No Thanks Day 2021

My family can claim that we arrived in the Americas on the Mayflower. The Howland and Hamlin clans owed its survival that second autumn to the Wampanoags or People of the Dawn. The Saints and Strangers of the Old World showed their gratitude by forcing the disease-weakened natives from their ancestral home, much as the Moses' ancestors had evicted the Philistines from the Land of Milk and Honey. The Pilgrims thought that they owned the land, while the Indians believed the land belonged to the people born on it.

Native animism versus the Old Testament. The Bible offered many lessons for those of the past and present and probably the future. The Wampanoag Tribe luckily survived the mass extermination of the coastal Indians and every Thanksgiving gather on Nantucket to mourn the failed alliance between the Old and New Worlds.

No Thanksgiving.

At least the wild have come back to their native land.

Give the Wampanoag Tribe a few slot machines and who knows where they'll celebrate No Thanksgiving on the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims' landing.

Me, I wish I was in Thailand eating crab curry with my children.

Mea Culpa Wampanoags.

Today's Thanks

Published on 11/23/23 2:30 AM

Today America commemorates Pilgrims’ gratitude to the local Indians lessons in food-gathering, especially those tribesmen of Squanto. who helped the religious refugees survive that first year in Plymouth. In response to this unexpected aid the settlers held a 3-day feast for their neighbors. The holiday was made official in 1789 by George Washington, although Squanto’s tribe had nearly vanished from Massachusetts and Indians don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.

Neither do I.

Even though I am a Mayflower descendant.

There was a Thanksgiving parade in New York this morning. I saw none of it. High school footballs between bitter rivals will be played this morning. I haven't seen the results between my high school and their North Shore rival. I've yet to leave my house, but I do have things to be thankful for this year.

I survived a liver transplant.

I am alive.

I make some money.

My children are healthy.

Sirinthip loves me sometimes.

So does Aphinya.

Every fourth Thursday of November Americans travel by train, plane, and car to feast with friends and family on turkey and all the fixings. Once their bellies expand to a girth of near-explosion, the men watch a meaningless football game in a stupor mimicking a boa who has swallowed a goat, while women repair to the kitchen.

Being male I have no idea what they do other than clean dishes and pots and recount old familar tales of youth, families and friends. Younger children are happy to gorge themselves on pies, while their older siblings sullenly vow to not end up like their parents.

Like all holiday the situation is prime for a good argument.

Eight years ago my father cautioned my lovely twenty year-old niece that she wouldn’t lose weight, if she ate any more pie. Sensitive about her size she broke into tears. My older brother demanded an apology. My father adamantly said he was only telling the truth.

My brother ordered him to leave the house.

My father grabbed a turkey leg and exited from the house, plowing his car across the lawn rather than wait for anyone to move their vehicles out of the driveway.

I would have really like to have seen his tires plowing furrows in the grass, except I was in New York. No turkey that year either.

I celebrated the holiday alone.

Google Goggle Hey Goggle Hey to paraphrase the Ramones.

Max’s Kansas City had turkey dinner for the punk orphans during the 1970s.

Free too.

Beer half-price.

Today I'm dining with Professor Ollamn, the famed Marxist, and his son Raoul.

Praise be the Turkey.

And those sexy Pilgrims.

The Elegance of the Wampanoags

The Wampanoags were not the savages. The people of the dawn were near extinction from a bacterial infection carried the settlers and wars with the Micmacs and Pequots. Despite these calamities the natives living near the Plymouth supposedly invited the starving Pilgrims celebrated their good harvest in the autumn of 1621. The event is poorly documented by the colonists, but the legend lives in the minds of Americans as a cherished moment of peace between the Old America and the New.

Within forty years the thousands Wampanoags would suffer through the King Philip War. Only 400 survived the fighting. They sought refuge on Martha's Vinyard. Today the Wampanoags number almost 2000.

I know one. Big Ralph. 6-8. A big man in Fort Greene. Wampanoag and proud of it.

Happy to be alive.

And me too, because I'm half-Irish.

Happy Turkey Day.

One and all.