Jonny Rosch and Friends – Tuesday, November 27th – Triad Theater – 8PM

Tuesday, November 27th

The Triad Theater
(Also known as Stage 72)
158 West 72nd Street
(72nd Street between Broadway and Columbus – upstairs)

“We didn’t land at the Triad Theater…

The Triad Theater landed on us!”

Whereas there are quite a few versions detailing the origin of the first Thanksgiving celebration, there is relatively little real documentation of how Thanksgiving Day came to be. Even the most prolific and renowned historians have had difficulty in agreeing on an accurate representation of what actually went down some 400 years ago at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts.
A while ago, I too did some extensive and exhaustive research on this particular subject matter. In my heartfelt attempt to ascertain the verisimilitude of any one particular rendition of the stories we have been presented with, I came to only one finite conclusion: I am way too chicken and far too lazy to pick a side. That is better left to fine folks like you – people who have a heart, ethos, and a conscience. As for me, I’m best left to watching football games on that day … complemented by the requisite tryptophan trip and the ensuing couch nap.

Oh, but there is one more thing I can contribute as I stated earlier: Divisiveness!
Yes, we could use a little more of that these days, don’t you think?

Below you will find various renditions of the origin of thanksgiving.
For unbridled holiday fun, pick one and then during dinner, open up a conversation … or better yet, an argument with a friend or family member at the table, one who has picked a differing or oppositional version. It’s clean and wholesome fun for the whole family. (That’s one too many ‘wholes’)
Enjoy your holiday, win your argument, and then come to our gig at the Triad Theater on Tuesday, November 27th.
You’re guaranteed to leave the show exclaiming:
“We didn’t land at the Triad Theater… The Triad Theater landed on us!”

(If this is WAY TOO MUCH TO READ – and you know it is – here is a shorter Thanksgiving dinner game you can play thank can accomplish the goal in a much more expeditious manner)

For the rest of you … below are real, true to life variations on the history of our Thanksgiving Day origin. Take a stand, pick one, and then pick a fight at the dinner table. It’s easy. It’s fun. It’s what you would be doing on Facebook later anyway.

Version #1)

Way back in the early 1600s, in merry old England there was a group of people called the Pilgrims. The pilgrims were very good people because they believed in God and they had belt buckles on their hats. The King of England in those days, King James #1, did not like the pilgrims because they liked God more than they liked him. The king told the pilgrims to stop going to church or they would be in really big trouble. The pilgrims didn’t like trouble, but they wanted to go to church every day, so they built a boat called the Mayflower and sailed to America to get away from the mean king. They landed at a place called Plymouth Rock. When they got off the boat, they realized that it was really, really cold and it was snowing, and that the ground was hard so they couldn’t plant food, and they were very, very cold because they didn’t have blankets. Some of them started to get sick from the cold and they didn’t have any cold medicine or nasal spray. One day when they were looking for food because they were also very hungry, they ran into some friendly Indians (which are also called a Native Americans). One of the Indians was named Squanto and he could speak English. He asked the pilgrims if they were hungry and also noticed they were cold. The pilgrims said yes, they were hungry and yes, they were cold. The Native Americans welcomed them as friends and gave them blankets, coats, protected them from the really bad savage Indian tribes that were always trying to hurt them, taught the pilgrims how to fish and hunt, and also how to plant corn and squash. After they all gathered enough food, they decided to have a big party to say thank you, a feast that included turkey, organic vegetables, and gluten-free pumpkin pie for dessert. The pilgrims were very, very thankful and the Indians liked their new friends so much that they said, “Hey, that was fun. Why don’t we do it every year on the same day?” The pilgrims said, “Great idea. We can call it Thanksgiving because we are giving thanks to you and to our God. We will even introduce you to our god because you don’t have any real ones and plus, you’ll really like Him.” The Native Americans said, “That sounds like a plan!” and they all became best friends and stayed that way to this day.

Version #2

“It was not the Indians who saved the day. It was capitalism and Scripture which saved the day,”
– Rush Limbaugh

It is Mr. Limbaugh’s contention that Thanksgiving was born out of the pilgrims discovery that socialism is bad and will always fail, and that the free market and capitalism is not only what saved the settler’s colony, it was also the beginning elements of what was ultimately to become the foundation of The United States of America. Here is a shortened, albeit authentic version of his explanation, but you can look up the transcriptions from his books (like the one titled Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims – if you can believe that) or his radio shows should you be much more curious to explore his accounting of ‘history’.

