Before there were bills to pay and papers to grade and family to take of, there was the simplicity of being young.  Part of that simplicity was marking time on a calendar according to the big events of the year like school starting, school ending, birthdays, the Christmas Holidays, and if you were from Kansas City, the Thanksgiving day lighting of the Country Club Plaza.

For those who haven’t been there, the Country Club Plaza was the first shopping center created to be reached by automobile.  Its buildings are all in the Spanish style (it was designed to look like Seville).   Aside from being a great destination for a day of strolling, shopping, and eating, “the Plaza” offers the best Thanksgiving evening entertainment in the Midwest, its annual lighting ceremony.

Most cities congregate to watch a Christmas tree lighting.  That tree in Rockefeller square, for instance, which might take up a square block of real estate at best.  In Kansas City, folks gather to watch as all 55 acres suddenly, with the flick of a switch, are illuminated in the colors of the season.

Residents take the occasion pretty seriously.  They vie for the best spots from which to watch.  If you want a free experience, you get there very early and stake your claim to a parking spot on a rooftop parking deck.  If you have some funds or some friends with funds, you reserve a Plaza-facing hotel room on an appropriately high floor and watch the ceremony over winter cocktails with your favorite people.

It has been almost 20 years since I last watched the Plaza lighting ceremony, and even longer since life was simple enough to put that event on the calendar of life.  As we all celebrate Thanksgiving in a couple of days, I hope we all find a simple and illuminated moment of beauty to begin our holiday season.

Today’s World Lit assignment was Tadeusz Borowski’s “Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Gas Chamber.”  In the many years that I have taught this story, I think this is the first time it has fallen on the syllabus the last class period before Thanksgiving.  I think I may intentionally schedule it as a Thanksgiving week reading in the future.

Class began with a lot of complaining about my even holding a class meeting.  Seems many of my colleagues are on vacation even though school is not officially closed until Wednesday.  For some students in the course, mine was the only class they had to meet this week, the only thing preventing them from a full nine day holiday rather than a five day holiday.  What can I say?  I’m a stickler for rules.

As I put the first lecture slides on the screen, the ones with pictures of Auschwitz, there were still rumblings about being in class.  I pointed out the irony of complaining about attending class at the same time as we were reading a work of literature about the Nazi concentration camps, gas chambers and crematoria and all.  My students usually feel free to offer a whittyish comeback to such points, but none were offered today.  Instead, even those students who didn’t read the short story before coming to class sat in a certain posture of respect for the subjects of Borowski’s narrative. 

Today I am thankful for the many reminders of what I (and my students) have to be thankful for.  Whether it be Borowski’s autobiographical story of one of the darkest moments in human history, or videos, still painful to watch, of students at UC Davis in the pose of silent protest being pepper sprayed, nothing I am enduring deserves even a mention of complaint.