Lift Up Your Hearts!

Nothing shows American individualism like the days between Thanksgiving and the end of the year, when everyone is free to celebrate the holiday of his own choosing—ancient or modern, major or minor, traditional or made-up—as long as he follows the Two Cardinal Rules:

• Don’t assume everyone else wants to celebrate the same holiday you’ve chosen, and
• Spend lots and lots of money!^*

I reach into the grab bag and choose:  Advent, all twelve days of Christmas, and Epiphany.  Perhaps New Year’s Day as well.  None, technically, involves spending a lot of money, but we generally manage to do our part, and so far this year has been no exception.

For the purposes of this blog, the operative word here is holiday.  I am attempting to take a break for the season.  I seriously doubt I won’t post at all, but do expect a significant reduction in the number and length of posts.

May whatever holiday(s) you celebrate bring you blessing!

^* The money doesn't have to be spent selfishly, despite what the television ads may lead you to believe.  I recommend considering some version of the Advent Conspiracy.

This resolution comes straight from George MacDonald, via his novel Robert Falconer.  It expressed the “divine law of [Falconer’s] activity,” and I wish to make it my own.

The phrase spreads before me a vision of quiet, effective work punctuated by seasons of true rest, the antithesis of modern society’s frantic—and often ineffectual—labor, and equally frantic striving after (unrestful) recreation.

Another author who captured this vision was J.R.R. Tolkien, in his short story, Leaf by Niggle.  At one point in the story, the protagonist is in a purgatory of sorts, and I love this description of what happens in him:

It could not be denied that he began to have a feeling of—well, satisfaction:  bread rather than jam.  He could take up a task the moment one bell rang, and lay it aside promptly the moment the next one went, all tidy and ready to be continued at the right time.  He got through quite a lot in a day, now; he finished small things off neatly.  He had no "time of his own" (except alone in his bed-cell), and yet he was becoming master of his time; he began to know just what he could do with it.  There was no sense of rush.  He was quieter inside now, and at resting-time he could really rest.

It was from Shinichi Suzuki that I first heard, “Never rush, never rest,” which captures a similar idea, but one not as good, for rest is essential.  “The Sabbath was made for man.”

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz (The Power of Full Engagement) studied top-notch tennis players to determine what separated the great from the greatest.  The players were equally skilled at the techniques of the game; the crucial difference appeared in how they used the brief moments when they were not actively playing. The really great players had learned how to rest between points.

Into Great Silence, a film about the Carthusian monks, gives yet another glimpse of what I seek in this, my final resolution for 2010.  Two monks are cutting wood into fireplace-sized lengths for heating.  The young novice quickly breaks into a sweat, and wears himself out with his energetic motions, while the old man calmly, deliberately, and slowly outpaces him in production without looking in the least bit tired.

Focussed, unhurried work; effective rest.  A good aspiration for Advent, the Season of Preparation, though perhaps a most difficult one during the secular Christmas season, which neatly epitomizes its opposite.

This year I've had more fun than ever before with my "New Year's" resolutions.  I'll probably find more next year, but on a less regular basis, as once a month is obviously a faster pace than I can put them into practice.  What I hope to do with this year's resolutions, as each reaches its one-year anniversary, is take time for analysis:  how I've done, whether or not I still think the resolution is valuable, and how I might make it more measurable (and thus more likely to be accomplished).

Progress Report

#1  Read More Books  In November I surpassed my most ambitious goal for the year, that of five books per month, wtih a total of 61.

#2  Rediscover Feasting  Thanksgiving at my sister's house is one long string of amazing feast days.  I'm still not good enough at saving the feast for special days to receive such times with the kind of joy and abandon that hungrier people do, however.

#3  Learn to Relax  I've been more regular (though still not good enough) at taking time each day for deliberate, focussed relaxation.  I also found our two activity-charged weeks away from home much less stressful than usual.  I'm not sure why, but I take it as a good sign.  (I don't mean that being with our wonderful family is in itself stressful, but I tend to stress out easily when there's a lot going on and a lot that needs to be done.)

#4  Like More Things Hmm.  What to say here?  I think I already liked everything I did this month, except missing my flight connection on the trip home after Thanksgiving.

#5  Pay Attention  I continue to work on keeping my mind focussed on the "now" of whatever I am doing.  When I remember.  What was I writing about?

#6  Cast Away Fear  Travelling alone and dealing with unexpected storms and missed connections gave me some practice here.

