Category: Reclaiming the Family

The Human Element

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Einstein is said to have made the imaginative leap when he based his Theory of General Relativity on the notion that time (t) is just another dimension to go along with the three spatial dimensions (x, y, z).  Space-time.  When we talk about the where of a particle (or a person) we must also specify the when.

So yesterday when I travelled back to the place where I was born, I would have to travel back in time to reach my place of origin (x, y, z, t = 0, 0, 0, 0).  But Einstein also said that for matter time can only travel forward.  But maybe the mind (or the soul) isn’t composed of protons and electrons; leptons and hadrons.  Because I had an uncanny feeling I had stepped back into an earlier era.

After battling New York City traffic that defied belief, to attend a family funeral, I walked into the little Roman Catholic Church that I attended as a child and was transported into my past.  Sure, a few little things had changed.  They had freshened up the paint on the ceiling over the altar and on the bas relief stations of the cross but the stained-glass windows, the icons around the altar and the pews we sat in triggered memories that perfectly mirrored my surroundings.  And then there were my cousins and their children and their children’s children surrounding me with proof that the world I left behind decades ago still existed in a very human, very tenacious way.  God said be fruitful and multiply.  And we have.  From a tiny family that set foot on this continent less than 150 years ago there are now a whole town’s worth of descendants.

And some of the latest additions were unknown to me by name.  But just looking at their faces I could see the kinship.  And in the middle of the Mass one of the youngest made such a noisy nuisance of himself that he forced his mother to retreat to the annex to return the ceremony to dignified order.  But this outburst was of the very nature of the family.  We are noisy, somewhat spoiled, sometimes rude but genuinely good natured and extremely funny people.  And we do enjoy each other’s company.  Being surrounded by this small army of family felt so right.

One of my cousins remarked that it was a pity that only such occasions rounded us all up together again.  He spoke nostalgically about when we were all living within blocks of each other within the Italian ghetto that we all were now flocking to for this solemn occasion.  He reminisced about the parties and get togethers we used to have on a regular basis; holidays, birthdays, weddings, graduations, births.  But I reminded him that no one’s grandchildren could hope to afford the multi-million-dollar price tags that now attached to the buildings in this once humble neighborhood.  What young people could afford to buy houses here now?   I kidded that we would have to buy a whole town somewhere in the middle of nowhere if we wanted to live together in this modern and expensive age.  He ruefully nodded his head in agreement.

Quickly the ceremony ended and we said our goodbyes.  I wasn’t headed out east to the Long Island cemetery.  I was headed north toward New England through the grid-lock of the outer boroughs and onto the highways beyond.  But we made one stop before we headed home.  There was an old time Italian Bakery that specialized in Italian pastries.  They had sfogliatella riccia (seashell), coda d’aragosta (lobster tail) and various other pastries stuffed with cream that we would eat on Sunday nights when we were kids.  The only problem with this wonderful store was the old woman who had run the counter.  She was a sharp-tongued shrew who carped at everyone who entered the store.

I entered the store today and found the shelves still lined with all those Italian delicacies.  But now the store was run by a Chinese family that had bought the recipes for the pastries when they purchased the business.  And thankfully the pastries were just the same!  And even better, the young lady running the counter was entirely friendly and polite.  A miracle!

After too many hours I returned home with my small cache of desserts and told Camera Girl of my epic journey.  We’ll eat the cakes with our coffee this week.  And that will remind me of what I learned.  Einstein was wrong about not being able to go back in time.  You can.  What you can’t do is go back to the same place.  It’s always different.  But it can be worth the trip.

Circling Back

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The next couple of days will be different.  I have to attend a funeral for a close relative.  She was ninety-seven and so I’m travelling both closer to my geographical origin and back in time to my childhood.  I’ll be going back to the Catholic church I attended as a child and seeing the neighborhood I lived in.  And a lot of my cousins will be there and my siblings.  I probably will also see some old acquaintances for the last time on this Earth.  And that is a thought that gives me pause.  This is the second death of that generation in the last few weeks.  Those folks had a lot of vitality.  All of them on that side of the family have reached their nineties.  I’m not exactly sure how I feel about that legacy.  It’s not an unmixed “blessing.”

