#god i hate florida this never happen in pa | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

quakerjoe · 4 years ago

Text

“VIOLENCE WILL NOT BRING CHANGE.”

That’s what Biden said in his latest advert.

Are we kidding ourselves here? Seriously? It’s the AMERICAN WAY! Let’s review a little history...

1619: SLAVERY BEGINS in AMERICA

American Revolutionary War (1775–1783)

Cherokee–American wars (1776–1795) USA v. Native Americans

Northwest Indian War (1785–1793) USA v. Native Americans

Shays' Rebellion (1786–1787) USA v. Citizens During Debt Crisis

Whiskey Rebellion (1791–1794) USA v. Citizens over TAXES

Quasi-War (1798–1800) Naval Pissing Match- USA v. France

Fries Rebellion (1799–1800) USA . PA Dutch Farmers over TAXES

First Barbary War (1801–1805) USA & Sweden v. N. Africa (Pirates)

German Coast Uprising (1811) Slave Rebellion in New Orleans v. USA

Tecumseh's War (1811) Native Annihilation.

War of 1812 (1812–1815) USA v. Britain over UK’s seizure of ships and men

Creek War (1813–1814) USA v. Alabama Native Americans

Second Barbary War (1815) Again.

First Seminole War (1817–1818) USA v. Florida Native Americans

Texas–Indian Wars (1820–1875) USA v. Texas Natives & Spain/Mexico

Arikara War (1823) USA v. Sioux Native Americans

Aegean Sea Anti-Piracy Operations of the United States (1825–1828)

Winnebago War (1827) USA v. Wisconsin Native Americans

First Sumatran expedition (1832) USA v. Indonesia

Black Hawk War (1832) USA v. Ill & Mich Native Americans

Texas Revolution (1835–1836) USA v. Mexico to steal Tex-ass

Second Seminole War (1835–1842) USA v. Native Americans in Florida

Second Sumatran expedition (1838)

Aroostook War (1838) USA v. Britain over N. Brunswick & Maine Border

Ivory Coast expedition (1842) USA v. Bereby, W. Africa against Slavers

Mexican–American War (1846–1848) USA v. Mexico to seize TX, NM & CA

Cayuse War (1847–1855) USA v. Oregon Native Americans (Annihilation)

Apache Wars (1851–1900) USA v. Apache Native Americans in s.west

Bleeding Kansas (1854–1861) USA v. USA Kansas & Missouri Conservative PRO-Slavery versus Abolitionist/Progressive ANTI-Slavery in new territories.

Puget Sound War (1855–1856) USA v. coastal Wash. State Native Americans

First Fiji expedition (1855) USA v. Fiji over the islanders not wanting rich American fucks there anymore. We did away with that by force, by Harry!

Rogue River Wars (1855–1856) USA v. Oregon Native Americans

Third Seminole War (1855–1858) USA purges last of Florida Natives

Yakima War (1855–1858) USA v. Washington Native Americans

Second Opium War (1856–1859) USA, Britain & France v. China over forcing the Chinese to buy opium to keep them compliant

Utah War (1857–1858) USA v. The F’n MORMONS This was the Waco Tex-Ass of its time.

Navajo Wars USA v. New Mexico Native Americans (Long Walk)

Second Fiji expedition (1859) USA v. Fiji. We told them once...

John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry (1859) USA v. USA, Prelude to Civil War

First and Second Cortina War (1859–1861) USA (Then CSA) v. Mexico in TX

Paiute War (1860) USA v. Nevada Native Americans

American Civil War (1861–1865) USA v. CSA

Yavapai Wars (1861–1875) USA v. AZ Native Americans

Dakota War of 1862 (1862) USA v. Minnesota & Dakota Native Americans

Colorado War (1863–1865) USA v. Colorado, Wyoming & Nebraska Natives

Shimonoseki War (1863–1864) UK, USA, France, Dutch v. Japan over straight between Japan’s own islands.

Snake War (1864–1868) USA v. Native Americans in Oregon, Nevada, Idaho & California

Powder River War (1865) USA v. Native Americans in Montana & Dakota

Red Cloud's War (1866–1868) USA v. Native Americans in Wyoming & Montana

Formosa expedition (1867) USA v. Taiwan Natives in response to massacre of crew of wrecked USS Rover, a small bark.

Comanche Campaign (1867–1875) USA v. Native Americans in western states/territories

Korea expedition (1871) USA v. Korea in retaliation for being shot at because they hated us.

Modoc War (1872–1873) USA v. Native Americans in N. Cali & Oregon.

Red River War (1874–1875) USA v. Native Americans in S.W.

Las Cuevas War (1875) USA/TX v. Mexican Raiders

Great Sioux War of 1876 (1876–1877) USA v. Native Americans in S.W.

Buffalo Hunters' War (1876–1877) USA v. Native Americans in TX & OK

Nez Perce War (1877) USA v. Native Americans in Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming & Montana

Bannock War (1878) USA v. Native Americans in Oregon, Idaho & Wyoming

Cheyenne War (1878–1879) USA v. Native Americans in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, S. Dakota and Montana

Sheepeater Indian War (1879) USA v. Native Americans in Idaho

Victorio's War (1879–1881) USA/Mexico v. Apache in Mexico

White River War (1879–1880) USA v. Native Americans in Colorado

Pine Ridge Campaign (1890–1891) USA v. Native Americans in S. Dakota

Garza Revolution (1891–1893) USA & Mexico v. Mexican Revolutionaries

Yaqui Wars (1896–1918) USA/Mexico v. Native Americans in Mexico & AZ

Second Samoan Civil War (1898–1899) USA v. Germany over Samoa Control because screw the natives already living there.

Spanish–American War (1898) USA v. Spain- when the US wanted to bugger Spain and used the likely accidental destruction of the USS Maine (”Remember the Maine!”) in Havana Harbor as an excuse for war.

Philippine–American War (1899–1902) USA v. Philippines because we won you from Spain in the last war; screw you if you’re a native on the island.

Moro Rebellion (1899–1913) USA v. Philippines because while we’re here, we’ll meddle in your politics too.

Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) USA v. China because they wanted those douchebag imperialists, foreigners and goddamn Christians to simply fuck the hell off back to where they came from because they suck.

Crazy Snake Rebellion (1909) USA v. OK Native Americans because Americans just LOVE betraying treaties and killing the native population.

Border War (1910–1919) USA v. Mexico & Germany because it’s more fun to play with guns and kill one another rather than sit at a table with a map and come to an amicable agreement.

Negro Rebellion (1912) USA v. Cuba (under US control from war with Spain) where we literally went in and slaughtered Afro-Cubans for wanting freedom. (Part of the Banana Wars)

Occupation of Nicaragua (1912–1933) USA v. Nicaragua where the US seized land and occupied it because a canal was going to be built and never was. Oops. (Part of the Banana Wars)

Bluff War (1914–1915) USA v. Native Americans in Utah and Colorado. Again. Why should the last generation have all the fun, right?

Occupation of Veracruz (1914) USA v. Mexico. Because fuck those Mexicans, right?

Occupation of Haiti (1915–1934) USA v. Haiti because why not? We own you now. (Part of the Banana Wars)

Occupation of the Dominican Republic (1916–1924) USA v. D.R. because we may as well own you too while we’re in the area.

World War I (1917–1918)

USA arriving very late in the “War to End All Wars”. “Thanks for nothing,” said the allies, “But please; take all the credit.”

Russian Civil War (1918–1920) USA & Europe v. Bolshevik Russia which didn’t end well for the USA & allies. We totally lost that one.

Last Indian Uprising (1923) USA v. Native Americans in Utah because we’d rather have Mormons than the Ute and the Paiute tribes.

World War II (1939–1945)

USA fights Japan covertly in the Pacific, aiding China against Japanese aggression. USA assists Britain and occupied Europe against the FASCIST regimes of Hitler’s Nazis and Mussolini in Italy and fucks off until the Attack of Pearl Harbor in 1941. “Oh, THIS shit again?” asks Europe. “Showing up late YET AGAIN, but sure; hey, USA, take all the credit yet again. Seriously, fuck you guys. Thanks for the assist, but we could have saved millions of lives of you’d gotten of your fat asses YEARS ago!”

Korean War (1950–1953) USA v. N. Korea in a proxy war with the USSR and China because fuck those commies, right? We won, even though they kicked our asses and a formal treaty was NEVER signed so technically the war is actually STILL ON.

Laotian Civil War (1953–1975) USA v. Laos and those commie scumbags. Yep. We don’t talk about this one because we LOST.

Lebanon Crisis (1958) USA v. Lebanon, Beirut, because we like Christians and fuck those Muslim twats, right? (God, we’re not a good people in the US...)

Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961) USA & Cuban Revolutionaries v. Cuban Government because fuck the commies. Maybe if we help, we’ll own Cuba again... Oops. Nope. Totally fucked that up.

Simba rebellion, Operation Dragon Rouge (1964) USA and EU Allies v. S.E. Asia in amounted to a total clusterfuck that dissolved Vietnam and was a precursor there as well as other areas. It helped the rise of dictators all throughout the region. Khmer Rouge anyone?

Vietnam War (1955–1975) USA, S. Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand etc. v. China-backed, USSR backed N. Vietnam. The Imperialist WEST v. the Communist EAST. That ended in a shit-show for the West like all proxy wars in southeast Asia do.

Communist insurgency in Thailand (1965–1983) USA/Local allies v. China/ally backed communist rebels. Pretty much a draw that petered out and Communism didn’t really stick... sort of.

Korean DMZ Conflict (1966–1969) USA v. N. Korea because they attempted to convince the S. Koreans to rise up and join the North, throwing out the WEST. No dice for them.

Dominican Civil War (1965–1966) USA v. Dom. Republic insurgents to restore Dem elected government. It worked so well that we would decide never to really do that sort of thing again when doing it the opposite way gets us more money.

Insurgency in Bolivia (1966–1967) USA (CIA) & Bolivia stomp out Che Guevara because we’ll have none of this uprising shit.

Cambodian Civil War (1967–1975) USA v. Cambodian communists, because we were in the area anyway... “THE KILLING FIELDS” happened.

War in South Zaire (1978) USA & Allies v. USSR & Allies in Africa. Yes, another Cold War proxy war. Finally, the US wins one. Yay.

Gulf of Sidra encounter (1981) USA v. Libya- a pissing contest over a line in the water. Libyan fighters fire upon US fighters and get their asses handed to them. USA! USA! USA!

Multinational Intervention in Lebanon (1982–1984) USA joins the U/N to shaft the P.L.O. and Muslims in Lebanon because fuck them and we love Israel.

Invasion of Grenada (1983) USA v. Cuban-backed commie bastards who overthrew the democratically elected government. I know we said we wouldn’t do that again, but we hate Cuba more than these guys.

Action in the Gulf of Sidra (1986) USA v. Libya because fuck you, Qaddafi, and that bullshit line in the water. We’re sending a carrier group in to show YOU where the REAL line is.

Bombing of Libya (1986) USA v. Libya because they keep bombing shit around Europe and they make us keep coming back. France still likes Libya and wouldn’t let US fighters through their airspace as they left German air bases. US pilots were a bit fatigued having to go around the long way and ‘accidentally’ bombed the French Embassy in Libya...

Tanker War (1987–1988) USA v. Iran because fuck them, that’s why. Iran & Iraq were duking it out and Iran thought shooting at US and allied shipping would be good fun. USS Vincennes then shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing 290 passengers; 66 of which were children. Yeah, we totally fucked that up hard-core.

Tobruk encounter (1989) USA v. Libya. Again. That line. US F-14′s splash their MIGs. Now, stay. Good Libya.

Invasion of Panama (1989–1990) USA v. Panama dictator Manuel Noriega because he’s an evil cunt. No, not really. It was because he wouldn’t play ball with the US and the CIA. He was a drug lord anyway so fuck him.

Gulf War (1990–1991) USA & Allies v. Iraq because Saddam Hussein needed his dick slapped the fuck back out of Kuwait, a US & EU ally.

Iraqi No-Fly Zone Enforcement Operations (1991–2003) USA v. Iraq, because every now and then we had to go blow up some of their shit and keep them in their place.

First U.S. Intervention in the Somali Civil War (1992–1995) USA & Allies v. Somalia because why not? Lots of shooting, lots of dead, and nothing accomplished. The war is STILL going on.

Bosnian War (1992–1995) USA v. Bosnian, post USSR dictators because the US/NATO won’t act until AFTER the genocides...

Intervention in Haiti (1994–1995) USA v. Haiti, because damn it, we’ll restore your democratically elected government and put down that coup... for a price...

Kosovo War (1998–1999) USA and a fuck ton of allies v. Russia-backed Yugoslavia because human rights violations are for US southern CSA states only, fuckers. We sort of won this ‘contest’.

Operation Infinite Reach (1998) USA v. Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, because fuck those ‘towelheads’ we helped push out the Russians! How dare they turn on us imperialists when we treat them like peasants and shit on them? What nerve! How will Big Pharma keep up their poppy fields now? This means war...

THE 21st CENTURY

War in Afghanistan (2001–present)

2003 invasion of Iraq (2003) & Iraq War (2003–2011)

War in North-West Pakistan (2004–present)

Second U.S. Intervention in the Somali Civil War (2007–present)

Operation Ocean Shield (2009–2016) USA v. Somali pirates

International intervention in Libya (2011) Because enough, Qaddafi.

Operation Observant Compass (2011–2017) USA v. Uganda because of terrorist camps

American-led intervention in Iraq (2014–present) USA v. ISIS/ISIL in Iraq. Thanks, Obama; right?

American-led intervention in Syria (2014–present) USA v. ISIS/ISIL in Syria where we rounded up lots of ‘terrorist’ fighters.

Yemeni Civil War (2015–present)

American intervention in Libya (2015–present) USA v/ ISIS/ISIL in Libya. It’s as if the war in Iraq pissed off a ton of people in the region along with Israel’s expansion into Palestine territory over the years... Go figure.

THE TRUMP YEARS

Despite fucking over our allies in Syria and being far too cozy with Putin and Kim Jong Un and other dictators, sympathizing with Nazis in the US and having the KKK in his blood, trumplefuckstick hasn’t actually pushed any “NEW” wars upon the US so far. Sure, we’re in a state of chaos and about to collapse into a failed nation-state into that “shithole country” everyone thinks can’t happen here.

The point is:

“HEY JOE FUCKIN’ BIDEN! I DON’T MEAN TO THROW YOU OFF YOUR GAME HERE BUT WHILE I DO NOT CONDONE VIOLENCE, IT SEEMS THAT AS AMERICANS, IT’S THE ONLY WAY WE DO THINGS HERE TO GET SHIT DONE!”

Still don’t believe me? How about some non-war stuff...

How about EVERY act of white supremacist, KKK driven TERROR on non-whites since the Civil War ended or of the slave owners before them?

How about how our first real “police” in the US were bounty hunters looking for runaway slaves?

How about the Tulsa race massacre when white mobs attacked the black residents and business of the Greenwood District in Tulsa because the good people of Oklahoma didn’t want them “uppity niggers” to be doing as well or better than the white racist fucks were doing. That learned ‘em, didn’t it?

Let’s not forget the anti-union suppression! How about the Herrin Massacre? During a United Mineworkers of America nationwide strike union miners shot at strikebreakers working at the mine. The mine's guards killed three union miners on June 21, and the miners killed 20 strikebreakers and guards on June 22.

What about the Hanapepe Massacre? During a strike of Filipino sugar workers, in an attempt to rescue two hostage strikebreakers police killed 16 strikers, while strikers killed four law enforcement members.

Kent State shootings: During a protest of the bombing of Cambodia at the University, members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire, killing four and injuring nine people.

Jackson State University shooting: After responding to the University due to a growing unrest, officers opened fire on a dorm building and two students (one from a local high school) were killed and twelve were injured.

There are more, to be sure, but Mr. Biden, you ARE correct in one particular field here- gun violence. Look at this list HERE. So many acts of mass shootings going WAY back before Columbine. What’s been done about this by you, the Democrats or Republicans of the piece-of-shit NRA? Fuck-all NOTHING.

Your truth, Mr. Biden- in this instance, gun violence literally achieves NOTHING.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States#1920s

#JoeBiden #FuckTrump #FuckTheGOP #LearnHistory

75 notes · View notes

creepingsharia · 5 years ago

Text

Thanksgiving on the Net: Roast Bull with Cranberry Sauce

Debunking revisionist history about Thanksgiving. Take the time to read it all, print it, and share it with your children no matter what age they are.

EDITORS NOTE: Due to the length of this article it has been presented here in three (3) parts. You may access the other pages by clicking the links at the bottom of this page or from the 'Related Links' section in the right column of the page.

http://www.sail1620.org/discover_feature_thanksgiving_on_the_net_roast_bull_with_cranberry_sauce_part_1.shtml

Thanksgiving on the Net: Roast Bull with Cranberry Sauce Part 1

by Jeremy D. Bangs

Jeremy Bangs (Ph.D., Leiden University), a Fellow of the Pilgrim Society, is Director of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, having previously been Visiting Curator of Manuscripts at Pilgrim Hall Museum, Chief Curator at Plimoth Plantation, and Curator of the Leiden Pilgrim Documents Center. Among his books are "Pilgrim Edward Winslow: New England's First International Diplomat" (2004); "Indian Deeds, Land Transactions in Plymouth Colony, 1620-1691" (2002); and "The Seventeenth-Century Town Records of Scituate, Massachusetts" (3 vols, 1997-1999-2001), all published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society. He has written many articles about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony, and is currently completing the manuscript of a book about the Pilgrims and Leiden. He was awarded the Distinguished Mayflower Scholarship Award by the Society of Mayflower Descendants in the Commonwealth of PA in 2001. Bangs is among a small, select number of historians of the Pilgrims (those who have no family relation to them whatsoever!). He has also published articles and books on Dutch history and art history of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Setting people straight about Thanksgiving myths has become as much a part of the annual holiday as turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. But should historians bother? Jane Kamensky, a professor of history at Brandeis, thinks not. She asks on the website "Common-Place" (in 2001) whether it's worth while "to plumb the bottom of it all - to determine, for example, [...] whether Plymouth's 'Pilgrims' were indeed the grave-robbing hypocrites that UAINE describes [i.e. United American Indians of New England]. [...] Was the 'first Thanksgiving' merely a pretext for bloodshed, enslavement, and displacement that would follow in later decades? Combing period documents and archaeological evidence, we might peel away some of the myths [...] But to do so would be to miss a fundamental point of these holidays. [...] in this new millenium, these sacred secular rites are once again pressed into service - this time by new nations, with new visions of the present, to be reached through new versions of the past. In place of one origins myth, the inventors of Indigenous Peoples' Day [intended to replace Columbus Day] and the National Day of Mourning [intended to replace Thanksgiving Day] invoke another. One in which all Europeans were villains and all Natives, victims. One in which indigenous peoples knew neither strife nor war until the treachery of Columbus and his cultural heirs taught them to hate and fear. To ask whether this is true is to ask the wrong question. It's true to its purposes. Every bit as true, that is, as the stories some Americans in 1792 and 1863 told about the events of 1492 and 1621. 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."

