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Quote of the Month
We would worry less if
we praised more. Thanksgiving is the enemy of discontent and dissatisfaction.
~Harry Ironside

News of the Month
The
Pilgrims
long ago etched their place in the nation’s history as plucky survivors who
persevered despite difficult conditions. Remembered and retold as an allegory
for perseverance and cooperation,
the story of the first
Thanksgiving has become an important part of how Americans think about the
founding of their country.
But what happened four months later, starting in March 1622 about 600 miles
south of Plymouth, is far more reflective of the country’s origins - a story not
of peaceful coexistence but of distrust, displacement and repression.
Let’s start with the
now-traditional story. In September 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower
left Plymouth England carrying 102 passengers - an assortment of religious
separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and
other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the
New World. Throughout that first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained
on board the ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of
contagious disease. Ill-prepared for the New England winter of 1620-1621, they
benefited from a terrible epidemic, which had raged among the Indigenous peoples
of the region from 1616 to 1619 and which reduced competition for resources. By
1620, the indigenous Wampanoag were in a
difficult spot
shaped by years of volatile contact with Europeans, slavery, regional threats to
their power and the devastating epidemic.
Having endured a winter
in which perhaps one-half of the colonists died, the survivors, weakened by
malnutrition and illness, welcomed the fall harvest of 1621. They survived
because the Wampanoags had taught them how to grow corn (the most important crop
in much of eastern North America), extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in
the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. The two groups forged an alliance that
tragically remains one of the few examples of harmony between European colonists
and Indigenous peoples. The decision to help the colonists, whose kind had
already been raiding native villages and enslaving their people for nearly a
century, came after they stole native food and seed stores and dug up native
graves, pocketing funerary offerings, as described by Pilgrim leader Edward
Winslow in
Mourt’s Relation: A
Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth.
In November 1621, after
the colonists’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William
Bradford organized a celebratory feast, which was attended by an uninvited group
of the fledgling colony’s indigenous allies. Now remembered as American’s first
Thanksgiving - although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at
the time - the festival lasted for three days. While no record exists of the
historic banquet’s exact menu, the Pilgrim chronicler Edward Winslow wrote in
his journal that Governor Bradford sent four men on a “fowling” mission in
preparation for the event and that guests arrived bearing five deer. Historians
have suggested that many of the dishes were likely prepared using traditional
indigenous spices and cooking methods. Because the Pilgrims had no oven and the
Mayflower’s sugar supply had dwindled by the fall of 1621, the meal did
not feature pies, cakes or other desserts, which have become a hallmark of
contemporary celebrations. Lobster, seal and swans were on the Pilgrims' menu
but turkey may or may not have been. This was the event that now marks the first
American day of Thanksgiving, even though many Indigenous peoples had long had
rituals that included
giving thanks
and other European settlers had previously declared similar days of thanks -
including one in
1541 in Palo Duro Canyon
(the Texas panhandle) by Spanish in search of gold, one in St Augustine
Florida in 1565,
a
1598 Spanish feast with
the Pueblo Indians
near the Rio Grande (TX) and another along the
Maine coast in 1607.
Days of fasting and thanksgiving on an annual or occasional basis became common
practice in other New England settlements as well. For more than two centuries,
days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states.
In 1623, Pilgrims in
Plymouth
held their second Thanksgiving celebration to mark the end of a long drought
that had threatened the year’s harvest and prompted Governor Bradford to call
for a religious fast and declare a day to thank God for bringing rain. They
likely celebrated it in late July. In 1777, in the midst of the Revolutionary
War, the Continental Congress declared a day of Thanksgiving on December 18. The
Pilgrims didn’t even get a mention. In the 19th century, however, annual
Thanksgiving holidays became linked to New England, largely as a result of
campaigns to make the
Plymouth experience one of the nation’s origin stories.
Promoters of this narrative identified the
Mayflower Compact
as the starting point for representative government and praised the religious
freedom they saw in New England - at least for Americans of European ancestry.
As Americans looked for an origin story that wasn’t soaked in the blood of
Indigenous peoples or built on the backs of slavery, the humble and bloodless
story of the 102 Pilgrims forging a path in the New World in search of religious
freedom was just what they needed. Regardless of whether it was rooted in
historical fact, it became accepted as such.
