• About

Dispatches From The World of Singer/Songwriter Heather Pierson

Dispatches From The World of Singer/Songwriter Heather Pierson

Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

The gravy of gratitude.

28 Monday Nov 2022

Posted by heatherpierson in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

birding, gratitude, mindfulness, Thanksgiving

Anything I want to be better at – piano, guitar, singing, songwriting, cooking, birding, gratitude, mindfulness – requires practice.

I’m slowly getting better at birding. I was so excited to spot this big flock of bohemian waxwings on Thanksgiving Day up in Gorham, NH!

I’m getting pretty good at gratitude, too.

My gratitude practice used to be this: at the end of the day before bed, I’d write down a few things for which I was grateful that day on each page of a 4ishx3ish composition notebook. One little page per day.

Over time, the daily exercise moved from pencil and paper to simply contemplating these things before turning in for the night.

After years of practice, I find that, no matter how sour my mood, I can almost instantly tap into a feeling of gratitude for even the smallest thing, like, ‘I’m grateful that I’m wearing my favorite socks right now.’

I think of any skill as a delicious gravy, and my brain is the biscuit into which it is (hopefully) settling and improving.

Many of us gathered this past week around food and connection to family – and perhaps the sharing of their gratitude – on a day that is set aside for these things. Then, many of us got swept up the very next morning – with Thanksgiving dinner still in the belly – in the hustle and bustle of Black Friday, spending money on things, looking for deals, perhaps pushing past others to get this or that for this person or that person.

Many of us have gotten a lot of practice being consumers in our lives. And many of us are ‘good’ at it.

I wonder – does the skill of being a ‘good shopper’ lead to a more satisfying life? That’s a question we can each quietly ask ourselves, and then listen carefully for the answer.

I also wonder – wouldn’t it be amazing if we could, as a culture, move away from these practices of acquiring stuff and instead creating and sharing more meaningful experiences? To bring more reflective practices into every day, week, month, year, moment of our lives? To cultivate more gratitude, more sit-down meals with loved ones, more connection to one another and to our experience in each moment?

Let that gravy sink in.

The recipe.

22 Monday Nov 2021

Posted by heatherpierson in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Thanksgiving

Here’s the recipe for all of my childhood Thanksgivings:

  • turkey
  • stuffing
  • smashed potatoes (thanks, Archie Bunker)
  • green beans
  • beer and wine coolers
  • cigarette smoke
  • snow on the ground
  • sitting in my favorite chair with a plateful of food balanced in my lap
  • dogs begging and drooling
  • cats pretending not to care
  • football on the old CRT box
  • music on the stereo after the game is over
  • the boxes of Christmas decorations coming down from the attic
  • early to bed with a book, even if there were no arguments or blowouts

My recipe really hasn’t changed too much. Sure, some of the ingredients these days are different, but all the essentials are still there:

  • delicious food that’s been cooking all day
  • people and animals that I love
  • the din of music
  • an eye to the sky
  • a comfy place to sit and take it all in

Food and music best served hot; friends and furniture are best if they’re warm and inviting.

Here’s wishing you a heart full of gratitude and a belly full of whatever floats your (gravy) boat.

I’ve got a ticket to ride. 

24 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by heatherpierson in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

gratitude, life, Thanksgiving

Good morning, and Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends. I haven’t posted anything personal in a while and would like to bend your eyes and ears for a moment in that regard.

I’ll be spending the day today playing piano at the White Mountain Hotel in North Conway, New Hampshire, for folks who are perhaps smarter than most and leave the cooking and the cleanup to other people – people who are, at least in part, giving up spending Thanksgiving with their own families. The almighty dollar looms large, as it must for many. Music is my living, and I’ll be happy to see my jar fill up today as well.  

To be truthful, Thanksgiving is just another day for me. When I was a kid, I loved it – it was just me and Mom and Dad, eating lots of food, and watching football. Dad would drink his Budweiser, Mom would drink her Boones Farm, and the dogs would beg for scraps. 

Dad died the week before Thanksgiving in ’98, and the holidays, and the rest of life, were never quite the same after that.  

Fast forward to January of ’07, and then Mom died one night in her bed, alone, surrounded by the memories of Dad of which she never let go.

