It’s Thanksgiving, Be Positive!

I wrote a rant to post this week.

Then Dennis reposted a BizCat article I wrote six months ago where I was genuinely asking what we might start doing  about the “Problems of the World.” It was written by my less-cynical self, who grabbed my grumpy-old-man self-by the proverbial lapels, shook me,  and said “Dude, can’t you be a little more positive – It’s Thanksgiving week!”

Thanksgiving – gratitude, gratefulness, thanks, counting our blessings, appreciation – thanking our lucky stars, appreciativeness, grace, respect, love, giving.

This week in these United States of America, many will gather with family or friends or both. Some will eat turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing themselves with plenty, saving room for the pumpkin pie, or sweet potato, apple, mincemeat, pecan, or wherever your pie-jones leads you, (Do people eat cake on Thanksgiving? – Well, “Let them eat cake” said Marie, “I prefer pie.”).

Some will watch on TV, what is called the Macy’s Day parade in New York City, inflated balloons of beloved cartoon characters fly, (if it isn’t too windy, ‘cause there was that year that Snoopy got loose and took out a light pole and injured that woman,) and pretty young women wave from floats built on bus platforms, while military drill teams strut their stuff and teenagers in marching high schools bands from the Mid-west couldn’t be more excited to be here.

Thanksgiving – gratitude, gratefulness, thanks, counting our blessings, appreciation – thanking our lucky stars, appreciativeness, grace, respect, love, giving.

I pulled out and reposted an old article that talked about how gratitude was a pre-requisite for leadership, mixed with a story about my mother’s recipe for pumpkin pie, which I’ll make again this year to take to my daughter’s hosted gala feeling supremely lazy, while my eighty-seven year old sister hosts 22 people in Lexington!

Some will watch football. No turkey this year for those Packers, Lions, Commanders, Cowboys,  49ers or Seahawks, (NFL teams playing on Thanksgiving 2023). No mashpotatoes-‘n’-gravy for Ole Miss Rebels, ’n’  ’sippi State Bulldogs, (Is there really only one NCCA game on T’day? “Watz ‘merica cummin’ ta?”).  OR maybe it’s High School? Does Lexington High School still play Concord-Carlisle on Thanksgiving morning?

Thanksgiving – gratitude, gratefulness, thanks, counting our blessings, appreciation – thanking our lucky stars, appreciativeness, grace, respect, love, giving.

And I pulled out last year’s post, which traces the history vs. the myth of the first Thanksgiving and ends expressing my gratitude for my readers. I’m still grateful for my readers

But the born-to-shop know what Thanksgiving week is for – training, training, training for BLACK FRIDAAAAY! Black Friday is the day all retailers, but mostly department stores and big box stores in malls give DEEP DISCOUNTS – It’s the starting gate of the Consumer Buying Extravaganza that is Christmas here – the time to buy this year’s go-to robot for Robbie, American Girl doll for Annie, and to pick up the latest iPad for recipes or 119” flat-screen TV for your man-cave.

Thanksgiving – gratitude, gratefulness, thanks, counting our blessings, appreciation – thanking our lucky stars, appreciativeness, grace, respect, love, giving.

Apparently, I’m a little more cynical about this holiday this year. That isn’t to say I am ungrateful for the privilege of my life  – ”still vertical and looking at the green side of the grass,”- and for all those who love me, loving wife, children, grandchildren, sibling, siblings-in-laws, their children, and grandchildren, friends, connections, readers, – I am embarrassed by the feast of loving people around me.

I am fed, sheltered and safe unlike so many in this world.

Well, the safe part really means I have no bombs falling on my head, have access to healthcare and vaccines and am in a place relatively less ravaged by the floods, fires, earthquakes and storms that changes in the climate seem to be making worse. Safe doesn’t mean safe from my own stupidity, like cutting myself using my jack knife as a screw driver, or pouring hot water on my hand making coffee, or falling off a ladder. I’m better at that kind of safety, but I still have a long way to go. The “Culler Curse,” as my late brother-in-law used to call my family’s innate clumsiness, is exacerbated by not-paying-attention.

Thanksgiving – gratitude, gratefulness, thanks, counting our blessings, appreciation – thanking our lucky stars, appreciativeness, grace, respect, love, giving.

I am not rich, but I have reached the point in my life where I am OK with that. I am not famous, but haven’t wanted to be since I was a celebrity speaker booking agent and saw what a pain-in-the-ass-lifestyle being famous actually entails. I am reasonably healthy, not without a little extra weight and aches and pains to complain about and not take any action to alleviate.

I am doing better than far too many people I see on the street and on the news. Watching the news on TV should make anyone grateful – if not for the natural disasters and people treating people badly reported every night onscreen, then for all the pharmaceutical ads –“Do you have mild to moderate_____?”- “Doctors recommend______ to supplement chemotherapy and radiation.” –“Daddy that toe fungus is disgusting; it won’t go away on it’s own and it could be contagious -you don’t want to give me toe fungus. Do you?!” –“I’m 78 years old and I work with people much younger than me -before I took massive doses of _____ they all thought I was stupid – now I can hold my own; they still don’t take any of my ideas, but that’s something other than my creeping-forgetting-what-I was-saying-mid-sentence affliction.”

Thanksgiving – gratitude, gratefulness, thanks, counting our blessings, appreciation – thanking our lucky stars, appreciativeness, grace, respect, love, giving.

I have a great deal to be thankful for. Perhaps you do as well. If not, I send my sincere wishes that your life improves. There are a lot of problems in the world and there may be a key-log or two that we might remove to break the log-jam. We should keep looking for those.

Gratitude and kindness may be a beginning. At least, it might be like my friend’s Jewish grandmother said about the efficacy of a steaming bowl of homemade chicken soup as a cold remedy,

“Well, it couldn’t hurt.”