What Would Jimmy Do?

As we’ve talked about before, Thanksgiving originally started out as a harvest festival as a way to celebrate and give thanks for a bountiful harvest. Although Thanksgiving is thought of as a truly American holiday, similar celebrations and traditions take place around the world. Although they spring from the same ideas, thanksgiving traditions in various places have their own unique ceremonies and stories and have their own way of showing and giving thanks.

I’ve been fortunate enough to witness some of these — mostly in the Far East,and while they don’t take place on a Thursday in November, they all have the common theme of giving thanks.

I’ve blogged about the Chinese Moon Festival a few times — it’s a descendent from old Chinese customs, but people of modern China use the occasion for gathering around a table, talking, eating and reflecting on the importance of togetherness. 

In Malaysia the Kadazan festival is celebrated in May. Malaysians believe that “without rice there is no life.” The people of Malaysia believe the grain holds the spirit of life and creation. The Kadazan Festival is a day of giving thanks to the Creator who made the people’s most prized staple of life.

Erntedankfest is “Thanksgiving Day” in Germany, held on the first Sunday in October. It’s a religiously dominated celebration where the churches run the show — both Catholics and Protestants celebrate and attend church services for this thanksgiving celebration, centered on giving thanks for the year’s harvest and grain. The celebratory food is much the same as the Thanksgiving Day food consumed in America. 

An African festival, Homowo, celebrated in August or September is dedicated to the hopefulness that the crops will be plentiful for the coming year and no one will experience famine. This “Festival of the Yams” is centered around the new yam harvest. The villages rejoice by dancing and singing with animal masks, acknowledging the end of the rainy season and the desire for a fruitful harvest to last well into the new year. 

We may think of Thanksgiving as a uniquely American celebration, but harvest festivals around the world have the common theme of giving thanks for the natural gifts given by nature and the gods. They bring people together, give cultures reason to celebrate, and provide a time for all people to reflect back on the wonderful disposition of their culture’s prosperity for the year….
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In keeping with the Thanksgiving theme, I thought today might be a good day to talk about something that probably most of us will taste on what some people refer to as “Turkey Day.”

Turkeys have become synonymous with Thanksgiving. There are a number of wild turkeys where we live and they’ve been here a long time, being native to the Americas.

Benjamin Franklin believed that the turkey would have been a better choice for our national symbol than the bald eagle. Here’s some of his thoughts he wrote in a letter to his daughter:
“For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly… like those among men who live by sharping and robbing… he is generally poor, and often very lousy. Besides, he is a rank coward; the little king-bird, not bigger than a sparrow, attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district… For in truth, the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but the turkey was secular to ours…”

Ben probably made some good points, but the bald eagle won out as our national symbol and the turkey became “famous” as the Thanksgiving meal. But the turkey is an interesting bird.

Ben indicated in his letter that the turkey was a “true original native of America.” Turkeys did originate in the “New World.” Specifically, wild turkeys are native to Mexico. European explorers brought wild turkeys home with them in the early 1500s. The birds were domesticated in Europe and later brought to North America by English colonists. You may or may not know that domesticated turkeys have white-tipped tails; wild turkeys have dark-tipped tails.

Only male turkeys, or toms, can make a sound known as a “gobble,” and they mostly do it in the spring and fall. It is a mating call and attracts the hens. Wild turkeys gobble when they’re surprised by loud sounds and when they settle in for the night.
The loose red skin attached to the underside of a turkey’s beak is called a wattle. When the male turkey is excited, especially during mating season, the wattle turns a scarlet red. The fleshy flap of skin that hangs over the gobbler’s beak called a snood and also turns bright red when the bird is excited. The wobbly little thing on the turkey’s chest is the turkey’s beard and is made up of keratin bristles. Keratin is the same substance that forms hair and horns on other animals.

The wild turkey is considered a game bird, but is one of the more difficult game birds to hunt. They won’t be flushed out of the brush with a dog. Hunters must try to attract it with different calls. Even with two seasons a year, only one in six hunters will get a wild turkey.

When Europeans first encountered the wild turkey in Mexico, they incorrectly classified the bird as a type of guinea fowl called a turkey fowl. Turkish traders originally sold guinea fowl from Africa to European markets. The country of Turkey has no native turkeys.

