As I do every morning, I just rode my bike around the gorgeous city reservoir a block from my house, with my little Toto-like terrier running joyously alongside me—honestly, you should see how he bounds through the grass. I wave at the regular walkers and dogwalkers, even if we don’t know each others’ names. Today, Thanksgiving, Fresh Pond was overrun by visitors, out to burn off some calories and enjoy the brilliant blue New England day before they sit down with families of blood or of choice to eat, argue, joke, pray, or whatever their particular configuration might consider appropriate for the day. Since this is Cambridge, the colors were mostly but not only white, from deep WASP to darker brown: prep school blonds; ruddy Irish; argumentative Israelis; Pakistanis or Indians; Chinese; a very sweet and quiet Tibetan refugee couple who run a local restaurant and whose tiny Tibetan terrier swaggers like he owns the world; an extremely tall and fit couple speaking French; an astounding athletic young white couple with their bounding Great Dane puppy; a transracial (white/African-American) family from up the street whose boy goes to the same school as mine; and myriad Cambridge immigrants, nerds from other parts of the country who immigrated to live around others who think far too much for our own good. Of course, many sullen twenty-somethings walked around staring at the ground, looking as if they dreaded the conversations at the coming feast. But for the most part, a sense of pleasure filled the air as leaves drifting across the path, dogs happily sniffed around, and the sun shone on us all alike.