Part 1:

For me the closest to my childhood understanding was easily the third article. “The Pilgrims and America’s First Thanksgiving.” The one out of the three articles the one closest to my current understanding has to be the same article. My understanding has developed from being seen as a historical time in history to a fantastic way to get away from work and/or school and enjoy the little things with friends and family.

Part 2:

I found that all of the articles so far to be interesting, however knowing that a socialist experiment went on in the first american colonies is a bit new to me. Thus making these four articles very interesting. The funny thing about the first article mentioned in this section was the line “colonists were lazy thieves.” To be quite honest I’m not surprised these people that came over didn’t have the mindset to be laborers, they were the higher ups.

In all curiosity not actually from it being required I looked up all the others. Author Richard J. Maybury who wrote “The Great Thanksgiving Hoax” is author of many books some for young adults others for more mature readers. Either way he is a writer with many experiences and factual evidence to help support his claims on a plethora of topics.

Now for Rush Limbaugh the third, He has a interesting life in radio talk shows. For me  being and working on radio shows, I know this doesn’t qualify me to talk on any subject. For Mr. Limbaugh his background in historical research is a bit scarce. However he is fantastic at understanding trends in the media due to his number of listeners on his shows. He is a man who he himself does not contribute research but rather is a wizard at collecting the information from those who have.  

Moving on now, Del Tackett is a religious man with a interesting political past. He assisted President George W. Bush during one of his two terms. However the information on Mr. Tackett is all rather bias seeing as the top 10 search results from google are his or part of his organization. Needless to say they state that he is a man of higher education in what I don’t know. Most of all he has written and published a few of his works.

Looking at the author of the last article I can see that they are of of higher education due to their writing style, unfortunately I was having difficulty finding the author and the information about them. However due to the nature of AIER and the requirements that are needed to have an article published results in the author being knowledgeable about the historical events. With all information you may want to take it with a grain of salt. Knowing the background of all of the authors helps me gauge which one I want to trust more than others. In other words it changed slightly but not very.

Part 3:

In all seriousness the articles for the step 2 were significantly more interesting. I feel this could be due to the information starting to be repetitive and already in my own viewpoint. The interpretations are yes compelling but for me they restate very similar facts. From my prior steps I can tell you that not all the information stated in the articles were all completely true. My main take is they are building off of my current understanding of  the “First Thanksgiving” and really I have to give credit to my older family members for instilling a more truthful story no matter how grim or advanced the information was for me at that time.

Looking at the background of each author they are all published from fairly websites and publishers. Taking a quick look at the author of “The Pilgrims Were … Socialists?” Kate Zernike has in total 1,154 articles published with The New York Times. Just taking a look at that this article is not her first rodeo. Digging deeper she has a lot of investigational articles along with up and coming news along with some of the pros and cons of each topic. Most having to do with some type of political situation.

Now for the audio recording for publish by the NPR. Bob Edwards was the radio host explaining a common explanation of the first thanksgiving and how it is being taught in school. First off Bob is a well credited radio show host with a few awards to his name. Due to the nature of his shows he does not need to avoid being extremely child friendly, resulting in his show being more in depth on a mature level.

Gary Hopkins author and Editor in Chief at the Education World has been a substantially credible source. I stress credibility since the information being stated can easily be altered due to simple bias. When looking at Gary Hopkins I can see that his background is with professional writing, according to his Linkedin page he has about 25 to 26 years in professional writing careers.

When reading the Pilgrim Hall Museum article, the author was never mentioned, which is quite common for this type of publishing. The author does however state facts that are backed by the actual speech given by Frank B.  James. The interesting parts about this article are how the lack a serious bias towards the events that happened that lead to the National Day of Mourning. continuing through the website I noticed the information published is not from one or two authors but rather 33 different authors.

When reading the the speech given by Wamsutta it’s interesting to see that his aggressive yet valid point of view on this matter. Wamsutta was an avid protesters of fighting for the more accurate depiction to be in schools. Along with schools just everywhere in general he wanted society to understand and be rid of the fairy tale story that is so commonly known.

After searching through and understanding the background of each individual it’s nice to see a little less biases in the author’s writings whereas the step two the authors involved could have simply altered the story based off of the environment they have been in.

Part 4:

When a historian starts off, knowing the simple story is the best place. Clearly ending there would not benefit in any way, but knowing it will help get the ball rolling. Once the simple story is understood dive more into the commonly known facts and understand what will they all have in common that is where some truth will shine through. In all seriousness the steps needed to take would be all of them. I say this since each step gathered more and more truth to the event that happened we call thanksgiving. Within each step knowing where the information is coming from can substantially aid in the most accurate interpretation possible. Along with knowing the source of the information, gathering as much as you can would be in the best possible favor for the author and their final interpretation.

Answering the second question on this step is a rather tough one. The average person ranging from 18 to 30 will find different parts of each article compelling. Looking back at the articles its simple to see that the repetitiveness I mentioned above is actually the information everyone can agree on. Knowing what each person agrees on helps build to the final story. After reading all of articles, the one that resides best with the 18 to 30 year old hopefully will be the one with the most credible sources backed by many variations with the most common facts throughout all of the articles. This is the best way to encourage the average person to pursue the more compelling interpretation.

If I was asked to find a primary source related to all of this would be google, why? It’s simple and can give you grounds to search on the more you develop the and understand everyone’s interpretation. Once hitting the end of my possible sources I would either end there or I might take it to the library I would first hit the campus then once that ended I would move to libraries and historical articles I could find. I say this in all seriousness, not trying to blow smoke up your butt or anything.

Knowing that I would be looking for a secondary source I would do the same steps stated above however without going to historical articles. My final step would most likely be the closest library or even google since they have a fantastic library of pdf files.