The first appearance of
the word thanksgiving in The New York Times digital archives -
which go back to 1851 - did not refer to the holiday. It instead was a reference
on October 4, 1851, to “an appropriate prayer and thanksgiving” from a reverend
at the opening of the Queens County’s annual agricultural exhibition. The first
mention of the holiday occurred less than a week later, in a
brief news item reporting that the governor of Massachusetts had declared
Thursday, November 27, 1851, as “a day of public thanksgiving and praise.” There
was no national Thanksgiving holiday at the time.
The
origin of the national holiday dates to Abraham Lincoln. On October 3, 1863, he
called for the country, “in the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and
severity,” to set aside the last Thursday in November as “a day of
Thanksgiving.” The Times published
his Thanksgiving proclamation on
the front page, and several times subsequently. While reciting the country’s
many blessings - a productive and growing economy, and bountiful harvests -
Lincoln also recommended that Americans give thanks “with humble penitence for
our national perverseness and disobedience.” Lincoln’s proclamation was in part
a response to Sarah
Josepha Hale,
an editor who had spent decades campaigning for a national day of gratitude. The
idea of the American Thanksgiving feast is a fairly recent fiction. The idyllic
partnership of 17th century European Pilgrims and New England Natives sharing a
celebratory meal appears to be less than 130 years-old. And it was only after
the First World War that a version of such a Puritan-Indian partnership took
hold in elementary schools across the American landscape. We can thank the
invention of textbooks and their mass purchase by public schools for embedding
this Thanksgiving image in our modern minds.
Thanksgiving in 1918 occurred in the midst of a global pandemic. But the
atmosphere was surprisingly joyous. World War I had ended on November 11, and
the country was celebrating, despite a horrific number of influenza deaths in
October. “Thanksgiving Day this year will evoke a gratitude deeper, a spirit of
reverence more devout, than America has felt for many years,” a
Times editorial on November 19 said.
One factor may have been that the pandemic briefly
receded that
November, before surging again at the end of the year. By 1930, the Depression
had begun and the country’s mood was much darker. A front-page headline on
Thanksgiving Day that year reported: “450 Tons of Food Given to Needy, But
Supply Fails.” The police turned away elderly men and women to reserve the food
for families with young children. In 1939, President Franklin D Roosevelt tried
to spark the economy by moving Thanksgiving one week earlier, to create a longer
Christmas shopping season. Critics mocked the policy as “Franksgiving,” and
it failed. Roosevelt announced in 1941 that he was abandoning the experiment for
the next year. Roosevelt ultimately settled on the fourth Thursday of the month
- a middle ground that made sure the holiday would not occur later than November
28 and that Christmas shopping could always begin in November.
Thanksgiving in 1963 came only six days after the assassination of John F
Kennedy, and most public celebrations were canceled. The Macy’s parade was an
exception because the organizers felt its cancellation would be a disappointment
to millions of children. The Covid-19 pandemic arguably caused a bigger break in
Thanksgiving traditions than anything that came before. Beginning with Lincoln’s
1863 proclamation - even during war, depression and tragedy - most Americans
found ways to gather with family and friends for a holiday meal. But the threat
from the recent pandemic - better understood in 2020 than it had been in 1918 -
caused many people to stay home. For most of the 20th century, US Presidents
mentioned the Pilgrims in their annual proclamation,
helping to solidify the
link between the holiday and the colonists.
But the origin story of Thanksgiving that’s often told in school - of a friendly
meal between colonists and Indigenous peoples - is
inaccurate.
The events in Plymouth
in 1621 that came to be enshrined in the national narrative were not typical. A
more revealing incident took place in Virginia in 1622. Beginning in 1607,
English migrants had maintained a small community in Jamestown Virginia, where
colonists struggled to survive. Unable to figure out how to find fresh water,
they drank from the James River, even during the summer months when the water
level dropped and turned the river into a swamp. The bacteria they consumed from
doing so caused typhoid fever and dysentery. Despite a death rate that reached
50% in some years, the English decided to stay. Their investment paid off in the
mid-1610s when an enterprising colonist named John Rolfe planted West Indian
tobacco seeds in the region’s fertile soil. The industry soon boomed.
But economic success did
not mean the colony would thrive. Initial English survival in Virginia depended
on the good graces of the local Indigenous population. By 1607,
Wahunsonacock,
the leader of an alliance of Natives called
Tsenacomoco,
had spent a generation forming a confederation of roughly 30 distinct
communities along tributaries of Chesapeake Bay. The English called him Powhatan
and labeled his followers the Powhatans. The Powhatans controlled most of the
resources in the region and Wahunsonacock could have likely prevented the
English from establishing their community at Jamestown. But in 1608, when the
newcomers were near starvation, the Powhatans provided them with food.
