obligatory Thanksgiving post

Before I start cooking today, I thought I'd say something here. I'm getting off easy-I only have a to bring a few dishes to the family meal. I am in charge of some veggie side dishes and am making green bean casserole (one of my favorites) and eggplant parm casserole. Plus some cookies and beer will be included.

There was never a history to Thanksgiving in my house growing up. It was chiefly a time of our little family (we didn't go to the big family gathering because of family disagreements) eating more than we usually did and Mom making her famous cheeseball. I learned the "first Thanksgiving" story in my small town public elementary school, and no one ever disputed it. Later in high school I read a few essays on the horrors that the settlers inflicted on the locals, but growing up I didn't know anything other than Pilgrims and Indians and sharing. That didn't matter much, because the focus was eating together and knowing the garden was done for the year and I didn't have to weed or mow anymore. It was usually not quite cold enough yet to worry about how gathering wood for our woodburner would soon replace summer chores.

Even now, I think of several things mainly when I think "Thanksgiving Day". I think of good food and gathering together with family. By now, my husband's side of the family who we gather with has ten grandchildren running around together, it's sometimes chaotic but having a bunch of kids underfoot is nice. When I married my husband, we lived with my parent's in law for a while and I helped my mother-in-law make all the family dishes for the holidays. The family meals have become a part of life in the past six years, and I look forward to them each year. Some of the best times with my mother growing up was cooking with her, so I also enjoyed cooking with my mother-in-law. She's a good woman and I love her dearly. I'm glad she's shared the family recipes with me and welcomed me into her family. I went by her house yesterday and saw she was putting out the family silverware for today's meal. It's a lovely, heavy old set that feels real in your hand and beats plasticware anyday. Thank God for having family in town, we're very lucky. I am very lucky in my in-laws and can't remember that enough.

This year, I am looking forward to spending the afternoon just being together with family. Elijah, my three year old tank of a boy, is excited about the big bird we'll be eating and wants to know who shot it. He'll be disappointed to learn it came from the store freezer. I am thankful that my husband doesn't have to work today...other years he has. I am glad he has a steady job and even likes his job. My father worked construction and factory jobs his whole life and when I was in my pre-teens he learned to hate the back-breaking work as age came on. If my husband remains a police officer, he'll retire with a pension at 50.

Happy Thanksgiving, blogdom. May God grant you many years of memories, and an immediate and extended family whose love extends beyond the present trial.

You Are

For Joseph. You are the best thing.

Help a Monastery

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mercy

If you had to guess, where would you say the newest challenge to the family's formerly exclusive claim to the socialization of its children has come from?

Mass media?

Peer group?

Nope.

From day care centers. Ugh.

Lord, have mercy!

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Information to communicate to the Patriarch Ignatios IV and the Synod of Antioch. Click.

a stanza or two, on a friday

Been awhile since I got a poem up on a Friday. I remembered lately my teen love of Bukowski, reading his work in a bookstore in Vegas, from a book I didn't intend to buy because he's not that good. Then I'd slide the book back onto the shelf with it's expensive sticker and go to work. Work was a tiny Italian restaurant where I worked shoulder to shoulder with a really excellent Mexican family who invited me to dinner all the time. They came across the border illegally, and were paid in cash. They were authentic and tough. Man, I miss those people. They made me BBQ when I came over the first few times because, as the head cook Victor said, "Americans eat this." I am from the north and didn't know much about BBQ at that point, and I laughed so hard. I miss the smell of pizza sauce and dough from scratch and the warmth of the huge pizza oven at the restuarant. The owner was trying to expand, maybe get a store in one of the casinos, and he was Italian and came around every few months to wax on about his big Italian family and yell at us for not chopping the chopped antipasto fine enough. It was fun, the rush and bustle of the place pulled you in. It was always busy, so busy, and smells to die for. I even miss the red checkered table cloths that constantly hovered on the edges of my vision.

Bukowski fit into that cynical time in my life, at 17, largely alone in Las Vegas and riding the bus every day because I couldn't afford a car. Anyway, here's a short one.




splash

the illusion is that you are simply

reading this poem.

the reality is that this is

more than a

poem.

this is a beggar's knife.

this is a tulip.

this is a soldier marching

through Madrid.

this is you on your

death bed.

this is Li Po laughing

underground.

this is not a god-damned

poem.

this is a horse asleep.

a butterfly in

your brain.

this is the devil's

circus.

you are not reading this

on a page.

the page is reading

you.

feel it?

it's like a cobra. it's a hungry eagle circling the room.



this is not a poem. poems are dull,

they make you sleep.



these words force you

to a new

madness.



you have been blessed, you have been pushed into a

blinding area of

light.



the elephant dreams

with you

now.

the curve of space

bends and

laughs.



you can die now.

you can die now as

people were meant to

die:

great,

victorious,

hearing the music,

being the music,

roaring,

roaring,

roaring.



Charles Bukowski

another gem from s-p

Pithless Thoughts: Curmudgeophan on Tools of the Trade

Check this out.