Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  I think the main reasons for this are: it is uncomplicated by gift giving or ceremonies; it is a 4 day weekend to spend with friends and family; it celebrates the turn of the seasons with a lot of my favorite comfort foods.  This year Cress and Amanda drove up from Cincinnati for the week.  We spent a few days relaxing and preparing, and on the big day we took Everett to the zoo for the first time, then came back and had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat, followed by a nap and seconds before bed.  We also enjoyed one of the Butson family traditions, which is to listen to Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie on Thanksgiving.  Everett got to hear the song for the first time, and for good measure he joined us for dinner with his own comfort food: rice cereal.  This was his first solid food, and he got the hang of it right away.  He seemed to intuitively understand that the spoon headed toward his mouth contained food, and that he should eat the food off of the spoon and swallow it.  This seems like a lot of steps to master at once for something that he had never tried before.  Clearly the Barber-Butson genes have once again served him well.



I assume that everyone is familiar with Arlo Guthrie, and with the Alice’s Restaurant Massacree in particular, but if not then Friends, I am here to tell you that Arlo is one of the great singers and storytellers of our generation, and our parent’s generation as well, so he’s worth a listen at least once a year, perhaps even more often if you are trying to turn your child into a modern-day hippie.  Hearing Arlo sing Alice’s Restaurant live was on the short list of things I wanted to experience in my lifetime, and so I was pretty upset when he publicly proclaimed in the 1990s that he would never sing the song again.  Fortunately he softened his stance and I got to hear him at Cain Park a couple years ago.  There are a couple of different recorded versions out there.  The original was 18 ½ minutes long, but if you can spare an extra 4 minutes I recommend the longer version with full orchestration and five part harmony where he describes how the song changed the destiny of the Nixon presidency.  It may also interest you to know that a couple of decades ago, Arlo recorded a Tom Paxton song called “I am changing my name to Chrysler”.  It was pretty funny when it came out, and in these uncertain economic times it turns out it is just as poignant today, especially considering recent events with US automakers, which is why I decided to include it here.  Originally I thought about just including the lyrics.  But it’s impossible to understand why he is such a master without hearing his voice (however, please ignore all of the cheesy graphics in the video which someone pasted onto the song).

Lastly, if you just want the experience of Alro live then check out this updated version of the song as he adapted it to Fannie Mae.  And Happy Thanksgiving!

Since the recent presidential election there has been a lot of speculation about who the new administration will hire, which issues they will tackle first and what approach they will take.  And in case you haven’t heard, one of those issues is the college football bowl championship series (BCS).  For those of you who don’t know what the BCS is, and for those of you who are expressing disbelief that Chris knows anything about it, allow me to explain.  There are no playoffs in college football, so it is difficult to establish a national champion, especially when there are multiple teams with the same win/loss record.  As a result, team rankings used to be decided through a voting system, and not surprisingly this led to a lot of problems and controversy.  The BCS was created to dispel the impression that college football rankings were subjective and capricious.  In response, the BCS ranks teams using a secret computer algorithm that is based on the emphatic opinions of a very small set of individuals, and this algorithm is fudged at the end of each season to meet everyone’s subjective expectations.  This system is based on the premises that the best team comes from one of the six major conferences, and that Notre Dame gets to do whatever the hell it wants to.  On the surface, this sounds like it was designed to create even more controversy than the old system, and some would argue this is true, including President Elect Obama (see video).  Fortunately, our government has a reputation for not shying away when faced with such difficult issues.  You may recall the time when members of Congress each sat down in private and spent a few minutes quietly reflecting on how many gallons of water should be required to flush a toilet (answer: 1.6).  Or the time that a congressional committee attempted to determine if Roger Clemens was a vegetarian, and after he answered “No” they proceeded to ask if he was a vegan, to which he replied “I’m not really sure what that is”, effectively demonstrating that Congress isn’t really sure about it either and that they might want to move to higher ground.  However, college football is way more popular than veganism, so I am optimistic that the legislative and judicial branches of our government will be able to engage in an articulate discussion on the issue, though I am certainly not ruling out the Supreme Court from getting involved.

Having said all of that, some of you may be wondering what effect the BCS has on Chris’ life and why he is taking the time to write about it.  The answer is that 1) he took an interest in the BCS when he found out it involved an algorithm, thinking that this might make spectator sports more compelling; 2) college sports have way more spirit and gumption than professional sports, and if we are going to have more football it would be great if it were college; 3) for years Chris has heard complaints from friends and coworkers about college football rankings, particularly from fans of a certain team in Ohio, and is hoping a playoff will finally put these to rest.

During the last couple weeks Everett has started paying very close attention when Melissa and I eat.  He is intently focused as food or drinks move from the table to our mouths.  As he watched mealtime from his highchair, he seemed to be circumspect at best about what we were feeding him.  I guess breastmilk via a spoon isn’t much of a substitute for his normal method (see photo above).  But then he started sitting in our laps during mealtime, which provides better viewing and, it turns out, better access to our food.  This was probably his secret plan all along.  So what was simply observation on Friday turned into a run at my coffee mug on Sunday morning (see photos below).  By Monday night any of my drinks were fair game (last photo).

Over the last few months (5 to be exact, as of yesterday) Everett has been experimenting with more and more sounds, and every few weeks he adds one or two new ones to his vocabulary.  Just this week he started putting those sounds together to form his first word: Obama.  We aren’t quite sure why he chose this as his first word.  He has certainly been exposed to it a lot lately in our house, but by comparison he heard Bush and McCain equally as often, though perhaps in a less flattering tone of voice.