"And that's all it needs to be"? I disagree. I think that anyone who wants to approach the question of Thanksgiving Day as a historian in the "ever changing Now" will need to ask "the wrong question" - what of all this is true?

Surveying more than two hundred websites that "correct" our assumptions about Thanksgiving, it's possible to sort them into groups and themes, especially since internet sites often parrot each other. Very few present anything like the myths that most claim to combat. Almost all of the corrections are themselves incorrect or banal, and otherwise not germane to the topic of what happened in 1621. With heavy self-importance they demonstrate quite unsurprisingly that what was once commonly taught in grade school lacked scope, subtlety, and minority insight. The political posturing is pathetic.

Commonly the first point scored is that lots of people gave thanks before the Pilgrims did it in 1621. Local boosters in Virginia, Florida, and Texas promote their own colonists, who (like many people getting off a boat) gave thanks for setting foot again on dry land. Several sites claim that Indians had six thanksgivings every year; at least one says that every day, every act, every thought was carried out with thanksgiving by pre-contact Indians. (My thanksgiving is bigger than your thanksgiving?) Among many examples:

* http://www.new-life.net/thanks01.htm

* http://www.oyate.org/resources/shortthanks.html

The Text

Many sites point out in a rankly naive sort of way that only one brief documentary account records Plymouth Colony's 1621 harvest festivities, the specific descriptive words of Edward Winslow, while additional information can be derived from the seasonal comments of William Bradford, who mentioned that the Pilgrims ate turkey among other things. See, for example, Pilgrim Hall Museum's website, which is consistently informative and of high scholarly quality:

Reporting on the colonists' first year, Winslow wrote that wheat and Indian corn had grown well; the barley crop was "indifferently good"; but pease were "not worth the gathering." Winslow continues: "Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent foure men on fowling; so that we might after a more speciall manner rejoyce together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labours. They foure in one day killed as much fowle as, with a little help besid, served the company almost a weeke. At which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest King Massasoyt, with some nintie men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted. And they went out and killed five deere, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our Governour, and upon the Captaine and others. And although it be not alwayes so plentifull, as it was at this time, with us, yet by goodnesse of God, we are so farre from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plentie."[1]

Governor William Bradford, in Of Plymouth Plantation, reported that fishing had been good all summer, and, in the fall, "begane to come in store of foule, as winter approached [...] And besides water foule, ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they tooke many, besids venison, etc."[2]

Archaeologist James Deetz made much of the fact that Winslow did not name the turkeys Bradford mentioned.

This startling revelation (that in this case one should ignore Bradford's general comments and suppose that Winslow was providing a complete menu listing) recurs in various websites, such as the 2002 article posted by the Christian Science Monitor.

More frequently repeated is Deetz's emphatic reminder that Winslow did not use the word "thanksgiving" - drawing the conclusion that therefore the 1621 event was not a thanksgiving but some sort of traditional English harvest festival he characterized as "secular."

I've discussed this oversimplification previously in an previous article.

Further, see "Re-bunking the Pilgrims" [subscribers]

On the one hand, whatever their folk customs may have been, harvest festivals in England with which the Pilgrims had been familiar were not "secular." (The Elizabethan and Jacobean-period Anglican Book of Common Prayer included an obligatory harvest thanksgiving prayer among the prayers whose use was increasingly enforced in the early seventeenth century.) On the other, Winslow's description includes biblical phrases referring to texts whose completion includes thanksgiving (particularly John 4:36 and Psalm 33). Winslow's contemporaries, unlike modern archaeologists, caught the meaning of the full texts to which he alluded. They knew their Bible.

But Deetz's assertion that there was no thanksgiving in 1621 is repeated in numerous websites. Often authors explain that what took place was so unlike later Puritan thanksgivings that it couldn't have been a true thanksgiving (usually citing, for the definition of what that would have been, William DeLoss Love, The Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England (Boston, New York: Houghton and Mifflin, 1895), a book whose title alone seems to have inspired the common web article notion that in New England people fasted as an _expression of thanksgiving). For example, in "Top 10 Myths About Thanksgiving,' Rick Shenkman announces that Thanksgiving was not about religion.

Had it been, he says, "the Pilgrims never would have invited the Indians to join them. Besides, the Pilgrims would never have tolerated festivities at a true religious event. Indeed, what we think of as Thanksgiving was really a harvest festival. Actual 'Thanksgivings' were religious affairs; everybody spent the day praying. Incidentally, these Pilgrim Thanksgivings occurred at different times of the year, not just in November."

Responding to this in reverse order: (1) that Thanksgivings were not limited to November does not mean that the first one held by the colonists in Plymouth (which incidentally was presumably in September or early October) was not a thanksgiving. (2) The modern idea that in a religious thanksgiving "everyone spent the day praying" is inconsistent with the only description of the specific activities of a definitely identified thanksgiving day in early Plymouth Colony - the thanksgiving held in Scituate in 1636 when a religious service was followed by feasting. (See my book The Seventeenth-Century Town Records of Scituate, Massachusetts (Boston: NEHGS, 2001), vol. 3, p. 513.) (3) That "what we think of as Thanksgiving was really a harvest festival" (as if that meant it could not have been a thanksgiving) repeats Deetz's incorrect opinion that an English harvest festival was non-religious or even irreligious. (4) That the Pilgrims "would never have tolerated festivities at a true religious event" presumes a narrow definition of what a true religious event was before arriving through circular argument at a denial that what the Pilgrims did was such an event, because it differed from the axiomatic definition. (Ever been to a midwestern church picnic? Did tossing horseshoes and playing softball make it non-religious?) (5) As is repeatedly demonstrated by the writings of the Pilgrims' minister John Robinson, the Pilgrims attempted to pattern their religious activities according to biblical precedent. The precedent for a harvest festival was the Old Testament Feast of Tabernacles, Sukkoth (Deut. 16: 13-14). This harvest festival (as described in the 1560 Geneva translation of the Bible, used by the Pilgrims) was established to last "seuen daies, when thou hast gathered in thy corne, and thy wine. And thou shalt reioyce in thy feast, thou, and they sonne, and thy daughter, and thy servant, and thy maid, and the Levite and the stranger, and the fatherles, and the widow, that are within thy gates." The biblical injunction to include the "stranger" probably accounts for the Pilgrims' inviting their Native neighbors to rejoice with them, although Winslow does not explicitly say anything about invitation. Besides Sukkoth, the Pilgrims' experience of a Reformed Protestant thanksgiving every year in Leiden probably contributed to what they considered appropriate. Leiden's October 3 festivities commemorated the lifting of the Siege of Leiden in 1574, when half the town had died (an obvious parallel with the experience of the Pilgrims in the winter of 1620-21). Lasting ten days, the first Leiden event was a religious service of thanksgiving and prayer, followed by festivities that included meals, military exercises, games, and a free fair. To summarize, the common assumption that the Pilgrims' 1621 event should be judged against the forms taken by later Puritan thanksgivings - whether or not those are even correctly understood - overlooks the circumstance that the Pilgrims did not have those precedents when they attempted something new, intentionally based not on old English tradition but on biblical and Reformed example.

Shenkman has not invented these views. Attempts to be accurate frequently make the same assumptions. For example, the History Channel states that, "the colonists didn't even call the day Thanksgiving. To them, a thanksgiving was a religious holiday in which they would go to church and thank God for a specific event, such as the winning of a battle. On such a religious day, the types of recreational activities that the pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians participated in during the 1621 harvest feast - dancing, singing secular songs, playing games - wouldn't have been allowed. The feast was a secular celebration, so it never would have been considered a thanksgiving in the pilgrims minds."

The identical text is copied without credit on the webpage of the International Student & Scholar Programs of Emory University:

It's worth pointing out that Winslow says nothing about "dancing, singing secular songs, [or] playing games." Those might be intended among Winslow's general term "recreations," but to specify and cite them as proof that the Pilgrims' day was "a secular celebration" is over-reaching.

Thanking Whom?

Assuming the nature of the festival was non-religious, some sites proclaim that there was a thanksgiving, but that the Pilgrims were not thanking God. Instead they were thanking the Indians for the help that had contributed to the colonists� survival during the first year. For example, "Rumela Web" says, "The Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock held their Thanksgiving in 1621 as a three day 'thank you' celebration to the leaders of the Wampanoag Indian tribe and their families for teaching them the survival skills they needed to make it in the New World."

A site that provides Thanksgiving Day recipes and menus says, "The Pilgrims invited the Native Americans to a feast to thank them for all they had learned."

Another site [member account required] provides a psychological analysis: "Not only was this festival a way to thank the Wampanoag, but it also served to boost the morale of the remaining settlers."

Such redirection of the thanks is consistent with the modern assessment expressed in "The Truth about the First Thanksgiving," by James Loewen, "Settlement proceeded, not with God's help, but with the Indians'."

We think the Pilgrims should have thanked the Indians. Nonetheless, while most modern historians explain events without dependence on providential intervention, it is still inaccurate to bend the evidence to suggest that the Pilgrims' attitude was not predominantly providential, and did not result in thanks to God for help received from the Indians.

Bending evidence, plus inventing details found in no historical source, is not a monopoly of the secular interpretation. For example, Kathryn Capoccia's online Sunday School lesson, "American Thanksgiving Celebrations," displays an incredibly imaginative disregard for historical evidence:

"Two weeks before the celebration was to take place a proclamation was issued stating that a harvest festival was to be held, which would be preceded by a special religious service and would be open to both Separatist church members and nonmembers. Everyone was urged to publicly offer gratitude for God's provision. The invitation was also extended to chief Massasoit." [...] "In response to the invitation Massasoit appeared in camp with three braves. Two days later he was joined by ninety other braves who provided five deer, a flock of geese, fifteen swordfish and small sweet apples for the celebration. The ceremonies began on the last morning of the festival [sic] with a worship service led by Elder Brewster. Then ground sports, such as foot racing and wrestling were held, as well as knife throwing contests. The settlers demonstrated musket drilling and shot a cannon volley. Then the feasting began in mid-afternoon at the fort. Everyone was seated in the open at long tables. At the end of the meal the settlers toasted the Indians as friends. The adults exchanged gifts with each other: Massasoit was given a bolt of cloth by Bradford, the warriors received cooking pots and colored beads in strings. The Indians reciprocated with a beaver cloak for Bradford and several freshly killed deer that could be smoked and stored for winter. The Indians presented the children with lumps of candy made from sugar extracted from wild beet plants. When the ceremonies were completed Elder Brewster quoted the Bible as a benediction, 'I thank my God upon every remembrance of you'". This level of fabrication is rare. It recalls the oratory of a century ago, that inspired the balloon-pricking emotions of countless would-be debunkers.

Colored Clothes, No Buckled Hats! My Goodness!

Similarly disconnected from Winslow's version are the common corrections to misconceptions about Pilgrim costume. Numerous sites let us know that the Pilgrims did not always wear black, and some even assert excitedly that it is important that we know about this discovery.

Timothy Walch, writing for History News Services, says, "Finally, it's important to dispel one last Thanksgiving myth — that the Pilgrims dressed in black and white clothing, wore pointed hats and starched bonnets and favored buckles on their shoes. It's true that they dressed in black on Sundays; but on most days, including the first Thanksgiving, they dressed in white, beige, black, green and brown." Surprisingly, Walch talks about buckles on shoes, instead of the common cartoon iconography of buckles on hats (itself an anachronism derived from a brief fashion in the 1790's). While Walch's point about color in workday clothing is true, I'm not sure it can come as a surprise to very many people. Nowadays most illustrations show Pilgrims in multi-colored clothing, often using photographs of the colorful actors at Plimoth Plantation. Even children now in their thirties will have learned about the Pilgrims from pictures showing varie-colored clothing. It wasn't always that way (cheaper books once were restricted to monochrome illustrations), but none of the websites gives a good explanation of the origin of the stereotype - the error is paraded simply as yet another example of inherited ignorance.

Only one genuine portrait of a Pilgrim exists - that of Edward Winslow (now in Pilgrim Hall Museum). Painted in 1651 in London, where Winslow acted as a diplomat representing the interests of New England colonies before various government committees, it shows him dressed appropriately in the very expensive black formal wear that most Pilgrims could not afford. From his portrait, as well as from other 17th-century portraits (that tended to show rich people) history painters of the early 19th century derived some ideas of costume. But they did not restrict their research to portraits of the rich, they also looked at pictures of common people in Dutch genre paintings. In romantic visions of historical scenes, the 19th-century history painters showed Pilgrim leaders in black, but others in a variety of colors. None of the dozen or so history paintings on Pilgrim themes at Pilgrim Hall Museum (the foremost collection) shows the Pilgrims uniformly in black - most wear scarlet, russet, green, ochre, grey, blue, or brown.

However, 19th century Americans became familiar with the Pilgrims through black and white stereoptype engravings, not paintings. At the same time, black clothing had become cheaper to produce and was expected for Sunday-best attire, not just among the wealthy. It was easy to imagine that the Pilgrim leaders as seen in black-and-white engravings were dressed in a way that was nearly familiar.

And, yes, they did call themselves "Pilgrims."

Almost as frequent as remarks about the color of their clothes are the website assertions that these colonists did not call themselves "Pilgrims." James Loewen, in "The Truth About the First Thanksgiving," writes that "no one even called them 'Pilgrims' until the 1870s."

This sort of belief is derived from a common misconception that because the manuscript of William Bradford's journal "Of Plymouth Plantation" was lost from the late 18th until the mid 19th century, no one was familiar, until the rediscovery, with his famous phrase, "They knew they were Pilgrims." The discovery of that phrase is thought to have appealed strongly to the Victorian imagination and to have led to the term "Pilgrims" as a designation for the Plymouth colonists. Bradford, however, was not the first to apply the name in print to these colonists - that was Robert Cushman in 1622 (in the book now called Mourt's Relation). Bradford's own words were excerpted and published by Nathaniel Morton in New England's Memorial, first printed in 1669 (and reprinted in 1721, 1772, and twice in 1826). The term Pilgrim, never forgotten, was used repeatedly in the later 18th century and throughout the 19th century, at celebrations in Plymouth that attracted attention throughout New England if not farther. If Mr. Loewen thinks the word "Pilgrim" was not applied to these people before the 1870's, one wonders what he thinks the local worthies of Plymouth were doing when in 1820 they founded the Pilgrim Society.

The Plymouth colonists considered themselves and all other earnest Christians to be on an earthly pilgrimage to a heavenly goal. Most of them were serious about their faith and puzzled by the presence among them of a few who demonstratively were not. Referring to themselves in that context they used the New Testament image expressed in print by Robert Cushman in 1622: "But now we are all in all places strangers and pilgrims, travelers and sojourners [...]" The full Bible citation, which these people knew and recognized as a text that gave re-assuring self-identification, was this (Hebrews 11:13-16, Geneva translation, 1560):

"All these dyed in the faith, and receiued not the promises, but sawe them a farre of[f], and beleued them, and receiued them thankefully, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrimes on the earth. For they that say suche things, declare plainely that they seke a countrey. And if they had bene mindeful of that countrey, from whence they came out, they had leasure to haue returned. But now they desire a better, that is an heauenlie: wherefore God is not ashamed of them to be called their God: for he hathe prepared for them a citie."

The foregoing unifying phrase - strangers and pilgrims on the earth - is misunderstood as a dichotomy in George Willison's book Saints and Strangers (New York: Reynall & Hitchcock, 1945). Willison�s Hegelian analysis of Pilgrim history as a conflict between religious fanatics he calls "saints" and disinterested, economically motivated opponents to them, whom he identifies as "strangers," has become a rarely questioned presumed truth, never doubted on the internet. It is basic to Willison's dismissive interpretation of the Mayflower Compact as an instrument of minority control. For Willison, the dialectical tension was resolved by a happy synthesis that bore similarities to the democratic triumph of the American common man over tyranny at the end of World War II. Willison was speaking to people who saw themselves in his description of the Pilgrims, as people who "were valiantly engaged [...] in a desperate struggle for a better order of things, for a more generous measure of freedom for all men, for a higher and nobler conception of life based upon recognition of the intrinsic worth and dignity of the individual." Stirring words, they introduce Willison�s description of the process of conflict that was for him the meaning of being a Pilgrim.

For the Pilgrims themselves, in specific contexts other identifying terms were useful. In their application to move to Leiden, they said they were members of the Christian Reformed religion - thus indicating that they were the sort of people Leiden wanted as immigrants. Distinguishing themselves from Puritans who stayed in the Church of England, they called themselves Separatists. In New England, for legal purposes connected with rights to distribution of the common property and land, the colonists referred to anyone who had arrived before the 1627 division as "Old Comers" or "First Comers." Their general self-identification, however, was "pilgrims" in the New Testament sense. Their first use of the term in America is seen in the name given the first child born in the colony - Peregrine White. "Peregrine" comes from the Latin peregrinus meaning "pilgrim" or "stranger."

[1]Mourt's Relation, published in cooperation with Plimoth Plantation by Applewood Books, Bedford MA, Edited by Dwight B. Heath from the original text of 1622 and copyright 1963 by Dwight B. Heath, p. 82.

[2]Of Plymouth Plantation 1620-1647 by William Bradford. A new edition by Samuel Eliot Morison; First published Sept. 19, 1952; 21st printing Jan. 2001, p. 90.

Thanksgiving on the Net: Roast Bull with Cranberry Sauce Part 2

The Fake Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1623

The invented secular harvest festival augmented by the redirection of thanks towards the Indians and the assertion that "Pilgrims" was a name not used by the colonists, has become widely accepted. What's to be done? Fake it! Instead of simply pointing out that this version of the past fails to account for the Pilgrims' habitual piety and is thoroughly inconsistent with the documentary evidence, someone has felt it necessary to invent a document that replaces the 1621 purported non-thanksgiving with a celebration that does include all the sentiments and specifications that Winslow's description lacks. Many websites whose authors would like to maintain an emphasis on the Pilgrims' religious attitudes to support their own, quite different convictions now tell a fake story instead.

The cute text, widely circulated on internet sites (or excerpted, for example), is: "William Bradford's Thanksgiving Proclamation (1623)

Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.

Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.

— William Bradford Ye Governor of Ye Colony"

["Ravages of the savages" indeed! Ye, ye, ye, ye!]

