The New Year, they say, is about reflections, resolutions and high hopes for the future. We take time to reflect on the year just ended and look hopefully ahead toward the fresh new year just beginning. Too often, admittedly, our reflections are about last year’s uncompleted list of resolutions and, yes, I’m just as guilty as anyone.

Admittedly, 2008 was a challenging year for many of us – hopefully 2009 will be  better. But being the optimist you know me to be, I’m working hard to stay positive about the coming year. Color me “hopeful”.

I hope California’s government and  citizens find ways to work together for the good of the people and that the politics of negativity get buried beneath the overwhelming swell of goodwill that cooperation fosters.

I hope 2009 brings us closer to  a lasting peace in the Middle East and a positive conclusion to the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are good things happening in the region – we need to acknowledge and expand upon them. I hope the conflict between Israel and Palestine is resolved without more bloodshed.

I look forward with hope - and some trepidation - to the coming year. I expect it to be difficult, but I have the love of an amazing woman whom I cherish, children I am proud of, beautiful grandchildren I adore, and wonderful friends I respect and appreciate. I still look forward to retirement and more time with family and friends, good health, and greater opportunity for Dawn and I to continue checking things off “our list.” 

I’m an optimist. I see the year ahead filled, not with problems, but with challenges and opportunities,  the glass half full rather than half empty. Thank you everyone for helping make our 2008 all it could be. Dawn and I wish you all a safe, healthy and prosperous 2009.

Dawn and I have a great deal to be thankful for, so making “thanks” a big part of our Thanksgiving is important to us. And a great way to begin is to remember and reflect upon how it all began.

We learned in school that the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts, starred the Pilgrims, Squanto and the friendly Wampanoag tribe led by Massasoit, who celebrated a bountiful harvest and the promise of making it through the harsh New England winter. But here are some lesser-known facts about that first Thanksgiving in 1621:

Squanto was a Patuxet Indian who almost single-handedly saved the first Pilgrims from starving to death. He taught them how to catch eels and trap fish during their spring run, plant corn and pumpkins and trap beavers. He helped the Pilgrims despite having been captured and sold into slavery by an English sea captain. According to Peter Marshall and David Manuel in The Light and the Glory, Squanto was shipped to Malaga, Spain, where he was rescued by local friars, and eventually returned to Plymouth, where he discovered not one member of his tribe was left alive.

During that first Thanksgiving celebration, the Wampanoags brought fat wild turkeys to the feast and introduced the Pilgrims to a local delicacy called popcorn. Next time you enjoy some at the movies, thank the Wampanoags, not Orville Reddenbacher.

They celebrated that first Thanksgiving in October, not November. In 1941, Congress issued a national proclamation setting our observance of Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November.

During the winter of 1621-22, an influx of new settlers eventually forced the pilgrims to each live on a daily ration of five kernels of corn. At the following Thanksgiving, Marshall and Manuel noted, “the first course was served ‘…on an empty plate and in front of each person were five kernels of corn… lest anyone should forget.’”

We have a lot to be thankful for, as did those first pilgrims. And for all its faults, we live in a country where we can write, speak and worship freely, and where we can attempt to right wrongs without being thrown in jail or exiled. Solomon wrote, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Well, where there is no thankfulness, people sour, slowly, like leftover cranberry sauce. We need Thanksgiving, if for no other reason than to remember that, while there may be only five kernels of corn on our plate, there are still five, and the promise of harvest is only a season or two away.

Total time spent online is up 24.3%. At least that’s the conclusion reached by Jay Meattle after, I assume, conducting a thorough study. To graphically illustrate his conclusion, Jay provided this handy graph but neglected to mention the source data used in its construction. Perhaps it’s provided elsewhere on his site. Nonetheless, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt since we all sort of assume that we spend too much time online and, after all, it’s a pretty impressive graph. Check it out:

From the graph and presumably the data it depicts, Jay concludes:

“We are spending more and more time consuming information online. Logically, since time is finite, online advertising spend[ing] should follow a similar trajectory with marketers allocating their ad budgets in proportion to where people are spending their time.

