Book Review: A Match Made for Thanksgiving

Title: A Match Made for Thanksgiving

Author: Jackie Lau

Date: 2019

ISBN: 978-1-989610-02-2

Quote:  "Why is it so difficult to have a one-night stand?"

Duh.

Lily Tseng has been told she's boring, so she decides to make herself more interesting to other idjits like the wormboy who told her that. She puts on a skimpy dress, goes to a bar, and tries to pick a man for a one-night stand. Instantly Nick Wong pops up. Having much in common--both have some Chinese ancestry, both spend time in Toronto, both feel excited by saying the same formerly unprintable word, and both like Nanaimo Bars--they proceed straight home for the one-night stand and, unlike real people who have one-night stands, immediately fall in love. But they have flopped into bed, drunk, first.

Well, it's not a sweet romance. It's not a romance I'd want to read on Thanksgiving Day. (And there's some intentional ambiguity about which Thanksgiving Day is being celebrated; neither the Tsengs nor the Wongs seem to care about the history, but they'll be thankful when their thirty-something children make them grandparents, they have made clear.) 

If you like an explicit romance with frequent mentions of body parts and a formerly unprintable word, plus close-knit families and the promise of three more siblings' holiday-theme romances, this one's for you.

Morgan Griffith's Thanksgiving Message

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9):

"

Households throughout the Ninth District, our greater commonwealth and the country are preparing for Thanksgiving.

Discussions are occurring over the method of cooking the Thanksgiving turkey and ensuring enough of the right food is available. The dining room table is organized for a feast, and maybe even a guest bedroom or couch is tidied up for incoming family.

On Sundays around Thanksgiving, it is customary to hear the hymn “We Gather Together” in churches.

The Christian song’s history is rooted in the Dutch war of liberation against the king of Spain. The Spanish were strong supporters of Roman Catholicism. The Spanish king was attempting to restrict the Protestant Dutch from exercising their faith and gathering at places of worship.

The Dutch were engulfed in years and years of battles.

In reference to the struggles of the Dutch people during this time, the hymn reads: “the wicked oppressing now cease from distressing...Let thy congregation escape tribulation.”

The hymn underscores the importance of community and faith centered around the Lord.

Meanwhile, people in England dealt with domestic problems of their own. Overpopulation with no room in the peerage for second, third and fourth sons, coupled with concerns of an overbearing government, caused people to reconsider their lifestyle options. Eager to improve their lives, the New World presented an opportunity for renewed fortune, promise and often religious freedom.

In 1607, the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown was founded in the colony of Virginia.

In 1619, others followed suit. That September, Captain John Woodlief and 36 men embarked on their own journey to Virginia. They battled stormy conditions sailing aboard the Good Ship Margaret from Bristol, England.

The wearied sailors and passengers arrived at their destination in December. They founded Berkeley Hundred, a settlement further up the James River from Jamestown.

Arrival at their colonial destination following the months-long journey became cause for celebration and prayer: “We ordain that this day of our ship's arrival … in the land of Virginia, shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

While many children are taught in school that the Pilgrims held the very first Thanksgiving in Massachusetts two years later in 1621, Virginia is credited with being a foundational player in establishing the tradition, which is why I believe all the common Thanksgiving imagery is merely Massachusetts envy towards Virginia. The Berkeley tradition was celebrated annually until the community was destroyed in an Indian conflict. I should note the Massachusetts Pilgrims only celebrated their Thanksgiving feast once.

In his 1963 Thanksgiving Proclamation, President John F. Kennedy recognized Virginia’s role: “Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and in Massachusetts, far from home in a lonely wilderness, set aside a time of thanksgiving. On the appointed day, they gave reverent thanks for their safety, for the health of their children, for the fertility of their fields, for the love which bound them together and for the faith which united them with their God.”

U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr. entered the story of the Virginia First Thanksgiving into the Congressional Record in 1969.

The modern annual Virginia Thanksgiving Festival at Berkeley Hundred, known better to some as Berkeley Plantation, pays homage to the contributions of Captain Woodlief and the original settlement. This year, the festival celebrated its 63^rd year commemorating America’s first Thanksgiving.

Berkeley Plantation also is the ancestral home of two U.S. presidents: 9^th President William Henry Harrison, which is where he was born, and 23^rd President Benjamin Harrison.

Aside from issuing proclamations, presidents engage in other customs around Thanksgiving time. One such custom is the pardoning of turkeys.

This practice allegedly stems from Abraham Lincoln. Legend holds it that Lincoln spared the life of a turkey at the behest of his son. Later presidents like Kennedy and Ronald Reagan held turkey pardon events before it became an annual tradition in 1989.

The National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation takes place at the White House. During the Obama and Trump Administrations, some of the pardoned turkeys ended up at Virginia Tech!

While I will not be granting any clemency to the turkey my wife cooks, I will be thanking God for all the blessings I have received.

In my house, like the Dutch and Captain Woodlief, we will gather together and place our trust and thanks in the Almighty.

