Here’s your standard Thanksgiving hymn, sung half a century ago by Tennessee Ernie Ford and the San Quentin Prison Choir.  (I have always like the name “Tennessee Ernie”.  How come only Southerners get state nicknames?  You don’t hear of anyone name “Connecticut Ernie”.)

When I was in the seventh grade I attended Boston Latin School, the oldest public school in the country; its graduates include folks like Cotton Mather, Sam Adams, George Santayana, and Joe Kennedy.  We had a music class a couple of times a week, and the elderly teacher quickly sized us up and decided he had no interest in trying to teach us any music.  So instead he made us memorize song lyrics, including this hymn.  (I wonder if learning a hymn at a public school would be acceptable nowadays?)  More than once he would let us know that way back in the day Leonard Bernstein had been one of his pupils.  Clearly, none of us was going to be another Bernstein.