her stuffing was splendid, despite the fact that there wasn't a trace of corn bread in it. On the other hand, she was not given to sharing recipes. (Years later, when we were neighbors in Paris, I ate it again at one of her November Thanksgivings, and asked her to write it down. She smiled sweetly and said, "No, I don't think so.") But the thing I remember most about her Castine Thanksgiving was how easy she said the marketing had been: she had called a farmer, ordered a sixteen-pounder, and three days later it was there.
The bad thing about good memories is how cheerful and optimistic they can leave you feeling. I was going to find the finest turkey in Italy—or, at least, a turkey as good as hers—and with that in mind I got in the car, drove two hours from my house to a parking lot under the Borghese Gardens, and made my slow way, by taxi and foot, through Rome to the Via della Maddalena, where I asked Angelo Feroci, arguably the city's best meat and poultry purveyor, to find me a sixteen-pound turkey for July or August. Feroci looked astonished. "Impossible," he said. His turkeys were not only Christmas turkeys—"Come back in December," he told me—they were Italian Christmas turkeys, which is to say, "younger and smaller and better" than anything the French ate. Then I remembered: most good butchers in Italy frown on large turkeys; it is a matter of reputation. They call them "poor food," because birds like that are usually raised in feed yards—not to sixteen pounds but to fifteen or sixteen kilos, which translates as thirty-five pounds of old Tom turkey—after which they are sliced thin, packaged, and sold cheaply in supermarkets as petti di tacchino. (Those slices are so ubiquitous that even the peasants who refuse to distinguish between a duck and a goose, at least if they happen to be selling one—or, for that matter, who refer to all squash, from pumpkins to zucchini, as zucca—admit that turkey is turkey.) They are the kinds of turkeys my husband remembers from the Army, which may be why turkey is not his favorite food. The farmers who supply places like Feroci's would never raise one; the farmers competing with feed yards to supply my local co-op, in Todi, would never consider anything smaller. Their feeling, which dates from centuries of poverty, is "the bigger the bird, the more people it can feed." (They feel the same way about vegetables. This year, I rescued a twenty-inch cucumber from the back of my vegetable garden. I had thought it was a skinny watermelon until the gardener said, "Cucumber, almost ready to eat.")
I asked Feroci what he told the Americans in Rome who wanted Thanksgiving turkeys. He told them, laughing, "Invite fewer people, or order two." He allowed that he had been ordering "Christmas turkeys" for November since the early sixties, when Burt Lancaster, who was filming the interiors for "The Leopard" at Cinecittà, walked in and asked for one. There was some discussion. Feroci won the first battle—seven pounds, no bigger—but he couldn't persuade the actor to let him bone the bird and stuff it with, among other good things, prunes and pistachios, ready to be cooked and cut across into "pretty slices, full of colors inside." Now, he says, his customers get "pretty" or none at all.
That was June. I was still searching for a sixteen-pounder in July, when an old Paris friend and fellow-journalist named Merete Baird decided to fly to Italy with her husband for a long weekend. She asked if I needed anything from Paris, and I heard myself saying, Yes, a turkey. My husband was horrified, but Merete is Danish—which is to say, exuberant in the face of a challenge—and she said, "Of course." Her turkey travelled, like Catherine's oysters, in a thermos bag in the luggage hold, and, despite its hours in airport taxis, French security checks, and Italian baggage claims, smelled fine when I unwrapped it. I set the table on the porch for eight people and began to cook. At seven and a half pounds, it just fit into the little oven where I had been doing my roasting for thirteen years, and I had thought to buy a bottle of bourbon for the gravy. Sadly, there were no pumpkins in my garden yet, or even canned pumpkin at the co-op, and, given the refrigerator-life expectancy of a bird that had just emerged from the hold of an Air France jet, there was certainly no time to persuade a dairy farmer to ferment a couple of cups of milk into latte acido, or soured milk, which, I had just discovered, was close enough to buttermilk for a corn-bread stuffing.
I searched my memory for the tastes in Mary McCarthy's stuffing. I spent the morning trying to reconstruct it. It was not a success. But I managed to transform my sweet-potato purée into a carrot purée—there were young carrots in the garden—with molasses that someone had brought from New York years earlier standing in for the maple syrup, red peperoncini for the chipotles, and fresh cream from the dairy for the crème fraîche. I brightened some local spinach with beetroot greens. I made grits, with Sardinian Pecorino—the nearest thing I could find to a sharp Cheddar—using the last bag of stone-ground cornmeal that I had brought from New York, since, for reasons I have never pierced, Umbrians stop cooking with cornmeal at the summer solstice, and it virtually disappears from the market shelves. But I couldn't claim credit for the apple-and-frutti di bosco crumble, steeped in Maraschino liqueur—my friend Lin Widmann, an Anglo-Argentine painter from a long line of English pudding fanatics, made that—or even for the French turkey, which I have to admit had been born delicious.
Given the success of my little July Thanksgiving—I thought of it as a trial run—I scheduled a big Thanksgiving for August 7th. I looked for a new oven. I visited poultry farmers. I tried to negotiate the slaughter of one of the sixteen-pounders I would always see, strutting like teen-agers, in their back yards. I held out ridiculous sums of money, but I could not shake the farmers' conviction that you don't slaughter a bird that will double in size, and yield, in a matter of four months. Their answer was always the same: "Too small. Not ready." Marketing is not what I like to do in Umbria. Unless I am off somewhere on a story, I don't do much of anything that can't be done within a mile of home. I sit on the porch steps and watch the sun rise. I smile at sunflowers. I sit at my desk and write. Toward the end of the afternoon, I check out my figs and my pots of basil and marjoram—Umbrians love marjoram and will not touch oregano—thyme and parsley, and then I tap my way through the vegetable garden with a big stick (Umbria is viper country) and a basket, and head for the kitchen to chop and slice whatever I've carried back. At night I cook it. Once in a while, I will drive north to Todi and pick up a chicken or a guinea fowl at the co-op, or south to Avigliano for mussels or spigola at the local fish store. But if you had asked me, in July, where in Perugia or Terni to find a big new oven that would fit between the counters that flank my stove I wouldn't have been able to say. And if you had asked me where to find a farm-raised sixteen-to-eighteen-pounder I would probably have cried.
By then, I had exhausted two Italian provinces in my turkey quest. So I crossed the Monti Martani (a massif best known as the epicenter of the earthquake that toppled the ceilings of the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in 1997) to consult with my friends Joanna Ross and Bruce Adgate. The Rossgates, as they are sometimes called, have been an Umbria resource since the day they decided to quit their jobs in New York—Joanna was a theatre agent and Bruce an actor with Ellen Stewart's La Mama theatre company—to move with their ten-year-old son to Eggi, a village near Spoleto (where Bruce had spent three summers performing Euripides in the mid-seventies). They went to work restoring a fifteenth-century village house, best described at the time as a pile of stones, and in the process unearthed a bread-and-pizza oven, just outside the wall of their son's bedroom. The oven was falling apart, but they peered into its cavernous beehive chamber and immediately thought Thanksgiving, or, as Bruce puts it, "Getting it back in shape went right up there with plumbing and heat as one of my high priorities." He worked on the oven all summer, making pizzas. By November of 1993, he was able to roast a Thanksgiving turkey for ten people. (His biggest turkey, to date, weighed thirty-seven and a half pounds, and thirty-five people spent the better part of two days polishing it off.) In July of 2009, he volunteered his oven for my next Thanksgiving, and, more to the point, his services at the oven, because just firing it up—feeding it wood until the embers turn red and the bricks lining it white hot—takes four or five hours of skilled hard labor and leaves you drenched, even in November. In August, you start drenched.
So I moved Thanksgiving across the mountain. I stopped looking for an oven, and a few days later, when Joanna called with the news that she and Bruce had prevailed on their butcher to find a farmer willing to part with a turkey for fifteen or sixteen people, I stopped looking for a bird, too. We made a guest list of American friends who lived in or around Spoleto and would be spared having to cross a mountain after a feast that, according to Bruce, promised to last past midnight. We made a shopping list. Bruce, whose Thanksgiving specialty is pumpkin pie, came home that night with the first pumpkin of the season. Joanna discovered a dusty bottle of maple syrup at the back of a shelf in a discount supermarket called Sabatini, which didn't surprise me; she can find anything, and what she doesn't find she grows. We were in countdown mode when Naomi Duguid, the Canadian food scholar and cookbook writer I had got to know on assignment last year, e-mailed to say that she was flying to Italy that week. I invited her to Thanksgiving and, of course, gave her the rest of my shopping list. She arrived at night, on August 5th, and emptied a suitcase full of rapidly defrosting cranberries on my kitchen table, along with a sack of pecans, two jars of chipotles, three cans of organic pumpkin, and homemade crackers for the cooks. Dinner was pasta al pesto (my basil pots) and salad (my garden) tossed with oil from my olive trees, and it left me thinking how much simpler life would be if the Pilgrims had been Italian.
The next morning, we drove to a farmers' market for spinach and dandelion greens, and then to my favorite Todi salumeria to discuss with the salumerista's wife the pros and cons of faro or chestnut flour for my stuffing bread. It was our festa del ringraziamento, I told her, only a little early. She considered my problem for a minute, disappeared into the stockroom, and emerged with a two-pound sack of local cornmeal, stamped "To be eaten by June 21, 2009," which she had been saving for herself. ("Of course you can use it," she said.) By lunchtime, I had started a pumpkin purée, and Naomi, having discovered three plum trees on the hill behind my kitchen door, had managed to bake two plum cakes and a loaf of bread and to produce a mysteriously spiced and soured cranberry sauce, which, she assured me, was much prized in its original incarnation as a sour-plum sauce in Georgia (the republic, not the state). Lunch was salami, prosciutto, creamy Campania mozzarella, garden tomatoes, and cucumber salad; it emptied the fridge. The afternoon meant corn bread. The recipe I had found, tearing through cookbooks, seemed a little off—six eggs, for one thing—but it looked easy, and, more to the point, it was the only one without buttermilk. I should have known better. When Bruce and Joanna crossed the mountain that afternoon with maple syrup for my purée, giblets for my gravy, fenugreek seeds for Naomi's cranberries, and fresh pumpkin for Bruce's pies, they found us crumbling burnt cornmeal goo onto a cookie sheet to dry.
Eggi is a walled medieval village tucked into one of the Apennine foothills, with a road that winds up to the church and then turns into a path—which is to say that to get to the Rossgates' house you walk. We were three people, a very large dog, my grandmother's turkey roaster, which I had carried on a plane from New York ten years earlier (turn-of-the-twentieth-century pans were made to last), and six big and extremely heavy Le Creuset pots, bought on the last day of a going-out-of-business sale in Todi and one of them filled with what was left of my gravy stock, which had splashed and splattered all over the back of the car by the time we parked. Ullie, the dog, licked up the gravy. The climb, pot by pot, in the August sun, took twenty minutes. The first thing I saw, walking up the steep stone steps to the Rossgates' house, was a fiendish circle of flames leaping out of the enormous mouth of the pizza oven, and Bruce, with a bottle of cold white wine and a pair of long iron tongs, waiting for me in a deck chair.
I fled up to the house, where Naomi was already at work, doctoring our greens with spices from Joanna's larder, and Joanna herself, an inspired cook, was slipping a paste of pancetta, garlic, and rosemary under the skin of a perfect turkey that covered most of her kitchen table. Her mother had just arrived, bearing a case of prosecco, and she and her husband were sitting in the garden, filling glasses for the first guests. They came, like Indians, with offerings—everything from caponata and olives to platters and decorations. Big cardboard turkeys were soon perched on the garden tables, their tails unfolding into a kaleidoscope of crêpe-paper pleats. The trees were draped with the Rossgates' Christmas lights, and a string of big gold letters—"HAPPY THANKSGIVING"—was dangling between two pergola poles, waiting for a breeze.
The bricks turned white by the end of the afternoon. The turkey slid into the oven. Bruce covered the mouth with an iron sheet, to seal in the heat, and the two of us settled into the deck chairs, poured some wine, and told Thanksgiving stories. (I have to admit that Bruce's were better, given that in the past five years he and Joanna had managed to pull off credible Thanksgiving dinners in Mexico, Vietnam, and Argentina and were planning to do it again this year in Laos.) From time to time, he would pull on the thickest mitts I had ever seen, lift the sheet with his tongs, prod the roasting pan into a half-turn, and, from a safe distance, fling some wine over the bird to baste it. People drifted down from the garden, watched for a while, and disappeared back up the garden steps. It has to be said that I was not much use that evening as a sous-chef. My one attempt at flinging wine into the fiery maw of the pizza oven fell at least a foot short of the roasting pan. On the other hand, Bruce was spared all my Thanksgiving-in-New York anxieties: should the bird be lying on its back in the pan, or upside down, or on one side and then the other? Should it be falling apart from "slow cooking," or turning crisp from a quick run, legs and wings akimbo, under a blast of electric heat? Should it be basted with butter, or wrapped in a cloak of wet cheesecloth, or left to smolder under a paper bag? Our eighteen-pounder—roasting, by Bruce's calculations, at somewhere between seven hundred and eight hundred degrees—was golden-brown, tender, and on its platter in not much more than an hour. The pots of pumpkin purée and doctored stuffing went into the oven to reheat. I poured some bourbon into the roaster. It sizzled into a juicy sauce, which brought my gravy pot close to brimming, and ready to carry upstairs.
It turned into a fine night. A soft breeze blew in from across the Spoleto valley and set the "HAPPY THANKSGIVING" fluttering; the chimes in the garden trees came to life. I forgot the work of the past few weeks and joined the party. The best thing about Thanksgiving is that it is always worth it. Everyone agreed on that. In fact, we decided to do it again, next summer. We toasted Thanksgiving at midnight with what was left of the wine and a bottle of Jack Daniel's that the Rossgates had stashed for the occasion. I fell asleep in the car and dreamed of leftovers, going home. ♦