No matter what your religious tradition is, I wish all a happy Thanksgiving!

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office.  You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives." 

Memes That Remind You of a Favorite Show or Movie?

Say what? I don't have a "meme garden." But let's see what Google can do today...a movie and a dash of snark...

 

And a happy, brain-restful Thanksgiving weekend to all...for those going offline for the weekend today, a tip from this web site: Try to find out one brand-new thing about each relative that you didn't know before. "That she's even fatter this year" and "That he's a stubborn wingnut" do not count. Make a list: name of relative, new fun fact--their favorite song, funniest childhood memory story, all-time favorite car model, anything you can think of them to ask them about that maintains a festive mood. 

If you liked these memes, check out everyone else's at http://www.longandshortreviews.com/miscellaneous-musings/wednesday-weekly-blogging-challenge-for-november-22-2023/ . I laughed. 

Thankful Friday: The Post I Should Have Done

Somebody proposed, as a corrective to the "Black Friday" hype and excess that crowds out Thanksgiving, calling it "Buy Nothing Friday." 

Well, bleep that. Friday is market day in my town. This post is appearing early so you can read it before you go out and shop. Or, if you like to read slowly, shop now and come back to it. People who don't shop on Friday are the ones who "have to" shop on Saturday, which is the day the Bible sets apart for rest and worship, or on Sunday, which is the day for visiting and entertaining friends, at church or at home.

The privilege of shopping is something for which modern Americans should be thankful, so that continues the mood of this weekend nicely. 

Now, about the post I should have done yesterday...

I did what I often do with this blog, in this season of (thank God and the sponsors) reliable Internet access. I read a friend's blog, clicked on a link, thought of a lot to add, wrote a nice snarky post and scheduled it for the next day that was open for a post. Thanksgiving Day, that was. Well, if people were online on Thanksgiving Day they ought to enjoy something snarky to read, I thought, clicking the "Publish" button.

But it does not express the spirit of thanksgiving, nor does it reflect what I did on Thanksgiving Day:

I stayed up most of the night, reading and writing, and cooking, and keeping lights on and shadows moving at the windows to discourage the Professional Bad Neighbor.

He still drives. He's been driving up in the dead of the night regularly, watching for a deer who is bounding in gleeful circles around him. 

In the past, sharing the HSP gene made him the sort of poacher who saw a deer and bagged it, but no more. Time and glyphosate are catching up with him. I've been sitting up all night, 'cos night is when the Internet runs best, and I feel the effects of trying to be a nocturnal human too, but not as badly as the P.B.N. does. It's not nice to laugh at what might be the effects of age, because one's own time is sure to come, but in this case I believe they are more the effects of his evildoing, and I just laugh and laugh at the decline of the P.B.N.'s special abilities, which so many of our other relatives kept into their eighties, and he's losing while only in his sixties. Give it up, you geriatric weasel, I chortle. You're so slow these days you might as well be some poor old White Man From Town. 

("White Man From Town" is a reference to a vintage Stephen King movie. As when those shorter-than-the-average-baby-boomer friends and I were dancing and roaring along with "Short People," it's not being used to refer to White people generally, but to a specific kind of person that is usually White. The P.B.N. and I, and the more or less mutual relatives involved, are legally White.)

So, my job happens to be well suited to night-shift work. I work the night shift and sometimes I do think it slows me down, like remembering to post things on the most appropriate days.

I fell asleep just after letting the fire go out, leaving the rice to dry out slowly on a cooling burner, and dozed until the first car rolled up at 8 a.m.

It was a sunny, festive day, warm for November, and people came up and enjoyed being festive and thankful. I woke up and was festive and thankful. The P.B.N. slunk away home. The rice came out perfect. There was extra meat for the cats.

About 1:30 p.m. the P.B.N. rolled past, accompanied by a young nephew who looked bloated and likely to have a heart attack before age forty. His whole side of the family have a peculiar sort of face. On the short, slim, trim ones it looks like a charmingly quirky smile until you've seen them in a bad mood and realized that it's a permanent birth defect. On this big puffy kid it is hideous.  

About 2:00 p.m. the evil wind blew, with that smell that might be some sort of freshly cut vegetation, or at least freshly cut rotten vegetation, except that, hello, it's November and there is no fresh vegetation to be cut, so you know it's that "Roundup" poison. The decent human beings left as fast as they could drive away, one vehicle at a time, without bumping into one another.

The evildoers sat in their truck till about 6 p.m., not freezing, unfortunately, but inhaling their own poison while not seeing any sign of the wily deer. I was really hoping to see at least one of them collapse and the other one not have the strength to take him home. That did not happen. But hey, knowing what I have to look forward to this weekend and what my nice relatives have to look forward to, I think life owes me the sight of at least one glyphosate poisoner going down into a long, slow, horrible time on life-support machinery...the kind of thing that will make the rest of the Rotten Branch of the Family Tree paupers, and force them to sell houses and land cheap, so that my nice relatives can reclaim our ancestral land easily and my rich ones can decide what to do with the frackable farms from which the Professional Bad Neighbor is trying to move away. I recommend trying to reclaim the land, but only on account of the aquifer. 

