Hey, thanks Andrea! She’s hanging in there. I think we’re going to have her mom stay with us for a while, so we can take care of her until she can move into a place that can give her the care she’ll need. All of us (my wife, her mom, my daughter) are all going to go and see a production of Les Mis at a theater downtown in January, so we’re all looking forward to that!
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You truly are an amazingly strong person! I agree, we really do have a great group. Have a great Thanksgiving, too, I look forward to seeing you at the next meeting. 
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That’s great to hear, and please let your family know that there are a lot of people out here sending love. I saw the traveling Broadway production of Les Mis a while back, it was absolutely amazing! The actor who played Jean Valjean’s voice alone brought tears to my eyes. You’ll have to tell us what everyone thought about the show. Have a great Thanksgiving, I look forward to seeing you at the next meeting. 
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Operation Joy or Mollie lives another day : Last Friday while the weather finally got cool, I took my cane up to the park a few blocks away. I so enjoy cooler weather and knew it would put me in a better mood. I traversed a couple of blocks and suddenly a white poodle came up behind me. I noticed it had a collar so I continued on thinking how I could see if there was a phone number attached. The dog followed me and shot ahead of me going across the road a couple of times. Oh dear, this isn’t good because there is quite of bit of traffic usually , but not so much now. I turned around and started back from whence I came and noticed there was a young woman walking her dog on a leash , same side of the street as me. She saw me and headed towards the neutral ground. I crossed the street to approach her making sure there was no oncoming traffic. Of course , the white poodle followed me and I waved down the young woman . Please help me , excuse me , this dog is following me and it must of gotten loose. Of course, she thought it was my dog , I said no, do you think you can read its collar ? After a. couple of minutes struggling with both dogs , we finally called the number on the collar . Luckily, the owner was home and a few minutes later she was close enough to walk to us. She thanked us and I told her my concern was with the traffic and was fortunate that this young woman was nearby. Morale of the story : Don’t let your pet become roadkill, have them leashed. Fortunate for Mollie , she was ok and could go home safe. Jack Callahan
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Here’s a no nonsense gratitude message:
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You made someone’s holiday, for sure!
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Such a great video! While I don’t know if this is a shortcut, in everything I do, I try to be mindful and purposeful. In being present I can appreciate and enjoy the smell of the apples when I cut them to make oatmeal for Kurt and me; I can stop what I’m doing and spend time with Kayla because she wants to talk about all things paleoanthropology; or I can feel and fully take part in the community when watching TYT or doing one of my online and YouTube group meditation sessions. In being fully engaged in what I’m doing I find that gratitude naturally follows. Rather than thinking of what I don’t have, I focus on the abundance of joy, love, and giggles in my life.
What I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving. I had a heavy, necessary, and wonderfully loving dialogue with my fifteen-year-old daughter, Kayla, last night. Long story kinda short, I didn’t know that she knew about the verbal, physical, and sexual abuse not just from my childhood and young adulthood, but from her father. She met me with so much love and grace, and because of her strength and belief in me, I know we’re going to be okay; no, we’ll be a helluva lot more than okay when I’m finally at a place where we can leave. Please know I’m not in immediate danger or anything right now–he’s not drinking, and if he does, he’s out immediately, it’s just that between the abuse, cheating, and losing our retirement and savings and putting us in semi-major debt, I just can’t do it anymore. We’ve had separate bedrooms for over two years, since his DUI arrest, and we live as roommates at this point. I’ve hurt my children too much in trying to protect everyone and hold it all together, and I have deep regret over that. I honestly thought she didn’t know; how stupid and arrogant, right? My son, Kurt (19), has barely talked to his stepdad in two years and is beyond happy that I am going to move on–he’s known I’m going to leave for about a year and has been my number-one fan and cheerleader. I don’t know if or how much he knows about the abuse, and am not going to ask because I’m afraid of what he’d do if he found out. Plus, I don’t want to burden him with that knowledge. I would have never told Kayla, she came upstairs last night and told me what she knew. My poor baby girl has been living with this for years. I cannot express in words how grateful I am for my kids and their amazing love and support. Besides having two amazing kids, slowly putting myself out there and making connections online this past year or so has been a catalyst for me building my awareness, finding inner strength, and believing in myself. Thank you all for being a part of that, you’ll never know how much I appreciate your support and kindness. 
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I posted this for last night’s Operation Joy and it also applies to everyone in TYT family who’s part of Operation Hope, too, so I thought I’d post it here. I hope everyone has a festive Thanksgiving!
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My #TeamJoy for today is being thankful for being part of the best online community anywhere. We don’t always agree — which is one of our strengths. We discuss and debate and try to find solutions. We’re always there for each other, no matter what insane news the political gods throw at us.
I’ll be traveling tomorrow for Thanksgiving, so I want to wish a happy Thanksgiving to everyone at TYT and to my TYT Fam. Much love
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I’m so sorry to hear about all that you and your kids have been going through.