A baby turkey is called a poult, chick, or turklette. An adult male turkey is called a tom and a female is a hen.
The domestic tom can weight up to 50 pounds, the domestic hen up to 16 pounds. The wild tom can weigh up to 20 pounds, the wild hen up to 12 pounds.
Wild turkeys can fly (however, they prefer to walk or run.) Domestic turkey are not agile flyers, but the bird will perch in trees to stay safe from predators.
The average life span of a wild turkey is three or four years. They generally feed on seeds, nuts, insects and berries. The average life span of a domestic turkey, from birth to freezer, is 26 weeks. During that period of time, they will eat about 75 pounds of turkey feed.

So the turkey has become an integral part of Thanksgiving. I remember when I was small, never having turkey except on Thanksgiving (and maybe Christmas.) But the turkey, like most “institutions” has tended to expand. Not long a go I heard a comedian talking about turkeys — I thought he was funny and was somewhat right on target….
If you stand in the meat section at the grocery long enough, you start to get mad at turkeys. There’s turkey ham, turkey bologna, turkey pastrami. Someone needs to tell the turkey, “Man, just be yourself.”
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Since it’s approaching Thanksgiving, I was reminded of a conversation we had, I think, a couple of years ago. Claire was discussing what to have for Thanksgiving dinner and I mentioned liking sweet potatoes like her sister, Terry, made. She thought that was a good idea and she said she thought we should have mashed potatoes and yams. 

I remembered that my grandparents always referred to sweet potatoes as “yams,” and I wondered why. I know that in the South, a popular dish is candied yams — I never heard it called candied sweet potatoes.

Well, naturally, this issue called for some of my extensive research. Turns out that this time my extensive research got a lot more involved that I had originally intended. But it was new information to me — here’s what I found:
Sweet potato varieties come in different colors — orange, white, yellow or (sometimes) purple. I alway thought sweet potatoes were orange. It turns our that the orange sweet potato is a recent thing. Until the 1930s sweet potatoes were only white or yellow. Then in the 30s, the orange sweet potato was cultivated and it was larger, sweeter, more moist, and fleshier compared to the smaller, yellowish, and drier-fleshed varieties… someone had come up with a superior sweet potato. To differentiate the orange sweet potato from the white and yellow ones, it was called a “yam” because it looked similar to an African vegetable with that name. Today, the name yam has stuck as an interchangeable term for orange sweet potatoes in the US.

Here’s some extensive research information I don’t really understand, but it seems important (and interesting) so I’ll pass it along.
Yams are big edible “tubers” that are categorized as monocots (plants having one embryonic seed leaf) and belong to the genus Dioscorea.
Sweet potatoes are edible “roots” that are categorized as dicots (plants having two embryonic seed leaves) and are from the Convolvulaceae or morning glory family.
Yams grow in tropical and subtropical climates, primarily in South America, Africa and the Caribbean.
Sweet potatoes are native to the Americas, growing best in both tropical and warm temperate regions.  
Yams can reach two to three feet long and some can weigh as much as 80 pounds.
Sweet potatoes are generally about 5 inches long and weigh about 4.5 ounces. They always taper at the end and have thin skin.

So back to the question, why do people call sweet potatoes yams? Basically to differentiate the orange sweet potato from the white and yellow ones. Today, the name “yam” has stuck as an interchangeable term for orange sweet potatoes. Whatever you call it, the odds are very high that you are buying a sweet potato in your grocery store.

My extensive research also discovered that the U.S. Department of Agriculture requires labels with the term “yam” to be accompanied by the term “sweet potato.” And — the preferred wording from the sweet potato commission(s) is “sweetpotato” (one word.) Apparently the reasoning is that it’s a unique crop, not a potato that happens to be sweet — sweet potatoes aren’t related to potatoes.
So there you have it — seems like this time my extensive research got to the “root” of all the confusion.
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I talked a little about the Bible a few blogs back and about how it can be misinterpreted and some people tend to use the Bible to prove, or dis-prove, just about anything.

But without trying to interpret each and very verse, the Bible is interesting in and of itself.
I think I mentioned that the Bible is the bestselling book in the world, but Ironically I guess, it’s also the most stolen book in the world. Bibles are regularly taken from hotels, hospitals, bookstores and lots of other places — I guess one of the Ten Commandments that says, “thou shalt not steal,” doesn’t apply to Bibles.

While there is some disagreement, most biblical scholars agree that it took about 1,500 years to write the Bible. The Bible has about 40 authors that wrote different sections and it was written on three continents — Asia, Europe and Africa, and — in three different languages. The Old Testament was written primarily in Hebrew, while the New Testament was written in Greek — the language of scholarship at the time. (Aramaic was the common “international language” of the time and most like the language that Jesus spoke.)

