The Collapse Chronicle November 23
The Thanksgiving Day Edition
The Open Secret of Thanksgiving, Putting the 'Thanks' Back in Thanksgiving, Being Alone on Thanksgiving Doesn’t Have to Be Miserable, Seneca on Gratitude and What It Really Means to Be a Generous Human Being, A Thanksgiving Message from the Archangels, and more… in the Thanksgiving edition of The Collapse Chronicle!
For this edition, we've done something different. Thanksgiving is a day to reflect upon our lives and give thanks for the small things and simple miracles that make it bearable. To that end, today's edition is a collection of Thanksgiving related stories and reflections.
Thanksgiving is for gratitude, the one day of the year we take stock of our lives and give thanks for the lives we have and the people in them. And on Thanksgiving, I remind myself of riches taken for granted.
I give thanks for simple miracles. To me it’s a miracle that the lights come on when I flip a switch, and the water emerges from the tap when I turn the knob. These simple everyday miracles remain marvels to me. Anyone who is ever had to carry water from a pump will appreciate the labor-saving marvel of indoor plumbing.
I'm grateful for a furnace that heats water and warms my home, and that I do not have to cut and stack firewood. Or shovel coal. I'm old enough to remember having a house with a coal chute, and my father going down to the basement and shoveling coal into a furnace. No part of me misses those days.
And I give thanks for public sanitation, perhaps the single greatest benefit to public health ever invented. Doubt it? Think typhoid and cholera transmitted by contaminated water.
As Helen Rosner says in our lead article today, Thanksgiving is “an opportunity to extend the ritual of gratitude outside of ourselves, to see both our astounding luck at being together and its inverse: that for many people, in the past and today, this day is not a celebration, and this country is not a haven. Bring everyone you can to the table, or let yourself be brought to it. Give thanks for whom you love and what you have. And if you find yourself facing catastrophe, in or out of the kitchen, add more butter.”
As each day unfolds and becomes a battle for quality of life, I am grateful for my smart, funny wife, who informs the small civilization we’ve created in our home with love, good humor, and endless stories. I am grateful for my extended family, many miles away, and for my friends. I am also grateful for each of my readers. May you have a warm and tender Thanksgiving, no matter how you choose to spend it. More butter.
