Tag Archives: thanks

Conflicted Thoughts On Thanksgiving

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When I sat down to write about Thanksgiving for today, I drew a blank. This has never happened to me. Past stories on this day have ranged from Norman Rockwell to how holidays are hard for those who have experienced loss.

When I did start to write, it quickly wound its way into something you don’t want to read and I shouldn’t publish. It started with the whitewashing of the first Thanksgiving story and meandered all the way into my scathing disapproval for how it’s more a day of national gluttony than a day of thanks.

I cut out all the juicy parts but you get the gist.

Except that isn’t what this blog is about and that isn’t why you’re here. Do me a favor though. Take a few minutes today to broaden your perspective and google “how indigenous people view Thanksgiving.”

Meanwhile, I am grateful today for my family and friends, for my little cat Scout and for the job that allows me to give him the lifestyle he believes he deserves. I’m grateful for my warm home, for fresh produce from the grocery store and and for all things in nature – even some of the creatures I don’t really like but that are vital to our ecosystem.

I am grateful for the ability to travel and adventure some and for having a camera on my phone so I can freeze time even when my good camera is at home.

I’m grateful for books and the authors who write them as well as for the small businesses across America that give our communities character. I am grateful for the wisdom to know when it’s appropriate to publish a diatribe on a national holiday and when it’s best to start again. I’m also grateful for a country where free speech allows me to decide that for myself.  

I’m grateful for lots more things including all my readers – particularly those of you who leave comments or contact me privately to chat about that day’s story. I truly enjoy hearing from you even though I have been struggling to keep up my end of the conversation lately! Things will be calmer soon. 

With that in mind, I would love to know something you’re grateful for this Thanksgiving. This isn’t a happy day for everyone, particularly those who have lost loved ones, but an exercise in gratitude makes the world seem brighter. 

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, friends!!

Norman Rockwell’s Thanksgiving

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It’s Thanksgiving in America. This is meant to be a day of thanks for the blessings we’ve enjoyed for the last year but it’s more a day of food and football. Tomorrow, as folks will spend the day buying a bunch of stuff they probably don’t need and can’t afford.

A Norman Rockwell painting we are not.

This painting is called “Home For Thanksgiving.” It was featured on the November 24, 1945 cover of The Saturday Evening Post. That was 77 years ago today.

The young man and his mother were real people. He was freshly home from the war and helping his mother with chores he likely would have hated doing in the Army Air Corps. Kitchen Patrol or KP duty probably didn’t seem so bad in the warmth of his mama’s kitchen.

Rockwell paid them each $15 to sit for the portrait. I read once that they owned the local dairy in their Vermont small town and that the young man was Rockwell’s milkman.

This painting was donated to the Eugene M. Connor Post 193 of the American Legion in Massachusetts many years ago. But they didn’t know it was an original and left it hanging in a hallway for decades. When someone offered $500 for what the Legion thought was a print, they took it to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts for appraisal.

After learning they owned an American treasure, they loaned it to the museum for display and safekeeping.

Just last year, the Legion sold it at auction for $4.3 million. This hefty sum went into a trust and interest earned will help pay bills and fund future repairs for the Legion.

It’s a beautiful slice of Americana and I like how it illustrates a nation transitioning from wartime into peacetime. Something so everyday like peeling potatoes probably felt almost luxurious to the soldier and his mother who had suffered untold sleepless nights in his absence.

Her relief is palpable.

Gratitude would have been the only thing that mattered in many households across the nation that Thanksgiving. Our soldiers were headed home. Life was returning to a new normal. Life was good.

Wherever you are in this world today, I hope life is good. Happy Thanksgiving!