This is demonstrably spurious, as my friend Jim Baker pointed out in 1999. His remarks are repeated by various people - usually without credit to Baker - Dennis Rupert, for example.

The false proclamation does not appear in any 17th-century source - not in Bradford, not in Winslow, not in Morton's New England's Memorial, not anywhere. Internal evidence suggests it is a 20th-century fraud. No mention of Plymouth Rock exists before it was pointed out in the mid-18th century, and the term "great Father" (for God) is a 19th-century romantic quasi-Native term that Bradford never used in his acknowledged writings. There are further anachronisms. For example, in 1623 there was no pastor in Plymouth Colony. Pastor John Robinson was still in Leiden, so services were led by the deacon, Elder William Brewster. William Bradford never referred to himself as "your magistrate" in years when he was governor. Bradford dated documents "in the year of our Lord" - sometimes adding the year of the monarch's reign. He never referred to landing on Plymouth Rock (not even as "Pilgrim Rock") and certainly did not use it as a date-base. The Pilgrims did not imagine themselves as seeking "freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience." They wanted freedom to worship according to their interpretation of biblical commands, which they thought was exclusively correct - and correct externally to any dictates of their own consciences. Finally, it's amusing that the 29th of November 1623 (Old Style) was not a Thursday but a Saturday (according to the tables in H. Grotefend's Taschenbuch der Zeitrechnung des Deutschen Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (ed. Th. Ulrich, Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1960).

While it is often impossible to locate the ancient origin of such internet myths, this fraud is relatively recent. Samuel Eliot Morison was unaware of it when editing Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation (New York: Knopf, 1952); Eugene Aubrey Stratton does not mention it in his Plymouth Colony, Its History & People, 1620-1691 (Salt Lake City: Ancestry Publishing, 1986). I have not discovered whether it appears anywhere before it made its way into William J. Federer's America's God and Country: An Encyclopedia of Quotations (Coppel, TX: Fame, 1994) and the source Federer gives - David Barton's The Myth of Separation (Aledo TX: Wallbuilder Press, 1991), p. 86. The text has been dropped from recent editions of Barton's book, but that doesn't put an end to repetition of the nonsense, especially on internet sites. A request to David Barton for information on this remains unanswered. On Barton's historical inventiveness, see:

Rob Boston, "Sects, Lies and Videotape: Who Is David Barton, And Why Is He Saying Such Awful Things About Separation of Church And State?" (Originally published in Church & State, 46, Nr. 4, April 1993, pp. 8-12).

Rob Boston, "David Barton's 'Christian Nation' Myth Factory Admits Its Products Have Been Defective." (Originally published in Church & State, 49, No. 7, July/August 1996, pp. 11-13).

Jim Allison, "An Index to Factual Information About David Barton And His Books".

Nicholas P. Miller, "Wallbuilders or Mythbuilders".

That people stressing the religious attitude of the Pilgrims use this invented 1623 "Thanksgiving Proclamation" is ironic. They might have been satisfied with the truth. The 1621 event did express the Pilgrims' religious attitude of thankfulness for God's providence and therefore should be adequate for their modern purposes. Moreover, in the summer of 1623 the Pilgrims held another special day of thanksgiving to God when they considered that their prayers for rain were answered, a drought ended, and their crops were saved. It wasn't in November and no stirring proclamation is preserved. Yet the "secular" interpretive ignorance that denies that the 1621 event was a thanksgiving had triumphed to the extent that someone from among the fundamentally disgruntled must have thought it clever to fight back. It is another question entirely, what the relation of the Pilgrims' religious attitude bears to modern understanding, that would make it urgent to use faked evidence to prove the Pilgrims were thanking God. Obviously the Pilgrims were religious - but what has this to do with anything other than an honest understanding of the past? Their religiosity scarcely provides support for any particular doctrinal viewpoint now; and no one is likely to become religious because it has been proven that the Pilgrims were.

Bartonis interest is to paint a picture of America as a particular sort of Christian nation since the beginning of its colonization. To make the Pilgrims even more religious than is indicated by their own words is dishonest. Removing the spurious quotation is a commendable step in the right direction. Considering that the Pilgrims interpreted their religion to mean that the Christian community bore responsibility to treat the Indians with respect and legal equality (see my book Indian Deeds, Land Transactions in Plymouth Colony, 1620-1699 (Boston: NEHGS, 2002)); noticing that the Pilgrims' laws proclaim that the community bore responsibility for the care of widows, orphans, the poor, and the infirm; and discovering that the Pilgrims' minister John Robinson argued in favor of cautious religious toleration and asserted that the church had no special authority over the magistrate, which he said was required to deal equitably with non-believers as well as believers, I'd be happy to see such Christian principles applied to modern America. Good luck to Mr. Barton and his colleagues in ensuring this happens!

The Libertarian's First Thanksgiving

Fred E. Foldvary has picked up the false 1623 date eagerly and given it a different twist. "The rains came and the harvest was saved. It is logical to surmise that the Pilgrims saw this as a sign that God blessed their new economic system, because Governor Bradford proclaimed November 29, 1623, as a Day of Thanksgiving." That's the opinion of Foldvary, Editor (1998) of The Progress Report and Lecturer in Economics, Santa Clara University.

So - the Pilgrims weren't thankful to God for a bounteous harvest as such, nor were they expressing gratitude to the Indians for help received. They were congratulating themselves on the discovery of the benefits of individualist capitalism!

The Ludwig von Mises Institute in 1999 published Richard J. Maybury's article "The Great Thanksgiving Hoax" (originally seen in The Free Market, November, 1985). Maybury (self-styled business and economic analyst) wants to correct our idealized view of the Pilgrims: "[T]he harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves." [...] "they refused to work in the fields. They preferred instead to steal food." [...] "The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first 'Thanksgiving' was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men." Then it all changed: "in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines." [...] "Before these free markets were established, the colonists had nothing for which to be thankful." [...] "Thus the real reason for Thanksgiving, deleted from the official story, is: Socialism does not work; the one and only source of abundance is free markets, and we thank God we live in a country where we can have them." So there you have it - neither God's providence nor helpful Indians, just materialistic private profit.

The theme recurs in numerous imitative articles online. In 2004, Gary M. Galles, professor of economics at Pepperdine University, ended his praise of Pilgrim property with a political admonition: "Though we have incomparably more than they did, we can learn much from their 'way of thanksgiving.' But we should also remember that our material blessings are the fruits of America's system of private-property rights and the liberties they ensure, including the freedom to choose our employment and spend money as we see fit. Those rights are under constant assault today, from limits on people's ability to contract as they wish, especially in labor relationships, to abuses of government's eminent domain." Robert Sheridan, who teaches constitutional law at the San Francisco Law School, quotes the full text (from the San Francisco Chronicle) and expertly dissects Galles' underlying assumptions about modern society, in his own article "Thanksgiving Nonsense and Propaganda".

A slightly abbreviated version of Galles' remarks is published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

The Independent Institute's website has a similar article that was published for Thanksgiving in 2004 in the Charlotte Observer and in the San Diego Union-Tribune. "The economic incentives provided by private competitive markets where people are left free to make their own choices make bountiful feasts possible," says Benjamin Powell, professor of economics at San Jose State University. "That's the real lesson of Thanksgiving."

Elaborating on Maybury's view of Thanksgiving, Newsmax columnist Geoff Metcalf becomes even more definite: "[A]n economic system which grants the lazy and the shiftless some 'right' to prosper off the looted fruits of another man's labor, under the guise of enforced 'compassion,' will inevitably descend into envy, theft, squalor, and starvation. Though many would still incrementally impose on us some new variant of the 'noble socialist experiment,' this is still at heart a free country with a bedrock respect for the sanctity of private property - and a land bounteous precisely because it's free. It's for that we give thanks - the corn and beans and turkey serving as mere symbols of that true and underlying blessing - on the fourth Thursday of each November."

True history? Does it make any difference? As Kamensky says, "It's true to its purposes."

For the purposes of historical accuracy, nevertheless, I think it's worth mentioning that the Pilgrims' initial system of working the land by changing field assignments each year had nothing at all to do with socialism - it was the consequence of an early and unrestrained form of capitalism whereby the colony, its products, and the colonists' productive labor were absolutely and entirely mortgaged to the London investors, whose loans had to be paid off before any of the Pilgrim colonists could own free-hold property. The colony as a whole and its colonists were indentured. Their contract is now lost; probably it was among the missing first 338 pages of William Bradford's letter-book. The shift away from rotating field assignments did not result in private property, just a modification of the organization of the indentured labor. Private real property came for these colonists in 1627 when a small group among the colonists - the "Purchasers" - bought the debt and the responsibility to pay it off. A temporary monopoly on the fur trade was reserved to them as compensation for their higher personal responsibility and financial exposure.

A Cornucopia of Grievances

So if Thanksgiving was not about the discovery of private property's profitability, not about help offered to the colonists by the Wampanoag Indians, not about God's providence - what was it?

"The first day of thanksgiving took place in 1637 amidst the war against the Pequots. 700 men, women, and children of the Pequot tribe were gathered for their annual green corn dance on what is now Groton, Connecticut. Dutch and English mercenaries surrounded the camp and proceeded to shoot, stab, butcher and burn alive all 700 people. The next day the Massachusetts Bay Colony held a feast in celebration and the governor declared 'a day of thanksgiving.' In the ensuing madness of the Indian extermination, natives were scalped, burned, mutilated and sold into slavery, and a feast was held in celebration every time a successful massacre took place. The killing frenzy got so bad that even the Churches of Manhattan announced a day of 'thanksgiving' to celebrate victory over the 'heathen savages,' and many celebrated by kicking the severed heads of Pequot people through the streets like soccer balls." So says Tristam Ahtone, at 13Moon.com. There were preliminary events before this celebration of atrocity, according to Ahtone. Although the 1621 harvest festival in Plymouth was not in his opinion a thanksgiving, he informs us that "Two years later the English invited a number of tribes to a feast 'symbolizing eternal friendship.' The English offered food and drink, and two hundred Indians dropped dead from unknown poison." This echoes the words of James Loewen (quoted by Jackie Alan Giuliano in "Give Thanks - Un-Turkey Truths"): "The British offered a toast 'symbolizing eternal friendship,' whereupon the chief, his family, advisors, and two hundred followers dropped dead of poison." Loewen places this event in Virginia.

Ahtone's remarks connecting the "First Thanksgiving" with the Pequot War are frequently copied or excerpted, with slight variations. Sometimes it's not Massachusetts Bay responsible, but the Pilgrims. "The next day, the English governor William Bradford declared 'a day of Thanksgiving', thanking God that they had eliminated the Indians, opening Pequot land for white settlement." That proclamation was repeated each year for the next century." This was posted by "Ecuanduero" on the Discovery Channel.com, in 2003.

William Loren Katz, author of Black Indians, A Hidden Heritage, writes that, "In 1637 Governor Bradford, who saw his colonists locked in mortal combat with dangerous Native Americans, ordered his militia to conduct a night attack on the sleeping men women and children of a Pequot Indian village. To Bradford, a devout Christian, the massacre was imbued with religious meaning."

Clearly we should realize that these people were not nice, but just exactly how bad? "Not even Charles Manson and Jim Jones combined could compare with that murderous Doomsday cult — the Pilgrims," says a website article called "The Pilgrims, Children of the Devil: Puritan Doomsday Cult Plunders Paradise." The site calls itself the Common Sense Almanac, Progressive Pages (and claims to be a project of the Center for Media and Democracy).

The story forms the foundation for stirring generalizations. "It is a serious mistake to practice holidays based on a false history," one site admonishes us. "The young people find out on their own that they are involved in a lie, and it makes them rage with fury and contempt. [...]It should surprise no one that after raising children honoring the memory of the Pilgrim fathers, that they grow up to hate freedom as much as the Forefathers did. It should surprise no one that a society that worships the Pilgrims �� who ruthlessly scalped the Indians (teaching them how to do it), who indiscriminately torched Indian villages, and murdered their women, children and elders in the precursors of total war, and holocaust — should produce children who grow up to join street gangs, and who seek the experience of murdering other human beings for kicks."

The story told by Ahtone, Katz, and others is derived from a report that surfaced in the 1980's. "According to William B. Newell, a Penobscot Indian and former chairman of the anthropology department at the University of Connecticut, the first official Thanksgiving Day commemorated the massacre of 700 Indian men, women and children during one of their religious ceremonies. [...]"

This version in First Nations News is from an article by Karen Gullo that first appeared in Vegetarian Times, 1982. Newell's material is quoted over and over. Newell, who is described in one site as having degrees from two universities [wow! Fancy that!], was convinced about the solidity of his research: ""My research is authentic because it is documentary," Newell said. "You can't get anything more accurate than that because it is first hand. It is not hearsay." http://www.s6k.com/real/thankstaking.htm

What's not authentic is the claim that William Newell was head of the anthropology department at the University of Connecticut, whose faculty cannot recall him at all. When the department was founded in 1971, Newell was 79 years old. See the letter by department chair Jocelyn Linnekin. And what is completely untrue is the idea that the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony participated in the 1637 Pequot massacre. Although asked to send military assistance, the Plymouth court did not respond until two weeks after the slaughter had been carried out by a mixed force of soldiers from Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, and the Narragansett tribe (no "Dutch and English mercenaries"). As Bradford himself reports, the Pilgrims were told their aid was too little, too late; they could stay home. (See my book,

Pilgrim Edward Winslow: New England's First International Diplomat (Boston: NEHGS, 2004), pp. 164-168.)

Is this important? Or is the lie "true to its purposes"?

Thanksgiving on the Net: Roast Bull with Cranberry Sauce Part 3

The National Day of Mourning

The purposes can best be understood as fitting in with the description of the Pilgrims that animates the so-called National Day of Mourning sponsored by the United American Indians of New England. "The pilgrims (who did not even call themselves pilgrims)" [yes, that again] "did not come here seeking religious freedom; they already had that in Holland. They came here as part of a commercial venture. They introduced sexism, racism, anti-lesbian and gay bigotry, jails, and the class system to these shores. One of the very first things they did when they arrived on Cape Cod — before they even made it to Plymouth — was to rob Wampanoag graves at Corn Hill and steal as much of the Indians' winter provisions of corn and beans as they were able to carry. [...] The first official "Day of Thanksgiving" was proclaimed in 1637 by Governor Winthrop. He did so to celebrate the safe return of men from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who had gone to Mystic Connecticut to participate in the massacre of over 700 Pequot women, children, and men."

This characterization of the Pilgrims was written in 2003 by UAINE leaders Mahtowin Munro and Mooanum James, whose father Frank James (Wamsutta) made the 1970 protest speech that started the Day of Mourning at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Wamsutta spoke out against decades of inequality in words historically vague and not entirely accurate. He clearly announced the continued presence of Wampanoag Indians to a society that he thought had too often treated them as bygone relics. But his measured anger at real injustice bore little of the demonizing divisiveness championed by UAINE in later years.

From the repetition of Mahtowin Munro's and Mooanum James' remarks in countless websites associated with Native American interests, it would appear that the Wampanoag tribes consider themselves best represented by the UAINE protests. The words of Russell Peters published by Pilgrim Hall Museum contradict this.

Russell Peters, A Wampanoag leader, died in 2002. Who was he? "Mr. Peters [M.A., Harvard] has been involved in Native American issues at a state, local and national level. He [was] the President of the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Tribal Council, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1976 to 1984, a member of the Harvard Peabody Museum Native American Repatriation Committee, a member of the White House Conference on Federal Recognition in 1995 and 1996, a board member of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, a board member of the Pilgrim Society, and the author of Wampanoags of Mashpee (Nimrod Press), Clambake (Lerner Publications), and Regalia (Sundance Press)." Russell Peters expressed regret at the deterioration of the social potential of the Day of Mourning. "While the day of mourning has served to focus attention on past injustice to the Native American cause, it has, in recent years, been orchestrated by a group calling themselves the United American Indians of New England. This group has tenuous ties to any of the local tribes, and is composed primarily of non-Indians. To date, they have refused several invitations to meet with the Wampanoag Indian tribal councils in Mashpee or in Gay Head. Once again, we, as Wampanoags, find our voices and concerns cast aside in the activities surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday in Plymouth, this time, ironically, by a group purporting to represent our interests."

The 1970 event at which Wamsutta spoke was organized by the American Indian Movement, whose leader Russell Means wrote, in his autobiography Where White Men Fear to Tread (with Marvin J. Wolf, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), "Americans today believe that Thanksgiving celebrates a bountiful harvest, but that is not so. By 1970, the Wampanoag had turned up a copy of a Thanksgiving proclamation made by the governor to the colony. The text revealed the ugly truth: After a colonial militia had returned from murdering the men, women, and children of an Indian village, the governor proclaimed a holiday and feast to give thanks for the massacre. He also encouraged other colonies to do likewise - in other words, every autumn after the crops are in, go kill Indians and celebrate your murders with a feast. In November 1970, their descendants returned to Plymouth to publicize the true story of Thanksgiving and, along with about two hundred other Indians from around the country, to observe a national day of Indian mourning."

One of the odder results of the "Day of Mourning" is the appearance in a couple of Thanksgiving Day sermons of the unfounded claim that some Pilgrims considered having a day of mourning to commemorate those who had died the previous winter, but that instead they chose to thank God for their continued preservation. This colonization of the protest rhetoric can be seen at Presbyterian Warren [excerpted at] Trinity Sermons.

Genocide

That's a mild contrast to Mitchel Cohen's "Why I Hate Thanksgiving" (2003), now re-duplicated incessantly. "First, the genocide. Then the suppression of all discussion about it. What do Indian people find to be Thankful for in this America? What does anyone have to be Thankful for in the genocide of the Indians, that this 'holyday' commemorates? [...] all the things we have to be thankful for have nothing at all to do with the Pilgrims, nothing at all to do with Amerikan history, and everything to do with the alternative, anarcho-communist lives the Indian peoples led, before they were massacred by the colonists, in the name of privatization of property and the lust for gold and labor. Yes, I am an American. But I am an American in revolt. I am revolted by the holiday known as Thanksgiving. [...] I want to go back in time to when people lived communally, before the colonists' Christian god was brought to these shores to sanctify their terrorism, their slavery, their hatred of children, their oppression of women, their holocausts. But that is impossible. So all I look forward to [is] the utter destruction of the apparatus of death known as Amerika � not the people, not the beautiful land, but the machinery, the State, the capitalism, the Christianity and all that it stands for. I look forward to a future where I will have children with Amerika, and ... they will be the new Indians." See, for some sanity, Guenter Lewy's "Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?"

