Thanks that I Give

My wife mentioned to me tonight that there are Americans who think we should not be celebrating this day in the traditional way. Namely, Indians who see the holiday as a celebration of the conquest of North America by Europeans. That’s certainly the implication of the way it’s taught about in the schools.

Well personally, I’m down with the Indians. Yet I celebrate Thanksgiving, which to me has nothing to do with the bogus story about Pilgrims inviting Indians over for lunch. I celebrate the Thanksgiving that Abe Lincoln declared, an occasion for giving thanks — for, well, what I have to be thankful for. So here goes.

First, I give thanks to the people in my life who have given me everything I have and everything I am. There are a lot of them, from family and friends all the way out, by way of teachers and colleagues, to living and dead writers and musicians and painters and playwrights and moviemakers and other artists.

I give thanks to my countries: The United States, where I have lived for most of my life and am a citizen; Costa Rica, the country of my birth and earliest childhood; Yugoslavia, the lost dream of a union of Slavs, where I spent an unforgettable year as a small child; Italy, where I roamed the city of Rome as a boy; and Brazil, where I spent the most exciting of my teenage years.

I am thankful for my colleges, Caltech and Reed, where I had the pure good fortune to get an education unlike anything I ever expected.

I am thankful to History, which has placed me in so many moments that I would not have missed for anything: the end of the Second World War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the struggle against it, the countercultural revolution of the 60’s, the dawn of personal computing and its first 25 years, and yes, the toxic, murderous, and slow (but accelerating) rise of the American Right, beginning with Reagan and still continuing. Who would want to miss these stories, including the scary ones?

Thank you California, my real homeland, most beautiful of American states, most diverse in people and ideas, most forward-thinking. Thank you, Nisei and Sansei Japanese-Americans, an astonishing culture into which I was lucky enough to marry.

Thanks Apple, for a quarter-century’s opportunity to contribute to the most vital and interesting part of the technological revolution.

Thanks to my bike, that simple subtle supple steel contraption that lets me fly the mountain roads, and my guitar, the wooden organism that gives me permission to sing.

There’s more…

David