text:
Following earlier speculation, Virgin Media has confirmed that EE and Vodafone are to piggy back on its London Underground Wi-Fi network, offering customers free access to the sub-surface service from early 2013.
Prematurely announced via the official EE Twitter feed this morning, Virgin Media has confirmed that both Vodafone and the UK's first 4G network are to become wholesale partners for the Underground Wi-Fi service. Although currently free to all, customers of both networks will continue to enjoy free access to the online service after the planned pay wall is introduced next year.
"WiFi on London Underground has been an incredible success with over 700,000 people already online and a remarkable million sessions every day," Jon James, Executive Direct of Broadband at Virgin Media said. "We're rolling out the service to reach even more stations throughout London, from Camden Town to Clapham Common and, thanks to our partnership with EE and Vodafone, the majority of Tube users can stay connected for no extra cost."
Currently available at 72 London Underground station, the Virgin Media Wi-Fi network will be expanded across a further 20 stations before the end of the year with another 28 stations to be added in early 2013.
Letting slip about the impending deal via Twitter, EE took to the social networking site to declare: "Travel on the tube? From early 2013, EE customers will be able to get WiFi access on the London Underground at no extra cost. Details soon." It quickly deleted the message but not before causing a raft of rumours and excitement.
Speaking on the official announcement, Pippa Dunn, Chief Marketing Officer at EE, said: "It's great that Orange, T-Mobile and EE mobile customers will soon get access to Underground WiFi included in their plan, at no extra cost. We know that our customers want the best and the fastest connections wherever they are – and with the largest 3G network and with 4G and Fibre on EE, we already offer customers superfast internet in the home, office and on the move. With Underground WiFi now they can stay connected on the London Underground as well."
Saving London based Vodafone and EE customers a potentially sizable chunk of money, the newly confirmed deal will see users avoid the £2 per day Pay As You Go fees Virgin Media is set to introduce to its Tube-based Wi-Fi service.
"WiFi is a great way to keep our Tube customers up-to-date with live travel information and other news and entertainment," Gareth Powell, Director of Strategy and Service Development for London Underground, said. "We are delighted that Virgin Media is giving the majority of Londoners the chance to continue to enjoy WiFi at no extra cost next year and beyond."
Are you an EE or Vodafone customer? Will London Underground Wi-Fi access enhance your user experience or be another less than useful 'perk'? Let us know via the Trusted Reviews Twitter and Facebook feeds or through the comments boxes below.

