Early Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving dinner was served today at the assisted living center where my mother-in-law, Shirley, resides. Along with me, my wife, Charlene; son, Matthew; brother-in-law, Rich; and his wife, Sharyn, attended. Another woman, Mary, who lives at the facility also sat at our table. Mary has no family. Char has befriended her and wanted to make sure she had someone to be with on “Thanksgiving.”

A woman who had been our next-door neighbor for the 33 years Char and I have lived in our house was having her Thanksgiving meal there, too. Like my mother-in-law, she has just moved into the assisted living center this past summer. Three of her daughters and a son-in-law were there to dine with her.

I’ve been reading a bit lately. I just finished the book The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring and the Rise of the Environmental Movement, by Mark Hamilton Lytle. Rachel Carson was born in 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania, just 15 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The book came to my attention as it was published in 2007, the 100th anniversary of her birth, and the author made an appearance at The Rachel Carson Homestead. If you are a person who cares about the environment, Rachel Carson is a person you have to admire. She was extremely intelligent and faced many challenges to accomplish what she did. As indicated by this book’s title, many believe that Carson’s book, Silent Spring, brought to the forefront the damage that was being done to our earth and, in fact, was the beginning of the environmental movement as we now know it.

This book is a quick, easy read, yet very informative -- just the kind I like.