A THANKSGIVING LITANY

Thanks for Thanksgiving, I say.

Thanks for Ellen Goodman, who once wrote — as I recall — that Thanksgiving was the best holiday: good food, no gifts, and family together — for about four hours. Surely there is research to support the family’s being able to hold it together for four hours. If not, widespread tradition surely attests to its truth. Thanks for family in all its forms and forums.

But what to do if the political gasbag or food Nazi gets going at the gathering?

Thanks for Roseledge Books, the mother of all problem-solvers, with tips.

Tip #1. When the gasbagger/Nazi pauses for air, jump in with a tangential topic, e.g. whatever book — especially with a RB tie — you are currently reading, and start a second conversation with links, however circuitous, to the diatriber. All the reasonable people will love you and you will have exercised your creative-reader powers.  Divide and conquer….something.

Thanks for RB Readers who have creative-reader powers.

Tip #2. If the family monologuer even thinks about asking a question, jump in and question his or her sources. RB guarantees this will be good for a million diversions.

Maybe start with “That’s interesting,” which my mother taught me to say in the face of nonsense, mystery meat, or a baby who looked like Winston Churchill or a radish, followed by “Why do you think so?” Wait out the bluster, then exercise your creative-reader powers and figure out how to find fault with whatever sources come up.

With his best R and D person look, my b-i-l asked if I found my theory about the Irish being here before the Vikings in a book or if I made it up. Some of each, I said, though I hesitated to say the first inkling might have come from a Sister Fidelma murder mystery which, I might add, is set in 7th Century Ireland when Brendan the Sailor probably sailed and written by Peter Tremayne, who, under his real name, is a respected historian of these times and matters Celtic. RB should definitely have Sister Fidelma mysteries.

Thanks for my brother-in-law.

Thanks for Roseledge Book Regulars who already know how to creatively use and fault book sources as you have, for years, linked any book you read and liked to RB, Tenants Harbor, or your Maine, especially if you wanted RB to carry it.  Thanks for Scott who is special master of fewest steps linkage.

And you have browsed, even wallowed, among the best search books RB finds currently available, some of which are The Road to Ubar by Nicholas Clapp, The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, The Great Hedge of India by Roy Moxham, and King of the Confessors by Thomas Hoving, though maybe The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal and Believing Is Seeing by Errol Morris should also be on the list. What is a search book, after all, but a book that uses sources and strategy to get from beginning to end and, in so doing, reminds us that outcomes depend on sources? Any suggestions?

RB believes search books are the best self-help books ever. Thanks for search books.

Thanks for winter coming. Last summer fades and next summer becomes possible, I hope.

Biggest thanks for Charlie who is never without options, though I do present a challenge. Well, many challenges, We WILL be in Maine next summer, come hell or highwater or more really weird surprises.

No thanks for my willful and capricious computer. I am still typing with the dead end of a pen. Millie suggested I try her stylus which she is bringing over. Thanks for Millie.