It’s time for celebration!  Time for looking back at the old year and searching ahead to the new one.  Time for planning and hoping and remembering and forgetting.  And if you’re lucky, most of the forgetting you do will be about what you did at the party on New Years Eve.  Why did you do that?  You’re old enough to know better by now!

Yes, celebrate the fact that another cycle in the life of this planet, in which you have a tiny, miniscule, almost worthless, dust-speck sized part, is gone.  So far, 17% of this century is gone (you have to count the zero, 2000, too, ya’know) and you know hardly anything about it.  For instance, do you know what happened on September 31, 2007?  Of course you don’t, because there aren’t 31 days in September.  And even if there were, you wouldn’t know anyway!  And why not!?  Because the people who were involved, no matter what their names were or how much money they pilfered, still had tiny, miniscule, almost worthless, dust-speck sized parts in the overall picture of the planet…and some of them are probably dead, anyway.

To further press my point, let’s take one of those really big group pictures – say,    a satellite photo of North America.  Can you find your Uncle Bob in this picture?  I thought not.  Very little importance there, is there?

On the other hand, perhaps it’s a good indication that the importance you have – and yes, your Uncle Bob, too – is due to the part you have as a portion of the WHOLE.  As a part of your neighborhood, your community, your state, your country and even the world… Even though we couldn’t get everyone into the one satellite photo.  Because of the round planet thing, I mean – not because they were out of town or sick on picture day.

“Sure,” you say, “but what about those famous people in the movies and magazines and the ones who cook on those TV shows?  They’re important, right?”

Well, you’re right in a way.  But we make these people important.  And mostly, we do so because we, too, are tiny, miniscule, almost worthless, dust-speck sized parts of the planet who have no sense whatsoever!  What are these folks going to do for us after a cataclysmic event?  The kind of inevitable thing made obvious in all those overly serious ‘60s apocalyptic thriller movies… you know, Oliver Stone training films.  They could organize roving cooking shows to teach what’s left of humanity how to make easy roast duck with a delectable crispy orange skin.  These would be the traveling minstrels of the day, going from town to town putting on shows for food, much like the guy playing saxophone on the street corner for tips.

“Okay,” inquirest thou.  (Sorry, I needed filler)  “How about the important people we were taught about in those really boring history classes in school?”

Excellent question, though I noticed you didn’t mention any specific examples because you were mostly dozing during history class.  These people were and are actually important in their society, which, as it turns out by extension, is our society.  You will notice, however, as our current society changes, our view of these people changes in turn.  Take Thomas Jefferson, for illustration.  He was one of the founders of the United States of America, author of the Declaration of Independence and a member of Congress, though the latter shouldn’t be held against him.  A great thinker in the betterment of the common man or, more precisely, of man in common.  Today we have heard argument that he deserves no notoriety because he owned slaves.  Granted, now days we understand slavery, by its very nature, to be an evil construct against the liberty of man and mankind itself.  At the time, however, it was a widely held and accepted belief and his work with, and treatment of slaves and slavery was quite progressive within that society.  Still, a portion of current society would have us delete Jefferson’s importance.  Well, if it weren’t for that big rock face thing.

Or what about Vladimir Lenin?  His theory was for ALL people to be equal.  The idea was noble, though the execution (poor choice of words, considering his successor) was poorly done.

We can see by these examples that society can change and cause even truly important people to lose importance.

That’s because we gave them the importance, just the same as we gave importance to Paris Hilton, or any one of the Kardashians or Justin Beiber, for God’s sake!  These are important like a car wreck…  It really has nothing to do with us, but we can’t help staring when we go past.

Truly important people in the world, while also essential in a societal way, are regular people of history and pre-history.  Average Joe and Jane Cro-Magnon or even those poor neighbors from the wrong (as it turns out) side of the tracks, the Neanderthal family, all going about their day to day business of gathering food by farming, hunting or scavenging.  The people who made tools like stone arrowheads, bronze axes or cotton gins – though I, personally, prefer the flavor of gin made with juniper berries.  These people, Eli Whitney notwithstanding, may not have been important by the current definition of the word but they have given us knowledge and understanding.  By going about their daily chores of survival they have left us evidence, usually in some type of container made of some type of clay pottery, I think, of how we have gotten to this really screwed up place where we have nothing to worry about but really unimportant, important people.  These early peoples have given us insight into the former use, or what some in today’s society would call misuse, of this planet of which we are celebrating another cycle.

All in all, it should help you feel much more important.  Even if you were in the wrong hemisphere for the group photo.

Oh, and about those currently important people who have names (not a big deal) or money (nice to have, to be sure), keep in mind that their importance is STILL a tiny, miniscule, almost worthless, dust-speck sized blip in the course of a year on the planet.

And if that doesn’t help, bury a pottery-shielded time capsule that describes their Butt-headedness in great detail!

And have a Happy New Year!

          The first snows have fallen.  Thanksgiving has come and gone.  The streets are crowded.  No, not with shoppers…with package delivery vehicles.

          Yes, it’s Christmas time for the UPS guy.