Mr. Cohen is co-editor of "Green Politix," the national newspaper of the Greens/Greens Party USA. He's annoyed. (Who wouldn't be - loving nature and living in Brooklyn?) He's also a romantic with an ideal view of Natives living in a pristine environment, rather like the peaceful, ecologically wonderful place imagined by Plimoth Plantation's Anthony Pollard (known as Nanepashemet). "The Wampanoag way of life fostered a harmonious relationship between the People and their natural environment, both physical and spiritual. [...] fighting was just part of the search for harmony when conditions had become intolerable or justice was denied."

Lies My Teacher�s Telling Me Now

The annual clamor of the aggrieved finds significant expression in website materials aimed at providing school teachers with a balanced (meaning non-colonial) view of Thanksgiving. One of the most important and widely copied articles is an introduction to "Teaching About Thanksgiving" written by Chuck Larson of the Tacoma School District.

Originally issued in 1986 by the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Washington, "Teaching About Thanksgiving" is no longer available from that State. It continues to be distributed by the Fourth World Documentation Project and the Center for World Indigenous Studies, among others. I hope it has been withdrawn by the state in response to the withering criticism it received from Caleb Johnson, whose Mayflower topics website presents much documentary material about the Pilgrims.

"The author of the 'Fourth World Documentation Project' lesson plan on Thanksgiving, published all over the internet as well as distributed in printed form, claims to have a strong background in history," writes Johnson. "But nearly every sentence of the entire lesson plan has a significant factual error, or is simply story-telling (making up stories and details to fit within a set framework of given historical facts)." Johnson's detailed, devastating line-by-line corrections attracted the attention of the New York Times. I have seen only one website for teachers that carries the Larson material and that also includes a reference to Johnson's work, and then only as if to provide an alternative to the nonsense they continue to present as the main material. But Johnson definitively destroyed the credibility of the lesson plan - why keep on providing it? Are the lies true to some purpose?

Mentioning that Johnson's work is worth looking at is, nonetheless, at least more generous than the ad hominem attack on Johnson that was mounted by Jamie McKenzie of the Bellingham, Washington, School District.

McKenzie complained in 1996 that Caleb Johnson did not list his own academic credentials that would suggest his website should be considered authoritative. Johnson had, after all, cast doubt on the value of Larson's "strong background in history." McKenzie, on the other hand, did not take the time to compare Johnson's careful quotations of source materials with the slipshod work of his academically qualified colleague down in Tacoma. (Although Johnson's essays are typically not footnoted, having only a source list at the end, Johnson has taken the trouble to re-publish the texts of many of the original documents on his site.) But McKenzie's major complaint in 1996 was that the internet in general did not provide much information about Thanksgiving, and that scholars with credentials were not creating the sites. There's certainly more now, and some of it is provided by professors. If one has doubts about the professor of anthropology William B. Newell, who's been forgotten by the University of Connecticut, there's the University of Colorado's Professor of Ethnic Studies, Ward Churchill, asking us, "what is it we're supposed to be so thankful for? Does anyone really expect us to give thanks for the fact that soon after the Pilgrim Fathers regained their strength, they set out to dispossess and exterminate the very Indians who had fed them that first winter? Are we to express our gratitude for the colonists' 1637 massacre of the Pequots at Mystic, Conn., or their rhetoric justifying the butchery by comparing Indians to 'rats and mice and swarms of lice'"?

And there's the late Professor James Deetz, who thought Thanksgiving only became associated with the Pilgrims around 1900, evidently disregarding the implications of Winslow Homer's famous Thanksgiving Day illustrations in Harper's Weekly, Nov. 27, 1858, Dec. 1, 1860, Nov. 29, 1862, and Dec. 3, 1864, as well as Thomas Nast's "Thanksgiving Day, 1863" (published as a double-page center illustration in Harper's Weekly, Dec. 5, 1863). Nast includes a vignette in the lower right corner labelled "country," whose main praying figure is recognizably derived from the representation of the Pilgrims' minister John Robinson in Robert Weir's painting "The Embarkation of the Pilgrims," completed in 1843 in the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington.

Despite its filiopietistic motivations, the huge desert of misinformation has left Caleb Johnson's work as one of a small number of oases of calm study, equalling the level of the so-called Plymouth Colony Archive Project established by James Deetz, Patricia Scott Deetz, and Christopher Fennell (which, however, despite valuable information about the colony, says nothing significant about Thanksgiving).

McKenzie also objects to Johnson�s "failing to mention some of the information which other sites provide about the Pilgrims taking the Native American corn and digging up and taking things from grave sites." In fact, Johnson publishes all the evidence there is about those issues. Because no evidence supports the inflated claims, McKenzie thinks that the Pilgrims have been "sanitized."

Unsanitized would be the word for Brenda Francis's version. She says that she "read on Binghamton University's website that the Pilgrims were starving and even went so far to dig up some remains of the Wampanoag people and eat them as a means to survival."

This directly contradicts William Bradford, who, after repeating the second-hand rumor that some Spanish colonists had been reduced to eating "dogs, toads, and dead men," proclaims that "From these extremities the Lord in his goodness kept these his people [the Pilgrims], and in their great wants preserved both their lives and healths; let his name have the praise." (Bradford's History "Of Plimoth Plantation" (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1901), p. 165: [subscribers].

The Binghamton site that is Brenda Francis' source has a student newspaper article (Nov. 21, 2003) by Rachel Kalina, who relays that the "Pilgrims were able to survive their first winter partially because of guidance by the natives and because they dug up the deceased Wampanoags to eat the corn offerings in the graves." That's not quite the same as necro-cannibalism.

Quoting from James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 91, the teacher of a course in "Debunking and Dissent" - Colby Glass of Palo Alto College (TX), maintains that "...the Pilgrims continued to rob graves for years."

There are three points of interest here: first, Winslow's description of examining graves (our only source of information) does not support these assertions; second, the corn found by the Pilgrims was not found in graves; third, I'm unaware of any evidence so far found to indicate that corn was included in graves on Cape Cod at all. Let alone that the Pilgrims were cannibals!

In the book now called Mourt's Relation, Edward Winslow wrote that the Pilgrims, exploring, found a path that took them to "certain heaps of sand, one whereof was covered with old mats, and had a wooden thing like a mortar whelmed on the top of it, and an earthen pot laid in a little hole at the end thereof. We, musing what it might be, digged and found a bow, and, as we thought, arrows, but they were rotten. We supposed there were many other things, but because we deemed them graves, we put in the bow again and made it up as it was, and left the rest untouched, because we thought it would be odious unto them to ransack their sepulchres." Passing through several fields recently tended, they came upon a house, from which they removed a European ship's kettle. Next to the house was a heap of sand, which when excavated yielded two baskets filled with Indian corn. One contained thirty six ears, "some yellow, and some red, and others mixed with blue [...] The basket was round, and narrow at the top; it held about three or four bushels." Filling the kettle with loose corn, two of the Pilgrims suspended it on a stick and carried it away. The rest of the corn they re-buried. Two or three days later, they returned for the remaining corn, also finding and taking some beans and more corn, totaling around ten bushels. The following morning they found a much larger mound, covered with boards. It turned out to be the grave of a man with blond hair, whose shroud was a "sailor's canvas cassock" and who was wearing a "pair of cloth breeches." The body was accompanied by a "knife, a packneedle, and two or three iron things." Clearly this was the body of a European. An infant's body was buried together with this man. Reburying the bodies (as was customary in Europe), they continued to look for corn but found nothing else but graves, which, considering their desire not to "ransack their sepulchres," they presumably did not disturb once it was clear the mounds did not contain baskets of corn. Having learned to recognize graves, three days later the Pilgrims avoided disturbing a cemetery. They "found a burying place, one part whereof was encompassed with a large palisade, like a churchyard [...] Within it was full of graves [...] yet we digged none of them up, but only viewed them and went our way." Mourt's Relation (1622) has been republished numerous times. Caleb Johnson has made it available online at Mayflower History.com.

Winslow's words are our only evidence. Nothing impels us to doubt his information that the Pilgrims opened the grave of a European sailor and his child, reburying them after removing from the grave a few items that to a European would not have been considered grave offerings having any symbolic significance. The Pilgrims exhibited memorable sensitivity in refraining from disturbing Indian graves, once they learned to recognize them. They did not dig up graves in order to eat corn buried as grave offerings. There is no indication they removed corn from any graves. The corn was found in baskets whose shape when packed in earth would result in domed pit spaces. There is nothing to support the idea that corn was placed in graves as offerings, although small gifts of corn have been found in graves excavated by archaeologists working hundreds of miles away (the American southwest and Peru, for example).

The amount the Pilgrims found in storage baskets - two or three bushels in the first, and three or four in the second - is a large, bulky quantity. From 1986-1991, I was Chief Curator of Plimoth Plantation. The collections at that time included all the archaeological material from excavations of burial sites in the Plymouth Colony area carried out by Harry Hornblower II and James Deetz, and others with whom they worked. I carried out a detailed examination of the thousands of items in the collections, specifically looking for corn - in hopes of having it studied scientifically so we could replicate the exact type of corn growing in the area in the early 17th century. Although some floral remains had been saved from excavations that included burial sites, there was no corn, not a single kernel. Had it been the practice to bury bushels of corn as grave offerings, surely there would have been some in the materials carefully excavated from these ten Native burials. There was nothing. Neither was any discovery of corn recorded in the careful notebooks kept by Hornblower (there were no Deetz notebooks present, and no published reports). This absence is consistent with the absence of corn among grave goods from several Cape Cod Native burials, recently transferred to Native authorities for reburial, from the Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts.

Throughout the accounts of these discoveries of storage baskets of Indian corn, Winslow repeats the intention to try to meet the Indian owners and negotiate repayment for the corn that had been taken That was an intention to provide compensation for what the Pilgrims understood would be considered theft if no payment were made. (During the first year, Pilgrims stole corn; Indians stole abandoned tools.) Establishing that neither side would steal from the other was an important part of early negotiation between them. Attempts to locate the specific owner of the corn were ultimately successful and repayment was made (see Pilgrim Edward Winslow, p. 36).

In "Deconstructing the Myths of 'The First Thanksgiving,'" Judy Dow and Beverly Slapin contradict the documentary evidence. They base their comments largely on information provided to them by Margaret Bruchac, an "Abanaki scholar" working in collaboration with Plimoth Plantation's Wampanoag Indian Program. "There is no record that restitution was ever made for the stolen corn, and the Wampanoag did not soon forget the colonists� ransacking of Indian graves, including that of Massasoit's mother."

One may surmise that Bruchac was confused in making the reference to the grave of Massasoit's mother, which is undocumented. Probably what is meant is the removal later of two bearskin rugs from over the grave of the mother of Chickatabut, sachem of the Massachusetts (see my book Indian Deeds, p. 13). It is meretriciously clever, nonetheless, to turn Winslow's statement of respect for the Indians and their graves into a pronouncement about the Wampanoags' long memory of "the colonists' ransacking of Indian graves." The up-to-date construction of "memory" and "oral history" to fit the needs of current political concerns is blatant.

Dow and Slapin end their deconstruction with the remark that "As currently celebrated in this country, "Thanksgiving" is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship."

Alternatively, Russell Peters said, "The time is long overdue for the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags to renew a meaningful dialogue about our past and look towards a more honest future."

Does it matter what of this is true? Was that the wrong question? Who do we want to be in the ever-changing Now? Intrepid demolishers of straw-man myths? Inventors of new myths to serve new political purposes? Historians?

#History #Thanksgiving #Religion #America

6 notes · View notes

the--blackdahlia · 6 years ago

Text

Armageddon Chapter 12 (Dean x Reader)

Title: Armageddon Chapter 1

Summary: Space. The Final Frontier. But for Dean Winchester, space was the last place he thought he would ever go. His family life isn’t perfect, his job isn’t ideal, but he has (Y/n), the woman he loves. Sam Winchester never thought his life would turn out the way it did. He is divorced, alone, and his brother most likely hates him. Working for NASA was not going to be easy. But, when a threat to the earth has him calling on his family for help, what can he do? can Sam and Dean push past his family issues to keep the Earth spinning another day? Based on the movie of the same name.

Pairings: Dean x Reader; Sam x Jessica

Warnings For this Chapter: Some angst, some language. I think that's about it.

Song for this chapter: Star Trek Movie Theme

Launch Day

Dean paced nervously in the small airport. (Y/n) had gone to the restroom, but she was taking longer than she usually does. John was to scared to approach Dean, he wasn’t sure what to say to his oldest son. Dean breathed a sigh of relief when (Y/n) emerged.

“Hey, are you okay?” He asked. “You took awhile. I thought you were going to miss me getting on the plane…”

“I’m fine, there was a long line, no biggie.” She caressed his cheek. “Go sit down and put on your walkman, you got your flying mix in there, I put it in this morning,” she gave him a soft kiss.

“God, what would I do without you?” He smiled and kissed her.

(Y/n) kissed him deeper this time, she put everything she had in her kiss, “You better come back to me Winchester, you hear me?”

“I will. Promise.” He smiled. “And I’ll bring back Sam before he decides to marry a Vulcan.” (Y/n) laughed. “Are you sure they won’t let me sneak you on the plane with me? I don’t want to fly alone…”

“You’re not alone. You’ll have Sam.” She motioned over to him. Sam was standing off to the side alone. Everyone else had someone to say goodbye to. Sam had held out hope that maybe Jessica would change her mind and bring Ashton to say by to him, but there was nothing. John made his way to Sam.

“You going to be ok up there?” He rocked on his heels as he crossed his arms looking at his son.

“Yeah. I’m not the one scared of flying.” Sam laughed. “There just better not be any killer klowns from outer space up there. Or you guys are on your own.”

“I remember when that movie freaked you out,” John chuckled. “you crawled into Dean's bed for… what was I it? A month?”

“I’m not sure.” Sam said awkwardly. “I just know clowns are literally the spawn of the devil.”

“Sam, I'm sorry. I should have been a better father to you… and Dean, ” John croaked. “I… I was just scared that you were going to die on me at a young age and then… Your divorce happened and…” John couldn't find the words.

“Dad, you don’t have to apologize to me.” Sam patted his shoulder. “I’m okay. I promise.”

“Now if Dean will forgive me,” John sighed, “I might get to meet… nevermind…”John wasn't sure if Sam knew about (Y/n).

“Dean’s not going to keep...you know...away from you.” Sam smiled. “And you’ve got Ashton too, if Jessica will let you see him.”

“When you get back, I’m going to help you with her…” John placed a firm hand on his shoulder. “I know how much you love her and your son.”

“I do but...she really doesn’t need me dad. She’s happy without me.” Sam sighed. “It’s almost time to get on my flight.”

Dean and (Y/n) made their way towards Sam and John. Ash was kissing a busty broad who had glitter all over her body. Garth seemed to be very mellowed out. Benny looked almost relaxed as he smiled at the group. Ketch, held his head as if he was nursing a headache. John looked at his sons, and his rig crew.

“ALL of you,” He looked to Dean for a bit longer, “better come back alive, you hear me?”

“Yes sir.” They all said. Sam nodded and Dean gave a smirk.

“Dean,” John motioned for him to come over.

“Yeah?” Dean asked, going to his dad.

John said no words, all he did was take Dean in his arms and hugged him tight. John couldn’t say any words to him. at least not yet. John only hoped that Dean could feel what the hug meant.

“We’ll be back soon dad.” Dean said, hugging his dad back. “We’ll have a barbecue.”

“Oh, now that sounds good,” John let Dean go. “Go give your girl one last kiss before you’re in the air. And Dean… congrats, I know her dad would be proud to have you as a son, cuz I know I already think of her as a daughter.”

“Dad, you’re gonna make me cry in front of the guys.” Dean laughed. They weren’t on good terms yet, but they were better. They were getting there.

(Y/n) picked at the hem of her shirt, she looked nervous. She never really knew Dean to fly without her, but she was hoping Sam could keep him sane. She took a shaky breath as he walked towards her.

“Ok,” her voice broke slightly. “I love you Winchester.” She whispered as she help him tight.

“I love you (Y/L/N).” He smiled at her, holding her close. “And I’ll be back before you know it.”

(Y/n) wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him one last time. She had a small sense of dread that this might be the last time she would be kissing him. She was scared of losing him on this mission.

“I’ll make sure he comes back.” Sam said, kissing her cheek. “Thanks for everything (Y/n).”

“Pipsqueak, be safe up there, please?” (Y/n) smiled at him sadly. “You know you have to come back too, promise?” Sam just smiled and nodded.

“Time to go guys.” Benny clapped them both on the backs, leading them towards the plane. As they boarded the plane, Bobby addressed them quickly.

“Ok, Director of Cape Canaveral Chuck Shurley is going to meet you guys there and take you right to get prepped for the Launch,” He nodded his head slightly. “Now, once the rocket is over Houston Mission control will take over and we will be in constant communication. So, good luck and don’t do anything stupid ya Idjits!”

John cupped his hands around his mouth, “MY CO-PRESIDENT BETTER COME BACK SAFE!” he bellowed.

***********

Rushing through the airport with Ashton in her arms, Jessica was desperately trying to find Sam. She was able to use her old clarence thanks to Charlie who owed her a favor. She smiled when she saw John and (Y/n).

“John!” she waved and rushed to him. “Please tell me I made it in time, please?” She looked at him with pleading eyes.

“Jessica?” John asked. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought Sam was lying when he said they were sending him up,” She shook her head sadly. “I mean they never, sent him up before and we… he and I… and I said horrible things to him…” She let (Y/n) take Ashton from her arms. “I need to see him, I need to tell him I’m sorry.”

“Jess, you’re too late.” John said, motioning to the plane that was about to take off. “I’m sorry.”

“NO, no, no, no,” Jess ran her fingers through her hair, “call them back or call the plane. I have to tell him I’m here, and Ashton’s here, Please!” she clawed at John before turning to Bobby. “Bobby, please you have to find a way to let me talk to him please.”

“Jess, I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do.” Bobby sighed. “If I would’ve known you were coming, I could’ve stalled.”

“Mission control! Is there any way after the launch when you switch that you can please let him know? Please, Bobby… please?” by now tears had started to spill from her eyes.

“There’s a chance that we can have a video feed to the shuttle.” Bobby said. “We’ll figure something out Jess.” He offered her a smile.

“Thank you,” she whispered. Before she almost collapsed only to be held by John as she sobbed.

**************

Ash looked around, “was he talking about me?”

“I think he’s talking about Dean.” Benny chuckled.

“Wait...did I just get promoted?” Dean asked as they shut the door. “Didn’t I quit?” Benny laughed and patted his shoulder.

Sam took his seat hoping that Dean would sit by him. Something about having his brother close to him seemed like a good idea.

“Come sit Dean.” Sam said. Dean slid into the seat by him. “Ready?”

