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<DIV>Jaime,</DIV>
<DIV>As usual, I enjoyed your article, but hardly think the wild turkey is
endangered. I could be wrong, but they are quite numerous in coast range hills
of California.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Blessings,</DIV>
<DIV>Jann McGuire</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 11/20/2012 4:51:35 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
svesjaime@aol.com writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT
color=black size=3 face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><FONT size=3>The usual
caveat: curious, welcome; not, see you at the bend.</FONT><BR><BR>
<DIV style="CLEAR: both; FONT-SIZE: 16px">j'aime la vie
<DIV style="COLOR: black"><BR></DIV>
<DIV><I style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: white"><FONT color=#000080><B>Yesterday,
appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all,
Celebrate!</B></FONT></I></DIV></DIV><BR><BR>
<DIV
style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica, arial; COLOR: black; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">-----Original
Message-----<BR>From: Jaime R Vergara <jrvergarajr2031@aol.com><BR>To:
jayvee_vallejera <jayvee_vallejera@saipantribune.com>; mark_rabago
<mark_rabago@saipantribune.com>; editor
<editor@saipantribune.com><BR>Sent: Tue, Nov 20, 2012 8:48
pm<BR>Subject: For Thursday<BR><BR>
<DIV id=AOLMsgPart_1_7d36dd32-b660-42c8-b6d5-47eece549176><FONT color=black
size=4 face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">T-Day</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">Three
perspectives underlie the structure of Christian thought in the last two
millennia. The most familiar one is transcendence where paradise in the
metaphor of heaven is located elsewhere than where we currently are.
Then there is earthly immanence, the transformation that occurs when one
unconditionally embraces the fullness of life in the here-and-now. The
third is the spirit of freedom, transparent exercise of responsibility in the
realm of finite historical choices.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">In
ritual, these perspectives were intoned in the medieval formula of naming
realities, "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!" In
current parlance, that would be rehearsing the role of the Terminator, the
Transformer, and the Turkey!</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">Human
civilization ritualize certain events like the culmination of a harvest, the
completion of a monumental task, or just the satisfaction over the passing of
a crisis. Gratitude is a garden variety of human virtue. It joins
other modes of affirmed consciousness in the practices of personal confession,
societal petition, and relational intercession, long observed in prayerful
communities.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">We tarry
along the religious path of this national holiday because most Americans
gather around family tables this day in the mythology of the first
perspective. In such spirit began the annual celebration after Abraham
Lincoln in 1863 proclaimed a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our
beneficent Father who dwelleth in Heaven".</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">Brownscombe 1914 painting of Plymouth
settlers feasting with natives has become a familiar visual to accounts.
Historians tell of 53 Plymouth settlers and 90 Indians holding a three-day
feast after the settlers survived their first year of harsh winter.
(Revisionists point out that narratives, at least, need to acknowledge how the
native residents were later turned into targets on T-day's turkey
shoots!)</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">FDR
nailed the date down to the fourth Thursday of November, to settle the
uncertainty of day on those years when there are five Thursdays in November.
Not all States complied. It became a joke that when there were
five Thursday, observance on the fourth made it Democratic while on the fifth,
Republican.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">The
celebration has commercially evolved into a season of shopping, marked by
Macy's Parade, merrily rolls down the store aisles until way past New Year,
with the apex reached with Santa's gifts under the Tannenbaum bought and
wrapped before Christmas eve. The intrusion of the dollar into the
equation watered down the religious emphasis specifically made Christian in
the presidential proclamations of Presbyterian pastor's son Grover Cleveland
and staunch Methodist William McKinley.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">Gerald
Ford made the day totally secular skewing previous references to providence in
his proclamation. The media was not pleased. Ford lost the next
election. Ronald Reagan chuckled the "pardoning" of the proffered
turkey, and George H. W. Bush made the practice a permanent fixture in the
annual presidential ritual. Bill Clinton emphasized gratitude to those
who serve to promote the American vision and implement its mission.
George W. Bush took the task of international peace into the war room on
terror after 9/11. Obama was criticized for not thanking "God" in his
proclamation of 2011. American sentiment shifted. Obama got
reelected. </SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">Along
with many College and Professional Sports' events, Holiday movies get a
Thanksgiving premiere to test their weight in the box office. The
pumpkin pie remains a dinner staple but the contest is in the field on the
biggest and heaviest variety raised. Meanwhile, the wild turkey joins
the list of the endangered specie. The t-bird that graces holiday tables
lost its thunder and smell, coming from coops where they are fattened for
weight. The meat hardly emits the familiar fragrant fowl flavor and
aroma characteristic of the wild bird in the prairies now relegated to the
trademark of a Bourbon.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">Thanksgiving Day in China has all the
trappings of western commercial symbols devoid of historical moorings.
In Saipan, we render obeisance to providential divinity in the cosmic
realm. It is a matter of course but irrelevant. In my campus
building, gratitude is echoed by the <I>Anshallah </I>of Muslims from Africa,
the Middle East, South-Southeast Asia who share my building's morning elevator
ride with their gracious salutations of <I>Salaam Malaikom! </I>Grace drapes
the diversity.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><I><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"></SPAN></I> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">Save for
a lone Protestant evangelical, we do not see much of the transformative
messianic impulse, amazingly gracious, or otherwise. The once
'puritanical' CPC battles corruption within its ranks, with President Hu
Jintao declaring at the recent Party Congress that if the practice is not
curtailed, it will be the death knell of the Party and the government in the
next decade. The hyperbole on service reminiscent of Mao's vaunted
service is met by a skeptical smirk. The current gap of income
distribution is deep and wide. That's all that seem to matter in a newly
affluent and resurgent China.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">The
Terminator remained with Ahnold in California. The Transformer is still
a toy but got animated in the fight between the autobots and the decepticons.
As for my gobble gobble, I will stick with the turkey!</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNoSpacing><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"></SPAN> </DIV><BR>
<DIV style="CLEAR: both"><A
style="FONT: lighter 10px Verdana, Arial; COLOR: #000000"><IMG border=0
align=absMiddle
src="http://presence.mail.aol.com/mailsig/?sn=jrvergarajr2031"></A> <FONT
color=black size=2 face=arial>j'aime la vie
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><I><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#ff0000><B>Yesterday, appreciate;
tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In
all, </B></FONT></I><I><FONT class=Apple-style-span
color=#ff0000><B>Celebrate!</B></FONT></I></DIV></FONT></DIV></FONT></DIV><!-- end of AOLMsgPart_1_7d36dd32-b660-42c8-b6d5-47eece549176 --></DIV></FONT><BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>OE
mailing
list<BR>OE@lists.wedgeblade.net<BR>http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net<BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>