Breakfast With Russell Baker

Russell Baker
August 14, 1925 – January 21, 2019

I was awake well before sunrise that Friday morning. A limousine was waiting for me in front of my building in Bloomfield, New Jersey, because commuter trains don't run that early. I had no time to brew coffee, so I had to make do with a chilled Pepsi offered by the driver. I am not a morning person, but it was part of my job as a publicist to escort my authors to their New York media appearances. I had booked Russell Baker on Good Morning America. 

I really didn't know what to expect from Mr. Baker, having only chatted with him briefly on the phone a few times. I had read The Good Times, for which I was doing publicity. It was a delightful memoir about his career in journalism. But I had not yet read Growing Up, his first memoir, for which he'd won a Pulitzer. Our department assistant had rustled up a copy for me only the day before.

I had learned a bit of the history, the unexpected success of Growing Up. The book had gone back for a second printing even before the publication date. The original publisher hadn't anticipated huge numbers on this sweet, understated memoir about coming of age in the shadow of the Great Depression and going on to become a New York Times columnist. The Times reviewed it, of course. It was a rave, and the book had started flying off the shelves, deservedly so.

In my youthful ignorance I hadn't really understood why it was so easy to book media for Russell Baker. It began to dawn when I saw how warmly he was welcomed at the GMA studio. They seemed thrilled to talk to Baker again, even for a mass market reprint of his second memoir. I began then to understand just how beloved he was. As the day wore on, I began to understand why.

If Thine Eye Be Single

Some synchronicities are ickier than others.

This is the first news story I read this morning.

South Florida beaches are usually places where people find sea shells, tiny crawling creatures and a shark tooth here and there, but a man walking on Pompano Beach Wednesday came across something out of the ordinary.

A giant eyeball.

Later today, a sneaky neighbor left a bucket of these on our doorstep.

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Full Circle

I've written before about my near obsession with this basic form. First it possessed my inner vision, so that I seriously considered doing a giant, and I mean giant, canvas... except that I don't paint. Then I began to recognize it in a variety of contexts, penultimately in the giant obsessional painting of Battlestar Galactica character Kara Thrace. And it slowly dawned on me that it appears in a great deal of spiritual iconography. Now it's taken to stalking me.

Rightly or wrongly, Dan Brown calls the stripped down version of this symbol a circumpunct.

Brown has this to say in his novel [The Lost Symbol]: "In the idiom of symbology, there was one symbol that reigned supreme above all others. The oldest and most universal, this symbol fused all the ancient traditions in a single solitary image that represented the illumination of the Egyptian sun god, the triumph of alchemical gold, the wisdom of the Philosopher's Stone, the purity of the Rosicrucian Rose, the moment of Creation, the All, the dominance of the astrological sun, and even the ominscient all-seeing eye that hovered atop the unfinished pyramid. The circumpunct. The symbol of the Source. The origin of all things."

. . .

It is true that the circumpunct symbol has been around for millennia, albeit more often known as "the circle with the dot in the middle". It can symbolise everything from gold in alchemy to a European road sign for city centre. It is commonly used as a solar symbol and reputable sources date this to ancient Egypt, where the symbol has its origins in Ra (or Re), god of the midday sun. In fact, the circle with a midpoint, plus a vertical line is the hieroglyph meaning "sun".

So how did an Egyptian symbol rise to shine again as a token of the ancient mysteries among 21st-century Freemasons in Brown's novel? Langdon's exposition is as follows: "The pyramid builders of Egypt are the forerunners of the modern stonemasons, and the pyramid, along with Egyptian themes, is very common in Masonic symbolism." Very neat. Well done, Brown.

Brown is frustrating to read. I keep expecting there to be more of the depth hinted at by the subject matter but it's never forthcoming. And even in this case, the assigning of lineage and intrigue does nothing to address the pull this symbol has on the imagination or its underpinnings in sacred geometry. But it does flesh out a little context.

The symbol is also immediately recognizable as a human eye... or the Eye of Jupiter if you're a Battlestar Galactica fan. I was reminded the other day of that solid bit of conventional wisdom: The eyes are the windows of the soul. Eyes tell you everything you really need to know about a person. They are what many people report recognizing during past life regressions as belonging to people they currently know. Creepy eyes warn of malice and even psycopathy. I've learned through hard experience that if I don't like someone's eyes, I don't like them. Note that both Robert D. Hare's Without Conscious and Martha Stout's Sociopath Next Door feature eyes on the front cover.

