Super Bowl Update

Severin Bar & Grill restaurant - Omni Severin Hotel 40 W. Jackson Place 396.3623

NPR sends out a regular missive called "Scoop," which contains mostly shop talk about NPR programming. But occasionally the Scoops include some entertaining nugget that has absolutely nothing to do with NPR.

This week's entertaining nugget was culled from a short New Yorker article about Mark Twain by Macy Halford. In it, Halford relates how, in 1905, Mr. Twain asked the President to move Thanksgiving, because its date that year, November 30th, coincided with the famous author's 70th birthday.

Mark Twain's 70th Birthday Celebration

Twain, himself,  noted the incident in his modest, 2000-page autobiography (the excerpt below was lifted from The New Yorker. 

Happy Thanksgiving!
Erin
___________________________________________________________________________


120 West at the Hilton (11 a.m. – 5 p.m.) 120 W. Market St. 972.0600
Bella Vita (11 a.m. – 10 p.m.) Circle Centre 822.9840
Champps (11 a.m. – 6 p.m.) Circle Centre 951.0033
Circle City Bar and Grill (6:30- 11 a.m. breakfast; 5 – 10 p.m. dinner) 350 W. Maryland St. 405.6100
Claddagh Irish Pub (11 a.m. – close) 234 S. Meridian St. 822.6274
Conrad Indianapolis (Noon – 3 p.m.) 40 W. Washington St. 524.2574
Great American Grill at the Hilton Garden Inn (7 a.m. – Noon) 10 E. Market St. 955.9700
Hilton Indianapolis Hotel and Suites (11 a.m. – 5 p.m.) 120 W. Market St. 822.5914
Jillian’s ( 6 p.m. – midnight) 141 S. Meridian St. 822.9300
McCormick and Schmick’s (Noon – 8 p.m.) 110 N. Illinois St. 631.9500
One South at the Hyatt (Noon – 3 p.m.) 1 S. Capitol Ave. 632.1234
Palomino (Noon – 7 p.m.) 49 W. Maryland St. 974.0400
The Propylaeum (12:00p.m., 12:45p.m., 2:30p.m. & 3:15p.m.) 1410 North Delaware Street 638.7881
Pullman’s at Crowne Plaza (11 a.m. – 7 p.m.) 123 W. Louisiana St. 236.7470
Severin Bar & Grill restaurant - Omni Severin Hotel (11 a.m., 1 & 3 p.m.) 40 W. Jackson Place 396.3623
Shula’s Steak House in Westin (Noon – 8 p.m.) 50 S. Capitol Ave. 231.3962
Slippery Noodle (opens 7 p.m.) 372 S. Meridian St. 631.6974
The Capital Grille (11 a.m. – 10:30 p.m.) 40 W. Washington St. 423.8790
Turner’s Restaurant at the Canterbury Hotel (10 a.m. – 3 p.m. brunch; 5 – 7 p.m. dinner) 123 S. Illinois St. 634.3000
Weber Grill Restaurant (Noon – 8 p.m.) 10 N. Illinois St. 636.7600

and here's a few more that I have heard about from my friends on twitter:

Rick's Cafe Boatyard (11 am- 9 pm) 4050 Dandy Trail, Indy 290-9300
Jonathan Byrd's (10:30-7:00) 100 Byrd Way, Greenwood, 881-8888

We did some modest traveling to reach our family celebration of Thanksgiving. I enjoyed myself there almost as much as I enjoyed getting home again.

Home to me is marked by a constellation of house, yard, cat and neighbors.

In my opinion, neighbors are underrated these days as an enrichment of our lives. So, in honor of all my neighbors, current, past and future, today I'm posting an essay I wrote about five years ago. It celebrates the first neighbors we got to know when Charlie and I moved to the Valley.

It's called "The Sisters."

