JINGO BELLS, JINGO BELLS, JINGO ALL THE WAY is what I've been humming to myself today as I've trimmed my Christmas tree red, white, and blue. It was surprisingly difficult to find patriotic-themed ornaments yesterday, but I suppose demand for these hasn't been very high in past years. Maybe I should look on E-bay. At any rate, the tree looks sufficiently Martha Stewart-y and it's so blue, white, and red, I'll be lucky if Robert Jensen doesn't drive across town to burn it. Best keep it watered, just in case.
HAPPY DERVISHES, BALLOONMEN, RAZOR SALES STAFF, AND FEMALE DOCTORS are all back in business in Kabul and I've got pictures to prove it on the little photo site.
RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE, LOCK AND LOAD! That's what Glenn Reynolds says this morning. I'm down with it. Today's the day after Thanksgiving and I need a Christmas tree. Plus, I had already been dreaming about sticking it to those Buy Nothing Day morons while driving back home from the folks last night. If I see one today, and here in Austin it's not unlikely I will, I plan to point out that buying things supports jobs for poor people and provides tax revenue for government programs. This anti-shopping "holiday" is the classic example of something which will do absolutely no-one any good, and thus is nothing more than yet another exercise in progressive self-righteousness. To the mall!
THE FIRST THANKSGIVING, PRIMARY SOURCES: From the excellent resources at the Plimoth Plantation Museum. These are the only two contemporary accounts of the Thanksgiving of 1621, which we celebrate now as "The First Thanksgiving." William Bradford and Edward Winslow were early leaders of the Plimoth settlement.
"Our Corne did proue well, & God be praysed, we had a good increase of Indian Corne, and our Barly indifferent good, but our Pease not worth the gathering, for we feared they were too late sowne, they came vp very well, and blossomed, but the Sunne parched them in the blossome; our harvest being gotten in, our Governour sent foure men on fowling, that so we might after a more speciall manner reioyce together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labors; they foure in one day killed as much fowle, as with a little helpe beside, served the Company almost a weeke, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst vs, and among the rest their greatest King Massasoyt, with some nintie men, whom for three dayes we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed fiue Deere, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed upon our Governour, and upon the Captaine, and others. And although it be not alwayes so plentifull, as it was at this time with vs, yet by the goodneses of God, we are so farre from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."E.W., Plymouth, in New England, this 11th of December, 1621. in A RELATION OR Iournal of the beginning and proceedings of the English Plantation settled at Plimoth in NEW ENGLAND, by certaine English Aduenturers both Merchants and others. LONDON,Printed for Iohn Bellamie,..1622. pp. 60-61.
"They begane now to gather in ye small harvest they had, and to fitte up their houses and dwellings against winter, being well recovered in health & strenght, and had all things in good plenty; for some were thus imployed in affairs abroad, others were excersised in fishing, aboute codd, & bass, & other fish, of which yey tooke good store, of which every family had their portion. All ye somer ther was no wante. And now begane to come in store of foule, as winter aproached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degree). And besids water foule, ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they took many, besids venison, &c. Besids they had aboute a peck a meale a weeke to a person, or now since harvest, Indean corne to yt proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largly of their plenty hear to their freinds in England, which were not fained, but true reports."William Bradford. Bradford's History, Of Plimoth Plantation. Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., State Printers... 1898. p. 127.
THE MENU OF THE FIRST THANKSGIVING: According to the History Channel, the following things were not on the menu:
- Pumpkin pie (Yet to be invented, though they had-- yum, yum-- stewed pumpkin)
- Cranberry sauce (No sugar)
- Corn on the cob (Their corn was dried)
- Sweet potatoes (Weren't available)
The couple of primary source accounts we have confirm that venison and wild fowl were eaten at the big feast. Some other possible menu items:
- Swan
- Eel
- Baby seal (Yes, I'm serious-- the History Channel says seal, no reason that wouldn't mean baby seal.)
- Acorns
- Crane
- Eagle (Check it out if you don't believe me.)
- More palatable items might have included lobster, chestnuts, carrots, clams, leeks, cod, plums, and grapes.
THE FIRST THANKSGIVING: Andrew Hofer has some insightful thoughts on the history behind our Thanksgiving holiday. It is a common misconception that the celebration of Thanksgiving is a yearly tradition that goes back to the first years of the Puritan settlement in Massachusetts. Andrew sets us straight:
Thanksgiving was not an annual holiday until Lincoln declared it one in 1863. In fact, the word "Pilgrim" did not come into use until around that time. This holiday did not yet have its association with the Plymouth Rock settlers. Prior to Lincoln, presidents commonly called one-time national days of thanksgiving. The evolution of the holiday as we have come to know it occurred between the end of the Civil War and World War I. It appears to have been an outgrowth of the "Colonial Revival" movement in which American culture reacted to the post Civil War period and the industrial revolution by harkening back to the country's more simple roots.
Go read the rest. It's good stuff.
