a man who truly grieved for all members of his nation

Fwoosh! (via Lila)

And thank you, everyone on Making Light, for creating and maintaining this community. Thanks to my fellow mods for letting me come play; to the regulars for the daily bread of comments, support, puns and poetry; to the occasional posters for the variety and amusement of your contributions; and to the lurkers, for supporting me in the email.

I am also thankful that when the welders started the fire at the self-storage building cattercorner from my office a couple of hours ago, no one was hurt or killed. The evacuation seems to have gone fairly smoothly. I hope the fire doesn't spread to our building, or at least that our offsite backup strategy is effective.

And many other things too.

I give thanks for The official Sesame Street twitter.

And thanks for posting this, Jim. I'd never read it before. That Lincoln guy had a way with a word.

(Note that previous Presidents Pierce and Buchanan both were asked to declare Thanksgiving a National Holiday and didn't.)

And Making Light is pretty thanks-worthy too....

I looked for a YouTube clip showing the time the MythBusters built an air cannon to shoot frozen turkey at airplanes, but it's not there. So, no cannonfowl.

(By the way, their experiment last night showed what would happen to a deep-sea diver 300 feet under the surface, should his air supply be suddenly interrupted. 'Disgusting' is one way to describe it.)

If anyone isn't already reading the Letters of Note blog regularly, enjoy this Thanksgiving post about complaint letters that poured in when FDR tried to change the date of Thanksgiving to lengthen the Christmas shopping season.

Not that he needed to go to such lengths. While the major holiday sales don't start until tomorrow, all the stores in my area put up their Christmas decorations and started playing Christmas music on November 1.

The last few years, I've been thankful that both I and my wife have work, and that for both of us it's work we love doing. I wish and hope for many others to have or find the same.

All: thank you for making my online life a source of joy and weird YouTube clips.

A followup to my comment @ 19...

I also want to thanks storytellers for their tales. Speaking of those yarn spinners, one of them, MK Hobson, suggests here that the Granny featured in Norman Rockwell's famous Thanksgiving painting has to be an atomic mutant endowed with superstrength because how else can she be carrying that huge bird around with such ease?

Thanks, all of you.

I am grateful to this web community. Even though I don't contribute as much as I wish I did, you all have provided me with untold joy and wisdom over the years. Thank you.

I don't often comment, but the discussions here are absolutely wonderful. I know I can always come here for civil, intelligent discussions. Thank you.

Had a very good and very large meal with the West Coast branch of the family. Went into one of those turkey comas, while reading a New Yorker article about famine in North Korea. With the help of coffee, had dessert and then drove to Walnut Creek for an evening with good friends whose kids are substitute nephews. Tomorrow, back there again to see The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Oh, man, I am so full.

Though it seems that with the exception of myself and a couple of others, everyone including the adolescents, were under the weather with something or other.

So we who weren't having upset tummies or allergies or colds evidently believed it our obligation to be even more cheery and helpful and happy to signal our appreciation for the bravery and good nature of the others who all stoutly were determined to carry on and make a Good Day for everyone else.

I spent 2 1/2 hours doing the clearing-up and clean-up single-handedly, except for one person who dried dishes. That really cheered up those who didn't feel so well, including the hosts!

This AM I was describing yesterday then, over the phone. My friend said, "I do believe you're invoking the voice of Louisa May Alcott in Little Women!" This delighted my amiga no end.

She might be right! The above was very LMAish. Hmmmm. Channeling, you know, can be carried Too Far. :)

Lucky me, no shopping for anything for the entire weekend, which is why I ran myself so ragged the last week prior to Thanksgiving, so I wouldn't have to be Out There on the streets of Lower Manhattan, where, perhaps, Combat Shopping was invented.

However, as I discovered while trying to spend money shop in the week prior to Thanksgiving and Black Friday, the retailers seemed determined that I would not do so. In fact, the National Public Rhetoric financial program and the NY Times confirmed that, why yes, retailers had devised a strategy this year to limit inventory and choice, thus shoppers would be forced to buy whatever they threw at us, and not even need to lure the shopper with discounts. How has that worked for them? Not so good. Just one example: I couldn't find a plain blanket, for instance, in Bed, Bath and Beyond. Nor was anyone in the stadium store in the least interested that I wanted a blanket, rather than an expensive throw,a backless robe (why?) or a blanket backed with wool designed to look like wool on the back of a sheep, or yet another comforter or duvet (I have several -- it's my plain blankets that have all worn out).

Love, C.

Like this?

Him, me, and our two;
Host (husband's brother), hostess, oldest son in gap year, youngest son in high school, and middle daughter on surprise visit from college;
Hostess's brother, his two, and his daughter's boyfriend;
Host's other brother-who-lives-in-town;
Husband's sister;
One large hopeful dog and two small.

We didn't take a lot of our own leftovers home this time!

My girls were ecstatic to see their favorite cousin (the one home from college) and she looked after them with patience and good humor so that I could skunk everybody at Mexican Train Dominoes--well, for the first two rounds anyway; after that they ganged up on me--and my husband could rest on the couch. He woke up with a bug yesterday morning and took it very easy all day long so that he wouldn't have to ditch us and go home.

Oh, and my extended family has a lot of fantastic cooks, and I got to take two pies home. Pumpkin pie for breakfast for the next several days. Yum!

Say what? Oh

It's the opening of Little Women, in which Our Sisters began feeling sorry for themselves. "Christmas won't be like Christms with no presents this year." Plus their father is serving as a chaplain to the Union troops down south, "where the fighting was." Marmee had persuaded the girls to give up receiving presents in favor of donating the money for food and gifts for poor children instead. But the girls make lemonade from these lemons and enjoy themselves together while stitching sheet hems to make money.

