X-no-archive:yes
Just a few minutes ago, I connected to our systems to ensure that all was
well (sometime, I will have to post my Thanksgiving weekend horror story),
and while sending an email, I noticed Wirt's reply. Now, it is past 11PM, so
perhaps my head is not as clear as it otherwise could be (on a closed course
with a professional driver), but my first thought was, you've got to be
kidding. Then I reread Wirt's post, and followed the links he provided,
which I commend those who enjoy these off-topics to do, and I am reasonably
sure that there is some good-natured kidding in it, with actual facts being
pressed into service toward a more serious end.

I would also commend those who enjoy these off-topic posts to visit one of
the links off the page I had provided, for Alternative Claimants to the
First American Thanksgiving, at
http://www.plimoth.org/Library/Thanksgiving/alternat.htm. Like almost all
historical accounts and reconstructions from primary sources, I am sure that
all of these web sites are "filled with errors and misrepresentations", but
then, that is part of what makes history interesting, right, Alfredo? To add
insult to injury, the El Paso expedition is sixth on this list, and
eighty-five years after "The very first Thanksgiving... when Juan Ponce De
Leon landed in Florida during the Easter season of 1513".

I'm not sure which court has jurisdiction to arbitrate these pregnant
claims, but I am aware of no governing authority.

However, at least according to authors at the Plimoth.org site, it would be
almost two hundred years before anyone would look back to the events in
Plimoth, and another forty-three before there would be a national day of
thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November. There is another irony that
amuses me: one of the resources for suggested reading on the first of Wirt's
listed sites is published by University of Oklahoma Press, the press of my
alma mater.

But, I think I do share the sentiments of several on the list, who enjoyed a
Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, and have had subsequent Friday meals of cold
turkey, and are looking forward to a weekend of turkey soup and turkey pot
pie and a few workday lunches of turkey sandwiches, that many of us would
welcome Wirt's turkey enchilada recipe, and hope to be able to find it soon
on the AICS web site, if only to break the monotony.

Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com