Pilgrims

Explosions targeting pilgrims at a Shiite religious festival have claimed dozens of lives this week. But pilgrims streaming to a Baghdad shrine Thursday made it clear that, no matter their feelings of frustration over a bleak political horizon and ongoing bloodshed, they valued the opportunity to express their faith. There were fresh attacks Thursday, killing 13 people as pilgrims continued to visit the shrine of Imam Musa Kadhim, a Shiite saint believed to have been poisoned in captivity in 799. Five bombings targeted pilgrims in Shiite areas of east Baghdad, according to police.

A 45-foot-high artificial Christmas tree towers over Manger Square, and downtown Bethlehem is festooned with sparkling decorations. There's even a picture of a saxophone-playing Santa Claus. But Nabil Giacaman, co-owner of a souvenir shop called Christmas House, isn't feeling the holiday spirit. The third-generation woodcarver, who sells handmade likenesses of baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary, sees as many as 200 tour buses arrive every day from Israel to visit the Church of the Nativity, just a few steps from his store.

OFF THE ROAD; A MODERN-DAY WALK DOWN THE PILGRIM'S ROUTE INTO SPAIN by Jack Hitt (Simon & Schuster, $22 hardcover). Since the 9th Century, pilgrims--Catholic and otherwise--have trod a series of roads and pathways extending from various points in France (Paris, Vezelay, Le Puy and Arles are the traditional four) to the supposed tomb of St. James the apostle in the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela in the Spanish region of Galicia.

What music did the Pilgrims like? Plymouth Rock! Sebastian, 12 Emperor Elementary Temple City What does the iPhone tell the turkey on Thanksgiving Day? You are very APPetizing! Joy, 9, Carden Conejo Elementary Westlake Village

A driver plowed into a procession of Roman Catholic pilgrims, killing four people and injuring 20, police said Saturday. The pilgrims were struck as they walked down a highway through the rain late Friday toward the medieval cloister at Andechs. Police arrested the 21-year-old driver, but charges were not immediately announced.

Hamas police set up checkpoints across Gaza to prevent pilgrims from leaving for a holy Muslim ritual in Saudi Arabia, beating some who tried to dodge barriers, witnesses said. The Islamic militants who rule Gaza were upset that the pilgrims had coordinated their journey with Hamas' rival, the Palestinian Authority. The authority, based in the West Bank, is run by the Fatah movement. Hamas seized control of Gaza from Fatah-allied forces last year, and animosity between the rivals has grown in recent months.

Imagine yourself at the first Thanksgiving feast. Would you have been a Pilgrim or a Native American? Explain. A Native American, because they showed the Pilgrims how to make the food for Thanksgiving. They taught them how to cook a turkey and grow vegetables. Tara, 7 El Rodeo Elementary, Beverly Hills A Native American, because they could shoot with bows and arrows without being spotted and they were a wise and good people.

Thanksgiving Day on the Mississippi River has everything a good holiday should: famine, floods and gunslingers. Slouched on an indent in the muck called Last Chance Landing, the three Osceola, Ark., pilgrims we meet choose to give thanks by shooting glass bottles into the dirty trough of water we call home. After 51 days spent rafting the river together, Marcus Eriksen and I are aware that, when we stop to ask for directions, our unwashed hair and multiple layers of clothing may constitute some sort of threat.

A female suicide bomber detonated a vest rigged with explosives among a crowd of Shiite Muslim pilgrims Monday in northeast Baghdad, killing 54 people and wounding 109, the latest in a string of attacks that have unnerved the city as pivotal elections loom next month. The bomber hid the explosives under her voluminous black abaya , or cloak, and detonated them among pilgrims gathered at a hospitality tent in the neighborhood of Bab al Shams. The dead included five women employed to search female pilgrims for bombs, police said.

Painted in Holland more than 300 years ago, a family sits for a meal, not unlike the one the Pilgrims sat for in 1621. Like the folks here, the Pilgrims would have worn black-and-white clothes, saved for Sundays or special occasions. But that is where the similarities ended. Life in America was hard. Unlike the family in this painting, the Pilgrims lived on the edge of survival their first winter in America. Within four months of arriving, disease had spread.

I once dated a Pilgrim. A Pilgrim-American Princess, in fact. Talk about crazy Thanksgivings. They have all these traditions, the Pilgrims do. For instance, you can't play knickers (much like marbles) till after dessert. And no Marie Callender pies. Ever. They're purists about their pies, not to mention many of the other traditions we kind of follow today. If it weren't for the hot tubs and the wine, a Pilgrim Thanksgiving wouldn't be worth it at all. Funny what you remember.

