Another Thanksgiving weekend. This year no need to fight traffic To and from the grandmothers’ houses, No need to spend hours circling The parking lot at the nearest mall. No need to go anywhere at all.
Now we are the grandparents. Our muted celebration took place Around our kitchen table, with The other set of grandparents, A daughter-in-law, a teen granddaughter In attendance. Mostly vegetarian,
The feast also featured a small ham for The meat eaters of the oldest generation. We talked in pleasantries, mostly Avoiding politics. The weather was warm And sunny, as southern California often Is in late November. Tomorrow, a wintry mix may
Disrupt the other grandparents’ flights Back to the Northeast. Been there, Done that. Especially the two winters When Vermont was my, then our home. The Thanksgiving before we reconnected, a blizzard Delayed and almost sidelined Jim as he came north.
The following year, sleet and snow complicated Our southbound journey, delaying our arrival at our elders’ House in northeast Philadelphia until nearly 4 a.m. From a later home in Richmond, VA, we’d set out by car to see Grandmas and Grandpas in Maryland and New Jersey, Two growing boys sporadically squabbling in the back seat.
I watch with sometimes spiteful glee as News clips feature clogged airports, or huge Temporary parking lots on I-95 in both Directions. Yes, Virginia, it can take nearly an hour To clear the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Still, I need to remain grateful for holiday traffic.
Nearly sixty years ago, the bus ride from Baltimore to D.C. That usually lasted 45 minutes stretched to almost Three times that long, giving my college-bound seat mate And me time to thread our awkward conversation toward a Slow-budding romance. Holiday traffic helped introduce me To a future husband, children, grandchildren. Thanks be!
After another bruising electoral season, we are individually and collectively beginning to recover and move on. As an older voter, I do not expect to participate in many more presidential elections. Still, I’m concerned about the rancorous legacy our generation seems to be leaving for those who come after us.
As a grandparent, I’ve lately become one of our family’s storytellers. It’s my hope that by sharing my own family story and then by deeply listening to others, I may be able to find more common ground. I hope that we may as a community be able to diminish the worst excesses of partisan bitterness. Every family has its own instances of disasters and triumphs. My family’s stories are unique but likely not uncommon.
Some aspects of my biological family’s history remain a mystery. What has come down to me has been partially shaped by our clan’s tendency toward long generations. It’s also been shaped by a generally privileged trajectory and multiple generations of residency in what is now the United States of America.
Both sets of my grandparents were well into their sixties or seventies, living in Maryland, when I was born there in 1947. For my first eleven years, I lived next door to my maternal grandparents. That grandfather began life in 1869, so his earliest memories are from a time over 150 years ago. My other three grandparents were born in 1879. All four grandparents had stories to tell.
My maternal grandfather, the man I called Pop-Pop, was born in Mississippi just after the U.S. Civil War. He was the youngest child in a family of former slaveholders, with one older brother and five older sisters. Pop-Pop recounted being frightened of the Union troops billeted in his family home during Reconstruction. He was later able to get a good education. He spent time as a school teacher before switching to bookkeeping about the time his first child was born in 1906.
My maternal grandmother, nicknamed “Ginx,” was a 3-pound “preemie” born in January, 1879 in rural Virginia, in the days before many hospitals or “modern medicine.” Her parents later told her that for her first few months they had kept her in a makeshift incubator constructed by lining a laundry basket with warm bricks and cast-off blankets. Her father was a school superintendent in one of the counties where Pop-Pop taught school.
My paternal grandfather was the second son in a family of midwestern small-scale farmers. He met my other grandmother while both were students at a telegraphy school in Kentucky. This particular school was run by a conman whose main goal seems to have been lining his own pockets. The two lovers conducted a lengthy, partially long-distance courtship, complicated by economic struggles plus the lingering animosity between northern and southern states. Grandpa was “Yankee bred,” Grandma a Southerner. They eventually wed at my great-grandfather’s North Carolina farm at Christmas in 1907.
Grandpa and Grandma briefly attempted to homestead in Nebraska, but found the dry conditions and near-constant wind too much of a challenge. Grandpa later worked various clerical and administrative jobs, first for railroads and then for a government agency regulating interstate commerce. Grandma managed the small Maryland farm where they eventually settled and continued raising their children.