#7  Talk Less, Listen More  Spending two weeks with lots of other people gave me more opportunity to practice this, and if I wasn't all that successful, I at least remembered this resolution on occasion.

#8  Enjoy Spontaneity  Not much to say here, but again, being away from home does tend to force me into some spontaneity, and I did enjoy it.  :)

#9  End with the Beginning in Mind  Nothing I can think of to report this month.

#10  Care More about Other People—and Less about What They Think  It's not easy to do, but there have been several occasions when I have made this a deliberate choice.

#11  Practice Thanksgiving  I had a lot to be thankful for this month—including a safe, if long, trip home—but to be honest I was no more thankful because of the resolution than without it.

So, this headline popped up in my news feed today:

US, Israel, PA fail to reach agreement on settlement freeze

and my immediate thought was, "Why is Pennsylvania negotiating directly with Israel?"

The more I learn about Julian Assange, the more I like Terry Jones.

They're both inconsiderate, irresponsible idiots in my book, though each started with good intentions and the belief that his actions were righteous and courageous.  But Jones had the grace to back off when he saw that his Koran-burning threat stunt was endangering innocent lives around the world.  Assange is using the threat of further, more dangerous WikiLeaks revelations to fend off prosecution on, among other things, rape charges.

There is a place for whistle-blowing, and shedding light in dark places sometimes requires great courage and controversial actions.  But if you want to be a hero rather than a two-bit blackmailer, it’s wise to break no more laws—civil and moral—than absolutely necessary.

One who lays his life on the line for the sake of others may be a hero, but the sacrifice of other people’s lives, even for a great cause, is a less clear path.  That’s why the right to make such decisions is generally given to regulated, designated authorities, like the military or police forces.  Being made up of human beings, they may make disastrous mistakes, and can be corrupted, but on the whole they are safer holders of that power than unregulated, untrained individuals and mobs.  There’s a good reason vigilante action is feared—and illegal.

Don't you just love it when an otherwise obscure reference clicks in your mind?

First, one of my favorite non-family blogs, The Occasional CEO, has a post entitled Steampunk in Pictures.  Steampunk, Wikipedia tells me, is a subgenre of science fiction.  Wait—I cut my teeth on science fiction, and I'd never heard of it?  Turns out steampunk came of age during the 1980's and 90's, when our kids were cutting their teeth and I was too busy to keep up with that part of my former life.

But then, just this morning, I learned that my nephews' writing teacher will be leading a class on steampunk.

Then on the way home from church I heard part of A Prairie Home Companion^*, which was being broadcast from New York City.  Garrison Keillor, describing the crowds at Times Square, reported that city locals were not there, but rather were at—and here he named several other places, including "the Christmas shops at Bryant Park."  That would have passed by me into obscurity just like all the other places he mentioned, except that last December I had passed by Bryant Park twice a day while doing research at the New York Public Library, and had seen those very shops—along with the portable ice skating rink and other magical sights of the season.

This phenomenon, that the more we know, the more we are aware, the more we learn—and often, the more we like—is a big reason why I believe even very young children should have the opportunity to encounter as many of the good things in this world as possible, from hearing new languages to making pancakes to looking at pictures of great art to any number of other wonderful things.  When it comes to knowledge, from the vital to the trivial, "to everyone who has, more will be given."

...and I believe it.  But my Personal Economic Indicators indicate a booming economy.

I dislike shopping in the best of times, and December is not the most pleasant of months to shop, even when one doesn't have to deal with heavy coats and boots.  Yet sometimes need will drive me out to the stores, and I had hoped that with all the bad news about unemployment and and bankruptcies and poor retail sales, there might come compensation in the form of a less-crowded shopping experience.

But I went out today, and all indications are of an economic boom in full swing.  Very heavy traffic in the middle of the afternoon—I didn't think it could get worse, but proved myself wrong by still being on the road when rush hour began—and stores full of shoppers.  Buyers, too, if the checkout lines were any indication.

If this is the situation in bad times, how will we handle the good?  Our main road (not highway) is already 6-8 lanes wide.  How much shopping, and driving, do people have to indulge in for the economists to stop saying "consumer confidence is down"?

In case you haven't seen it, check out the 12 Composers of Christmas.  (H/T musician friend Sarah D.)

It is fitting to end my November Thanksgivings with gratitude for a wonderful visit with family and a safe journey home.  Despite Heather’s prediction that I would post more about our activities than she would, you’re not likely to hear much about them.  I was too busy living the adventure to write about it.¹  Of yesterday’s voyage from Pittsburgh to Orlando I have much to say, and the illusion of time to say it.

