Giving thanks

In church on Thanksgiving Day, Father Don pointed out that Thanksgiving is not a holy day. It actually has nothing to do with any religion. I believe he said the first Thanksgiving took place during George Washington's time but Abraham Lincoln was the president that declared that a day be set aside each year to give thanks.

Actually, in 1621 in Plymouth, Mass. the celebration of thanks was held by the Pilgrims who had sailed to our shores and survived. They were well acquainted with annual thanksgiving day celebrations. It is an ancient and universal custom. The Greeks had honored Demeter, goddess of agriculture; the Romans had paid tribute to Ceres, the goddess of corn; the Hebrews had offered thanks for abundant harvests with the Feast of Tabernacles. The Western World accepted these customs.

The Pilgrims had survived a very hard year, illnesses, severe weather, and other hardships had plagued them but they had a bountiful harvest and an abundance of food. Hence, thanksgiving celebration.

On October 1777 for the first time, all thirteen colonies joined in a common thanksgiving celebration. They were celebrating the victory over the British at Saratoga. It was a one time thing.

Finally the first national Thanksgiving proclamation was issued by President George Washington in 1789. However, not unlike some citizens today, there was a group of Americans that felt there was no need for a national celebration because a handful of early settlers had chosen to honor their survival. They looked on the day as honoring the settlers not as a day to give thanks. President Thomas Jefferson went so far as to actively condemn a national recognition of Thanksgiving during his two terms.

In 1827, a magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale, started a one woman crusade for a Thanksgiving celebration. She not only published editorials in her magazine but wrote letters to governors, ministers, newspaper editors and each incumbent President requesting that the last Thursday in November be designated as a tribute of joy and gratitude for the blessings of the year.

Finally in 1863, the Civil War had bitterly divided the nation and Mrs. Hale revved up her editorials with unflinchinglly patriotic fervor, and in September of that year just after the Battle of Gettysburg when the North had an important victory, Mrs. Hale prompted President Abraham Lincoln to issue a proclamation. He did so on October 3, 1863. He proclaimed the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.

In 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt shifted Thanksgiving back one week, to the third Thursday in November to increase the number of shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Hence, Black Friday!Ciao

Give Us This Day...

I had a suggestion from one of my family m;embers that I list the foods that I consumed on T-Day. I believe Dolberry was giong to try to eat 20 items on T-Day so I'll see how close I come to that.

• Early in the day: cream of wheat,
• one dried pineapple chunk
• one Tum
• another Tum
• two Tums
• two more Tums
• Later on: three potato chip fragments
• one Triskit w/salmon spread
• one more Triskit w/ salmon spread
• one Flat Bread fragment w/salmon spread (salmon spread, very good!)
• ten or twenty almonds (does that count as one or twenty?)
• 1 T of corn pudding
• 1 T of potatoes w/gravy
• 1 T of sweet potato casserole
• 1 T broc. casserole
• 3 T escalloped oysters
• 1 chunk of dark meat turkey
• 1 clover leaf roll (no one told me about Scott's rolls)
• 1 T dressing, otherwise known as stuffing
• 3 more T. of escalloped oysters
• 2 beverages of choice (Reisling)( served in grown-up glass )
• 1 small slice of rhubarb pie
• 1 small slice of sweet potato pie

• All followed by severe pains in the abdomen.
• Hasty departure to my home
• You don't want to know the rest and besides it negates all of the above.!
• Ciao

Competition

In an effort to have an official entry on record for the Great Shamrock Debacle, I am entering my first entry but it is not my best shot. I do hope you take note of the fact that it is purple and while it does not stand up as straight as the one other entry, it is doing its best. Ciao

Testing 1..2..3

I am trying to learn how to blog with pictures. Problem is I don't know where to go from here. I am definitely tech challenged.