Borrowing from "The Wizard of Oz," Emilio Estevez sets a ragtag quartet of seekers on a long trek in his new film, "The Way. " Their Yellow Brick Road is the Way of St. James, or El Camino de Santiago, one of Western Europe's most famous Christian pilgrimage routes. The gentle drama offers an intriguing look at the contemporary version of an ancient ritual, and is anchored by the on-screen work of the writer-director's father, Martin Sheen. But Estevez doesn't push far enough, opting to focus on generic lessons in camaraderie and the primacy of the moment.

Ethan Wayne, the youngest son of Hollywood legend John Wayne, hates to have anything in his pockets because as a young boy he couldn't go out of the house with his dad without a stack of business cards that read, "Good Luck, John Wayne" on one side and the Duke's name typed on the other side stuffed in his pockets. "He would always take care of the fans no matter how busy he got," said Wayne, 49, who is named after his father's character in John Ford's influential 1956 western "The Searchers.

Hear that? That dull roar, like the sound from inside a shell? That might be the Orange County coastline calling you -- 42 miles of beach and beach towns, give or take, from San Clemente to Seal Beach. Follow the advice here, and this coastline might lull you with surfers on swells, startle you with circus tricks (look for the guy by the Huntington Beach Pier with the hammer, nail and much-abused nose), charm you with old shacks on priceless real estate, seduce or offend you with shiny new buildings on equally priceless real estate, tempt you with $2.69 corn dogs or $600-a-night hotel rooms.

Colin Thubron, the acclaimed British travel writer, has ventured through Russia, China and Central Asia. With restrained, spare prose, Thubron is a versatile painter of place, capturing the look and the language of locales. His "To a Mountain in Tibet" reads more like an elegy than a traditional story of travels. His trek takes him toward the "lonely peak" of Mt. Kailash, considered by Tibetans to be the holiest mountain in their highly elevated desert. Following an itinerary through a remote section of western Nepal, passing tiny, impoverished villages, on foot and by Jeep, ordinarily would offer a firm framework for his story.

Two car bombs exploded Monday near Karbala as Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority visited the shrine city for a major religious holiday, security and medical officials said. The blasts killed at least 22 people. The bombs went off as thousands of pilgrims marched into Karbala to mark Arbaeen, the end of the 40-day mourning period for the Shiite religious figure Imam Hussein, whose 7th century death in battle cemented Islam's Shiite-Sunni schism. It was the second major attack in the religious city since Thursday, when a pair of bombs killed 56 people and wounded 189. On Monday, the first bomb went off in a car parked south of the city, close to one of Thursday's blast sites, killing at least eight people and wounding 35. The second bomb went off east of the city, killing at least 14 and wounding at least 40, officials said.

It is a scene that has been repeated each Friday afternoon for centuries in Jerusalem's walled Old City. Christian pilgrims by the score struggle to stay together as they elbow their way through crowds of shoppers in the narrow stone streets. Some of them carry symbolic wooden crosses, but these days more of them carry cameras as they follow the "Via Dolorosa"--"The Way of the Cross."

Despite calls for patience and courteousness, pilgrims pushed and shoved their way Friday around the Grand Mosque, where more than 1.5 million Muslims gathered to pray. On this last Muslim Sabbath before the peak of the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to holy sites in Saudi Arabia, the prayer leader urged pilgrims to be "kind, gentle, patient and tolerant to other pilgrims while they are performing the rituals."

At least 56 people were killed Thursday in a pair of suicide car bombings that targeted pilgrims marching on foot into the Shiite Muslim shrine city of Karbala ahead of a major holiday. The attacks in the lead-up to Arbaeen, a holiday honoring Shiite icon Imam Hussein, also wounded at least 189 people, said medical officials who provided the death toll. The blasts horrified and angered members of the country's Shiite religious majority, many of whom are still scarred by memories of major bombings by Sunni extremists that devastated their community.

It's time to brush up on your pop culture references and talk about "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. " The genre-breaking cult hit is being released on DVD and Blu-ray. In case you're so behind on your pop culture news, a breakdown: The film, based on a graphic novel series, follows a young man's quest to fend off the seven evil exes of his lady love. Yes, lanky Michael Cera is capable of kicking some rogue butt (we're just as surprised). Oh, and there's an 8-bit Nintendo-style Universal Studios ride opening ?