Thanksgiving!

This, my only Thanksgiving post, goes back to 2004, the first year of my blog. This week Dad and I will head down to see Grandma yet again. I'm not sure yet what the food situation will be-- will she put out some lunch meats and cheese, will I cook, will we go to an over-priced restaurant-- all that is certain is that i will hate it.

He Shall Speak Peace Unto the Vegan
For Thanksgiving dinner my sister and father and I drove two hours to visit my Grandmother in Chesapeake.
"Pick a nice restaurant," we told her, "the sky's the limit!"
So Grandma picked a place called the Founder's Inn.
It turns out that the Founder's Inn is owned and operated by Pat Robertson.
I was unhappy that my father's $150 was going to such a person, as I'm sure he was, but the restaurant was actually very nice. The waitress didn't try to share the good news with us, and the food was no less delicious for the proprietor's craziness. There was a large buffet, with normal Thanksgiving food like stuffing, and also less common things like oysters, which I tried and liked. There was a bit of a line, but Grandma and I both enjoyed the buffet thoroughly. Dad enjoyed it a little less, because it was overpriced and he was paying. Sarah enjoyed it not at all, because she is a vegan.

We knew this ahead of time, of course. Dad got a copy of the menu in advance to make sure it was vegan-friendly.
"Look, succotash. Mashed potatoes, stuffing, salad. This should be fine right?"
Not being vegans, or even vegetarians, neither of us thought about things like chicken stock in the succotash, or cheese in the salad.
These things leapt out at Sarah though, who sat down after her first trip through the line with a plate of fruit and two rolls. My Grandmother, who was not paying, began whining and complaining about how if we were being charged such a large sum Sarah ought to have something more substantial to eat.
"No, don't worry about it," said Sarah. "I'm used to places like this never having anything for me. If we told them I was vegan they wouldn't even know what that meant. I'll eat something later."
But Grandma wouldn't shut up, and I tried to calm her down.
"Grandma, Sarah's used to this, don't worry. It's alright."
"Sure, it's alright for you," she said, and got up to get herself a plate of free roast beef and mashed potatoes. Partly for Sarah, partly for Grandma, I went and asked a server if they could make something vegan for my sister.
"She's a vegan, so no animal products. No meat, no milk, no butter, no cheese."
"What about eggs?"
"Nope."
"Chef Gerald, this is Dave, do you copy?" the man said into his walkie-talkie. "We've got a situation here with a guest who can't eat any meat or dairy. Yeah. I know. Could we do something for her?"
Ten minutes later the nice man brought my sister a plate of over-seasoned asparagus and charred peppers. Grandma, Dad and I all beamed at Sarah.
"Look at that!"
"That looks great!"
"How wonderful!"
The man smiled and wished us a Happy Thanksgiving, glad, in the spirit of the season, to have humored a hippie freak. My Grandmother finally stopped complaining about how Sarah had nothing to eat and began complaining that our cousin had married a Mexican. Sarah pretended to like her food. "It's awfully salty," she frowned, but, noticing that we were frowning back, added, "but I really like it!"

A Revolutionary New Strategy For Winning 'The Culture War'

Driving with my friend Lynsey this evening, politics came up. It does sometimes.
Lynsey said: "I hate when people say they want the government not to interfere with their lives economically, and then ask for it to regulate everyone's beliefs. That makes my head explode."
I thought about this, and had what I think is a extraordinary idea.
"That's because they want the government to force everyone to believe what they believe, so government interventon becomes okay to them. And we (liberals, moderates, people with compassion, people who think) have been fighting back the wrong way. We've been saying 'Keep the government out of our personal lives,' and it hasn't worked. We need to go further, Lynsey."
"Surely, you don't mean!"
"Yes! We need the government to force fundamentalist Christians to become gay!"
I really think this could work- the Christian Right would immediately start railing against government social intervention, and then the left would stand back and say, "Alright by us." Government would be out of people's personal lives, and we, the righteous and the sane, would win.
I'm writing my Congressman tomorrow, and I hope you do likewise.

Okay Nick: Yay Obama! Yay!

Long-time reader Nick Bognar writes:
Wow, four hundred reactions to your professor, and yet the most important presidential election of the last hundred years doesn't merit a blog entry. Bigot.

Really Nick? More important than 1932? More important than 1968? The election was important surely, but let's not indulge in CNN-style hackery that throws all historical perspective out the window in the name of making current events more "exciting." God I hate that crap.

I wrote about my experience at the polls on election day. You want more? Okay, I'm excited to have a President who gives a good speech, but a little afraid that people, myself included, are going to end up disappointed and more cynical than ever.
It makes me warm inside that creationists everywhere are frustrated and angry and quoting Bible verses in their efforts to cope with the "scary direction our nation is headed in."
And I remember talking to a black coworker named Maurice last January, and how he said that white people would never let a black man be President ever. I wish he hadn't quit so I could engage him in a "See-my race-isn't-so-bad-after-all" conversation, even though I still kind of believe that my race might be that bad, in spite of who our President is about to be.

Election Day

1. By 9 o'clock the lines were not bad at the polls, and I didn't have to wait at all. On the way in I passed a few people soliciting.
"Would you like a Democratic ballot?" they asked.
"Oh no thank you," I said, "I am well-informed and don't vote at the whim of some party. I am the part of the system that works."
Emboldened, I continued down the sidewalk towards my polling place, prepared to turn away two more chipper looking young professionals in raincoats. I began to say "No thank you," but was cut off.
"I'm Kim Gray and I'm asking for your vote today," said the one, pressing a pamphlet into my hand.
"Charles Samuels, asking for your vote," said the second.
I'd never met actual politicians who wanted me to vote for them before. And I had not prepared as well as I'd thought. I'd done no research at all for the school board and city council races that these two wet and friendly people were participating in.
I entered the hospital to vote, found the lines pleasingly small, and went right into a booth with a touch-screen, another first for me. I made all the choices I'd researched, and then stared for a minute or two at the choices for City Council and School Board. The thought of them smiling at me in the rain seemed to represent a fine thing about our system- that people wanting political power should first be made to grovel. Maybe if these people were willing to dress up in nice clothes and stand in the rain for hours smiling at people they deserved my vote. On the other hand, I had no idea what either of them stood for, and not wanting to give my support to someone who for all I knew could support feeding stray cats to the homeless I left those two boxes unchecked. Or untouched, or whatever it is you would say in a digital age. Then I went to see if Starbucks would make good on an offer for free coffee on election day.

2. Picking the kids up from school the other day I heard two first graders discussing the Presidential race:
"McCain is bad cause he wants to destroy the environment."
"Yeah. Baracka Obama has the most votes."
"Yeah, if Obama gets any more votes he will win."
"If I was countiing votes, I'd be like 'McCain, a thousand votes. Forty votes. six hundred votes.' Then I'd be like, Baracka Obama, infinity times a million google votes!"
"Hahaha yeah."
Then a kindergartner on the second row told everyone that Obama was not a Christian, putting me in an awkward spot.
"I don't want to hear any talk like that."
"But it's true, he isn't."
"No, that's a lie," I told him knowing full well I probably just called his Dad a liar, "people say mean things that aren't true sometimes about candidates because they don't want them to win, but that's bad. If you disagree with someone that's fine, but you have to be honest."
I then kicked myself for the next two days for talking about not being a Christian as though it were a bad thing. If I ever have kids they're gonna believe in Santa way longer than they believe in Jesus.