Happy Bird Day

I found this posted on the comments section of TheMorningSun.com from Obamanation, one of our regular contributors. With a little editing, I thought it was worth passing along:

During the darkest hours of the Civil War, Abe Lincoln decide to create a holiday, a propaganda holiday, to force a broken nation to overlook its troubles and be thankful for the good times of a Civil War.
Like freeing the slaves, Lincoln couldn’t have cared less, but when the Northerners started to have second thoughts about Lincoln, the war and life in general, one needs diversions.
Freeing the slaves and creating Thanksgiving were just a couple of his best-known tricks. Declaring people free means nothing if they are still treated like slaves, and what kind of nation celebrates a civil war anyway?
Today’s Thanksgiving is a bizarre ritual comprising corny presidential turkey pardons, lame parade coverage, a turkey dinner at noon, badly played football, travel problems, Christmas advertising, and some weird unwritten law that says you can’t talk about anything but what you are thankful for.
There are four kinds of ways people express their thanks on Thanksgiving.
• The Traditional – Friends, family and health. Simple, sweet, and to the point without grandstanding.
• The Modern – A laundry list of things they have. More of a bragging contest than true thanks. Just another way of some jerkball to rub it into others that they are doing better/are better than the next guy.
• The Sarcastic – A loophole in the Thanksgiving pact that allows smart donkeys a way to truly express their bitterness and spite.
• The Innocent – Ask a little kid what they are thankful for and they might reply “cats and monsters.” [Mark’s note: One of the kids once said he was thankful for boogers.]
After careful deliberation I have decided this Thanksgiving I am very thankful that the guy in Elm Hall will be open and selling pizza on Thanksgiving, and that my wife is hot, because after eating dinner at noon, watching the Lions lose, while pretending civil war, and Christmas is not just around the corner, I just might want something that is truly great.

Thanksgiving 2009

Thanksgiving was on Sunday this year - it was the only day that fit into everyone's schedules - but we got everyone together and we gave thanks. The family was there, the table was full, and the Lions had even won a football game. It was, indeed, Thanksgiving.

And it was us. Matthew said something, well, politically incorrect.

Andrew expounds on cynical libertarianism, and defines politically incorrect just by being there.

Miranda's getting used to this.

But Jamie, well, Jamie still harbors an element of disbelief about this bunch.


The food was good and the laughter was hearty. We once were wished the gift of laughter, and it was here in full force this year. It's family. It's Thanksgiving, and we have so much to give thanks for.

The first half is the warmup act for the band

NPR reporter Tom Goldman nails it.
And yes, marching band is crazy difficult.

If only this were real ...

I ran across this while looking for something else. It's priceless.

The Finals - Again!

For the fourth year in a row, the Oiler band has made it to the Michigan Competing Band Association state finals.
This year, the band made it by the skin of their feathered caps - but they made it.
Mt. Pleasant scored a 70.3 at the Durand Invitational at Durand Saturday. That score was enough to qualify them in 10th place for the finals - by about two-thirds of a point.
It's been a challenging year for the Oiler band. It's by far the youngest band Mt. Pleasant has fielded in years, with about one-third of the band being first-year players.
Flu racked the band a couple of weeks ago - at one practice, a good third of the band was out sick. And the weather for practices and performances has been the worst I've seen in four years.
But they made it.
The show is awesome, and it deserves to be performed on the big stage. The break from "Glycerin" back into "Don't Stop Believin'" near the end of the show always brings a tear to my eye - and the close is heart-stoppingly beautiful.
Show time for the Flight III competition at Ford Field Saturday is 10:05 a.m.