Eyes are made up of vesicae piscis and circles. And that geometrical interplay between the sphere and the vesica piscis is, as I said here, the gateway in and out of manifestation. So it stands to reason that it is associated with the soul's migration. But it also seems to represent various levels of spiritual expansion and possibly even ascension.

My point is this. We are not drawn to that form because it looks like an eye, as when Eye of God mania swept the web. The eye is shaped like that because the eye is a significant portal in the body and one associated directly with light.

"In our circles, in our circles, in our circles, in our circles..." ~ Madeline Kahn, The Carol Burnett Show

For over a week, I've been awash in synchronicity, and much of it has revolved around this repeated geometry. I've been reading William Henry's Secret of Sion and it's just brought one epiphany after another. Like much of his work, it has me pulling out journals that date back over a decade, because it clarifies and validates things I've been seeing in my head for years. Henry, of course, associates various iterations of concentric circles with the opening of stargates. And I realized at a certain point that as I moved through the concluding chapters of the book, I began seeing the symbol everywhere.

The issue moved into sharp relief on Thursday when I noticed this amusing juxtaposition on my Facebook homepage. The photo is by my old friend Andy Cohen who is a simply exquisite photographer. The geometrical synchronicity is by universe.

Click to Enlarge

It does not escape my notice that the photo is of a sunflower and the circumpunct is, among other things, the symbol for the sun... and gold.

Later that day, I went to Target. Nothing to do with the power of suggestion. My daughter needed something and it's close. But having discovered the night before, while sitting by the pool, that it was definitely time to retire my very old iPod nano, I did something a little impulsive. I bought myself a new iPod. It's a purchase I've been planning but I could have gotten it a little cheaper elsewhere. It was, to put it oh so gently, not a good day, so I went straight for the instant gratification. I don't regret it... at all. And it was only later that I realized how truly flawless the timing was.

And, of course it came home in a Target bag because I bought it at Target.

Much later in the evening, I kept finding myself brought up short by my husband's viewing choices. I'd glance up at the TV just in time to see things like Alton Brown on the Food Network talking about the perfect form of the donut.

And then by these electric blue crested worm-things that were supposed to represent yeast... or something.

A little later, I noticed he was watching the Keanu Reeves remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. I looked up just in time to see this stellar scene.

And, of course, the reticulated python moving towards the sphere.

Sitting by the pool Friday night, listening to Hildegard von Bingen on my new iPod, I finished reading Secret of Sion. The concluding chapters of this book contain too many ah-ha moments to recount. But you really could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw his concluding image. The White Rose by Gustave Doré is a plate from Dante's Divine Comedy: Paradiso.

"In fashion then as of a snow-white rose displayed itself to me the saintly host..."

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Past and Portents in Graham Hancock's Mexico

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Well, this could explain all the piercing tones I've been getting in my head for the past couple of weeks. (Of course the supermoon hasn't helped this weekend. I mean these pics are pretty but, oh, my head.)

North America's second-tallest volcano recently rumbled to life, putting authorities on edge. Big eruptions of Mexico's massive Popocatepetl volcano are "few and far between," as one geologist says. Yet even without any dramatic fireworks, 17,800-foot (5,425-meter) "Popo" has the power to wreak havoc.

. . .

Popocatepetl lies about 40 miles (70 kilometers) southeast of Mexico City. The mountain reawakened in December 1994 after five decades of silence. Yet in the nearly 20 years since, the volcano has rarely exhibited the kind of vigorous activity that began the week of April 12.

Minor earthquakes have rocked the mountain, it has spewed out plumes of gas and ash, and multiple explosions have shot glowing rocks from the summit. [ Images of Popocatepetl in action.]

The mountain has the potential to erupt magnificently once every 2,000 or 3,000 years. "It has big eruptions, but they are so few and far between," Sheridan said. "But they have been pretty big. So that is the scary part."

I have a particular affection for the Mexico City area and tend to be sort of dialed in to earth changes there. It is an area rich in history. One of the most transformative experiences of my life involved a trip to Mexico City. And I owe at least a little of that to Graham Hancock. I was reminded of that yesterday morning when I stumbled on this lecture he did some years ago.

