This happened at the Walker Thanksgiving:
My brother Moloch and his wife brought the Korean exchange student they recently acquired. His name is Han. (Or Hon. I never asked him to spell it.)
When he was introduced to one of my nephews, this bit of dialog occurred:
Moloch: “Han, meet Luke.”
Me: “I think I saw this scene in a movie once.”
I’ve spent the day alternating between stretching out on the sofa with a book and cleaning the house (or vice versa) in preparation for Saturday’s invasion. I took time this evening to do my bill paying, which I usually do on Thursdays. Since I’ll be able to put them in the mail again tomorrow, I thought I might as well keep up my usual routine.
I have a cheap pocket knife that I’ve been using as a letter opener ever since the old pewter letter opener that belonged to my dad disappeared unaccountably.
I was in the midst of bill paying when I got up to do something (I went to the bathroom, actually, but you don’t want to know that).
When I got back to the desk, the pocket knife was missing. I retraced my steps on the very short trip, and checked all around the desk, and I can’t find the bloody thing anywhere.
I know whom to blame, of course. It’s the elves (or nisser, in Norwegian). It’s always the elves (or nisser, in Norwegian).
What troubles me is that it appears they’re arming themselves…
Happy Thanksgiving.
Yesterday, I thought I might live blog my early Thanksgiving morning, which isn’t the right use of the term “live blog” because no one was awake, I had nothing to do, and I doubt you were here wondering when the lit news is coming. The coffee wasn’t even made. I could update you on what’s coming over an antique radio I have behind me. It’s a Japanese made Viscount “Stereo Solid State” with volume control for both left and right speakers and something called “MPX” on the AM/FM switch which seems to enhance the sound for FM radio. I didn’t catch the name of the composer whose music is playing now, but it’s a work about war and peace in Switzerland.
Ah, Copeland’s Rodeo is on the radio now—Classical 90.5 out of Collegedale, TN. Rodeo makes you think of beef, doesn’t it?
Did you see the story reporting the claims of a Floridian historian who says the first American Thanksgiving was in St. Augustine. Spanish Explorer Pedro Menendez de Aviles landed in St. Augustine on September 8, 1565. He claimed “Florida for the Spanish crown and participat[ed] in a special Mass of Thanksgiving given by Father Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales. After being declared governor of the new land, Menendez invited the Timucua natives to join the Spanish in a Thanksgiving feast.”
Susan Brandenburg reports, “A flurry of national attention followed the reporter’s article about Gannon’s book, with a number of irate New Englanders dubbing Gannon ‘the grinch who stole Thanksgiving.’ In fact, Gannon poured literary salt in their wounds by remarking, with a chuckle in his voice, “’In the year 1621, when the Pilgrims were having their first Thanksgiving, St. Augustine was up for urban renewal.’”
I don’t see why this should ruffle anyone’s feathers, but then I don’t understand why so many will argue for their dog in a fight when they have no personal investment and winning an argument will mean nothing at the end of the day. That’s why I don’t favor one sport team over another.
Anyway Lars said yesterday, we have much to be thankful for. Today, I’m thankful for the rain that fell yesterday evening. The southeast needs a lot of it, and I see rain south of us in middle and south Georgia. That’s a blessing. Perhaps the Lord will not take us through a very dry valley into next summer, but even if he does, I know he will leave us. He will not leave his people, that is, because He works all things together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose—those whom he foreknew and predestined to be conformed to his image. All things, like droughts and freakish jellyfish attacks on Irish salmon farms.
That’s a huge thing to give thanks for. Bryan Chapell preached a great sermon on prayer which touches on this idea (MP3 link).
What else might an American Christian thank the Lord for today? Good coffee comes to mind, but I’ve drunken all I brewed this morning. Other things? Good roads, stable houses, reliable heating and air conditioning, reliable transportation in various forms. Plenty of food of all kinds. Computers and networks for writing and talking to each other regardless the distances. These are blessings from the Lord of heaven and earth. Because people in our have respected the Lord’s commands, generally speaking, we expect people to keep their commitments, to do a job properly, to deal with us honestly. I know we have become more cynical of these things, and buyer beware is still a good principle, but I wonder if our justifiable cynicism comes to us as our countrymen drift toward a secular mindset and liberal doctrines.
Maybe if we “undertake for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country” our lives in this country, as the Mayflower pilgrims did, we would see more hope for the future of this life as well as hope in the life to come.
I think I’m hearing the foreshadowing toll of the dinner bell. I must go.
Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving, Faithful Reader. I don’t have any particular plans for the day, but pity me not. My brothers and their families will be gathering here at Blithering Heights for a feast on Saturday. Once again I shall test myself against the wily domestic turkey, to learn which of us is the better man.
I may post over the long weekend. Or I may not.
I have several things to say about Thanksgiving, and they don’t all hang together terribly well. But when has that ever stopped me?
For some reason I’ve been thinking today about the old people of my childhood. Not merely my parents. Not even my grandparents (who are much missed, one and all). I’m thinking of the really old people I met in church as a child, incredibly tall people (from my perspective) who dressed in a formal manner, moved slowly, spoke with accents, and seemed possessed of the wisdom of the ages.
And in a way they were.
