Who in their right mind throws a soda at someone working in a fast-food restaurant’s drive-thru window—a worker who is six-months pregnant, during a pandemic, no less—all because they didn’t want ice in that drink? Tips rolled in from across the world after a witness saw what happened and asked if she could help. She’d approached the worker in suburban Atlanta, saw that she was shaken and soaked, and offered to support her. A social media post drew a huge response, reported by Tricia Escobedo of CNN. “I have a surprise for you,” the witness told the worker before mailing an envelope of cash.

“She gave me the envelope and I couldn’t do nothing but cry because I wasn’t expecting that,” the worker said. A hat tip to Escobedo for amplifying the story. I’d shared this summer the news of a customer berating a barista for asking her to wear a mask, followed by $32,000 in tips; a $1,300 tip for a Texas server; an Arkansas worker landing a customer’s $1,200 stimulus check; bakery workers scoring a $1,000 tip in Florida; $93,000 for a server who’d defended customers on the receiving end of drunkenly spewed racist comments by another customer; $3,000 on a $124 tab for a New Orleans bartender; $1,600 on a $99 tab in Ottawa; $1,000 on a $43 tab at a New Jersey restaurant; $330 from one server to another; and a pizza deliverer welcoming $100 on a less-than-$30 tab.

But the underlying pay structures, working conditions, and health care access aren’t equitable or sustainable, giving occasion to these headlines in the first place. If you have stories of support and solidarity, send them this way: recharge@motherjones.com.

As we close the books on 2020, we asked our editorial staff to reflect on newly published reads that they loved. We also wondered what books, from any year, they turned to for help processing everything that’s happened, from a pandemic to the climate crisis to electoral politics to a renewed push for racial justice—a decade’s worth of content in just 52 weeks, as one Mother Jones engagement editor put it. The resulting list, “The Books That Got Us Through 2020,” is wide-ranging and surprising, with everything from highly publicized picks like Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste and Elena Ferrante’s The Lying Life of Adults to an unconventional “speculative narrative about wayward Black women at the beginning of the 20th century,” Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals. As the coronavirus continues to exert its deadly toll and winter lockdowns descend, our reading list offers an escape hatch.

Each Friday, we pull articles from our archives to propel you into the weekend.

“I knew no black people—young or old, rich or poor—who didn’t feel injured by the experience of being black in America,” wrote Roger Wilkins in his 1982 biography. In 1973, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials about the Watergate scandal. In the 1960s, he worked in the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. His close personal mentor was Thurgood Marshall. Wilkins was also a regular contributor here at Mother Jones.

He wrote for this magazine in 1992 a piece titled “White Out.” In it, he describes “an even bigger hurdle” than 1960s segregation, to his mind: “the power of whites to define blacks.” (Throughout, when quoting, I am adopting Wilkins’ use of a lowercase “b” for Black; our magazine’s style now, and my belief, is that an uppercase Black is better suited.)

He describes how he’d noticed, from talking with his white students (Wilkins taught at George Mason), that “many suburban racial attitudes have actually rolled back to something like the fifties.” He remembers how in more “innocent” days, before integration, racism would be thought of not as systemic, but as “individual.”

“We believed that the power to segregate was the greatest power that had been wielded against us,” he writes. “It turned out that our expectations were quite wrong. The greatest power turned out to be what it had always been: the power to define reality where blacks are concerned and to manage perceptions and therefore arrange politics and culture to reinforce those definitions.”

It reminded me of the argument made in a recent essay for this magazine that so-called “cultural” concerns cannot be so easily cleaved from the material. They are intertwined. For example, Wilkins notes that the Black unemployment rate in the United States in the early 1990s had never gone below 10 percent since the early 1970s.

I looked up the current numbers. That’s no longer true. It has gone below 10 percent. But, still, look at the vast gulf over the past 50 years between the Black unemployment rate and the white one.

