Reflections at Thanksgiving time

"There's always a lot to be thankful for if you take the time to look for it.  For example, I'm sitting here thinking how nice it is that wrinkles don't hurt."

That thought isn't original with me, but I wish it were. I read it last week in one of those e-mail forwards that get circulated back and forth across the country.

But nevertheless it is time for thanksgiving. "I am thankful for small mercies," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. "I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods."

For what they're worth, these are some of the things that make me smile and for which I am grateful at Thanksgiving time and throughout the year: 

Book stores . . . the first cup of coffee in the morning . . . distant train whistles . . . peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches . . . the sun streaming through stained-glass windows of a church . . . a giant cranberry muffin at a Perkins restaurant . . . 

Available only in the print version of the Custer County Chronicle. To subscribe call 605-673-2217.