A Few Things I'm Thankful For
Gratitude is a muscle worth flexing.
Thanksgiving is a special holiday for my family. We trace our roots directly back to the radical separatists who left the Church of England in the seventeenth century and migrated to the Low Countries, before traveling across the Atlantic to start the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts.
I’m not myopic about that history.1 But I take pleasure in the fact that, Black Friday aside, Thanksgiving has proven stubbornly resistant to late capitalist commercialism.
So nothing here is sponsored; in fact most of it isn’t stuff at all. It’s a simple list of things I’m thankful for this season.
Caitlin and Mo. Early parenthood is hard. And my wife Caitlin has been the rock of our family, patient with Imogen even as one of her heels was literally reconstructed a couple months ago. She’s the strongest woman I know, helping us keep up as Mo’s personality blossoms. Mo likes to climb. She likes dogs, birds, and airplanes. She likes books and music. She dislikes loud noises and grocery-store checkout lines. She likes slides and water and wearing necklaces (or Therabands).
Reggie and Sibley. I’m not a cat person. I find them to be strange and alien creatures. But I’m thankful for these two bossy, kind-of-annoying animals that live with us. They are silly and kind. They’re nice to Mo and gracious in sharing their space with her. They ask for little except a bit of attention and a lot of food. And they let me rub their bellies when I am exhausted and overwhelmed.
Family and friends. This one goes without saying. Keeping me somewhat less haggard has been family, who’ve traveled across the country to help with childcare, cook meals, and just spend time with us. Friends and running buddies, especially Breakfast Club and the stroller dads, always refresh my soul.
Pantoprazole anti-acid. I’ve had difficulty swallowing food for over a decade, such that I’ve had a couple endoscopies and some worry from physicians about things like esophageal strictures, allergies, cancer, and such. Turns out my gut is bit dysfunctional. So it goes. Taking this medicine daily has pretty much resolved my swallowing issues so I can enjoy things like soy sauce and rice again. Thank you, bio-pharmaceutical industrial complex.
BART. I started going to my day job’s office more consistently this year and Bay Area Rapid Transit’s line between Richmond and Berryessa saved me from mindnumbing car rides down 40 miles of I-880 nightmarescape. BART makes my 45-minute trip from Oakland to the edge of Silicon Valley not unpleasant as I can journal and read. Unfortunately, it doesn’t solve the last mile problem. Still, I’m thankful for regional transit systems.
Leave-in hair conditioner. Everyone tells you your hair will go grey. No one tells you its texture changes when it does. I’m grateful for Tea Tree Specials leave-in hair conditioner that makes me feel a little more handsome and confident, even as I grow more dad haggard by the week.
Geneva, New York. We spent my work sabbatical with family in this pleasant, lakeside town in central New York. I’m thankful for my sister-in-law Professor Meghan Brown who got me library space at Hobart and William Smith College, where I worked on some of the stories many of you loved this year. (Meghan helped Jeff VanderMeer write his climate mystery thriller Hummingbird Salamander which you should read.)
Barebell protein bars. If you work for a global corporation, one thing you learn is that our world is just a big rock spinning in a void. Work continues even when the sun stops shining on the particular section of rock where you happen to be alive. Profits must churn forth though you are a frail human who requires things like sleep or sustenance. In 2024 that means you have to join video meetings in the liminal hours when that sunshine isn’t too far removed from various distantly located points on that big rock.2
So I’m grateful to have discovered Barebell protein bars at Trader Joes. How are they so tasty? How is the protein so soft? I worry it’s too good to be true and I’m eating people or some sort of Chernobyl runoff. But ignorance is bliss, keeping me from going hungry during morning meetings this year.
Run commuting. I started jogging into the workspace I use when I’m not doing the epic work trip down to San Jose. Running to work helps me get a little meditative time in the mornings before meetings. I’m thankful for the nice path around Lake Merritt with its soft gravel shoulder. I’m not thankful for the awful intersection near my house that remains horrible to cross.
Hans Zimmer. I saved a couple projects from capsizing this year by putting my headphones in, starting the Dunkirk soundtrack, and going sicko mode to think through some meaty concepts. I’ve expressed my appreciation for Hans Zimmer in this newsletter multiple times, but I’ll do it again here. I love this unpretentious German man and the soundscapes he dreams up.
Thule Glide Running Stroller. If it wasn’t for this stroller, my path to running retirement would be considerably hastened. Not only did the Thule let me run a lot of miles with Mo, it became one of the few ways we can get her to nap. It’s comfortable to use, breaks down for travel, and does indeed glide like a dream on tarmac.
Mack Weldon t-shirts. My biggest pandemic life hack was the realization that I should never again be crippled with anxiety about what to wear for work. Ten copies of the same charcoal grey Mack Weldon t-shirt let me dress up or down to meet the mores of tech-casual for remote and in-person labor. Someday I’ll be more fashion-forward and creative with my attire. But today is not that day.
Substack. I’ve been writing on the internet since the 1990s, blogging since 2010, and writing a newsletter since 2014. But moving to Substack has helped me meet more interesting people than any other site on the Internet. It’s less the result of any one feature as it is the people on the platform and the spaces they create. Those relationships have been the biggest growth accelerator for this newsletter. So a deep tip of the cap to the team at Substack. And a very big thank you to
, , , , , and who set up great writer meetups over the year. Y’all the real MVPs here.All of you. I know, I know, it’s corny. But I am grateful to each of you who read Footnotes. This is the place where I think out loud, where I try to build a creative and intellectual life. You’re an essential part of that personal growth. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here.
Coming up. A gift guide for thoughtful pedestrians. Objects, books, and subscriptions I loved this year.
Tweets of the week
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading.
The United States’ settler history—like most settler history, western or otherwise—was one of violence, empire, and rapacious replacement of indigenous peoples. The north Atlantic colonial project was also quickly shackled to the obscene institution of chattel slavery, a stain that will never be bloated out from American history. We can’t ever forget that.
And yet we also can’t let lazily applied ‘decolonization’ narratives undermine the political framework created in the 17th century, one that contributed to democratic principles we value on both the Right and Left: collective decision making, space for heterodox ideas and experimentation, and the notion that no one person should decide what other people think or believe.
I learned this perspective reading ExxonMobile’s shareholder report every year for a decade after an uncle gifted me stock as university graduation gift. From the point of view of a multinational petrochemical company, the world really is just a rock with finite resources that can be extracted and deployed to generate predictable amounts of shareholder value.
an enjoyable, charming list!
Happy Thanksgiving, Sam! Happy to be a part of the Bay Area Substack family :)