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EGACY Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.

WEDNESDAYS • Nov. 27, 2019

INSIDE

A collection of individual viewpoints on Thanksgiving - A sister wronged, struggling, but still thankful - A historical lesson on genocide and holocausts - Counting the number of Thanksgiving days left - Thankful for? The snarky and inappropriate list

Richmond & Hampton Roads

LEGACYNEWSPAPER.COM • FREE

Instead of just being grateful, try this on Thanksgiving ADAM GRANT Expressing gratitude is a November ritual. By giving thanks, we help others feel appreciated and remind ourselves of how fortunate we are.

But if we want to promote a spirit of generosity, we need to add another custom to the Thanksgiving repertoire.

Although gratitude is a powerful emotion, it’s also a fleeting one. Research shows that when we say thanks, we become motivated to pay back or forward what we’ve received. Then the emotion fades and the giving stops.

A few years ago, Jane Dutton and I asked people to donate a portion of their money to relief efforts for the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. The base rate of giving in a control

group was 13 percent When we randomly assigned a second group of people to list three things they had received from others, donations climbed to 21 percent.

Not bad… until we saw that a different exercise spiked the giving rate above 46 percent.

Instead of reflecting on what they had received, we asked a third group to write down three things that they had contributed to others. Now they saw themselves as givers, and here was a chance to earn that identity by helping victims of a natural disaster.

Gratitude is a temporary emotion. Giving is a lasting value.

In another experiment, we asked university fundraisers to keep a daily journal about what they had received from others or contributed

to others. Over the next two weeks, the fundraisers who reflected on giving increased their total effort by 25 percent — and put in 13 percent more hourly effort than their colleagues who wrote about receiving. Having reminded themselves that they were the kinds of people who cared about others, they became invested in giving more.

According to a popular mantra, we should give without remembering and receive without forgetting. Our research suggests otherwise: we should take the time to remember both what we’ve given and what we’ve received.

So this Thanksgiving, don’t just count your blessings. Count your contributions too.

Grant is a Wharton professor and the author of “Give and Take and Originals”.

The LEGACY

2 • Nov. 27, 2019

Behind the fog... thanks My name is Regina. I am from Kentucky, and I have six kids and seventeen grandkids. I’ve struggled with crack addiction for 30 years. I didn’t care about anything anymore.

I was a tomboy as a kid. I liked to ride bicycles and jump in the water.

There were 10 of us, three girls and seven boys. One of the boys died of pneumonia when he was 10-monthsold.

I was been raped by my own brother when I was 13. I’ll be [57] in December, and it still bothers me. I was ashamed at first, I’m not ashamed no more. He calls me, but I don’t want to hear his voice. I told him I’d never forget. I told him ‘I’m your baby sister, you’re supposed to be my king.’

I was doing really well in my 20s, until I started doing drugs. I was working, doing childcare, helping disabled people, cooking. Then I got into crack through a friend. In the beginning, druggies mean no harm, but you get to the point where you don’t care. It’s been over 30 years now. I was getting too old, I had to stop. The stuff I did, it was so nasty.

It was not even dope no more. You waste your money and you ain’t getting nothing.

Being a woman on the streets is hard. I stayed on the streets for two years. I slept in a car for a while, and on the sidewalk. The hardest thing was going to sleep at night.

It’s not safe. Men wanna mess with you. And they rob you, steal all your food. I had to do things to survive.

Have sex, whatever. I got tired. I went to the district attorney’s office [in San Francisco] and cried like a baby. The officer said ‘It’s gonna be alright.’ And I got the SRO (Single Room Occupancy.)

“My SRO… People are shooting needles in the bathroom, and they’re having sex in there. That’s why I avoid being home. I often feel like I’m still homeless.”

The SRO I’m at is on a drug street.

I could buy like a dollar hit, two dollar hit. But once I buy it will get me started to want more, and then you’ve got to get out there and do things for it, like [fellatio] and all

that. I don’t want to do that.

Although I’ve been clean for two months now, life is still hard for me.

Right now, I’m depressed. I thank the Lord everyday for having a roof over my head, but I’m not used to living in an SRO. A lot of the times I feel like killing myself. Maybe it’s the easy way out. I’m so tired of looking at the four walls, I’m tired of crying. I try to not be in my room, because I’m uncomfortable there.

People are shooting needles in the bathroom, and they’re having sex in there. I hate that. That’s why I avoid being home. I often feel like I’m still homeless.

“I’m a grandmother, and I’ve got something to live for.”

Now, I’ve got to spend my money on my grandkids. I’m a grandmother, and I’ve got something to live for. At first, I didn’t care, but I realize now that my grandkids really love me.

One time, one of my granddaughters came in when I was sick. She said I am going to make a pattern on the

“Being a woman on the streets is hard.

Men wanna mess with you. And they rob you, steal all your food.” floor for you, grandma. So I got on the pattern and she said ‘I love you’.

And I said ‘You don’t even know how much you are giving me that makes me love you even more.’ She’s making me strong. And I tell them everyday not to do drugs, don’t drink, don’t smoke. Be yourself and stay a kid while you are a kid, that’s what I tell them.

When I got my checks on Friday, I used to get high. Now, I call my daughter up and I say ‘Please, come and get me, cause the money is burning in my hand.’

When I got my checks on Friday, I used to get high. Now, I call my

daughter up and I say ‘Please, come and get me, cause the money is burning in my hand.’ I’ve got to fight the crave. And I’m tired of it. The more I keep myself busy, the less I think about it. I started working for Downtown Streets Team to distract myself. And I read my bible. I also like marijuana, it takes the craving from me.

I’m trying not to be weak no more.

I’m getting stronger. I just want something simple in my life. Get a nice little one bedroom. Go back to church. Learn about God the right way. Have my grandkids over for the weekend. We could play and love and talk, and I’d make sure they had whatever they want.

This Thanksgiving, I’m going to my daughter’s house. I’ve been saving up the Safeway cards I get from working with the Downtown Streets Team to cook Thanksgiving dinner for my family. I’ll cook the turkey, ham, roast, potato salad, yam and cornbread for them. Like I used to.

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Nov. 27, 2019 • 3

Thanksgiving: Celebrating the hidden holocaust NAFEEZ AHMED Imagine if the Nazis won the Second World War. Yes, yes, I know there’s a TV show about that — but stay with me.

So imagine: the Nazis won, and then every year, on the day when we currently hold Holocaust Remembrance Day, they celebrate with a national holiday called “Eternal Gratefulness for the Fruits of Industry.”

In the Nazi national holiday, citizens bizarrely demonstrate no recollection whatsoever of the systematic, bureaucratic statesponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews.

Instead, they share with each other strange stories of how the German nation overcame all obstacles through generosity and love, manifested in amazing industrial advancements attributed to the wonderous exceptionalism of the German nation. Stories that have literally no resemblance to real Nazi history.

Guess what.

We’re the Nazis. We committed acts of genocide, enslavement, mass murder and ethnic cleansing. And we won the war — a war that never really ended. But we carry on as if there’s no war.

Except there is a war. And it’s not just the Jews and ‘the Indians’ who are the victims. The war has turned on us. But we still don’t see it.

Instead, we sleepwalk into it, perpetrate it on ourselves, in the very act of collectively accumulating hundreds of thousands of air miles pumping colossal quantities of carbon dioxide into an already over-polluted atmosphere, and overconsuming millions of turkeys bred in brutal factory farms — giant animal concentration camps — that would probably make the Nazis mildly proud.

We are at the pinnacle, right now, of a hidden holocaust. So hidden that our national and global culture, fueled by our advertisingdriven media system, sanitises this holocaust with pomp and celebration.

The word “holocaust” is a Greek word, which means “sacrifice by fire.” It conveys an event, the scale and horror of which, transformed the course of world history.

The Nazi holocaust was, indeed, a uniquely horrific genocide, whose enormity and systematic character is barely imaginable, designed to exterminate wholly the Jewish people, physically, socially, culturally, from the face of the Earth.

