It’s Thanksgiving, a day I really don’t give much thought to. I always enjoyed it, the feast and all, but it was never a day that inspired me to feel gratitude. I try and feel gratitude for someone or something every day and at every opportunity, and I try and put words to it as often as possible. Even most of my meditations before Shiva, Ganesh and Durga are more often than not merely me projecting gratitude towards them. I grew up in a Christian tradition where I was taught that God was, for all practical purposes, dead, retired, no longer all that evident; so now, as a practicing Hindu (of the Western variety), I have been shocked at how much more involved the Deities have been in my life… and for how much more immediately I feel grateful.

Today, for Thanksgiving, Joe and I went out for lunch… I had no other plans or invites, which was fine by me, I would rather eat with one than with 12 anyhow. I know how to behave around 1, I’m clueless around 12… so I hide and plan my escape… whereas with 1 I can relax and be content. We went to Boston Market, as I knew they’d have a decent Thanksgiving spread, and not only was the spread decent, but the employees were kind and joyful. I hope and assume they were pleased to be there getting time-and-a-half pay… they were awful smiley about something. I was thankful for the food, the pleasantness of the experience, and the lack of pressure and stress I would have felt in Ohio with my family. The whole experience was simply good and easy.

After that my only other plan was to meet with a student, who, like many of our students, are somewhat displaced here, like I, far from what was once “home” and family. As I was heading out I was bellyaching a little inside… wondering why I was going off to the school (SAW) to meet with a student on Thanksgiving day. Who the heck else is doing that on Thanksgiving? Well, the joyful souls at Boston Market were doing that… but again, I assume they were getting time-and-a-half.

What was I doing?

Well, I know what I was doing. It came to me as I was about to leave my house and get into my car. My thoughts went first to Saraswati (Goddess of arts and Knowledge–among other things), and I thanked her, and I decided to drop all my bellyaching thoughts, realizing that it was my duty–and not in a dreadful way, either… it is simply my duty to draw and teach, and more importantly to pass along all I know. It is a duty of the highest order, one that must be fulfilled in gratitude, especially on Thanksgiving.

And I realized why else I was going: to pay thanks to my teachers, to the many artists who befriended me, who tolerated me, who got me through, who gave far more to me than I had any right to expect. I was going to pass along all they had passed to me, and that is a divine duty, one worthy of Saraswati, Thanksgiving, and my time. As I set my mind on Saraswati, my duty, and gratitude, I realized how happy I was, how content, and how brilliantly the sun was shining. I was bowing in gratitude before my teachers, my Masters, my gurus, as I drove to meet my student. I was going on Thanksgiving to thank them… thank you…

P. Craig Russell – for being the first, for tolerating my ignorance and youth, and for teaching me to get over myself, to love Disney, and for showing me through example the power of grace and elegance,

Val Mayerik – for the obscene amount of time you devoted to me, to my development, for teaching me to kick ass with hands and fists, and for being my father when I had none,

Dan Adkins – for learning from Wally Wood, for passing it along to Craig and Val, and then for showing me that you could spend the rest of your life in love with the brush, and for the stories… dear God… those Dan Adkins stories,

Jim Steranko – for the most profound and chillingly insightful portfolio reviews ever,

Frank Thorne – for being a God when I needed one, for the warm glow of your charming wife, for revealing the secrets of your work, and for the warmth of your home when I so needed you,

John Workman – for the gentle knowledge and compassionate enthusiasm for the things that really matter in art and comics,

Tom Hart – for showing me that teaching is as grand a life purpose as the making of art, for patience, and for seeing how much I had to offer in a world that has so often overlooked and dismissed me,

Jeffrey Catherine Jones – for so much more than I could put to words, for teaching me the Yin Yang value of white as well as black, for allowing me to trust my work, for showing me the path I needed to follow, and mostly for treating me like an equal,

Jean Rollin – for a love of Sadeian decadence, and for that amazing weekend in New York, I will treasure forever having known a legend such as you, rest in peace, you and dear Jeffrey both.

And to my students… thanks for giving me the chance to keep alive the lessons these Masters taught me. Thank you, in a world that values little of the past, less of tradition, and far far too much of modernity; thank you for letting this old broad rant and fill you with a love of craft and discipline, for the chance to argue that sacrifice and discipline matter, for letting me swim upstream with the message that artistic limitations and ignorance are not to be embraced as stylistic victories. Carry it on into the future, no matter how much the rest of the world of comics and art slips and stumbles into the sewage of the post-modernist cult of self-expression… thanks for carrying at least a little of what matters with you. You can have as much of it as you like, even on Thanksgiving day.