subset: commoncrawl


text: The youngest member of an important class of objects has been found using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Australia Compact Telescope Array. This composite image shows the X-rays in blue and the radio emission in purple, which have been overlaid on an optical field of view from the Digitized Sky Survey. This discovery, described in the press release: http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2013-news/Brandt12-2013, allows scientists to study a critical phase after a supernova and the birth of a neutron star.


text:
48 comments:
Wow, that is a sweet dress. It's great how the perfect fabric can make a dress really special. That's why I love working with vintage fabric.ReplyDelete
What a sweet little dress! I can tell where you see the 30s influence because I see it too! (love the pops of teal, your subconscious style decisions are just as awesome as your conscious!)ReplyDelete
Super adorable dress :)ReplyDelete
Absolutely gorgeous, love! I love the new location too ;). Your hair is looking very vibrant now days!ReplyDelete
The print on this dress is so fun and whimsical... and I love all the teal accents. I have two different teal purses that are that same exact shade you're showing here... I tend to pair them with purple, probably far too often. Obsessed much?ReplyDelete
that dress is adorable Rebbecca! It suits you perfectly.ReplyDelete
Wow, that Sonia Rykiel dress really does resemble a 30s novelty print! Amazingly cute.ReplyDelete
Amazing dress and very nice hairdo.ReplyDelete
I love your dress, amazing photos!!ReplyDelete
From Carys of La Ville Inconnue
you always have a great eye for the more beautiful and quirky pieces! :)ReplyDelete
Your hair is so pretty, and I love the shoes, so cute!ReplyDelete
You are lovely.ReplyDelete
super sweet dressReplyDelete
these photos are super fun and i LOVE the print. i, too, adore teal!ReplyDelete
This is rather wonderful. I especially love how you styled it with nails and shoes that mirror the green tones.ReplyDelete
Dress Rehearsal
I really love that dress, great prints just make any item so much better.ReplyDelete
Excited about you coming to Europe (especially England), I'm sure you'll have an amazing time!
Hello Hello (:ReplyDelete
Just love that dress, is soooo adorable :)
I have a question for you, hope you help me. I have brown hair and I tried to be a ginger but now I've a brown hair that looks red just in the sun. But I want to be ginger in the shadow too :D
So my question is if you are a natural red hair or if you just changed your natural color. If yes...can you tell me how you did it? because your color is just the one I want, it's PERFECT!!
Oh, I'm Daniela. I just follow you for a fewdays but I just can say your blog is AMAZING. :D
I'll put you on my favourites.
Kisses **
- AnonymousJuly 21, 2010 at 4:29 PM
gorgeous photos!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 21, 2010 at 5:50 PM
Cupids all over the dress so beautiful. :) I love the photos on the train-tracks, they give an interesting sense of perspective. :)ReplyDelete
some of the best pictures to date!ReplyDelete
i'm a fan of the new dress, totally you!
a tripod on the train tracks! i hope no trains interrupted you ;)!
- AnonymousJuly 21, 2010 at 6:15 PM
looove your dress and nail polish color!ReplyDelete
I love your hair this way!!!! Looks great pulled back like that... stop by my blog this week to check out the premier of my first collection!ReplyDelete
I adore your dress ~ it looks marvelous and the cut is fantastic. Go 30's fashion!!ReplyDelete
b. of Depict This!
Amazing dress and photos :)))ReplyDelete
I love this dress, what an adorable print. Those are also some great shoes that really make the color in the dress pop!ReplyDelete
Looking super adorable in this dress!ReplyDelete
awww look at you.. that dress is perfect! :DReplyDelete
Animated Confessions
Very cute. The teal shoes are just the right touch!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 21, 2010 at 8:59 PM
amazing look, i LOVE the midsummer night's dream title too :-)ReplyDelete
i'm in love with the fabric pattern! it's truly stunning on you :)ReplyDelete
You are so adorable and lovely! I always enjoy your postsReplyDelete
Adorable dress, and I love that your nails match your shoes : )ReplyDelete
what a wonderful dress! such a cute print.ReplyDelete
PS: did you get your hair done? the color looks amazing in these!
This dress is great! I really love the feel of the last photo.ReplyDelete
lovely pics! and what an amazing outfit!ReplyDelete
Yay for all the smiling photos! (: you look wonderful Rebecca. It's nice seeing you in different skirt lengths from time to time (not that there's anything wrong with your usual hemlines!). <3ReplyDelete
You look amazing! That dress has a silhouette which reminds me of a 50s' housewife!(: Very chic; so much fun!ReplyDelete
And teal's a gorgeous color!
AMAZING blog,ReplyDelete
AMAZING photos,
AMAZING all,
Follow you!
cute! love it!ReplyDelete
come by
You look so sweet and a little bit like a girl out of the golden 20s maybe because of your hair do today or the classic shape of the dress. The print is very funny.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 22, 2010 at 9:45 AM
Such a gorgeous print!ReplyDelete
You look very sweet! Teal is an awesome color to like, I love mixing it with shades of purple :)ReplyDelete
Very pretty dress! Love the pictures xReplyDelete
That really is a stunning dress.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 23, 2010 at 7:32 AM
Love this look. I didn't check my blogs for a day and I come back to your lovely posts, they make me happy. :)ReplyDelete
It's a rare thing to see you in flats. You're positively glowing.ReplyDelete