Pain, Pain Go Away--

Don't let the title mislead you, I am not in pain at the moment. At least I don't think I am. Pain is all relative. A few years ago when I had one of my more drastic surgeries, a boy that was in my class at school, who lived not too far from me, came to visit. He was and assume still is a very sincere, serious boy. He told me that he knew just how I felt because he had had surgery once and he remembered how painful it was. When I enquired about the nature of his surgery, he said he had had his tonsils removed. A few weeks later he came to visit again and that time he told me that he had told his mom what he had said to me about his tonsilectomy and she said he needed to come back and tell me that he didn't really know how much more drastic my experience was and he was truely sorry.

You know, I don't think it was at all a goof-up on his part that he compared his experience to mine. When you think about it, his tonsillectomy was probably the most painful experience he had ever had and maybe unknowingly he was comparing his pain to mine, not the procedure. I thought about that a lot and realized that his commiseration was so accurate. He did know how I was feeling. He had experienced the greatest pain he had ever had and knew how it feels to be in that much pain. One could only hope that he will never suffer more pain than he did for that minor procedure. Dealing with head aches, skinned knees or knuckles, paper cuts, muscle aches, stomach aches will, by comparison, be not all that bad.Which brings me to the point I'm trying to make.

Measuring pain is a difficult task. Now they have these little charts in doctors' offices and hospital ER's and they hold the chart up for you to see and ask " How would you describe your pain? " The chart has a gradated thermometer type drawing of a scale from 1 to 10." What level of pain do you have?" I am always tempted to ask, " as compared to what? "If you have had many, many levels of pain at other times or have never had anything worse than a flu shot injection, how can you gauge your pain? A 3 or a 6 or an 8 or maybe a 10?

There are categories of pain: A piercing pain, a stabbing pain, a heavy pain, a dull ache, a pain that radiates, a pain that builds in intensity and then subsides and then builds again. They're all pains but how could you put a number on anyone of them?

Their are so many factors to consider when asking people what level of pain they are suffering. How about the people that are a pain in the neck? Even there it would require some kind of comparison, right?

I think I've given myself a headache, trying to figure this out, I don't know whether it's a 3 or a 7 but I'm going to go lie down!Ciao

Perspective

As you may or may not know my house was robbed last Wednesday. I've known many, many people that have had their homes invaded by thieves and they aptly describe their emotions just as I would. It is awful to feel so violated. The first reaction is one of astonishment that this has happened to me! My home is my safe place, my haven, my personal space, who would have the nerve to cross my threshold and help themselves to my possessions. Possessions that I value and am comforted by, not because of their monetary value but because of the memories that I have been saving up. I can look at certain possessions and recall happier times, or tender moments, or places I have visited. Possessions that help me reach back to the past and relive some of the experiences that I have had. Sort of a connection collection, so to speak.

Shakespeare said, "He who steals my purse, steals trash" he also said, "One man's trash is another man's treasure." Last year when a tornado hit a small rural area of Kentucky, they showed a woman on the nightly news that was standing in front of what had just hours earlier been her trailer home. She was crying and said." they say it is just junk, but it is MY junk! "

Each of us value different things. Among the things stolen from me was an article that Doc brought home to me when he got out of the Army after WWII. He told the story about how his battalion had liberated a small village in Italy that was near one of the German Concentration camps that they had captured. The village people took the Americans into their homes in thanksgiving for their liberation. An old Italian woman gave Doc a hand tooled cameo necklace to bring home to me. She had no money but wanted him to take something for giving them back their freedom.

The necklace had no clasp so I could never wear it but the cameos were exquisite and it was valuable to us because of what it represented. There were a few other items, a necklace that I got while visiting the Vatican, it had the Pieta on one side of the pendant and it was one of the items that Pope John Paul II had blessed, There was a gold coin on a gold chain that my grandchildren had given me one Christmas and also the gold locket and chain that Doc had given me on our 1st wedding anniversary 67 years ago. There were lots of other pieces of jewelry but those four were the irreplaceable items that I feel the most.

