My In-Laws Are Visiting...For 11 LONG Days

In-laws: your punishment for enjoying sex with their offspring.

Why Don't You Celebrate Thanksgiving? An Essay

I post this here on the ZPT every year.

Have a wonderful day---whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or not.

A disclaimer: read the warning first.

If you don't, I'm not responsible if you get offended.

Hell, I'm not responsible if you get offended either way.....


BEFORE YOU READ THIS, A WARNING:
Do not read this if you will be offended by a different point of view on the Thanksgiving holiday.

I am not here to preach to anyone and have no desire to ruin anyone's concept

of the holiday (and the quotes at the end are intended to be humorous, nothing more).

I am posting this only because I am personally of the belief that knowledge hidden is knowledge wasted.

Thanks in advance.
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WHY DON'T YOU CELEBRATE THANKSGIVING?

Over the last few days, I have been asked this a dozen times or more. It happens every year. My reply that I am a Native American only seems to confuse some of

the questioners. "Well, it's your holiday, too," I hear quite often. My answer:

it is not my holiday.

And here is why.

The traditional Thanksgiving story tells that the Pilgrims, after a long and hard winter, celebrated with a feast and invited their Indian friends. A nice story,

to be sure. But not the whole story. That story is a mixture of both truth and myth. What follows, is our truth (just a note: there is another version of a Thanksgiving which

has nothing to do with Pilgrims. Click here for the story of the Pequot Tribe massacre and the feasting that the Mass. Bay Colony declared to celebrate it).

First of all, one must understand that the Pilgrims were a splinter group of the Puritans, an extremist religious sect. They viewed themselves as the "Chosen Elect" from Revelations. They saw themselves as fighting a Holy war against Satan, and anyone who disagreed with them was their enemy. This inculded their "friends," the Natives. In fact, in the 1623 Thanksgiving sermon, they gave thanks to God for the smallpox that had nearly wiped out all of the Wampanoag Indians. They were especially thankful that the men and children had died, or the "seeds" of their nation. Not a particularly nice way to treat peoples who helped them survive that first winter in the "New" World. For without the help of the Natives, the Pilgrims would have died. Insofar as the Pilgrims were concerned, they had "repaid" that kindness with the feast, and owed the Natives nothing more. The

Natives were still their Holy enemies, to be treated as such. In fact, the Pilgrims believed that they only had to be kind to the Natives because they were, at that time, powerful; and only needed to continue being kind until the boatloads of settlers shifted the balance of power in the Pilgrims' favor. Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of American history realizes that that is exactly what happened.

Which leads one to a question with an ironic answer: "Why did the Natives help the Pilgrims?" Because, in their religion, one must give hospitality to any who came to them with open hands, and their religion stressed charity to the helpless. In fact, it was the Natives who brought the vast majority of the food to that first Thanksgiving feast! The Pilgrims weren't "sharing their bounty." It was the other way around.

By the time the children of that first Thanksgiving reached adulthood, the Pilgrims and their reinforcements began to systmatically commit genocide against the Native peoples in a war known as King Phillip's War. Many Natives were also captured and sold into slavery for the profit of the Pilgrims whom they had saved from starvation only years before. So successful was this slave trade, in fact, that the settlers began raiding Africa to bring slaves to the "New" World.

To add insult to injury, children in schools have for generations been prompted to "re-enact" that first feast by donning gross misrepresentations of Native ceremonial clothing and speaking in broken English in order to pretend be the "Indians" who are "thankful" to be invited to the feast! These "costumes" and broken English stereotypes are highly offensive to Native Americans, and many schools now are discontinuing such programs as a result, or altering them into a more tolerant program.

Many Natives celebrate a "Day Of Mourning" on Thanksgiving Day, to mourn our ancestors who were killed for their generosity (I am not one who does this, although I respect those who do).