Rush writes, “Like everybody, I was taught a sanitized, modern version that has elements of political correctness and multiculturalism. I was taught that Thanksgiving was about the Pilgrims being saved from starvation and deprivation by the loving, good-hearted, compassionate, and caring stewards of the earth, the Indians. And Thanksgiving was the Pilgrims inviting the Indians over for dinner to thank the Indians for saving them. But, ladies and gentlemen, it isn’t true.”
In Mr. Limbaugh’s politically charged historical (is that a typo? Did I actually mean hysterical?) depiction; the Puritans were religious, God fearing subjects who rejected “The Church of England under King James who was persecuting anybody and everybody who did not recognize its’ absolute civil and spiritual authority. The government was god, the government was the religion, the government was the church. And those who challenged that, those who believed strongly in freedom of worship, were hunted down, they were imprisoned and sometimes executed for their religious beliefs in 1600s England.”
(Oh, I see where you’re going with this Rush … government bad vs. religion good. Carry on.)

In Limbaugh’s version, In order to escape the king’s persecution, about 40 pilgrims and some other 62 settlers borrowed money from some merchant sponsors in Holland and London, and bought a “rickety little boat” called the Mayflower and on August 1, 1620, aware of the hardships potential perils and risking everything, they fled England and thus set sail across the Atlantic to a great unknown future, which they assumed had to be better than what they had at home. They were led by William Bradford who was eventually elected the governor of the colony after they reached the new country and established their new home.
That first winter in America was arduous and torturous and the pilgrims were not prepared for the harsh weather, lack of food, disease, and other unforeseen hardships. More than half died in the first few months including Bradford’s wife. In the spring, Limbaugh concedes that the Indians helped the settlers survive buy teaching them to hunt and fish, skin animals for pelts and blankets, and plant corn and squash for the future.
Meanwhile, Bradford had set up a governing agreement/contract that established ‘just and equal laws’ for all members of the community. This contract (known as the ‘common course’ was an experimental approach to setting up a new society, yet it was based on what the Israelites had done in the Bible, of which the Pilgrims had more than a thorough knowledge of. In this contract, all members were to get an equal share of whatever the community owned or produced … or in Rush’s words,
“Nobody owned anything. Everything was owned by the community, everybody equal share to all of it. They were gonna distribute it equally. Everybody would get the same, everybody would be the same. All the land they cleared, the houses they built, belonged to the community. Nobody owned anything. It was a commune. It was Humboldt County, California, minus the weed. They even had organic vegetables.”
(Um … Rush … I don’t think they had a choice in the organic vs. GMO veggies in those days but hey … whatever. Anyway, this is where Rush Limbaugh goes in for the kill.)
Limbaugh continues, “Now, William Bradford, the new governor of the colony, recognized that this (experiment in equal ownership) wasn’t working. They weren’t making any money to pay off the sponsors. But you know what else was happening? Since everybody got an equal share no matter what, there were some lazy sloths. Yes. Some of the original Pilgrims, some of their offspring just sat around and did nothing all day while the others picked up the slack and Bradford saw this isn’t gonna work. And so they essentially tore up that first contract, which they didn’t know it, but that was socialism. And what they did was create a new community based on what we would call capitalism today. The more you produce, the more you got to keep. The harder you work, the greater were the fruits of your labors. If you wanted a bigger home than somebody else, and you could afford to build it, you did it; you didn’t have to share it.
And this change unleashed everything, and the Pilgrims became a growing economic concern. And they experienced economic plenty far greater than any they had had under the previous Mayflower Compact arrangement”
Rush continues, “Okay, folks, now, here’s where this gets good. William Bradford, after abandoning the original contract and then converting to, “Hey, you can keep what you earn and earn as much as you produce,” when free enterprise was turned loose in Bradford’s journal, this had very good success, “for it made all hands industrious so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.”
In other words, they had economic growth, they had prosperity because there was personal incentive rather than everybody getting a share of what others, some, not everybody else produced. And so the Pilgrims found that they had more food than they could eat themselves.”
Limbaugh goes on to say, “Now, this is where what you’ve been told about Thanksgiving enters the picture. The Pilgrims had more than they could share, more than they could eat, more food than they could serve each other. They invited the Indians. They set up trading posts. They exchanged goods with the Indians, and the profits finally allowed them to pay off the debts to the sponsors, the merchants in London and Holland who had sponsored them. But it was the sharing of the bounty that was created by the change in governing structure that led to the plenty that allowed them to invite the Indians and share all of this with them. That’s the story most people get, but they’ve been mistaught that the Indians provided all the food ’cause the Pilgrims were incapable. It is the exact opposite.”
He continues, “While most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years — trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it — the Pilgrims decided early on,” it didn’t take them long to realize it didn’t work and “to scrap it permanently.” You’re not taught this!  Nobody is taught this.  Even today in the true story of Thanksgiving, it was an epic failure of socialism.  “What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild’s history lesson. If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future.”

