THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR FIRST THANKSGIVING

From Worldometer (new deaths yesterday):

        DAY  USA  WORLD   Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9     1093     4732        1185       246        82

July    22     1205     7128        1293      1120     572

Aug    12     1504     6556       1242       835       130

Sept     3      1094    5886          830     1083       174
            9      1208    6222        1136      1168        82

Oct      8        957    6420          730       967       160

          21      1225     6849         571       703         85

Nov     4      1199      8192        276       511         74 

          11      1479    10178        564       550         60

          17      1615     10502       676       472       118

          18      1964     10970       754       587       124 

          19      2065     10758       644       584       115

          20      1999     11136       521       562         88

          23        972       7951       344       481         65

          24      2216     11742       638       489        115

          25      2304    12025       620       518        118

Summary:  Terrible.

Apparently, AstraZeneca/Oxford made a mistake in conducting their vaccine tests, so doubt is being cast.  

• Sometimes you learn something from a goof.  This could well turn out be good news, for half a dosage could well be closer to the sweet spot for effectiveness than a pre-calculated full one.  
• If this is true, then double the dosages will be made available for a vaccine that is ten times cheaper with simple storage in a standard refrigerator for months, as opposed to the Moderna and Pfizer versions, which need extreme cold for storage.
• While the messenger RNA platforms of Moderna and Pfizer might sound more high tech than the chimpanzee virus from A/O, sometimes solutions come from strange places.

From The New York Times this morning:

• Daily deaths in the U.S. have exceeded 1,600 in recent days, more than double the level of one month ago.
• Daily deaths in the U.S. have exceeded 1,600 in recent days, more than double the level of one month ago.
• Senator David Perdue, Republican of Georgia, sold at least $1 million worth of stock in the financial company Cardlytics weeks before it announced disappointing results and its share price tumbled.

• Travel, virtually: Tour 52 places around the world. Admire some abstract architecture. And foster the spirit of travel at home.

A large tom turkey at the age of 5 months (when they are sold) can weigh up to 44 pounds.  In the wild they only get up to 24 pounds.  Large ones are not being purchased this year.  As a pet they have around a 10-year lifespan.  Wonder if a new market will be created this year.  On that note, before I go into the true story of Thanksgiving, here are a few six-word memoirs about thankfulness sent to the New York Times:

• Family reunion in January, before COVID.
• Miss family, but safer for them.
• Saved a lot of lipstick money.
• Mom, 87, rocking pretty, pandemic ponytail.
• Windows have never been so important.
• I'm just thankful for indoor plumbing.
• My parents did not get it.
• Wasn't too late to say sorry.
• Dr. Fauci and all truth-speakers.
• Pandemic baby after years of trying.
• Toddler see Audrey Hepburn, says "Mama."
• Water cooler chats with six-year-old son.
• Survived first semester of online university.
• To be a United States citizen.
• Vaccine is coming, Trump is going.
• Biden won the election--thank God.
• Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia.
• Paris Climate Agreement returns in January.
• Red or white, and occasionally rose'.
• Fell in love at 75.
• Solitary Thanksgiving means no turkey. LOBSTER.
• I am thankful to be thankful.

And, incidentally, I did have a LOBSTER dinner, but it was for Thanksgiving eve:

I grew up with the myth of Plymouth, and how there was racial harmony and sharing of food in the fall of 1621.  David Silverman last year released:  This Land is Their Land--The  Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving.

When the pilgrims arrived at Plymouth in 1620, 400 years ago, the Wampanoags offered peace, but mostly to protect themselves from their rivals, the Narrangansetts.  The alliance led to colonial expansion, the spread of disease and exploitation.  Thanksgiving for the Wampanoags is a day of mourning, rather than a moment of giving thanks.

Silverman is a professor of history at George Washington University.  He says:

The myth is that friendly Indians, unidentified by tribe, welcome the Pilgrims to America, teach them how to live in this new place, sit down to dinner with them and then disappear. They hand off America to white people so they can create a great nation dedicated to liberty, opportunity and Christianity for the rest of the world to profit. That’s the story—it’s about Native people conceding to colonialism. It’s bloodless and in many ways an extension of the ideology of Manifest Destiny.

