La!
You mailed me at 7:22 this morning.. at the time I was asleep.
But now, 1:05 this afternoon, I am much more awake.
I just finished cleaning the kitchen and eating fruit and coffee with roommates.
Yesterday was epic:
Breakfast as normal. But Do told us that he invited some people over for lunch.
Ok, I think, it will be a small affair. Now, though, I know that his friends don’t have small affairs.
Lunch was a feast of rice, beans, stewed salted meat, breaded and fried bacon and bananas, ’spring salad’ (with oranges!), chocolate cake, ice cream, cashasa (like rum) and juices, coffee, several spliffs, and about 6 hours of half-Portuguese conversation. And that was lunch.
We were completely stuffed on everything, but then we had dinner plans with Fa (the short girl you met last week?) and her roommates (we bumped into them on the train at New Years).
So we had no choice but to go over for some pasta and more salad, tieramisu and new people (because Do hadn’t me them before).
And by about 1am, well, I guess we were all positively knackered.
So we came home and called it an early night!
A good friend of mine (despite her vegetarian-ness) sent me this rather silly article lambasting Thanksgiving:
How I stopped hating Thanksgiving and learned to be afraid
SO I sent this response back to her, and the 30-or-so people that she had included in the mass email:
1) Thanksgiving represents mass genocide
2) Many people celebrate thanksgiving
3) Therefore, many people celebrate mass genocide
The error is in step 1. What DOES Thanksgiving represent?
This man appears to become excited by politics and fear. His assertion in paragraph 6 that people are in reality celebrating the genocide is non-sequitur. He falls victim to dominant culture by accepting generalizations as facts, reinforcing what he attempts to break from. He tells us “that’s how it is,” and “you can’t change it.” His solution is to “find something new,” again, of course, based on fear and politics.
How much historical context is present along with the holiday? In schools the myth is taught, right there along with the 4th of July and Holocaust Remembrance Day myths (I won’t write here about the misconceptions behind those..). But in my family Thanksgiving is simply a private time for enjoying good company and good food, cause for celebration in any place.
If it helps you sleep better at night, call it an Autumn Festival, but why on earth should we refuse it? I refuse to be afraid.