Actually, I think we need a law to the effect that spraying anything you can't drink, outdoors, costs the person doing it any right ever to own land anywhere. Professional insecticide applicators could live in nice government-funded flats. Idiots who don't know any better than to spray poisons on mere plants should live in sub-basement apartments, preferably in New Orleans, where all the water has passed through eight or ten other bodies and smells like it, too, and a good bit of that water seeps in around the windows in wet weather.

I am not going to feel very pleasant for the rest of this weekend. 

When unpleasant feelings are unavoidable one might as well at least think pleasant thoughts, so I went online and started opening posts on other people's pleasant blogs. Before even reading those posts I realized that this web site needs a Thanksgiving post about some people for whom we thank God, and for whom we pray...Not all of these people ever were on the blog roll widget, even when it was working properly. Not all of them blog or e-mail regularly. Some of them are Tweeps whom I've followed and/or who've followed me for years during which the anti-private-Twits algorithm has blocked our tweets from one another's home pages. Nevertheless, this web site thanks them for the content they feed it.

This list is a draft of a Page that is going up, in a few weeks, to replace the broken blog roll widget. There will be more names on the Page. These are just the first few people I try to follow who popped into my mind.

I GIVE THANKS FOR

Private people we know in real life who do not have screen names, who are not to be named, photographed, or discussed in any detail on any computer connected to the Internet

Private clients who've exchanged e-mail with me but not disclosed public web addresses

Adayahi and family

Alana Mautone

Amy Singer, a.k.a. Knittymag

Andrei Codrescu

Andria Perry

Anne Lamott

April Munday

Barb Radisavljevic

Barb Taub

Beth Ann Chiles

Candace Owens

Carey Gillam

Carolina, a.k.a. Carolinaily

Dan Lewis

Daniel J Robles

Dave Barry, @rayadverb

David B. Clear

David French

David I. Ramadan

Diane Zoller-Ciatto, a.k.a. Jersey Nana

Dinesh D'Souza

Dsnake1

East Sussex Wanderer

Ellen Hawley

Ena Valikov, a.k.a. Notorious KGB Aggie, a.k.a. @beachvetlbc

Erin Brockovich

Fayanora

Gene Weingarten

Glenn Beck and The Blaze

The Grouch

Hanan Habibzai

Hazel Stark

Helene Rush

Idiotgrrrl, a.k.a. Pat Mathews

Iris Yang

Janis Evans

Javier Reinoso, @reinosoj

JD Edwin

J.D. Tuccille

Jeanne Frost, a.k.a. JP Sixbear

Jee Leong Koh

Jendi Reiter

Jerry Jenkins

JJ Pryor

John McCutcheon

John McDougall and Mary, Craig, and Heather

John Scalzi

Jonah Goldberg

KA Ashcomb

Karen Linamen

Kat Murti

KerrAvonsen

Kraeuter Verbena

Larry Elder

Laura Ingraham

Laura McKowen

LB Johnson and Barkley's heirs

Limyaael

Linda Ann Nickerson

Linda Lee Lyberg, a.k.a. Charmed Chaos

Lisiwayu and family

Lizza Aiken

Lydia Schoch

Lyn Lomasi, a.k.a. Momie Tullottes, and Richard Rowell

Magaly Guerrero

Margaret Atwood

U.S. Senator Mark Warner

The Marmelade Gypsy and his human Jeanie

Meg Swansen

Melissa and Mudpie

Messy Mimi

Michael S. Hart and his heirs, a.k.a. Project Gutenberg

Michelle Malkin

Millionhair, a.k.a. Morgan Mei

Moshow

MOTUS, aka Michelle's Mirror, and all the Moti

U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9)

Naomi Parker, @naogannet

Neil Gaiman

Pamela Dean

Pat Myers

Penny Nance

Petfinder

Plough

Priscilla Bird, a.k.a. Pbird

Proud Boomer

Rachel Parent

Ralph Nader and USPIRG

Revived Writer

Rick Bailey

Rita Quillen

Roadsend Naturalist

Rob Kistner

Robert Kennedy (Jr.)

Roger Latour

Rokujira

Rommy Cortez-Driks

Rosemary Nissen-Wade

Ruth Cox, bereaved human companion of Valentino

Sara McNulty, a.k.a. Purple Pen

SARK

Scott Adams

Shaunti Feldhahn

Son of Sobieski

Stephen King, a.k.a. Big Steve (no, he's not a close relative, and "King" is the name of the founder of the town where I chose this screen name)

Stryck

Susan Jarvis Bryant

Tamara Lebret

Virginia Delegate Terry Kilgore (R-1)

U.S. Senator Tim Kaine

Virginia Senator Todd Pillion (R-40)

Tom Cox

Trish Nicolson

Vandana Shiva and David

Veronik Avery

Virginia in California

Vivian Zems

Wendy Welch

Yona and family

The Young Grouch

Ysabetwordsmith, a.k.a. Elizabeth Barrette

Zazzle

Holiday Shopping and Thanksgiving Dinner with Compost

So after Wednesday's trip to Michaels, where I bought three "Pounds of Love" (blanket yarn) with the giftcard because the cotton I wanted was priced higher than it is at the other stores, I did some other things and then cooked Thanksgiving dinner. Having written a short story in which a character serves something similar to my Rice a la Garbage to visitors, I did that. It doesn't seem to have made anyone sicker than we were already. Here is the recipe.