“I guess,” He put on his seat belt with a shaky hand. “Do you think (Y/n)’s pregnant?”

“Uh, what?” Sam asked, a little nervous now. “What makes you ask that?”

“The throwing up, the fainting, The food she’s eating, not having beer last night… I mean, she’s gotta be right?” Dean gave a small smile. “I mean… I wouldn’t mind the idea really.”

“I don’t think so…” Sam lied. “Maybe she’s just stressed about everything.”

“Maybe,” Dean leaned back and sighed. “I’m scared I’d be like dad though if she was.” Dean chuckled, and looked to Sam. “I bet I turn out be a horrible dad. I would screw up that kid so bad,” Dean sighed sadly.

At that moment a voice sounded over the PA. “Passengers, please remain seated as we prepare to take off and make our way to Cape Canaveral Florida”

“You’ll be a great dad.” Sam smiled. “Just make sure you spend more time at home than at work.”

Dean simply nodded as he placed his head phones over his ears and pressed play on his walkman. Dean began breathing calmly as the first guitar sounds of Metallica’s enter sandman, began to play.

“Dean?” Sam got his attention, “Is that Metallica?”

“It calms me down.” Dean told him. Sam just smiled and shook his head before looking out the window. The other guys were swapping stories and talking about what they were going to do after they saved the world. But not the Winchester boys. They were in their own little world.

“So, you excited to tie the knot with (Y/n)?” Sam smiled. By now the plane was in the air and they were free to move around the cabin. The plane was a small private chartered plane.

“I’m nervous, but I don’t want to be without her.” Dean asked. “Sam, can I ask some questions without upsetting you?”

“Yeah Dean, I can try,” Sam gave a small nod.

“How did you know Jess was the one?” Dean asked, feeling bad when he saw Sam cringe a little.

“If I can be honest,” Sam gave him a sad smile, “She made me feel whole. It was like… everytime we were together, I felt complete. But when I got the job at NASA… I messed it up. I missed her so much when I was in the office, that I distracted myself with work, that by the time I looked up… I lost her.” Sam closed his eyes for just a moment. “I felt and still feel like I’m drowning.”

“Sammy….” Dean felt his heart break a little. “Maybe when we get back and you’re a big hero, she’ll want you back.”

“It’s ok Dean… I know I lost her, I had her and I lost her... I will just have to see what happens next.” Sam muttered.

It wasn’t long before the plane began to descend into Kennedy Space Center where a tarmac was cleared just for them. As they got off the plane, they were greeted by a man with curly hair, an unkempt beard, glasses, and a look that he had not slept for days.

“Hello gentlemen!” he squeaked, “I am Director Shurley, and I will take you into the area where we will dress you and prep you for your shuttle ride to the asteroid.”

“Good to see you again Chuck.” Sam said, shaking his hand. Chuck looked a little surprised to see Sam there. “We won’t let you down.”

“Sam! Wow, um… are you sure you don’t want the assistant director job? I mean… we could really use you over here?” Chuck said to Sam as they were walking towards a small building far from the launchpad.

“No sir, I’m fine in Texas.” Sam smiled and walked with the others. Dean slapped him in the back of the head. “Ow! What the hell was that for?”

“You told us it was a transfer,” Dean hissed. “Not this job! What are you crazy?” Dean shook his head, “Sam this was a big Deal… hell this is a big job!”

“It’s not a big deal Dean.” Sam sighed. “They could find someone better.”

“But Sam….” Dean began but was cut off when Director Shurley began to explain the procedures.

Chuck gave everyone a nervous smile, “gentlemen, as you can see we will be sending you up on two small shuttles in order to better fit the asteroid. Now you will be divided into two groups. The commanders for the shuttles are Gabriel for the Independence, and Jo for the Freedom.” Chuck explained. “Garth, Mick, Ash, and Cas will be with Gabriel on the Independence. Sam, Dean, Benny, and Ketch will join Jo on the Freedom.” He looked at them. “Now let’s get suited up. And may God bless you.”

Forever Tags: @anathewierdo @dekahg @marvel-af-imagines @feelmyroarrrr @nanie5 @imboredsueme @gemini0410 @aiaranradnay @babypink224221 @mogaruke @xxwarhawk @sandlee44 @shatteredabby @caswinchester2000 @supernaturalwincestsblog @lauravic @mrsambroserollinsacklesmgk @teller258316 @horrorpxnk

Dean Winchester/Jensen Ackles Tags: @queenslandlover-93 @screechingartisancashbailiff @strab0 @maaryisafangirl @deathofmissjackson @hellabrothers @fandom-princess-forevermore @x-waywardaf-x @webcraft4eveh @deansgirl-1968 @2dead2function @luciathewinchestergirl @sheris532 @bobasheebaby @bella-ca @akshi8278

Supernatural Tags: @bandobsession98 @mrsdeanfuckingwinchester @fangirlsencyclopaediaofweirdness @ilovetardis @missihart23 @cloudyskylines @flamencodiva @sams-serialkiller-fetish @theas-bedtime-stories @huntingfreewill @ocholove @princessofthefandomrealm

Armageddon Tags: @thefaithfulwriter

#Armageddon #dean winchester #dean winchester x reader #dean x reader #supernatural #Jensen Ackles #fanfiction

31 notes · View notes

dumbledearme · 6 years ago

Text

chapter one

~~ read The Second Soul here ~~

It all started Monday afternoon.

Johanna spent the whole day constructing a 1/10,000-scale replica of the Empire State Building from boxes of adult diapers. It was a thing of beauty, spanning five feet at its base and towering above the cosmetics aisle, with jumbos for the foundation, lites for the observation deck, and meticulously stacked trial sizes for its iconic spire. It was almost perfect, minus one crucial detail.

“You used Neverleak,” Shelley said, eyeing her craftsmanship with a skeptical frown. “The sale’s on Stay-Tite.” Shelley was the store manager, and her slumped shoulders and dour expression were as much a part of her uniform as the blue polo shirts they all had to wear.

Johanna never wore the uniform, came in late, repeatedly and with the flimsiest of excuses; made shockingly incorrect change; even misshelved things on purpose, stocking lotions among laxatives and birth control with baby shampoo, trying as hard as she could to piss Shelley off. “I thought you said Neverleak.” She hadn’t. Shelley had been very clear on her order and Johanna had purposely made the mistake.

“Stay-Tite,” Shelley insisted, shaking her head regretfully. There was a brief but awkward silence in which she continued to shake her head and shift her eyes from Johanna to the tower and back to Johanna again.

Johanna stared blankly at her, as if completely failing to grasp what she was passive-aggressively implying. “What?” she said finally. “You mean you want me to do it over?”

“It’s just that you used Neverleak,” Shelley repeated.

“No problem, Shell.” Johanna kicked a single box from the tower’s foundation and, in an instant, the whole magnificent structure was cascading down around them, sending a tidal wave of diapers crashing across the floor, boxes caroming off the legs of startled customers, skidding as far as the automatic door, which slid open, letting in a rush of August heat.

Shelley’s face turned red and Johanna could see how much the woman hated her. And yet, no matter how incompetent Johanna pretended to be, Shelley stubbornly kept her on the payroll.

It was next to impossible for Johanna to get fired from Smart Aid. Any other employee would’ve been out the door a dozen minor infractions ago. But Johanna’s dad owned every single Smart Aid in Florida and had insisted that she’d work there during the summer.

Wading through the diapers, Shelley poked her finger into Johanna’s chest and was about to say something dour when the PA system interrupted her.

“Johanna Roseberg, you have a call on line two. Johanna Roseberg, line two.”

Shelley glared at Johanna as she backed away.

The employee lounge was a dank, windowless room where Johanna found the pharmacy assistant, Linda, nibbling a crustless sandwich in the vivid glow of the soda machine. She nodded at a phone screwed to the wall. Johanna picked up the dangling receiver.

“Yehanan? Is that you?”

“Yeah, hey, Grandma.”

“Yehanan, thank God. I need my key. Where’s my key?” She sounded upset, out of breath.

“What key?”

“Don’t play games,” she snapped. “You know what key.”

“You probably just misplaced it, you know.”

“Your mother put you up to this,” she said. “Just tell me. She doesn’t have to know, Yehanan.”

“Nobody put me up to anything, Grandma.” Johanna tried to change the subject. “Did you take your pills this morning?”

“They’re coming for me, understand? I don’t know how they found me after all these years, but they did. What am I supposed to fight them with, the goddamned butter knife?”

It wasn’t the first time Grandma acted like this. She was old, and Johanna thought she was starting to lose it. The signs of her mental decline had been subtle at first, like forgetting to buy groceries or calling Johanna by her mother’s name. But over the summer her encroaching dementia had taken a cruel twist and she was sure there were monsters coming to get her.

“Look, you’re safe, Grandma. Everything’s fine. I’ll bring over a video for us to watch later, how’s that sound?”

“No! Stay where you are! It’s not safe here!”

“Grandma, the monsters aren’t coming for you, okay? I swear. You’ll be okay.” Johanna turned to face the wall, trying to hide this bizarre conversation from Linda, who shot her curious glances while pretending to read a fashion magazine.

“You don’t understand, Yehanan,” she said. “No, no, no. You can’t possibly understand. I think I made a mistake not telling you, not talking to you sooner. It might be too late now, Yehanan.” Johanna could hear her banging around her house, opening drawers, slamming things. She was in full meltdown. “You stay away, hear me? I’ll be fine; cut out their tongues and stab them in the eyes, that’s all you gotta do! If I could just find that goddamned KEY!”

The key in question opened a giant locker in her garage where she kept a stockpile of guns and knives sufficient to arm a small militia. It had always been her favorite thing in the world: weapons. She was definitely not your regular muffin-maker grandma.

Johanna’s mom said this sometimes happened to people who had experienced traumatic things. Grandmother was the only member of her family to escape Poland before the Second World War broke out. She was twelve years old when her parents sent her into the arms of strangers, putting their youngest daughter on a train to Britain with nothing more than a suitcase and the clothes on her back. It was a one-way ticket. She never saw her parents or brother ever again. Each one would be dead before her sixteenth birthday, killed by the monsters she had so narrowly escaped. But these weren’t the kind of monsters she was imagining now; they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don’t recognize them for what they are until it’s too late. Johanna guessed that after everything her grandmother had been through, she never really felt safe anywhere, not even at home.

“I really don’t know anything about the key,” Johanna said, repeating the lie her mother had told her to say. Mom had taken the key away from Grandma, afraid she would end up hurting herself or others.

There was more swearing and banging as Grandma stomped around looking for the key. “Fine!” she said finally. “Let your mother have the key if it’s so important to her. Let her have my dead body, too!”

Johanna got off the phone as politely as she could and then called her mom.

“Grandma’s flipping out,” she told her.

“Has she taken her pills today?”

“She won’t tell me. Doesn’t sound like it, though.”

Johanna heard her mom sigh. “Can you stop by and make sure she’s okay, Jo? I can’t get off work right now.” Her mom volunteered part-time at the bird rescue. She was an amateur ornithologist and a wannabe nature writer, which are real jobs only if you happen to be married to a man who owns a hundred and fifteen drug stores.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Thanks, Jo. I promise we’ll get all this Grandma stuff sorted out soon, okay?”

“You mean put her in a home,” Johanna said. “Make her someone else’s problem.”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Of course you have.”

“Jo…”

“Whatever, mom.”

Johanna hung up and called her boyfriend Ricky for a ride. She broke the bad news to Shelley and went outside to have a smoke. Ten minutes later, Ricky arrived with his mud-encrusted boots and his green hair. He saw her and leapt off the hood of his car.

“You fired yet, beautiful?” he shouted across the parking lot.

“I wish.”

Ricky kissed her with such enthusiasm that some people on the street turned to look the other way. “Don’t worry, beautiful. There’s always tomorrow.”

He kicked the car’s passenger door, which was how you opened it, and Johanna climbed in. The engine rattled to life in a cloud of blue smoke. The sky was turning the color of a fresh bruise as they pulled into grandma’s subdivision, a bewildering labyrinth of interlocking cul-de-sacs known collectively as Circle Village.

Johanna’s phone chirped with a text from her dad asking how things were going, and in the short time it took her to respond, Ricky managed to get them stunningly lost. When Johanna said she had no idea where they were, he cursed and pulled a succession of squealing U-turns as she scanned the neighborhood for a familiar landmark. It wasn’t easy, even though she’d been to visit her grandmother countless times growing up, because each house looked exactly like the next.

Finally Johanna recognized something or other and they managed to find the right place.

“Last one on the left,” she said. Ricky tapped the accelerator and they sputtered down the street. At the fourth or fifth house, they passed an old man watering his lawn. He was bald as an egg and stood in a bathrobe and slippers, spraying the ankle-high grass. Johanna turned to look and he seemed to stare back, though he couldn’t have, she realized with a small shock, because his eyes were a perfect milky white.

Ricky hung a sharp left into grandma’s driveway. He cut the engine, got out, and kicked Johanna’s door open. Their shoes hushed through the dry grass to the porch. Johanna rang the bell and waited. When there was no answer she banged on the door, thinking maybe the bell had stopped working.

“Maybe she stepped out,” Ricky said, grinning and pulling Johanna close. “Hot date.”

“Go ahead and laugh,” she said as he kissed her. “But she’s not good in the head. Something might’ve happened.”

The quiet was making her anxious. Johanna stepped away from Ricky and fetched the extra key from its hiding place in the bushes. “Wait here.”

“Hell I am. Why?”

“Because you’re six-five and have green hair and my grandma doesn’t know you and owns lots of guns.”

Ricky shrugged and stuck a wad of tobacco in his cheek. He went to stretch himself on a lawn chair as Johanna unlocked the front door and stepped inside.

Even in the fading light she could tell the house was a disaster; it looked like it’d been ransacked by thieves. Johanna’s heart sank. Grandma had really, finally lost her mind. Johanna called her name but heard nothing.

Then saw a gleam of light from the backyard. Running through the screen door, she found a flashlight abandoned in the grass, its beam pointed at the woods that edged her grandmother’s yard.

She shouted for Ricky and a moment later he came tearing around the side of the house. Right away he noticed something she hadn’t: a long mean-looking slice in the screen door. He let out a low whistle. “That’s a helluva cut. Wild pig coulda done it. Or a bobcat maybe. You should see the claws on them things.”

A peal of savage barking broke out nearby. They both traded a nervous glance. “Or a dog,” Johanna said. The sound triggered a chain reaction across the neighborhood, and soon barks were coming from every direction.

“Could be,” Ricky said, nodding. “I got a .22 in my trunk. You just wait.” And he walked off to retrieve it.

Sweat trickled down Johanna’s face. It was dark now. She picked up the flashlight and stepped toward the trees. Her grandma was out there somewhere, she was sure of it. Something seemed to guide her, a quickening in the chest, a whisper in the viscous air, and suddenly she couldn’t wait another second. She tromped into the underbrush like a bloodhound scenting an invisible trail.

She spied a narrow corridor of freshly stomped palmettos not far away. She stepped into it and shone her light around; the leaves were splattered with something dark. Her throat went dry. Steeling herself, she began to follow the trail. The farther she went, the more her stomach knotted, as though her body knew what lay ahead and was trying to warn her. And then the trail of the flattened brush widened out, and Johanna saw her.

Her grandma lay facedown in a bed of creeper, her legs sprawled out and one arm twisted beneath her as if she’d fallen from a great height. Johanna thought surely she was dead. Her shirt was soaked with blood, her pants were torn, and one shoe was missing.

Johanna ran to her, hands shaking, eyes watering, breathing turning harsh. She sank to her knees and pressed the flat of her hand against her back. The blood that soaked through was still warm. Johanna could feel her breathing ever so shallowly. She slid her arms under her and rolled her onto her back. Grandma’s eyes were glassy but the real problem were the gashes across her midsection. Johanna nearly fainted.

She heard Ricky shout from the backyard. “I’M HERE!” she screamed. Johanna looked down at her grandma again and noticed she was mumbling something, shifting between English and Polish.

“I don’t understand,” Johanna cried. “Grandma... Grandma, I don’t...”

Grandma’s eyes seemed to focus on Johanna, and then she drew a sharp breath and said, quietly but clearly, “Go to the island, Yehanan. It’s not safe here.”

“No. We’re fine. Grandma, you’re going to be fine. You’re going to-”

“Go to the island,” she repeated. “You’ll be safe there. Promise me.”

“Grandma-”

“Promise me, Yehanan.”

“Okay. I will. I promise.” Johanna closed her eyes; her tears were blinding her.

“I thought I could protect you,” Grandma said. “I should’ve told you a long time ago…”

“Told me what?”

“There’s no time,” she whispered. “Find the bird. In the loop. On the other side of the old man’s grave. September third, 1940. Emerson... the letter. Tell them what happened, Yehanan.”

With that she sank back, spent and fading. “No, no, no... Grandma... Please...” But then she seemed to disappear into herself, her gaze drifting past Johanna to the sky, bristling now with stars.

A moment later Ricky crashed out of the underbrush. “Oh man. Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus,” he kept saying, rubbing his face with his hands. He babbled about finding a pulse and calling the cops and did you see anything in the woods?

The strangest feeling came over Johanna. She stood up, every nerve ending tingling with an instinct she didn’t know she had. There was something in the woods, all right: she could feel it.

There was no moon and no movement in the underbrush and yet somehow Johanna knew just when to raise her flashlight and just where to aim it, and for an instant in that narrow cut of light she saw a face that seemed to have been transplanted directly from nightmares. It stared back with eyes that swam in dark liquid, furrowed trenches of carbon-black flesh loose on its hunched frame, its mouth hinged open grotesquely so that a mass of long eel-like tongues could wriggle out.

Johanna screamed and then it twisted and was gone, shaking the brush and drawing Ricky’s attention. He raised his .22 and fired, pap-pap-pap-pap, saying, “What was that? What the hell was that?” But he hadn’t seen it and Johanna couldn’t speak to tell him.

She dropped the flashlight, covered her mouth with her hands, took a step back, tripped and fell on her ass, too terrified for any other reaction. And then she must’ve blacked out because Ricky was shaking her shoulders and calling her name and that was the last thing she saw.

#hollowgasts #miss peregrine #fanfic #dfcrosas #the second soul #sophie lowe #fem jacob portman #johanna roseberg #peculiar children #supernatural

2 notes · View notes

celebratorypenguin · 7 years ago

Text

Fic: Lachrimae Antiquae Novae

Rating: PG-13 for language

Genfic, but could be considered McLennon if you squint

Summary: In which I visit Overused Trope Land with a story about Hurricane Dora/"The Night We Cried." The title is from a set of seven Pavanes by John Dowland, and roughly translated it means "Old Tears, Renewed."