Except at the very peak of the pandemic, the Black unemployment rate is close to double the white one. As the economy has pseudo-normalized into its active inequality, that gap has reasserted itself.

Wilkins, in discussing racism, never separates these two concerns; he wants to change material policies: “For me and other black people, there is nothing to do but stay the course. That means, more than anything else right now, fighting to get decent jobs for poor blacks, fighting for support for poor families and for good education for black children,” he writes. And he wants to enact cultural change. “What can I say to decent white people? I think the best answer is what so many whites invariably preach to us—self-help… We can’t save white folks’ souls. Only they can do that.”

Just 14 days left in 2020. Speed things along with a round of recharges:

1. Michaelangelo Matos’ phenomenal new book is out. Can’t Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop’s Blockbuster Year is a detail-rich read on the constellation of music that shaped a moment, and how a moment shaped the music. His scene-setting, pattern-matching, vivid turns of phrase, and historical vision are every bit as electrifying as the music he’s immersed in. A deeper-dive review in the weeks ahead.

2. Gabi Yetter, a Recharge reader and founder of “The Good in Us,” a Facebook group dedicated to deeds of solidarity worldwide, has published her first novel. Whisper of the Lotus is set in Cambodia, where Yetter used to live. All proceeds from the first two months of book sales go to the antitrafficking organization Justice and Soul.

3. In a crowded field of candidates for funniest folks of 2020 who’ve made the best of an excruciating year, comedian Leslie Jones stands out.

4. If you haven’t spelunked yet through Yesterday’s Print, dig in. Archival news clips with a bite. From 1918: “The man who is unwilling to wear a flu mask usually is of the kind who expects everybody to listen to him when he speaks.” Also from 1918: “Don’t throw away the masks. Two of them tied together will make excellent ear muffs later on.”

5. A headline that sands down the cynicism of any cold news-junky heart: “Over 900 Cars Paid for Each Other’s Meals at a Dairy Queen Drive-Thru in Minnesota.” What? What? And no one called me? I don’t like Dairy Queen anyway. “What started as a random act of kindness…resulted in over 900 cars also taking part in the pay-it-forward chain,” reports CNN’s Alisha Ebrahimji.

6. The Arizona Daily Star and ProPublica teamed up yesterday to host a livestream of stories about developmental disabilities, boosted by the National Center on Disability and Journalism.

7. “A small dam but a big deal,” a colleague told me in celebrating the news of a 100-year-old dam’s removal from a former golf course to improve salmon migration.

Share your own good news at recharge@motherjones.com.

Thank us later, but right now you have some gifts to unwrap: 15 below, each a bitingly funny video by the comedian and Saturday Night Live alum Leslie Jones. Your mileage will not vary; these are guaranteed howlers, home recordings of Jones watching cable news and adding piercing commentary about broadcasters’ home-video backgrounds:

Take 1, to which her target and friend Tim tweets back, “Every time you tweet about my ponytail it only gives it more strength.” Leslie: “You can be you Tim you can be you the schuchie ain’t you.”

Take 2, with love lost for intercoms.

Take 3, with love gained for storage rooms.

Take 4, with love lost for purple ties.

Take 5, with love…gained? lost?…for an office library.

Take 6, with love of a kind for James Carville.

Take 7, an expression worth a million retweets.

Take 8, with love (love?) for skeletons.

Take 9, with no apologies to kitchens.

Take 10, with an eye for eyeglasses.

Take 11, an interior design salute to the Costa family.

Take 12, an interior design salute to the Pettypiece family.

Take 13, for when you live in a courthouse.

Take 14, for when you wear bowties at home.

Take 15, “Landlines are always my jam!!”

