- That you and I are still alive and kicking, often to our amazement.
- That no matter where we are on the economic and social scale, we live as kings compared with our grandparents, even compared with billions of our fellow humans coexisting with us today.
- That regardless of how unjust our country's social and financial inequities, how powerful the threats to our democracy, how cunning our enemies, we shall overcome. We have the tools. We have the spunk. And, as elders, we know better.
Altogether, more than five thousand Suddenly Senior readers e-mailed me about my last column, "A Swan Song for Medicare." While I was overwhelmed, most of you were angry — no few at me — and you took that anger to call, fax, e-mail and write to both Congress and AARP.
We lost that battle. But we can be thankful that we live in a place where we're free to fight again, in this case probably in 2006 when our fellow seniors fully realize how they've been screwed by a greedy political/pharmaceutical/insurance cartel.
Now, in this special electronic-only edition of Suddenly Senior, I want to thank every one of you — those both for and against my stand — for speaking out, for taking your American citizenship seriously.
As seniors, we can do no less.
Thanksgiving is one of our few holidays where we can skirt the jungles of political correctness. (Who would have even dreamed of PC when we were kids?) Think about it. At Christmastime, many of us now greet each other with the anemic, "Happy Holidays!"
Even Columbus Day gets dicey when Italian-Americans and Spanish-Americans join to celebrate.
Thanksgiving, as Ellen Goodman points out in her column today, is so very American: Invented by Pilgrims who left home for religious freedom which, when they found it, they immediately denied to others.
Above all, Thanksgiving is for family. And though just my wife and I will be celebrating today, I recall vividly the huge family Thanksgiving dinners of my childhood — the laughter, the love, the spirit of all humankind that was celebrated then, and will be celebrated today by us, by you, by all in this magnificent land of ours.
Happy Thanksgiving! And thank you for joining me in this wonderful journey we call getting old.
Copyright © 2003 – Frank Kaiser
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