By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… Thanksgiving is tomorrow. For many of us, Thanksgiving has a religious connotation; for others, it is a day to feast and watch football, and for some, it is both.

As a child, I remember going to church on Thanksgiving morning. We took canned goods and left them at the entry to the sanctuary of the church. They were later delivered to the poor. We sang songs like, We gather to Together To Ask The Lords Blessings and Come Ye Thankful People, Come. Those songs still sound out of place sung any other time of year. I was not aware that Lydia Maria Child’s song Over the River and Through the Wood depicted her trip to her grandmother’s on Thanksgiving Day.

When I was a child, Thanksgiving, like all holidays in the Moses house, was time when we kids had to stay home. We had the traditional turkey but it was Mom, Dad, and us kids only.

I came to learn, after I had grown up and left home, that Thanksgiving is a day of gathering for the extended family. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmas and grandpas come from miles around to eat turkey and watch football.

I suppose that with seven kids in the family, my mother and father felt we had a large enough crowd for dinner. I do remember after 1953, when we got our television, the football game was always the Detroit Lions and the Chicago Bears. However, I also learned that whenever the turkey was done, we ate and the television went off even if Zeke Bratkowski was marching the Bears to a touchdown.

By the time this column appears, we will have already celebrated one Thanksgiving with our California son and Reno grandson. It will be a quick trip but a good time. My granddaughter’s soccer game will have trumped the Pirates state championship bid in Reno. But family is family.

Jean has been making cookies, candy, caramel popcorn, and party mix for two days now and I am exhausted. You have no idea how hard it is to walk from my den to the kitchen sampling these goodies without getting caught.

We will do a second Thanksgiving in Las Vegas and other members of the family with gather. I can handle turkey and all the trimmings twice.

While religious historians trace Thanksgiving back to the Old Testament ritual of fall harvest, the Thanksgiving I grew up with probably had its origin at the Berkeley Plantation on December 4, 1619 near what is now Charles City, Virginia. English settlers landed in the New World under the leadership of Capt. John Woodlief. They had sailed the Atlantic Ocean in the good ship Margaret and upon landing, gave thanks for the fact they survived the trip. They celebrated a day of thanksgiving on that date until 1622 when most of them were killed in Indian raids. For that, I am sure they were not thankful.

Many contend that Thanksgiving’s origin is to be found with the Pilgrims who arrived in America two years after those in Virginia. The pilgrims were not only thanking God for their harvest, but also for their deliverance from the religious persecution in England. Their feast included all of the plantations inhabitants and ninety poor “strangers” – King Massasoit’s Indians. It was reported later that King Massasoit fired his homeland security chief. A preventive measure here might have stemmed this flood of illegal immigrants.

No one asked me but… Let me state right now I am in favor of the development and use of green power. As soon as we develop technology that will allow us to provide green utilities for our homes, and drive our cars without fossil fuel in an economic manner, I will jump on that bandwagon and play the bass drum. However, until we can do this, we must continue to use fossil fuel. So far, all alternatives offered to the American people have been cost prohibitive.

We attempted to use corn to produce fuel for our autos. Everyone thought it was a great idea until it was revealed that it took over a dollar of fossil fuels to produce a dollar of ethanol. It also became apparent that the food supply was dependent on corn and its diversion to fuel caused a major increase in food prices.

A year or so ago, the Clark County School District bought some school buses that were green in nature. These buses were more costly to purchase but the district said they would recover the cost in fuel savings within a fifteen-year period. The only problem with that is the life expectancy of a school bus is less than ten-years; therefore, the savings would never be seen.

That was all said in reaction to a report that the Las Vegas American Legion Post 8 has been outfitted with photovoltaic panels and will be the first Legion post in America converted entirely to solar power. The post commander estimated it would save the post $130,000 in energy cost over a ten-year period. The Post had to put up only one dollar for the project, the rest of the $383,000 cost of the project was fronted by two Las Vegas Valley companies, Solar Universe and Jersey electric. These two companies will be reimbursed for their cost by NV Energy through a grant arrangement. This means the rate payers of NV Energy paid $382,999 for the free solar power that will light up the American Legion Post 8. The issue of who paid for the project is not one I wish to explore. I am more interested in the question of: Is it cost effective?

The system cost $383,000 to install. It will save the post $130,000 over ten years. If you divide the cost over a ten-year period, someone (according to the report the customers of NV Energy) has spent $38,000 a year to save American Legion Post 8 $13,000. I will admit that I am a history major and not real good at math, but that seems to be a loss of $25,300 a year. But, wahoo! They have green power and someone else paid for it.

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