Since early colonial days, North American communities have stopped for days of prayer and thanksgiving. Grateful for mercies received and sobered by harrowing conflicts, people have paused for a day to reflect upon lifes bounties and tragedies. In its current incarnation, however, it is sometimes a shallow splurge of food and football. Only vestiges of this initial community tradition of thoughtful reflection can sometimes be found.
This collection reflects an effort to revive the tradition of thoughtful reflection and contemplation of our role and responsibilities in todays troubling and often violent world. Written year by year over the decades, each grace speaks to a moment in our nations passage through many elections, crises, disasters, and even triumphs. High moral purpose is balanced by a spirit of playfulness and an appreciation of the myriad beauties of our planet and universe. These graces have been shared at tables around the world for over three decades. Enjoy them and catch glimpses of our collective life as we moved from the twentieth to the twenty-first centuries.
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David Kessler was born in Brooklyn. He learned his first lesson in love and loss when the Dodgers left town. He relocated to Hartford, where he was exposed to New England culture. He then headed west, first to Kalamazoo College, and eventually fulfilled his lifelong desire to live in Berkeley. After doing graduate work in history at the University of California, he went to work in the university library. He recently retired from its fabled Bancroft Library. He continues to indulge his passions for swimming, baking bread, and reading contemporary fiction. He sometimes entirely disappears from view during the baseball season. He and Nancy Mennel, his wife of thirty-five years, lost their home in the calamitous 1991 Oakland Hills Fire. They rebuilt. David has been active in the neighborhood’s community life since that signal event.
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