Fingerprints of the Gods, which he discusses here in some depth, was the first of Hancock's books I read, and it began a love affair with his writing. But the way I came to read that book was somewhat peculiar.

The book had belonged to a friend of mine. I noticed it on her bookshelf where it looked a little out of place. I borrowed it and had begun to read it when she and I had a huge falling out and I had to the give it back. I had fully intended to get the book for myself but I hadn't yet got 'round to it when, some months later, an opportunity to travel to Mexico City came up. It's a long and complicated story but suffice it to say it wound up with me going there to do a Flower of Life teacher training with Drunvalo Melchizedek.

When it came time for me to make my travel arrangements, it occurred to me that I should probably do at least a little research about the area first. I stopped by the Montclair Book Center to pick up a Fodor's. There, thoroughly misplaced in the travel section, sort of shoved in awkwardly on its side, was Fingerprints of the Gods. I picked it up and started to leaf through it. And there it was. Teotihuacan. Now, geography has never been my long suit and I really hadn't grasped until that moment that the ancient site was spitting distance from Mexico City. I really knew very little about it except that Hancock had included it as a site of some importance in advancing his theory of an ancient, lost civilization. But in the split second it took me to put those few pieces together I resolved that one way or another I was going to get there during my trip.

It occurred to me that Drunvalo might take us there as part of the seminar but I wasn't going to leave that to chance. I built an extra day into my trip so I could go there alone if needs be. As it turns out, he did not take us to Teotihuacan. Although he did take us to Cuicuilco, a round pyramid that isn't nearly as well known, and that was also an amazing experience. But the opportunity to go to Teotihuacan fell into my hands as if by magic. There was a gentleman in the class who was a professional tour guide. He graciously extended an offer to anyone who wanted to go there on the Monday following the seminar which, as luck would have it, was the day I had left open for just that purpose.

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Hancock goes into some detail in this presentation on the relevance of Teotihuacan to his theory of a lost civilization. I had read everything he had to say about Latin America, with its ziggurats and plumed serpents, before I got there. Even so, I was unprepared for the intensity of this "place where men become gods."

I spent that day doing rituals with the small group of travelers and our wonderful guide. We came to realize the entire experience was one long ritual and we were not the one's directing it. Mostly, our job was to listen and do as we were told. Teotihuacan is inhabited by wise spirits of ancient origin. 

The conspiracy of events that put me in Mexico City at that particular time with those particular people is something I could only marvel at. And the process of transformation that was initiated in me at that time is something I'm still sorting out.

One of the things that struck me as I was listening to Hancock explain his research is just how impermanent it all is. I still marvel at the hubris with which so many people disregard doomsday theories. I'm not saying that I think 2012 signals such a doomsday and I think if anything is clear about the Mayan long count calendar, it's that, for all the theories, no one really understands it. It remains a tantalizing mystery. But something is happening and the energy shifts we've been experiencing are fairly amazing. So are the earth changes.

Hancock touches briefly on Charles Hapgood's theory of crustal displacement and the possibility that we may have had previous pole shifts. Whether any of that is tied into the vestiges of a lost civilization and the out of place artifacts Hancock has spent years researching is hard to say. Even harder to say is whether it will happen again. But to pretend that civilization ending cataclysms are silly wives tales is arrogant. The people of Pompeii were apparently enjoying life as usual when they found themselves engulfed by the sudden, massive eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. We certainly know more about volcanoes now than those ancient Romans did but we are no more immune to a grandiosity that convinces us that we know enough.

I was reading the other day about some new theories on the volcano that is Yellowstone. Something many Americans don't realize is that Yellowstone is actually a "supervolcano" and a full scale eruption would be devastating. The new study I was reading up on found that it might not "wipe out half of the United States, covering the rest in 3 feet of ash and pushing the world into hundreds of years of nuclear winter, challenging human civilization to a game of death and survival." So that's... kind of... good news. The bad news? It's much more active than previously believed and even a lesser eruption would be inconceivably disastrous.

My point is simply this. As tempting as it is to think that we know all we need to about the potential for sudden, radical change on this planet, history has shown over and over that we don't. And the clues are there to a prehistory of which we know nothing with any certainty. Embrace the mystery. That's all I'm saying.

A side note: I love Jungian synchronicities. As I write this I notice that the movie Matilda has come on ABC Family. It's one I've watched over and over. But the first time I ever saw it was when I was taking my red-eye flight back from Mexico City, after a full day of tromping up and down those divine temple monuments. On the nearly empty plane, I stretched out over several seats and drifted in and out of sleep, surfacing just long enough to ask myself questions like: Is that little girl making things fly around the room? This movie is about a telekinesis? Maybe I should be paying more attention? Zzzzzzzz...

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More Earthquakes and Weirdness

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Someone George Ure refers to as "Deep Source" did some unusual calculations on the Virginia and Colorado earthquakes. Ure describes the dialogue:

“Did you notice the Colorado quake was 111-miles from the border of Mineral County, Colorado? he began.

No, I hadn’t.

“Notice it…it’s important…”

“Uh…OK…”

“And what was the first Virginia landmark referenced in the USGS report?”

“Well, the quake was 5 miles from Mineral, Virginia. So what?”

“And how far is it between the quakes?” he continued.

Uh…1,460 miles, or so, I guess, just eyeballing it on Streets & Trips.

“Add up all those numbers.”
 
“11.”

“Hold that.  And how far from the Colorado quake to Mineral Well, Mississippi?”
 
“841 miles.”

“And from Mineral Wells, Mississippi to Mineral, Virginia?”


“About 700.”

“So here’s something to think about then:  Doesn’t it strike you as a synch-wink that the quakes happened approximately equally spaced from Mineral Wells?”
 
“Hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Then look 111 miles North and slightly East of Mineral Wells, Tennessee.  Tell me the name you see up there…”
 
New Madrid.

“Must I do all your work for you, George?”  Click.

Yes, I Felt It Here ~ UPDATED

Well, that was a little scary. No major damage to report here. A couple of small things fell. But I've never experienced vibration like that in my life. How's that for irony? Several years in Southern California and the worst quake I've ever experienced was in Virginia. I thought it must be at least a 4 but it turns it was close to 6 at the epicenter; it was downgraded to 5.8 from 5.9 over the course of the afternoon. This was a fairly shallow quake and it was close to a minute before the rattling completely stopped. I grabbed my hysterical 9 year old daughter and stood in the doorway until the house completely stopped jerking around.

But this isn't about me. I just find it a little odd that there were two quakes in the US of over 5 point magnitude almost exactly 12 hours apart. Late last night Colorado had experienced a 5.3 -- also very unusual for the region. The quake there centered in Trinidad was clocked at 11:46pm MT on 8/22. Ours, about 50 miles from here in Mineral VA was at 1:51pm ET on 8/23. That's a little too close for comfort in every sense.

The one in Colorado was the strongest in over forty years. As near as I can tell, this was the first quake in Virginia of such magnitude in over a hundred years. There was another 5.8 in 1897.

There've been a few of aftershocks in Virginia but I haven't felt them. The strongest was a 4.2 around 8:00 pm but I think they initially thought it was in the Charlottesville area because of the original posting which has been removed and replaced with one that puts it in Mineral. The other two were under 3.0. Trinidad, Colorado has had multiple aftershocks and there was a foreshock the day before of 4.6. As of this writing, I count 5 aftershocks above 3.0 in Colorado.

Over the past couple of days I've been picking my way through the most recent interview with Time Monk Clif High. I still haven't listened to all of it because I just haven't had the time, but I'm going to post it now because this really jumps out. Last night I noted that there was mention of high potential for earthquakes. I just went back and listened to some of the earlier parts of the interview et voila. In the fourth video a little before the 5:00 minute mark, someone asks Clif if he still predicts two quakes for North America. The interview is from August 12 and he says he's still looking at a timespan from Aug 17 - 19, so as he typically is, he's a few days off.

My ears had pricked up when I listened to that last night because I've been on earthquake alert myself for the past week or so. I just thought it would be in a more predictable location. I'm still concerned about California and noting Baja on my earthquake feed about daily; sometimes a couple of times a day. I had a fleeting thought a day or two ago that what I was sensing could be here but dismissed it.  I've experienced quakes here before but they've been of the momentary jolt that feels like a truck hit the building variety. Again, with history as my guide, I did not expect a major quake in this area. Joke's on me.

