Yes, we do have a lot to be thankful for: Each other
Trying to find something to be thankful for in 2020? Tough task.
Facing it reminds me of the old joke that President Ronald Reagan loved to tell about a very optimistic little boy and a pile of horse manure.
Thrilled by the pile of poop, the little boy happily jumped onto it and started digging, saying, “There must be a pony in here somewhere.”
That’s how I feel in assessing this year of pandemic, racial unrest, school closings, darkened theaters, shuttered restaurants, a shaky economy and a bitter presidential race that seemed like it never was going to end. (Is it over yet?)
Little wonder that the surprisingly scraggly appearance of this year’s Christmas tree in New York’s Rockefeller Center touched off headlines about its sad appearance, making the perfect metaphor for this sad year.
Tut, tut, responded the Rockefeller Center management, just give gravity a chance to help the unwrapped 75-foot evergreen’s branches settle into place after its 200-mile trip from upstate New York.
Right. That’s what our neighborhood tree salesman tells me when I’m shopping picked-over evergreens at the last minute in the local church parking lot.
But before that could happen, workers found a happy little surprise in the tree’s branches. It was not a pony. It was an owl.
A Northern saw-whet owl, nicknamed Rockefeller, was found in the Christmas tree chosen for Rockefeller Center's 2020 display in New York.
Identified at a rehab center as a saw-whet owl, the smallest of its kind in the Northeast, the owl may have hitched a ride all the way from upstate New York. As a New York Daily News headline exclaimed, “What a hoot!”
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