The fact that your daughter came to you showing you love and support, and that your son is also supporting you, I think says a lot about just how much good you’ve done as a mother. Giving everything you’ve been through, both as a child and as an adult, that’s something you can hopefully be proud of.
Growing up as a kid, my father and my stepfather were physically abusive towards my mom, and we were always afraid for her. Even if I didn’t know 100% what is going on, I knew a lot more than probably my mom realized.
I hope you’re able to get out of that situation with your husband as soon as possible, even if you’re not in immediate physical danger (which is very good to hear) I can’t imagine what it’s like to deal with that while trying to raise a kid. I’m very happy that you are building up connections more and that the community here has been a positive impact on your journey. I don’t know if any of this reply helps, but thank you for being strong enough to share with us. If you ever need anything, just let me / us know. 
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Happy Thanksgiving , electicmisc !
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Have a great Thanksgiving , Andrea. ! Jack
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Gobble ‘til you wobble, folks!
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Thank you for your kind words and support. Your reply helps more than you know. I’m so sorry that your mother, you, and your siblings went through that!
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I had a really nice Thanksgiving and I hope you did too!
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I hope you and your family had a great Thanksgiving (and that Tobi Wan got plenty of scraps)! 
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Yes , Andrea I did. Fortunately for several Thanksgivings I’ve been invited to a couples family since I don’t have family anymore. I had a really good time . wishing you well
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Hey, Operation Joy family!
It’s been a while since I’ve shared some joy. Recent events put me into a bit of a social media and political content hiatus.
I took some time to look over my life for the past few weeks and decided that the negativity and dread has no ability to squash my happiness. This is going to be a little bit of catching up and a touch of photo dumping, so buckle up.
First off, my baby Morgan is doing great. She’s starting to smile socially and it’s absolutely adorable. She is really enjoying physical interaction and it absolutely melts my heart. She’s strong, opinionated and beautiful. I can’t express how lucky I am.
I had become concerned about Russell, my brewing crow (and future leader of my crow army). After my family leave, I hadn’t seen him come back to the brewery for post-brew snacks. Last week, my boss came out to tell me “hey, your broken-legged crow is back”. He was picking remnants of grain out of the grass from the previous day’s brew. This week, he was here to greet me with an exuberant caw and helped himself to his usual treat. Welcome back, Russell. I missed you. (Side note: sorry for the terrible photo quality, had to snap a picture through the window)
On the topic of beer, I sent one of my favorite creations (Mythical Beasts Oatmeal Stout) to an international beer competition. It took bronze! This was one of the first recipes I wrote when I took over as head brewer and it felt really nice to have it get the recognition that I’ve always felt it deserved.
I have so many reasons to be joyful.
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Thanks Andrea — we traveled to see my in-laws and Tobie-Wan stayed with a dog sitter, but she sent us several pictures and he seemed to have fun!
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Hey TYT. I’d like to share some interesting news that’s happened in the world of Michigan politics in the last few weeks that gives me some joy (note that this will probably be a really long post).
First some bittersweet news: Detroit mayor Mike Duggan recently announced that he would not be running for re-election in 2025 for a 4th term as mayor. The reason: After 11 years of progress and hard work so far, he met his ultimate goal of getting Detroit’s population to finally start growing again after a 57 year decline, a result that we finally saw from the US Census estimates earlier this year.
The big rumor going around was that he was going to run for governor of Michigan in 2026. He made that announcement official last week, but the twist was that he decided to run as an independent. This shocked everyone from Detroit to Lansing as he had always been affiliated with the Democrats (although the mayor of Detroit is officially a non-partisan job). But Duggan felt his positions don’t neatly fit into a clear mold with the Democrats or Republicans anymore.
I think if anyone could pull of an independent run, Mike Duggan would be the guy. Why? Because he’s a populist. I don’t think he realizes that though because he’s never used that term in any of his campaigns, but when he first ran for Mayor of Detroit in 2013 (as a write-in candidate mind you) he visited as many people as he could in the city and simply asked them what was most urgently needed from the city. A reminder that Detroit was bankrupt at the time, so everything was broken. But after a lot of hard work, Duggan along with city council and other stakeholders delivered a functioning city to its residents again and everyone is generally happy with how things turned out.
Now he wants to take this same approach at the state level. While Michigan is nowhere near bankruptcy, there have been some problems that have gotten ignored for too long, and now Duggan wants to visit as many people as possible throughout Michigan over the next two years. I think this will be an important test to see whether the paradigm has truly shifted from left vs right to populist vs establishment as Cenk and Ana have been preaching for the last several months. We’ll see what happens but I’m certainly excited for the future here and that gives me joy.
You can watch Duggan’s announcement for his independent governor run here in this 5 minute video: https://youtu.be/78O3uNBj61w?si=soTuBapCHQzFSRcC