My Thanksgiving list each year, thankfully, is lengthy, but this year I'm looking back — to Thanksgiving 1990. We'd just moved back to Oak Park after a long sojourn out of state — first Colorado, then Michigan.

When your country commits a collective insanity, it helps to be far from home in a foreign land. Ten years ago this month, I was in Cuba with the local Hemingway Foundation when Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election, and George W. Bush appeared to win the electoral vote (though not really).

Recently, I saw Social Network at The Lake. Going to a movie theater "by yourself" (odd phrase) is something of a paradox. A theater, after all, is a very public place. You're sharing the space, and the movie, with dozens, if not hundreds of other people.

Dan Gash Jr., a self-described history buff, stands by the Scoville Park War Memorial and shakes his head. "I drove by these plaques for 30 years without looking at them."

If you want to know which Oak Parkers fought — and died — in World War I, you can read the names on the bronze tablets of the Scoville Park War Memorial (if you can get the kids who sit on them to move out of the way).

One of Galen and Marge Gockel's first encounters with Oak Park's village government was when the village bought their house and demolished it. The Gockel family moved into 534 S. Lombard Ave. in August 1969. Three years later, the village purchased 24 homes and razed them to make way for the new village hall.

My son is getting married on Friday. That means his life is flashing before my eyes. I suppose this happens to every parent on the eve of a child's marriage. As I look at the handsome young man before me, I keep seeing the child — and the pre-teen and the teen and the high school grad and the college student.

In his Cityscapes blog last Saturday, Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin broke the news that Oak Park's Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust will soon have a presence in the Loop as it moves its administrative offices to the Rookery Building, 209 S. LaSalle St.

Paul G. Bloyd, 76, of Forest Park, formerly of Oak Park, died on Oct. 2, 2010. He grew up hopping the streetcar to Wrigley Field to watch his beloved Cubs. According to his son, Alec Bloyd-Peshkin, he had a social work background, but soon branched into community-based nonprofit organizations with a focus on housing issues.

Walking is my social media. Meeting people on the street, I get my status updates. It's how I "facebook" with the village. And this column is my "wall."