I can’t say, but I do have a good sense of who Atlanta’s team is.

My wife wore her Holland shirt around town today and was stopped over and over by people who told her that they hope this year is the Netherlands’ year.

Soccer is a beautiful game, but it can also be a cruel one, and who knows how the World Cup will turn out? Maybe today was as good as it gets for a fan of the Netherlands. Maybe, just maybe, another couple of glorious days are to come. Again, I only say maybe.

But maybe there’s another lesson to draw from this experience. The city of Atlanta currently has 18 Sister Cities around the world. The list, as unlikely as it might seem, goes like this:

Ancient Olympia, Greece

Brussels, Belgium

Bucharest, Romania

Cotonou, Benin

Daegu, Korea

Fukuoka, Japan

Lagos, Nigeria

Montego Bay, Jamaica

Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom

Nuremberg, Germany

Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago

Ra’anana, Israel

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Salcedo, Dominican Republic

Salzburg, Austria

Taipei, Taiwan

Tblisi, Republic of Georgia

Toulouse, France

Atlanta’s relationship with some of these cities is much deeper than with others. And, since the ties are largely reinforced by citizen volunteers, they wax and wane over the years, depending on the energy of the people involved.

But the lack of a Sister City in the Netherlands is clearly an omission. The time is right to develop that relationship. And I for one would be happy to join in and develop it.

Let’s go, Orange. Let’s go, Dutch. And let’s go, Atlanta, and develop a new and meaningful relationship with a wonderful country and people.

I had read a couple of her early books and thought they were well done. In conversation, she was charming, engaging and genuine.

In the years since then, however, I confess that I haven’t really kept up with her work. Oh, I’ve read the reviews, most of them very favorable, and some people who have read her books have told me how much they liked, even loved, them. But other books always seemed more pressing to read, and I never got around to Ms. Kingsolver’s.

I was late in reading her newest novel, “The Lacuna,” published last year.

Maybe because of my gross negligence in reading her recent books, I was totally unprepared for this experience.

What a book. I was totally wowed by it. Barbara Kingsolver is clearly a writer at the top of her game.

In the first place, “The Lacuna” is beautifully written and carefully crafted. So many sentences are true gems. But most people don’t read books for style. They’re drawn to plot, character or perhaps setting. Those readers will not be disappointed. Ms. Kingsolver makes you think you are there — especially in the sections of the book set in Mexico and Asheville, N.C. She brings to life some prominent historical characters: the artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and the anti-Stalinist Marxist Leon Trotsky. She also develops a vibrant lead character in the half Mexican-half American cook turned writer Harrison Shepherd and several lesser, but thoroughly believable, characters, including, especially, Shepherd’s secretary, the sensible, sensitive, human Appalachian native Violet Brown. For readers who crave plot, the book is a page turner, crafted from diary entries, letters and occasional — and all too believable — error-filled newspaper stories.

But the whole is greater than all these parts. “The Lacuna” is really a book about the United States, a nation founded on idealism but flawed by hate and ignorance. Good people populate its pages, often good people who are apolitical, but so do people who are politically motivated while possessing limited understanding of the notions that should make their country stronger. Questions about what makes us “un-American” are central to this tale, which comes to its crashing climax at the peak of the McCarthy era.

Lacuna is defined multiple times in slightly different ways during the course of the novel, but here’s the first definition:

Laguna? The lagoon?

No, lacuna. [Leandro, the Mexican cook who mentored the book's protagonist] said it means a different thing from lagoon. Not a cave exactly, but an opening, like a mouth, that swallows things. He opened his mouth to show. It goes into the belly of the world. …

While that image might seem vague, it becomes clearer as the book progresses. So too do other references, including the opening scene’s howler monkeys.

Ultimately, this is a book that speaks to our times, although its last entry is in 1959.

I don’t want to spoil the experience for anyone by saying too much. But I will say this: Read this book. I don’t say this lightly. Only a couple of books in the past 50 or 60 years come close to deserving this kind of praise from anyone, but Barbara Kingsolver’s “The Lacuna” might just be the long-awaited Great American Novel.