The timing couldn’t be better for Through the Night, released days ago as an intimate and urgent portrait of three women crossing paths at a day care center. Directed and produced by Sundance fellow Loira Limbal, the story highlights a mother working overnight at a hospital, another working three jobs to support her family, and a woman who’s been caring for kids for 22 years. As personal and situational as the story is, it’s a call to action for supporting the millions of front-line workers outside the film’s frame. The pacing, arc, and treatment of themes around economic and social struggle, and the mutual recognition and resilience, are a fitting mirror to the tail end of 2020.

The trailer and full film are here. A portion of ticket sales is donated to the Essential Care Fund in support of child care providers nationally.

Just 17 days left in 2020. Enter the final lap with a story from reader Tammy Maitland of Albuquerque, New Mexico, who writes in to say that instead of trading holiday gifts, she suggested her family “make donations to nonprofit organizations in each other’s names.” But she accidentally emailed a different person with her brother’s name. The unintended recipient was 5,200 miles away in Stockholm (her siblings are in Boston). “He let me know, and I apologized, but a few days later he wrote back to say that he was inspired to make his own donation to an organization that helps homeless children.”

“It really gave me a boost that he did that,” she said. “Maybe this story could help people get inspired to make donations if they are able.” And if you’re not able, forward this to one person you know or don’t know. More lifts to enter the week:

100th birthday. Happy centennial to Clark Terry. The trumpeter lit up more than 900 recordings as one of the most prolific musicians in jazz, sharing stages with Count Basie and Duke Ellington, and mentoring Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. “Since your phoenix-like recovery from serial ills—one of the more astonishing and upbeat stories of the year—I’ve found myself thinking a lot about what you have meant and continue to mean to jazz,” Gary Giddins wrote in 2002, when he saluted Terry as musician of the year. “The dramatically launched high notes, the terse, bent tones that round the corner from one note to the next like a motorcycle zooming around a curve…My wish for you on this birthday and every one to follow is good health, good chops, and a full dose of the joy you have given the rest of us all these years.” Here’s Terry with Peterson in 1965.

Northern lights. The Guardian has published a selection of “the best images” of the breathtaking sky. Photos here.

Cracking the code. A Zodiac breakthrough of sorts. One of the serial killer’s cyphers has been solved, thanks to a code-breaking team from the United States, Australia, and Belgium. Not much to go on; his letter is light on disclosures and clues, and characteristically boastful, but it’s one fewer mystery, a small step in breaking his shield. I was on the Chronicle staff when the Zodiac film was made and interviewed one of the original detectives and an eyewitness. While re-reporting the story, I discovered something curious stuck between archival photos in the newspaper’s library. I turned it over to top editors and we agreed to pass it along to handwriting experts and forensics authorities, all on the record and reported. Have a backstory if you’re into not-so-cold cases. I’ll fill you in if you drop a note to recharge@motherjones.com.

The music on the newly unearthed recording Bill Evans: Live at Ronnie Scott’s came to us through a number of coincidences.

At first, it seemed there were no clear recordings of the four weeks in 1968 when a “mythic” but short-lived jazz trio—Evans, the pianist famous for his work on Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue; the bassist Eddie Gomez; the godly drummer Jack DeJohnette—descended on a London club.

There were recordings of the trio before and after. In those, you can hear Evans—by the late ’60s, too expertly comfortable in his swooning ballads he’d put behind Davis—tested. DeJohnette’s percussion urges him on. (Evans later said that DeJohnette woke up his sleepy piano.) With this trio, Evans always said he’d played with greater vibrance. I never totally heard that on what’s come out before, when I first heard the trio a few years ago. At least to me, there was always a hint of more.

“It was a good run,” DeJohnette said in 2017 of the gig at Ronnie Scott’s. What did that sound like? It seemed unlikely I’d ever know. In 2016, DeJohnette found a recording of the Ronnie Scott’s show. He’d set up his personal tape deck between the drums and piano. But when he sent it over to Resonance Records’ Zev Feldman, it seemed unusable. Feldman said it “sounded like I was listening through a sock.” That, they thought, would be the end of it.

