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Before and during World War II, the Nazis seized up to 600,000 works of art from all across Europe. This has created a long-running drama that is still playing out from movie studios in Hollywood to museums in Israel.

If you saw last year's movie The Monuments Men, starring George Clooney, then you know the story line. Toward the end of the war, American and Allied forces sent teams on a treasure hunt through Europe.

Their mission was to find those stolen art works the Nazis had stashed away, and return them to their original owners. But many of those owners had been killed in the Holocaust, and a lot of art was just never claimed.

Ultimately, a couple thousand artworks were distributed to Jewish institutions around the world, with many going to Israel, including the country's leading museums.

Now, advocates for Holocaust victims say more needs to be done to get the art back to the families that once owned it.

At the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, director James Snyder shows me a 1915 oil painting – a sort of mosaic of rooftops – by Austrian artist Egon Schiele. It's a well-known work by a famous artist, one of about a thousand pieces of Holocaust-era art the museum received.

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"The fact that no one has ever surfaced with record of its prior ownership sadly suggests that no one from the family that may have owned it before the war survived the war," Snyder says.

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'Violins Of Hope': Instruments From The Holocaust

Today, many museums around the world are going over their collections to see if they have art that was confiscated by the Nazis. Snyder says the Israel Museum has returned about 40 works to heirs.

But art experts say it's likely that museums in Israel have many looted paintings on their walls and they don't even know it. These are likely works that museums bought in good faith, or received as gifts, and they simply aren't aware of the history, or have no way of tracing it or haven't done enough research to find out.

An Renewed Search

Stuart Eizenstat, special adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry on Holocaust issues, addressed a conference on art restitution in Israel this past summer. He said Israel hasn't done enough.

"It's ironic because Israel is the state of the Jewish people. It's ironic because Israel has the greatest number of Holocaust survivors in the world. It's ironic because Israel should be a leader as a Jewish state on Holocaust-related issues," said Eizenstat.

The Israeli organization Hashava was formed by the government to locate Holocaust victims' assets in Israel, though it only started looking into art in 2013.

"I believe Israel always had the sense that being the state of the Jewish people, things should belong here if they are heirless," says Elinor Kroitoru of Hashava.

Her organization has caused a bit of a stink on this issue, publicly accusing Israeli museums of not doing enough detective work to weed out suspect art.

Kroitoru has singled out one major museum, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. She says it has a big collection of impressionist and post-impressionist art – the kind European Jewish collectors owned before the war. She thinks that statistically, it's likely the museum has looted art on its walls without even realizing it.

"The Tel Aviv museum claims they have done research internally but nothing has been published yet," she says. "We are waiting for the museum to come forward and show us and the public what they have done. They are a responsible museum. I know they are a serious museum, and I hope they will publish and work transparently."

Ruth Feldman, who recently recently retired as a curator at the museum, says the museum takes the matter seriously. "We did a lot of work in that field. There is not always the time to do it ... But things are done at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art," Feldman said.

Raising Money For Research

The Hashava organization is working to get money to fund provenance research at the Tel Aviv Museum. And this past summer, Israeli curators attended the first workshop of its kind in Israel, on how to do that research.

But even if a museum can find an heir and return a piece of art, that's not always the end of the story. In some cases, Kroirotu says, the heirs turn around and sell the piece to private collectors.

"Then we are in a very unusual situation, where art that was looted from a Jew in Europe before the war, ends up in the beautiful palace of a very rich person in Dubai. And one of the questions is, 'Is that what we want to happen to looted art?'" she asks.

In other cases, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem has returned art to heirs and they have allowed the art to stay where it is, on loan, or sold it back to the museum.

That way, the heirs don't need to fuss with security cameras and climate controlled rooms for their precious painting — and the public in Israel gets to appreciate a great work of art and a piece of Holocaust history.

Holocaust

Israel

The International Consumer Electronics Show came to a close Friday in Las Vegas — and with it: the end of a performance. The show is meant to be a happy time: party hard. Put your best face forward — even if you're not sure about the future of your company. The CEO of Intel, the chipmaker, is in just that awkward position.

The Performer

On stage at the Venetian hotel, a pop band and a cellist play a rendition of the song "Radioactive." The combination of modern and classical form, the refrain "Welcome to the new age, to the new age" — it was a fitting prelude to the real show.

The tens of thousands of people at the week-long show didn't come for the musicians. They came to this gadget-fest for the engineers, for people like Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, who was the opening night headliner.

As Krzanich stepped on stage, the audience expected to be dazzled. And he dazzled them with Nixie, which he called "the first wearable camera that can fly."

The must-have drone has legs that fold around your wrist like a watchband. And when you want that selfie from the sky, unclasp it and it can hover around you to shoot.

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"Now those of you in the audience," Krzanich says, "Get your cameras ready — we're about to witness history."

We watch Nixie take the first flying photo on the stage of this electronics show – and it's made possible by an Intel chip.

For an hour, Krzanich uses whiz-bang technology to make a case: Just like Google is the software platform for developers around the world, Intel — the chipmaker — is the hardware platform. From drones to refrigerators to bracelets — if it computes, if it's smart, if it needs to communicate — it should be done with Intel inside. At least, that's the hope.

A Comeback — With Wearable Devices?

"It's a hard slog," says Michael Malone. "It can look like your divorced uncle going out dancing on a Friday night."

Malone, the author of the book The Intel Trinity, says the company founded in 1968 fell behind the smartphone revolution and poured its money into making big chips for more intelligent PCs and servers. "That was a fairly reasonable conclusion to draw," Malone says. "However, it was the wrong one."

Intel is now betting on the wearable device movement — like that wearable drone — even though it might flop. And according to research sponsored by Intel, customers are not sold.

But, Malone says, Intel has to show the world that the company's in the game: "They're not stodgy old Intel. They're making connections with a lot of interesting folks that are doing interesting things."

This Is Not The PC Era

Off stage, CEO Krzanich talks about the new kinds of companies he's working with in this wearable era. Take the fashion industry: "They're used to changing product right up until the last moment, as fashion and what's desirable shifts. And that's something we've had to adapt to."

Brands like Oakley sunglasses and Fossil watches are really different from the old PC makers — and from each other. And, Krzanich admits, he's not into the scene per se.

"I can't say I went to any of the parties," he says about his time at New York Fashion Week. "An engineer at fashion week. It's not the exciting thing. It's not like a tech show."

Intel has a real technology challenge: to figure out a button-sized superchip that'll serve the needs of many new, fragmented partners. Krzanich unveiled a prototype called Curie, which does not yet have a price.

Intel's got to get the price right. Back in the PC era, it sold chips for as much as $1,000 — and had nice margins. But when I roam this convention floor and ask device-makers what they'd pay for a quality chip, I get single-digit answers: mostly $1 or $2.

Mark Watterson with iFit.com says he'd go as high as $6. "The current chips on the market are limiting" his smartwatches and smart shoes, he says. But an expensive chip would have to be "good."

Intel's chips — which are more than good — might be overkill. And so, as CEO Krzanich walks passed poker tables to lead Intel demos, he is making a gamble.

Intel Corp.

Consumer Electronics Show

Investigators searching for the crashed AirAsia plane's black boxes lifted the tail portion of the jet out of the Java Sea on Saturday, two weeks after it went down, killing all 162 people on board.

It was not immediately clear whether the cockpit voice and flight data recorders were still inside the tail or had detached when the Airbus A320 plummeted into the sea Dec. 28. Their recovery is essential to finding out why it crashed.

The tail was hoisted from a depth of about 30 meters (100 feet) using inflatable bags that were attached to the rear of the aircraft and a crane to lift it onto a rescue ship.

Intermittent underwater ping-like sounds were picked up Friday about a kilometer (half a mile) from where the tail was located, but it was unclear whether they were coming from the recorders. It was possible the signals were coming from another source.

No metal was detected at the ping location, and Nurcahyo Utomo, a National Commission for Transportation Safety investigator, said the sounds could not be confirmed.

The discovery of the tail on the ocean floor earlier in the week was a major breakthrough in the slow-moving search that has been hampered by seasonal rains, choppy seas and blinding silt from river runoff. Officials were hopeful the black boxes from Flight 8501 were still inside the tail.

The last contact the pilots had with air traffic control, about halfway into their two-hour journey from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore, indicated they were entering stormy weather. They asked to climb from 32,000 feet (9,753 meters) to 38,000 feet (11,582 meters) to avoid threatening clouds, but were denied permission because of heavy air traffic above them. Four minutes later, the plane dropped off the radar.

Four additional bodies were recovered Friday - two of them still strapped in their seats on the ocean floor - bringing the total to 48. Officials hope many of the remaining corpses will be found inside the fuselage, which has not yet been located by divers. Several large objects have been spotted in the area by sonar.

Meanwhile, Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan cracked down on five airlines Friday, temporarily suspending 61 flights because they were flying routes on days without permits. Earlier, all AirAsia flights from Surabaya to Singapore were suspended after it was discovered that the low-cost carrier was not authorized to fly on Sundays.

Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan also sanctioned nine more officials for allowing the plane to fly without permits, bringing the total to 16.

In the late 1970s, a young Southern California beer enthusiast named Bill Sysak began doing something quite novel at the time. He bought cases of beer and stashed the bottles in his basement to age like wine. Over several years, Sysak discovered that some beers could develop rich flavors — like toffee and caramel — not present in their youth. Excited by what he found, Sysak ramped up his cellaring program and made it a full-time hobby.

Today, Sysak's beer stash contains thousands of bottles, some acquired from other collectors and now more than 60 years old. Meanwhile, many more beer aficionados have begun experimenting with the art and science of aging beer.

"There is a huge subculture of people in the beer industry with cellars who are squirreling away bottles, just like with wine, to keep for years," says Patrick Dawson, a beer writer and the author of Vintage Beer, which was released in March.

Sysak, who works for Stone Brewing Co. as its "craft beer ambassador" and who wrote the foreword to Dawson's book, tells The Salt there is a considerable difference between aging beer in barrels — also wildly popular now among brewers — and aging beer in bottles.