It was about 400 years before the New Testament was written after the completion of the Old Testament — these years are known as the “silent years.”

On average, the Bible is over 600,000 words long. Different versions or translations of the Bible are even longer — the King James Bible is 783,137 words. And the Bible has over 1,000 chapters — 929 in the Old Testament and 260 in the New Testament. It’s interesting that both the longest and shortest chapters in the Bible are in Psalms — Psalms 117 is the shortest and Psalms 119 is the longest. The shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35 and consists of only two words: “Jesus wept.”

The Geneva Bible, produced in 1557 in Geneva, Switzerland, was the first version of the Bible to be translated from both Hebrew and Greek, as well as the first to be printed on a printing press. At the time, Queen Mary I of England was persecuting Protestants, even having them burned at the stake. In response, many Protestant leaders, like John Calvin, fled to Geneva. The Geneva Bible was very influential in the 16th century and was one of the books taken to America on the Mayflower in 1620.

Believe it or not, there is a “Sinner’s Bible.” We all know that the Bible states, “thou shall not commit adultery.” However a Bible printed in 1631 contains a typo and actually states “thou shalt commit adultery.” This Bible has become known as the “Sinner’s Bible,” and today a few copies of this rare Bible are still floating around.

There is one more fairly famous Bible that contains a typo — in a 1611 edition of the King James Bible, a typo is found in the Book of Ruth 3:15, which reads: “She went into the city.” This verse refers to God, so it is essentially describing God as a woman. Not surprisingly, this Bible is known as the “She Bible,” and only a very few of these Bibles remain. 

The Bible in its entirety has been translated into 704 languages and at least some portion has been translated into over 3,000 languages. And, there are numerous versions of the Bible. With so many versions and translations, things were bound to get lost in translation at some point. So I suppose it’ll continue to be the book to quote when you want to prove, or dis-prove your argument.
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When I started yesterday’s blog, I seem to have gotten off-track a bit. I had originally intended to talk a little about some Thanksgiving trivia or as I like to refer to it, “statistics” I ran across the other day. Here’s some I found interesting — maybe you will, too.

The day after Thanksgiving is the busiest day of the year for plumbers.
The most hated Thanksgiving dis is tofu.
The first Thanksgiving lasted three days.
More people travel to Orlando, Florida than anywhere else on Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is America’s second favorite holiday (after Christmas and before Halloween.)
Minnesota raises the most turkeys in the U.S.
Red wine is the most popular Thanksgiving alcoholic drink.
More than four-fifths of Americans prefer the leftovers to the Thanksgiving meal.
“Jingle Bells” was originally a Thanksgiving song.
Americans eat 704 million pounds of turkey every Thanksgiving.
The Butterball hotline answers 100,000 turkey-related questions every year.
Frozen had the biggest Thanksgiving opening of any movie.
Native Americans had many uses for the cranberry — not only did they eat cranberries fresh and use them as an ingredient in other foods, they also used cranberries to heal wounds and dye fabrics.
The first national Thanksgiving was declared by George Washington.

Feel free to use these as conversation starters around the Thanksgiving table — my compliments.
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Well, Thanksgiving is less than a week away and I was thinking about my Thanksgivings over the years. I’ve spent Thanksgiving in a lot of different places and with a lot of different people. Thanksgiving, like all holidays, has its own set of traditions like the turkey, watching football and Macy’s parade — but a lot of traditions have disappeared over the years….

A lot of people still send Christmas cards and of course kids (especially) trade Valentine’s cards, but around the turn of the 20th century, people also used to send Thanksgiving cards, that had illustrations of pumpkins, turkeys, pilgrims, etc. — the verses conveyed seasonal sentiments of thanks.

When I was little, there was always a kids’ table at Thanksgiving — it seemed like a tradition to separate the kids and adults during dinner. That doesn’t seem to be the case today — the entire family usually sits together around the table, regardless of age.

It hasn’t been that many years ago when you sat down for dinner on special occasions, like Thanksgiving or Christmas, there were usually place cards on the table. Most people don’t use place cards anymore. That was one of the more formal Thanksgiving traditions that hasn’t stood the test of time.

Special meals on holidays like Thanksgiving, used to call for using the family’s finest china and silverware. But today, no one wants to spend a day polishing those special knives, forks and spoons that were too good to be put into the dishwasher and that were probably inherited from the grandparents. Most families just stick with the everyday dishes and silverware on Turkey Day.

