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One problem with Thanksgiving is that it involves turkey, and my feeling about turkey is that whoever decided it was edible was hungry to the point of starvation. I will eat enough this year to be polite, and be thankful that we plan to dine at a friend's home Thursday, so that our ensuing diet will not feature a fortnight of turkey leftovers.
Another problem is that it is to a great degree a harvest festival, and the harvests, at least in this part of the world, come long before late November. The celebratory spirit would be improved if Thanksgiving were in mid-September, when the chilies are roasting and fresh vegetables abound.
And then there's the issue of deciding what to be thankful for. This gets tricky.
For instance, most people here were grateful for the 14
inches of snow that fell Saturday. As is always the case
when water falls out of our generally clear sky, you hear a
lot of We sure needed that.
But the snow caused several auto accidents, and town streets are so slick that I can't figure out how to run errands. If I drive, then I might slide into an accident -- four-wheel drive doesn't help much on ice. If I walk, someone might slide into me. And there's only so long that I can do the sensible thing and stay home next to the fire.
I am, however, quite grateful to my neighbor with the snow-blower. I had visions of a world-class backache before I saw him come down our sidewalk.
I'm also thankful that our old dog, Ted, is still with us. Actually, her name is Teddi. She was christened by our daughter, Abby, because she looked like a teddy bear.
Ted's a mixture of chow and husky, and she turned 15 last March. She's slow and sleeps a lot, but she can still get around and enjoy being petted. I figure every extra day is a blessing, but then again, I know the time is coming.
So the flip side of that gratitude is that I have to dread the day of decision, because it seems inevitable that some morning, she won't be able to get up.
Perhaps we should be grateful that Republicans continue to control both houses of Congress and the White House. That way, they'll have to accept responsibility for increasing the federal budget deficits, starting a war in Iraq, expanding the power and reach of government, and diminishing our civil liberties.
On the other hand, they'll probably find a way to blame
someone else for all this -- gay marriage advocates,
perhaps, or the media elite
or perhaps non-gun
owners. The GOP spin doctors are very creative in this
regard; someone christened this phenomenon the rage of
the empowered class,
and it should be entertaining to
watch them avoid responsibility.
During this cold snap, I'm more than grateful for the wood-burning stove in our living room. Sitting near the fire, reading a good book on a gelid night, is one of life's great pleasures.
However, when the stove is hot, the furnace doesn't come on, and so the rest of the house, like the back room I work in, gets rather chilly, and it's hard to be thankful for that.
On the other hand, it certainly saves on the heating bill, and it will be plenty high anyway on account of the big increases in natural-gas prices. Gas used to be cheap in Colorado, because this area produced more than it consumed, and there wasn't sufficient pipeline capacity to export all the surplus.
But from what I've read, the Bush administration made it easier to run the export pipelines across federal lands, so now the natural-gas producers can sell to more markets and get higher prices. Thus we get to pay more, and meanwhile there are drilling rigs and pipelines invading our landscape.
Some people may be grateful for that, but I am not among them. And I'm going to quit trying to find things to be thankful for, because no matter what comes up, there's always a catch.
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