Thanksgiving

Frank Tahvildari has spent each Thanksgiving for the last 16 years serving dinner to others. And he's not bored yet. He's doing it again this year. The owner of Tumbleweeds Bar & Grill, 21094 S. Beach Blvd., and two other restaurants in Huntington Beach and Seal Beach could easily take the day off, relax, eat and watch football with family and friends. But he chooses to give. "It's a day of appreciations - appreciating people and appreciating life," he said. "Life is not just about taking.

o7 The Independent went to Village View Elementary School in Huntington Beach and asked the children, "What is your favorite fall-time activity?" f7 "Go to Knott's Scary Farm with my family and get chased." Josh Moon, 10 "Every Thanksgiving when family comes to my house. This year I'm looking forward to seeing my cousin that I haven't seen in years." Megan Grint, 9 "Decorating the house with pumpkins, candles and cobwebs." Diane Tamondong, 10 "Carving pumpkins with my family."

The last Thursday in November is traditionally a time for giving thanks. For Vic and me, it's a time to gather with family and friends and eat the traditional foods of our people, who were mostly Midwesterners. That means we chow down ungodly quantities of turkey, stuffing, candied sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and gravy, and traditional round cranberry sauce -- round because it's straight from the can! Everything but the cranberry sauce is made from scratch, the way my mother and aunts and grandmothers made Thanksgiving dinners.

Clem Dominguez If you want to see a fast-paced thriller that totally entertains this is it. The beginning is a bit confusing as there is one plot and two subplots unfolding, but once all the characters are in place and the story reveals how everything is intertwined it's nail-biting time. Michael Douglas plays an upper west-side psychiatrist who gets an urgent call from one of his colleagues. He wants Douglas to see a patient named Elizabeth (Brittany Murphy)

Mike Sciacca The art of giving is especially felt during the holiday season, perhaps more than any other time of the year. Surf City Breakfast Kiwanis Club, however, intends to extend that gift beyond the new year. The club, some 22 members strong and less than a year old, first adopted a Huntington Beach family at Thanksgiving, providing all the trimmings for a hearty, holiday meal to a single mother with five children aged 8 to 17, living in a two-bedroom apartment.

A few weeks ago, I got one of those unpleasant, though not unexpected, shocks when I walked into a let's-not-name-it department store. Everywhere I looked there were paper turkeys, Pilgrim hats and clothing in colors the leaves turn in other parts of our country. Thanksgiving, according to them, was here. And it was still September. Worse still, tucked behind the Thanksgiving displays were fake Christmas trees, strands of holiday lights and more than a few 3-foot-tall Santas.

While President Obama is pardoning two turkeys for Thanksgiving, every one of us has that same presidential power by choosing a nonviolent Thanksgiving observance that spares a turkey's life. And here are some good reasons: •You are what you eat. Who wants to be a "butterball"? •Your kids can tell their friends about their cool "Tofurky. " •You won't have to call the Meat and Poultry Hotline to keep your family alive. •Fruits and vegetables don't have to carry government warning labels.

Michele Marr, For the Independent Love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or conceited or proud; love is not ill-mannered or selfish or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs, love is eternal. -- 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 Sooner or later, as Valentine's Day approaches each year, someone is bound to ask me the question: How did Michael propose to you? Then I have to tell them that I'm not exactly sure he did. He did of course. But not in the way people mean when they ask that question.

Dressed in traditional Arabic hijab, Maria Khani stood before a pulpit in the St. Wilfrid of York Episcopal Church and sang prayers dating back thousands of years. Her culturally prescribed modesty did not cloak the beauty of her voice as she chanted a section of the Koran to members of the Greater Huntington Beach Interfaith Council. Minutes before Khani's performance at the council's second ecumenical Thanksgiving service on Sunday, Carol Weinfeld read a Jewish Sukkot prayer from Temple Emanuel of Baltimore.