Giving Thanks, With Reservations

I’m thankful for the way the election turned out. Not all the races, certainly, but for sure the big one, President Obama’s re-election. As New Yorker editor David Remnick wrote, it is OK, recommended even, to sigh a huge sigh, to let the shoulders drop, breathe, relax . . .

Thanksgiving Circle Game

During the ski school years, Thanksgiving was lost to us. Mostly.

We’d get together with other twenty-somethings if we could, friends from the ski area, fellow instructors, patrollers, lifties. And, assuming we had Thursday night off, we constituted a sort of substitute family. Nobody had time to cook, so our gatherings were more like impromptu parties where we might put together a baña calda: massive amounts of garlic and anchovies in hot oil; dip strips of cheap steak; retrieve. It was fun. It helped to be drunk.