A CAUTIONARY TALE: Sad news, pilgrim. Those turkeys the President pardoned a couple of days ago may not have much longer to live anyway. ABCNEWS.com reports that many of the past avian presidential pardonees haven't lived to see the next Thanksgiving. By the time they get to the President, they have become so plump that their little turkey hearts can't support them. Often they are just found dead at the petting zoo. Food for thought as we stuff ourselves tomorrow.
SO THAT'S WHERE THE MONEY COMES FROM: A puzzling article notes that the Flood of donations to fight deadly diseases dries up after September 11th. Before the WTC atrocities, $2.9 billion dollars was pledged to fight AIDS, TB, and malaria around the world, and since 9-11, only $4,000 has been pledged.
I can think of two reasons for this. One, the bulk of the $2.9 billion was probably pledged by governments, who now have already given. Two, since the outpouring of money to the victims' funds has come primarily from Americans, it must be American individuals who the UN is counting on to fund this fight against infectious disease. That's fine; we are already the largest giver of foreign aid in absolute amounts in the world. But how about a little credit here?
NAIL LACQUER, BURQALESS TEACHERS, and an ingenious use for the yellow plastic food bags, plus much more on the photo page. Thanks for the links from Overlawyered.com, the Rant Blog, Matt Welch, Stephen Den Beste, worldcrossing.com, Fredrik Norman, and Reid Stott, whose own photo page inspired me .
UH, SORRY, NOT GOING TO HAPPEN: Taliban spokeman, Syed Tayyad Agha, has suggested that it's time to forget about the terror attacks of September 11th, which he characterized as "Not our problem." He told journalists yesterday:
You should forget the Sept. 11 attacks because now there is a new fighting against Muslims and Islam, and the international and global terrorists like America.
Yeah, tell that to the thousands of children who are going to be missing a parent tomorrow and every following day of their lives.
Or, maybe they could talk to Sheima, the 30 year-old widow of a Northern Alliance POW massacred by the Taliban several weeks ago. She told an LA Times reporter, "I'll never forgive the Taliban, never! Not until judgment day. They should all die."
HERE'S A PREDICTION: Americans to Pile on Calories This Thanksgiving says Christopher Doering of Reuters. He claims that Americans have decided since the terrorist (my term) attacks on September 11th that life is too short to eat healthy and exercise. Frankly, this has not been the case for me; terrorism turns my stomach. In fact, I just started eating yogurt again after that last fateful bowl on the morning of 9-11. Also, jogging has kept me sane and given me a place to think about it all. Plus, everytime I've worn my jogbra and shorts since the attacks it has been with the happy thought that the Taliban despises my right to do so.
It is the luckiest thing in the world to be a Western woman. Not just the fact that I'm a Texan, but that I was allowed to live past infancy, taught to read, permitted to go to graduate school, to choose a husband, to wear what I want, to vote, to hold a checking account, to drive, to write whatever I want on this gorgeous laptop. It's amazing and beautiful and pure luck. Dammit, I have much for which to be thankful.
IS NORWAY HEAVEN? Yes, according to the LA Times which ran a feature saying so a couple of weeks ago. Not exactly, says Fredrik Norman, who actually lives there. Fredrik gives us the inside scoop on the state of the Nordic welfare state in an article on his website, fredriknorman.com
HOW COULD IT BE OTHERWISE? British citizens who have gone to fight for bin Laden and the Taliban face arrest if they return to the UK. This seems pretty basic-- how could you go to fight for your country's enemies and think you'd be welcomed back, no questions asked? But then, these guys don't come off as very bright in the first place.
BEYOND BURQAS: Interesting commentary in the British Independent by Mary Dejevsky. She cautions against the idea that Afghan women can be liberated simply by removing their veils:
If there has been much wishful thinking about what casting off the burqa will mean, however, there has been almost as much unthinking condemnation of the veil. Underlying much of what has been said about the defeat of the Taliban and the re-emergence of women has been a simplistic and culturally restrictive equation: uncovered good; covered bad.The burqa, which is so heavy and so all-encompassing, has been raised to totem status in the West and among Westernised Muslims as worst of all, a symbol of all the evils inflicted upon women by Islamic fundamentalism. The reality is, however, that it ill behoves "liberated" Western women to denounce the veil as a symbol of oppression alone. The veil whether it takes the form of a full burqa, a black chador or just a headscarf worn low over the forehead is a cultural phenomenon that cannot just be thrown off overnight. For many, especially in rural areas, it is less a mark of subjugation than a protection. In their male-dominated societies, they will be treated as "loose". Their husbands may leave them: and few have an education or means of sustenance outside their marriage.
While the enforced wearing of the veil is something Western women can justifiably condemn, it is the force, not the wearing, that is wrong. To take another view is patronising to Muslim women and may spell danger for them, too.
More burqua-free pictures on the photo site.
THE IDEA FOR THIS COMMERCIAL? PRICELESS. All summer I was vaguely charmed by a series of MasterCard commercials showing two friends traveling across country visiting all the major ballparks. They even went to Camden Yards a couple of weeks before we did. Now it seems likely that the ad guys completely ripped the idea off a documentary about two friends who really made such a pilgrimage, though I doubt they spent so much on memorabilia.
