Time for turkey

[thedrifter]

Time for turkey
November 23,2006
CHRIS MAZZOLINI
DAILY NEWS STAFF

As most families know, it takes a lot of work to cook a Thanksgiving turkey.

Imagine cooking 45 of them.

That’s the task that faced Remy Stitt, the director of the soup kitchen at Onslow Community Ministries, who has been sweating over a hot stove for days preparing Thanksgiving meals for the less fortunate.

The ministries will cook enough Thanksgiving dinners for about 550 people, delivering food about the county in the soup kitchen’s two trucks. Stitt said they are also expecting about 60 people to come to the soup kitchen between 10:45 a.m. and 11:45 a.m. today for the holiday meal.

Volunteers were expected to arrive at about 5 a.m. today to begin preparing the turkey, stuffing and yams for the day’s feasting. On Wednesday, volunteers sliced and prepared an assortment of pies.

Stitt said they wouldn’t be able to prepare the meal without the volunteers, and she said she is thankful for their help and the look of gratitude on the faces she will see on Thanksgiving.

“I enjoy it because I help the community,” she said. “I really enjoy helping the community and preparing the food for them. It makes me feel good to see them smiling and coming here.”

The Marines and sailors who will be attending the USO’s annual Thanksgiving feast are also looking for some compassion. Many are far away from home and family, some for the first time.

A platoon of retired sergeants major will cook most of the roughly 70, 20-pound turkeys at Camp Johnson, though the USO is frying up a handful of birds at their location on Tallman Street. On Thursday, when the more than 2,000 hungry Marines come through the lines, the sergeants major will be dishing up the turkey and stuffing, ham, potatoes, yams, rolls and other delights in generous portions.

Sharon Malloy, the USO’s director, said it’s gratifying to give the service members a touch of home.

“It’s the best part of the job,” she said.

Alicia Barnes, the assistant director at the USO, said they received generous donations of food. Volunteers at the USO on Wednesday were busy setting up the dining room and getting the kitchen prepped for the big day.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Barnes said of the preparation. “Because you know it’s going to such a great cause.”

About 120 volunteers will be on hand Thursday to make sure the feast goes off without a hitch. They have also received constant requests to volunteer their time on the holiday.

“No shortage,” said JoLinda Flores, the volunteer event coordinator with the USO. “They are still calling.”

Contact staff writer Chris Mazzolini at cmazzolini@freedomenc.com or 353-1171, ext. 229.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Thanksgiving
Then and now

Thursday, November 23, 2006; A38

IN 1789, CONGRESS requested of George Washington that the young nation's first president, as he put it, "recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanks-giving and prayer." The grand traditions of the holiday that we all look forward to today -- grotesque overeating, traffic jams and airport delays, endless sports on television, and family squabbles -- had not yet developed. And the country then, having only just established the government we still enjoy, had a great deal to be thankful for, President Washington noted: "the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war," the "great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed -- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted -- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us."

Such a list of blessings must have seemed remarkable to Washington when he composed it. And while Americans take it for granted now, it is all the more so today. The national constitution he described has endured, after all; civil and religious liberty persists; the means of acquiring and diffusing knowledge have ballooned beyond his wildest dreams.

Washington's proclamation didn't stop with thanks. The second half laid out some requests or, as he more delicately put it, "supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations." Most pointedly, the proclamation asked that "our national government" be rendered "a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed."

In this, too, the document is prescient. For constitutional government is never a completed blessing but an ongoing challenge, one requiring activism, thought and engagement on the part of its officials and its citizenry. Precisely because the blessings over which Washington marveled have multiplied, it is a demand Americans now make chiefly of themselves and their government, not of the Ruler of Nations. Happy Thanksgiving.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation
Lincoln's papers in the Library of America series, Vol II, pp. 520-521. ^ | Washington, DC—October 3, 1863 | Abe Lincoln

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as the iron and coal as of our precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

And the Fair Land
Let's give thanks for America.

Thursday, November 23, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Anyone whose labors take him into the far reaches of the country, as ours lately have done, is bound to mark how the years have made the land grow fruitful.

