We admire those who find things to be thankful for, especially since they seem to do it on a daily basis and not just the one called Thanksgiving. But Thanksgiving has its place, certainly, despite being a smudge on our human rights record.
Thanksgiving is sold as family, food and a kick start to shopping season, but we know we’re all smarter than that. Just look at the word – it’s about Thanks and Giving, no matter how we parse it. We can do that.
Our little newspaper with a little staff in a little town is totally dependent on a little advertising. Advertising is the only income for a free weekly that pays rent, lights, water, Internet, telephone, salaries and an exorbitant print bill. If it weren’t for advertisers we would be twiddling our hair thinking about things instead of writing about them.
For our advertisers we are grateful, and in awe, since we know our politics and theirs might not fit like tongue-in-groove. But we get to do this because of advertisers. They trust us to keep our end of the deal, heavens, they trust us to show up and do this again. That feeling alone is worth squeezing our eyes closed and saying Thank You.
And where would we be without readers? We took a week off at the end of October and one lovely man simply said, “What are we supposed to do?” He has no idea how good that felt, so to him we give a high five of deep down appreciation.
Thanksgiving is such a descriptive word, full of resonance and remembrance and gosh, have you noticed more people smiling this week than they did last week? The week hasn’t been without its tribulations, doggone it, Larry the goldfish died and that made us quietly sad. Yes, we print pictures every week of 30-lb. stripers and 18-in. Brown trout just before they get tossed into a hot skillet with some butter, garlic, a little lemon juice, dill, salt and pepper. But Larry had a name. It’s not like we had sheets of tears cascading down our faces but finding Larry floating belly up made our hearts leak a bit.
What’s the difference between a wild fish caught in the White River and a goldfish in a tank? One tries to avoid us, the other seemed to like to see us. The one we held captive is the one that made us cloud up when he died, the ones in the river make us fry some potatoes. Weird but true.
We spend as much time as anybody reading news, listening to news, asking about news and pondering news. Most of it we simply don’t get, but we have figured out that women are smarter and men are more fun, and it takes both to make this life continue. Yes, as in everything else, there are exceptions.
We know that we like where we live and what we do, and if it weren’t for contrary opinions there would be no reason to have a newspaper to log information about us, our time, our town and our lives, shortcomings and all. And, honestly, we love disproving that print is an obsolete medium.
The thing about Thanksgiving is whether we believe in God, gods, Allah, Yahweh, The Light, Elohim, Krishna, alien intervention or none of those, we are thankful that humans got this opportunity to inhabit this planet and that we get to be one. If there is an entity who created all this, it was probably for good reason. Or at least a fun experiment. And it’s likely they are overseeing how we deal with free will, a spot of intelligence and that pesky wide-range of emotions. Wouldn’t any of us want to watch our creations until they either did what we hoped or fizzled out?
Yes. No. We’re not the same. Backgrounds, experiences, goals, secret thoughts, public displays, driving habits, we’re like seven billion little stars on the same planet and have no idea where we’re going but look forward to getting there.
Mary Pat Boian