Wahunsonacock also spared Captain John Smith’s life after his people captured
the Englishman.
Wahunsonacock’s actions
revealed his strategic thinking. Rather than see the newcomers as all-powerful,
he likely believed the English would become
a subordinate community
under his control.
After a war from 1609 to 1614 between the English and Powhatans, Wahunsonacock
and his allies agreed to peace and coexistence. Wahunsonacock died in 1618 and
soon after his passing,
Opechancanough,
likely one of Wahunsonacock’s brothers, emerged as leader of the Powhatans.
Unlike his predecessor, Opechancanough viewed the English with suspicion,
especially when they pushed onto Powhatan lands to expand their tobacco fields.
By spring 1622, Opechancanough had had enough. On March 22, he and his allies
launched a surprise attack. By day’s end, they had killed 347 of the English.
They might have killed more except that one Powhatan who had converted to
Christianity warned some of the English, giving them the time to escape. Within
months, news of the violence spread in England. Edward Waterhouse, the colony’s
secretary, detailed the “barbarous Massacre” in a
short pamphlet.
A few years later, an engraver in Frankfurt captured Europeans’ fears of
Indigenous peoples in a
haunting illustration
for a translation of Waterhouse’s book. Waterhouse wrote of those who died
“under the bloudy and barbarous hands of that perfidious and inhumane people.”
He reported that the victors had desecrated English corpses. He called them
“savages,” resorting to common European descriptions of “wyld Naked Natives” and
vowed revenge. Over the next decade, English soldiers launched a brutal war
against the Powhatans, repeatedly burning their fields at harvest time in an
effort to starve and drive them out.
The Powhatans’
orchestrated attack anticipated other Indigenous rebellions against aggressive
European colonizers in 17th-century North America. The English response, too,
fit a pattern. Any sign of resistance by “pagans,” as Waterhouse labeled the
Powhatans, needed to be suppressed to advance Europeans’ desire to convert
Indigenous peoples to Christianity, claim Indigenous lands and satisfy European
customers clamoring for goods produced in America. It was this dynamic - not the
one of fellowship found in Plymouth in 1621 - that would go on to define the
relationship between Indigenous peoples and European settlers for over two
centuries. Before the end of the century, violence erupted in New England too,
erasing the positive legacy of the feast of 1621. By 1675, simmering tensions
exploded in a war that stretched across the region. On a per capita basis, it
was among the deadliest conflicts in American history. In 1970, an Aquinnah
Wampanoag elder named Wamsutta, on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the
arrival of the Mayflower, pointed to
generations of violence
against native communities and dispossession.
Ever since that day, many Indigenous Americans have observed a
National Day of Mourning
instead of Thanksgiving. In 1974, The Times ran
an article describing
the holiday as a “national day of mourning” for many Indigenous peoples. Today’s
Thanksgiving - with school kids’ construction paper turkeys and narratives of
camaraderie and cooperation between the colonists and Indigenous peoples -
obscures the more tragic legacy of the early 17th century.
There is no question
that the history between European colonists and Indigenous peoples has not been
one of peaceful coexistence. There is no question that much of the “first
Thanksgiving” story is based on myth. But all accounts do seem to agree that it
included giving thanks for surviving a harrowing situation and sharing a meal
with others that are different from us. And at least during that brief time,
there was peace and tranquility. Perhaps, in this moment, we should give thanks
and take stock of what we are thankful for, including thanking the Indigenous
peoples of the Americas and their descendants. It is time to move forward, to be
more thankful and thoughtful and less divisive for future generations. Today
will be different. Mixed feelings are also part of the Thanksgiving tradition,
all the way the back to Lincoln’s proclamation.

Then and Now
11/01/1512 -
Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel were exhibited to
the public for the first time.
11/01/1952 - The
US exploded the first hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands.
11/01/2023 -
National Authors Day
11/01/2023 - All
Saints’ Day
11/02/1783 -
George Washington issued his Farewell Address to the Army near Princeton
NJ.
11/02/1917 -
British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour expressed support for a "national Home"
for the Jews of Palestine in the
Balfour Declaration.