Limbaugh concludes, “The real story of Thanksgiving is William Bradford giving thanks to God for the guidance and the inspiration to set up a thriving colony. The bounty was shared with the Indians.’ They did sit down’ and they did have free-range turkey* and organic vegetables, ‘but it was not the Indians who saved the day. It was capitalism and Scripture which saved the day,’

* Historians are quick to point out that there is no evidence that there was turkey at the original feast, but there was some kind of fowl, likely geese and duck. (Sweet potatoes were not grown in America yet, cranberries would have been too tart for desert, though grapes and melons would have ben available. All organic, by the way!)
Footnote: As for Limbaugh’s assertion that the pilgrims initial ‘socialist society’ nearly caused the demise of the colony, New York Times correspondent Kate Zernike points out that “The arrangement did not produce famine. If it had, Bradford would not have declared the three days of sport and feasting in 1621 that became known as the first Thanksgiving.”
That is to say, the first Thanksgiving was held when the ‘common course’ (the system of collective ownership) was still being practiced, when the Pilgrims, according to Limbaugh, were still socialists.
Footnote #2; Historian Richard Pickering, a leading expert on the Pilgrims, explains that, when the common course was abolished, it was not abolished because it did not work — it actually worked just fine — but rather because the colonists simply did not like it. Pickering said “there was griping and groaning,” and, as Zernike explained, “this grumbling had more to do with the fact that the Plymouth colony was bringing together settlers from all over England, at a time when most people never moved more than 10 miles from home. They spoke different dialects and had different methods of farming, and looked upon each other with great wariness.” Moreover, the reason the Pilgrims later became more prosperous was not because they became capitalists, but rather because they had learned how to better farm the new crops in the new soil on the new lands they had only just moved to a few years before.

Version #3)

Should you choose to spend your Thanksgiving this year in Plymouth, Massachusetts, you will have your choice of two very differing types of celebration to choose to attend (although to be fair, there are some that will do both). There is the traditional parade that begins at the Benny’s Plaza at the corner of Nelson and Court Street.  You can watch or even join the townspeople as they march towards Plymouth Rock, dressed like pilgrims, beating drums, and carrying blunderbusses.
Or you can stand on the top of Coles Hill with indigenous people, such as a group which calls itself “The United American Indians of New England” and their supporters, and fast in observance of what they call a “national day of mourning” in remembrance of the destruction of Indian culture and peoples.
The notion that the first Thanksgiving was some kind of cross-cultural love-fest, as it has been portrayed, is also disputed by historians, who say that the settlers and the Indians were brought together less by genuine friendship than by the extremity of their mutual need. The two struggling communities were never more than wary allies against other tribes.
The colonists were contemptuous of the Indians, who they regarded as uncivilized and satanic heathens, and the fragile early peace between Native Americans and the early settlers would soon unravel in a horrific manner in what is now Mystic Connecticut, where the Pequot tribe was celebrating their own Thanksgiving, the green corn festival. In the predawn hours, settlers – not the Pilgrims, but a band of Puritans— descended on their village and shot, clubbed and burned alive over 700 native men, woman and children.
This slaughter, according to Robert Jensen, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, was the real origin of Thanksgiving— so proclaimed in 1637 by Massachusetts Bay Governor John Winthrop in gratitude for God’s destruction of the defenseless Pequot village. Thereafter massacres of the Indians were routinely followed by “days of thanksgiving.”
These two events represent radically different visions of American history. The official version, the one we learn in school, essentially starts with the landing of the Mayflower in 1620 in a small bay north of Cape Cod. In the Native version, on the other hand, the appearance of the Pilgrims on American shores marks the beginning of the end.
Author Richard Schiffman tells us, “In fact, the end times began for Massachusetts Indians several years earlier, when British slaving crews inadvertently introduced smallpox— carried by their infected cattle— to coastal New England killing over ninety percent of the local population, who lacked antibodies to fight the disease. (Compare this astonishing figure to the 30 percent death rates at the height of the Black Plague.) While the decimated Wampanoag Indians helped the British boat people survive their first harrowing year, Native Americans say that the favor was not returned.”