As ever, I offer up the Time Monk material without opinion on High's world view. He says things I agree with and things I don't... at all. In general, he's far more pessimistic than I am but I continue to be impressed with the technology he's developed for collating the collective unconscious. Turns out we humans, as a group, are fairly prescient.

I noticed this on Time Monk George Ure's blog the other day, for interest. A helpful reader noticed that the webbot data pretty clearly predicted the "global rev" eruption in Great Britain.

George, your comments and link Tuesday to the UK riots spreading and other stuff is right out of Clif’s Web-bot . He talks about the GlobalPop exhibiting “maniacal behaviour patterns”, and also for a really direct hit on his part – under the heading Tea Crazy – he writes:…”data sets have celtic isles as..center/focal point…of global revolution…British experience..provide emotional springboard…new subsets geographically tied to British Isles…long struggle against oppression/repression…challenges of mass national contention…fighting..displays as emotion…uncharacteristic of the national British character.

So the webbots predictions continue to be impressive on the global revolution.

While I was looking for that, though, I noticed something else from Ure that made me do a double-take.

What Clif and I are both worried about it how these events (or eventlets to coin a term for them) may presage that yet-to-be-noted reports about people “staring blankly’ ‘going into standing stupors’ and needing ‘help of others to survive’ which would seem to fit with that could happen to someone whose mental constructs are not ‘light enough’ to accept that the world is sinking back into what in previous ages was called “magick”.

They've been talking for a while about predictions of people just losing it and staring blankly into space. Here, Ure is putting that into context with a reader's experience of something I can only call a "reality glitch." It jumped out at me for a couple of reasons. One is that I've been noticing these "eventlets" or, to use my term, "reality glitches" for a while. I keep thinking I must be misperceiving but I'm less and less willing to say that. The other reason this statement caught my eye is that it echoes something I've been saying for a couple of years now -- that I see us entering a time of magic. I've been very reluctant to give details because what I see and sense... is just too weird. But I've mentioned it a couple of times; a quick search shows here and here but there are probably more. I don't know how George Ure means. I'm not even sure how I mean it but the future looks... surreal.

I think I just felt another minor tremor around 12:45am here. I'm going to keep checking the USGS site but nothing is showing yet. Weird day, anyway. But things are gonna get stranger. Just sayin.'

UPDATE: I did feel another quake last night. It took quite a while for it to show up in the reports -- and some of the smaller quakes seem to have disappeared from the site -- but it was a 3.4 and it occurred 12:45:26 this morning. I have to say it was very subtle. If I'd been doing anything other than sitting in a quite room typing I expect I would have missed it... as clearly I did the 4.2 last evening.

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Dendrolatry

Monday evening during a rather intense thunderstorm I sat watching an albeit somewhat pixilated Kill Bill Vol. 1, for the umpteenth time, and noodling on the computer. I didn't realize just how a bad a storm it was until an incredibly loud crack of thunder shook the wall next to me and something shiny flew across the living room a couple of feet from my face. What I thought must have been a shard of glass from a broken window turned out be lightning. There was no damage at all to the window or to me. The tree outside the window, however...

Our phone lines also got a good jolt that night and we've been replacing things all week, starting with the router which was magically transformed into a paperweight. So I've been offline for a few days. Turns out that thing about turning off and unplugging all your appliances during thunderstorms might have some merit.

We've been learning a collective lesson about the frailty of our technological society. In our endless to quest to subdue and control nature, nature keeps winning. Just ask the good folks in Japan who thought loading up one of the most seismic areas on the planet with nuclear plants was a good idea. There's power and then there's power.

We were fortunate. I wasn't hit by a refracted lightning bolt. And we've been able to replace our damaged electronics without incurring too much expense. Mostly, I've been left with a sense of awe.

When I was taking pictures of the tree for the property manager, I found myself overwhelmed by the beauty of the tree itself. Trees have always amazed me. I've been drawing pictures of them and writing poems about them since I was a child. They're one of the few things I've always been able to draw well. I drew trees with images of women woven into them and great serpent roots. I drew trees with open eyes.

My fascination with trees has grown over the years; the mythology and geometry. When I read Robert Graves's White Goddess years ago, I learned that many ancient cultures had elaborate mythical and cultural interrelationships with trees. Graves wrote extensively on the Beth Luis Nion alphabet and calendar of the Celts, for instance.

The Norse Yggdrasil is one of many "world tree" symbols; it's origins probably tracing back into its shamanic forbears. Trees are often used by shamans as entry points into non-ordinary reality because the roots go into the lower world, the trunk to the middle world, and the branches to the upper world.

When I first began learning about some of the deeper symbolism of trees it answered unasked questions that had been rattling around my subconscious: Why had I always been so entranced by trees? Why does the contemplation of them lull me into a state of reverie? Why of all the emanations of nature is it trees that I find so ineffable?

The tree is one of our most potent archetypes as a symbol of life and unity between the seen and unseen worlds; spirit and matter.

As I examined where the river of current had run down the tree into the earth, the myth that sprang to mind, though, was Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. There, Eve met the serpent -- the shining one -- who coiled up the tree, or spine. And, in one of those strange vignettes where myth merges seamlessly with the world of form, I learned that a neighbor who bears one of the many names of the great mother goddess was hit in the leg by one of those shining sparks of electricity that shot through so many of our windows that night.

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Rest in Peace, Lynn Redgrave

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Tomorrow night they will dim the lights on Broadway to honor the passing of Lynn Redgrave.

I find myself deeply saddened and somewhat startled at my own sadness. I did not know Lynn Redgrave well, but I spent a good bit of time with her when I handled publicity on her book "This is Living." She was a lovely, gracious, and unpretentious woman. It was that genuine, down-to-earth quality that so distinguished her work as an actress.

I was only a child when I first saw "Georgy Girl" on television. The warmth, vulnerability, and accessibility Redgrave brought to the character of Georgy made the film an instant classic. But that was Lynn Redgrave; sincere, open, and unabashedly honest. She brought that incredible presence and integrity to every project she undertook.

Shortly after wrapping the media tour for her book, I had the opportunity to see her perform in Henrik Ibsen's "The Master Builder" at Tony Randall's National Actor's Theater. It was a thrill to see her perform live and it was an honor to have known her.

You left us too soon, Lynn Redgrave, and you will be missed.

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Ummm... Thanks...

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Well, the Thanksgiving weekend is now over... I hope. What a weekend it's been. In keeping with the true spirit of the season, I feel like I was given some pox covered blankets. That was some holiday, huh? Complete with a terrorist incident and murder by shopping. Am I the only sensitive who feels like they've been hit by a bus? Something in the ether, as they say. The collective unconscious has been roiling for a while, now. Well, roughly since the financial system started to collapse under its own weight, earlier this fall. And, now it feels like it's boiled over. It seems that "release language" period the time monks warned about is in full swing now. There are times when being an empath is... challenging.

I spent Thanksgiving day clutching a box of tissues to my bosom, and avoiding bright light. There is some sort of massive clearing happening that is causing the worst, prolonged allergy attack in recent memory. Something to do with being vibrationally out of sync with my environment (read: earth) and a whole lot of leaf mold. (Note to self: Never blow leaves after they've been rained on for days on end and have begun moulder. Don't know what the alternative is, but, even so, don't do it.)

On Friday, I learned that two of the casualties in Mumbai were part of a group traveling with Master Charles Cannon. This knocked the breath out of me. I do not personally know Master Charles, nor did I know Alan Scherr or his thirteen year old daughter, but Master Charles is a close friend and associate of Virginia Sandlin, with whom I studied for many years. I have heard a great deal about his work and have been enjoying his truly remarkable meditation music for some years. So, this felt very personal to me, which underscored the sense of horrific tragedy.

All in all, not the best Thanksgiving, this end. I did have one that was worse. It was years ago, when I was working at Penguin. After work, the day before the Thanksgiving holiday, I had planned to make a run to the bank and Post Office around the corner. I was stopped short by a scene playing out on the sidewalk. There was a dead body on the ground, a small crowd, and a woman screaming "I did it! I did it!" and waving her hands in the air. It was one of those truly surreal moments when everything seems to shift into slow motion. I learned the back-story, later, on the news. A paranoid schizophrenic had murdered a civil servant as she was leaving work. She had become convinced that said civil servant had it in for her, and after an escalating series of letters, had shot her in broad daylight. I spent most of the weekend in a state of low-grade shock. Oh, the humanity...

So. How was your Thanksgiving?