My Thanksgiving Wish!

OK...before you say anything, I know the picture above is not a Turkey or anything representative of Thanksgiving, but i don't have a picture of a turkey and I like my picture of this Blue Peacock from the "Garden Of Eden" botanical gardens on the road to Hana in Maui...so there it is.

And speaking of turkeys representing thanksgiving here why I am writing this blog entry. For the last 4 days, there has been a line hundreds of people long in a local avant-garde soul-food place in my hood called Jive Turkey. Normally, the JT has at most 2 people in it at rush hour. From what I hear its good food but seeing as I don't eat turkey, i never went in. Today there are no less than 3 hundred people waiting to buy their gourmet thanksgiving turkey meals.

I have never been a very preachy type of vegetarian, but listen: Just because some version of history says that the traditional thanksgiving meal is turkey doesn't mean that you HAVE to eat turkey. It also doesn't mean you have to buy the biggest turkey in the store...or that just because you bought something called "free-range" that somehow you are acting better than other consumers duped into buying more food than you need.

Its just another day. If having dinner with family and friends make you happy, great...that is indeed an occasion to celebrate and enjoy. It shouldn't however mean finding all sorts of useless gifts to buy and food to over-purchase or use more gallons of gas to hurry to dinner.

True that environmental destruction and community upheaval may very well be the true legacy of thanksgiving, but that doesn't mean that we have to oblige.