Unexpected Gratitudes
Posted at 6:00 AM on November 19, 2009
by Dale Connelly
(22 Comments)
Radio Heatland has tickets to give away to the Americana Showcase in Rochester at the Civic Theater, this Saturday night, November 21st.
The show features local singer/songwriters Adam Levy, Molly Maher, Darren Jackson and Jeremy Messersmith and is hosted by Brandon Sampson of the band Six Mile Grove.
Enter the drawing.
Obey the rules.
Good Luck.
Thanksgiving is one week from today.
We are all grateful for family and friends and the good things in life, but lest we forget, there are others who are less fortunate. And still others who are more fortunate. And some ... we don't know if we should consider them fortunate or not, but the things they are grateful for are not the same things the rest of us would typically put on our list.
People such as Captain Billy, who felt compelled to send me a waterlogged parchment with greetings for the season:
A Pirate's Thanksgiving PrayerThanks for the sea and the sun an' the skies
Thanks for the vessel we's ridin', which plies
through the waves - frothy, brilliant an' blue.
A salute from the captain an' all of the crew.An' furthermore thanks for the boats that we plunder.
The crews, what go free, an' the ships we sends under
to crust and decay in the dark down below,
where the fishes is fearsome. An' also aglow.Fer the seaports we's grateful. The look an' the smell
of their dockside establishments - if walls could tell
of the things they had seen - of our exploits, (so-called)
you'd be glad that you missed 'em. You would be appalled.Fer we's pirates of old an' we ain't very nice.
But we's thankful regardless for booty an' vice
an fer grog an depravity, which we adore.
An' you all should be grateful we ain't on yer shore.
Of course I AM grateful that Captain Billy isn't here, although I think of him as a rather benign sort of pirate who is more menacing at a distance than he would be face-to-face.
But perhaps I'm being naiive.
But the Captain reminds me that we are all looking out different windows on this train, so we see things from a slightly altered perspective. Grateful for depravity and vice?
I suppose everyone is thankful to have a purpose in life. I expect bank robbers are grateful for convenient branch offices in your local supermarket. I know that flies are grateful for sunny south-facing windows on November afternoons, just as I am grateful for the vacuum cleaner I use to suck them up.
Put yourself in another's shoes. What are some unexpected gratitudes?
Comments (22)
Good Morning!
I work in a building that has it's only smoking area outside and down three flights of stairs. I was in a session with some folks from an out of town site and one of them commented she was grateful that the smoking area in her building wasn't so hard to get to as she could barely get back up the stairs. I was grateful both for the fact that I don't smoke and that the stairs are no problem for me.
Have a great day everyone!
I've been sitting here for about half an hour trying to think up things that others might be grateful for that I'm not and I'm just running on empty today! The problem is that everything I come up with I realize that I'M grateful for. So... can't wait to see what others who've already had their morning caffeine can come up with.
Sounds trite, but I am exceedingly grateful for all of you, my fellow Heartlanders!
There are a lot of people that fall in with Captain Billy who it seems are grateful for the chance to plunder, but I don't want to dewell on them. There is one who I can't resist mentioning, Shara Palin. I supose she is grateful for having another chance to get our attention and lots of news coverage of her new book.
I think it would be good to pick something from nature to examine. How about butterflies. If a butterfly can be grateful I think they would be grateful for the air to fly through and for flowers and for plants on which to lay eggs.
A butterfly could be a little like captain Billy when it lays eggs on garden plants, burt I think we should be able to put up with a little damage from the catapillars that hatch out from the eggs. Also, butterflies would be grateful if we could leave more natural areas where wild plants grow that they need for food.
i imagine that rat, before it crawled into the bucket and drowned, was grateful for the hay stack - elevated on pallets - the tunnels underneath make a nice, insulated winter home. or did it crawl in the bucket in despair? maybe the constant goat-nattering drove it to suicide. oh dear.
Last weekend I brought home a homeless kitty that had been hanging around my parents' place in IA. He's grateful for his new warm and well-fed dwelling, not to mention that he's being cared for by an all-around-wonderful person. (Eric may have been imbibing when he wrote that.)
Sherrilee - I second your trite endearment for RH!
As a person, I must be ordinary to a fault because I can't come up with a gratitude of the unexpected variety. At least not in a timely manner, and I have lots of work to do!
