This week we’re marking our one-year anniversary by checking in the real people who helped us bring you the names and events in the news. Peggy Silva is among the many citizens who we turned to. We first met her last October. It was the morning after she stumped then Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain at a town hall style presidential debate by asking a question that read like a zen koan. Namely, what don't you know and how will you learn it? One hundred days into the Obama administration we’re wondering what question she would put to President Obama today.

Watch Peggy Silva's question and the responses from the town hall debate in the video below.

Two rows from the band, which is right in front of the podium. Dressed in four layers, rode a (full) metro at 4:30 a.m. By 4:45 a.m. the mall was filling with a crowd that just wanted to be a part of history — I met people from Alabama, Indiana, California, red states, blue states, the United States. People that just decided to come and people that bought tickets a year ago. They wanted to be part of something larger, and today they are.

Beginning at 8:00 a.m. Eastern
11:00 a.m. Pacific
Musical selections (The United States Marine Band)

9:30 a.m. Eastern
6:30 a.m. Pacific
Official video stream begins

11:00 a.m. Eastern
8:00 a.m. Pacific
Official audio stream begins

11:30 a.m. Eastern
8:30 a.m. Pacific
Takeaway Live Blog with John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji

Approx. 11:30 a.m. Eastern
8:30 a.m. Pacific
Call to Order (Sen. Dianne Feinstein), Invocation (Rick Warren), Music (Aretha Franklin)

Approx. 11:45 a.m. Eastern
8:45 a.m. Pacific
Vice President-elect Joe Biden receives oath of office (Associate Justice John Paul Stevens), music (John Williams (composer/arranger), Itzhak Perlman (Violin), Yo-Yo Ma (Cello), Gabriela Montero (Piano), Anthony McGill (Clarinet))

Approx. 11:56 a.m. Eastern
8:56 a.m. Pacific
President-elect Barack Obama receives oath of office (Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts)

Approx. 12:01 p.m. Eastern
9:01 a.m. Pacific
President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address (expected to last about 20 minutes)
Poem (Elizabeth Alexander), Benediction (Rev. Joseph Lowery), the National Anthem (The United States Navy Band "Sea Chanters")
President Barack Obama escorts outgoing president George W. Bush and outgoing vice president Dick Cheney to a departure ceremony

Approx. 1:05 p.m. Eastern
10:05 a.m. Pacific
President Barack Obama attends an Inaugural luncheon

Approx. 1:25 p.m. Eastern
10:25 a.m. Pacific
Outgoing president George W. Bush speaks at Andrews Air Force Base

Approx. 2:20 p.m. Eastern
11:20 a.m. Pacific
President Barack Obama reviews the troops, the Inaugural Parade begins

MORE INAUGURATION 2009 »

President Obama gives the inaugural address today. No doubt it will be a soaring narrative that will have interwoven into it concepts of unity, agency, responsibility, hope, the promise of this great nation, a collective destiny, hard work, et cetera. And the speech will matter. It will be the answer to a Dream for many, and for others, as poet Saul Williams has expressed; it will have been "such a long way to travel just to reach the beginning."

... but rather lunch with Hillary, Janet, Hilda, Kay, Bev, Jeanne and Ellen, and a supporting cast of 2000. Emily’s List, the group devoted to raising money for pro-choice women’s candidates for U.S. Congress, took advantage of the arriving hordes to pull together a luncheon today to celebrate its achievements.

I wouldn’t say it was the loudest or most enthusiastic crowd I’ve ever seen at one of these events but it did remind me, while we’ve all been focused on the top-line narrative of the last two months — who’s in the cabinet, what that means, what Obama is doing about banks and economic stimulus and whether he’s more conservative — "pragmatic" is the word that he likes to use — than his campaign supporters believe — while we’ve been focused on all that, just one level down, the ground really is shifting. To have the Congress be able to pass a bill protecting women workers, and a children’s health bill, and not face a veto, well that’s new. To have a secretary of state talk about women’s reproductive health — it’s a while since we heard that. The big things may take some time to change. But on a micro level, there’s a lot of pent-up energy, and things will likely move quickly, indeed.

Listen to Meaghan O'Neill's suggestions for greening up your holiday cleanup.

Nationwide, there was a lot of focus this year on how to green up your holiday season, and with good reason: Half the country is broke, the atmosphere is falling apart, and many of us are plain done with the stress of running ourselves ragged to buy gifts that nobody really wants just so we can fulfill the tradition of giving and receiving. At TreeHugger and Planet Green, we offered dozens of solutions to Christmas-as-usual, hundreds of green holiday gifts, and even recipes to make your holiday a little brighter and lighter.

One of the main things we talk about is dematerializing the holidays; that is, choosing gifts that are small, experiential, or consumable, such as tickets to a ballet, a spa gift certificate, or donations in your giftee's name. Still, there's much to be said for the cheeriness of holiday décor and thoughtful gift-giving, but when the gifts are unwrapped and the tree comes down, the question remains: What to do with all the stuff that's literally littering our homes?

