Thanksgiving 2018

It’s Thanksgiving Day back in America. I’ll be spending a good chunk of the day in transit, on a train from Prague to Berlin. I haven’t been on a train in 18 years, so this will be quite the adventure.

As I wrote the draft for this post, I’d just finished my last dinner in Prague. (Yes, it was heaps better than the one the night before. If I ever return to the city, I’ll definitely want to try the place again.) And I thought about what things must be like across my homeland. That mad, hysterical dash to get all the food for the feast, start the cooking, iron the linens, clear out the medicine cabinet in the guest bathroom so your nosy relatives don’t go snooping…that anxiety-laden dash that starts to fade around maybe 1800-1900, when the stores close.

Once those doors shut, you’re stuck with what you have on hand, unless 7-Eleven can make up the delta. Just do the best you can, pour an extra slurp of the chardonnay in everyone’s glasses and enjoy what’s there before you.

It occurred to me that I’ve not heard at what time today Black Friday will start today. In recent years, it’s been all over the news which stores are beating the competition to open earlier and earlier on Thanksgiving Thursday in hopes of scooping up everyone’s holiday-shopping dollars before the competition gets to your wallets.

Interestingly, Black Friday has made it over to the Continent. It’s been in the UK for a while, but I saw adverts for a local department store (a holdover from the good old days of Communism), viz:

And here’s one of their store windows:

I’m guessing that Kotva’s not the only store in the country pumping up the punters to buy. I wonder what I’ll find in Berlin?

Well, anyhow, it’s Thanksgiving. I’m grateful I’ve been able to spend six days in a country I’ve never been to before. I’ll be visiting a city I’ve never seen before, and returning to one I love.

I have a job; 23 of my colleagues—including my former boss—came to work on 1 November and were told they did not, out of the blue. I have a house, and a friend is feeding my birdies in my absence. (I didn’t want them to go hungry while I’m away.)

I have no plans any time soon to eat romaine lettuce (although I’m a little worried about the bunch of it I chopped up and tossed out for the critters when I was cleaning out my refrigerator before I left. I hope they’re all okay).

I have this blog, which gives me the platform to process things in the world. It’s held me together through very challenging times.

In the wider sphere, I'm grateful for those who have committed themselves to service. The lower-court judges who have time and again struck down cruel and illegal attempts by the regime to implement authoritarian rule. The men and women of our armed services. First responders and ER/hospital staff who never have holidays from cleaning up the various messes we manage to get ourselves into. 

The journalists who tirelessly report events globally to bring us the facts, whether or not anyone in power is pleased by the truth. As we all know, they sometimes do so at risk of their lives. 

The firefighters still battling the wildfires in California and the workers supporting them; also without holiday. Additionally, all the relief staff who've organized shelters, meals, clothing and comfort for the thousands who've lost everything in those fires. And the veterinarians who are tending to injured and traumatized animals who've lost their humans in all the confusion. God bless all you kind, generous souls.

(And the Finns, who have magnificently shown up the Kleptocrat for the moronic buffoon he is—in the way most guaranteed to make it smart: by laughing at him.) 

In short: every person who chooses kindness over indifference, integrity over power, generosity over greed, law over ruthlessness, truth over expediency, compassion over cruelty. They give hope and inspiration that we can all do better, and for this I am deeply grateful.

May you have at least as many things to be thankful for in your life, too.