While Thanksgiving has been the traditional start of the “holiday season,” in recent years the calendar for that kick-off appears to have been turned back to Halloween, then to Labor Day, then to July 4th… Pretty soon, it will be Christmas year ‘round — at least, for the commercial aspect of it.
“Black Friday” has transitioned from a one-day event to a weeks- and even months-long orgy of consumerism. If everything is on sale all the time, is there really such a thing as MSRP? (BTW, I used to love that TV show: “MSRP in Cincinnati.”).
Anyway… however you do (or don’t) choose to stage any celebrations this time of year, I trust this edition of the RFTN newsletter finds you safe and warm.
Of the five RFTN posts I generated this month, the common theme is that they were all generated this month:
Presents Aren’t Accounted For (November 9, 2021)
The second holiday season in a row has been tainted not only by Covid-related concerns but also issues with the global supply chain, leading to massive shipping backups and manufacturing delays:
Global supply chains are creaking. Shortages of everything from raw materials to cars are nearing historic levels. Shipping rates have risen to multi-year highs, and consumers face delays and price increases that will stretch beyond the year-end holiday season. Much of the demand is in the U.S., where shoppers seem to have an endless appetite as the economy stages a comeback. Meanwhile, the supply is primarily in Asia, where many countries – chief among them China – still confront lockdowns and a rocky recovery out of the pandemic. That’s created tensions across global trade channels, manufacturing hubs and logistics networks…
[Read more here: https://wapo.st/3xrHHt3]
Last Christmas was focused on the barriers to family gatherings. This Christmas is focused on the barriers to purchasing new cars and PS5 consoles.
River-Horsing Around (November 13, 2021)
As if providing cocaine to fuel the 70s and 80s lifestyle wasn’t bad enough, late drug king Pablo Escobar was also responsible for introducing a very large invasive species into Colombia:
Colombia, struggling to control its oversized hippopotamus population, has started to dart the animals with adapted contraceptives to stop over-breeding, new agency Reuters reported.
The hippos, native to Africa, are a legacy of Colombia’s deceased drug lord Pablo Escobar who had imported them for his private zoo, the report said.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the US Department of Agriculture is said to have donated 70 doses of the GonaCon contraceptive to neuter the animals.
The contraceptive darts are normally used to control deer populations…
Escobar reportedly bought four hippos from a zoo in California, and flew them to his Napoles ranch in the early 1980s. They bred to become supposedly the biggest wild hippo herd outside Africa, which is both a local curiosity and a hazard, AFP reported in 2020.
According to a study published in the Biological Conservation journal, the invasive animals could attack people and destroy crops, and their waste threatens water environments. Neutering the hippos through surgical sterilisation is considered risky, and costly too.
[Read more here: https://bit.ly/3rmQGdI]
I’ve always thought of hippos as relatively benign, if gargantuan, creatures — but that apparently is not the case. Has anyone ever tried to flush a baby hippo down the toilet, as it’s alleged happens with baby alligators from time to time? That would make for an interesting call to the plumber.
On the Roadrunner (November 17, 2021)
This was a story of great interest here in Maine, where I live, before being picked up by the national media:
A wayward roadrunner is on the mend in Maine after traveling across the country in a moving van.
The greater roadrunner, a species native to Southwestern states, hitched a ride in the storage area of a moving van from Las Vegas to Westbrook, Maine. Volunteers took the bird to Avian Haven, a bird rehabilitation facility in Maine.
Avian Haven representatives said that they took the call about the bird Nov. 13 and that it continued to rest Tuesday. They said in a Facebook post that the bird was in “remarkably good shape” for having been stuck in a van for four days but might have lost weight during the journey.
The center is looking at ways to return the roadrunner to Nevada once it is healthy enough, said Diane Winn, Avian Haven’s executive director.
[Read more here: https://bit.ly/3CYQYtx]
Since this was initially posted, the roadrunner (who was finally determined to be male), was returned to his native habitat:
Pretty fast, even the second time through in slo-mo. But I didn’t hear the “beep-beep”!
Fortune Crookies (November 23, 2021)
I’ve heard of trucks spilling beer, or chickens, or crates of oranges on the highway — but money? Not so much:
An armored truck dropped loads of cash onto a freeway in Carlsbad, California, causing a major traffic jam as motorists hopped out of their vehicles to scoop up the bills — but authorities say drivers need to return the money or face possible criminal charges.
Shortly before 9:15 a.m. Friday, the California Highway Patrol, or CHP, began getting 911 calls about cash scattered across part of Interstate 5 near Cannon Road.
CHP and the FBI, which are investigating, said several people got out of their vehicles to chase after the money.
"Many of the motorists returned the money immediately to the officers; however, there were motorists observed driving from the scene with stolen money," they said in a joint statement. "The CHP would like to thank those motorists who have already returned money to their local CHP office and remind the public to do the right thing and return any money they found on the freeway."
[Read more here: https://nbcnews.to/3rbtWgU]
What would *you* do if you came across a hoard of cash spilled across the lanes? I was less surprised to read that people scooped up the money than I was to realize they’d come to a complete stop in the middle of a busy freeway and dodge speeding traffic to do so.
Harvest Croon (November 25, 2021)
No news story prompted this one — just the realization that there aren’t any Thanksgiving tunes popping up on our playlists.
After posting this, I received recommendations from a few folks; foremost among them was a reminder that many radio stations play “Alice’s Restaurant” in its full, 18-minute length to celebrate the holiday. I came across this clipping:
As I allude to in the post: Thanksgiving does have a more challenging history than what many of us were taught in school. The relationship between the Pilgrims and the indigenous population was fraught with tension and disease and racism. It actually didn’t play out so well for that initial wave of Pilgrims — and proved far worse for the native population who had existed in what came to be known as the “United States” for millennia before the arrival of the English settlers (and Spaniards before them).
2021 is the 400th anniversary of what’s been pinned as the “first Thanksgiving.” The modern-day celebration focuses, for many, on over-consumption, with little reflection on the origins of this event.
There’s a lot of controversy (much of it ginned-up, but still…) regarding efforts to “re-write history” (E.g., the 1619 Project, Critical Race Theory) and recast how we view any number of events that were fundamental to the establishment and prosperity of our nation. I won’t opine any further here — after all, RFTN is supposed to be a humor column.
I’m just thankful that, at the very least, we are having some sort of national discussion about the people upon whose backs America was constructed, even if that conversation seems to be dominated at the moment by those who wish to sweep it back under the rug.
If I can think of a way to comment on those discussions through the medium of light verse, I’ll get right on it.
See you next month! Thanks for sharing the newsletter, website, Facebook posts, etc.
JB