So many things I’m thankful for. What’s on your list?

On this Thanksgiving day, I offer my thanks for:

Two buttes (Spencer and Skinner), two rivers (the Willamette and the McKenzie) and two major cities (Eugene and Springfield) that complement each other well and help make us who we are as a community.

Waiters who must keep a dozen or so diners happy all at once, while coordinating with a kitchen, zipping by other waiters who are also in overdrive and putting up with insufferable diners like me, who, amid the madness, say, “Kevin, do you remember my usual order?” And he says: “Yeah. Red curry, medium spice, with chicken. No eggplant. No peppers.” Amazing people, waiters.

Service clubs, who do an array of behind-the-scenes work to keep our communities going. For example, Eugene’s Airport Rotary Club, in the past 29 years, has raised $1.49 million for 1,106 Lane County students to go to college. Who knew?

Poetic rhymes in songs, among the best being James Taylor’s, “Now the first of December was covered with snow / Yes, and so was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston / Now the Berkshires they seem dreamlike on account of that frostin’.”

The University of Oregon. Sports. Science. Arts. Journalism. Visiting lecturers. The UO has enriched our community for 148 years. As Don Essig, the voice of the Ducks, once told me: “Eugene without the UO is Roseburg.”

Caretakers. Some are professional, some are sons and daughters who must learn on the fly. All care for those who can’t care for themselves. Our quiet, unheralded heroes.

The Florence-to-Yachats drive on Highway 101. In my book, the prettiest stretch of road in Oregon.

Ya-Po-Ah Terrace’s “Peace on Earth” sign that lights up this time of year. Hurrah to the retirement high-rise for keeping this tradition alive, a candle of hope in the darkness, when it would be easier to not do so.  

First responders. Police, firefighters, EMTs — I’m humbled by people who, each day, show up to work willing to put their lives on the line for total strangers, including me. I’ve never forgotten the Friday afternoon in April 2011 when Eugene Police Department officer Chris Kilcullen, 43, was killed after pulling a motorist over on Highway 126 in Springfield. Forever a hero. Forever appreciated.

The Amazon TV commercial in which three older women hit the sledding slopes, smiles wide. You go, girls!

Fellow swimmers who don’t act like the water at the Amazon or Sheldon pools belongs to them, but who willingly share their lanes. 

Laughter. Anytime. Anywhere. Like whistling, one of those things you hear less of as the generations pass, but so vital to a community’s health.

Oregon’s geographic diversity. Where else can you see a sunrise at sea level (Florence) and, with a bit of creativity and hustle, see a sunset atop the 10,358-foot South Sister, all in the same day? Did it in 2009.

Local crafters, cooks and bakers who enrich our community with their skills, passion and perseverance. (See the Holiday Market, the Florence Artisan Studio Shop, Junction City’s Camas Country Mill, etc.)

Spencer Butte and Mount Pisgah hikers who pack out their dogs’ solid waste instead of leaving it beside the trail (ostensibly to pick up on their way down from the summit). The fact that both trails are sprinkled with plastic poop bags suggests a lot of hikers either forget or have no problem littering the trail. So bravo to those who pack it out!

Neighbors who deploy our garbage and recycling cans when we’re gone, offer us fresh tomatoes over the back fence in September and bake us apple torts after the power-washer they hired sprayed mud all over the side of our house.

A city blemished by only one stretch of serious traffic jams — the Randy Papé Beltline. Sure, home Duck games can snarl things for a few hours, but if you’ve lived in the Seattle area as I have, I still marvel—after 36 years—at how relatively easy it is to get around this place.

Reciprocating saws. They are the Houdini of power tools, able to get you out of any jam you can get yourself into. Not often used, but like a football team’s long snapper, indispensable when needed.

Veterinarians who not only show utter respect when you bring in your dying cats—two in the last five months—but follow up with a condolence card. Who does that?

Memories. A few months ago, when I met a friend for coffee, he told me he was, in essence, losing his mind. He was in the early stages of dementia. He was forgetting stuff that he always used to remember. How easily I take for granted that I can remember stuff.

