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“Kwanzaa teaches us to look within ourselves rather than to others for fulfillment, for determination, for self-worth and for self-esteem,” Angela Rowell, vice president of the committee, said. “These are things that all too often we look to others to fulfill, but Kwanzaa teaches that you can find these things within yourself and that you can use the principles of Kwanzaa in everyday life.”

Kwanzaa’s origins are in the first harvest celebrations from Africa and are derived from the phrase “matunda ya kwanza” which means “first fruits” in Swahili.

The observances are open to the public, and on Thursday, there will be a potluck dinner featuring “harvest-style dishes,” as well as Central African dishes.

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It is the escapism and fantasy of the chick-lit genre, and love it or loathe it, it is here to stay.

Random House marketing and publicity manager Brett Osmond says rather than seeing a downturn in chick-lit book sales in 2009, an increase in demand is expected.

“A publisher out of the US told me following 9/11 they had noticed there was an increased demand for escapist fiction, more like chick-lit titles,” Osmond says.

“I wonder in the next few years, as times are tough and there is lots for people to worry about, whether they are actually going to use books – particularly fiction – as a way of really escaping.”

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“It would just make me feel better as a parent,” she said, “and set an example for my kids.”

But actually doing it has proved harder than she expected. The skills she had years ago no longer set her apart in a job market that’s growing more competitive by the day. Her searches in all the obvious places the classifieds, ads in doctors’ offices, blurbs in hospital newsletters proved fruitless. A lot had changed in eight years including the widespread use of a new invention called Google.

It wasn’t until she signed up for the LIFE Skills program a collaborative training course through Beverly Bootstraps and Salem CyberSpace that Brown switched gears from discouraged to determined.

“I already know Excel and Word Perfect, but it boosted my self esteem,” she said. “Being on the computer again really made me feel at ease.”

She had never heard of Craigslist, an online classifieds Web site, and she learned how to better navigate job search engines like Monster.com, as well as doctor offices and hospital Web sites to find employment opportunities.

She updated her resume, converted it into a document she could e-mail, and sent it out to seven businesses. This month she had her first interview, and is waiting to find out if she got the job.

“I want to be there,” she said. And she knows it’s just a matter of time before an employer realizes that too.

“Once I’m there, I’m the best,” she said. “I know I’ll end up somewhere soon because of this.”

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PG for some mild rude humor and mild language.

Adam Sandler returns to the familiar man-child of yore with “Bedtime Stories,” a desperate family-friendly comedy about wild nighttime fantasies that magically come true in broad daylight.

Truly, Sandler seemed to have moved beyond this comfortable adolescent state. He’s proven he can act, really act, with surprising vulnerability and nuance in “Punch-Drunk Love” and “Spanglish.” He seemed to have turned, God forbid, into a grown-up.

Even though “Bedtime Stories” represents a first for Sandler a comedy that’s appropriate for all ages - it still feels like a giant leap backward for him.

Sandler plays Skeeter Bronson, the handyman at a boutique Los Angeles hotel, who is forced to look after his young niece Bobbi (Laura Ann Kesling) and nephew Patrick (Jonathan Morgan Heit) for a week while his sister (Courteney Cox) is out of town lining up a new job. Skeeter finds the only way to connect with the kids, and get them to go to sleep, is by telling them bedtime stories.

Soon, Bobbi and Patrick are chiming in with their own ideas about what the tales should include gum balls falling from the sky and gooey booger monsters and in no time, those details start creeping into Skeeter’s life. And those surreal occurrences inspire Skeeter as he racks his brain for a design concept for the new hotel his boss is launching.

It’s a whimsical and not-too-shabby idea from writers Matt Lopez and longtime Sandler friend and collaborator Tim Herlihy. But under the direction of Adam Shankman (”Hairspray”), the result is too often flat, crass and disjointed. And in keeping with the raunchiness that traditionally infuses Sandler’s comedies, there are also various sight gags involving flatulent or slimy animals.

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Playing Queenie, the title character’s adoptive mother in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (which opened yesterday), Henson brings lots of life to David Fincher’s often-sombre meditation on life and death. She charges into every scene like an old-school Broadway bruiser, taking charge of the film’s intentionally meandering, dreamy emotional tone and giving it some sharp, no-nonsense vibrancy. When the film wanders away from Queenie and turns the spotlight wholly on Pitt’s Benjamin Button, one yearns for her return.

Although this is Henson’s biggest role to date, and certainly her most high-profile, she is hardly a neophyte. In the past decade, she has done an enormous amount of TV - including guest spots on ER, Murder She Wrote, House, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Boston Legal - and starred in the art-house hits Smokin’ Aces, Baby Boy and Hustle & Flow (for which she won both BET and MTV movie awards). She was last seen in one of Tyler Perry’s money-spinning comedies, The Family That Preys, wherein she played yet another tough-love type.

