Thanksgiving is Coming – Be of Good Cheer!

November 1, 2021

We are often advised to be of good cheer – and to be grateful – especially at Thanksgiving.

• With the pandemic still of concern and the many losses of the past year, it may be hard to be grateful or of good cheer; and
• To remember that Thanksgiving also implies that we should do some giving.
• Here are some stories to get you thinking!

DC Statehood:

• The League of Women Voters of the United States (LWVUS) has supported statehood for the District of Columbia for over 80 years!
• This summer, The League of Women Voters of the District of Columbia (LWVDC) decided to lobby by having fun and challenged quilters (members and non-members) to create small quilts which would “lobby” for statehood for DC! (https://my.lwv.org/california/orange-coast/article/quilt-challenge-dc-st...)
• The quilts are in and being judged for inclusion in a display of “lobbying” quilts!
• My friend Lynda Detling submitted the quilt pictured here, “Stars and Stripes with a Cherry on Top,” pieced by machine, quilted by hand and photographed by her son Wayne Hammond!
• In a more traditional form of lobbying, recently, the LWVUS delivered nearly 37,000 signatures from Americans across the country, urging that DC be granted statehood (https://www.lwvdc.org/statehood-petition-delivery).
• You can get in the act by urging your senators to support the Washington DC Admission Act!

Simple Ways to be Grateful for What You Have by Passing it on to Others:

• Write a letter to someone no longer able to be active – I write regularly to my Aunt Faye, who will be 91 in January!
• Support your city or state or country with a donation to a local food bank like the Orange County Foodbank or a national one, like Second Harvest, or an international one like the World Food Program.
• Support the League at any level – with money, if you can, but also with service. At the local level we are an entirely volunteer organization – go to https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/175zgQLseGnQZ9GYPwG9R_6CnS5anOW1b to see what sorts of help we are looking for right now.

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Becky Newman

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