‘You can get anything you want’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

An essay in tribute to Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”

* * * *
There are three quotes, three statements, in my head this Thanksgiving afternoon, 2016.

Earlier this morning, a friend and I were chatting about our different Thanksgiving Day plans and he asked me if I had ever been to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City. (I almost marched in it, by accident of all things, but that is an anecdote for a different blog post. Perhaps later today.)

“Well, I just hope,” he said, that no one tries any terrorism down there today, but if they do,” and here he looked like someone who hoped that “someone” would “try terrorism down there” because he added, “If they do, I hope we go ahead and use our nuclear weapons the way they were meant to be used. Just go over there and flatten that whole place.”
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Sarah Hale: The Mother of Thanksgiving

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In most of her portraits, Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, the reason we celebrate Thanksgiving in America, looks stern. Gentle, but stern. She was an editor, but befitting a woman of her era, she employed the term, “editress.” From age 33 until her death at age 90, she wore black, which designated her as a widow in mourning from the day her husband died until the day almost sixty yeas later that she was to join him.
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Today in History: Nov. 24

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“You know that everyday a helpless child is born
Who needs some loving care inside a happy home
Somewhere a wealthy man is sitting on his throne
Waiting for life to go by”—Freddie Mercury, Brian May, “Is This the World We Created?”

Freddie Mercury died 25 years ago today. At Live Aid in 1985, he and Queen partner Brian May performed a song, “Is This the World We Created,” lyrics by Mercury (after the jump):
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