Even as a kid, of all holidays, Thanksgiving was my favorite.

Sure, birthdays and Christmas brought all the gifts, but there was something about Turkey Day that just hit all the right notes.

Family, food. My mother’s stuffing. The scent of the turkey filling the house — I can smell it to this day. 

A rite of passage was getting a drumstick. Cranberry sauce came from a can, and that can-shaped mold was sliced on a plate. None of that fancy berry stuff. 

In the Delaware Valley, we celebrated with the famous Thanksgiving Day parade. The payoff  was the last float — Santa on his sleigh. It was even bigger than the Mummers on New Year’s Day. Heck, we didn’t even know there was a Macy’s Day parade. 

After dinner, my Dad, Grandpop and I passed out in front of the TV “watching” the Detroit Lions lose another Thanksgiving Day game. John Madden used his telestrator to map out how to carve the turducken on the Madden Bus.

And at the end of the day, with time off from school, I’d head down to my grandparent’s house in Philadelphia for a couple of days to trim the tree and enjoy a little “city” holiday season.

Not to mention leftovers! Mmmmmmm... turkey sandwiches... 

After dinner — and I am strict about this — you can officially start playing Christmas music.

We weren’t a large family — at most there was a half a dozen of us around the table, but it was enough.

As always, opposites attract. My significant comes from a large family. A holiday dinner in her neck of the woods can easily see 30 people around multiple tables. For the uninitiated, it can be a bit overwhelming. 

She’d be a charter member of the Macy’s Day Parade fan club if such a thing existed. And, I have no doubt she started playing Christmas music in secret about a month ago. And, she likes yams...

Lately, Thanksgiving leaves us both feeling a little bit like fish out of water. Now that it is just Dad and I, we tend to celebrate separately. And with her kids scattered across the country, it is often just my significant and I trying to find new traditions. We have high hopes one of these years all three of her kids will be at the house, but for the moment, it is often just the two of us.

Were it just me, I’d be content sitting at home watching the Mystery Science Theater Turkey Day marathon, but that’s not her thing. We’ve done hikes, visited Civil War battlefields, gone to the movies, and hunted for pre-black Friday bargains. But in her book, nothing would match having everyone around the table. And why should it? 

Because, in the end, Thanksgiving is about family. No matter what the size. No matter how much we irritate each other. For one day, the stress we face in life becomes a tomorrow problem.

I’m thankful. Thankful for all my memories. Thankful for all the gifts in my life, despite the challenges, and thankful for all that is yet to come. 
Every year, when I got back from my grandparents’ house, Thanksgiving was over, and I was back at school, I would come home one evening to find the wishbone had dried out enough to make a wish. 

Mom and I were fierce competitors, we probably split the lifetime series. They say if you tell the wish, it will never come true. Ah, well... what the heck? My wish was and is always the same: May all our dreams come true.

Happy Thanksgiving.

​You have probably heard the news of the latest controversy. It’s inescapable.

George Lucas fiddled with the classic Han/Greedo Cantina scene again. This may be the fourth time, for those keeping track at home.

Apparently, he snuck it in before the Disney+ release last week.

For those who were around in 1970-something, you may remember the iconic scene. Han Solo is waylaid by the bounty hunter Greedo just after Obi-Wan Kenobi secures passage for himself, Luke Skywalker and the droids to Alderaan on the Millennium Falcon.

Seems a certain Jabba the Hutt has no time for smugglers who drop their shipments at the first sight of an Imperial ship. Also seems Han doesn’t have time for Greedo, because he dispatches the green fella without hesitation.

Because we all know, Han shot first.

Until he didn’t. When it came time to re-release the original trilogy in the 1990s ahead of the much-maligned sequels, Mr. Lucas decided to use much-advanced CGI to add to his original vision in many places. The response was mixed, and for traditionalists, difficult to swallow. But the Cantina scene was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Not wanting one of his saga’s heroes to be seen as the kind of man who would shoot someone down in cold blood, Mr. Lucas chose to add a shot from Greedo that appeared to come first.

Now, a moment of perspective: in 1977, while he had hopes and dreams, Lucas didn’t really have a saga to dream about, Star Wars could easily have been a one-off. His concepts for sequels, if there were to be any, were still in the design stages. There is no way he could have envisioned his original movies would have attained a mythological quality. Legends? Canon? Expanded universe? Midi-chlorians? Whills? What is this babble? 