Lots of folks gather to sip a Corona or, my favorite, Modelo Especial, or a margarita, eat spicy Mexican food, and generally celebrate all things Mexican.

It’s not typically a day for deep thoughts, and its feel-good qualities don’t necessarily carry over to debates about immigration law or fair treatment of Mexican workers in this country.

I’d like to mark the occasion, though, with a tribute to a Mexican-American, who was very important to my youth: Pedro “Pete” Gallegos.

Senor Gallegos taught Spanish classes I took during my sophomore, junior and senior years of high school. He was born in southern Utah and had been an excellent guard on his high school basketball team before going on to university. He was not far removed from college when he taught me. But he was especially talented in relating to students.

None of us would have dreamed of seeking out a guidance counselor for a serious conversation about our lives or challenges in those days. But students frequently sought out Senor Gallegos to talk about whatever issues were bothering them.

In class, he was a steady task master, who started each day with a short vocabulary test. He was also funny and engaging. You could not sit through one of his classes without being actively involved.

He opened up a new culture and a wider world for most of us. While he wanted to convey a certain body of knowledge to students, he also actively encouraged us in wider pursuits, especially anything that expanded our creativity. Knowing that I wanted to be some kind of a writer in the future, he decided early on to require me to bring a limerick to him every day. The limericks could be my own or from some other source, but he was encouraging me to be disciplined about reading and writing. He also introduced me to translations of Spanish language literature.

In class, as we moved further along, he forced us to speak only in Spanish. With our limited vocabularies, that could be difficult. But Senor Gallegos cut us a little slack. If we couldn’t say what we wanted to say in Spanish, we could act it out. All of us became pretty adept at pantomime.

In later years, I’ve found those pantomime skills pretty useful as I’ve traveled in many countries where I can’t speak the language.

Senor Gallegos was a role model. He was smart, caring and empathetic. He was alive to the joys of learning about diverse cultures. He pushed us to challenge ourselves. He believed creativity should be fostered throughout life. For him, all those elements were requirements for personal fulfillment.

I’m grateful that he chose to teach in public schools. I’m grateful that I had the chance to get to know him.

So on this Cinco de Mayo, I’ll drink a toast to a great Mexican-American and a great teacher. Senor Gallegos, wherever you are, this Modelo Especial (pictured above) is for you. Salud!

“Name withheld” — referring to the person who was equally capable of doing very good or very bad work, in John’s opinion —  comes from me, not John, who rarely minced words. But I’ve often thought you could say the same about the United States and the South and my home state of Georgia. There’s a good one and a bad one. As citizens, we take pride in the good and are embarrassed — or worse — by the bad.

John’s analyses — prompted by his assessments of his individual reporters’ strengths and weaknesses — came to mind again this afternoon as I spent some time looking back at stories and commentaries on the first Earth Day 40 years ago.

My reflections were prompted, in part, by reading Barack Obama’s proclamation of April 22, 2010, as Earth Day. In it, he says: “Forty years from today, when our children and grandchildren look back on what we did at this moment, let them say that we, too, met the challenges of our time and passed on a cleaner, healthier planet.”

Looking back four decades, that first Earth Day seemed to be a really momentous occasion. Here’s the way a CBS report  began on the evening of April 22, 1970: “This is a CBS News special. Earth Day: A question of survival. With CBS News correspondent Walter Cronkite.”

Cronkite then came on the air and said: “Good evening. A unique day in American history is ending: a day set aside for a nationwide outpouring of mankind seeking its own survival …”

On that historic day of seeking our own survival, two of the most talked about people were Georgians — a good Georgian and a bad Georgian, or at least one who was doing good things and one who was not.

The good Georgian was Eugene Odum (pictured at left). A graduate of the University of North Carolina who later earned a doctorate at the University of Illinois, Odum was frequently invoked at environmental teach-ins as “the father of modern ecology.”

