November 2023: The Strange Files Newsletter
November 2023: The Strange Files Newsletter
Thanksgiving, Veterans Day, and Native American Heritage Month
The big event for most of us in November is Thanksgiving, a joyous time to feast with family and friends.
Of course, if you are among the 46 million turkeys who will contribute to Thanksgiving dinners this month, we understand it may not be as joyful for you.
But since our feathered friends are unlikely to comprise any meaningful segment of this newsletter's audience -- and not a single turkey has ever shown up at one of my book signings -- to heck with them. Instead, let's snack on a bit of Turkey Day trivia:
When was the first Thanksgiving and what was served?
The 53 survivors of the Mayflower celebrated their first harvest in the so-called New World in October 1621. They were joined by 90 Native American Wampanoag people. It started badly when, in celebration, the Pilgrims began firing guns in the air. This alarmed the native people, who gathered for battle, Instead, they shared a meal.
As for the menu, it isn't known, but it is likely turkey wasn't served.
Seriously? No turkey?
The menu probably comprised venison, swan, duck, goose, lobster, oysters, fish and, maybe, eel.
So that's why Reggie and Jake in Free Birds wanted the menu changed? To make Thanksgiving more authentic?
That and to save their skins.
Who was the first president to pardon a turkey?
John F. Kennedy. George H.W. Bush turned it into an annual event.
Did Trump break the tradition?
No. The turkey he pardoned was named Flynn.
Speaking of presidents, which one made Thanksgiving a permanent national holiday?
Abraham Lincoln.
Is it true that one president received a live raccoon as a Thanksgiving present?
Yes. Calvin Coolidge. It was given to him to be served for dinner by a woman from Mississippi, but he kept it as a pet. Which earned him kudos from animal lovers, although he confessed that mostly it was because he was a picky eater. He named her Rebecca Raccoon.
November is also Native American Heritage Month
In 1916, Red Fox James rode on horseback around the country seeking approval from 24 states to create a day to honor Native Americans.
His efforts led to the creation of special days and weeks over the years until, finally, in 1990 President George H.W. Bush signed into law a proclamation declaring November National Native American Heritage Month.
Interesting facts you can share with your friends:
There are 574 tribes in the U.S. that are officially recognized by the federal government, although others are also seeking recognition.
Native Americans comprise 2.5 percent of the population, and while many still live on reservations, 71 percent live in metropolitan areas.
The first bilingual newspaper in the United States was launched in 1828 in the town of New Echota, Georgia, the capital of the Cherokee Nation. It was printed in both English and Cherokee.
About 60 percent of the world's food supply is based on crops that were cultivated by Native Americans.
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy -- also known as the Iroquois Confederacy -- is one of the oldest participatory democracies on Earth. It was founded in 1142 by the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca tribal nations.
One way to get a better sense of Native American culture is through literature. I highly recommend Tommy Orange's book, There There, a Pulitzer finalist that shares the stories of twelve characters from Native communities as they make their way to the Big Oakland Powwow.
Also in November...
November 1 is National Author's Day. By celebrating authors, holiday sponsors say, we "not only show patriotism, loyalty, and appreciation of the men and women who have made American literature possible, ...we also encourage and inspire others to give of themselves in making a better America."
November is also National Memoir Writing Month and National Novel Writing Month. And speaking of writing novels, the sixth book in The Strange Files series is in pre-publication now. Watch for announcements for its release date.
Jupiter will be in opposition on Nov. 3. Opposed to what? What's the argument about?
No, that's astronomy talk that means our solar system's largest planet will make its closest approach to Earth and its face will be fully illuminated by the Sun.
It will be visible all night long. With a telescope (or telephoto lens) you should be able to see some of the bands in Jupiter's atmosphere. With a pair of binocular you will be able to see the gas giant's four largest moons -- Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
Fun facts: Europa is about the size of Earth's Moon. Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system and is larger than the planet Mercury. Astronomers aren't entirely sure how many moons Jupiter has. Estimates are between 80 and 95. But there are thousands of objects in its orbit. And Jupiter, like Saturn, has rings, but they are too faint to see.
Nov. 3, 1718, marks the invention of the sandwich. Created by John Montague, Fourth Earl of Sandwich, who slapped meat between bread slices during a gambling session. The explorer James Cook named a group of Pacific Islands after him -- the Sandwich Islands. Today, we call them Hawaii.
National Bison Day is November 4. It's a celebration of America's official mammal. I photographed this lone buffalo on a trip to Wyoming and Montana earlier this fall.
Fun facts: While the terms bison and buffalo are used interchangeably, the scientific name is bison. Weirdly, it's Bison bison bison (genus: Bison; species: bison; subspecies: bison). Buffalo is derived for the French word for beef.
Daylight Savings Time will end at 2 a.m. (local time) on Nov. 5. Remember the saying: Fall back; Spring ahead. So, at 2 a.m. (or whenever you wake up) remember to set your clock back an hour. Or do it before bed. Or whatever. It's so confusing.