That's not the color I bought. Amazon is not showing a picture of the color I bought. The company call the color chestnut; it's not the color of chestnuts or of chestnut wood. Yarn shoppers now know which color I mean.

Equipment

1. A Dutch Oven type of cooking pot with a nice tight lid. Both sealing in the steam and sealing out the compost are crucial for this recipe. Don’t use the pretty, enameled kind of Dutch Oven for cooking directly in a frugal fire. Plain, heavy metal is good.

2. A secure container for a small cooking fire—either a barrel, or a pit in the ground, or a grill, that allows 6-8 inches (about 20cm) around and below the pot.

3. An average day’s supply of junk paper—junkmail, newspapers, manuscripts, wrappers, etc. About 50 pieces of paper will do. If you use canned vegetables or packaged rice, add the wrappers. One or two pieces of thin flimsy plastic (wrappers, photos, supermarket shopping bags) can help get the paper going in damp weather. Plastic that won't lie flat in a stack of papers burns poorly and releases toxic fumes, so it should be sent in for professional recycling.

4. Dry wood or charcoal: Rice can be cooked over a big fire, of course, but what I’m describing is a frugal little fire designed to get rid of trash and economize on fuel. By cleaning up what your hedge, shade trees, and fruit trees drop on the ground you should have a nice collection of dead wood in your shed. Trees shed lots of twigs and sticks, relatively few logs. For this recipe you don’t need to use up any logs. Take a scant handful of twigs and sticks, about a foot long and not more than an inch thick.

5. Contents of your Sun-Mar toilet, the drier the better. (Remember, you’re meant to put as much dry organic matter as possible—vegetable scraps, garden prunings and clippings, paper, peat—in the Sun-Mar to help soak up and dry out liquids. Even the sand or commercial litter that sticks to cat excrement won’t hurt anything in a Sun-Mar toilet, although it certainly would in an oldfashioned water-flush toilet..) Recognizable food scraps or excrement will dry out and burn slowly, making lots of foul smoke. Burn only well carbonized, peaty looking stuff that will char further and retain heat.

Ingredients

1. Meat, fish, beans, or those soy-wheat “vegetarian meat analogs” if you can eat them, are optional. For this recipe the important thing about any protein you add is that it needs to be fully precooked so that it warms up as the rice does. Grilling over a trash fire? Urgh. So use leftovers from the refrigerator if you have them, or use a can of your protein of choice.

2. Packet of quick-cooking rice. For cooking over a trash fire, Success Rice, Minute Rice, and Zatarain’s rice mixes are ideal. The company has been relatively proactive about glyphosate, so the rice is relatively safe, and the packets take just about as long to cook as an average day’s supply of burnable garbage takes to burn.

3. Water to cook the rice.

4. Vegetables, spices, and nuts are optional. If you like, or don’t hate, garlic and turmeric, they’re rich in trace minerals and good for blood pressure and immunity.

Mix & Match Variations

* Some Zatarain’s flavors are quite spicy (several with turmeric). You can extend meals, add fibre and protein, and also mellow the flavor by combining a packet of flavored rice with a packet of plain brown rice.

* All Zatarain’s flavors go well with canned chicken. If using fish, other canned meat, or “meat analogs,” test to find your favorites.

* All rice, with or without meat, goes well with any member of the Allium family. I like wild garlic in season. I live close enough to Georgia to have access to Vidalia onions in summer; they’re worth paying for.

* All rice, with or without meat, goes well with any kind of beans.

* Zatarain’s Jambalaya Rice goes well with a little extra water and okra, when you have a safe source of okra.

* Zatarain’s Yellow Rice goes well with green peas—fresh, canned, or frozen--when you have a safe source of peas.

* Zatarain’s Spanish Rice positively begs for tomatoes, when you can trust your source of tomatoes.

* Zatarain’s Long Grain & Wild Rice goes well with fish.

* Zatarain’s Mexican Rice with Pinto Beans is better with additional pinto beans, when you have a safe source of beans.

* Wild greens picked out of your garden or pesticide-free not-a-lawn are best, to my taste, when they’re nibbled raw, leaf by leaf until your body tells you you’ve had enough. Non-wild greens go very well with rice and any form of chicken or turkey, but they soak up glyphosate and other nasty residues; I've gone off them.

