National Day Calendar (NDC), where we often go for details about historic national days, surprised us this time with National Absurdity Day (November 20). In addition to being grateful for our blessings every day of the year, this gives us carte blanche to be “seriously absurd.� What fun it could be to carry the concept through the holidays to relieve boredom or distract rambunctious kids or contentious relatives during family gatherings. The NDC is “still researching� the history of this holiday that “started as a philosophical movement called Absurdism and bloomed into this marked calendar event, during which anyone is allowed to follow their most preposterous whims (Please keep safety in mind).� NDC does, however, offer an educational aspect to being silly: a classroom. For instance, take Problem Solving. Instead of arguing politics, it suggests solving the world’s ridiculously absurd problems—include the kids, please, for dragons, weird robots and ETs—by taking a topic from a newspaper article like Miles Erickson’s interview about UFOs with Preston Dennett on pages 8-9 (another way to recycle The Canyon Chronicle), and have each person offer their most absurd solution. NDC even has a classroom that provides an Absurd Problem Solving worksheet and links to resources: nationaldaycalendar.com/classroom-absurdity); edutopia.org; and Medium.com. We’re coming into the multi-holiday countdown to 2023, so there’s plenty of opportunity to practice. Happy belated Thanksgiving, dear readers. We are so grateful for you. We are also grateful for our new ARTS contributor Sarah Spitz, who introduces herself on page 10.