I’m writing on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving while gazing directly at a ridge of snow-covered Alps. The sun is setting in a blaze of white-and-black glory here in Interlaken, Switzerland, the site from which the Holiday Market Tour begins, my last Smithsonian Journey of the year.
How can a place be as beautiful as this? And what is it like to live here, surrounded by a timeless vista of Alpen crags, crystal lakes, and verdant meadows (despite it being nearly December)? Would one ever lose a sense of awe?
Reluctantly, we will leave all of this beauty on Thanksgiving morning to board a river ship in Basel and set sail down the Rhine for Cologne. Along the way, the itinerary includes tours of historical sites and visits to Christmas Markets in France and Germany. It will be absolutely grand. But still, I miss Thanksgiving at home.
For me, our American celebration of Thanksgiving is “the tops,” to borrow a phrase from Cole Porter. First, its inspiring historical message speaks volumes. Secondly, it has yet to be ruined by commercialization, despite the best efforts of the retail industry to do so (starting with the tasteless artifice of Black-Friday). Thirdly, Thanksgiving focuses primarily on commitment to family and gratitude—both sorely needed in today’s world. And finally, it’s possible to prepare the traditional menu with surprisingly little effort and have everything come out tasting fine.
But this year I’ll be sharing the holiday with my fellow-travelers in a shipboard version of Thanksgiving dinner (delicious, but definitely different). Still, we’re bringing American flavor to the meal since, in a funny moment, our clever travel directors rescued four boxes of still-fresh fall decorations from our Royal-St. Georges Hotel as it began decking itself out in evergreen and mini-lights. These opulent items, saved from their impending fate on the compost pile, will embellish Thursday’s tables quite nicely.
Now I’ll interrupt my panegyric to the holiday and shift to the topic of footnotes because, in fact, they do belong with the season of Thanksgiving, at least for students whose academic semesters are drawing to a rapid close. For most, term papers are on the front burner right now. If so, here are some Thanksgiving facts.
Fact one: somehow, mysteriously, much (or all) of the work on a term paper assigned “way back in September” still needs to be completed. Fact two: that paper is due shortly after the Thanksgiving holiday. Fact three: students enter the Thanksgiving break with the best intentions of getting this work done. Fact four: no matter how good these intentions, Sunday evening arrives with many students staring in horror at what remains to be done.
Am I right about that?
Even if you are the rare person who has it all under control, with research, outlining, and writing largely finished, your paper may need a bit of documentary tidying-up. If so, this panegyric is for you too.
Although it certainly did not start this way, footnotes became my favorite aspect of writing by the time I finished graduate school. The careful mentoring of professors and the discovery of style manuals, particularly The Chicago Manual of Style, changed my life insofar as realizing what footnotes offered both writer and reader. In teaching, I’ve tried to bring an enthusiasm for footnotes into my own students’ lives. Along the way I created a video session that shares some of those thoughts. The session is entitled Those Wonderful (Pesky) Footnotes and is part of a series of on research and writing within our Professor Carol “Circle of Scholars.”
So, for Thanksgiving 2019, let me invite you to enjoy this moderately entertaining session about footnotes. You’ll need a code to view it, provided below (and yes, the code refers to something Russian). I won’t give away too much (let the excitement build) but the video does present the multi-faceted, irreplaceable, even joyful ways that footnotes function in formal writing. Particularly if you view them as nuisances and obstacles, this single session may help you find more pleasure in the task.
So there you have it: my two titular topics bound, admittedly loosely, together. I won’t go so far as to say that this is my Thanksgiving gift to you, but you will be able to watch the session while the turkey is baking. And if the video helps even one student in this season of academic pressure, then let us be glad and rejoice.
Instructions: Video will say “Sorry, because of its privacy settings, this video cannot be played here.” Ignore that and click the blue button “Watch on Vimeo” and provide the code: romanov. (Valid until December 8, 2019.)