Reese Witherspoon, watch your back. You no longer have the steely-but-still-cute market cornered.

All the female characters in Benjamin Button understand that Benjamin’s strange life [the character is aging backward] is ultimately a curse, while the male characters only see the immediate, superficial benefits.

I don’t really think that Queenie looks at it as a problem. Queenie, in particular, is one of those people who take life, you know, life as “it is what it is.” I mean, what are you gonna do about it? I never got that from Queenie, that Benjamin’s life was a curse.

But she understands that his life will be difficult, to watch all his friends and loved ones grow old and die while he gets younger and younger.

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Moore sat rigidly alone in a room on the third floor of the Shreveport Convention Center one recent Wednesday morning dressed in a red, white and blue shirt covered with sponsor patches.

Words rolled off her lips in her beautiful Australian lingo, easily endearing her to the listeners who would come her way on this cold, rainy day.

By late in the morning Bain-Moore was a tired young woman. And she hadn’t even spent a minute on the Red River. Instead, she had endured multiple questions from reporter after reporter as part of the Bassmaster Classic publicity tour of which she was the solo feature.

Australia has blessed us with on-screen and musically with Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Paul Hogan, Olivian Newton John and Keith Urban. But Bain-Moore is the first high-profile Aussie to make her name in the professional fishing ranks.

Just how big that name becomes will play out in front of a lot of northwest Louisiana eyes in February.

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Madisen Beaty is like many 13-year-old girls. She is pretty, growing like a weed, and has an easy laugh. But unlike many other teenagers, she will be watching herself on the big screen on Christmas Day alongside Brad Pitt.

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” opens nationwide on Thursday. The film staring Pitt and Cate Blanchett is getting great reviews, especially from one Colorado family.

Beaty is an actress who until now was most known for her last local show at the Denver Center. She played Belinda Cratchit in “A Christmas Carol” in 2005. A locally produced film in 2007 called “The Five” was her next big role.

She plays the same character as Blanchett in the film, only as a young girl. Her growth spurt during filming and since even caught Pitt by surprise last week at the Hollywood premier of the film.

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Kim Bain-Moore sat rigidly alone in a room on the third floor of the Shreveport Convention Center one recent Wednesday morning dressed in a red, white and blue shirt covered with sponsor patches.

Words rolled off her lips in her beautiful Australian lingo, easily endearing her to the listeners who would come her way on this cold, rainy day.

By late in the morning Bain-Moore was a tired young woman. And she hadn’t even spent a minute on the Red River. Instead, she had endured multiple questions from reporter after reporter as part of the Bassmaster Classic publicity tour of which she was the solo feature.

The native Australian, who married professional angler Andre Moore in December, fielded querries from a couple of newspaper reporters, a television guy, a magazine editor and a radio personality all within a 45-minute span. She claimed she wasn’t asked any stupid questions by the dozen or so interviewers but with people asking them who probably don’t know the difference between a goggle-eye and a sac-a-lait she may have just been kind.

Australia has blessed us with on-screen and musically with Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Paul Hogan, Olivian Newton John and Keith Urban. But Bain-Moore is the first high-profile Aussie to make her name in the professional fishing ranks.

Just how big that name becomes will play out in front of a lot of northwest Louisiana eyes in February.

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Whenever a conversation starts and includes the phrase “leading actress of her generation,” sooner or later the talk will turn to Cate Blanchett.

The 39-year-old actress won an Oscar for playing Katharine Hepburn; she also has been nominated for playing Elizabeth I (twice), a teacher having an affair with a 15-year-old boy, and, of all people, Bob Dylan (sort of).

Blanchett appears next in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (opening Thursday in the Valley) as the friend and lover of a man (Brad Pitt) who was born old and ages in reverse. As luck would have it, she received a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame the day before she talked about the film and her career.

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An overhaul to Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law takes effect Jan. 1.

The changes are expected to dramatically expand what people can find out about what goes on behind the scenes of the state and local governments.

The new Right-to-Know Law will repeal the 52-year-old original, long regarded as one of the nation’s weakest.

No longer will journalists, activists and other citizens interested in mining government records have to cross their fingers and hope the document they want fits into one of a half-dozen narrow categories. Nor will they have to go court and probably need to hire a lawyer to challenge an agency’s refusal to turn over a record.

The new law is built on the presumption that most government records are open. It also places on public agencies from state bureaucracies to county governments and local school districts the legal burden of showing why a record should be withheld, instead of forcing requesters to establish why it should be made public.

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