the 32 rules of thanksgiving touch football

Another cracking pice by Jason@WSJ. A few highlights below, but head over and read the whole The 32 Rules of Thanksgiving Touch Football

1. If you have a healthy relationship with your family and speak to them all the time, you're playing touch. If you see your family only once a year, it's tackle.

9. Two completions is a first down. Not as simple as it sounds—just ask the 2011 Indianapolis Colts.

17. No show-off football lingo. No screaming "trips left" or "zone blitz." Uncle Dale doesn't want to play the "nickel package." He wants to get this stupid game over with, have a vodka and stand in the kitchen eating stuffing with his hands.

turkey day -3

reblog of a comment from mütter-gern... Is there a turkey in your sitting room?


On the basis that you always need a great title before you actually write the book...

"The wretched thing used to wander into the breezeway and start nibbling plants! After the unfortunate episode on the car ride [pictured, cartoon from "The Message" circa 1978, when turkey held onto roofrack for drive into town... it fell off past the dump and the Merrills phoned us to say it was in their bathtub...] it (the turkey) never really recovered and did not survive to grace the Thanksgiving table. At least I made it into the local paper."

cranberry harvesting

Nantucketers set up these cranberry bogs about 100 years ago. Makes sense that they took cranberries (v high in vitaminC) onboard the whaling ships with them; easy guard against scurvy.

turkey day -2

From a series entitled Pres. Roosevelt Enroute To Warm Springs Ga. For Thanksgiving by Margaret Bourke-White, 1938.

It was the next year, in 1939 that FDR moved Thanksgiving to the second-to-last Thursday of the month under pressure from retailers (who believed no one shopped for Christmas till after Thanksgiving, so can you please Mr. President move Turkeyday a bit earlier...). The calendar printers didn't like that too well... It was then resolved to make Thanksgiving the 4th Thursday (not the last Thursday). wiki tells me that Bourke-White was the first female photo-journalist hired to shoot for LIFE magazine.

If you hit the jump to see the full set, it is noticable that you barely see FDR in any of the shots, more the hardscrabble crowd.

turkey day -1

Photo above via RestoredPrints.com

Great recent article in the WSJ on J.J. Audubon and his fasciantion with the turkey. It was plate #1 in his Birds of America don't you know. Really deserving of its own post, but until you see Birds of America you have no idea of the scale.

Above; Sotheby's auction house worker Mary Engleheart, goes through a rare copy of a book of illustrations by John James Audubon's "Birds of America," in central London, Thursday Sept. 9, 2010. The collection of 435 hand-colored prints, made from engravings of Audubon's illustrations, measures more than 3 feet by 2 feet [i'm liking the bibliographer's term double-elephant folio -ed.]) because Audubon wanted to paint the birds life size. Photo via AP.

Further reading. That copy above from Lord Hesketh’s book collection, is being auctioned by Sotheby's on December 7th.

The whole story of the book and its publication is pretty wild. The University of Pittsburgh has the best zoomable/online version that I have seen. Remember the real plates are bigger than your desk...

[For a counterpoint, head to EvenCleveland to read about Benjamin Franklin and his thoughts on the old bird...]