But in 2018, Feldman came up to DeJohnette’s basement in New York. “We listened to the same tape that he had sent to me in 2016,” he said. “Except it turned out that the first time we listened to it we weren’t doing it right—it was a four-track recording which had parts running in different directions or something—and this time, lo and behold, there was music on the tape!”

Now you can hear the Ronnie Scott’s recording in impressive clarity. It is decidedly live; you can make out the scuttle of the room in which they’re playing. The drums are louder, especially on “‘Round Midnight.” It is, to my mind, the waking up of Bill Evans, in motion. And it really is a delight. Adding to his signature sweep of modal tones, impressionistic chords, and lyrical runs are higher-energy chunks of sound than his earlier recordings. It’s a bit more alert than his Verve and Emarcy sessions.

You cannot stream it. Buy the record from Resonance for yourself or the holidays.

It was just seven years ago that Mother Jones ran an article by Noam Chomsky titled “Destroying a Planet Without Really Trying.” In his sights: “dangers like pandemics.” He saw epidemiological and environmental threats as intertwined, on top of oil profiteering, labor exploitation, Indigenous rights violations, and institutional inaction and obstacles. “That’s what the future historian—if there is one—would see,” he wrote.

“If you ask what the world is going to look like, it’s not a pretty picture. Unless people do something about it. We always can.”

That last bit—we always can—is the takeaway not just of his 2013 article, but of his life’s work. If there’s a throughline in his canon of criticism of imperialism and capitalism’s wreckage, it’s that idea. Action is takable. Solutions are available. “It’s not that there are no alternatives. The alternatives just aren’t being taken.”

Chomsky marks his 92nd birthday today with a livestream on “the future of democracy, nuclear threat, and the looming environmental catastrophe in a post-Trumpian world.” The video is here. His 2013 article is here. Chomsky sipping coconut water through a straw is here. If you’re a glutton for archival punishment, his 1969 autopsy of William F. Buckley Jr. is here.

In July 1979, this magazine ran a series of articles about the United States’ plans for a nuke war. As usual in a Mother Jones piece of the era, writers dove into wonky policy while finding a straightforward and biting tone to match the horror of what they were reporting. It was solid investigative work. And it has some fun stuff in there about how moving to the suburbs meant we might not have anywhere to hide if bombs dropped.

But you don’t really need to know all that. I’m talking to you about this issue because…check out the cover! It’s a formal portrait of military leaders with the headline “Meet America’s Leading Terrorists.”

I don’t have a ton to say here. It seems that, at the time, we cared a lot more about nukes than now. Another issue that year had President Jimmy Carter on the cover, as we prodded his administration’s nuclear policy. But, at least until something happens like oh I don’t know a war with Iran, our nuclear policies are not top of mind for anyone in the United States at the moment. I dearly hope that does not change.

However, the other article mentioned on the cover—“Marriage Dissected”—will perhaps be more directly relevant to your daily lives. It’s a doctor arguing, basically, that “marriage has not been healthy for women.” One of its standout lines is quite the turn of phrase: “Marriage seems to be good for men and bad for women. The obvious public health conclusion from this is that men should marry other men and leave women alone.”

As we close the books on 2020, or try to, chapters of new devastation keep appearing: Just yesterday the United States saw its highest single-day death toll in the pandemic yet, and the number is expected to climb rapidly. But that’s exactly why our newsletter ends each day with a story of strength gained, justice achieved, or stamina built. Or at least good music. A reminder that today brings the livestream launch party for Thulani Davis’ Nothing But the Music, at 7:30 p.m. ET. Story here, register here.

It’s also why our priorities at Mother Jones are to keep shining a light not just on abuses of systems and power, and on systems themselves, but on ways that change and justice happen. As the year kicks and screams, starts and stops, and crashes on its final lap, let us know how you’re getting a recharge. Our Recharge team knows that so many of you are showing up for each other, and fighting for change, and we want to highlight your stories from time to time. Tell us your good news or how you recharge someone else at recharge@motherjones.com.

