What I Am Thankful For- 2020
I was reading about how Hoda Kotb from The Today Show tries to write down three things she's thankful for every day.
Well, I get around to making a list of the things for which I am thankful about once a year, on Thanksgiving.
And really, what better way to throw it in the face of Coronavirus than to actively think of things for which I am thankful.
Here are some things I have to be thankful for in 2020.
1. I am thankful that, knock on wood, I have avoided being diagnosed with the Coronavirus thus far in 2020. I know many people now who have been diagnosed. Has it required sacrifices? Of course. No plays this summer. No tickets to see shows, no shows for which to learn lines and to tread the boards. No trips to the movie theaters. No overnight trips. No baseball and softball this past spring. No track. No spring band concert. But this leads to my 2nd item.
2. We got away with putting on our play at Lewistown. Right as everything was about to shut down, completely, we were able to produce and put up Once Upon a Time and Very Far Away: A Cinderella Story at Lewistown, original music and script written by our director, Susie Lafary. Where my copy of the said script ultimately ended up, I do not know. It disappeared at some point between the last day of in class education on March 16th, and our first day back on August 17th. I was waiting with bated breath right up to the Friday morning of opening night to see if we were able to mount the production, given that Governor Pritzker had just issued the order which forbid crowds and gatherings exceeding 250 people. I know for fact we could have sold 250 tickets to any given performance. And we weren't at all sure that we were going to get the privilege to even issue that many tickets. By Wednesday, at our final dress rehearsal, the world was on a precipice of lockdown due to the rampant spread of COVID. Keep in mind, we already had 3,400 deaths in the United States by March 16th. And that was a lot of fatalities at that point in time. No vaccination in sight. No widely available testing. A nitwit president who had some delusion that he would be able to bury this malady as a hoax and that it could be contained in due time for him to back that knowingly false claim up. He couldn't. It spread. We all knew it was going to spread. He could have ordered more ventilators, more PPE in February, but he didn't. He was too proud to admit that the illness was real, and civil liberties and personal freedoms were going to have to be sacrificed in order to survive this. And this leads me to my next point.
3. Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential Election. Donald Trump is a man who has everything, and yet is left wanting for more. It's never going to be enough. That song from The Greatest Showman that was sung by Jenny Lind is apt. He's a dumb, stupid idiot who had his sister complete his term papers, homework assignments and exams while he was a student at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. He's way too dim-witted to have actually passed on his own volition. He had the narcissistic tunnel-vision sense of entitlement that he should have the presidency for as long as he wanted it. The thought that we could have at least been a little more prepared in February and March by ordering up just some more equipment, in case things got bad, gives me the gloomy sense that the damage has been done. How can the next president possibly undue the widespread damage wrought by Trump and his disastrous administration? But I will say that a calm came over me when the Associated Press and CNN called the election for Joe Biden on Saturday, November 7th.
Joe Biden will ably help to fulfill the wish of his son Beau by getting into office and helping make sure immigrants aren't tortured, imprisoned in cages and profiled mercilessly. Brown-skinned people can breathe a little easier. I know that comes across as a blanket statement, but really, was there any minority that Trump embraced? No. No, everyone at some point got racially, culturally, ethnically profiled by this nightcrawler of a bad, bad man. Biden will make hard choices, but his life has been dedicated towards making hard choices, knowing full well he can't make the extremely left-wing liberals or the hard-line off the deep end right wing conservatives happy. But he will make the middle happy. And maybe, hopefully, he can draw all of us a little bit closer to that middle ground.
Trump, to quote the National Review, may just be a weak President. In a just world, he would be led out of the White House in handcuffs in the back of a squad car. But democracy in action voting him out will suffice.
Oh, but come on, admit that it would be nice for him to be in a place where he wouldn't have access to Twitter.
4. I am thankful for my wife, Sara. We have grown closer during shelter in place, quarantine. I appreciate the comforts of her presence and company. More so due to the fact that on the bleakest days of shelter-in-place, she was my only company.
