How About an Adult Time Out?

If you still read print newspapers as I do, you would do well to skip the editorials in The Star-Ledger and the Courier News today.  The latter was marginally better than the former, but still too off-key for my taste on this, the day of America’s celebration of Thanksgiving. 

 

Since when did America’s ability to give thanks and praise for its hard-won abundance become hostage to the results of a national presidential election?

This morning, both editorial writers missed the mark by a superabundant margin!

Samples:  The Star-Ledger writes that “We still believe much of the American creed, but that doesn’t mean it won’t get spiky around the dinner table today.” The writer bemoans that “Some of us just spent 18 months living in a perpetual state of xenophobic paranoia”

A Thanksgiving Message for all of Humanity

Annalee Dolls from Priscille's collection welcome our guests.

America is not such a bad place after all.  If it were, would there be such a tsunami of immigrants washing across this country seeking a better life?

The uncontrolled flow of immigrants into the United States would be even larger, were it not for two oceans separating us from the hundreds of thousands of Middle East refugees: 

They have no place to go, except to risk their lives to reach Europe and, once there, to seek solace and a good life in the heart of its great cities.

Moreover, if there were a geographic land bridge connecting the Middle East to America, Syrian refugees would be pouring across it to reach the U.S.

A visualization of the tired minds and bodies of undocumented Latin American immigrants streaming across our southern border, together with those of Syrian refugees desperately seeking asylum in Europe paints a self-evident picture:

A Few Thanksgiving Day Side Dishes

Priscille's homemade cranberry sauce.  Like nothing
from the can.  (Photo credit/Bergeron Image)

Every family has its preferred list of side dishes to accompany the traditional turkey meal in celebration of America’s Thanksgiving Day.  There are many which accompany our own family choices, but at least two have been popular accompaniments on our table:  Cranberry Sauce and Butternut Squash.

Both should be prepared at least a day earlier.  Sorry about the late recommendation.  Think Christmas.

Cranberry Sauce:   This one is a true winner, a new recipe which Priscille tried out this year.  I tasted it this afternoon after I had finished preparing the squash.  All I have to say about the result is “C’èst magnifique!” (It’s magnificent!).

I no longer care for the canned variety, whether whole or jellied, mainly because both are too sugary, a practice which kills the tart flavor of the berries.  Neither of the canned product tastes like cranberries should.

Only a Week Away

Each year, no matter how much I think I may be ready for them, the holidays always seem to arrive much more quickly than expected.

Priscille's festive Annalee Dolls welcome
guests who enter into the foyer of our home.

In early October, I begin getting my thoughts in order for the onset of Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

I start thinking about making up a Christmas wish list; begin to consider what gifts to buy for others (I’m not very good at that).

But mainly, I look forward with anticipation to our convivial gatherings with friends and family – dear people with whom Priscille and I have the chance, once again, to share, to reminisce, and to be joyous.  Having the opportunity to add to one’s storehouse of precious memories is a privilege – a gift from the Almighty.

An American Thanksgiving

Annalee Dolls in our home reflect the joyous spirit of the day.
(Image/Dick Bergeron)

This morning, after yesterday’s Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family just outside of the Nation’s Capital, I was reminded not only of how uniquely American this national holiday is, but also of how it has come to be such a significant day of celebration and gratitude for newly-minted American immigrants as well

In an above-the-fold article on this morning’s front page of the print edition of The Washington Post, writer Luz Lazo quotes Abraham Lima, a Salvadoran immigrant who says, “How can I not be thankful?” 

Several photos depict Mr. Lima with his wife, his grown children, and his granddaughter sitting at their dining room table, offering up a pre-meal prayer of gratefulness for the blessings which have been showered upon them in their new country.

Post-Thanksgiving Gratitude

O

ver the centuries, Thanksgiving has gradually become America’s official we-are-lucky-to-be-where-we-are-and-what-we-are-today celebration.  There are millions of reasons – literally – for this exceptional phenomenon. Yet those reasons come packaged in so many combinations and permutations that it would take a Cray supercomputer to calculate their number and composition.

If this sounds like hyperbole, consider this:  Where else in the world in the last 400 years have so many people gravitated?  Yes, we have shortcomings; plenty of them – both individually and as a nation – but where else have so many of the world’s wretched come for relief and for an opportunity to start over again?

