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Showing posts from November, 2022

And so begins the Holidays and my musings on the Holidays

'Tis the season when Thanksgiving ends and we, at the very least, pretend to be festive and joyous until January 1, 2023 and then fall off the ledge for the inevitable post-holiday blahs.  Okay, sorry to start the post with such a downer statement.  Anyway, Thanksgiving is sort of like "opening day" for the holiday "festive season" that lasts about five weeks. To use another sports metaphor, Thanksgiving is like the "exhibition game" that prepares us for the "regular season" of Christmas (and Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Year's Eve/Day). Thanksgiving is also the "Rodney Dangerfield" of holidays: no respect. And in recent years, Thanksgiving is taking much more of a beating for being racist and an anachronism. It's hard to dispute this, certainly when it comes to Thanksgiving origins. Even if one ignores Thanksgiving's roots in European extermination of the native people of North America and tries to treat it as a day in w...

Why The GDR Fascinates Me: Neese Family Adventures in Radebeul, Leipzig and Dresden

This is the link to a podcast I was on. It was recorded back in the spring and just dropped a few days ago. Why The GDR Fascinates Me: Neese Family Adventures in Radebeul, Leipzig and Dresden :  "I have said this often, but I am so grateful to you all for your continued loyalty to the podcast this season. Most of you all don't know this, but I got…"--Steve Minegar, Radio GDR podcast [The rest of Steve's commentary is available after one clicks the link above].