Here in the US this is one of two big "family & friends ritual" days. The other is Christmas.
For this one today, we have a small turkey from Whole Foods, wine from Trader Joe's, vegetables from Farmers Market, fresh bread from Great Harvest bread. Just the 3 of us plus 2 pussycats. NPR music if we want, books, weather permitting we could go for walk in the park; alternatively Yvette and I will go to see J Edgar at Cinemart at 4.
Caroline and Rob will have a roast duck.
Yvette primed to watch Thanksgiving Day parade in front of Macy's "in order to see Johnny Weir."
I shall force myself to phone my mother and try to keep the conversation short.
On Jacquie Lawson there's a lovely meditative card which pictures a fall day in somber autumnal like colors; we are told to click on the picture to start the music. We see leaves falling, then a squirrel taking an acorn (large on screen), then pull back to see a harvest scene with a bird alighting on carrots. Then the frame moves slowly so we see the area from a picturesque standpoint, then at a distance, framed, we see a house, someone (male it seems) arrives in a late Edwardian style carriage, drawn by horses; children rush out to greet the person and all go in. The bird returns and sits on an acorn. The music is Simple Gifts done in stately slow fashion by light instruments. I find I like it; it soothes me; I've listened several times now.
Just now Yvette has a male tenor singing "Oh what a beautiful morning" (from Oklahoma) on her stereo equipment and the sun is shining into her room. Clarissa (the cat) is at her post at the window behind Yvette's computer. Ian is squatting warily but peacefully somewhere in the front of the house.
I have read two peremptory questions (one on livejournal here) and other on another site, what are you grateful for? They reminded me I need to read William Godwin's Equity and Justice where he has a whole chapter demonstrating how pernicious is the inculcation of this slave-binding emotion. I will try to find it and put some of what he says on this blog eventually. For my part I regret that I did not see the Woody Allen documentary last Sunday and hope to watch Part 1 and Part 2 online separately. And most immediately this morning really hated how hard it is for me to find how from the PBS site when any particular program is playing on our local PBS channel here in the DC area.
As a general social comment on our society for this ritual day: Last night I watched and listened to Amy Goodman Democracy Now on the terrors and brutality going on in Cairo (gov't still supported by millions from the US, the tear gas supplied by a US company). She also interviewed Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle and was very moved. It bothers me a news report describes them as "saying" they didn't kill the people they were accused of killing not simply that they didn't. A friend, Rachel, commented: "Also saw this interview on Democracy Now, Ellen; devastating story." To which I replied: "One element was Sunny Jacobs spent more than 5 years in solitary confinement. Atul Gawande has written persuasively that solitary confinement is a form of torture. He writes huge numbers of people are regularly punished this way for years; the three cases he discusses may have come to Gawande's attention because the people went mad. Jacobs (as we saw) had the strength to endure. What I now think is not just huge numbers of people but most people are put in these tiny cement rooms; US citizens' taxpayers' money is paying private companies to set up such places; Gawande says solitary confinement is very expensive and counterproductive (it makes people less social, robs them of social skills), and now it's torture. There is no public board screening what happens in these prisons, so this technique is a small visibilia that tells us what we don't see is as bad."
And on Al-Jazeera read Hugh Grant's statement on being hounded by the unscrupulous British press: the man has an absolute right to privacy.
I've now broken my usual silence about "celebrity" people (Allen, Grant) in the press in public than I have in hundreds of blogs.
I'm now "following" the Trollope Society on twitter and the thought for the day from AT is: "I love to have my teacup emptied and filled with gradual pauses so that time for oblivion may accrue and no exact record be taken."
I hope all spend this declared or official "interval" with satisfaction, contentment, in peace. A friend wished our table to be serene and festive. Amen.
Sylvia