Blog in the strict sense of the term: Thanksgiving

 

Narragansett turkeys, Murray McMurray Hatchery

This blog is produced on land belonging to the Lenape people.

Cut the pastry for a one-crust pie, and it's resting in the refrigerator. One of the bloody-minded things I'm up to today involves forcing people to eat pumpkin pie and (theoretically) discover that it's really good. At the big extended-family Thanksgiving in New Jersey we've missed since the pandemic began (and which I don't feel great about missing again—maybe next year!) there are about five pies so you've always got an excuse for skipping the pumpkin, but this is a small one and I'm managing it. Tough luck, skeptics!

The other particularly bloody-minded thing is that I spent an ungodly amount of money on a "heritage" turkey (Narragansett or Bourbon Red), also in the fridge, since yesterday morning, in a dry brine of fresh herbs, salt and pepper, and juniper berries, in a similar effort to convince them that turkeys are fully edible. It's going to be fantastic, too. With oysters in the stuffing, not dressing (no need to worry about bacteria with these pampered birds, I'm told). The oysters aren't bloody-minded but rather on request. I like how they work too, though, almost dissolving into the mix but contributing a beautiful briny perfume.

1:00

The pie is in the oven for its final baking, with a crust somewhat the worse for wear, and some pumpkin filling dribbled out to the oven floor, where it's creating some smoke.

I'm thankful I almost certainly don't have prostate cancer, if you want to know the truth. I got a bad test result at the beginning of October, saw a urologist and got some meds, and a very good test result in the email yesterday. It's been a pretty stressful couple of months, with a lot of medical attention neglected over the last years. I also have cataracts in both eyes, which I can't start fixing until the end of December (I thought it was under socialized medicine that you had to wait in line for three months for essential care), and they make working difficult, both in the day job and here at the blog; rather than a blur when I'm looking at text onscreen I get a sense as if the air ahead of me were divided into vertical planes and the text is inscribed on a plane somewhere behind the one I'm looking at. 

It's weird that I'm doing this, but the post I'm working on is not as exciting as I want and I always do some kind of Thanksgiving post, usually on the plight of North America's Indigenous peoples. I'm thankful, by the way, not just on their behalf but everybody's including my own, that the most blatantly racist anti-Native president in recent American history is out of office and that the current president is Joe Biden, whose plans as he signaled them shortly after inauguration

“It is a priority of my Administration to make respect for Tribal sovereignty and self-governance, commitment to fulfilling Federal trust and treaty responsibilities to Tribal Nations, and regular, meaningful, and robust consultation with Tribal Nations cornerstones of Federal Indian policy,” Biden wrote.

were kind of breathtaking, when you think about it, and accompanied by real-world progress in the unprecedented commitment to hiring Indigenous people for Senate-confirmed positions, financial commitments to tribes in the American Rescue plan and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act,  and attention to the protection of culturally and spiritually important territory (though not above criticism). And the revival of the Obama administratioin's annual Tribal Nations Summit dropped, of course, under the Trump administration—this year's will be held Wednesday and Thursday.

Even as the Supreme Court seems intent on ditching the Indian Child Welfare Act

passed by Congress in 1978 to address the nationwide epidemic of American Indian children being forcibly removed from their homes by child welfare agencies and placed into non-Native homes at disproportionate rates. Throughout history, federal and state governments have sought to undermine and threaten the existence of tribes via the forced separation and assimilation of Native children. 

6:00

Turkey's been in for a couple of hours, which means it will be coming out fairly soon (it's just eight and a half pounds), assistants have been peeling potatoes, my intention of boycotting Qatar has weakened for US vs. Wales, of all the silly places for one's resolve to break.

Somebody on the radio mentioned that the first fourth-Thursday-in-November proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, and I thought I'd look up the text, apparently written by radical Republican secretary of state William Seward, and what I noticed is that it's got nothing to do with Miles Standish and Priscilla Mullins and Squanto and the shining city on a hill; and this being the greatest country in the world.

Indeed, what the Union was invited to be grateful for in November 1863 was basically that they hadn't lost the war yet;

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

And bought Alaska. 

Though Wikipedia suggests that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1858 poem "The Courtship of Miles Standish" had something to do with the 1863 Thanksgiving proclamation,

In the United States, the story brought the Pilgrims to the forefront of American culture, contributing to the establishment of a national Thanksgiving holiday in 1863.

