Thanksgiving Kaleidoscope
Doggerel, Therukoothu, and the Theater of Belonging.
Infophilia: A Positive Psychology of Information | November 29, 2025, Vol. 3, Issue 70
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Cite as: Coleman, A. S. (2025). Thanksgiving kaleidoscope: Doggerel, therukoothu, and the theater of belonging. Infophilia: A Positive Psychology of Information, 3(70).
This week I visited a museum of Mediterranean cultures in pursuit of infophilia research. I also shifted focus from open source AI to have conversations with some of our most popular commercial AI chatbots: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. What started as curiosity about how we relate to these chatbots became something else entirely — a meditation on voice, belonging, and the tables we set.
In the weeks ahead, I’ll continue exploring ipower (information power) through stories already promised and new ones about AI companions, the FTC’s recent inquiries into these technologies, and what it means for all of us. But this Thanksgiving weekend, I want to share something more personal: a wandering conversation about doggerel and therukoothu (Tamil street drama), about tables without turkey, and about all the improbable ways we make home and create belonging. It’s also, quietly, a story about how we interact with information and AI companions. Thanks to Bill Trzeciak for the inspiration.
A reminder: office hours are back — Wednesdays at noon. RSVP for the zoom link. See you soon and enjoy the read!
Thanksgiving Kaleidoscope
Doggerel, Therukoothu, and the Theater of Belonging
Read a poem a day and keep the devils away, they say. So this Thanksgiving week I’ve been reading poems by America’s poet laureates when I noticed — all of them, born in the USA. Were there no poet laureates born elsewhere? We’re a nation of immigrants, aren’t we? A magnificent mosaic. A bouquet of mixed flowers, each one shining like a star. Voices gathered from every corner of time and space.
Then I remember Joseph Brodsky. Born in Leningrad, exiled, became America’s poet laureate. So there was one (at least). One voice that crossed the ocean and claimed the title. But still, I wonder about all the other voices, the ones we haven’t heard yet.
My email brought me Bill’s Thanksgiving doggerel and I began to wonder again — what’s the Tamil literature equivalent of doggerel? Claude offered therukoothu, raucous street theater with gods and demons in glittering costumes, performed under open skies during temple festivals. I thought of Cho Ramaswamy immediately, his razor-sharp satire slicing through political pretense.
A factcheck using Perplexity offers several corrections — Cho was sabha natakam, hall drama, not street theater. And therukoothu is definitely not doggerel! The correction is sharp: Equating therukoothu with “the Tamil literature equivalent of doggerel” misrepresents both. Therukoothu is a performance tradition rooted in classical epics and community ritual, while doggerel is a derogatory label for poor-quality verse. The analogy is inaccurate on genre, function, and value.
I don’t tell this to Claude, who cheerfully continues unfolding the history: Parsi theater companies traveling from Bombay to Madras in the late 1800s, bringing Urdu plays that already mixed European stagecraft with Indian storytelling. These Parsi troupes became the bridge — between the proscenium arch and the folk tale, between London’s West End and Tamil Nadu’s village squares. Urban sabhas sprouted (Madras), and eventually Cho would take that stage and transform it into a weapon of wit.
Later, a software developer gives me a pro tip: give the chatbots some freedom —when you prompt, add that if they don’t know the answer, that’s okay, they should just admit it. I tuck this away for next time.
I move on. I wonder about Thanksgiving tables which may have never seen a turkey. I’ve had one myself. There was dosai, of course, and Mum’s signature potato curry and green beans poriyal pretty with coconut flowers that nobody else makes quite right. There’s pizza — because what’s more American than pizza? — and pecan pie that tastes exactly like Tirunelveli halwa if you close your eyes and let the sweetness speak in both languages. There are chicken tacos made birria-style with corn tortillas. California contains multitudes.
The beaches where I walk are reflected in our Thanksgiving centerpiece which includes an abalone shell and starfish nestled amid fall leaves and acorns, jeweled apples, sparkling gourds, and pomegranates. Somewhere across that vast Pacific, if you kept going and going, you’d eventually reach the Coromandel coast. The same ocean lapping two shorelines, carrying stories both ways.
“Write in your own voice, for there’s no one who can write like you,” a critic said. “Every book its reader” is the first law of library science. But if everybody wrote a book, who would be left to read? Are there enough readers for all these stories? The question feels urgent at this table, where every dish is a story, every recipe a book passed down through generations that someone had to remember, had to carry, had to choose to make again.
What is America then? It’s not James Baldwin in that Swiss village, alone with whiteness staring back at him. It’s not even just Brodsky crossing the ocean to claim the laurel. It’s conversations across continents and centuries. It’s doggerel meeting therukoothu. It’s Parsi theatre as the middleman of meaning. It’s tables that refuse single-stories, where pecan pie fuses with black halwa, and tacos sit next to poriyal without apology.
America is the sabha and the street, the hall and the festival ground. It’s the place where we ask who belongs and keep revising the answer. Immigrant voices don’t just add to the chorus; they remake the song entirely. And Mum’s green beans are as essential as any dish the Pilgrims imagined.
This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for the kaleidoscope of time — for every twist that reveals a new pattern, every conversation that refuses to stay still, every tradition that travels and transforms. For the mess and the mixing, the folk and the formal, the dosai and the doggerel.
For all the theaters of belonging we build together, one improvised scene at a time, one improbable table at a time.
Notes
I had fun with this rambling essay. Some (not all) of the literary allusions are below. Can you spot the others?
Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1892). “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version
R.K. Narayan. The Guide (1958). Narayan’s work as a cultural translator between Indian storytelling traditions and English-language readers influenced my thinking about “middlemen of meaning.”
James Baldwin. “Stranger in the Village.” Harper’s Magazine, October 1953. Baldwin’s meditation on being the only Black American in a Swiss village explores what it means to be outside looking in — a theme that resonates with questions of belonging and immigrant identity. https://harpers.org/archive/1953/10/stranger-in-the-village/
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. “The Danger of a Single Story.” TED Talk, 2009. Adichie’s warning about single stories informs the essay’s celebration of tables that “refuse single-stories.” https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story
S.R.R. Ranganathan. Five Laws of Library Science. (1931). “Every book its reader” is the first law, reminding us that every story needs someone to receive it.
The conversations with AI chatbots ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, were real explorations this week. I asked Claude about the Tamil equivalent of doggerel and learned about therukoothu — which I’d known about but remembered poorly! Claude’s original answer was actually virali vidu thoothu (courtesan’s message) as the rough equivalent of doggerel. Since I hadn’t learned that in my Tamil Literature classes in school, and I found flaws in Claude’s explanation of that genre, I opted for therukoothu which was also offered. Both Claude and Perplexity agreed that Cho Ramaswamy did not do therukoothu. And both corrected the record explaining Cho’s sabha natakam. Claude’s history of Cho’s urban / auditorium drama (not fully shared here) also matches my memories and learning.
My goodness, this was a delightful post to read. Thank you for this response to my doggerel!