(Portraits of my grandparents that a friend of my parents painted; they hung for years in the family dining room)
My dad made his entry into the family saga in 1912. Born in Ohio, he moved with the family to Maryland in 1920. Through grade school, he attended a two-room rural schoolhouse. By the time he was ready for college, the Great Depression had set in and money for tuition was scarce. Dad and his two older siblings took turns at the University of Maryland nearby, each finding what work they could to supplement the family income. They pooled their funds, helping each other pay college costs. Dad and his older brother John sold chickens and eggs from the farm. Aunt Lucy did clerical work.
My mom showed up in 1917 as a “bonus” daughter, eleven years younger than her sister Margaret, five years younger than her brother Stuart. Family life was hectic as the “war to end all wars” came to a close in late 1918. The armistice was bracketed by a global flu pandemic that spared Mom’s family, but killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.
Aunt Margaret and Uncle Stu attended high school in Baltimore City. Though city tuition was somewhat expensive, Baltimore’s schools at the time were considered vastly superior to the small high school in the next-county village where Mom’s family lived. Pop-Pop and Granny spent much of the 1920’s ponying up city school tuition to give their children the best educational start they could. Pop-Pop had a job as a Baltimore-based bookkeeper. Granny earned money teaching piano pupils at home or in local schools. Then, just as Mom was ready to enter high school, the Depression hit. It limited Mom’s high school choices and nearly preempted her chance to attend college.
Within seven months during 1929-1930, Mom’s family experienced a one-two punch of reversals. The stock market crash in late October, 1929 did not directly impact them—Pop-Pop and Granny owned no stocks. The family’s downward spiral started about a month later with an “upward spiral.” On an unusually cold day just after Thanksgiving, a chimney fire broke out in their recently renovated kitchen. By the time the local fire brigade arrived, the fire had started to spread. They were unable to contain the blaze. Water from their hoses froze before it could reach the house’s high roof. The entire structure burned to the ground. The family found rental lodging, hoping to rebuild later. The following June, Pop-Pop, then sixty years old, was laid off from his job. The company he had worked for replaced most of their human staff with early calculating machines to cut costs.
Somehow, Mom’s family persevered. Aunt Margaret and Uncle Stu were able to find jobs. Granny took correspondence courses in hotel management. She then got work as a full-time housekeeping supervisor at a Baltimore luxury hotel. Though she frowned at some alcohol-lubricated political shenanigans during the waning days of Prohibition, she held her tongue. Pop-Pop got what temporary work he could, once surviving a major 1933 flood while working as a night guard at a railroad construction site.
Mom finished at the top of her high school class. She scraped together earnings and loans to attend college. The Depression eventually ended. Mom and Dad eventually met and married. Their “greatest generation” was partially shaped by the eras they grew up in—one global war, then boom times, then economic depression, followed by another global war. During the post-WWII baby boom, they produced me, my sister and two brothers. We’ve so far confronted different challenges, including a recent global pandemic with its accompanying trauma and dislocations.
What have been your family’s triumphs and trials? How may they influence your experience of the world going forward?
This spring, I traveled with my husband to two European cities—our first international trip since the start of the covid pandemic. Judging by the crowds we encountered at prime tourist sites, we were far from the world’s only “post-covid tourists.” We were lucky enough to be able to afford about a month each at small rental apartments in Barcelona and then Paris—a wonderful chance to get some different perspectives about how a more resilient human world might work.
Both Barcelona and Paris get considerable income from tourism. According to official figures, almost 26 million visitors made an overnight stay in the Barcelona region in 2023, spending 12.75 billion euros ( or 13.8 billion dollars). About 100 million visitors come to France in non-covid years, making it the most visited country in the world, with Paris one of its most visited cities. In 2023, Parisian tourism generated revenues of 63 billion euros. Tourism in each city employs over ten percent of the work force—an important component of their overall economies.
The proprietors of our rental units were accommodating and helpful. Our lodgings contained useful tour guides with hints to optimize our access to both famous and lesser known sites. In both cities, there were many restaurants and food choices, including some at affordable prices. During our journey, we did not encounter any personal rudeness or threatening behavior. However, there were a few worrisome signs in our surroundings.
