Connections: Pilgrims’ Progress

According to Kathleen Wall of the museum at Plymouth, Mass., the colonists and their Wampanoag guests in 1621 ate shellfish and wildfowl, perhaps with herbs and berries, but their meat was accompanied by no potatoes. Neither white nor sweet potatoes had arrived in Europe or Britain yet, and the colonists were unfamiliar with the dubious tubers; it would be another 50 years before a letter home to England spoke of cranberries being boiled with sugar to make a sauce. Ms. Wall believes that the 150 people who celebrated that three-day feast drank . . . water. 

We’re not quite that traditional in our family, but I like to think we take a leaf from the first Thanksgiving by keeping everything — as we have done since long, long before “locavore” became a word — local and homemade. It will be a Ludlow farm turkey from Mecox; for the broiled oysters, a topping made with sorrel (which I no longer seem able to grow) from the Halseys of the Green Thumb in Water Mill; cranberry relish made with berries hand-picked on Napeague by grandkids and their dads, and clams from good old Bonac. 

We are celebrating Thanksgiving at home with lots of relatives this year, and I have been energized by the planning. That The Star is published early this week, a day before the holiday, means that I and most of the staff will have rare free time on Wednesday. I have been happily bustling about, gathering the ingredients, taking out the best silverware, china, and linens, and enlisting everyone to tie on their aprons and chop, slice, mince, and bake. I am grateful for it all.

But, this year, I would also hope that as we gather to remember all we have to be thankful for, we also recognize the dark side of what might be called the American personality — and consider what might be done about it.

In the last few weeks, hateful words and incidents have proliferated, with swastikas defacing playgrounds in Brooklyn and KKK fliers found on the train at the station in Amagansett. I am especially grateful that I live in a humanistic environment, among strangers as well as friends and family who believe in the Golden Rule and try to act accordingly: “Do unto others as you would have others to do unto you,” Matthew: 7:12. “Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself,” Leviticus 19:18.

I’m an agnostic, but the season inspired me to look into what the various religious traditions say about kindness to others. They all agree. Muhammad, I recently discovered, is reported in the books of Islam to have offered this version of the Golden Rule: “None of you has faith until he loves for his brother or his neighbor what he loves of himself.” Hinduism offers similar advice, and Confucius may actually have been the one to put it like this: “Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.”

I am grateful for tranquility at Thanksgiving on the East End, but am afraid that too many citizens both near and far have forgotten the Golden Rule, deeply concerned that too many of our neighbors are not feeling as safe and secure this week as they should — indeed, as they have a Constitutional right to — feel.

From New York City’s Rikers Island to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Bagram, Afghanistan, the evidence of outright disregard for human life continues to haunt the conscience of Americans — or, at least, it should.

A friend recently forwarded to me a paragraph from Representative John Lewis’s 1998 book, “Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.” We would all do well to follow his lead:

“When I care about something, when I commit to it, I am prepared to take the long, hard road, knowing it may not happen today or tomorrow, but ultimately, eventually, it will happen. . . . People who are like fireworks, popping off right and left with lots of sound and sizzle, can capture a crowd, capture a lot of attention for a time, but I always have to ask, where will they be at the end? Some battles are long and hard, and you have to have staying power. Firecrackers go off in a flash, then leave nothing but ashes. I prefer a pilot light — the flame is nothing flashy, but once it is lit, it doesn’t go out. It burns steadily, and it burns forever.” Amen