Sunday, November 28, 2021

 November 27, 2021 a thought for today, Words are sounds of the heart. Chinese Proverb

We had a new experience on Thursday....going out to dinner for Thanksgiving. Going to Bob Evans wasn’t quite what I expected. When we were seated at the table, we had a menu with one side entirely Thanksgiving related, turkey, ham, dressing, mashed potatoes, and so on. The other side of the one page menu was simple breakfast offerings. There were no other choices. I had my taste buds fixed on a nice fish dinner. I’m sure that kind of menu is helpful for the kitchen and for keeping things straight. My other surprise was that when I chose my three sides, green beans, mac and cheese and mashed potatoes. Of the three choices I got mashed potatoes and corn (no green beans and no mac and cheese but corn I didn’t order). After the long wait to be seated and another wait for the food to be put on the tale I decided not to complain. It was an adventure and at least I didn’t need to be tied up with fixing food and cleaning up. Another observation was that there were as many people standing in line to pick up full take out meals as there were people waiting to be seated or to pay afterward. 

Yesterday’s photo challenge was titled “dark”. Last night as I laid in bed after I had read some of my book I glanced out the window and noticed the bright moon between the bare tree branches. I just had to grab my cell phone camera right next to my hand and capture an image of this moment in time. In the right-hand corner is a slight showing of the reflection of the street light in the alley behind my house.  

It’s interesting and inescapable to reflect on past Thanksgivings (along with other family holidays) and how they change as families grow and expand. In the beginning it’s kind of “over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go”...it grows and “glows” as in-laws and the new lives are added, and others may choose to take a new direction, as the years go by....finally reaching the time when age, energy and family size has gradually taken a turn in life’s journey as it moves into the September years that must come as we become senior citizens. All of this brings experience and awe toward the things that do and must come with the gift of life. In the end loving memories take the place of warm activity.

Yesterday I went in to church to meet up with Dorothy to put the finishing touches on the newsletter. We had some extra things to add in the fold so it made the letter puff up leaving a wide opening at the top. I was concerned about it not going through the postal machines correctly so we had to decide how to correct the situation. We ended up adding a staple to the top section. Hopefully that will pass the post office inspection. 

Today is the Saturday after the busiest week of the month for me. The bulletin and the newsletter are done, the newsletter done for another month. So other than getting the coloring book ready for the free meal tonight I am keeping things low and slow. The one thing I had to get out of the way was paying bills. 

The word today (food for thought) is instinct.  Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence, Denis Diderot.  The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason, Charles Darwin.  Five thousand years have added no improvement to the hive of the bee, nor to the house of the beaver; but look at the habitations and the achievements of men! Charles Caleb Colton.   Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species, Joseph Addison. An instinct is an agent which performs blindly and ignorantly a work of intelligence and knowledge, Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet. Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response, Amos Bronson Alcott.  The instinct of the people is right, Ralph Waldo Emerson. The soul, by an instinct stronger than reason, ever associates beauty with truth, Henry Theodore Tuckerman.  What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct, Ovid.  The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct. Marcus Tullius Cicero.  Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside. Honore de Balzac. Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is much higher and truer courage. Wendell Phillips. The true and the approximately true are apprehended by the same faculty; it may also be noted that men have a sufficient natural instinct for what is true, and usually do arrive at the truth. Hence the man who makes a good guess at truth is likely to make a good guess at probabilities. Aristotle. 

Today’s photo theme is not a great surprise when you consider yesterday’s theme.... today's is “light”.  This is the lighting set up for my indoor house plant garden with only part of one of the Boston ferns caught in the exposure. 

This article is an assorted set of  tid bits of history about a Thanksgiving of the past in 1921. The day began with a steady downpour. The rain kept the street clear and with very little traffic only football fans complained but the games did go on. As the article stated then the day was considered a religious holiday. For people who had no home the Volunteers of America helped out with free meals. According to the article one thousand baskets were filled and given out. In the basket was a “peck of potatoes, a half-peck of apples, canned goods, coffee, sugar and bread”. Added to the basket for sick or “aged persons’ was fruit and jelly. In many homes that year roast beef with brown gravy and potatoes were the “staples” for the meal. Though turkeys were readily available so were chickens, ducks and geese sold at 30, 35 and 40 cents. I learned from this article that a place then called the Columbus Barracks (later Ft. Hayes) Thanksgiving dinners fed 400 officers and men when the year before it served 1400 men. That meal included “turkey, cranberry sauce, oyster dressing, mince pie, chocolate cake and the other necessary attributes.” Also, in 1921 turkey was served at the deaf and the blind schools. That article further stated that “no religious services were given at the state penitentiary in the morning”, motion pictures were shown instead and roast pork was the main part of the meal. At the reformatory in Marysville rabbit was served. At the state hospital roast port was served and special music and literary programs preformed.  Many “fashionable restaurants” stayed open along with local theaters, many still being “live theaters”. Another thing I learned from the article is that there was a restaurant called the Oriental in existence then that served a Thanksgiving Day dinner from 11am to 8pm for $1.75 a plate. Some of the sides offered with that meal were oyster cocktail, heart of celery, queen olives, puree of croutons, chicken a la Reine, roast Vermont turkey, or fried chicken a la Maryland and Oriental lobster salad, and asparagus tips in the dessert. Interesting!

We are having the Omaha Steaks spiral sliced holiday ham and trimmings that Lowell ordered for our (mine, Bob and Sue’s) Thanksgiving today instead of on Thursday by my choice. 

Joy 

all alone and feelin’ sad






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