Nov. 5 is the anniversary of the first shattered backboard. On Nov. 5, 1946, Chuck Connors of the Boston Celtics became the first basketball player to shatter a backboard. Connors also played baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers and Chicago Cubs and went on to become the star of The Rifleman TV series.
(As an aside, I created a TikTok on this last year. It was one of a handful of what I thought were throwaway postings to tide me over while I was on vacation. I was stunned when it received more than 82,000 views. Guy's still popular.)
Veterans Day is November 11. It's a federal holiday signed into law in 1938 to honor the veterans of World War 1. Originally called Armistice Day, Nov. 11 marks the beginning of peace negotiations in 1918 that ended the war. Those talks began at 11 a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year.
The first black governor was elected on Nov. 7, 1989. He was Douglas Wilder of Virginia and had previously served as lieutenant governor. He became the first African-American to be elected to statewide office in the South since Reconstruction.
American Education Week is celebrated November 13-17 spotlighting the importance of public education.
National Unfriend Day is Nov. 17. Thank Jimmy Kimmel for this. He concocted the event in 2010 because, he said, people have too many friends on Facebook. "Cut out some of the friend fat in your life."
Thanksgiving this year falls on November 23, which means, of course, that ...
Black Friday is November 24. It's known as one of the busiest shopping days of the year, but did you also know that it is the busiest day of the year for plumbers? So reports CNN, which notes that more plumbers are needed on the day after Thanksgiving to clean up after holiday feasting that "overwhelms the systems."
Another Black Friday fun fact: Twelve percent of Black Friday shoppers are drunk. Read it on the internet, so it has to be true.
Hurricane season officially ends on Nov. 30. As someone living in southwest Florida, I can tell you this day can never arrive too soon.
November Sports
Major League Baseball's World Series is spilling over into November. This is the 119th series, this year between American League champs, the Texas Rangers, and the Arizona Diamondbacks, winner of the National League pennant.
The NFL takes a European vacation this month. On Nov. 5, the Miami Dolphins will face the Kansas City Chiefs in Frankfurt, Germany, and the following week, Nov. 12, the Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots square off.
On the Tube and Silver Screen
November will be a blockbuster month for the movies. The Marsh King's Daughter (out Nov. 3) stars Daisy Ridley (Rey Skywalker in Star Wars) and Ben Mendelsohn (Talos in Captain Marvel) in the dramatic thriller based on the Karen Dionne novel.
Speaking of Captain Marvel, Brie Larson is back in the titular role in The Marvels, out Nov. 10. Will this be the movie that rescues the sagging Marvel Universe? The franchise needs a superhero to save it, and Carol Danvers is, arguably, the most powerful of them all.
Speaking of power -- and power-mad -- Napoleon premiers Nov. 24 starring Joaquin Phoenix under the direction of Ridley Scott. Other movies of note include The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, a Hunger Games prequel arriving Nov. 17; and The Wish, a Disney tribute to its first 100 years.
On the tube, the long-awaited Netflix film, All the Light We Cannot See, premiers Nov. 2. Starring Aria Mia Loberti and Mark Ruffalo, it is based on Anthony Doerr's Pulitizer winning novel and tells the story of how, in the final days of World War II, the paths of a blind French girl and a German soldier collide.
The Buccaneers releases Nov. 8. The three-episode miniseries on Apple TV+ tells the story of a bevy of "beautiful and untamable daughters of America's new rich" heading to London to "snare themselves an aristocrat."
And if you've been longing for the final season of The Crown, wait no more. Netflix is dropping the long-running series' final installment on Nov. 16. Also, if you enjoyed the bloodshed in Squid Game (and millions did), you'll be interested in Squid Game: The Challenge in which 456 contestants compete for a $4.56 million prize.
What I'm Reading
Nonfiction has dominated my reading list recently with the release of several, diverse tombs, all riveting in their own rights.
Enough. My wife Sandy and I listened to January 6 Committee star witness Cassidy Hutchinson's Enough on Audible during a road trip. She shares an insider's view of the chaos inside the Trump White House during the coup attempt and her inner turmoil regarding her testimony. Essentially, she feared she'd end up in jail if she didn't start telling the truth, and Liz Cheney offered her a pathway out of trouble.
Collision of Power. Former Washington Post editor Marty Baron's recounting of his time at the Post's helm and his relations with the paper's new owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is a fascinating read for anyone (like me) interested in the minutiae of newspapering and politics.
To Infinity and Beyond. Just launched into Neil deGrasse Tyson's latest journey to the stars, but if an astronomy book can be a page-turner, this is it.
Ordinarily, those three books would have been enough to keep me busy (I read nonfiction much more slowly than fiction), but along came John Sandford and Lee Child (with his brother Andrew) with their latest offerings, Judgment Prey and The Secret. Sandford's heroes, Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers, team up in the latest in the Prey series, one of the best and funniest in a while. A two-day read. Same with Child's latest (and apparently last under his name) in the Jack Reacher series. Fast-paced action, brilliantly structured (thank Andrew for that). Lee is turning over his typewriter to Andrew, who will continue the series. It's in good hands.