11/02/1930 -
Haile Selassie was crowned emperor of Ethiopia.
11/02/1948 -
President Truman surprised the experts by being re-elected in a narrow upset
over Republican challenger Thomas Dewey.
11/02/1963 -
South Vietnamese President Ngo Dihn Diem was assassinated in a military coup.
11/02/1976 -
Jimmy Carter became the first candidate from the Deep South since the Civil War
to become president.
11/02/2023 -
Anniversary of the Crowning of Haile Selassie – Rastafarian
11/02/2023 - Día
de los Muertos
11/02/2023 - All
Souls' Day
11/03/1903 -
Panama declared its independence from Colombia.
11/03/1957 - The
Soviets launched Sputnik II, the second manmade satellite, into orbit
carrying a dog named Laika who died in the experiment.
11/03/1969 -
President Richard Nixon’s
Silent Majority
speech
11/03/1970 -
Salvador Allende became president of Chile.
11/03/1991 -
Israeli and Palestinian representatives held their first ever face-to-face talks
in Madrid, Spain.
11/03/2023 -
National Sandwich Day
11/04/1922 - The
entrance to King Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered in Egypt.
11/04/1979 - The
Iranian hostage crisis
began as militants stormed the US Embassy in Tehran. For some of the hostages it
was the start of 444 days of captivity.
11/04/1995 -
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli
minutes after attending a peace rally.
11/04/2008 - The
US elected
Barak Obama,
its first Black president.
11/04/2023 -
Lhabab Duchen – Buddhist
11/05/1940 - FDR
won an unprecedented third term in office.
11/05/1946 -
Republicans captured control of both the Senate and the House in midterm
elections.
11/05/2023 -
Daylight Saving Time ends. Clocks fall back from 1:59
am to 1:00
am.
11/06/1860 -
Former Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln defeated three other candidates for
the presidency.
11/06/1861 - The
Confederacy elected Jefferson Davis to a six-year term as president.
11/06/1986 -
President Ronald Reagan signed the
Immigration Reform and
Control Act of 1986.
This law, sometimes referred to as IRCA or the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, made it
illegal to knowingly employ undocumented immigrants and created penalties for
businesses that did so. This law also provided amnesty for undocumented
immigrants arriving prior to 1982.
11/07/1811 -
Battle of Tippecanoe
11/07/1916 -
Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to
Congress.
11/07/1917 -
Russia's Bolshevik Revolution took place as forces led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
overthrew the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.
11/07/1944 - FDR
won an unprecedented fourth term in office.
11/07/1973 -
Congress overrode President Nixon's veto of the War Powers Act, which limits a
chief executive's power to wage war without congressional approval.
11/07/1989 - L.
Douglas Wilder won the governor's race in Virginia, becoming the first elected
black governor in US history.
11/07/2023 - US
Election Day
11/08/1933 -
President Franklin Roosevelt created the Civil Works Administration, designed to
create jobs for more than 4 million unemployed.
11/08/1994 -
Midterm elections resulted in Republicans winning control of the House for the
first time in forty years.
11/08/2002 - The
UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution giving UN weapons
inspectors the muscle they needed to hunt for illicit weapons in Iraq. President
Bush said the new resolution presented the Iraqi regime "with a final test."
11/09/1938 -
Nazis looted and burned synagogues as well as Jewish-owned stores and houses in
Germany and Austria in what became known as
Kristallnacht.
11/09/1989 -
Communist East Germany threw open its borders allowing citizens to travel freely
to the West. Joyous Germans danced on top of the
Berlin Wall.
11/10/1775 - The
US Marines were organized under authority of the Continental Congress.
11/10/1871 -
Journalist-explorer Henry Stanley found missing Scottish missionary David
Livingstone in central Africa.
11/10/1928 -
Emperor Hirohito was enthroned in Japan.
11/10/1954 - The
Iwo Jima Memorial was dedicated in Arlington VA.
11/10/1982 - The
Vietnam Veterans Memorial welcomed its first visitors in Washington DC.
11/10/2023 - The
US Marine Corps Birthday
11/11/1620 -
Forty-one Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, anchored off Massachusetts,
signed a compact calling for a "body politick."
11/11/1831 -
Former slave Nat Turner, who had led a violent insurrection, was executed in
Jerusalem VA.
11/11/1921 -
President Harding dedicated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington
National Cemetery.
11/11/1926 - US
Route 66
was established.