My home was just one of many that were broken into this past week. A woman that I knew back years ago but hadn't seen for many years, called me today and she had heard that I had been robbed and she wanted to share her experience also. She was enraged and resorted to calling the perp some very crude names and gave some ideas of what she would do to him if she ever got her hands on him. She vowed to press charges and see to it that they ,"put his sorry #&^@ in jail." She asked what action I had taken and proceeded to tell me that she calls the detectives at least twice a day and they don't always call her back. She said she wants her things back and she is not going to let up on the police until they get her things for her! She said if they don't have them back by next week she is calling Chief White and telling him that it is his job to see that our homes are safe and he needs to see to it that the police are doing what we are paying them to do!!! Vituperative language was sprinkled all through this tirade. She then listed some of the items that were missing but the one that she is going bonkers over is Billy Ray Cyrus' git tar 'pick that he gave her once when she saw him in concert. He had little Hannah Montana with him at the concert and he took her on stage to sing with him. She was only three and by d... she wants that 'gitar 'pick back. Her little granddaughter was just asking the other day if she could have the 'git tar' pick some day, and now it's gone! Some body's going to pay for this big time!! Whew!

I will see what happens next, I'm hoping the guy is apprehended before he gets rid of all the swag, so that I may get some things back. They are not worth thousands of dollars but to me they are worth a fortune.

The woman on the phone had one final question for me before she hung up; "Did they get in your panty drawer?" Ciao.

Bad News, good News

When a couple of our boys were little, we purchased an inflatable clown that was about 4 ft tall when when inflated. It was named Bozo, or Brillo or something like that. It had a rounded bottom so that when it was punched hard enough it fell down but promptly stood right back up again, only to be punched again! That's me! I fit that description exactly.

I lost some very,very sentimental keep-sakes in the dastardly deed perpetrated in my home yesterday but I have no other choice but to get back up again and wait for the next punch. I'll make every effort to dodge the next one. Life comes at ya' fast. Ciao

Alert!

It has come to my attention that my opponent is not above cheating! A person very close to the dolberry has knowledge of activities on his part that could make this an unfair competition. This is very devastating news to me because I do not relish playing the role of the lamb being led to the slaughter! I must be vigilant at all times and ramp up my blogging so as to foil the blogging perp that I have become involved with. I am up to the task.

I have been in tough spots before and have come out unscathed or relatively unscathed so I will be devoting much of my time trying to win against all odds. I must make every effort to outwit the wittiest! Ciao

Dog Gone!

Members of the animal kingdom have long been know to be man's best friends. Think about it. Before the industrial revolution man depended on beasts to help plow the fields, to uproot trees, pull the milk wagons, transport supplies, carry heavy loads, even carry people from place to place, the warriors rode their steeds into battle, the Pony Express carried the mail, what would the world have been without the beast's of burdon? Beasts still carry a heavy load in today's world even though we have become mechanized. Cows, my favorites, provide our milk, cheese, butter and other bi-products, cattle provide meat, chickens give us eggs, and cacciatore, turkeys and other fowls do their share. We depend on animals for thousands of things, footballs, gloves, feather pillows, down coats and the list goes on.

Having said all that, I want to make note of the role that dogs play in society. Is it any wonder that domesticated animals became so prominent in society? They are good companions that are naturally loyal, non-judgemental, faithful ,loving and protective. When we traveled through England, Scotland and Ireland and visited many cathedrals it was a surprise to me to see how many of the crypts that were in the cathedrals had life size stone figures of the dogs placed at the foot of their masters burial place.

When we visited Pompii we saw the dogs of Pompii, they live on the premises and follow the tourists and guides around all day every day. If a guide was distracted and had to stop for one reason or another the dog would move on to the next site and sit and wait for the guide to catch up. They belong to no one, people feed them scraps and they live their life time there and when their time comes they just lie down and die.

Today we have working dogs too. The K-nine corp has trained dogs to track down criminals, and help make arrests. It the airport in Rome ,Italy the polizia patrol the concourse with Uzzi in hand and a polizia dog at their side. We saw one dog take a man down moments after we arrived there. Scary.

We have Bloodhounds to track lost people or criminals or whatever. There are cadaver dogs, trained to find dead bodies, bomb dogs to sniff out explosives, and drug dogs to find drugs. On the Today show today they had a segment about a new dog job!

