"We gather together..."

The pre-Thanksgiving rally and march of writers and their supporters on Hollywood Blvd. this afternoon.

If you go home some distance for Thanksgiving this week and find yourself in the company of people who don’t understand what the Writers Guild strike is all about, you can try to explain it to them or send them to the links at The WGA and UnitedHollywood.com for the nuts and bolts of it. But if someone asks you "Who do those greedy writers think they are?" tell them this:

We are the sons and daughters of parents who wanted us to do better than they did. We are the children of janitors and bank tellers, the legacy of parents who were lectured to by strangers about the dangers of indulging the dreams of their kids. We made them proud by not doing the sensible thing and mastering an intangible skill instead. I have repaid the debt to my father by making a better living than he did. I have repaid the debt to my mother by telling stories. We are the children of parents who taught us that things hard won are worth holding on to...and worth passing on to the next generation.

The corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga Boulevards...the site of Philip Marlowe's office