It’s Thanksgiving.

I’ve written before about what Thanksgiving means to me, personally – on this blog’s first Thanksgiving (checks notes) twenty-one years ago. It’s still true in every respect.

I was on the road, driving somewhere the other day when the notion of listing the things for which I’m grateful popped up. I started trying to list them all – and the list only really came to an end when the car stopped, far too soon, at my destination.

So what the heck – I’m just going to start a stream of consciousness list of things for which I’m grateful on this, our country’s festival of thanksgiving.

I’m thankful for my family, and my family in law. Looking back over the past twenty years since I’ve been writing about all of us, there are so many ways things could have turned out differently, and much worse – but yet here we all are, and things are all right.

And I’m thankful for the family I grew up in – my sister and my brother, of course, and my father, who is blessedly still with us. And for my mother, who we’re spending our second Thanksgiving without, this year. And as I noted back last spring, I’m profoundly grateful for one of the greatest gifts my mother and father gave us all – boring, non-remarkable childhoods, free of the sort of pointless, mindless drama that has always afflicted less fortunate families, and that a certain segment of society has taken to celebrating these days.

The more families I get to know, the luckier I know we all were, and are.

So for Bun, Zam, Syd, Watermelon, and of course Barb, Jim and Dad, I’m happily thankful.

Oh yeah – and Pickle, the cat. I lost him last summer – one of those cancers that hits cats like tornados out of the blue. I’m thankful to have had eight years with the best cat ever.

Beyond just family, I’ve had some people who affected my life pretty immensely, mostly positively. I wrote about a bunch of them last month – and the more I wrote, the more people and events and priceless gifts of influence I thought of.

So for them, all of them, I’m grateful.

I’m thankful for the career I have. I blundered into it 25. years ago, more out of boredom with my short career writing instruction manuals – and yet after all this time, I still look forward to going into the office every day, literally or virtually.

I’m grateful in particular for the job I have with the company I’m at. Not naming names – but it’s a place I genuinely enjoy being, with people I genuinely enjoy working with. There aren’t many places where a UX designer with a BA in English could land on two engineering patents. For that story alone, I’m exceedingly thankful.

I’m grateful for the path I took to get there – all its myriad chicanes and hairpin turns. Starting in radio at 15, burning out on it when I was 21, getting back at 22, out again at 25, nightclub DJing, technical writing, and the various twists and turns that got me here.

At the very least, there are a lot of stories to bore my kids stiff with.

On the other hand, every once in a while I can offer someone a perspective they don’t have. And that is a great feeling. For both of us, I think.

I’ve become keenly aware in recent years that there are people who’ve been very important at one time or another, that I will likely never see again. The time for chance serendipity random encounters gets shorter every year. So one thing I didn’t expect, but for which I’m intensely grateful – my show and blog and, to an extent, social media have led me back into contact with a lot of people I likely wouldn’t have via the normal course of random encounters – high school and college classmates who tune in, and occasionally shout out on my show’s various social media feeds. In three particular cases – my college friend Ray Zentz, and my high school and colleg4e classmates Eric DeMar and Pennie Werth – they passed away, very unexpectedly, and (gulp) way too young. And in this past couple of course, I’ve been blessed to have had at least some contact with each of them, while I still could.

And for my many friends who are still with us, and who I do get to see and hang out with? Yes, I’m even more thankful for each and every one of you!

It’s easy enough to say “I’m thankful to be healthy”, and it’s true. But in the five years since my crash weight loss I’ve become humbly aware that most guys who spend as many years sedentary and overweight as I did, aren’t nearly as lucky as I am, to be as relatively healthy, after all that, as I am. I got another warning last spring – I’d found a little under half the weight I lost in 2018, and had to get back on the program – and it worked, again. I’m very aware I’m as lucky as can be. “I’m healthy” is, in this case, delivered with a bit of “whew – close call” as a happy nod. And for that, I’m thankful.

