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Sunday, November 29, 2015

On Giving Thanks

“When was the last time you wrote a blog?” my ten-year-old granddaughter asked me lately.
“A long time ago,” I told her.
“You can’t do that, your followers will forget you!” she said, and I explained to her how busy I have been, after I returned to teaching following my sabbatical year and finishing up the last version of my manuscript, sending it to an editor to get it ready for literary agents. Besides, I run out of subjects, I told her, which is the furthest think from the truth.

I could write about ISIS bombing the Russian Metrojet Flight 9268 in Sinai on November 7, killing 224 victims. Or the Paris attack by ISIS two weeks ago. I could write about the steps the international community, if there is one, needs to take to minimize the danger of that pseudo state.

I could write of the immigration issue and the way it is dealt by some of the Republican candidates - particularly after the Paris attack - from Jed Bush’s proposal that the US would only allow Syrian refugees that can prove they’re Christian, to the idea that Muslims should be required to carry special identification cards or badges, attributed to Donald Trump, but denied in some media outlets that he has said that.

I could write about the deteriorating conditions in the Middle East, with Turkey’s downing the Russian fighter jet over Turkish or Syrian airspace. And I could try to refute that the coalition’s war against ISIS is a war between the Western and the Islamic civilizations, as Samuel Huntington theorized in the early 1990s.

Of course, I could write about the wave of stabbings in Israel and the West Bank, carried out against Israelis by Palestinian individuals, mostly young, who are either desperate, or are poisoned by incitement on social media, taught how to kill efficiently; and I could scream, that no, incitement to kill is not free speech, not by any standards, ethics or law.  

But there’s nothing new I could add to the analyses that are widely available on these issues. Besides, I deal with these subjects in my classrooms repeatedly.

Surely I could write of the terrorist attack this past Friday on the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, shouting that this too is the result of incitement – part of the politization of abortion rights by those reactionists who want to do away with Roe V. Wade.

 Instead, I want to write about the things I am thankful for in this holiday of giving thanks.

I our traditional Thanksgiving dinner, we do not go around the table for everyone to state what they are thankful for. It doesn’t suite my personal taste. Only my two young grandchildren did.

My tragic life when I was young taught me to take nothing for granted and feel fortunate every day: For being able to see and breathe and touch, to smell and taste. For having the capacity to speak out and teach. To give and accept. To love and to abhor. To do the best I can.


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