Because not only does the Proclamation not mention the First Thanksgiving, Longfellow's poem (composed in the same weighty hexameters as Evangeline, "In the old Colony days, in Plymouth the land of the Pilgrims/To and fro in a room of his simple and primitive dwelling...") doesn't seem to mention the First Thanksgiving either. It's got lots of social details about the Pilgrims, but the Indians don't play any personal role at all. No doubt the feast described in the primary sources (which wasn't a Thanksgiving, a religious event, but a multiracial party) took place, but the national holiday decreed by Lincoln had nothing to do with it, or Longfellow either—all this narrative we have so much fun with in South Park and  The Addams Family is stuff that was actually invented after the end of Reconstruction.

Gratitude

 

William S.L. Jewett "The First Thanksgiving Dinner" wood engraving for Harper's Weekly, 1868, via The Clark Museum. The first federal Thanksgiving, that is, proclaimed by President Lincoln in fall 1863 to express the Union's gratitude for the victory at Gettysburg, which is perhaps what Father is focused on while the children tuck in.

Happy 400th Thanksgiving! Though I guess it's understood that the first one wasn't, technically, a thanksgiving. That is, they must have held one after that 1621 harvest, but in church, praying all day, not feasting, and not inviting the heathen savages in, and that's not what we're historically informed about. The feast, actually three days of feasting, undoubtedly took place too, as Edward Winslow wrote in a letter to a London connection, George Morton (sent with the ship that brought their first harvest of "Indian corn" and barley for sale on the English market, because they'd done much better, with Squanto's help, than just being able to feed themselves), 

Literary Corner: What's First and What's Last?

Image via Steemit.

Sonnet: On the Poet's Plans for his Last White House Thanksgiving

By Donald J. Trump

Q: Mr. President, do you have any big plans for your last Thanksgiving at the White House?

Well, we don’t know what is last, if you look

at what’s going on. You have to really take a look

at what’s going on. They’re finding tremendous

discrepancies in the votes. Nobody believes those

numbers. Those numbers are incorrect numbers. A lot

of numbers have already been reported that's incorrect.

You’re going to see things happening over the next

week or two that are going to be shocking to people —

if you look at the numbers in Michigan, if you

look at the numbers in Pennsylvania, if you

look at fraudulent voting and fraudulent votes.

So I can’t say what’s first and what’s last, in

terms of is this the last one or is this the first

one of a second term. We’ll see what happens.

That's just the beginning, of course, It was an enormous explosion of Trumpian analysis of the election fraud alleged in the 35 or so lawsuits his campaign had lost to date (last I heard it was 40 and no signs of slowing down) and no word whatever on what his Thanksgiving plans might be. I'm convinced he and his lady ("Who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decoration, but I need to do it, right?") don't particularly recognize Thanksgiving as a part of their American lives, and I'm not at all convinced Melania and her son are even in Washington at this point. The White House announced that the president celebrated with his "immediate family", but declined to say who was there, while his children by his first two marriages and their partners showed up at Camp David, Maryland, which they seem to have come to regard as their party place; Big Donald doesn't much like the place (too summer-camp primitive, and anyway he prefers to work during presidential time off, schmoozing with the customers at his businesses, since he gets plenty of relaxation on official work days at the White House, lying in bed with the TV and a cheeseburger or two), but flew in to say hi on Black Friday, perhaps in the hope of selling them something, such as an election fraud narrative.

Pre-Thanksgiving

 

Pessimists say Trump's "Full Pardon" is only Half Full, but I say it's Half Empty. See Emptywheel. https://t.co/vo4S59bhfo

— Rank Democracy (@Yastreblyansky) November 26, 2020

I had approximately the same idea as Emptywheel, though I obviously can't make it sound that technical: Trump didn't do this right. Flynn made a plea deal in his two guilty pleas of 2017 and 2018, in which he basically acknowledged a decent number of crimes that he wasn't being charged with, mainly involving the hundreds of thousands of dollars he earned working as an undeclared agent of a foreign government while being the president-elect's national security adviser and they agreed not to prosecute him for them as long as he stuck to the terms of the agreement, which he promptly violated, in particular by lying to Judge Emmett Sullivan, which is yet another serious federal crime, and: 

Embarrassment of Riches

Donald Trump Jr. challenged his supporters to 'trigger' their liberal relatives over Thanksgiving dinner, offering prizes for the best one caught on camera https://t.co/XHccy14Q68

— 010100100110010101110011011010010111001101110100 (@cj_disabledVet) November 28, 2019

Well, thankful the Thanksgiving I attend won't have any of the assholes who will be competing in this Biggest Asshole contest. Not that there are necessarily no Trump voters there—it's a pretty big group—but standards of human decency still apply, and nobody gets anywhere near that drunk. NPR ran a piece this morning suggesting from I don't know what research that only 4% of Americans would actually be at a celebration where this is a problem, but went on like everybody else telling us how to cope with it anyway.