It was a long day—nearly 16 hours door-to-door—but I can’t complain as Porter still had some 13 more hours to travel after I was safe in our own house.  If it weren’t for the final blow from JetBlue, I wouldn’t have minded at all.

Perhaps the beginning of the trip was a portent, as we began by brushing the first, wet snow of the season off the car.²  Traffic was bad but the driving fine on the way to the airport, and there was no line at either of our check-in counters, so we had plenty of time.  The security line was by far the longest I’ve experienced in Pittsburgh, but short by Orlando standards, and neither of us had to make the body scanner/pat down choice.

All too soon we had to go to our separate gates, but kept in touch by SMS:

many flights out of nyc canceled³

mine ok so far

delayed to 10:40

our plane just landed.  praying for your connections

ours not here yet

on plane

me too

Remind me not to schedule non-direct flights during the winter if possible.  I was flying through New York City instead of directly home to Orlando because I was taking a free trip Porter had earned by being bumped from a JetBlue flight earlier in the year.  If it weren’t for the most important part—I got to my destination and home again safely—I might be tempted to say the flights were worth the cost.⁴

Flights out of JFK airport were delayed and cancelled left and right…but not the one flight I wanted to be delayed:  my 12:30 New York – Orlando leg.  I must say that JetBlue got me to New York in time to catch the flight, had we not been so far above the airport at boarding time.

When we finally were allowed to land, I remarked that if I had wanted a thrill ride I could have stayed at home in Orlando.  One of the airport employees later described the weather as a monsoon and a tornado combined.  In Florida we’d call that a hurricane, but whatever it was, that’s what it looked (and felt) like from the airplane, too.

Safe on the ground—not without a cheer and a communal sigh of relief from the passengers—I sped out of the plane hoping that my connecting flight had been delayed at least as much as we had, but it was no longer on the display board.  I noted that the next flight to Orlando was currently boarding, so I sprinted from Gate 6 to Gate 17 to pant for a seat.  No go.  Well, no go for me.  As it turned out, they had room for my luggage, though I would later learn that the price it paid for the privilege was not one I would be willing to pay for myself.

I almost didn’t mind the delay, however, because I received one more SMS from Porter:

 just made the narita flight, got my first jog in in 2 weeks

Better him than me, by far.  If he’d missed that connection, his next chance wouldn’t have been until the following day.

Another sprint—or rather, a fast walk, as there was plenty of time before the next Orlando flight—brought me to the “Just Ask” desk, where the friendly and apparently helpful agent listened to my story and quickly printed me a new boarding pass.  I walked away, very impressed with JetBlue’s service.⁵

That good feeling lasted just long enough for me to get to the gate and be told that my boarding pass was not a ticket, just a placeholder on the standby list for a completely full flight.  Still, the gate agent was fairly encouraging, as if he expected several of the “already checked in” passengers to disappear at the last moment.

Being on standby pretty much tied me to the gate area, as I wanted to be available at a moment’s notice.  In fact, everyone was told to stay in the gate area, since flight statuses were changing with a fairly regular randomness.  Not that this kept me from getting my exercise:  the gate changed from 14 to 5, pretty much as far as you can go in the JetBlue area.  Presumably this was because the plane we were to take to Orlando was now coming into Gate 5 instead of Gate 14, so we were hopeful that we⁶ might soon be on our way. 

Just kidding.  I dutifully re-told my story to the new gate agent and settled in with the crowd, but after much more waiting and wondering, we were informed that “our” plane had been diverted to Atlantic City.  Fitting, I suppose.  Air travel in winter is always a gamble.

I had asked the agent at Gate 5 if it wouldn’t be better to get a confirmed seat on a later flight than to take my chances with a sold-out flight that piled delay upon delay, but she told me to stick with the standby.  The Atlantic City diversion sent me back to Just Ask for a second opinion.  The agent there confirmed that the later flight was also full—but that a few seats had opened up on my standby flight, and he would confirm me on it.  Hallelujah!  I wish the gate agent had been willing to do the same, but in all fairness she was mighty busy, and it did take 10 minutes and a phone call or two to make it happen.

But happen it did, and clutching my confirmed boarding pass I pulled up a square of carpet near an electrical outlet and sat down for the first time in hours.⁷  I finally felt secure enough to relax and pull out my computer, but alas, those waiting for posted updates did not get any, as for reasons still unknown I could make neither the gate-area wi-fi nor our air card work.  I soon repacked the computer and resumed standing—the floor was cold and hard.