Then, on Christmas Day they Marmee persuades them to give up their Christmas breakfast to a poor immigrant German family that has a sick mother and baby. They are called angels (our host's family's dog is named Angel -- I adore her) by the poor Germans they have helped. This makes up for going hungry all morning and having nothing but bread and milk as their belated breakfast-lunch on Christmas Day.

Their rich neighbor hears about their generosity and good deeds. He sends them a feast to make up for it, with THREE kinds of ice cream! Everything's great.

And so on and so forth.

Which is all more than you ever wanted to know!

Ho-ho-ho! :)

But I just remembered the best, maybe only good line from the Walk on the Wild Side flick, as uttered by Twist played by Jane Fonda, acting (emphasis upon ACTING) a poor starving girl of 1932, which was addressed to the leading man, named Dove: You act like a crazy person. You get hungry like a millionaire!"

Love, c.

The quality of rich people, except for aberrant statistical outliers, has declined considerably since then.

So it goes. I love my family, even if I had to get out of there after a while.

I am now busily wishing I had leftovers. Leftovers all went home with other people, which is probably for the best. But I would really like some pie.

Absolutely contra flow, I am more deeply influenced by Louisa May Alcott's socially acceptable writings than anyone can imagine. I know her works (including the socially unacceptable -- at least in her time), the period, her life, the lives of those of her context from father and mother and Thoreau and Emerson and Hawthorne so well, that I throw all the biographies written of her across the room (figuratively speaking) for they are so filled with error.

They don't even get what happens in the books right.

Love, C.

Judging from the reaction of my friends' kids, suitable for young'uns, but it is really a movie for grown-ups.

Haven't heard of Arkham Horror, but the last group I played with tried out Betrayal on Haunted Hill a few times.

I find myself wondering why the rich neighbour didn't feed the poor German family himself in the first place, and save everybody some trouble.

We play Mexican Train Dominoes with a set that goes up to double 15s. (The different amounts of dots are color coded so they're easier to tell apart, so instead of saying, frex, "13," we often find ourselves saying, "baby poop.")

First everybody draws 15 dominoes. Now check your hand. Did anybody get double 15 (double gold)? No? Then everybody draw one. Double 15? No? Draw again. This can go on until the pool of extra dominoes is exhausted.

When somebody finally gets double 15, it goes in the center. Now look at your hand. How long of a train can you build, beginning with a domino that has 15 dots on one end? This follows the basic rules that identical ends have to go together, so you might go 15:2, 2:0, 0:8, 8:9, etc.

Starting with the person to the left of the one who found the double 15, everybody lays down their train, radiating from the double 15 in the center. The goal is to get rid of as many dominoes as possible, preferably the highest denomination dominoes you have. Note that they are all read at face value, except double zero, which has a value of OUCH.

After the first round, you play dominoes one at a time. You can draw one domino and add it to your own train, the community train, or anybody else's open train; you can take a 15:something domino and start the community train if there isn't one already; or if you can't play at all after drawing one domino, your train is open and anybody can play on it until you are able to play on your own train again.

If you lay down a double number, you MUST IMMEDIATELY follow it with a connecting domino in the same turn. That is, if you lay down 4:4, you have to follow it with 4:something in the same turn. If you don't have a 4:something, you have to draw once. If you still can't play, everybody else has to try in turn order, and if nobody has anything in their hand that will match, they have to keep drawing dominoes in turn order until somebody gets something they can add to your train. Then play continues as above.

If you get down to one domino, you have to call, "Uno!" If somebody catches you before you do, you have to draw another domino.

The round ends when one person runs out of dominoes or nobody can play at all. Then everybody totals their points. Lowest total wins the round.

Subsequent rounds begin with the next lower double: double 14, then double 13, etc. The game ends when somebody breaks 1,000 points; when people decide that this will be the last round; or after double zero has been used as the center, depending on what people feel like doing.

Thanks for the explanation.

And yes, thank you all for Making Light. Working from home a lot and not having a huge social life, this community helps keep me sane!

It's not personal, either for you or against you, or even me, for that matter.

You get to bring up whatever you like!

That I hate these movies is not your problem or your fault, and if you like them, that's about you, and it's nice to like things, you know?

I'm too happy and content right now to scold anyone about anything, unless they're xtian xtremists, rethuglians or otherwise determined to destroy my life, my home and my planet.

Love, c.

Just guessing here, but probably like so many rich people he hadn't notice the poor sick German immigrant family, and nobody told him.

However -- in defence of Mr. Lawrence, he did give Marmee a nice check to help with the charity organization she directs.

Love, c.

Glad to hear!

I am thankful to have the ability to make the holiday more enjoyable for others. (My husband and I volunteered at the Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless, held at the restaurant where he is employed. And I am thankful that he has such a neat employer!)

I am thankful for yet another year of living, learning, and loving.

There are even now wealthy people with a social conscience, and some of them are even our friends. There are also the limouisine liberals, but I'm not including these particular friends in that classification.

Love, C.

And lest there be any doubt, that is exactly how I took it

Thank you!

Love, C.

One of the local VFD paramedics showed up in his little SUV and gave oxygen followed a few minutes later by the ambulance proper, who had the nebulizer and drugs. All good, all successful.

And the 2.5 yr old's reaction was a little jealousy that he didn't get a ride. I'm just glad that he hasn't had an ambulance ride yet.

Of course, I worked my Thanksgiving (and Remembrance day, save Those Two Minutes), intending to take American Thanksgiving off to have fun in San Diego (and not shop), but ended up in India instead. So Thanks Delayed it is this year.

Idea of Thanksgiving is a good one (like Christmas), tho' application seems similarly flawed. I've much to be thankful for, & state it frequently.