CAN WE PLEASE START A DONALD RUMSFELD FAN CLUB? Here he is on taking no prisoners among the mercenaries of Kudunz in The Times:
Any idea that those people in that town who have been fighting so viciously and who refuse to surrender should end up in some sort of a negotiation which would allow them to leave the country and go off and destabilise other countries and engage in terrorist attacks on the United States is something that I would certainly do everything I could to prevent. They're people who have done terrible things.
Via the excellent Rantberg.
MOVIE RIOTS, SATELLITE DISHES AND MORE at the photo page. It's clear that the Afghans were starving for entertainment. How else do you explain the melee that resulted when Kabul's movie house opened for the first time in five years? Snobby Americans like David Brooks will turn up their noses at such plebeian delights, but how can you be so dismissive of something that gives such happiness? Easily enough, I guess, if you're a prig.
THE TIMES' TAKE ON TAXES: Over the weekend, Andrew Hofer had intelligent comment on the biased tax coverage in the NYT on his site More Than Zero. What's interesting about the Times's economic coverage is that Dean Baker also does a pretty successful job of knocking them and The Washington Post down from the Left every other week in his Economic Reporting Review. It's amazing and scary how sloppy and careless they can be, considering they are the papers of record in this country. Good thing we have the blogs.
ARAB TOLERANCE: In what was billed as a celebration for Ramadan, the second most popular television program in the Arab world featured a skit in which an actor playing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon drank the blood of Arab children. The program was shown over the weekend on Abu Dhabi Television, which is produced in Kuwait. The idea that Jews drank the blood of Christian children, or even used it in Passover matzohs, received a lot of play in the Middle Ages, but it can still be seen in Arab newspapers.
Considering that this is what gets served up as a holiday treat in the Islamic world (instead of, say, "It's the New Moon, Charlie Brown"), it's no wonder if the "Arab street" hates us. How can we possibly win the "hearts and minds" of the Arab world, when all they know is this kind of horrible propaganda about the west? The Israelis are going to report this incident to the UN. It will be interesting if they can bring themselves to condemn it, when propaganda passed out at their Racist Conference in Durban also pictured Jews with Arab-child blood dripping from their fangs.
READY FOR MY SHOT: I've been wondering lately who exactly is responsible for the absence of a nifty little vaccine scar on my arm and the smallpox protection that it implies. Now I have a candidate-- D. A. Henderson, who ran the World Health Organization's smallpox eradication program from 1966 to 1979, which was somewhat prematurely declared a success. It may very well be a success. There haven't been any natural outbreaks of the disease in more than twenty years and clearly WHO's program of vaccinations deserves the credit. But it seems to me incredibly naive to have halted vaccinations in 1972.
What they've created is a huge target populace for bio-warfare. Yes, in a perfect world we would have destoyed the two remaining vials of smallpox already. But it seems to me that anyone charged with protecting the health of the world, if they were paying attention at all in the Twentieth Century, should have taken very seriously the possiblity that bad people could do very bad things with the virus if you stopped vaccinating children. Henderson grumbles in the NYT profile about Bush's decision not to destroy our sample of the virus, saying that it should be destroyed so that possession of smallpox can be made illegal. As though some kind of international law would stop terrorists from unleashing plague on whomever they please. If smallpox virus possession is made a crime, then only criminals will possess the smallpox virus. Well, NSS. Who else would have any use for it in the first place? We do not make ourselves safer by relying on laws alone to protect us, especially international laws. I'm glad to see we're going to start vaccinating again.
WHERE'S MY VIOLIN? Such a sad story in the Chicago Sun-Times about a Pakistani Talib who went over to Afghanistan to kill Americans and instead has now found himself in a mud hut, at the mercy of the Northern Alliance. The "young idealist," as the reporter chooses to call him, now claims: ''I came to Afghanistan to just look at the place, to understand what was happening.''
Uh huh, right, he just wanted to look around. But then he complains he got only three days of military training. I suppose that was just for self-defense on his little walking tour of understanding. The Northern Alliance clearly don't see it that way, and our young idealist is lucky to still be alive. Much better this guy is in a unheated mudhut, though, than making trouble for Musharraf in Pakistan.
TROUBLING ISN'T EVEN THE WORD-- While Afghan women burn their burqas and celebrate the freedom to go to beauty parlors, Western women are mobilizing to fight for their right to starve themselves into fashionable oblivion. A recent Time article also documents the "pro-anorexia" presence on the web. Many of the websites it lists as giving tips and support for young women who want to achieve that death-camp look have been shut down, but it was easy to find others this morning. Here's one for the strong-stomached, but, then again, nausea is their forte.
NEW PHOTOS of Afghan life after the Taliban-- teenage girls on TV, bathhouses, a cockfight, general celebration. Women have been burning their burqas and visiting beauty parlors, which will no longer be secret establishments. They are making plans to return to work. Even the pictures of women still wearing burquas on Afghan streets reveal a substantial change from the Taliban regime, where women were beaten just for leaving their homes.