Initially interested in the study of birds, Odum soon began to understand how their lives related to their environment and, from there, how ecosystems were interrelated. He was hired to teach zoology at the University of Georgia in 1940 and quickly began to focus on developing ecology as an integrated system that brings all the sciences together. His 1953 textbook, “Fundamentals of Ecology,” is credited with launching modern ecological studies.

Odum also established the University of Georgia’s Marine Institute on Sapelo Island in 1954 and continued to write influential books until 1998. Three years ago, the Institute of Ecology he founded at UGA became the Odum School of Ecology, which, I’m told, is the first stand-alone academic unit of a research university dedicated to ecology.

While many people praised Odum on that first Earth Day, few singled him out as a symbol of an enlightened Georgia or the enlightened South. Many probably had little idea of his heritage. Unfortunately, the heritage of the “bad” Georgian was inescapable. It was hard to overlook because he was the state’s duly elected Comptroller General and a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor. (The title, Comptroller General, was changed to Commissioner of Insurance in 1983.)

Here’s a quote from another news broadcast on April 22, 1970: “Some quarters saw more than coincidence in the fact that Earth Day occurred on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lenin, the father of Soviet communism. And the Comptroller General of Georgia, James Bentley, sent out $1,600 worth of telegrams warning that Earth Day might be a Communist plot.”

Telegrams sound quaint, of course, and the idea that the public could be riled up over a politician wasting a mere $1,600 of taxpayer money seems oddly dated. But the idea of a politician engaging in political grandstanding over a silly exaggerated notion seems very much up-to-date.

Two days after that first Earth Day, on April 24, 1970, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran this editorial:

An Enemy of Earth Day

“James L. Bentley, Comptroller General of Georgia, is a man who thinks for himself. Mr. Bentley, a candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, did not join the millions of ingenuous Americans who observed Earth Day. Not a timorous individual to be taken in by apocalyptical talk of environmental catastrophe, Mr. Bentley instead sent out $1,600 worth of telegrams to public officials and Georgia voters charging that Earth Day might be a Communist plot because it fell on Lenin’s birthday.

“Mr. Bentley may have only a sketchy idea of ecology, but he has a much firmer grasp of finance. The comptroller general sent the telegrams at the taxpayers’ expense. Public protest has led Mr. Bentley to doubt the political wisdom of his action, however. He has decided to pay for the telegrams to President Nixon and others.

“Somehow we cannot bring ourselves to regret Mr. Bentley’s decision to stand aloof from Earth Day activities. He probably wouldn’t have contributed much of value to the dialogue anyway.”

No doubt, Bentley probably wouldn’t have contributed much of value to the dialogue, but perhaps at least one lesson we should draw 40 years later is that, when we’re talking about the environment — which really is a life and death matter, as Walter Cronkite suggested — we should listen more to our scientists and a little less to our politicians.

1) A green-and-black rugby shirt from Delaney’s, an Irish pub in the Wanchai district of Hong Kong. (Wanchai was the setting for “The World of Suzie Wong,” but I never met her at Delaney’s.)

2) An Irish flag. Just a small one. (A bigger one flies outside our house at St. Simons Island.)

3) A ceramic figurine depicting Durty Nelly’s, a Bunratty pub that serves the best poached salmon I’ve ever eaten.

4) A pair of portraits of writers: one of novelist James Joyce, the other of the playwright Sean O’Casey.

5) A painting by John Woodfull of the interior of McDaid’s pub on Harry Street in Dublin, once the favored local of the writer Brendan Behan, among others. In the painting, a pint of Guinness rests on the bar next to a folded copy of the Irish Times newspaper. If you look closely, you can read this headline just above the fold:

S. Keith Graham to

6) A coaster with a picture of the poet Patrick Kavanagh and these lines from “If ever you go to Dublin Town:”

On Pembroke Road look out for my ghost
Dishevelled with shoes untied.
Playing through the railings with little children,
Whose children have long since died.

(Just a footnote, Kavanagh lived at 62 Pembroke Road in Dublin in 1943 and again from 1944-1958, but he might be better known for his association with Raglan Road, where he also lived for a time. “On Raglan Road,” a Kavanagh poem set to music, has been recorded by Van Morrison, Sinead O’Connor and Luke Kelly among others.)