5. I am thankful for Mom, Dad, Carrie, Jen, my nieces Kayla, Alaina, and Mason.
As I am posting this article, Dad has tested positive for Coronavirus. He's 74. He's fit and active. He still volunteers at the Riverbend Food Bank's distribution center in the labor union hall on 7th Avenue in Rock Island. That being said, there's no guarantees with Coronavirus. He could be hospitalized by this, for all I know. It's hard, it's scary, but it's something I have to think about and worry about. So far, the only symptoms are a dry cough, fatigue, a headache, and some nausea. But Dad's hearty.
Jen had a bad cold last week. No word if it were actually Coronavirus from which she was suffering. She wasn't tested.
My mom, so far as I know, has not displayed any symptoms.
But heading into Thanksgiving of 2020, I still have all of them! I have my family and Sara.
6. I am thankful to still have my job at Lewistown Community High School as Spanish Teacher. This is my fifth year of full-time teaching Spanish, sixth year as an employee of the school (counting the semester of Student Teaching where I paid WIU for the privilege to teach there), and seventh year being paid by the school. (I was a substitute teacher during Caitlin Streeky's first maternity leave in 2014.)
7. I am thankful to still be able to pick up hours at Arc. In as much as I have to wait fourteen days before I can go back and pick up hours, including giving up hours today at 12th Street, while I go out and get tested for Coronavirus, I am thankful to still be one of their temp workers and on payroll.
8. I am thankful we were able to get the townhouse sprayed for cockroaches in October, on a Monday. And that I managed to get the apartment relatively well picked up while also making it to Mason's Confirmation as his sponsor the day before the spraying. I am thankful we got a follow-up spray for cockroaches in November, and an initial spray for bed bugs. (Not my first time at the rodeo for either bug. 2020 has not been the best year of all time.)
9. I am happy Sara and I got our taxes done for 2019, and we weren't at the mercy of the Credit Union for a loan again. Yes, we're still paying heavenly bills on our 2018 Income Tax Credit Union Loan. Thanks to the relief check of 2,400.00, we were able to pay our $2900 federal income tax bill that we were slapped with, along with about 250.00 apiece from Sara and me. And I had help from mom and dad for that part of mine that I had to pay out of pocket, plus the cost of having the taxes done. I was able to cover my state of Illinois $700.00 bill thanks to my RIA Credit Union Visa Card. So I am still making heavenly payments on that, lol. Upwards of $100.00 a month. My bill to the Land of Lincoln should be paid back to Visa by about February or March.
10. I am happy that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was able to proceed with its 25th annual Induction Ceremony to celebrate the induction class of 2020. Granted I haven't watched it yet, I know that it will be on HBO Max whenever I get around to subscribing to that.
Nine Inch Nails may have been a bit populist of a choice, in my opinion, because from 1995 through about 2000, it seemed that everyone and their brother had one of those NIN t-shirts. "Closer to God" got overplayed, and it lost its novelty. But Trent Reznor won't be able to complain, because the Rock Hall amended its inductee list for the band, bringing in a whole bunch of the bands' members across a thirty year span, leading up to and including Atticus Ross.
I am happy that Whitney Houston got inducted! "The Greatest Love of All." "I Wanna' Dance With Somebody." "One Moment in Time." "I'm Every Woman." "I Will Always Love You." "I Have Nothing." "I'm Your Baby Tonight." And I haven't even mentioned her cover of Steve Winwood's classic "Higher Love." Wasn't that song played by the Biden-Harris campaign? It was an apt choice!
I'm not familiar with T. Rex's music. I'll have to look into it.
The Notorious B.I.G. got in. I remember "Hypnotize" and think back to about 9th grade at Alleman. I remember "I Love it When You Call Me Big Papa" and remember getting MTV in our hose for the first time in 1994 with our TCI Cable package. And his collaboration with P.Diddy, or Puff Daddy, Sean Combs, the "Mo Money Mo Problems," with the terrific spoof on Tiger Woods with the music video.
Depeche Mode- They get joked about, like something's as '80's as a Depeche Mode cassette single. But they were really good in the 1980's. And people liked them! They were frequently on the radio. "But Not Tonight." "A Question of Lust." "Blasphemous Rumors." "Shake the Disease." "World in My Eyes." "Devotional." These were all relatively new songs to me as I did my Google Search, which led me to YouTube official videos. I was looking for the two songs that I recognize, that one that's in the key of C minor with heavy synth beat that has the word "necessary" in it, and that other song in the key of C minor with heavy synth beat that has the lyric "never before." I sound like I'm not a fan of the band, but I'm growing to really like their music the more I listen to them. Those songs I would have recognized but can't rattle off the titles or any real lyrics bring me back to those Thursday nights at Skate Ranch in Milan.
