Anything You Want

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant.

— Arlo Guthrie

Last year, my wife and I spent three late-summer days in leafy Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the home of the now-derelict Alice's Restaurant. The restaurant's front door was padlocked, but I managed to sneak inside through the adjoining building (another greasy spoon, this in full operation). Not much to see of Alice's Restaurant except dust, cobwebs, and a few splintery tables and counters.

This year, I'm grateful for many things, not the least of which include the annual airplay of Arlo Guthrie's anti-war song—the only song about Thanksgiving that isn't insufferably schmaltzy. I'm also grateful Covid-19 hasn't ripped family members and friends from my life or denied me a cozy, if crimped, lifestyle.

Millions of other Americans can't say that.

Behavioral scientists believe gratitude, the "affirmation of goodness," survives from our primate-days, when we thrived by helping others and being helped in return.

Psychotherapists believe gratitude is as much a "practice" as an inborn emotion. Counting your blessings makes you upbeat, sociable and generous; combats depression; and wards off many unhealthy emotions, including envy, resentment, anger and contempt. AA calls the practice an "attitude of gratitude."

Although few Americans know or care, Gettysburg is the reason we celebrate Thanksgiving every year. The holiday—intended by Lincoln as a "day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficient Father who dwelleth in the Heavens"—was instituted by executive order three months after the Federal government's Pyrrhic victory outside the Pennsylvania town. 

Seven score and seventeen years later, we mark the holiday not by thanksgiving and prayer, but by overeating, watching football, and avoiding any mention of the "party of Lincoln."

Quite the comedown.

So let's set things aright.

This week, I challenge you to write down three good things that have come your way in 2020, and imagine your life without them. The items you list are up to you: they can be can be people, ideas, objects, or events. Anything you want.

Fishy

Holocaust deniers love a red herring.

A red herring is a statement meant to divert our attention from evidence. For example:

All Jews weren't exterminated. So there was no Holocaust.

The Holocaust-denier's favorite, this red herring ignores the fact that victims have survived genocides throughout history.

Right now, Rudi Giuliani is peddling red herrings. He employed one in a federal court this week:

Republicans weren't present for every ballot-count.
So Trump won the election in Pennsylvania.

Rudi's red herring ignores the fact that the election results in Pennsylvania were carefully audited by state and county election workers. Republican poll watchers, although they should have, failed to visit every election-return warehouse in the state. But Republicans' laziness doesn't reverse the outcome.

The noun phrase red herring dates to the early 13th century, when, to compensate for the lack of refrigeration, fish peddlers would salt and smoke fresh herring. A red herring was smoked so long—usually 10 days—it would turn from white to red. Poor people and British sailors lived on the tangy treats; so did Catholics throughout Lent. Red herrings were—and are—known as kippers, a favorite British breakfast food.

Two centuries later, writer Gerland Langbaine noted in The Hunter that you could train your hounds to follow the game's scent by trailing a kipper on the ground.

A century after Langbaine's handbook appeared, newspaper journalist William Cobbett related a fable about a boy who used a kipper to distract a pack of hounds from their prey. Cobbett compared the hounds to sloppy journalists who chased after "false leads."

Cobbett cemented the metaphor in English speakers' minds when he wrote that a false lead is a "red herring," because "its scent goes cold" in a day.

In Nonsense, grammarian Robert Gula defines a red herring as "a detail inserted into a discussion that sidetracks the discussion." It's purely and simply a logical fallacy.

Red herrings are bull—and bad for you. 

And, frankly, Rudi's are giving me a haddock.

Trifles

A trifle consoles us, because a trifle upsets us.

— Pascal

Trifle is an 11th century word that derives from the French trufle, meaning "tiny deception."

A trifle can ruin a day—or make one.

Bob Dylan captures the ominous power a trifle yields when he sings: 

Yes, I received your letter yesterday,
About the time the doorknob broke. 

When you asked me how I was doing,
Was that some kind of joke?

Trifles deceive. 

They lead us to believe the world either has our welfare in mind, or is out to get us, when neither is the case. No, the world, as Wittgenstein says, is all that is the case. When it comes to you, the world is more or less unconcerned. Only the narcissist thinks otherwise.

If a trifle makes you unhappy, don't sweat it; a good one's bound to turn up soon.

And if it doesn't, rejoice in the fact that there's always coffee.

Make it your mantra: I won't latch on; I will let go.

Meet Me at the Fair

I invite you to grab your sweetheart, don your mask and come see my exhibit of original oil paintings for sale at the Center for the Creative Arts’ Annual Artisan Show, next Saturday, November 21, and Sunday, November 22.

At the event—a weekend marketplace for fine art and handmade crafts—you’ll meet over 20 artists of the Brandywine Valley. 

They’ll be offering original paintings, jewelry, ceramics, wearables, leather goods, decorations and more.

Original oil paintings make wonderful gifts for the holidays.

The show takes place Saturday and Sunday, November 21-22, 2020, 10 am-5 pm and 11 am-4 pm. Admission is $5 (kids 10 & under free). Proceeds go to help the Center. 

Buy your timed tickets in advance.

Strict CDC and State of Delaware guidelines for health and safety at events will be followed.

The Center is located at 1149 Yorklyn Road, Yorklyn, Delaware 19736.

Meet me at the fair!

A Confederacy of Crepehangers

All events are linked together in the best of all possible worlds.

— Voltaire

Most of the 78 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden—myself included—are chirpy this morning, now that the election has been called.

But whether their pleasure will last more than a morning I doubt.

Most liberals I know are Cassandras. Cassandras seem to prevail under our tent and, often, I feel awash in them.

Cassandra, of course, was the fusspot daughter of the king of Troy. Apollo made her a seer in exchange for a toss in the hay. She used that power to warn the Trojans the city would be invaded by Greeks hiding in the belly of a wooden horse. No one listened to her; but, gosh darn it, she was right.

Other liberals I know are Doubting Thomases. There are plenty of them under the tent, too.

Doubting Thomas, you'll recall, was the Apostle who refused to buy into Jesus's resurrection. "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were I will not believe," he told the disciples. But unlike Cassandra, Thomas had to eat crow.

Because I'm a cock-eyed optimist, I prefer liberals who are Pollyannas.

Pollyanna was the character in a 1913 eponymous novel whose father taught her the "glad game." The game demands that, so you'll never be disappointed, you "find something about everything to be glad about." When you shower in saccharinity, the novel preaches, you're never disappointed.

Speaking for myself, I'm a Pangloss.

Pangloss was the talkative tutor in Voltaire's 1759 novel Candide. He is a baseless, feelgood optimist and follower of the Enlightenment philosopher Leibniz, who insisted we live in "the best of all possible worlds."

While crepehanging liberals lament the future of  America—cursed as it was by the shameless slaver, germ-spreader and colonizer Christopher Columbus—I'm content like James Brown to say: I feel good.

America's an okay place.

And I'll point out, like Pangloss did, that without Columbus we wouldn't have Mallomars.

NOTE: Writer Robert Brault said it right: "You can look at optimism and pessimism as two different outfits in your closet, and you decide each morning which one you're going to wear."