Thanksgiving – the American holiday of feasting; family; friends. Also the fare is unique; at no other time during the year, at least in my family, and in my circle of friends, do we ever cook a whole turnkey, with stuffing; eat cranberry sauce…I mean cranberry sauce, picture the way you shake the can it comes in, it always comes canned, until the perfect cylinder of burgundy-red gelatinous stuff somehow wrongly identified as a “sauce”, slowly slithers out onto a serving plate. I love slicing it. Sauce slicing. Cranberry sauce I like. I’d eat it more often if it was served more often. It never is. At least not around here.
Photo: http://www.dreamstime.com
And potatoes. And gravy(s). Sweet potatoes in brown sugar sauce. Delicious sweet potatoes – I like them too! Corn. Butter on everything. And stuffing – I know I mentioned it above, but in my circle, we never eat stuffed meat dishes except at Thanksgiving. Yams, squash, vegetable casseroles – yes, vegetable casseroles. We never eat vegetable casseroles; except at this one crazy meal. Pies, pies, pies, ice-cream and whipped cream.
We never eat like this. Except for this one, unique holiday – Thanksgiving. It’s all good and I personally love Thanksgiving, mainly because it always means a 4-day weekend and I dig that; but, I actually like the food served. It’s a bit much, and I usually end up at at least two, sometimes three Thanksgivings. I like parties. Here’s the weird part; at least to me, I think this is weird about Thanksgiving. We, I mean us Americans, like I said above almost never, ever, ever eat these combinations of food all at once. But the entire point of eating all these somewhat uncommon foods, is that they are allegedly American foods. American foods that Americans almost never eat. At least not in this combination and in this amount.
Hey, I’m down with it! Don’t get me wrong, I like Thanksgiving; it’s a big party! It’s just kind of a weird celebration of Americaness, to eat a huge quantity of food, that Americans normally never eat all together like that. I mean the foods all together. And, it is suppose to have everything to do with being Thankful.
Being Thankful is an interesting, somewhat contrived notion, but a notion only possible amongst civilized, reasonably materially well-off people. Can you even visualize, what’s more give one good example of a savage, barbaric type, savage and barbaric for whatever reason, being thankful for anything? Angry, envious, enraged, cunning, perhaps fearful, but never Thankful. Thanksgiving is a civilized sort of affair based on the civilized notion of giving thanks. And then we go ahead and express various and many things we are Thankful for – friends, family, the great food, whatever.
Well, dear readers, naturally, like all good, civilized, reasonably well-off types, I too am thankful. I am thankful for many things, but this year I want to give thanks for the International Space Station, because tomorrow morning it is flying almost directly over my house at 6:20 AM, and I’ll be up with the dogs and binoculars to check it out! I love that thing! You can easily see it with the naked eye and if you haven’t checked out yet, you are missing the fun! Do it and tell me about it!
http://iss.astroviewer.net/observation.php?lon=-112.07403729999999&lat=33.4483771&name=Phoenix
Photo from: http://www.esa.int/esaKIDSfr/SEMUKFK22EH_LifeinSpace_0.html
Check out this fun, fact filled website for all things ISS; including a photo of four female astronauts all on ISS at once! Girl power!
http://pillownaut.blogspot.com/2013/04/international-space-station-facts.html
From the site: “Sixteen nations are involved in building and supporting the International Space Station: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.” So it really is International.
Spaceflight is a modern miracle, and the ISS is a miracle of modern technology, a shining example of international cooperation, and amazing testimony to the human spirit and is flying over my house tomorrow. So I’m thankful for that.
Hey everybody – Have a great Holiday!
Alan Olee Book Report 
some interesting thoughts on a holiday that is such an intrinsic part of our Culture that we usually fail to analyze it except in terms of who we have to spend it with or the people we don’t want to spend it with or the family members, we would just as soon skip as spend the day with. I remember so many Thanksgivings hoping to avoid going to my Aunt’s— (more than I want to go into) and then other times, being ‘thankful’ that I could go there and now that she is gone— I am sorry for the times I was resistant… but I think that I am now resisting the idea of eating so much delicious food that you would just as soon focus on almost anything else than be left with that feeling of ennui and exhaustion that comes with the meal……. I am Thankful for many things, though and I think that focusing on why our lives are better than most is a very necessary and good thing and keeps us on a ‘forward’ path!
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OK – Space Stations Spotting was simply awesome! It was an absolutely cloudless, Arizona sky, with no moon in view. Waiting for its northerly approach we noted the planet Venus overhead glowing with a piercing brightness; and then from the northwest, suddenly coming into view there it was, on a southeast trajectory silently cutting across a purple sky, like a man-made shooting star in slow-motion it picked up speed and shone ever brighter as it passed us overhead, passing Venus, and trailing off into the faint hinting tint of the coming dawn.
Amazing and wonderful.
And I introduced a new person to Space Station Spotting and she thought it was pretty cool! As a matter of fact, it was kind of cold for Arizona; according to my weather logger it was 43.4 degrees F with a relative humidity of 60%. Snuggle time!
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Great article – made me rethink the holiday I usually take for granted.
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David,
Thanks for stopping by! And check out that space station! it’s cool!
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