I remember a lot of families made it an annual tradition to retell the story of the first Thanksgiving before starting to eat. Today everyone around the table can just access the history of Thanksgiving on their phones…. and people do use their phones during the Thanksgiving meal — but I’m pretty sure they’re not reading about the first Thanksgiving.

One activity that I remember well is the wishbone tradition. This tradition is much older than even I am — in Ancient Roman times, chicken bones embodied good luck. So, when two people pulled apart a wishbone, the person left with the larger piece was, in theory, rewarded with good luck or granted a wish. Breaking of the wishbone was something I always looked forward to. But today, you hardly ever even hear it mentioned. Probably because the wishbone has to dry out before it will break — that means waiting…. patiently. That doomed the wishbone ritual for today’s culture of instant gratification.
I guess that’s the thing with traditions — they usually adapt to the times, morph into something different, or fade away entirely.
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This may come as a surprise to you, but no, Christoper Columbus did not discover America. There were already 50 million indigenous peoples living in the area of land Mr. Columbus claimed to “discover.”

I know this is a busy month and lots of activities bid for our attention, but the month of November is Native American Heritage Month — giving Americans time to consider the important contributions of Indigenous Peoples, honor their histories, and advocate for solutions to the struggles they still face today.

Native Americans have been confronted with discrimination and hardship since European settlers first stepped foot on their land, and have suffered injustice in many ways since.

‘Indigenous” means the original inhabitants who first occupied a land or region, so the Indigenous peoples of America has the same meaning as Native Americans.
The indigenous people of North America spoke a huge number of spoken languages prior to colonization — somewhere between 300 and 500. However, many of these languages have disappeared as a result of assimilation policies by the government. In 1868, President Ulysses S. Grant declared, “In the difference of language today lies two-thirds of our trouble… their barbarous dialect should be blotted out and the English language substituted.”

Beginning in the 1800s, Native Americans were displaced from their communities and moved onto reserves, and children were taken to Indian boarding schools and educated in English. It wasn’t until 1972, when Congress passed the Indian Education Act, that Native American tribes were permitted to teach their own languages. In 2013, there were 169 Native languages spoken in the United States and many of them had very small numbers of speakers. In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Language Act, which provides support for Native American language preservation and revitalization. It’s estimated that all but two Native American languages are in danger of disappearing altogether by 2050.

Prior to colonization, Native American languages were orally transmitted. After the arrival of Europeans, several tribes began to adopt writing systems. Sequoyah, a member of the Cherokee Nation, spent 12 years developing a writing system so that his people could learn to read and write in their language — he completed his 86-character “a;phablet” in 1821. 

On February 21, 1828, the first edition of the Cherokee Phoenix was published in the Cherokee capital of New Echota, Georgia. It was the first bilingual newspaper in the United States — printed in both English and Cherokee.

It wasn’t until 1924 that all Native Americans were granted citizenship, when Congress enacted the Indian Citizenship Act. At that time most Native American were able to vote, but many laws at the state-level prevented voting rights for all — it took over 40 years for all 50 states to allow Native Americans to vote.

The very first American Indian Day in a state was held in New York and took place on the second Saturday in May in 1916. The first year of dedicating November as National American Indian Heritage Month was in 1990 ± proclaimed by President H.W. Bush. The name was changed under President Obama, in 2009, to National Native American Heritage Month.

The United States of America was founded on the idea that all of us are created equal and deserve equal treatment, opportunity and dignity. Unfortunately, we have fallen short many times. That equality has often been denied to Native Americans who have lived on this land since time immemorial.
Maybe the Native Americans figured us out years ago…. A Sauk Indian from Oklahoma, Black Hawk, said, “How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.”
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There are a number of subjects that are almost impossible to discuss without creating arguments, disagreements and maybe even fisticuffs. A lot of people are die-hard sports fans and can’t tolerate any criticism of their favorite team. Of course politics, especially the past few years, is a subject to stay away from if you want a civil conversation. Religion has always been a subject to disagree on. And it seems like the Bible is one book no one can agree about. 

The Bible is the bestselling, most-read book in the world. But the religious world can’t even agree on one Bible. I’m pretty sure all Bibles have 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament, but there are additional books accepted in various religious sects. For example, the Protestant Bible has 66 books, the Catholic Bible has 73 books and the Orthodox Church doesn’t have a universally approved biblical canon — Orthodox Bibles can have between 79 and 86 books.

There are I don’t know how many “versions” of the Bible. There is a King James Version, a New King James Version, an American Standard Version, a New Revised Standard Version, a New American standard Bible, a New Living Translation Version, a New Century Version, the Holman Christian standard Bible — just to name a few.

