BoSacks Speaks Out: A Thanksgiving Toast, A Little Travel Gossip, and How We Got Here

Happy Thanksgiving, Friends.

Before Carol and I board a ship carrying more calories than common sense, I want to raise a virtual glass, say thank you, and connect today’s feast with the long, complicated history that landed us on this specific Thursday in November.

The Travel Gossip: Bo at Sea (Wi-Fi Permitting)

Carol and I are preparing for a trip so indulgent it makes Odysseus look like he just stepped out for a quick gyro. From November 25 to December 17, we will sail Viking-style from Barcelona to Athens. Choosing between Spanish tapas and Greek moussaka seemed too restrictive, so we decided to test-drive the entire Mediterranean—one overstuffed plate at a time.

The itinerary reads like a cardiologist’s warning label paired with a foodie’s dream:

• Barcelona: Where dinner isn't a meal; it’s a late-night endurance sport.
• Sète: France’s secret oyster vault.
• Marseille: The proud capital of bouillabaisse and strong opinions.
• Florence: Where gelato quietly replaces lunch, dinner, and sound judgment.
• Rome: Carbonara deserves a flag, an anthem, and a permanent seat at the United Nations.
• Pompeii: Proof that the Romans knew plenty about decadence and very little about volcanic risk assessment.
• Crete: A chance to dance away roughly one percent of yesterday’s caloric sins.
• Athens: Where ordering octopus for breakfast passes for cultural curiosity rather than a mistake.

Yes, it is grueling work, but someone has to check on the health of European newsstands. If they are still selling ink on paper in the Mediterranean, I will find it.

A Note on the Newsletter Rhythm: Usually, I manage to keep the presses rolling regardless of time zones. However, shipboard Wi-Fi is often powered by a single overworked hamster, and our daily schedule involves museums, ruins, and the occasional mandatory second dessert. You might hear from me only once or twice during the voyage.

Then again, I do love a challenge. Expect at least a few dispatches from a cabin desk or a quiet lounge, where I will do my best impression of a working journalist—fork in one hand, keyboard in the other.

A Short Tour Through Thanksgiving History

Thanksgiving did not arrive fully formed with televised parades, football, and weaponized stuffing. It was stitched together over centuries from hardship, politics, marketing, and myth-making.

We all know the tidy tale of the 1621 harvest feast in Plymouth. That event was real, more or less, though the grade-school version usually omits the disease, power imbalances, and colonial ambition. The meal was part diplomacy and part survival, not a Hallmark special.

For a long time, thanksgivings were sporadic. The Continental Congress proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving in 1777 to celebrate progress in the Revolutionary War. Gratitude and propaganda have always been comfortable tablemates.

It wasn't until the Civil War that the holiday took its modern shape. Sarah Josepha Hale, a persistent editor, lobbied presidents for years to nationalize the holiday. Abraham Lincoln finally agreed in 1863. In the midst of bloodshed, Lincoln called for a day of “Thanksgiving and Praise” to pull a fractured nation into one shared ritual.

Later, Franklin Roosevelt tried to move the holiday up a week to boost Christmas shopping during the Depression. That experiment, dubbed “Franksgiving”, confused half the country and annoyed the rest. Congress stepped in during 1941 to make it official: the fourth Thursday in November.

So, when you sit down to your turkey (or lasagna), remember: you are participating in a tradition that blends Native survival, colonial ambition, wartime desperation, presidential politics, and retail strategy. Only in America could all that become an excuse for pie and football.

Gratitude Without the Sentimental Glaze

I am not a fan of performative gratitude, posting something on social media one day a year and returning to doomscrolling by Friday. What matters is durable gratitude: the kind that shows up in how you spend your time and what you choose to build.

I am grateful for you, this community of readers, friends, and industry comrades who have stuck with this daily experiment in media commentary and mild troublemaking. You read, you argue, you send me links and rants. You keep the conversation alive.

I am grateful that, after all these years in publishing, I still get to poke at the future of media while remembering the smell of fresh ink and the racket of a live press. History and disruption served on the same plate, that is my idea of a proper feast.

A Thanksgiving Toast

Here is my toast to you:

May your day be stuffed with great food and better company.

May your arguments be passionate but not permanent.

May your technology behave, your Wi-Fi hold steady, and your team at least keep it close in the fourth quarter.

And may your reading pile always be taller than your to-do list.

If you find a quiet moment between the turkey and the leftovers, take a second to reflect. This noisy, contradictory, sometimes infuriating country still stops, collectively, for one day to say “thank you.” For all our flaws, that is not nothing.

From Carol and me, thank you for reading, thinking, arguing, and being part of this peculiar, passionate corner of the publishing universe.

See you soon from somewhere between tapas and tzatziki.