11/11/2023 -
Veterans Day
11/11/2023 -
Martinmas – Christian
11/12/1942 - The
WWII naval Battle of Guadalcanal began. The Americans won a major victory over
the Japanese.
11/12/2023 -
Diwali begins – Hindu
11/13/1789 -
Benjamin Franklin wrote in a letter to a fried, "In this world nothing can be
said to be certain, except death and taxes."
11/13/1927 - The
Holland Tunnel opened to the public, providing access between New York City and
New Jersey beneath the Hudson River.
11/13/1940 - The
Walt Disney animated movie Fantasia had its world premiere in New York.
11/13/1942 - The
minimum draft age was lowered from 21 to 18.
11/13/1956 - The
Supreme Court struck down laws calling for racial segregation on public buses.
11/13/1982 - The
Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington DC.
11/14/1851 -
Herman Melville's Moby Dick was first published.
11/14/1922 - The
BBC began its domestic radio service.
11/15/1777 - The
Continental Congress approved the
Articles of
Confederation.
11/15/1889 -
Brazil's monarchy was overthrown.
11/15/1926 - NBC
debuted with a radio network of 24 stations.
11/15/1998 -
Civil Rights activist Kwame Tume (Stokely Carmichael) died in Guinea at the age
of 57.
11/15/2022 -
World population reached 8 billion.
11/15/2023 -
Shichi - Go - San (Seven - Five - Three) – Shinto
11/16/1849 - A
Russian court sentenced novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky to death for his alleged
anti-government activities. At the last minute, his execution was stayed.
11/16/1864 -
Killer and arsonist William T. Sherman and his troops began their March to the
Sea.
11/17/1800 -
Congress held its first session in Washington in the partially completed Capitol
building.
11/17/1868 - The
Suez Canal
opened in Egypt.
11/17/1969 -
Strategic Arms
Limitation Talks
(SALT) between the US and the Soviet Union began.
11/18/1820 - Navy
Captain Nathaniel Palmer discovered the frozen continent of Antarctica.
11/18/1883 - The
US and Canada adopted a system of Standard Time zones.
11/18/1928 - The
first successful sound-synchronized animated cartoon, Walt Disney's Steamboat
Willie, premiered in New York.
11/18/1966 - US
Roman Catholic bishops did away with the rule against eating meat on Fridays.
11/18/1987 - The
congressional Iran-Contra committees issued their final report saying President
Reagan bore "ultimate responsibility" for wrong-doing by his aides.
11/18/1999 -
Twelve people died when a bonfire under construction at Texas A&M University
collapsed.
11/18/2023 -
Mickey Mouse’s Birthday
11/19/1863 -
President Lincoln delivered the
Gettysburg Address.
11/19/1919 - The
US Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles.
11/19/1977 -
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to visit Israel.
11/20/1789 - New
Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.
11/20/1945 - The
Nuremberg Trials
began as Nazi leaders went on trial before an international war crimes tribunal.
11/20/1967 - The
US Census Clock ticked past 200 million.
11/21/1877 -
Thomas Edison announced he had invented the phonograph.
11/21/1922 -
Rebecca Felton (GA) became the first woman to serve in the US Senate, filling
the vacancy caused by the death of the state's senator and served one day.
11/21/1963 -
President John Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, began a two-day tour of Texas.
11/21/1969 - The
Senate voted down the Supreme Court nomination of Clement F. Haynsworth, the
first such rejection since 1930.
11/22/1718 -
English pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, died during a battle
off the Virginia coast.
11/22/1906 - The
International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin adopted the SOS distress
signal.
11/22/1928 -
Maurice Ravel's Bolero made its debut in Paris.
11/22/1963 -
President
John Kennedy
was shot to death while riding in a motorcade in Dallas.
11/22/1975 - Juan
Carlos became King of Spain.
11/23/1889 - The
first jukebox debuted in San Francisco's Palais Royale Saloon.
11/23/1936 -
Life magazine was first published.
11/23/1971 - The
People's Republic of China became a member of the UN Security Council.
11/23/2023 -
Thanksgiving Day
11/24/1859 -
Charles Darwin published
On the Origin of
Species by Means of Natural Selection,
or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
It immediately sold out.
11/24/1871 - The
National Rifle Association was incorporated.
11/24/1963 - Jack
Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald.