I have to admit I feel a pang of sadness when I see social media filling up with photos of happy families gathering together on this day. But that feeling never lasts long. Life is too good for that. 

The last couple of years have been the best in my entire life. My music is making its way into the world, and I’m lucky enough to make my living entirely from it.  

All of this is a long winded way of saying two things:

1. I am so grateful to you, one and all, for being a part of my life and for cheering me on during this one way wild and crazy ride.  

2. Treasure your own one way ticket and the bumps in the road and enjoy the smooth stretches. And the scenery is great too. 

Oh and stay home tomorrow if you can. Black Friday totally sucks.

Saturday Morning Musings – Say when!

30 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by heatherpierson in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Black Friday, Christmas shopping, consumerism, consumption, life, perspective, shopping, Thanksgiving

Just as I have every year on Thanksgiving since 2003, I spent three hours on Thursday seated at the piano in the dining room of the White Mountain Hotel in North Conway, NH.  Directly in my line of forward vision was a couple, I’m guessing in their late sixties, seated in the corner by the window.

I found that I couldn’t take my eyes off of them.

I could see their wedding bands, their well groomed appearance, their hands folded in front of each of them.

What I couldn’t see was love.

They rarely spoke, and only when she would lean forward to say something – then he would simply either nod or shake his head.   I watched them as they stared at their folded hands, their wine glasses, their meals as they ate.

“Why are they here and not with family?” I wondered.  “Why don’t they speak to or even look at each other?”

Maybe I’m reading too much into it.

I’m skeptical.  I’ve been a working musician for a long time – and don’t you know that we’re all professional people watchers?

I’ve seen plenty of retired couples gaze at each other across the table like teenagers in love.  I’ve seen lots of twenty- and thirty-somethings spend more time with their iPhones than with each other.

My gut tells me that this older couple ran out of things to say to each other years ago, and the whole scene just broke my heart.

There’s a song in all this…

Maybe it’s the time of year that brings the sadness out of me.  The closing and turning of the year are always a bit melancholy – both my parents’ birthdays, their wedding anniversary, the holidays, the anniversaries of both their deaths.

And then, there’s Black Friday.

During his first HBO special after completing drug rehab, George Carlin proclaimed that “the new national pastime… is consumption.”  After watching video and reading tweets about Black Friday violence throughout the US this week, his words ring astonishingly true.

Imagine the scene: hundreds of people lined up in the middle of the night – some having camped out for hours – to “spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need,” as George put it.  Barricades in place, many of which are breached by customers who cannot contain themselves in their pursuit of deeply discounted items like tablets, game systems and household appliances.  Police officers on hand to quell any violence.  Men, women, and sometimes young children swept up in the throng, some falling and getting trampled.  Fist fights erupting over things like towels and DVD players.  A sea of strangers pushing and shoving each other to be the first to grab the latest must-have gadget.

All this while their bellies are still full of Thanksgiving feasts – dinners, of course, meant to accompany and to celebrate feelings of gratitude.

Recalling my several year stint working in retail, I can assure you that Christmas shopping, particularly that done on Black Friday, can and does bring the worst out of people, and in large unruly numbers.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that my ex dragged me to Walmart in North Conway on a Black Friday shopping expedition several years ago.  This was the first time I’d ever attended one of these early-bird box-store sales.  To my complete astonishment, at 4 a.m. the parking lot was nearly filled to capacity.  I was in a fluorescent consumerist jungle inhabited by unfriendly, bleary-eyed beasts on the prowl.

Jeans for three bucks.  DVDs for a dollar.  Deep discounts!  Huge savings!

In this small mountain town of less than 10,000 people, the aisles of Walmart were crammed with shoppers clutching coffee cups and the handles of their well-stocked carts.   The cheery Christmas music issuing from the PA system coupled with the frowning faces of both staff and customers actually lent a sinister air to the whole enterprise.

“Why, exactly,” I remember thinking, “are we here again?”

Ah, yes.  Christmas gifts for loved ones.

When is enough enough?

It brings to mind something that happened almost every night at the dinner table when I was young.   Mom or Dad would spoon out whatever it was we were having, accompanying it with the following instruction:

“Say when!”