* Venison is special. Deer are one of those species that nature really seems to have intended us to eat; they will overpopulate, and the consequences of deer overpopulation are nasty. As deer populations are increasing, I'd rather see male deer on a grill than on someone's grille--or beside the road. However, some alarming diseases have been found in local deer. Others ate my share of the venison that was consumed at this Thanksgiving Dinner. After age 80 I plan to eat venison.

Method

1. Clear fully carbonized residues away from fireplace. Make sure the Dutch Oven has a solid support. If not using a grill rack, put a flat stone, brick, or log in the center of the fireplace and surround it with compost. Compost should not touch the Dutch Oven.

(Important: In Virginia a barrel fire is almost idiot-proof—scraps of paper will occasionally blow out of the barrel on the updraft, but 99% of the time they’ll burn out harmlessly even if they land in the woodpile, because nothing ever gets dry enough to blaze up the way wildfires do in California. Barrel fires are legal even during drought-related bans on outdoor fires, but even on the East Coast we need to have a few jugs of water around a fireplace. Someone should watch a fire as long as flames are visible. I once talked to an old lady who once saw a scrap of paper blow out of a barrel and ignite dry vegetation in the yard.)

2. Wash hands thoroughly, combine ingredients in the Dutch Oven, and set it in its place.

3. If cooking in a barrel, you almost have to use a modified tepee-type fire-lay. Arrange paper, twigs, and sticks in a circle (more or less) around the Dutch Oven, letting them stand up vertically to maximize draft. Ignite. Continue adding pieces of tinder as the first few blaze away. By the time the paper's used up the twigs should be, too, and the sticks should have burned down to ashy coals.

4. If the weather is right you may be able to hear the rice boiling in the Dutch Oven. If not, rice will cook anyway. Know your pot. When mine feels too hot to hold, the rice is hot enough to cook. Once the rice is hot, the tinder is burned up, and the wood is smoldering nicely, leave them alone for 20 to 25 minutes.

5. Carefully remove the pot from the fire. It may or may not still be too hot to hold. It will be dirty. Dust off ashes and wipe off soot before lifting the lid to check the rice. If weather conditions are right it will be perfectly cooked and ready to eat. In cold weather you may need to burn another handful of sticks and let the rice simmer for another 10 or 15 minutes.

Thanksgiving Day was sunny and warm, over 60 degrees Fahrenheit in the afternoon. A good time was had by all, apparently including Burr and Samantha, though they didn't contribute anything to the dinner.

Morgan Griffith's Thanksgiving Message

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9), to whom this web site wishes a good Thanksgiving too:

"
Friday, November 16, 2018 –
Two Churches and Thanksgiving
Most Virginians and most Americans are familiar with the words of Patrick Henry, “Give me liberty or give me death!” Fewer are familiar with where he said it.
When he uttered his famous declaration to the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775, Williamsburg was still the capital of Virginia, but it remained under control of the British authorities led by the King’s representative, Lord Dunmore.* So to meet freely, delegates to the convention gathered at St. John’s Church in Richmond.
I thought of this son of our Commonwealth, and his meeting place in particular, while attending a recent Congressional Prayer Breakfast.
A guest at the breakfast was Tunne Kelam, a citizen of Estonia who today represents his country in the European Parliament.
Estonia celebrated its 100^th anniversary of independence this year. As a small nation in the Baltic region, Estonia was long a part of the Russian Empire. In the wake of World War I and the collapse of Russia’s tsarist regime, Estonia declared its independence and repelled an attempt by the newly-formed Soviet Union to subdue it.
Unfortunately, Estonia would find itself twenty years later caught between the socialist Nazis and the communist Soviets, two of the worst tyrannies ever to afflict humanity. During World War II, the Nazis and the Soviets would both occupy Estonia, murdering thousands of its people and sending thousands more to the death or labor camps.
Yet these calamities and the ensuing decades of Soviet oppression following World War II did not crush the spirit of the Estonian people. They rejected the attempts of the Soviets to eradicate Estonian culture and sought to restore the independence they had once enjoyed.
Mr. Kelam was one of the Estonians determined to see his country free again. In 1988, he joined with others to form the Estonian National Independence Party. This was a milestone on the road back to independence, and he was at the meeting that formed the party. Just like that meeting in Richmond over two hundred years before, these patriots met in a church.
There are other links between this story and our American one, too. Mr. Kelam told the prayer breakfast that they drew inspiration from the fact that the United States refused to recognize Soviet rule over Estonia. He took comfort that the greatest democracy in the world didn’t accept that they had been extinguished as a nation.
One of the things we celebrate on Thanksgiving is that we became that greatest country ever based on democratic principles. Over the centuries, people have come to our country for the same things the Estonians who rejected Soviet rule wanted: the right to govern ourselves, to speak according to our consciences, and to live in peace with whichever faith we practice, among others.
In our country, we have flourished while securing these rights, so taking a national day to give thanks is entirely appropriate.
While Virginia’s Thanksgiving occurred in 1619 at Berkeley Plantation, many of the famous Thanksgivings in our history have occurred during momentous times for our democracy. The Pilgrims were celebrating the survival of their colony in 1621; George Washington issued his Thanksgiving proclamation in the first year of the Federal Government under the Constitution; Abraham Lincoln instituted the annual custom of Thanksgiving amid the Civil War. Perhaps it is during trying times that we should be most thankful for the blessings we do possess.
Tunne Kelam’s story certainly caused me to reflect on the things we can be grateful for in America. I hope you will reflect on them, too, when we join our family and friends around the table this Thanksgiving. The words of the classic Thanksgiving hymn “We Gather Together” still say it best:

We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known;
the wicked oppressing now cease from distressing;
sing praises to His Name, He forgets not His own.

