Reading: The New Yorker
Music: DoCo
TV/Movie: How To Rob a Bank
Link o' the Day: The Marriage Equality RI blog



The students of Brown University have successfully campaigned to end recognition of Columbus Day on their campus. Citing Columbus's brutal treatment of the indigenous peoples, they've decided that he's not worthy to honor with a holiday, and while the holiday is still a national holiday and therefore subject to labor laws regarding such, the campus will still have its holiday weekend--they just won't call it Columbus Day weekend.

You know what? I can understand how they feel.

Many folk do not. Granted, I am not of Italian extraction so I don't have anything invested in the heritage. I suppose if someone tried to abolish St. Patrick's Day, I might have some words. It's a day that rarely considers the saint who encouraged violence against the non-Christian religions of Ireland (i.e., the snakes), but is more a celebration of Irish heritage. Italians have St. Joseph's Day--not because Joseph was Italian, but maybe because it was one of the earlier Rome-sanctioned holidays still around. (Plus, they see the Irish having so much fun, why wouldn't they want to get in on the act?)

But Columbus Day is a bit of a dinosaur, and an embarrassing one at that. It's been pretty well established that much of what I was taught in school about Columbus wasn't entirely true. People didn't think the Earth was flat. Columbus wasn't the first European to visit the New World. He was more concerned with picking up gold and slaves than spreading the benefits of "civilization" and converting the local populace to Christianity. His brave trek was based on a misconception as to the size of the Earth. His intention as he had landed in Asia was to make a claim for the Spanish king despite knowing that China already had rulers all its own. He was considered pompous and arrogant and it was of little surprise to anyone that he spent his latter days stripped of this titles and in debtors prison. He had no plan and he abandoned his men after his first journey to be slaughtered by native tribes. Upon his return, he knowingly took his revenge on a wholly different tribe. His very presence in the New World upset the balance of the local populace to the point that millions died of violence and disease while many were also taken as slaves and his "discovery" simply led to more of the same.



He was the George W. Bush of early explorers. Dangerously inept. The wrong man at the wrong time in the wrong place, but that's where luck and history put him. So does that make him worthy of honoring?

Not really. It's a legacy of shame. Sure, the world I'm in right now might have been very different. Some say I should be thankful. That's like saying I should be proud of folks like General Custer or the events of Wounded Knee. Sorry. Mistakes of the past are to be learned from, not celebrated. This is why Germany distances itself from its Nazi past as much as it does, yet makes sure every schoolchild knows what happened.

We name a lot of things in honor of Columbus. There's a city in Ohio. The District of Columbia. A space shuttle. Does this mean we should change all these names?

Not necessarily. What's in a name but what you make it? Columbus has become synonymous with the brave spirit of exploration, of moving forward into the unknown. However misapplied this may be to the person of Christopher Columbus, it's become something bigger and greater than his criminal doings.



Columbus, as a name, can still mean something good and something brave so long as we continue to treat it as such. And remember that with actions come consequences. The tale of Christopher Columbus should be a cautionary tale, not a celebratory one. In this case, the kids at Brown may be missing the Big Picture.

So Okay, let's not abolish Columbus Day, but let's seek to redefine it and make it mean something positive and productive.

Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

You'd think a history major like George W. Bush would have remembered that, but alas.

-=-=-=-=-=-

Lots of work. No time for love, Dr. Jones.

Actually, not so bad. Thank god for keeping good schedules, eh?

Today's link references another hot button issue that's hit the Ocean State. Apparently our governor--an odd duck who seems to actively hate the state--has decided that civil rights can be voted on. He probably thinks that southern blacks would have had the right to vote sooner if the locals just held a referendum. Or that mixed marriages would be legal or that women could own property and business if it were put up for vote and not legal or constitutional scrutiny.

Remember the Bill of Rights, governor?



Haven't the foggiest as to what I'm talking about? Poor organization on my part--sorry. Governor Don Carcieri proposes that, instead of making it a legislative or court process, Rhode Islanders vote on the right for gays to marry. What's next? A vote to round up non-citizens and put them in pens? Maybe a vote to restrict my freedom of speech? He tried that one once years ago by trying to pass his own version of the Patriot Act which would have made what I'm writing right here and now a jail-able offense. (It never made it out of the office...wiser heads prevailed...but it did get to the press.)

Oh, and the governor is all for making it possible for gay couples married in other states to get divorced in Rhode Island. I guess it means he's really more anti-marriage than pro-marriage. Maybe this came with the realization that Rhode Island is the only state in New England now not to recognize gay marriage. That's got to be pretty embarrassing governor.



So you get two links today. First: The Marriage Equality RI blog and Second: a link to the The Providence Journal article regarding this issue.

(photo from The Providence Journal taken by Kathy Borchers)

Cheers!

--John