Thanksgiving, 2022, As It Happened Here in Prague

The heading photograph was planned to be a Norman Rockwell painting of Thanksgiving, but that seemed too nostalgically soft for the times, maybe even too American, what with the Ukrainian war blazing away some 300 miles from where I live and where I can still buy a turkey and have friends in for dinner.

So I opted for this wounded mother, holding her daughter and knowing that Rockwell would understand, because he celebrated the common man.

The world moves too quickly these days for a thought to settle

This article itself was meant to plead for another American Berlin Airlift to hold Ukraine safe from the cold and darkness of the coming winter. We once pulled off that miracle when the Soviets blockaded the agreed-upon access to a partitioned Berlin after WWII. For 15 months we flew everything from coal to groceries, 250,000 flights delivering 7,000 tons of supplies each and every day.

Surely we can do the same or better into a nation fighting for its life—and winning.

Then I realized most of today’s readers had little or no memory of that event.

Who would remember?

My god, that was five wars and 74 years back, before Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine. I’ll be your witness. I was thirteen years old and I remember. Now the Soviet Union is over, but the Russians are still at it.

The Czech Republic, where I live, is host to some 400,000 Ukrainian refugees, but that mother and daughter are still there, victims of Putin’s missiles—aimed at civilian targets and civilian infrastructure.

So when you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends, remember its roots

300 years ago refugees, mostly from Europe, had just survived their first terrible year of crop losses and hardship in the new British colony of America. Winter was coming on, but they knew they’d finally make it, and sat down to a celebratory dinner of thanks in gratitude to their god and the native-Americans who had helped bring them through.

The America I grew up in used to do things like the Berlin airlift

Thanksgiving was (and still is) my favorite holiday, because no gifts are expected and the celebration is among friends and family. We bow our heads (if that is our custom), hold hands, look into each other’s eyes and give thanks for the singular gift of friendship.

I once had a complete stranger pick me up in the desert, where I had run out of gas on a borrowed motorcycle. He drove me 50 miles to his home, 50 miles back to the bike and 50 miles back again to his home. He wouldn’t take a cent. He told me, “around here we don’t pass by people out in the desert. You can thank me by doing the same for someone else who needs your help.”

Words to live by, as I wish you and yours a lovely Thanksgiving

Perhaps, as you hold hands at dinner, you’ll give a thought to or say a kind word for that brave Ukrainian woman and her daughter.