This is indeed a big country, a rich country, in a way no array of figures can measure and so in a way past belief of those who have not seen it. Even those who journey through its Northeastern complex, into the Southern lands, across the central plains and to its Western slopes can only glimpse a measure of the bounty of America.

And a traveler cannot but be struck on his journey by the thought that this country, one day, can be even greater. America, though many know it not, is one of the great underdeveloped countries of the world; what it reaches for exceeds by far what it has grasped.

So the visitor returns thankful for much of what he has seen, and, in spite of everything, an optimist about what his country might be. Yet the visitor, if he is to make an honest report, must also note the air of unease that hangs everywhere.

For the traveler, as travelers have been always, is as much questioned as questioning. And for all the abundance he sees, he finds the questions put to him ask where men may repair for succor from the troubles that beset them.

His countrymen cannot forget the savage face of war. Too often they have been asked to fight in strange and distant places, for no clear purpose they could see and for no accomplishment they can measure. Their spirits are not quieted by the thought that the good and pleasant bounty that surrounds them can be destroyed in an instant by a single bomb. Yet they find no escape, for their survival and comfort now depend on unpredictable strangers in far-off corners of the globe.

How can they turn from melancholy when at home they see young arrayed against old, black against white, neighbor against neighbor, so that they stand in peril of social discord. Or not despair when they see that the cities and countryside are in need of repair, yet find themselves threatened by scarcities of the resources that sustain their way of life. Or when, in the face of these challenges, they turn for leadership to men in high places--only to find those men as frail as any others.

So sometimes the traveler is asked whence will come their succor. What is to preserve their abundance, or even their civility? How can they pass on to their children a nation as strong and free as the one they inherited from their forefathers? How is their country to endure these cruel storms that beset it from without and from within?

Of course the stranger cannot quiet their spirits. For it is true that everywhere men turn their eyes today much of the world has a truly wild and savage hue. No man, if he be truthful, can say that the specter of war is banished. Nor can he say that when men or communities are put upon their own resources they are sure of solace; nor be sure that men of diverse kinds and diverse views can live peaceably together in a time of troubles.

But we can all remind ourselves that the richness of this country was not born in the resources of the earth, though they be plentiful, but in the men that took its measure. For that reminder is everywhere--in the cities, towns, farms, roads, factories, homes, hospitals, schools that spread everywhere over that wilderness.

We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth.

And we might remind ourselves also, that if those men setting out from Delftshaven had been daunted by the troubles they saw around them, then we could not this autumn be thankful for a fair land.

The Wall Street Journal has published this editorial annually since 1961.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Thanksgiving Day, 2006
A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

Thanksgiving 2006


As Americans gather with family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving Day, we give thanks for the many ways that our Nation and our people have been blessed.

The Thanksgiving tradition dates back to the earliest days of our society, celebrated in decisive moments in our history and in quiet times around family tables. Nearly four centuries have passed since early settlers gave thanks for their safe arrival and pilgrims enjoyed a harvest feast to thank God for allowing them to survive a harsh winter in the New World. General George Washington observed Thanksgiving during the Revolutionary War, and in his first proclamation after becoming President, he declared November 26, 1789, a national day of "thanksgiving and prayer." During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln revived the tradition of proclaiming a day of thanksgiving, reminding a divided Nation of its founding ideals.

At this time of great promise for America, we are grateful for the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution and defended by our Armed Forces throughout the generations. Today, many of these courageous men and women are securing our peace in places far from home, and we pay tribute to them and to their families for their service, sacrifice, and strength. We also honor the families of the fallen and lift them up in our prayers.

Our citizens are privileged to live in the world's freest country, where the hope of the American dream is within the reach of every person. Americans share a desire to answer the universal call to serve something greater than ourselves, and we see this spirit every day in the millions of volunteers throughout our country who bring hope and healing to those in need. On this Thanksgiving Day, and throughout the year, let us show our gratitude for the blessings of freedom, family, and faith, and may God continue to bless America.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 23, 2006, as a National Day of Thanksgiving. I encourage all Americans to gather together in their homes and places of worship with family, friends, and loved ones to reinforce the ties that bind us and give thanks for the freedoms and many blessings we enjoy.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this sixteenth day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-first.

GEORGE W. BUSH