11/24/2023 -
Black Friday
11/24/2023 -
Martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji – Sikh
11/25/1783 - The
British evacuated NY, their last military position in the US during the
Revolutionary War.
11/25/1986 - The
Iran-Contra affair erupted as President Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese
revealed that profits from secret arms sales to Iran had been diverted to
Nicaraguan rebels.
11/25/2002 -
President George W. Bush signed legislation creating the
Department of Homeland
Security.
11/25/2023 -
Mangé Yam (fête de la moisson) – Vodún
11/26/1942 -
Casablanca had its world premiere in NY.
11/26/1950 -
China entered the Korean conflict by launching a counteroffensive against
soldiers from the UN, the US and South Korea.
11/26/1997 -
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said he would allow visits to presidential
palaces where UN weapons experts suspected he had hidden chemical and biological
weapons.
11/26/2023 - Day
of the Covenant – Baha’i
11/26/2023 -
Christ the King Sunday – Christian
11/27/1901 - The
US Army War College opened in Washington DC.
11/27/1973 - The
Senate voted 92-3 to confirm Gerald Ford as vice president, succeeding Spiro
Agnew.
11/27/2023 -
Cyber Monday
11/28/1520 -
Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reached the Pacific Ocean after passing
through the South American strait that now bears his name.
11/28/1925 -
The Grand Ole Opry made its radio debut on station WSM.
11/28/1975 -
President Ford nominated federal Judge John Paul Stevens to the US Supreme
Court.
11/28/2023 -
#Giving Tuesday
… a global generosity movement unleashing the power of people and organizations
to transform their communities and the world. There's something everyone can do
to help. If you have time, consider volunteering in your community. If you don't
have time, you can donate to a good cause, or simply just be kind to everyone
you see.
11/28/2023 -
Ascension of Abdul-Baha – Baha’i
11/29/1864 - The
Colorado militia killed at least 150 peaceful Cheyenne Indians in the
Sand Creek Massacre.
11/29/1947 - The
UN passed a resolution calling for the partitioning of Palestine between Arabs
and Jews.
11/29/1963 -
President Johnson named a commission headed by Earl Warren to investigate the
assassination of President Kennedy.
11/30/1782 - The
US and Britain signed preliminary peace articles in Paris, which ended the
Revolutionary War.
11/30/1966 - The
former British colony of Barbados became independent.
11/30/1981 - The
US and the Soviet Union opened negotiations in Geneva aimed at reducing nuclear
weapons in Europe.
11/30/2023 - St.
Andrew's Day – Christian


Online Resource Links
How Wobbly Is Our Democracy? | The American Abyss
| US is polarizing
faster than other democracies.
| The Ballad of Downward Mobility
| A Crisis Coming … The Twin Threats To American
Democracy: (1) A Growing Movement to Refuse to Accept Defeat in an
Election and (2) Policy and Election Results that Are Increasingly
Less Connected to What the Public Wants | America’s Surprising Partisan Divide
on Life Expectancy
| ‘Freedom’ Means Something Different to Liberals and Conservatives. Here’s
How the Definition Split - and Why That Still Matters.| Politics is personal.
| For elites, politics is driven by ideology. For voters, it’s not.
| Trust and Distrust in America
| One
America is thriving; the other is stagnating. How long can this go on?
| America
Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good - The great “convergence” of the mid-20th
century may have been an anomaly. | Are we really facing a second Civil War?
| How ‘Stop the Steal’ Captured the American Right
| Conspiracy theorists want to run America’s elections. These are the
candidates standing in their way. | Two Americas Index: Democracy deniers
| Where will this political violence lead? Look to the 1850s.
| American Democracy Was Never Designed to Be
Democratic
Visualizing the State of Global Debt, by Country: The debt-to-GDP ratio is a
simple metric that compares a country’s public debt to its economic output. By
comparing how much a country owes and how much it produces in a year, economists
can measure a country’s theoretical ability to pay off its debt. The World Bank
published a study showing that countries that maintained a debt-to-GDP ratio of
over 77% for prolonged periods of time experienced economic slowdowns.
What ISIS Really Wants: The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths.
