As I do every year, I am dedicating our Thanksgiving to the memory of the twenty million or so Native Americans who were shot, starved, exiled, sickened, betrayed and herded into near-extinction while over a roughly 300 year period we were constructing the forerunner of the pax caucasia democratic state, and then the state itself, into which we now won’t allow other native North Americans or their hybrid ancestors.
In particular, this year, I would like to mention the courageous members of the Standing Rock reservation whose peaceful protests against the violation of their sacred land by the Dakota Pipeline drew a preposterous response from the North Dakota National Guard, local and state white police agencies and private security firms including armored vehicles, heavy machine guns, attack dogs and ultrasound weapons. Soon after his inauguration, Hair Hitler ended the ongoing environmental impact study initiated by the Obama administration, ordered the protest camps forcibly cleared and the pipeline construction completed.
So, enjoy your turkeys but remember the appalling cost in human misery that lies behind our gratitude for being here.
Fan Interference 
If you prefer another reason to celebrate, my birthday November 22, falls on the fourth Thursday of November every seven years. Considering what might have been this year, I have reason to celebrate.
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Our son’s birthday is the 22nd! Obv some very fine persons.
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Not to be a downer, but I always think of November 22, 1963, I was in the sixth grade. It was quite a scarring experience.
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My mother’s birthday is the 21st, and she was so excited to see the president in person on her birthday. She worked downtown and my dad came down to watch with her.
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I was upset by it because everybody was watching the news instead of paying attention to me.
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I was also in 6th grade, I think. I have a pal two years younger who recalls being bewildered his entire class got sent home early, but only realized something was terribly wrong when he turned on the TV and there were no cartoons!
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Oh yeah, afore I ferget: I was privy to the production of a wonderful Canadian music drama directed by Cowboy Junkies’ guitarist/songwriter Mike Timmins and written by Toronto area drama teacher Scott Garbe called The Kennedy Suite:
The entire album is a masterpiece but one cut from this utterly brilliant album, which was performed live by an all-star cast of Canadian musicians and songwriters on 11/22/13 at the Winter Garden Theater in Toronto, which I attended, is called “Disintegrating.” It features Margo Timmins singing the part of Jackie Kennedy on the plane back to Washington with her husband’s body. Pay attention. This would be a nearly impossible persona for a singer to assume but Margo just kills it. It will tear your guts out. I couldn’t find a streaming site for the album version, unfortunately, but below is the live recording from the performance with some documentary footage overlain from YouTube. You might have more luck, or just order the CD. Here are the lyrics, just FYI:
Disintegrating
In glazed eyes and red stains
I’m thinking this has to be
The biggest case of “I told you so”
I know I’m being petty
But when Nellie turned and said,
“Can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you…”
I almost laughed before you put your hand on my knee
To stop me,
Please stop me
Like I couldn’t stop you
From disintegrating
The young woman you waved to
For that moment I hated you
I imagined you dead and that I was finally free
And that’s when it happened
‘Did I will it to happen?’
Was all I was thinking as I
Held your head in my hands
This is a tight sleeve,
The fucking engines of this plane are shrill
My lips are bloodless
Please, stop me
Please, stop me
Like I couldn’t stop you
From disintegrating
The face of that young aid
Glancing back over LBJ’s shoulder
I heard him say, “I’ve got a sure-fire way to win a second term
Put a hit out on his wife
The sympathy vote would be a landslide”?
You weren’t really thinking that, were you?
Did you?
Were they killing you?
Or were they just missing me?
And if you were in my place
Would you be…Disintegrating?
From the staged production:
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I was in the fourth grade. Brand new school, classmates, teachers, everything was already uncharted territory. Got called into home room from recess and had to listen to the announcement over the PA. Utterly stunned. Everything seemed curiously stone still save for some little crying here and there. I hadn’t thought of a president in quite that way before. I’d never pondered the existence of domestic terrorists before. Those thoughts didn’t give me hope then, and certainly chill me to the bone today.
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I like sharing this as a good history of the Pilgrim Thanksgiving (ignore the stupid title):
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/native-intelligence-109314481/
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Long read. Totally worth it.
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The feesh just DFA’d Derek Dietrich, not because he wasn’t playing well but because he figured to double his salary in arbitration. That will leave poor J T Realmuto as the ranking veteran on a team full of AAA tryouts, not counting the perpetually injured Martin Prado. J T, it’s time to turn to Jobu.
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Only 20 million? Seems conservative. But as a timely counterpoint, there’s a story elsewhere today about the USA about to become a white minority nation. Let’s all pray that it doesn’t cause the whites to become even more anti-social than they (we?) have been lately.
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I saw that story on the CNN web site. I have no issues with it. The demographics include a huge number of mixed-race people, in any case. I think that’s a very hopeful sign.
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My grandson and best buddy is half-Mexican, the rest a curious mix of boring old Caucasian (me) and crazy Irish (spouse). His girlfriend’s grandmother came over from Korea and thinks he is just a peach because his paternal heritage makes him fond of such things as goat brains and barbacoa.
That is why we have hope in this country, by the time we get to the demographic crossing point, scarcely anyone will really be REALLY white.
Take that, Rep. Steve King! May you rot in Hell!
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Hell was a nice neighborhood before that piece of shit Steve King got there.
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I think Scott Walker may be joining him at some point. He’s got the record to get in.
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I’m not going to argue Walker is an okay guy, but King is a special piece of work. He would have found himself very comfortable in Josep Goebbels’ propaganda organization.
Most southern reps have to at least pretend they are not working race. King is an out and out white supremacist. I’m not exactly sure how that flies so well in Iowa.
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My entire family – clan semi encircled me a few hours ago and sang happy birthday to me. I had to look to look down to keep from losing it. My daughter in law – tortured by my mentally ill son who she loves more than anything made me a HOME MADE strawberry cheese cake. My step daughter wrote me a beautiful note and gave me forty dollars, exactly what she budgets to give her own Dad, a very good man, on equivalent occasions. I’ve been asking Gator who do you love and why do you love them. Maybe he’s right. It’s more about who loves you and why do they love you.
I guess I’m bragging, but it is my birthday.
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Happy Birthday, Happy!! I semi-agree with Gator… it’s all about who loves you and why… as well as, who do you love and why… but to me, the most important question these days seems to be, why the hell can’t all just we love each other more?
Happy belated Thanksgiving to all my Fan-Interference family down there in ‘Murica. Only in the good old US of A can you be humbly thankful for all you have one day, then go out and trample some stranger the next day so you can buy something on sale that you don’t really need.
And you say we Canucks are weird….
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Perhaps, but you have smoked meat….
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