This setup with all four of them is based on one of Paul’s conflicting recollections of that night, when they were ALL in the room and Ringo ended up in the bathtub.

Lachrimae Antiquae Novae

Key West, Florida September 10, 1964

***

Once the jam session ended, there wasn't anything else to do but drink.

"Thank you, Dora," said George as he poured scotch for Paul and himself into plastic cups before passing the bottle to John. "We needed a night to ourselves."

John decanted a liberal amount for himself, then splashed some into the cup in Ringo's outstretched hand. "Let's drink to her." The four men raised their makeshift glasses and said in unison, "Here's to Hurricane Dora."

"And a good night's sleep," Paul added. His voice was creaky with overuse and the beginning of a cold.

"Not sure how much sleep we'll be getting tonight, crammed in here like sardines," Ringo sighed. "A man needs to stretch out, you know."

Because of the emergency surrounding the approaching hurricane, the band had been able to secure only one room, with two tight double beds and a tiny bathroom. Brian and the crew had to stay in an even smaller and less comfortable motel down the road.

"We've slept in worse situations than this one," John reminded everyone when their faces began to reflect annoyance. "No holes in a windscreen and no dirty movies playing in our ears. And we've got a proper bathtub." He nudged Ringo with his elbow and grinned maniacally at him. "A veritable palace, this place."

In reality, it was a barely-respectable motel. John had doubts about how sturdy the building might actually be, but he kept them to himself. With George absolutely exhausted, Ringo apprehensive about the storm, and Paul trying not to come down with something, they were on enough of an edge already.

For himself, John was just glad not to be on the move. Brian had supplied them with snacks, candles, and a shocking amount of liquor, so they were all set for the night. The fact that there was a bed to sleep in instead of an airplane seat sounded just great to John, even if the bed was going to contain an extra Beatle.

Paul sneezed, looking surprised that it was happening to him. "Ugh. Sorry," he sniffed as he rubbed the end of his nose with one of the tissues he held in a tight ball.

George poured more scotch into Paul's glass. "Here, drink some more. Kill the germs."

"Ta." Paul took a long swallow and winced. "It's like gargling with battery acid."

"Good. It's burning the snot out of your throat so you'll be able to sing by tomorrow night," John said lightly even though he was concerned about how rotten Paul was starting to sound.

"If we get to sing tomorrow night." Ringo's words were strained. "If we don't wake up in Oz what with this storm and all."

George, whose rosy cheeks hinted at how tipsy he was becoming, snickered. "Here you were a Hurricane for all these years and it turns out you're scared of 'em!"

Everyone laughed. John looked fondly at George. Rather than being a maudlin drunk like the rest of them, the first few drinks tended to bring George's humorous side bubbling to the surface of his personality. It was always a joy to see the furrows between George's eyebrows lessen, to see a full smile instead of the brief flashes of teeth he gave when he was uptight.

John took a good, long swallow before setting the cup down on the shaggy brown carpet. "Might as well get comfortable, fellas. I'm gonna change so I'll already be in pyjamas by the time I pass out." Standing up was a bit more of a problem than he'd expected, but he felt Paul steadying him with a strong hand on his leg. The hand was warm, too warm, but John decided to get comfortable now and check on Paul's temperature later.

It wasn't as if any of them would be leaving the room tonight.

They took turns in the little bathroom, changing into pyjamas while the other three plucked or drummed at nothing in particular. By the time they were all back in the bedroom they were well into the third bottle and the storm was raging all around them. Wind and pounding rain rattled the windows. Distant flashes of lightning went off like strobe lights and the accompanying thunderclaps got closer and closer together.

John actually enjoyed a good storm now and again; the rumbling thunder and faint scent of ozone made him drowsy. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ringo's frown. "Best have another one," John said as he passed the bottle. "We're in for a long night."

"I was counting the seconds between the flash and the thunder," Ringo said, but he didn't turn down the offer of more scotch. "You can tell how close the storm's getting. At least that's what my mum always said."

Paul cast a quick glance at John. It was a reflex, the way he always checked on John when a mother was mentioned in their presence. More than one interviewer had made the faux pas of asking the two of them about their mothers, and no matter how many times it happened John always felt flat-footed when replying. It upset and annoyed him, but what he really hated was the tiny flash of sadness that always, always crossed Paul's face before he had a chance to hide it from John.

Tonight, between the scotch and the fever, Paul wasn't able to school his features as well as usual. His lips trembled and his wide eyes were suspiciously shiny. He opened his mouth as if to say something, seemed to change his mind, and instead slumped against John's shoulder.

"What is it?" John asked quietly, giving Paul a chance to whisper it if he didn't feel secure enough to say it aloud.

Paul shook his head. "It's daft," he murmured.

"That never stops me." Ringo's deadpan delivery and sly smile told John that he was attempting to lighten Paul's mood. John grinned at him, grateful for the attempt.

Paul shifted his head so that he could talk without a mouthful of John's pyjama top. "D'you remember her voice? Julia's?"

"God, what...what?" John stammered. He had to think about it for a moment, had to force himself to return to a time when Julia's silver laughter rang out in delight, when she told John how clever and wonderful he was. "Yeah. It was a nice voice, I remember liking how smooth and cool it was."

George nodded in agreement. "And she could sing, too. She loved listening to us and singing along just like the kids."

The pain John felt in remembering his mother was acute, even six years later, but when Paul whispered, "I can't remember my mum's voice," John's heart nearly broke for him.

George gently said, "She was a nice lady, your mum," then his face fell. He reached out a slender hand and put it on Paul's knee. "I'm sorry," he mumbled.

Paul, confused, patted George's hand and shrugged at John. "For what?" he asked.

"For my perfect life," George said in a thick, miserable tone.

Well, George usually wasn't a maudlin drunk. There's a first time for everything, John said to himself.

Paul's eyebrows shot up and he coughed slightly. "Son, I don't have a clue what you're on about."

"You three all had it so rough, and here I was happy with my mum and my dad and my sister and brothers!"

John, who knew exactly how poverty-stricken the Harrisons had been before the Beatles made it big, felt his heart swell that George considered himself so fortunate compared to his friends. "I dunno, George. I mean, Mendips was a pretty swish place to live."

"It was hard losing my mother, but I have my dad and Mike," Paul added.

"My mum and Harry took good care of me every time I got sick," Ringo said after a pause. "We didn't have much, but I never doubted that they loved me."

John was relieved that Ringo had the delicacy not to remind them that he was from an actual slum, because that would have set George off even more.

George nodded. John leaned over and peered into his face. "How much have you had to drink, there, George?"

"Not as much as Paul."

Paul, whose face was ghostly pale, suddenly doubled over with his arms around himself.

"Uh-oh," Ringo warned, getting to his feet faster than anyone could have thought possible. He grabbed Paul by the armpits and hauled him into the bathroom just in time.

Eager to cover up the sound of vomiting lest it trigger a chain reaction, John grabbed his guitar and started playing noisy chords. George looked woozily at John and frowned. "Aren't you going to go in there?" he asked.

"Nah. Give the lad a bit of privacy." Years and years of sharing rooms with Paul left John certain that Paul would want as few onlookers as possible. Losing control, even due to illness, was something Paul preferred to do in private.

George reached for his own instrument and played a plaintive melody to go with John's chords. Even plastered, George was more than a match for any guitarist John had ever heard. John watched George's fingers pull eloquent tunes out of the guitar. "That's quite good," he said with awe in his voice.

"Don't you forget it," hiccuped George, whose hands seemed blissfully independent from the fog in his brain.

"I won't." John took a deep breath. Fueled by liquor and genuine admiration, he said, "I can't believe I put off asking you to join the group just because you were a tyke of twelve."

"I was fourteen," protested George. "Almost fifteen."

"But you looked ten. And I was an arrogant sod--" He stopped when George snickered at the word "was," then continued. "And I might never have asked if it hadn't been for Paul's fucking stubbornness."

"I heard that," croaked Paul from the bathroom.

"Your FUCKING STUBBORNNESS, Paul, got us the best lead guitarist in the whole damn world, and I don't care who hears me say it!"

At that interesting point in the night's conversation, a crash of thunder directly overhead was followed by all the lights going out.

Ringo came out of the bathroom, holding his cigarette lighter aloft. "Where'd Brian put the candles, then?"

John scrabbled on the nightstand and came up with a cylinder that he hoped was a candle. "Here, try this."

"Make sure it's a candle and not a condom," Paul called out.

"I can tell the difference, son, even if you couldn't," John replied as he took Ringo's lighter and put the flame to the wick. The candle sputtered and for a horrible moment John thought it wasn't going to light up, but eventually the flame shone clear and strong.

"What're you going to put it in?" George asked.

John blinked. Surely he wasn't going to have to sit here holding it until the damned thing burned to nothingness.

"Here, let me." Ringo took the candle, tipped it sideways so that some of the wax ran around the lip of an empty scotch bottle, then held the bottom of the candle in the warm wax until it set. He repeated this with two other candles.

George whistled through his teeth. "Impressive, that."

"Now our cheap motel looks like a cheap Italian restaurant," Ringo chuckled. "So much better."

It actually was better. The room was bathed with a warm, golden glow instead of incandescent white electric light. John picked up one of the makeshift candle holders and shuffled into the bathroom to check on Paul.

"Can you see all right, Macca?" he asked. Paul was leaning with his cheek against the rim of the toilet, breathing shallowly.

"Wish I couldn't," was all Paul was able to say before he choked and began vomiting again.

"Easy, Paul, it's okay, I've got you, I've got you," John crooned as he wrapped one arm around Paul's chest and stroked his hair with the other. The contents of the toilet were mostly clear, meaning that Paul was probably near the end of whatever had made him sick. John flushed the toilet then put his hand on Paul's forehead. It was warm but not as bad as before. "That's better," John said. He reached up to the sink and pulled down a tube of toothpaste - probably George's, because it smelled strongly of the peppermint he favored - and squeezed a bit onto Paul's index finger. "Scrub a bit, get the taste out of your mouth."

Silently, Paul complied, then his body went lax and he laid his head in John's lap.

"That's him done for," George said from the doorway. He set his candle on the sink and sat down next to John, putting one hand in Paul's hair and the other on John's shoulder. "If only the world knew what larks it was, being a Beatle."

John chuckled. "We've had better nights."

"And worse ones. Like in Hamburg, where you and Paul and Pete played Olympic scorekeepers while that ginger bird..." George broke off, clearly embarrassed at the memory of losing his virginity while his bandmates cheered him on.

"Oh, I don't know, I quite enjoyed that," John said with a little leer.

George shook his head and leaned against the wall. John's shoulder felt cold without George's touch, and Paul whimpered a little at the loss of the caressing fingers. John took over, absent-mindedly tousling Paul's dark hair.

Ringo entered a few moments later. "Room for one more?"

"Of course," John said, "if you don't mind sitting in the tub."

"I don't, actually." Ringo clambered in and set his candle on the edge of the bathtub. He stretched out and folded his arms behind his head. "We only have the three candles, so maybe we should blow two out and save 'em."

John puffed out George's and his own candles, then pulled Paul's head into a more comfortable position on his lap. George's head tipped back and his breathing deepened.

"Guess it's just the two of us still conscious," Ringo whispered.

"I'm conscious," mumbled Paul.

"Me, too." George's voice was barely audible as he relaxed further, nearly hitting his head on the plumbing beneath the sink.

"Hey, Ringo, don't let him tip over," John said.

Ringo held out his hand to George. "C'mere, lad. More room over by me."

George scooted to the edge of the tub and put his head down on the pile of towels. He shifted a couple of times, grumbling wordlessly. Ringo rolled his eyes at John then moved one hand down to George's head, petting him like a puppy. "The youth today just can't hold their liquor," Ringo quipped, but John could hear the affection in his voice.

John cocked his head, listening for the storm but not hearing anything. "I think that's the eye passing over us now," he said. "So it's halfway done."

"Good. I've had about enough of this storm business." Ringo's eyes, silver in the muted candlelight, were focused on John. "Listen, Johnny, did I stick my foot in it, earlier, talking about my mother in front of you and Paul?"

John's throat tightened. "Nah," he said, wanting to mean it, but he could tell that Ringo wasn't fooled.

"Okay, I'll be more careful from now on." Ringo waggled his eyebrows to let John know that he hadn't fallen for his attempt at obfuscation.

Nodding in appreciation, John turned his gaze down to Paul's face. "It's funny, how Paul hears music so perfectly, how he remembers every note after hearing it just once, but he can't remember his mum's voice. I can't imagine forgetting Julia's, but I suppose I will, eventually." His voice felt thick as he continued. "I mean, I don't really remember Uncle George's, and sometimes I'm not even sure I can remember Stuart's, except for the old recordings. And someday they won't play anymore, and then his voice will be gone."

"Steady on," Ringo said, reaching out for John even though they were sitting too far apart to touch. He settled for putting the last remnants of scotch within John's reach.

The hurricane's eye was past them and the storm began anew, lashing the windows with rain and shaking the whole building with wind. John grabbed the bottle and swallowed the last of the amber liquid before he started talking again.

"How can someone you love just...disappear, like that? Like they never existed? Who's gonna be left in ten years, in fifty years, to remember Stuart's voice, to remember him, to remember Julia?"

George raised his head, blinking slowly. John felt George's fingers wrap gently around his wrist as he said, "God will remember, John. He'll remember all of us."

"Is that the same God who gave Stuart a brain aneurism? The same God who put a cop in a car he didn't know how to drive so that he could kill my mother? Why should I trust a God who takes everyone I love away from me?" He knew he was shocking George with his words, George whose childlike faith in higher powers never wavered, but John's heart was throbbing in his chest and the words spilled from his mouth as the hot, stinging tears spilled from his eyes. "Everyone I love leaves me," he cried. "Everyone I love fucking dies, that's why I don't love anyone, why I can't love anyone, because I don't want them to fucking DIE!"

John heard himself sobbing harshly as Paul sat up and threw his arms around him. "Johnny, it's okay, love, it's okay."

"Don't!" John yelled, trying to pull away. The panic that seized him clutched his chest so that he could barely breathe. He started scrubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Don't you see? If you love me then I'll love you and you'll die, just like the rest of them!"

"You can't stop me from loving you." Paul's voice was still raspy and weak but his embrace remained firm. "And I'm not going anywhere."

"Me, neither," chimed Ringo from the bathtub.

"We're none of us leaving you, so you can feel free to love us as much as you want." George's voice was as tearful as John's as he sat behind him and wrapped his arm around John's chest. "You're not getting rid of us that easy, Lennon."

The lights flickered then came back on. All four men winced at the sudden burst of cold fluorescence. George staggered to his feet and batted at the bathroom switch until that light went out.

The insanity of the situation wasn't lost on John. He was sitting on the floor of a loo in a cheap motel during a thunderstorm, in his pyjamas, with the rest of his band trying to console him while he had a drunken breakdown.

It was actually a good metaphor for their lives, when he stopped to think about it.

The light coming in from the bedroom was strong enough that he could take a good look at his friends: Ringo, always as unwaveringly steady as his drumbeat, loyal George with his fine mind and extraordinary patience, and Paul, whose brilliance more than compensated for his exasperating perfectionism.

"How'd I get so bleedin' lucky as to end up with the three of you?" John asked as he smiled at each of his bandmates in turn.

"Dunno how lucky you'll feel when you have Typhoid Paulie in your bed," George declared around a yawn. Paul shot him a dirty look but he was fighting back laughter.

"C'mon, up with you." John stood, wincing at the pain in his lower back from sitting on hard tile, and gave Paul a hand up. "What about--"

George silenced him with a finger on his lips. John and Paul looked at Ringo, who had fallen asleep in the bathtub. "I'll get him settled," George whispered. "You two go on, get some sleep."

John walked Paul over to one of the beds and pulled the bedspread back for him. As Paul climbed in and John covered him up, they shared a tiny smile. John could tell from the way Paul's eyes softened that he was thinking about his mother, and if he was thinking about her then he was also remembering Julia and worrying about John.

"Daft lad," John whispered fondly as he started to get in behind Paul.

Paul stopped John with a hand on his wrist. "If Ringo's gonna sleep in the tub, maybe you should share with George. You don't need my germs."

"Better your germs than George's bony knees." John pried Paul's fingers loose and patted his hand before settling in behind him. "Now, be a good boy and let me have my beauty sleep. Or maybe a beauty coma, that'd do me more good."

Chuckling, Paul burrowed deeper under the covers.

George padded barefoot through the room to get a blanket and pillow for Ringo. John could see him over Paul's shoulder as he lifted Ringo's head ever so gently to put the pillow beneath it, and then draped the blanket over his sleeping form. George picked up the candle and used it to light his way back to bed once he turned out the bedroom lights. When he got into his bed, he leaned over, mouthed "Good night" to John and Paul, then blew out the candle.

The storm had died down to a lulling fall of heavy rain. Moonlight streamed through the window, a gentle silvery glow that lit up Paul's face when he turned over to look at John.

"Your voice," he whispered. "No one's ever going to forget your voice. Not in fifty years, or a hundred. It's gonna live forever."

"Hush, you'll wake Ringo," John admonished, but he pulled Paul into a fierce hug. He felt Paul begin to relax into sleep, his skin damp with breaking fever. Maybe John would catch his cold but he would not push Paul away.

Tomorrow night, John thought, when the storm had washed the sky and polished the stars, he'd take Paul outside and show him their mothers' star, Mary Julia, and perhaps Paul's long-opened wound could begin to heal.

Perhaps John's would as well, and at last their old tears would come to an end.

*** END ***

#Beatles fic

2 notes · View notes

beardedwinnerobject-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Stacyville Iowa Cheap car insurance quotes zip 50476

"Stacyville Iowa Cheap car insurance quotes zip 50476

Stacyville Iowa Cheap car insurance quotes zip 50476

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare quotes: : http://freeautoinsurance.xyz/index.html?src=tumblr

RELATED QUESTIONS:

What is the cheapest car insurance company to go with at 16. could someone give me a estimate?

my car is a 2000 Pontiac grand prix. all i need is state minimum.i live in ohio

Cheap Uk Car Insurance?

Which car insurance company in England is cheaper?

""I was driving my husbands car, I was not on his insurance yet. A car hit us while sitting at a stop sign?""

I was driving my husbands car, I was not on his insurance yet (married two weeks before). A car hit us while sitting at a stop sign. The at fault driver's insurance company is ...show more""

Can I stay on my parents auto insurance policy if I move out?

I am covered under my parents' insurance policy (Ontario), but am planning to move out on my own. I do not own a car but I want to maintain coverage so that I have a good rating when I do decide to get one, and for the rare time I borrow their car. Can I stay on their policy even though I live elsewhere?""