7) A small collection of Irish CDs by performers including Maura O’Connell, Van Morrison and the Chieftains.

8) A cup from O’Kim’s, an Irish pub in Seoul, South Korea. (You could get a Guinness there but only in a can. The fish and chips were decent, though.)

9) A dark blue wool flat cap bought at Kennedy and McSharry in Dublin.

10) A mug bearing the lyrics to “The Rose of Tralee,” purchased the day after a genial elderly man named Sean Ferris serenaded my wife with the song as we rode in a jaunting cart through the scenic Gap of Dunloe.

11) A T-shirt celebrating the 1990 Irish World Cup soccer team. Here’s a great scene from the movie of Roddy Doyle’s “The Van.” It illustrates how that team was embraced by the Irish:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gaj2vONg67I

12) A postcard of the Regency Hotel in New York with this message scrawled across the back: “Dear Chrys & Keith: Go to Ireland. Richard Harris” (It’s mounted next to a photo of film critic Eleanor Ringel with the actor; Eleanor asked Harris to write the card to us while she was interviewing him and he kindly obliged.)

13) A refrigerated package of Kerrygold Irish butter. (I wish we could get their cream, too.)

14) A copy of Seamus Heaney’s translation of “Beowulf,” autographed by the poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. (I once had the good fortune to spend part of an afternoon talking with Heaney and later attended a spirited party where he was the guest of honor.)

15) A pair of Donegal Mist handwoven tweed coats that wear their age much better than I wear mine.

16) A cloth book bag from Hughes & Hughes book store in Dublin, where writers and readers are rampant.

17) A now empty bottle of Smithwick’s Irish ale that — with optimism that proved too great — I had really planned to drink later tonight.

Not long ago, for instance, we told you the wonderful news that the U.S. just might become the next France. We got the word from Mitt Romney and joie de vivre has been building ever since.

Once again, here goes: Some really great news.

Rush Limbaugh, who just might be our nation’s consummate rightwing blowhard, said this on Tuesday about the pending health care legislation:

“I don’t know. I’ll just tell you this, if this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented, I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica.”

Finally, another good reason for Congress to pass the reform measure.

Sorry, Costa Rica, we know this news might not seem quite so bright from where you bask in the sunshine. But let’s face it. According to some measures, you currently offer slightly better health care than the U.S. You have no army but have been highly stable. You are ranked among the top countries in the world for environmentalism. And you’ve even elected social democrats to high places.

Sounds like you’re just the kind of place Limbaugh would want to live.

And let’s face it: If you can’t straighten him out, who can?

PS: Britain’s Guardian newspaper has been running an online survey about whether Limbaugh should leave the U.S. if the healthcare bill passes. As of late Tuesday, 85.2 percent of the international community that had voted said, “Yes, another good reason to pass healthcare.” A no-doubt kinder 14.8 percent of respondents said, “No. What’s Costa Rica ever done to the U.S.?”

But David Brooks is far from the most doctrinaire, and his columns in The New York Times are almost always readable.

As a writer and in his regular appearances on PBS’s News Hour, Brooks comes across as a bright fellow who respects people with differing viewpoints and refrains from mean-spirited commentary. He also appears willing to challenge some of the orthodox faithful on his own side of the political spectrum. Unlike many modern-day conservatives, he rejects free-market fundamentalism and accepts the fact that government has a legitimate, even necessary, role to play. He just wants the appropriate amount of government involvement in our lives.

Liberals might think he often reaches the wrong conclusions, but at least he makes some interesting observations along the way.

I’m still puzzling, however, over the definition he offered of conservatism in a column last week, headlined “The Wal-Mart Hippies:”

“Conservatism,” Brooks wrote, “is built on the idea of original sin — on the assumption of human fallibility and uncertainty. To remedy our fallen condition, conservatives believe in civilization — in social structures, permanent institutions and just authorities, which embody the accumulated wisdom of the ages and structure individual longings.”

