I Said I'd Keep on Going

When we were kids, today, Columbus Day was a big deal. In New York City the Department of Public Works used to paint the white line on Fifth Avenue purple for the annual parade that was always held on the real date of the holiday, October 12.

In light of so much I as a codger of seventy-one now know, that as a boy of twelve, I didn't about the Rape of Paradise which ensued after Columbus' arrival, perhaps blood red might have been a better choice of colors.

As a kid, all I ever cared about was the day off, just like kids across the country. We all recited the rhyme because that's how we knew what we did know about Columbus and since there wasn't a snappy couplet about genocide we didn't hear anything about that aspect of discovering the New World (I also don't remember the Arakawa natives part but some of the little gray cells have had some rough days).

Looking at the world as it is and how all settlement and civilization have developed, I'm not sure it's just Old Chris we should be putting in the defendant's docket and charging. I'm thinking a look in the mirror as well as a glance out a window might increase our catch significantly.

And to compound the cacophony of facts clashing with opinions is the realization that not only did Columbus not discover the New  World, he wasn't the first. We've spent hundreds of years observing a historical event that is neither historic nor an actual event. 

Columbus was a proto-American before we ever existed: he didn't know where he was going, didn't know where he was when he got there, and when he came back, he was celebrated for something he never did. Guess whose running mate I think he's qualified to be?

And now, as it's the dot on the "i" in Monday holiday, we have another excuse (and sale opportunity) to buy bedding or is that just me in the last couple of days? Sandwiched between the 'My candidate is on the special advisory committee to Gawd while yours eats bugs" commercials there has been a steady stream of ads selling mattresses. 

Between you and me, I'm not sure there's any more of a connection of one to the other than there was to India from Bermuda back in the day.       
-bill kenny