Needless to say, this is a time of considerable opportunity for online media properties and online marketers!”

Well, sure. But shouldn’t we at least consider what kinds of online activity are included in the data? I mean, I think we can all agree that a great many people use the internet as their primary news source. My readers (ahem) probably fall into this group. If they weren’t online, they would be reading Time or Newsweek in paper format thereby contributing to deforestation. So let’s classify them as “green” onliners. And some are online to post the aforementioned news stories, also “green” onliners but sub-categorized as “producers” vs. “consumers”.

Then there are ‘net “surfers”, free spirits who simply ride the internet waves in search of the next “big one” but contribute little beyond clever cryptic comments like “Awesome dude” and “LOL”. If they weren’t online, they would be watching cable TV or skateboarding…

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This is a Patriot’s Journey post. Remember to check out the other Patriotic Journeyers: Drumwaster, The Bastage and the folks at The Line Is Here…

Throughout history, patriotism and the fulfillment of duty have been considered among the highest virtues. Perhaps the highest virtues.

In the Iliad, Achilles was angry at Agamemnon and thought that the war wasn’t worth his effort. However, in the end, he completed his duty, rising to the call and going into battle for Greece.

The central theme of the Aeneid was Aeneas’s sacrifice for duty. He abandoned all of his personal desires to fulfill his duty to his country, to establish a new empire.

The civilizations to which we owe our modern thought, to which we owe our own civilization, all praised patriotism and fulfillment of duty. Yet today, some say that dissent is patriotic, that duty should not be required, that when duty interferes with personal interests or beliefs, it should be ignored.

I’ll agree that dissent is required in some cases, but too often it walks a fine line with treason. I’m instead aligned with the seers of old, with Homer and Virgil, with the civilizations that generated our modern society. I’m a patriot and try to be a responsible citizen.

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Today is Memorial Day, first observed on May 30, 1868, declared a national holiday by Congress and, since 1971, celebrated on the last Monday in May. It also marks the unofficial beginning of summer when families enjoy a long weekend of outdoor activities. In the process, I hope you’ll all remember what it commemorates by remembering and honoring those who gave their lives defending our freedoms in the service of country.

While preparing this post, I thought about the 272 words so eloquently delivered by President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg when he paid tribute to the honored dead who had made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. In that memorable address, he summarized what we today celebrate as Memorial Day.

I thought, too, about my family’s long history in this country. Our ancestors arrived in the Massachusetts colony around 1630. That an ancestor of ours has fought in nearly every conflict in which this country has engaged is highly probable. It is documented that one ancestor fell at Gettysburg, so Lincoln’s words hold special meaning for our family.

I thought of my father who, though still with us, served proudly as a B-29 pilot during WWII. It was my pride in him and his service to country that made me want to follow in his footsteps. I thought of my brother, Ken, and my daughter, Shannon, who served in the U.S. Navy, and how proud I am of them both. I thought of all my ancestors, known and unknown, who have served in the fight for freedom…

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An old friend of mine sent me this Calvin comic and reminded me, well, of me back in our high school “Honors English” days too many years ago to even think about. Yes, that was me, all right - long, complex sentences, exaggerated vocabulary, confusing twists and odd angles - yet my writing style, if you can call it that, impressed my teachers, winning me frequent accolades and a dependable stream of “A”s in written communication.

But my aspiring novelist bubble was about to burst. Fast forward to my first college English class. Focusing on literature and writing, it carried steep prerequisites. I foolishly thought it would be four easy credits given my stellar academic credentials, especially with two years of high school debate team experience tossed in for good measure. So I wasn’t worried when our first assignment, intended to ensure that enrollees possessed the necessary skills to succeed in the class, was to write a short essay on a favorite novel.

