Thanksgiving 2015 Random thoughts and memories

  I'm well into my 62nd year now as Thanksgiving rolls around. For the most part growing up in Gaffney SC it meant riding down to Rome Georgia to see Nanny and Papa and then on Thursday afternoon or Friday over to Collinsville Alabama to see Aunt Jean and Uncle Bill and dash back to Gaffney Sat afternoon cause my Dad was a preacher and had to preach at Bethany on Sunday morning. Now I live across the street from Uncle Bill and Aunt Jean so I go in reverse most of the way to see my Brother and Sister and their family in the Pickens County vicinity.

      I am on the verge of opening a vein and killing all the little darlings--don't take that literal, it's some literary allusion to cutting out the censor and letting it all hang out; well this library computer just chewed up a great thought so to hell with it. I'm not quite going for that today....It was a sweet memory of my departed Mother that had my eyes moist about three am last night and some reference to episodic maudliness.

   I thought about going to war with the Morgans for about the 7th time. This time over Jojo retort in the Southern Torch Facebook wall over the role his Mother played in the ouster from Collinsville Baptist Church, and free speech; but to hell with that idea, not worth it. Besides I just read a great piece in the New Yorker about North Caolina BBQ and the BBQJew.com and Jojo's brother went to Duke and sends a witty text on occasion and I haven't had time to talk with him about the BBQ piece yet.

   And then there is that ( I deleted the profanity in an edit, let's just call him abysmally disconcerting) Uncle Prentice who has been too long in this world and about to sabotage all pleasant memories of the Fox Family and grand get togethers in the past, some of which he added relish to.

   And of course there is ISIS and the reaction of right wing radio in Bham Alabama which enrages some of my days, but what the Hell can you do with either one of them. Close as I can get is Marilynne Robinson's great piece, "Memory"  in her new collection of essays The Giveness of Things. What's frustrating to put it mildly is you suggest something that sublime to a fundy and instead of reading it, they just quote another verse of Scripture they never understood in the first place and think you are a smartass if you try to explain it to them.

   And I just noticed Ana Alaru, the perfectly cast Rachel in screen version of my friend Ron Rash's Serena, has taken up the cause of the Syrian Refugee. Rachel was a refugee of sorts herself, fleeing great evil in North Carolina whose Governor now has reservations about the vetting process, for better clime of Tennessee on the way to Washington state. I've messaged Alaru to consider Robinson and Memory.

    Well Revenant comes out in Theatres in December, I read a good Robert Bly poem or got word of it back in October and the Clemson/South Carolina marching Bands are going to join together Saturday to Be South Carolina Strong in Memory of the Charleston Nine.

   Hopefully by the SC primary early next year some of the bastards in the GOP field will be honest about the legacy of Strom Thurmond and Lee Atwater. Who knows.

   God Bless America, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Pilgrims who sent us in the direction of Turkey and Family Get togethers and the words at the end of Pynchon's Inherent Vice.

   Amen