Please Have a Wonderful Thanksgiving

by paradox

Here it is already but time and calendar call for duty, the scatter is on by wheel, rail and wing as we gather with friends and family for Thanksgiving. I know I speak for Mary, Steve, Turkana, Oly Mike and all the writers here wishing you safe travels, happy times with missed friends, great food and a wonderful day with the people who are most precious to you.

I’m on the roll myself in a few hours, a spin of 75 miles to be with my parents before the big day. There are many things to do and I get to play with my Weber rotisserie toy, a 12 lb. stuffed and stitched bird twirled with hickory smoke. I had a dry run last week with a pork roast and I’m confident all will up to the standards of the Food Channel.

I have been very quiet this year, I know, but I have been ill and disturbed in my soul, I didn’t feel like I was in the right place and I didn’t want to cause any harm. I had this excellent adviser at the University, right, Lydia Andrade, she was new and was describing the first time she wrote on the chalkboard: “Okay, now it’s time to show everybody my big ass!” Sorta like that, why put it out there for everybody to talk about?

Which reminds me, my former chair Terry Christensen wrote me a personal note to donate to the department scholarship fund, the sumbitch knows how I feel about students and a personal note, that must be done soon. MeteorBlades at Daily Kos has a bill on a reservation to pay, ‘n dern it I promised a professor a book review today before I realized it was Thanksgiving. Read the book, but it will have to wait. Perhaps I can handle one before I take off.

If pressed to define one of event of gratitude for 2012 it would be the steady rise of blogger Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon into the mainstream publication ranks like USA Today. I have been in and around blog forms since the very beginning in 2002, you know, helping and encouraging many writers in ways I haven’t talked about much. Since then it has always been a fervent dream of mine that somehow blogging would enable the little people to have their voice heard, to hear logic, reason and passion in a real voice that isn’t so horribly constrained by our putrid corporate journalism. Amanda is easily one of the top ten bloggers in the country, brilliantly melding modern feminism with a fiercely independent perspective the United States desperately needs in its cultural politics.

We’re all the better for it, and it’s deeply gratifying to see a blogger make it to the national stage. There are many other ways for the little people to make a real difference in the ether other than professional freelancing, of course, but the big time is, well, the big time. Perhaps issues that tear at my life so would have been very different had the patriarchy not been so dominant in American cultural life, good luck and go get ‘em, Ms. Amanda Marcotte.

Well. Time to pack the truck and move through life. Now that the possible window of harm has closed with the election the dream will live on and I will be here in my tiny way more often, how much more I cannot say. Flawed and uncomfortable, yes, but still an American with a voice. It’s enough.

Please be well, please be safe and content with the love of family and friends tomorrow. I hope the light, laughter and food of your people give your mind and soul memories that will nourish you forever. Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at The Left Coaster.