I decided on a comparison of Melvile’s Moby Dick and Conrad’s Billy Budd, contrasting the authors’ writing styles. I’d read and discussed both in high school and believed I was sufficiently well versed to dazzle my professor. So confident was I in my writing skills that I hastily cranked out five double spaced pages late Tuesday night for my Wednesday morning class.

The essays were returned Friday morning as the professor began her verbal assessment. All were interesting, she told us, some even quite good. I was certain mine had impressed. Continuing, she explained her cryptic notations at the top of each paper. A “check” mark indicated you were in the right class and she looked forward to helping improve your writing skills. An “X”, however, meant the class would likely prove too challenging and you should immediately transfer to a lower English. The latter group, about a quarter of the class, quietly gathered their materials and left the classroom as the professor returned to her desk. I sat in stunned silence. There was no mark on my paper.

Had she forgotten to mark it? Had she even read it? Finally, I mustered the courage to raise my hand and asked what the lack of any notation meant. “Ah, Mr. Arrington,” she replied with a blank expression I later learned to recognize as a smile. “That’s to let you know it’s harder to bullshit a college English professor than a high school teacher!”

There it was. I’d been put on notice, outed, called out. My days of skating through writing assignments had come to an abrupt conclusion. For the remainder of the semester she challenged, blue penciled and embarrassed me into producing some of my best written work. I was glad when the semester ended, but I’ll remain forever grateful to her for showing me a better way to weave the written word.

I should mention something else my high school friend, Alex, noted in his email after reading my blog: “I see you haven’t changed.”

I know, Alex. Thanks for remembering.

In his March 27 article for AP, Tom Raum notes that while there’s little enthusiasm for government bailouts in general, voters are increasingly demanding immediate government relief as the economy ebbs. And Democratic presidential candidates, quick to recognize potential votes, are fanning the flames with promises of government aid for homeowners facing foreclosure. Clinton wants a $30 billion fund to assist those at risk of foreclosure, while Obama’s “plan” includes $10 billion to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.

I’m afraid I have to agree with Senator McCain: “It’s not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers.”

Sure, the Fed orchestrated a bailout, if that’s you want to call it, for Bear Stearns. It reasoned that allowing a major investment bank to fail could so adversely affect the nation’s economy that helping shore it up, even with some detrimental economic effects of its own, would be the lesser of two evils. But now homeowners facing foreclosure want a slice of bailout pie as well, and both Clinton and Obama want government (read “taxpayers”) to serve them one. But is that such a good idea?

Not as I see it. I’m a believer in the philosophy that if you make a mess, you’re responsible for cleaning it up. And in this case, we taxpayers didn’t make the mess. So who did?

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My wonderful wife, Dawn, often challenges me with questions I usually try to answer off the top of my head. But if my answer fails to satisfy her, she assigns me the task of finding the “real” answer and getting back to her. Such was her question about the origins of the Easter Bunny and its colored eggs since, we all know, rabbits don’t lay eggs and the whole Easter Bunny thing isn’t even mentioned in the scriptures. Well, I’ve put it off for as long as I can. Easter is this Sunday and I was reminded that the question is still “out there.” So I did some cursory research and here’s what I learned.

The answer lies in the ingenious way that the Christian church absorbed pagan practices. After discovering that people were more reluctant to give up their holidays and festivals than their pagan gods, the church simply incorporated pagan practices into Christian celebrations. As recounted by the Venerable Bede, an early Benedictine monk, clever clerics copied pagan practices and by doing so, made Christianity more palatable to pagan folk reluctant to give up their festivals for somber Christian practices.

In second century Europe, the predominate spring festival was a raucous Saxon fertility celebration in honor of the goddess Eostre (Ostara), whose sacred animal (or consort, depending on which version you choose to believe) was a hare. One story holds that Eostre hurled the hare into the heavens after giving it the power, once a year, to lay colored eggs. Another popular piece of folklore is that Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a hare. Because the hare had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and eventually became the modern Easter Bunny.

