Christmas with Colonel Sanders

Eating fried chicken every year “is what makes Christmas, Christmas.”

Eating fried chicken every year “is what makes Christmas, Christmas.”

Protestantism, Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity — all are active in Japan. But something less than one percent — that’s < 1% — of the Japanese population profess to be Christian. That doesn’t prevent them from celebrating Christmas, and gathering around the table for the traditional holiday repast.

For many in Japan, Christmas dinner is cole slaw, shrimp gratin, triple-berry tiramisu cake and chicken. Not just any chicken, though, but Kentucky Fried Chicken. People line up at their closest KFC on Christmas Eve at for their “Party Barrel,” ordered in advance. KFC Japan does a third of its business at Christmas time.

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Something New to Worry About

I lived twenty-plus years in Sonoma County California, Santa Rosa, to be exact. As an emigrant from Oregon, I eventually realized that a crack in the wall or a sticking — and later unsticking — door was the normal. Earthquakes occur literally every day; most are felt only by scientific seismic equipment. In my two decades I felt only several. The most severe woke me early one morning in 2014. That one did most of its damage to the town of Napa, about thirty-five miles away.

Santa Rosa lies just east of the San Andreas Fault line (magnitude 7.6 in 1906 and) and right on top of the Hayward/Rodgers Creek Fault system (magnitude 5.6 and 5.7 in 1969). San Andreas follows the west — SanFrancisco — side of San Francisco Bay; Hayward/Rodgers Creek the east — Oakland — side of the Bay.

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Harvesting the Ocean for Art

“I want to reach people who might throw something on the beach and not think about it, and I want them to start to think about it.”

Plastic is pervasive in the oceans. From giant plastic garbage patches to plastic nano-particles finding their way into sea life and thus humans. Angela Haseltine Pozzi is using the plastic flotsam to create sculpture.

Haseltine Pozzi gathers plastic bottle caps, cocktail toothpicks, shotgun shell casings and detergent bottles that wash up on her hometown beach at the town of Bandon on the southern Oregon coast. The debris come from as far away as Asia and Europe. So far, she has fabricated eighty life-size animals, real and imagined: a jellyfish made of golf balls, sharks from flip flops and plastic lighters. Haseltine Pozzi Haseltine Pozzi gathers plastic bottle caps, cocktail toothpicks, shotgun shell casings and detergent bottles that wash up on her hometown beach at the town of Bandon on the southern Oregon coast. The debris come from as far away as Asia and Europe. So far, she has fabricated eighty life-size animals, real and imagined: a jellyfish made of golf balls, sharks from flip flops and plastic lighters.

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The Debate That Changed Politics

“Kennedy knew it was going to be important. He rested that afternoon. Nixon made a speech to the Carpenters Union that day in Chicago — thought this was just another campaign appearance that night — was ill. Arrived at the studio, banged his knee when he got out of the car, was in pain, looked green, sallow, needed a shave.” – Don Hewitt

With a little over a month to go until election day, polling showed Republican Vice-president Richard Nixon with a slim lead over his rival, Democratic Senator John Kennedy, in the race to choose the successor to two-term President Dwight Eisenhower. On September 26, 1960 both candidates met at a CBS television studio in Chicago. For the first time ever, the presidential debate would be televised. Seventy-million viewers tuned in that evening.

Those who listened to the debate on the radio perceived Nixon as victorious. Television viewers saw Kennedy as the clear winner.

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Everything You Wanted to Know about Thanksgiving

“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.”
– Jon Stewart

  • The first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1863. Well, that’s when it became an official holiday in the United States. Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation for the new holiday, partly an attempt to assuage the nation’s deep divide during the Civil War.
  • The real first Thanksgiving, to celebrate and express gratitude for a bountiful harvest, lasted three days at Plymouth Colony. Over the following decades, Thanksgiving observance became an annual tradition in New England.
  • Only a few women partook of the Thanksgiving at Plymouth Colony in 1621. That’s because only four of the twenty women who arrived on the Mayflower survived the first winter. By that time, about half of the approximately fifty colonists were children and teenagers.
  • Native Americans outnumbered colonists by about two to one. Ninety men from the nearby Wampanoag joined the colonists. They soon became BFF with the Pilgrims.
  • There was no Black Friday shopping after the First Thanksgiving as there were no retail stores. And there was no UPS to deliver Amazon parcels. Nor was there NFL football, as the Pilgrims had no television.
  • Native Americans had no tradition of formal Thanksgiving; giving thanks was integral to daily life. “Every time anybody went hunting or fishing or picked a plant, they would offer a prayer or acknowledgment.”
  • Wild turkeys were abundant in the region, but probably not a centerpiece of the feast. Goose and duck and even pigeon were the wildfowl of choice. Eels and shellfish, such as lobster, clams and mussels, likely were on the table. No mashed potatoes and gravy; potatoes, white or sweet, had not yet made their way to North America. Cranberry sauce? It was not until fifty years later that an Englishman reported what resulted from boiling the red berries with sugar.
  • Thanksgiving at Plymouth colony began the centuries of friendship between European immigrants and Native Americans. America’s manifest destiny even gave inspiration to Adolph Hitler and his lebensraum.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving. If you need a conversation starter at the dinner table, try “How about that impeachment?”

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