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Letters: Thanking Teachers And Missing Faces

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

It's Tuesday and time to read from your comments. On Thanksgiving, we talked to Dave Isay, founder of StoryCorps, about the National Day of Listening, which focused this year on teachers. Kavon Hasari(ph) wrote, I came to the United States at age 12 from Puerto Rico. The rigor and criticism of several English teachers and the French teacher in Miami made me want to become a better writer. Now I make a living writing in English and French.

It's a TALK OF THE NATION tradition to remember the family and friends not able to join us on Thanksgiving Day. This year, we received an email from Ron Barber in Tucson, who wrote, I was one of the people shot on January 8 as I stood beside the congresswoman, Gabby Giffords. I want to remember the six good people who were killed that day. And even as my family gives thanks for my life, today, we will pray for the families who lost loved ones. We're also very thankful for our community that came together in compassion, love and prayer to support us.

And Sandra Emerson emailed, my grandmother used to always make the dressing. Every year, she would take a bite of it and say this is the worst dressing I ever tasted, and we would all say how good it was. The first Thanksgiving after she died, we were at a loss because her yearly notation of the dressing was missing.

Finally, in our discussion yesterday with time.com contributor Adam Cohen, I said that Black Friday was so named because it was the day retailers made enough profit to get into the black. We received a tweet from Richard Miller in Portland who said, no, it's called Black Friday because Philly cops hated it. We've done some research and found out he was a lot righter than I was. The moniker originated in reference to the congestion on the day after Thanksgiving in city centers, especially in Philadelphia. Thanks for the correction.

As always, if you have corrections, comments, or questions for us, the best way to reach us is by email. The address is talk@npr.org. Please let us know where you're writing from, and give us some help on how to pronounce your name. If you're on Twitter, you could follow us there, @totn, or you could follow me, @nealconan - all one word. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.