But the eggs associated with the hare also have another, even more ancient, origin — The eggs associated with this and other vernal festivals have been symbols of rebirth and fertility for so long, the precise roots of the tradition are unknown and may date to the beginning of human civilization. We know, for instance, that ancient Romans and Greeks used eggs as symbols of fertility, rebirth, and abundance.

And eggs were solar symbols that figured in the festivals of numerous resurrected gods. Pagan fertility festivals at the time of the spring equinox were common and it was believed that, when day and night were of equal length, male and female energies were also in balance, hence the connection to fertility. In this context, the hare was often associated with moon goddesses; the egg and hare together represented, respectively, the god and goddess.

Moving forward fifteen hundred or so years, German children awaited the arrival of Oschter Haws, a hare who laid colored eggs in nests made from children’s caps and bonnets to the delight of those who discovered them Easter morning. Abandoned plover nests found in the spring were said to have been those of Oschter Haws in which he laid his colored eggs. It was this German tradition that popularized the Easter Bunny and Easter basket in America when introduced into American culture by German settlers in Pennsylvania.

Many modern practitioners of neopagan and earth-based religions have embraced these symbols as part of their religious practices, identifying with the life-affirming aspects of the spring holiday. The neopagan holiday of Ostara, for example, is descended from the Saxon festival. Ironically, some Christian groups have used the presence of these symbols to denounce the celebration of the Easter holiday and many churches have abandoned the pagan moniker in favor of more Christian oriented titles like “Resurrection Sunday.”

So there you have it, Dawn. I hope this gets me off the hook on this one so I can move ahead with some of your more recent “questions.”

You don’t have to look far to see signs of spring. From the budding of trees and the warming of temperatures to the animals coming out of their winter hideaways, the promise of new birth and fresh color fills the springtime air. In our area, signs of the change in season have been popping up for weeks. La Niña provided a mild winter with above normal rainfall, and we’ve enjoyed some wonderful early spring-like weather.

The first day of spring is usually March 20 but sometimes, like last year, it falls on the 21st to correspond with the vernal equinox when the sun rests directly above the equator on its apparent trip northward. As the earth revolves around the sun, the Northern Hemisphere tilts more toward the sun as winter turns to spring. Conversely, the Southern Hemisphere tilts more away from the sun ushering in the beginning of autumn for people in that hemisphere.

The word “equinox” is derived from Latin and means “equal nights.” Around March 20 (or 21st as the case may be), sunrise and sunset are about twelve hours apart everywhere on Earth. Because of that, some folks mistakenly believe that day and night on that date are of equal length. In reality, though, the day is a little longer and here’s why. Sunrise occurs when the top of the sun rather than its center is on the horizon. But the sun actually appears to be above the horizon when it is in fact still below it. That’s because the earth’s atmosphere refracts, or “bends,” light coming from the sun, so we “see” the sun a couple of minutes before it actually rises over the horizon. And if you add the daylight that persists after sunset, you’ll find the day on the equinox is several minutes longer than the night.

Spring is a time of transition, not only for plants and animals, but for the weather, too. It can mean weather extremes from very cold and snowy days to humid and stormy days. Some of the country’s biggest snowfalls have occurred in March and the period from March to May brings severe thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes to much of the south. In the Sacramento region, spring is my favorite season. It means hiking and other outdoor activities, longer days and warmer nights, and myriad opportunities for landscape and wildlife photography.

And let’s lay to rest the myth about your being able to balance a raw egg on end on the first day of spring when, supposedly, the pull of gravity is more equal because the sun is more directly overhead. There’s simply no scientific support for this.

