THANKSGIVING DAY IS GOOD TIME TO FOCUS ON OUR BLESSINGS

My family and I wish you all a HAPPY THANKSGIVING. It's a good time to concentrate on the many blessings we have ... instead of focusing on the negative. I've always found Norman Vincent Peale's "Power of Positive Thinking" a good guideline.

Thanksgiving Day this year is also the day WENDY and I celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary and the many blessings good health, six children, and 11 grandchildren bring to us.

Even with it's imperfections ... the free country of opportunity in which we live is reason enough to be thankful. As my minister said this week in encouraging us to focus on the positive: "IT COULD BE WORSE."

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United States in throes of rapid change: The United States, the world's richest nation, is home to 275 million people, but one in 10 of them was born elsewhere.

Immigration is rapidly changing the face of the society founded 224 years ago, with its Declaration of Independence from Britain.

Seventy-one percent of its people are white, according to the Census Bureau. But that will change within 50 years, if the current demographic and immigration trends continue. African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans will then outnumber whites.

Currently, one in 10 Americans, or 26.4 million people, was born outside the United States, a record since the 1950s. Some 6.5 million people speak little or no English, while 17.3 million speak exclusively Spanish.

The United States is also slowly being transformed by a decade of prosperity, but poverty is prevalent.

The world's richest country, with an annual gross domestic product of $8,000 billion, the United States nonetheless has a significant underclass of people. They account for 11.8 percent of the population.

Minorities are more affected by poverty. More than 23 percent of blacks live below the poverty line compared to under 8 percent of non-Hispanic whites.

The recent economic boom has pulled many people out of poverty, however. Some 2.2 million people rose out of poverty, defined as an income of $17,000 for a family of four, between 1998 and 1999.

The unemployment rate has also shrunk during a decade of uninterrupted growth and is now just around 4 percent, its lowest level in 30 years.

Median household income stands at $40,000 a year.

The U.S. population is graying perceptibly. The average age of the population has gone from 32.8 years in 1990 to 35.2 years in 1998.

Those aged 65 and older make up 12.7 percent of the population, a total of 34.4 million people. The Census Bureau forecasts that the figure will double in the next 30 years.

The number of Americans without health insurance has declined along with the economic boom, but the figure is still significant.

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But too many in this country have come to expect government to take care of them ... having missed the reality of the benefits of hard work.

To anyone with kids of any age or anyone who has ever been a kid, here's some advice Bill Gates recently dished out at a high school speech about 11 things they did not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good politically correct teachings created a full generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair. Get used to it.

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will not make $40,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes. Learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers but life has not. Some schools have abolished failing grades and will give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off, and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is not real life. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one. -- Arkansas Press News

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Don't forget the CHRISTMAS PARADE of LIGHTS this coming Sunday evening. It's one of the finest parades of the year to get you into the holiday spirit.

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You're blessed if:

If you own just one Bible, you are abundantly blessed. One third of the world does not have access to even one.

If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who will not survive the week.

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 500 million people around the world.

If you attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death, you are more blessed than almost three billion people in the world.

If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75 percent of this world.

If you have money in the bank and in your wallet and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8 percent of the world's wealthy.

If your parents are still married and alive, you are very rare, even in the United States.

If you hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful, you are blessed because the majority can, but most do not.

If you can hold someone's hand, hug them or even touch them on the shoulder, you are blessed because you can offer God's healing touch.

If you prayed yesterday and today, you are in the minority because you believe in God's willingness to hear and answer prayer.

If you believe in Jesus as the Son of God, you are part of a very small minority in the world.

If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world who cannot read anything at all. Message from a friend

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"It is more fun to arrive at a conclusion than to justify it."

"In the long run, a short cut seldom is." -- Malcolm Forbes

~Gary Rust is president of Rust Communications.