Music and more at 7:30 p.m. ET.

In celebration of the interdisciplinary artist and historian Thulani Davis’ new poetry collection, Nothing But the Music, a launch party of performances and conversations is set for tomorrow, December 3, at 7:30 p.m. ET. The occasion is as historic and thrilling as the lineup of artists joining the livestream: Roscoe Mitchell of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Greg Tate of Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber, Pulitzer-winning composer Anthony Davis, author Tobi Haslett, Yale theater professor Daphne A. Brooks, playwright Jessica Hagedorn, and NYU performance studies professor Fred Moten.

Davis’ poetry is as vivid and profound as her subjects: the sounds, contours, and characters of avant-garde jazz and soul of the ’70s and ’80s. The many instruments and registers she excels at—playwright, journalist, librettist, novelist, and screenwriter—converge in her current role as Afro-American Studies professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. But she’s been a public educator since long before the academy, awards, and articles. For Davis, a pioneering Village Voice editor and writer, the act of writing is an act of discovery and recovery—of history, information, and places. It’s also an act of documentation in a democratic sense. Her genealogy-memoir, My Confederate Kinfolk: A 21st-Century Freedwoman Discovers Her Roots, reveals the entrenched dynamics of power around family, race, and gender.

Though best known for her librettos in Amistad and Malcolm X and her Maker of Saints and 1959, she’s increasingly recognized as a visionary in the Black Arts Movement alongside Jayne Cortez, Sonia Sanchez, and Davis’ longtime friend Ntozake Shange. I could go on—about the care, the craft, the eye for joy, grief, and resilience—and I will in an upcoming dive into Davis’ works. For now, register for the Zoom. Pick up Nothing But the Music from Blank Forms Editions.

A big shoutout to senior data journalist Sinduja Rangarajan for winning a national award from the Asian American Journalists Association. Her extensive reporting and wrangling of datasets in collaboration with Reveal at the Center for Investigative Reporting, where Sinduja worked before joining Mother Jones, shines a crucial light on challenges for H-1B visa holders. The Trump administration tightened restrictions, creating obstacles for highly skilled immigrants, largely from India and China, who often use the coveted visas as a path to residency in the United States.

Sinduja assembled a first-of-its-kind database of H-1B lawsuits against the administration, showing a substantial uptick in applications being rejected for reasons that appear deliberately arbitrary and misapplied federal law. It was Sinduja’s first big series for Mother Jones, the culmination of a long look into the Trump era’s stealth strategy of cracking down on the visa program stemming from complaints aired by Stephen Miller and Jeff Sessions in contradiction to Trump’s own claim that he wanted to help “totally brilliant people” work in the country.

Trump himself is totally brilliant people, so I should trust 45, but, you know, I just don’t. Melania herself is here on a special-case “genius” visa, as it happens. Rather trust solid datasets from reporters who show their methodology transparently. Sinduja has built a living archive for the public to expand on. She shares the award with Mother Jones deputy editor Dave Gilson and producer James West, along with Reveal’s Teresa Cotsirilos, Brett Myers, Al Letson, Jim Briggs, Fernando Arruda, and Amy Mostafa.

And today is Giving Tuesday. For those of you who can, consider pitching in to support investigations like it, and join the award celebration on Friday, December 12, 5–6:30 p.m. PT.

The devastating toll of the pandemic on gigging musicians continues to upend artistic communities, but relief efforts are also growing. I got an encouraging email last week from the jazz drummer and singer Rie Yamaguchi-Borden. The nonprofit she launched, Gotham Yardbird Sanctuary, with her husband, Mitch Borden (founder of the legendary jazz clubs Smalls and Fat Cat), helps musicians hardest hit by the coronavirus. “Even COVID-19 hasn’t completely broken our hearts,” she said. “As long as we are alive, we will never stop thinking about playing.”

