Couldn't agree more. What if an algorithm could actually optimize the logistical complexity of holiday family gatherings, factoring in travel, dietary restrictions, and familial 'guilt' paramters, to create a more efficient distribution? Your observation about Thanksgiving being as 'homeless as the Pilgrims' provides such a powerful and poignant metaphor for the evolving, decentralized nature of modern family traditions.
Restless, artful and youthful. Things change, they and their contexts become unintelligible, or disappear, and the hole they leave is disturbing, or else whatever eventually fills it is devoid of the inelectable resonance which made them meaningful and to delusionally cohere. I enjoyed reading. Geh zee en gesunta heit.
I’ve taught this essay many times because I think the intertextual references are so well considered to show the different ways of thinking about family connection and ritual. Great to read it again.
Beautifully written (duh) and an equally beautiful message. As someone who has spent their adult Thanksgivings in many settings and at many tables, this hit home. Grateful for your beautiful words.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. I’ve Long been a big fan and reader of most of your novels and my sister is good friends with your sister, Jenny in Walnut Creek.❤️
If AI wrote that, please keep it to yourself. I'd like to have faith in humanity a little longer, and that piece just refilled my tank. PS: I will shamelessly reuse this metaphor in conversation sometime: "...not built so much as accumulated, like boots on a porch."
A verbal Thanksgiving feast, deftly prepared. The closing brought a tear to my eye.
Reminded me, in parts, of that paragon of remembered holidays, A Child's Christmas in Wales.
Couldn't agree more. What if an algorithm could actually optimize the logistical complexity of holiday family gatherings, factoring in travel, dietary restrictions, and familial 'guilt' paramters, to create a more efficient distribution? Your observation about Thanksgiving being as 'homeless as the Pilgrims' provides such a powerful and poignant metaphor for the evolving, decentralized nature of modern family traditions.
Restless, artful and youthful. Things change, they and their contexts become unintelligible, or disappear, and the hole they leave is disturbing, or else whatever eventually fills it is devoid of the inelectable resonance which made them meaningful and to delusionally cohere. I enjoyed reading. Geh zee en gesunta heit.
I’ve taught this essay many times because I think the intertextual references are so well considered to show the different ways of thinking about family connection and ritual. Great to read it again.
Beautifully written (duh) and an equally beautiful message. As someone who has spent their adult Thanksgivings in many settings and at many tables, this hit home. Grateful for your beautiful words.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. I’ve Long been a big fan and reader of most of your novels and my sister is good friends with your sister, Jenny in Walnut Creek.❤️
Thank you thank you thank you for this. It's what I needed.
Very poignant and touching...
I'm so not worthy, but I'm also 69, so fuck it. Here's mine.
https://jonathankronstadt.substack.com/p/a-thanksgiving-story-365
Beautiful
If AI wrote that, please keep it to yourself. I'd like to have faith in humanity a little longer, and that piece just refilled my tank. PS: I will shamelessly reuse this metaphor in conversation sometime: "...not built so much as accumulated, like boots on a porch."