text:
Thursday, March 17, 2011
St. Patrick's Day bento lunches! 2 (count 'em two!) of them!
(said very sheepishly, head down, eyes embarrassingly glancing up).
Long time no see. I've missed you. :)
Really, I have.
I do have an explanation for my (terribly, unexpectedly) long hiatus. But I'm sure you don't want to be bored with my life's details. ;-)
On with the bentos!
Ethan's bento is in the tried and true 4 square Lock & Lock box. It's not so fancy. It was early. I haven't adjusted to the time change. My husband was out of state for work. Actually, I might have still been asleep when I put this together.
Ethan's request was to not "make up any weird green foods". Apparently last year's St. Patrick's day bento was a little too greeny and weird for him. ;-)
Clockwise from top left: cereal bar and granola bar (both cut in half and stacked to fit in the space), Granny Smith apple (she's Irish, right?) and green grapes on St. Patty's food picks, and baby carrots.
I took out the two inner boxes on the right side to make more room for the apple slices and grape picks. The apple slices were dipped in Honest Kids pink lemonade to keep from browning. He also had a smoothie to have along with his lunch. :)
On his way to school this morning, picture taken right before I took him into the yard to spray his hair green. That's a leprechaun kiss on his cheek. ;-)
And now for the second St. Patrick's day bento...for my lil lassie, Paige.
I was short on inspiration for this bento, until I saw this cute paper in my stack. The rainbows caught my eye first but then I saw the mushrooms and that made me think of those tricky little green bandits too. :)
So here we have a mushroom shaped peanut butter & jelly sandwich, a couple leprechauns dancing a jig under it in a field of green grapes. To the side are some blueberries, shamrock-shaped cheddar cheese pieces, and some almonds in a shamrock-shaped silicone cup. Oh, and some green veggie straws.
The gummy ring in the corner? Well, I was thinking that was a Blarney Stone. But then I was second guessing myself and googled...and well, what I was thinking was a Blarney Stone really isn't. I read some silly book a couple decades ago which described a stone that was worn by water (such as in a river) to have a hole in the middle - and this stone would give you luck and protect you from mean fairies. (Yeah, LOL). Anyone know what the heck I'm talking about? Or what that stone is called? Or the number of a good psychiatrist? :p
Anywho, here's my sweetie pie girl on her way to preschool. I think she sees a leprechaun behind the bushes. :)
Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!!
32 comments:
- Laura Alison said... [Reply to comment]
glad you're back! cute lunches :)
- March 17, 2011 at 2:34 PM
- jessicah said... [Reply to comment]
Yay! Glad to see you back. I checked 2 weeks ago just to make sure I wasn't missing posts by accident, but then was happy to see your post on FB today. :)
- March 17, 2011 at 2:52 PM
- shanna said... [Reply to comment]
I can say with confidence that "we" (your followers) missed you way more than you missed us. Glad you're back.
- March 17, 2011 at 3:21 PM
YAY!! I'm SO glad you're back!!
- March 17, 2011 at 3:31 PM
YAY!! I'm SO glad you're back!!!!
- March 17, 2011 at 3:32 PM
- Carolina said... [Reply to comment]
I'm very happy to hear about you! You're back! :D
See you soon... :)
- March 17, 2011 at 4:16 PM
- Cowboy Ninjas said... [Reply to comment]
TOTALLY missed you. So glad I saved your book mark to my Google home page - Hurray! The luck of the Irish is with me today as I saw your return. Hope all is well and continues to be. :)))
- March 17, 2011 at 4:18 PM
- Jenn @ BentoForKidlet said... [Reply to comment]
Yay! It's good to see you back :D Lunches look very tasty and fun!
- March 17, 2011 at 7:51 PM
- Mama G said... [Reply to comment]
so happy to have you back in blog land!! :)
- March 17, 2011 at 8:59 PM
- Kelly Polizzi said... [Reply to comment]
Melissa!!!! I must have checked your blog a dozen times in the past few months JUST incase i happened to miss a post on your wonderful blog. Welcome back, you were missed!!!
- March 18, 2011 at 7:48 AM
- erin said... [Reply to comment]
Beautiful Bentos and adorable kids!
Happy St. Patty's!
- March 18, 2011 at 11:55 AM
- mrs. fuzz said... [Reply to comment]
Yay! SO glad you are back. We all need a little hiatus every now and then and even though we were desperate for your cute bentos, it is very understandable! :)
Cute kids and I love the mushroom sandwich!!
- March 18, 2011 at 1:16 PM
- Nielson Shmielson said... [Reply to comment]
Yay!! I'm so excited you're back!
- March 18, 2011 at 6:17 PM
- The Jennings Family said... [Reply to comment]
Glad you're back! Cute lunches and very cute kids!
- March 18, 2011 at 7:00 PM
- mermaidprincesa said... [Reply to comment]
Missed your lunches!
- March 19, 2011 at 12:11 AM
- mermaidprincesa said... [Reply to comment]
Missed the lunches!
- March 19, 2011 at 12:11 AM
- frosty said... [Reply to comment]
SO glad to read from you!! How does the apple in pink lemonade work? I mean... can it pass a super picky 'my apple was brown' boy? :)
- March 19, 2011 at 11:34 AM
- Becky A said... [Reply to comment]
So glad you're back! the mushroom is adorable...
- March 19, 2011 at 11:35 AM
- frosty said... [Reply to comment]
PS- Take a hop over to my blog if you feel so inclined. I have switched up my focus a bit.
- March 19, 2011 at 11:35 AM
- אילאיל זיו said... [Reply to comment]
So happy to see you are back!
I have missed you!
- March 19, 2011 at 12:04 PM
- Jackie said... [Reply to comment]
You're baaaack!!! I'm so glad!!! I was starting to feel like a stalker - constantly checking the site for new posts. We sure did miss you. And then some.
- March 19, 2011 at 12:43 PM
- Pagemaster said... [Reply to comment]
I am so happy to "see" you again! I have missed you. I am glad your little monkeys had a nice St. Patrick's Day. i have no idea of any tales about a good luck stone with a hole in the middle, but it sounds like it would be a fun story and tradition.
- March 20, 2011 at 1:09 AM
- Kariane said... [Reply to comment]
So happy you're back. I was getting worried and hoped all was well. By the way, cute lunches, sleeping or not!
- March 21, 2011 at 12:47 PM
- Sarah said... [Reply to comment]
So happy to see you back! I hope all is well!
- March 21, 2011 at 3:30 PM
- Karen said... [Reply to comment]
we actually would love to know how you've been. Hopefully all is well. But, thanks for coming back to inspire creativity in us (what little there is after doing all the jobs a mom has to do!) :)
- March 21, 2011 at 7:31 PM
- Dina said... [Reply to comment]
Welcome back!
- March 23, 2011 at 3:29 PM
- Lauren said... [Reply to comment]
happy to see this post! we missed you!
- March 23, 2011 at 4:09 PM
- Faltus said... [Reply to comment]
ohhh my god I am getting hungryyy :d !!
- April 10, 2011 at 1:09 PM
- Appleshoe said... [Reply to comment]
Hello, I'm a bit late, but those stones are called "Holey" stones or Oden stones, Wonderful blog, I'll be back to visit again soon.
- April 18, 2011 at 8:47 AM
- Kelly said... [Reply to comment]
I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your posts. I discovered you a couple of weeks ago, and went back to the beginning and caught up. Yours is the only bento blog that has food that appeals to my son, a 4 y/o picky eater. I got so many ideas, and started his bento lunches last week. I wouldn't have had the faintest idea where to start if I hadn't seen your blog first! Keep up the good work!
- May 2, 2011 at 10:49 PM
- Melissa Wright said... [Reply to comment]
Haha! The gold coins are a great touch and the mushroom-sammich is GENIUS (and absolutely adorable). The little green shamrocks and leprechauns, are those gummies?
- July 7, 2011 at 12:16 PM
- Brandie S said... [Reply to comment]
I think the stone related to faeries you are thinking of is called a hag stone. They don't actually protect you from them, but a hag stone will let you see them. It is a big deal to find a hag stone in some parts of the world.
Thank you for the wonderful posts :)
- October 3, 2011 at 3:00 PM


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At least one pharmaceutical was detected in tests of treated drinking water supplies for 24 major metropolitan areas, according to an Associated Press survey of 62 major water providers and data obtained from independent researchers.
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Only 28 tested drinking water. Three of those said results were negative; Dallas says tests were conducted but results are not yet available. Thirty-four locations said no testing was conducted.
Test protocols varied widely. Some researchers looked only for one pharmaceutical or two; others looked for many.
Some water systems said tests had been negative, but the AP found independent research showing otherwise. Both prescription and non-prescription drugs were detected.
Because coffee and tobacco are so widely used, researchers say their byproducts are good indicators of the presence of pharmaceuticals. Thus, they routinely test for, and often find, both caffeine and nicotine's metabolite cotinine more frequently than other drugs.
Here's the list of metropolitan areas, with the number of pharmaceuticals detected and some examples of specific drugs that were found, or where tests were negative, not conducted or awaiting results:
Albuquerque, N.M.: tests negative
Arlington, Texas: 1 (unspecified pharmaceutical)
Atlanta: 3 (acetaminophen, caffeine and cotinine)
Austin, Texas: tests negative
Baltimore: no testing
Birmingham, Ala.: no testing
Boston: no testing
Charlotte, N.C.: no testing
Chicago: no testing
Cincinnati: 1 (caffeine)
Cleveland: no testing
Colorado Springs, Colo.: no testing
Columbus, Ohio: 5 (azithromycin, roxithromycin, tylosin, virginiamycin and caffeine)
Concord, Calif.: 2 (meprobamate and sulfamethoxazole)
Dallas: results pending
Denver: (unspecified antibiotics)
Detroit: (unspecified drugs)
El Paso, Texas: no testing
Fairfax, Va.: no testing
Fort Worth, Texas: no testing
Fresno, Calif.: no testing
Honolulu: no testing
Houston: no testing
Indianapolis: 1 (caffeine)
Jacksonville, Fla.: no testing
Kansas City, Mo.: no testing
Las Vegas: 3 (carbamazepine, meprobamate and phenytoin)
Long Beach, Calif.: 2 (meprobamate and phenytoin)
Los Angeles: 2 (meprobamate and phenytoin)
Louisville, Ky.: 3 (caffeine, carbamazepine and phenytoin)
Memphis, Tenn.: no testing
Mesa, Ariz.: no testing
Miami: no testing
Milwaukee: 1 (cotinine)
Minneapolis: 1 (caffeine)
Nashville, Tenn.: no testing
New Orleans: 3 (clofibric acid, estrone and naproxen)
New York City: no testing
Northern New Jersey: 7 (caffeine, carbamazepine, codeine, cotinine, dehydronifedipine, diphenhydramine and sulfathiazole)
Oakland, Calif.: no testing
Oklahoma City: no testing
Omaha, Neb.: no testing
Orlando, Fla.: no testing
Philadelphia: 56 (including amoxicillin, azithromycin, carbamazepine, diclofenac, prednisone and tetracycline)
Phoenix: no testing
Portland, Ore.: 4 (acetaminophen, caffeine, ibuprofen and sulfamethoxazole)
Prince George's and Montgomery counties, Md.: no testing
Riverside County, Calif.: 2 (meprobamate and phenytoin)
Sacramento, Calif.: no testing
San Antonio: no testing
San Diego: 3 (ibuprofen, meprobamate and phenytoin)
San Francisco: 1 (estradiol)
San Jose, Calif.: no testing
Santa Clara, Calif.: no testing
Seattle: no testing
Southern California: 2 (meprobamate and phenytoin)
Suffolk County, N.Y.: no testing
Tucson, Ariz.: 3 (carbamazepine, dehydronifedipine and sulfamethoxazole)
Tulsa, Okla.: no testing
Virginia Beach, Va.: tests negative
Washington, D.C.: 6 (carbamazepine, caffeine, ibuprofen, monensin, naproxen and sulfamethoxazole)
Wichita, Kan.: no testing.
© 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


