Thank You

3x5 inches, paper collage on vintage post card, 

loosely based on a painting by John Marin

It's Thanksgiving, a day set aside for considering our blessings, for cooking and eating, for parades, and endless marathons of televised football.  When I was a child, and our family had one small black and white television, no remote, lousy reception, my dad was king of the day.  No food was put o the table that he did not like.  No television program was watched that he did not select.  I remember him watching a Thanksgiving Day football game, and since even then I did not like or pretend to understand football, I went into my bedroom to read.  I came out occasionally, checking to see if the prostrate and apparently sleeping form of my father still had a football game on.  Sometimes, if he looked unconscious, I would try to switch the channel, but he would mumble that he was awake, to leave the game on where it was.  I remember crying out in frustration that the game HAD to be over. I'll never forget the Thanksgiving so long ago.  He looked me in the eye and told me the first one WAS over.  This was the next one, and that there would be another after that.  This may be part of what turned me into a reader. 

Today, though I miss my dad very much, and though my sweet husband is taking his turn in watching the Thanksgiving football marathon, I am thankful for my own television, tucked away in my studio.  Of course I am also thankful for my health, my current family, friends, security.  But I thought I'd take a moment to thank all the online folks I have met through this blog an other web sites.  I consider many of them to be great sources of inspiration, instruction, and encouragement.  I started participating in online book groups back in 1995, and nothing has spurred on my reading like knowing these fellow readers, with whom I could discuss books any time of the day or night.  Since then I have added artists to my online friends and acquaintances, and they too have helped me think about my art more seriously, and have been a wonderful source of ideas and support.  Thank you, all of you who have stopped by to read and to comment.  I appreciate every one of you.