Under the baobab: Despite struggles, there are still many reasons to be thankful
“Centre County is located on the original homelands of the Erie, Haudenosaunee (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Tuscarora), Lenape (Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe, Stockbridge-Munsee), Shawnee (Absentee, Eastern and Oklahoma) Susquehannock and Wahzhazhe (Osage) Nations. We acknowledge and honor the traditional caregivers of these lands and strive to understand and model their responsible stewardship. We also acknowledge the longer history of these lands and our place in that history.” — Acknowledgment of Land by IPSA and IFSA
Happy Thanksgiving.
It is fitting that this day, which many First Nation Americans call a National Day of Mourning, comes at the end of Indigenous People’s History Month. It is one of many commemorations focusing on cultural reconciliation, emerging out of the patchwork quilt of our diverse society. As we learn to live with each other, hopefully we are learning to respect each other’s culture. An axiom I used to tell my students was “to go where you are celebrated not just tolerated.”
Though much of my time in this country and community has involved struggles for justice and equality, most of my time has centered around a quest for joy and a celebration of our common humanity. Fortunately, I have been blessed with a loving and supportive mate. My children are decent people. I share the same human values with many friends and colleagues of all races and ethnicities. I live in a country that is better than when it started and continues to improve. Appropriately on Thanksgiving, I am thankful for so much.
I am thankful to my ancestors who cleared the way and paved the path to freedom. I celebrate my great-great grandfather, Curtis, who fought as a member of the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War and helped to bring freedom to our enslaved people. I honor and thank my father, Douglas, who saved the world for democracy during World War II. I thank my mother Bessie and grandmothers, Alma and Johnnie B., who built the world’s most powerful industrial apparatus to support that effort. I applaud my grandsons, who represent the seventh recorded generation of our family to be born in this country.
I am thankful that our country is not at war with any other country and that we have a government with enough sense to see how important that is. I am thankful that there are women, African Americans and other ethnic minorities serving at all levels of government and public and private institutions. I am thankful that we seem to have survived the worst pandemic in our history. I am thankful that we are learning to talk to each other again and that saner heads on both sides of the aisle, in national and state legislatures, are beginning to do the jobs for which they were elected.
I am thankful for our teachers and coaches, for educating and training our young people for the world they will encounter beyond the academy. James Franklin, Micah Shrewsberry, Carolyn Kieger, Cael Sanderson, Katie Schumacher-Cawley, Erica Dambach have built highly ranked programs which have brought national recognition to our central PA college town. Quarterback Sean Clifford has been in residence for six years and is leading the team to a ten-win season and hopefully a New Year’s six bowl. Head football coach Matt Lintal of State College Area High School has the unbeaten Little Lions in the PIAA semifinals for the second straight year.
Despite the disease, despair, mass shootings and inflation, we are blessed that there is still love in the land and most of us want to see more of it. Sisters and brothers, let the scales fall from our eyes and hearts. We have taken a step back. Let us take two steps forward, together.