DEAR READERS: Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. So let us pause for a moment today and make a mental note of all those blessings for which we can be thankful.

How is your health? You have a few minor complaints? Well, thank God they're not major. If you're reading this -- you're still here. You can probably think of at least one person who isn't around this year. (I know I can.)

If you awakened this morning and were able to hear the birds sing, use your vocal cords to utter human sounds, read the newspaper with two good eyes (or even one) -- praise the Lord! A lot of people couldn't. (Say a prayer for those who have perished -- from natural causes, fire, flood, earthquake or war.)

How's your pocketbook? Thin? You're not alone. But many people in much of the world are a lot poorer and have far less hope than we have in America.

Are you lonely? Well, the way to have a friend is to reach out to someone and try to be a friend. If nobody calls you, call someone. Go out of your way today to do something nice for another person. It's a sure cure for the blues.

Are you concerned about your country's future? Hooray! Our system has been saved by such concern -- concern for fair treatment under the law. Our country may not be a rose garden, but it is far from a patch of weeds.

Freedom rings! Look and listen. You can worship in the church of your choice (or not worship at all if that's your choice), cast a secret ballot and even criticize our government without fear of retribution. And for the first time, we are living in a unipolar world free from the threat of impending nuclear disaster.

As a final thought I'll repeat my Thanksgiving prayer. Perhaps you will want to use it at your table tomorrow -- let one of the children read it:

"O, heavenly father, we thank thee for food and remember the hungry.

"We thank thee for health and remember the sick.

"We thank thee for friends and remember the friendless.

"We thank thee for freedom and remember the enslaved.

"May these remembrances stir us to service,

"That thy gifts to us may be used for others. Amen."

May the spirit of Thanksgiving be shared by one and all! Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and may God bless you and yours. -- Love, Abby

P.S. Why not invite a friend who lives alone to share a Thanksgiving meal -- or better yet, call and say, "I'm coming to get you, and I'll see that you get home." Try it, and let me know how your day was.

Most teen-agers do not know the facts about drugs, AIDS, and how to prevent unwanted pregnancy. It's all in Abby's new, updated, expanded booklet, "What Every Teen Should Know." To order, send a business-size, self-addressed envelope, plus check or money order for $3.95 ($4.50 in Canada) to: Dear Abby, Teen Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, Ill. 61054. (Postage is included.)

DEAR ABBY: Over the years, you have provided your readers with numerous comments and some helpful, serious advice. But, Abby, your age and the changing technology have caught up with you -- and passed you by. The advice you gave "Living a Nightmare," whose husband wanted to videotape their sex act, was so off base. I had to let you know that you are out of touch with today's men and technology.

Today's women claim that the men in the U.S. Senate are not in touch with women's needs (Professor Anita Hill's charge of sexual harassment against Judge Clarence Thomas), and you are not in touch with today's men's needs. Abby, men have been capturing the sex act through photography since the invention of the camera. So, for your information, a man does not have to have a tumor on the brain to possess an age-old desire.

Abby, had you been up on the video technology available today and attuned to male desires, you would have given your correspondent at least one of the following options: 1. View themselves on the monitor without a tape in the camera. 2. Tape the act and she keeps the tape. 3. Make him agree that the two of them will be the only viewers of the tape. 4. Use the tape as a bribe to get all those things she's always wanted and couldn't get before.

Abby, you need either to retire or get a male adviser for males' problems. -- ALPHONSE BUSH, LOS ANGELES

DEAR ALPHONSE BUSH: I heard from other video-wise male readers who also disagreed with my answer, but there will be no mea culpas from this corner, because "Living a Nightmare" said that her husband's behavior had changed so noticeably that even his co-workers had mentioned it.

Furthermore, the issue was not the husband's wanting to videotape their sex act -- it was his heavy-handed tactics. When she advised her husband that having their sex act captured on a videotape made her uncomfortable, he told her that he would not have sex with her again unless it was on film! And when she suggested they consult a marriage counselor, he flatly refused. After her husband had been "badgering her every night for two months," she finally wrote to me.

