Thanksgiving 2013 In A Suburb 20 Min. From Detroit

Two young women who have been friends since age two, and the eldest sister of one of the women
got their families together for the holiday.
Everyone there had health care.
Five of the adults are safely retired.
Five children, 14 and under attended..
Three of the children were covered under a mom or a dad.
One of the children was definitely covered under a mom's insurance.
One other was probably covered under a dad's.
Two adults were working, and wouldn't talk about whether they were covered at work; but two
others (one with no children) were definitely covered at work. We spoke only briefly about
health care.gov except to say a computer cannot cover you anyway. Go to an insurance company.
Of the adults, eight women and four men came to dinner.
All the women were single except our hostess;  though two women were there with significant others.
Three of the single women were divorced.
The men were all married or paired.
One divorced couple was there with an adult son and his girlfriend and three of his young children with her. Though he was only forty-five, he had done time, had a newly discovered twenty-eight
year old son, and a twenty-five year old daughter in Florida.
We had to assume that for the two adults who wouldn't say, they did have health insurance because the children, it seems, were all covered.
Two of the working adults were social workers. One seemed to be an accountant, speaking about the
twenty-two levels of financing to save the Detroit Medical Center, ten years ago.
One was principal of a charter school.
One was an advertising professional.
One was in graduate school.
Other professions didn't come to light.
Dinner was all homemade save the jellied cranberry sauce and one of the cakes. The hostess had spread the cooking out over a two day period.
We ate a flavorful, tender turkey, stuffing with gravy, green beans with corn bread, (Oh, the
Honey-Baked ham was the brand named ham.) the cranberry sauce, a tender, fluffy mac and cheese.
Desserts were two sweet potato pies, a pound cake, and an Italian cream cake from Knudsen's Bakery
on W. McNichols in Detroit. No one can do that cake better. The store has been there more than forty
years.
We also talked Detroit politics. The buppies, young (Black Urban  Professionals)
believe we have a new mayor. No one else believed it.
The buppies were thirtyish.
All in attendance were African American. But two were related to mixed race families. One had
a daughter who was married to a white gentile. The other had a daughter who married a Jewish person.
We talked for a while about how last Sunday's Patriots/Broncos game nearly gave me a heart attack.
I don't always scream at TVs, but that day I was beside myself that I had stayed up late to see the
Pats go down 24/0 at half-time. I wanted to spit nails at high velocities.
Even though New England won in the end, I have barely forgiven them for what we put them through.
A couple of us lamented that Lovie Smith isn't coaching, and we expressed high hopes for the Lions.
We talked a little about institutionalized racism, but not much. Buppies seem to believe each racially
motivated incident is sui generis.
None of the rest of us could understand why they think that true until we decided none of them know
the history of the "struggle".
The youngest member of the dinner party got picked up by his divorced mom before he was ready to
leave. He was an only child, so having four adoring fans between about nine and thirteen was a dream so great he couldn't have imagined it.
Buppies seem to believe in charter schools, and are dubious about union professionals- equating the
individual problem persons in some cases with unions themselves.
I guess we weren't all deep thinkers, but we covered so many topics.
We didn't get into criminal justice or rap music.
Next time ... maybe at a book club meeting.