The sisters were way up in their eighties if they were a day. During the two years I lived one farm down from them, I passed Marjory and Elizabeth most mornings on my way to work—Marjory, driving the tractor; Elizabeth, riding shotgun—heading out to tend the sheep, or plow a field, or mend a fence.

I’ve always been drawn to happy, unconventional, un-helpless people. A month after becoming their neighbor, I told the sisters I was a journalist and asked if I could record their story. Elizabeth is deaf, so Marjory shouts, and she shouted at me they'd have to think about that.

Six weeks later, there was a fortissimo message on my answering machine: "This is Margery. If Martha still wants to hear our story, tell her to come on."

Margery wasn't a particularly good storyteller—she's not at all interested in the past—perhaps the only eighty-year-old I’ve ever met who isn’t. "The past is over!” she bellowed into my microphone. "Who wants to think about the past?"

But she did play an old recording of her and Elizabeth singing hymns, and she showed me a lot of old photographs—two dark-haired sisters smiling in pretty hats and flowery frocks, Elizabeth drop-dead gorgeous, Margery handsome and obviously nobody's fool.

It struck me that these were the photographs of women who could have gone anywhere, done anything that women were allowed to do in the mid-part of the last century; yet here they were, and here they obviously wanted to be. Even when talking into a microphone, they felt no need to explain or justify their odd course to the rest of us.

"Did you ever think about marrying?” I asked. They were—after all—of a generation of women that usually did.

Margery hooted. "Awe, fellows asked us, but we didn't pay ’em no mind. One came around a couple of years ago crying how his girlfriend had died, and he was all alone and wouldn't one of us marry him. Elizabeth told him to get a dog.”

I’ve moved a lot and had a lot of neighbors. Most of them have come and gone without leaving anything permanently useful inside me. But my life is richer and steadier for having lived for a while one farm over from Marjory and Elizabeth. I simply haven’t met many other women—many people, really—who are living as they truly wish to, without worrying at all about the sideways glances of the rest of us.

The only bumper sticker I’ve ever put on a vehicle is one my daughter, Lizzie, sent me years before I met the sisters. It read “Uppity Women Unite,” and when I slapped it on my truck’s bumper, I thought, “There! That’s who I am!”

After meeting Marjory and Elizabeth, however, I realized I am a mere wannabe in the uppity woman department. That bumper sticker would have really belonged on their tractor.

I usually am repelled by anything sappy, but not today. Today I will wallow unashamedly in that which on most other days I would consider bathetic. Today, I am officially, happily, unabashedly sappily thankful for, among many other things, my job.

I think I only became intentionally thankful on Thanksgiving Day in my forties. Before that, I was just too frenzied with cooking. (By the way, if you are so frenzied and need some last-minute help, the NY Times has Sam Sifton on on-line duty until 3 p.m.).

The things in my personal life for which I'm thankful are not appropriate blog fodder--let's just say that I'm a happy camper and leave it at that. But one of my greatest blasts of personal gratitude gets bestowed on my job at WMRA--the big rush and mush of the hectic, absorbing days I get to spend there making radio; the creative freedom I'm allowed; the good company of my very funny and fun colleagues; the chance to meet and get to know people in the WMRA community of listeners; the chance to work directly with NPR editors.

Being pretty sure a lot of my colleagues felt the same, yesterday I sent a note out asking them to let me know what each of them is personally grateful for re WMRA and/or public radio in general. Here's what I got back (you'll note that I'm not the only person who waxes sappy on the subject!).

From Scott Lowe, host, Weekend Edition Sunday:  "I have been very thankful for the enthusiasm and appreciation loyal WMRA listeners express to me whenever they find out I work here. WMRA members are more passionate about their choice than any others I have encountered in a 25-year career."

From Tom Graham, host, Virginia Insight: "I wake up every morning feeling grateful to be part of such a special public radio community. After many years, earlier in my career, of employment in profit-oriented, commercial television and radio news, it is such an honor to work for a non-profit whose overriding mission is public service. And I find myself giving thanks many times a day for the supportive listeners who make this type of dedication possible."

