Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Guess Who's Coming to (Thanksgiving) Dinner?

The First Thanksgiving

Interested in spicing up the conversation at your Thanksgiving Dinner? Plimoth Plantation is sending Edward Winslow and Hobbamock to spend Thanksgiving with an anonymous winner of its auction on Ebay. The auction winner, a Cape Cod resident, will be hosting employees of Plimoth Plantation portraying Edward
Winslow, the former Governor of the Plymoth Colony and Hobbamock, a representative of the Wampanoag Indian tribe, for Thanksgiving. The winning bid was for $5,000. The Daily News Tribune of Waltham has their version of the story by Edward S. Colby here.

I thought this was a good idea from the people at Plimoth Plantation. This is kind of a variation of the old question: if you could meet an historic figure from the past, would would it be? A very difficult question to answer, but I'm going to answer a variation of the question. What if I could just choose my dinner companions?

In choosing dinner companions I would be naturally be looking for famous people from the past that I admire and who led interesting lives. I would also choose people who were famous for their intelligence, wit and after-dinner conversation.

Narrowing it down to just three, my choices would be: Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890), Samuel Clemens (1835-1910) and Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965). First enjoying dinner and then spending an evening listening to the conversation of these three gentlemen, maybe while they played Billiards and smoked cigars, would certainly be a night to remember.

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