Talking turkey

Well, Bloggers, its one week until Thanksgiving, more popularly known lately as 'Turkey Day'. Do you suppose that's because in this time of an unpopular war, political distrust and disgust, sky high gasoline prices, global warming, insurance highway robbery, the housing debacle, tumbling investments, border paranoia, and shrinking personal incomes, people don't feel that they have a heck of a lot to give Thanks for? They'd rather just stuff themselves like a turkey on...well, turkey? Is the reference because everybody eats turkey now on 'the day'? I think not. I personally know people who eat ham.

So, what are you doing for Turkey Day? Danny and I are going to younger daughter Amy's house. We're having turkey...and ham. It's Amy and Elias's first Thanksgiving feast in their own house, and they've invited twenty family members and friends in all. A tall task with Amy being exactly two months from giving birth, too. 'Course we're all helping.

Just like the first Thanksgiving feast back in cold and snowy Massachusetts. That dinner featured folks giving thanks for the bounty of the feast, produced with their own labor, and thanking God for being safely together to enjoy it. Family and friends, neighbors...Pilgims and Indians.

Its a little different for us in 2007 though. In America we have an abundance of food, but very little of it is grown by our countrymen. We get it from the supermarket or from take out places and frequently do little other than reheat what somebody else already prepared. I wonder what the pilgrims would have thought of the microwave oven? Thanksgiving day parades? Football games on HDTV? (Probably have jumped for joy). Still, a feast is a feast be it in the seventeenth or twenty first century. Except of course, for the turkey. For some, nothing has changed at all.

Did you know that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be our national symbol? Oh, come on, give the guy a break. He said some great stuff, invented the lightning rod and the Franklin stove and the hundred dollar bill. Okay, I made that one up. He didn't invent the hundred dollar bill. But he did say, "guests and fish smell after three days." So, I guess its a good thing that Thanksgiving is a one day feast!

Live long and prosper.

PS Franklin also said, "The early bird get the worm."
I'm having waffles, what about you?