BS: Columbus Day

Subject: BS: Columbus Day
From: kendall
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 11:57 AM

Would someone please explain what Columbus did to warrant this?
He was a racist butcher who had a love for power and gold. He landed on an island off the coast of the continent 500 years after the Vikings and 10,000 or so years after the natives who lived here.
He didn't discover America, it was never lost!

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: SINSULL
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 12:02 PM

Hey! You're retired. Those of us (not I ) who get the day off treasure Columbus. Ever notice that he bears an uncanny resemblance to Gene Wilder?
Happy Columbus Day all.


Actually Kendall, the text books have been re-written to reflect Columbus' dark side and very few states observe the holiday.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: kendall
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 12:22 PM

Maine is one of them. Hell, we still celebrate Patriot's Day! What a joke that is!

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: pdq
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 12:41 PM

What did Columbus do?

Well, let's see. He gave us small pox and bi-lingual education.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: Riginslinger
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 12:52 PM

He gave small pox to the natives--it was alive and well in Europe before he got here--and cleared the way for a great civilization to prosper.
             He must have spoken both Spanish and Italian.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 02:17 PM

I think it is only New England states which take it off, parades and all. I remember a statue of him in New London, CT with his name spelled the Italian way, i.e. Columbo, and being disappointed that my fav. tv dick shared the name. The Native Americans were just starting to tell the truth about him when we lived back there and were going to powwows a lot. GREAT education for everyone.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 02:28 PM

Blah...blah...blah...blah

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 05:03 PM

Here in Denver we have the oldest Columbus Day Parade in the nation, and the Italian American community here and an Italian American congressman from Colorado were the primary driving force behind establishing Columbus Day as a national holiday. In 1907, Italians were one of the primary target groups for racism and jingoism, especially in the West. Columbus represented a stake in the future of the country, and a point of pride for Italians and their children. The parade became a great annual event for their descendants.
In the 1970s when the events of Columbus' life and his actions became more well known, Russell Means and A.I.M. began to actively protest the parade. Conflicts between Native and Italian Americans at the Parade have since become a new kind of tradition. This year, someone impersonating the chairman of the Sons of Italy contacted the City Government and informed them that they were cancelling the parade. The word got out and was reported by several Denver media sources. The parade did go on as scheduled last Saturday with low attendance and minimal protest in very cold weather.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: Riginslinger
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 05:20 PM

Yes, the Columbus Day Parade in Denver is famous nationwide. Hopefully it will go on for years to come, a great source of amusement.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 06:32 PM

I was wondering today what native Americans think of Columbus Day...

BTW, strickly off to yet another isssue, me thinks the earth is flat... Looks flat to me... Okay, a tad mountainous around here but nothing in these mountains would suggest that the earth is round...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: kendall
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 07:53 PM

So, come out of the mountains and go to the seashore. Watch a vessel disappear a bit at a time over the horizon. Sailing ships work best.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: Alice
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 08:34 PM

Leif Erikson Day
was Oct. 9.

Wisconsin was the first state to honor the holiday starting in 1930.

wiki page

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: open mike
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 11:03 PM

see my recent thread about Leif Eriksson Day with mention
of other holidays...Native American Day,
A.B.C. (america before columbus), dia de la raza, etc.

http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=124109&messages=12

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: Peace
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 11:07 PM

I'm grateful for Columbus Day because it's the only way I can remember 1492.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 11:41 PM

LeeJ, I'd forgotten about that. We on the Western Slope do consider the Eastern slope to be another country, ya know? Well, we did when I was a kid.:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: GUEST,Terribulus
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 04:43 AM

The viral exchange was mutual .... the indigenous peoples of the Americas gave the world syphillis.

"we found is that syphilis or a progenitor came from the New World to the Old World and this happened pretty recently in human history," (http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN1443055520080115)

Some of the confirmed notable folk that DIED from Syphillis (and of course millions more "un-notable") and of course "the innocents" those with congenital Syphillis.

Maurice Barrymore (1849–1905)
Al Capone (1899–1947)
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903)
Theo van Gogh (1857–1891
Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893)
Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901)

SUSPECTED Cases

Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (1545–1567), second husband of Mary Queen of Scots
Henry VIII (1491–1547)
Ivan the Terrible (1530–1584)
John Keats (1795–1821)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)
Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895)
Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)
Franz Schubert
Niccolò Paganini

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: Jeri
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 08:58 AM

"I'm grateful for Columbus Day because it's the only way I can remember 1492. "

Damn... you're WAY older than I'd guessed.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 03:55 PM

Columbus never found America
It was never lost - it was always there!

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: Amergin
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 04:07 PM

Well, Peace...you know what they say if you remember the 1490's...you weren't really there....

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 08:02 PM

Syphilis-
Pre-Columbian theory. According to Lobdell and Owsley (the latter at Smithsonian Institution), syphilis was present in Europe before discovery of America by Europeans.
Columbian Exchange Theory. Mackenzie, Harper et al., syphilis is a New World disease brought back to Europe by Columbus and Pinzon. The latter has some support from genetic studies of the bacterial group.

The disease is caused by a spirochaetal bacterium, it is not viral.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: kendall
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 09:35 PM

The Europeans killed more native Americans with Small Pox than natives killed Europeans with Syph.

What it boils down to is: Syph happens.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 14 Oct 09 - 11:32 AM

"I was wondering today what native Americans think of Columbus Day..."

My 11 year old son's best friend is a Native American. Monday morning he called to say he would not be going to school because it was a holiday in his religion. He told us last night that it was actually a day of mourning over the fact that Columbus 'discovered' America.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: GUEST,Terribulus
Date: 14 Oct 09 - 01:49 PM

Oh Come on Kimbel - were is your evidence?

Can you name me even three Famous Indians that died of small-pox?

There is no need to buy into in the myth of "The White Man's Burden."

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Oct 09 - 04:18 PM

Why famous? Just ordinary won't do?
In the western plains of Canada, the smallpox came late to the Indians there. Smallpox ("a terrible epidemic," says the Dictionary of Canada) in the year 1870-1871 took many Indians. Rev. McDougall, who had a mission at Pakan, Alberta, lost his wife and a daughter, and an Indian girl adoptee. The posts at Fort Victoria (at Pakan), Carleton, and others were closed to the Indians, many died. McDougall wrote, "The strain was continuous, disease and death and danger constant." Hungry Indians were a a problem (the last buffalo hunt 1872).
Most of the White and Metis personnel at the posts or in trade or cartage had been vaccinated, cowpox or vaccinia strain.

The McDougall graves, on the North Saskatchewan River at the Fort Victoria Historical Site are within 200 yards of the little farm we had obtained there (A Hudson's Bay river lot grant for Metis employees, the original cabin there the last one left).

There are plenty of accounts of the decimation of the native population, not only during the days of 'discovery', but through the 19th c.

Subject: RE: BS: Columbus Day
From: Riginslinger
Date: 14 Oct 09 - 04:35 PM

All because their ancestors failed to survive the bubonic plague in Europe!