Letter: Thanksgiving in the Land of Lincoln

The other day, a couple of days before Thanksgiving, I drove through this our Land of Lincoln out west as the sun was setting. The fields were harvested except for a few leftover cornfields.

I could not help thinking about how thankful we should be for all the food those fields were producing: To the farmers who planted and harvested those fields, to the millers who turned the crops into cornflakes and flour for bread, and so many other workers of the fields and animals. While we cannot feed many people on prairie grass, we need bees and other insects to pollinate all these plants. We grow trees and flowers to beautify the gardens and landscapes, - and hopefully help the bees. We need to help balance all this and not think one or the other can do it all.

And then I thought about how thankful we should be that Russian rockets have not set our fields on fire, nor destroyed our power stations and electric grid.

Maybe it is time we in the Land of Lincoln and all the other well-to-do lands stop bickering about little things and get together about how we can do the big things, without destroying it all.

Thoughts from the field.

Peter Orum

St. Charles