The answers are self-evident and need no further articulation.  Everybody on this globe knows where in the Western Hemisphere lies that great land of freedom nestled between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. 

Enormous problems confront America today: 

There is the comatose economy, much of it brought on by our own man-made internal political intransigencies. 

There is that seemingly never-ending war on two fronts – one being waged in the open, the other largely clandestine – in Afghanistan and Pakistan; and we are opening a third front in Yemen to choke out the roots of radical Islamic Jihad.  

Within our own boundaries we are getting besieged by a similar home-grown terrorist threat conceived by organized cells or by lone American citizens with problematic allegiance, motivated by the same ideology.

Despite those daunting challenges, it’s still a good time to count not only our individual blessings, but also our national ones.  I remain an optimist about the U.S. and am – most of all – grateful that it welcomed my mom and dad from our friendly neighbor to the north.

I know what it means to be a first-generation immigrant whose parents labored under the most dreadful of economic conditions – worse than those of today – as they raised a family whose offspring sought education, employment and opportunity. 

Somehow, we pulled through; and we never looked back. 

Thanks America.  We love you.

Let’s Say Thanks

There is a simple and easy task you can do on Thanksgiving which will go a long way to boost the spirit of our troops serving in the military outposts of the Middle East. Just go to http://www.letssaythanks.com/, a Xerox website whose sole purpose is to send a personal message from you to one of our servicemen and women.

I sent one such message yesterday, as did Priscille. You will find that it’s highly professional and quick to use – just a few clicks and your message is on its way to an American warrior far from home. There is a large selection of excellent messages from which you may choose. You won’t have to worry about what to say.

Go ahead. Do it. You will love the setup of this specialized website and feel a sense of personal and civic pride for supporting our American heroes.

Thanks for reading and have a happy Thanksgiving.  Remember that this country has given each of us much more than we can ever give back except, perhaps, for those to whom you will be sending that message.

One Week to Go!

Yesterday, after glancing at the calendar, I realized – as is the case each year – that the Thanksgiving Holiday had crept up again without notice. It’s one of my favorites because it encapsulates and memorializes very well the concept of gratitude.

It’s a time to pause and to reflect upon the fact that all of us in America sit upon the broad shoulders of all the others who preceded us and who sacrificed to build the great social, economic, and religious platforms upon which this nation rests.

The European Pilgrims who landed in Massachusetts Bay would be only among the first of a long line of immigrants streaming in from all points of the globe – voluntarily and involuntarily – to cast their lot for the success of America. They would work their butts off to found this nation and to make it grow over the centuries into this expansive country which so many of us have grown to love, despite all of its shortcomings.

I only wish our President would spend as much time proclaiming the proud history of America, as he does minimizing it before other countries and apologizing for what we are and for the less-than-perfect way in which we have developed.

An attitude of gratitude is not merely a slogan. It’s a concrete expression impelling us to be thankful for what we have, and a strong incentive to remember that in this nation and world, there are others not so fortunate with needs that have not been met.

I’ll try to remember that as I weave my way through the joyous season dawning upon us.

So Near, Yet so Far

Late Saturday morning, about a dozen of us left our daughter’s home in Potomac, Maryland, and drove the short distance to Swains Lock, one of the access points to the towpath of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal. From that rendezvous we all set out for a bracing walk along this old passageway frequented year-round by bikers, joggers, hikers, campers and day walkers. The 185-mile long C&O canal snakes along the Potomac River where it eventually flows through Washington, D.C.

We enjoyed the conviviality of an invigorating walk on that bright sunny day, observing the light blue of the sky and the steely gray of the river which contrasted dramatically against the earthy fall-brown of the leafy ground cover.

Our one-hour stroll was a welcome break in extended Thanksgiving festivities with families and friends. Even though we’ve all been living in the same sandbox for a couple of days, everyone is playing fair and enjoying good companionship, food, wine and family activities.

During that quiet one-hour towpath trek where the river cliffs rise steeply to the left on one side of the canal, and the river quietly meanders below on the right towards the nation’s capital, there was no physical indication that we were only about 12 miles from the nerve center of national politics. It seems that we had all implicitly decided to take a break from the hustle of the recent elections.

In that natural environment, there were too many other equally important topics.