Thankfully crimson and cream

Among all the holidays, Thanksgiving is a particularly inspired one. It honors no given religion, yet it is profoundly spiritual. It has a slick commercial element -- after all, it kicks off the holiday shopping season, and many of us spend Thanksgiving Day watching blockbuster movies and TV. Yet we celebrate it by sharing a dinner with family and friends and, if you're involved the way you should be, by helping the less fortunate. \nHowever, most remarkably, Thanksgiving asks all of us to take stock and reflect on how good our lives actually are. This seems to fly in the face of human nature. We all have gripes and worries, weaknesses and jealousies upon which we fixate. We often don't realize how happy our days are as we're in the midst of living them -- only later, in the soft-focus lens of memory. And we on the editorial board, being professional complainers, are particularly bad about this.\nBut that doesn't mean there aren't things for which we are deeply thankful. So as you prepare to take off to visit with your family -- or stay here and spend the holiday with your friends -- here are a few items to keep in mind while you carve the turkey (or tofurky or ham or whatever):\n• For starters, we live in beautiful surroundings, both on campus and off. The artist Thomas Gaines famously named IUB one of the five most beautiful campuses in the nation in his 1991 book, "The Campus as a Work of Art," and the town of Bloomington receives regular accolades for its picturesqueness. Campus might not be at its finest now, in the period between autumn's colors and winter's snow, but soon, we should be back to living in a postcard.\n• In its latest rankings, U.S. News & World Report named IU the No. 70 university in the United States -- which might not sound so impressive until you realize that, as of 2005, there were 2,618 accredited four-year U.S. colleges and universities (according to the Association of American Colleges and Universities). This puts us in the top 3 percent of universities nationwide in what is generally regarded as the country with the best system of higher education in the world. Not too shabby.\n• We suspect that many of you will differ on the degree of thankfulness with which you view the last election. Yet we can all be thankful that we live under a political system that, for all the tricks and machinations of political parties, politicians, lobbyists and donors, still must bow to the will of we humble voters. Our governmental institutions work far more often than not, our economy is steadily growing and, while we might be at war abroad, here at home we are at peace. That's more than could be said for the country when Abraham Lincoln made the holiday official in 1863. \nLastly, if all else fails, there is one thing for which we IU students can always be thankful: We don't go to Purdue.