Back to a bit of nostalgia – I’m thankful for my entire high school class. I can’t say I’m friends with everyone in the Jamestown High School Class of 1981 – but this past couple of reunions have blessed me with a deeper appreciation of quite a few people who, between cliques and crowds and circumstances I barely knew in the day, with whom I’ve spent more time over a few drinks at reunions than we ever did in high school, and intensely glad for the opportunity.

I’m glad I got the education I did. It’s become the fashion these days among a certain crowd of conservatives to dunk on the modern college education – and from what I see among 20-and-30-somethings today, there’s something to it – but my BA in English has served me far better than I’d ever thought it could when I graduated from college. It taught me how to think, reason, look for the question behind the question, for the additional questions that every answer launches.

And of course, “education” is more than just curriculum and schooling. I’m thankful the many unintentional lessons I learned from some of the amazing people I met, and the collateral effects of the things I learned, in class and out.

I’m grateful that this version of the RIchard Thompson Band released this version of this day-appropriate song:

Perhaps a bit less ethereally? I’m so happy to have a band again. Oh, it’s just a classic rock cover band – it’s not the flaming-hot passionate “mission in life” vibe the twenty-some me wore back in the 1980s, when I took my swing at being a rock star, or at least a songwriter, producer and whatever else came my way. But I get to play guitar in front of rooms full of people who seem to enjoy it. And even if it’s a slow night at an out of the way bar, my Fitbit says I burn 6-7000 calories and rack up a zillion steps, so even then it’s a win-win.

Anyway – for that, I’m thankful.

Given the sturm und drang of this state and nation’s political scene, I’m deliriously grateful for the voice this blog, and the NARN, have given me over the years. On the one hand, social media have given everyone a voice, of sorts – and what people have done with that voice is another entire subject. But being able to do this on my own terms (within FCC and Salem Communications rules, natch) for all this time? To the extent I’m still sane, that’s probably why.

Of course, I’m grateful for the friends I’ve made during all these years of writing – Professor Reynolds, Gary Gross, Joshua Sharf, Sheila O’Malley, and the group of local bloggers that, about this time 19 years ago, started coalescing into that radio show: Scott Johnson, John Hinderaker, Brian Ward, Chad the Elder, Atomizer, Michael Brodkorb, and of course Ed Morrissey, King Banaian, Brad Carlson and Jack Tomczak. And of course, for the many friends I made in the “Minnesota Organization of Bloggers” days – including the three whose contributions still bless this blog, Mr. D, Jeff Kouba and First Ringer.

Why, yes – even Paddyboy! I’m thankful that Pad – someone I’ve considered a friend for over three decades, and to whom I owe an odd little debt of gratitude from back before the word “blog” meant anything but something that happened about an hour after you ate a gas station burrito – drops by, pique and all. I owe you a drink or two. Have your people call my people.

And I’m thankful for this little ephemeral bit of internet I’ve been wrangling this past 20.75 years. It’s been a sporty year – as I write this, the comment section is still shut down. And since you mention it, yes – I’m thankful I shut it down. It’ll be back. Yep – also grateful.

As I noted elsewhere around the time of the 20th anniversary, writing this every weekday morning has been sort of a Zen-like lesson – come rain or shine, feast or famine, writer’s block or fit of logorrhea, the exercise of sitting down and writing, five mornings a week, has been a way of centering myself for this past two decades. For better or worse – I have to think it’s better – one of the great takeaways from doing this has been, I think, one of the great lessons of life; keep plugging away, and things eventually explain themselves.

Of course, I’m profoundly and humbly thankful that people still choose to read it, after all this time. Thank you all!

I could keep at this for hours more. And perhaps one day I should. But cooking calls, same as last year.

And so to borrow a line from that first Thanksgiving post on this blog, way back when:

But I forgot one. I’m thankful to be here. Now. Doing what I’m doing, and with the chance to be doing the same thing – or better – next year.

