I'd wanted things to fall into place serendipitously for a convivial, convenient, and local Thanksgiving. But nothing really did. So I was left to my own rat-like ingenuity, and here is where the story gets interesting.

My reservations about 'not wanting to plan' the holiday compulsively, not wanting it to dominate my own life, as it dominates our alienated consumer culture, did not influence my thinking much by Thanksgiving day. It really was all about practicality by then. Come lunchtime, the refrigerator was empty, my blood-sugar was low, and I decided to walk to the Methodist Church down the block for their 'free Thanksgiving dinner.'

This church runs a thriving food pantry, and I suspected before I walked in the door for the Thanksgiving feast that a lot of my fellow diners were not going to be parishioners at the church, were instead going to be the chronically hungry persons served by the food giveaway. Walking in and surveying the crowd, it seemed I was right.

Freeloaders, was what I reflexively thought, looking around at what obviously wasn't a middle-class assemblage. Useless. A drain on society. Oh, why couldn't I have my Thanksgiving with 'my kind?'

Because I was able to chip in $10 towards the cost of the food, and they weren't, I was somehow 'better' than the people around me?

Your thoughts mislead you all the time. Your feelings will never, ever lie.

So a therapist told me years ago.

For the record, I hate prejudice. I hate hypocrisy. When I see it influencing others' actions, I seethe. I see it as lazy to project bad things onto others, because your recycled thoughts mask emotions that don't happen to fit with your self-image.

I should be thankful for my contempt of bigotry in others, because it makes me suspect my own.

I sat down at a table with my full plate and was gradually joined by a bunch of silent men. Two were neatly dressed, the rest appeared rumpled. The green salad, turkey, stuffing, regular and sweet potatoes, gravy, green beans, and cranberry sauce were filling and very tasty.

The scene at the table brought to mind a quote from William Carlos Williams:

It is all, for eat we must, made sacred by our common need.

After lunch, I sought out the church's pastor. We of the California single-payer healthcare lobby had been pursuing endorsements of local religious congregations for SB 840. In each case, it's a matter of persuading the clergyperson to write a sympathetic letter to State Senator Sheila Kuehl, the bill's author.

The pastor was all ears as I pitched the bill. I think she may end up writing the letter, after the church's social action committee meets. One more hash-mark for me as an activist, and for California's single-payer movement.

Plenty of people scoff at single-payer. Even people on the Left say it's 'wishful thinking,' 'it'll never pass.' True, healthcare reform has been a hard slog. Any movement away from for-profit medicine, these past 60 years or so, has been vigorously fought, and often thwarted, by the powerful insurance lobby.

If my nose is anything, that tide may just be turning. We are seeing unprecedented dissatisfaction these days with our current healthcare that costs so much and deprives so many. It's clearly even worse now than it was in the 90s, when the Clintons pushed HMO medicine as a panacea. Besides crossing a new threshold of public unrest over healthcare, we are also seeing a brand-new confidence on the Left, thanks to possibilities for activism afforded by the internet and venues like MoveOn.org.

So, here's another item in my gratitude-list. It has to do with the opportunity to help nourish a timely good cause, to lavish my loving concern, patience, creativity, and canny attention on a seedling that can only grow. The lobby is still out-gunned for sure. But David did bring down Goliath in the end.
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