Vince got up around 6 this morning to get the fire going in the smoker. I reckon we’re going to slow cook some turkey legs to bring to Grandma’s house. We’ve been practicing for the past three weeks.

As the smoke kinda wandered around the yard in the early morning air, I thought about last year’s Thanksgiving. I thought about how thankful I am that one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression is now subsiding. Last year at Thanksgiving, America was one year into a recession even though we had been told the exact opposite.

One thing the Bush recession taught me was to be thankful for electricity, grocery stores and toilets. During the entire last year of President Bush’s second term, I explored what we’d do as a family if things got so bad that we’d have to make our own butter or run in a wheel to keep the lights on.

I learned a lot since last Thanksgiving, including the fact that bacon comes in a can. I’m thankful for that, too.

I’m thankful to live in a time when technology empowers individuals to be as loud as the millions of dollars that will be spent to con Americans into forgetting what bad leadership and bad policy actually does to our nation.

It’s hard to believe how bad things got in this country over the past two years, but it makes me very thankful this Thanksgiving. Hard times can be humbling teaching moments if we can bring ourselves to think them through. They also tend to repeat themselves in different ways when we don’t think them through or can’t stomach the truth.

Here’s to saving room today between the television and turkey to think about our nation, to think about those serving our country in war, and to cooking the Thanksgiving turkey over a fire because we want to and not because we have to.