The balancing egg legend apparently got its start in 1945 when a reporter for Life Magazine wrote a story about a Chinese ritual in which people stood eggs on end on the first day of spring. But the Chinese recognized the first day of spring in early February, or about six weeks before the spring equinox! Hmmmm…

Later, in 1983, a hundred New Yorkers got together on March 20 to balance eggs and an article about the event appeared in the New Yorker magazine. A year later, five thousand New Yorkers repeated the tradition on the first day of spring, and the egg legend grew. The truth is that if you can get a raw egg to balance upright on the spring equinox, you can get it to balance any other day of the year. The pull of gravity or the position of the sun in the sky has nothing to do with it.

But balancing egg or no balancing egg, by all means embrace spring! Get outside, listen to the birds and smell the flowers. Take long walks. Explore. Immerse yourself in the newness of the season!

Have you ever found yourself in a social situation where you encounter people you’ve met and need to quickly recall their names but draw a complete blank? Sure you have and, if you’re like most of us, it can be downright embarrassing.

For some of us, the encounter may place acquaintances in unfamiliar surroundings; we know them from somewhere, but can’t make the association. Others of us psych ourselves out in social situations, fulfilling a self-imposed prophesy that we’ll forget everyone’s name. Why does this happen? Most likely, it’s because we simply fail to properly commit names to memory when we’re first introduced.

There are myriad techniques to help us remember names and you’ll find many of them in articles on the Internet and in countless other publications on the subject. But most are centered around some variation of these five simple (easy for me to say!) steps:

• Pay attention when you’re introduced to someone. A few minutes after you meet the person, say his or her name to yourself again. Use their name in conversation. If you’ve forgotten it, talk to the person again and ask for their name.

• Write down the new name three times while picturing the person’s face; do this as soon as possible after meeting someone.

• Ask how to spell a difficult name or glance at the spelling on the person’s business card if it’s offered. If you know the spelling of a name and can picture it in your mind, you’ll remember it better.

• Connect a name to a common word you’ll remember. For example, the name “Salazar” could sound like “salamander,” “bazaar” or “sell a jar.”

• Make a connection to the person’s hobby or employment. “Bill the pill” might help you remember the name of your pharmacist, for example.

Follow these steps and I’ll bet you’ll see improvement in name recollection. Work diligently at implementing them and, with practice, you can become one of those people you know that always seems to know everyone’s name. Make it a priority for 2008. You’ll surprise even yourself!

This Randall Munroe cartoon may ring the bell of self-recognition in some of you. But now you know the secret, and it no longer has to.

So you’ve listed your New Year’s resolutions and now you find yourself where you always do after announcing your intentions - struggling to act on them, to put them in motion. You tell yourself that you’re not alone, that everyone is in the same boat when it comes to following intentions with empowering actions, but you wish, just once, you could actually follow through. Believe me, I know. I’ve often been right there in the proverbial boat with you. But Dawn and I decided that this was going to be our year and so we took some unconventional, albeit fun, steps to help us give it a kick-start.

It was Dawn’s idea, I think, and pretty soon both her mom and sister had signed on, so there was no way I could shrug off doing my part as well. It seems Dawn (or maybe her mom) had read an article in the January issue of Redbook by shuistrology expert Ellen Whitehurst on some cures to make this the best New Year ever. All we needed, claimed Whitehurst, was a little New Year feng shui! Here’s what she recommended and how we did…

A Clean Sweep. Before New Year’s Day, we were to clean the entire house “to clear the way for new and exciting energies to enter your home.” The task apparently can’t be done on New Year’s Day as doing so is thought to “sweep away” all the fortune and luck that is headed your way in the coming year. If that was too big a project (it was!) then cleaning just the kitchen (we did) would be okay since it represents our health, happiness and prosperity. An integral component was to move 27 things around our home (we stayed in the kitchen) as this simple change up causes the same-old to head out with the old year. We were off and running!

Create a Cash Flow. Next, we headed to the bank for 27 one-dollar bills and 49 coins each so as to make our wallets appear full and bring us “untold and unexpected fortunes in the year ahead.” We even sprinkled dried ground ginger on the wallets and our checkbooks. I’m not sure what that does but we wanted to give ourselves every possible advantage. It wasn’t clear whether we were to leave the ginger in place or remove it. I dusted mine off. Hope that didn’t disqualify me from any untold and unexpected fortunes.