One day in Barcelona, we visited its museum of contemporary art, tucked away along a side street an easy walk from our apartment. The building itself is a work of art, filled with adaptable exhibit spaces and easy access ramps. Outside is an extensive plaza where we watched young men and women practicing their skateboard moves. As we left the area, I noticed a large mural on an adjacent wall. The overall wording was beyond my elementary Spanish or my even more limited Catalan, but the message was clear. The accompanying graphic, a “welcome mat” inscribed in English with “Not Welcome,” told me what I needed to know.
tourist caution in Barcelona
Recently, some locals expressed similar sentiments by going to prime tourist venues and squirting patrons with water pistols.
Protests in Barcelona are partly due to the way tourist lodging seems to distort available housing stocks. Though the rental income from our apartment helped sustain our proprietor’s family, it may also have helped drive up longer term rental prices for local residents. Not just in Europe, but in resort areas in the U.S. as well, we’ve heard laments by long-term residents about the hollowing out of local cultures and services when a town or region becomes too dependent on tourism.
A ski resort, a summer retreat, a place to go to view autumn colors, a city with an abundance of museums and historic sites—none of these by themselves support local transportation infrastructure, schools, or other public services. Tax revenue can fall short of providing the level of services wanted. If too many non-tourism-related locals leave, the networks of volunteer groups that help make a community thrive can wither and die. Similarly, becoming too dependent on tourism can exacerbate income and wealth inequalities. Service workers crucial to successful tourism can find it impossible to afford housing near where they work. Long-distance commutes, sub-standard housing, and exhausted workers then can blemish even the poshest resort.
Tourism-driven economies can also generate excess trash and pollution. The streets of old town Barcelona were sometimes cramped, loud, and dirty. Traffic jams all over the area were getting more frequent and disruptive. In Paris, tourist taxis sped by our building nearly 24/7, along with police cruisers, sometimes with sirens blaring. They made it more difficult for visitors and locals alike to get needed rest.
Finally, as covid so dramatically showed us, tourism is not a “core” industry. In a health crisis, millions of erstwhile tourists will stay home, leaving hotels and restaurants standing vacant, their staffs suddenly unemployed.
An appropriate level of tourism will vary from place to place. Paris, for centuries a tourist magnet, may be more robust than most in its efforts to be a “host city” that works. In a week or so, it will become the site of the 2024 Olympic games, estimated to bring in about half again as many as its already abundant annual influx of tourists.
While governments and economists continue to wrestle with how to “solve” the tourism conundrum, those of us who travel and/or host can help make tourism more mutually rewarding. As travelers, we can prepare with some basic education about the places we plan to visit, make responsible choices in itineraries and accommodations, use our best manners and be respectfully curious about habits and customs different from what we’re used to “back home.” As hosts, we can be more patient than we might be with fellow locals, do our best to assume positive intent by our visitors, and provide clear instructions about the use of available services.
Whatever our role of the moment, we can acknowledge both the value and the limitations of tourism.
For many of us, especially those of us who are older, this is our first fully “post-pandemic” Independence Day. Although the pandemic in the U.S. was declared officially over in May, 2023, last July many were still somewhat nervous about indoor gatherings or large crowds. This year I still didn’t venture out into large crowds, but not because of covid concerns. The prospect of driving through heavy traffic to crowded beaches or our area’s evening fireworks venues was unappealing. I spent a fairly quiet, but nonetheless enjoyable 4th, no longer isolated by a nasty virus and the worldwide fear it had engendered. Later, as I drifted off to sleep, I could hear the muffled hisses and booms of the closer fireworks displays.
Early in the morning, I’d gone to my small plot at our neighborhood community garden. Our most consistent volunteer was already there, watering some shrubs and flowering plants that were stressed from our recent heat wave. I wished her a Happy 4th. I quickly drew some water from the communal water barrel to help coax the bean seeds I’d recently planted into sprouting. As I was leaving the garden, I ran across a group of local men who volunteer at holidays to place American flags in the medians of our major streets. At 7 in the morning, they had just finished their work, and were headed to a local donut shop to have breakfast together.