""Can you recommend a good,cheap insurance for a 17 year old??

I don't want to be on my mom's because mine will be higher than normal because hers is already really high.I'd rather just have my own insurance.Thanks in advance!!

Is 2500 a reasonable car insurance premium for me to pay?

I'm 19, male; newly passed; buying a cheap car (with lower insurance group); what should be the approx. price I should be paying? Coz 2500 is as low as i can get in those comparison sites and that also after adding my mom (who has a provisional license) as the 2nd driver....is there any other combinations i can try? Also should I try Pass Plus, coz it didnt seem to make that much of a difference in the insurance quote! thanks a lot everyone for your time and effort!""

Cheapest auto insurance in PA??

for a non-standard driver.

Against my religion to have health insurance?

I live in the US and it is against my religion to have health insurance. If I will be forced to buy Obamacare, it will disrespect my God and I will never be allowed entry to paradise. I don't want to ruin my mortal life and my afterlife. Am I exempt from buying Obamacare now since it's very intolerant and hateful to force a man of God like myself to purchase this health insurance?""

How to stop the direct debit car insurance and switch to another?

I want to stop my current policy with RAC.. and switch to another car insurance which is cheaper. How do I go about doing this? I pay monthy.

What the Cheapest Car insurance company in your area?

I know this answer can vary based on your driving record and other factors.

Will 1 speeding ticket effect my insurance rates in Maryland?

Erie Insurance policy, 83 in a 65, 2 points, no other tickets. Will this effect my insurance cost in Maryland?""

can you ride a bike without insurance?

Do you really need to apply for insurance? Or just liscence is ok to ride?

How does motorcycle insurance work?

Okay, I want to finance a motorcycle. I understand that by financing you have to have full coverage until it's paid off. But my question is, do you need to buy the insurance and have it already before going to buy the bike? Or can you go buy the bike, and ride it home, THEN get the insurance for it? Or do you have to haul it home if you don't have the insurance working yet? How does this work? Thanks a bunch!""

Where's the best place to get health insurance?

I was hoping that someone with experience could tell me whether buying insurance through the Maryland offered program or through a direct insure such as united healthcare or blue cross blue shield would be the better deal. Looks like a 80/20 silver plan is about $205/month trough Maryland with a $1500 deductible. I'm hoping to find an affordable 90/10 plan or better. If you have any suggestions or know recommendations please let me know! I'm new to this health insurance stuff...

Health insurance and pregnancy?

Could someone help me with finding an AFFORDABLE HEALTH INSURANCE which would include all maternity benefits [cover labor delivery, visits...] What is your experience with insurance companies at this point? Thank you very much. Michaela""

Motorbike cheaper than car insurance?

Is motorbike insurance for learer motorcycle 125cc, significantly cheaper than car insurance for a small city car, for a young man?""

What is the estimated insurance for this car?

2-Door Coupe 1989 BMW 6 Series Coupe 2D 635CS, costing $6,000 new 16 yr. old driver.15-20000 in coverage.""

17 year old girl insurance?

My dad is a mechanic and will only buy me a 1.0 for insurance and cost. I want to know how much would it cost me to insure a Citroen Saxo when i have my full liscence in 6 monts?? I was told it is also possible to be a name driver on one of my parents insurance. How much would that cost??

How much is average insurance for a year on a sports bike vs a regular crusier?

High school sports insurance Florida?

Hi, I'm a 15 year old varsity baseball player in Florida. On the 19th of March, I had a partial tear of my biceps tendon in my right elbow along with a suspected injury to the RCL, and LUCL (MRI results). I don't have primary health insurance (even though my Dad's a doctor haha) but my school carries insurance for student athletes. I'm going the the Andrews Institute in Gulf Breeze, FL. What do you think my coverage will be like? I know it's a rather hard question but thanks for anything!""

Is there a car insurance company that only ask if you have any convictions within the last 3 yrs instead of 5?

Does anyone knows of a good Health Insurance in Florida?

HMO, PPO or whatever... I need to know asap. The work insurance is horrible!""

Car insurance rate for 24/m honda accord 03?

Just wondering if anyone could guesstimate a car insurance rate for me? I recently graduated college and just got my first job making 32,000 a year. I am thinking of buying a 2003 Honda Accord EX Coupe. I havent gotten a ticket or been in an accident, ill be commuting 20 min to work every other week (carpool) and i have ok/good credit (no co-signer required). Any guesses? Thanks!""

CAR insurance...i dont have a 3.0?

on estimate how much wil the cost of insurance be more? i will have a 90' 4runner if that helps

What does Term Life Insurance mean with no surrender value?

If I had a 15 year Term Life Insurance at $100,000. with no surrender value. What would it be at the end of 15 years. Can I collect the full amount on this type of insurance?""

Stacyville Iowa Cheap car insurance quotes zip 50476

Can a car insurance still charge me if there was no police report and the guy ask me for money to let me go?

I turned right in a street when I got hit on my rightdoor it got just a littledented.But the other cars leftside bumper,headlight,and side of where the tire is at did get kind of ...show more""

What is the cheapest price university in California to study Power Plants for international student?

I'm holding Diploma certificate in Airframe and Power plants, i need to continue my study in US, CAL exactly but i didn't find the perfect university i need a low price university which i can get bachelor degree in it so i need a help please as soon as possible to get start soon.""

Americans. What cars do you normally have as your first Cars. As a cheap car with cheap insurance?

I was just wonderng What kind of cars American tennagers ahve for there first Cars I might think of importing one

""Im 19 ,how much should i pay for car insurance?

im not british.but im getting a uk full licence.. any people know how much should i pay for a classic mini? and how about a 1995 subaru wrx?

I have a scrap on my car what can my insurance pay?

i have insurance from progressive in Michigan a 2009 Chevy Malibu when i went on the site to pick my price i went for the cheapest one i pay 50 a month i backed up into a basketball hoop in my driveway will the insurance company pay for anything i got a claim number just too impatient to find out from the adjuster my estimate was $500 for some tiny scrapes they said they melt it and use a filler the same stuff the car is made out of making it look like it never happened

Recovery/treatment dates for disability insurance?

If someone was never treated for borderline hypertension, they just controlled it with diet without any input from a doctor, what can be used as recovery and last treatment dates? Could it be when the patient's current physician first had their blood pressure measured and it was normal?""

I need cheap car insurance?

I stay in Virginia and i got a job that don't pay good. After I pay rent I have nothing just gas to get to work. I need very cheap insurance can anyone help please??

Car Insurance.?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ArWrfDO9dpyfOnXm3.1rI7Tsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20071006110521AAt0j9L Can someone please answer this. IF possible,,, any insurance pros. thanks. AAA is closed today.""

Are car insurance quotes always free?

Car Insurance- Am i covered?

If i drive my uncles car, and i dont have insurance myself am i covered in case of an accident(he has full insurance). hes live in ca and we are in different households. thanks""

I got an insurance quote for a 1990 mustang gt at 225 a month. im 17 how do i get lower?

i want a foxbody so bad. nothing will stop me from getting one except insurance rates with my dad. he is being stiff about a mustang in general so i need a low insurance rate to ...show more

Pay-as-you-drive auto insurance: do you think this is a good idea?

An alliance of insurance companies and environmentalists wants to bring a new kind of mileage-based auto insurance to California and charge motorists only for the number of miles actually driven. Called pay as you drive, the option is available from a few insurers in 34 states ... as well as Canada, Japan and Europe. One company, GMAC Insurance Group, says its customers -- whose mileage is tracked by General Motors Corp.'s OnStar system -- have reduced the premiums they pay by 13% to 54%.... The system could cut motoring costs, protect the environment and reduce traffic congestion, boosters say. Opponents, mainly privacy advocates, say they fear that insurance companies could begin tracking more than just a driver's mileage. High-mileage drivers could also see higher rates. from the Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-fi-carinsure15-2008jul15,0,6970018.story""

I gotta question with car insurance?

im 18 and buyin my moms car,will the insurance rates rise if she signs the car over to my name? or will it be that much of a difference? cuz i want it in my name but she says the cost will double automaticly just by changing the name of the owner from her to me. is she lying so that i keep it in her name?""

What is the average cost of car insurance?

What would be the average cost of car insurance for a 17 year old female? Im trying to work out a payment plan with my dad for my truck. but i need to know the figures for insurance ...show more

First time driver...really need insurance help?

ok, so i am 17 and i just bought a car. i live in CA and i really need to find auto insurance for cheap. i know its really expensive for a first time driver to get insurance for themselves, so if anyone knows of an insurance company that does not charge that much i would greatly appreciate a response. thanx""

Excluded driver totaled my new car. Does his property damage liability insurance pay for my car? Any advice?

Someone who was exluded from my car insurance drove my car yesterday and had an accident that was at his fault. He had only liability insurance with bodily damage, property damage and underinsured motorist protection. My insurance is not going to cover anything since he is an excluded driver. We live in TX, USA. Can my new wrecked car be considered as a property damage involved in that accident? The other vehicle and driver are OK, only small dent on the rear bumper, but my new car was totally destroyed, not driveable, my insurance refused even go to look and inspect. Schould I seek any legal help if his liability insurance refuses to pay? Is it possible to get any legal help in this situation? What to do and where to go? What to do with the car? It is still on the nearest to the accident parking lot. The property damage limit on his insurance is 25,000. I just bought my car few months ago for 20,000. Thank you for your time, I appreciate your help.""

Can I claim for mechanical faults on my fully comp car insurance?

My car set on fire whilst I was driving it & as a result is a write off. My insurer is refusing to pay up as they claim its a mechanical fault. Is there anything I can do? Please help.

Where to get pregnancy insurance?

Please can someone tell me where to get pregnancy insurance? I am a UK citizen and will be spending the whole of 2010 in America (Boston). Thanks

Should fat people and smokers get a discount on their health insurance?

Fat People Cheaper to Treat, Study Says Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn't save money, researchers reported Monday. It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars... -- AP/wired.com, Feb 6, 2008 http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/O/OBESITY_COST?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-02-05-02-58-08""

Are auto insurance premiums negotiable?

They want me to pay the same rate I've been paying the last two years. Is the company/industry open to negotiating thru its phone agents? Anyone have success or is this company too big to do that sort of thing?

Cheap Car Insurance for International Drivers License holder in the UK?

please i was told i could use my IDL here for a year. but to be able to drive my auntie's car i would have to get car insurance. i just need it for a couple of weeks. so please if anyone knows how i can obtain one please let me know thank you

Is it typically cheaper to pay car insurance monthly ? semiannually? or annually?

Car insurance and the state you live in and registration?

I just moved from Richmond VA to Greensboro NC. My car insurance is in Richmond VA and and my car is registered up there. I'm only going to stay in North Carolina for about 8 months. I want to know if I can switch my car insurance to North Carolina with out having to register my car and switching my license plates over to North Carolina. Car insurance is a hell of alot high up in Richmond than here and I want to save some much needed money. Anyone know if I can make the insurance switch with out having to register my car and switching my tags over to North Carolina? Please respond with only legit answers.

Information about health insurance please?

Im looking for a cheap but good health insurance. Please let me know what your recommendations are.

Which car would have a higher insurance - Audi or Lexus?

I have a reckless driving back in August 2008 Speeding ticket - 50 on 35 May 2008 ever since then I have not been pulled over Thank you

Stacyville Iowa Cheap car insurance quotes zip 50476

""Car Insurance costs for a 17 year old in Las Vegas, Nevada?""

I will be getting my license early next year and I will be 17 years old. I am a male, and I get decent grades. Usually alway's A's and B's, maybe one C. I plan on getting an SUV, particularly a 1999 Ford Explorer with over 100,000 miles from my uncle. What would your estimate on insurance costs be? How do I apply my good grades to my insurance policy? Would it be cheaper to go on my parents account? Thank you, Damon Reis""

How much will the auto insurance be? ?

Ok so my dad wanted to get an 06 chevy Cobalt SS supercharged but is wondering how much it will cost... He is 53 years old has a good driving record, the car is Black and of course supercharged. He has dairyland auto insurance.. Is there anyway we can check online or can anybody give me estimates? Thanks""

Does car insurance really go down when you get married?

I have heard that insurance goes down once you get married. Is this true? If it is, how much? Is it significan't? Do you have to be married before you turn 25 for this to apply? I have heard so many conflicting answers. Help??..""

I need 3 insurances anyone know good insurances?

I need three insurances. Does anybody know any very good insurances? The insurance I have is freaking crap, so I want to change everything, so I need 3 insurances. I want the best ones but I know those ones are high price that's what I was told, so I just need 3 very good ones with a reasonable price. The 3 insurances I need are cosmetic dental, pet insurance, sports insurance. Went to the dentist and found that I need little work and all of the work is cosmetic. Insurance that I have doesn't cover cosmetic things. I have 3 pets and I need pet insurance. The last one I need is a sports one. My insurance won't cover sports or fitness. I need sports insurance that is great. The sport that I'm trying to get into is wrestling yes professional wrestling like WWE type. I need sports or extreme sports insurance that will cover on those type of extreme sports. I was told that There is a insurance that covers everything sports, cosmetic and pet insurance but I don't know how true that is, but if there's a one please tell me. Anyways anybody let about these 3 insurance that I need. Thank You so much to whoever read and answers my question and helping me. Thank You.""

What is the oldest year car I can buy without paying for collision insurance?

I want to buy a new car in the 2000's. I know that when you a brand new car you have to pay for collision insurance and I don't want to have to pay for that. What is the oldest year car that I can buy without having to worry about the collision insurance?

16 year old insurance for a moped UK?

Hey, i'm thinking of buying a moped but before i buy one, i need to make sure that the insurance won't be too expensive otherwise i won't be able to afford it. I will basically be using the moped to get to college and back home. Any ideas as to how much insurance will cost on average? I am currently 16 years of age and will be turning 17 in December 2013. I live out of london if that helps. Thanks in advance :)""

Where can i get life insurance for my daughter who has cancer ?

What is the best/cheapest young drivers insurance company?

I am learning to drive and purely for future reference what insurance companies are the cheapest to go buy for first time drivers. At the moment im just looking on AutoTrader and eBay and copying and pasting them into various companies if you can speak from experince it would really help...

HELP : ( I need dental coverage but I am a temp.Can anyone recommend insurance?!?

I'm having a really hard time finding an insurance company that are available to temps. Unfortunately I make too much to be eligible for medicaid, which is ironic because I don't make a lot of money! lol So any suggestions!? I really need to go to the dentist asap, I'm in a lot of pain :'(""

Disability insurance?

Where can I find a free, instant , disability insurance quota online?""

""I am going to study in Ontario but I am a US citizen, how much is it to register my car and get car insurance?""

I live in Texas and i'm an 18 yr old female. I will be studying in Canada but I need to take my car to get from place to place. Does anyone know how much it costs to register the car, get car insurance, plates, License and whatever else needed? Thank you (:""

HELP whats the Cheapest place to ge car insurance in ontario?

im a 18 male just got my g1 not to long ago, i have had/drove cars be4 But i am not doin the driving school thing as i dnt have $500 to Blow! so im just gonna wait the 12months to get my g2 (so ill be 19 goin on 20 when i have my g2), i just started saving for a car tht i plan on puttin on the road after i have my g2 (i can get cars for a fair price so im not worried about tht), but where can i get cheaap Car insurance in Belleviille Ontario?, as i dnt make alot of money right no and nobody else n my family has a license lmao so i cant go under their insurance. and i did a online thing sayin i had a 99 z24 nd it said ill have to pay $1013 a month wht is wayy to much money!! and i have already had a 96 cavailer, 93 mx6 (but i drove em with no license or anything) but now i either wana get a honda civic, sunfire, neon, mx3 or acura, 95 and up""

""Your credit rating can affect how much you pay for renters insurance,if so explain thoroughly.?""

Your credit rating can affect how much you pay for renters insurance,if so explain thoroughly.?""

Please Help...Will i be able to get any health insurance?

Im a 21 yr old female, who benefits from deferred action. im currently working two jobs and going to community college. money is TIGHT. i know being protected under deferred action will not provide me any health insurance help but can i still be able to get ANY help? im a type 1 diabetic as well and the cost of insulin and doctor visits skyrockets every single time. i live with my parents but i dont receive money from them. i guess long story short. can i get any type of health insurance? if i dont die from diabetes ill die from the cost of it hahaha. i live in Southern California if thats any help. thanks in advance :)""

Car insurance cheaper with 2 drivers?

Ok guys, learning to drive hopefully pass my test within a couple of months, what I'm wondering is, I'll go onto my fathers insurance for a couple of years as 2nd driver, no I will not be the main driver before any of you come on to say that's illegal it's called fronting I know I know. He uses it 5 days a week for work anyway ill probably only be using it during the weekends, I'm only really going on his so I can get a couple of years on my license and when it comes to it my insurance won't be a fortune, I'm 25 just now, worked out if I want to have my own insurance it with a small 1L engine it would cost me 1547 a year, not gonna happen, so I'm going to go onto my fathers insurance as 2nd driver to his car. A 1.8L vauxhall vectra. Ok now to the question lol, my fathers insurance just now is 26 a month, with me going on to his insurance it will work out at 18 each a month, is this normal? Insurance to go down when you add a 2nd named driver who would only have passed his test?? This is fully comprehensive cover. But if I wanted to driver my own car a small 1L engine it would be roughly 129 a month. Seems like it doesn't add up. Go figure lol Got the quotes from go compare and confused.com. Just seems like it doesn't add up, have insurance for 26 a month with 1 driver or have it for 18 each with 2 drivers, one who has little experience and has only just passed his test driving a 1.8L engine""

Car Insurance Question?

I'm looking at buying a four door sedan but I don't have car insurance. The reason that I don't have insurance is because I only have my permit. Unfortunately, I no longer live with my parents so I don't think their insurance will cover me. I've been trying to get quotes from various companies for when I do get my license but many of them will not even give me a quote if I don't have my license. Are there any car insurance companies that will offer insurance to me while I still only have my permit? I already found a car that I like before realizing my parents probably won't be able to put me on their insurance so I'm trying to figure this out quickly but thoroughly. I'd really like to get it soon because I hate driving in my parent's minivans since they are huge and I have trouble seeing out the tinted back window. So far the only option I see is to have my parents buy the car for me until I have my license (which I plan to get before December to avoid learning in the snow).""

""5. If you get paid $8.00 per hour at your job and insurance is $200 a month, how many hours will you have to..?

work to pay for insurance?

Insurance company offering me a check to settle? What should I do?