I really love Thanksgiving, from the inside out, warmth and family and the simplicity and breadth of the menu, but I have to say I'm not crazy about the theology of it, the thanks part, which seems kind of obnoxiously Calvinist, dividing blessed Me from the damned dude down the street who has little to be thankful for, without the equally Calvinist recognition that I don't deserve it because I'm just as vile a sinner as he is and God chose me essentially at random. I think there should be a little more embarrassment as opposed to simple acceptance. A gratitude day would be better employed in fasting and service, and I admire those who do the latter, but I just want to be in a hot room with all those smells and a glass of red and football on the TV and noisy kids and people I love but haven't seen in a few months, laughing and talking, including talking about things other than politics. But we'll definitely gather in corners and talk about politics too.

Thanksgiving

Thought I'd rerun this piece of fragile hope from the fearful Thanksgiving of 2016:

Image by blogfriend Fearguth, November 2015.

We spend a lot of time criticizing the Thanksgiving myth, of that first feast at Plymouth Plantation, where the Indians, having helped the Pilgrims survive into their first harvest, come to share its fruits at the same table; for its false consciousness and historical decontextualization, ripped out of the record of exploitation, theft, and violence that marks the white people's takeover of the continent, but maybe we ought to remember that it is, after all, a myth.

Athena didn't leap, an armed baby, out of Zeus's skull, either! You can't expect a myth to be true! Maybe we should be thinking about the fictionally happy picture itself, of that multicultural table, as something we yearn toward, prospectively, without any illusions about the actual festival of 1621, toward the time when we can all sit down together, conscious of our identities and willingly sharing across the boundaries, those who have more obliged to share more, or even better to make it real every day, or as real as we can, imperfect and selfish as we all are by nature.

Thanksgiving Cheap Shots: And Farewell to Mark Halperin

Reconstruction Thanksgiving, Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, 1869. Uncle Sam carving the turkey, self-government and universal suffrage on the menu, and everybody, a Native with a feather in his hair, Germans, French, Spanish, African Americans, Chinese (the Chinese woman looks more Japanese, but the child she's admonishing is wearing a Qing-dynasty queue), even a disreputable but hopeful-faced Irishman at far right, among the guests. Identity politics used to be a thing Republicans approved of! Image via Millard Fillmore's Bathtub.

Happy Thanksgiving! I'm grateful Trump's too busy watching TV to do all the harm he might otherwise be doing, glad to have a voice and wonderful readers, happy to have a big extended family to go have dinner with, and schadenfreudig that the exodus of famous but bad men from social respectability includes Charlie Rose, Leon Wieseltier, and Mark Halperin.

Following Dylan Byers awful tweet (since deleted) about the catastrophic loss of talent in the media industry because all these sexual assault victims keep telling their stories, Jeet Heer:

Happy Thanksgiving

Image by blogfriend Fearguth, November 2015.

We spend a lot of time criticizing the Thanksgiving myth, of that first feast at Plymouth Plantation, where the Indians, having helped the Pilgrims survive into their first harvest, come to share its fruits at the same table; for its false consciousness and historical decontextualization, ripped out of the record of exploitation, theft, and violence that marks the white people's takeover of the continent, but maybe we ought to remember that it is, after all, a myth.

Athena didn't leap, an armed baby, out of Zeus's skull, either! You can't expect a myth to be true! Maybe we should be thinking about the fictionally happy picture itself, of that multicultural table, as something we yearn toward, prospectively, without any illusions about the actual festival of 1621, toward the time when we can all sit down together, conscious of our identities and willingly sharing across the boundaries, those who have more obliged to share more, or even better to make it real every day, or as real as we can, imperfect and selfish as we all are by nature.

The Thanksgiving myth is a myth, and it really is about celebrating diversity! But not 400 years ago, when it didn't happen: 400 years in the future, or this year if we want it!

It doesn't mean anything if everybody at the table is the same, or if we pretend we're all the same; it derives its meaning from the differences, from dramatizing whatever differences we have, even if it's just generations or genders, but ideally racial differences, and being generous about them, not just with food but with attention, and not just attention but a little surrender, maybe of allowing the other person to be touchy and ready to get indignant, maybe of noticing how touchy we're feeling (with good reason!) ourselves.

And tomorrow, Resistance! Have a great holiday.

Cross-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.

Emperor Trump

Via.

Up on my list of things to be giving thanks for on the holiday is that President-Elect Trump is breaking so many of his campaign promises, to build a wall and make the Mexicans pay for it, to prosecute his Democratic opponent for crimes unspecified and unspecifiable, to restore torture to the CIA's toolbox, to withdraw from the agreement between Iran and the P5+1 powers, to dump the Paris climate accord, and to accept the backing of the alt-white movement, which he rejected in his meeting with the Times executives and pandits yesterday. I hope he decides to break more of them! And I hope the betrayed voters don't react too violently.