Once home, I phoned my brothers, who both live on the East Coast, three time zones later than here. I wished each of them a Happy 4th. The brother who still lives in the neighborhood where we all grew up was getting ready to head to the potluck lunch that’s been a local tradition since long before we were born. He said attendance might be down some due to their latest heat wave—the historic community center, built in the 1870’s, has multiple fans but is not air conditioned. We reminisced about our childhood 4ths at “the hall”— the turtle race, the ample lunch with ice cream for the children, the parade featuring patriotic floats and decorated bicycles, the general fellowship and good feeling.
Later in the morning, before the sun got too high, I went for a walk with my husband through our suburban housing complex. Heading uphill to a favorite overlook, we met a stream of elementary-school-age children riding bicycles festooned with red, white, and blue streamers. They were accompanied by several adults, probably parents. All seemed headed toward festivities in our community park. Different neighborhood, different times, similar traditions. To some, it might seem a little contradictory to celebrate “independence” by having community gatherings, community gardens, community flag displays. Perhaps not.
I didn’t remember exactly what I’d done last Independence Day, so I checked a previous journal for July 4, 2023: my husband and son’s family were away; turns out I’d gone to a small outdoor barbecue at a next-door neighbor’s. More journals helped me recall prior 4ths during the pandemic:
At July 4, 2020, daily life was totally upended. In the neighborhood in North Carolina where we then lived, few were in a holiday mood. Infections, serious illness and deaths were climbing. There was not yet a vaccine or reliable treatment. Most of us were hunkered down, even disinfecting our postal mail before bringing it indoors. Libraries and other public venues were closed indefinitely. There was a dire shortage of protective gear of any kind. Social activities that still occurred were probably virtual. In-person activity had ground to a screeching halt.
In 2021, we had relocated to be close to a grown son and his family in southern California–the prospect during a pandemic of continuing to make long-distance plane trips to visit the grandchildren seemed foolhardy. In early spring we’d gotten our vaccinations, further downsized, and driven cross-country to our lives’ next stage. I spent July 4 trimming hedges at our son’s house while he and his family took a much-needed vacation.
On July 4, 2022, we were recovering from mild cases of covid. We’d most likely become infected while traveling by plane back and forth in June to visit a “bonus” grandchild born in Ohio in late May.
This July 4th, I relished my encounters with those celebrating where I live now. It was fun, too, to share long-ago memories with family and friends. I hope we never have to go back to the isolation of the worst of covid times. I hope that we never forget the medical researchers who helped develop vaccines and treatments, the health care workers who sometimes risked their own health to care for the rest of us, all the “essential workers” who kept us fed, clothed, and provisioned during the pandemic’s darkest days. I hope we avoid conflating independence with isolation.
On July 4th and on other days, let’s keep in mind the moving balance between our independence and our mutual dependence. A worthwhile paradox. Happy belated In(ter)dependence Day!
renovated Sant Antoni Market, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
This past spring, I had the good fortune to embark on my first overseas trip since the covid-19 pandemic. I spent a month each in two different European cities, Barcelona and Paris. Their time zone is quite different from where I live in southern California. After my return, it took me a week to adjust my sleep and waking schedules to my home time zone—jet lag. It’s taking me even longer to readapt to the culture of my home city. I’m still suffering from a touch of “culture lag.”
Getting readjusted to a car-dependent city like San Diego is taking some time. The volume of automotive traffic, both in my neighborhood and on area freeways, continues to amaze me—Barcelona and Paris, at least at their cores where I stayed, had proportionally much less vehicular traffic. Paris has been installing dedicated bicycle lanes at a great rate as part of an aggressive strategy to reduce air pollution and make the city more livable. There’s now even a bicycle rush hour; per a recent (2024) survey, in central Paris more people bicycle than drive. In the run-up to its hosting of the 1992 Olympic Games, Barcelona, the largest city of the Spanish region known as Catalonia, totally revamped its formerly shabby waterfront to create a 2-plus-mile-long stretch of walkable, easily accessible public beach.
Both Barcelona and Paris have robust, easy to use, inexpensive public transportation systems that serve most of their metropolitan areas. Paris is upgrading its metro (subway) in anticipation of increased ridership during the Olympic Games it will host next month. I wish our city could become less dependent on “car culture,” especially as I continue to age and my driving skills continue to diminish.