I’ll look over the old neighborhood.  Last time I was there it had become a Southeast Asian enclave of one sort or another.  I’ll be interested to see if the homeless and the illegal aliens have shown up to any degree.  I suspect things will look worse than even it looked a decade ago when I passed through.  The only thing that seems to have endured since my childhood is an old-fashioned Italian bakery that somehow has endured.  The family still runs it and from what I’ve been told they still make crumb cake and crème doughnuts that are worth buying.  So, after the wake and the mass I intend to stop by that store and buy some pastries to bring home to Camera Girl.  She’s partial to good crumb cake and I like it too.

When I get back, we’ll have some good coffee and enjoy some pastries while I tell her what the old neighborhood looks like.  And I’ll tell her who showed up for the funeral and who didn’t.  What everybody looked like and any family news for good or bad.  And hopefully, there won’t be any new feuds breaking out to report.  At this point in the cycle, I’m hoping everybody is looking to let bygones be bygones and go quietly into that good night.  But you never know.  I come from some pretty ornery stock.  There are old feuds that go back well over a hundred years that I’ve heard about and as far as I know are still being honored.  But hopefully those folks won’t be showing up for this family gathering.

And in fact, I know of at least one party who will attempt to spark a gathering of the clan for a summer party sometime in the summer.  I used to have one every summer about a decade ago at the Compound but people got older and travelling became more difficult so it subsided.  Maybe this will revive the custom.

So, I’ll see what I can do to keep this site active while I’m on the road.  At the very least there will be pictures and quotes.  I’ll see if I can get one more post scheduled after this one to fill in the gap.  But we’ll see.

Well, back I go.

Bring Back the American Mom

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Today was the last family party of the Christmas holiday season.  The kids go back to school on Monday and everybody else starts their diets to scrape away all the fat we’ve absorbed since Thanksgiving.  And it has been a fun season.  What with the Trump election win and the gob-smacked silence of the leftist crazies there has been a veritable aura of peace and calm.  Well, relatively speaking anyway.  After all you can’t eliminate terrorist attacks and brutal war news completely.  But all in all, the last month and a half has been pretty nice.

So, two weeks from Tuesday Donald Trump will be sworn in.  As is his way, his every word and deed will stir up a hornet’s nest of outrage in the establishment media and political communities.  He will be fought tooth and nail every step of the way in courts, in Congress and in the agencies, he is attempting to reform or destroy.

Well, that will be a long story.  The coming months will tell us if he can make any headway in ending illegal immigration through deportations and border security.  And his other reform goals will take just as long to implement.

But tonight, I was just trying to put into perspective where our society is and where it has to go if we’re to last as a nation.  And I would say the most unsettling problem is the current baby drought.  Specifically native-born American women are not having children at replacement rates.  Now, why is that?  Currently the blame game ping pongs back and forth between blaming young men and young women.  But I would say the true culprit is the culture that has enabled a world view by young people that includes the following “facts”:

  • Women are better off in careers than as mothers.
  • Employers should prefer hiring women rather than men, especially white men.
  • There are too many people on planet Earth.
  • Bringing children into this world is a crime.
  • A middle-class lifestyle that allows for the raising of children is no longer within the reach of young adults.

Looking at all these statements I see a dystopian version of the world.  The only statement there that has any basis in fact is the last one and that situation needs to be rectified by our government if they hope to prevent this country from disintegrating into a sad, hollowed-out vestige of the dynamic, prosperous place it was a century ago.

To do this, each of those “facts” needs to be refuted and policies enacted to reverse the opinions and their effects that are currently laying waste to our society at all levels.

The first change needed is to convince young women that getting married and staying home to raise a large family is the most valuable and meaningful “career” they can have.  This is the key change that makes restoration of our society possible.  And the only way these young women can be convinced is for the government to put in place policies that subsidize couples forming and sustaining families.  Specifically, the policies should specify that men must remain employed and women must remain at home during the childhood years of their children.  Ideally these mothers should stay home until their children move out at eighteen years of age.  After that, mothers moving into the workforce shouldn’t be too detrimental to family life.  Although I wouldn’t force them to go.

Now this idea is anathema to modern feminist views.  That isn’t surprising since feminism is anathema to family life.  But it is absolutely vital to maintaining the health of the nation that women be convinced to resume their place in the home; not as part-time mothers of latch-key children but as moms.

