NaNoWriMo Update No. 3. This is the third (and final) update on my progress in the National Novel Writing Month Challenge. To review the rules: the goal is to cough up a 50,000+ word novel between November 1 and November 30, 2002. I clocked in today at 54,885 words. Now the real work lies ahead: actually taking the lump of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and punctuation marks that I've coughed up, and honing them into a readable, memorable story. Through this NaNoWriMo process, I now appreciate the value of creating arbitrary deadlines and targets as ways to induce production. More work -- much more work -- lies ahead! But maybe the hardest part is behind. « 11:19:58 PM »    

Thanksgiving - Many POVs. "The first day of thanksgiving took place in 1637 amidst the war against the Peqouts. 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 indigenous 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. The proclamation of 1676 announced the first national day of thanksgiving with the onset of the Wampanoag war, the very people who helped the original colonists survive on their arrival. Massasoit, the chief invited to eat with the puritans in 1621, died in 1661."

There are (many), (many) (different) (versions) of the (original) Thanksgiving story. Something about "speaking with forked tongues." If you include the version taught to schoolchildren in the United States, the fairy tale about the European settlers sitting down with the Native Americans and actually giving thanks, sharing happy moments and gorging on sumptuous feasts, it all becomes a little confusing. But then, all you have to do is look at the fortunes of the Native Americans after they first met the Europeans -- and I'm even discounting the fact that some Native Americans had African slaves. Thanksgiving, if you find it hard to believe the myth you've been spoon-fed, was indeed the beginning of the end for the only people who can truly claim this land we now call America as their own. « 7:47:16 PM »