At last our plane escaped from New Jersey, and even managed to land without another gate change.  We boarded and were soon in the air and on our way home.

Flights to Orlando are unique in that the pre-boarding line, which includes those travelling with young children, can fill up much of the plane before anyone else gets on board.  Amazingly, although a baby or two cried occasionally, and one two-year-old with a high-pitched scream was set off ‘way too many times, the children were incredibly well-behaved for having been cooped up in an airport for most of the day.  Not that this stopped one nearby passenger from complaining, loudly and rudely.  I would guess he was in his mid-20’s, but even the two-year-old with the nails-on-blackboard screech was more mature than he.

Even more amazingly, he was the only rude and immature person I encountered.  The camaraderie of shared difficulty mostly seemed to make people friendlier. We talked, we joked, we helped one another.  I’ve had less fun at parties!⁸

Three hours later, the plane touched down at good ol’ MCO.  We cheered, we packed up our belongings, we retrieved our luggage from the overhead bins.  We waited patiently for the exit line to start moving.  And waited.  And waited.  The jetway at our gate was broken, and all other gates were occupied.  After much effort and failure, the proper mechanic was sent for, but his efforts were equally fruitless.  At last another gate opened.  Thanks no doubt to the same regulations that require us to learn on every flight how to fasten and unfasten a seat belt, we couldn’t moved until all the luggage was restowed in the overhead bins, and all the passengers back—and belted—in their seats.  Thus protected, we made our way—at an altitude of 0 feet above the ground and at a speed slower than I can run—around the corner to our new gate, and deplaned at last.  Even so, everyone but the aforementioned rude young man was cheerful and patient.  My neighbor did refer to this delay as the final blow, and I told her to wait to say that until she had her luggage in her hand.  Sometimes my prescience astonishes me.

Cheerfully I hauled my heavy backpack and heavier duffle bag across the airport to baggage claim, where I searched in vain for my suitcase.  It should have been easy to spot, with its 1992 Sunshine State Pow-wow patches and bright red Towers-Perrin strap, but bag after bag went by, and I reluctantly had to admit mine was not among them.  At the JetBlue baggage desk I was astonished to find that they could not tell me if it had made it onto the plane.⁹  I did, however, find it myself, in a small group of orphaned bags from previous flights.

My rejoicing was short-lived.  The bag was canted at an odd angle, and refused to come along when I pulled.  The cause of this recalcitrance was not hard to discern:  the wheels—both of them—had been Snapped. Clean. Off.

Back to the baggage desk line I went, only to be told, “They don’t cover wheels and handles.”  I ask you, does the above look like normal wear and tear?  Having had my bag badly mangled on a previous trip, I took especial care to pack this one completely full and in a way calculated to minimize problems.  And it worked—the body of the bag came through in fine shape.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so diligent, as if they’d bashed the body they would have acknowledged the claim.  But then the contents might have been damaged, and so far all looks well in that department.  The bag, however—our one remaining of that size not damaged beyond usefulness—is a total loss.  The clerk said I could file a “courtesy claim,” but when pressed admitted that it would make no difference whatsoever.  Mindful of the hour and my kind neighbors who had been waiting a long time for me, I said good night.  But for the record, whatever JetBlue claims for its successful baggage handling, their statistics are off by at least one bag.

Did I mention kind neighbors?  We have the best!  My original plan had been to take the bus home from the airport and walk the mile and a half home.  When I ended up bringing home the extra 48-pound bag, my revised plan was to ask our neighbors to pick me up at the bus stop and save me the half-hour walk with heavy luggage.  However, as my chances of getting into Orlando at a decent hour grew slimmer and slimmer—and the odds of my getting to the bus stop after midnight greater and greater—I went for Plan C and asked for a ride from the airport.  This is no small favor, the airport being 45 minutes away, but as I said, they are great neighbors and came to my rescue.  Given the baggage situation, it was a much greater rescue than any of us knew—dragging the wheel-less bag the 50 feet to their car was difficult enough. I think we owe them Outback dinners for the rest of the year.

On the way home, after I told my baggage story, they—seasoned travelers themselves—remarked that these days you almost have to look on luggage as a disposable item.  Perhaps they’re right:  We reuse plastic cutlery, zip-lock bags, and yoghurt containers until they give out, but don’t mourn overmuch when they do.  I’m pretty sure some of our yoghurt containers have lasted longer than the dearly departed suitcase, but then again, they never had to go through the airline baggage system.