Never Go All in Against a Witch

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Some of the grandkids were over today to complete my transformation into a beached whale.  More food appeared from heaven knows where and eggnog and desserts rounded out the meal.  And after some talk of this and that we got down to a high stakes game of Texas hold ’em.  The game was played completely for pride with no cash changing hands.  The chips were divvied up and play went on for hours with fortunes waning and waxing almost at random.  All except Camera Girl.  She is not only a canny bettor but also possesses supernatural luck.  And finally, it came down to her and me.  I was holding a pair of aces and the flop was nothing to write home about.  She and I were betting very heavily.  On the turn an ace showed up.  The final card was a second queen.  We had put most of our chips in the pot and I went all in.  I showed her my two aces and she showed me her pair of queens.  Four of a kind!  I accused her of witchcraft and spent the rest of the game railing at her from the sidelines.

Luckily coffee was served shortly after the game was over and I could gracefully move on from my somewhat unsportsmanlike behavior to my more dignified pose as pater familia and patriarch of a great nation.  All question of who beat whom in a meaningless game of chance was left behind and more important matters took center stage.  Discussions about which were the best Christmas toys or gifts were spirited.  The remote-controlled planes seemed to be the people’s choice.  I watched some cellphone video of these battery powered wonders buzzing the neighborhood at remarkable speed and surprising acrobatic agility.  The remarkable thing was how they survived the crashes I witnessed into the ground and trees.  It seems the drone revolution has reached the adolescent fraction of the American population and it is being enthusiastically embraced.  I was happy to see that these flying wonders did not include munitions of even the mock variety.  A small victory for world peace.

Tomorrow is work.  But I’m hoping it will be a short week and I’ll be able to extend the family fun a while longer while the kids are still off from school next week.  It’s heartening to see that simple games and food can still serve as an adequate excuse for fun.  No video games were played.  We even left the television off.  Sibling rivalry and parental scolding were not absent and some folks were too drowsy from food to avoid snoozing on recliners but for the most part the generations showed sufficient tolerance for each other to bridge the boomer/millennial/zoomer chasms of culture and conditioning.  And even that most fraught relationship, father-in-law/son-in-law was carried through with mutual regard and tolerance.  Having now been on both sides of that relationship I have equal respect for both partners in that arrangement.  It’s a strange but important set of rituals that bind up families and benefit everyone.  But for grown men it will always be a somewhat awkward interaction.  Luckily the wives and daughters can help to smooth out and buffer the whole dance.

I was thinking of writing something about the H-1B visa squabble going on.  But I’ll leave that up to various talking heads to battle it out.  Trump should be smart enough to figure out which way the wind blows on immigration, legal and illegal.  If he can’t figure it out, he’s not going to have a very productive presidency.  Instead, I’ll spend a little more time calculating the odds of getting a four of a kind in a Texas hold ‘em hand.  Now that’s an important question.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 26DEC2024 – Elemental

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war pig

Given the choice between kids with simple toys and physicists, I’ll take the children every time. There is something elemental about children learning a new skill. They have to understand trajectory, momentum, judging speeds & accurate distances, bound orbits; and then teach their bodies to react precisely to intercept a bound orbit vector at speed and to furthermore cushion the landing of the ball to prevent it bouncing out of the cup again.

Small wonder we have so much trouble programming humanoid robots to do simple things children can do.

Now Prove Me Wrong

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So, Camera Girl works double time for a week and I just spend two days eating thousands and thousands of calories of delicacies over the long holidays but I’m the one who’s exhausted and complaining!  I guess we each have our own strengths and weaknesses.

So, mission accomplished.  Two days hanging out with the grandkids and all the rituals were observed.  I even bonded with my sons-in-law.  They were good sports and tolerated all of my quirks.  They uncomplainingly watched my showing today of W.C. Fields classic “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.”  They even laughed at several of the most absurd scenes of Ambrose Wolfinger with his cellar full of singing burglars, his career as a “memory expert,” his criminal adventure as an unlicensed manufacturer of apple jack, his passion for professional wrestling and his trials and tribulations dealing with his truly awful wife and her mother and brother.

The kids fell right in with the silliness on display.  The only protest came from my six-year-old granddaughter who recognized both Fields and the actress playing his wife from the previous showing of the other Fields movie where they played a husband and wife, namely “It’s a Gift.”  Princess Sack of Potatoes wanted to know where the son and daughter in that previous movie had gotten to in this movie.  I explained that even though Fields and the actress were playing husband and wife again they were different characters.  I think this situation didn’t sit well with her.  Apparently, she felt that her suspension of disbelief was being abused and she wanted those interesting characters returned.  I did my best to smooth over this outrage but it took half the movie to return her to willing participation.

