So another Thanksgiving day has passed, and hopefully if you celebrated it you enjoyed it.
In Europe we are not familiar with it as it is, unlike Halloween a tradition which until now has not crossed the pond. In a way that's a shame as the idea behind it seems a nice one, giving thanks, being gratefull etc.
It is a celebration of the first successful harvest from the pilgrim fathers, the first western settlers, who were apparently helped by an indian summer and some very kind local Indians. It is celebrated on the 4th Thursday in November, and the following Friday is called Black Friday., the day when many americans are free to shop.
I wonder what the pilgrim fathers would make of things today? It was really not so long ago, America is such a young nation and when you stop to consider it it takes your breath away.
I have for example just been reminded by my computer that in 1805 William clark rejoiced when he reached the Columbia estuary on the pacific coast.. Look at what has happened in the intervening 200 odd years!
The landscape has been radically altered. Great cities and infrastructure projects have left their mark. Progress at an astonishing pace.
The pilgrim fathers would not recognise modern agricultural production. They would probably be shocked by the scale of it, the mechanisation, the bombardment of pesticides and fertilizers.
They would probably be amazed at how we have increasingly moved away from respecting and working with nature, and now increasingly challenge and abuse it. How we destroy it.
They would probably be dismayed by the destruction of virgin forests, and the hunting of species such as the buffalo to virtual extinction.
They would probably not have liked to bear witness to how inappropriate farming methods created an environmental catastrophe like the dustbowl.
They would probably not approve of the wastefulness in our land usage and production or the way in which so much of that usable food production is simply thrown away into landfill sites.
They would have probably been horrified at what subsequently happened to the indigenous peoples ofAmerica (the so called red Indians). After all it seems that in part they owed their survival to the friendly natives they encountered.
All in the name of progress, the persuit of a dream at any cost.
What then would they have made of Black Friday, the celebration of our consumerism?
Where are we likely to be as a civilisation in another 200 years?
What lessons can be learnt from the growth pains of the American nation?
If mistakes were made , do we have to keep on repeating them?
Be thankfull. Be gratefull,. Be aware of the cost.
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