Begin New Rituals. We didn’t refer to anything from the past on New Year’s Day, speaking instead of our hopes, wishes and dreams for the future. The placement of nine mandarin oranges in a bowl in our kitchen was to help “orchestrate sweet treats that will make the coming year’s dreams come true.” And since we were home as the year turned, we briefly opened and closed all our doors and windows, no small task in a home the size of ours, “to let the previous year’s energies out and allow some new, interesting ones to come in.”

We passed on the recommended lighting of firecrackers or the banging of pots and pans to “scare away any maligning influences” that may have been headed our way - firecrackers are illegal in El Dorado County and the cookware too heavy and expensive - but since it’s considered very auspicious if the first thing one sees on New Year’s Day is a red bird, I Googled up a few on the computer screen. Red bird sighting? Check.

Find the Right Words. There was no crying on New Year’s Day as doing so “could have triggered a yearlong deluge.” No losing of tempers, foul language or whining, either. And since the first words one utters at the top of any New Year have “a huge impact on your fortune and luck in the 12 months following”, we chose to say “health, happiness, prosperity” to one another at midnight. (I inadvertently included “and”, possibly a technical foul.)

Chew On This. Many traditions maintain that abstaining from eating meat on New Year’s Day will grant you a long and happy life. Easy for Dawn - she never eats beef, pork or lamb - and not difficult for me either. Eating fish on this promising day is said to aid in intelligence, build immunity and symbolize “a year swimming in abundance and prosperity.” So on New Year’s Eve, I drove to Placerville and bought enough of Steamer’s “lazy man’s cioppino” to cover lunch and dinner on New Year’s Day. For those unfamiliar, Powell’s Steamer makes a dynamite cioppino and removes all the shells. As always, it was delicious and now we’re ready for a big helping of abundance and prosperity. We also avoided using anything sharp, like knives or scissors, as this could conceivably have cut our coming fortunes in half.

All in all, we covered most of the bases and had a lot of fun in the process! These suggestions and much more are apparently covered in Ellen Whitehurst’s new book, Make This Your Lucky Day so, if you’d like to learn how to be prepared for the rest of this year and next, it sounds like a read worth adding to your library.

The New Year, they say, is about reflections, resolutions and high hopes for the future. We take time to reflect on the year just ended and look hopefully ahead toward the fresh new year just beginning. Too often, admittedly, our reflections are about last year’s uncompleted list of resolutions and, yes, I’m just as guilty as anyone.

But 2007 has been a pretty good year for me – hopefully 2008 will be even better. And being the optimist you know me to be, I have high hopes for the coming year on a wider scale as well.

For California, I hope the state and its citizens find ways to work together for the good of the people and that the politics of negativity get buried beneath the overwhelming swell of goodwill that success produces.

For the country, I hope 2008 brings us closer to peace in the Middle East and a positive conclusion to the war in Iraq. There are good things happening in the region – we need to acknowledge them. And I hope the President is able to maintain our national security without sacrificing too many of our civil liberties, although I’m certainly prepared to sacrifice a few so-called “liberties” for the sake of security. It’s not that hard to reconcile if you remove the politics.

As for me, I look forward with enthusiasm and anticipation to the coming year. I have the love of an amazing woman whom I cherish, children I am proud of, beautiful grandchildren I adore, and wonderful friends I respect and appreciate. I look forward to retirement, more time with my family and friends, continued good health, and the opportunity and motivation to continue checking things off “our list.” 

Yes, I’m an optimist. I see the year ahead as one filled, not with problems, but with challenges and opportunities,  the glass half full rather than half empty. Thank you everyone for a pretty darn good 2007. I wish you all a safe, healthy and prosperous New Year.

