Thanksgiving '07: Happy Birthday to Me

Thanksgiving was supposedly started as a feast and joyous celebration of making it through another year, of acknowledging the toil and strife and the people that helped us along the way. Lincoln (a personal favorite) made it an official holiday and although it originally was August 6, it now falls in November and this year on my birthday. I am grateful to be born. Life is precious. I am the mother of two adopted children so birth and and the giving of life is monumental in my home despite it's political toolmaking.

I am grateful to my mother for laboring on my behalf despite her secret desire to get back into her size 17-inch waist that I stretched out.

I am grateful to her and my father and my step-father's patience and guidance and complete disregard.

I am grateful that there is life out there for someone who isn't a scholar. I wear my combined 760 SAT scores like a medal around my neck that ANYONE can make it despite being a round, square, gay, alcoholic, liberal, pampered peg in the proverbial square hole of what is the norm.

I am grateful that I am aware of the terrible legacy this generation has created and the wonderful technology that support this apathy.

I am grateful that someone wanted to share his life/heart/mind with me and that we have been able to raise our children in an attempt at our own family and not that we just perpetuated our own family histories.

I am grateful to have arrested and faced down my alcoholism and drug dependency and that my children and their children will not see me in an altered state, other than Idaho.

I am grateful for my friends who choose to know me and secretly see my snarky side and still let me be part of their lives. I am grateful that my children appreciate that I am trying, that I am FAR from perfect (a terrible name for a movie BTW) that I am locating myself while trying to help them locate themselves. I am grateful that there is love around me from them.

I am grateful that I live around trees, that there are books and music and photographs and movies and yes, I am grateful that there is musical theater. I am grateful that my dogs trust me. I am grateful that I trust me.

I am grateful that I can question our government and HATE the policies it is enforcing in my name and still love our country and its great promise. I am grateful to be alive and aware and up at 5a.m. on my birthday. As I was taught or read in the tabloids, I can't remember, that giving is better than receiving I get to give you all a gift. It is one of MY favorite things and it is free:

"Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man (and woman). Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost."

- John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Birthday, Tell the Truth, Make Good Choices.

Comments

[Libsrule]

I'm grateful that beautiful women like you exist that blog here and are as intelligent as they are beautiful (yes I know that sounds chauvanistic) because unfortunately so many are not.

And I agree with your entire list of reasons to be grateful and please don't take this the wrong way but I am still grateful for that scene in Trading Places. So I am grateful that such beauty exists and we get to see it.

[BritPatJax]

Part Three...Guy Fawkes is on November 5th and I came here that night in 2001 so was heralded all the way from my home in Peterborough to the airport two hours south by fireworks in every town along the way. I guess they were celebrating my departure. So close to 9/11 I did not exactly get a rousing welcome even as a Brit in Atlanta and have not had great vibes from INS ever since. If you can't treat your friends any better what hope for your enemies. No wonder the cold feelings around the world of late. Isolationism is not working guys. Merry Christmas.

[cyberhawk]

Jamie Lee you have always been an inspiration to me and it looks like you will continue to be.Thank you for being so brave and honest and interesting.You are a very beautiful person in my book.I don't mean to sound like an ungrateful male trying to pick up women and place them in bondage.I'm just trying to communicate my love to you and what you have accomplished is magnificent.Please promise to continue to be involved.Thank you Jamie Lee!

[BritPatJax]

Part Two...Happy Birthday Jamie....loved you in 'Wanda'...I don't really miss the cold cold winters that go on for ever. ..The cold cold summer also some years.....I love America and write to change not to complain. Google 'patrick lockyer' and debate with me. I came here right after 9/11 and still await an inefficient bureaucracy to get my status straight but I keep smiling and I am thankful for my health and the love of a good woman. Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament and the English burn his effigy every year. As a child in Wales my ma would make the best effigy and we would get a small fortune doing 'penny for the guy' outside her dressmaking shop in Pontypridd the home of Tom Jones. We bought fireworks with that money and it all went up in smoke. Oh well, it was fun. Kids were safe then. In Wales a bonfire was built over months and we would see the other villages fires burning three days later. It was a way of getting rid of old furniture. We had to mount a guard over our stock as it would be raided by 'the enemy'. I once was lassoed with a burning cycle tire and lucky not to suffer bad burns. Part three maybe?....

