Editor’s Note: On these special Holidays, I remember those who lived in their time, and who shared their times with the young ones. The men had been inadvertent warriors in their time, and all thankful to have survived. The women were strong and indomitable, proving they could do what needed to be done until peace returned and life could go on. They all experienced a massive Depression, one in which Grandma reminded them to (carefully) walk along the tracks on the way home from school. She told them to pick up stray lumps of coal, fallen from the trains that could be used at home. They were thankful for things like that, and in the telling of those old stories we were filled with wonder and thankful for them. Despite the uncertainty of this tumultuous year, remember those who gave us life and the families that stood together to greet whatever joy and sorrow God’s green earth delivered to their doors. We will go on in their spirit, and we give thanks for that above all things.

Meanwhile, Marlow has some words for this remarkable holiday. I have to braid some bacon to wrap the unfortunate turkey who passed away suddenly the other day. Give Thanks.

– Vic

Thanksgiving Day

For all our friends and family
In hope they’re still alive and well
We pray and give thanks

Being still enveloped by this vast and stormy plague and its sea full of menacing sharks, white whales and icebergs lays before us our dashed seasonal holiday expectations. We can no longer welcome friends and family to our homes, nor repair to inns and bistros to entertain or refresh them, there are no airy BnB houses, or much less towns, to repair and seek comfort food and drink. For this plague is now in its winter scary season, and we are told that these winters are sharp, violent and cruel.

We are harangued despite the Christmas gifts of tens of millions of doses of miraculously effective vaccines arriving in our carefully hung stockings that we face months-long state ordered incarcerations in our private vessels, wigwams and encampments across the land. Further, we seemingly wage this war without an army, but there is huge one battling and winning on our behalf, nonetheless.

Why is our plague literacy rate and awareness so low? Why is our understanding of this battle space so wrongfully negative as to where the big blue arrows are on the virus SitRoom battle maps? What we see daily are hideous and desolate media reports, full of wild past and present virus scenes of victims and their bereaved and even wilder men, rumors, gossip, conspiracies and not the least “Kraken” beasts. The effect on our “hearts and minds” of this willfully inflicted ignorance is gobsmacking.

We should find solace and give thanks for this quick arriving vaccine and therapeutic spring and summer in the late winter proclamation of “all clear” on the virus front.

But, sorry, I cannot resist . . .

No thanks for so many of 2020’s other things.

-Marlow

Thanks for the fresh wild duck and Wild Turkey, destined to be passed around by and through wholesome Americans.

Thanks for the Constitution to protect and defend, but not despoil and poison.

Thanks for the media when they provide a little more than their usual modicums of hype, danger and alarm.

Thanks for vast herds of despicables and deplorables, whom the tent preachers failed to charm, skin and leave their dreams to rot.

Thanks for empty boastful bounties on opponents and predators of all stripes and furs.

Thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to propagate and its failed watering down until its bare bones only remained.

Thanks for the poseur extremists, but not for lawmen-killing yahoos feeling their notches nor for street protestors with their mean, pinched, bitter faces.

Thanks for colorfully dressed shit-kickers.

Thanks for manufactured social media rage for it will be remembered.

Thanks for a country where we’re allowed to mind our own business.

Thanks for a nation of cancellers. Not.

Thanks for all the memories . . . all right, if you agree, let’s see a show of raised hands . . . at least it hasn’t always been a painful headache or a bore.

Thanks for America — the last and greatest hope and the last and greatest of man’s dreams.

But most of all . . .

Let’s just thankfully say “hooray” that 2021 is right around the corner and that there are only 6 more weeks of carpet bagger funded Senate election ads to go here in the Coastal Empire.

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