The idea of a ‘hidden holocaust’ conveys an ongoing campaign of global homicide, murder, whose scale and enormity is such that one feels that the word ‘holocaust’ does, certainly loosely speaking, apply.

It is ‘hidden’, in the sense that, although experienced by millions

of people around the world both historically and today, it remains invisible, officially unacknowledged — thanks to a broken media system that fails, chronically, to join the dots.

This ‘hidden holocaust’, is escalating, accelerating, intensifying; according to all expert projections from the social and physical sciences, it may culminate in the extinction of the human species, unless we take immediate drastic action, now.

The ‘hidden holocaust’ is not an unfortunate aberration from our civilization, which, perhaps with some choice reform, still represents the peak of human development.

Rather, the ‘hidden holocaust’ is integral to the very structure, values and activities of our civilization.

Unless we see this, and transform it, we will all perish in a holocaust of our own making.

The ‘hidden holocaust’ began at the dawn of modern civilization itself, especially in the pivotal voyages for European colonial expansion and trade from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth centuries. Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, English and other explorers ventured out from their home countries in search of new wealth and new land in all corners of the globe. They went to the continents of America, Africa and Asia and set up colonies and trading outposts.

Colonists and settlers had all sorts of intentions. Some of them had capital, and were simply looking for new investment opportunities.

Others were trying to escape lives of hardship at home to make new lives for themselves with a fresh start by settling in the colonies. Others wanted to deliver the message of Christianity to native populations.

Almost all of them saw themselves as part of the inevitable historical momentum of Progress, bringing the fruits of European civilization to backward peoples.

It is, though, irrelevant what these different individuals intended.

Because the sum, accumulated outcome of European imperial expansion involved massive, systematic violence.

Violence of all kinds.

Wholesale massacres, forced labour camps, disease, malnutrition due to the imposed conditions of economic deprivation, mass suicides due to depression and cultural alienation.

As Irving Louis Horowitz argues in Genocide: State Power and Mass Murder, “the conduct of classic colonialism was invariably linked with genocide.”

American holocaust Starting from 1492, when Christopher Columbus is said to have discovered the Americas, the deadly conquest commenced.

The complex civilizations of Native Americans, over the next

(continued on page 14)

The LEGACY

4 • Nov. 27, 2019

Happy Thanksgiving anyway Finding gratitude in the ruins LISA RENEE Thanksgiving is not a favorite. The story is silly at best and racist at worst. The shopping is a terrifying display of everything wrong. The mess is prodigious and long lasting.

It’s supposed to be about thanks giving, giving thanks, but it’s really about boring food. Turkey (absolutely whatever), cranberry sauce (pretty, easy, and forgettable, like jello), and stuffing (bread mash, who cares).

Pies, though. And wine.

The only truly good part is the thanks. There’s power in gratitude, if it’s practiced sincerely, though it’s tough to feel grateful in a shit storm. 2016 is challenging gratitude,

laughing in the face of sincerity.

Grinches are all about, robbing us of cheer, filling our mouths with metal and cotton. Fear tastes like anger tastes like fear. There’s a bar code behind my eyelids.

[The year] killed my dog, laid off my husband, smacked around my kids, and squeezed me tighter in the fist of menopause. It gut-punched a few friends and meddled with our teeth. It stole some favorite luminaries and gave us a gold leaf clown. It crammed hysteria, hegemony and white power ugly boys down our throats and told girls to shut up and stop eating.

It stomped in seven league boots, leaving oily footprints all over the rug. [The year] either hates us or is

having a laugh. Either way, it sucks creamed onions.

It all matters, and it all doesn’t matter. The sun rises, which is to say either “it’s ok” or “it’s so fucking bad that the only positive is the reliable rotation of the earth.” I’m leaning into the second. I will start my gratitude list this year with that simple fact.

•I am grateful for the reliable rotation of the earth.

•I am grateful for our relative, mediocre health.

• I am grateful for the wood that burns in my stove.

• I am grateful for my stove.

• I am grateful for … pencils?

• I quit.

Yes, I’m grateful for food and

family, water and wine, life and limb. But I’m so tired. So boneweary, heart-sick, brain-cramped and soul-walloped by a mean and petty orange streak blazing through everything that felt decent. Tearing a hole in the flesh of collective attempts to just be good.

To be good is not unattainable. It is my wish for all of us.

I will say, I’m also grateful for this thing that the sky does over my back yard each evening, this curious ombré thing from pale blue to lavender to pink to orange, striped so perfectly like an unseen hand drew a brush right across the celestial canvas. It’s very pretty.

And leftovers.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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Nov. 27, 2019• 5

The last Thanksgiving MEG I have a strained relationship with Thanksgiving. I won’t say I hate it, but the word “dread’ does spring to mind.

This day others are thankful for has been problematic for me since birth. A late November child, my birthday often aligns with the evershifting holiday, it’s Jupiterian bulk eclipsing my puny sphere.

Before you get on my case, Christmas babies, let me acknowledge the greater suckiness of your nativity issues. My deepest sympathies. Moving on …

A Thanksgiving birthday meant that while other children had kid-

friendly parties — fun food, little friends, Pin The Tale on the Donkey — I was often decorously celebrating with the cartes du jour, old folks and pharmaceutical table talk.

It’s not that I didn’t like the meal. Stuffing is an underserved delight. But my favorite dinner was (and is) spaghetti, damn it.

Other family members got to choose their birthday menu. Why not me?

It’s freakin’ spaghetti. What could be easier? The only explanation: “ You can’t have spaghetti for Thanksgiving.” That’s code for, “Thanksgiving is more important than you.”

The Thanksgiving effect reverberated through the entire

week. The days before were busy with cooking. People left town for the weekend. I could never be certain if the dearth of children at my scantily attended off-day parties was due to grandparenty obligations or if those were merely convenient excuses to avoid being seen with me.

But there’s more.

I am descended from accidentprone Pilgrim John Howland, an indentured servant who managed to fall off the boat during a storm but was miraculously saved, hand of God and all that. My family was smugly proud of this unearned distinction.

I learned early that getting to America before the next guy made you a superior sort of person. Those

ancestors who came much, much later to mine coal? Hidden in the back room when company called.

Thanks largely to Uncle Mitch, the high mucky-muck (oops, I mean governor) of the Society of Mayflower Descendants of Pennsylvania, my sister, cousins and I, along with other suffering children, were — for the benefit of the society pages, because without society pages how do you know you’re someone?

— trussed into Pilgrim garb and trundled over cobbled streets to spend a long Thanksgiving Sunday at Old Swedes’ Church in Philadelphia.

(continued on page 8)

6 • Nov. 27, 2019

The LEGACY

TIME IS THE MOST VALUABLE RESOURCE I HAVE. YET, I DON’T MANAGE IT LIKE ONE. HERE’S HOW I’M CHANGING MY LIFE: I have 46 Thanksgiving dinners left with family.

And then, I’ll be dead.

BEN HUH I’m not good at quantifying my life. Most of us aren’t. We don’t think of life as a finite resource that needs management, but it is. Life is finite and we keep using it up every second. Even the smartest people I know only have a vague sense of what’s left versus what’s been used in their lives.

The Quantified Self movement of step trackers and sleep apps has gotten it backwards. The way to change our behavior isn’t to measure our daily accomplishments, but to measure it relation to what remains of our life.

Why don’t more of us quantify the dwindling resource of life? It’s just too morbid. We are frozen with uncertainty about our future. We are so busy with tomorrow that we forget the todays we have left. We’re simply in denial.

So I counted what is left in my life.

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I stopped using the language of uncertainty and started being overly definite about what is left. I started by calculating my activities and predicted their future occurrences.

Then I forced myself to write them in clear, unambiguous statements.

Let’s start with two hard numbers: I will live to 83. I will be active until 75.

Between today and the day I die, I have five more home buys left. I have 19 car purchases left. I have 1,368 bottles of wine left to drink. I The LEGACY welcomes all signed letters and all respectful opinions.

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have 46 new countries left to visit.

I have 8,376 dinners left with my wife. Et cetera, et cetera. The one number that I can’t bring myself to publish is the number of times I have left to see my mom. I can feel the tears welling up inside me.

