Et tu, Thanksgiving?

"We'd love to get the platter back when this is over.  That, and our land."

With college presidents resigning under pressure from angry students protesting historic racism and myriad grievances, one could look forward to the peace and equanimity of Thanksgiving.

PBS dashed those hopes with its broadcast of The Pilgrims, a searing documentary by seasonal West Tisbury resident Ric Burns, which obliterates any quaint notions of Thanksgiving. "It's not just buckled shoes, pointed hats and turkeys," explains Burns, adding "We take the Pilgrims away from the myth. The darkness of the story is shocking."

The adversity the Pilgrims faced that first winter in Plymouth makes the grievances of today's campus crybullies a disgrace, to say nothing of the plagues and death visited on the local Wampanoags, before and after, and the tragic yet divinely inspired example set by Squanto.

The First Thanksgiving - Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, 

Gleaning Cranberries

For thousands of years, Wampanoags have gleaned sassamanash, as the tribe calls cranberries. The harvest tradition continues this week at the cranberry bog on Lambert's Cove Road in West Tisbury. The bog's more than hundred-year-old processing barn and Hayden Cranberry Separator have been carefully restored and put back into operation. Pick your own or buy a bag of organic cranberries for $5.

The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket ~ Eastman Johnson, 1880

2015 Global Terrorism Index

Last week's Islamic terrorist attacks in Beirut and Paris were brutal proof that Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) is growing in numbers, reach and in sowing death.

According to the Institute for Economics & Peace and its latest 2015 Global Terrorism Index, here are the key facts:

• Deaths from terrorism increased 80% last year to the highest level ever, with 32,658 people killed, compared to 18,111 in 2013.
• Boko Haram and ISIL were jointly responsible for 51% of all claimed global fatalities in 2014.
• 78% of all deaths and 57% of all attacks occurred in five countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria.
• Iraq continues to be the country most impacted by terrorism with 9,929 terrorist fatalities, the highest ever recorded in a single country.
• Nigeria experienced the largest increase in terrorist activity with 7,512 deaths in 2014, an increase of over 300% since 2013.
• The global economic cost of terrorism reached an all-time peak at US$52.9 billion.
• Since 2000 there have been over 61,000 terrorist attacks, killing more than 140,000 people.

For more on what's happening in Syria, watch Syria's War: Who's Fighting and Why.

The Smart-Ass Phone

Now Siri!

Roz Chast ~ The New Yorker

Veterans Day

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we
lie in Flanders fields. ~ Major John McCrae

1965 Blackout

Life Magazine ~ Bob Gomel

50 years ago at 5:27 pm on Tuesday, November 9, the lights went out across several states, affecting more than 30 million people.



I was seven years old when the lights went out that night, swimming in the Westport YMCA's indoor pool to earn my Minnow Club badge. I worried that my mother couldn't come to pick me up. She did and we ate dinner by candlelight.

We are really lucky!

Kurzgesagt means "in a nutshell."