Friday leftovers

It is rare in this day and time to have people pausing and focusing on gratitude, home and family. We should do it more often. All three of these things are powerful. I even think of gratitude as a kind of home, less the place but more of experiences of unfamiliar places and kin I don't see very often.
When people ask me if I am going home for Thanksgiving, I say yes but I am really thinking, I am home. Too many confuse gentle love and generosity for an imitation of home. Home is just a perception, and we all know you can never go home again.
Thanksgiving day comes around every year and so does it's traditions. I pick and chose the traditions I like and dislike. My favorite tradition is turkey and dressing. I will be with a large group of family for the Thanksgiving meal and if I see anyone chose a steak instead of turkey breast, I will hit them over the head with a drum stick. The tradition I hate the most starts at 5 am the day after Thanksgiving. Retail opens it's door for thousands of shoppers who have waited in line in the dark just so they can get a one day discount.
Traditions good or bad come and go, they are a perception just as Home is. But there is one tradition I miss, that of Friday leftovers. Turkey salad, turkey soup, turkey spaghetti, I like it all. I swear I could eat dressing twice a day for a week and never get tired of it.
I have always looked at Thanksgiving as though I was an old dog. An old dog does not know the difference between November 24 and April 24, it's just another day and another bowl of food. Come Friday if the old dog in me could talk he would simply say " Just throw it in my bowl, I'll eat it and can you please pass the Tabasco "

Kangaroo Court

A kangaroo court is characterized by dishonesty or incompetence. The definition clearly describes the Senate hearings on energy prices and oil company profits.
The Republican controlled Senate performed one of its ancient ceremonies, that of a public hanging of a varmint by the ears. All the Senate really did was kiss the pearly white asses of the oil company executives that they were supposed to be demanding answers from. The Republicans did not even require the oil company executives to swear they would tell the truth The CEO of the worlds largest oil company said "there were no excess or windfall profits, just profits". The truth is whether it is because of collusion, Arabs, customer demand, China, hurricanes, or the failure to make investments in future capacity, a business person will charge and gouge the most he can get by with, otherwise he will lose his job.
Seeing the CEO of Exxon, Lee Raymond, set before the Senate panel, he reminded me of a big brown bear breathing heavily and grunting through the forest when he encounters a large beehive filled with honey which has blown down from a tree and landed in front of his schnuffling nose. It would never occur to him to think of other less fortunate bears. He simply eats the honey as fast as he can.
We might as well have had Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Moose incharge of the Senate hearings on energy prices. The Captain is honest and a much more serious inquisitor than any of those clowns running the Senate. The oil company CEO's would have never lied to the Captain for if they had, Captain Kangaroo would have sent them to bed without their supper. Greed and glutting run hand and hand so the CEO's would not have wanted any part of going to bed without supper.
The Senate hearings always tend to get boring and when they got to that point, Mr. Moose could have told one of his knock-knock jokes he was so famous for.
Knock-Knock!
Who's there?
The CEO of EXXON
The CEO of EXXON who?
The CEO of EXXON who produced a gallon of gas for 50 cents and charged your stupid ass 3 dollars

The Perfect Pumpkin

There is no such thing as the perfect pumpkin. As adults we know that but kids sure don't. They will spend hours hunting for that perfect pumpkin. If pumpkins were perfect they would all be made in a factory in China and each pumpkin would have a passed inspection sticker on it.
Pumpkins come in all sizes from little ones you could put in your shirt pocket to large robust ones that it takes both arms to cradle. I have no ideal what the little ones are used for. Christmas trees also come in all sizes but you don't see three inch trees on Christmas tree lots.
Dad was always the tree picker where mom was the mellon picker if you want to call a pumpkin a mellon. There is a big difference between the Christmas tree hunt and picking a pumpkin. Dad was the only one who had input about the tree. He wasted little time in his selection, usually picking the same kind of tree his friends picked and he was done with it. Mom on the other hand took her time with mellons of all kinds. I do not remember picking many pumpkins, but watermelon, I was a hell of a thumper. She would let me thump till she was finished talking to the other women in the store then she would always say " it's time to go, put that mellon in the basket ".
As a kid I wondered how the custom of carving pumpkins started, why didn't we carve watermelons instead of pumpkins? I watched lots of Peanuts Halloween specials where Linus sat among the pumpkins waiting for the Great Pumpkin that never came, but I could never figure out why people carved Jack O Lanterns. While growing up our house didn't have much of a tradition with pumpkins even on the one day of the year other people had pumpkins on their porch. If mom had set a pumpkin on our porch the pumpkin would have had a smile face. After all what kind of a person would be scared of a pumpkin ever if it had a scary face on it! Mom always knew best. She knew if we were to carve a Jack O lantern she would have to give us knives and she was not about to do that. The next thing we wanted to do was put a candle in the Jack O Lantern and that involved matches, those were out of the question. She was not about to let us burn down the house.
The tree business along with the pumpkin business is just one big racket. When the holiday is over out goes the tree or pumpkin and both make a mess. I have never met anyone who likes pumpkin pie and the only way to get rid of a Christmas tree is to give it to a South Austin good old boy who thinks if he sinks it in a body of water, he can go back the next year and catch a five pound bass, good luck!
Oh well, its really about the hunt not what you catch, the thrill of it all. Maybe in a couple of weeks I'll write about picking the perfect Turkey. I do have some experience in that field and I am a little bit of Turkey myself.