          Our UPS guy is Marge, who is actually a UPS person.  From this point forward, however, we will use the term “guy” as a uni-sex term;  kinda’ like “they”, “them” or “you” and interchangeable with the aforementioned suffix “person” as in chairperson, fireperson and crazyperson.  This will create new but easily understood terminology such as spokes-guy, police-guy and pregnant-guy (as with any unique, forward thinking advancements, some of these will take some getting used to).  This is a noteworthy day in the history of the English language and should be marked on your calendar or noted in some other way such as cleaning that grey, slimy stuff off of those bottom tiles in your basement shower.

          Anyway, the UPS guys are earning their money this time of year.  To be truthful, they’re earning their money plus overtime, but that’s to be expected…they have a union.  I don’t know if they hire any extra help for the deliveries themselves at Christmas time, but I doubt it.  Doing so would require more large, cubically shaped, brown aluminum step vans which would sit around decaying in some way for the other eleven months of the year.  This is not cost effective.  This is something the Postal Service would do.

          The UPS vans do have two major characteristics:  1) they are ugly and 2) they are easily recognizable.  I believe the reason for the decision to use brown for UPS colors is lost in the archives of history.  At least it is at my house.  I haven’t actually called to ask the people at UPS because, well, they’re kind of busy at this time of year and they think the vans are brown, when in actuality they are a brownish, olive drab color.  It’s important to note, however, that even without any fancy stripes or costly multiple colors, the vans are still easy to identify.  You always know when you see a brown step van pull up in front of your door that you’re going to get a package, or that the guy (please see the earlier note referencing use of the term “guy”) next door is going to get a package…or that the U.S. Army is taking a more hands on approach to recruitment.  But that’s kind of unlikely since we no longer have to worry about that immediate threat from the evil hoards of – wherever evil hoards are coming from these days.  I’m not even sure evil hoards are PC in the present climate.  Perhaps they’re merely misunderstood hoards with minor social issues…?  Either way, a topic for another time. 

          Anyway, UPS guys are constantly on the run this time of year.  They drive their vans with the doors open, even in the cold, and they park their trucks and leave the motors running so they can deliver quickly and zip to the next stop.  These guys have become so busy they don’t even take time to have you sign for the package anymore.  Sometimes, in their efficiency, they deliver your package with such stealth and speed that you aren’t even aware they were there.  They flash to your porch, marking their sheet on the way and place the package right where you can see it…on the mat in front of the door…below eye level.  In the summer, when they have time, I’m sure they wait a few minutes in their green/brown van to see if you dash out of your home in a hurry, trip on the box, fly over the railing and take out two juniper bushes and a row of chrysanthemums.  At this time of year, however, they’re much too busy for that kind of stuff.

          Nowadays, in order to compete with other delivery services, the UPS guy offers overnight delivery and second-day air.  I always get these packages at supper-time or later.  I get the feeling the UPS guy delivers all the packages in a mad rush throughout the day.  She returns to the warehouse, tired but satisfied after a good days hard work – and the manager says;  “We just got this package for this guy and it’s got to be delivered today.”

          Marge always rings the doorbell to deliver these packages.  I think she does this so I can see the smile on her face and the blood in her eyes.  I wonder if it’s proper to tip UPS guys?

          It should be noted that there are other delivery guys.  The friendly folks with the firearms at the US Postal Service still deliver the largest bulk of Christmas related packages over the holiday season.  This is in addition to handling the hundreds of millions of pieces of holiday related paraphernalia including those cards we always feel obligated to send to people we haven’t been in contact with since last year when we got a card from them which included one of those generic letters copied on green or red paper.  I can understand the stress these Postal guys are under – just thinking about it makes me want to shoot something and I only have to deal with 60 or 70 of them.

          Since the Postal Service guys are so busy anyway, it doesn’t hurt to give them a break and send your packages via other means.  Federal Express is another option to use, but I still think these guys are generally reserved for use by last minute gift shippers and procrastinators of all types.  I, for example, know the people at the FedEx office on a first name basis and I usually take them a gift with my packages on the 22^nd.

          All in all, for the largest part of your holiday gift and package shipping needs, it’s hard to beat the UPS guys.  They’re friendly, they’re efficient and most importantly, they are, as a rule, poorer marksmen than Postal Service guys.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a happy Thanksgiving – the hunters’ holiday.

Why, you ask, do I refer to Thanksgiving as the hunters’ holiday?  Elementary, my dear Watsonian-type person!  None of the other holidays apply, except maybe the opening day of pheasant season, but that’s only a holiday on the state level…I think.

Allow me to explain.  The pilgrims who came to this land were used to hardships.  Most of them were able to do many things because at that time it was necessary to have myriad abilities in order to survive.  They were not able to run to the yellow pages to get the goods and services they required.  After all, there were no phones then so the only thing the yellow pages were good for was as booster chairs for little kids.

These people were their own grocers and butchers, tailors and blacksmiths; corporate lawyers and nuclear physicists, investment bankers and…well, you get the idea.  The needs they had they filled on their own or went without.  Obviously, when they got to this new land, they didn’t run right over to the store to pick up some fresh produce, a nice roast and a video to watch after dinner.  NO!  They bought Manhattan for a box of odds and ends worth $24.00[1], but they couldn’t get anything to eat there for another 6 or 7 years so that didn’t help them much.  And they didn’t run out and start harvesting those amber waves of grain, either, because before they got here no one had planted any amber wave grain, which I believe came much later – from Russia…I think.