From Bob Leweke, host, Morning Edition, “In a world full of voices, I'm thankful for the unique, and constructive, voice that public radio provides in our democracy.”

From Tina Owens, host, Acoustic Cafe: "I am thankful that WMRA gives me the the opportunity to be a part of the local roots music community.  It is such a treat to spend each weekend presenting - and listening to - such wonderful acoustic music."

From Terry Ward, host, All Things Considered: "On WMRA, I will not be subjected to commercials with cheesy sound effects of Santa's belly laugh, as happens on certain ~other~ broadcast entities with increasing frequency from this date forward, til Xmas. For that, I am grateful."

From Matt Bingay, Program Director: "I am thankful for the fact that I work in an environment that encourages exploration, discovery, discussion and meaning. Before beginning my career in public radio, the world was small and trivial. Today, I see so much, and want to know so much more. Thank you NPR for helping me live outside of myself."

And finally, from Tom DuVal, General Manager: "Hmmm. It's easy to say I'm thankful for the thousands of listeners who support WMRA and WEMC financially. And James Madison University, and dozens of local businesses and organizations. And believe me, I most certainly am!

 "I think, though, at heart I'm most thankful for the many listeners who take the time to contact us with kudos and criticisms. They keep us honest and keep our spirits up.

"And I'm thankful every day for my professional and dedicated colleagues, here and at the national level, who dive into and complete the necessary work of keeping public radio coming out of the speakers all across the region."

Thought I'd leave you with one of my husband's, Charlie, photos (taken late last month) of where we live. For no other reason than to remind  myself and you of how beautiful it is here in WMRA Land.

Four days from now all of us will give at least a passing thought to the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620. To be welcomed by this land's prior residents. Whom Europeans would shortly (in historical time) displace.

I think one of my ancestors was among those getting off the Mayflower. I say I think because it was not something my family ever made a big deal of. But as I like following the grand story that is history (and just in case my family's down-played myth was true), I once paid a visit to Plymouth, just to see what this famous rock looked like.

Not much, I decided.

I was to dig up bigger rocks putting in gardens on Charlie's and my 11.5 acres of land along Buffalo Ridge in Amherst County. And it's this land I want to write about, on this, the first working day of the short working week in which we celebrate Thanksgiving.

Charlie and I bought those 11.5 acres nigh onto two decades ago. They were down a rutted logging road, surrounded by thousands of acres of logging forest; home to bears, wild turkeys, deer, and very few other people. Having very little money ourselves, we lived on that land for the next six years in a couple of trailers. The first one was an ancient repo bought at a bank auction; the second was so comparatively palatial, we nicknamed it "The Palace."

But enough about Charlie and me. It's something simple that happened the day after we bought that land I want to write about; something that made me personally experience land ownership in a more complicated--and so more accurate--way.

It was around this time of year, actually. Charlie was off from work that day, so he took a lawn chair out to sit for a while on our 11.5 acres. He wanted to get to know it, to decide exactly where we should position our ancient repo. He sat his lawn chair down on a likely spot, idly reached his hand down and picked up the first rock he touched.

It was an arrowhead.

We were, of course, by no means the first to live on those 11.5 acres; just the first in a few decades, which in the context of history is a big fat nothing. That day, when Charlie showed me the arrowhead he'd found, I realized deep in my gut for the first time how people have moved other people--and peoples--around. And that we Americans, for all our national pride, are but a sentence in the larger story of our land.

On this Monday, back when I was in elementary school, we routinely made Pilgrim hats out of construction paper and congratulated ourselves mightily for being Americans. Now I realize that back then I had no idea what "being American" meant.

Even today, as glad as I am to be one, I'm still not quite sure what being American means. Whenever I think of that arrowhead, however, I do hope it means more than being able to push people around.