One reason so many people fail to keep, or even start, their New Year resolutions is procrastination. Most of us, myself included, are procrastinators to one degree or another. I’d venture to say that some of the most accomplished people I know are procrastinators. So is procrastination really such a bad thing?

There’s certainly no shortage of articles published on how to cure the problem of procrastination. But I would argue that, except in extreme cases, curing procrastination may be undesirable if not impossible. Think about it. At any given moment, there are any number of things we could be working on. And no matter which we choose, it will be to the exclusion of all the others. So the question becomes not how to avoid procrastination, but how to procrastinate well. With me so far?

Expanding on this concept, let’s postulate there are three types of procrastination depending on what you choose to work on. You could either work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. The last type, I’d argue, is good procrastination.

Consider the absent-minded professor who forgets to shave, eat or perhaps even notice where he’s going because he’s thinking about something more important. His mind is absent from the everyday world because it’s hard at work in another. That’s the sense in which I referred to accomplished people being procrastinators. I’ll call them Type-C procrastinators. They put off working on small things in order to work on more important things.

What are small things? Well, sometimes it’s hard to say at the time, but a list might include things like doing the laundry or cleaning the house, things that would more correctly be classified as errands. Good procrastination is avoiding errands in favor of more important work. Errands interrupt creative productivity. Still with me?

The most dangerous form of procrastination is unacknowledged Type-B because it doesn’t feel like procrastination. You’re getting things done, just the wrong things. In fact, any advice about procrastination that concentrates on crossing things off your to-do list is not only incomplete, but positively misleading if it doesn’t consider the possibility that the to-do list is itself a form of Type-B procrastination. In fact, possibility is too timid a word. Unless you’re working on the biggest things you could be working on, you’re Type-B procrastinating no matter how much you’re getting done.

Here’s the bottom line. People who’ve managed to make themselves work on big things all blow off errands and, surprisingly, all feel guilty about it. I don’t think they should feel guilty; there’s more to do than anyone possibly could. But realistically, someone doing the best work they can is inevitably going to leave a lot of errands undone. It seems a mistake to feel bad about that, don’t you agree? Instead, let delight pull you instead of letting a to-do list push you. Work on an ambitious project you really enjoy, sail as close to the wind as you can and you’ll leave the right things undone.

You can read more about procrastination here, here and here. You may also find it interesting to take this short quiz to evaluate whether you’re a procrastinator and, if so, why you procrastinate and what areas of your life are most affected. 

Like many of you, Dawn and I will be enjoying Thanksgiving dinner with family. But this year, with our house still under renovation and with the size of our family, we collectively decided that, this year, we should let someone else cook the turkey - and do the dishes! So we’ll be among the thousands of families that, for one reason or another, will be enjoying Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant.

Oh, I know, it’s not the same as sitting around your own dinner table and saying, “Pass the gravy.” But, except for Dawn and I, none of our family have a table that can accommodate all thirteen of us. And this year, we’ll have three additional guests! So we’ve picked a nice restaurant we know will do a first rate job and, when we’ve all eaten our fill, we’ll just push away from the table… and leave the cleanup to someone else.

Of course, the best part of the holiday for us, besides the magnificent dinner table, is having my family together. We’ll miss James this year - he’ll be celebrating with Liz and her family - but there’s always something wonderful about having family come together, give thanks and share a fine meal. I love the family part the most.

Lori introduced a new family tradition a couple years ago where we all wrote down the things we were thankful for during the year to be read aloud at the dinner table the following year. I doubt the setting this year will be conducive, but I hope we do it next year. It’s a great tradition! Dawn and I have so much to be thankful for and making “Thanks” part of our Thanksgiving is what it’s all about. And a great way to begin is to remember how it all began.