It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is
a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy
and for how to stop it |
ISIS
Claims Responsibility, Calling Paris Attacks First of the Storm |
Syria Iraq: The Islamic State Militant Group
| Isis:
The Inside Story |
Frontline: The Rise of ISIS |
Council on Foreign Relations: A Primer on ISIS
|
Cracks in ISIS Are Becoming More Clear
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How ISIS’ Attacks Harm the Middle East
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Timeline: the Rise, Spread and Fall of the Islamic State
Keeping the Shi'ites Straight Based on the opinion
that no story has been more confusing for the Western news media to cover in postwar
Iraq than the politics of the country's Shi'ite majority, this article provides
a basic outline of Shi'ite religious history. Discusses the Sadr family (Muhammad
Baqir as-Sadr, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and Muqtada as-Sadr), Muhammad
Baqir al-Hakim and other figures.
What it’s like to live on $2 a day in the United States (PDF)
Check out
Today's Front Pages. Each day, you can see the front pages of more than 800
newspapers from around the world in their original, unedited form.
PBS's
30 Second Candidate allows you to view more political ads than you ever knew
existed. Choose the Historical Timeline link to see how political ads have changed
over the years. Start with the infamous
Daisy Ad that Lyndon Johnson used against Barry Goldwater. Click on Watch
Johnson ads. Then click on either the QuickTime link or the Real Video link
next to Daisy.
Check out
the
Political Compass. The site does a good job of explaining political ideologies
(although with definitions different from those I use) and gives you a chance to
discover your own political philosophy.
Law Library of Congress: North Korea: Collection of links to websites on North
Korean government, politics and law. Includes legal guides, country studies and
links to constitutions and branches of government (where available).
Council on Foreign Relations: North Korea: Background, articles and opinion
pieces about North Korea government and politics. Many of the articles focus on
North Korea's nuclear program. From the Council on Foreign Relations, "an independent
membership organization and a nonpartisan think tank and publisher."
State of the Union (SOTU): The site uses an interactive timeline to provide
a visual representation of prominent words in presidential State of the Union addresses
by displaying significant words as "determined by comparing how frequently the word
occurs in the document to how frequently it appears throughout the entire body of
SOTU addresses." The Appendices section describes the statistical methods
used. Also includes the full text of addresses.
Small Town Papers: This site provides access
to scanned images of recent issues of dozens of small town newspapers from throughout
the United States. Newspapers are updated periodically, 2-3 weeks after publication.
The site also includes a searchable archive (of articles, photos and advertisements),
which covers different periods for each paper, some as far back as the 1890s. Access
to the archives requires free registration.
This website serves as a centralized location to learn about the
Congressional Research Service and search for CRS
reports that have been released to the public by members of Congress. (CRS Reports
do not become public until a member of Congress releases the report.) Features a
searchable database with more than 8,000 reports, a list of recently released reports,
other collections of CRS reports and a FAQ about CRS.
Stem Cell Research: See the official NIH resource for
Stem Cell Research. In 2005, NOVA aired an overview of
The Stem Cell Issue.
Instances of the Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798 - 2020: This report lists hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its
armed forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or
for other than normal peacetime purposes. It was compiled in part from various older
lists and is intended primarily to provide a rough survey of past US military ventures
abroad, without reference to the magnitude of the given instance noted.
Government
Product Recalls
Homeland Security Knowledge
Base
If you're worried about retirement, try some of these sites:
IRS Tax Information for Retirement Plans | Social Security Retirement Planner
| Retirement Planning Resources from Smart Money
This commercial site presents brief information about dozens of
Black Inventors from the United States. Some entries
include portraits and images. Also includes a searchable timeline covering 1721-1988.
Does not include bibliographic information.
Annenberg Political Fact Check: This site describes
itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit, consumer advocate for voters that aims to reduce
the level of deception and confusion in US politics. The site provides original
articles, with summaries and sources, analyzing factual accuracy in TV ads, debates,
speeches, interviews and news releases. Searchable. From the Annenberg Public Policy
Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
The State of State and Local Finances: New studies afford a state-by-state
or city-by-city analysis of fiscal well being.
The Year of Living Dangerously: While leaders in a growing number of states
appear to believe they're serving the public good by squeezing government dry, there's
little question that minimizing management carries a host of dangers that directly
affect the lives of citizens.
First Amendment Library: Provides info on Supreme
Court First Amendment jurisprudence, including rulings, arguments, briefs,
historical material, commentary and press coverage.


Community Service
If you need a presentation or workshop for your group,
use this
Community link
or the link at the top of the page.
The link will take you to a list of the topics I currently have available.
To schedule a date or for more information, feel free to contact me at
dramyglenn@gmail.com
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