For I-don’t-know-how-many-years Joan Beck, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, wrote a special Thanksgiving Day column. Ms. Beck’s column was always a highlight of my Thanksgiving, and I would look forward to reading it every year. Ms. Beck died in December of 1998. In memory of Ms. Beck and her wonderful columns, here is her last Thanksgiving Day column, from the Chicago Tribune of November 26, 1998:
"As we gather together to count the Lord’s blessings, 377 years after the first Thanksgiving Day, we are grateful, Dear God, for the Israeli-Palestinian accord if it lasts and the bull market if it’s back, and the budget if there’s a surplus and the pullback in Iraq if it works, for John Glenn and Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, for latte and laptops and love, for diversity and dialysis and dishwashers, for Amazon.com and answered prayers and amazing grace.
O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, we thank you this day for violins and Viagra and virtual reality, for daughters and databanks and doughnuts and down, for magic and Magi and miracles, for browsers and brooks and brown paper packages tied up with string, for tech-support hotlines when they help and low mortgage rates when they’re available, for carryout and carry-ons and carry-overs, for caregivers and caretakers and caramels.
Grandparents and granola and grants and grand slams and Grand Tetons we count as blessings this Thanksgiving, God of grace and God of glory. So, too, carousels and caucuses and crocuses, oboes and oysters and oceans and Oz, blue jeans and teens and jelly beans, docks, and doctors and docents and doctoral dissertations, ducks and documentaries and dogs, pasta and pesto and pro bono and the ancient promise, that ‘while the Earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter and day and night shall not cease.’
Eternal Father, strong to save, whose arm hath bound the restless wave, we are grateful today for e-mail without spam and elections without attack ads, for limericks and luminaria and lime, for angels and onions and e pluribus unum, for cooks and courage and cousins and cougars, for sun and sons and soup and soap and soul, for modems and mothers and brothers and significant others.
For teachers and preachers and all creatures great and small, we thank you, Lord God who made them all, and for fathers and founding fathers and forefathers and foster fathers and father figures, for fajitas and farms and faith, for fireflies and fireworks and firefighters and fireplaces, for gingerbread houses and jumping ropes, for Grisham and Gershwin and Grieg, for hymns and hugs and hamburgers, for eagles and beagles and bagels and lox.
O Lord our God, when we in awesome wonder consider all the world thy hands have made, give thee thanks for ‘Swan Lake’ and ‘Nutcracker’ and ‘Silent Night’ and the ‘Grinch Who Stole Christmas,’ for Madeline and madeleines and madrigals and magazines and magnets, for nurses and newspapers and newborns, for readers and referees and Christopher Reeve’s ‘Rear Window.’
For ‘Your baby’s just perfect,’ and ‘Your lab report is normal’ and ‘You’re hired’ and ‘You’re covered’ and ‘It’s benign’ and ‘You’re admitted to the class of 2002,’ and ‘For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.’ And ‘they lived happily ever afterward,’ and ‘Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil,’ we thank you, Immortal Invisible, God only wise. So, too, for volunteers and vouchers and voters and votive candles, for authors and aspic and autumn and auld lang syne.
Our Father who art in heaven, we thank you this special day for mentors and memories and melting pot, for salad and salmon and salsa and salvation, for beaches and bleaches and bleachers, and peaches and for soccer and succor and success and for physicians and musicians and electricians and magicians, and for pick-your-own-apples and sing along Messiahs and chose-your-own Christmas tree in the woods.
The discovery of suchomimus tenerensis with its dreadful jaws, and astonishing size gives us thoughtful pause this day, O God from whom all blessings flow, as so SUVs and RVs and MRIs and AP courses and ESOPs and Roth IRAs and BLTs and TGIF. We count as blessings, too, 911 and 1-800 and 98.6 and 20/20 and 120/80 and 1999, the 55th chapter of Isaiah and the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians and the 103rd Psalm, the 1st Amendment and the 9th Symphony and ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident’ and ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.’
For second harvests that salvage surplus food for the hungry, we praise you this Thanksgiving Day, God, who is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. So, too, for smokers who quit and kids who just say no, for homes and homecomings and homemakers and homers, Homer and home rule and holidays and holy days, thesauruses and tyrannosaures, sleeping bags and sleeping babies and all the wonder your hands have made.
Our father’s God to thee, author of liberty, we offer thanks today for Lincoln and licorice and libraries and lilacs, for commissions and remissions and non-polluting emissions, for chocolate and churches and chowder, for Christmas and carols and choirs and coral reefs, for sales and sails and ponytails, for vacations and vocations and vaccinations, for dreams that aren’t deferred and hopes that come true.
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, we thank you, once again, for dawn after dark, for rest after work, for healing after hurt and life after life, for a bridge over trouble and a shelter from the storm, for love that will not let us go and an eternal home and always ‘that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present, nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God.’"
I came late to this post and, not knowing how such things work, I hope the blogger reads this. I so looked forward to Joan Beck's annual Thanksgiving column and have sorely missed it but was not curious enough to find out why my paper stopped publishing it. Was thinking about her and got curious enough just now to do a search. I did not know she died (a good enough reason to stop writing...), so thank you, Mr. Allen, not only for letting me know that but for reprinting her last column. I'll print it out to savor on future Thanksgivings. (One more thing -- anybody with a blogroll like yours deserves a bookmark)
Posted by: Roxanne McNally | November 29, 2009 at 08:10 AM