During the Thanksgiving season, I hope that each and every one of you will have safe travels, find those things for which you can be thankful, and remember that in our nation of broad and diverse beliefs, we can celebrate America by giving thanks for the things which bind us.
If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.

*Lord Dunmore would be chased from Virginia the next year by the Ninth District’s own Andrew Lewis.
"

Status Update: Surviving Thanksgiving Weekend...or Did We?

Well...I survived Thanksgiving weekend much better than I expected. I cooked and ate several things that didn't make me sick. I wrote the recipe book manuscript, and sold a hand-knitted blanket, and got some house and garden chores done as well. I'm not back to that normal, regular digestion that allows eighty-year-old celiacs to feel ever so much better than they felt at twenty-five, yet, but I have some basis for believing I may get there again. And when we achieve a glyphosate-free world, I may not only live as long as Great-Aunt Oily McFilthy (age 99) but enjoy doing that.

Grandma Bonnie Peters, however, has been too ill to provide an update. (As regular readers know, she's not my grandmother. She chose "Grandma" as a screen name back when her grandchildren had four living grandparents. She is now the last grandparent they have left, and she's 82 years old.)

Others...let's just say, to preserve everyone's privacy, that it's been a very mixed Thanksgiving for this web site.

Although it's been electronically transferred, I've yet to receive the actual cash payment for either of those e-books; my income for this week, so far, is still $50. If your income for this week was more than that, you need to support this web site, using one of these options:

* Use the "donate" button in the Greeting post if it works for you (it should be visible at https://priscillaking.blogspot.com , always, and it has worked for some e-friends, but it does not work in my part of the world).

* https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804

* https://www.guru.com/freelancers/priscilla-king (This is the site processing the e-book projects.)

* https://www.fiverr.com/priscillaking 

* https://www.iwriter.com/priscillaking 

* https://www.seoclerk.com/user/PriscillaKing 

* https://www.wordclerks.com/user/PriscillaKing 

* Or mail a U.S. postal money order to Boxholder, P.O. Box 322, Gate City, Virginia, 24251-0322.

That reiterated...did I think of anything "good" to post over the weekend? I thought of several things to post as soon as they're funded. Your payment can unlock any of the following:

1. Thanksgiving: why do some people react so "negatively" to Positive Thinking?

2. That scam post...you don't have to wait for the Turkish workers' story in English; it's already live at Change.org with the heading "JusticeForBravoWorkers." My own breaking story, in which the scammer exposes its own scamminess, awaits payment.

3. The explosion of allegations of sexual misconduct that allegedly happened twenty or more years ago, against men who look, at best, extremely unlikely to be dangerous now. This post is bipartisan: I have no more reason to "defend" Roy Moore than John Conyers, Garrison Keillor than Bill O'Reilly, and in fact I'm not "defending" them. If any of these guys is currently molesting children, by all means, lock him up and recycle the key. I'm raising the question, though, whether the dogpiles on these old men are merely a cover-up for more recent offenses (and offenders), or a more sinister effort to stretch the rule of "When it's her word against his, we should take her word" to the breaking point and thus protect all rapists and child molesters.

4. Another Vietnam veteran story (other than my Significant Other and relatives, that is). Family care for young veterans with most of their roads before them, or for older ones to whom We The People have a contractual obligation--why would anyone even suggest that we have to pick one?

5. Your call: pick a topic and (within reason) I'll write about it. (Due to contractual obligations, this does not include advocating for legalization of things that are currently illegal or deregulation of things that are heavily regulated, such as drugs or weapons).

Amazon book link? A correspondent celebrates the "bestseller" status of recently reissued...

Morgan Griffith: Happy Thanksgiving

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9):

"
Monday, November 20, 2017 –
A Song of Thanksgiving
This week, people across the Ninth District and the country will sit down to celebrate Thanksgiving, the oldest uniquely American holiday.
Thanksgiving was an established tradition well before the United States came into being. While most Americans are taught that Plymouth Colony’s harvest festival with local Native Americans in the fall of 1621 was the first Thanksgiving, as Virginians we know that the first Thanksgiving was actually celebrated at Berkeley Planation in 1619, before the founding of the Massachusetts colony at Plymouth.
In any event, two colonies 600 miles apart in the New World inhabited by colonists who came here for different reasons from the Old World chose to mark their success with a ritual of thanks to God. This is a ritual we keep down to our own day. This fact says something important about our origins as a nation.
Of course, another Virginian, George Washington, is central to the holiday’s history. As the first President of the United States under the Constitution, he issued a proclamation setting aside Thursday, November 26, 1789 as a day of Thanksgiving. The proclamation came at the recommendation of Congress, which had urged that the American people honor:

. . . a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.

