Color Us Connected: Giving thanks

Guy Trammell Jr. and Amy Miller
Guy Trammell Jr. and Amy Miller

This column appears every other week in Foster’s Daily Democrat and the Tuskegee News. This week, in recognition of the season, Guy Trammell, an African American man from Tuskegee, Ala., and Amy Miller, a white woman from South Berwick, Maine, write about what being thankful means to them.

By Guy Trammell Jr.

Fall weekends were great in childhood. We played in the woods: climbing trees, exploring trails, finding new rocks to collect, learning bird songs, swinging on vines (don’t tell my parents about that one), and making our own clubhouses with what we found. All this in cool temperatures, without the pesky mosquitoes. Yes, it was in the Jim Crow-ruled South, but it was also in Booker T. Washington’s Village of Greenwood, where we were watched over by neighbors far and wide and there was a Number One rule for all children to follow: “Be in the house by dark.”

After Thanksgiving, our family combined leftover turkey, gravy and dressing with potatoes, onion, celery and bell pepper, making a delicious soup. Please enjoy this cup of thanksgiving.

In this season, I am thankful to be in a wonderful family, and to have had incredible friends through the years. I am especially grateful for my family of friends in South Berwick, and to be able to maintain contact throughout the pandemic. I really enjoyed our recent Common Ground visit from Julia and Mike and spending extended time with them, hanging out around Tuskegee. I treasure all our interactions of learning, sharing and simply being together.

I am humbled and appreciative to work with the Macon County Ministers’ Council, an amazing community of love and of concern turned into action. The wisdom, support and shared community caring they give in operating the Macon County Food Pantry are very fulfilling.

I am especially grateful for a special group of local heroes who took on the task of actively guiding our county through this pandemic. They are the Macon County Community Partners Task Force, and they are a wonderful collaboration of all aspects of our community: science, medicine, education, law enforcement, government, business, civic groups and much more. They meet weekly for action, and during the week in subcommittees creating plans. They were the first to get mitigation strategies initiated. They basically ganged up on the SARS 2 virus to collectively beat it up.

In addition to locally, I am also thankful for the strides that have been made in addressing the pandemic around the world. I am excited about the news on how Mexico has made great progress in SARS 2 virus control. News has also come from Africa on their low numbers. There is progress in Slovakia, Panama, Bulgaria, Peru, India’s Uttar Pradesh and even Tokyo, Japan. With advancements being made by the science and medical communities in so many locations, I am hopeful it won’t be long before SARS 2 will become a distant memory.

I appreciate contributing to this column with Amy, my stellar sister in life and media, and I appreciate Foster's Daily Democrat and The Tuskegee News for publishing the ramblings in my head every other week. I am grateful to you as a reader for giving this column a reason to exist.

So please enjoy a nice, hot cup of your favorite soup to warm your body and spirit. May the things you are thankful for enhance your holiday season, and give you hope for the New Year.

By Amy Miller

It feels almost disrespectful to go on about being thankful right now. It’s like publicizing our own good fortune while the misfortune of others swirls around us.

And yet, appreciating what one has - whether a sunset, health or a fridge full of food - is important, perhaps essential, when we have reason to be grateful.

It’s facile to say I’m thankful I am not living right now in Afghanistan. Or Haiti. Or Wisconsin. And self-evident that I’m grateful for an education and the vaccine I was able to get easily and for free.

None of this was of my own making. Nor was my birth in America, to loving parents, or as a white person in a country that confers all sorts of advantages, that is, protects me from all sorts of disadvantages.

So I think further about gifts I may not immediately recognize. As we close a year that has brought so much pain to so many, I take a minute to take stock.

I am grateful to friends who give me the benefit of the doubt, even when I may not deserve it. I am grateful for those same friends who keep me honest, when I am veering perilously off center.

I am thankful for my warm comforter and wood fire, for a boss who tells me to take the time I need for grieving, for the dog who sits at my feet while I’m working. I am grateful for the juicy blackberries, wild geranium and lilies that grow whether I sing to them or not.

I am deeply thankful for the chances I’ve had to travel to other cities, states and countries, providing me with a profound belief in the kindness and humanity of people everywhere. I can’t imagine living on this complicated planet without that foundational belief.

Every day I see and hear about the generosity of the human spirit. While so many people suffered hardship this year, so many people also and at the same time continued to give and look out for and care about their fellow human beings. This faith in humanity is my religion, and it allows me to live more sanely through another day.

I am grateful for the heroes among us: those who speak out when it is risky, those who put themselves in danger to help others, the nurses and doctors, teachers and principals, garbage collectors, storekeepers, and bus drivers who showed up when it was needed but wasn’t easy.

I am grateful for this column, which gave me and co-columnist Karin Hopkins, and now gives me and Guy Trammel, an excuse to write regularly, talk frequently, and build friendships based on ideas, discussion and shared as well as disparate experiences.

And of course, Dear Reader, I am grateful that you take the time to read our columns and made it to the end of this one.

Amy and Guy can be reached at colorusconnected@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on Fosters Daily Democrat: Color Us Connected: Giving thanks