Stuffin'

I don't know about you, but I am a Thanksgiving fan, man! Yeah sure, Christmas is pretty awesome (I love jingle-jams), and May Day is probably just about as important as holidays get (all hail) , but Thanksgiving, yeah, I'm pretty in to it. It's kind of like the overlooked little brother to Christmas, which honestly I think is pretty unfair to a holiday with such a long and complex history. Here's what former President George W. Bush had to say on the subject in his 2007 Thanksgiving address at the Berkeley Plantation, originally known as the Virginia Colony (y'know, a stripe on the flag, dude)- "In the four centuries since the founders of Berkeley first knelt on these grounds, our nation has changed in many ways. Our people have prospered, our nation has grown, our Thanksgiving traditions have evolved -- after all, they didn't have football back then. Yet the source of all our blessings remains the same: We give thanks to the Author of Life who granted our forefathers safe passage to this land, who gives every man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth the gift of freedom, and who watches over our nation every day."

No football indeed, ha ha! We sure didn't George! But even without modern conveniences like The NFL or Safeway I'll bet the early colonizers could still glaze a turkey so shiny you could see yourself in it. If you don't know how to do that already Green Apple has a wall near collapsing with the weight of its cookbooks that can help. Don't eat meat? No problem. The vegetarian section here is slammin'. Heck, we've even got a pretty solid raw food section if you're not in to the whole oven (check out books from the Ani's Raw Food Kitchen series, she's a babe!). Best of all the Food Not Bombs cookbook'll teach you how to prepare anything you want in bulk for the entire neighborhood, and from what I've gleaned from my six years and seven apartments in this city, there are a couple of districts in this city that could use some reasons to be thankful.

Now there's a little less than two weeks till the fateful Thursday. I really do hope everyone's gonna' have a good one with family, friends, or even just peace and quite if you prefer. I myself will be enjoying they way the city empties out over the holiday, chilling out and cooking up something weird with my rad Mom. I've even picked out a semi Thanksgiving related nonfiction title to read, Ward Churchill's From a Native Son. I'm looking forward to it!

A woodcut of early Thanksgiving festivities, circa 1622.