I always thought the Pilgrims and Indians were the first to celebrate Thanksgiving. False.

I always thought that President Abraham Lincoln was the first President to call it a holiday. False.

I thought it was about eating loads food. False.

President George Washington was the first President to ask the nation to celebrate it. It is about being thankful for the Constitution we have. And it was a day of fasting and prayer in thanks to God for establishing our country.

Have a read about the TRUE meaning of Thanksgiving in Benton's blog.

My only question is: Why did I not know this before?

Watching our new President-elect's acceptance speech yesterday was a surprising thrill. I found myself caught with some emotion and I felt proud to be an American as our country symbolically steps away from racism.

Proposition 8 also passed. This was an enormous relief for me.  An answer to prayer and a wonderful win to protect the family and hold off a collision course between gay rights and religious freedom.
 
But my emotions were bittersweet. Obama's rhetoric is downright socialist and scary and the gay rights activists have already filed suit against Prop 8. I was listening to Glenn Beck just during the election. A young man called in and asked, "What do I do now?" Glenn gave some great advice: "Get a copy of and study the constitution. Learn everything about it. Read the Federlist Papers. Learn what Founders really taught."

If you are a Mormon then you might have already heard Elder Packer's talk last month on the Constitution called "The Test". Here he talks about a celebration the Saints held in honor of the US (a country that had just chased them from their homes):

"Three things about that 1849 commemoration were both symbolic and prophetic: first, that the young men carried the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence; next, that each young woman carried the Bible and the Book of Mormon; and finally, that the old men—the Silver Greys—were honored in the parade.

"After the program they had a feast at makeshift tables. Several hundred gold-rush travelers and 60 Indians were invited to join them.

"Then they went back to work."

Lets celebrate the peaceful elections this country just afforded us. Let's honor this historical moment in our history as we prepare for our first black President. Let the rising generation grasp to the Constitution and Declaration of Indepenence in hand with our holy writ, and let us turn to our wise "silver greys" for council. Now I got to get back to work. (:

As the election has neared, my attention has left the Presidential Election and gone to the Proposition 8. I have donated to the campaign and spent many hours in the front lines of the blogosphere. It has been messy and disturbing to say the least. Who will win tonight, I do not know. But my feeling is that all the big media and money against Prop 8 will not hold when it is placed up against the tight knit communities of churches and close families. My feeling is that family and trusted friends still wield the greatest influence, even over Hollywood and the Media elite.

But even if Prop 8 pulls out in a win, a sobering realization has set in on me, a time of great religious discrimination is not far from us. We have been framed as "Haters", "Bigots", and "Discriminators".  If I was an outsider reading and watching their statements about the Yes on 8 campaign, I would wonder if Prop 8 was the re-institution of slavery. In contrast here are the actual words to be added to the constitution: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

Google (who openly opposes 8) is in hot water for allowing Yes on 8 ads to display on sites that disagree with Prop 8.

I don't know when. Why I am even more clueless, but AncestryPress changed their name to MyCanvas.com. From a branding standpoint it just seems strange. Why confuse all your customers with a new name after over a year of being up? They also have this strange loading bar that generically says: "Powered by MyCanvas". In the top left it has Ancestry.com still written. I am wondering if they are going to try and use MyCanvas to move cross platforms to MyFamily.com as well?

The new MyCanvas barrows a lot of UI ideas from MemoryPress, particularly the sliding panes on the right side (they are on the left in MyCanvas). Although MemoryPress is still a typesetting system for real books while MyCanvas is a glorified photobook.