In the United States, our waste stream increases by about 25 percent between Thanksgiving and New Year's, bringing the total amount of stuff we toss out to more than 25 million tons. With landfills being one of the top sources of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, it pays to pay attention to how to we dispose of the extraneous stuff we gather at this time of year. With that in mind, here are 10 solutions for dealing with post-holiday clutter...

1. Mulch that tree. If you've chosen to use a live tree this year, make sure it's disposed of properly. If your city doesn't have a curbside pickup program, find out where you can deliver it so it can be mulched or used for landscaping, not landfill. For info about your area, check out Earth 911.

Continue reading...

Traditionally Christmas is a time for family, food, and friends. But unlike Thanksgiving, Christmas doesn't have a set menu of turkey and all the fixings. Every family has its own unique rituals that span the globe and reflect family history, roots, and experience. Chef Rocco DiSpirito and his mother, Nicolina, joined The Takeaway to share their family's holiday traditions.

ROCCO'S RECIPE

Struffoli
My Aunt Margaret gave me her recipe, which we love to eat at the holidays.

Ingredients:

• 9 eggs
• Approximately 3/4 cup olive oil
• 5 1/2 cups of flour, or more
• Vegetable oil for frying

To decorate:

• 1/4 cup of honey
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups of sugar
• Confetti sprinkles
• Sliced almonds

Instructions:

1. Beat together the eggs and oil.
2. Add flour into bowl, then knead for 20 minutes or longer, until soft. (it should be like a ball).
3. Break off a small piece of dough and covering the remaining dough. Roll the piece into a long narrow strip, and then cut the dough into pieces less than a half inch long. Repeat with remaining dough.
4. Using a heavy-bottomed frying pan, fill halfway up the sides with vegetable oil. Place dough pieces inside pan, without letting them touch. (Do not overcrowd, put in a only a handful in at a time; you may have to work in batches.) If oil starts to foam, the oil is too cool; raise the temperature. Cook until lightly golden brown.
5. To decorate, combine approximately 1/4 cup honey and 1 to 1 1/2 cups of sugar in a 12 inch frying pan. Cook on high heat until it boils. Add cooked pieces of strufoli, mixing until they are covered with the honey-sugar mixture.
6. Remove from frying pan and immediately mold strufoli into desired shape, traditionally a wreath. Keep cool water nearby for when hands become too warm.
7. Decorate with confetti sprinkles and almond slices.

View more recipes by Rocco DiSpirito »

In 1978 Harvey Milk made history as the first openly gay man elected to office in San Francisco. Months later, disgruntled former city employee Dan White made history when he assassinated Milk and San Francisco mayor George Moscone. Thirty years have passed and Hollywood is marking Milk’s legacy with a movie about his life. The Takeaway takes stock of Milk’s enduring influence with attorney Carol Ruth Silver, who served on San Francisco’s Board of supervisors with Harvey Milk. We are also joined by New York State Senator Tom Duane. Duane was the first openly gay and HIV-positive member of the New York state senate and city council.

Mass produced on an assembly line, with a will of its own, it's 100 years old today: The Ford Model T. The car started a global craze and made Ford Motor Co. one of the world's largest companies.

Today, George Gershwin would have turned 110. We listen to the music of the legend who changed jazz.

The events of September 11th still seem too fresh to qualify as American history. High school teachers are grappling with how to teach this event to kids, some of them just seven years old in 2001. Gideon Sanders is one such teacher who has thought about how to discuss this with his students. He joins The Takeaway to discuss how he's turning an emotionally fraught moment into an opportunity to teach the lessons of 9/11. Paloma Walker, a senior at McKinley Technology High School, also joins us.

North Korea was expected to hold a lavish parade for its 60th anniversary, with armaments and military hardware on display. Instead, it was scaled back and leader Kim Jong II was absent. Why? Chinese sources in the South Korean press report that the leader is gravely ill.

Times Picayune reporter Lolis Eric Elie says that Hurricane Katrina has lessons for the nation. From a frail infrastructure, to a flawed emergency response system, to a society divided along race and class lines, Katrina pulled back the curtain on issues that have long plagued the country. As we mark the third year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we check in with Lolis Eric Elie on the state of New Orleans and what the nation can learn from this disaster.

Guest: Michael Kazin, professor of history, Georgetown University. As member of the Students for a Democratic Society, he was arrested at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

For this year’s Emmy’s, the Academy is asking people to vote online for their most memorable television moments – either in comedy or drama. But what about news and other reality TV? At The Takeaway, we’re also head first into news and love these moments, so here’s our own category: most memorable “unscripted” television moments...

The Beijing Olympics start on an auspicious date in Chinese culture, but it’s not the only event happening on 8/8/8 for superstitious reasons. Thousands of Chinese Americans have picked this day to get married in the hope it’ll bring them luck. The Takeaway speaks to one couple who fought hard for event space on a day of big demand for weddings.

China is a luck-obsessed nation. And, sports figures are notorious for their rituals and superstitions. Put the two together, and you have the Beijing Olympics.