[Seth Says] New Essential Thanksgiving Songs!
(By which I mean, they contain the essence of Thanksgiving. Think essential oils, rather than medical essentials, which is to say you don't need them and possibly they stink a bit but some people enjoy them nonetheless.)
The old essential Thanksgiving song is Alice's Restaurant, which is ever more relevant to this time and place because it was around here that it all happened and written up in the Berkshire Eagle back at the time, and also Alice died this year. Lot of that going around lately; I had another friend die last week, one of the people who was first responsible for my really feeling at home in the Berkshires after moving far enough away from the college that I could no longer easily walk over and hang out there. He and his partner used to host a "Potluck for the Creatively Afflicted" where I first met a lot of the local arts community, and the Berkshires are certainly the poorer for both of their passing over the past half decade.
A doubly good reminder, I suppose, to be thankful for the people we have in this life, not only because life is fleeting, but because one or two people can make a world of difference to your feeling of belonging -- and conversely, you can make a world of difference to someone else's feeling of belonging. (Admittedly, I'm still not really people-ing per se, although I did make a few more donations recently, spurred by the desire to feel like I'm doing something to push back against unpleasantness, and also spurred by a benefit concert a friend put together with her band "Joy Factor".)
THE GIFT OF FRIENDSHIP
Years ago I used to do a FoaF Holiday Gift Guide, because studies show that your happiness is influenced by the happiness of your friends -- and not just first-degree friends, but their friends, and even their friends. The upshot of this is that a great way for you to become happier is to increase the happiness of your friends, as well as (if you’re a friend of mine) the happiness of my friends, and consequently I'd love to encourage people to buy things from my friends and gift them to your friends.
Sadly response rates were pretty low when I tried this on social media in recent years, causing me to give up because I am a quitter. (But I don't feel guilty about it; I’m a quitted.) However, I haven't tried it with this newsletter yet, so why not?
Here's my ask:
If you create anything that might make a decent holiday gift - art, music, writing, jewelry, etc. - please reply to this newsletter with a link to where people might purchase your stuff (or your giftiest stuff, if not all your stuff is at one link). My next newsletter will contain a link for everyone that replied, so if more than one or two people reply, we'll all have a cool little gift guide in mid-December and together we can make our friend circles happier and thus slightly improve the statistical likelihood of our own happiness and make winter a little less bleak.
NEW ESSENTIAL THANKSGIVING SONGS
Okay, so we've got Alice's Restaurant. And we've got that damned Adam Sandler song. But that's not enough. Christmas continues to encroach upon Thanksgiving with decorations going up earlier every year. We need more Thanksgiving cheer, and we need it now.
Conveniently, in honor of Hip Hop History Month, I've rewritten some classic hip-hop standards to become Thanksgiving songs. So if you ever used to listen to RunDMC, NWA, or Vanilla Ice, I entreat you to enjoy:
A Hip-Hop Thanksgiving
I'll admit to being more pleased than usual with this column for two reasons:
1) I loves the parodies where I go all in making syllables line up so you can easily sing along if you know the song (or click through to listen on YouTube).
2) I got Straight Outta Compton in the newspaper, which is a song charitably described as "not family friendly" (which, as Debbie pointed out, you might suspect if you know what NWA stands for)(I mean, my parody is 100% family friendly. The original isn't.)(I guess depending on your family.)(Arguably, for most families, opera isn't family friendly.)("What is the question to which the answer is '9W'?" "Is your name spelled with a V, Mr. Wagner?")(Wow, in retrospect that joke really needs to be spoken and not written.)(I'll refund you half of what you paid me for this newsletter, to make up for it.)
SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE TURKEY
Look, I know it's not the best times, illness, genocide, fascism, climate, people dying, plus the past week here at our house has included some stupid and frustrating mishaps. But all the more reason to appreciate the people who make our life better, which is what Thanksgiving is all about. (Well, that, and repaying hospitality with genocide.)
My point is, I've been fortunate to know many wonderful people in spite of my hermitude, and I don't spend a single day not feeling appreciative. (Admittedly, the majority of this appreciation on any given day is directed at my partner, but still.) I appreciate you reading this far, will be back in two weeks with another column (and hopefully a gift guide?), and bid you a happy Giving of Thanks to whoever is making your life better -- especially if they cooked you a tasty dinner!
Gobble Gobble,
Seth