Eat me! (Photo: Bob Ingrassia)

First, Happy Thanksgiving from everyone at Fast Horse.

Second, what are you doing reading this blog on Thanksgiving weekend? Seriously, shut down the computer and stash the cell phone.

Wait, hold on. Before you sign off, enjoy this lovely Thanksgiving essay by Garrison Keillor in the Nov. 27, 1995, issue of Time magazine.

Some tidbits:

I am thankful to be alive. In Minnesota the lakes are freezing over in late November, and some men who envision a leadership role for themselves take their snowmobiles out onto the thin ice and fall through and drown in the cold water–their last thought in this life: “Boy, was this dumb or what?”–and so far I have not been one of them.

I am thankful for living in a place where winter gets good and cold and you need to build a fire in a stove and wrap a blanket around you. Cold draws people closer together. Crime drops. Acts of kindness proliferate between strangers. I have been in Los Angeles on a balmy day in January and seen the glum faces of people poking at their salads in outdoor restaurants, brooding over their unproduced screenplays. People in Minnesota are much cheerier, lurching across the ice, leaning into the wind as sheets of snow swirl up in their faces. Because they feel needed and because cold weather takes the place of personal guilt. Maybe you haven’t been the shining star you should have been, but now is not the time to worry about it.