Remembering Our Native Americans

Ducky's deep guttural yowls at 4:30 got us up and out of bed by 5am.  He's communicating "I'm hungry, so feed me, and if you don't, count on not going back to sleep!"  After cats fed and Ducky silenced, the coffee gloriously dripped while I stepped out to feed the birds and squirrels.  It was 20F and the sun was rising behind the trees.  It seemed the perfect image for this thankful day * Note Newt's wooden steps on the left * For me Thanksgiving represents a time for families to gather together and celebrate with favorite foods.  It's a way to show gratitude for our lives and our loved ones.  It's a purposeful day when we give thanks for the blessings in our lives.  But Thanksgiving is a complicated holiday says Lily Fisher.  She sums it up this way: "Thanksgiving represents the strange untruths the United States creates and perpetuates about its colonial history." I would not have understood this ten years ago, but I do now, and this awakening is long overdue * Today MrsP and I will share memories of our Thanksgivings growing up with parents, grandparents and siblings gathered around.  We will also eat foods that we enjoy and be grateful for our abundance.  And in our own way we will invite Native Americans to our table too, to share in our feast, to acknowledge and apologize to them for our collective failures, to mourn their losses, and thank them for being such kind and gentle caretakers of this great land.  We will read a Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Prayer "Greetings to the Natural World".  It's beautiful and poignant * I wish a Happy Thanksgiving to other US blippers, and for my other blip friends, I hope you enjoy a peaceful and joyful day * Grateful and Awake in Maine.