The concept of “original sin” might disconcert some people, but, rather than launching off on less than useful tangents, let’s accept Brooks’s definition of it as “the assumption of human fallibility and uncertainty.” Don’t most liberals accept the idea that human beings are fallible? And don’t most liberals also “believe in civilization?”

I don’t know about you, but if I believed people were perfect, I’d be an anarchist — not a liberal — because I would expect people to always do the right thing and to cooperate when necessary without any need of government intervention. I don’t believe people are perfect, and I know I’m neither perfect nor always right. I also think imperfect people create — and operate — imperfect institutions, both private and corporate ones as well as government ones. But while I can’t always have any influence on the private institutions, I do have at least a little say in how the government functions. And I want it to function in ways that foster the possibility of health and happiness for as many people as possible. In other words, I want it to help us all live in more civilized ways.

So I’m a liberal. But, by David Brooks’s definition, I think I’m a conservative, too. Of course, I’m also fallible, so I could be wrong.

That skepticism has not been erased. But I also confess to a certain amount of humility after reading Stephen Lee Myers’ report on Sunday’s election in Iraq.

No matter what else I might think about the election, I marveled at this paragraph:

“Iraqis defied a barrage of mortars, rockets and other bombs to show up to the polls in strength on Sunday, in elections that have been seen as a critical test of Iraq’s stability and a last milestone before American troops leave the country.”

Elections marred by violence are not as rare as we might hope in today’s world. Perhaps we are even a little jaded at hearing stories about them. But the question lingers: How many of us would defy “a barrage of mortars, rockets and other bombs” to go out and cast a ballot?

“Have I succeeded in reversing a 30-year trend of skepticism and cynicism about government? I confess that I have not. Maybe next year.”

Published Monday, the column was written before Jim Bunning, a baseball pitcher turned Republican senator from Kentucky, abandoned his one-man stand against extending unemployment insurance. But it covers a lot of ground under the headline, “Living with partisanship.”

I encourage everyone to read the whole column by clicking on this link. But even if you don’t have the time or inclination, you might be interested in the most telling comment, explaining what Dionne sees as “the philosophical and emotional divide” between Democrats and Republicans:

“Democrats on the whole believe in using government to correct the inequities and inefficiencies the market creates, while Republicans on the whole think market outcomes are almost always better than anything government can produce.

“That’s not cheap partisanship. It’s a fundamental divide.”

Far more unpredictable, I thought, was a discussion at the St. Marys, Georgia, city council meeting the other night.

I read about it in the Georgia edition of the Jacksonville newspaper, the Florida Times-Union.

The topic? A recommendation by a consulting company that the city spell out “Saint” in its Historic St. Marys marketing campaign. This is not the first time this controversy has flared. The council debated it in July, then courageously decided to table the matter after some residents expressed opposition.

According to the Times-Union’s report, the issue came up again when a councilwoman said she liked the new look the consultants were proposing for the city’s Web site. A councilman said he liked most of the consultants’ recommendations but not spelling out “Saint.”

“I’m not in favor of changing [the spelling] at all,” another councilman said.

Then another said people should be able to spell out Saint when they wanted to or just use St. when they preferred. Trying to be helpful, the city manager pointed out that mail already gets delivered whether people use Saint or St.

Ultimately, the council chose not to spell out Saint but to send the rest of the consultants’ recommendations to the city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau for further review.

You have to feel deep empathy for elected officials who are put on the spot when thorny issues come up. You wonder why anyone even bothers to run for office when faced with such challenges.

And, to think, the council could have confronted an even larger dilemma. What if someone had proposed putting an apostrophe in Marys, so that the city’s name became St. Mary’s or even Saint Mary’s? The dilemmas multiply.

At least that’s the view from the safe vantage point of St. Simons Island, where I write.

With the inauguration of Barack Obama in early 2009, the nation appeared on the verge of entering a new era of hope — one in which the U.S. would make progress toward living up to its ideals and once again be a shining beacon for the rest of the world.

Then Republicans put up a united front of naysaying and political grandstanding, Democrats responded with craven timidity and downright cowardice, and the era of hope quickly evaporated into an era of nope.

