Two friends recently asked me to post this column from Thanksgiving 2017. Here it is, with a few updates.
“The World is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;Little we see in Nature that is ours…”
William Wordsworth’s lines seem to me more relevant today than they might have been during his lifetime. Twenty-four hours a day, every day, we are bombarded with bad news: catastrophic natural disasters, mass shootings, wars, famine, poverty, political dissension, oppression of minority groups, and the list continues. Cable news never sleeps. How can we survive the daily onslaught of miserable events?
Thanksgiving is here, with its message of gratitude and lots of food, family, and football, but some families have members who aren’t fun to be around and spoil every celebration, and many people can’t afford to put on a Thanksgiving feast. And there is Black Friday. The day after giving thanks for all we have, we can go shopping so we can buy even more s...