The Real Measure of Thanksgiving

No, not about doing good for those less fortunate, or being grateful for the food you're gorging yourself on, etc., etc. The real measure is how you consume your cranberries.

Everyone knows the sine qua non is the Jell-O-like stuff that comes in a can. You splort it out onto a plate and slice it up, but if you can't see the ridges in the side from the shape of the can, it's not the real deal. Anything else is just pretense.

Here is proof: Every year NPR's Susan Stamberg gives her family recipe for cranberry sauce. It has actual cranberries in it, and it sounds pretty plausible until you get to her secret, special ingredient. This is the dead giveaway that this is nothing more than a prank on the people who listen to NPR because they think it makes them seem more high-toned than if they listened to top-40 or WFAN like they really want to. Stamberg's recipe contains horseradish. Now, come on. If you are not laughing yourself silly at that point in the recipe, the joke is clearly on you.

There are other, less extreme recipes that contain more subtle combinations of ingredients, but those are just for show. You see the more complex versions served in restaurants that are trying to garner attention or justify their prices with quirky methods ("All our food is prepared in a medieval firepit that was discovered in Uzbekistan in 1912 and disassembled and carried over by specially bred llamas") and impossible reservations ("We only serve one person per evening so the chef can give that individual meal his undivided attention; our next available seating is in 2218") rather than really good food. You find the easier versions in the homes of people who buy things all covered with designer names and logos to show their good taste (just so you know: slapping a "designer" logo on something is not the same as good design), and read Gawker.com religiously to find out what they should be fascinated by. (A lot of the people mentioned on Gawker are made up--just more pranks on the unwitting. Most people know this. Less well known is that several of the political figures mentioned on Daily Kos are made up, too, for similar reason.)

The real upper crust--the kind of people who could easily have their cranberries grown in private high-moisture cranberry-growing environments ("bog" is such an unattractive word) and their sugar genetically engineered to their exact palate sensitivity for sweetness on their personal islands--prefer the stuff that's shaped like a can. They may have it served on a plate that cost more than your house, brought to the table by a servant who was retained before birth, having been interviewed and hired in utero and trained from infancy in a private academy on a secret space station to insulate them from bad influences like self-determination and labor laws, and eaten with turkey that has been dusted in uranium (gold is so gauche!) but when it comes to the cranberries, the super-rich are eating the same shaped-like-a-can stuff as the trailer park family.

Because it's good. And good is the ultimately equalizer. We can all be grateful for that.

Bailing Out

I don't want to see the Big Three auto makers fail, not least because of the impact on an already weak economy if their workers and workers at their suppliers lose their jobs, retired workers lose their pensions, etc. Certainly there is merit in doing something to prevent a catastrophic collapse of a major American industry.

However, any help we give must have major strings attached. GM et al. didn't end up in these straits by way of a natural disaster; they made the decisions that led to their current situation. They chose not to be aggressive in improving gas mileage and taking the lead in hybrids and other alternatives; rather, they lobbied against aggressive standards for gas mileage. And they saw their overseas competition seize a growing share of the market as a result. They could easily have foreseen the possibility that gas prices might go up (there's a war on in the mideast, not to mention an ultimately limited supply of oil in the world) but they continued to focus their resources on big vehicles and inefficient manufacturing that isn't nimble enough to shift with the economic climate.

And then they were sufficiently myopic to show up in Washington with hats in hand looking for a bailout--having just arrived on their (separate) private jets. This is the multibillion-dollar equivalent of a streetcorner beggar asking for money for food then spending it on cigarettes and booze while the person who gave it to him is still standing there. 

But unlike the case of the guy on the corner, the "gimme some money, then screw you" demeanor of the Big Three execs isn't just hurting them. If we don't bail them out, the people who suffer will be the bottom o of the org chart, not the top. 

It's essential to provide some kind of interim aid, but it's critical that that help be contingent on a number of things: executives feel the belt-tightening at least as much as the people at the bottom; the companies demonstrate frugality in every aspect of their operations; the use of the funds be closely monitored; and most important, this financial crutch be used not to keep doing business the (failed) way they have been, but to redirect their business toward environmentally friendly vehicles and innovations. Because if they're not going to build reliable, affordable, sustainable cars using innovative technology and methods, they deserve to lose their business to somebody who will.

I Can Only Imagine

Back when I was a little girl, a man spoke of a dream.

One might say it was not my dream. My experience of racism, albeit proximate, was always at second hand: Lying to my grandmother about whose house I was going to, because if she knew it was Paulita, who was black, I might not be allowed to go. My school closing because race riots had broken out at the nearby high school. A friend attempting to justify the Bogan Broads--mothers of Bogan High students--pelting black kindergarten kids with rocks. An old white man sitting next to me on the bus and muttering insults about the black passengers, on the assumption that as a fellow white person, I must agree with him. 

Sure, it hurt me that I couldn't play with who I wanted, or had to lie to do it, that I had friends who sincerely believed that black children were a threat to them, that a stranger would assume by the color of my skin that I was a bigot. But nobody ever barred me from a lunch counter or a ballot box or a seat on a bus; nobody threw those rocks or those words at me. I was not battered by the storms of persecution, to use Dr. King's phrase. We are all diminished by racism, but I can only imagine how it must feel to be the person who experiences it firsthand.

And yet tonight I shrieked with joy, and tears streamed down my cheeks--still are, two hours later. I am so proud of my country, not because we elected a black man president, but because people looked past the color of his skin to vote for Barack Obama because he is a smart, thoughtful, capable person whose priorities and ideas are in tune with their own. And looking back over the past year: the two leading candidates of a major party were a black man and a woman, both of whose candidacies would have been unlikely if not impossible not very long ago.

A man had a dream about his children being judged by the content of their character. Today that dream is real.

There was a teenage first-time voter in line in front of me at the poll, a kid who beamed with pride after he pulled that lever. I didn't have to wait long to vote, but a lot of people did, waited hours. For too many years, there's been cynicism, apathy, around the political process. Not today. Today there was passion: people clamored to vote, wanted to make a difference (whomever they voted for); they gave a damn. Dr. King opened his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by  calling it "what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation." Until now. The greatest demonstration for freedom took place today anywhere people cast their ballots. 

The theme of Dr. King's speech was hope: hope for a better tomorrow: "let us not wallow in the valley of despair." Hope was a theme of President-elect Obama's campaign, and he harkened back to Dr. King more explicitly in his speech tonight. Today we have realized yesterday's hope. Tomorrow we can realize the dreams of today.

Dreams often fall by the wayside as you get older. But when old dreams come true, they give birth to new idealism. And out of that hope can arise greatness.

I started the night looking back, feeling old because I remember when bigotry was institutionalized in the form of segregation. But I end the night looking to the future. We may not all get there together, there will be disappointments and setbacks and hard work, but I go to sleep tonight confident of a bright new day.

In the morning I'll go to work at my same job, where the first thing I have to do is finalize two books we're publishing that are ready to go to press, but were awaiting the outcome of tonight's election so we could know what to put on the last page. Meantime, we as a people will begin to write the first chapter of the next volume.