We will close our offices from this afternoon through Sunday to celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends over the next few days, although of course the free learning goes on! Speaking of learning, is there a word for sesquicentennial-plus-one? That’s how long the streak of the official Thanksgiving holidays in the U.S. has gone unbroken, ever since Honest Abe spoke of the bounties that “cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible” — and that in the midst of a terrible civil war.

As you may have noticed, we are eschewing the more-traditional turkey imagery (so done!) in favor of cranberries, an act of iconoclasm that will immediately be nullified by our embrace of the spirit of the holiday, below.

It is traditional to speak aloud the things for which one is grateful at Thanksgiving, but we propose to substitute the written word:

Thank you, students. Thank you, friends, supporters, and collaborators. Thanks for your words of praise as well as critique; for your enthusiasm as well as your patience; for your love of learning and faith in the value of education for improving lives and communities, especially this larger community called Earth.

Wherever you are, whomever you are, whatever your joys or adversities, we wish for you all good things. And again, thank you.

Photo modified from: Muffet via photopin CC BY 2.0

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