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The main thing to be thankful for is that Thanksgiving comes but once a year. Not that there's anything wrong with gratitude, but as far as I can tell, the man who discovered that turkey was edible must have already eaten his mule along with its saddle, the soles of his boots, and the bark of every tree within a day's ride.
However, everybody else in the family likes turkey. So I compromise, and I'm grateful that the need for compromise comes only once a year.
Let us also give thanks for Colorado Republicans.
They're going to give us the best show in politics next
year. Just when you thought you were safe, he's back. Get
ready for The Return of Sam Zakhem,
coming soon to a
Lincoln Day dinner near you.
As for the national GOP, I'm afraid there's not much
reason to be grateful for a party which always calls for
pro-family values
when there's an election, and then
torpedoes a family-leave bill when it is in power. Even so,
we could give thanks that George Bush is such a wizard at
foreign policy: Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat, Haiti
is peaceful and democratic, the Philippines are stable,
nuclear proliferation is no longer a concern and freedom
blooms in China, right?
I am also thankful that I have yet to see a single petition which calls for limited-stakes gambling here in order to preserve the character of our historic district by putting up huge new casinos. The way things are going, Salida may soon be the only mountain town where you'll be able to go about your business without running into a slot machine.
Even though I smoke (I have plenty of advice on quitting, since I've done it so often), my gratitude goes to those pure-air crusaders who have lobbied so that you can't smoke inside most buildings. Thanks to their efforts, you've got to go outdoors when the craving strikes. Out on the sidewalk, you meet other smokers. In general, they're a convivial lot. I've met many nice people that way whom I never would have met otherwise. Even if I quit again, I'd still go outdoors every hour or so to enjoy the camaraderie.
I also give thanks this year for an inexplicable
peculiarity of the American publishing industry. Go into
almost any bookstore, and you can find novels by John Barth
-- The Sot-Weed Factor,
Giles Goat-Boy
,
Letters,
etc. Tremendous amounts of time and money
must be required to write and edit these books, to print
and distribute them.
Yet to my personal knowledge, only four people ever read any of these books. (I'm one of them. The others are a local carpenter, an accountant in Gunnison and a high-school English teacher in Illinois.) It is indeed wonderful to live in a country where distant strangers go to all that trouble just to delight only four people.
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