text:
Day 1 Recap | Day 2 Recap
AUSTIN, Texas—The New England-champion Harvard sailing team capped the 2012 season with a fifth-place finish at the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association/Gill Dinghy National Championship, which concluded Friday on Lake Travis.
Senior Brendan Kopp and sophomore Sarah Pierson placed second in the A division, four points behind winner Georgetown, while senior Emily Lambert and freshmen Brian Drumm and Michael Drumm took 13th place in the B division. The Hoyas claimed the national championship by placing first in the 18-school field with 137 points. Roger Williams finished second with 169 points, edging Yale (171). The Crimson finished with 213 points, just six more than fourth-place College of Charleston.
Harvard finished in the nation's top five for the third straight year, capping an outstanding finish to a strong season. The Crimson previously won its first New England title in 11 years, placed third in the ICSA coed semifinals and finished eighth in the ICSA/Sperry Top-Sider Women's National Championship.
"We're really pleased," head coach Mike O'Connor said. "I'm very proud of the way the kids worked hard all year and the progress we made as a team. Our players worked very well together, and they performed their best at the biggest regattas."
Kopp and Pierson led the way in difficult conditions caused by winds shifting in direction and varying in velocity. The conditions allowed only a pair of races in each division to be completed Friday. Kopp and Pierson won their first race and placed fourth in the second to finish the competition with 75 points in 12 races. The top-four finishes were their seventh and eighth of the regatta, and they finished in the second half of the pack just twice.
"Brendan and Sarah sailed a fabulous regatta," O'Connor said. "They were able to make some excellent comebacks and win a lot of small battles. They led the way in their work ethic all year, and the rest of the team followed."
Lambert and Brian Drumm placed eighth or better on five occasions, including one win. The Crimson B-division team finished just one point behind 11th-place Boston College and eight points outside the top 10 in the division.
Team Standings
Georgetown 137
Roger Williams 169
Yale 171
College of Charleston 207
Harvard 213
Hobart & William Smith 231
Boston College 231
Stanford 246
Tufts 252
Wisconsin 255
South Florida 263
Boston Univeristy 264
Miami 267
Dartmouth 277
Brown 284
Navy 306
Old Dominion 318
New York Maritime 356


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Welcome to Country Estate.
Many are aware of the natural advantages of Country Estate products that include freedom from traditional maintenance and increased property value. Beyond those advantages, Country Estate products are the environmentally friendly alternative to other building materials. Country Estate Fence, Deck and Rail utilize only the finest ingredients resulting in a finished product that is far superior to other products on the market today.


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Following the announcement of SteamOS and Steam Machines, Valve revealed its first proprietary controller, the Steam Controller. It sure is something.
"We realized early on that our goals required a new kind of input technology — one that could bridge the gap from the desk to the living room without compromises," Valve said. "So we spent a year experimenting with new approaches to input and we now believe we've arrived at something worth sharing and testing with you."
That end result (depicted above) is the Steam Controller. Not content to rely on analog sticks and the now standard button array, Valve's attempt at redefining what a controller can and should be has thrown the old books out the window in favor of some fairly outrageous design decisions. Rather than analog sticks, the Steam Controller features trackpads with haptic feedback. Supposedly more precise than standard console controls, the trackpads offer fidelity Valve promises relates very well to the keyboard/mouse experience.
There will also be a small touchscreen in the middle of the controller, which will serve as an area to map multiple functions without the need for more physical buttons. "When programmed by game developers using our API, the touch screen can work as a scrolling menu, a radial dial, provide secondary info like a map or use other custom input modes we haven't thought of yet," Valve described. Since the Steam Controller is designed to work with every single game in the Steam catalog, the device needed loads of flexibility the touchscreen should certainly provide.
You'll be able to obtain one in the same fashion as the Steam Machine itself, though it's not clear if this beta will be offered to people who don't happen to get a Steam Machine. The beta version of the controller will also be slightly different, and won't offer touchscreen or wireless functionality. It's certainly an interesting peripheral, but until we actually get one in our hands, we're not going to get too hyped up about its prospects.
Авторский пост


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The Particulars
After falling to cross-town foe MIT last week, Harvard returns home to host two consecutive matches. The Crimson faces UC Santa Barbara Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Malkin Athletic Center.
Last Time Out
Harvard lost to the Engineers in three sets in the Crimson's only match away from home in the month of February.
The first set featured five lead changes and 13 ties as the teams traded points. A kill by MIT and a Crimson attack error cost Harvard the final two points as the Engineers won the opening set.
In the second set, the Crimson rallied from a seven point deficit to tie the score at 25-25. The teams traded points until the score was tied at 28, but Harvard was unable to stop MIT, who scored the next two points to pick up the set win.
In the final set, MIT put together several runs of unanswered points and Harvard was unable to get within reach as it fell, 30-19.
Erik Kuld posted 16 kills in the match while Gil Weintraub added 10. Kuld and Matt Jones each recorded five digs and Weintraub and Derek Jansma each posted four digs. Rob Lothman handed out 26 assists while Weintraub dished out 12 assists.
Scouting the Crimson
Harvard is seeking its first win of the season, having fallen in its first six matches.
Senior Gil Weintraub paces the team with 3.89 kills per set while classmate Erik Kuld adds 3.86 kills per set. Freshman Rob Lothman is handing out 10.29 assists per set. On the defensive side, sophomore Dan Schreff leads the Crimson with 2.16 digs per set and sophomore Nicola Ivica is registering 1.24 blocks per set.
Scouting The Gouchos
The Gouchos, who stand at 6-8 on the season, are ranked ninth in the latest AVCA Division I-II Men's Coaches poll. The team holds a 5-1 record on the road.
Junior Jeff Menzel leads the team, as well as the nation, with 5.52 kills per set. Vince Devany is averaging 13.28 assists per set, which ranks sixth in the nation. Andy McGuire averages 2.80 digs per set, good for 12th in the nation. With 1.06 blocks per set, Sam Moisenco ranks 37th in the nation.
The Last Meeting
Harvard and UC Santa Barbara have met just once before in a matchup in California on March 23, 1998. The Gouchos came away with a 3-0 victory over the Crimson.
On the Bench
Head coach Brian Baise, a 1995 graduate of Princeton, is in his second season at Harvard. He brings an 11-14 overall record into today's match.
Men's Volleyball Hosts No. 9 UC Santa Barbara Thursday Night
The Particulars


