A Few Quick Notes

For Thanksgiving day

1: Before all else, a happy Thanksgiving to all the American readers here. If you are planning a large gathering of the extended family, this may be an especially good year for avoiding political issues at the table. We are at what is now fashionably called an ‘inflection point’ in national culture, one in which the middle ground between opposed camps has entirely vanished. So focus on the food and the football and leave Armageddon to take care of itself.

2: Here, however, I will perversely set my own injunction aside and direct you to an article that my brother Robert has posted on his Substack publication The Musical Platypus. That newsletter is as a rule dedicated entirely to music (the clue is in the title), but on this one occasion he felt moved in heart and mind to write on another topic. His argument is no doubt correct by the letter of the law, though I suppose nothing can come of it.

3: When I lived in England, occasionally some English wag would proudly cite the quip of the native soldiery regarding American GI’s during the Second World War: “Overpaid, oversexed, and over here.” Amusing enough, but no one there ever seemed to recall the American riposte regarding the Brits, which my father now and then liked to note: “Underpaid, undersexed, and under Eisenhower.” I mention it now for two reasons: first, because it is Thanksgiving and therefore an appropriate day for taking national pride in our having won that little skirmish in the greater engagement of the ‘special relationship’; and, second, because we shall never again enjoy the luxury of mocking any other people, since now we are officially the stupidest nation on the face of the earth.

4: The correct recipe for pumpkin pie, which I would supply here if I had the energy, includes a good number of spices—cinnamon, nutmeg, and so forth—and an outlandish quantity of bourbon, ideally Maker’s Mark (and I mean a lot). If you are in the habit instead of eating an insipid sweet pumpkin custard in pastry with whipped cream on top, or something like that, you are depriving yourself of a precious experience. I will try to get the proper recipe out to you before the next Thanksgiving rolls around; it would come too late for tomorrow’s meal in any event, because the pie needs a day or two after cooking to settle, so that the flavors blend properly.