I've discussed before how prevalent allergies are . The peanut allergy has become the plague of
our time. We assume that all babies are born with the possibillity of a peanut allergy. Therefore babies are not allowed to have peanut butter or peanut products until the age of three. In the school lunch room we have separate tables for the Peanut butter crowd and the non-peanutbutter crowd. We have had to restrict 'bake sales' at school to store bought bakery supplies that have the listed ingredients on the labels so that no peanut or by product can be lurking in the cookie or cupcake that is being sold. Well maybe that can change!

According to the person on the Today Show they now have started training dogs to detect peanuts and peanut by products. They are Peanut sniffing dogs. They said one child already has one and it is allowed to go to school with him. If it sniffs a whiff of peanuts it will immediately sit down and refuse to move until the contraband is removed and he has been given a treat!

Should the kids that do not have the allergy have to stop bringing the traditional PB&J sandwich to lunch? Wouldn't that trigger the dogs olfactory sense and he would have to be given a treat? What if more than one kid has the allergy and he wants to bring his sniffing dog to school? Who takes the dog out to potty? Is that an added duty for the teacher? Will they have to add a critter sitter to the staff to take care of the sniffing dogs?

We had an art teacher one year that had a working dog that she brought to school with her every day. She had some medical problem that the dog could sniff outand warn her before she had a seizure. The kids loved the dog and he was quite friendly and seemed harmless BUT a few of the students were allergic to dogs and the parents were quite concerned about sending their child into this unsafe envirment. Problem: Art teacher goes or child withdraws from art class? Trials and tribulations abound. Fortunately we had no bomb threats that year so no bomb sniffers had to come. Ciao

Ha! The Owl Responds!

Okay, Dolberry, you're going down! I write ...therefore I blog! I had already sewn the seeds for my intended blog for today but I must digress when challenged by one so competitive as you. You may as well go ahead and concede the shamrock competition and get that out of the way and then get ready to eat humble pie. I hear it is not too tasty, I've never experienced it myself.


I will see how well I can perform under pressure, but meanwhile I will be concentrating on how to act when I end up being the winner. I like a gracious winner. I think being a good loser is over rated I think it is more difficult to be a good winner!

I will put forth the effort to study up on good winners. I'll try to perfect a few phrases that will be appropriate:" Nice try!" " You were pretty tough to beat!" " You are really coming along!" "Writers block is terrible, isn't it?" (I'm sure I can come up with others.)

OK, the gauntlet is down. Dolberry ,start your computer! Ciao

CAT NIP

Kudos to Dolberry for his Shamrock entry! I do now have a camera available but I have not yet mastered the skill of posting pictures on the blog site, or I would show my crop of shamrocks. I have both purple and green and they are spectacular, excuse me, I meant to say they WERE spectacular. They are spending the winter in the family room and they lose some of there zest for life down there. They are like bears, they hibernate and turn very,very ugly. But, not to worry when the gentle winds of spring blow back to my deck the shamrocks will once again burst forth in all their glory and be ready for serious competition.

It has been brought to my attention that there are reports of cats or maybe just one cat having Swine Flu in Iowa! I have been there(not in Iowa but Ohio) and done that! My encounter with the diseased cat took place in London, Ohio about 70 years ago. Believe me it was a life altering experience. Cat flu can be very painful and cause a lot of consternation in a small town and in a family.

One snowy Christmas day I was walking from one grandmother's house to another grandmother's house when I was attacked by my own grandmother's cat. The attack was unprovoked but my formerly loving grandmother swore up and down (as the saying goes) that the cat saw me and knew it was pay back time. My GM was under the impression that I had teased the cat the previous summer. Not entirely accurate.

When I went in the house to report the attack, my big brother went out to chastise the cat and it nipped him too! It ran under the shed and when my grandpa went out to confront the cat, it ran out of the shed and, yes, you guessed it; it nipped him also! Did Grandma blame them for their encounters? No!

The attacker whose name was Bib, died the next day. Woe is us! Grandpa reported it to the board of health in London and they promptly dug the cat up. (Grandpa had buried it in the garden.) and sent its head to Columbus for a 'cattopsy' and it was discovered that it was indeed gravely ill. They did not term it Cat Flu but referred to it as Rabies. Sort of a cross between Mad Cow disease and Swine Flu disease.

