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!