In the words of the Duke, “Whoa, take ‘er easy there, Pilgrim.”
It’s understandable that the Pilgrims would have been agitated. By the time the Mayflower left England, they had already been living on board ship for a month and a half. Then 300 miles out to sea, the Mayflower’s sister ship, the ironically named Speedwell, began to leak and they had to return to port. The now extremely overcrowded Mayflower embarked once more. It took 66 days to cross the Atlantic. By the time they finally landed, well north of their projected target of Northern Virginia (the territory then encompassing the Hudson Valley), they had long exhausted their supply of sandwiches and their collective blood sugar level was plummeting. Fortunately, the locals were kind enough to help them out, and Puritanism took root in America. And we’ve been paying for it ever since.
Still, we, like the Pilgrims, have much to be thankful for, and this morning on WPRB we’ll celebrate our good fortune with music by American composers on the subjects of gratitude, flight from religious persecution, the torments of Puritanical repression, Native American themes, and New England, Southern and mountain folk music and hymn tunes.
So go ahead and help yourself to a second slice. It will be more powerful than a tryptophan coma, from 6 to 11 EST, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We’ll be loosening our belts in front of the football game, on Classic Ross Amico.