Thanks to all of you. I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving and a blessed holiday season.

This post is an update of a post I wrote last year. Not much has changed – for which I’m also grateful.

We’ll start with this thread on Twitter. I urge you to read the whole thing; it distills the response I have to the modernes attempt to cheapen and undercut everything Western Civilization stands for into a hot red crystal of truth:

One of my great strengths is I’m a very loyal person. If you’re a colleague, a romantic partner or a friend, I’ll stick with you – sometimes to absurd lengths.

One of my great weaknesses is I’m a very loyal person. I’ve stuck with some friendships, and other relationships, that didn’t deserve it. If you’re a colleague, a romantic partner or a friend, I’ll take a lot of fairly pointless and demeaning abuse on what my inner critic thinks is “principle”, but is really more equal parts inertia, a childhood of not having a lot of close frieends, and excessive self-doubt (as noted by others).

A great example was the long-gone and utterly unlamented “Dog Gone”. She’d been a social acquaintance, even a friend of sorts, going back to the ’80s. She’d known my kids when they were babies. And when she turned up on the blog, a few years later, I figured “good – let’s see what happens”.

We all know how that turned out.

I mean, things started out OK.

And then, as the wheels slowly wobbled off, I figured “Dogs are gonna Dog”.

For a while, it devolved to the fact I just enjoyed watching the smart people in the comments curb-stomping her, week after week – although as her “technique” degenerated into “pooping and running”, that fun didn’t last long.

Finally, of course, she used her 20+ year old contact with my family to take a deeply bizarre and very personal swipe at me. Something so over the top, so biliously narcissistic that even I had enough.

That arc took about a decade.

Because loyalty is wasted on some people.

No, that’s not accurate. It’s more true to say I waste loyalty on some people.

I’m not going to say that changed me, particularly – “Dog Gone” wasn’t a close friend, and jettisoning that fairly peripheral relationship had no effect on my life or how I live it.

But it’s a bit of a cue that I have a tendency to misallocate loyalty.

Apropos not much.

More later in the week.

I had a long drive over the weekend. I spent it listening to Jordan Peterson.

I caught an excellent episode with Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation. It’s a sprawling 97 minute discussion of everything conservatism is, everything it should be, where it falls short, how to make up the difference…

Here’s the episode:

…and, toward the beginning, a concept I’ve been struggling to put my finger on.

The topic was the American university’s new obsession with “safety”, especially intellectual safety. A higher education is, as Peterson notes, supposed to upset one’s adolescent stupidity, and thereby teach you how to think critically about all your, and everyone’s, preconceptions.

Roberts pointed out that in the traditional University system – especially in Europe – the goals are:

• To have an intense, probing debate without a whole lot of regard for what the various parties feel about the issue…
• …while observing some standards in the argument – the basics of human respect, not to mention logic and social decorum.

Now, call me a dreamer, but that’s what I’ve always shot for on this blog, and in the comments.

We’ll come back to that.

I’ve had plenty of feedback about the disabled comment section. I do appreciate it. I miss having it turned on as well.

It’ll be back.

But in this past week, I’ve done a bunch of thinking.

As I pointed out last week, I’ve always treated “managing” the comments with a certain amount of idealism. Pragmatic idealism – I also barely have enough free time to read the comments, much less play manager – but idealism nonetheless.

I figured “we’re all adults”. I asked a bunch of adults, respectfully, to mind their manners and treat each other with the same basic respect.

It didn’t seem like that big an ask at the time. And for about 20 years, I was mostly right.

And, let’s be honest – this blog is more a personal exercise in self-discipline and thought-development than “citizen journalism”, to say nothing of a money-making venue. I’ve been amazed to have an audience for a couple of decades, now – and, yes, blessed. Much of what I genuinely like about my life, particularly my social life, springs from the connections this blog started for me.

I figured the input should match the output.

But there’s been more than enough output for me to make it worth making things work.

More tomorrow.