Just before the holidays, I had my annual dinner with longtime friends — all political liberals.

My friends’ son, now in college, asked me a health care question as I munched on a delicious dish of short ribs. “If you’re against government health care insurance, what should poor people do? What, just screw ‘em?”

Before you blow your top about the holiday hassle at the airport, the long lines at the grocery store, all the hours you’ll spend cooking and cleaning, the uninvited guests who are crashing hubby’s football party, and the endless Christmas shopping list that awaits, just stop.

Many of us are giving thanks this holiday, but are we thanking God, thanking our friends or throwing into the air an undirected thanks?

I know I promised you James and Henry Parker this week (both children of Martha Byram and John Parker) but they will have to wait. Several things need to be discussed before we continue.

I have discovered that, at times, clothes do make the man ... or at least assist the man.

From time to time, someone will ask, “Why do you wear that clergy collar?”

So what’s to be thankful for this year? A few, things at least.

1. A kind of peace. Not peace itself, of course. That awaits the end of fighting all over the world, not just in bleeding, bomb-torn Iraq but also in the smaller places about which the media inform you only intermittently — Darfur, Afghanistan, Gaza, Lebanon and the like. Peace on Earth — the ideal — appears always to await circumstances humans seem incapable of affecting.

Holiday traditions can be hazardous to your health. Trust me; I have the scars to prove it.

Most people get up early the Friday after Turkey Day and go shopping. They choose to fight traffic, fight to get a parking space, and fight other shoppers to get into the store first.

The “greatest generation” is a term sometimes used in reference to those Americans who were raised during the Great Depression, fought in World War II, worked in farms and factories and sacrificed for the war effort while maintaining the home front. Following the war, these Americans, many of whom were born between the turn of the century and 1930, went on to produce a level of wealth and prosperity heretofore unknown to mankind.

I’ve enjoyed some of the reality shows on PBS. They get some families together to reenact some of the American history. One series is called “Colonial House.” Producers found an undeveloped piece of land in New England and brought several families, couples, and single people together to build a colony, as the early settlers did in the 1600s. They wore the same kind of shoes and clothing, used the same kind of tools, and brought the same amount of food provisions.

When I told Dave I was having a hard time coming up with a column this week, he said I shouldn’t worry about it.

“You have a way of finding something unusual – unlike everybody else who is falling back and writing about, oh, the fall colors, for instance. So overdone.”

Many people in the metro Atlanta area recognize the place that we call home as something very special. Nevertheless, our moral task is keep it special for the next generations. Figure out what sets Peachtree City and Fayette County apart and make sure you include those things in your Thanksgiving prayers.

“Appeal for Wounded Men,” proclaimed the New York Times headline. “An appeal to citizens to open their homes on Thanksgiving Day to the 15,000 wounded soldiers in the city was sent out yesterday. ... ‘Many of the disabled men feel the people have forgotten them.’”

When used as a noun, the word debate means, “A discussion involving opposing points of view.” Using such a definition, the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are engaging in something other than debate.

You knew it was going to happen. You had to know there would come a time when some reader somewhere felt compelled to give me a grammar lesson.

A Texas kindergarten teacher was helping one of her students put on his cowboy boots. He had asked for help, and she could see why. Even with her pulling and him pushing, the little boots still didn’t want to go on. By the time they got the second boot on, she had worked up a sweat. She almost cried when the little boy said, “Teacher, they’re on the wrong feet.” She looked, and sure enough, they were.

Just in time for the busiest travel week of the year, we have this news from the General Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm: It’s relatively easy to get bomb-making materials through security checkpoints and onto airplanes.

In the crosshairs: Duane “Dog” Chapman.

Move over comedian Michael Richards, former baseball player John Rocker, former Dodger general manager Al Campanis, former CBS analyst Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder — all of whom suffered for “anti-black” remarks.

WASHINGTON — Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party’s presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided not to use it. The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed.

They say one of the joys of parenting is being able to re-live your childhood by playing with your children. You get to re-read classic tales like “Hop on Pop,” a book which my 2-and-a-half year old son, Colin, has just recently decided to take quite literally, play games like Hide and Seek, color and use some of the eight million toys, many of which are battery operated, annoying and/or noisy, that people have bestowed upon your child in the hopes of driving you as completely bonkers as their children drove them.

We continue this week with the family of Beverly Byram and Sarah Williamson of Mecklenburg County, N.C. and Pike County, Ga. Last week, we began discussion of the family of Beverly's daughter, Martha, who appears to be the oldest child and one of only two we can really prove, at this point, as being Beverly's. Information on Martha was sent by Chris Wren, a descendant, who lives in Alabama. Martha married John Parker and they had nine children. We discussed the first child last week - Catherine F. Parker Dunn Norris.

The recently launched crusade to have every child tested for autism before the age of 2 has as its reason an opportunity for “early intervention” to treat the condition.

WASHINGTON — A bus full of 15 Iraqi lawyers carrying a four-page, single-spaced letter to President Bush arrived at the White House Tuesday. The mission was to request less U.S. help for building prisons and more for establishing the rule of law. There was no immediate official response, and experience of the last four years indicates nothing will be done in the future.

Richmond, Va. — Here in the onetime capital city of the Confederacy, a city I once flippantly referred to as “a hotbed of social rest,” a dozen solidly Republican voters spent more than two hours on a recent Thursday night pessimistically assessing their party and their children’s future in a session moderated by pollster Peter Hart for the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

“Tonight’s the night! It’s gonna be alright,” begins the chorus of a song by pop singer Rod Stewart. In my case, “tonight’s the night” and I certainly hope “it’s gonna be alright!”

Gas can kill! Trust me. I know. After Twin Brother Mark ate broccoli at dinner, by bedtime he was deadly. When I was young, I thought that was the worst gas one could possibly smell, but as a firefighter, I know that’s not the case.

An important component of the leftist class warfare agenda is to condemn President Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. This claim is careless, ignorant or dishonest on at least two counts.

Curiously, it was the death of a committed Christian believer the other day that got me thinking about non-believers.

There are events in most of our lives that offer opportunities for us to change our ways. The strike by television writers affords one such opportunity.

If Republicans end up with a divided convention between Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, I say we pick Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

All right, class. Today we’ll visit a word that was invented for a purpose, a made-up word you probably use daily. It’s an invented word, according to several sources like NPR Radio and Yahoo Asker, because its creator had trouble settling on a word to use when answering the telephone he just invented.