What they did do when they got to this new land was run out and start Christmas shopping.  After all, it was already the middle of December before they even got off the Mayflower.  They had to unpack from the move, find the Christmas lights and the wrapping paper and those plastic yard Santas they had stored away.  It was a busy time.  But then, we’re not talking about Christmas yet.  We’re talking about Thanksgiving and whatever we can tie in with it.

Now, these English people from the Netherlands (it’s a long story) were ill prepared for the conditions that awaited them at Plymouth.  This was, in part, due to the limited supplies they were carrying.  It also had a great deal to do with the fact that they were supposed to land somewhere in Virginia where the weather is a bit more hospitable than it is in Massachusetts.  One reason for this error was the maps they were supplied with at the time.  If you look at a map of New England, you’ll see all sorts of roads running to the coast from the west, but very few, if any, from the east.  You can’t blame them for being off course a bit.  Besides, there was no one standing on the shore looking out to sea, saying:

“I’m getting worried, Tonto.  They should have been here by now.”

The point I was trying to pin down here is that there were no crops to harvest when the Mayflower landed and no native plantlife to use for food in December.  Their survival depended on their ability to hunt.  This ability probably wasn’t all that great since about half of them didn’t make it through the unusually mild New England winter.  The reasons for the somewhat high mortality rate at the time, however, may have been something besides the hunting skills of the colonists.  Actual dangers such as disease, exposure to the elements or improperly prepared Japanese blowfish, for example.  The optimistic view would be that the hunters of the group kept the other half of the people alive through the winter and until they saw a return on their crops.

Of course, Thanksgiving could really be the farmers holiday because the harvest was fairly good the following year – actually, percentage-wise, it was a lot better than the previous year, since there wasn’t actually a harvest the year before because they weren’t even THERE yet.  This is where the government agricultural statistics began the reputation for unfailing exactness:

“The harvest looks to be a bit better this year.”

“Well, when we got here last winter we picked three frozen strawberries that the birds hadn’t gotten, an ear of corn and some pine bark.  That gives us an increase over last year of 43,479,000 percent.”

“Yep, a little better.”

It could, however. Be argued that Thanksgiving is the fisherman’s holiday.  One of the reasons for the success of the harvest was the method of planting corn, taught to the pilgrims by the Native Americans.  This entailed dropping a fish into the ground with the seeds when planting.  The nutrients from the breakdown of the fish served as fertilizer and thereby greatly increased the growth of the plants.  Unfortunately, this must be the method still used today for growing zucchini, which is why anybody with a garden and one zucchini plant is always trying to get rid of the stuff by doing things like giving it to strangers on the street or making up wonderful, innovative recipe’s such as zucchini cake or zucchini ice cream or zucchini chocolate topping…

Then again, Thanksgiving could actually be the Native Americans’ holiday since they were there to help the pilgrims survive the new wilderness.  As a matter of fact, the two Indians who primarily helped the early colonists had once been held captive by English-speaking people, which is why they knew a little of the language in the first place…and they STILL helped them.  Obviously they hadn’t been around much and didn’t see what was coming.

Come the think of it, Native Americans may not really want to be reminded that this holiday is in large part due to them.  I know I wouldn’t.

Today, the holiday we celebrate on the fourth Thursday of the month – or the third Thursday after the fourth Wednesday – or the last Thurs…  Anyway, we celebrate the holiday, which was decreed on November 26, 1789 by President George Washington.  It’s easy to see that this was early in our nations’ history or the holiday would be held on a Monday.

The very first Thanksgiving, however, was declared by William Bradford, the governor of the Plymouth colony, in the fall of 1621.  He felt it would be good for morale and increase production values.  Oh, sure!  He said it was a time set aside to give thanks for their survival and the gathering of the bountiful harvest, but he knew the result he was looking for because every night, after everyone else had gone to bed, he would sit in his cabin and listen to motivational tapes by candlelight…I think.

Anyway, the rest of the settlers were thankful for their survival and all they had been given before winter set in again.  So they set aside three days (Yes, three whole days.  Those ancestor-folk took everything very seriously.)  and invited the neighboring Native Americans to a first-class, early American celebration.  They had the traditional pumpkin pies, corn and other dishes made from native plants, which the Indians had taught them to grow.

In truth, Thanksgiving was and is a holiday for everyone of all faiths and beliefs.  A time to gather together friends and relatives and let them know you are thankful both for them and for what you have.

But you know, the main course served at that first Thanksgiving was wild turkey and venison.  I think that gives the hunters just a little bit of an edge.

Happy Thanksgiving.

[1] At this point I would like to alert you to the fact that this is not actually the group of pilgrims who bought the island of Manhattan from the Native Americans who were there at the time.  I inserted this part for artistic license.  I an allowed to do this because I carry a Federal artistic license from the Bureau of Literary Questionability;  lic. # 6Q4R2D2!@B, Class 3C