"When a beer is in an oak barrel, it continues to pick up flavors, like vanillins and tannins, that contribute to the recipe created by the brewer," Sysak says.

i i

Sediment in a glass of 1977 Ind Coope Strong Ale. Proteins in very old beers can coagulate into chunks at the bottom of the bottle, Patrick Dawson explains in Vintage Beer. /Courtesy of Lindsay Dawson hide caption

itoggle caption /Courtesy of Lindsay Dawson

Sediment in a glass of 1977 Ind Coope Strong Ale. Proteins in very old beers can coagulate into chunks at the bottom of the bottle, Patrick Dawson explains in Vintage Beer.

/Courtesy of Lindsay Dawson

But a beer aging in a bottle, which is virtually airtight, is affected by no material additions — just the effects of time.

Most beers are not suited for aging. Light pilsners, pale ales, IPAs and most other styles with low or moderate alcohol levels will only deteriorate when stashed in a cool, dark place. Deschutes Brewery's assistant brewmaster Ryan Schmiege — a beer collector himself — says beers that contain lots of hop are generally intended to be consumed fresh, not stashed away to age.

"Hop compounds break down rapidly," Schmiege says, and losing the aromatic qualities of a carefully brewed IPA, he says, "is tragic."

For a beer to benefit from aging, there are several basic prerequisites. First, it should be strong — at least 8 percent alcohol by volume. Alcohol acts like a preservative against a beer turning stale or skunky. Virtually all beer bottles display the alcohol content.

Sweetness, from residual sugar that didn't ferment during brewing, also helps, as the sugars develop malty, caramel-like overtones. Smoky-flavored beers, as well as those affected by souring yeasts or bacteria, can also do well in the cellar. Sour beers, a popular brewing method, are easily found at many beer stores, as are smoke-flavored brews. Those shopping for cellarworthy beers should ask for tips from the retailer.

With high-alcohol brews commonplace in the craft beer world, finding age-worthy bottles is easy to do. On the other hand, finding beers already aged for some time in a cellar is more challenging, as most retailers and small breweries don't have the storage space to keep large library collections of past vintages. Your best bet for locating old bottles is to inquire with beer-specific retail shops — the sorts of stores with entire walls devoted to shelves of beer. Examples include Craft Beer Cellar in Belmont, Mass., Monk's Caf in Philadelphia, Falling Rock Tap House in Denver and City Beer Store in San Francisco. The New York City and Chicago locations of Eataly serve keg-aged beers on draft. Breweries like Hair of the Dog, Stone, Avery, Deschutes, Sierra Nevada, The Lost Abbey, Dogfish Head and The Bruery, among many more, all keep aging bottles in stock.

Such beers, be warned, come at a substantial premium — sometimes $30 or $40 for a 12-ounce bottle.

Much more affordable is to get started with your own beer cellar — or just a cupboard. What some people do is put away a few bottles of a given beer every year, carefully marking the year of release on each bottle. Some beers, like North Coast Brewing's Old Stock Ale, come labeled with the year of production. Old Stock — strong and sweet — is considered a great beer to age. So are Anchor Brewing's Old Foghorn barleywine, Goose Island's Bourbon County Stout and Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot barleywine. After several years, a bottle of each vintage can be opened and sipped side by side — a snapshot glance at how a beverage changes with time called a vertical tasting.

Some beers age rapidly. Just a year or two in storage will turn a Lagunitas Brown Shugga' from a rather one-dimensional candy-sweet ale into a fudgy, malty beer with qualities of a sipping liquor. Many barleywines reputedly take many years to reach their peak.

Samichlaus Classic Bier also evolves for long periods of time. While some enjoy this 14-percent alcohol lager right off the retail shelf, I've found it wretched — like cough syrup and flat Pepsi spiked with vodka. But Dawson, who has tasted aged Samichlaus, says delectable flavors of dried fruits and candy begin to emerge at three years of age.

He recently opened a 1995 bottle. "It was absolutely delicious," he says. "There was tons of dried fruit, raisins, molasses, treacle and a hint of pipe tobacco."

Julia Hertz, a spokeswoman with the Brewers Association, a craft beer advocacy group, concedes that bottle-aging can do great things for many beers.

However, she warns that improper handling — especially exposing a bottle to light or heat or wavering temperatures — can easily cause a beer to spoil. The beer will not be dangerous to drink, though, just foul-tasting.

She also says to keep bottles upright, not sideways, as wine bottles are supposed to be placed when aging. And if, at the end of the process, the beer tastes bad, don't blame the brewer, she says.

By the same token, if a beer tastes great after a few years in solitary confinement, you'll have yourself to thank.

"I've put my thumbprint on a beer that I aged," says Dawson. "It's really satisfying. When I drink it, I get to say, 'I helped make this beer as good as it is.' "

Alastair Bland is a freelance journalist based in San Francisco.

craft beer

food science

Beer

Updated at 8:53 a.m. ET

The U.S. economy added 252,000 jobs in December, capping a 12-month stretch of job growth unmatched since 1999, according to the Labor Department. In a separate survey, the department says that the unemployment rate dipped to 5.6 percent from 5.8 percent the previous month.

The department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that job gains occurred in professional and business services, construction, food and drinking establishments, health care and manufacturing.

The number of jobs created in October and November was also revised upward by 50,000 for the two months combined, according to BLS.

It was widely expected that December would be another strong month for job growth.

NPR's John Ydstie, reporting on Morning Edition ahead of this morning's announcement, says that it's been 15 years since job growth was so strong.

"[You] have to go all the way back to 1999, when companies were rapidly hiring IT workers to deal with the Y2K threat to computer systems. That year the economy added about 3.2 million new jobs," John says.

In a foreshadowing of today's new figures, a report out on Thursday showed fewer Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits.

Labor's Household Survey, which determines the official employment rate, showed 383,000 fewer people were considered unemployed, bringing that number to 8.7 million.

According to BLS: "Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for adult women (5.0 percent) decreased by 0.2 percentage point in December, while the rates for adult men (5.3 percent), teenagers (16.8 percent), whites (4.8 percent), blacks (10.4 percent), and Hispanics (6.5 percent) showed little change. The jobless rate for Asians, at 4.2 percent (not seasonally adjusted), changed little from a year earlier."

The number of so-called "discouraged workers" — those who have given up looking for work — stood at 740,000, down by 177,000 the year before.

Despite the good news, wage growth remains weak, with hourly pay actually slipping by 5 cents, the department says.

As The Associated Press notes:

"American businesses have been largely shrugging off signs of economic weakness overseas and continuing to hire at healthy rates. The U.S. economy's steady improvement is especially striking compared with the weakness in much of the world.

"Europe is barely growing, and its unemployment rate is nearly double the U.S. level. Japan, the world's third-largest economy, is in recession. Russia's economy is cratering as oil prices plummet. China is straining to manage a slowdown. Brazil and others in Latin America are struggling."

employment report

More than a dozen United Airlines flight attendants who were fired for their insistence on additional screening measures after discovering "menacing" graffiti scrawled on an airplane have filed a federal complaint against their former employer.

The Los Angeles Times reports: "On July 14, 2014, United crews departing from San Francisco International Airport bound for Hong Kong found the words 'BYE BYE' in six-inch high letters alongside two faces, one smiling and the other one also smiling, but with eye brows drawn in a more sinister expression. The writing was traced in an oil slick from the auxiliary engine in the [Boeing 747] aircraft's tail cone. "

The 13 flight attendants have filed a federal whistleblower complaint with the Department of Labor. They say they found the drawing "menacing" and "devilish" and that they requested that more than 300 passengers aboard the July 14 flight be taken off for an additional security sweep.

Reuters says:

"The flight attendants, all with 18 or more years of experience, said the airline refused to deplane the passengers and conduct a security inspection. They said they disobeyed orders to work, believing the lives of more than 300 passengers and crew on the jumbo jet could be endangered."

"After a delay, the July 14 flight was eventually canceled. United accused the flight attendants of insubordination and fired them all, according to the complaint."

United spokeswoman Christen David said on Wednesday that: "All of FAA's and United's own safety procedures were followed, including a comprehensive safety sweep prior to boarding, and the pilots, mechanics and safety leaders deemed the aircraft entirely safe to fly."

United Airlines

Terrorism

Elvis Presley was better known for his music than his gourmet tastes. But he did have a famous affinity for the fried goodness of the American South — and he had the waistline to prove it.

In honor of what would have been the King of Rock 'n' Roll's 80th birthday, let's take a look at some of his legendary eating habits.

His famously beloved fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches — or "peanut butter and 'nanner sandwiches," according to Are You Hungry Tonight, a cookbook of his favorite recipes — were basically peanut butter and sliced banana between two pieces of white bread, fried in butter or bacon fat.

Butter seems to have been a frequent part of Presley's diet, contributing to his weight gain before his untimely demise at age 42 in 1977. By that time, "Elvis had long been gobbling drugs and fatty foods," Graeme Wood writes over at the now-defunct The Daily. "But his romance with saturated fat reached a sort of point-of-no-return 18 months before the end, on a chilly night that started at Graceland, his estate in Memphis, Tenn."

Wood recounts the story of Presley's famous flight to Denver one night to get a sandwich that topped even his old familiar favorite. One night in 1976, the King started reminiscing about Fool's Gold Loaf, a sandwich he'd once eaten at the Colorado Mine Company in Denver. It cost $49.95 at the time — $189 in today's dollars, Wood says.

Apparently, Presley's craving was so intense that he and his entourage jumped on his private plane and jetted off for the two-hour ride to Denver — a midnight junk food run that totaled $16,000, says Wood.

As for the calorie count involved, estimates vary: Wood says 8,000 but some estimates have run as high as 42,000! Here's the recipe:

"Take a whole loaf of Italian bread and slice it lengthwise. Hollow it out and slather it with margarine. Then add a whole jar of jelly and a whole jar of creamy peanut butter, creating two large boats of PB&J. Finally, add a whole pound of fried bacon. Before adding the bacon, dab away the grease on paper towels (presumably to avoid adding unnecessary fat and rendering the sandwich disgusting). Then reunite the sandwich halves, deep-fry, and serve."