Adventures or misadventures, all in all it was a great trip.  I’m glad to be home, and thankful for all the wonderful people who made it enjoyable from beginning to end.

Being an avid reader of science fiction, I was sure that the big technological change to mark our time would be space travel.  But it’s apparently an idea whose time has not yet come, because it never took off (yes, I meant to say that) the way the science fiction writers prognosticated.

Personal computing and the Internet, on the other hand, took me—along with most of the S-F writers—by surprise, even though they were part of my world from the era of room-sized machines and paper-tape input.  I never imagined how drastically they would change our lives.  Instead of exploring outer space, we have opened the inner spaces of our world.

Time, space, and grandchildren do not permit me to cover the vast scope of changes, but here are a few for which I’m grateful, even though there’s often a negative side as well.

Information  I guess that goes without saying in the information age, but I think people who came of age in the post-Google era cannot imagine how rare information was.  Questions often required a trip to the library, on the chance that there might be a book on the subject (no online card catalogues), then wading through the book hoping for an answer.   One could go to progressively larger (and more distant) libraries searching for more, all of which took time, time, and more time.  I love sitting in a library doing research—somehow I doubt the Internet will ever replace the smell and feel of old books—but I’m gratefully amazed at how much information is readily at hand now.  Information is power, and the Internet has distributed this power to the masses.

Memory  Are you, like me, perennially tortured by something that you almost remember?  A quotation you need to source?  A fragment of a quotation you’d love to know in full?  A snatch of music from some song you can’t recall?  A word that would be perfect for a sentence you’re writing but it just won’t come to mind?  In the past I mostly just had to wait and hope that eventually the missing information would appear from my subconscious; often the question was never answered.  Even I sometimes find it difficult to believe what life was like before Google.

Connection  We have friends and family all over the world.  I wrote earlier how thankful I am for the radical changes in communication and transportation speed and affordability.  Moreover, e-mail, blogs, and social networking sites have kept me in contact—or renewed contact—with people who would otherwise have faded from my life.  We are among that disappearing breed, the Christmas-card senders, and I can't imagine ever giving that up, but the connections that more frequent and instantaneous communication builds are even better.

Opportunity  I love to write. Unfortunately, I did not discover this strange state of affairs until after I graduated from college with a math degree and went to work as an assembly language programmer, so the opportunities for this form of expression were few.  I wrote letters to the editors of newspapers and magazines, created a family newsletter, and kept a journal.  But it wasn’t until I discovered blogging (thanks, Jon!) that I started writing a lot.  It takes an unreasonable amount of time, it doesn’t bring in any money, and I regret that it has for the most part crowded out the above-mentioned outlets for my writing impulse.  I’d love to be able to do it all.  Still, I now have my own corner of the world in which to write, a small but loyal following, and a large number of people who have found something useful here.  That’s a good feeling.

Independence  I’ve written before about the way the Internet facilitates the work of amateurs, and how I believe this is for the most part a good thing.  We need professionals who will devote to their fields the time that amateurs do not have and the effort they do not want to make.  Yet for two reasons I believe the rise of amateur work is an important benefit of 21^st century life.

First, so much information is now available that even the professionals cannot keep up with it, as everyone knows who has by his own minor research discovered important medical information that his doctor has missed.  This is not, in my observation, a rare occurrence.

Second, there is a tyranny of professionalism, under which professionals—and more so, their guild-like organizations—have encouraged a “leave it to us” attitude that most of us have bought into.  Professionals raise our food, bake our bread, make our clothes, take care of our lawns, attend to our health, teach our children, provide our music, and play our games for us.  Thanks to the Internet, computer software, and even television, tools and information once limited to professionals are now available to everyone, and many people are rediscovering the joy and freedom of doing things for themselves.  Someday we may even return to the neighborhood kickball game and singing around the piano at home, though this will take more than the Internet to recover.

I’m not unaware of the irony of trading dependence on a few professionals for dependence on technology and a vast, faceless “community.”  There’s a lot to be said for having local doctors, teachers, musicians, and bakers who know and are known in a true, small, physical community.  But few of us have that choice, and even then I’d like to have the best of both worlds.  In the meantime, I’m encouraged to see families and individuals discovering and rediscovering the basic skills of life.

This is the final post in November’s Thanksgiving series.  I doubt it’s the end of the Good New Days series, as there’s more to say there, but I’m thankful to leave behind the pressure to post something every day. 

For all I gripe about the short shrift given to public transportation in the United States, I need to take a moment to be thankful for our highways.  Vacation travel in my younger years was more picturesque, as we wandered through small towns and back roads.  But if I-95 is boring, it makes the drive between Pennsylvania and Florida immeasurably more pleasant.