But by the mid-1990s, he probably should have known better. The backlash was harsh. The galaxy’s favorite scoundrel would let Greedo get the jump on him, and it was only the fact that the bounty hunter was a worse shot than a storm trooper that saved Han? That was unacceptable. “Han shot first” t-shirts became a thing.

Granted, the change didn’t really hurt anyone. It’s a split second in a great story. It isn’t Hayden Christensen showing up for a curtain call. Still, if you were going to change things based on where the story went in subsequent “episodes,” I can think of a scene or two that could have used more attention. But I digress.

Obviously, Mr. Lucas has felt the heat all of these years, because with the launch of Disney+, he has again edited the scene. Not content to give diehards their scene back, he made the shots simultaneous.

Oh, and Greedo says “Maclunkey.”

Wait, what?

The social media reaction (of course) has been priceless. Apparently, if you are a student of these things, what he truly says is “ma klounkee” — “This’ll be the end of you” — something established in The Phantom Menace. Whatever. Lucas has succeeded in defusing the anger in the room.

Maybe it’s because those of us who were most up in arms about who shot when in the first place have reached a point in our lives where it just doesn’t make a difference anymore. Or maybe, it’s because it’s just so silly, but “Maclunkey” is now a thing.

Hats off to George Lucas. I can only hope the foresight he had to hold on to the Star Wars merchandising rights repeats itself, and he holds the sole rights to Maclunkey. Because I have a new catchphrase, and I need me a t-shirt!

​It struck me sometime midway through Tuesday evening it was election night in two states I used to work. In a previous life, that would have meant a late night and dining on pizza or cold cuts provided by a newspaper.

It momentarily surprised me, but there was also a little bit of joy at the thought I was spending the evening relaxing in my chair watching the start of college basketball season. 

Still, it played on the back of my mind. This will publish almost a year to the day I found myself, like so many others in the newspaper business, on the outside looking in.

I wasn’t surprised. I’ve always had a feel for work situations, and as a student of the industry, I was well aware the future was always tenuous. I had hoped I could hang on until retirement, but acknowledged in recent years that was going to be a tall order.

I had evolved to a position that wasn’t necessarily in my wheelhouse, yet I needed that experience to know that. With only two exceptions, newspapers were my home for nearly three decades. Being a journalist was what defined me. Finding out I suddenly wasn’t going to be one, at least defined by a traditional “employer-employee” relationship, was a shock to the system.

In all honesty, the first feeling was a sense of relief — no longer having to get up early and commute, no more juggling the responsibilities of that job. My significant other noticed the change in me within days, and it was the new year before I had completely “detoxed.”

The future was uncertain. I had some freelance work and an unemployment benefits, but two of us on the gig economy with a kid in high school and cars and a house to pay for made clear something more lucrative was necessary, if not forthcoming.

Then, a funny thing happened. Freelance and contract work started coming my way. Many of the skills I brought to the table were being outsourced by the industry, and I could reliably fill those gaps at a reasonable price. Being “old” suddenly had a benefit — years of positive working relationships and a trustworthy reputation meant I was able to start building something on my own.

The new work situation can be time consuming. I spend a lot of time hustling to add to my contract portfolio. I still have deadlines and commitments, but the commute is now a flight of stairs to my home office. I work as hard as I always did, but I’m finally learning to draw boundaries, something I was less apt to do working for others. The finances are still a struggle, but are also one heckuva motivator.

The biggest changes, however, have been personal. In the last year, I have exercised more, eaten better and lost nearly 20 pounds. I played more golf this year than the last 15, though contrary to my hope, I have not improved any. I’ve gotten back into hobbies I have ignored for years, though I still need to practice my music more.

Most important, all those years I let being a journalist define me, I had lost sight of the most important things. The stress and responsibility I carried on my shoulders had taken quite a toll. I’m not sure my relationship with my significant other would have survived another year. I missed a lot of time with her daughter, as well. A lot of apologies were in order.

The point of all this is not to suggest everyone quit their jobs and strike out on their own, but rather to take a step back and objectively evaluate your approach to life. It is so easy to bury yourself in work and not see what is happening around you. It took a life-changing experience to open my eyes, but I’m thankful I did.