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Retail Price:
Outlet Price: $13.59
Style/Pattern: Peppercorn
Size: 6" dia., 2.25" tall, 16 oz.
One of our most popular items, the 6" Bowl is perfect for a myriad of uses! Whether you decide to use it for cereal, soup, salad, ice cream, or snacks, you're sure to love its beauty and functionality!
Item #M089


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Pocket Wikipedia, hand-checked selection from Wikipedia which is about the size of a fifteen volume encyclopaedia (24,000 images and 14 million words)
Works on PocketPC, Windows and Linux
To find out more about Pocket Wikipedia click here.
This is a freeware PocketPC dictionary which runs on Windows Mobile 2003, Windows Mobile 5, Windows Mobile 6 compatible PDA's. It contains 18 dictionaries with more than 2Mil words. The dictionary is very fast and need only 1MB free RAM memory to run.
To find out more about Pocket Dictionary click here.
Everest Dictionary is a great free dictionary. If you are here probably you've heard of it. It contains 37 dictionaries and there are more to come. Besides the dictionaries, Everest also has a Text Translator, an Instant Translator, a Pronunciation Agent, a Game to help you learn a foreign language and al lot of other facilities that you will certainly appreciate. Downloaded for more than 2.000.000 times!!!
Author: Daniel Vladutu
To find out more about Everest Dictionary click here.
It's a large database of free flash games. Today it contains almost 700 free Flash games.Author: A.Bute
To find out more about Flash Games application click here.
Project Gutenberg is an open source application which contain almost 10.000 free books.Author: Daniel Vladutu
To find out more about Project Gutenberg click here.
Everest QDictionary is the Linux version of Everest Dictionary. It uses the same dictionary databases but it does not have all the facilities that the Windows version has.Author: Daniel Vladutu
To find out more about Everest QDictionary click here.
It's a free book which contain more than 235.000 lyrics. Lyrics application can read MP3 tags for played MP3 file in Winamp application and give you information like artist and song name.
Author: A.Bute
To find out more about Lyrics application click here.
This is a large database with over 11.000 jokes in two languages.Author: A.Bute
To find out more about Jokes application click here.
Virtual desktop for Windows NT/2000/XP is an open source application witch helps you to create new desktops for and to switch between desks and windows quick and easy.Author: Daniel Vladutu
To find out more about Virtual desktop click here.
DEX is a free dictionary.
To find out more about DEX click here.
Create fake large file in order to share on filesharing clients like DC++
To find out more about Huge Small File click here.


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The search found 1 result in 0.203 seconds.
This content analysis, which was carried out over a twelve month period spanning January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2002 examines the manner in which the print and online media in the 13 countries report on HIV/AIDS. The main focus of the analyses is the treatment of stigmatisation and discrimination and whether writers adhere to journalistic ethics in their write-ups. It also covers the gender aspect in the coverage of HIV/AIDS and language use in the write-ups.


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lafcadio 0.9.5
Lafcadio is an object-relational mapping layer for Ruby. It lets you treat database rows like first-class Ruby objects, minimizing the amount of time you have to spend thinking about database vagaries so you can spend more time thinking about your program's logic. It also offers extensive support for unit-testing complex database logic without running cumbersome setup scripts. It currently supports MySQL and PostgreSQL.


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' ... anti-Catholicism is no different to anti-fascism'. Eh? That's a pretty silly thing to say, really. It's like something out of a sixth-year debate. John Eden makes one good counter-point, but the main problem is that the whole 'argument' hinges on an extremely simplistic, not to say slightly odd, understanding of fascism:
Only a stubborn tribal mind virus that insists that is good to belong to a certain ethnic group.
Fascism in other words.
Even without questioning the conflating of ethnicity and religion here (if the Catholics are an 'ethnic' group now, then what about the Quakers, and so on? Are they all ethnic groups too?), that's a fairly strange definition of fascism. If I remember my political science correctly, it's normally considered to be an extreme form of liberal democracy, the belief that the majority have more rights than minorities. Ethnic pride is surely far too widespread a phenonenom to be given the name 'fascism'? African tribal conflicts, all kinds of nationalist movements all over Europe for hundreds of years, Chinese Han nationalism from 2000 years ago - they're all fascist now, right? It seems to me fascism is now just a cipher for 'bad'.
Actually, I've changed my mind, that's not really the main reason that this is a really silly thing to say. I remember a while ago John Eden, I think it was, wrote something along the lines of ordinary people living ordinary lives, helping people out, being nice, that they were the best political activists there were. I think my point is kind of the same. There are millions of Catholics all over the world, in almost every country, who are what I would call 'good people'. They don't abuse kids, they don't burn Mayans, they help people, they're nice - and if you asked them they would describe themselves as Catholics, and most would say that they live their lives the way they do because of their faith. But we should hate them because they're catholics, and hating catholics is the same as hating fascists, right?
Aw, my second post here and I'm kind of having a go at someone. One of the administrators, no less. It's not my fault, the internet has made me bad.


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affaction necesitaba un nuevo diseño de banner publicitario y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 69 diseños de 20 diseñadores freelance.
Looking for banners incorporating popular/funny memories of the 1980's. Banners will be targeting users who graduated high school in the 1980's and could incorporate ideas of popular things such as 1980's clothes, hairstyles (mullets), radio/electronics, news events, etc.
Need a set of banners in the following sizes: 300x250, 728x90 and 120x600. Banners should be no more than 30KB in total size, can include some animation, although are leaning towards static design.
The banners will target a specific high school graduating class from the 1980's. We would prefer banners incorporate pop-culture ideas, images and designs that apply to most of the decade of the 1980's so that one banner design can be used to target several graduating years, such as 1985, 1986, 1987, etc.
The banners should incorporate United States 1980's pop-culture and should include the following text:
- Class of 198X (where we will replace X with any of the 1980 years).
- Remember high school?
- Find your old high school friends now.
Or similar text to the above.
Along with the text, we want the banners to display a theme that brings back memories of the 1980s (incorporating teenagers 1980s fashion, hairstyles, music, sports, news events, etc.)
- Designs for banner sizes: 300x250, 728x90 and 120x600
- 30KB maximum size per banner
- Animation ok, but static preferred
- 1980's U.S. pop-culture images include
- Images used must be fully licensed to be used in banners
- Clean, catchy designs
- Nothing really flashy/annoying
- No images used that are NOT rights granted