The first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts, starred the Pilgrims, Squanto and the friendly Wampanoag tribe led by Massasoit, who celebrated a bountiful harvest and the promise of making it through the harsh New England winter. Here are some lesser-known facts about that first Thanksgiving in 1621:

Squanto was a Patuxet Indian who almost single-handedly saved the first Pilgrims from starving to death. He taught them how to catch eels and trap fish during their spring run, plant corn and pumpkins and trap beavers. He helped the Pilgrims despite having been captured and sold into slavery by an English sea captain. According to Peter Marshall and David Manuel in The Light and the Glory, Squanto was shipped to Malaga, Spain, where he was rescued by local friars, and eventually returned to Plymouth, where he discovered not one member of his tribe was left alive.

During that first Thanksgiving celebration, the Wampanoags brought to the feast fat wild turkeys and introduced the Pilgrims to a local delicacy called popcorn. Next time you enjoy some at the movies, thank the Wampanoags, not Orville Reddenbacher.

They celebrated that first Thanksgiving in October, not November. In 1941, Congress issued a national proclamation setting our observance of Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November.

During the winter of 1621-22, an influx of new settlers eventually forced the pilgrims to live on a daily ration of five kernels of corn a piece. At the next Thanksgiving, Marshall and Manuel noted, “the first course that was served ‘…on an empty plate in front of each person were five kernels of corn… lest anyone should forget.’”

We have a lot to be thankful for, as those first pilgrims did. And for all its faults, we live in a country where we can write, speak and worship freely, and where we can attempt to right wrongs without being thrown in jail or exiled. Solomon wrote, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Well, where there is no thankfulness, people sour, slowly, like leftover cranberry sauce. We need Thanksgiving, if for no other reason than to remember that while there may be only five kernels of corn on our plate, there are still five, and that the promise of harvest is only a season or two away.

For all the blessings bestowed upon us, Thanksgiving should serve as a day of thanks and praise. But I’m afraid some of us have lost sight of the holiday’s intended purpose.

Sure, most of us will gather tomorrow and share in the “bountiful harvest” with friends and family. But too many of us will see it as what sadly has become a day dedicated to sports and retail pursuits. We’ll settle in front of the television to watch football or strategically plan Friday’s trip to the mall for the big “Day After” sales.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that not all my Thanksgivings have resembled a Norman Rockwell painting. But I’d like to think that, as I get older, my thoughts will focus on what’s really important. So with that in mind, here are a few things I’m thankful for this year.

I have a wonderful family. I’ve been blessed with caring, honest, hard working parents, great brothers, a beautiful and loving wife, four wonderful children, four terrific grandchildren and a wonderful extended family, all of whom love me unconditionally. Yet I am mindful that there are many less fortunate.

I’m thankful for my career. Building my business has been a source of enjoyment and pride over the years and I’m thankful that I’ve been able to influence and provide a livelihood for many fine people over the last 36 years.

I’m glad I live in California. We enjoy a relatively mild climate, magnificent parks, countless pristine lakes, majestic mountains and the Pacific Ocean with some of the most beautiful coastline anywhere.

I’m thankful for the roof over my head. The recent fires in southern California were a reminder that there are people who have no permanent place to rest theirs. No one who stays warm and dry night after night should complain when there are others who have no place to sleep.

I have more than enough to eat. It’s sad to think that, while so many of us are worried about our growing waistlines, there are many who are dying of starvation or are uncertain when they’ll see their next meal.

I’m glad - and proud - I’m an American.

I’m thankful that there are men and women who have and will defend my rights as an American. You don’t have to agree with the war in Iraq, or any conflict in which the United States has ever been engaged, to know that our military will always be there to protect us. Supporting our troops is critical if we are to continue enjoying the freedoms we too often take for granted.

And I’m thankful for a lifetime of good friends. I’ve had many over the years, some who have passed on but are still with me in spirit, some with many miles between us but with whom I still enjoy a connection, and a dear few who are like family, as close as friends can be. For those I am especially thankful.

Yes, I’m indeed fortunate. Sure, I’ve been given my share of mountains, but the climb has always been worth the effort. Life is good. I’m a very thankful man.

Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone!