As Melanie Kirkpatrick explains in her history of the holiday, New England colonies eventually established annual general thanksgiving days. Thanksgiving as we know it arose from these days and the memory of the 1621 event, with layers of tradition added over time (the formal date in late November, the cuisine, the association with football, etc.).

It seems a safe bet that no one wants ever to see another year like this. Maybe not even Jeff Bezos, whose Amazon corporation has piled up tons of profits as people shun stores so they don’t pay with their lives for buying a new slipcover.

She is exactly who we want leading the United States through this immediate economic crisis and strategizing ways to address the country’s more chronic challenges.

Monday, on Twitter and CNN, respected reporter Carl Bernstein named 21 GOP senators, including McSally, Grassley, Cornyn, Collins, Rubio and Rick Scott, who in private, he says, “have repeatedly expressed extreme contempt for Trump and his fitness to be POTUS.” Yet almost none has been willing to say so publicly.

Her experiences taught me important lessons. First, we should never take the peace and freedom we enjoy here for granted. All this happened in the lifetime of my immediate family. It could happen again. Indeed, in places such as Syria, people are suffering similar atrocities today. America should not abandon them the way we abandoned the Warsaw Poles.

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