It wasn’t too many years ago that we would sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, and before we ate we would go around the table and be forced to say something that we were thankful for before we could eat anything. I don’t know if anyone else has this problem, but I hate being put on the spot, especially about things like this where everyone has already said “I’m thankful for the food!” and “I’m thankful for friends and family!” and “I’m thankful for being here with you all today!” I am the sort of person who wants to say something heartfelt and original, but whose mind on these particular occasions goes completely AWOL. So what ends up getting said are things like: “I’m thankful for ….” ::glances around room:: “my Nintendo!!” or “I’m thankful for my talent,” which draw the customary mumbles of “Oh, that’s a good one,” but are obviously causing thoughts of “What a brat,” and “What a pompous asshole,” respectively.

I think the problem that I have with the holiday is not that I’m not thankful for all the subjects of those aforementioned stock answers; nor does it have anything to do with those Native-American massacres that took place after the First Thanksgiving that we all reproduced at some point during kindergarten. Not the massacres, the feast. You know what I mean.

No I think that the fact that we have such a holiday speaks to a societal problem: that it is normal to go about your business and take everything for granted for 364 days out of the year. In America, it’s acceptable to focus on the things that we don’t yet have, to toil away to try and acquire these things, so long as we take 1 day out of the year to remember that we actually have a lot of things already. To me it speaks to the greed that is built into our society.

I’m rather glad that on Thanksgiving Day I don’t feel any more or less thankful than I do on any other day of the year. I think that I don’t take those stock answers for granted most of the time.

The food: I definitely don’t take food for granted. I have it set up so that I run out of food about every week and have to walk to the Supermarket in the cold to get more. I absolutely don’t have it as tough as our hunter-gatherer ancestors, but it’s still an inconvenience. But it has given me a certain amount of satisfaction to have to keep myself fed this year. In fact, I devoted a whole blog entry to food just a few weeks ago, if you don’t believe that I think about it.

The family: Perhaps this was one thing that I took for granted when I was younger. But I specifically remember a few times when I was at CU thanking my lucky stars that I had a relatively stable family to support me through tough times. Nowadays, my family is fragmented, but I still have been trying to show an appreciation for where I came from through genealogical research and the like. So I think that I appreciate family more than perhaps I let on at times.

The friends: I’ve always been a person who prefers to have a few close friends rather than copious what I feel are superficial acquaintances. The result is that I don’t have that many people that I would call friends, but I feel that those that I do have I appreciate a whole lot more. I’ve tried to stay in touch with many of you that I know from high school and before despite the forces of life pulling us apart. Anyway, perhaps you’ll understand from this why I’ve done things like set up this weblog and harass you on AIM all the time

And as for this Thanksgiving, mine was nice, even without people to spend it with. I had a nice dinner and watched a bunch of football. So don’t cry for me! Not that you were anyway, but still.

The one thing that I am thankful for at this time of year that I’m not the rest of the year is the fact that it is a holiday and I have time to catch up on my schoolwork! Yay!! So now I have to go back to reading and composing, and hopefully I can get all caught up by Monday.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday!! Until next time…

This week I’ve been really digging deep into my family history, partly for a school project, and partly due to my own curiosity. Let me tell you, this is one of the most addicting things I have ever done. It’s right up there with smack. Not that I’ve ever done smack before, but you know what I mean.

I think my curiosity has been fueled in part by the fact that every time I’ve asked my folks what nationality I am, they’ve answered, “mutt.” Which isn’t terribly informative.

I haven’t researched all of my family yet, so I don’t have a final tally for my heritage, but so far it breaks down like this:

Exactly 1/4 Norwegian
~ 1/4 (maybe more) Irish
~ 1/8 German
~ 1/8 (possibly more) English
and the rest consists of:
1. Dutch
2. French
3. Scottish
4. 1 dude was from Belgium
5. As yet undiscovered

So all this research has led me to conclude that the best way to describe myself is “European mutt.” Which is more informative than before, so I’m happy.

The reason my family is so diverse is that, interestingly, I have found that most of the lines I’ve traced back so far lead back about 12 generations to people who immigrated here in the early 1600′s, which is about as long as a family of European descent could have lived here in America. And I’ve found people in there that served on the initial continental congresses, and that wrote and signed various state constitutions, and founded colonies and served as governors, and have been veterans in every major American war. Pretty amazing to think about. And just doing some numbers crunching, if you follow back every single line of ancestors back 12 generations, allowing for inbreeding (which there is a fair amount, unfortunately), there’s still a couple thousand people just in the top row of that family tree. When you consider in those days that the average couple had about 13 children (ok I’m exaggerating… but seriously, 8 children) then you can’t help but look at it with awe and astonishment and think, “Damn, that’s a lot of sex!”

But honestly, it does give you a much different sense of scale, and it makes you stop and consider how in a hundred years you’ll probably just end up a name and date on somebody’s chart. Or even worse, maybe even just one of those tree branches that no body cares about because it doesn’t lead anywhere.

Anyhoo, I’m sure my research will continue now that I’m hooked, and perhaps I’ll come back with updates as it gets farther along. Toodles!