Wednesday, November 25, 1998

Surfing the Web

By Doug Williamson

We devote today's column to tomorrow's holiday, Thanksgiving.

- How about doing a little last-minute decorating around the table? If you've got the family crowd coming to your place, how about personalizing the place each is sitting? Go to http://www.patswebgraphics.com/thanksgiving/thanksgiving.html and grab a border, a background or another graphic image to adorn the name card at their seat.

- While the guys are watching the Cowboys and the gals are gabbing over coffee, send the kids over to http://www.night.net/thanksgiving/fun.html-ssi. This is a links page to 10 other sites that are great for children and directed toward Thanksgiving fun.

- So, you think you know it all about Thanksgiving. Try the Thanksgiving Quiz at http://wilstar.com/holidays/thanksqz.htm.

- From the educational side of things, you can read the first Thanksgiving proclamation at http://www.ukans.edu/carrie/docs/texts/thanksg.txt. The governing council of Charlestown, Mass. issued the proclamation on June. 20, 1676.

- Leave it to the National Turkey Federation (I don't know those are people who raise turkeys or the animals themselves) to give us the complete history and folk lore about the great bird. It's a pretty good read at http://www.turkeyfed.org/consumer/history/history.html.

- And then enters the Animal Protection Institute with "No Giving Thanks for Turkeys," a story about how cruel we are to the bird. It's on the WWW at http://www.api4animals.org/Turkey.htm.

- If that site didn't turn you off, guys, here's the site that tells you how to carve the turkey like a professional - http://cookinglight.com/food/cooking/111398ss.html.

- Of course, the most famous Thanksgiving site on the Internet is Butterball University at http://www.butterball.com/fall/bballuni.html. It's sort of Turkey 101 from the Butterball Turkey folks. Just about whatever you need to know about the bird, you can find here.

- It's nice to be home for the holidays, but not to be sick for the holidays. A good set of holiday food safety tips may be found at http://www.cspinet.org/reports/safetips.htm. They come from the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

- Thanksgiving Day around the Williamson house for almost five decades has included the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The official New York City site for the parade, at least on the Internet, is http://www.nyctourist.com/macys(underscore)menu.htm.

-Doug Williamson can be reached at 676-6707 or williamsond@abinews.com.