Here's to Plymouth Rock

Happy Thanksgiving! This holiday always brings me face to face with my all-American heritage: my nine-times-great-grandfather, the eminent Pilgrim John Alden, participated in that legendary first Thanksgiving feast with the local natives of Cape Cod in 1621. Another of his many claims to fame is that he was the first to plant his feet on the famous stone, Plymouth Rock. The rock has literally been loved to pieces since then, and today it looks better on commemorative crockery than it does in person. As for John Alden, hundreds of thousands of his descendants now people the United States, and I hope all of them are enjoying the holiday today.