The group provides paid gigs with physical distancing in place throughout New York. More than 60 percent of musicians surveyed by the Jazz Journalists Association said their income this year is less than half of last year’s. More than 70 percent said they have no live gigs lined up for next year. Relief groups like GYS and the Jazz Foundation of America are meeting the moment with fundraisers and livestreams. Starting December 5, GYS hosts a Yardbird Jam program at Bodeguita in Brooklyn at 6 Suydam St., and every Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m., Yamaguchi-Borden hosts jam sessions for a wide range of musicians. The schedule is here, and donations for the Yardbird Jam are welcome here.

More Recharges to enter the week:

Fowl headlines: “Lame Duck Pardons Turkey.” Credit where it’s due: “All hail great copy editors (in this case, the Washington Post’s Doug Norwood),” tweeted Post editor Marc Fisher.

Take two: “Lame Duck Pardons Turkey.” Thanks Guardian.

Take three: “Lame-Duck President Pardons Turkey.” Thanks Reuters.

Climate win: Goldman Environmental Prize winners were celebrated in a virtual ceremony hosted by Sigourney Weaver, with appearances by Jack Johnson, Robert Redford, Danni Washington, and Lenny Kravitz. Winners include the innovative activists Chibeze Ezekiel of Ghana, Kristal Ambrose of the Bahamas, Leydy Pech of Mexico, Lucie Pinson of France, Nemonte Nenquimo of Ecuador, and Paul Sein Twa of Myanmar.

Season of firsts: The American Ballet Theater welcomes Calvin Royal III as its first Black male principal in more than two decades. “Whether I was being featured or not over the years, I pushed myself and strived to be the best version of myself on stage and off,” he said, “so to finally make it to principal with ABT, it was a dream come true.” Hat tip to Venu Gupta for the story, and if you haven’t yet, check out our colleague Cathy Asmus’ insightful take on how dance studios are adapting to the pandemic.

As you gather with the ones you love in person or remotely or not, it is worth reflecting on the words of Edgar Villanueva—author, activist, founder of the Decolonizing Wealth Project, an Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity, and, in full disclosure and celebration, a new member of Mother Jones’ board—from a conversation in Yes! magazine headlined “Healing From Colonization on Thanksgiving and Beyond”:

As a Native American, I’m often troubled by the way that Americans approach Thanksgiving. By holding onto an idealized image of a harmonious feast between the Pilgrims and Wampanoag, we’ve overlooked the brutality that Native people have faced since the arrival of Europeans. For many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning and remembrance—a reminder of the genocide of our people, the loss of our way of life, and the theft of our ancestral lands.

I propose seven steps to healing: grieve, apologize, listen, relate, represent, invest, and repair. I initially developed these steps in relation to my professional field of philanthropy, but they are also applicable to a personal process of decolonization.

The steps Edgar proposes are not easy, but I imagine they have the cumulative effect of bringing forth the actual goal of Thanksgiving—gratitude.

Gratitude for the opportunity to cross a bridge that you may not have known was there, or one you thought you couldn’t cross. Gratitude for the Navajo communities that organized get-out-the-vote efforts during a devastating pandemic that has imperiled the Navajo Nation at a disproportionate rate. Gratitude for the Gwich’in Native community in the Arctic for protecting the planet, risking life and livelihood. Gratitude for the Federated Indians of Graton Ranchería for supporting ways all of us can keep learning about wisdom that existed before so many of us arrived.

Happy healing and giving of thanks in the many ways we can and have yet to pursue.

—Venu Gupta is Mother Jones’ Midwest regional development director. Share your stories of gratitude and Thanksgiving with her at recharge@motherjones.com.

On Thanksgiving I think of my grandmother—a loud, kind, pugnacious woman who dyed her hair fiery red almost until the end. When she finally let her hair go white, I knew we were approaching a cliff. She died in early 2019.

