I have been writing about some not very happy things, including 1984, one of the most depressing and dispiriting books I have ever read. That's not quite right for Thanksgiving week, so I'll put it on pause. I have a little more on the topic, including at least one more quote, but that can all wait until next week.
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I read the words of a writer on the Internet who wrote that he has over 46,000 unopened--or maybe it's unanswered--emails in his inbox. I don't feel so bad now. I have email messages, comments, cards, letters, and other things that have gone into limbo. They have been there for weeks and months, some for years. This isn't a good way to be.
If you read my lone entry from last month, you know that things have suddenly changed a lot for me and my family. Our situation from the last five years, which culminated in the death of our dad in August of this year, hasn't quite reached its end, but there has come an unavoidable and irreversible turning in our lives. As some of you know and the rest can imagine, this is a really hard thing to go through. I and we--suddenly orphans, all of us--are struggling every day. But not everything is so bad or so difficult. There are some positives in our lives and in the way things are turning. In any case, life goes on. My friend and his wife had a baby this month, for example, and life goes on. I hope that there will soon be a turning in our whole country, too, and that this will mean we can all go back to living lives again instead of the half-lives--or less--that we have been enduring in this sad, lonely, bizarre, and utterly stupid year.
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Despite everything that has happened this year, we have so much for which we can be thankful. I am thankful for many things, large and small. I am thankful for whatever gifts I might have received in my abilities to think about, research, and write about the things that you read and see here. I am thankful, too, for the chance I have in this digital age to do the things that I have always wanted to do--to write, draw, and publish what I write and draw, all on my own and at little or no cost--things I might not have been able to do so easily in previous ages. I thank everyone who reads this blog and who keeps coming back to it, for whatever reason, whether for enjoyment or edification, or even if it's to find something about which to be angry, offended, or infuriated. You are welcome here as well as anyone. I want to say thank you to the people who have written to me, either on this blog or directly by email, in sympathy, support, and understanding, since I came back at the end of September. I will write back to thank you personally. I especially thank Randal A. Everts, who has been generous and supportive in offering information, photographs, and corrections from his vast trove of research, stored in "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis."
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The American project began as an adventure, an escape from oppression, and a vision and ambition to found a place in which we and our posterity might live out and enjoy our lives in freedom. We haven't always done very well in all of that, but if there are arcs in history, the arc in ours is towards greater freedom, justice, and prosperity. Sometimes there is a drawing back, but always there is a going forward again, towards the goals and ideals of our founding. These are too big, I think, for any small person or group of people to overcome, let alone to defeat. It hasn't happened before, and it isn't going to happen now. Our country is built upon a rock, deeper, greater, and more solid than the one upon which the Pilgrims disembarked--an event that was at once, I guess, apocryphal and symbolic--400 years ago next month. No one is going to dislodge the rock or break it up, I'm convinced of that, and our nation will go on. We will not only survive the current hard times but come to thrive and prosper again. I'm convinced of that, too. And so I wish everyone life, freedom, and prosperity, and I say:
Happy Thanksgiving, America!
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| Weird Tales, October 1930, with cover art by Hugh Rankin. This is an October cover so not quite right for Thanksgiving, but it has autumn leaves in bright colors. Just ignore the knife. |
Copyright 2020, 2023 Terence E. Hanley
