It’s been a tough year all around: Climate change is fueling more extreme weather disasters, war and conflict are spreading across the globe, political divisions are deepening and a never-ending series of mass shootings is tearing through American communities. Just what is there to be thankful for?
Yet, amid the hardship, there are myriad things that bring joy to our lives, though we may take them for granted. This year, Times editorial board members reflect on the people, places and things that make our lives richer in small but important ways.
Volunteers who keep communities running
After a 33-year career as a bilingual elementary school teacher, my mom retired at age 59 and became a full-time volunteer.
Twelve years later she maintains a packed schedule working four volunteer jobs at a food bank and community center, Meals on Wheels, an animal shelter and the public library, among other projects.
She is the person in my life who exemplifies the countless volunteers who make their communities better by taking on indispensable and underappreciated work. With a teacher’s pension sustaining her, she considers it a luxury to spend the second chapter of her life in service to others. She says it gives her purpose.
There are few things more virtuous than giving your time freely to those in need. I will always measure myself against my mom’s example and be thankful for the generosity volunteers like her show us all.
— Tony Barboza
The small propagators of big oaks
This year’s winter storms felled a once-magnificent valley oak, a beautiful thing that was such a part of my youth that I still have acorns and leaves I collected beneath it in the 1970s. The fact that the tree stood in the parking lot of the Woodland Hills shopping center where my mom bought groceries and I and my fellow high school students stuffed ourselves with pizza after football games did nothing to diminish its presence. It had been there at least a century before the asphalt, cars and shopping carts and would still be there, I was certain, centuries after they and I were gone.
So the tree’s demise was shocking and heartbreaking. I am thankful it stood as long as it did.
And as I shake my fist now at the squirrels that dig up fresh plantings in my garden, I am grateful to their anonymous squirrel forebear who buried an acorn in my yard about a quarter-century ago. It sprouted into what is now a fairly large and attractive but still young coast live oak that drops leaves and acorns that someone someday may gather.
—Robert Greene
Donald Trump is the only U.S. president in history to be so damned by so many who were part of his inner circle. Here’s an anti-Trumper cheat sheet.
A show of public spirit
Sometimes, it’s easy to focus only on the worst aspects of politics because they demand urgent attention. The incompetence, failures and scandals of elected leaders can make democracy seem hopeless, even without the poisonous polarization of recent years.
But this fall, I was reminded how wrong this thinking is. In talking to many candidates running for city and county offices in 2024, I saw how much they were moved by a true public spirit. It takes a lot of time and effort to enter a race and run a campaign. You need to set out with a huge dose of optimism — for starters, that your message matters.
Nearly all the candidates — especially those without much political experience — said they decided to run to solve concrete problems: to create more housing for homeless people, to improve classroom teaching, to expand medical access, to fight for street safety and criminal justice. Some said they were just sick and tired of living in a place where legitimate complaints were met with excuses for government inaction. So, they decided to do something about it.
We live in a vast, complex, struggling metropolis where there is still a promise of citizen action and engagement. It takes candidates such as these, coming from all backgrounds, to build a responsive democracy, and I’m grateful for people like them.
— Terry Tang
The U.S. is full of people getting furious on behalf of other people. But maybe, if only for a day, we can concentrate on better things.
Keeper of the sidewalk flora
On a stretch of Barrington Avenue in Brentwood, a lean older man walks the sidewalk daily watering the trees and flowers on the sidewalk. He hauls a utility cart filled with a couple of big jugs of water. He lives down the street, I’ve heard, and for the decade I have been on the block, I have seen him taking it upon himself to nurture the plantings that would otherwise get little attention.
I’ve seen him during midday and at dusk, bending over, tending to the trees and flowers. In addition to water, he sprinkles found trinkets and treasures around the tree trunks, some of which are uprooting the sidewalk. He is, a neighbor tells me, a scavenger of discarded things who makes them visible to delight people passing by. Whatever you think of the plastic sunglasses he affixes to plants, I am grateful that he has volunteered to walk the sidewalk day after day taking care of our flora.
— Carla Hall
The joys of swift travel
It might seem odd to feel gratitude for an airport at the height of holiday travel madness, but I am thankful for the Hollywood Burbank Airport. This little gem in the northeast corner of the San Fernando Valley makes flying extraordinarily easy and convenient.
You can arrive at your terminal 45 minutes before your flight, go through security and still have plenty of time before you board. The food and shopping options may be limited, but that’s OK. This isn’t an airport where people have to linger for long. Recently, my 90-year-old father flew down from the Bay Area to visit. His plane landed and 15 minutes later, a friendly airport employee pushed my dad in a wheelchair through the exit and into the baggage claim area — 15 minutes! Nothing is that quick or easy at LAX or most other major airports.
It helps that Burbank is one of those old-school airports in which passengers walk on the tarmac from the terminal to the plane and can enter through the aircraft’s front and back doors, which makes boarding and disembarking much faster.
The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority begins construction next year on a new terminal that meets modern safety and seismic requirements, and the nearly century-old building will be demolished. I hope the new facility maintains the convenience and speed that makes Burbank airport a traveler’s treasure.
— Kerry Cavanaugh
Approximately 46 million turkeys are slaughtered for Thanksgiving, and this year the suffering of the industrially farmed birds is compounded by the return of avian flu.
Appreciation for shared wisdom
I haven’t met the people I’m most grateful to this year. Not in person, anyway.
Over the past year, I’ve been writing a book that will be published next August: “Rethinking College: A Guide to Thriving Without a Degree.” Though it includes plenty of how-to information, the most inspiring parts come from the dozens of people who spent many hours on the phone with me sharing how they carved out their own best lives. Their stories of vulnerability and achievement can help guide teenagers and young adults who wonder whether they really need to go to a four-year college.
There are accomplished entrepreneurs and creators, including one of the most successful sound designers in Hollywood. But there also is the former grad student who became an electrician to earn enough to support her daughter.
People divulged their struggles with mental illness, failing at school, food insecurity and society’s ridiculous notion that only people with bachelor’s degrees are really smart. They also shared their published poetry, information on the lucrative life of crewing a tugboat, and discovery of how fulfilling it felt to care for the elderly, overcome homophobia, design costumes or learn to bake what’s been rated among the best bread in America. They created well-paid careers through military training or apprenticeships or by indulging their love for coding or travel or hanging out with and ultimately managing rock bands.
Above all, the people who opened up for the book are reaching out to younger versions of themselves, saying it’s OK to have faith in who you are.
— Karin Klein
A cleaner city, one piece of trash at a time
During the pandemic I started noticing a man collecting litter along the streets near the local park. He had professional equipment — a big bag and one of those pointy litter-collecting sticks — but he was not a park employee. I guessed he was just another one of my locked-down neighbors who got fed up with all the used masks, gloves, wipes and takeout wrappers strewn on the sidewalks and in gutters.
I never spoke to him, but I am deeply grateful for him. Not because he was picking up trash so I didn’t have to (I’ve always been an occasional trash picker upper), but because he inspired me to do more. Maybe I couldn’t stop coronavirus (or climate change or the proliferation of plastic pollution) but — darn it — I could make my little patch of Earth a little cleaner.
It’s a habit that stuck. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t clear trash from my street, neighborhood or park. (Sadly, L.A’.s pandemic trashiness seems to have stuck too.) A few months ago, after I bent to collect an empty pizza box left in the middle of the sidewalk, a young woman walking past said, “Thank you.” It was jarring and irritated me more than perhaps it should have. I didn’t want her gratitude; I just wanted her — and everyone else — to see that it’s not that hard to step up, too.
— Mariel Garza
A cure for the common opinion
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