I have always felt that what happens in the bedroom of two consenting adults is their own business, providing they are both agreeable and neither is harmed. The wife felt that his request was degrading, but he continued to badger her; therefore, I concluded that his behavior was sick. Whether it was a symptom of a potentially life-threatening illness would have to be determined by a medical doctor.

I rest my case and stand by my answer, even though it's entirely possible that the husband was more brutish than brain-damaged.

P.S. I already have a male adviser. I sleep with him.

Everything you'll need to know about planning a wedding can be found in Abby's booklet, "How to Have a Lovely Wedding." To order, send a long, business-size, self-addressed envelope, plus check or money order for $3.95 ($4.50 in Canada) to: Dear Abby, Wedding Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, Ill. 61054. (Postage is included.)

DEAR ABBY: In a recent column in the Delaware News-Journal, you condemned the traditional Labor Day Pigeon Shoot in Hegins, Pa. I was pleased to learn that you were compassionate enough to have written to then-Gov. Dick Thornburgh in 1986, protesting that barbaric tradition, and you asked him to please put an end to it. You said he responded with a courteous letter defending the live pigeon-shoot as a time-honored tradition.

Well, Abby, last week, on Election Day, Dick Thornburgh suffered an unexpected defeat in his race for the U.S. Senate. In Philadelphia, the newspaper headlines read: "Wofford Stuns Thornburgh!"

In sustaining this totally unexpected defeat, Dick Thornburgh must have felt as stunned as those doomed pigeons of Hegins for whom he refused to take merciful action. -- JANICE DILLON, WILMINGTON, DEL.

DEAR JANICE: I have received a few letters asking if it was just a coincidence that the letter about Dick Thornburgh and the Labor Day Pigeon Shoot in Hegins appeared in my column just a few days before the Pennsylvania elections. I assure you, it was. I am not so egotistical to presume that my column was in any way responsible for Thornburgh's defeat. Suffice it to say, it didn't help him any.

Read on:

DEAR ABBY: Re Dick Thornburgh's letter to you describing the Hegins Pigeon Shoot as "a time-honored tradition": May I remind him of a few other "time-honored traditions"?

-- Public hangings

-- Segregation

-- Cockfights

-- Bullfights

-- The caste system

-- Apartheid

-- Binding the feet of female infants (in pre-revolutionary China) to impede their growth

-- Leaving elderly people out on the ice to die

Some of these "traditions" needed a war to stop them. Others ended because they became illegal. I thank God we have people who see injustices for what they are, and have the courage to fight for change. -- ROSALIE BEREZICK, TRUCKSVILLE, PA.

DEAR ROSALIE: Thanks for writing. I am reminded of the immortal words attributed to Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the Irish-born British statesman: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

DEAR ABBY: Greetings from Oregon. I'm writing concerning that POW bracelet which Karen A. Tamura of Cerritos, Calif., found in her garage. (It was engraved "Lt. Cmdr. John McKamey.")

I, too, am a veteran, and I've always wished that I could have gone to Vietnam, but I was too young at the time. My older brother went to Vietnam, and he came back a different man: psychologically screwed.

I've read thousands of pages about that war and talked to numerous vets, and yes, they are very reluctant to talk about it.

Abby, if you can't find the family of Lt. Cmdr. John McKamey, please send me that POW bracelet. I will put it on my wrist and wear it to my deathbed, or until all POWs have been returned or accounted for. -- GREGORY WANG, BEND, ORE.

DEAR GREGORY: I have some happy news for you. Read on:

DEAR ABBY: I'm replying to Karen Tamura from Cerritos, Calif.: John McKamey is alive and well and residing in Pensacola, Fla. He's a wonderful man and I'm proud that I met him. -- DENNY GLYNN

Most teen-agers do not know the facts about drugs, AIDS, and how to prevent unwanted pregnancy. It's all in Abby's new, updated, expanded booklet, "What Every Teen Should Know." To order, send a business-size, self-addressed envelope, plus check or money order for $3.95 ($4.50 in Canada) to: Dear Abby, Teen Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, Ill. 61054. (Postage is included.)