Far be it from us to advocate anyone eat like Presley (as we've told you before, all that bacon could be the death of you). Still, those curious about the King's other culinary ways can dive into these recipes from the authorized cookbook, Graceland's Table: Recipes Fit for the King of Rock and Roll.

Or you could try a modern interpretation of Elvis' immortal beloved snack — The Elvis Presley Milkshake, from acclaimed Charleston, S.C.-based chef Sean Brock. He shared the recipe for All Things Considered's Found Recipe series.

"I am a really big Elvis fan," Brock tells us.

So one year around Elvis' birthday, he decided to work the flavors of the crooner's favorite snack into the menu at his restaurants. Thus was born the Brock's Elvis Presley milkshake, a blend of ripe bananas, peanut butter, vanilla ice cream and bacon fat. It also has a dash of bourbon — which, Brock says, "we added for our own personal amusement."

"[I]t was kind of weird, especially with the bacon in the milkshake, but it turned out to be delicious," Brock says. Listen to All Things Considered's story later for more details, but here's the recipe if you just can't wait.

Sean Brock's Elvis Presley Milkshake

From Come In, We're Closed: An Invitation to Staff Meals at the World's Best Restaurants

Serves 4 to 6

5 thick-cut strips of smoked bacon

2 very ripe bananas

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter

1/4 cup Buffalo Trace bourbon

3 cups vanilla ice cream, softened slightly

3 tablespoons of bacon fat, cooled

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, fry the bacon until very crispy, about 6 to 8 minutes. Drain the bacon on paper towels. Reserve the rendered bacon fat separately, allowing it to cool slightly.

Place the bananas, peanut butter and bourbon in a blender. Add the cooked bacon and 3 tablespoons of the reserved bacon fat and blend until smooth, about 45 seconds, scraping down the sides if necessary. Add the ice cream and pulse to incorporate into a smooth shake, about 30 seconds. If you'd like, you can also incorporate the ice cream by hand by mixing it in with a whisk or an immersion blender; this will help keep the shake in a more frozen state. Serve immediately. Transfer any extra shake to a lidded container and reserve in the freezer. Because the alcohol prevents it from completely freezing, it turns into a scoopable ice cream.

A version of this story was published Jan. 8, 2013.

Elvis Presley

There is no formula for what sticks, says Jack Zipes, author of a number of books about fairy tales. "You cannot predict whether a child will really understand the moral or the message of a particular tale," he says. Zipes developed a storytelling program in Minneapolis where kids read and interpret classic tales like "Little Red Riding Hood." After some discussion, the teacher asks them to rewrite the stories based on a "what if" question. "For instance, 'What if Little Red Riding Hood knew karate?' or 'What if Grandma ate the wolf?' or 'What if the wolf were a vegetarian?'" says Zipes.

The exercise, he explains, helps children think more critically about the tale. But even then they might not be able to say what the moral is. And adults don't always grasp the moral of the story either; according to Zipes, a 17th century version of Little Red Riding Hood was written as a cautionary tale about rape: "'Little girls who invite wolves into their parlor deserve what they get.' Now that's a very clear moral and it's very sexist, obviously," he says. Today we might just say it's: "Don't talk to strangers."

Fables and fairy tales — and their morals — have changed and evolved over the centuries. Maleficent, starring Angelina Jolie, is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty from the evil fairy's point of view. It's really Maleficent's back-story. Seven-year-old Grace Feldmann of Laurel, Md., says it's one of her favorite movies: "It has evil; I like evil. It has nice; I like nice," says Feldmann.

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Maleficent rehabilitates the most maligned figure in the fairy tale canon: the evil fairy in Sleeping Beauty. Frank Connor/Disney hide caption

itoggle caption Frank Connor/Disney

Maleficent rehabilitates the most maligned figure in the fairy tale canon: the evil fairy in Sleeping Beauty.

Frank Connor/Disney

Maleficent certainly starts out nice — with her majestic wings, she grows up to be the strongest fairy of the Moors, an enchanted forest. But the human kingdom wants to conquer the Moors, and a soldier brutally cuts off her wings. That's when she turns evil. When the soldier becomes king, Maleficent puts a curse on his firstborn: "Before the sun sets on her 16th birthday, she will prick her finger on the spindle of the spinning wheel and fall into a sleep-like-death."

In this contemporary retelling, however, Maleficent ultimately repents and awakens the princess. She becomes kind again and reunites the two kingdoms. The message — that a person can be "both hero and villain" — is very powerful, says Harris. "It reflects the reality of the world and it also helps children understand the range of emotions and how emotions fit in to helping people walk through the world."

For Feldmann, however, it's a lot to take in. Here's how she describes the plot: "She gets angry. She turns back. She gets angry. It's kind of confusing sometimes." But Feldmann still loves the movie – she even dressed up as Maleficent for Halloween.

When kids read fables and fairy tales, they probably won't fully absorb their morals until they grow up — and maybe not even then.

Foie gras, the luxe delicacy made from fatty duck or goose livers, is no longer contraband on California menus.

A federal judge on Wednesday lifted a statewide ban on the sale of foie gras, which is made from the engorged liver of ducks or geese that have been force-fed to create the food's signature rich, creamy taste.

Animal rights activists have long denounced foie gras as a product of animal cruelty. In 2004, California voters approved a ban on the production and sale of foie gras in the state, but it didn't take effect until eight years later. Now U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson has ruled that the ban clashes with an existing federal law that regulates the sale and distribution of poultry products.

The three plaintiffs in the case include two foie gras producers and Los Angeles-based Hot's Restaurant Group, which filed suit the day after the ban took effect in 2012.

Indeed, Hot's Kitchen, based in Hermosa Beach, Calif., is among the many restaurants in the state that have been skirting the ban ever since it took effect, illicitly stashing and serving foie gras. Chefs and foodies likened the ban to Prohibition, and "duckeasies" popped up to satisfy demand for foie gras, which usually sells at a premium in high-end restaurants. But by offering it free as a gift from the kitchen, restaurants argued they weren't "selling" foie gras or violating the ban.

Last night, California chefs rejoiced on Twitter. Chef David Bazirgan of San Francisco's Dirty Habit wrote:

CALI FOIE BAN OVERTURNED . GOOD THING I ALWAYS HAVE IT ANYWAY!!! We have lots of FOIE gras for tonight… http://t.co/qQNfQ33gw5

— david bazirgan (@bazsf) January 7, 2015

After Wednesday's announcement, Bazirgan quickly created a four-course foie gras tasting menu that sold out within a few hours. "We were slammed and the chef sold out, but we're doing it again tonight," Jamie Law, public relations manager for Dirty Habit, tells The Salt.

Animal rights groups have vowed to appeal. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals President Ingrid Newkirk says force-feeding ducks and geese is akin to torture and won't be tolerated.

"A line will be drawn in the sand outside any restaurant that goes back to serving this "torture in a tin," and whoever crosses that line identifies themselves with gluttony that cannot control itself even to the point of torturing animals," Newkirk told us in an email.

The state has not said whether it will appeal the decision. A representative from California Attorney General Kamala Harris' office told us, "We are reviewing the ruling."

Meanwhile, restaurants from Los Angeles to San Francisco are offering celebratory treats, from seared foie gras on a stick wrapped in pink cotton candy to foie gras and beef burgers.

Celebrity chef Thomas Keller, who has been a vocal opponent of the ban, said both of his Yountville Calif. , restaurants, The French Laundry and Bouchon, will start serving foie gras again this spring.

"We are thrilled to be offering our guests the opportunity to enjoy this delicacy again," Keller said in a statement.

It is still illegal to produce foie gras in California, but Wednesday's ruling makes it legal to sell it, which means the state's restaurants are free to import it.

Although a handful of celebrity chefs, including Wolfgang Puck, oppose serving foie gras, most welcomed the recent news.

"It's like a right of passage to be able to serve it," says Chef Josiah Citrin of Melisse, a French restaurant in Santa Monica with two Michelin stars. "It'll be on our menu all this week."

foie gras

The Pentagon announced Thursday a plan to save a half-billion dollars annually in a major scaling back of the U.S. military presence in Europe – including a withdrawal from an airbase in the U.K. and handing back 14 other sites to NATO allies.

It also said that its presence at one British airbase would be beefed up as part of a planned deployment of the F-35 fighter.

At present, the U.S. has more than 60,000 troops stationed primarily in Britain, Germany and Italy. The changes would affect mainly the Army and Air Force.

The Associated Press notes: "The restructuring will take place over the next several years, and the first F-35 aircraft would arrive in the U.K. in 2020. They will replace F-15 fighter jets, which are leaving."

Two operational squadrons of the F-35 Lightening II joint strike fighter are eventually to be stationed at RAF Lakenheath, about 70 miles northeast of London.

Facilities in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Portugal would be closed between 2018 and 2021 under the plan, according to The Hill.

A Department of Defense statement on Thursday says that the plan, known as the European Infrastructure Consolidation will enhance readiness while reducing funding:

"The EIC calls for the return of 15 sites to their host nations in Europe. Divestiture of RAF Mildenhall represents the largest reduction in U.S. personnel among the sites, but it will also pave the way for the F-35 units at RAF Lakenheath, Pentagon officials said. DoD officials expect a net decrease of roughly 2,000 U.S. service members and civilians in the United Kingdom over the next several years.

"About 3,200 Americans will be relocated from RAF Mildenhall, and that will be offset by the addition of about 1,200 personnel who will be permanently assigned to the F-35 squadrons at Lakenheath, officials noted.

"'Taken together, these decisions on our force presence in Europe will enhance our operational readiness and mission posture at reduced funding levels, all toward the objective of maintaining a strong transatlantic alliance and meeting our common security interests,' Derek Chollet, assistant secretary of defense for international affairs, said."

The AP quotes John Conger, the acting assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment, as saying the closures themselves will cost $1.4 billion to implement.

Reuters says:

"British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon voiced disappointment at the loss of U.S. forces from Mildenhall and two other bases, but said in a statement to Parliament that the advance notice would help mitigate the local impact.

"The Mildenhall withdrawal is not likely to begin until 2019.

