For Thanksgiving we've got Currier & Ives, Charles Ives, Witches' Sabbath, and a (filched) list of things to be grateful for...plus Levi's tush

by Ken

Now does that say "Thanksgiving," or what? And for musical holiday cheer, what could be more Thanksgivingy than crusty old New Englander Charles Ives's Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day? (This is both a stand-alone piece and the final movement of Ives's A Symphony: New England Holidays, or Holidays Symphony. In case you don't know, Forefathers' Day, December 21, commemorates the day in 1620 when the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. It's a big deal in, like, the greater Plymouth area.)



Baltimore Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, David Zinman, cond. Argo,recorded September 1994

Not the sound you have in your head for Thanksgiving? (I have to say, though, that David Zinman's performance is the most persuasive I've heard. Says "Thanksgiving" to me!) You're thinking: more like "Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go"? Okey-dokey.



Surely this has you primed for either suicide or homicide. So you should be up for something a little gamier.

BERLIOZ: Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14*

iv. "March to the Scaffold"


v. "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath"


Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Apr. 9, 1962

I don't know, sounds kind of fantastic to me.


"27 REASONS TO GIVE THANKS" [or not]
(as thunk up by the team at Think Progress's The Progress Report)

[For the many internal links, check out the onsite version -- except for the link for contributing to Think Progress, which is certainly one of those things to be grateful for, and worthy of tangible thanks.]

I'm sure if I thought really hard I could think of a bunch of things to be thankful for, but it's a holiday weekend -- why should I be doing back-breaking work like thinking? Especially when I can just steal somebody else's list? And what could be more Thanksgivingy than that?

We're thankful President Obama is thinking long and hard about committing more troops and money to Afghanistan.

We're thankful President Bush feels liberated now.

We're (not) thankful Dick Cheney has elected to move from his undisclosed location to the media spotlight.

We're thankful Al Franken has gone from playing self-help guru Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live to helping rape victims receive justice from their employers.

We're thankful for the healing power of beer.

We're thankful there are some on the right who think Glenn Beck is "incoherent," "mindless," "erratic," "bizarre," and "harmful to the conservative movement."

We're thankful for long hikes on the Appalachian Trail.

We're thankful Michael Steele understands that he can't "do policy" and that no one has any reason to trust his "words or actions."

We're (not) thankful for "birthers," "deathers," "tenthers," or "tea baggers."

We're (not) thankful conservatives believe they love America so much that they can root for our President to fail and for our nation to lose out on hosting the Olympics.

We're thankful NFL players refused to "bend over and grab the ankles" for Rush Limbaugh.

We're thankful six companies have resigned from the Chamber of Commerce due to its denial of climate change science.

We're thankful Falcon "Balloon boy" Heene wasn't actually in the balloon.

We're thankful Lt. Dan Choi and Lt. Col Victor Fehrenbach bravely spoke out against Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

We're thankful Shep Smith doesn't always drink the Fox News kool-aid.

We're thankful more than 80 companies refused to lend their sponsorship to Glenn Beck's hateful rants.

We're thankful there are progressive organizations in D.C. lobbying for a two-state solution in the Middle East.

We're (not) thankful for the filibuster.

We're thankful that more than 20,000 of you stood up to Bill O'Reilly's harassment machine and called for impeachment hearings against torture advocate Jay Bybee.

We're thankful that Iran's authoritarian rulers live in fear of their own population.

We're thankful we'll no longer have to listen to nativist rhetoric on CNN and global warming skepticism on ABC News.

We're (not) thankful for bailed out CEOs who think they're doing "God's work" by doling out billions in bonuses.

We're thankful for the legacy of the Liberal Lion.

We're thankful Bill O'Reilly won't be following us home for Thanksgiving.

We're thankful a "wise Latina" sits on the Supreme Court.

We're thankful our boss helped rescue imprisoned American journalists in North Korea.

We're thankful for our readers and the support you give us.

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*If you're wondering what this has to do with Thanksgiving, well, it happens that I've been working my way through BMG's 10-CD compendium of all the Munch-BSO Berlioz recordings,and yesterday on the way to work I got to this 1962 Symphonie fantastique. It sounded worth celebrating to me.

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UPDATE: And For Our Gay Friends...

We wish we were able to report some real progress on equality and some of the rest of the Hope & Change agenda but... how about the naked pictures of Levi Johnston?