Kafka

Barbara Kafka's cranberry ketchup recipe, from her book, "Party Food" (William Morrow, 1992), which was printed in last Wednesday's food page, contained an error. The correct recipefollows. The Sun regrets the error.Cranberry ketchupMakes 6 cups.3 pounds -- about 13 1/2 cups -- fresh cranberries (If using frozen, allow to defrost at room temperature.)1 pound brown sugar1 cup white vinegar1 1/2 ounces grated peeled fresh ginger (about 3 tablespoons)1 teaspoon ground cinnamon1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper1/4 teaspoon ground allspice1/8 teaspoon ground clovesCombine all ingredients in a 5-quart casserole with tightly fitting lid. Cook, covered, at 100 percent in a high-wattage microwave oven for 30 minutes, 50 minutes in a low-wattage oven, stirring occasionally.

"The Unconsoled," by Kazuo Ishiguro. New York: Knopf. 535 pages. $25This novel is avant-absurd. Its hallucinated, mildly paranoid state of mind tempts one to compare it with Beckett or Kafka, but its true fathers are Lewis Carroll and Thomas Berger, particularly in the odd mix of humor and frustration.The novel has no plot. It is instead a series of misadventures, connected by an exquisite sense of disconnection. Almost everybody with whom the protagonist must deal is unhappy or perturbed.

On March 2, 2009, WILLIAM F. CHELF, of Street, MD. Beloved husband of Betty L. Shackelford Chelf. Devoted father of Joyce Ann Kafka and husband Joseph, Judy Lynn Cross and husband Frank, Nola Mae Giglio-Tos and husband Michael and Noel Lee Marshall and husband Mark. Loving brother of Norman Chelf, Arthur Chelf Jr. and the late Ethel Williams. Also survived by eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Services will be held at the family owned McComas Funeral Home, P.A., Bel Air, MD on Friday, March 6, 2009 at 11:00 A.M. Interment will be in Bel Air Memorial Gardens, Bel Air, MD. Friends may call at the funeral home in Bel Air on Thursday from 3-5 and 7-9 P.M. Memory tributes may be sent to the family at mccomasfuneralhome.

"Basic Instinct" is the mega-controversial murder mystery starring Michael Douglas as a cop and Sharon Stone as his bi-sexual suspect and lover. The movie has enraged gay and lesbian groups in its portrayals of lesbians as ice-pick wielding murderers and it has enraged moralists in the frankness of its sexual encounters (it just barely avoided an NC-17). Rated R."Shadows and Fog" is Woody Allen's new film, an account of a long, foggy evening in a middle-European city in the '20s where a strangler, a schlemiel, the townspeople and a black and white cameraman wander about, going bump in the night.

If you are of a mind this Christmas to do a kindness, let it be this: Once during that day, spend no less than a half-hour reading aloud or being read to. Please do that with the seriousness and abandon and the singlemindedness that are appropriate to sacraments both spiritual and secular.The text can be almost anything, so long as it is a single continuous piece of writing - somebody's traditional favorite, a chapter at random from a book for which you have strong feeling or imagine you might.

NEW YORK -- Ch. Brunswig's Cryptonite, the top-winning Doberman pinscher in the breed's history, cleared the first barrier last night in his bid for the best-in-show award at the 116th annual Westminster Kennel Club fixture.The 5-year-old known as Kafka was named best of breed as Westminster opened its two-day run at Madison Square Garden.Kafka is owned by Sam and Marion Lawrence of Orlando, Fla., and has been guided to 118 top awards by his handler, George Murray.Last year, he defeated a total of 100,867 dogs to finish second in the Science Diet Winners' Circle competition, which keeps a yearlong tally of dogs' individual performances.

The USNS Comfort, the white-hulled hospital ship that has been a fixture of the Baltimore waterfront for a quarter-century, is moving next year to Norfolk, Va., the Navy announced Tuesday. Maryland officials had fought the move of the ship, whose missions have included supporting service members in Iraq and helping earthquake victims in Haiti. Former Rep. Helen Delich Bentley, who helped to bring the ship to Baltimore in the 1980s and worked with the current congressional delegation to keep it, called the decision a symbolic and an economic blow to the region.

When yesterday's girls soccer showdown between No. 7 Notre Dame Prep and No. 14 McDonogh came down to overtime, one of two players seemed likely to make the difference -- NDP's Zoey Bouchelle or McDonogh's Brittany Tegeler. Bouchelle, a versatile All-Metro midfielder, took the first shot in overtime and set up a teammate for another. Tegeler, coming off a 20-goal freshman season, had already scored once and fired 17 shots in the game -- 12 of them on goal. A minute into the second 10-minute overtime period, the break came, and it went Bouchelle's way. With the visiting Eagles pushing up, NDP's Beth Koloup started a counterattack by clearing a short ball.

A heavy tropical fruit, ponderous and overripe, sways gently beneath the twisting branch of a tree. Flowers on slender stalks burst forth in profusion from shapely vases with narrow necks and fat, bulbous bowls. And a dead fish with a hook in its mouth dangles limply from an invisible line. These and other seemingly innocuous images of fruit, fish and flowers are recurring metaphors in the extraordinary art of Joseph Norman, whose complex, elusive works on paper are on view in Amazing Grace: The Lithographs of Joseph Norman, a beautiful but harrowing exhibition at the James E. Lewis Museum of Morgan State University.

Here is a partial list of this year's Academy Award winners:SUPPORTING ACTOR: Martin Landau, "Ed Wood"SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Dianne Wiest, "Bullets Over Broadway"ART DIRECTION AND SET DECORATION: Ken Adam and Carolyn Scott, "The Madness of King George"CINEMATOGRAPHY: John Toll, "Legends of the Fall"COSTUME DESIGN: Lizzy Gardiner and Tim Chappel, "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert"DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Freida Lee Mock and Terry Sanders, "Maya Lin:...