We're expecting old friends and family for dinner, all gathering to celebrate our American national holiday today, Thanksgiving.

We're all a happily diverse bunch, with a trio of medical types who speak physiology; two engineers who talk of electrical grids and blackouts; a secretary whose Finnish substitutions of what for which amuse; a soda distributor who with his wife and his two children represent the Pepsi generation; our museum-director son and his wife, an artist, who ooze local memory and imagination; a pianist son who keeps us all soundly entertained; a college student and his mom who both manage a substation of bright light hereabouts, and my wife who will once again keep everyone stylishly cheered and deliciously fed this Thanksgiving.

Of course, this is nothing like the first Thanksgiving, an original report of which I thought to share today — William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation:

And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides they had about a peck a [sic] meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports.

So is this report, likewise, though I might feign saying I hear a knock at the door now.

Well, whoever you are, do have a Happy Thanksgiving!

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The Rev. Martin Rinkhart here (1586-1649), noting that you didn't cite and extend my title words right. For the record, do tell everyone that they went originally in German, "Nun Danket Alle Gott," and in English,

Now thank we all our God,

With hearts and hands and voices,

Who wondrous things has done

In whom this world rejoices;

Who, from our mother's arms,

Has blest us on our way

With countless gifts of love,

And still is ours today.

Thanks, of course, for doing something more properly Germanic last year.

Posted by The Rev. Martin Rinkhart on November 27, 2003 04:05 PM

My Bradford is rusty and your library vast, but something seems amiss in the phrase italicized below. Is it of rather than a, perhaps?

And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports.

This site — great as it is — needs a copyeditor:

Pls chek prior post, re: R. Angell, 2nd 'graph, 8th line, and and, too.

Posted by Shirley Crowe on November 30, 2003 03:30 PM

Though your fine slot services may help, Samuel Eliot Morrison and The New Yorker seem rather in need of your eagle eye.

But note that I've added acknowledgement of your helpful corrections already, Ms. Crowe.

My heartfelt thanks.

Posted by Styles on November 30, 2003 05:44 PM

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