Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free


‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come ’round right.

I wish you all the best, Jack

Share

29 thoughts on “Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free”

  2. a tip of the hat to the folk who wrote ’tis a gift.

    about an hours drive from me is Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill. ’tis a gift to visit, see their artistry, stay there, eat the wonderful food grown on the premises and most of all enjoy the peaceful atmosphere of a long gone era.  

    About Us – Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill (shakervillageky.org)

    Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill is a landmark destination that shares 3,000 acres of discovery in the spirit of the Kentucky Shakers. With 34 original Shaker structures, the site is home to the country’s largest private collection of original 19th century buildings and is the largest National Historic Landmark in Kentucky.

  3. People using weight loss drugs may have smaller appetites at Thanksgiving dinner, Americans overwhelmingly prefer canned cranberry sauce to homemade, and several balloons will be sporting new looks in New York City’s parade this year.

  5. Washington DC, October 3, 1863
    By the President of the United States of America.
    A Proclamation.
    The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.
    In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
    Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
    No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
    It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
    In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
    Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.
    By the President: Abraham Lincoln

  6. Lovely Jack, simply lovely. Thanks!

    And Pat, Shaker Village is a treat. My Mom inherited some land in Kentucky that Shakers once logged for their furniture making. In Mom’s day she sold to the Amish, also for furniture.

  12. ‘Our little uniter’: New Jersey town bereft by capture of Turkules the wild turkey | New Jersey | The Guardian

    Residents of West Orange, New Jersey, have been left heartbroken after a wild turkey named “Turkules”, whose resilient nature and ability to evade capture “brought the town together”, was finally snared by state officials.
    Turkules, who was named by a local man, first took up residence in West Orange, 25 miles west of New York City, over the summer. The bird’s fearless attitude towards traffic and disregard for authority soon made him a local celebrity, and his fame only grew as Turkules spent weeks outwitting animal control officers.
    Standing at 3ft tall, with a vibrant red wattle and a wingspan of more than a yard, Turkules claimed a patch of grass, next to a busy road, as his own. He soon became known for his tendency to wander into the road, causing all sorts of commotion.
    On Facebook and Instagram, people regularly posted photographs and videos of the turkey standing in the middle of a road, preventing cars from passing by fearlessly pecking at tires and flapping his wings. Despite sometimes causing mile-long traffic jams, Turkules was hailed as a sort of West Orange mascot. His popularity was such that on Saturday businesses organized a “Hometown Hero” event in Turkules’s honor.
    But it turns out that the Hometown Hero celebration, during which businesses donated a portion of profits to the Wildlife Conservation Society, was really a goodbye.
    On Tuesday, the New Jersey department of environmental protection told the Guardian that after a weeks-long effort, Turkules had been captured and relocated to Wharton state forest, 85 miles away.
    It has left locals bereft.
    “I’ll miss him a lot. I’ll miss the daily reports on his sightings, I look forward to getting updates about him every day,” said Gia Garcia, who owns Willow and Olivia dessert cafe in West Orange.

    “With everything being so tense in the world, political-wise and all that stuff, he came around, and he was the one thing that could just bring the whole town together. No one was arguing about politics, no one’s talking about conflicts that are going on: it was just everyone who just wanted to know if this turkey was still around and was still alive.

    “He was just our little uniter. The one thing that makes us smile, the thing that everyone could agree on.”
    The wild turkey is native to North America, but almost went extinct in the US in the early 1900s from overhunting. Since then, conservation efforts have led to a population boom, with 7 million nationwide and an estimated 20,000 in New Jersey.
    As their numbers have grown, wild turkeys have sometimes clashed with humans, particularly in the north-east of the country. Reports of vicious pecking, loud gobbling and even kicking have become increasingly common, as turkeys stake their claim to parks, front yards and even roads.
    When turkeys misbehave in a town, it falls to state officials to catch the birds. In Turkules’s case, this process took more than a month, including one botched episode in which officials shot the turkey with a tranquilliser dart. The dart struck Turkules, but had zero effect, and he spent weeks wandering about with a blue and orange dart hanging from his breast.
    “He is resilient,” Garcia said. “To see a turkey actively show a type of protective nature for that patch of land, and then for him to walk around with a tranq dart in him, I mean, that’s badass.”
    Aaron Guikema, the New Jersey state director for the Department of Agriculture’s wildlife services program, said that typically about half a dozen wild turkeys have to be removed from residential areas in the state each year – usually when the birds continually interfere with traffic or otherwise become a nuisance.
    Turkules proved particularly difficult to capture, Guikema said, because he “tended to fly” more than the average wild turkey.
    “So it just made him tougher to catch,” he added.
    As West Orange mourns the loss of their well-liked bird, some residents believe they may not have seen the last of Turkules. According to local lore, Turkules was previously captured and relocated earlier this year, only to return to the town.
    “It’s very sad. He has given the community near and far a reason to come together to hear of his adventures and determination,” said Susan, a West Orange resident who asked that her last name not be used.
    “But he is a gangster. He will make his way back. He always does.”

  13. Life is difficult.
     
    This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.
     
    It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult — once we truly understand and accept it — then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan, more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties, as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others.
     
    I know about this moaning because I have done my share.
     
    — M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

  14. this is the kind of turkey that Pres. Biden should pardon next year.  more fitting to be a wild turkey – the bird ben franklin wanted as our national emblem – and probably the kind that Lincoln (who started the whole ritual) pardoned to begin with due to the insistence of his son Todd.

    turkules, nick-named “our little uniter” (see above comment at 9:41) should fit right in by that time for Joe to urge the country to come together after a likely divisively mean election.

    a wild tukey

    Turkules, not pictured, has been captured and relocated to Wharton state forest, 85 miles away from West Orange. Photograph: Robin Loznak/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

     

    let’s start a Trail Mix movement for Joe to pardon Turkules.