My brother, Grandpa and I all had to have a very painful series of injections to keep us from contracting the disease. The injections were unbelievably distressful, and we had to take 21 of them. One each day for three weeks. If we did not get the shots we could become dreadfully ill with hydrophobia.

I did not go mad as I could have but I did prepare for the worst. I promptly, at the height of my discomfort, make a list of all the people I was going to bite if I became afflicted with hydrophobia. My sister was high on the list, as a matter of fact, she was first on the list because she would shriek and pretend to run every time I got near her. She insisted that she would not sit next to me at the table during dinner, just in case I became rabid during the meal.!

The list took me awhile to compose because I felt it was my opportunity to repay any unjust treatment that I had suffered through in my life. It was a very satisfying task. There were a few nuns on the list too. Later in life I did see the error of my ways and try to make amends to them. Teaching junior high school gives one perspective on many things.

Fortunately, I did survive the treatment but I do not take it lightly when there is a report that cats may be afflicted with flu. Beware! Ciao.

Oink,Oink

The news in this morning's paper was certainly disconcerting. They are now reporting a pig somewhere in Indiana that has Swine Flu. They are keeping the location under wraps for now so as not to stir up all the other pigs. No, maybe that's not the reason, maybe they are just protecting the pig's privacy.I don't really intend to make light of this but it befuddles me that in the same article they say, "Not to worry, people can't get swine flu from eating pork". As further reassurance they have a recipe on the next page for Pork Tenderloin with Red Grapes and Thyme.

I remember a few years ago when we were dealing with Mad Cow's Disease. I had to close my eyes when the news programs reported that news accompanied by film clips of cows falling down. I could not watch the indignity of cows falling down like common drunks. Certainly we won't have to watch pigs sneezing and coughing into their arm pits; leg pits? Whatever.

Many other nations, including Canada, Australia, Argentina, Ireland, Norway and the United Kingdom have had herd infections that were diagnosed as swine flu after conducting tests on the animals. The ban on pork imports to China was just ended after six months. The Chinese were expected to re-open their import markets which would be good news for the pork producers.We'll have to see if that happens.

If the media decides to give the sick pigs lots of news coverage and get everyone stirred up by casting aspersions on pork consumption and have the pigs line up to get vaccinated by the vaccine that is not yet available, then what?

Maybe it will be a good thing! It can take every one's attention away from worrying about the seasonal greetings and seasonal icons being displayed. Once again, because of a lack of education we must suffer through, what used to be, a joyous season, by rantings from the tin foil hat crowd. First of all they, the nebulous "they", refer to the Christmas tree as a religious symbol! In Frankfort, KY when the tree on the Capital lawn was referred to as a" Holiday "Tree their was an outcry from some"Christians!" Do they not know that" holiday "is a portmanteau for "holy day"!

The winter solstice is the time in the Northern Hemisphere when the sun is farthest south of the equator; it is in December on the 21st or 22nd. In ancient Britain, Ireland, and France there was a Celtic religious order of priests, soothsayers, judges, poets, etc that were worshipers of the sun and oak trees and Forrest's. Their major worshiping day was on or around the winter solstice. This was before Christianity came into being. They were ,and are known as, Druids. It is such an interesting story to read about but I have not the time to record it at this time. Anyway, that,by a series of events that took place in the 8th or 9th century is how the custom was started of decorating a tree at winter solstice. It is not a "Christian " symbol. Through the centuries it became a custom to decorate a tree at winter solstice which happens to coincide with the Christian celebration of Christ's birth. One of the beliefs is that the evergreen tree is a symbol of eternal life, among other things. It's not a time for fighting and arguing over what it symbolizes. The season is supposed to be a time of goodwill to all men. ALL. Knock off the silly arguing and sit back and enjoy the beauty of a tree lighted with bright and colorful lights and shiny ornaments and do your celebrating of your private beliefs with your family, friends or self.!