The search-and-replace and undo (command-z) functions on my MacBook Air. As an author, these have saved me hours, days, perhaps weeks of unnecessary keyboarding. How did precomputer authors write books?

School teachers. They can make or break a student. Change a life. Instill hope in the hopeless. From a fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Wirth, who arranged for me to interview Oregon State basketball coach Paul Valenti on Career Day, to the University of Oregon’s Ed Coleman, who broadened my world to include writers of color, they’ve made a big difference in my life. Said Turkish statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: “A good teacher is like a candle—it consumes itself to light the ways for others.”

The pioneers. Not just the well-known ones such as Eugene Skinner, Cal Young, Elijah Bristow and Bill Bowerman (jogging, 1962), but folks such as Caroline Boekelheide, who helped launch the Eugene Symphony (1965), from practice sessions in her living room; those who started our first TV station, KVAL (1954); and those whose donations built the Hult Center for Performing Arts (1982).

Grace. In any size, shape or form.

Books. I know, I know, they’re losing favor with entire generations who are glued to screens; America, The Atlantic recently reported, is sliding toward illiteracy. I think of how books have influenced me — from my mother reading me “The Little Engine That Could” to the current stack on my bedstand — and I can’t imagine life without them.

People who do what seemingly can’t be done. I just returned from coffee with Eugene’s Faris Cassell, who began as a book reviewer for The Register-Guard and later spent more than 20 years writing a book, “The Unanswered Letter” (2020), that won the National Jewish Book Award. Three years later a second book, “Inseparable,” was featured on NBC’s Nightly News. Who does that? Only the brave. Only the dedicated. Only the indefatigable among us.

Fog. The overlooked and underappreciated Willamette Valley weather condition. Especially nice when tucked in valley nooks and seen from Spencer Butte and Mount Pisgah.

The Eugene Airport. Big enough to attract major airlines. Small enough to keep things simple. I still miss the “flying-people” wall — the compacted consolation prize following a remodel never quite cut it for me — but the airport is always a good place to return to.

Pharmacists. Beyond doctors and nurses, did any profession struggle more during COVID-19? My sense is that they’re just now returning to a sense of normalcy. They deserve a break.

The first winter weather report that says, “Chance of snow.”

Yachats. Oregon’s finest small town. Winter storms, laid-back people and deep-fried halibut from the crazily named Luna Sea Fish House.

Children, who ground us in their innocence and wisdom, even if they don’t always see it themselves. Like the kid at a Hayward Field all-comers meet, a nonribbon winner, who was asked how fast he’d just run the 50-yard dash. “As fast as I could!”

Military veterans. In half a century of journalism, I’ve been privileged to interview hundreds of them. They are the quiet keepers of the peace, the people who willingly give up control of their lives to serve the common good. And they pass, like winter wheat, each day without the fanfare they deserve. Wrote the late George “Rusty” Mayer, of Eugene, an Army Air Force corporal in World War II: “And now with a tear running down my cheek / I see the old soldiers coming for me …”

The local media. In a landscape far more challenging to survive in than decades ago, they abide: The Register-Guard, Eugene Weekly, The Chronicle and the new kid on the block, Lookout Eugene-Springfield. KLCC. OPB. Local TV stations. Every time a reporter offers readers, viewers or listeners an objective story, democracy is fortified.

The life-sized ducks sprinkled here and there, 50 of which were created by local artists back in 2002 and 2003 and auctioned off to raise $150,000 for local nonprofits. Grandson Cade, then 7, was particularly infatuated with “Touch of Oregon,” which still resides at the Oakway Center.

Pizza. Anytime. Anywhere. It’s not just the taste, it’s the name — pizza, so quirkily captivating, a staccato audio burst of culinary intrigue. And, of course, the unique shape. Beyond fire, the wheel, electric light, the printing press and the Fosbury Flop, is any invention so magnificent?

Seasons. I can’t imagine life in a city without seasons. As the patriot Patrick Henry said: “Give me limber trees — with changing leaf colors — or give me death.” (Groan.)