THANKSGIVING: ANGEL BAND, THE MOORS OF SCOTLAND, AND BOUGAINVILLEA

There's Gregorian chant, there are Beethoven's Late Quartets, and then there's George Jones.

This version of "Angel Band" with George's buddy Vestal Goodman (who knew?) leads me to give THANKS FOR:

1) country western music which, with my mile-wide streak of corn, went far toward sustaining me during "the dark years" i.e. my whole life;
2) friendship, which really does become more of a treasure and more poignant somehow as we AGE, and;
3) sobriety because, given his history, that "terrible car accident" of George's....

Vestal Goodman and George Jones: Angel Band


THANKS FOR MY NAME:

"Eh! We're on the moor now sure enough," said Mrs. Medlock.

The carriage lamps shed a yellow light on a rough-looking road which seemed to be cut through bushes and low-growing things which ended in the great expanse of dark apparently spread out before and around them. A wind was rising and making a singular, wild, low, rushing sound.

"It's--it's not the sea, is it?" said Mary, looking around at her companion.

"No, not it," answered Mrs. Medlock. "Nor it isn't fields nor mountains, it's just miles and miles of wild land that nothing grows on but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing lives on it but wild ponies and sheep."

"I feel as if it might be the sea, if there were water on it," said Mary. "It sounds like the sea just now."

"That's the wind blowing through the bushes," Mrs. Medlock said. "It's a wild, dreary enough place to my mind, though there's plenty that lies it--particularly when the heather's in bloom."

--from The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

HEATHER MOORS
ISLE OF ERISKA
photo: Dennis Hardley

The story goes that my father (whose father hailed from Glasgow) played my mother this song when they were courting (the corn goes back generations, I'm proud to say) and thus they named their firstborn:
"There's a Wee Hoose 'Mang the Heather," Sir Harry Lauder, 1906


THANKS FOR:

1. Light
2. Eyes to see, legs to walk
3. Bougainvillea

I am totally, TOTALLY stoked for the holidays (complete already with piercing stabs of childhood feelings of desolation, loneliness, abandonment, anxiety, and the rock-bottom fear that Santa won't come) .

I'm cooking for Christmas, for one thing, and Thursday I'll be making  Brussels Sprouts With Herb Bread Crumbs and Bacon (from the great L.A. restaurant Mozza) (bacon, I sense, will be a "theme" this year) to bring to my friend Julia's.

A Happy Fun-Filled, or Quiet Meditative, or whatever darn kind of Thanksgiving you want to you! I am grateful to and for all of you...

[fyi, I'm gonna be on Barbara DeMarco Barrett's radio show "Writers on Writing" today, live at 9 a.m. PST. Listen in while you mash your pumpkin here]...