Washington suggested the American people give thanks for the establishment of a new government under the Constitution, but also all that had led to it. Even for the trials of the Revolution, he recommended gratitude for “the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence.”
Over 200 years have passed since the Father of Our Country issued his proclamation. The United States has achieved successes Washington could never have imagined. These continued successes underline the continued need for a day of thankful reflection, a time to take stock of our blessings and offer up gratitude for them. As one of Washington’s successors, Calvin Coolidge (whose right-hand man in the White House was another Virginian, C. Bascom Slemp of Big Stone Gap), put it in a Thanksgiving proclamation of his own, “We have been a most favored people. We ought to be a most generous people. We have been a most blessed people. We ought to be a most thankful people.”
Washington finished his proclamation by recommending prayers of supplication for the future, urging Americans to ask God:

. . . to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord.

Faithfulness to our values and our Constitution, justice, peace. As we gather around the table this Thanksgiving, we can pray for the same today.
So this Thanksgiving, let us find guidance from wise examples of forebears like George Washington, and let all of us of every faith give thanks for our many blessings. I personally like the words of the hymn “Let All Things Now Living,” written by Katherine Davis and set to a Welsh tune, which offer a fine expression of this sentiment:

Let all things now living a song of thanksgiving
To God our Creator triumphantly raise,
Who fashioned and made us, protected and stayed us,
Who guideth us on to the end of our days.
His banners are o'er us, his light goes before us,
A pillar of fire shining forth in the night,
‘Til shadows have vanished and darkness is banished,
As forward we travel from light into light.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Read the full text of George Washington’s first Thanksgiving proclamation here.
"

Happy Thanksgiving, Dear Kroger's...

First a long status update: This will be my last day online over the U.S. holiday weekend, starting at 5 p.m. today and continuing until Tuesday morning. I plan to spend much of the weekend curled up with a warm computer, writing another e-book.

This one will be a cookbook; it won't be specifically vegetarian, dairy-free, or gluten-free, but it will emphasize healthier home-cooked meals and present organic, vegetarian, kosher/halal, nondairy, and gluten-free options for an energy-boosting diet. That is, I'll be writing up recipes the client has tested, and also variations GBP and I have used...I expect at least a few gluten-free "organic" foods to be contaminated enough that we'll probably get sick, this weekend, as farmers use up their supplies of blank-blank bleep-bleep glyphosate, but apart from that it'll be fun.

But my health-maintaining gluten-free diet is going into free fall this autumn. I know the most recent batches of naturally gluten-free General Mills cereal, naturally gluten-free Planters peanuts, and several other things I should be able to enjoy eating safely, are contaminated with enough glyphosate to make me sick. I'm not sure what else is; I know I'm having to buy inferior-quality, off-brand, foreign-grown nuts because good Virginia peanuts have recently been toxic to me. It's insane. I know that taking charcoal to flush out the poison also flushes out any nutrients my glyphosate-poisoned body might be absorbing from food, and I'm not confident that the charcoal will even adsorb enough of the chemical residues to stop the ongoing damage to my digestive organs, but I've been losing enough blood for long enough that I have to try something...the basic celiac sprue reaction displays surface damage to fast-healing internal tissues, but when it goes on over months the damage does get down below the surface.

I hate to hear people babble about being thankful when the news is less bad than it might have been...yes, it's something of a relief that eating nothing but off-brand nuts for a few days slowed down the loss of blood enough to show that I don't (yet) have (acute) cancer forming in this damaged tissue, but no, that's not something for which to give thanks. A total ban on glyphosate, and a strong movement away from the whole idea of poisoning nuisance species found in or near food crops, would be something for which to give thanks. Let's all pray that that happens this winter.

In theory I've been paid for the Bible study, and I'm celebrating with a hot meal in the cafe today (on Wednesdays they do a delicious, naturally gluten-free corn soup, which I expect will make me sick, but it won't be the Roberts' fault). In practice the payment has fouled up somewhere in the detestable money-handling industry, but I expect to collect the cash soon.

In actual cash, my income so far this week has been US$26. If your income for the week has been higher than that, you ought to support this web site, and here again are the links you can use to be sure of getting something in return for your financial support:

* Use the "donate" button in the Greeting post if it works for you (it should be visible at https://priscillaking.blogspot.com , always, but it won't work with some servers).

* https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804

* https://www.guru.com/freelancers/priscilla-king (This is the site processing these e-book projects.)

