nancynall.com » What I’m thankful for.
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What I’m thankful for.

This will be the last post before the hol­i­day, because I will be a prover­bial one-armed paper­hanger until Fri­day, no, Sat­ur­day. I have moved-up dead­lines on my writ­ing projects, and my reg­u­lar news-farming gig con­tin­ues, because we cover the whole world, and Thanks­giv­ing is not a world­wide hol­i­day (but should be). Plus I have to make a pie and a Wal­dorf salad (secret ingre­di­ent: Cool Whip) and some tasty fresh rolls and that green-bean thing from yes­ter­day. Alan trudged out of the house with one of those “don’t expect me before spring thaw” grunts, which every new­shound knows as the thousand-yard Thanksgiving-week stare. I talked to another old new­shound yes­ter­day, who wisely took the week off, only to receive an emer­gency call from the news­room to inform her one of her sub-editors had an alco­holic break­down at the morn­ing news meet­ing, just FYI.

I think all of us who are jour­nal­ists in the audi­ence can under­stand how that hap­pens.

But still, I’m tak­ing the time to be thank­ful, because I am, and because grat­i­tude is a virtue, and virtue is my mid­dle name. Also, because the longer I sit here blog­ging, the longer I can put off all that crap in the first para­graph.

So let’s get started with just a few of the things I’m thank­ful for this week­end:

…that my kid had a sleep­over last night, and I slept until 9! hours and 22! min­utes! into Novem­ber 21. Vir­tu­ally unprece­dented.

…that it’s finally rain­ing, even though it’s pos­si­ble the rain will turn to snow and turn all our plans to shit. Still. Water in the streets means water in the lake, and just hear­ing the pitter-pat of rain on the sky­light reminds me of how long it’s been since I heard it last.

…for my web host and great old friend and online guru, J.C. Burns, who has designed and encour­aged and hosted and trou­bleshot this site since Jan­u­ary 2001, at a total cost of $0.00 to yours truly.

…for all my great com­menters, and for what they’ve taught me about the nature of online com­mu­ni­ties. I wish we could have some sort of slam­min’ party at some equidis­tant point from all of us, but it would prob­a­bly be some­place in South Dakota.

…for all the links on my blogroll, many of them tended by writ­ers who daily remind me why the news­pa­per busi­ness is in such a state. (Please, stop before I lose my health insur­ance.)

Ah, the hell with grat­i­tude. Grat­i­tude is for losers. On to the use­ful blog­gage!

My brother-in-law has used this method to carve the fam­ily poul­try for years, ever since he saw Bryant Gum­bel demon­strate it on the Today show. It works like a charm. Although, for rea­sons of bet­ter sto­ries to tell down the road, you may pre­fer the comedy-of-errors method:

“One year the turkey took a long time to cook and I went to carve it after about 13 beers,” said Mau­rice Landry, who lives near Lake Charles, La. “The way I remem­ber it, I bore down to take off the leg and the whole thing went shoot­ing off the plat­ter and knocked over the cen­ter­piece.”

A ques­tion often asked in our house­hold: Where would we be with­out news­pa­pers to remind us to wear sun­screen? I just asked Google to rus­tle up that other dead-tree hol­i­day sta­ple — how to eat healthy at Thanks­giv­ing. Imme­di­ate result: 398. More sure to come.

Detroit’s Metro Times throws bait in the water — 100 Great­est Detroit Songs Ever! — and, as usual, gets it all wrong. Why? There’s not a sin­gle song by J. Geils on it, even though the best live album in mod­ern his­tory was recorded here. And you can’t find “Panic in Detroit” any­where. David Bowie is no local, but it’s a great song just the same.

OK, one-armed paper-hanging must com­mence. See you back here on Fri­day, mos’ likely. Happy Thanks­giv­ing!

Posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 11:56 am in Same ol' same ol'. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


18 responses to
“What I’m thankful for.”

  1. LA mary said on November 21st, 2007 at 12:35 pm

    Don’t for­get the arti­cle about how to make clean up after Thanks­giv­ing eas­ier.

  2. Mindy said on November 21st, 2007 at 1:24 pm

    I’m on for South Dakota. Let’s do it.