These numbers don’t make me happy. They are morbidity made real. They are a harsh reality opposed to the vague, positive, seemingly infinite notion of the future I used to have. But my overly definite count of life that remains is just as real of a construct as a dreamy, foggy future. The quantification of life that remains is a huge dose of reality.

There is one unwavering positive realization that comes from counting the life that remains: I am my own Dr. Emmett Brown and my own Marty McFly from “Back to the Future”, the highest-grossing film of 1985. My time machine isn’t a retrofuturistic stainless steel DeLorean.

My time machine is just elementary school math on a spreadsheet. All that’s required to travel to the future is to take off the blinds of uncertainty and exchange them for a confident prediction — and know that we are free to correct them with deliberate changes in behavior.

Did facing my mortality make me more appreciative of my life?

Yes. No. I have 228,000 miles left to drive in my life. I won’t be changing my

behavior on that. While I can wax poetic about the joy of every mile, that’s bullshit. I’ll spend most of it zombie-driving in traffic. However, I only have 46 New Year’s Eve celebrations left (Whoa! That’s less than 50!). I’ll definitely be more appreciative and more thoughtful about how I spend my New Year’s Eves. It also turns out, I see an average of 1 fireworks show per year (I regularly miss NYE or Independence Day). 46 fireworks shows remaining? Damn. Let’s order up a change in habit.

Be warned. Quantification of the life that remains isn’t a blanket license to upend everything right now. In fact, radical behavioral changes rarely stick. Quantification is a cautionary tale of how I’ve sleepwalked through many amazing moments, and the determination that I can change my future.

There are only two ways to change the future.

One: Do more of what I want.

For example, I read an average of 1 book every 2.5 weeks. It was a surprise to learn that I had less than 1,000 books left to read — 966 to be exact. Given the amazing literary works throughout history and the amazing works to come in the next 46 years, I began to wonder if I would be happy with this number.

The simple thing to do is to increase

(continued on page 7)

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Nov. 27, 2019• 7

P.T. Hoffsteader, Esq.

Winter is always coming Last week, my father-in-law came to visit for a few hours. He and my motherin-law live relatively close, and one or both of them come to visit their young grandchildren a couple of times a month.

It is a highlight when “Pops!” or “Mimi!” come to the house. They play games, read books, eat lunch, and eventually head back for the 90-minute drive home to northeast Ohio. It’s a family tradition.

After his visit, around 3:00 PM, my father-in-law got back in the car to head home. But he did not get home around 4:30, in time to do some work around the house before dinner. Instead, he sat, on the same quarter mile of I-80 for nine hours before eventually getting home.

Last weekend was the start of winter in Ohio and Pennsylvania and with winter comes a different, more sinister tradition: the regular shutting down of I-80 and other interstates for extended periods due to vehicle accidents.

It’s no one’s fault, exactly. After all, nobody intends to get into an accident.

And the state police that came by every few hours to make sure my father-inlaw and his fellow drivers were alive and had enough gas to keep their heaters on in subfreezing temperatures were certainly working hard. But it’s a curious thing. I-80 began construction in 1953 and was completed in 1970, which means for 49 years citizens have been subjected to annual, disastrous pileups every time the snow starts falling. In the worst instances, state troopers arrange to take the ill or elderly to hotels on buses. Hopefully they get there before some poor pregnant mom goes into labor.

But otherwise, everyone just waits, and hopes, that this time, the trooper’s estimate of “just another two hours” proves to be true. It’s not the fault of the first responders. They are trying their best to do their jobs in difficult circumstances. But no one in authority ever has the sense to think, “Maybe we should do something different this year.”

Anyone who has ever experienced this sort of delay, or stayed up calling a relative who is stuck in it, knows what it feels like to hope for basic government competency and not get it.

It is surprising then that we keep falling for the same extravagant claims every election cycle. Presidential candidates make promises to “Make America Great Again,” or “Drain the swamp,” or “make college education free,” or “provide health care for everyone,” or bring “Hope and Change.” But the government cannot even fulfill basic functions, such as keeping the roads clean of snow and ice, or helping get drivers off the road after an accident. Why do we think they can fulfill all of the ridiculous promises we hear every four years, despite the abundant evidence to the contrary?

We do in fact still leave plenty of children behind in our education system.

We haven’t stopped terrorism. We are losing the War on Drugs, and the War on Poverty has wasted trillions of dollars without actually reducing poverty at all.

American manufacturing has not come back to Lordstown, Ohio, or Buffalo, NY. If you like your doctor, and your plan, you can’t actually keep them.

We’re like Charlie Brown and every four years we really, honestly believe that Lucy is going to let us kick the football. But just like my father-inlaw couldn’t make it home for dinner, the promise of Elizabeth Warren to magically socialize healthcare for the “low price of $30 trillion” somehow without raising middle class taxes are obviously untrue. The promise of Joe Biden to bring back the glory days of Obama’s presidency, when we all liked each other, there was no partisanship, health care worked well, and Syria was a functioning country, are as true as Joe’s stories about his time under fire in war zones. Bernie Sanders’ angry diatribes against the rich are slightly less believable now that he is a multimillionaire. And of course, Donald Trump’s guarantee that “it was a perfect phone call” seems no more believable now than it was in June.

Maybe we should gain some perspective from all of this. In my view, I-80 is an apt metaphor for our entire governmental apparatus, from local and state governments to the leviathan in Washington. And Winter is Always Coming.

Dr. Caleb Verbois

(from page 6) the time spent on book reading.

But there in lies the problem.

Quantification of life that remains is a brutal reminder in the finiteness of time.

I can try to extend my life, but there’s very little I can do to actually extend the useful, vibrant portion of it. Unless science produces some magic, efforts to fight the clock are not my best return on investment.

So that means doing less of something else. Fortunately, there’s a lot of bullshit in our lives and I can remove as much of that as possible.

Who doesn’t love getting rid of crap!

But that leads to another problem: Removing bullshit means spending lots of time looking for, and focusing on, the bullshit. Eww. It’s a lifelong struggle to change the ratio of good time vs. bad time because it is dependent on so much external, uncontrollable events like traffic, the economy, other people, etc. Fighting what I can’t change means I’m just shouting into the wind. That’s the opposite of how I want to spend my time.

Can I do more of what I want by removing what I don’t want?

Sometimes. Is it the best way to improve the rest of my life? No. There’s a better way.

Two: Improve the quality of what’s left.

I can, however, change how I view each and every experience. Let’s

take the diverse world of food. I have 114 Michelin-star meals remaining.

I also have 14,352 cups of coffee and 7,176 bananas left (at time of publication 7,175 bananas remain).

It’s not about spending more money.

I suppose I could drink only Kopi Luwak brewed in the vacuum of space, or eat only organic dwarf bananas picked by albino-chimps, or only dine at 3-Michelin star restaurants in eastern Spain. (I could, but that devolves the question of quality into a matter of financial constraint and is ultimately a zero sum gain and yet another drain on time.)

Quality of experiences is entirely a mental, self-controllable pursuit.

There are many ways to attain the skills: meditation, self-help, religion, etc. But at the core of each and every single one is the message “It’s not about grabbing more, but appreciating the now.”

Here’s what I can do: I can be thoughtful. I can be deliberate.

I can create a physical depleting reminder to what I have left — such as marbles in a jar. I can say “yes” to the important, and say “no” to everything else. I can love the good and accept the bad. (I can go on, and on.) All of these phrases are familiar because we have all been told how to lead a quality life. Yet we don’t. We make excuses.

That was until I counted how many birthdays I had left: 46.

8 •Nov. 27, 2019

The LEGACY

(from page 5) Built in a time of stern religion, Old Swedes’ was designed for righteousness not comfort.

Seated in hard, straight-backed pews, we had the privilege of squirming in a child’s version of purgatory whilst being flogged for a good hour with the fortitude of our forebears. They, we were assured, would have considered pew-sitting a vacation. It was a joyous occasion.

One year, we went on a family pilgrimage to Plymouth on — you guessed it — Thanksgiving.

We went to Sturbridge Village, too. Seeing the living history displays and landscape was educational. I recommend it.

