This Thanksgiving I am grateful for a couple of new TV shows that I am enjoying: "Community" and "Parks and Rec," both on NBC. Good for good old NBC. It warms my heart to see that a major network can still do interesting work. Just like it's good to see Sunset magazine and The New Yorker still come to the front door periodically. I worry sometimes about these old modes that seem to be threatened with extinction. It makes me feel like I do when I drive by where the old Thiele's restaurant used to be on N.W. 23rd in Portland. I don't think it's a CPK anymore, although that was a weird slap in the face when that happened.

It is easy for me to get nostalgic about the good old days and the places that are no more and the toys that are long buried in landfills deep, deep down under forty years of flotsam. It is especially easy at this time of year, of course. Of course.

I want to curl up with a likely book and a soft blanket or comforter and fall asleep. But it's kind of late in the day, and it will be hard to fall asleep later tonight, and I just have to get up again to go do my job, which is a hard job.

Yes, it is. I have to come up with ways to help children who are struggling, and sometimes I feel pretty ineffective about it all. There are no magic wands to wave, no guarantees of personal happiness for every single child. There are hurt feelings every day, misunderstandings, transitions in friendships, experimenting with bullying, pushing people around for the fun of it. All the irritating and occasionally painful things people think up to do to one another, and it all happens in these middle school years. I mean I know it happens in preschool, but the edge can be honed in seventh and eighth grade in particular.

All I want to do is go back inside, go back in years, find a time when there was ease and comfort and safety and fullness and kindness and security. Wow, I wonder when the heck that was my experience...? There has been so much anxiety of so many different types through the years...

And to be honest it isn't really all that horrible right this second. I do miss my son, but we get to see him in just a few days... That will be nice. That will be something to be truly grateful for.