[BlameBill]

Happy Birthday and many more!

I am grateful that I live in a country with others who have understood that being human means being part of the whole race. I am grateful for those who understand that reaching out to help when need is there is an act of strength not weakness. And I am grateful that you are among us.
Post on!!

[jcc173]

I am grateful I own a copy of Scaramouche and can look at your Mom and see one of the most Beautiful women of her time.:) Happy Birthday Jaime

[YquequeFromLondon]

Jamie Lee you have always been one of my favorite actors and a brutally honest blog like this one just confirms my good taste!
I too am struggling with alcohol and actually gained the courage to speak its' name out loud after reading your Thanksgiving post. Thank you!

[wrabbitt]

refreshing to see that creativeness is still alive and well in Hollywood,Happy Birthday,live long and prosper

[Jonahson]

To appreciate your parents and declare it so openly is a great virtue. From the sitcoms I watched I always thought Americans despise their parents and their in-laws. You are either an exception or an eye opener to me.

[USMC1980]

JLC is right. You can hate the policies of the insane Bush administration (or any administration for that matter), and still be a patriotic American. It's a shame so many Americans are so brainwashed by Right winf losers like Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity and others...that they don't understand that loving America means speaking out when it is on the wrong track.

[minnieszoo]

Happy Thanksgiving, Jamie, to you and your loved ones.

I don't follow that we are the only creative species. Note the greeting ceremony of the Southern Resident Orcas of Puget Sound, not to mention that they do have language skills.

And the fact that a guy named Doyle is studying the song of the Humpback Whale, because some scientists believe that visitors from distant worlds may chose the whales to communicate with.

Monkeys and birds use tools to find food. And Koko the lowland Gorilla signs.

Some of us believe that we are the most creative species and others believe we aren't.

Betcha the animal kingdom believes we are the most destructive species and the most dangerous. We haven't been able to communicate well with other species on our planet and still, we wish to explore our universe. Hell, we have a hard time with other countries.

Now, what were we talking about?

[wrabbitt]

happy birthday! its refreshing to see someone out of Hollywood who can write! thats not on strike. And, not in trouble with the law as others are or have been. Why don't you run for president? you have much more of a grasp on life,and reality than all of the would be candidates, And, still look good in a short dress, ever thought about an asbestos jumpsuit?

[VanessaSchlichtherle]

Dear Jamie,
I hope you had a really great BIRTHDAY! I also hope that you had a great THANKSGIVING, too, although I don't feel attached to the underlying concept of this feast, because I am from Germany where celebrating Thanksgiving is not a tradition.
In times like this it makes me happy to read the lines of people whose mind hasn't been infected by this ongoing hypocrathy. It makes me happy to find people that are greatful for the life they are leading and grateful for their life's companions.
I felt addressed by your words, for I am gay and for I wished as a child to be adopted by someone with a heart and mind like you. It never happened and I had to learn accepting life as it is; however, hard it was. Today I am released from the dark chamber that made me dependend on other people's choices; now I make my own and I hope that they are GOOD CHOICES. People like you, with minds like yours help me not losing my way on the road of life that I chose! So, thanks for the gift and the only thing I can give in return is to say: "Stay on your road of life" and "You are really MAKING GOOD CHOICES"!
Take care,
Vanessa

[Maeve1]

Wow,such a very open and honest blog.I'm happy you feel so grateful.You seem totally unaffected by stardom and that I respect.Have a wonderful birthday and lots of love xxx

[Siren]

I'm grateful I made it through cooking a feast for Thanksgiving whilst most of Santa Cruz was smarter and went out to Steamers Lane watching an abundance of surfers. Surfs up and happy birthday!