Thanksgiving

Yesterday's post originally was entitled Thanksgiving.  I changed it after I started writing, so since today is the actual day this year, I'll be posting some of my thoughts on what I'm thankful for.  You may not agree with all of them, but that's your right.

This will not be a post about being thankful for friends, family, etc.  I'm always thankful for them.  I want to show some thanks for other things that I think many of us take for granted.  And while it's true, we may take our family for granted, I hope that I don't.

First off, I am going to say I'm thankful for our health care we have here.  My dad was an "orphan" by the time he was 27, my mom was "orphaned" before she turned 40. Both of my parents are still alive as is my father-in-law.  Without advances in medicine that we've had in the last 50 years, it's very likely that they might not be around to enjoy their grandchildren.  While it weirds me out a little to realize that I'm now the father of three adult children, my parents have seven adult grandchildren.  I don't believe my dad's parents even got to enjoy one adult grandchild.

I'm thankful that I can get up in the middle of the night and get a drink of water if I want.  Nearly one billion (yes, you read that right, billion with a B) people don't have access to safe water on a regular basis.  According to water.org website, 3.4 million people die each year from a water related illness.  The majority of those illnesses are caused by fecal material (still hungry for that turkey dinner?).  More people have a cell phone than have safe water to drink.  Those are some sobering statistics.

I'm also thankful that I live in a country that allows me to worship, or not worship as I please.  Can you imagine living in a country where you could only worship via one religion?  What if you didn't agree with that religious philosophy?  Think about that the next time you kneel down to pray.  Our country might not be perfect in many ways, but it's a lot better than many other areas out there.

Lastly, I'm thankful that we can all share in discourse about what we think is right and wrong with our country and with the way some businesses choose to run their business, which is what I'm going to do right now.  

Over the past week, I've seen many posts on Facebook from people voicing their displeasure over certain stores opening for business today.  The business of the company is to make money for the company.  They don't make money when they're closed.  If they believe this will bring in more money for them, then more power to them.

You don't have to go.  Yes, I respect your right to voice your displeasure, however, I believe you're wrong.  If you don't like it, don't go.  When I worked as seasonal help at Disneyland back in college, I never worked on a holiday.  Why?  Not because Disneyland was closed, but because the permanent employees all wanted to work.  They got paid time and a half.  Granted some stores might not do that because they aren't unionized, but the employees might need that extra money down the road for Christmas presents.

I also find it interesting that all this complaining has been directed at stores opened on Thanksgiving Day.  How many of you watched the Macy's Thanksgiving parade?  Do you think Macy's produced that out of the goodness of their heart?  Why are there no complaints about the people holding onto the tethers of the balloons at the parade?  In fact, why is there no complaints about the NFL playing football on TV?  All those poor football players, and referees and stadium employees away from their families on Thanksgiving Day?  What a travesty.  I think we should boycott that too.

Tongue in cheek aside, I hope all of my readers have a happy Thanksgiving, no matter how you choose to celebrate it.  As for me, my plan is to watch the Lions win on Thanksgiving for the first time since 2003, then drive with my wife and boys to my sister's house to gather around the table with the family that's here in Southern California.  My thoughts will be with family members (especially my daughter who will be celebrating with her boyfriend and family in San Mateo) who weren't able to make it down.  I know we shall be seeing them at Christmas.

Fiesta

Our church held their 65th annual church fiesta this weekend.  They always host it on Mother's Day weekend and it's the 2nd or 3rd largest event the city has each year.  Many times in the past, we've been elsewhere, but in the past 10 years or so, we just enjoy the weekend, eating the great food, hanging out with friends and enjoying the live music played there.


My wife is in a jazz group called 11th Hour and two years ago they played at the fiesta to open up the Saturday that weekend.  Small but appreciative crowds were on hand as is usually the case at noon on Saturday.  The fiesta really gets hopping around dinner time both Friday and Saturday and it lasts all the way to 10PM both nights.

The past two years, I've played around with some long exposure settings on my camera.  I really didn't know how to do it very well last year and was just getting 4 second exposures, mainly because I didn't know how to set my camera on the bulb setting.  I fixed that over the past year, learning how to use my camera more and more in the manual setting.


This year, I got several shots that I'm quite pleased with.  The second shot looks like a giant slinky about to tumble over a staircase.  While, I'll never understand the fascination of spinning around and around in circles for five minutes and then throwing up (I exaggerate a little here), but the light trails on these things really lend themselves nicely to some interesting shots.  There were no rollercoasters at the fiesta, so the thrill seekers had to be content with the spinning rides or the bumper cars.


Each year, our church makes a nice profit from the fiesta which helps funds the school there and other things throughout the year.  Even in these tough economic times, it seems that people are willing to spend some money having a little fun in Claremont.