Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone (A Note to Readers)

Dear readers and friends (both Americans and non),

Today, I will stop by the gym to ride the bike for a bit, then get the kids from their mom’s house — they’re with us from 9am-2pm. We will proceed to a traditional Puritan re-enactment/worship service at Colonial Church, the church of my youth. After that, we’ll finish baking the six pies that we’re responsible to bring to dinner and get in a game of touch football before sitting down to a feast.

Among the things for which I’m grateful is you, and I mean that quite sincerely. When I started blogging in 2004, it was a lonely enterprise. I was lonely — my early posts were composed in an empty apartment in Princeton, NJ. My family had left after my first year of coursework, and I commuted between Minneapolis and New Jersey. My desk in the apartment was a door propped up on two sawhorses. I slept on an air mattress. I blogged because I’d usually finished all my reading by dinnertime, and I didn’t have a TV. Like I say, it was a lonely enterprise.

Most everything has changed since then. I am now in a marriage that is brimming with love and acceptance, for which I am truly grateful. I am surrounded by friends and family in Minnesota who love me for who I am.

And blogging is no longer lonely. With your clicks and your comments, your likes and your retweets, you have transformed this space from a platform for my thoughts into an electronic space of conversation and debate. I am honored — even humbled — to be the convener of that. I don’t know that my thoughts are always worth reading, but you’ve given me the benefit of the doubt.

I am thankful.

Thanks for coming here to read.

Thanks for commenting.

Thanks for your friendship.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.