Thanksgiving

This was one of our best Thanksgivings. Mom got to relax, the food was good and we hung out with great friends. We left the house in the warm morning air and returned home needing down coats, hats and gloves. Warm Thanksgivings were a problem for us, when made Thanksgiving dinner in my mother's 12th floor Manhattan apartment. When it was cold, we used the balcony as a second refridgerator. But when it was warm, we had a problem; we served warm drinks and worried whether the food had been left out at room temporature for too long. No one ever got sick ... so I guess it was okay.

For second Thanksgiving (like the second night of Passover), we met some cousins at a suburban Dim Sum Chinese Restaurant. The waitstaff is so aggressive with those steaming hot carts! I haven't seen these cousins in years and it was good to touch base. We usually have second Thanksgiving with our "Russian" cousins from Kiev; but all of us were too busy with other things. So we missed them. And, my sister got to see another set of our cousins out in Texas. All pretty impressive, considering we're a family that rarely talks to one an other and virtually never gets together. Although one cousin and his family toured the monuments instead of joining us for Dim Sum.

Appropriately, Mom and I went to the Museum of the American Indians today, which was interesting. We only made it to the forth floor, which was filled with the stories of many different native people told by their descendants. It really gives you a sense of the magnitude of the tragedy that be-fell the natives of the Americas. I kept wanting more details. The cafeteria offers tasty Native American foods from north, south, east and west of the hemisphere.

In school I loved class trips to the American Museum of Nature History in New York. And, the Indian village displays were my favorite. I imaged myself an Indian girl. It all seemed very romantic, despite the hard work. Now, it seems totally bizarre that the Native Peoples were mixed in with the dinosours and stuffed wildlife. Needless to day, there is an Indian museum in NYC as well.

Question: why is the museum called the Musium of American Indians? Why not Native Americans? Or indiginous people? I'm not familiar with the linguistic politics. Will have to look it up.