Thanksgiving?

starvation

Saleh Hassan al-Faqeh holds the hand of his four-month-old daughter, Hajar, who died of malnutrition at the al-Sabeen hospital in Sanaa, Yemen, Nov. 15, 2018.  “She was like skin on bones, her body was emaciated,” he said.  Hajar was one of thousands of Yemeni children suffering from malnutrition in a country that has been pushed to the brink of famine by more than three years of war.  (Source: Father mourns baby who died of starvation in Yemen, ABC News, November 15, 2018)


Who can imagine hunger who has never experienced it, even for one day?

~ May Sarton, The House by the Sea: A Journal

Why My Family Takes a Thanksgiving Vow of Silence

nina-li-coomes

For many years, my family took a vow of silence over Thanksgiving, retreating to a Catholic seminary perched on a small lake in Libertyville, Illinois. The rules of the Thanksgiving Silent Retreat were simple: no talking, no reading, no watching TV or listening to music. We were allowed to draw, or write, or play the grand piano in the pink-carpeted seminary lounge, but were not to bring books or use our laptops or phones. […]

Consider the Thanksgiving table, groaning under the weight of abundance: jeweled cranberries winking in orange-spiced syrups; the skin of the turkey rubbed and brined and roasted to crispy perfection; mounds of potatoes fluffed into chive-flecked clouds; green beans and stuffing and marshmallow-topped yams. Circling these dishes, the yawning promise of empty plates, and yet—above the whole table floats a cottony haze of silence. No one speaks. No one asks you to pass the salt, to refill the wine. What would that be like? How do you think you might feel and exist in that silent, still place?

Click here for the punch line and the entire story: Why My Family Takes a Thanksgiving Vow of Silence by Nina Li Coomes.

T.G.I.F.

A balloon showing Charlie Brown failing to fly a kite during the 91st Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.


As is the modern way, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was buttressed by blockades of sand-filled sanitation trucks, patrolled by sniffer dogs and guarded by police.  Heavily armed police patrolled the parade route during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Security was greater and more intensive this year following a deadly truck attack in the city by an alleged terrorist on Halloween.


Source: wsj.com Photos of Macy’s 91st Thanksgiving Day Parade. #1 by Carlo Allegri, Reuters. #3 by Andres Kudacki, AP

 

little tummy roll that has helpfully crept over the bottom of the iPad, so that it might help you type?

Anne Lamott, from a Facebook post on November 25, 2012:

Quickly, and probably with lots of typos: I am beginning to think that this body of mine is the one I will have the entire time I am on this side of eternity.

I didn’t agree to this. I have tried for approximately fifty years to get it to be an ever so slightly different body: maybe the tiniest bit more like Cindy Crawford’s, and–if this is not too much to ask–Michelle Obama’s arms. I mean, is this so much to ask? But I had to ask myself, while eating my second piece of key lime pie in Miami last Sunday, and then again, while sampling my second piece of Crete brûlée in Akron, if this is going to happen.

For the record, I do not usually eat like I do in hotels while I am on book tour. But I have a terrble sweet tooth and I am just not going to be spending much more of this and precious life at the gym, than I already do, which is at best, three times a week, in a terrible shirking bad attitude bitter frame of mind. I go for three one-hour hikes a week. I’m not a Lunges kind of girl.
And even if I were, I’m shrinking. I’m not quite Dr. Ruth yet, but I used to be 5’7, and now am–well, not.

But the psalmist says I am wonderfully and fearfully made. Now, upon hearing that, two days after Thanksgiving, don’t you automatically think that “fearfully” refers to your thighs, your upper arms, the little tummy roll that has helpfully crept over the bottom of the iPad, so that it might help you type? Continue reading “little tummy roll that has helpfully crept over the bottom of the iPad, so that it might help you type?”

Not everyone had Thanksgiving dinner at home with Family

military-thanksgiving-service


Photo: U.S. military personnel wait in line for Thanksgiving dinner at a coalition air base in Qayara, south of Mosul, Iraq. (Felipe Dana / AP / wsj.com)