Thanksgiving in New Orleans, or The Church of the Do-Gooder

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Do you ever think about water? Like, what rain is in the grand overall scale of the Universe. Isn't it the great dissolver and re-maker? Isn't it doing on a huge scale what water does on a small one in your mixing bowl? When it rains God is making Cosmic bread!

A bit of Wisconsin breaks off in a storm, gets washed into Lake Michigan, tumbles into the Chicago River, then the Illinois, and the Mississippi. It passes the Gateway Arch at Saint Louis, joins the Ohio's downwash at Cairo, undulates along the Memphis bluffs, gags on the effluence pumped in at Baton Rouge, and gets sucked into City water systems and splashed out of taps onto your shrimp boil and into your coffee cup.

Next day, your liver chucks that microscopic bit of Wisconsin into your bladder and out it goes into Big Swamp City's sewage system, where it is pumped over the levee, rejoins The River and dumps out into The Gulf of Mexico containing a small part of you reduced to micro-micro-microscopic size. It mixes in The Gulf with all The World's drainage and swamp rot, gets picked up by the prevailing westerly winds and is dropped back on Wisconsin in the form of Spring rains.

It takes a while, friends, but Life goes on.

It is Thanksgiving and time to kill the fatted turnip -- or turkey, if so inclined. It is time to celebrate the harvest and give thanks for all that is good. Most of all, it is time to sit quietly on The River and back off from doing bad things, at least for the day.

L. A. Norma has given birth to a new religion in celebration of Thanksgiving. It is called, "The Church of The Do-Gooder."

Do-Gooders have but one tenet of faith. It would be written in stone, and painted in loud colors round the nave of their cathedral, if they had one. It is, "You do not do bad when you do good."

Simple minded, yes, but not simple enough to lose the spun taint of "Liberalism," or gain the embrace of President W., now mandating his Second Coming. Liberal is, by the way, a word etymologically related to Liberty.

Albert Einstein said, "Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them." We were wrong, Landslide is an intellectual. Not an idiot, not a genius.

So where does that leave us wee little people? "In a hot shrimp pot," Norma says, "where bad things happen to the shrimp."

"Were only Landslide a Do-Gooder," she sighs, Camel cigarette smoke curling over her head.

Should you wish to join The Do-Gooder Church, be advised there is nothing to sign, and no meetings. If you wish to join, you have.

It's an easy faith to follow. Do-Gooders don't do much. Their real contribution is not doing bad.

"You just do what you can, then you go for coffee, or a drink," Godmother Norma says.

"Sometimes we just go for the drink!"

In any case, "You do not do bad when you do good." Einstein could not have said it better. Happy Thanksgiving!