"Fallon said the decision to base F-35s at RAF Lackenheath 'paves the way for continued close collaboration between our respective forces.'"

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

Pentagon

Europe

Britain

More than a dozen United Airlines flight attendants who were fired for their insistence on additional screening measures after discovering "menacing" graffiti scrawled on an airplane have filed a federal complaint against their former employer.

The Los Angeles Times reports: "On July 14, 2014, United crews departing from San Francisco International Airport bound for Hong Kong found the words 'BYE BYE' in six-inch high letters alongside two faces, one smiling and the other one also smiling, but with eye brows drawn in a more sinister expression. The writing was traced in an oil slick from the auxiliary engine in the [Boeing 747] aircraft's tail cone. "

The 13 flight attendants have filed a federal whistleblower complaint with the Department of Labor. They say they found the drawing "menacing" and "devilish" and that they requested that more than 300 passengers aboard the July 14 flight be taken off for an additional security sweep.

Reuters says:

"The flight attendants, all with 18 or more years of experience, said the airline refused to deplane the passengers and conduct a security inspection. They said they disobeyed orders to work, believing the lives of more than 300 passengers and crew on the jumbo jet could be endangered."

"After a delay, the July 14 flight was eventually canceled. United accused the flight attendants of insubordination and fired them all, according to the complaint."

United spokeswoman Christen David said on Wednesday that: "All of FAA's and United's own safety procedures were followed, including a comprehensive safety sweep prior to boarding, and the pilots, mechanics and safety leaders deemed the aircraft entirely safe to fly."

United Airlines

Terrorism

When Michele Serros burst onto the literary scene in the 1990s, she was a new kind of Latina writer: She didn't speak much Spanish, she listened to ABBA and she was a vegan who liked to surf and skateboard. Her success as a writer, poet and comedic commentator made her an inspirational voice for Chicanas of her generation and beyond.

Serros, who Newsweek once hailed as a "Woman to Watch for the New Century," died of cancer Sunday at her home in Berkeley, Calif. She was 48 years old.

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And Other Stories of Death, Identity, and Oxnard

by Michele M. Serros

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In her writing, Serros made wisecracks about culture, dishing out haikus and poems about things like breakfast cereal, graffiti taggers and drivers with thumping, distorted sound systems. In her poem "Mr. BOOM BOOM Man," she wrote:

"Why can't I be like those cool girls
and like the cars that go:
BOOM BA BOOM...?
Dig the way quarters
bounce off vinyl roofs?"
"Funky, fresh, and stoopid,"
they say.

Serros got her big break as a college student in 1993 with the publication of her first book, Chicana Falsa: And Other Stories of Death, Identity, and Oxnard. It's a collection of wry stories and poems about growing up in the unincorporated, rural, agricultural community of Oxnard near the California coast. In it, she writes about protesting in the frozen food aisle of a grocery store and lusting after chicharrones, or fried pork rinds:

Man, I couldn't get enough
of that crackly pork skin.
I crammed them into tortillas
that were always too small,
so I ate them right out of the pot,
throwing small crispy bits into the air,
like popcorn,
letting them land
in my open anxious mouth.
I used to eye
my cousin Amy's pet piglet.
With a wink I'd say,
"See you in a couple of years ...
in my belly!"

Like others in what came to be known as "Generation Mex," Serros and her writing were influenced by both her working-class Mexican-American heritage and Southern California pop culture.

"I relished the fact that I was a fourth-generation Californian, but not looking like the stereotypical blond beach girl," she told NPR in 2000. "I always felt like an outsider."

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Serros, pictured here in February 2014, got her big break as a college student in 1993. Rachel Buchan/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Rachel Buchan/AP

Serros, pictured here in February 2014, got her big break as a college student in 1993.

Rachel Buchan/AP

In the '90s, she was part of the lively spoken word scene in Los Angeles and often performed as a member of the Chicana poetry collective known as Y Qu Ms? Screenwriter and former lawyer Evangeline Ordaz was also in the group.

"She was so funny, so witty, so sly," Ordaz says of Serros. "She was a great performer. In fact, when we were performing together, she always had to go last because none of us wanted to follow her."

Ordaz says Serros' writing was different from the militant identity politics of an earlier generation of Chicano poets. "She still talked about really important issues in the Latino community, but she did it by telling funny stories. The messages were similar, but they really opened up a way for us to talk about them in a dialogue that wasn't necessarily as oppositional as it might have been in the past."

Serros also made it cool to be an outsider and a book-loving nerd who threw slumber parties for her friends and got to go to drive-in movies. "She was always just doing funny, ironic stuff like that," Ordaz says. "You find that joy in her writing."

For the photo on one book jacket, Serros wore the colorful uniform from the fast food chain Hot Dog on a Stick, and when Chicana Falsa was published, she made the book release party an event. Her friend and fellow poet Maria Cabildo says, "She threw herself a quinceaera and she had a bunch of us put on quince dresses and read from her book. And it was so Michele to show up in tiaras. It was wild because we were so not the quinceaera type of people."

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In 1994, Serros was invited along with 11 other poets on Lollapalooza's tour of the West Coast. Ordaz says her friend was perfect for the gig. "It really showed where poetry was at the time that it was alongside rock music. And if anybody could stand up next to a rock star, it was Michele, because she was literally the rock star of the poetry scene at the time."

Playwright and performance artist Luis Alfaro was among those wearing quinceaera dresses for Serros and performing with her at Lollapalooza. He says, "She speaks for a whole generation of Mexican-Americans, you know, who have a very different way of looking at their parents' culture and trying to make sense of all those crazy rituals that are you. Maybe in another life, she might have been a stand-up comic of sorts."

Serros often spoke at schools, conferences and commencements. She wrote for the Huffington Post and other publications, and branched out into television for a season as a staff writer for the George Lopez show.

As an admittedly awkward teen suffering through her parents' divorce, Serros once wrote to author Judy Blume, who encouraged her to keep a journal. Eventually Serros published two young adult novels: Honey Blonde Chica (2006) and a 2007 sequel, Scandalosa! As she told NPR, "I grew up reading a lot of young adult novels. And being an author and speaker and going into middle schools and high schools, I was seeing a lot of the same books that I read, and they followed a similar theme and that's a theme I like to call the three B's: It was always about barrios, borders or bodegas. And I wanted to present a different type of life — a life that truly goes on that we don't always see in the mainstream media."

Serros' writing is now part of the Latino literature canon, especially the guidebook she published in 2000: How to Be a Chicana Role Model. She wrote it tongue-in-cheek , but for many readers she remains someone to emulate.

It all started with milkmaids.

Edward Jenner, an 18th-century English country doctor, noticed that they seemed to be immune to smallpox.

i i

An illustration of a cow pox postule from the first edition of Edward Jenner's "An Inquiry into the Cause and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae." Henry Barton Jacobs Collection, Institute of the History of Medicine, JHU hide caption

itoggle caption Henry Barton Jacobs Collection, Institute of the History of Medicine, JHU

An illustration of a cow pox postule from the first edition of Edward Jenner's "An Inquiry into the Cause and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae."

Henry Barton Jacobs Collection, Institute of the History of Medicine, JHU

And that was a time when smallpox was a truly terrifying disease. Each year, it killed hundreds of thousands of Europeans. It made people terribly sick. Its oozing blisters scarred many of its victims for life. And there was no cure.

A new exhibit at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, open until March 1, traces the history of a disease that as late as the 1960s was still killing millions every year. Christine Ruggere is the curator of the historical collection at the Hopkins School of Medicine. Walking among the glass display cases of smallpox artifacts on the second floor of the Welch Library at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, she says that at the turn of the 19th century, diseases were still very mysterious. And it wasn't clear how they spread.

Then Jenner had his Eureka moment about milkmaids.

"In English literature and poetry milkmaids are referred to for their creamy complexion, as pretty as a milkmaid," Ruggere says. "One of the reason they had such nice complexion was they didn't get smallpox."

Jenner guessed that by being exposed to a bovine form of the disease, cowpox, milkmaids were protected from the much more lethal smallpox. So he set out to test his theory.

In the center of this wooden frame are clippings of the hair of the cow named "Blossom," the source of the cowpox used by Dr. Edward Jenner in his work on the smallpox vaccine. Institute of the History of Medicine, JHU, Henry Barton Jacobs Collection hide caption

itoggle caption Institute of the History of Medicine, JHU, Henry Barton Jacobs Collection

"Now his experiments are not what we would do today," says Ruggere. "He took cowpox [and] gave it to a small boy. The boy got a good case of cowpox and was healed. Then he took smallpox and injected it into the same child."

The 8-year-old never developed smallpox. Jenner had just come up with the world's first vaccine.

His idea was widely ridiculed at the time. A cartoon from 1802, on display at this exhibit, lampoons Jenner. It shows a crazed scene in which cows' heads erupt from the bodies of people being inoculated for smallpox.

So as scary as smallpox may have been, people were also terrified of this new idea of inoculation. And religious leaders said it was immoral to stop a disease that God has created.

"Even today there are those who feel we should not be intruding on God's will," says Dr. D.A. Henderson. In 1966 the epidemiologist went to Geneva to head up a World Health Organization campaign to eradicate smallpox entirely.

"At the beginning of the program, there were an estimated 10 million cases and 2 million deaths," he says. "The disease was present in 31 countries."

i i

Freeze-dried smallpox vaccine produced in the Soviet Union for the WHO campaign. Each vial contains 100 doses, which could remain stable at least 30 days at 98.6 °F. That was critical if the vaccines were to be used in the tropics. Gift of Dr. Donald A. Henderson, Institute of the History of Medicine, JHU hide caption

itoggle caption Gift of Dr. Donald A. Henderson, Institute of the History of Medicine, JHU

Freeze-dried smallpox vaccine produced in the Soviet Union for the WHO campaign. Each vial contains 100 doses, which could remain stable at least 30 days at 98.6 °F. That was critical if the vaccines were to be used in the tropics.

Gift of Dr. Donald A. Henderson, Institute of the History of Medicine, JHU

The eradication campaign tracked smallpox cases, then vaccinated everyone in a geographic circle around the patient. Smallpox only travels from person to person.