On the other hand, I’m relieved to experience my lower exposure to tobacco smoke here in San Diego. Outside our Barcelona rental apartment, the sidewalk was always full of cigarette butts. At all hours of the day or night, people sitting on some of the local public benches periodically lit up. Staying upwind of the secondhand smoke was an ongoing challenge. Paris has banned indoor smoking in public places, but nearly every restaurant or cafe has alluring sidewalk tables where non-smokers may try to “dodge the smoke.”
Both European cities have ongoing recycling efforts, with large, labeled bins for different recyclables at every block or apartment building. The neighborhood market near our Barcelona apartment even had a staffed drop-off location for food waste. Recycling volumes were lower because less plastic or other packaging was used to begin with. In Barcelona, people wheeled small fabric-covered carts to carry their groceries from shop to home. In Paris, cloth shopping bags were more common.
Living spaces were smaller than ours here, with each of our rental apartments measuring less than 500 square feet. Partly because of limited space, partly because of different cultural norms, appliances were more compact and less extensive than ours—“half size” refrigerators, no automatic dishwashers, limited clothes driers. Drying racks and sunny windows served nearly as well. People shopped several times each week, if not daily. Specialty shops could provide cheeses, meats, fruits and vegetables, or baked goods. There were no “big box” stores. Across the street from our Barcelona apartment was a recently renovated 19th century market with over a hundred stalls selling all sorts of food and clothing. American-style grocery stores were generally smallish, had no parking, and coexisted with living spaces. In both cities we could easily walk to groceries, bakeries, restaurants, book shops, and newsstands. Delivery services were more often by bicycle or covered tricycle than by motorized vehicle.
My “culture lag” after this most recent trip has been less severe than on earlier occasions. During my work life, I’d spent longer periods of work and/or travel in areas more “exotic” than western Europe. Still, San Diego is different from what I’d become used to in Barcelona and Paris. I’m not yet sure how long this episode of “culture lag” will last.
I’m very glad to have a San Diego home to return to. Perhaps some of the better parts of Catalan and Parisian cultures will outlast culture lag to work their way pemanently into my life here.
Sailors in a foreign port get a late night start to their next voyage. Just settling into their departure routines, they’re at first flustered by the Flickering of the ship’s lights, then alarmed by more serious Malfunctions. Their pilots issue an international distress call, then Desperately drag anchor to try to avoid lumbering into a major bridge.
Young girls in frilly frocks, some with flowers in our hair, Dance around a maypole, skipping in and out, Weaving intricate patterns with suspended colored Streamers as we twirl in the iridescent sunshine.
Distress calls and maypole dances— Mayday! May Day!
This January 6, I want to remember the date as my sister-in-law’s birthday, or maybe the Christian festival of Epiphany. I’ll do my best to tune out an overdose of analysis and commentary about U.S. events of January 6, 2021.
This year’s January 6 falls on a Saturday, when many of us will be experiencing a weekend, free from most work obligations and ready for a change of pace. As an inveterate player with words, I want to propose a widening “consurrection.” Taking the prefix “con,” typically meaning “with,” to replace the “in” of “insurrection,” we can create a “rising up with,” rather than the “rising up against” that occurred a few years ago. Just as “conspiring” at its root represents “breathing together,” so might “consurrecting” come to mean something like “working together to create a more humane, welcoming society.”
I would like more and more of us to spend part of January 6 each year in the sort of voluntary public service that’s become more closely associated with the MLK holiday later in January—let this Saturday be the start. Thanks to a faith community teamed with a local non-profit, I’ll have a chance on Saturday to sort produce for an area food bank’s weekly distribution, “consurrecting” on January 6 with an eclectic range of folks who work to reduce food insecurity in San Diego County.
May you find a worthwhile and fulfilling path toward “consurrection” as well.
It’s nearly the end of 2023, a time for looking back and for looking ahead. I’m grateful to have made it through another year with most of my faculties intact. I’m blessed to have a warm, supportive network of family and friends. Over the holidays, I’ve managed to spend some extended family time in person and to avoid an excess of media. I’ve (mostly) avoided discussing politics, but still have heard the word “polarization” more times than I care to count.