So, to wrap it up: in our version of the first Thanksgiving, we helped the Pilgrims survive that first horrible winter in the "New World." We even brought a great deal of food to a feast to celebrate. Once the feast was over, we discovered that our "friends" saw us as demons to be eradicated from the land or sold into

slavery for their profit. Shiploads upon shiploads of the "white man" came to make good on the promise to commit genocide against us. Our religious beliefs prompted us to help them; theirs promted them to kill us. The sad irony of the myth that the Pilgrims "escaped" England because of religious persecution does not escape us (That story is not exactly true, either. Click here for a more accurate history of the Pilgrims.).

So I cannot, in good conscience, celebrate a holiday that in my mind is a lie. I cannot celebrate the decimation of the Native American. I cannot celebrate people who, if they had had their way, would rather I not exist at all.

To be fair, Thanksgiving has evolved into something far beyond what the

Pilgrims celebrated. Now, it means a gathering of the family, and a chance to count one's blessings. I respect those who celebrate for those reasons, and wish them a happy holiday.

I wish our side of the story was taught in schools, rather than perpetuate the myths. I wish that Thanksgiving could be a time when Americans remember and honor the Native peoples who helped them survive and made this country possible. Perhaps someday, it will.
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I'd like to wrap up this posting with a quote from the movie, "Addams Family Values":

"Wait, we can not break bread with you. You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years

from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, and you will play

golf, and eat hot hors d'ourves. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken.

They said do not trust the pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller. And for all of these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground."

And one from the television show, "King of the Hill":

Dale: "Do your people even celebrate Thanksgiving?"

John Red Corn: "We did...once."

And finally, one from a Wampanoag Tribal member in Massachusetts, from a speech given in 1970 at a ceremony marking the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrim's arrival:


"Today is a time of celebrating for you -- a time of looking back to the first days of white people in America. But it is not a time of celebrating for me. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People. When the Pilgrims arrived, we, the Wampanoags, welcomed them with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end. That before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a tribe. That we and other Indians living near the settlers would be killed by their guns or dead from diseases that we caught from them. Let us always remember, the Indian is and was just as human as the white people. Although our way of life is almost gone, we, the Wampanoags, still walk the lands of Massachusetts. What has happened cannot be changed. But today we work toward a better America, a more Indian America where people

and nature once again are important."

Have a blessed day.

New Beginning

My husband was fired today. Without warning or notice, and as far as we can tell, without cause. In six months, I will be uninsured.

We should be panicking. Crying. Scared witless.

We aren't.

It may sound strange, but we feel like this is not an ending, but a beginning. God is working in our lives, and we feel it quite strongly.

Prayers, as always, are greatly appreciated.

Zen Angel on Twitter!

Yes, ZPT fans...I'm also on Twitter now. Hit me up @ZenAngelSinger!

Shocking! Nerve Pain, MS and Me

Last night, I found myself in a familiar place: Shock Treatment. Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment? A great song, to be sure...but not a great facet of the MonSter.

"Shock Treatment" is how I refer to a common and very aggrivating symptom of multiple sclerosis: nerve pain. Mine is always centered on the right side of my body. This is not unusual; many (if not most) people with MS have a "problem side," where the vast majority of their symptoms reside. Mine has, from the beginning, been my right side. My trigeminal neuralgia is on the right side of my face. My leg spasms are almost always in my right leg; that's also the leg that has lost a great deal of nerve sensation, a sort of mini-paralysis. I use a cane because of my right leg. When I have optic neuritis, it's my right eye I can't see out of. When I get kidney stones, they are invariably coming from the right kidney. See a pattern?

Oddly enough, when I was 12 it was discovered that I am nearly deaf in one ear. You guessed it! My right one.

So it's no surprise that when I suffer from Shock Treatment, it's my right leg, arm, hand, foot and the right side of my ribs & lower back that gets the honors.

Shock Treatment feels pretty much the way it sounds: sharp, unexpected electrical shocks. They generally last only a second or so apiece, but they tend to occur in clusters, shocking me over & over & over. Sometimes, the shocks are mild and little more than annoying. At other times, they are so bad my body jerks uncontrollably and I cry out.