I do not, however, advise Thanksgiving dinner at a less than stellar hotel. Though a child, the awfulness of the meal remains etched in my memory: overlit room, soggy turkey, pallid gravy, canned cranberry, overcooked peas, and skimpy stuffing. Only the potatoes held their own. It’s hard to ruin potatoes.

As a child, I imagined adulthood came with perks such as controlling one’s own destiny. I was wrong, at least where Thanksgiving was concerned.

My 30th birthday fell on Thanksgiving.

Recalling disappointing birthdays past, I decided to be proactive. I would host my own party.

Brilliant! I would be assured dinner companions on my big day. I invited twelve friends. They said yes. I purchased a monstrous turkey.

In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, they called me, those friends, dropping out one by one.

A family something had come up or, perhaps, a better offer. By the morn of Thanksgiving Eve a single guest remained on the roster.

This rather sad state of affairs seemed unfair to my guest. I phoned Sage, offering her the option to opt out if she had a more festive alternative.

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry I haven’t called. I can’t come.” Sheesh!

Another birthday defeated.

I tossed the bird in the freezer and suffered the indignity of calling around to find a dinner I could horn in on. That’s how I came to celebrate my thirtieth birthday with my boss. Good times.

From this lowpoint, you might guess it was all uphill. Not so fast.

I got married. Our wedding was in September.

Two months later, we headed to New York City to join my new mother-in-law for Thanksgiving. My husband’s cousin had gotten us Thanksgiving Eve tickets to Juan Darien at the Vivian Beaumont.

How exciting! We decided to have dinner before the show at a Lincoln Center restaurant.

Part way through dinner, my mother-in-law

started to look pale and clammy. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“I don’t feel well. Please take me home,” she eked out.

Um. Maybe not.

Thank God we were at Lincoln Center. The restaurant staff called the house doctor. He arrived with oxygen, took one look at my motherin-law and called an ambulance. That’s how we came to spend that Thanksgiving at St. Luke’s Hospital.

That heart attack was followed by a stroke on Christmas Eve, which precipitated a move into a NYC nursing home followed by a relocation to assisted living in Maine, where we could keep tabs on her.

Being in a wheelchair meant my mother-in-law couldn’t visit our house. It wasn’t a matter of a ramp. We could have carried her up the porch steps. None of the interior doors in the centuryold home were wide enough to let the chair pass.

Thanksgiving at our farm was out. Thanksgiving at a restaurant? Good luck with that.

Thanksgiving at the retirement home sucks. It doesn’t matter if the food is good. No one wants to be there — not you, not the staff, and certainly not the residents — making it all the more important to attend. The good news is it’s held early so the staff can get home to their families. This means that you, too, can be responsible for a second Thanksgiving at your house.

That’s right!

Somewhere during the 12 assisted-living years

I lost it. I was tired of being the responsible one.

My creativity was stifled. I was bored with the meal. I couldn’t stand everyone’s expectations of me and Thanksgiving one more minute.

Perhaps I went a little crazy.

My mind wandered from images of Pilgrims feasting with American Indians into a fantasy of Pilgrims cooking with Indians from India in a culinary collusion. The more I daydreamed the more inspired I became. Spending a semester at Gujarat University hardly make me an Indian chef, but at least I had a frame of reference.

For the first time ever, I became artistically invested in Thanksgiving dinner. I scoured cookbooks for Indian equivalents of each dish.

Bird roasting was a lost cause. I’d have to go American there. But cranberry chutney, spicy peas, curried squash, masala potatoes and aromatic, biryani-style stuffing all sounded good to me. I even went all roti on the cornbread.

Pumpkin pie, with its traditional spices, was a perfect finish.

I was psyched. I was energized. I cooked with glee and, I must confess, a wee bit of malice.

Thanksgiving at the home behind us, we returned to house guests who had been keeping an eye on the turkey. More guests arrived for cocktails. A little wine, a little scotch, a few martinis, a handful of nuts … before they knew it was time for dinner.

Ta da!

They sniffed. They looked. They gingerly filled their plates and took a bite. No one died. We were not visited by the ghosts of Pilgrim Fathers angrily brandishing spectral muskets. Everyone was complimentary in a very restrained sort of way. They asked for more wine. The pie was a hit.

Despite its lukewarm reception, that meal might have been my greatest culinary accomplishment.

It served its purpose. It fed others while feeding my soul.

Best of all, I was never asked to make Thanksgiving dinner again!

These days we go to a Thanksgiving potluck hosted by friends. She handles the bird, stuffing and gravy. He appetizes us with varied versions of his famous hummus. We guests fulfill side dish and dessert assignments with room for personal flair.

No pressure. No expectations. Just gratitude for food and each other’s company.

This happy collaboration feels right to me.

For the first time in my life, I really enjoy Thanksgiving.

Perhaps my Pilgrim ancestors are smiling, too.

After all, their First Thanksgiving was not about family. It was about community.

www.LEGACYnewspaper.com

Nov. 27, 2019• 9

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10 • Nov. 27, 2019

The LEGACY

Things I’m grateful for that I won’t mention at Thanksgiving... (Because my gratitude list is inappropriate) BEBE NICHOLSON A Satirival View “I’m grateful I’m not a turkey.”

It’s the season to be grateful and to remember our blessings.

Every year at my house we go around the Thanksgiving table and mention what we’re grateful for. But one year I made the mistake of reading my gratitude list to my husband, and he said it was inappropriate.

I don’t understand why. I’m truly grateful for these things. But for the sake of maintaining Thanksgiving harmony, I’ll share my list here instead.

The first thing I am grateful for is toilet paper. Lots of it.

This appreciation for toilet paper started early in life. My dad used to walk me to the bathroom, show me the toilet paper roll, tear off two little squares and say, “Stop using so much. You only need to use two squares.”

Two squares? We might as well use our bare hands!

I would nod and say okay. But as soon as he was gone I would unroll long, luxurious reams until there was nothing left but the cardboard core, which I left on the toilet paper holder.

Nowadays I buy jumbo rolls in jumbo packages from Sam’s Club or Costco. My dad, if he were living, would be appalled. Or at the very least, glad he wasn’t paying for it.

One time I read about missionaries who were kidnapped and forced to hide with their kidnappers in the the jungle. My first thought was, “What do they do for toilet paper?”

The second thing I’m grateful for is teeth.

My sister, who is single, likes teeth, too. Not having them is a major deal breaker when it comes to dating.

“Does he have teeth?” She always asks if someone wants to introduce her to a potential date.

If you ask me, men should be texting women pictures of their teeth instead of other body parts better left covered.

When I worked in a thrift store, somebody donated a full set of teeth. They were in a plastic Ziplock bag at the bottom of a sack of clothes.

I had fun with those teeth. I placed them on various desks around the office and was not disappointed at the commotion they generated.

“Eeeew! That’s disgusting!” Was the most common response.

The teeth reminded me of one of our thrift

store customers whose brand new big, gleaming dentures had vanished.

“What happened to your teeth?” I finally got up the nerve to ask.

“The dog ate them,” she said. “We love that dog but he’s a nuisance. He better be glad he’s not a turkey at Thanksgiving.”

I started to offer her the teeth in the Ziplock bag, but decided teeth probably had to be specially fitted.

I’m grateful for my own teeth, and don’t understand why this would be inappropriate to mention at Thanksgiving. We will all be using teeth to eat Thanksgiving dinner, and that should be a tremendous source of gratitude.

The same argument can made for toilet paper, since we’ll most likely be using it afterwards.

The third thing I’m grateful for is not having bunion surgery.

Bunions run in my family. I remember one aunt who cut a hole in her shoe to make room for her bunion, which protruded through the hole. I thought that was horrendous.

I refuse to cut holes in my shoes. I just keep buying bigger and bigger shoes, so that my feet remind me of boats, but my toes have room to wallow around pain-free.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Why doesn’t she go ahead and have those bunions removed?”

It’s because I had foot surgery 30 years ago (for a different foot malady) and my feet took forever to heal. My toes still look a little swollen.