One thing that seems to contribute to misunderstanding/disagreement about the Bible is that many Bible stories or verses are taken without context. Another thing that probably contributes to the problem is that the context for many of the parables occurred thousands of years ago and don’t necessarily translate very well to to the modern era. Of course that doesn’t stop people from trying to apply them in today’s world.

There’s no doubt that the Bible has some great advice for Christians or anyone trying to be their best self. Do not judge lest ye be judged yourself, love thy neighbor, may he who is without sin cast the first stone, and lots of other verses aren’t generally the ones that stir up the controversy. But the Bible is full of stories that seem to condone deplorable practices — even some that are prohibited in the 10 commandments. Here are a few that taken at face value, or our of context might make you say, “Whaaa?”

• (Exodus 21:20-21) And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.”
• (Leviticus 20:10) And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
• (Matthew 5:28) But I say unto you, that whosoever loocketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
• (Exodus 22:19) Whosoever leith with a beast shall surely be put to death.
I’m sure there are tons more verses in the Bible which seem to contradict modern values… but remember when the Bible was written.

Religion is a very personal thing — maybe it’s good that the Bible is open to so many interpretations. The problem, of course, is that your interpretation is your interpretation… not to be forced on someone else that interprets it differently. The majority of wars have been fought over “interpretation.”
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Today is Sadie Hawkins Day — or, maybe not. The date of Sadie Hawkins Day can vary. Some people celebrate the day on the first Saturday in November. Some choose November 15 because that’s when it actually “originated,” (more on that later) and many choose today — November 13.

Sadie Hawkins Day has been around since the year before I was born, but actually came into prominence in 1939 when “Life” magazine published a two-page spread about it.

When I was little, I always heard about Sadie Hawkins Day, even though it didn’t mean much to me. Nowadays, you don’t hardly hear it mentioned…. maybe Sadie Hawkins Day just doesn’t seem relevant today. So what the heck is it, and how did it come about?

It all started with a comic strip called Li’l Abner, drawn by cartoonist Al Capp. The comic strip was set in a fictitious town called Dogpatch. On November 15, 1937, the comic strip introduced the idea of a day when all unmarried ladies, including the character Sadie Hawkins, could pursue their men. If the men were caught, marriage was unavoidable. This finally led to an annual “girls-ask boys” day.

So here’s the whole story as pieced together from my extensive research:
This whole thing started from a plot line in Al Capp’s comic strip “Li’l Abner.” The comic strip was set in the American South. The story involved a rich man’s daughter named Sadie Hawkins in the fictional town of Dogpatch, Kentucky, who was so “homely” that she was still unmarried at 35. Her father was worried and gathered all the bachelors of the town together and set up a sort of race, with the men running ahead of Sadie. The one she finally caught would have to marry her.

The original Sadie Hawkins “Li’l Abner” comic strip was printed in 1937 in many American (and foreign) newspapers. Al Capp didn’t intend for his comic strip story plot to gain so much social momentum, but after he revised the storyline in November of 1938, American college students started to honor the idea of gender role reversal by holding Sadie Hawkins dances and other events. Then in 1939, “Life” magazine published a two-page spread with the headline, “On Sadie Hawkins Day Girls Chase Boys in 201 Colleges.” And from that… the tradition was born.

Capp received tons of fan mail, and he went back to the Sadie Hawkins theme every November — and put a new spin on it each year. One year there was a “Sadie Hawkins Eve dance,” where the women wore hobnail boots and stomped on the men’s feet, to make them run slower in the next day’s race so they’d be easier too catch and marry.

Over the years, Sadie Hawkins dances became popular, not only at colleges and universities but at high schools and junior high schools…. probably most of the young participants weren’t even aware of the old comic strip storyline. 
Of course today the idea of women “needing” to be married — at any age, is an antiquated point of view.

I should mention that Sadie Hawkins Day isn’t the only day associated with the “girls-ask-boys.” A similar tradition is associated with February 29 in leap years. Long ago, Leap Day was also known as “Ladies Day” or “Ladies Privilege,” the only day when women were free to propose to men. No one knows for sure, but the event may have been based on a Scottish law in the 1200s or on an Irish legend. 

But today is Sadie Hawkins Day for a lot of people and its one of those holidays that you may celebrate or criticize as you see fit…..
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You always know the mark of a coward. A coward hides behind freedom.
A brave person stands in front of freedom and defends it for others.
~ Henry Rolins
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