"If you could snip the chain, you'd stop the spread," Henderson says.

By the mid-1970s Ethiopia was one of the last smallpox holdouts. It was also in the midst of a bloody Marxist revolution. Getting around was so difficult that the vaccinators had to use helicopters.

"Even with the helicopters we had some troubles," Henderson recalls. "One was blown up with a hand grenade because people thought it was the Italians coming back to occupy Ethiopia. Another time they captured it a helicopter and asked for ransom."

Eventually the vaccinators got their helicopter back. The last case of smallpox ever recorded was on October 26, 1977, in neighboring Somalia.

Keep Or Kill Last Lab Stocks Of Smallpox? Time To Decide, Says WHO May 9, 2014

"It's the only disease of man which we have succeeded in eradicating," Henderson says.

In A Lab Store Room, An Unsettling Surprise: Lost Vials Of Smallpox July 8, 2014

Tracking down the final smallpox cases was the hardest part of the eradication campaign. In what could be useful advice in the final push to eliminate polio, Henderson says the key was to get local leaders to embrace the cause. Ultimately, wiping out smallpox, he says, involved drinking a lot of tea.

vaccine

smallpox

Empire comes to Fox with an interesting pedigree: it was created by Danny Strong (who's written multiple award-winning projects for HBO) and Lee Daniels, who made Precious and The Butler — both films with a sheen of prestige, but both films to which people reacted in complex ways. It stars Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson, who are both Oscar nominees. The executive music producer is Timbaland, who's worked with all kinds of folks, including Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake.

The basics are these: hip-hop mogul Lucius Lyon (Howard) has three sons: Andre (Trai Bryers), the one who went to Penn; Jamal (Jussie Smollett), the sensitive one whose relationship with his father is broken because his father can't handle the fact that he's gay; and Hakeem (Bryshere Gray), the young partying one. He's just learned that he has a devastating illness, so he's looking to designate a successor to run his ... well, his empire. Which is called "Empire." On the show Empire. You can tell this is the conflict because one of the sons actually says, during a meeting, "We're all in competition to be the future head of the company?"

The welcome fly in the ointment is Cookie (Henson), the boys' mother, who's just out after spending 17 years in prison for her part of the drug operation that funded the company at the beginning, while Lucius skated for his part. As you can imagine, she figures she's owed something. Lucius has his own interesting background full of surprises, which the show signals as hard as it can whenever it can, as when he begins a board meeting while talking about how he used to sell drugs while also spinning a basketball on the tip of a pen.

Whenever narrative storytelling takes on the lives of artists — and here, it treats producer Lucius as an artist as well as a businessman — it runs the risk of making art seem like a magical function of one's personality rather than the result of work and discipline. Empire has this problem. The series opens with Lucius solving the problem of an artist he feels isn't singing quite hard enough by giving her this nonspecific advice: "I need you to sing like you are going to die tomorrow! Like this is the last song you will ever sing! Show me your soul in this music." When it doesn't work, he goes into the booth, puts his hand on her shoulder, and says, "Go back in your mind to a year ago. When you just found out your brother had been shot." (Everyone in this show seems to know multiple people who have been shot, which is perhaps an intentional and valid narrative choice, but seems a little tossed-off at times for effect, mentioned at times it might not be mentioned in real life.)

This is not the extent of producing records. People who produce records actually talk to artists about what they want — volume, pitch, pauses, phrasing. Making music is, in part, a job. If your genius lies in essentially finding a lot of ways to repeat "Feeeeeeeel the music!", you're not going to last that long, I don't think. So from the beginning, this music-based show's actual interest in — and understanding of — music seems really limited. That comes up again when Hakeem and Jamal try to talk about some music they're working on, and have little to say to each other about it, despite both being musicians, besides "that's wack" and "that's hot."

That's not to say the music itself is bad. It's actually pretty catchy and entirely credible; not surprising given its providence. But the way the show uses music in stories feels kind of clumsy and devoid of nuance.

In fact, "devoid of nuance" is kind of the show's biggest problem. Thematically, for instance, when it wants to get into the issue of record companies perhaps being reluctant to promote black artists if they're gay, it gets there by having Jamal describe the problem thusly: "Way too much homophobia in the black community." This is taken as kind of a given once it's verbalized; it's not talked about, nor is it demonstrated or substantiated. It's just announced, plunked down in the scene like a prop everyone then has to acknowledge. And, of course, it's shown in Lucius' cruel treatment of Jamal, which extends back to childhood abuse and continues up to the very awkward line, "Your sexuality? That's a choice, son."

Similarly, there are tantalizing mentions of Lucius' knowledge that a large part of his customer base is made up of white kids, but that's all there is, is the announcement: a reference to "the white kids that make up 75 percent of our sales." There's nothing about that; it's just offered up like a bonus fact.

These interesting little pieces of cultural complexity aren't the show's focus, of course — its focus is an imposingly large number, even in the pilot, of interpersonal stories that can be illustrated through song. The presentation of songs isn't really integrated like it is on Glee; it's diegetic like on Nashville, where you hear music in situations where characters are performing music.

In fact, Empire is probably not as directly comparable to anything else on TV quite like it is to Nashville. That show also came to television with a pedigree of offscreen writing talent (Callie Khouri) and an undeniably great music producer (T Bone Burnett). It also was thematically blunt and overloaded with stories. In fact, as you watch Empire, you may be able to pick out the storylines you'll be tempted to fast-forward through later, just as many of us can with Nashville. And you can tell there's going to be a lot of backstabbing, betraying, ill-advised-sex-having, crime-concealing, arguing, and emoting at pianos.

There's an interesting show in here somewhere, to be sure. But there's also a lot of ornamentation trying to hang hip-hop trappings on a pretty standard piece of television. That's not necessarily bad — just as Bella Abzug once said the goal of feminism was not only to support equality for female Einsteins but also female schlemiels, the goal of better representation of more kinds of people on television is not only good for profound, statement-making pieces that cast light on social problems, but also in dishy, sort of enjoyably trashy family sagas with unbuttoned shirts and people hiding guns under tissue paper. It is sort of hip-hop Nashville, but so what? Why not hip-hop Nashville?

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah is ill, the kingdom is facing the lowest oil prices in years and it remains locked in a regional rivalry with Iran.

Yet Crown Prince Salman, stepping in for the monarch to deliver an annual televised speech to the nation on Tuesday, sought to reassure the public that the kingdom was in steady hands.

"Today, as you know, your country is facing unprecedented regional challenges," said Salman. "That should make us cautious, and I would like to assure you that your leadership is aware of these challenges and their consequences," he added.

The king, at least 90, has been in the hospital since last week and this has set off a wave of speculation about the succession plans for the Saudi monarchy and what this might mean for the U.S.

Saudi watcher Rachel Bronson isn't expecting chaos when King Abdullah eventually leaves the throne. She says Saudis know the world is watching and don't want to further upset the oil markets, where prices have fallen by more than half since last summer.

The Risk Of Too Much Stability

What concerns her is too much stability in a country that needs to be more agile.

"As it is, it is a very slow moving state, so anything that slows down decision-making makes it harder for them to fight terrorism, increase liberalization," says Bronson, who's with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and is author of the book Thicker than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia.

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She says if power shifts to Crown Prince Salman, who's 79, the kingdom could enter a period of very slow decision making — something that happened in the latter part of King Fahd's rule. He led the country from 1982 until 2005.

The Two-Way

Saudi Women Reportedly Referred To Terrorism Court For Driving

"He suffered a stroke in the mid-90s and continued to rule until he died in 2005 and everything came to a halt in the sense that everything continued as it continued before but you didn't have the agility and flexibility that you need in difficult times," Bronson adds.

These are difficult times for Saudi Arabia. Its regional rivalry with Iran is a perpetual concern as is the threat of the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

And while Crown Prince Salman read out the king's message today, he is not in good health, according to Simon Henderson, an expert on the Gulf at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"Prince Salman himself has had at least one stroke and he's also been slowing down. This is pretty well accepted by everybody," Henderson says. "How you actually describe that slowing down is a matter of debate. I've tended to think it is some form of dementia."

The Line Of Succession

In the royal line of succession, Salman is followed by Deputy Crown Prince Muqrin, 69, the youngest surviving son of Saudi Arabia's founder, Abdul Aziz al Saud.

While some Saudi watchers think its possible that power could move to him fairly quickly, Henderson isn't so optimistic.

"There's every reason why the rivalries and tensions in the house of Saud could lead to some real sharp divisions, which may have been hidden in the past but will erupt into public view," he says. "That sort of event is bad news for policy against Iran, policy on oil and policy against ISIS."

Saudi Arabia didn't do much, he says, when ISIS was threatening Syria and the previous government in Iraq. But with ISIS now on Saudi Arabia's borders in southern Iraq, it is widely viewed as a direct threat to the kingdom.

Henderson says the U.S. needs to encourage Saudi Arabia to do much more to counter the group's ideology.

"Washington can't have a hiatus of leadership in Riyadh and it can't afford anything but a smooth succession," he adds.

But the U.S. tends to avoid talking about such issues, says Bronson of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

"We will continue to engage very actively with the leadership in Saudi Arabia at all the different organizations – whether its counter terrorism, intelligence," she says. "We will continue to interact, but i think we will stay very quiet."

Henderson, meanwhile, says the U.S. should be sending discreet messages to the kingdom to make clear that any argument of succession will be damaging to both Saudi and U.S. interests.

Saudi Arabia

It's flattering to be King of the Hill.

And these days, the U.S. dollar is wearing the crown. It has climbed to its highest point in 11 years, with global investors pushing it ahead of the euro and other major currencies.

But while it's a compliment to have a strong dollar, the honor is not without its downsides. When the dollar rises against other currencies, it increases risks to U.S. manufacturers.

So economists are looking for signs that a good thing may be starting to go too far. These questions and answers may help explain what's happening.

First, has the dollar really moved that much?

Yes, the WSJ Dollar Index, which tracks the dollar's performance against 16 other currencies, had a 12 percent rally in 2014. In these early days of the new year, the dollar has been continuing to rise.

Why is this happening?