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LONDON (MarketWatch) — European stocks leapt Tuesday, logging their best performance in two months, as shares of BNP Paribas SA climbed in the wake of the French bank's nearly $9 billion settlement with U.S. authorities.
Opening the second half of the year, the Stoxx Europe 600 index SXXP, -0.16% rose 0.9% to end at 344.89. It was the strongest percentage gain since a 1.2% rise on April 29, according to FactSet data.
BNP BNP, -0.35% was a standout, advancing 3.6% after the bank pleaded guilty to two felony counts on Monday. The plea was part of an $8.8 billion deal to settle an investigation into alleged violations of U.S. sanctions against Sudan and other countries. The bank is also banned for a year from conducting certain U.S. dollar transactions.
BNP shares should "catch up, following the significant underperformance over the past four months," in part as the bank will be able to absorb the negative impact from the fine, said J.P. Morgan Cazenove analysts in a note Tuesday. BNP shares ended the first half of the year down 10%.
BNP Paribas Chief Financial Officer Lars Machenil said the bank was in "no rush" to boost its capital cushion, but will consider opportunities to raise cash.
The gain for BNP shares aided in a 0.9% rise for France's CAC 40 equity index PX1, -0.34% to 4,461.12.
Meanwhile, shares of Banco Monte dei Paschi BMPS, -0.20% jumped 8.6%. An offering of rights to purchase new shares has been closed early because they sold out on the first day, Dow Jones Newswires reported Tuesday. The bank on Friday completed a cash call of 4.99 billion euros ($6.83 billion) and funds were being used to repay a portion of a government loan.
"We firmly believe that the capital increase is the turning point for the Italian bank," said Peter Garnry, head of equity strategy at Saxo Bank, in a Tuesday report.
Saxo said financials still dominate its European conviction buy list despite sharp declines last week of nearly 5% on an equal-weighted basis.
EU manufacturing slows, but U.K. activity revs up
European equities remained higher after a report showed slowing in the euro-zone's manufacturing sector in June. Data firm Markit said its purchasing manufacturers' index was 51.8, lower than a preliminary reading of 51.9.
But Markit's June manufacturing PMI reading for the U.K. came in at 57.5, outpacing expectations for a 57.0 reading. The U.K.'s FTSE 100 stock index UKX, +0.29% jumped 0.9% to 6,802.92, and the British pound GBPUSD, -0.1398% rose to $1.715 from $1.708 late Monday, trading at levels last seen in October 2008.
"With U.K. data continuing to exceed expectations the pressure builds on [Bank of England] to hike rates this year rather than in 2015," wrote BK Asset Management's managing director of FX strategy Boris Schlossberg. The benchmark interest rate currently stands a record low level of 0.5%.
Separately, unemployment in Germany in June rose a seasonally adjusted 9,000 to 2.92 million. The adjusted jobless rate held at 6.7%.
The jobs report together with weak German retail sales results from Monday indicates the euro-zone's largest economy is starting to slow down, "although the slack is picked up somewhat by the periphery, especially Spain, where the rebound continues to gather pace," Schlossberg wrote.
In Frankfurt, the DAX 30 DAX, +0.06% ended up 0.7% at 9,902.41.
Investors will watch what the European Central Bank will say about economic growth and monetary policy on Thursday.
Back to stocks, shares of Ocado Group PLC OCDO, -1.16% dropped 4.4%. The British online grocer swung to a pretax profit on a 16% rise in sales during the first half of the year, but also noted the rate of growth in the online grocery market is "currently impacted by subdued and cautious consumer spending."
Mining stocks were among advancers after two separate reports on manufacturing in China — a key buyer of natural resources — suggested a rebound. Anglo American PLC AAL, +1.62% sprung 4% higher, diversified miner BHP Billiton UK:BLT BHP, +0.37% moved up 2.9%, and Rio Tinto PLC RIO, +1.43% advanced 3%.
More must-reads from MarketWatch:
China factories show first improvement in six months
What could make stocks tumble? Watch the energy sector


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In order to improve the performance of the personalization (PzN) function in WebSphere Portal, the PzN results can be cached. Otherwise the LDAP and the Portal database is accessed excessively. There are different forms of caching within PZN - resource collection caches, visibility rule caches, and others. However, most are surprised to find that Portal disables the PzN visbility cache by default.
If your production (or performance sensative) Portal uses PzN, then you should definitely enable the PzN cache. If not, both the LDAP and the database are excessively accessed. Note that visability rules in the theme use PzN.
The cache is enabled via a file. There is one of these files per node. Therefore, you must update one file on every node and then restart the cluster for the change to take effect.
The file is /opt/IBM/WebSphere/wp_profile/PortalServer/config/config/services/PersonalizationService.properties.
Set the property "rulesEngine.attributeBasedAdmin.enableCaching" equal to "true". This will enable the Portal PzN caching in Portal.
In addition, there is an undocumented property "rulesEngine.user.nestedGroupLookup" which can be set to false to speed up PzN. However, this should only be done if (and only if) nested groups are NOT used in the authorization ACL lists in Portal.


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People's revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and other nations of the Middle East and North Africa were among the most inspiring events of 2011. They've toppled, or threatened, tyrants that seemed untouchable for decades. At a stroke, they've remade the history of a politically oppressed region.
"The positive development is that there is a significant political change in the Middle East, which we haven't seen in decades," says Freedom House vice president Daniel Calingaert.
But will the Arab awakening revolts lead to a spread of democracy throughout an arc of former autocracies? That's far from clear. In most of the nations involved, basic institutions – courts, law enforcement, and regulatory agencies – have been corrupted by years of strongman rule. Rebuilding governments and civil society will take years.
"In this sense the removal of a dictator represents only the beginning of the end of authoritarian governance," conclude analysts Christopher Walker and Vanessa Tucker in the Freedom House report "Countries at the Crossroads 2011."
Already some nations are making more progress than others.
Tunisia, for example, is doing relatively well. A popular uprising that began after the self-immolation of a despairing street vendor ousted President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali last Jan. 14. In October the interim government proceeded with a vote for a constituent assembly that international observers pronounced generally free and fair.
"Tunisia had a very strong election," says Mr. Calingaert.
In contrast, Egypt's transition is incomplete. Since street protests toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, the country's atmosphere has become more open. But Egypt's interim military leaders have yet to rescind the decades-old emergency law that legalizes censorship and suspends constitutional rights. The military has seemed reluctant to surrender power, and Egypt's streets erupted again in mid-November in what almost seemed a second national revolution.
But parliamentary elections at the end of the month went smoothly, with larger-than-expected turnout. A three-way struggle for influence seems to be taking shape: Military leaders have indicated they want to choose the new prime minister. The Muslim Brotherhood and the secular democratic movement are resisting this – each maneuvering for its own interests in the newly constituted Egyptian government. For millenniums Egypt has been dominated by a strong central state. With citizens used to big government, expectations are high that the new parliament will make progress on issues important to ordinary Egyptians, such as unemployment and high housing costs.
"The question is, can a forthcoming parliament have any form of power or influence over the leaders of the government to deliver?" said Ed Husain, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, in a Nov. 29 conference call with reporters.
Libya is still recovering from the warfare that toppled and killed dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Syria continues to try to brutally repress its restive population. Yemen has been in turmoil through much of 2011, although President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Nov. 23 finally agreed to transfer power to his vice president, effectively ending his 33 years of authoritarian rule.
Whichever direction these revolutions take, the region's yearning for freedom is something that has drifted on the winds to other parts of the world.
"You can see repercussions in sub-Saharan Africa, for instance," says Calingaert. "You see popular movements pushing for more openness in Uganda, Malawi, and elsewhere."
Opportunities for democracy presented by the Arab awakening come at a time when the progress of freedom worldwide has slowed after a rapid, decades-long climb.
In 1990, 41 percent of the world's nations were electoral democracies, according to Freedom House. But in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, tyrannies toppled throughout Europe and Asia. In 2006 the spread of democracy peaked, with 64 percent of the world's nations rating democratic status.
Since then, there has been some backsliding. Today, democracies account for 115 of the world's 194 nations, or 59 percent, according to Freedom House's annual report "Freedom in the World."
"The multiyear spate of backsliding is the longest of its kind since 'Freedom in the World' was first published in 1972, and threatens gains dating to the post-Cold War era in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the former Soviet bloc," writes Arch Paddington, Freedom House vice president for research, in the organization's 2011 annual report.
In Latin America, for instance, the scourge of organized drug-related violence pushed Mexico from the category of "free" down to "partly free" in Freedom House's 2011 ratings. A similar slide occurred in Venezuela as a result of President Hugo Chávez's pushing through limitations on the rights of the press and independent political activity. But both Brazil and Colombia became freer as the former held a free and fair presidential election and bitter political polarization continued to fade in the latter.
Africa showed similar conflicting trends of decline and improvement. Ethiopia continued a slow slide downward toward oppression, for example, while Guinea held a free election as it emerged from a military dictatorship.
Overall, Freedom House finds a number of reasons for optimism about democracy's future – among them, that the global economic downturn has not triggered a reversal of democratic institutions in vulnerable countries.
"The past decade began at a high point for freedom and concluded with freedom under duress. The next decade could witness a new wave of democratic development if democracy's champions remember that freedom is more powerful – both as an idea and as the basis for practical governance – than anything its adversaries have to offer," concluded the Freedom House 2011 report.


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720 horsepower. 740 lb-ft of torque. $1.3 million dollars of carbon fiber extremism. It's all yours, but only for 24 hours.
Welcome to Morning Would, where we present you with some of the most desirable, controversial cars ever built and ask what you would do to drive one.
This is a car that can melt the brains of children while sitting on a curb. So where would you go and what would you do? Remember, your billionaire patron would appreciate if you brought it back in one piece.