I loved to watch my favorite foods pile up on my plate, especially mashed potatoes.  Ah, the glorious gravy lake I would soon build…

.. but I almost always took more than I could comfortably eat, and I wasn’t allowed to leave the table until I finished it.  (Seriously, not allowed.  I sat for hours one night staring at a half-eaten bowl of Campbell’s Chicken and Stars until I did finally finish it.)  I always did regret crossing that line into excess.  Still do.

When did shopping and eating and blindly adhering to traditions become more important than genuine human connection and kindness?  Is enduring all that obvious misery really worth it?

If you are bloated and nauseated from eating far more than your digestive tract can handle; if you are standing in a dark, cold parking lot in the middle of the night, muscling your way through a frenzied throng to just buy some stuff; if you are sitting at Thanksgiving dinner with someone with whom you can’t even share a loving glance or barely a single word: you have to know when to say “enough is enough!”  You have to know when to say “when”.

Saturday Morning Musings – Shouldn’t every month be gratitude month?

09 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by heatherpierson in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

gratitude, Thanksgiving

I’m not typically one who climbs aboard bandwagons. This propensity towards the path not usually taken has meant that I’m usually a little behind the times on pretty much every aspect of popular culture – fashion, movies, TV, idioms, etc.

So, while my social media newsfeeds have been awash since November 1st with daily declarations of gratitude, I can’t help but think: shouldn’t every month be gratitude month?

Even as trendy as the month of gratitude may be, I do think it is a good way to help remind people to get into that mindset. Gratitude is, at its best, a selfless expression of appreciation for the good stuff in one’s life.

Even the celebration of Thanksgiving as a national holiday is dubious, given what happened to that peaceful accord between Europeans and native Americans: for what, exactly, did those tribal people have to be grateful once their lands, their wives, their children, their health, their Eden, had been taken from them? Besides what was left of their lives? Not a whole hell of a lot.

Today, most thoughtful people can appreciate how terrible an injustice it was and is even as they tuck in to their roast turkey, bread crumb stuffing and pumpkin pie. Those were the sins of another generation. The cycle ends now.

Let’s hope so, eh?

I say: live in such a way that others are grateful for your existence. That’s my goal – this month and every month thereafter.

Tickets now on sale for A Charlie Brown Christmas! – plus more news

20 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by heatherpierson in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Charlie Brown Christmas, Davy Sturtevant, Delaney's, First Universalist Church, Glen, Heather Pierson, Heather Pierson Quartet, Jackson, Laconia, Louisa Wise, Maine, music, Nate Towne, NERFA, New Hampshire, North Conway, Norway, Norway UU Choir, Oxford Hills Food Pantry, Pitman's Freight Room, Red Parka Pub, Shannon Door Pub, Sing Now, Thanksgiving, The Dean Machine, The Open Road, White Mountain Hotel

It’s been a very rewarding time here lately – last Thursday’s CD release show for “The Open Road” at Pitman’s Freight Room was a great success.  Many thanks to the sweet folks who came out to listen so intently!

I was also very pleased at the turnout for the Harvest Concert on Sunday afternoon.  There were musical offerings from myself, the Norway UU Choir, Davy Sturtevant, Nate Towne and the newly formed hospice choir “Sing Now”.  It was a benefit for the Oxford Hills Food Pantry and, thanks to the kindness of everyone in attendance, we collected lots of food and cash donations for that worthy organization to help them through the tough holiday season.    A great afternoon for a great cause!

Shawn and I have been working hard in the studio on my new acoustic tracks for CD #7 (!!!) which I’m hoping to release in the summer of 2013.  Sneak previews are now available (along with a few other goodies) on the Listen/Buy section of my website: www.heatherpierson.com.

Tickets are now on sale for the Charlie Brown Christmas shows!  Visit my website for dates, times, locations and to purchase tickets.

Here’s what’s happening the rest of this month:

Tuesday, November 20th:  I had the pleasure of meeting Louisa Wise at NERFA last weekend.  Here for 6 months from her home in Australia, she is touring the States with her music, which is absolutely beautiful and full of grace and charm!  She plays guitar, dulcimer (that she built herself), fiddle and more!   She’ll be performing at Pitman’s Freight Room in Laconia, NH at 8 p.m.  If you’re in the area, please consider attending this concert.  You’re in for a treat!