Currency traders are betting the U.S. economy will be growing so quickly in 2015 that the Federal Reserve will nudge up interest rates from recent historic lows.

The opposite is likely to happen in Europe. There, growth is weak and Greece's political troubles are creating uncertainties.

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So if you were a saver, where would you put your money — in a strong, stable country offering rising interest payouts, or in a region with a shaky economic outlook and falling interest rates? Common sense says more people will turn to the United States as a safe haven.

"As dollar assets become more attractive, more money comes into the U.S., pushing up the value of the dollar," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for IHS Global Insight. "And as more money leaves Europe, it pushes down the value of the euro."

So what's wrong with having people love the United States?

It is good to have everyone wanting to stash their savings in the United States. But investors' embrace of the dollar can start to feel like a death grip if it goes too far. Here's why:

U.S. companies that make goods and equipment want to compete on a global stage. If the dollar gets too expensive, U.S. exports can get priced out of the market. For example, if a customer in Brazil wants to purchase an earthmover, it could buy one from Caterpillar, or it could turn to companies in Germany or Japan.

If the dollar's value is very high, then it could tip the Brazilian's decision in favor of the Germans or Japanese.

It's not just U.S. manufacturers who worry about the rising dollar. The U.S. tourist industry also could take a hit if Germans, Brits and others can no longer afford to visit Florida this winter.

"A strong dollar is a double-edged sword that could hurt a lot of U.S. companies," said Lindsey Piegza, chief economist for Sterne Agee.

How is this likely to play out over time?

It could turn out just fine over the next year or two. In this good scenario, the European Central Bank would lower interest rates just enough to encourage European companies to borrow money and expand. With energy being so cheap now, this could indeed be the perfect time to take a chance on expanding a plant.

That would lead to more hiring, which would help consumer spending in Europe. Once growth picked up, the euro's value would rise. In the end, the United States would have a healthy trading partner again and a more reasonably priced currency, allowing for fair global competition.

But there could be a bad scenario: Europe's economy could keep shrinking, with the euro becoming unstable and the dollar getting way overpriced. The bottom line would be less business for U.S. manufacturing and tourism, and the U.S. economy would start to sink too.

dollar

currency

Early Tuesday morning, the California firm SpaceX will launch a resupply mission carrying 5,000 pounds of food and experiments to the International Space Station.

But just as important as the stuff going up is what comes back down.

The rocket's massive first stage — a metal tube 14 stories high — won't just drop into the ocean as other rockets do. Instead, it will deploy fins that will allow it to maneuver as it falls. It will then fire its engines in order to gently settle onto an unmanned barge in the Atlantic.

"If we can recover the stage intact and re-launch it, the potential is there for a truly revolutionary impact," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in April at the National Press Club. Musk said that recycling the rocket stages could cut the cost of space flight by a factor of 100.

Video of the first stage falling back to earth after a commercial launch in July.

Trying to reuse the stages of a rocket isn't a new idea. The space shuttle's massive solid-rocket boosters used parachutes to return to the ocean. But the boosters had to be extensively refurbished before flying again.

SpaceX's vertical landing trick is far more ambitious. Bringing the rocket down in one piece means it could, in theory, be refueled and reused almost immediately.

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X marks the spot where SpaceX hopes the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket will land. The landing barge is robotic and will be unmanned in case something goes wrong. SpaceX hide caption

itoggle caption SpaceX

X marks the spot where SpaceX hopes the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket will land. The landing barge is robotic and will be unmanned in case something goes wrong.

SpaceX

But vertical landing is also far more risky. The company says that keeping the rocket stage vertical as it falls is like "trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a wind storm." On top of that challenge, the massive stage has to slow down from speeds of nearly a mile a second without the aid of parachutes.

SpaceX has had some success in two previous tests. A flight in April saw the first stage successfully fire just before touching the ocean, but rough seas destroyed it shortly after it hit the water. A second attempt in July also made a soft landing on the water, though the rocket stage was damaged after it toppled into the ocean.

This time, SpaceX has deployed a floating drone barge. The rocket will attempt to touch down on the barge, where it will be recovered. Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president for Mission Assurance says the tricky part will be hitting the relatively small barge.

He puts the odds of success around 50/50.

Heart surgery is a spectacle to behold. Even more so to see it on a mass scale, which is what happens at the Narayana Health, a state-of-the-art medical center in the southern Indian city of Bangalore.

I am invited to scrub up and witness renowned surgeon Dr. Devi Shetty at work. The operating room is symphony of all things medical: monitors beeping out a metronome-like rhythm, forceps and scissors clanging onto metal tables, a heart-lung machine gurgling as it does the work of the patient's stopped heart, and, curiously, pop music drifting though the room.

"Music is very soothing because the operation lasts six hours, eight hours, ten hours. You need to create that environment," says Dr. Shetty, founder and chairman of Narayana Health. (The hospital says its Sanskrit name means "the preserver of the universe," which matches with the commitment to the health of everyone. Or it can be a strong hero with divine powers.)

With Buddha-like calm, the pediatric cardiac specialist huddles over the spliced-open chest of six-year-old Nitha Nisar. Peering into the cavity, I see a startlingly large heart, an affliction caused by a leaking heart valve, the team says.

"Repairing the child's heart valve, it requires a lot of expertise," Shetty says, making the maneuvering of forceps look like a ballet. "It is done in very few centers across the world. And we have done thousands of them."

Shetty, who's 61, insists that young surgeons at this teaching hospital attend painting classes to learn to treat instruments "like paint brushes." It changes their "entire approach toward surgery changes," he says. "Ultimately, we are all artists," creating masterpieces.

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Anjali Subramaniam cradles her son, Aswin, who underwent open heart surgery free of charge. Subramaniam calls the doctors "a god" and the hospital a temple. Julie McCarthy/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Julie McCarthy/NPR

Anjali Subramaniam cradles her son, Aswin, who underwent open heart surgery free of charge. Subramaniam calls the doctors "a god" and the hospital a temple.

Julie McCarthy/NPR

Shetty adds matter-of-factly, "Because of the huge volume, because of the number of operations we perform on a daily basis we have developed phenomenal skills."

That's why the 13-year-old center has good outcomes, he explains. As Shetty speaks, he finishes the operation and sutures the child's heart.

"I am trying to close the opening we created to repair the valve. These are the fine sutures made of a material called Prolene."

To cut costs, Shetty assessed the price of the sutures supplied by a multi-national company.

"Every year the product price goes up five percent, ten percent, and the revenue of people doesn't go up by five to ten percent," he says.

Shetty switched to a cheaper Indian brand, spurred competition and made "huge savings."

Some of his doctors complain that the cost-cutting compromises quality, but say they use their "skills to overcome any shortcomings."

Shetty has slashed costs on everything from the operating table to the lighting — all supplied by American or European companies. When I remark that I hear he is a hard bargainer, he says, "I'm not negotiating on my behalf. I'm negotiating for the man who is selling his house to sleep on the hospital bed."

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Doctors at Narayana Health attend to a young heart patient. Some 3,000 children received cardiac care at the 1,000-bed center last year. Dr. Shetty says, "600 to 800 children are born every day [in India] with a heart problem," and only a fraction are operated on. Julie McCarthy/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Julie McCarthy/NPR

Doctors at Narayana Health attend to a young heart patient. Some 3,000 children received cardiac care at the 1,000-bed center last year. Dr. Shetty says, "600 to 800 children are born every day [in India] with a heart problem," and only a fraction are operated on.

Julie McCarthy/NPR

Selling a home or a cow to pay for a hospital stay is not uncommon. While India's Constitution India declares,"The State shall regard the raising of levels of nutrition ... and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties," in fact, health care coverage and quality are spotty and most Indians must pay out of pocket for their care because many still do not have decent insurance.

"So it's my duty to get the best price," Shetty says.

A flutter of excitement ripples thru the O.R. as Nitha's heart begins to pump on its own again.

"You can see the heart," Shetty says smiling. "It looks like a happy heart now. No more leakage and it is functioning happily."

"Success," I say. Shetty corrects me: "God's grace."

Shetty deflects compliments the way one of his former patients, the late Mother Teresa might have. He calls the tiny nun, a Nobel Laureate, a towering influence in his life.

From Shetty's glass-walled O.R., I peer into a row of active operating theaters. Fifty-eight surgeons work six days a week stitching life back into broken hearts for a fraction of what they might earn at a premier private hospital in India or in the U.S.

"There are certain things in life you just do only once," says pulmonary critical care specialist Dr. N. Rajagopalan. After 23 years away, he came home to treat his fellow Indians and said goodbye to a $350,000-a-year practice in Miami.

"It's a precipitous fall from that year," he laughs. "But as I said, healthcare is a mess everywhere and I think whatever Dr. Shetty has been doing is remarkable."

Devi Shetty says Narayana's profits are poured back into the enterprise, which now has 29 hospitals in India and one in the Grand Cayman islands. The volume of surgeries — 14,000 last year — have drawn comparisons to the assembly lines of Henry Ford. It not something Shetty shies away from: "The is the way forward for the world," he says.

"It's pointless building boutique hospitals where one surgery or two heart surgeries are done in a day. We need to have a few hospitals but these hospitals should do very large numbers. Then your quality improves, costs go down," he says.

Shetty contends people are entitled to cardiac care regardless of how little they earn.

"We do about 30 to 35 major heart surgeries a day. And we have never refused a single patient because they have no money."

The fees from the rich offset the costs for the poor. Patients with money pay several thousand dollars for open heart surgery. But patients with little money and little hope of raising any, pay very little. They are 60 percent of the cases.

The head of the charitable trust wing, Lakshmi Mani, says there's no complicated test to determine who's eligible for free surgery.

"One look at them and we can make out: They are poor, they don't have the money. And once we start doubting their credentials, there's no end to it," Mani says.

But the hospital is tougher on a male child who needs surgery. Shetty figures in a culture that puts a premium on sons, families of boys will somehow raise the money. A girl in India, however, is far more likely to die before the age of five for lack of adequate food and medical care.

"They will never raise the money for a girl child," Shetty says. "So if it is a girl child we talk to them very politely and the moment they start asking tough questions, we tell them, "don't bother, you don't pay anything, we'll take care of the child."