And as everyone was heading home, I was thinking what a strange world we live in.  All the silly rituals and behaviors that we associate with happiness and family.  Three generations of people playing penny ante poker or watching movies from ninety-some-odd years ago or eating peasant foods from a country none of us has ever lived in.  It’s all just a hodge-podge of things that make up a stream of experiences that we all share together travelling down the years.

And for me, those are the realest things in the world.  All the other things I read about “on-line” and the important progress that is being made by artificial intelligence, global convergence or whatever else they call what they are doing with government money are utterly fake.  Watching my two youngest grandchildren trying for the first time to master the silly game of getting a wooden ball on a string to land in a little wooden cup was more meaningful than listening to two physicist talking heads debating about whether dark matter was faker than modified gravity.  These high powered (we hope) intellects should be concentrating their efforts on solving the world’s energy problems.  The physics they need to be studying is defining the criteria for engineering a safe fission reactor.  Humanity needs to snap out of its stupor and produce an ecosystem of abundance and prosperity that fosters human happiness and maximizes human intellectual potential.

It’s amusing to hear people who “believe in science” stating categorically that there is no God and that the universe and life are just meaningless accidents.  And their proof is “The Big Bang.”  They declare confidently that the universe began x number of billions of years ago with all the matter and energy of creation appearing out of nowhere and all of that creation is still expanding at an ever-greater acceleration into empty space with entropy leading to the heat death of this universe in y billions of years from now.  But if you ask them where the big bang came from, they just shrug their shoulders and say that is unknowable.  In essence they are saying they don’t know anything about the beginning and end of the universe.  So basically, they’re saying, “and then there was light.”

I tend to think life is not an accident.  From my point of view, what I experience in my small piece of the universe is the point of the whole thing.  A little kid playing with a ball and cup toy is the reason for the big bang and everything else that has been put in motion.  Now prove me wrong.

The Intersection of Christmas and the Woke

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It’s at this time of the rolling year that we think about what matters most in our lives.  Just as Charles Dickens designed into his story we think of the past, present and future.  And at this point in my life these become very distinct groupings.

When I think back to my childhood and youth it’s as if I’m looking out on a different world.  The America of my past was like a fantasy world where opportunity and optimism was omnipresent.  And Christmas was the epicenter of that sense of optimism because children are the center of Christmas and America was arranged around providing the next generation with a future of limitless opportunity.  And that culture back then was still a Christian culture and the religious and moral aspects of the Christmas story were at the very least still acknowledged.  Even Charlie Brown ended his troubled search for the meaning of Christmas with Linus reciting the New Testament text at Luke 2:8-14.  And all this positivity and solidarity produced a remarkably happy life for the great majority of Americans.

Now look at the present.  It’s not an exaggeration to say that pessimism is the dominant sentiment among Americans of every stripe.  And young people are convinced that the opportunities their parents and grandparents enjoyed will not be there for them.  And as far as Christmas goes, not only is religion now almost abandoned by the young but any spirituality or even morality associated with Christmas has been drained out of it by the popular culture and the cultural institutions on the Left.  Christianity is only referenced as a symbol of Western oppression or the patriarchy.  What has replaced it is a confused cult of “social justice” that allows any depravity as long as it’s in the name of sexual identity.

But what of the future?  I think it’s certain there’s no way back to the past I knew.  But that does not rule out escaping from the desolation we find ourselves in now.  We do not have to try to reclaim the lost souls that surround us on the Left.  We do not even have to hate them.  But we do have to separate from them.  In their confusion and despair, they have taken it upon themselves to destroy our children by confusing them with their insane views.  This must be prevented by any means possible.  The beginnings of this resistance can be seen appearing in various parts of the country.  To know if this will be effective, we’ll have to wait and see if it starts expanding during the friendlier environment of the Trump administration.  And there is some hope that the Supreme Court will lend a hand.  There are hints in the statements after the reversal of Roe v Wade that gay marriage may be headed for a similar reversal.  As with any discussion of the future every fork in the road is a flip of the coin.  But sometimes the coin comes up heads.  So, there’s hope.  What we’ll need to do is rebuild our culture on the durable parts of our heritage.  Morality will have to be redefined to support a healthy community that centers around normal family life.  Those who don’t fit into that pattern will have to be left to the other side to find a place in the world.  We’ll concentrate on people who can face reality and want to build something positive for their children.

