Thanksgiving Broken Record

Come Thanksgiving, my thoughts – and I know I’m being wholly and stunningly original here – tend to drift towards that things that are worth being thankful for.

And unlike the more pedestrian thinkers out there, I am wholly and stunningly original when it comes to the things I am thankful for.

Family, friends, health, home, work, and the fact that, last time I looked, books were still being printed on paper.

While I recognize that, when it comes to Thanksgiving, I am a wholly and stunningly original thinker, I also recognize that I’ve done this wholly and stunningly original thinking at other points in time. Like last Thanksgiving.

Still, at the risk of sounding like a broken record – a concept that I suspect is wholly and stunningly lost on those who don’t know what a broken record sounds like, sounds like, sounds like – I am wholly and stunningly thankful for family, friends, health, home, work, and the fact that, last time I looked, books were still being printed on paper.

Meanwhile, broken record-wise, it’s important to remember that not everyone has family, friends, health, home, and work to be thankful for.

In Boston, hundreds of those folks will, nonetheless, be able to gather at St. Francis House, which has been helping Boston’s poor and homeless rebuild their lives for over 25 years.

In the past year, St. Francis House has:

• Served more than 295,440 meals

• Provided 6,996 showers

• Distributed 6,891 changes of clothes

• Provided more than 15,000 counseling sessions on mental health issues, substance abuse, housing, employment, legal matters, and other issues

• Partnered with Boston Health Care for the Homeless to provide 9,416 medical appointments

• Trained 156 people in our First Step Employment Program

• Graduated the 107th class from the Moving Ahead Program (MAP), our vocational rehabilitation program, whose alumni now number more than 1,100

• Housed 56 men and women in our Next Step Housing Program

If you’ve got something to be thankful for, please consider a donation to St. Francis House.

Now I must away to the groaning board that awaits at my cousin Barbara’s, for what I calculate to be the 66th time that our combined families have celebrated this holiday together.

Forty years ago, the Thanksgiving after my father died, Barbara and Dick, two small kids in tow, made it from Lexington to Worcester during a freak November blizzard so that my mother wouldn’t be disappointed. And, thus, our gathering record remained unbroken.

Thank you, Barbara, for that.

And to all, a very Happy Thanksgiving.