Thursday, November 22nd:  Happy Thanksgiving!  As has become my yearly tradition, I’ll be playing solo at The White Mountain Hotel in North Conway, NH starting at 11:30 a.m.

Friday & Saturday, November 23rd & 24th:  I’ll be rocking The Red Parka Pub in Glen, NH with The Dean Machine!   This room — and this band — are so much freaking fun!!  9 p.m. til the wee hours.

Wednesday, November 28th:  The Heather Pierson Quartet will be at Delaney’s in North Conway from 9 p.m. til midnight.   Blues/funk/jazz/whatnot.  Maybe a Charlie Brown preview?  MAYBE.  🙂

Friday, November 30th:  Shawn and I will be performing at The Shannon Door Pub in Jackson, NH starting at 8 p.m.  A warm and cozy room and great pizzas, too!

That’s it for now!  Don’t forget to follow me on Facebook (HeatherPiersonMusic) or on Twitter (@HeatherPierson) to stay up to date on all the latest developments.   Thank you so much for your continued love and support, and have a joyful and restful Thanksgiving!

Love,
Heather
xo

What are you thankful for?

21 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by heatherpierson in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bretton Woods, Charlie Brown Christmas, Davy Sturtevant, Heather Pierson, Lovell, Mount Washington Hotel, music, New Hampshire, North Conway, Norway Open Mic Night, Thanksgiving, The Cave, White Mountain Hotel

It’s hard to believe that Thanksgiving week is already here!  Looking back over the past year, I have so much to be thankful for.  I am so fortunate to be able to make a comfortable living doing what I love to do more than anything, and to be doing  that work with some of my favorite people on the planet.  What could be better than that?   I am also grateful for each and every one of you faithful readers and fans for your continued support of and enthusiasm for what I do.   It really and truly is why I do this.  Life is awesome!  🙂

Let’s have a look at what’s happening this week:

Monday, November 21st

My dear friend Davy Sturtevant hosts an open stage event at the Charlotte Hobbs Memorial Library in Lovell, ME on the third Monday of each month.   It runs from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m.  As of this wrting, I’m planning on being there this evening – please come out and support heartfelt, acoustic offerings of live and local talent!   FMI or directions please call (207) 925-3177.

Wednesday, November 23rd

I’ll be playing in the main (and magical!) dining room of the Mount Washington Hotel in lovely Bretton Woods, NH from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. with Brian Hathaway on bass and Dave Ellis on drums.

Thursday, November 24th

Thanksgiving Day is a busy one for me!  First, I’ll be playing at the White Mountain Hotel in North Conway, NH from noon until 4 p.m.  If you’d like to let someone else worry about cooking your Thanksgiving dinner this year, call 1-800-533-6301 to make reservations.  Later that evening, I’ll be back in Bretton Woods to play at The Cave from 9 p.m. til midnight.

Friday, November 25th

It’s Norway Open Mic Night time!  Come join the fun at 479 Main St. in historic downtown Norway, ME.  6:30 sign-up for performers, 7:00-ish p.m. open mic start.  $3 donation – plus we’ll be collecting non-perishable food items for the Oxford Hills Food Pantry to help that organization get through the tough holiday season.   If you aren’t in the area or you can’t make it, we’ll be streaming the festivities online: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/norway-open-mic-night

Saturday, November 26th

I’ll be back at the White Mountain Hotel for a solo dining room gig from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m.

Tickets for A Charlie Brown Christmas with The Heather Pierson Trio are selling like hotcakes!  If you’d like to reserve tickets for either the Eaton or Gorham show (or both!) then please drop me a line and let me know.  Seating is especially limited for the Eaton show, so get your tickets now while you can!

Hope you have a peaceful Thanksgiving holiday – and when you get a moment, drop me a line and let me know what you’re thankful for this year!  Thanks so much for your love and continued support!

Archives

Blogroll

  • Facebook
  • Heart Songs & Circle Songs
  • Heather's official site
  • Instagram
  • Patreon
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Dispatches From The World of Singer/Songwriter Heather Pierson
    • Join 136 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Dispatches From The World of Singer/Songwriter Heather Pierson
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...