The Doobie Brothers- I am very excited to have The Doobie Brothers in Greatest Hits. When I started work on my sitcom Stalemates in 2006, as a lad of 23, I took the song "Taking it to the Streets" and made that its theme song. I was thrilled to see "Taking It to the Streets," "China Grove," and "What a Fool Believes" name-dropped by Derrick Storm in the Richard Castle crime novel "Heat Storm." I had heard The Doobie Brothers my whole life on the radio and in movies. So we'll say that I "discovered" the Doobie Brothers in 1995, when I finally rented Forrest Gump, and learned the song "It Keeps You Running." Borrowed the soundtrack on cassette from the library. Got it for Christmas of '96. Bought the Doobie Brothers' 1976 album Takin' It to the Streets at the Twist and Shout in Denver, Colorado in 2005. I bought the Best of the Doobie Brothers at the Best Buy inside the Mall of America in 2009. I have many favorites from this Southern Rock band, and I feel that their induction is long overdue.
11. I am thankful that Moderna and Pfizer each have vaccines that have made it through to the last round of clinical trials, and they are about to be shipped en masse to hospitals and clinics. By January, mass vaccinations may start to become available, at least to people of highest risk.
Look, am I bitter about a lot of things that have happened in 2020? Sure. Am I able to say "I am thankful that my parents have their good health?" Not at this particular moment, as my dad lies in his sick bed, and my younger sister Jen recovers.
Any horned virus that goes after the disabled and elderly deserves to die a painful death. I fantasize antibodies taking shape in Jen's immune system, as she is a hearty girl, and full of the decency that comes with Down Syndrome. I look forward to the Coronavirus writhing in pain and agony in her system, as each virus spore meets a violent death. Same goes for dad.
On that happy note, I wish everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving. I will be celebrating it at my townhouse in Rock Island with Sara. I have chicken breasts, little Russet Potatoes, and some mixed vegetables to make for dinner. Mom is sending over plates of turkey and sweet potatoes for lunch.
Well, I get around to making a list of the things for which I am thankful about once a year, on Thanksgiving.
And really, what better way to throw it in the face of Coronavirus than to actively think of things for which I am thankful.
Here are some things I have to be thankful for in 2020.
1. I am thankful that, knock on wood, I have avoided being diagnosed with the Coronavirus thus far in 2020. I know many people now who have been diagnosed. Has it required sacrifices? Of course. No plays this summer. No tickets to see shows, no shows for which to learn lines and to tread the boards. No trips to the movie theaters. No overnight trips. No baseball and softball this past spring. No track. No spring band concert. But this leads to my 2nd item.
2. We got away with putting on our play at Lewistown. Right as everything was about to shut down, completely, we were able to produce and put up Once Upon a Time and Very Far Away: A Cinderella Story at Lewistown, original music and script written by our director, Susie Lafary. Where my copy of the said script ultimately ended up, I do not know. It disappeared at some point between the last day of in class education on March 16th, and our first day back on August 17th. I was waiting with bated breath right up to the Friday morning of opening night to see if we were able to mount the production, given that Governor Pritzker had just issued the order which forbid crowds and gatherings exceeding 250 people. I know for fact we could have sold 250 tickets to any given performance. And we weren't at all sure that we were going to get the privilege to even issue that many tickets. By Wednesday, at our final dress rehearsal, the world was on a precipice of lockdown due to the rampant spread of COVID. Keep in mind, we already had 3,400 deaths in the United States by March 16th. And that was a lot of fatalities at that point in time. No vaccination in sight. No widely available testing. A nitwit president who had some delusion that he would be able to bury this malady as a hoax and that it could be contained in due time for him to back that knowingly false claim up. He couldn't. It spread. We all knew it was going to spread. He could have ordered more ventilators, more PPE in February, but he didn't. He was too proud to admit that the illness was real, and civil liberties and personal freedoms were going to have to be sacrificed in order to survive this. And this leads me to my next point.
3. Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential Election. Donald Trump is a man who has everything, and yet is left wanting for more. It's never going to be enough. That song from The Greatest Showman that was sung by Jenny Lind is apt. He's a dumb, stupid idiot who had his sister complete his term papers, homework assignments and exams while he was a student at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. He's way too dim-witted to have actually passed on his own volition. He had the narcissistic tunnel-vision sense of entitlement that he should have the presidency for as long as he wanted it. The thought that we could have at least been a little more prepared in February and March by ordering up just some more equipment, in case things got bad, gives me the gloomy sense that the damage has been done. How can the next president possibly undue the widespread damage wrought by Trump and his disastrous administration? But I will say that a calm came over me when the Associated Press and CNN called the election for Joe Biden on Saturday, November 7th.
Joe Biden will ably help to fulfill the wish of his son Beau by getting into office and helping make sure immigrants aren't tortured, imprisoned in cages and profiled mercilessly. Brown-skinned people can breathe a little easier. I know that comes across as a blanket statement, but really, was there any minority that Trump embraced? No. No, everyone at some point got racially, culturally, ethnically profiled by this nightcrawler of a bad, bad man. Biden will make hard choices, but his life has been dedicated towards making hard choices, knowing full well he can't make the extremely left-wing liberals or the hard-line off the deep end right wing conservatives happy. But he will make the middle happy. And maybe, hopefully, he can draw all of us a little bit closer to that middle ground.
Trump, to quote the National Review, may just be a weak President. In a just world, he would be led out of the White House in handcuffs in the back of a squad car. But democracy in action voting him out will suffice.
Oh, but come on, admit that it would be nice for him to be in a place where he wouldn't have access to Twitter.
4. I am thankful for my wife, Sara. We have grown closer during shelter in place, quarantine. I appreciate the comforts of her presence and company. More so due to the fact that on the bleakest days of shelter-in-place, she was my only company.
5. I am thankful for Mom, Dad, Carrie, Jen, my nieces Kayla, Alaina, and Mason.
As I am posting this article, Dad has tested positive for Coronavirus. He's 74. He's fit and active. He still volunteers at the Riverbend Food Bank's distribution center in the labor union hall on 7th Avenue in Rock Island. That being said, there's no guarantees with Coronavirus. He could be hospitalized by this, for all I know. It's hard, it's scary, but it's something I have to think about and worry about. So far, the only symptoms are a dry cough, fatigue, a headache, and some nausea. But Dad's hearty.
Jen had a bad cold last week. No word if it were actually Coronavirus from which she was suffering. She wasn't tested.
My mom, so far as I know, has not displayed any symptoms.
But heading into Thanksgiving of 2020, I still have all of them! I have my family and Sara.
6. I am thankful to still have my job at Lewistown Community High School as Spanish Teacher. This is my fifth year of full-time teaching Spanish, sixth year as an employee of the school (counting the semester of Student Teaching where I paid WIU for the privilege to teach there), and seventh year being paid by the school. (I was a substitute teacher during Caitlin Streeky's first maternity leave in 2014.)
7. I am thankful to still be able to pick up hours at Arc. In as much as I have to wait fourteen days before I can go back and pick up hours, including giving up hours today at 12th Street, while I go out and get tested for Coronavirus, I am thankful to still be one of their temp workers and on payroll.
8. I am thankful we were able to get the townhouse sprayed for cockroaches in October, on a Monday. And that I managed to get the apartment relatively well picked up while also making it to Mason's Confirmation as his sponsor the day before the spraying. I am thankful we got a follow-up spray for cockroaches in November, and an initial spray for bed bugs. (Not my first time at the rodeo for either bug. 2020 has not been the best year of all time.)
9. I am happy Sara and I got our taxes done for 2019, and we weren't at the mercy of the Credit Union for a loan again. Yes, we're still paying heavenly bills on our 2018 Income Tax Credit Union Loan. Thanks to the relief check of 2,400.00, we were able to pay our $2900 federal income tax bill that we were slapped with, along with about 250.00 apiece from Sara and me. And I had help from mom and dad for that part of mine that I had to pay out of pocket, plus the cost of having the taxes done. I was able to cover my state of Illinois $700.00 bill thanks to my RIA Credit Union Visa Card. So I am still making heavenly payments on that, lol. Upwards of $100.00 a month. My bill to the Land of Lincoln should be paid back to Visa by about February or March.
