Pie

President Obama is sharing a traditional Thanksgiving feast -- including the choice of six different pies for dessert -- with family, friends and staff. The White House released the First Family's holiday menu Thursday: turkey, ham, cornbread stuffing, oyster stuffing, greens, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and dinner rolls. For dessert: banana cream pie, pumpkin pie, apple pie, sweet potato pie, huckleberry pie and cherry pie. The "Let's Move" calorie burning begins Friday.

Your pie charts on foreign-born residents on pages A1 and A45 (Dec. 19) have a gross terminology error. There are three racial categories (black, Asian and white), but then there is another category (Latino) which in fact is almost entirely a sub-category of the "white" racial group. By showing the pie chart the way it is, the impression is left that Latinos are some other race. I'd strongly suggest changing the categories to include "Latino" and "non-Latino white" (or "other white")

I WATCHED JUSTINE ACROSS THE STREET. I SEEN HER from the window. Even with Sheldon and Jeffrey asking for lunch, I seen clear enough to know she was up to her old tricks. I said to myself, that queen, she's up to it again. This time it was a boy, a black boy whose name I'd learn in a matter of hours. Justine wastes no time. But just then I pulled away from the window, in case the two little guys might see me looking. Kids have a way of telling things, after all. Nothing was unpacked.

I was talking to a half-dozen theater friends about the changes new Artistic Director Michael Ritchie has put in place at the Taper ["The Reviews Are Already Coming In," June 26]. This theater-savvy, L.A.-diverse klatch was worrying about the same threads that your panel of theater artists were, so I felt compelled to ask, "Do you remember the last time you really had to see something at the Taper?" That killed the conversation. We all had to think about that one for a few long minutes.

Re: "Wellpoint Profit Increases 64% From Year Earlier" (Feb. 11): This is the problem with the health-care delivery system: An insurance company, among the best performers in the managed-care industry, made $703.1 million in 2002. An ideal system would have no one between the patient and the provider (doctors, hospitals, etc.) taking a huge slice of the medical-care pie, $17.3 billion in 2002 revenue to be exact. A nonprofit single payer is the answer to this ridiculous arrangement.