Today’s earworm isn’t specifically a Thanksgiving piece, but it is about being grateful for things around us.
Yes, I know—for millions and millions of people around the
globe, this is not, in fact, a wonderful world. Millions of Americans, in fact,
are struggling to survive, particularly in this political and economic climate.
All the more reason to seek out the good, the beautiful,
the kind, the generous.
And who better than Louis Armstrong to show us?
©2025 Bas Bleu
Welp, it’s the big one for gratitude here in the United States. A day set aside for the purpose of counting blessings and acting en famille. (It’s also the official demarcation for The Christmas Season, although Christmas merch has been in Costco since August, and Hallmark seems to run its Christmas rom-coms pretty much all year round now.)
In our current political and economic situation, I can see
that it might be difficult for many people to feel gratitude—or to crawl out
from under anxiety, fear or even just crushing unease that can pervade our
lives. Never in my own lifetime have I felt the disparity between the haves and
the have-lesses and have-nots. Billionaires who nonetheless never have enough
squeezing ever more out of the middle and working classes, aided and abetted by
politicians and politicized courts. There are hundreds of thousands of my neighbors across the country who are living with food insecurity. It’s real, it’s unamerican and it’s disgusting.
So what I have to pull myself out of is continually being
pissed off at the perversion of the idea of America; anger can be good, but not
when it’s carried around like an extra 20 pounds on the butt. That’s why I make
gratitude a discipline, to remind myself that we can refuse to let the world be
unremitting horror, and that one way to start that process is to acknowledge
the good in it whenever and wherever we find it.
So—today I’m grateful for the friends who include me in
their Thanksgiving celebrations every year. I never take their invitation for
granted, but when it comes, I’m delighted. I get to make pie! I get to make cranberry
relish! I get to spend an evening with friends, eating turkey (which I would
never make for myself) and engaging in wide-ranging discussions.
I’m grateful for every protestor at every ICE facility and
activity in every city across the country. As wealthy individuals, institutions
and corporations kowtow to the Kleptocrat like bobble-head dogs on the back
decks of low-riders, it’s the soccer moms, the priests and pastors, the
neighbors of all economic stripes and the students who are peacefully locking
arms and filming our very own masked Gestapo thugs committing crimes right out
in daylight. They have been tear gassed, beaten and arrested, and they still
return to bear witness.
I’m absolutely verklempt for the protest that scores of
people pulled at a Home Depot in Monrovia, Calif.—buying $.79 ice scrapers and
immediately returning them, to tie up the store’s self-service check-out
registers for hours. They did the needful for a business that toadies to the
thugs.
While I’m talking capitalism—kudos to the millions of
people boycotting Target for caving to the anti-Woke nonsense. (Notice: I’m one
of the boycotters, but it’s not as though my $50 annual spend there is going to
be missed. Still—a lot of littles make a lot.) Target’s hurting and had to
replace its CEO after only six or seven months of the boycott.
And—more capitalism: without the workers in the fields (in-country and around the world), the ones in meat packing plants, the people who get food from its starting point to our tables, we'd be SOL. For any and every meal. Thank you to all!
Big, deep, joyous thanks to all the No Kings and other demonstrations
of force. Because that’s precisely what they are: demonstrations of the power
of what the founders called We the People. You don’t see millions of people
turning out around the country (and indeed the world) to laud the Kleptocrat
and his authoritarian machinations, but you do see the protestors. Repeatedly. And
so do those in power.
Humble gratitude to people who show everyday kindness in a
time when I cannot imagine anyone is without angst. The smiles, the nods;
patience—oh, my, what a grace that is when I encounter it. “Please” and “thank
you.” Just wow!
I give thanks for the people who looked after my sister in
her final days. She had progressed to the really ugly stage of Alzheimer’s, but
both friends and professionals cared for her with respect and love. I cannot be
more grateful for that than I am, even a year later.
The dogs I meet on my morning walks fill me with delight,
and I’m thankful I can share even a few moments with them. There’s one who
positively dances down the sidewalk; she stops me dead every time in admiration.
Dogs are an unexpected and unlooked for grace.
I’m grateful for my friends—the ones down the street and
the ones across an ocean. They make me a better person, they talk me down from
the ledge, they spark laughter when I need it the most, they give me comfort.
Nature—large and small—fills me with both awe and delight.
When I’m having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day, a quick walk
outside mitigates even the worst things. Thank God for that.
And you know what else? Thank God for the internet. That’s
where I got the recipe for pumpkin pie (thanks, Martha!), how I learn about
legal issues (thanks, Bluesky), join communities and get reporting from
publications around the world. (Take that, WaPo!) Yes, it’s a cesspool
of misinformation and malevolence, but—just like the world—it contains powerful
good and it’s up to you do decide which roads you’re going to follow.
I give thanks to those who stand watch for us—whether they’re
wearing cammies and tactical gear or scrubs and a stethoscope; for those who
serve us—whether in a government agency or a retail store; for those who keep
the neighborhood clean by picking up the trash; and for those who deliver
packages, groceries and mail. They’re like the air we breathe—necessary for a
good life, but often overlooked until it turns bad.
And, finally, I’m grateful for the 22nd
Amendment. I hope not even this SCOTUS will find a way to abrogate that.
Happy Thanksgiving, all.
©2025 Bas Bleu
All I’ve got to say today is glory be to God for Japanese maples.
This guy is in my back yard and every single year, when
things start turning to crap, he struts his stuff and fills me with joy.
Take some of that for yourself, too. He’s got plenty.
©2025 Bas Bleu
I was looking at autumn foliage a while ago and noticed this guy.
That’s it. That’s the post.
©2025 Bas Bleu
Last Sunday, I attended an event featuring the former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered” talking with Anthony S. Fauci, MD. It was a fascinating discussion, all the way from Fauci’s upbringing in an Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn to his leadership of the US scientific and medical efforts to identify, treat and prevent COVID-19 during the pandemic five years ago.
Fauci is a personable guy (as is Siegel) and I was taken by
the sense of curiosity and the commitment to service that have obviously shaped
his life. (He also spearheaded the American investigation into HIV and AIDS in
the 1980s and 1990s that eventually led to effective treatments, changing what
was at one time a death sentence to a chronic condition for sufferers.)
Since that interview, I’ve been thinking about how deeply
grateful for Fauci and men and women like him—the whole gamut, from pure researchers
who want to find out where a microorganism came from and how it interacts with
its environment; to the applied scientists who carry that further to develop
new therapies and ways to improve life; to the healthcare professionals and
public health officials who take it where the rubber meets the road.
I don’t often spend time on all of this—in the same way
that I don’t often consider how the engine in my Saab works…until it doesn’t.
But when things began to go south in January of 2020, every member of every bioscientific,
medical and public health organization did everything possible to contain,
mitigate and turn around the most devastating virus to strike the world since
1918. And in the United States, they did it despite active attempts by Republicans
at every level of government to deny, diminish and deter the efforts, while
maximizing the prospects of making both money and political hay out of it.
I’m thinking in particular the doctors, nurses and support
staff at hospitals all over the country who worked exhausting shifts, often
without proper protective gear, to treat thousands of patients at the stage
where no one really knew what was going to work. I also recall that they died
in their hundreds.
The thing is—this stuff goes on all the time: the research,
the scientific iterations (and sometimes breakthrough innovations), the medical
care. And we don’t notice it, really, until there are problems—a new drug is
too expensive to buy, surgery is unsuccessful or the insurance company denies
the claim. But today I am in grateful awe for everyone involved in these
things, because they all rely on humans who really care about making things
better.
We need all of them we can get.
©2025 Bas Bleu
