Disneyland - Belated Happy Thanksgiving - Early Merry Christmas!

Whew!
I haven't posted for the past week or so because I was in the midst of a wrongful death jury trial in downtown Los Angeles. 
As counsel for the defendant, I was a touch too busy to post.
The jury issued a verdict in favor of my client after a week of trial.
I even managed to work the Peoplemover into my jury selection and closing argument!
Ah, the joy of having a Disneyland background.
Helps keep the jurors awake.
Okay - semi-awake.
Anyhow, we have all had our Thanksgiving and today is Black Friday.
Guess we should pack up our pepper spray and hit the Wal-Marts, Targets and Best Buys of the world.
Anyone tries to grab that deeply discounted item you're reaching for?
Spray 'em into next week!
That's the Christmas spirit!
Heaven must weep at our hapless human species.
Often.
Hey, at least the folks that brought you two world wars, a Holocaust and atomic weapons are also responsible for good wine, violin symphonies, poetry, art...and Disneyland!
It really is an unlikely place in this wacked out world of ours, isn't it?
Who would have ever believed that this former Anaheim orange grove could be transformed into the Magic Kingdom?
Frankly, only a group of artists, daydreamers and craftsmen like those Walt Disney assembled could have EVER pulled off a stunt like Disneyland.
Many of those responsible are still scratching their heads.
How'd we manage to do it??
Ours, dear Jungle fans, is not to reason why.
We are merely to soldier forth onto Main Street and through New Orleans Square and beyond---experiencing the magnificent place that so many people's imaginations helped to make a reality.
This Thanksgiving we begin, as always, by thanking God for our very lives, our families, and our many blessings---those we see and those we carelessly overlook.
Allow me to add a prayer of thankfulness for the power of imagination, the gift of joy, the capacity to wonder and the faculty of creativity.
These are gifts of light in a world that might otherwise sink hopelessly into tarry darkness.
May your life be filled with such gifts, fellow travelers!
As we march forward into the Christmas season, please accept this old skipper's sincere wishes for a Merry Christmas!
This is a simple greeting and wish meant to communicate universal concepts of joy, love and peace, regardless of the cultural, racial or religious background of the recipient.
And I extend it to you whether you hail from the banks of the Nile in Egypt, the teeming jungles of the Amazon, the humid forests of the Mekong, the steep canyons of the Yangtze, the Colorado or Columbia, the idyllic hillsides of the Rhine or the Danube, the soaring edifices abutting the Hudson, the Thames or the Seine, the realm of the mystic Ganges, the plains along the Irrawady and the Congo, the green wetlands along the Tigris and Euphrates, the muddy edges of the Mississippi or Missouri or Ohio, Allegheny or Monongahela, on either side of the damp concrete channel known as the Los Angeles River, or "home on the Ana" along the Santa Ana River in Anaheim, or from the dusty deserts of Yemen, Tunisia, northern Mexico, the Australian Outback, the American Southwest, or northern and central Africa, or come from the high mountain areas of the Andes, the Rockies, the Alps, the Urals, the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush, Sierra Madre, the Pyrenees, Sierra Nevada, Smoky Mountains, Blue Ridge, Mt. Kenya, Mt. Kilimanjaro or Akaishi Mountains, or from the great and rolling plains of the Dakotas, Deosai, western Siberia, northeastern China, the Pampas, Nullarbor in Australia, Canterbury Plains of New Zealand, the Steppes of Russia and Mongolia or the Canadian Prairies.

It is, after all...

...a small, small world.

Merry Christmas!

---Mike