I was in a wheel chair for a while, since I insisted on having both feet done at the same time. But something happened that traumatized

me.

The family had gone to an outdoor concert, and my children got the idea to push me down a hill. Fast. The wheel chair gained momentum, bouncing and lurching over roots and rocks. My husband tried to catch up to us but we were too far gone. I screamed and the children stopped just short of crashing me into a row of porta potties at the bottom of the hill.

So you can see why I’m grateful for not having bunion surgery. Surgery of any kind can be traumatic, but especially surgery that leaves you at the mercy of rambunctious kids. My children aren’t young anymore, but I have grandchildren.

I explained to my husband that bunion surgery should remain on the gratitude list, because if I couldn’t walk during the holidays, there would be no Thanksgiving dinner. Come to think of it, every single member of my family who is coming for dinner should be grateful I am not having surgery.

But he thought it was strange to be grateful for surgery you’re not going to have.

The last thing on my gratitude list doesn’t have as much to do with Thanksgiving as toilet paper, teeth or bunion surgery. But it’s something I am so grateful for that I can’t leave it out.

I am grateful to get back home from wherever I’ve been.

It doesn’t matter if I’ve been on the greatest vacation ever or a trip to Walmart, I’m still overjoyed to get back home. It isn’t that I don’t have a good time when I’m out and about. But all of a sudden, in the middle of the Walmart line or the crowds in the mall or the traffic jam, I will think, “I’m so ready to be home!”

Entering my house after being away induces a euphoria that’s hard to describe. I’m back with my coffee maker, my computer, my books, my bed, and my phone if I happened to forget to take it with me.

The man who honked his horn when I didn’t turn fast enough, the woman who held up the line because she was arguing with the cashier, the person who dinged my car with his door, all recede into the background when I get home.

I might be able to sneak this last thing in during the Thanksgiving blessing. I can say, “I’m grateful for my family, this wonderful food, and all our blessings as we all sit here together in my home, which I am very grateful to be in.”

So chow down with those beautiful teeth, and there’s plenty of toilet paper for everybody.

www.LEGACYnewspaper.com

Nov. 27, 2019 • 11

Thanksgiving: A defiant feast LISA RENEE I have to say, I’m tired of this holiday. I have a bad attitude about many of these forced celebrations — Halloween, the Fourth, Easter. I can be a bit of a killjoy, I’ve made no secret of it.

With two kids gone and two still tethered, I flirted with the altered holiday. I imagined a Thanksgiving made of steak, or osso bucco. How about a festive lasagna, or fresh pork? Italian wedding soup, lobster in champagne, venison with juniper — we love to cook, but turkey?

Can we just get a pizza?

This meal, the Thanksgiving meal that is rhapsodized for weeks, is the very definition of mediocre. Food writers contort themselves to come up with the new twist that elevates it — jalapeños in your cranberries!, brine your turkey!, bacon and chestnuts and oysters, oh my! — but can we admit that this meal just doesn’t sing, no matter what you do to it? Call it comfort food, cleave to your traditions, but turkey, mashed, gravy, and stuffing is not much more than a bland Sunday gut bomb. On a Thursday. Pile some winking red berries on top, maybe a sprout in balsamic, wash it down with a Pinot and go to sleep.

This year, however, my bad attitude is getting a bit of a kick in the pants. We are being given — gifted — a thirty pound turkey; and not just any turkey, but a happy turkey of the free range, no chemical interference variety. The universe has decided to be kind and generous with a wink and a nod.

Here’s a heaping portion of the popular and supposedly delicious thing that you disparage so. What are you going to do with it? Says the universe, with a smirk.

Okay. Challenge accepted.

My husband, Mr. Meat, will do something wonderful with the bird and we will feast on sandwiches

and soups and other turkey based folderol for days. I am, for the first time in years, fighting my turkey day cynicism and enthusiastically seeking the most magnificent things to do with veggies and pies. Perhaps there will even be appetizers and cocktails. Maybe something with mushrooms or a decadent cheese.

Winter squash can be divine, in the right hands. How about gruyere gratins and fluffy rolls smeared with butter? Can I get a fish in there somewhere? Maybe there’s something splendid to be done with plums. I saw something about drunk cranberries, that could work. Maple custard and chocolate mousse, pumpkin cheesecake and lemon tart.

Lillet and a Beaujolais and off to sleep. I can do this.

How have I forgotten?

I used to embrace this holiday, when all my kids were home and people came to see us and there weren’t quite so many looming dark shadow monsters infusing each day with dread. I used to whip up courses and lay out linens and light candles and sometimes it was hard and sometimes it felt underappreciated or like a waste of time and energy, but we made memories.

We twisted the bland American meal to fit our snarky palates and we argued and kvetched, but we were also heartily sated and we laughed and sang and felt warmed by our participation in the show. I miss that

feeling.

I’m not sure what happened, not sure when or how the cynicism took over. It’s as if a slow creeping vine of minor despair has seeped into the cracks and whispered tales of resignation and weariness into our psyches. The pursuit of joy, the creation of magic, has lately seemed silly, almost like a lie. We have, I’m afraid, given in a bit to the tenor of the times; the great, sad, and terrifying upheaval churning in all corners of culture. It has me on edge, thinking too much of the worst parts of us, and it hangs like a gray veil over each day.

This turkey — the gift — has reminded me of the point. All the points, really. Food, family, gratitude, celebration, time. Damn outrageous fortune, we will honor this gift with apples and mushrooms and spirits and song! We will laugh a bit through the tears and carry on.

Defiant in the face of adversity.

Examining Black/White racial constructs through art and inquiry.

Perhaps the feast is just the thing, a fest of joy and thanks in the face of all the mocking evil. Claim joy, claim celebration, reclaim our time. Defy the demons, kill them with kindness.

Two of my children won’t be here, but two will. The four of us, instead of marinating in headlines and moping through a mediocre facsimile of tradition, could grab the season by the throat and show our teeth, grinning grateful at the grief. As the light wanes and the devils squirm, we’ll make fires and fill the air with glee. Hoisting a sparkling toast and sharing the bounty may be, after all — after all — the best way to say thanks — thank you — to a generous universe.

Gee, I’ve sort of inspired myself with this little rant. I’m off to hunt recipes. Give yourself a gift this year, and thank yourself. And then carry on.

We’ve got a lot of work to do.

Happy Thanksgiving.

OCTOBER 5 – JANUARY 5 Broad + Belvidere / icavcu.org

12 • Nov. 27, 2019

The LEGACY

Thanks-Giving

ANTONIA Americans celebrate thanksgiving every year, and without going into the history of why, it makes a lot of sense to me.

This year for the first time I’m really beginning to understand what it means to give thanks, to show appreciation. Looking at the trajectory of my life, there’s much to be grateful, but, can we break it down for a bit?

Thanks The root of the word thanks, is shared with think. Which means that you can’t engage in thanks without thinking. Therefore Thanks-giving can be translated as Thoughts-giving. A paying of attention, thoughtfulness to life, to people, to Love. Giving One cannot give thanks vaguely, it won’t make sense to you, that’s why you will be uncomfortable when forced to show appreciation for something.

Thanks-giving must well up from one’s innards.

You sit still to think; where have I come from?

What do I have? Who gave me these things?

So we see that the act of thanks-giving requires an object and subject, a thing(s) that has been done (object) and the one who has done it (Subject) In my case, most of my thanks goes up to God, when I think of who God is to me, to us, the specific things that have been done, salvation etc thats why in the Bible when people praise God theres no vague thanks, it’s You brought us out of Egypt etc When next you show appreciation to someone, to God, make it specific, really take time to consider the things that have been done, things ahead, savor it and pour out your heart.

Every generous act and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights; who does not change like shifting shadows..

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14 • Nov. 27, 2019

The LEGACY

(from page 3 few centuries, were devastated.

In his “Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold”, British historian Mark Cocker reviews reliable estimates of the death toll: “Eleven million indigenous Americans lost their lives in the eighty years following the Spanish invasion of Mexico. In the Andean Empire of the Incas the figure was more than eight million.