This week, however, some great, good — OK, let’s be blunt — really tremendous news came our way. Mitt Romney, a failed Republican candidate for the presidential nomination in 2008, has written a book, “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness,” in which he warns his countrymen that, if they don’t change, the U.S. will be “the France of the 21st century.”

With its characteristic lack of vision, Fox News has fretted about this prospect. Perhaps, the staff there has only seen France from Alaska.

But U.S. history is replete with Americans — including Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin as well as many of the nation’s greatest writers and artists — who have fallen in love with la belle France. Just to borrow a line from Jefferson: “Every man has two countries, his own and France.”

As best I can tell it was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s brother-in-law, Thomas Gold Appleton (1812-1884) — later quoted by Oliver Wendell Holmes and Oscar Wilde — who coined the now famous phrase: “Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.”

If Mitt Romney is right — and I’m hoping he is — not only good Americans but all the crummy ones, too, now seem destined to go to Paris without even having to die.

Appleton’s high opinion of the City of Light might be due in part to the fact that, as a young man, he rather happily lost his virginity there. But as almost anyone who has spent time in Paris or in other parts of France can tell you, living as the French do can be a wonderful experience.

Just imagine: Steak au poivre and escargots in every pot. Chevre chaud to your heart’s content. Trout Meuniere. Cassoulet. Nights on the Seine. Views of Notre Dame, the Tuileries, the Luxembourg Gardens. An incredible museum around every corner. And just to make life even sweeter, an ever handy bottle of fine wine within reach at a pleasant sidewalk cafe.

Thanks to Mr. Romney, my sadness has lifted. Here’s to the United States, the France of the future.

Vive la France. And, yes, I’ll take another glass. A votre sante.

“It’s a city in a forest,” he told me.

I loved his fresh perspective on the city I knew well, and he was right. Compared to many cities, Atlanta still does have wonderful trees, despite an onslaught by developers determined to knock them all down.

I thought of that young man again today as I tried to cull through the books that are overflowing the shelves at my house. The city of Edinburgh, Scotland, is running a Carry a Poem campaign all this month, and in the spirit of that campaign I’m trying to identify a different poem that I appreciate each day of the month.

The book that came easily to hand offered up one of my all-time favorites.

The book is an acclaimed 1997 collection, Protestant Without a Horse, by the late Irish poet Robert Greacen. (He died in 2008.)

My copy of the book is well-marked with underlinings and arrows pointing to favorite passages, and it’s annotated with my hand-written notes about sections that pointed me to one train of thought or another.

Before I even started reading the collection, I was intrigued by the dedication. It reads: “for my friends Betty and Jack W. Weaver who introduced me to the American South.” Who are the Weavers and what was their connection to Greacen? Some day, I still want to do a little research and learn the answers.

But I get waylaid every time I open the book. The first poem, “At Brendan Behan’s Desk,” introduces the title phrase, “A Protestant without a horse.” (Greacen was born to Protestant parents in the north of Ireland.) The second poem, “Procession,” focuses on a painting of a parade by Orangemen in Portadown in 1928.

It concludes with these lines:

The past invades the present,
The present lives in the past,
The future will never come.

These lines capture some of the ongoing tragedy of Irish history, especially the history of Northern Ireland in the 20th century that Greacen knew so well.

But, as I noted in the book on my first reading, it also captures too much of the experience of people in the American South.

The failure of American Southerners to confront our history honestly is a painful reality. But Greacen’s social commentary was focused on his own people, not on Americans. And in one poem in the book, he offers a soaring little anthem that I have always found as inspiring and revelatory as the words of the young man on the plane.

The poem is called “Flying Into Atlanta.”

It goes like this:

FLYING INTO ATLANTA

A velvet evening at fall’s end,
Day in retreat, I flying high
Look down on diamond lights.
John Keats, come with me now.
Let’s travel in these realms.
Un-misted, mellow, fruitful,
And drink from brimming beakers
Above this city’s radiance,
Nor speak of hemlock, nightingales,
Or northern islands we have fled.
Through this rich Georgian sky
We’ll ride in dazzlement
Deep in romantic images
Yet hear a voice proclaim:
O my America, my new-found land!