* https://www.fiverr.com/priscillaking (Yes, I'm still there, and so is +Lyn Lomasi Rowell , and so far as I can see it's a safe, efficient site for processing payments to writers or other types of online workers...but the system has been streamlined for cell phone users in a way that I find bizarre and alarming. Apparently it now allows job proposals to get into the system as actual orders, which then have to be cancelled, at inconvenience to all concerned, before a writer even sees them...and has time to mention that, as happened when someone actually used the Fiverr link earlier this week, I don't know that I even have the device the client wanted to use. I know Grandma Bonnie Peters bought this laptop complete with a lot of gadgets I've never even seen, including the audio and visual features I always disable when working from public places, but I think the one the client wanted was invented after this laptop was built. Anyway the Fiverr system is now set up for buyers who don't want to wait even overnight to negotiate jobs, and now, as it was explained to me this week, requires sellers to set our pages to "vacation mode" when we go home for the night. I don't imagine this will last long; I hope the system can be fixed back before this change destroys Fiverr. If Fiverr works for you, please leave a message.)

* https://www.iwriter.com/priscillaking 

* https://www.seoclerk.com/user/PriscillaKing 

* https://www.wordclerks.com/user/PriscillaKing 

* You can also mail a U.S. postal money order to Boxholder, P.O. Box 322, Gate City, Virginia, 24251-0322.

Now for the actual post...Friends of the Earth e-mailed out one of those editable form letters for everyone to add to a blitz aimed at the Kroger's supermarket chain. Since I like to stop at the Kroger store when I'm on the far side of Kingsport, and my mother considers a Kroger store to be a significant reason for wanting to live in Kingsport, I had enough to say to this store to make a blog post, so thought I might as well post it. You can read the original form letter, sign it, and/or use it to compose your own letter to Kroger's at this link; what I wrote is below the link.

https://us.e-activist.com/page/3967/action/1

"
Dear Rodney McMullen,

Happy Thanksgiving! This is not just another Friends of the Earth form letter, although Friends are prompting us to tell you...I'm thankful for bees, butterflies and other pollinators. They’re responsible for many of the Thanksgiving staples we enjoy like pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, apples and potatoes.

I'm also thankful for...an alarmingly shrinking list of things that, as a celiac, I can still eat. With farmers spraying glyphosate (which causes pseudo-celiac reactions even in people who don't have the celiac gene!) on many foods as if it were a safe preservative like salt, sugar, or rosemary, this autumn many things that are naturally gluten-free have made me sick. I've adhered to my strict wheat-free, cheese-free diet for many years and been thankful for a graceful, largely unnoticed, midlife transition, for the ability to keep up with the younger generation on jobs and be mistaken for one of them in a bad light. But at the time of writing...I'm confident about one snack sold in the store across the street from work, not confident about much of anything I'll be eating over the holiday weekend! Can I trust Kroger to help keep me healthy by providing a reasonable selection of food I can safely eat in winter?

At Thanksgiving I expect to be particularly thankful for the chance to check in with nieces and nephews, several of whom are also celiacs, and with my mother, from whom we inherited the celiac gene. Mother is an active, healthy Kroger senior shopper and so thankful to have got the "with glasses" restriction removed from her drivers' license this year. (I remember her wanting to visit the Kroger store in Kingsport, Tennessee, every time we went there, from back in the 1970s. Now that she's retired from farm life, she lives in Kingsport and likes to drive to the Kroger store every week or two, despite living three blocks from the Wal-Mart grocery store.) Due to known sensitivity to beet sugar, Mother likes to cook with honey--which I now know is largely poisonous to us celiacs too. Will Kroger help keep her cooking Thanksgiving dinners and watching her grandchildren grow up strong and healthy, in spite of the celiac gene?

This Thanksgiving, I urge Kroger to help protect the pollinators--and your loyal shoppers!--by committing to help your farmers phase out toxic pesticides, including neonicotinoids, chlorpyrifos, dicamba, and especially glyphosate, in your company’s supply chain and encourage suppliers to employ alternative, least-toxic pest management strategies.  It’s important that Kroger take this step as quickly as possible and not wait for direction from the EPA.

The science is clear (I'm sure you've seen a barrage of full-length form letters already!) that glyphosate, chlorpyrifos, dicamba, and the neonics are harmful for people, pollinators and the planet, just as DDT, chlordane, and so many others have already turned out to be. How long do we have to keep experimenting with toxic chemicals and watching people become ill or die before we recognize a pattern? Poisoning nuisance species eventually builds up levels of residues that poison humans, while the nuisance species, which have much shorter life cycles, evolve immunity to the poisons that are making humans sick. Let's not go through this with more poisons! I urge Kroger take immediate action given the latest science and commit to phase out chemical pesticides using safer alternatives and increase offerings of bee and people-friendly organic food, giving preference to food grown by America’s farmers.

Thank you on behalf of Mother as a lifelong Kroger shopper,

Priscilla King
"



(They're naturally gluten-free...and they're yummy...and did they ever make me sick. Let's all pray for help and guidance to get the toxic element of Cheerios, namely glyphosate, permanently banned from this entire planet.)