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September 16, 2024

— William Bradford

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The Mayflower

We're going to start today by talking briefly about college spring break, and then pivot to the Mayflower -- as in, yes, the ship that landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620.

When I was a college sophomore, a group of us went on spring break to Florida.

We were broke, and I still remember paying $200 each for a package that included a 1/4 share of a motel room for the week (4 guys sharing 2 queen size beds), plus "round-trip transportation" from Connecticut to Panama City Beach.

As you can imagine, "round-trip transportation" meant a 30-hour trip (including breakdowns) on a beat-up old bus with 3 drivers switching off. It was packed to the gills with about 60 students, plus all their bags, maybe 30 cases of beer(?), and a single tiny bathroom in the back.

Spring break itself was a lot of fun, but the bus ride itself -- let's just say we could only laugh about it later. It was an endurance contest.

I thought about this trip when I learned some statistics about the Mayflower recently:

• Length? About 90 feet -- basically the same as our spring break bus.
• Passengers? 102, plus a crew of about 30.
• Time on the ship? Oh, man ...

There are so many ways to calculate that last line, but the ship left Plymouth, England 404 years ago today, September 16, 1620, and sighted land on November 19. So that's 64 days.

But, they were in the wrong place (they'd meant to sail to Virginia but wound up at Cape Cod), and it wasn't until December 7 that anyone actually left the ship to try to explore the coast. Then, the first foray turned brutal because the Pilgrims had no idea that the weather in December in Massachusetts would be much colder than what they'd experienced in England.

They also hadn't understood that the ground would be so cold and hard that planting would be impossible. It's quite true that had Native American tribes not helped the Pilgrims, they would have starved to death.

In fact, during the winter of 1620-21, half the passengers and crew did die, either from disease or malnourishment. And, it wasn't until March 1621 that the survivors finally disembarked from the Mayflower for good.

Now, was it bad form to write about (a) college kids on spring break and (b) what must have been pretty horrific scenes and death four centuries ago in the same essay?

More than the uncertainty and the religious persecution, and maybe even the death, I can't help imagining that the extra difficulty was something that was all around them, but that people might tend to forget in the telling: just how utterly cramped the whole thing was.

However, if there had been no Mayflower, well -- who knows what the future would have looked like? The one thing I'm pretty sure of is that I wouldn't be here, at least as I currently exist -- or for that matter, any of the 35 million Mayflower descendants that the Mayflower society insists there are.

(I'm not a Mayflower descendant myself; far from it. But, let's just assume Massachusetts and the surrounding area would have been different, and I can imagine that somewhere in my own ancestral lineage, somebody who had to get together for me to exist now, might not have.)

Anyway, let's give the quote of the day, which is written as people wrote 400 years ago, but is still pretty easy to discern, to the late (obviously) William Bradford, the second governor of the colony they created:

Think about that next time you're cramped on public transportation, OK?

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Did you see ...

• Donald Trump was the target Sunday of “what appears to be an attempted assassination” at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, according to the FBI, nine weeks after he survived a previous attempt on his life. Trump said he was safe and well, and authorities held a man identified as Ryan Wesley Routh in custody. Secret Service agents a few holes ahead of Trump on the golf course noticed the muzzle of an AK-style rifle sticking through the shrubbery that lines the course, roughly 400 yards away. (Associated Press)
• Conspiracy theories about Haitian immigrants allegedly eating pets in Springfield, Ohio cited by Trump during last week's debate led to security threats to the town's public schools and City Hall, law enforcement said. Separately, the woman whose Facebook post originally sparked the whole thing now says she had no firsthand knowledge and regrets having done it. (Axios, NBC News)
• J.D. Vance to CNN's Dana Bash afterward (I'm just going to quote this, as some people say he's admitting that the stories were false, and others say no): "The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast." (Mediaite)
• Moving on ... Minnesota just became the latest state to eliminate prison gerrymandering. A new law will end the practice of counting incarcerated people where prisons are located, which skews political power within the state. (BoltsMag)
• NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban announced his resignation last week, one week after federal authorities seized his phone in connection with a probe investigating his twin brother’s business as a nightlife consultant, Gothamist has learned. Caban served in the role for just over a year. He’s the second commissioner to resign under Mayor Eric Adams. (Gothamist)
• For my Gen X readers: A concert by the reunited Jane’s Addiction in Boston came to a sudden end Friday night when a clearly enraged Perry Farrell threw a punch at guitarist Dave Navarro — and was restrained by crew members, still appearing physically agitated as he was hustled offstage. Multiple audience members shared their dramatic video of the altercation after the gig ended in calamity. (Variety)
• UK media have jumped on a Sunday morning message from the British Royal Family wishing Prince Harry a happy 40th birthday, as a sign of a slight thawing in the chill between London and Montecito. Harry turned 40 Sunday and the Royal Family’s official social media account posted a message, along with a picture of the smiling prince. This is a contrast to last year, when no reference to the prince’s birthday was made. Prior to that, the date had been marked every year. (Deadline)