View Full Version : Happy Columbus Day
I know the guy has his detractors, but I'm still grateful he made the trip.
There are a lot of Italians at my company so I get this as a holiday.
Williamsmith
10-9-17, 10:17am
I never got into Columbus Day much even as a kid. I guess that is because the only holidays that were important enough to quit making steel were Christmas and Easter. In those cases, dad was home. The whole trip across the ocean thing was heroic, don’t get me wrong but I have always considered his bravery was a little tarnished because after all....he got lost. He actually thought the world was a lot smaller than it is and he thought he’d made it all the way to the Phillipines. That’s not just a wrong turn......
Unfortunately for the natives Columbus was an inept sailor. But he knew how to conquer better. The first in a long line of people who captured, enslaved, infected and killed off the competition. It was lucky for me Columbus threw his anchor out in the Bahamas because eventually my ancestors benefitted from all that manifest destiny. I’m probably sitting right now on Seneca Chief Cornplanters happy hunting grounds near the mink river. Cornplanter took a symbolic “knee” against the revolutionaries and fought with the Loyalists. But when the war went south so to speak, he negotiated with the new government for better treatment. Unfortunately, he learned that like all politicians, Washington and Jefferson were incapable of keeping their word.
You can fish and ride a nice speedboat on the lake that was created when they built a dam and flooded his land. Electricity being more important than promises.
So while I’m really glad I got to have a day off work for many years on Columbus Day.....it might be more fitting to recognize indigenous people......or maybe just go to work and not do a celebratory dance in the end zone.
dado potato
10-9-17, 10:20am
This is traditionally the day I plant garlic in my garden. The weather is fine... I will wait for the temperature to warm up a little. I plant cloves from the biggest and best bulbs from the summer harvest. It is a great saving to be self-sufficient in garlic.
ApatheticNoMore
10-9-17, 10:24am
Happy day off wage slavery for those who get it. (yes I do know this is only government and bank workers, and that the vast majority are trudging to work, but still).
What the people crusading about Columbus day don't' realize is no one gives a flip, because noone really celebrates columbus on columbus day anyway save a few italian communities and even that's not exactly what they are celebrating really (they are more just celebrating being italian ok). All they care is if they have a day off or not (and even though I don't I'm grateful traffic is lighter - so I even have *selfish* reasons to be pro other people getting a day off).
I think the p.c. crusaders couldn't even get people a day off work, so it is plenty worrisome to see them campaign against holdiays as people could lose something real, a day off, and only get symbolism in return. The case in point on how they can't do much good and can only take and never give: MLK day: now MLK is a fine guy to honor with a day off of course, but they've never succeeded in extended that day off to anyone but you got it: government and bank workers. So kind of: go after statues if you want, but keep your hands off our days off work thanks.
Yes native people's were treated horribly, the only people who really care about that in any way that can have an influence on anything on the present were say standing with the water protestors, or working to improve things on reservations or so on, they aren't engaged in empty talk. There are native tribes in other countries to this day that have never been contacted that are being driven off their land, but whether or not we get a day off for Columbus day changes that not at all.
I read that the city of Austin has proclaimed it as something like National Indigenous People's Day.
I read that the city of Austin has proclaimed it as something like National Indigenous People's Day.
That seems to be a trend; I'm fine with it.
There's a theory that Columbus was a crypto-Jew, eager to remove himself from the Inquisition. That interests me.
ETA: There have been scores of "discoverers" of the Americas--from the North, from the East, maybe from other worlds entirely :0! . It seems capricious to single out Columbus, aside from the issues of rape and genocide.
goldensmom
10-9-17, 11:09am
Happy day off wage slavery for those who get it. (yes I do know this is only government and bank workers, and that the vast majority are trudging to work, but still)......
Additional information....that would be Federal government workers as not all states give their state employees the day off. I worked for a state agency for 28 years and never got Columbus Day off (nor do current state employees). The only way I know it is Columbus Day is when I go to the mailbox and remember because there is no mail. We did get Veteran's Day off and just for kicks we used to call it Christmas Shopping Day mostly to irritate those who did not know anything about Veterans Day. It was a good opportunity to then explain what Veteran's Day was all about. When I was working for the state I said I would take anyone's birthday off as a paid holiday
You know you've achieved a sort of immortality when the debunkers, deplorers and decriers come out of the woodwork centuries after you're dust. Possibly millions of them all over the Americas; although few seem willing to give up their share of his wicked legacy and return to the Old World.
https://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6079/6077587763_0cf5e8f819_b.jpg
http://urbanmilwaukee.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/img601.jpg
This is traditionally the day I plant garlic in my garden. The weather is fine... I will wait for the temperature to warm up a little. I plant cloves from the biggest and best bulbs from the summer harvest. It is a great saving to be self-sufficient in garlic.
Cool! Great idea!
dado potato
10-9-17, 3:45pm
The postcard is of "Leif the Discoverer", a bronze statue by Anne Whitney. It was erected in 1887, a copy of the same statue she built in Boston.
Inscription:
Leif the Discoverer
Son of Erik
Who sailed from Iceland
And discovered this continent
AD 1000
dado potato
10-9-17, 3:46pm
Thanks, catherine.
The deed is done, and the garlic is mulched with pine needles.
You inspired me to go looking for garlic today but two garden centers did not have it. I then tried to find organic at two supermarkets so it wouldn't be sprayed with an antigrowth substance to prevent sprouting but they didn't have it either. I will try Whole Foods Market tomorrow since that is near where I work.
The postcard is of "Leif the Discoverer", a bronze statue by Anne Whitney. It was erected in 1887, a copy of the same statue she built in Boston.
Inscription:
Leif the Discoverer
Son of Erik
Who sailed from Iceland
And discovered this continent
AD 1000
It is indeed. While there is no record of him stopping by Milwaukee for beer, brats and frozen custard, the upper Midwest likes to keep the legend alive. And while some Columbus statues have been vandalized around the country, I'm not aware of any such attacks on Leif the Lucky.
You know you've achieved a sort of immortality when the debunkers, deplorers and decriers come out of the woodwork centuries after you're dust. Possibly millions of them all over the Americas; although few seem willing to give up their share of his wicked legacy and return to the Old World.
Right about now, i'd be happy to--but I'm pretty sure it's not going to welcome a gimpy pensioner with only a few years left on her warranty.
ApatheticNoMore
10-10-17, 1:23am
Right about now, i'd be happy to--
yea i wasn't aware they were offering. But although some settlers to the New World engaged in their genocides against native americans, Europe was ALSO periodically engaging in genocides against various of their people (the obvious and probably less obvious like the Irish potato famine as well). So .... there was nowhere genocide free to be really, live and let live was not so easily attained. Or many people were fairly innocent, but not so many continents were.
yea i wasn't aware they were offering. But although some settlers to the New World engaged in their genocides against native americans, Europe was ALSO periodically engaging in genocides against various of their people (the obvious and probably less obvious like the Irish potato famine as well). So .... there was nowhere genocide free to be really, live and let live was not so easily attained. Or many people were fairly innocent, but not so many continents were.
People like to pick and choose which parts of history to be angered or offended by. There's plenty to go around.
Me I'm happy to be the beneficiary of past atrocities I had no part in.
I don't particularly have strong feelings one way or the other about columbus day. After all the reality is that if we didn't have columbus day we'd have some other day named after whatever other dude eventually sailed the ocean blue and figured out that the world had a whole other hemisphere just waiting to be plundered.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.5 Copyright © 2024 vBulletin Solutions Inc. All rights reserved.