Sgt. Mom’s Thanksgiving Bird

Fresh out of the oven – right alongside the other dishes for the feast! Behold, Sgt. Mom’s Thanksgiving bird!
Thanksgiving Bird - 2014 - Even Smaller

It is, in fact a Rock Cornish game hen, butterflied and baked on a small dish of Sgt. Mom’s rye bread and sausage stuffing. Not everything in Texas is bigger…

What – there are only the two of us, and the HEB was out of fresh turkey breasts. I am sorry, but a whole turkey for two people would have us eating leftovers until St. Patrick’s Day.
A most blessed Thanksgiving to you all – especially to those of us who were working today…

History Friday – An Archive Post on the Uses of History

(From 2006, in response to a then-current story on a local grade school principal cancelling a long-standing tradition of a Thanksgiving tableau enacted by the small children dressing as Pilgrims and Indians. The link to the original story is long-decayed, but in light of this particular blast, and this one from the eternally plastic Cher … well, still relevant.)

Reader Mark Rosenbaum commented on one of my historical pieces this week: “Why couldn’t they tell history this well when I was in school a half century ago?” About that same time, I ran across this story—part of the run-up to the Thanksgiving holiday. Perhaps it might, in a small way, explain why people are not so enamored of history these days – at least, the sort of history taught in schools.

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Giving Thanks

For my Family

For my Home, my Country. A wonderful experiment in self-governance that, despite deep difficulties and irregularities, remains a dream-beacon.

For the Brave: Project Valour-IT.

For Beauty and for Books and for Art:

How delightful it would be to be a governess! To go out into the world; to enter upon a new life; to act for myself; to excercise my unused faculties, to try my unknown powers; to earn my own maintenance, and something to comfort and help my father, mother, and sister, besides exonerating them from the provision of my food and clothing; to show papa what his little Agnes could do; to convince mamma and Mary that I was not quite the helpless, thoughtless being they supposed.

Agnes Grey, Anne Bronte.

My copy of the Bronte book has a cover painting of great quietness, symmetry and mystery: Interior, by Vilhelm Hammershoi.

As long as we are discussing art, the flickr page for iPad created art is here. This wonderful experiment in self-governance frees us to create more and more and more. All hail the creators!

For Humor:

In “Whiter Shades of Pale,” Mr. Lander’s targets are more far-flung, and it’s a treat to watch him take aim. He takes note of the industries, in addition to classical music, that survive solely on white guilt: “Penguin Classics, the S.P.C.A., free-range chicken farms, and the entire rubber bracelet market.” About the chef Anthony Bourdain’s TV show — during which Mr. Bourdain eats arcane dishes and complains about tourists — the author writes, “There hasn’t been a show this reaffirming to white people since ‘Seinfeld.’ ”

New York Times books page

Yes, I am aware that I linked a Penguin Classics book above. That’s humor, too :). (Plus, I really love the books.) And for those not familiar with Mr. Lander’s brand of satire, he is making gentle fun of a certain mindset and attitudes, not race.

For Friends. Be well.