Her absence makes the general loneliness of this pandemic Thanksgiving a bit easier. I think this year’s holiday would have always felt empty without her, as my family adjusts. On my dad’s side, she was our locus. The turkey dinner was less important than her ersatz Jewish brunch; Panera bagels were deemed good enough, lox was average at best, pimento cheese was added (which, I thought, until visiting New York City, was Jewish, not Southern, because we always had it as an optional schmear). It is not really because of food though or because of her warm embrace that I will miss her this season.

It is because my grandma, like me, basically enjoyed, above all, one activity: talking shit.

I will really miss talking shit with my grandma this year.

She was so ruthless, and funny, and biting. I loved it. She was an older Jewish woman glued to her chair or creeping along slowly in her walker around her home, constantly yelling insults about strangers—absolutely eviscerating people she’d heard about on TV.

She talked shit about everyone and everything. She watched CNN with the glee of gossip and without moral qualms. The point was entertainment. I don’t think she ever pretended to be some “citizen” interested in democracy or the nation. She liked Anderson Cooper because he was attractive, not a good journalist. And she liked cable news because it tore away the pretense of “policy” and got right into the bullshit. My father joked that if a horror was ongoing in the world somewhere, she’d wake up early and diligently turn on cable news like it was a job. The Trump era, obviously, treated her well.

Thanksgiving brought her prowess at this to a peak. Each year, we played a simple game: Who will be the Time Person of the Year? None of us really read the news deeply, except my dad, but mainly to write jokes; I don’t think anyone in my family subscribed to a print newspaper. This was all us just recklessly talking out of our asses. We’d yell and fight and laugh. This was a great way to be, and still is my preferred method of communication. I learned love is haranguing a family member for a slip of the tongue and a slightly bad take.

So, in her honor, and perhaps this will be of help to you too, I highly recommend doing as she would do. Talk some shit. If you’re doing pandemic Thanksgiving, no uptight family will grouse or condemn about your meanness. Lean in and talk some shit about someone. Just pile on for no reason! It’s fun.

And, yes, you can be thankful for all the good people in your life too, I guess.

The most memorable description I’ve read of the Trump era’s time-warp effect and destabilizing impact was written in late 2016—before his presidency. The president-elect was doing a victory lap. The news media was looking inward, or trying to, for lessons learned. Fusion’s editor-in-chief was the brilliant Alexis Madrigal, now an Atlantic staff writer and co-founder of the COVID Tracking Project, who found just the words to close out the year: “Each hour and each tweet and each celebrity sighting at Trump Tower can blot out the millions of other stories simultaneously in motion, backwards and forwards in time. How can anyone make a proper critique” of “the ‘moment,’ our name for any number of myths…if its basis—even the set of facts that occasioned it—has been forgotten in an instant? It’s like we’re living inside the memory hole, shards and pieces of what used to be structured into history floating around us like confetti.”

My porous memory can’t shake that idea, the swirl of news and noise and the distinction between them; the durability of facts; the shards and structures of memory itself. What we remember and don’t. What we choose to forget but can’t. Whether it’s Mother Jones giving shape to the pandemic or Alexis chronicling its path, I’m brought back to those year-end words: “Maybe the hero of 2016 is every other year that has come before it, and their contents. Stay anchored. Do the work.”

Thanksgiving will float by like a shard, and workers will stay anchored, seen or unseen. You don’t need sentimentalism to hear it, and don’t need to be in a sentimental mood to hear “In a Sentimental Mood,” recorded on this day 13 years ago by Sonny Rollins, now 90. Ellington’s original is here. Rollins’ is here. Madrigal is here. Recharge is at recharge@motherjones.com. Happy almost Thanksgiving.

