Thanks for Coming, Thaddeus!

Thaddeus is sitting patiently in the refrigerator in the garage waiting for eager hands to deliver him to the oven this afternoon.  He came to us from Amish country.  I guess that makes him Amish, but it doesn't really matter.  After dinner tonight he will be remembered as a tasty symbol of all we have to be thankful for. 

Many of my friends berate me for anthropomorphizing our holiday main courses...I on the other hand like the personalization.  It makes the eating of them somehow closer to the heart.  I always like to name the hogs that my brother-in-law Jeremy or my nephew Richard cooked for family gatherings.  So much effort and care goes into the proper preparation.  When you put morsels of them in your mouth, it helps to think of it as a personal gift from a sentient idealized soul.  We had been blessed with Ted last Thanksgiving.  At family reunions we have been fed with the presence of Horace (the hog) and Beulah (the beast).  My kids used to think it was corny, but they got a chuckle out of it.  It also gives us a mirthful moment when we say the blessing before we eat to especially thank "whomever" for gracing us with his/her presence (albeit posthumously).


Anyway, the family has gathered and it is still quiet in the house while they sleep in their beds that lie in wait for them so infrequently now that they are grown.  My daughters are home, the older one with her fiance and dog; my younger one just brought her dog.  Our empty nest has been descended upon by the boundless energy of young people and their frantic animals, trying to figure out the pecking order between them for the next couple of days.  Before the fray becomes overwhelming, I am just taking a few minutes to savor the anticipation of the experience of today with my family and some close friends.

For me, Thanksgiving is all about family and enjoying the presence of people that I love....and taking a moment to give thanks for all that I have that I don't think about except on days like this.   When we sit around the table tonight with our smiling faces beaming at each other, and our friends sharing our home and our love for each other I am always amazed at my good fortune.

My children are both healthy.  They are basically happy individuals, each with their own 'mishugaas' to be sure, but they are making their way in the world.  They have found love and independence.  What else could make us more grateful as parents than that.  I think about all the people I know who are going through divorce, separation, medical crises, emotional crises, and I look at the people gathered around me and am thankful that these faces have not been ground down by those experiences. To be sure we have had our share of difficult times, but at this moment they are memories and not present in our lives.

I look at my wife of 30 years and think about all we have shared --in good health and love.  We have raised these children.  We have a commonality of vision for their happiness and our own.  We have shared love and family through all these years.  We have had 30 Thanksgivings together and each one has been a good time--a time to take stock and really be thankful.  We are blessed.

So I think about Thaddeus and how he will add to our pleasure today, and about all those who will gather at bountiful tables tonight.  We are all angry about our politics and all the things that are wrong with our society and our lives, but this night, we need to take a deep breath and be thankful for all that we do have that is so rare in this world.  We have relative peace in a place that is not a locus of war and death like so many other places on this planet.  We don't know what tomorrow will bring, but we can live at this moment and savor the sweet time of family and smiles that this day and souls like Thaddeus bring us once a year.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Can I Uncover My Eyes Now?

So the deed is done and the Republicans have made huge gains as a result of this election.  The adage that the people will receive the government they deserve holds true.  We will see what they will do now that they have the keys to the car.  My guess is that our governmental machinery will grind to a halt.  In the past two years what indications do we have that Republicans have better ideas about how to handle this country's gargantuan problems?  All we have seen is the near uniform lockstep effort to thwart any program or initiative that the Democratic majority has attempted.  For whatever reasons, the opposition party was intent on stopping Obama cold on all fronts from day one.  Mitch McConnell says that the new Republican agenda is to make Obama a one term president.  Why can't these people use the energy to express such petty vitriol in the service of new ideas to solve our problems?

So now we will see if they actually have any innovative ideas.

My guess is that they will continue to do all they can to unravel any progress we have made over the last two years in service of a return to the conditions that led us to an economic precipice.....only this time they won't be happy until we go over it.  In the meantime, I fully expect all progress toward solution of some of the more pressing issues like almost 10% unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, rising health care costs, corporate shenanigans, mortgage foreclosures, the increasing pain of the unemployed to grind to a halt as the Republicans deflect our attention to repealing the new health care legislation and making the Bush tax cuts permanent for all the wealthy people, etc. etc.

All the anger we have seen from the electorate is really so ridiculous.  Most of the angry people don't really know what they are angry about.  Here's an example:  Republicans and Tea Party people have been haranguing us about how the Democrats have raised taxes to unreasonable levels.  Excuse me, our taxes have actually gone down since Obama came to town.  How is it that millions of people just believe this lie?  Obama's appointed budget panel just came out with concrete ideas that show real intelligence albeit at the expense of significant sacrifice.  The metaphor is like weighing 300 pounds and suddenly realizing you need to lose 150 within a year.  Not going to be easy.  What is the response from both sides of the aisle:  Oh no, can't do it, too tough, (preserve our current bureacracy).

I just woke up this morning and realized that with all the sturm and drang of the past two years, my life has not really been impacted by anything that all these blowhards have been saying or doing.  I still struggle to pay all the bills and have to work my ass off to make ends meet.  Thanks to all the vested interests and powerful lobbies (fronted by all the politicians) my economy is in a shambles and no one is trying to work together to solve the problems.

Democrats are wussies and Republicans are insane.  What a combination!  Alfred E Neumann for President!

I promise to write about other things that mean something.