Thanksgiving

Mimi, Tim and Eleanor come tomorrow until Saturday.

That's enough to make me Thankful.

We'll Zoom with Josh and Cathy and their big girls at some point.

Our old friend John will come to dinner.

A small group, but a great one!

I fix the dressing--it's not 'stuffing' since it isn't in the turkey, do the  before dinner cheese and snacks, set the table and pour the wine.

Bern does everything else--and beautifully.

I love Thanksgiving...more than Christmas, I think.

All of you--Have a Happy, Happy One!

 

The Rittenhouse verdict

I don't agree with it. I think it was wrong. I think the judge was too much leaning toward the defendant.

But as the President said, disappointed in the verdict, we must support the justice system.

No one should walk away free after killing two people and wounding another with an illegal gun at 17!

It makes me want to take guns away from everyone!

It makes my skin crawl.

It makes me against the right to bear arms, which was, at the time the Constitution was written, meant arms to defend the country from foreign aggressors, not to shoot people on the streets of Kenosha.

Will we ever come to our senses and drastically limit guns?

Probably never.

But we should.

We really should.

This trial proves that explicitly.

 

gona miss it

Tonight (or early tomorrow morning) there's going to be a total eclipse of the moon.

In CT it will be from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. And it will be raining.

Going to miss something that doesn't happen very often.

Oh, well.

Going to sleep and (hopefully) have good dreams.

Maybe next time.

When I'll be several hundred years old.

We'll see....

 

What's going on?

 The House of Representatives censured Rep. Gosare today for his video of him killing AOC and attacking the President.

Only two republicans voted for the censure.

The two who are on the Jan. 6 committee.

What is going on that one party in our democracy can choose not punish someone who showed a video of him killing another member of the House? And attacking the President?

How F***ing divided can we be as a nation?

It is really frightening to be so divided.

Be scared, beloved!

Be very, very scared!

And, more importantly, speak out and do something....

It's fall in the Northeast

It's November in Connecticut and the sound of leaf-blowers resounds through the land.

For the most part, Bern doesn't bag our leaves.

She cuts them up with her grass cutter and lets them be the fertilizer for next year's grass.

It seems to work.

But neighbors all around us keep getting the leaves off their lawns.

Who knows who's right?

There were some tornadoes in CT on Saturday. One of them in Cheshire.

Driving around town I have been amazed at the tree damage.

First time since 1950, when I was three in Anawalt, West Virginia.

Come on Climate Change Deniers and you Vaccine Deniers.

Smarten up.

Look around you.

Change your minds--it can be done!

 

Rain storm

We had a violent rainstorm this afternoon.

Lots of bright lightening and rolling thunder.

It scared our dog, Brigit.

And wind, wind, wind.

Cable went our for a while.

As did internet.

Lights flickered.

With daylight savings time over, it was also very dark.

A bit scary.

And a bit exciting.

 

Sunday's Sermon--don't read if you go to Trinity, Milton

 

Nov. 21 sermon

        This is a very personal sermon. I mention the gospel near the end—but it comes from me.

        OK?

        This week was Veterans Day.

I want to tell you about my father, who served in World War Two.

My father grew up on a turkey farm in Monroe County, West Virginia. He finished the eight grade at his local school and then had to go to a boarding school, but dropped out after a few months.

In spite of that, as I look back, he was one of the wisest men I ever knew. (I just wish I had recognized his wisdom when I was a child! But what child does that?)

He left the farm and moved to McDowell County to be a coal miner.

A funny aside: on the farm his family never ate the cash crop so my father had never tasted turkey. At a boarding house for unmarried coal miners, he told the cook, “that was the best chicken I’ve ever tasted.”

She told him it wasn’t chicken, it was turkey, but he wouldn’t believe her until she took him in the kitchen and showed him the carcass. He’d been told growing up that turkey didn’t taste good except to stupid city people!

He joined the army by lying about his age (he was too old to enlist) and spent the early part of the war in England and was part of the invasion of Normandy. By then, he was in the Engineers and spent the rest of the war building bridges across Europe so Gen Patton could drive his tanks across them. “Then,” he told me, “we would blow the bridges up because Patton said ‘we’re not coming back!’”

That was the only thing he told me about the war though I begged for stories. I’m sure most of his memories were too painful to recall.

He did come home, though many he knew did not, and became my father and a life-long member of the VFW.

Things are not good these days for many veterans. You can buy a coat at Ocean States Job Lots down the road and give it back for a gift certificate and the coat will go to a homeless veteran. People who risked their lives for us are homeless!!!

The GI Bill did not pay Black veterans of WW II at the same level as White veterans.

John Anderson, one of my oldest and closest friends, is a psychologist at The Veterans Hospital in West Haven. He spends his days counseling veterans with psychological problems in person or on zoom. Many have serious issues.

Their lives, like the Temple in today’s Gospel, are in ruins.

There is so much more that needs to be done for the men and women who served to keep our lives safe.

In God’s name, we must seek to help them.