Even with the inevitable traffic jam around Washington, D.C., when your objective is to get from Point A to Point B, travelling 70 mph on a multi-lane road beats without question poking along at 30 mph on a two-lane road, behind a mile-long army convoy, through a construction zone.  The only thing the latter has going for it is that it’s easier to find relief when the kids have to use the bathroom.

(If you travelled on New England’s highways yesterday, you may have a hard time believing that automobile travel could have been worse, and you might be right.  I don’t think we ever experienced anything as bad as Massachusetts/Connecticut traffic on the Sunday after Thanksgiving—or just about any Friday night, for that matter.  I refer you to my previous complaints about our lack of good public transit.)

It’s such a brilliant idea to have one, easily-remembered number to call for all forms of emergency, anywhere in the country.  (Cell phones and Voice Over IP phones have outpaced the 911 system and diminished its power a bit, but it is catching up again.)

I used to have nightmares in which I needed to call the police, or ambulance, or fire department, and kept fumbling through the phone book and not finding the number.  If I finally succeeded, then d-i-a-l-i-n-g the number took so long and my finger always slipped at about the next-to-last digit and I’d have to start over again and by that time the phone book had fallen shut and I had lost the number….

I don’t have those nightmares anymore.

For a normal, healthy person dealing only with minor illnesses—including diseases like measles and chicken pox, which were no big deal for most people—in many ways it was better to be living 50 years ago than now.

(An exception would be for normal childbirth, which had been taken over by hospitals and doctors.  Mothers reclaimed their [ahem] birthright in the late 1970s, only to lose it again, and then to partially regain it—it’s the only branch of medicine that I know to be so cyclical.)

I remember doctors making house calls, and doctors who treating the whole family as a unit, which I believe is healthier for all.  They trusted parents to describe symptoms accurately and as often as not the doctors gave advice over the telephone and saved many a trip—even when they were no longer making house calls.  They still had time to talk with their patients; none of this in-and-out-in-15-minutes assembly line stuff.

However—and it’s a big caveat—for serious illnesses and for emergency medicine, now is a much better time to need medical care.  When I was born, polio was still devastating the country and organ transplants were unheard of.  CAT scans didn’t appear until twenty years later.  From babies to bones, from tumors to head trauma—I hope never to need it, but if I do, I’ll take today’s medical technology with gratitude.

It’s just a pity we can’t have the house calls, too.

I grew up in a monoculture, which was not unusual 50 years ago.  People of other races and cultures were a topic to studied, not friends and neighbors.  I’m thankful today’s American children experience racial and cultural diversity naturally, as part of their daily, normal lives.  To our grandson, a “black lady” is a woman of any race wearing a black dress.

On this Thanksgiving Day, as we prepare for a very traditional American feast, I’ll take time to be thankful for the tremendous variety of food now available from other countries and cultures all over the world.

I’m a great fan of the locavore movement; I know from my childhood that nothing tastes as good as food that not only comes straight from a nearby farm, but also has a distinctive local flavor.  But there is also something to be said for being able to enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables in the middle of winter.

Even better is the opportunity to enjoy fruits, vegetables, spices, and prepared foods that were unheard of when I was growing up:  sushi, satay, tandoori chicken, naan, fajitas, egg rolls, mango lassi, bok choi, passion fruit, kung pao chicken … the list is long of now-common foods that were unavailable to most Americans 50 years ago.  I’d never even had a bagel till I went to college with a large crowd from New York City.

What a multicultural feast our table has become!

I can’t quite bring myself to say directly that I’m thankful for television, because I believe it has done great harm in our society, but it would be wrong to ignore the enormous educational and cultural benefits this technology has conferred.  As strong a proponent as I am of the written word, some second-hand experiences are much better approached in a video format.  From African safaris to Wagnerian opera, video provides formerly elite experiences to the hoi polloi.  It’s not the real thing—but even the very rich cannot experience everything directly.

Thus I am also thankful for the technology that has enabled us to be masters of this medium.  In my early days we had no television at all, but it didn’t take long to become enslaved.  Life was planned around when favorite shows were on, because if you weren’t watching at that very hour, you missed it.  I remember (to my shame) being reduced to tearful anger because our babysitter wouldn’t change the channel from her favorite show to mine.

It's true that we are, as a society, still enthralled.  But we don’t need to be.  We have the tools to use the medium for good purposes and ignore all the rest.