My BTR Show #19-History of Thanksgiving

On Saturday, November 27th, 2010 at four in the afternoon, I podcast a show from a crowded Starbucks in Centerville, Ohio. It included a story about the history of Thanksgiving. I wrote this for the BlogTalkRadio site about the show:

"For the first time, I'm going to try to ad-lib some of this show in addition to reading copy. My subjects will include J.K. Rowling, mentioning her new movie, and the history of Thanksgiving."

Here's my Thanksgiving segment:

"The other morning, I was listening to NPR radio, and there was a link they were talking about. It was called SomethingYouShouldKnow.net. That was their link to the history of Thanksgiving. So I went there, and the first Thanksgiving feast was a harvest meal shared by Plymouth Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indian tribe in 1621. It also says the first national Thanksgiving Day was on November 26th, 1789 by President Washington to give thanks for the establishment of a formal government and for the Constitution. And President Lincoln made Thanksgiving an official national holiday on October 3rd, 1863 in the middle of the Civil War, after a forty year lobbying effort by Sarah Josepha Hale, who was the editor of the Lady's Home Journal. She proposed that turkey, cranberries, and potatoes be a main staple of this festive celebration meal. It was Lincoln's attempt to help heal wounds that were happening at that time in the middle of the Civil War to show the North and the South that we were united, at least by making Thanksgiving a national holiday."

Then I proposed something on this show-"That we start composing, writing, and looking for Thanksgiving music and songs to celebrate this uniquely American holiday. After all, we've got all of December to do this for Christmas. And it just seems silly to just during November when we're having Thanksgiving to be talking about the next month's holiday when we should be talking about this month's holiday. So for October, we should have music for Halloween. In November, we should have music for Thanksgiving. In December, we should have music for Christmas. And so, I'm hoping that some people out there will take the opportunity to write some music, some songs on this. You might even have a hit record for you and make some money. This is a dire national need. We need to have this. We should be playing this music in November, and to celebrate and be thankful for the freedoms we enjoy, our American heritage, and our American stories as well."

Then I recommended a book I checked out of the local public library. "It's called 'Thanksgiving: An American Holiday, An American History', copyright 1984 by Diana Karter Applebaum, and says on the jacket it's 'a thorough and entertaining chronicle of America's oldest and most beloved holiday from it's earliest roots to the present day.' Okay, let's talk about the first Thanksgiving. Well, the first Thanksgiving was actually celebrated in different ways, in different places, and on different dates. In Plymouth in 1621. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony by the Puritans in 1631. In Florida by the French Huguenots in 1564. In Maine by the colonists in 1607. In Virginia by the English colonists in 1619. And the first Spanish-American Thanksgiving was in Texas in 1541. And these weren't November either! These were in August, May, December, June, February, all over the calendar!

"But (it's) with the towns of the Connecticut River and the farm villages of Plymouth Colony that our modern Thanksgiving actually evolved, including the traditions of both the New World and the Old World. And its growth involved both religious and political currents of our American history through different times as well as its culinary history. All this is covered in this book."

My BTR Show Debut-Intro

I podcast my debut BTR(BlogTalkRadio) show, "Gene On The Scene", on my cell phone at two in the afternoon on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at the local public library in Centerville, Ohio in their conference room.   

I scheduled the show about three weeks earlier, and wrote a piece on the BTR site telling people about my show and series:

"I write commentaries on a variety of subjects, as you can see on my website at http://gene-dakin.livejournal.com/. I've also done occasional television interviews with rising young talent, including one with Raven-Symone when she was eleven years old(and look where she is now!) So I'm still developing as a commentator, and my best years are ahead of me! On this show, I talk about "Nim's Island" and my meeting Sidney Poitier in Columbus, Ohio."

The live podcast began. After the show aired, it would be archived so that listeners can access the show. Just click on the audio clip on my profile page here. Here's the intro I did on the show:

"Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is 'Gene On The Scene' with news, profiles, and commentary. I'm Gene Dakin. I usually do commentaries on community access television, which are streamed on www.mvcc.net and on my websites at http://gene-dakin.livejournal, and now I'm starting a website at MySpace.com/GeneDakin. I'm really excited to be learning this new medium of internet radio on BlogTalkRadio. So on with the show."

So that's my introduction on my debut show. I'll do pieces from this show, and other shows, on future postings on this website. But they won't necessarily be in any particular order. For example, next Thursday is Thanksgiving, so I plan to use a Thanksgiving piece I did on my 19th show to celebrate the holiday. See you then.




    
                                                                                                                                                                        

My BlogTalkRadio Show

I do an online show on BlogTalkRadio called "Gene On The Scene", which I started in the spring of 2008. I've never put any content from those shows on this website. So I'm about to do that.

The debut show, and the series as a whole, went basically like this. I researched it, wrote it, and read it on the air, ad libbing at times. I'll do that here on this website, paraphrasing my shows so they won't be exact copies, but close enough so you'll get an idea and a feel for my radio series. I hope you'll click the audio link on my profile page on this website, and listen to my BlogTalkRadio shows. Enjoy!

Ali's Debt to "Smoking" Joe Frazier

Muhammad Ali would never have been recognized as "The Greatest" without Joe Frazier. "Smoking" Joe made him earn it in their three epic battles, especially in "The Fight Of The Century" and "The Thrilla in Manila". The first was the fight where Ali showed he had heart and a chin. Nobody had ever hit him before. The Manila fight, the third of their trilogy became the greatest fight of all time. In every fight Joe fought with determination, courage, an iron will, and ferocity every second of every round, overcoming a bad eye he kept a secret throughout his entire boxing career. Frazier also overcame short arms and stature with unrelenting training, a great chin, heart, and an unorthodox boxing style even the great Ali couldn't figure out. Ali had to raise his own training and ability to endure Joe's "Smoking" machine like pounding to fight, then win wars of attrition with Frazier. These epics made Ali earn his claim to be "The Greatest" and cemented both fighters as the greatest fighters of their time, and among the greatest boxers of all time.