Happy Thanksgiving!

Here are my favorite Bryant family Thanksgiving traditions:

Russell and Dad cook the turkey in a trash can in the backyard. Everyone wins - the turkey's juicy, it only takes an hour and a half, and the boys get to play with fire. Beautiful. Here's Russ basting the turkey before setting the can over it and covering it with coals. (I think that's his "whistling face."):

The baked bird: Ta-da!

Mom has a collection of Christmas plates - she gets a new plate, saucer and cup each year. Starting at Thanksgiving, we start using Christmas dishes instead of the normal plates. At some point, we break out the games and play for hours. Playful banter begins... usually culminating in Russ accusing Mom of cheating (which we all know is not true... that makes it more fun). By the middle of this game she was laughing so hard at his antics that she sprayed the table (including the game pieces and "the opposition") with the left-over roll she was eating. Oops! The boys soundly beat us, but there's always next year!
Kitchen towel wars aren't exactly a Thanksgiving tradition at our house, but why not...

It's good to be home.

To all my friends and family out there: Happy Thanksgiving!

homecoming

Aaaahhhh... it's nice to be home. After a short 24 hours in the DFW area (with the fabulous Neill-ites), I finally boarded a plane with Atlanta as my final destination! Most of the time I read voraciously on planes, but I was so anxious to be there that I simply plugged my ears with gentle, thoughtful music and watched for familiar landmarks to appear on the horizon. As the sun died spectacularly in the west, we hit the tarmack and emerged into the sticky Georgia heat (and smog - ick). My parents were waiting eagerly at the baggage claim with bright smiles - they each gave me an extra long, tight hug (which I returned with relish!).

When we finally arrived home, my "little" brother was actually there waiting (shocking!) - he greeted me with a (bone-crushing) hug too, but that wasn't the real welcome home gesture. No, his true greeting was to enact one of our little rituals. He waited for me to take a load off, thrust his large, buzz-cut noggin in my lap, and waited for me to start rubbing his head. I rolled my eyes and sighed in hopeless protest... but deep down, I felt that, for a sweet, brief period of time, things were as they should be. It's nice to be home!

Greener Every Day

Today I had a chance encounter with a Reader's Digest article about the top cleanest (and dirtiest) cities in America (it's in the July 2005 issue). Surveying the 50 largest metropolitan areas in our nation, the article listed the top 10 cleanest cities as well as the dirtiest 10. Each city was rated by air and water quality, sanitation, industrial pollution, and Superfund sites (toxic waste sites- I had to look it up). For my Ohio friends: Columbus was in the top 5 cleanest. For the Texans: Austin is number 8 (it looks like "keeping Austin weird" is a good option at least in this regard!).

Like any loyal Atlanta girl, I carefully scanned both the cleanest and dirtiest lists, but "my city" wasn't listed on either. Naturally, I would have loved to discover yet another reason to boast about my hometown, so I was disappointed not to find Atlanta among the cleanest (but I'm certainly not surprised!). Still, I could take pride in the fact that it was not among the "lower ten" names. Then I found a link to view the analysis of all 50 largest metropolitan areas. (If your curiosity gets the better of you, too, click here to see how your favorite big city measures up.)

Well, it appears that my initial pride was a little misplaced - Atlanta, GA is the 11th dirtiest large city in the nation (Houston was worse, preventing Atlanta from appearing in that infamous list). Okay, I knew we were in bad shape, but I didn't know it was this bad. Apparently, the Phoenix hasn't quite risen from the ashes. Or maybe it's better to say that we continue to wallow in ashes of our own design (in oh so many ways).

Why is it that I am so indifferent, and even condescending, when I read the names of other filthy cities, but I'm so shocked to see my own in black and white? As long as there were other cities out there "dirtier" than my own, I was content. Maybe I feel like a judgment on my hometown is by extension a judgment on me, too; after all, this is a place that has shaped me significantly.

Above all this article makes me want to make a difference in the condition of the environment wherever I'm living. I wonder, how can I be a small part of maintaining the beauty of this world God created as our home? I also wonder, what keeps me from being involved in efforts to protect the environment on a regular basis?