Sunday, November 19, 2017

Baxter Black: Thanksgiving

It's Thanksgiving here in the U.S.A. Canada had theirs in October. Good neighbors, we are. It is something both countries can be thankful for. Either one of us could have moved in, only to find North Korea or Syria lived next door.

Our countries are blessed. North America's a pretty good neighborhood. We have big backyards full of timber, pasture, minerals and oil. We have flowerbeds with fertile soil growing corn and rice and peaches.

We're good mechanics, electricians, cowboys, baseball players, teachers and students. Naysayers deride our education system, but look around. Who graduated all those dunces that are winning the Nobel prizes, leading the free world and feeding the starving from Somalia to Cuba?

Need something more to be thankful for? How 'bout the Bill of Rights. It and subsequent amendments guarantee our rights to speak, preach, own guns, vote, have our privacy and be treated equally regardless if we're rich or poor, immigrant or Indian, socialist or libertarian.
We have a Constitution that protects us from our government. A pretty profound concept. It's as if the writers could predict the Stalins, Hitlers, Kim Jong Uns and penny ante politicians would get in office.
Closer to home, those of us who belong to the land can count our blessings daily. We turn the earth and raise our livestock knowing in the recesses of our brain that we are an essential cog in the wheel of life. Our daily battles often obscure the contribution we make to mankind.

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