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Dr. Devi Shetty operates on a young man, one of the 14,000 patients who underwent surgery at Narayana Health last year. 58 surgeons work six days a week performing surgery at the Bangalore center. Shetty's group has grown to 29 hospitals around India. Julie McCarthy/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Julie McCarthy/NPR

Dr. Devi Shetty operates on a young man, one of the 14,000 patients who underwent surgery at Narayana Health last year. 58 surgeons work six days a week performing surgery at the Bangalore center. Shetty's group has grown to 29 hospitals around India.

Julie McCarthy/NPR

Cardiac disease is on the rise in India. Shetty says that two million Indians need cardiac care every year. The Chief's office is a revolving door of stricken breadwinners and babies.

"More than 90 percent of heart problems in children are correctable," he says. "600 to 800 children are born every day [in India] with a heart problem."

Baby Aswin was fortunate to get treatment. Ninety-five percent of Indians with a serious heart condition don't get the care they need "and gradually perish over time," says Shetty.

Amid the clamor of chickens and children, the wide-eyed infant Aswin recovers at his uncle's house. Anjali Subramaniam cradles her son in her sari and talks of the ordeal that left a scar the length of his tiny chest.

The father's meager $5-a-day wage meant that the infant's surgery was done for free, she says. But expensive incidentals were not included. Anjali's brother scraped together $1,000 for those, saying, "Dr. Shetty cares for the poor, like us." Anjali says her son has been given a "second birth"—

"We see the doctor as a God," the young mother says, "and that hospital for us is a temple."

An evangelist for affordable care, Shetty is overturning how cardiac treatment gets apportioned in India, whether it's addressing gender bias or redistributing care to the poor. He says the hospital's break-even point for surgery is $1,200. Shetty wants to cut that in half.

"Like we get oxygen, air and water, health care should become available to everyone on this planet naturally. And that can be done," he says.

Devi Shetty predicts that India will become the first country "to dissociate health care from affluence."

Follow NPR's Julie McCarthy on Twitter at @JulieMcCarthyJM

heart surgery

pediatrics

India

Tina Amissi grew up in a small village in the Democratic Republic of Congo with 26 brothers and sisters. When her mother insisted she drop out of school and help out around the house, it was her polygamous father — and his iron authority — that saved her.

Amissi's father supported her dream to go to medical school in the city of Bukavu. Even now, she gets so excited recounting the story that she can't stop from clapping.

"My father said, 'You'll leave your mother?' " Amissi recalls. "I said, 'Yes, yes, yes, yes, I'm going.' "

When the classwork got too hard and Amissi wanted to drop out of medical school, it was her father who walked hundreds of miles from his village to her dorm room just to give her a critical pep talk.

"And truly, I thank him for that," Amissi says. "If he hadn't done that, I wouldn't have been able to become a doctor."

Now Dr. Tina Amissi works at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, a city in the war-torn Eastern Congo. The area is considered the rape capital of the world. Each year, Panzi Hospital treats more than 2,000 rape survivors a year — not just with medical care. The hospital also hosts Western organizations that teach these women job skills, such as basket weaving, to give them some means of self-support when they've been shunned by their communities.

But do these types of individualistic, Western solutions work for a country that has a more communal culture? Amissi isn't sure.

Now a new research center at Panzi Hospital is giving Amissi and other Congolese doctors the tools to fight sexual violence with science. The center is called ICART — or the International Center for Advanced Resource and Training. And it's funded by the University of Michigan. ICART will give Congolese researchers the opportunity to investigate the causes and impacts of rape and to see which interventions actually do help women — and help a community as well.

One topic of study: basket weaving. Western organizations have taught many women in the region to weave baskets so they can support themselves. Amissi points out that most women end up returning to their home village after treatment at Panzi Hospital. But if a woman's an outcast, her neighbors may not buy her baskets, no matter how well she weaves them.

So it's unclear how a rape victim will fare in her community. "And the woman herself," Amissis says, "when she returns home, how does she feel?' "

Amissi doesn't know the answer to these questions yet. But because of the new research center, she's starting to figure them out.

The center's director, Kanigula Mubagwa, says Congolese researchers now have the resources to study, with academic rigor, the bigger issues for patients they encounter in their clinics.

The researchers can look at the broader context of the problem. In this case, that means not just doing a survey to find out how many people were victimized by which armed group, but looking at what will it take for the community to repair itself.

For rape survivors and their children to be accepted back into the fold, perhaps, some of the money given to individual survivors to teach them job skills might be more effectively granted to a project that helps the whole village's economy.

"I think the local researchers, when they talk to the local population, they might be much more easily heard than a Westerner, who will come in and say, 'Well you have to accept these women. You have to accept these children,' " Mubagwa says. "People might think that they are being imposed on with traditions that are different from theirs."

Dr. Amissi says she's excited to get to that stage of her research. One thing that working at Panzi Hospital has taught her is that rape survivors can be incredibly strong. She's eager to go into their home communities to find the strong men that can support them.

The price for a barrel of U.S. oil benchmark West Texas Intermediate fell below $50 Monday, matching levels seen in the spring of 2009. The drop is linked to both OPEC's boosted production and a stronger dollar.

Oil's latest fall came along with a dip on Wall Street, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 330 points to finish at 17,501 — a drop of 1.86 percent that's also seen as a reaction to new instability in Europe.

Petroleum has been in a free fall: In the U.S., the average cost for a gallon of regular gasoline has fallen from above $3.60 to below $2.20 since June, according to AAA.

The sharp drop has come as OPEC member nations seek to protect their market share by raising production levels to undercut profits for U.S. oil companies.

Both Iraq and Russia are now producing crude at record levels, as Bloomberg News reports.

"People are thinking about promises from OPEC, mostly Saudi Arabia, that they'll continue to produce at very high levels," TD Securities commodity strategy chief Bart Melek tells Agence France-Presse. "On the demand side of the equation, what we're getting is basically a lack of demand growth... as Europe is potentially in crisis."

The cheaper oil and gas prices come along with a surging dollar, which reached a nine-year-high against the euro earlier Monday.

As Krishnadev reported for the Two-Way, the reasons for that gain include renewed instability in Greece and the possibility that the European Central Bank "could introduce quantitative easing to stimulate the eurozone."

For many in the American oil industry, a central question has been whether companies can keep developing oil fields, even as the financial incentive to do so keeps shrinking.

As the industry site Fuel Fix notes today, the number of working U.S. oil rigs has fallen more in the past two weeks than in any similar period since 2009.

"The number of rigs operating in the United States declined by 29 last week to 1,811," the site reports, "marking the fourth consecutive weekly decrease for the U.S. count, published by oil field services company Baker Hughes."

oil prices

gas prices

Six years ago, homebuilders and Realtors were facing brutal business conditions: millions of Americans were losing their jobs and homes.

As 2015 begins, hiring is strong and economic indicators are pointing up. Could this be the year when the housing market finally breaks out of its tepid recovery and takes off?

Economists see several reasons why 2015 might be a banner year for homebuying— and not just in San Francisco and Miami.

They also see One Big Factor that potentially could block a buying binge.

Before considering that possible downer, let's first look at the upside:

Employers are hiring again.

When companies are hiring, would-be homebuyers feel more confident about taking on mortgage debt.

During the recession, companies kept slashing positions, sending the unemployment rate soaring to 10 percent and frightening potential homebuyers. But job growth has been strong lately, with employers adding 321,000 jobs in November. The unemployment rate has tumbled to 5.8 percent.

As that good news sinks in, optimism is rising. The Conference Board's latest Consumer Confidence Index shows confidence is running 19.5 percent higher than a year ago.

Home prices just took a breather, which helps.

From January to October, home prices rose 4.5 percent nationally, according to the latest S&P/Case Shiller Home Price Index. That gain was subdued compared with October 2013, when home prices jumped 11 percent higher than the previous year.

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Looking To 2015, Economists See 5 Reasons To Celebrate

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Sluggish Housing Market A Product Of Millions Of 'Missing Households'

But slower price appreciation in 2014 may have set the stage for a buying surge in 2015. That's because buyers need the right combination of steady income, decent savings, low interest rates and reasonable home prices to jump into the market.

The Labor Department's latest jobs report showed an uptick in wages, and the surging stock market has been boosting savings. Mortgages have been holding below 4 percent for 30-year fixed rates.

And now the decelerating growth in home prices may be creating an affordability opportunity that will attract buyers in early 2015.

Rents are high.

When millions of Americans were losing their homes in the recession, many started moving into apartments. That shift caused rents to soar.

"With rents now rising at a seven-year high, historically low [interest] rates and moderating [home] price growth are likely to entice more buyers to enter the market in upcoming months," Lawrence Yun, the National Association of Realtors' chief economist, said in a release.

Millennials are sick of mom's basement.

The Census Bureau says just 36 percent of Americans under age 35 own a home. In 2007, that figure was 42 percent.

Some young people enjoy renting, but a recent survey by Fannie Mae showed 9 in 10 would prefer to own. They have been held back by tight lending standards that have made it tough to get around their heavy student debts and light savings.

But in December, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced programs that would allow first-time buyers to get homes with down payments of just 3 percent, instead of 5 percent.

That lower amount would allow creditworthy, but cash-strapped, young buyers to qualify for mortgages. "If access to credit improves, we could see substantially larger numbers of young buyers in the market," Jonathan Smoke, chief economist for realtor.com, said in his 2015 outlook.

But there's one reason for pessimism.

For years, many economists have been saying mortgage interest rates would rise. In 2015, they finally may be right.

That's because the Federal Reserve, which has held down both short- and long-term interest rates since 2008, has been signaling a coming change. The Fed is expected to allow rates to drift up, probably starting this summer.

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The Federal Reserve, headed by Janet Yellen, is expected to begin raising interest rates later this year. Higher mortgage rates could scare off some potential homebuyers. Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

The Federal Reserve, headed by Janet Yellen, is expected to begin raising interest rates later this year. Higher mortgage rates could scare off some potential homebuyers.

