Far be it from me to wish anyone a ‘Happy Columbus Day’
"Three Thanksgivings ago I was at a friend's house in San Francisco (who'd struggled mightily to accommodate two vegans, a dairy allergy, a wheat allergy (mine) and an allergy to nuts among her seven guests) One of the guests (vegan) went on for the entire meal about what a despicable holiday Thanksgiving was, a celebration of imperialism, the subordination of the laborers who'd planted, irrigated, and harvested the vegetables and fed and slaughtered the turkey, etc., an exhortation to consume, an advocacy of carnivorousness, boy did the sanctimonious bore go on, I nearly fricasseed her. And then there was this Christmas dinner a few years ago where there were two Mormons, two pagans and two atheists. It sounds like a joke, right? 'A Mormon, a Pagan and an Atheist sat down to Christmas dinner.' The first argument erupted over the proper way to say grace. And, as you might imagine, it wasŃor felt likeŃhours between grace and dessert."
—Caterina. "It's terrible to hear secondhand about New York replacing itself piece by piece since I last lived there, it's startling to see how fast it changes when it's a year or more between visits, but then again we're replacing ourselves cell by cell all the time."'
