It’s amazing -- Indians and Pakistanis shop at the same markets, Thais and Mexicans and Chinese work in the same restaurants. But let's not be Pollyannas; not everyone always loves it. And I wonder who was here before, and why they’re not here anymore. For all the diversity in my building, I have to confess that I don’t often see, well, white people.

I walk around to smell what’s cooking. I take the stairs, and notice how the food smells different from floor to floor, but those aromas are the only things that connect me and my neighbors. The doors are always closed, heavy and black in our drab halls, and all the living goes on behind them.

On the day before Thanksgiving, though, I turned and saw bright splashes of color: Christmas decorations lining the second floor. I paused and smiled, happy to see someone bringing a little of their life outside of their door. Out came a woman, thin white curls on her head topping a pink muumuu, packing tape in hand and heading toward an enormous cardboard bear dressed as Santa.

We said hello, exchanged some pleasantries about how long we’ve lived in the building. Six years for me, decades for her. I said I admired her spirit. "Oh, we’re Christmas nuts!" Ann Marie exclaimed. [Note: Real names have been changed in this story.] "Me and all my neighbors here in our little corner," she said, waving her hand in circles. "We do this every year, different decorations each year." She pointed her chin toward  her doorway, draped with yards of white tinsel. "Here, take a look. We’re all ready inside."

She led me into her home, a little too small for all the things it contained, meticulously kempt and lived-in. I saw her tree, glittering, a side table pulled out and stocked like a bar. "I’m ready for tomorrow, making turkey and all that," she said, pointing toward her table set for five. I looked at the plates and napkins, green and decorated with pine trees. "Are you sure you have the right china out?" I asked.

"For us, Thanksgiving is just the beginning of Christmas season!" she howled.

I asked her what she makes for Christmas dinner. "Eh, this year I might make a roast beef. I don’t know yet. We don’t have one thing we always make." She paused. "Oh, except my mom always liked herring, that herring in cream sauce. We have that with raw onions," she said, pronouncing "raw" like "roar," hardcore New York style. "She liked that. It makes me go bleahh! But for New Year's we always have ham or pork. That’s supposed to be good luck for the new year. That’s our tradition."

"What tradition is that?" I asked.

"It’s Irish. Irish-Italian," she said.

We talked some more, about traditions, about watching the children of friends grow up and about what it’s like to still be working. "Back when I was your age, we used to think you’d go to work for one company and stay there forever," she said. "But that was a long time ago. The world is so different now," she said, looking past me, down the empty, undecorated part of the hall. We smiled and said goodbye.

Two days later, on my way out, I saw Carlos the maintenance man sweeping with a jury-rigged dustpan, made by sawing a cooking oil container in half and bolting it to a broomstick. He’s a small man, face and skin wrinkled with age, but he moves quickly and talks even quicker, his voice jumping in quick staccato, highlighting his thick Peruvian accent.

"Did you have a good Thanksgiving, Carlos?"

"Oh yeah, amigo. I had dinner here in the building, upstairs with my friend. I bring my whole family. She likes them, my family. She’s very nice. We do this 15 years."

"Oh, that’s great. Who’s your friend?"

"On the second floor. The fat lady, Ann Marie," he said.

Onyango, the half sister of Obama's late father, says she has exiled herself from the family after attending Obama's inauguration because she didn't want to become fodder for his foes. Obama and his family have not reached out to her either, she said.

"Before, we were family. But right now, there is a lot of politics, and me, I am not interested in any politics at all," said Onyango, whose appeal for asylum from her native Kenya is before an immigration judge in Boston.

The Obamas are her only family in the United States, she said.

"It is very sad when such a thing happens. There are people, outsiders, you know, they come in between, they divide a family," she said last week. "It's not easy."

Onyango, 57, is protective of Obama and said she never asked him to intervene in her case and didn't tell him about her immigration difficulties.

"I carry my own cross," she said. "He has nothing to do with my problem."

The White House said Obama has had no involvement in his aunt's case and believes it should run its ordinary course.

Onyango helped care for the president's half brothers and sister while living with Barack Obama Sr. in Kenya. She moved to the United States in 2000 and applied for asylum in 2002, but her request was rejected and she was ordered deported in 2004.

However, she did not leave the country and continued to live in public housing in Boston. She had been a health care volunteer, but not since her status became public. She refused to discuss how she affords to live now or who is paying for her attorney.

