Thanksgiving Musings

By Tom Gehl

Nov. 25, 2009

In the past I have focused my Thanksgiving column on the historical foundations and meaning of this uniquely American Holiday. That has been an enjoyable practice, but after what has so clearly been a difficult year for our nation and for so many people in it, I felt it appropriate to offer a more personal take by reflecting on more personal matters.

First and foremost, I am grateful to be married to a woman of character. A woman who despite a long list of more enjoyable options, chose instead to spend this week far from home, caring for her aged and lonely father. My maternal grandmother lived to be 104, and I well remember her 80th birthday party . While holding court (and a manhattan-filled tumbler), our great matriarch opined that "gettin old ain't for sissies". Coming from a woman who lost both parents at the age of two, lived through the Great Depression, saw two World Wars, and buried a husband and two sons-in law, her words stuck like glue. Grandma was right - and now Barb's father, a man who once marched across Europe in Patton's Third Army, can barely walk steadily across his room. And so - she has traveled to be at his side.

I am grateful that, while certainly having felt the effect of the financial and economic environment visited upon us, that I am still employed. I try and be consciously thankful for that reality every day.

I am grateful to be able to view the parade of nature in our back yard - to see turkey and deer and possum and fox and raccoon and the varied bird-life, instead of asphalt and steel and drugs and bullets.

I am thankful for last Memorial Day Weekend, spent in the heart of the UP's Sylvania Wilderness. For four nights and five days my son and I tromped and paddled our way through wilderness so dense it bore no signs of man ever walking the planet. I am thankful for that time together, and for the opportunity to begin teaching him the ways of the wild, and to be humbled by what Jack London referred to as its "call".

I am grateful to live in a country founded by men and women of such requisite vision, wisdom and courage, that though we have done much to forsake their legacy, we yet live in the good of it. I am grateful to live in a country that both molded and was molded by the likes of John Adams and Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.

While mindful of its insidious invasion, I am also thankful for the technology that enriches our lives, enabling me at the push of a button to view the text of Lincoln's Second Innaugural Address, or Churchill's 1940 BBC broadcasts, or to hear any music I care to, including just this morning that most singularly beautiful piece of music, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

And I am grateful to be able to write this column and express my views without fear of retribution, or of the midnight knock on the door that even today, so much of the world fears.

This is by no means an all inclusive list - just some musings. Give some thought this week to your own list - and comment if you care to.

I wish you and yours the Happiest of Thanksgivings.

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