    J. Geils Live, yes! Get down to it! Wham­mer Jam­mer lemme hear ya, Dickie!

    Have a par­tic­u­larly happy Sun­day.

  3. Julie Robinson said on November 21st, 2007 at 2:08 pm

    My Dad lost his left arm in a farm acci­dent as a child. He really was a one-armed paper hanger! And darned good at it he was, as he was at just about every­thing else he turned his one arm to. Well, except mar­riage, but that’s another story.

  4. Kirk said on November 21st, 2007 at 2:20 pm

    Thanks for that link to the turkey-carving video. My sis­ter became a vegan this year for health rea­sons and said she’d make every­thing but the bird, so I’m roast­ing a turkey for the first time tonight (though I have grilled one or two). It seems pretty sim­ple, so I don’t have turkey anx­i­ety. And the carv­ing demon­stra­tion seems highly log­i­cal, with noth­ing tricky to remem­ber.

    Have a great hol­i­day, folks, and Nance, happy birth­day. I admit that I can never remem­ber the date but I do know that’s it around Thanks­giv­ing.

  5. Joe K said on November 21st, 2007 at 2:28 pm

    N,
    I would be up for a party, but only if the J Giels band was play­ing. When I was fly­ing home from Cleve­land last night I was up @10,000ft to get above the clouds, the moon was about full and with the cloud deck below it was beau­ti­ful. I had my Garmin 496 gps tuned into xm radio and what came on?? King bis­cut flower hour fea­tur­ing the J Geils band LIVE. Man for a hour I was just jam­min. And before any­one pan­ics, yes I was in con­tact with ATC at all times. At the times I usu­ally fly, there is not a lot of other traf­fic up there.
    Have a Great Turkey day,
    Joe

  6. MichaelG said on November 21st, 2007 at 2:54 pm

    Happy Thanks­giv­ing to all!

  7. Elaine said on November 21st, 2007 at 3:14 pm

    May you all have safe trav­els and fab­u­lous meals this week­end!

  8. alex said on November 21st, 2007 at 3:37 pm

    And good drugs, sex and rock-n-roll.

  9. ashley said on November 21st, 2007 at 6:41 pm

    Thought y’all might enjoy how this smar­tass with an iphone gets shut down, by an air­line cap­tain:

    http://​www​.planeb​uzz​.com/​2​0​0​7​/​1​1​/​w​e​_​k​n​e​w​_​t​h​i​s​_​w​a​s​_​g​o​i​n​g​_​t​o​_​h​a​p​p.html

  10. basset said on November 21st, 2007 at 10:55 pm

    The best live album in mod­ern his­tory was indeed recorded in Detroit, but it wasn’t “Full House,” although that one was damn close… along with “Live at Leeds” and “Get Yer Ya-Yas Out.”

    The best live album in mod­ern his­tory would be… “Live Bul­let.”

    mean­while, I am look­ing right now at a poster from a J. Geils con­cert at Indi­ana U. in the fall of ’73, with Mark-Almond and Strawbs sup­port­ing… tick­ets $5, $4, $3, and $2. Hell of a show, too.

  11. Danny said on November 22nd, 2007 at 10:42 am

    Great story, Ash­ley. We actu­ally flew yes­ter­day in spite of the doom and gloom of The-Busiest-Travel-Day-of-the-Year! sto­ries. South­west air­lines. Non-stop from Bal­ti­more (my home town) to San Diego. It was fine. Got in to San Diego at 11:15 AM.

    You all have a great hol­i­day. We’re going to this restau­rant. Here is the menu.

  12. Ricardo said on November 23rd, 2007 at 12:11 am

    I mostly agree with the Top 100, I might order the songs dif­fer­ently. I would have sub­sti­tuted “25 Miles” as one of Edwin Starr’s entries, that song is my Motown favorite. I used to go see Jack Scott play in a lounge in Lin­coln Park dur­ing most of 1969, and “Burn­ing Bridges” should be on the list.