Those were people who grew up in a world full of Civil War veterans. They clearly remembered the Spanish-American War, and high buttoned shoes, and gentlemen in derbies and handlebar mustaches. They remembered a time when you measured distance (to loosely quote C.S. Lewis) by the time it took to walk from one place to another (or at least the time it took to go in a wagon or buggy).
Some of them were immigrants. They remembered what it meant to come to a country where it didn’t matter what class you were born in, or what your father had done for a living. In America, you could be anything you wanted to be!
They remembered times of being genuinely uncertain whether the summer’s food would get you through the winter. They remembered prairie fires, and locust clouds, and diphtheria epidemics.
They remembered times when things to read were hard to come by. When you got your hands on a book, or a magazine or a newspaper, you read it front to back and then read it again. And then thought about it. Because it might be a while before you got anything more to read.
They were probably all racists, by our contemporary standards. They thought going to theaters and dancing were mortal sins. They thought America started going downhill when we ended Prohibition.
But all in all, I think they were better people than we are. They’d experienced life in a skin-to-skin, scratchy, smelly, painful manner from which we’re far removed today. They knew how to be thankful, because they’d lived with genuine want.
I miss them. I wish they were here to celebrate Thanksgiving with us; to influence us to be quieter, more reverent, more grateful.
Unfortunately, they’re gone.
All you’ve got to bring you down today is me.
And if that’s not something to be thankful for, I don’t know what is.
Thomas J. Craughwell writes, “If Only the Pilgrims Had Been Italian.”
When the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts in 1620, lobsters were so common all you had to do was stroll down to the nearest tidal pool and pluck them out by the bushel. But the Pilgrims wanted meat, not fish — not even fish as succulent as lobster. Very quickly familiarity bred contempt: The better class of colonists scorned the crustacean as suitable only for the poor. In his journal for the year 1622, William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth colony, recorded the landing of a boatload of new colonists from England. Their arrival was a thrilling event, yet Bradford confessed that he and his fellow Plymouth residents were humiliated that they had nothing better to offer the newcomers than lobster.
Also on The American Spectator, Jay D. Homnick riffs on Georgia’s prayer for rain. “Pray today, give thanks tomorrow. Remember also that prayer is not only a means to an end, as Maimonides explains, it must catalyze each of us into reflecting upon our priorities,” he writes.
“God said, I am tired of kings, / I suffer them no more;” Emerson has an interesting poem here, Boston Hymn.
Gaius writes about the Pilgrims early attempts to live communally. This appears to be within the first seven years of their landing in America. According to what I’m reading, the pilgrims’ voyage was funding by London investors who required they work for them for seven years doing whatever profitable work they could find. At the end of those years, the survivors would receive a small share of the profits, but everything belonged to “the common fund” or that of the investors. Even the clothes they wore were owned technically by the men in London. Perhaps that’s why the colony started with a communal attitude.
Now, a little holiday advice: If you start feeling like this little guy, throw out your inhibitions and do something different. Take that walk. Eat that brussel sprout. Whatever you don’t normally do, do it. (Cute warning alert)
I forgot to mention that Libertas recently posted this review of Andrew Klavan’s new novel, Damnation Street. As you know, I boost Klavan at every opportunity. I’ve got to read these newer mysteries.
Unfortunately, no store in the Twin Cities seems to carry them in stock. Wouldn’t have anything to do with his politics, do you think? Nah, not here.
This will probably be my last post till Monday. I’m driving down to Iowa for the Viking Meet in Elk Horn, and although I’ll be staying in a motel room and bringing my laptop, I never count on web access.
Today’s interesting anecdote:
I was asked to sit in on what is called a “President’s Lunch” at the Bible School today, because a couple who plan to donate a large number of books to our archives were going to be there. When they told me where they came from, I told a story about my one visit to that town. I had been there with my musical group in the early ’70s, and my hosts had told me an anecdote about a microwave oven.
The lady laughed. “That was us,” she said. “That was our story.” They turned out to be the same people we’d met on that first visit. (Not so great a coincidence, considering the size of the town.)
The story goes like this:
This was just when microwave ovens were first entering the consumer market. They were very high tech stuff, and not a little frightening. Some people refused to eat food cooked in the things.
This particular couple had a neighbor who was selling microwaves. He made them a thirty-day offer. “Try it out, see how you like it,” he said. “You can cook almost anything with this, in almost no time. You can cook a twelve pound turkey.”
The couple told him they were going to take a chance and cook their Thanksgiving turkey in the microwave. They told him several times, to make sure he knew how important it was to them.
On Thanksgiving Day, at lunchtime, when everyone was sitting down with their families to eat, they called their neighbor.
“What have we done wrong?” they cried. “Come over here! Look what your microwave oven has done to our twelve-pound turkey!”
The neighbor and his wife left their meal and came over immediately, instruction book in hand.
“Look at this!” said the couple.
There on the turkey platter sat a tiny miniature bird, trussed, browned, but so small….
The dealer and his wife obsessed over the malfunction for some time, until the stifled laughs of the couple’s children tipped them off.
The couple had carefully stitched up and cooked a Cornish Game Hen.
…
I’ve always thought that was a pretty good practical joke.