Onyango said she previously had no trouble visiting Obama when he was state senator in Illinois or after he became U.S. senator, though she declined to discuss details of how often she had contact with Obama and his family. Her tiny apartment in a modest subsidized public housing complex for seniors and the disabled is adorned with photographs of her with Obama at the Illinois Statehouse, the president's official portrait, his family, the inauguration, her children and African wildlife.

She is disabled and learning to walk again after being paralyzed for more than three months due to an autoimmune disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Her status as an illegal alien was revealed in October 2008, days before Obama was elected. Obama said he did not know his aunt was living in the U.S. illegally and said he believes the law should be followed.

A judge agreed to suspend Onyango's deportation order in December and reopened her asylum case. A hearing will be held in February, when Onyango can present her reasons for seeking asylum. The judge will then decide if she will be deported.

Her attorney, Margaret Wong, said that Onyango first applied for asylum due to violence in Kenya, an East African nation fractured by cycles of electoral violence every five years. People who seek asylum must show that they face persecution in their homeland on the basis of religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group.

Immigration experts say Onyango's relationship to the president could strengthen her claim she would be subjected to danger at home.

Onyango declined to discuss the details of her case, citing the pending appeal.

She became angry when discussing Obama's half brother who wrote a semi-autobiographical novel about the abusive Kenyan father he shares with the president. She called Mark Ndesandjo, who lives in China, an opportunist eager to capitalize on his famous brother.

Ndesandjo, who wrote "Nairobi to Shenzhen," did not grow up with Obama. He has said he wrote the book in part to raise awareness of domestic violence. But Onyango said she was Ndesandjo's baby sitter while living with his father and never witnessed any abuse.

"He was only strict and argumentative, motivating one to do the best," she said, acknowledging that in those days in Kenya "it was politically correct to slap children to discipline them just as it was done elsewhere in the world."

She said Ndesandjo's claims against a man who died 27 years ago are unfair. The senior Obama had problems with alcohol and was difficult to live with sometimes because of his frustration over years of political persecution but wasn't a child abuser or wife beater, Onyango said.

She also denounced persistent allegations that Obama is not a natural-born American citizen, saying that she is angered by the "outrageous, absurd, calculated conspiratory claim" that he was born outside the United States and is ineligible to be president. She recalled receiving a letter and photos from Obama's father announcing his son's birth in Hawaii.

Onyango reserved special words of kindness for former President George W. Bush for a directive he put in place days before the election requiring federal agents get high-level approval to arrest fugitive immigrants, which directly affected Onyango. The directive made clear that U.S. officials worried about possible election implications of arresting Onyango.

She said she wants to thank Bush in person for the order, which gave her a measure of peace but was lifted weeks later.

"I loved President Bush," Onyango said while moving toward a framed photo of Bush and his wife standing with Barack and Michelle Obama at the White House on inauguration day. "He is my No. 1 man in my life because he helped me when I really needed that help."

"Because this is a holiday, Mom. This is what we’re supposed to do!" I would shriek, every word hot with the disappointment of a child whose parents never lost their accents, never taught us the rules of baseball, never gathered us around to play board games like the other parents did on TV.

One year, right after what my aunt called White Kids' Day, when all the white kids come to your house looking for candy, I geared up again. At school I was making construction paper cornucopias and drawing turkeys out of the outlines of my pudgy hands, smiling at pilgrims with impossibly large hats. My turkeys were always smiling at the pilgrims.

It had been a good year. My parents' business was doing well. They even bought a summer condo in Florida -- two beds, pool, near the beach, easy access to the choicest retirement communities -- though they ended up working so much through the summer we never went. "Good news!" my mother said one night, coming home from work. She was beaming. "We’re going to Florida for Thanksgiving!" I didn’t even get a chance to fire my turkey salvo. I sank. "It’s cold now. People go to Florida in the summer," I said.

We flew on Thanksgiving day, because it was cheapest. My parents, ever scared, terrified that we would miss a flight, always insisted on getting to airports half a day early. And so we sat in the gate, our bags stinking with Chinese food we just had to bring, just in case there would be no Chinese food in Florida. We sat through the throngs of people flying to their real Thanksgivings in the morning, then thinner and thinner crowds, until it was dark, and finally time for us to board.

I fell asleep. I slept through the flight, I slept through the car rental, I slept through the drive. My father gently nudged me awake. "Jai Jai," he called me, meaning Little Son. "We’re here," he said. My brother and I helped him with our bags, and when we got out of the garage I noticed the air. It smelled good. It never smelled this good in New Jersey. And I heard the ocean, sounding like the highway out behind my cousin’s house, but nicer, quieter.