I was in a car accident, where the other driver was 100% at fault. We both have the same insurance. They reimbursed me fully for my car, reimbursed my employer for health expenses (I assume) and I didn't get hurt too bad min the accident besides some whiplash and scrapes on my hand. Today, I get a call and an offer of a $250 check for the inconvenience of being in an accident. It sounds kinda fishy, I thought this case was closed long ago, so I told her to send the offer, in writing, describing the details of this inconvenience check. What exactly is going on here and why would they feel the need to randomly cut me a check? Something doesn't add up.""

""Which companies offer insurance for individual items such as laptops, iPods, cell phones, etc?""

I'm looking for US insurance companies that offer this service - i.e. instead of buying home insurance to cover everything, to buy insurance just for individual items.""

What is the best and most affordable whole life insurance i can get for my mother who is 77?

what's the best and most affordable whole life policy i can get for my mother who is 77 and has numerous health concerns?

""I recently received a red light camera ticket, will the insurance know about it?""

I'm trying to apply for a new auto insurance which i think i would have a better rate than the one i currently have. The problem is I recently received a red light camera ticket with no points, but there is a question on the application form that said have you receive any moving violation including no points violation? Would they really know about it? should i say yes or no. i'm afraid if i say yes they will deny me coverage. please advice. I just ordered my drivers license history to see if its there. thanks!""

Important question regarding auto insurance while renting a vehicle?

Does anyone have any idea about how much a person is liable for if they rent a car from a place such as Avis, Hertz or Thrifty without paying for the insurance coverage they offer? A friend of mine doesn't have her own car so therefore she doesn't have any insurance. She is renting a car for the weekend and wasn't sure about her liability with or without purchasing the insurance coverage thru the rental agency. Any answers would be great as we all know that those rental insurance programs offered by car rental agencies can be quite expensive:-)""

Who will be responsible for my dad's car wreck/Will my insurance premium go up?

I let my mom borrow my car to get to work for about 6 months. I knew she had it, I never insured it and neither did she. My dad is abusive and tries to contol everyone and their possessions (my car, my apartment, my bf's car). He hit a local business and caused 15k of damage. He has never worked and my mom just recently started a job-I have had to work for everything in my life and I'm frustrated with always being taken advantage of. My dad was taken away from the scene in an ambulance, the owner's of the property he hit never received his name or contact info. Since the car is registered to me, am I liable? Although it was his accident, will my future car insurance premium go up because of this?""

Do you have health insurance?

if so, how much is it per month? how old are you? what kind of deducatbale do you have? feel free to answer also if you do not have insurance? also, do you support obamacare?""

How much does Whole Life insurance cost?

I have a quote for 20-year term life insurance for a non-smoker for $48 a month. How much would it be a month for whole life insurance?

Stacyville Iowa Cheap car insurance quotes zip 50476

Question on insurance and license suspension.?

i bought a car and started financing. i got car insurance, but the next day i found a way cheaper one. so i called to cancel the old one, and put a downpayment on the new one. for some reason my other one wasnt cancled, and i have duplicate insurance. i just recieved an email from the expsensive insurance saying if i dont make a payment my license will be suspended. but this cant really happen right? if im making payments on my other full coverage insurance that i want to keep, i still have current insurance.""

What is The Age Limit To Use My Medical Insurance?

Hi I'm 20 years old and i want to know what is the age limit medical insurance covers? I hardly use it and now that i need it to have an eye check, I don't know if it will cover me... I reside in California. Thank You!""

Does anyone know of affordable family health insurance?

Can you help me with Car insurance?

I need a car insurer but I would like to deal with a UK call centre as I feel a bit more at ease, this is my first car,please help.""

Heath insurance help ?

what is affordable heath care plans ? and do u have 2 pay monthly 4 heath insurance

Car/Motorcycle Insurance and address question.?

I live in PA I Just moved out 5 months ago and i never changed my drivers license to the new address. Mainly because my dad payed for my next 6 months of my car insurance and it still says i live at home. Im going to buy a motorcycle soon and i know if i get the title in my name all the info will be mailed to my parents address because thats the address on my DL. My dad doesnt care if i get one but my mom does. I dont really want it mailed there but i dont think theres nothing i can do about that, can I? Say it gets mailed there when i go get insurance on it will i have to say the bike is parked at my parents house or my new address I know in the state of PA once you move out you have 15 days to change the address on your driver license. i did not change it. by me not doing this will it affect me getting insurance on my motorcycle? and if i do change it will it affect my car insurance cause its on my parents but i dont live there""

How can I get an inexpensive Health Insurance while having no job and on disability?

I am on a workman's comp. claim which is temporary disability, I am not able to return to work for another 6-12 months. I am getting married in August and eventually would like to have children in the next year. Who will give me health insurance at a rate I can afford, and will be able to cover pregnancy in the months to come after we get married? Thanks for your help!""

Dental Insurance Company Denying Authorization for Covered Plan Services.?

Anthem Blue Cross Dental Net I was referred to an oral surgeon by my primary care dentist since I have to have 6 teeth and 2 residual root tips extracted in advance of getting a full upper denture. All the extractions including the root tips have to be done during one visit, which necessitates the use of IV sedation. My general dentist cannot perform any of this work. Anthem Blue Cross Dental Net denied the original pre-authorization request, and subsequent appeal stating that my general dentist can perform the services being referred. Which is absolutely not the case. I even spoke with a customer service rep who indicated that the extraction of residual root tips is definitely a referable service and it clearly states that in their Dental Net Provider Contract. She has no explanation for why the appeal was denied. My primary care dentist has even provided Anthem Blue Cross Dental Net with his specific reasons for referring this work to an oral surgeon and I still can't get anyone at Anthem Blue Cross to re-evaluate the original denial and the appeal and authorize the necessary work. I have filed a complaint with the California Department of Insurance, although I don't hold out much hope for any results from that effort. HELP... what are my options? Who can I contact? Thanks""

Where can I get insurance for an older car?

I have a 1969 VW Beetle and need cheapish insurance. Very few insurers will cover a car that old unless it is a classic , but as this means it can only really be driven to shows and whatnot, it won't work for me. This is my daily driver. Thanks in advance.""

Auto Insurance help......50/100/15?

i have a 50/100/15 auto coverage.I hit a parked car and damaged the store along the front. the damage to the parked car was 5,400 and damage to the store was 12,650. What amount will the insurance company pay for and what amount will I have to pay for? How can I figure this out?""

Car insurance on car i want to sell?

I am trying to sell my car because my uncle left me his old truck and I don't need two vehicles. Since I don't want to have insurance on both cars, is there a way for me to just have insurance on the car only when it is test driven by someone interested in buying it?""

Best car to insure in GTA 5 online?

I need a car to insure and upgrade but not sure which one is the best help?

""Is buying scion xb 2008 for me a good decision? How about insurance, after market maintenance and so on.?""

Im in early 30s, this is my first car... here are my preferences, i'm 6ft 2 inches so i want to feel comfortable in the driving seat and so the people sitting in the rear seats, Toyota for reliability, popularity & availability of parts, less maintenance overhead,nice ROI. I need good night visibility, does it comes with HID lights installed? Good range of colors (esp. nautillica metallic blue). Is stick better than automatic (if so why) ? This is mostly for my commute to work everyday (10 miles) and occasional long driving on holidays and weekends ? I'm not looking for any bells & whistles just the base model. The total cost of the car with tax comes $18K+ ... the APR is 6.39% (scion.com) , so by paying more down payment say $12K will i be able to reduce the monthly interest for the rest of the payment (6K) or should i shop around ? I believe you cant negotiate for price with the dealer. Do you have any more suggestions""

What is the most affordable life insurance and health insurance?

Where can I find Affordable Health and life insurance for me and my wife. What is the best web site with online quotes?

What is the cheapest and best insurance for brand new drivers (16 year old guys)?

also how much would it approximately be?

Where should we keep car insurance papers and license plate registration?

My husband and I live in Ontario and currently share one vehicle. He insists on keeping the insurance papers and plate registration in his wallet but if I need the car I have to get them from him each time (of course, if we get stopped we can be ticketed for not having the papers). The problem is, we are both extremely busy and sometimes forget to give them back to each other and find ourselves driving without the papers. My question is, where is the best place to keep these papers (I've heard you shouldn't keep them in the car in case its stolen) AND/OR are they valid if photocopied and one of us keeps THOSE copies in our wallet? I've heard that using a true copy, whatever that is, is accepted but that some police officers won't accept them at true if you're stopped. This is becoming a real problem for us...please help!""

Is it standard procedure for home insurance agents to visit your house before they insure it?

I was told by my ex that a home insurance agent was coming to look at the INSIDE of my house. I was under the impression only appraisers came to look at the inside of your home. Do home insurance agents do that now too? What's the cheapest home insurance?

Can you be fined for owning an uninsured car? (California)?

Even if the car is not driven? And if it is registered?

Where can I buy cheap auto insurance or temporary auto insurance in the United States?

I know u can do it in the UK...but can't find any insurance agency in the US to do it.

Car insurance question.?

I was involved in an accident recently. The other driver ran a red light and totaled my car. There were no witnesses or cameras. The other driver claims that I was the one who ran the red light. This is not true. The police report was finished today and it came back in my favor. I only have liability insurance so I am waiting to hear from the other driver's insurance company on whether or not they are going cover the cost of replacing my car. Do you experts think they will cover my full costs? Thanks, Eric""

I need to start saving on my healthcare insurance coverage. It is way too expensive. Since our congresmen?

and women are not working so that I can buy insurance outside the State of Colorado, could I possibly buy it from China? anyone know of any Chinese companies operating in the U.S. that are offering affordable health insurance?""

If I lie to my insurance company about who lives with me is that considered insurance fraud?

I have a relative who lied about who lived with her on her insurance application even though it does not affect her insurance and I was just wondering would that still be considered insurance fraud.

How much (approx) is THIRD PARTY insurance on a small used car of value around $2500?

(in australia)

I don't have insurance ?

I don't have any insurance. Any cheap one? Please any suggestion ?

Question about car insurance...?

im trying to figure out if im being ripped off by my parents. i pay $200 every month for car insurance because that's what my parents tell me it is. I got one speeding ticket for going 14 mph over the limit and in 2 minor accidents. no damage to either cars. my question is am i being ripped off? I told some people that i pay that much and they said there is no way your insurance could be that high. help me out please?

Stacyville Iowa Cheap car insurance quotes zip 50476

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cheapest-place-get-insured-friends-car-roger-wade/"

0 notes

amtushinfosolutionspage · 7 years ago

Text

Chain vs. Plank, Who Ya Got?: The Weekend in College Football

Welcome back to The Weekend in College Football, VICE Sports’ new column. Each week, we’ll take you through everything you missed on Saturday (or, God forbid, Friday night), the things worth learning, and look ahead to what happens next. Enjoy.

1st and 10: The CFP Race Is Insane

The College Football Playoff has certainly been a success in its three years of existence, and the run-up to the Playoff is far more exciting than the debacle that was the BCS. But I have a confession to make: Last year was boring as hell.

As excited as we try to get about the annual selection show, at this point last year we all knew which teams—Alabama, Clemson, Washington, and Ohio State—were going to be selected. Only two other teams, Michigan and Oklahoma, had any real hope of cracking the list.

This year, other than Alabama, I really can’t tell you who’s going to be selected. Because at this point, there are multiple top teams in multiple conferences that have a chance.

Clemson: Probably the best non-Alabama bet, but only has one great win (Auburn) and lost to Syracuse, somehow. If the Tigers lose the ACC Championship Game to Miami, they’re out.

Miami: This week’s darlings (more on that later) after destroying Notre Dame, but is the schedule strong enough to get in, even with one loss? Probably not.

Wisconsin: If they win out, they’re in. But if they lose to Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship Game, their best win will be either Michigan, Northwestern, or Iowa. As 2015 Iowa can attest, that’s probably not going to be enough.

Oklahoma: Probably the second-best chance behind the ACC champion, but the Sooners still have to go to West Virginia and play the No. 2 team in the conference in the Big 12 title game.

Georgia: The Bulldogs just got blown out by Auburn, but if they win the SEC Championship Game, they’re in.

Auburn: The win over Georgia is impressive. Maybe they’ll get themselves into consideration if they beat Alabama?

Ohio State: The Buckeyes dominated Michigan State after being blown out by Iowa (which is still hilarious). If they similarly dominate Michigan and Wisconsin, they’ll have a very strong resume, despite the losses to Iowa and Oklahoma.

Do any of those teams have a better than 60 percent chance of getting in? Clemson, Miami, and Wisconsin certainly control their own destiny. Oklahoma most likely does, too. Georgia might. With just a little bit of help, Auburn and Ohio State will both have strong cases.

The selection show is in less than a month and we’re officially in a wild playoff to get to the Playoff. That’s how it should be.

2nd and 8: Miami Is Awesome and You Should Cut It Out with the “Catholics vs. Convicts”

The Miami-Notre Dame rivalry was branded “Catholics vs. Convicts” when the top-ranked Hurricanes visited the Irish in South Bend in 1988, and it was memorialized by an ESPN 30 for 30 with the same name.

The moniker speaks for itself: Notre Dame players were choir boys, while Miami’s mostly black team was branded a group of criminals. No, Miami didn’t run a particularly clean program in the 1980s, but “convicts” certainly wasn’t an adequate way to describe the players on the team. Moreover, in recent years Notre Dame has been guilty of some deplorable actions of its own, including academic fraud and railroading an investigation into a reported sexual assault by a football player, after which a woman committed suicide.

And yet, the reputation has stuck with the Hurricanes.

You might think this is just a cute little tradition, but given the not-so-subtle racism involved, and the fact that it seems to bug the current Miami players who are definitely not convicts, maybe you should stop using the name.

Clip of the Week

Ten years ago, Georgia players celebrated a big win over Auburn by dancing to Soulja Boy’s “Crank That” on the field.

Auburn didn’t forget. Ten years later, the Tigers celebrated their blowout victory over the Bulldogs the same way.

That’s some excellent college football trolling.

Tennessee Should Hire Lane Kiffin

The Butch Jones era is mercifully over at Tennessee after the Vols lost 50-17 to Missouri and fall to 0-6 in SEC play. Tennessee remains one of the toughest jobs in college football because the fans have massive expectations, but the Vols don’t have the recruiting advantages that many of their conference brethren—Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Auburn, and even Texas A&M—enjoy.

Here’s how the Vols will deal with these built-in burdens: They’ll copy the rest of their conference’s teams and hire a Nick Saban clone who will never be as good as the original (hello, Dan Mullen).

Here’s what they should do: Hire Lane Kiffin.

Admittedly, the No. 1 reason the Vols should do this is the hilarity of it. Kiffin, you’ll remember, had perhaps the most tumultuous one-year stint in coaching history while in Knoxville, before ditching town for USC. Tennessee fans hate him, probably for good reason.

But there are two other reasons Tennessee should hire Kiffin: For one, he’s a good coach who’s off to a great start with Florida Atlantic. And two, it would piss Saban off to no end, which might play into Tennessee’s hands.

Kiffin was the offensive coordinator at Alabama until Saban got so fed up with his antics that he sent him packing the week before the 2016 national title game (which Alabama lost). The Vols haven’t beaten the Crimson Tide in over a decade, so why not add some sass to what has become a stale rivalry?

Kiffin, for one, seems on board.

Have some fun with this, Tennessee. If you hire another generic SEC football coach, nothing is going to get better.

3rd and 1

This weekend was Veteran’s Day, which meant it was time for college football programs to show their support for the military. That meant flyovers, flag helmets, and patriotic displays on the field.

These “tributes” seem harmless, but in reality, they’re a way for teams to use jingoistic marketing to build their own brands. Pledging allegiance to the military through vague patriotic symbols and playing dress up isn’t the same as helping veterans, and it’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Veteran and sports writer Matt Ufford, who graduated from Northwestern—a school that loves integrating patriotic imagery into its football team—said it best in his attempt to “debark the bullshit train to Jingotown“:

Sporting events, particularly around Veterans Day, have a habit of condensing military service into an easily digestible slice of patriotism. The PA announcer says words like “heroic” and “sacrifice” without context or meaning while soldiers and sailors stand in camouflage or dress uniforms, a 38-second tribute that squeezes an emotional trigger for the audience while whitewashing the devastating effects of war — its 500-pound bombs and rubbled buildings, its stolen sons and daughters, its impossible and unfair cruelty.

Punt

Football coaches tend to struggle with math and probability. Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen is no exception.

With 6:30 left in the game and the Bulldogs tied with mighty Alabama, Mississippi State faced 4th-and-3 at the Alabama 42-yard-line. Given how great the Alabama defense is, it wasn’t particularly likely that the Bulldogs would get down to that point on the field again. But instead of seizing the opportunity to keep the Crimson Tide on their heels, Mullen decided to punt.

The punt ended in a touchback, helping MSU gain all of 22 yards of field position. The Crimson Tide scored two possessions later to win the game, after the Bulldogs couldn’t move the ball past their 24-yard-line. Shockingly, the decision to punt put MSU in far worse field position overall and diminished its chances to win.

Don’t punt in plus territory with the game on the line, kids. And especially don’t do it against Alabama.

Player Who Deserves to Be Paid This Week: Baker Mayfield

Besides being the best player in college football and the Heisman Trophy favorite, I’d like to congratulate Mayfield for again beating long-time nemesis TCU, this time to keep the Sooners in College Football Playoff contention.

Mayfield and TCU coach Gary Patterson have been feuding for years. Mayfield said in 2017 that he doesn’t like the Horned Frogs because he was promised a scholarship by Patterson that never came.

Recruiting can be a frustrating and deceptive process for players, but rather than understand that, Patterson got all defensive.

He said, “If Baker Mayfield wants to blame TCU for 128 BCS schools not offering him a scholarship, that’s fine.”

It’s true, Mayfield didn’t get any major scholarship offers out of high school, but now he’s one of the most marketable, exciting, and talented players in the game. Pay the man, already—and take the money out of Patterson’s paycheck.

Obscure College Football Team of Note: Kennesaw State

Miami has gotten a lot of attention for its very cool turnover chain, but the Hurricanes have officially lost the award for best turnover prop to Kennesaw State, which has a turnover plank.

Good plank.

Something to Look Forward to

Alabama plays Mercer this week, so it’s annual Nick Saban Gets Mad About Reporters Overlooking a SoCon Team to Ask Questions About Auburn Week. Set your DVRs and Twitter searches accordingly.

Chain vs. Plank, Who Ya Got?: The Weekend in College Football syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

0 notes

flauntpage · 7 years ago

Text

Chain vs. Plank, Who Ya Got?: The Weekend in College Football

Welcome back to The Weekend in College Football, VICE Sports' new column. Each week, we'll take you through everything you missed on Saturday (or, God forbid, Friday night), the things worth learning, and look ahead to what happens next. Enjoy.