So here we are on Christmas Eve and I try to remember and point to the past as a template, ignore the worst of the present and hope for and work for a better future.  Now past the roast beast and gravy and let’s get this show on the road.

A Modest Moratorium

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So tonight, Camera Girl was unleashed on the baking supplies she’s been assembling for the last week or so.  Tomorrow our daughters and our granddaughter will be showing up at noon or so for the tradition grandma-cookie baking ritual.  Grandma cookies are Camera Girl’s mom’s recipe for what some people in the family call white cookies.  These are lethally addictive.  With a large mug of coffee (or milk for the kids) it’s almost impossible not to binge on every cookie that’s left in harm’s way.  It’s hard to believe that the ingredients are only things like flour, eggs, butter, sugar and vanilla extract.  There must be some cocaine or opium in them somewhere.

Well, anyway, tonight she baked alone.  She baked all the other cookies for the holiday.  She made oatmeal, chocolate chip, M&M and sugar cookies.  And then just to make sure I won’t survive the year she made a big pan of baklava.  Oh, man.  Even Zorba the Greek after dancing for a week straight wouldn’t be able to finish off the portion she made.  Between the butter, honey and walnuts I can see myself in the local emergency room receiving last rites as the intern on duty calls for the crash cart and the body bag.

Tomorrow I’ll be on a road trip to northern New England; to Vermont.  I’m riding shotgun just as company.  It should be fun.  Meanwhile the womenfolk will be bonding in the kitchen and indoctrinating Princess Sack of Potatoes in the mysteries of family tradition of the female variety.  All very sacred proceedings.  So, the holidays are progressing satisfactorily.

But it’s not as if all is normal.  After her latest shopping trip for the holiday supplies, Camera Girl was horrified at the increase in the prices of such staples as eggs, butter, flour and coffee.  I felt very sad for her so I tried to cheer her up by saying that after the holidays the prices would come back down based on supply and demand.  I think she could tell I was making it up but she forced a smile and we moved on.

Trump will have his hands full trying to fix the economy and deporting ten million illegals.  Just doing those things would be hard enough but he’ll have to do it in the face of not only a hostile Deep State but also the Congress.  The House has a razor thin Republican majority and the Senate is packed with RINOs who want to please their corporate paymasters and don’t give a damn about making America great.  Yes, he’ll have his hands full.

But despite all this resistance, I am surprisingly optimistic.  I was very pleasantly surprised by his victory.  And because of it, I no longer assume that the Left will have everything its own way.  Trump has seen a lot of the worst that the powers that be can do against him.  If he’s half as smart as I hope he is, he’s going to eliminate a very large number of his enemies from the ranks of many of the the agencies that he controls, basically the whole executive branch of government.  Unless he’s crazy he knows he has to eliminate large chunks of the management of the FBI and the Justice Department.  Once that’s done, I expect he’ll have an easier time dictating terms to the rest of the departments.  And in fact, after he has loyalists in charge of the FBI I wouldn’t be surprised if the various RINO senators suddenly become much more cooperative.  All of these people must have files that are kept for just such an eventuality.

Now maybe my optimism is foolish.  But the holiday is upon us and I think optimism is better for my digestion during this season of overeating.  January is the time for resolutions and facing facts.  So, unless a planet killing asteroid is discovered approaching Earth or I see the incoming ICBMs over Dunwich between now and Christmas I’m declaring a moratorium on gloom and doom.

I’m going to eat way too many cookies and much too much roast beast and spoil my grandkids and watch way too many old movies.  I think that’s a plan.

Happy Thanksgiving – 2024

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I feel virtuous tonight.  I got up early, worked on the novel, did my exercise, got outside with my camera to get some shots of ice crystals on the grass and leaves and even spent some time today with Princess Sack of Potatoes going over the facts on the planets of the solar system.  I told her about the deeply anti-American decision to strip Pluto of its status as the 9th planet and the very questionable nature surrounding ideas about a manned voyage to Mars.  But I said it was still a wonderful idea to dream about.  And she drew her versions of what the planets look like.  I told her to add the Great Red Spot to Jupiter and pointed out the Polar Ice Cap on Mars as a feature.

