Happy Thanksgiving, JelloHeads! Unnamed Partner and I are heading out this morning to go over the river(or at least a few large creeks ) and through the woods (BW Parkway has lots of trees) to spend the day at grandmother’s house. So here’s the weekly video, a day early. Give thanks for all that you have.
When I wrote in the poetry post below that my Dad always has a profound Thanksgiving blessing, I mean that in just a few short words he reminds us of those less fortunate than us. Not to make us feel guilty, not to make us feel bad, but to keep the world in perspective. (My Dad was a global citizen way before that became a popular notion.) It’s sometimes so easy to just curl up in our cocoon of a warm house full of wonderful smells and laughing children and the t.v. tuned to the Lions game, and forget the big bad world out there for a day.
But that is a fantasy world. While we sit at our dining room tables (or card tables, depending on whether you’ve graduated from there yet or not.) So I think my Dad would heartily endorse keeping this kind of thought in mind before we all sit down tomorrow to a feast of the senses:
Comprehensive new strategy in Afghanistan will be unveiled by the President soon.
You know what this will mean? More troops, and the war will now be his. No longer Bush’s mistake.
Eight years. How many more? Two? Ten?
I want out. I never wanted in, to be honest. Sure, the night of 9/11, I was mad. Angry. The missile strikes felt righteous, in some way. In a way that a impulsive teen yells at a parent to get something they want.
Doesn’t work that way, though.
In searching for a poem appropriate for the day before Thanksgiving, I think an homage to butter will do. If you’re like me, you are spending today cooking and cleaning and getting ready for the biggest meal of the year. I hope you also have something that I have every Thanksgiving: namely, someone like my Dad who every year astounds me with a pre-meal blessing that is short and profound, and always brings us back to the true meaning of the word “thanksgiving” before we are about to plunge into gluttony.
Butter
This video alternates between being very very funny, and being extremely terrifying ….
Rudolph Delson does a wonderful job guiding us through what sounds like a waste of perfectly good trees. To wit:
“1:32pm. While eating a cheese sandwich, I read Palin’s descriptions of motherhood. (These passages are the most saccharine of Americana; they are mom-tastic; they deserve an essay themselves, something in fiery Menkenese. Later, later.) So let me cite one small example. On page 57, Bristol Palin has just been born. “Her shock of black hair, chubby cheeks, and dark, lively eyes showed off her Native heritage.” And what was the child like?:
As she grew she manifested her little mama’s heart by nurturing her siblings and cousins and always begging to babysit.
How Sarah Palin, knowing what she knows in 2009, could write with pride that Bristol Palin always had a “little mama’s heart,” is beyond my power to explain. It was enough to make me put down my cheese sandwich. It is enough to make me spend twenty minutes away from my lunch, hunched over my laptop, trying to find words.”
The caption reads:
A Palestinian child smiles during an event organised by Unicef to mark the 2oth anniversary of the Convention of the Rights of the Child in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
It is significant to note this story from the BBC on Friday, November 20, 2009:
Somalia has vowed to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – a move that would leave the US as the only nation not to back the accord.
The UN, which is celebrating 20 years since the agreement was put into force, welcomed Somalia’s announcement.
But analysts say the Somali government has little authority and its rulings are largely unenforceable.
The US helped draft the agreement, but conservative politicians have argued its measures impinge on sovereignty.
image from BBC
and he won’t give up until we get it!
I just don’t understand what is wrong with these people. The Smoking Gun has the police report from the arresting officer — the one who arrested a 10-yr old girl who was refusing to take a shower. The officer writes that upon arriving at the house, he found the little girl “balled up in the floor crying and screaming” and that she began “screaming, kicking, and resisting every time her mother tried to touch her.”
So what does this rocket scientist of a man do? In his own words,
“… at this point I decided that there was not going to be a peaceful resolution of the issue. I moved her into the living room area and told her she was going to jail.”
‘Cause that’s going to calm her down. Not surprisingly, the girl continued kicking and crying and resisted arrest. We are talking about a 10-year old child here, after all. And yes, she kicked the officer in the groin, and that’s when he Tasered her. But in case you’re thinking about all the huge, adult-like 10 year-olds that you might have met in your lifetime, according to The Smoking Gun, the little girl is “about 65 pounds and 4′ 6.” No word on the weight and height of Officer Barney Fife Dustin Bradshaw, but it does not sound to me that his life was in danger.
Can anyone explain to me why this is not getting more news coverage?