10. I am happy that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was able to proceed with its 25th annual Induction Ceremony to celebrate the induction class of 2020. Granted I haven't watched it yet, I know that it will be on HBO Max whenever I get around to subscribing to that.
Nine Inch Nails may have been a bit populist of a choice, in my opinion, because from 1995 through about 2000, it seemed that everyone and their brother had one of those NIN t-shirts. "Closer to God" got overplayed, and it lost its novelty. But Trent Reznor won't be able to complain, because the Rock Hall amended its inductee list for the band, bringing in a whole bunch of the bands' members across a thirty year span, leading up to and including Atticus Ross.
I am happy that Whitney Houston got inducted! "The Greatest Love of All." "I Wanna' Dance With Somebody." "One Moment in Time." "I'm Every Woman." "I Will Always Love You." "I Have Nothing." "I'm Your Baby Tonight." And I haven't even mentioned her cover of Steve Winwood's classic "Higher Love." Wasn't that song played by the Biden-Harris campaign? It was an apt choice!
I'm not familiar with T. Rex's music. I'll have to look into it.
The Notorious B.I.G. got in. I remember "Hypnotize" and think back to about 9th grade at Alleman. I remember "I Love it When You Call Me Big Papa" and remember getting MTV in our hose for the first time in 1994 with our TCI Cable package. And his collaboration with P.Diddy, or Puff Daddy, Sean Combs, the "Mo Money Mo Problems," with the terrific spoof on Tiger Woods with the music video.
Depeche Mode- They get joked about, like something's as '80's as a Depeche Mode cassette single. But they were really good in the 1980's. And people liked them! They were frequently on the radio. "But Not Tonight." "A Question of Lust." "Blasphemous Rumors." "Shake the Disease." "World in My Eyes." "Devotional." These were all relatively new songs to me as I did my Google Search, which led me to YouTube official videos. I was looking for the two songs that I recognize, that one that's in the key of C minor with heavy synth beat that has the word "necessary" in it, and that other song in the key of C minor with heavy synth beat that has the lyric "never before." I sound like I'm not a fan of the band, but I'm growing to really like their music the more I listen to them. Those songs I would have recognized but can't rattle off the titles or any real lyrics bring me back to those Thursday nights at Skate Ranch in Milan.
The Doobie Brothers- I am very excited to have The Doobie Brothers in Greatest Hits. When I started work on my sitcom Stalemates in 2006, as a lad of 23, I took the song "Taking it to the Streets" and made that its theme song. I was thrilled to see "Taking It to the Streets," "China Grove," and "What a Fool Believes" name-dropped by Derrick Storm in the Richard Castle crime novel "Heat Storm." I had heard The Doobie Brothers my whole life on the radio and in movies. So we'll say that I "discovered" the Doobie Brothers in 1995, when I finally rented Forrest Gump, and learned the song "It Keeps You Running." Borrowed the soundtrack on cassette from the library. Got it for Christmas of '96. Bought the Doobie Brothers' 1976 album Takin' It to the Streets at the Twist and Shout in Denver, Colorado in 2005. I bought the Best of the Doobie Brothers at the Best Buy inside the Mall of America in 2009. I have many favorites from this Southern Rock band, and I feel that their induction is long overdue.
11. I am thankful that Moderna and Pfizer each have vaccines that have made it through to the last round of clinical trials, and they are about to be shipped en masse to hospitals and clinics. By January, mass vaccinations may start to become available, at least to people of highest risk.
Look, am I bitter about a lot of things that have happened in 2020? Sure. Am I able to say "I am thankful that my parents have their good health?" Not at this particular moment, as my dad lies in his sick bed, and my younger sister Jen recovers.
Any horned virus that goes after the disabled and elderly deserves to die a painful death. I fantasize antibodies taking shape in Jen's immune system, as she is a hearty girl, and full of the decency that comes with Down Syndrome. I look forward to the Coronavirus writhing in pain and agony in her system, as each virus spore meets a violent death. Same goes for dad.
On that happy note, I wish everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving. I will be celebrating it at my townhouse in Rock Island with Sara. I have chicken breasts, little Russet Potatoes, and some mixed vegetables to make for dinner. Mom is sending over plates of turkey and sweet potatoes for lunch.