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Industry economists generally expect mortgage rates to reach 5 percent by year's end. That would still be quite low by historical standards, but after having such cheap mortgages for so long, even a modest rate increase could scare off buyers, according to Lindsey Piegza, chief economist for Sterne Agee.

"A rising monthly payment — thanks to rising interest rates — could cause an unwelcome sticker shock for many potential homebuyers," she said.

On the way that his career took off in the midst of his movie addiction

There was a string of luck and successes that I guess you could say was connected to the addiction. But the addiction began to replace my life, and when that starts to happen, it starts to hurt your comedy. 'Cause you're not living enough of a life to really feed into a memorable comedic set, I guess. If you just end up talking about movies you've seen and stuff you don't like, in the long run, that becomes forgettable.

On how his daily conversations became centered on films

My conversations were not conversations. It was me spouting paragraphs at people and then not listening to them and wanting to get to showing off the next thing that I knew, rather than being present with another person and finding out what they think and learning from them, basically.

On his attempts to use films to inspire the sketches he was writing for Mad TV

I was looking at the grand risks some of these movies were taking and then saying, "Why aren't I doing the same grand risk with a sketch that I'm writing for Mad TV?" Except that the sketches I was writing were so sloppy because I was so sleep-deprived from going to see movies and going out to do stand-up that I was using it as a defense for my half-assedness in writing the sketches. I was like, "Yeah, but I'm taking a risk here, why do you care where it goes? It shouldn't go anywhere, man!" And, again, it was a young guy who thought that my attitude and my boldness could take the place of actual competence and skill and work.

“ "I was the worst kind of movie fan. I'm the kind of guy who saw 6 movies a day, didn't write any movies, didn't make any movies, but then could be armchair quarterbacking on a movie that I had no hand in making."

- Patton Oswalt

On the first of two events that finally killed his addiction to movies, the release of Star Wars Episode I: Phantom Menace

It's not that it killed the addiction; it made me look at the addiction from such a different angle that it didn't hold any power over me anymore. I'll put it this way — I was the worst kind of movie fan. I'm the kind of guy who saw 6 movies a day, didn't write any movies, didn't make any movies, but then could be armchair quarterbacking on a movie that I had no hand in making.

Yes, I thought [Phantom Menace] was a failure, but the dude took a shot at it. It hit me that I was spending days and days and nights and nights with my friends, arguing back and forth about this film but this guy made a movie. Good or bad, he made a movie. He's on a different relam than you.

On the second event that dealt the death blow to his movie addiction

The New Beverly [Cinema theater] on Beverly Boulevard, that was my crack house, basically. And Sherman Torrigan, who founded it ... I went to the New Beverly and bought a ticket and Sherman said, "I thought you'd be handing me a screenplay by now."

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... I was basically doing the version of a guy that's shooting heroin and he's like, "I'm doing this so I can be like Lou Reed and David Bowie. I'll eventually do "Ziggy Stardust" and Transformer..." But it's like, no! You can't do the heroin addiction first. You have to become a good musician first. And even then you shouldn't do the heroin addiction, but I'm just saying, you're doing all this backwards!

On his dream to one day direct films

Eventually I will. But when I make the leap to become a director, I have got to convince a platoon of people to make the leap with me, so that's really nerve-racking. And I'm in the process of working up to that. And hopefully, someday, someone can play back this interview, if I've made a movie, and I can go, "Oh, OK. I was at least approaching it respectfully."

It's gonna have to be me finally just closing my eyes, and hitting the gas pedal and pulling out into traffic.

patton oswalt

addiction

Now that the holidays are over, another season has arrived. It's time for children to put pen to paper and scratch out thank you letters — all under the watchful eye of their parents.

In a recent piece for The Guardian, Peter Ormerod argues that it's time to do away with that ritual. He writes that thank you letters "represent arguably the first instance in our lives when insincerity is officially sanctioned, which is particularly sad given that the best thing about children is their honesty."

Author Interviews

Perfect Thank You Notes: Heartfelt And Handwritten

He tells NPR's Arun Rath that he's not at all against gratitude. His argument has more to do with the spirit of the thing. "It's really because gratitude is so important to me. I don't, however, think that forcing children to write what's often quite formulaic letters — I don't think that's necessarily the best way of helping children develop gratitude."

Instead, he thinks the emphasis should be on getting kids to feel and experience gratitude, rather than just make a show of it. And once they feel it, he says, they can express it in fun or creative ways, "ways that feel much less like a chore." That could involve drawing pictures, taking photos or baking. Ormerod says he's even written songs for people.

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Email Just Can't Compete With Heartfelt 'Letters Of Note'

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In Wired World, Handwritten 'Thank You' Still Tops

Another common argument for the thank-you letter is that it's one of the last ways for children to stay connected to the physical world — actually putting pen to paper and letter into mailbox. Ormerod says, "There is something nice about that and, of course, if the children really want to write letters and put their heart into them that's fine."

But he says that wasn't the case when he was growing up.

"It was something sort of tacked on after Christmas or after birthdays and it was 'Oh no, I've got to do that,' " Ormerod recalls, while noting that he doesn't blame his parents for doing what they'd been brought up to do. "I don't think I really appreciated that people had taken the time to think of me and to buy something for me."

Commentary

After WWII, A Letter Of Appreciation That Still Rings True

A lot of the commenters on his piece in The Guardian shared similar stories of childhood thank-you-letter dread. But some of the most fascinating comments for Ormerod came from older people who say they've actually told family members not to send thank-you notes because they know they're annoying to write. They assume, those commenters say, that their family members are appreciative.

Ormerod does acknowledge that, for now, he's arguing from the perspective of a former child: He's not a parent. "Perhaps I'd feel a bit differently," he says. "I can appreciate there may well be some parental peer pressure. So I hold up my hands if I turn out to be a massive hypocrite on this one."

Web Resources

Read Peter Ormerod's argument against thank-you letters

giving thanks

etiquette

At his Colorado Springs studio, Bransby attacks a drawing with tight, sharp strokes, a pastel pencil grasped between gnarled fingers. His studio is unheated, but he doesn't seem to notice the cold. He's completely engrossed in the image taking shape on his easel. It's a study for a new mural that he hopes to install at nearby Colorado College. He says he draws between two and eight hours every day.

"Drawing has been a continuous thing for me, like exercises for a musician," he says. "It's refreshing. I draw better. I paint better."

Drawing the human figure has been one of the few constants in the artist's patchwork career. Bransby was born in 1916 in Auburn, NY. His father was a preacher who took the family to Pennsylvania and then Iowa. His parents didn't encourage his artistic pursuits.

It was during the Depression, and when he demanded that he get sent to art school, he remembers his parents said: "Well he'll do one year and he'll come back so discouraged that we'll make something else out of him."

"But that didn't happen," Bransby says. "I found heaven."

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Eric Bransby, pictured above in his home in Colorado Springs, is still creating art at 98. "I try to make each mural a project that will somehow expand my abilities a little bit more," he says. Nathaniel Minor/Colorado Public Radio hide caption

itoggle caption Nathaniel Minor/Colorado Public Radio

Eric Bransby, pictured above in his home in Colorado Springs, is still creating art at 98. "I try to make each mural a project that will somehow expand my abilities a little bit more," he says.

Nathaniel Minor/Colorado Public Radio

Bransby hitched a ride from Iowa to enroll in the Kansas City Art Institute in 1938. At the time, Thomas Hart Benton was one of the most famous artists of the era — though Bransby had never heard of him. Under Benton, Bransby embarked upon a rigorous regimen of figure drawing and anatomy classes patterned after the European academies. Benton painted alongside his students and Bransby remembers him as a taskmaster.

"With Benton, it was all business," he says. "You got in the studio and, by god, you worked like hell."

Things looked promising for the young artist. Benton included two Bransby paintings in a high-profile show in New York in 1941. The following year, Bransby painted his first professional mural for what was then called the Work Projects Administration. Then he got drafted. By day, he painted military murals at Camp Leavenworth, and after hours, he improvised a way to do his own work.

“ I'd go down and paint at night in the latrine because they'd leave the lights on down there. I was called the latrine painter.

- Artist Eric Bransby on how he continued creating art after he was drafted during World War II

"I'd go down and paint at night in the latrine because they'd leave the lights on down there," he says. "I was called the latrine painter."

After the war, abstract expressionism hit the art world. The human figure was displaced by drips, splashes and abstract forms.

"For that generation it was very difficult to make your way as a figurative painter," says Henry Adams, an art history professor at Case Western Reserve University. "A number of artists who had been very successful in the late years of the 1930s then suddenly found that the whole art world had changed."

Bransby and his family criss-crossed the country looking for work and grants. In the late 1940s, he got a grant to study at Yale under the exacting European abstract artist Josef Albers. Bransby started to incorporate what he learned from his teacher into his figurative pieces.

"One of the things that makes his work unique is he combines that Renaissance-based figurative tradition with what he learned from Josef Albers," explains Blake Milteer, museum director at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, home to many of Bransby's works. "He combines figures with a dramatic sense of abstraction and of architecture, placing these figures in a shifting kind of space.

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Bransby created Function of the Command for NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs in 1956. Courtesy of Eric Bransby hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Eric Bransby

Bransby created Function of the Command for NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs in 1956.

Courtesy of Eric Bransby

Though Bransby managed to successfully combine the old with the new, his passion for the human form — and for murals — never left him. He says: "I thought about it quite a long time and I said 'Godammit, I'm going to draw the figure whether it's in favor or not. And if a wall comes along — I'm going to do it.'"

In the 1980s and '90s, Bransby's profile as a muralist rose again. He received commissions in Illinois and Colorado. His stick-to-it-iveness impresses painter Sushe Felix, who has assisted Bransby on several mural projects.

"I mean, here he is. He's 98 and he's still doing it," Felix says. "That was a really good lesson: To never give up. Keep trying. Keep growing."

Bransby's age has slowed him down; he gets around with the help of a walker and his hands shake when he paints. But he's always got his eye on the next project.

"I try to make each mural a project that will somehow expand my abilities a little bit more," he says. "Everything has to be a new adventure."

He's hoping to finish his latest mural in time for his 100th birthday.