The worst nerve pain, of course, is the bane of my existance: trigeminal neuralgia. It is the great-grandaddy of all Shocks. Relentless, debilitating pain in the face. There is a reason why it is considered the worst chronic pain condition known to man. It is the heavyweight champion, more than willing to defend its title against all comers.

Back to last night...Jonathan and I were spending some much-needed time together. May through September is the busy season for his work, and it's not uncommon for him to work 14-16 hour days, 6-7 days a week, during these months. To make matters worse, the house we rented was, without any warning to us whatsoever, foreclosed. Through the grace of God we found a new home almost immediately, only three blocks away. While it was great to find this place (which is just amazing) so quickly and so nearby, moving is naturally stressful and time-consuming. Thanks to the still-too-warm temperatures the past month, I have not been of any great help moving. As a result of all this...my husband and I haven't spent a lot of time with one another. Now that the move is practically done, the busy season is winding down and the weather is cooling off, we're trying to make up for lost time.



The MonSter, however, does not respect romantic inclinations. Shortly after we put the girls to bed, Shock Treatment began to rear its ugly head. The Shocks began just above my right ankle, a tender area for this particular activity. As the night wore on, the Shocks became more unpleasant, more frequent and worse: they were migrating North for winter. By the time my upper arm was being bombarded, I began to worry about what might lie ahead: another painful bout of trigeminal neuralgia.



Now I was in a pickle. It was late. Did I eat and take a pain pill in hopes of warding off the TN? That tactic has no gaurentee of success. It also runs the risk of the nausea becoming so bad, I end up vomitting and causing the TN on my own. There was even the very distinct possibility that the act of eating in and of itself would make the TN appear. What to do, what to do.

I waited another hour. Still Shocks, but no TN. They had climbed back down to my upper leg & hip, and seemed very content to be there. I decided not to take a pill.

If my life was a game show, that would be the moment when the door I chose opened up to reveal a donkey. Or a goose. Or anything, except the prize I was hoping for.

The Shocks did in fact reach my face, a few hours later. And they did so out of the blue, and at full force. I choked down some food, which naturally made the pain worse, and took a pill.

Now comes The Waiting. As in, Waiting For the Pill To Kick In Oh Please Let It Kick In Soon. I spend a lot of my life Waiting.

The pill kicked in. And it wasn't enough. I take another. More Waiting, please. Boy, do I love to get seconds.

An hour later, and the pain had not subsided. If I take another pill, I will most definately be sick. And I'm in so much pain, if I get sick, I will end up in the hospital.

So I Wait some more.

By 5 AM, I was so exhausted I fell into a fitful sleep. Five hours later, I was wide awake. The Shocks were back, and so was the TN. It was very much as if they too had taken a short respite, and now that they were refreshed, they could attack me with renewed vigor and purpose.

I ate. I took a pill. I started The Waiting all over again.

Rinse and repeat. This is how I spent all of yesterday. And it's how I am spending the night. As I write this, it is 2:35 AM. The Shocks, for the moment, are gone. Perhaps they watched the TN torture me today and scurried off, knowing their better when they see it. Bow to your sensei, Shock Treatment.

And so I Wait. Will I be able to break the pain, or will I have to go to the ER? Will I be able to hold on until the doctor's office opens? Can I avoid throwing up, and what should I/can I eat to accomplish that goal? And if I do eat, how much worse will that make it? Why is it that I must eat to take pills to kill the pain, but if I eat to take pills to kill the pain the act of eating will make the pain worse?

And the most pressing question: will I ruin my husband's birthday today?

New Horizons

I'm attempting to blog via my new BlackBerry. If this pans out, I'll be able to blog more often. It can be hard for me to update when I can't physically sit at my computer. Fingers crossed!

A Difficult Week

Temperatures are in the triple-digits here in Portland, which is not good news for people with heat-reactive MS, like me. It only compounds what was already a difficult time for me: my mother's 55th birthday was Friday, and the 11th anniversary of her death was Sunday.

Stay out of the heat, y'all....