In Brazil, the Portuguese conquest saw Indian numbers dwindle from a pre-Columbian total of almost 2,500,000 to just 225,000. And to the north of Mexico… Native Americans declined from an original population of more than 800,000 by the end of the 19th century. For the whole of the Americas some historians have put the total losses as high as 100 million.”

Although the majority of these deaths occurred due to the impact of European diseases, disease alone does not explain the variations of death toll rates in different parts of the Americas. The key factors in which diseases operated were ultimately the kinds of repressive colonial social formations imposed on natives by European invaders, consisting of different matrices of forced labour regimes in mines and plantations, mass enslavement for personal domestic use of colonists, religious and cultural dislocation, and so on.

Ultimately, what wiped out the Native Americans was a system of relentless extraction.

As David Stannard concludes in his extensive study of the genocide, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World, these factors accelerated and intensified the impact of disease. He further describes the colonists’ strategic thinking: “At the dawn of the 15th century, Spanish conquistadors and priests presented the Indians they encountered with a choice: either give up your religion and culture and land and independence, swearing allegiance ‘as vassals’ to the Catholic Church and the Spanish Crown, or suffer ‘all the mischief and damage’ that the European invaders choose to inflict upon you.”

You’re either with us or against us.

American plantations manned by African slaves, was overwhelmingly the driving force in British industrialization.

‘African holocaust’ But the system of genocidal extraction in the Americas was part an emerging world system of imperial profiteering through deathdealing.

When Native Americans continually died out en masse, a new labor force was needed. We got them from Africa.

Cue the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, which produced the protracted deaths of truly vast, incomprehensible numbers of people. While slave structures had already existed locally, it certainly did not exist on the vast scale it reached in the course of European interventions.

English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Danes, and Portuguese slave-traders started out by raiding villages off the West African coast. The slave trade, lasting from the 1450s to the 1860s, consisted of “a series of exchanges of captives reaching from the interior of sub-Saharan Africa to final purchasers in the Americas.”

An observer at the time, British journalist Edward Morel wrote in The Black Man’s Burden: “For a hundred years slaves in Barbados were mutilated, tortured, gibbeted alive and left to starve to death, burnt alive, flung into coppers of boiling sugar, whipped to death.”

From the 16th to 19th centuries, the total death toll among African

slaves being in transhipment to America alone was as high as two million, reports R. J. Rummel in his “Death by Government”.

Although the many millions who died “in capture and in transit to the Orient or Middle East” is unknown, among the slaves “kept in Africa some 4,000,000 may have died.”

Overall, in five centuries between nearly 17,000,000 — and by some calculations perhaps over 65,000,000 — Africans were killed in the transatlantic slave trade.

University of Essex sociologist Robin Blackburn in “The Making of New World Slavery” demonstrates the centrality of an emerging extractive capitalist economy to the growth of slavery. The momentous profits of slavery accumulated in the “triangular trade” between Europe, Africa and America, and contributed directly to Britain’s industrialization.

For instance, the profits from triangular trade for 1770 would have provided from 20.9 to 55 per cent of Britain’s gross fixed capital formation. The question of industrial capital formation, however, is only part of the story.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was an indispensable motor in an emerging extractive world system under the mantle of the British empire. The mechanization of cotton textiles, originally produced in

‘Indian holocaust’ And as the British empire expanded, it left its mark elsewhere.

In his landmark study, “Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World”, historian Mike Davis shows how British imperial policy systematically converted droughts in South Asia and South Africa into foreseeable but preventable deadly famines.

In India, between 5.5 and 12 million people died in an artificiallyinduced famine, although millions of tons of grains were in commercial circulation. Rice and wheat production had been above average for the previous three years, but most of the surplus had been exported to England.

“Londoners were in effect eating India’s bread,” writes Davis.

Under “free market” rules, between 1877 and 1878, grain merchants exported a record 6.4 million hundredweight of wheat to Europe while millions of Indian poor starved to death.

Crucially, Davis argues that these people died: “… not outside the modern world system, but in the very process of being forcibly incorporated into its economic and political structures.

They died in the golden age of liberal capitalism; many were murdered by the application of utilitarian free trade principles.”

Division of the world This violence was, therefore, not accidental to the European imperial project. It was integral, systematic, as a solution to the problem of native resistance.

Between about 1870 and 1914, European imperial policies received a new lease of life, resulting in the intense scramble for control over eastern Asian and African territories.

Almost the entire world was divided up under the formal or informal political rule of Britain,

(continued on page 15)

www.LEGACYnewspaper.com

(from page 14) France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, the USA, and Japan.

Between themselves, in Africa for instance, these powers acquired 30 new colonies and 110 million subjects. African resistance was brutally crushed.

Consider, for example, the 1904 uprising of the Hereros, a tribe in southwest Africa, against German occupation. The German response was to drive all 24,000 of them into the desert to starve to death; others who surrendered were worked to death in forced labour camps.

During this period, we can already see drastic inequalities in the international system. By 1880, the per capita income in the developed countries was approximately double that of the ‘Third World’. By 1913, it was three times higher, and by 1950, five times higher.

Similarly, the per capita share of GNP in the industrialized countries of the developed core was in 1830 already twice that of the ‘Third World’, becoming seven times as high by 1913 according to Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Empire.

In summary, for 500 years, hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples were slaughtered, decimated, deported, enslaved, starved, exterminated, impoverished, and forcibly assimilated into an emerging world system dominated by Western Europe.

This was how the global values and politico-economic structures of industrial civilization came into being.

This is what we give grateful thanks for every fourth Thursday in November in a twisted mockery of ethical and spiritual commemoration.

It’s not over But this “hidden holocaust” didn’t end with the demise of colonization: Because colonization never underwent a genuine demise.

Rather, it underwent a fundamental re-configuration, prompted by rising demands for freedom and independence from around the world. While the colonies died out, the extraction system just went into overdrive.

By 1945, the end of the Second World War, the contours of a

new international order were in place. According to US professors Lawrence Shoup and William Minter in their powerful history of the Council on Foreign Relations, Imperial Brain Trust, the plan was known as the “Grand Area Strategy”, drawn up by US State Department policy-planners.

If you want evidence for a plan for empire, you won’t get better than this. The planners identified a minimum “world area” control over which was deemed to be “essential for the security and economic prosperity of the United States and the Western Hemisphere.” This “world area” included the entire Western Hemisphere, the former British Empire and the Far East.

State Department planners had no illusions about what this meant.

Indeed, they candidly recognized that “the British Empire as it existed in the past will never reappear”, and that therefore “the United States may have to take its place.” Grand Area planning was about fulfilling the “requirement[s] of the United States in a world in which it proposes to hold unquestioned power.”

The problem of freedom So what next? The contradiction between revamped American plans for the extension of a new imperial order, and the struggles for national independence breaking out across Africa and Asia, had to be resolved.

Since 1945, the United States, with routine support from Britain, has conducted military interventions into more than 70 nations in the South. Many of these were conducted in the context of the Cold War, supposedly to fight off the Soviet Union, which, we were told, was intent on imminent invasion of Western Europe and possibly even the American mainland.

But in truth, the vast majority of interventions conducted had nothing to do with the Soviet Union, but were indeed fought to put down nationalist independence movements across the Third World. The paranoia and fear over the USSR allowed Western policymakers to label anything that threatened Western domination as Communist. According to former State Department official Richard

J Barnet in Intervention and Revolution: “Even the word ‘communist’ has been applied so liberally and so loosely to revolutionary or radical regimes that any government risks being so characterised if it adopts one or more of the following policies which the State Department finds distasteful: nationalization of private industry, particularly foreign-owned corporations, radical land reform, autarchic trade policies, acceptance of Soviet or Chinese aid, insistence upon following an antiAmerican or non-aligned foreign policy, among others.”

Ongoing holocaust How many innocent civilians died as a consequence of these military interventions?

A detailed break-down of figures can be found in “Unpeople”, by the British historian Mark Curtis, a former research fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs.

Curtis’ conservative calculations confirm that Britain has been complicit in the deaths of over 10 million “unpeople”, expendable people from far-off foreign lands whose lives are worthless compared to the significance of a specific set of overriding strategic and economic interests.