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Just call 600502030 (within UAE) or +97126210090 (outside UAE) and speak to one of our Phone Banking Officers who will assist you with the registration.
IVR (Interactive Voice Response)
ADCB's IVR or Automated Phone Banking Service is like your own Personal Banker – always there whenever you need it and it is just a phone call away. What's more? It is fast and secure.
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- Review your last 5 transactions on your account or credit cards
- Request statements through fax or mail
ADCB VoicePassTM
We are pleased to announce the launch of VoicePass™, our new voice recognition security system for IVR. Click here
TouchPoints Awarded on Usage and Utility Bill Payments
Usage TouchPoints Earned Cap First Time Registration 500 One Time Utility Bill Payment (per Payment) 50 250 Per Month First time usage Utility Bill Payment Cap 1st Month 250 One Time 2nd Consecutive Month 500 One Time 3rd Consecutive Month 1000 One Time
Just call 600502030 (within UAE) or +97126210090 (outside UAE) to access all your ADCB accounts.
It is quick and easily accessible which helps you save precious time.
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You have no items in your shopping cart.
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L Shape Vinyl Wristbands
Quantity in boxes. 1 box = 500 wristbands
Vinyl wristbands are well suited for extended wear since they are very soft and comfortable. The male/female snaps latch through any of the holes to fit wrists of different sizes. Once removed, the wristband cannot be reattached.
Custom Printing is available for all vinyl wristbands.


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Among the most common questions cramming their way into my inbox at the HIV Prevention and Safer Sex Expert Forum are an impressively wide spectrum of concerns about HIV-diagnostic testing. Everything from the very basic -- "to test or not to test; that is the question" (a favorite of Shakespeare aficionados) -- to the ridiculous -- "Grandma farted getting out of the barcalounger. I think I smelled an HIV-charged fart. Should I get an AIDS test?" In between these extremes are HIV-diagnostic-testing conundrums, such as:
"Is the three-month window period calculated as 90 days (three months x 30 days per month) or 84 days (12 weeks x seven days per week)?"
"Which test should I take -- ELISA, EIA, Rapid, Western Blot, qualitative PCR DNA or quantitative PCR RNA?"
"What is pooled NAAT testing and how does it work?"
"Should I test using blood, urine or oral fluids?"
"What's the difference between confidential and anonymous HIV testing?"
"Do I have to worry about delayed seroconversion, and what about rare or emerging strains?"
"What causes false-positive, false-negative and indeterminate results?"
"What is the difference between older HIV-antibody tests and the newer generation assays?"
Needless to say confusion abounds on many levels! It is not feasible for me to address all these topics in detail in this blog without totally congesting the information superhighway and getting carpal tunnel syndrome from excessive keyboarding. (Note to readers: Most of the above topics I've discussed at length by responding to questions now posted in the archives of the HIV Prevention and Safer Sex Expert Forum.) What I will attempt to address here are some of the evolving technologies that are guiding emerging new strategies in the field of HIV-diagnostic testing and how these emerging new strategies affect HIV guidelines.
Let's begin with a rather startling fact: The United States Public Health Service HIV-testing-algorithm guidelines have not changed substantially since they were first devised in the late 1980s, even though new and improved diagnostic-testing technologies have been developed and are currently in widespread use. It's interesting to compare the static HIV-testing guidelines to the guidelines for when to start antiretroviral therapy, another field of HIV medicine in which there has been significant development and now widespread use of new-and-improved technologies (new and novel antiretroviral agents). While there has been no substantial change in the testing guidelines, the when-to-start guidelines have changed rather dramatically multiple times over the past 25 years. When the first effective antiretroviral drugs were discovered, our initial treatment mantra was "hit early; hit hard." Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) showed great promise. However, we soon learned more about HIV-drug resistance leading to treatment failure. HAART (rather embarrassingly) became FAART (fairly active antiretroviral therapy).
Complicating matters further was the gradual recognition of unexpected and bizarre drug-related side effects and toxicities. This led the treatment-guidelines pendulum to swing in the opposite direction, and the mantra became "treat when CD4 counts drop to dangerous levels." Next, new antiretrovirals were added to the drug armamentarium that provided additional and safer treatment options. Our treatment mantra evolved to "hit wisely." Today we have over 30 antiretroviral drugs or fixed-dose combinations from six classes, each class having its own unique mechanism of action to battle HIV.
As new and novel, better-tolerated therapies have come online and we have learned more about the natural history and immunopathology of HIV disease, our mantra is now "hit earlier (CD4 of 500 or less) and hit wisely (use resistance testing to guide therapy)." The treatment pendulum has swung back toward early intervention. Many HIV specialists, including your author, have evolved beyond the most current federal guidelines and now recommend starting antiretroviral therapy as soon as the diagnosis of HIV positive is made, even if the CD4 count is above 500, in order to preserve immune function and decrease damaging immune activation/inflammation. The point here is that federal guidelines that address when to start treatment have changed dramatically over the years, based on our improved understanding of HIV coupled with the development of new and novel antiretroviral therapies.
So why are the HIV-diagnostic testing guidelines still stuck in the Reagan Era? Excellent question!
So that this blog doesn't become a tome rivaling War and Peace in length, let me focus on just a few aspects of HIV-diagnostic testing -- the so-called window period and the detection of acute HIV infection.
Window-period confusion is a great source of frustration and anxiety when getting HIV tested. The window period is defined as the time during which markers of HIV infection are not detectable in a person infected with the virus. In other words it's the time between becoming infected with HIV and being able to detect that infection with HIV-diagnostic tests: HIV antibodies, p24 antigen or NAAT/PCR/RNA. The window-period length for each of these tests (and different generations of these tests) varies based on sensitivity and specificity and which component or marker of HIV they are measuring (i.e., direct measurement of the virus with NAAT/PCR/RNA versus an indirect measurement of infection via detection of anti-HIV antibodies). Adding to the confusion is a natural variation in the time it takes for different individuals to produce detectable antigen and/or antibodies and complications arising from concurrent illnesses and the use of certain medicines that can affect some of the diagnostic tests. It should become apparent that making definitive statements about the exact length of "the window period" is extremely challenging, if not completely impossible! Making this situation even more murky is the fact that guidelines and recommendations defining the window period are not consistent or clearly communicated. Some take into account the newer realities of the improved testing assays; others do not.
I can just about hear many of the anxious folks in the throes of their "window pain" who are reading this blog begin frantically typing questions to me, such as "but Dr. Bob, why can't scientists just determine the precise duration of the window period for each type of test?" Okay, let me try to explain. To be calculated accurately, researchers would have to know the precise date that person was exposed to HIV, and then have multiple serial blood samples to test with different testing assays (NAAT/PCR/RNA, p24 antigen, anti-HIV antibodies). Even if we had this data, the best we could come up with would be an average number of days during which specific tests were not able to detect infection.
The key variables remain:
- Individual variations in immune response to the virus;
- Rarely known precise dates of exposure; and
- Confounding factors, such as concurrent illnesses, the use of certain medications and possible variations due to viral strain and route of exposure.
Even designing research studies to try to definitively answer the question of the exact duration of the window period would be challenging, due to the scope and number of these variables and the need to have multiple serial blood samples.
What we know for certain is that HIV RNA is the first measurable marker of HIV infection. The gap between acquiring HIV and the first detection of HIV RNA is sometimes referred to as the "eclipse phase." Viral replication during this period occurs principally at the site of infection.
Early diagnosis of HIV disease is of particular public health importance, because recently infected positively charged folks who aren't aware of their HIV-positive status often have sky-high HIV viral loads, because they obviously are not on antiretroviral treatment. High viral loads are associated with high infectiousness. This explains the disproportionate number of new HIV infections traced to HIVers who have acquired the virus very recently.
Stay tuned for part two of this blog in which I discuss the various HIV-diagnostic tests currently available and the evolving guidelines for diagnosing recent HIV infection, and make some summary comments on window periods.
Want to get in touch with Dr. Bob? You can reach him through his "Ask the Experts" forum, by sending a message to the Robert James Frascino AIDS Foundation, or by leaving a comment for him below. (If it's a private message, or if it includes personal info such as your e-mail address or phone number, we won't post the comment, but we will send it along to him.)