To be thankful for

I see by my calendar that Thanksgiving this year is still 73 days away, but there are things that we should be thankful for on any day of the year. (I feel particularly thankful this morning because I had the task before me of sowing grass seed and fertilizer on my lawn to enhance its beauty next spring, but it’s raining, so I can’t do it today.) Thus, in the spirit of thankfulness, I offer the following blessings for which we can be thankful.

Foremost is the fact that, on this fifth anniversary of 9/11, we haven't suffered a terroist attack on our homeland. May it be ever so!

George Bush has only 496 more days in office. Since many companies, large and small, offer early-retirement packages to their employees (or sometimes force them on them), why can’t we have the same for U.S. presidents and other politicians? (See more about that below.)

We will be free of any Olympics for 697 more days. That boring, over-hyped event won’t come up again until the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.

The hapless Baltimore Orioles, who at the moment are 23 ½ games out of first place in the American League East, have only 20 more games left to play this year.

The Ford Motor Company has kicked out a member of the Ford family as its CEO and replaced him with an outsider; such a move has taken place before with unfavorable results, but could work out better this time. (I offer this reason to be thankful only to anyone who has been stupid enough to buy Ford stock or to anyone employed by the company or by a Ford dealer.)

Joe Paterno, the Penn State football coach, who will become 82 years old later this year, is still doing his thing. He has been assistant coach or head coach there for 49 years. Some observers criticize him for not retiring a few years ago when Penn State was having good years (recent years have not been so good; they were whomped 41 to 17 by Notre Dame on September 9th). Yet he may yet come out on top since he shows no signs of slowing down.

Paterno is already in that league of legendary college football coaches who coached for many decades and lived to very ripe old ages. Lou Little coached at Columbia for 27 years (1930-1956) and died in 1978 at age 86. "Pop" Warner (born Glenn Scobey Warner) coached for 44 years; he was an itinerant who coached at Georgia, Carlisle Indians, Pitt, Stanford, and Temple. He died in 1954 at age 83. Amos Alonzo Stagg, however, topped them all: he was head coach at three colleges for 57 years (1890-1946), his longest tenure having been 41 years at the University of Chicago (1892-1932). As if that were not enough, Stagg was assistant coach to his son at Susquehanna for 12 more years (1947-1958). He died in 1965 at age 102.

We still have 24 days left before we have to start hearing about basketball, and we will have about five months free from it next year. the NBA’s pre-season games start October 9th, the regular games begin October 31st, and the playoffs start April 21, 2007; if they go the full seven games, it will be around May 1, 2007 when we will hear no more about basketball and the NBA until some time in October 2007–about five wonderful months.

No doubt you, Dear Reader, have other reasons to be thankful. If so, feel free to list them in the "Comments" box.

"If only" (Reasons for which I wish we could be thankful)

We had the mechanism that parliamentary democracies have by which a general election can be called at some close future date to keep, or fire, the head of state. A parliament might come up with a vote of "no confidence" in the current head of state (usually called the "prime minister"), or the prime minister might himself/herself foresee such a vote and call for a general election. In a general election the voters of the country vote for a party, not an individual, to be in power; that party then elects its leader as the prime minister. Tony Blair, the British prime minister, has announced that he will resign within a year, at which time a general election will be held to either keep the Labour Party (Blair’s party) in power or to put the Conservative Party in power.

Of course, in the USA we have the impeachment procedure by which a sitting president can be removed from office for "high crimes or misdemeanors." But that involves a trial on specific charges held in the U.S. Senate, whereas a simple "no confidence" vote (or the anticipation of one) brings about a general election, with the public voting, in a parliamentary democracy.

We could go one week without seeing or hearing anything about Paris Hilton, Whitney Spears, Tom Cruse, Madonna, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, et al.

Jay Leno could go one night without telling a joke that included "sexual intercourse", "penis", or "masturbation."

We could go one week without seeing an interview with John McCain. I like the man for the most part–he is personable, bright, and plain-spoken. But he has that politician-cum-presidential-aspirant disease of overexposuritis. Whenever he comes within ten feet of a TV camera he seems to have to succumb to an interview.

I could one day see the Baltimore Orioles winning the World Series, as they did in 1966, 1970, and 1983, and not wake up and realize that it was all a dream.