Don’t be fooled into believing that this war is over.

Nov. 27, 2019• 15

The war has shifted and expanded in multiple directions. And increasingly, it has crept into the homeland, into the hearts and minds of the American people, the British people, and so on.

The starkest evidence of it is its very invisibility.

In the comforting illusion of an annual celebration, that sanitizes a global system whose trajectory of relentless extraction is accelerating us toward an uninhabitable planet by end of century.

It’s not just that we’re complicit in this trajectory. It’s that, now, they — the system — is coming for us.

We’re the cannon-fodder. We’re the consumers. We’re the ones that are plugged into a system that knows only the path of endless, cancerous growth, like blind cogs in a machine, beholden to clickbait, addicted to retail therapy, running after the next high, because we cannot bare the silence and awkwardness of our own selves.

So guess what.

We’re the Nazis.

And we’re the Natives.

And we’re next in line.

Ahmed is an award-winning 16year investigative journalist and creator of INSURGE intelligence, a crowdfunded public interest investigative journalism project.

16 • Nov. 27, 2019

The LEGACY

Calendar

COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES & EVENTS

HOW TO FINANCE YOUR BUSINESS

CASA volunteers needed

Thursday, December 5 11:30 AM: Registration & Lunch - 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM: Presentation Chesterfield Economic Development 9401 Courthouse Road, Suite B, Chesterfield, Virginia 23832 Join Chesterfield Economic Development as we collaborate with First Citizens Bank to educate and support new and small businesses.

Do you need to purchase a building, finance lease improvements, require an equipment loan, or need a line of credit for cash flow?

Well, Christy Gauvin with First Citizens Bank will instruct you on “How to Finance Your Business”.

Take advantage of this FREE learning and networking opportunity.

Registration is REQUIRED to attend. *** Contact: Latisha W. Jenkins 804-318-8550

M&

oments emories

...advertised here.

Please support Bridging The Gap In Virginia's efforts to continue to provide reentry services to returning citizen “Overcoming Barriers” that they face in life. We are asking that you make tax deductible donation to our organization. We gratefully appreciate your continued support of our goals to help others.

We have opened an additional office in Newport News, and making plans to operate an additional office in Saluda, where we’ve been offered office space, a four bedroom house and double wide trailer on 10 acres of land for transitional housing for formerly incarcerated person. It is our vision to offer housing, job readiness training, employment and opportunity for individuals throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia for a second chance at life “To Get It Right” For more information: Richard Walker 804 248-6756

Submit your calendar events by email to: editor @ legacynewspaper.com.

Include the who, what, where, when & contact information that can be printed. Deadline is Friday.

Henrico County Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) will hold information sessions at 6 p.m.

Thursday, Dec. 5 and at noon Wednesday, Dec. 11 for people who may be interested in volunteering to work in the court system on behalf of abused or neglected children.

The information sessions will be held in the CASA offices in suite A of the Hungary Spring Office Park, 3001 Hungary Spring Road.

To reserve a seat, contact Rebecca Kalman-Winston at (804) 501-1670 or kal001@henrico.us.

Henrico CASA is recruiting volunteers for a free, 14-session training program that will begin Saturday, Jan. 25. Classes will be held at CASA’s offices and will culminate with a swearing-in ceremony at the Henrico Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court.

Henrico CASA is a private, nonprofit organization that has worked closely with the court for more than 24 years. Working typically 10 to 15 hours per month, volunteer advocates gather information on a child’s circumstances to supplement information provided to the court.

Henrico CASA volunteers served 383 children by donating 15,500 hours during fiscal year 2018-19.

Prospective volunteers must apply

by Friday, Jan. 10, be at least 21 years old and have regular access to a computer. Volunteers must attend all training sessions. Applicants will be interviewed, fingerprinted and undergo criminal background and reference checks.

Anyone interested in applying but unable to attend an information session is asked to contact Jeannine Panzera at (804) 5011673 or pan01@henrico.us. For an application or more information, go to henricocasa.org.

Nov. 27, 2019• 17

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18 • Nov. 27, 2019

Classifieds NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT THE CITY OF RICHMOND BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS Will hold a Public Hearing in the 5th Floor Conference Room, City Hall, 900 East Broad Street, Richmond, VA on December 4, 2019, to consider the following under Chapter 30 of the Zoning Code: BEGINNING AT 1:00 P.M. BZA 48-2019: An application of John Wilson for a building permit to construct a new accessory building (approximately 16’ X 8’) and to use a portion thereof (79 sq. ft.) for use as a home occupation (art studio) at 505 NORTH 24th STREET. BZA 49-2019: An application of DMS Construction for a building permit to construct an addition (basement, 1st & 2nd floor) and a two-story deck on the rear of a single-family attached dwelling at 2318 VENABLE STREET. BZA 50-2019: An application of Keana and Shanell Williams for a building permit to enclose an existing 1st floor covered porch and to construct a 2nd floor addition to a single-family detached dwelling at 3422 R STREET. BZA 51-2019: An application of BT Property Holdings, LLC for a building permit to construct a new single-family detached dwelling at 1201 CHANTILLY STREET. BZA 52-2019: An application of Lancaster Custom Builder, Inc. for a building permit to construct a new single-family dwelling and detached garage at 120 GRANITE AVENUE. BZA 53-2019: An application of Mark Julian and Natalie Newfield for a building permit to construct a one-story detached garage (24’ x 24’) in 409 the rear of a single-family detached dwelling at 3866 FAUQUIER AVENUE. Roy W. Benbow, Secretary Phone: (804) 240-2124 Fax: (804) 646-5789 E-mail: Roy.Benbow@richmondgov.com Resource Information Help for the Disadvantaged and Disenfranchised (RIHD) www.rihd.org ● (804) 426-4426 P.O. Box 55 Highland Springs, Virginia 23075

Thank you for your interest in applying for opportunities with The City of Richmond.

To see what opportunities are available, please refer to our website at www.richmondgov.com.

EOE M/F/D/V

Serving Richmond & Hampton Roads 409 E. Main St. #4 (mailing) • 105 1/2 E. Clay St. (office) LEGAL, EMPLOYMENT, Richmond, ANNOUNCEMENTS, VA 23219 FOR SALE, SERVICES 804-644-1550 (office) • 800-783-8062 (fax) 105 1/2 E. Clay St. (office) ads@legacynewspaper.com Richmond, VA 23219 804-644-1550 - 1-800-782-8062 (fax)DRPT FY21 PUBLIC NOTICE PUBLIC AUCTION(office) of Ad Size: 1 column(s) X 7.10 inches) ads@legacynewspaper.com Unclaimed Vehicles The Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT) is accepting applications for 150+/- IMPOUNDED transit, rail, and transportation demand2 management (TDM) grants-for the 2020 year. The Tot Issues (11/13 11/20) $78.10 perfiscal ad ($156.20 AUTOS, LIGHT TRUCKS & state’s annual grant application period is open from December 1, 2019, through February 3, Rate: $11 per column inch MOTORCYCLES 2020. Transit and TDM funds are available through multiple state and federal funding sources to SOUTHSIDE PLAZA DRIVE-IN support transit service, human service transportation, senior transportation, ridesharing and TDM

Includes Internet administrative placement and programs in Virginia. Eligible project categories include capital purchases, operating costs, technical assistance, demonstration grants, and TDM/ridesharing program costs.

Ad Size: 12 inches (2 columns X 6 inches) Please review the proof, any needed changes and return by Funds are available for rail initiatives through the Railmake Enhancement and Rail Preservation Gates open at 9:00 AM programs. In addition, funding to provide access freight rail shipping for Virginia businesses If your response is to not received by deadline, your ad mayisnot Auction begins at 10:00 AM 2 Issues - Nov. 20 & 27 - ($132 - peryear run)round $264total available through the Rail Industrial Access program. Complete details on eligibility Auction will include the vehicles listed the inch application procedures for DRPT grant programs are available online. To learn more Rate: $11 per and column Ok X______________________________________ below plus many others: about transit, rail, and transportation demand management funding in Virginia, visit QINGQI SCOOTER LAEAGZ4016B920757 www.drpt.virginia.gov. Applications can be submitted online at https://olga.drpt.virginia.gov/.