I enjoyed the poem, Dale. :-)
Happy Thursday, all.
I think the cat next door, Santos, was grateful yesterday when I let him come in with me for a lap sit. He stayed at our house for part of last week, as his house had a cat allergic guest. So now he considers the inside of our house as part of his territory, I think, which is fine with us.
Nice journey with the butterfly, jim, thanks. I will try to think of more later...
Folks who sell kleenex and chicken soup are grateful for poor flu vaccine production.
Elmer's glue is grateful for kids with mohawks.
Photoshop joins RH in being grateful for Dale.
Greetings! As sure as night follows day, someone's misfortune is usually another person's good day. The misery of a car breakdown means business for the tow truck and car repair shop. A slow economy for most of us, means somebody else is raking in the dough (usually inside traders). A foreclosed home is a new homeowners' dream of affordable housing.
Bad news sells newspapers, the morbid idea "if it bleeds it leads" in TV and print news. While none of us enjoy tough or challenging times, in retrospect we usually find something to be grateful for -- a valuable lesson learned, new strengths we didn't realize we had, and new connections with friends or family who helped us through.
Thanks, Dale -- for helping me feel grateful for experiencing difficult financial times -- because I know it will all turn out OK, and something better will come of it. Have a great day, everyone!
No apologies are necessary if you can't come up with an answer for the unorthodox question posed today. It's a bit convoluted.
Jim has a good suggestion - look at the natural world. Can animals be grateful?
I'm pretty sure the squirrels in the woods where I walk my dog are grateful for the leash. The dog might be grateful for it too. She's 11 years old and would tire out quickly - a defeat the leash spares her from. She can still be angry and offended by those naughty squirrels as long as I keep her from beginning the chase.
Off topic here, but what is RH doing for its one year anniversary?
Hi Aaron -
Has it been one year already?
I confess that there are no plans at the moment.
What SHOULD we be doing?
I'm pretty sure our recently adopted basset hound is grateful he no longer has to put up with three other dogs all the time. He's probably also thankful for the "couch" I made from dining room chairs so he can look out the picture window when we're gone (neighbors tell me he's there most of the day).
A little farther afield (but not much) - I'd be willing to bet that the bunnies in the neighborhood are thankful that Barney is blind in one eye so he often doesn't see them when they're in our yard (and so, therefore, they can keep eating our garden, such as it is).
i tell my kids to be thankful for the examples of how not to behave. we miss a great deal if we are only frustrated and disgusted by bad behavior. it is exactly the perfect lesson for how and why we should be aiming at the behavior we want to see out there.
and we should be thankful we didn;t get 31 inches of snow on halloween again this year.
and that the meteor showers are far away and not bombarding the atlantic
and that you can avoid hard rock music and rush limbaugh by simply not turning to those station on the radio dial.(or is that the same as the first paragraph)
good topic dale
Dale - Back when I was in high school kids would use Elmer's School Glue instead of hair gel to get really spikey high mohawks. Glue works better for stiffness and Elmer's washes right out - just like hair gel or other more traditional hair products. (Jell-O apparently also works well for bright colors.)
Ooh, there should be some kind of party, don't you think, for the 1st anniv? What's the date?
Is the health care worker grateful for disease? The computer geek for viruses and spam? The cop for crime? The janitor for grime? The pastor for sin? The teacher for ingorance? The political reporter for . . well, politicians in general? The sports reporter for steroids and egos? The conservative for liberals and the other way around? Goats for flies? Mtohs for the flame?
And just how boring will heaven be?
Step one to celebrate the anniversary is for Dale to use the technology to actually be home on Thanksgiving morning, or at least not at work.
One would hope that undertakers don't rejoice in the deaths of the righteous. I think my cats are grateful for our dog so they can steal her food, and our do g is grateful for the cats as they provide her with prey to chase and groom.
Its December 11th (the real Anniversary is on the 12th which is on Saturday.
I'm grateful for Captain Billy's sense of rhyme. I've read the pirate's prayer a couple of times now and each time I am more delighted by the rhyme of "so-called" and "appalled."
I had a chance to think some more, and tried getting into the head of my 84 year old mom, who is thankful that she can still drive, in town anyway; walk (with her walker) down the block to her friend's house; play the piano; go out to brunch with friends; and feel good enough to travel here for T'giving. Makes ME thankful I can drive anywhere I want, walk without a walker, etc.
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