FOR THANKSGIVING, SOME PERSONAL NOTES AND ONE GREAT QUOTE....

EDITION OF THURSDAY/FRIDAY NOV. 27-28, 2019 [PetPowellThankfulPress] How many different elements are there to this 2019 Thanksgiving? Food, fun, football, family… lots of alliteration and we’re ignoring follytics, er, politics. How great is the American Holiday!

I’ll bet the holiday atmosphere today is just about like that of the alleged first Thanksgiving gathering back in the 1600s in Virginia.

In 1621, New World colonists and New World inhabitants met to celebrate a bountiful harvest.
Then, fed and happy, they sent a young guy shinnying up a tall tree with a long piece of wiring looped at one end. And then, bets properly placed, the thankful diners watched the Dallas Cowboys play the Buffalo Bills. 
Wait. Wrong century. 
The participants in that first New England Thanksgiving must have relied on food, conversation and “friendship-under-pressure” to make the event memorable.
And then there’s the Thanksgiving Rivalry — claims of the “first Thanksgiving” are also set forth by Florida and, yes, Texas (Two! Under Coronado in Palo Duro Canyon and another one in El Paso. Read about ‘em in The Texas Almanac and, also, The Federalist has a story HERE. )
 But, you can study all that later -- no homework over the Thanksgiving break.  Just go ahead and embrace the reality that Thanksgiving is a holiday of gratitude that reaches across the nation and is inspired annually by things we encounter during a year and during our lifetimes.
[LARRY ASIDE: That first photo is my personal cat Deputy Chief Kittie Leigh Johnson and I in a whisker comparison picture. She’s artsy with her lifelong whiskers; I’ve had mine only since 1971 -- but it was a daring thing to grow a beard and keep a job in the political climate of the early '70s.]

The red oak is one of our neighborhood trees. How fantastic is that autumn foliage!
 I am giving thanks for that cat and for those great and vibrant trees! 

What’s your favorite Thanksgiving story? Yeah, Miracle on 34th St. starts on Thanksgiving Day. After that, I’m about out of Thanksgiving stories — well except for 1987’s Planes, Trains & Automobiles with John Candy and Steve Martin and the 1995 film directed by Jodi Foster and starring Holly Hunter, Robert Downey, etc., Home for the Holidays.
I’m thankful for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Broadcast, whether the big balloons are flying or whether they’re anchored in safety somewhere. I’ve been enchanted by the broadcast since I was a kid watching it on black and white TV. Another thing to be thankful for: Our big screen color TV.  And microwave popcorn. And … well, save the food thanks for Thursday.
 We have so many different things to be thankful for that the list goes on and on. At readlarrypowell.com, in keeping with our theme of saving and celebrating animals, we’re thankful for all the animals and all the people who work to save them. We’re also thankful that the President — ANY president —signed that federal anti-animal cruelty bill into law. Next year, perhaps, we’ll be thankful that people are enjoying prison turkey and dressing because they were convicted of violating the federal anti-cruelty law. Or, maybe, even better, we can be thankful that humans quit mistreating animals. That would be a wonderful longshot. 

That dog is our wander-up Border Collie mix Dudley the Angel, a fellow who loves a good session of petting and head scratching. And he also was photographed demonstrating what many of us ol’ dogs will look like around about half-time of the Cowboy’s game Thursday. 
Now, that photo of the cats? Those are the Office Cat William Powell, the big gray tabby, and the Office Cat-Apprentice Stevie Ray Treeboy (found in Oak Cliff in a tree). It’s snipped from a video that you simply must watch to be thankful for the existence of Thanksgiving compan- ionship. It’s a demonstration of patience and understanding. Click HERE.
I’m thankful for another Thanksgiving with my holidaycookingfunspouse Martha and our family members (humans and animals) and, of course, for the memories we’ve all made. Readlarrypowell.com has readers from coast to coast and even some from across the oceans. We’re thankful for all of them.

We should all make a list of books we’re thankful we’ve read — you know, before literacy vanishes like green bean casserole on the last Thursday of November.
I’m thankful for friends I’ve had since before elementary school — longtime school friends. Neighborhood kids I used to know when our hometown had school-centered neighborhoods. I’m thankful if kids today have the same ability to friends in the ol’ neighborhood. I’m thankful for friends I met in newsrooms. Friends I love because we’ve linked up over adorable animals and adorable people. 
Friends I’ve gained since the arrival of the New Millineium — I’m thankful for a computer that can spell “Millenium” correctly for me. Oh, yeah, it’s 
“millennium.”

These are photo- graphs I snapped as Thanks- giving approa- ched. I’m thankful I have a tele- phone that takes pictures. And that is a sentence nobody would have written when I started my career in newspaper journalism in the summer of 1965. Phones were just for talkin’ and you couldn’t walk more than about 10 feet with ‘em. Phones never rang in cars. FYI: I was thankful for that first newsroom job — not only did The Texarkana Gazette pay me, it had an air-conditioned building! I was raised without a/c. It’s chilly right now, but in July and August I was extremely thankful for air-conditioning in Texas! 

Back to Martha, I’m so thankful she has a sense of humor — and, of course, a bit ashamed that she really needs to use it to be able to live with me. 
So, I came home from an errand a few days ago and walked into the kitchen to find a quote from Sir Peter Ustinov, the actor. It is held on the refrigerator door by a Barney Fife magnet photo/quote “Stay calm, people!” and a bulldog magnet photo/quote, “I wake up this fabulous.” 
Sir Peter Ustinov’s quote “to a pair of lovers,” reads, “I can see from your utter misery, your eagerness to misunderstand each other, and from your thoroughly bad temper, that this is the real thing.”
Now, there’s a splendid, heart-felt reason I am giving thanks in 2019 — I am thankful for “the real thing.”
—- Offer some Thankful notes by clicking on ‘comment’ below or by emailing [email protected]. Sincerely thankful for you all, Larry Powell, fan of dogs, cats, other critters and a great many humans, too. —-