“Now that’s good news,” a co-worker sighed in relief after a colleague shared with us a breaking news headline: “Charlie Brown Specials to Air on TV, After All, in PBS Deal.” Count yourself lucky if you didn’t know that Charlie, Linus, and Lucy were temporarily off of network TV. They’re back to their historic PBS home after Apple TV+ had gained exclusive rights. An outcry grew with petitions gathering more than 263,000 signatures, and Apple backed down. PBS scored the victory, but Apple didn’t lose either. The platforms teamed up to air the specials in partnership “ad-free!” my co-worker boasted.

The broadcast aired yesterday on PBS and streams for free this week on Apple TV+. If you don’t know Charlie Brown or Peanuts, start with the piano soundtrack. A key theme is anti-commercialism, or striking a better balance of consumption and the meanings found beyond products and services. It’s echoed elsewhere in surprising ways during the pandemic, as more big-box retailers revert to staying closed around Thanksgiving Day for safety rather than fueling elbow-jabbing crowds.

The Black Fridayification of Thanksgiving was summed up in a 2015 Mother Jones article that rings ever truer, and a 2017 academic essay by Williams College student Will Abersek, with footnotes and all, that doesn’t fail to mention at the end, “I have written this essay in the style of David Foster Wallace.” Not sure that helps, Will, but your essay is remarkably good. And support for a less-commercial future of Thanksgiving, after the pandemic, is growing.

Share thoughts on Thanksgiving and opinionated takes on Charlie Brown at recharge@motherjones.com, and if you need a boost, the daily blog is here for you.

Ah, 2009. For the past week or so, I’ve lived in a time vortex propelling me back to that year. Then, as now, a Democratic president was about to take the White House; there was much chatter about Barack Obama’s legacy; and Gucci Mane’s music was of utmost importance.

Yet it would have been impossible then to imagine each becoming so relevant now: Joe Biden’s election as president, a Verzuz battle amid the pandemic, and Obama’s memoir all smashing together. The world is acting like a poorly performed “10 years later” article.

So, what can 2009 tell us about now?

Looking back at our January+February 2009 issue, it’s surprising to see the number of echoes of the present. There were discussions about race versus class, whether to lock up Cheney for war crimes, and pushes for broad plans to fundamentally change the economy.

One, from David Cay Johnston, that ran as our cover story, is an interesting document. He lays out a few ways to substantially change the tax code instead of “tinkering around the edges.” You might recognize a few of the ideas: fix student debt (Biden is talking about doing that), tax the rich (Democrats are talking about doing that).

There’s more to dig into there, from a takedown of stimulus spending to an examination of welfare’s means testing.

Thirty-five years later, a first public apology. On the night of May 13, 1985, police dropped a demolition device, typically used in war, on Philadelphia’s own people, killing 11 residents, including five children. The satchel bomb destroyed 61 homes and left more than 250 people homeless, lodging in local memory and parts of national memory an example of just how cruel, corrupt, demonstrably racist, and capable states are of atrocity with impunity. The target was the Black liberation group Move, known for protesting war and police violence. The city had wanted to evict Move from its West Philadelphia residence.

The apology comes after the City Council passed a resolution following the measure’s introduction on the 35th anniversary. Only a handful of times in US history have governments—local, state, or federal—apologized for anything. Whether the apology can meaningfully advance a process of reconciliation, if not restorative justice, or is chiefly symbolic is fiercely debated, says Howard University political science professor Niambi Carter. But the acknowledgment does expand focus on a tool democracies have available and rarely use: apology. “I don’t know that an apology is going to be enough to really address the emotional toll that those events took on those communities,” Carter says.

“To evolve and progress towards a more equal and just society,” the resolution says, “we must confront, reflect upon, and learn from heinous government actions of the past.” The apology also establishes a remembrance day to observe the history.

“I know that it’s symbolic, but I also hope that it can be the start of the real listening and conversation and relationship building that we need to happen in the city,” says Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who sponsored the measure.

Learn more about the legacy and share memories and thoughts about the bombing—and the reaches and limits of state apology, as well as what should come next—at recharge@motherjones.com.