I get heartfelt thanks from all kinds of people. Today I heard from a waitress in Georgia who has lost her job and is trying to figure out how her local bank can change the terms on her credit card and I heard from a physicist at a major research university who wants to explain a better theory of financial stress tests.

I wouldn't change anything. I've made mistakes but thanks to those mistakes I've learned.

All the times being like 'Who rented this car and why are we going to this place?' You take the easy route and go 'Oh thanks for the champagne. I'll have another.'

When I climb into my car I enter my destination into a GPS device whose spatial memory supplants my own. I have photographs to store the images I want to remember books to store knowledge and now thanks to Google I rarely have to remember anything more than the right set of search terms to access humankind's collective memory.

I'm happy to report that 'The New Press' is still in business to this day. But not thanks to me. I was a really bad publishing intern.

Thanks to my mother not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.

If we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday at a time of presidential inaugurals this is thanks to Ronald Reagan who created the holiday and not to the Democratic Congress of the Carter years which rejected it.

As we look forward to freedom the shining city on the hill and the best days of America lying ahead it is the men and women in uniform who protect defend and make us proud to whom we should look and give thanks every night.

Best of all is it to preserve everything in a pure still heart and let there be for every pulse a thanksgiving and for every breath a song.

Our worldly successes cannot be guaranteed but our ability to achieve spiritual success is entirely up to us thanks to the grace of God. The best advice I know is to give is to give those worldly things your best but never your all - reserve the ultimate hope for the only one who can grant it.