The year was 1977. The Clash, The Talking Heads, The Sex Pistols, and Elvis Costello all released their debut albums while The Ramones released their second and third albums, but I wasn’t listening to any of them. I was still obsessed with Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life released the year before and other music that had been released over the past decade from The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and a random assortment of hippies, freaks, and dreamers. My consciousness was expanding.
First, it was possible, then likely, and eventually it became unavoidable: the conviction that there was something immoral about meat. As I wrote in my diary on my first vegetarian Thanksgiving, “I had no turkey because I hate the killing of any animal.” Even now, 45 years later, the thought of chewing on flesh or making clothes, accessories, and furniture from skin is grotesque. It would take more psychic energy that I can spare to convince myself otherwise. So I will eat the grains and vegetables and be thankful.
The picture at the top is two Toms: My dad and Tom Turkey in the kitchen of the house that was my first home. Even though home has changed over the years, it is always the place where love lives. Of all the things that make me thankful – and they are countless – none compares to love.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Words & Music by Mike Power 