A Short History of Thanksgiving

The following exceprt is taken from General Duncan McNabb's (the Commander of the US Air force's Air Mobility Command, where I work) Thanksgiving message to all Air Mobility Command troops. It gives a short, one paragraph, history of the Thanksgiving Holiday.

....Thanksgiving Day was first observed at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621. In subsequent years, states set aside one day in the fall to commemorate the harvest until 1863 when President Lincoln made the last Thursday in November the national holiday. His Thanksgiving Day Proclamation intended to heal the wounds of the Civil War and it remained the day for giving thanks until 1941…when Congress decreed that Thanksgiving would be on the fourth Thursday of November. This day affords us an opportunity to give thanks for all that makes this nation great....

I find it interestering that the first National Thanksgiving Holiday was intended to preserve the union!

Back Home

Well, I am back home after another week long trip. The good thing about traveling are all the wonderful people you meet. The difficult thing about traveling is the time spent away from family and friends.

I had an opportunity in Spokane, Washington to spend some time with an old high school friend who is a church planter there named Kurt Bubna. Wow, what a great family Kurt and Laura have. They have some wonderful kids and have experienced a flurry of weddings this past year. Their family is doubling at a very quick rate. The church Kurt pastors is Eastpoint Church in Spokane Valley. Eastpoint has been meeting for about 3 years now and has 900 regular attenders. They have rehabilitated a vacant K-Mart in a strip mall and are doing great work. It is pretty exciting to see what the Lord has done there in such a short amount of time. God is really blessing their ministry.

It was so good to finally get home and see the family again. I missed them so much.

I have one more trip the first week of December to Las Vegas, Nevada. After that I will be home for a couple of months. I need the time to catch back up with my family and complete all my house projects I have lined up. It was a good trip, but I was more than ready to get back home!

Traveling Again

Well, I'm on the road again. I think I have only been to church once since mid September due to my traveling schedule. I spent November 1 and 2 in Las Vegas helping write some Air Force Regulations on how we visualize the battlespace. My company provides some solutions for the Air Force that are kind of Google Earthish in nature. The solution is called GeoBase. We help the Air Force visualize our US installations and those overseas that we may want to use in the future. It is a wonderful capability that save us lives and time in evaluating where we want to beddown our forces when we do expeditionary (new overseas locations) operations.

This week I am in Tacoma and Spokane, Washington, visiting McChord and Fairchild Air Force Bases. I evaluate their GeoBase programs and provide help if any is needed. It has been a lot of traveling since September, but I only have one more trip planned this year.

I will be back in Las Vegas December 3-8 for the Air Force's Installation Mapping and Visualization Council Meeting. The trips to Las Vegas are good times because I get to visit my brother Steve and his wife Tracy. Steve has cut his hair and they both look very good. Anyhow, I'm looking forward to seeing them again next month. Then I have no more trips scheduled until late January.