Not so:

• The Pilgrims were supposed to head for the Hudson River, much further south, but they actually first landed at Provincetown, Massachusetts in November of 1620.  There was a hostile Nauset tribe, so they left and ended up at Plymouth Rock in Patuxet a month later.

• 
  The Mayflower was not the first contact.  The Wampanoags had been in conflict with Europeans for a century.  Indians were regularly captured and sold as slaves.  You need to look from early in the 16th century up to the 18th century to understand the complicated relationships.
• More than half on that ship were not seeking religious freedom.  They were there to make a profit.
• Note that there were several contending camps:  various Indian tribes, early settlers versus England, and immigrants from other European countries.
• Even within each tribe there was dissension.  Add to this the different interpretations of who owns land among competing cultures.  These tribes had been in the Massachusetts region for 12,000 years.
• 
  The Whites celebrated Thanksgiving not by feasting, but instead, fasting and prayer.  There was a meal in October of 1621, but a tense one.  The Reverend Alexander Young later wrote about a peaceful dinner to boost tourism.  More than a century later, President Abraham Lincoln picked up this setting in 1863 and declared Thanksgiving as a public holiday to foster national unity.

• 
  Later Europeans were also Catholics and Jews, so these Protestants wanted to assert cultural authority to the newcomers.  Thus the myth about Pilgrims and Indians sharing land and resources.
• New Englanders wanted to downplay the Indian Wars and slavery, pushing Thanksgiving as a feel good experience to hide the really dark past.
• Further from Silverman:

This is about as contrary to the Thanksgiving myth that one can get. That's the story we should be teaching our kids. They should be learning about why native people reached that point, rather than this nonsense that native people willingly handed off their country to the invaders. It does damage to how our native countrymen and women feel as part of this country, it makes white Americans a lot less reflective about where their privilege comes from, and it makes us a lot less critical as a country when it comes to interrogating the rationales that leaders will marshal to act aggressively against foreign others. If we're taught to cut through colonial rhetoric we'll be better positioned to cut through modern colonial and imperial rhetoric.

In 1610 there were 6,600 Wampanoags.  This dropped to 400 in 1677 after outbreaks and wars.  Today, close to 3,000.

A first step in appreciating Thanksgiving is forget what your kindergarten teacher told you.  Then remember that ALL lives matter.  Next year appreciate your gathering on Thanksgiving with family and friends and thank God that Joe Biden is President.

Back to turkeys, why do you think we serve them on Thanksgiving?  The Pilgrims/Wampanoags had some fowl and venison, but almost certainly not this specific bird.  Turns out that turkeys are impossibly cheap in November and large enough for a group of people.

Song #32 will come from Franz Liszt:

• Liebestraum
• Hungarian Rhapsody

Franz Liszt was a Hungarian composer and said to be one of the greatest pianists of all time.  He began composing at the age of eight.  One of his teachers was Antonio Salieri, who was depicted as a rival of Wolfgang Mozart in that popular film.  He did not poison Mozart.

Liszt in his early 20's formed friendships with Hector Berlioz, Niccolo Paganini and Frederic Chopin.  At the age of 30 he became a kind of rock star with showmanship on the piano, as his concerts were known as mystical ecstasy.  Women fought over his silk handkerchiefs and velvet gloves.

He received an honorary doctorate in that period, and in time gave away much of his proceeds to charity and humanitarian causes.  Largely retired from touring at the age of 35 to returned to composing.  His daughter Cosima married both Hans von Bulow and Richard Wagner.  Two children died in his 50's, so he went to live in a monastery outside of Rome, and became a priest.  He passed away at the age of 74.  

Dreams of Love (English for Liebestraum) is a 1970 Hungarian-Soviet film of his life.  The Hungarian version is 174 minutes long, with the Soviet film 150 minutes and American 130 minutes.  Can't find it anywhere.

He was a prolific composer.  Here is one top ten list.  Not there is Liebestraum, published in 1850.  These are three solo piano works.  No. 3 is the most popular.

There are 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies, with No. 2 in C sharp minor by far the most famous.  This is my favorite #32.

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