JEEP GRAND CHEROKEE 1J4GW58S4XC704785 Includes Internet placement DRPT has also revised State Management Plans (SMPs) for the federal section 5310, 5311, and JEEP GRAND CHEROKEE 1J4GZ58S5RC329273 Ok with changes X ___________________________ 5339 grant programs, awarded to Virginia by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). Draft plans AUDI A8 WAUML44E45N016778 CADILLAC Please DEVILLE 1G6KD54Y2YU217325 canchanges be foundand at http://www.drpt.virginia.gov/.

DRPT is committed to ensuring that no person is review the proof, make any needed return by fax or e-mail.

CHEVROLET SUBURBAN 3GNFK16R0VG153858 excluded from in, or denied the benefits of its services on the basis of race, color, or CADILLAC If your DEVILLE 1G6KD54Y82U112263 response is not received by deadline, your adparticipation may not be inserted.

REMINDER: Deadline is Fridays @provide 5 p.m. national origin, as protected by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. DRPT will also TOYOTA COROLLA 2T1BR38E43C109118 SUBARU LEGACY OUTBACK 4S3BG6857T7380392 reasonable accommodations and interpretive services for persons who require special assistance HYUNDAI ELANTRA KMHDN46D15U042046 Ok X_________________________________________ to participate in this public involvement opportunity as required by the ADA. For LINCOLN LS 1LNHM87A81Y655140 accommodations, additional information on how to file a complaint, please contact our Title VI NIRVE BELMONT L5E0505261 TOMOS MOPED K124698 Compliance Officer, (804) 786-4440, or 600 E. Main Street, Suite 2102, Richmond, VA 23219, MERCEDES-BENZ E320 WDBJF65F4WA703900 or visit our website at www.drpt.virginia.gov CHEVROLET G20 1GBEG25K4RF171257

Monday, Dec. 9, 2019

Ok with changes X _____________________________ 1N4AL11E13C257530

NISSAN ALTIMA NISSAN MAXIMA FORD E150 SATURN VUE SATURN VUE TOYOTA CAMRY DODGE STRATUS LEXUS GS 300 HYUNDAI TUCSON TOYOTA CAMRY SOLARA LEXUS ES 300 CHEVROLET TAHOE HYUNDAI SONATA

JN1DA31AX2T314122 1FDEE14HXLHB76438 5GZCZ33D57S828013 5GZCZ63454S835623 4T1BG22K8VU172030 4B3AG42G41E061714 JT8JS47E4P0045314 KM8JN72D76U424965 2T1CF28P8YC277005 JTHBF30G620068066 1GNEC13R4XJ493478 5NPET46C28H333417\

REMINDER: Deadline is Fridays @ 5 p.m.

Serving Richmond & Hampton Roads E. Main St. #4 (mailing) SEIBERT’S is now accepting • 105 1/2 E. Clay St. (office) vehicles on consignment!

Richmond, VA 23219 Reasonable Seller’s Fees.

804-644-1550 (office) • 800-783-8062 (fax) ads@legacynewspaper.com

Ad Size 3.4 inches 642 W. Southside Plaza Dr.- 1 column(s) X 1.7 inches) Richmond (804) 233-5757

1 Issue - $37.40 WWW.SEIBERTSTOWING.COM Rate: $11 per column inch VA AL # 2908-000766

To file a housing Includes Internet placement complaint, call the Virginia Office Please review Housing the proof, make any needed changes and return by fax or e-mail.

(804) 367-8530 or (888)by deadline, your ad may not be inserted.

If your response is not received 551-3247.

For the hearingOk X_________________________________________ impaired, call (804) 367-9753, or e-mail fairhousing@ Ok with changes X _____________________________ dpor.virginia.gov

Nov. 27, 2019• 19

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CUO 0010145- Procurement 1121 HAMPTON SOLICITATION

AUCTIONS ATTN. AUCTIONEERS: Advertise your upcoming auctions statewide or in other states. Affordable Print and Digital Solutions reaching your target audiences. Call this paper or Landon Clark at Virginia Press Services 804-521-7576, landonc@vpa.net

CITY OF HAMPTON Thursday, December 19, 2019 2:00 p.m. ET – ITB 20-24/TM Fire Alarm Systems Testing, Inspections, Maintenance and Repair.

Mandatory pre-bid meeting December 3, 2019 at 10AM ET. We will meet in the conference room. Location: PW Facilities, 231 Springfield Rd. Hampton VA. Mandatory Site Visits will be held on December 3, 2019 and December 4, 2019, starting at 10:00 AM ET

CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT AND TRUCKS AUCTION. Bid online for a great selection of equipment and trucks. Now accepting quality consignments for this sale! Sun., Dec. 15 at 5 a.m. to Tues, Dec. 17 at 11 a.m. Motleys Industrial, Richmond, VA. 877-MOTLEYS. Bid online at www.MOTLEYS.com. VAL16

For all forms or additional information, see our web page at https:// www.hampton.gov/bids-contracts or call (757)727-2200. MinorityOwned, Woman-Owned and Veteran Businesses are encouraged to participate.

ONLINE AUCTION! The BIGGEST Heavy Lift and Transport Auction EVER. Don’t miss the Bigge Crane and Rigging Company Fleet Realignment Auction. 2000+ Lots! 50+ Cranes and Hoists, Strandjacks, Gantry Systems, Goldhofer Trailers, Rigging Gear, Trucks, Forklifts, Support Tools, Shop Tools, Quality Beams, Surplus Steel and much more. Online bidding begins Nov. 25 and closes on 6 various days Dec. 3 – 12.

Motleys Industrial, Richmond, VA. 877-MOTLEYS. Bid online at www.motleys.com/biggeauctions. VAL16 CATTLE/LIVESTOCK/FARM TOTAL PERFORMANCE BULL SALE. Friday, December 6, 2019 at Noon. Featuring 175 Bulls: Angus, Polled Hereford, Gelbvieh and Balancer. Knoll Crest Farm, Red House, VA 434376-3567. Call or visit our website to pre-register before sale day! KnollCrestFarm.com EDUCATION/CAREER TRAINING AIRLINES ARE HIRING – Get FAA approved hands on Aviation training. Financial aid for qualified students - Career placement assistance. CALL Aviation Institute of Maintenance SCHEV certified 877-204- 4130 HELP WANTED / DRIVERS Need CDL Drivers? Advertise your JOB OPENINGS statewide or in other states. Affordable Print and Digital Solutions to reach truck drivers. Call Landon Clark at Virginia Press Services 804521-7576, landonc@vpa.net HOME IMPROVEMENT Replacement Windows $189 Installed. Any size white vinyl SH window. Window and Labor Included. Professionally Installed.

Lifetime Warranty. $189 Installed. Straightforward Windows 804238-4132.

REAL ESTATE FOR SALE ATTN. REALTORS: Advertise your listings regionally or statewide. Affordable Print and Digital Solutions that get results!

Call Landon Clark at Virginia Press Services 804-521-7576, landonc@vpa.net SERVICES DIVORCE-Uncontested, $395+$86 court cost. WILLS $195.00.

No court appearance. Estimated completion time twenty-one days. Hilton Oliver, Attorney (Facebook). 757-490-0126. Se Habla Espanol. BBB Member. https://hiltonoliverattorneyva.com.

EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY NOTICE We are pledged to the letter and spirit of Virginia's policy for achieving equal housing opportunity throughout the commonwealth.

DENTAL INSURANCE Call Physicians Mutual Insurance Company for details. NOT just a discount plan, REAL coverage for 350 procedures.

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We encourage and support advertising and marketing programs in which there are no barriers to obtaining housing because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, elderliness, familial status or handicap.

For more information or to file a housing complaint, call the Virginia Housing Office (804) 367-8530 or (888) 551-3247.

For the hearing-impaired, call (804) 367-9753 or e-mail fairhousing@dpor.virginia.gov