What are we giving Thanks for

Hello all!

Some givens about Thanksgiving are:
1. it is the number one travel holiday in the year,
2. it is centered around food,
3. it is a celebration of working together with people who may have very different ideas

First I'll address number three. I don't know if the story of thanksgiving they taught me in kindergarten is actually true, but it is a nice story. I'd like to give it a little context however. This information is coming from personal research that I did when I was studying for an ecology paper last year, and I won't be quoting directly, but the info is out there. Changes in the Land by William Cronon is one of my sources as well as multiple papers about settlement, and land use practices of settlers and natives on the East Coast. Also my brilliant professors, Clow and Moore.

When the white people came, they had a totally different world view from the natives. They differed especially on their views of ownership and property, in other words they had conflicting territorial customs. To the whites, the natives appeared to have no sense of ownership. They traveled great distances, moved their homes, and they were often absent from a plot of land that they considered to be theirs. You can understand how this observable behavior would appear to the whites as a lack of ownership, but in fact the natives had a very specific system of territoriality. It was more common for natives to percieve their ownership as a right to specific activities in specific areas, rather than complete dominion over specific areas. This meant that when a native sold hunting land in exchange for guns, maybe the deal was meant to be the sale of hunting rights on that area, and then the white guy cleared a field and built a house there. Not to say that's wrong, but the christian view of land ownership at the time and especially among settlers is that "thou hast no right to land lest it be duly improved by works of man." or however they said it. In other words it was the settler's duty to work hard, clear fields, build fences and raise cows. It was the honorable and christian thing to do.

This is because europeans seem to have a strange and relatively unique idea of a binary world. "It's mine completely or it's not at all". This is what gives western culture the idea of epics and tragedies because there is good versus evil, but in a native culture you see more trickster stories. Our tragedy as opposed to their comedy. The creator is the trickster is the fool is the bringer of fire is the animal is the spirit and so on. This worldview is more of a network than a binary. Perhaps the network is made of many binaries, but it is still very different. For the natives, the gift of food and the knowledge of how to grow it could have had a very different meaning than it did for the settlers who recieved it.

In the light of this interesting difference in worldview, it is possible that at that time, the natives were trying to figure out how these new bearded men and cloth covered women would fit into their network of spiritual and physical relationships, while the white people were trying to figure out how to defeat the savages. I like the idea of the first thanksgiving. Because that was before American civilization really screwed up.

It is highly possible that the white people could at that point have simply become another tribe in the network of American tribes. making treaties, owning land, fighting wars like all the rest. Instead we have conquered the continent and subjugated the people who owned it. I believe that it is pertinent to be thankful for the gift of survival in this new world. And it should certainly not be forgotten that this gift was in part given willingly by the natives and in part taken from them by force. I wonder if there was ever a wigwam on the spot where my house is now standing...

OK, now as for travel, I don't know what the grand solution to this is. Well, you'll probably save money if you ride the bus. I rode it from Vermont to Montana. 3920 miles all told and it was about 109 bucks. I packed my food in advance and only spent my first dollar on the road on day three when I wanted some nachos or something. But also I got to speak spanish on the bus and met great people, so consider it. It really wasn't that inconvenient either. You don't have to drive, its comfortable and that's all I have to say about that. Other than that the best alternative is staying home. Trains too, I guess. that sounds like fun.

Further more, when you eat on the road you often end up with no option but fast food that's unhealthy for you and the environment. Fast food is usually so cheap because it gets its ingredients from the lowest bidder and therefore lowest quality and farthest distances. Bringing your own food from home will be even cheaper and then you can choose what you really want, and that choice can include local food and low packaging and other good things like that.