  15. Happy Thanksgiving all!
     
    Glad that there are many stores not opening tonight…  for now… employees have power.

  16. also in today’s guardian Trump called Iowa evangelicals ‘so-called Christians’ and ‘pieces of shit’, book says | Books | The Guardian

    In the heat of the Republican primary of 2016, Donald Trump called evangelical supporters of his rival Ted Cruz “so-called Christians” and “real pieces of shit”, a new book says.
    The news lands as the 2024 Republican primary heats up, two months out from the Iowa caucus and a day after Trump’s closest rival this time, the hard-right Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, was endorsed by Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical leader in Iowa.
    The new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, by Tim Alberta, an influential reporter and staff writer for the Atlantic, will be published on 5 December. The Guardian obtained a copy.
    Early in the book, Alberta describes fallout from an event at Liberty University, the evangelical college in Virginia, shortly before the Iowa vote in January 2016.
    As candidates jockeyed for support from evangelicals, a powerful bloc in any Republican election, Trump was asked to name his favourite Bible verse.
    Attempting to follow the advice of Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, the thrice-married, not noticeably church-going New York billionaire and reality TV star introduced it as “Two Corinthians”, rather than “Second Corinthians”, as would have been correct.
    “The laughter and ridicule were embarrassing enough for Trump,” Alberta writes. “But the news of Perkins endorsing Ted Cruz, just a few days later, sent him into a spiral. He began to speculate that there was a conspiracy among powerful evangelicals to deny him the GOP nomination.
    “When Cruz’s allies began using the ‘Two Corinthians’ line to attack him in the final days before the Iowa caucuses, Trump told one Iowa Republican official, ‘You know, these so-called Christians hanging around with Ted are some real pieces of shit.’”
    Alberta adds that “in private over the coming years”, Trump “would use even more colourful language to describe the evangelical community.
    [continues]

  18. sturge, as long as it’s his pet goose “googles” and not himself.  I picture Joe pardoning Turkules to a happy life at the national zoo so everyone in the USA, not just the citizens of west orange or the state NJ, can enjoy his antics.

  21. I just ran across this
    Sorry for the length but It needs to be read whole, imo.

    [Editor’s note: Sixty years ago this month, in November 1963, President John F. Kennedy issued the following eloquent proclamation of Thanksgiving. He did not live to see the holiday.]
     
    By the President of the United States of AmericaA Proclamation
    Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and in Massachusetts, far from home in a lonely wilderness, set aside a time of thanksgiving. On the appointed day, they gave reverent thanks for their safety, for the health of their children, for the fertility of their fields, for the love which bound them together and for the faith which united them with their God.
     
    So too when the colonies achieved their independence, our first President in the first year of his first Administration proclaimed November 26, 1789, as “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God” and called upon the people of the new republic to “beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions . . . to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue . . . and generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.”
    And so too, in the midst of America’s tragic civil war, President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November 1863 as a day to renew our gratitude for America’s “fruitful fields,” for our “national strength and vigor,” and for all our “singular deliverances and blessings.”
    Much time has passed since the first colonists came to rocky shores and dark forests of an unknown continent, much time since President Washington led a young people into the experience of nationhood, much time since President Lincoln saw the American nation through the ordeal of fraternal war—and in these years our population, our plenty and our power have all grown apace. Today we are a nation of nearly two hundred million souls, stretching from coast to coast, on into the Pacific and north toward the Arctic, a nation enjoying the fruits of an ever-expanding agriculture and industry and achieving standards of living unknown in previous history. We give our humble thanks for this.
    Yet, as our power has grown, so has our peril. Today we give our thanks, most of all, for the ideals of honor and faith we inherit from our forefathers—for the decency of purpose, steadfastness of resolve and strength of will, for the courage and the humility, which they possessed and which we must seek every day to emulate. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.
    Let us therefore proclaim our gratitude to Providence for manifold blessings—let us be humbly thankful for inherited ideals—and let us resolve to share those blessings and those ideals with our fellow human beings throughout the world.
    Now, Therefore, I, John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America, in consonance with the joint resolution of the Congress approved December 26, 1941, 55 Stat. 862 (5 U.S.C. 87b), designating the fourth Thursday of November in each year as Thanksgiving Day, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 28, 1963, as a day of national thanksgiving.
    On that day let us gather in sanctuaries dedicated to worship and in homes blessed by family affection to express our gratitude for the glorious gifts of God; and let us earnestly and humbly pray that He will continue to guide and sustain us in the great unfinished tasks of achieving peace, justice, and understanding among all men and nations and of ending misery and suffering wherever they exist.
    In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States of America to be affixed.
    Done at the City of Washington this fourth day of November, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and eighty-eighth.
    John F. Kennedy
     

  23. And PatD, I will be roasting it in the big boy cast iron skillet you gave us for our wedding. I love that guy. Plenty of room for roasting veggies on the side.

  26. Today was a very special Thanksgiving Day.  As I have said many times, my mother is 95 years old.  Today my brother hosted the family.  My mother, my sister, my ex spouse, my youngest son and his wife. My nephew and his wife and son, and several of my sister inlaws family.  We do not know how much longer our mother will be with us so days like this are very special to us.  We had a good time and a great meal.  So thankful for this wonderful day.

Comments are closed.