Teal Inner Beauty

Here’s what I DIDN’T know about the first Thanksgiving: The pilgrims didn’t call their new home Plymouth, Massachusetts after Plymouth, Devon. Previous explorers dubbed it that long before the Pilgrims came. So it was just a coincidence that their journey’s beginning and end had the same name. When Squanto taught them to plant maize, the pilgrims called it “turkey wheat.” To them the word “corn” was a general term referring to any kind of grain. When we say the word “Puritanical,” we mean abstinent and austere. And the Puritans were all that. But they weren’t teetotalers. They brewed and drank a lot of beer; primarily because they believed water was dangerous for their health. We think of turkey and cranberries as being part of the first Thanksgiving, and they were there. But so were clams, eels, venison, lobster, mussels, squash, walnuts and grapes. No wonder the feasting lasted three days!