No, it won't be quite like this. It'll be just Mrs. JP, the cat and me and an outside chance of seeing my son Adam and his fiancee later on. It won't be KFC but a pork loin. With my luck, that means, somewhere in America, there's a three-legged pig on a crutch that's looking for me.
So before we clear the table and put up the laptops, let me take this opportunity to tell ya'll what I'm grateful for this Thanksgiving.
I'm grateful for having the few loyal readers I do. You guys prove that quality is always better than quantity. In these brutal times, we have a roof over our heads, a working car on the road and no creditors (yet) knocking on our door.
One of those readers is Mrs. JP, who thought enough of me to walk away from her family to drive 1355 miles alone two and a half years ago in a rickety 15 year-old Chrysler LeBaron on its last legs in the name of love.
I'm grateful that I have strong, healthy sons. It's a shame the mother of two of them didn't live long enough to even begin watching them grow up.
I'm grateful that I didn't succumb to the racist wingnuttery into which my father fell later in life and that I remained independent and strong-minded enough to reject the diktats of all organized religion. I've always been a big believer in Altruism whether I was the giver or recipient. As the poet Percy Shelley once bemoaned to a friend, if only we had a religion founded on charity rather than faith.
I'm grateful for Occupy Wall Street and its countless incarnations and all the hell they're enduring for us to remind us that, yes, the First Amendment does indeed exist and to we who wring our hands at the festering cesspool of corruption this country has become, OWS gives us vibrant, indelible proof that we are not alone.
So as we sit at the dinner table this Thanksgiving, let's offer a vocal or silent thank you to Occupy Wall Street and all those who were swept up in the movement. They, especially those in Occupy Boston and the other colder states, are undergoing tortures and persecution that the rest of us can only imagine. And they'll be right out there again tomorrow decrying corporate greed while the rest of us camp out (without being beaten or pepper-sprayed) outside Wal-Mart, Target or Best Buy.