So, in many ways this was a model of what a productive day should look like.  I did go on line from time to time and even checked up on Ukraine (things look even more dire than they were).  But I skipped the crying Leftists videos and even passed over the “Trump’s Cabinet Picks Explained” category too.  So, all in all, I’m a model elections-anonymous twelve stepper.

And here we are the night before Thanksgiving and really all I’m thinking about is where we can fit everybody in the dining room.  I wanted to adjourn to the living room.  I like elbow room, lots of elbow room.  But Camera Girl, like all women thinks it’s a big deal to have to break down some folding tables after dinner.  I told her that is silly.  I’d mobilize the men and boys and it would be done in a minute and a half and it’s good to move around a little after eating all that food.  But blah. blah, blah.  So okay, we’ll be squeezed together like sardines.

Alright, for Thanksgiving we have to be thankful.  And even before Trump won, I was thinking I’ve got lots to be grateful for.  Everybody is healthy including my many siblings and their families.  Camera Girl hasn’t come to her senses and decided to murder or divorce me.  The kids and grandkids are apparently flourishing and a few days of rain has prevented New England from burning to the ground.

And alright, I’m grateful that God allowed Trump to win and thus permitted me to indulge my baser instincts with an orgy of schadenfreude that I have now ended in a sensible way.  And also, I am grateful that it is possible that Americans may be blessed with a second chance to claw back some of our freedoms from the Deep State in 2025.  But if it doesn’t happen, I am grateful for all the other things listed above that make life a remarkable experience.

So, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.  Whatever I may think about the inauthenticity and self-serving nature of the propaganda that the ruling class has passed off as patriotism, I’ve always believed that Thanksgiving and Christmas are an amazing gift that families get to spend together.  The happiness and good feelings are a tonic for the soul.  Enjoy.

A Pretty Good Deal

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The holidays are upon us and today we got a taste of them.  A gathering of my children and their families at the Compound was deeply enjoyable.  The youngest grandchildren were triumphantly underfoot.  They had a game where they spaced out some pillows on the living room floor and hopped haphazardly between them to avoid the “lava” that surrounded these tiny islands of safety.  They were a menace to navigation and a real danger to themselves from collision with doors and walls and other solid objects.  So, they kept me busy refereeing their wilder excesses.

And Camera Girl outdid herself in the kitchen.  The food flowed impressively onto the table and then into the mouths of the delighted diners.  I give her all credit except for one decision that I was responsible for.  She had baked a huge Italian cheese cake and a chocolate cake and a chocolate pudding dessert.  Along with whipped cream she declared that no other dessert should be offered.  I insisted that vanilla ice cream must always be available as a component of dessert.  When the dessert was being served, I quizzed the kids about this and the reaction was electric.  They shouted agreement with my position.  Well, Camera Girl must have known in advance that I was right.  Not only did she have a half gallon of   vanilla.  She had chocolate chip and cookies and cream.  I was magnanimous in victory.  I openly applauded her willingness to accept advice and avoid disappointing the future of the family.

We talked about this and that.  Local politics and town affairs like the volunteer fire departments and their trials and tribulations.  And I talked to the kids about the upcoming Thanksgiving celebration here.  I mentioned that they would have the option of joining me in watching my traditional viewing of the 1930s versions of “The March of the Wooden Soldiers” and the Max Fleischer cartoon “Gulliver’s Travels.”  I also mentioned that there would be viewing of some of W.C. Fields’ classic movies, “It’s a Gift” and “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.”  I emphasized that they should take special note of the similarity in behavior of the wife in these movies toward her husband (Fields) to the way that Camera Girl abuses and disrespects me.  I think it’s never too early to use the classics to teach valuable lessons to children about how the world works.  I’m sure Camera Girl heard me making these statements because I detected a growling sound coming from the kitchen at this point.

Well, before we knew it the night was getting along and everyone had to get home to their own things.  After they left, I noted to Camera Girl that it isn’t such a bad world where such nice people can surround us with life and energy with only the cost of some peasant Southern Italian food and desserts needed as fuel.  Sure, the world is falling apart at the seams and Joe Biden is still causing damage everywhere you look.  But things could be much, much worse.  And at least we’ll get to do Thanksgiving and Christmas at least one more time before the world comes to an end.  That’s a pretty good deal.  I’ll take it.