Columns
Bark o' the Banshee
| Bark o' the Banshee Thanks For Giving |  |
by Pat Robinson
Halloween was strange this year. A pagan ritualistic hallowed day usually involving treats instead of tricks. It used to be safe to eat anything you wanted from a bag of collected loot. Towns now have designated times and evenings for costumed children carrying flashlights and sacks, and ring doorbells saying “Trick or treat!”
Kids are admonished by parents waiting at sidewalks who yell “Don’t eat the candy till later, and say thank-you.”
New Hampshire and Vermont are the leaf peepers’ empire. Seems people feel safe in the country, now more than ever. We complain every year about the slow drivers and the constant stopping. Maybe we should stop along the way and look too. Are we missing something?
Soon, the BIGGEST travel holiday will be upon us. We know the drill, it is part of news stories across the nation every year. The long lines of people at airports, some stuck because of winter weather, the price of gasoline seems to grow before the Thursday event and then drops some in relief after it. This year, the news stories will be long lines at security checks assuming the public will get out into the blue yonder again. I am thrilled my daughter is coming up from Louisiana, relieved she is driving instead of flying with her kids.
There will be lots of empty spaces at the tables of thousands of families. Their Thanksgiving will be hard to endure. I pray for them all, for their hearts and wounds to heal for the sake of those left behind.
Football has resumed; I hate the sport yet I find peace in the normalcy of the NFL hogging up my Sunday. I am writing this on a Monday night. I like Harvard-Yale games played on a Saturday in the Brighton Stadium on a crisp fall day. Harvard at home means the Square will be bursting with college men playing victor or vanquished. You can always tell a Harvard man from a Yalie, but you cannot tell either much.
The long-standing local rivalries around the country are all settled up in Thursday morning games of grit and sweat and girls and cheers. Traditionally, ha-ha, the mother gets up at some bizarre hour to put an overfed bird in an oven too small for the hungry horde that will arrive after the games end.
I want to thank the families of the people who have shared the remarkable stories of last moments with loved ones with the rest of us so they do NOT suffer alone.
I want to thank the men and women that went in and didn’t come out for the proof that we are an unselfish people.
I want to thank the victims that stayed with friends who could never make it out in wheelchairs.
I want to thank Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Rosie O’Donnell, Dave Letterman, and Jay Leno for openly showing us another side of the public face.
I want to thank all the men and women and children who gave what might have been all the money they had to the victims funds, and let them stand side by side with the famous who gave millions.
I want to thank all of the clergy from all the churches, synagogues, and mosques around the world for praying to the same God regardless of the name they usually use.
I want to thank all the health care professionals who have stepped up to bat and will continue to do so under what will be dire circumstances.
I want to thank all the branches and ranks in the armed services who will lay it on the line for us all.
I want to thank Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond for retiring. I am so glad to see you go. Ya’ll don’t come back now, hear?
I want to thank Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Louis Sheldon for publicly shooting each other in the foot. Do you think we could get you to aim a bit higher?
I want to thank loved ones Bruce, Rosemary, and Tom for their continued support of my daughter as she seeks freedom from a battering marriage.
I want to thank my best friend PG for being Leah’s strength because I am so far away.
I want to thank all of you for reading this and thinking about who you need to thank for giving.
Pat will celebrate Thanksgiving dinner with her partner Rhoda, daughter Leah, and grandsons, Ry and Jake.