Certainly, troubling questions about the origins of our national feast remain. Historical depictions of what happened to the Indians and/or the pilgrims vary so greatly.
In many accounts, the great English speaking Pawtuxet Indian, Squanto is the heroic centerpiece of the story, having brokered a peace treaty between the indigenous tribes and the English settlers.
In other accounts he barely exists, but rather there are detailed allegations that English and Dutch mercenaries slaughtered over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe who had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival (which is now our Thanksgiving celebration.) Other raids against the Indians continued and in what is now Stamford, Connecticut, (where I will be performing with my quartet at a fine club called L’Escale on December 15^th … no I’m not – I just wanted to see if you were still reading down this far) what is now Stamford, Connecticut, the churches announced a second day of “thanksgiving” to celebrate victory over the heathen savages.  During the feasting, the hacked off heads of Natives were kicked through the streets like soccer balls.  Even the friendly Wampanoag did not escape the madness. Their chief was beheaded, and his head impaled on a pole in Plymouth, Massachusetts — where it remained on display for 24 years.

Who to believe?

Jane Kamensky, a professor of history at Brandeis University, wondered whether it makes sense to stir up the historical pot, “to plumb the bottom of it all – to determine whether the first Thanksgiving was merely a pretext for bloodshed, enslavement, and displacement that would follow in later decades.”

“To ask whether this is true is to ask the wrong question. Thanksgiving is true to its purposes,” Kamensky writes, “And that’s all it needs to be. For these holidays say much less about who we really were in some specific Then, than about who we want to be in an ever changing Now.”

It seems odd for a historian to argue that history doesn’t matter. A Thanksgiving, which ignores the systematic destruction of Indian cultures, which followed hot on the heels of the Plymouth feast, not only does a disservice to indigenous peoples, it falsifies our understanding of our history and ourselves.
However, while few would suggest that Thanksgiving should become the occasion for a yearly guilt trip or for burying any uncomfortable truths, we would do well to remember the price the first Americans paid for European expansion into their territories as we sit around the bountiful table with our family and friends. Only by openly acknowledging the sins of our collective past, is it possible to proceed toward a future that all Americans can feel thankful for.

Version #4)

In 1621, a group of pilgrims known as Google, fled England due to the horrific, unrelenting constraints of strangulating regulations and actual real taxes they had be asked to pay. They sailed to America and soon set up a colony and started to spread out. Eventually, some of the colony spread to some offshore locations too but the main colony had to be in America. However, they were in a new land and did not know how to monetize the land to its fullest capacity. Subsequently, their future looked uncertain. Fortunately, they met and Native American indigenous tribe called Amazon. The Amazons were very good at monetization and taught the Goolges how to advertise. It was hard at first because nobody could figure out how the Googles could advertise but slowly, bit by bit after a little time, there were small ads popping up in places that had not been seen or at least noticed in the early years.
After they built up a colony that seemed viable and financially stable enough, a splinter group with the same goal of ‘eventual world domination’, but with differing interests and approaches, split off from them and started their own colony called Facebook. They were a strange, puritanical sect that seemed to be friendly with Amazon in the beginning, but soon they discovered how much Internet landmass was out there and they, like Google, wanted more and more of it. They shut down other tribes and small companies who tried to move into their Internet territories. They also became more hostile and competitive to the Amazon who were thriving due to online sales. The Facebook tried to spread smallpox and other computer related diseases and bugs in an attempt to decimate the Amazon computers and websites.
Because of an unanticipated black plague called Wall Street, widespread panic ensued as financial markets started to shake violently and the housing market began to crumble. As soon as overall sales began to drop, and profit margins started to suffer, the Amazon, the Google, and the Facebook discovered they all had a common interest and so they each sent represenatives from their tribes called lobbyists, to pay off government officials in Washington to get them to ignore any, and all regulatory practices and turn a blind eye to any potential conflicts that might hurt Americans, the Internet, and democracy. They even got some foreign aid from a place called Russia.
Soon everything became ok and maybe even great. True, many citizens (official US statistics say 99%) became poor and disenfranchised but a whole whopping 1% thrived and so the whole country came together to celebrate the end of the dark days and created the celebration known as Thanksgiving / Black Friday / Cyber Monday

Today we give thanks with equality for all the surviving devices; iPhones, iPads, Androids, Samsungs, etc., for the bountiful gifts they bring to us such as:

– Keeping us informed of what our old college ex-girlfriend, Marion Colvin (now Marion Colvin Phillips), is doing and just how fat she got.

– Giving us in real time, the score of the Falcons vs. Saints, Bears vs. Lions, or the more ironic Thanksgiving Day matchup; Cowboys vs. Redskins NFL games.

– Where to shop tomorrow (Black Friday) where there will be the most people, with the most traffic, with the least amount of parking spaces.

– The best WAZE exit strategy to get as far away, as fast as one can, from your surrounding family members later today.