I am having pork and sauerkraut for dinner and hope the pig did not have any illnesses before he met his violent end. Makes me want to become a vegetarian! Pigs are one of the more intelligent animals in the kingdom. More intelligent than some of the people that slaughter them.

Bon appetit! Ciao

Week-end amusement!

I just had a banner weekend. I sometimes sit here at home for the weekend and think about the times I so looked forward to the weekend. Now I can pretty much act like its the weekend every day. I don't have to get up each morning and go off to school, and I regret that, and I don't have any one else to tend to or accommodate, and I regret that, too. Poor me! But this past weekend was a winner!

Friday, as I mentioned before , I went with Karen and Paul to Kris and Tim's house along with Scott and Kathy, Abby and Gus, for pizza. They live just across the street from Bellarmine College. After our pizza we all walked over to the campus to enjoy the Halloween activities. They had lighted pumpkins/jack-o-lanterns lining all of the walkways, and roads throughout the whole campus. It was spectacular. I'm not sure who carved the pumpkins, it could have been some of the students, I don't know but they were so creative and original. Some were elaborately carved with spiders, cats, monsters, clowns and many other designs and some had primitively carved faces. Square eyes, square nose and square mouth. They looked like something I might have carved or perhaps Maureen or Rowan but never the less, beautiful. It was overwhelming to see. There must have been at least a thousand of them! We toured around the campus to see the displays and noted the statue of the Knight on His Horse Sculpture, sculpted by Bob Lockhart and finally found ourselves in a huge line that had donuts at the end of it. It had started to rain, just a soft drizzly rain and we re-thought standing in line for the donut at the end of the jack-o-lantern trail and headed back to Kris and Tim's house before the drizzle turned into a down pour.

The organization that had sponsored the event had members sprinkled throughout the crowd handing out treats to the little goblins. When we got back to Kris and Tim's all of us except Paul and Tim scoped out the treats in the pillow cases, and plastic pumpkins and tested a few of them , just to make sure they were safe. Uhhh, while Paul and Tim drove up to the Krispy Kreme for donuts! There were a dozen Halloween decorated donuts and a dozen still warm glazed. I personally felt compelled to test both kinds. Great fun for all of us watching the children in their garbs having such a good time.

On Sunday Linda and Larry and I went to see "Chicago" at the Center for the Arts . All of us had seen the movie some time ago. I loved the movie and so I was glad to see the live performance. It was very good. The dancers were so alive and in perfect sync and enthusiastic throughout the whole performance. The orchestra was on the stage seated on risers that were outlined with tubular, various colored lighting. Very unique. The dancers did their dancing just below the orchestra on the front part of the stage.

It was interesting comparing the two different presentations. In the movie version everything was spelled out for you, so to speak. We knew the reason for the 'murder' that put Roxie in jail and the crimes of the others and the blatant activity of the jail house matron that plied her trade of extortion on each of the prisoners. The shenanigans of the girls trying to convince their shyster lawyers that they were innocent was plain to see through. The music was most definitely jazzy, and the lyrics left no doubts; " He had it comin..." and others like ," They call me Mr Cellophane..." It was marvelous.

Whereas, in the live version it took on all the markings of a good burlesque show. The costumes were rather scanty, sheer black tights and black panties and bras and the dancing and singing told the story or alluded to the facts of the storyline. Most of the cast did an outstanding job, I was not too impressed with the shyster lawyer, I guess I saw Richard Gere "tap dance' around the facts in the movie and still having that in mind I could not give it up for this pretender. Other than that ,I applauded the entire performance.

I think I was meant to be a dancer and singer, I just know I was. My spirits lift and my heart sings and my fingers snap and my feet tap when I hear that jazzy music. I put on little shows, when I was young, and I sang and danced and was the star of the show. Actually, I was the only one in the show but believe me I was dazzling! If you had only seen me then! Wow! I tried not to hide my lights under a bushel or whatever but the only live audience I ever had was my grandmother, aunt and my aunt's boyfriends. They would pay me a dime if I would recite pieces for them and were fully oblivious to the fact that I was a born dancer and singer! I regret that my talent was wasted all these years. I suppose it's too late now! Ciao!










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