I like to think that many of us, despite all the rhetoric and doom-saying, are more centrist than otherwise, with overlapping multi-layered allegiances—to family, to work group, to neighborhood, to profession, to age-mates, to craft groups. To varying degrees, many of us also affiliate with politically oriented groups at various levels. I think it does us a disservice to try to reduce anyone to a single level of allegiance, politically or otherwise.
Nonetheless, our current “in between” media environment, an evolving mix of broadcast, print, and internet-driven content, is surfeited with polling that purports to pigeonhole us by political allegiance and/or some aspect of our demographics. I could make a bonfire with all the pieces of campaign literature I’ve received warning of the end of the world if “the other side” wins. Though checking boxes on surveys may relieve a few of my frustrations, it does little to create or reinforce connections. Indulging my anger may feel righteous for a time, but it likewise does little toward solving problems. Nuanced discussions and concerted actions are needed and seem in short supply.
Many years ago, I applied to the United States Peace Corps. Once accepted, I was offered a two-year assignment with a United Nations agency, providing technical assistance in an economically struggling country. Over the course of the recruitment process, I was asked to affirm my allegiance both to the U.S. government and to the principles of the U.N. This was at a time during the 1980’s when there was serious talk of cutting off U.S. support for many international organizations. (Echoes of the same tendency are again current.)
I crossed my fingers that there would not be a serious conflict between the stated purposes of the U.S. and those of the U.N. I wondered where my allegiance would lie if such a breach occurred. Luckily, it was a choice I did not have to make. I think my assignment helped persuade some of my in-country coworkers that there was more to Americans than bellicosity or arrogance. The work done by our multi-national staff made a small but positive impact on the lives of the mostly peasant families we interacted with. Once my assignment was over and I returned to the U.S., I bought two flags—a U.S. flag and an “earth flag,” showing our blue-green planet as viewed from space. On holidays, I gladly flew both. (An image of the earth flag is on Wikimedia Commons as File:Earth flag PD.jpg)
Unless our lives have been exceptionally tranquil, we’ve sometimes been faced with potentially conflicting allegiances. What seems dangerous to me about our current era is that much of our public sphere seems intent on collapsing the many overlapping layers of allegiances of healthy societies into strictly “us versus them” categories.
I draw some solace from a recent experience of our soccer playing granddaughter. The school league in which she plays consists of several smallish secondary schools. At a recent game, the opposing team was short a couple of players at the start of play. It would have been perfectly acceptable, per the league’s rules, for our granddaughter’s team to claim a win by forfeit. Instead, our granddaughter and another player with friends on both teams added a layer of soccer jersey and played for the “opposing” team until enough of their players arrived to complete the rest of the game “normally.” I doubt anyone kept very close track of who “won.”
So here’s a wish that your 2024 will be multi-layered and nourishing, that you’ll have chances to experience some of the “win-win” results that can come from recognizing how multi-faceted and interconnected all of us are.
The local church whose “back lot” has for over a decade served as a community garden also engages with the wider community in other ways. Recently, on a trip to tend my garden plot, I saw posters for a “live Nativity.” I’d not yet seen one, supposedly initiated by Saint Francis in central Italy during the 12th century as a way of teaching about Christ’s birth. The poster for the local event prominently featured a camel.
“Where would anybody find a camel around here?” I wondered. “At the zoo?” Intrigued, I showed up at the church’s front lawn just before sunset on a balmy Saturday evening to see for myself. Sure enough, there was a regal-looking camel, festooned with a decorated blanket and tassels and bells. Standing beside the camel, holding its halter, was a swarthy bearded man in a long embroidered robe. He represented one of the three kings bringing gifts for the baby Jesus. The nativity also included a couple of sheep, some goats, and a donkey, in addition to the three humans representing the Holy Family.
It was a supremely kid-friendly event. Lots of families with children were taking part—looking at the animals, petting the goats, decorating Christmas cookies, sipping cider or cocoa. I stayed long enough to chat briefly with some of the animal handlers. Turns out, the camel was from the “Oasis Camel Dairy” in a nearby farming area. She’d been rented out for the occasion.