My mother was cleaning already by the time we got to the door of our apartment, really working that broom, sweeping away colonies of dead bugs. South Florida fauna is no joke. It’s like we were vacationing in Biosphere 2. There were bugs on the floor, bugs in the sink, bugs folded up in the towels. My mother is horrified by bugs, but there she was, dealing with them happily and soaking the sinks in Dettol. "Go see the balcony!" she said to me. "You can see the ocean and the pool!"

I stood outside, smelling that air again, suddenly realizing how warm it was on my skin. I looked at the ocean, enormous and dark, and at the little blue pool underneath me, glowing. I imagined swimming in it, and started tapping my toes on the floor.

"Jai Jai!" my father called. "Come eat."

We sat, under the single functioning light bulb, and right away I frowned as my mother brought out bowls of rice, some of the food from home, and a plate of vegetables she stir-fried with Spam, though I did like Spam. So this was our Thanksgiving dinner.

But then she did something strange. She opened the oven. She never used the oven. She took out a foil tray. "What’s that?" I asked.

"I went and got this for you, and brought it with us on the airplane," she said, walking toward the table. "It’s your favorite."

She set the tray down. Printed on the paper lid I could see heavy black letters under a red roof. "Pizza Hut!" I squealed. She peeled back the lid. "Spaghetti and meatballs!" I jumped out of my chair and wrapped my fat little arms around her. My father smiled, chewing on his Spam.

"Thank you, Mom!" I said. "Thank you!" And we ate our dinner. 

At this point, that’s really not that shocking coming from Perry. Facing a stiff challenge for renomination in 2010 from fellow Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the governor has moved steadily to the right, and worked to align himself with the Tea Party protests. Remember, this is the guy who publicly entertained the idea of seceding from the union back in April.

Beyond the headline quote about socialism, though, it’s worth noting that Perry fails to say almost anything true or accurate in the almost six minutes of video available online. Let’s do a quick rundown.

• Perry's claim: “This administration is interested in punishing Texas.”
• Real world: OK, obviously this isn’t technically verifiable, but for real, Gov. Perry? Because your evidence for a preposterous piece of demagoguery like that is pretty thin. Which brings us to:
• Perry's claim: The Obama administration is shipping undocumented immigrants to Presidio, Tex., taking them to the border, and releasing them on the bridge over the Rio Grande. From there, they’re faced with the choice of braving the Mexican desert or walking back into lovely Presidio. Naturally, Perry is concerned that Obama is purposefully flooding the tiny, all-American town with hardened criminals.
• Real world: You think I’m exaggerating what Perry says. And I am, but only barely. (See the video, below.) Besides the fact that none of the people deported through Presidio have been accused of any crimes, they also aren’t just released on the bridge. They’re taken over the border, where Mexican officials buy them bus tickets to their hometowns. And it’s not as if this routing was chosen to spite Texas, as Perry explicitly claims. The idea is that it breaks the smuggling cycle to deport immigrants from somewhere other than where they entered the U.S.
• Perry's claim: The Tea Parties scared Senate Democrats into opposing a public option. Says Perry, “You better believe they’re listening!”
• Real world: Look, Democrats are well-known fraidy-cats. But the claim that the Tea Parties got the public option killed in committee in the Senate ignores the fact that one of the two Senate committees in charge of healthcare, in fact, passed the public option. And it’s now about to be brought to the Senate floor for debate, where it has a reasonable chance of passing and becoming law.
• Perry's claim: Moving on briskly to environmental policy, Perry inveighs against a cap-and-trade plan to limit emissions with typical arguments about how it would ruin the economy. He then adds something that I’d never heard before. “Even the EPA director herself said, ‘If you pass that piece of legislation, it will make zero impact on our environment.’”
• Real world: Curious where this came from, I did a quick Google search. The first site to pop up was www.southfloridateaparty.com. The Tea Partiers quote EPA chief Lisa Jackson saying, “U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels.” They, and Perry, are making an obviously willful misinterpretation here. Jackson isn’t saying cap-and-trade will make zero impact. She’s saying the U.S. can’t stop climate change on its own. Misreading Jackson’s statement this way is like saying that, because one person can’t singlehandedly lift a couch, the damn thing is obviously impossible to move. May as well leave it there. How helpful of you, governor.