    Some­one for­got Ray Parker Jr. is a Detroit, ex-Motown side­man and should include some­thing like “Ghost­busters”. We were audi­tion­ing gui­tar play­ers in 1972 and Ray showed up, but our man­ager talked us out of get­ting him. Good for Ray, he imme­di­ately got a job with Ste­vie Won­der!

    Also, it wasn’t men­tioned that Bar­rett and Nolan Strong were cousins. “Mind Over Mat­ter” should have been near the top of the list. Lastly, “Func­tion at the Junc­tion” by Shorty Long needs to be on the list.

  13. Kim said on November 23rd, 2007 at 11:07 am

    Thanks for being the house mother to a group of folks who likely will never meet (tho SD is a beau­ti­ful place and I’d sug­gest Syl­van Lake Lodge for the fes­tiv­i­ties.) Hope every­one had a deli­cious Thanks­giv­ing.

  14. michaelj said on November 24th, 2007 at 1:31 pm

    I’d have to say that as far as live albums are con­cerned, Kick Out the Jams beats the Who and Sil­ver Bul­let. But maybe you had to expe­ri­ence MC5 in per­son. And Bob Seger in ’67 at the Birm­ing­ham Teen Cen­ter was the best Bob Seger. Too bad nobody thought to tape that.

    If y’all go to South Dakota, just drive up into the Black Hills. Clean streams, wild black­ber­ries, aban­doned mines that look as though they’d been pop­u­lated until yes­ter­day. Stun­ning.

  15. Ricardo said on November 24th, 2007 at 6:29 pm

    More fires out in SoCal today. We are still hav­ing 75 degree weather. This is the first time I haven’t had to light my fur­nace pilot in Novem­ber, I might get all the way to Decem­ber before get­ting to that, and I am still leav­ing the win­dows open (a lit­tle) at night. The wood is piled up for the fire­place, but it is too warm for a fire (and now too windy). My neigh­bor, who likes to have a fire if it drops below 68 isn’t even hav­ing one yet.

    One of my favorite quotes from “Atomic Cafe”: “…That atomic test­ing has blowed us clear down to the equa­tor…”

  16. Jeff said on November 25th, 2007 at 9:38 pm

    Note to Dorothy and any­one else in Ohio on Mon­day, 26 Novem­ber –

    Deer gun sea­son begins at dawn (defined by drowsy fel­lows in tree-stands, the very def­i­n­i­tion of sub­jec­tiv­ity). Stay away from win­dows fac­ing wood­lots near the morn­ing or evening hours, and the real dan­ger — not kid­ding — is that all at once, the forests alive with trudg­ing stout yeomen bear­ing fire­sticks, the deer that sur­vive this morning’s fusil­lade will be absolutely and under­stand­ably fran­tic, and they are run­ning every pos­si­ble direc­tion.

    Hun­dreds of thou­sands of them, all over Ohio.

    No bet­ter time to run into a deer at dusk, or mid­night, or noon­time, than dur­ing the week of boom-boom sea­son. They run into coin-op laun­dries, used book­stores, barns, and office park lagoons. We have for a brief time both too many deer, and too many (new­bie) hunters, and they’re every­where.

    You’ve all been warned.

  17. basset said on November 25th, 2007 at 11:46 pm

    I was up in Michi­gan for the open­ing of deer sea­son last week, sat in the blind for three days and part of another… didn’t take a shot but I just about got one with the rental car head­ing out of Big Rapids at night. and a Michi­gan out-of-state hunt­ing license doesn’t cost a whole lot less than the deductible on the car, either…

    related fac­toid… I do some work for a hunt­ing show on cable tv, the research they use says white­tail deer are by far the most pop­u­lar topic. because they’re acces­si­ble to every­one, I guess.

  18. John C said on November 26th, 2007 at 7:45 am

    One of my favorite brushes with musi­cal fame was just after col­lege 0 mid ’80s. Some friends and I got together at the Tam O’ Shanter in Boston (Brook­line, actu­ally) and wound up in an extended drink­ing ses­sion with none other than The Magic Dick! (Unfor­tu­nately I must’ve (you know I MUSTA) got lost, ’cause that’s about all I remem­ber.)
    Hope every­one had a good turkey day.

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