Politiquotes
"And what Donald Trump does now, he is wedded to the teleprompter. He can’t get off that teleprompter. Any time he does, he says things like ‘Don’t vote.’ He’s telling people not to vote like we have all the votes we need. Really? Wait a minute, you lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016. (He's) lost the zip on his fastball.”
-- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis,
“The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass in your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
-- H.L. Mencken
“Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."
-- Mark Twain
Strange Science
When we think of scary skin cancer, melanoma comes first to mind.
But according to a recent study, more people are now dying of other skin cancers.
It's not that these other cancers are more deadly, per se, it's that they are more common (by a factor of four) and while rarely fatal, they are so more numerous than melanoma they actually account for more deaths.
It's a numbers game.
Globally, melanoma caused 57,000 deaths in 2020, but the other types of skin cancer combined to result in 63,700 people losing their lives.
The non-melanoma skin cancers that are the culprits are basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. They don't spread as rapidly as melanoma. And if detected, can ordinarily be removed before becoming dangerous. But left untreated, even though they don't spread as fast, there are many more of them.
Bottom line: Don't let any unusual skin discolorations go unexamined.
The final frontier may be between our ears.
It may not be the depths of the ocean or the farthest reaches of outer space. The most exciting new field of scientific discovery may be inside our heads.
Scientists have just unveiled the most thorough "atlas" of the human brain, and it is mind-boggling huge. It includes cell types we've never seen before -- a whopping total of 3,300 different kinds of cells in all.
One interesting result of the years-long study, which included the brains of animals as well as humans: Many of the cell types found in our brains are also present in chimpanzees and gorillas -- although the genetic activity in those cells are very different.
A bit of brain trivia: The adult human brain contains about 86 billion neurons. And those neurons need energy to operate. Twenty percent of the energy we use every day is to keep our brains running.
News Bulletin: Mark Your Calendar for the Florida Man Games*
Associated Press
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — It ain’t the Olympics, but a group of Floridians plan to host competitions themed according to the collective antics of the beer-loving, gator-possessing, rap-sheet heavy, mullet-wearing social media phenomenon known as Florida Man.
Organizers of the “Florida Man Games” describe the competition as “the most insane athletic showdown on Earth.” The games will poke fun at Florida’s reputation for producing strange news stories involving guns, drugs, booze and reptiles — or some combination of the four.
Among the contests planned for next February in St. Augustine, are the Evading Arrest Obstacle Course in which contestants jump over fences and through yards while being chased by real police officers; the Category 5 Cash Grab in which participants try to grab as much money in a wind-blowing booth; and the self-explanatory beer-belly wrestling.
*Big thank you to Bill Pope for sharing this news tip.
Readers Write...
Dear J.C.
You really read five books a month? I haven't read five books since high school.
L. Boebert
That's probably about my average, but it is normally weighted with fiction, not nonfiction. Fiction's a quicker read. According to the Gallup Organization, Americans these days read fewer books than in the past. The average being 12.6 books per year.
Dear J.C.
Yeah, but in Florida where you live, you guys don't have that many books left to read, do you, what with all the book banning going on?
R. Bradbury
Sometimes if feels that way. I recently read Carl Hiaasen's latest, a young adult novel titled Wrecker. I no sooner finished it than Hiaasen was quoted as saying it was already being banned in some places. Here's one of my favorite quotes about censorship from Kurt Vonnegut:
“I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases.”
Dear J.C.
Absolutely love your newsletters. I usually laugh out loud. Thank you.
Margo Carey
Usually? Only usually? I shall strive to do better.
Dear J.C.
Just finished reading "Mister Manners" and can't wait to go back and pick up your earlier Alexander Strange works from the beginning of his story. I have no news tips from the Gunshine State to offer. Florida is a wealth of weird and you seem to be able to effortlessly mine the absurdities of our politics, weather, and natural phenomenal beauty. It is so much fun to have a good laugh at our shortcomings and idiosyncrasies ... May we expect to encounter the mob enforcer with perfect diction in some future novel?? Please, give us more of Alex!!
P.T. Hamilton
More Alexander Strange is on the way. Stay tuned. And thanks.
Come See Me!
This is your chance to get an autographed copy of one -- or all -- of the books in The Strange Files series. If you're in Naples in mid-November, drop by and say hello!
Enjoy this Newsletter?
I hope you enjoyed this edition of my free monthly STRANGE FILES newsletter. If you have a friend you think might also enjoy this, please forward this email. In fact, if you forward this to ten of your friends and they, in turn, do the same, etc. etc., soon my Constant Contact email bill will bankrupt me. What a great problem to have.
Got a Question or an Item For the Next Newsletter?
Send me a note by clicking this link.
Parting Shots
J.C. Bruce is the author of The Strange Files series of mysterious novels (available on Amazon, other fine online booksellers, and at selected libraries). He also writes this free monthly newsletter. He holds dual citizenship in the United States of America and Florida, which PEN America notes is the number one book-banner in the U.S.A.