NOTE: Protestant Without a Horse was published by Lagan Press in Belfast and copyrighted by Robert Greacen.

Two obituaries for Robert Greacan with details about his life and career: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/robert-greacen-ulster-poet-of-considerable-gifts-832109.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/may/15/culture.obituaries

The best oyster stew I’ve ever eaten in my life was made by my grandmother and mother. Unfortunately, they are no longer living and I never thought to find out just how they made theirs.

Nevertheless, I do manage to make a little oyster stew at home now and then. Although my recipe is considerably inferior to Grandmother’s, Mom’s or the Oyster Shak’s, it still tastes pretty darn good to me, especially on a cold winter’s night. The biggest catch is that I have to make it only when my wife is not around. She hates the thought of oyster stew — especially my version of it — and can’t abide the smell.

I made some just a couple of weeks ago. Here’s how:

Captain Keith’s Homemade Oyster Stew

1. Open a can of Campbell’s Oyster Stew.

2. Pour the contents into a pan.

3. Fill the can with milk and pour the milk into the pan. (If you consider this to be two steps instead of one, please number appropriately.)

4. Put the pan on the stove.

5. Turn on the appropriate burner, preferably the one under the pan. (And, just as an aside, don’t you hate those recipes in newspapers and magazines that leave out essential steps like this?)

6. Stirring occasionally, cook the stew on medium low until piping hot.

7. Add lots and lots of ground black pepper. (Optional step: Then add even more black pepper.)

8. Pour the stew into a bowl.

9. Be sure to turn off the stove. (Again, I call your attention to the aside with Step 5.)

10. Crumble firm saltines into the stew. (I say firm because some but not all generic store brands are too soft and flaky.)

11. Put ketchup on top of the crumbled saltines.

12. Eat. (You get the best results when you use a spoon.)

13. When the whole layer of saltines is gone, add more. Add more ketchup and continue eating.

14. Repeat this process until all the stew is gone.

A note about the canned stew: My recollection is that in my youth Campell’s Oyster Stew had a small number of whole oysters in each can. The cans I’ve bought recently have only small bits and pieces of oysters. But the stew still has that distinctive oyster taste, and it’s still good.

A note about the ketchup: Some purists will object to this practice, and it’s optional. I would never put ketchup in stew when eating at a fancy place like, say, the Oyster Shak, but in the comfort of my home, I’ll eat the stew my way.

Every bite is like a trip to the sea shore.

Editor’s note: This story could be the first in a series, Mastering the Art of Keith’s Cooking. Future topics might include how to serve chips with extra hot salsa “Billy Howard style,” how to cook bratwurst on a George Foreman grill, the connoisseur’s guide to frozen pizza, proper preparation of pommes frites avec moutarde (also known as French fries with mustard), making Southern cassoulet (also known as beanie weenies), and the proper way to open a can of beer. If you would prefer not to read those future stories, please do Like the Dew readers a favor: Write your own stories for the Food and Drink section so we won’t need to run Keith’s.

Photo captions: Top — Keith’s oyster stew actually cooking on a stove; Bottom — A genuine can of Campbell’s Oyster Stew.

Mahatma Gandhi, the great nonviolent leader, was born 140 years ago today (Oct. 2).

Just wonder how he would have dealt with much of what passes for political dialogue on the Internet, talk radio or some cable television in our times. I’ve been reading various commentaries on several sites on the Web today and the hostile and mean-spirited discussions that followed them. I also made the mistake of tuning into the misnamed Fox News channel, which might more accurately describe itself as the Fox Fantasy channel or, too often, the Fox Hate channel.

Imagine Gandhi trying to introduce a sane thought into this mix.

In honor of his birthday, though, I’ll let him introduce a few sane thoughts here.

Gandhi speaks:

“Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.”

“I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.“

“Poverty is the worst form of violence.”

“A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.”

“Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is very important that you do it.”

“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.”

“What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.”