In most years, the town of Bethlehem in Palestine, site of the original Nativity, sees a huge influx of religiously oriented tourists around Christmas. Pilgrims come from all over the world to see the Basilica of the Nativity and to visit its grotto, the oldest continuously used site of Christian worship. Many suppose it to be the place of Jesus’ birth. This year, though, according to a recent article in the Jerusalem Post, nearly all tourists have canceled, further depressing the local economy. The locality’s struggles to support itself are also complicated by a full-scale war being waged in nearby Gaza.
Even amid sadness and outrage at the ongoing carnage in the Mideast, I’m reminded by the live nativity here of one of my favorite Christmas songs, variously titled “The Gifts They Gave,” or “The Friendly Beasts.” Sung by many different soloists, one of the most popular versions is by Harry Belafonte. Listening to his mellow rendition helps calm and inspire me. In the song, a donkey, a sheep, and a dove in turn explain the gifts they brought for the Christ child: the donkey, transport for Jesus’ mother Mary to Bethlehem; the sheep, a warm blanket for the new baby; the dove, a lullaby. In current news, if we see donkeys at all, they are likely pulling carts of Palestinians fleeing in search of some area of safety.
At this holy season, may we remember the Christmas song’s friendly beasts and their simple gifts. May we imitate such wise animals more often.
Most days, I remember at some point to be grateful: —for life —for breathable air, for water that’s safe to drink —for access to food, clothing, and shelter —for health —for family and friends both near and far —for sunrises and sunsets, for clear days and for rainy ones.
It seems totally appropriate to me that we celebrate an autumn holiday in honor of gratitude, “Thanksgiving.”
Depending on what traditions we’ve been exposed to, we may think that the Thanksgiving holiday in the current territory of the U.S. originated in 1541 in Texas with Spanish explorer Coronado and the Teya Indians. We might suppose that Thanksgiving started in 1619 in eastern Virginia when some British colonists gave thanks for their safe arrival on American shores. Lots of us were taught as primary school students about the 1621 Massachusetts feast when Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians celebrated together after the immigrants’ first successful harvest. In multiple places in the colonies and then in the U. S., Thanksgiving was celebrated locally or intermittently for a long time, but it only became fixed as a national holiday in 1863. That year, then-President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation making the last Thursday of November (later tweaked by Congress to the 4th Thursday) a national celebration of Thanksgiving.
November 2023 has so far often lacked for gratitude—wars and conflicts dominate our headlines; fiscal and military brinksmanship abounds; in many places there’s a general feeling of malaise and discouragement. Resentment often fills our airwaves and screens. It’s so pervasive that it can seem to poison the very air. Few of us will ever let go of our resentments entirely, be they of long-ago childhood slights or traumas, of former lovers who jilted us, or of perceived business or professional snubs. The rich and powerful are not immune, either. Some can seem resentful that they’ve not obtained even more wealth and/or power. So, especially in this fraught season, it’s important to make time for gratitude.
Fortunately, it’s nearly impossible to be resentful and grateful at exactly the same time. Thanksgiving reminds us to rearrange our lives to expand our proportion of gratitude and to diminish our corresponding “resentment quotient.” We need Thanksgivings, more than we usually admit.
Coronado’s party and the long-ago Virginians and Pilgrims had lives filled with deprivation and danger. Back then, there might have seemed little reason to be grateful. At the first national November Thanksgiving in 1863, the American Civil War raged. Though the tide of battle seemed to have turned in favor of preserving the Union, the outcome was far from sure. Deaths and injuries had touched many families both North and South. In many places, basic goods were either in short supply or totally unavailable. The ill will and resentment that had helped spark the war lingered. Even now, it sometimes darkens our politics.
Happily, for most of us in the U.S. in 2023, Thanksgiving does not equate with privation. It’s sobering, though, that over a tenth of our population fell below the official poverty line in calendar 2022. Moreover, during the period 2020-2022, there were about a million and a half excess deaths, either directly from the covid pandemic, or from other health complications. Many Thanksgiving tables this year are missing one or more previous guests.
Still, it’s my hope that this Thanksgiving many of us will have things to be grateful for. I hope that most of us will resist temptations either to settle old scores or to prefigure the next election cycle. May we, for at least the better part of a day, let gratitude overtake any resentments.
Jinny's Occasional Poems 