I also hope he never holds a press conference, as Michael Gerson (G.W. Bush's faith-based speechwriter, you'll recall) was suggesting on NPR. Because presidential press conferences are really dangerous with a president who's unable to control his tongue. Controlling one's tongue, also known as "political correctness". A careless word can jolt a market or put somebody's life in jeopardy. Reported hate crimes in New York City are up over 400% since this time last year because of the words of a politician who isn't even president, yet. I hope he never appears in public without a script and his words are as anodyne as Eisenhower's speeches were.

The worst fears of Monsignor Ross Douthat, Apostolic Nuncio to 42nd Street ("The Trump Revelations"), appear to him to have been confirmed: the man's a secret liberal, "in his heart"!—

Cheap shots: Thanksgiving

Former McDonalds restaurant, Broadway near 82nd St. The manager of the property, named in the placard at lower left, is some kind of Marxist joke.

Jay Nordlinger of the National Review on disturbing subway ads:

 a sign read, “You spent the night in Manhattan but left your birth control in the Bronx. Maybe the IUD is right for you.” Honestly — laugh if you must (and you must!) — but I’m not entirely sure what that sign means.

No comment. If you want to ask somebody, Jay, make sure you don't ask Rush Limbaugh.

And a little more below the fold:

Thankful

Chalchiuhtotolin, Aztec turkey god (image from Wikipedia via University of Leicester)

1. No Republican brothers-in-law. Three sisters with a total of two current and two ex-husbands, plus one helpmeet with a brother of her own, not to mention that the turkey is being cooked by a sister whose husband has three brothers-in-law of whom at least two will be showing up this afternoon, and not a Republican among them: no death panels, no gold standard, no "I'm not a racist but". We don't talk about Netanyahu but you'd be surprised how easy not talking about Netanyahu is. Indeed not talking about Netanyahu is in itself something to be grateful for.

2. No God. I don't think I could bring myself to be thankful if I thought I owed it to some choosy Deity who decided to pick me out for this particularly meager set of blessings leaving me between, on the one hand, the businesslike middle-aged black woman in a man's winter coat who will probably be standing outside my bank hoping for a dollar if I go visit the ATM, and on the other, say, Donald Trump. That must have been Simone Weil's problem. Unutterably disgusting, the idea that you just deserve three meals a day and a warm bed and millions of others don't because God. But if you understand, thanks to Darwin, that your blessings come to you entirely by chance then grateful acceptance is really the only decent attitude; that plus trying to use your blessings as well as you can, modestly, to decrease the suffering you see.

3. Brahms.

Actually there's a lot more. This is just a representative sample.

The opposite of Obamacare

Looks like this Thanksgiving the obnoxious Uncle Louie ranting about how the country has been going downhill ever since the Jews and the coloreds got rid of the gold standard is threatened by a new phenomenon, your smartass nephews on the bandwagon as Novice Navigators and trying to sign the whole family up for Obamacare, and it's got the Heritage Foundation all worked up:

Facts for your #Thanksgiving dinner & the conservative alternative to #Obamacare! http://t.co/UOwfCj37pM
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) November 26, 2013

Oboy oboy thanks, Heritage! I was getting really curious about that conservative alternative to #Obamacare. Let's see...

Bibi loser

Dear Prime Minister,

If you had just called off the Gaza blockade and hung a sign labeled "Kick me" on your back, you know, you would have accomplished almost everything worthwhile you got out of this little war, without any war.

Troops spell out Bibi luzr (the second word is a borrowing from American) with their bodies. Viral image via Noam Sheizaf's blog at 972+.

Now you have army boys mocking you for not giving them a chance to get killed, wise old talking heads talking about how President Morsi, formerly of the Muslim Brotherhood, is a true statesman, Morsi getting more phone calls from Obama than you do, the Labor party trying to present itself as Compassionate Warriors (I guess that's good for Likud in the short run, but somebody's going to note sooner or later that all the wars Israel actually won were fought under Labor governments), five Israelis and 150 Gazans dead. And Tzipi Livni, new leader of the Kadima party, is having a victory party as if she were already PM herself.

Oh, but wait—you've made peace in America! At thousands of Thanksgiving tables today, right and left are in agreement for once: Bibi is a turkey!

This was meant as a pro-Netanyahu image in 2010, after Turkey's fiendish attempt to destroy Israel with donated medical supplies aboard the Marmara—our tough guy laying into Anatolia, I guess. But it turns out that bibi بيبي  is the Moroccan Arabic word for the bird (Meleagris).