Sometime in the 1960s, in a land about 700 miles north of here, the
\nnation’s grandmothers felt very much left out of all the protesting
\nagainst war and nuclear weapons and the like. Free health care and a
\ngenerous social security system didn’t leave much for them to demand in
\nthe way of social justice until an enterprising few noted that
\nThanksgiving was just too close to Christmas. The proximity of these
\nholidays on the calendar, they reasoned, required that they cook two
\nfeasts only a month apart and further gave their families an excuse to
\nattend one or the other. They joined forces with the first nations
\n(“natives”), who had been quite successful with their highway blockades
\nfor whatever they blockading for, and marched on Parliament to demand
\nThanksgiving be moved to Columbus Day and Colombus day be removed from the
\ncalendar. The Prime Minister, recognizing that the Vikings had landed in
\nNova Scotia before that upstart Spaniard was even born, conceded to the
\ndemands. Many historians suspect the PM did it out of patriotism and never
\nknew demands had been made. This is all, of course, completely
\nficticious…<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
…Few things are sacred in my family, dinner is one of them. Turning on
\nthe TV during dinner would be equivalent to brushing one’s teeth with holy
\nwater or making nachos with the host and serving them at a Super Bowl
\nParty. Nobody has been known to do either, to the best of my knowledge.
\nBut it could happen. Vegetarians are tolerated at the dinner table, vegans
\nare eaten…<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
…Since my family immigrated, a couple years before the earthquake
\neveryone mistook for The Big One, Thanksgiving has happened twice a year.
\nIn October the turkey is served to family, in November to expatriot
\nfriends who aren’t quite sure what the feast has to do with big ice cream
\ncones filled with produce, indians wearing feathers and people in top
\nhats…<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
…Today’s got the distinct flavor of “One of Those Days”. I fouled up my
\nholiday availability sheet and showed up at 0700 to discover I’d been
\nordered out at 1300. Every time someone says “McKinnon” I wince, knowing
\nI’m going to have to explain what I’m doing here. It doesn’t look like I’m
\ngoing to be sent off though, which is nice because I’d rather not call in
\nsick after showing up in uniform. I wasn’t looking forward to explaining
\nto the APD that I’d been bitten by a large fish while at Safeway and
\ndidn’t feel up to working anymore (maybe tomorrow). It was that or tell my
\nmother that I wouldn’t be at Thanksgiving after all…<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
…I’m careful who I identify with when I go to the movies. When I saw …I found my phone after I’d resigned myself to it’s loss. I revisited …Maybe the link between Jaws and my cell phone’s a little weak, given my Sometime in the 1960s, in a land about 700 miles north of here, the nation’s grandmothers felt very much left out of all the protesting against war and nuclear weapons and the like. Free health care and a generous social security system didn’t leave much for them to demand in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-long-wander","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n“ Jaws& #8221; I was cheering for Jaws. Well, he was where he was SUPPOSED to be:
\nin the water. You’re going to the beach, he’s going to the supermarket. If
\nhe was to come in here I’d be with you grabbing a chair to beat the s-o-b
\nback…<\/i> [Gil Scott-Heron. JAWS<\/i>. Track 10 of
\nHREF=”http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B000005ZD1\/opendnaprojec-20”>The
\nFirst Minute of a New Day]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nevery place I’d been since I last had the phone out, as we’re supposed to
\ndo when we lose something. I had already started planning my response,
\nwhich is no small task when you don’t have a phone or know any phone
\nnumbers, when I discovered it was exactly where it was SUPPOSED to be: in
\nthe charger… <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nphone – baring some horrific accident involving a carp and a top secret
\nradiation experiment – isn’t going to eat me…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"