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On October 12th, the menu spotlights National Gumbo Day for food holidays. This heavily seasoned, stew-like dish fills us up on chilly fall days. #NationalGumboDay Originating in southern Louisiana during the 18th century, Gumbo typically consists of strongly-flavored stock with meat or shellfish, a thickener, and seasoned vegetables. The seasoned vegetables may include celery, bell peppers, and onions. In Cajun cuisine, the trio is known as the “holy trinity.” Most people serve Gumbo over rice. Gumbo also falls into different categories based on the following types of thickener used: African vegetable okra Choctaw spice filé powder (dried and ground sassafras...

Akira Kurosawa may be one of cinema's more humane filmmakers. While he did see a lot of sadness and injustice in the world, and would address those issues in his films, few of his works skewed full-bore into cynicism. Often, wicked characters would face retribution for their actions -- seen most notably in Kurosawa's Shakespeare adaptations "Throne of Blood" (1957), "The Bad Sleep Well" (1960), "Kagemusha" (1980), and "Ran" (1985) -- but more often, their moral fall was depicted as a great, tragic failing of the world. He looked and saw people, not archetypes. If one sees archetypes in Kurosawa...

Click here to find out more! When asked about the significance of her daughter, Chelsea, marrying Marc Mezvinsky, who is Jewish, and thus being married in an interfaith union, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded, “Over the years, so many of the barriers that prevented people from getting married, crossing lines of faith or color or ethnicity have just disappeared.” True, the barriers have disappeared, but serious difficulties remain. While some scholars argue that mixed-faith unions “serve as a refiner’s fire” that make the relationships stronger, the statistical evidence indicates this is all too frequently not the outcome. The American...

Nevada's unemployment rate rose for the sixth consecutive month, hitting 5.1-percent in September as a housing slump continued and growth in the state's labor pool outpaced job gains.

WASHINGTON - In the face of stiffening insurgent resistance, U.S. and Iraqi security forces now control about half of Baghdad, the American commander overseeing operations said Friday. Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., commander of Multi-National Division Baghdad, told reporters at the Pentagon that progress in securing the capital has been steady and that while he could use more U.S. troops he believes he has enough — with the recent arrival of reinforcements — to complete his mission. “Some wonder: Are we progressing fast enough? Are we ahead? Are we on track?” he said in a video teleconference from his...

Get prepared. This film of the Passion isn't your typical Hollywood production, and it's producers say playing the race card is needed. It's not Mel Gibson's The Passion, but folks involved in this big-screen's production are no less passionate in bringing this adaption of Christ's last 48 hours to your local cinema house in a film that openly plays the race card - with the Messiah cast as a black man. This racial perspective to the conventional biblical story, the producers say, "is sure to challenge Conservative Christian beliefs."