Tag Columbus Day

Happy Holidays

Michael 4 Comments

Today in the USA it is Columbus Day. That’s what it says in the Federal Register. Americans being Americans can’t let anything happen without controversy so the holiday named for a man who never set foot on North American soil is called by a few other names so we aren’t honoring the man who forcibly conquered entire populations of people who were here when he never set foot on American soil. But that’s a different post for a different day. Today’s post is just to wish you a happy day because for 99.7% of us, that’s all we’re gonna get.

The United States of America has 11 federal holidays. Proposals are floating around Washington to approve 7 more. And there are a handful of days (Armed Forces Day Inauguration Day, and others) which grant federal employees days off but have not been elevate to the rank of “Holiday.” Not that it would matter. There is a law on the books that says the federal government cannot force any state to observe a federal holiday and it cannot prevent any state from declaring its own holiday(s). I guess that’s the technical difference between a federal holiday and a national holiday.

Of those 18 holidays, only 7 are actually fixed days that commemorate something that happened that day either by history or tradition. Five of the approved holidays – New Years, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Veterans Day, and Christmas) are celebrated the same day every year. Thanksgiving is always the fourth Thursday of November regardless of date (likely to make the scheduling for Black Friday easier). Two of the six holidays that float so they will always result in 3 day weekends supposedly commemorate peoples’ birthdays (Martin Luther King, Jr. and George Washington) and you’d think if we were celebrating birthdays we’d celebrate it on the birthday date, but…well. Americans. What can I say?

Those floating days are important to the narrative here so let’s keep them, and 5 of the proposed 7 federal holidays that may join their ranks, in mind. The Uniform Monday Holiday Act (yeah, that’s what it’s called) of 1968 was enacted to create more three day weekend opportunities for employees. That’s about it. Oh and that’s the act that made Columbus Day an official federal holiday, so it instituted 2 things of controversy with one law. (Originally Veterans Day was also assigned to a floating Monday but reverted to November 11 in 1978.) Those federal employees are important here now too. Let’s keep them in mind now.

So, if you are a federal employee, Happy Columbus Day. Enjoy your day off.  Everybody else. Get back to work. Congress only has the power to enact federal holidays and grant days off, premium pay, or any other perk of the law for employees of federal institutions. Everybody else. Sorry. Unless you have a really generous boss, no law gives you those days off. Nope. It’s not one of your rights either. Generally, since the 1970s most business still conduct business on almost every day of the year.

If you’re like me and have always worked in hospitals or organized health care settings, emergency services, or some entertainment fields, every day, whether weekday, Saturday , Sunday, or holiday, could be a day of work. Some banks and schools celebrate every holiday and then some and might have more than just those extra 11 days off. But for many, holidays today are not like the holidays of the past. Few people experience days off or holiday celebrations for more than for New Years, Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Which incidentally were the first four recognized federal holidays. You know what? Maybe that just about right.

So allow me to wish you a happy day. Even if you don’t want to call it anything!

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Happy Federal Employees Day Off Day!

Michael Leave a comment
Happy Thanksgiving all you Canadians, and happy whatever holiday it is that we Americans (U.S. type) are supposed to be ashamed of but we’re glad to get the day off anyway so let’s just change the name for when we are talking on social media or while standing in line at the coffee shop. Woe to he or she or they or it or whatever is the right way to refer to him or her or them who dare utter the name Columbus. Don’t you know what he did to the true and rightful Americans (native type except not native as in one who was born here)?  From whence did all this vitriol come? Not the faux vitriol or he, she, them, it, and/or who or whatever. The frank vitriol being spewed by me! Well, I’ll tell you. Come sit and listen.
 
It was Sunday afternoon and I was out for a ride with my dear friend who had just travelled 3,000+ miles to visit and be able take such a ride. We were speaking of mountains, anticipating a trip to the nearest mountains, the Alleghenies, an mid-range of the Appalachians, to do some fall leaf watching. “Who named the mountains?” she wonder aloud. Without thinking I said, “I’m not sure. Around here almost everything was named by the original tribes.” Yes, that’s exactly how I said it. Not Native Americans, not Indigenous People, not [shudder] Indians. The original tribes. 
 
See, here there were several nations and tribes around here and many are still recognized as the names of towns or schools or rivers though not necessarily as nationals. Iroquois, Shawnee, Seneca, Chippewa, and others. Their cultures and language, their religions and even their forms of government differed much like France differs from Poland. Yet “we” the “woke privileged white americans” lump them together as Indigenous American or Native American much like we the same do the same with anybody “we” feel are or have been slighted by “us.” Asian Americans, African Americans, Latino Americans (which I suppose is now Latinx) yet never considering if we really wanted to recognize and celebrate their heritage we would take the time to recognize and celebrate their ancestry. Just as their is a huge difference between decedents of French and those of Polish ancestors so there is a difference between Cuban and Columbian, or Namibian and Nigerian, or Thai and Taiwanese, or even Chippewa and Cherokee. 
 
I don’t really care what you think of Columbus. What he did, didn’t do, thought about doing or wish he had done was done, not done, thought about, or wished for long before I was a gleam in my parents’ eyes. What resulted from those deeds and non-deeds can’t be undone. But what you decide to do or not do or think or dream today and tomrrow and the days after that do matter. So if you want it to matter more than just for as long as it takes for somebody to create an even more politically correct term for anybody who “isn’t like us” how about taking the time to talk to and learn about somebody who “isn’t like you.” You might find out their histories and culture are much more interesting than you read about in 40 characters or less on line.
 
Happy Day!
 
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Just the Facts Ma’am

Michael 3 Comments
Welcome to Columbus Day 2019! The holiday everyone loves to hate!!! Personally I’m not thrilled with any holiday outside of Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July. All the others are just excuses for anybody who works for the government to get an extra day off.
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Columbus Day is also the holiday everyone loves to demonstrate their knowledge of “the facts.”
  • Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America, Amerigo Vespucci discovered it, that’s why we call it America.
  • Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America, Leif Erikson discovered it 500 years before either of those Europeans.
  • Nobody discovered America, there were already people living here!
  • Columbus was a criminal, slave trader, tyrant, and probably didn’t like dogs.
All sort of true (except maybe about the dogs) and all sort of not true, or at least inaccurate. If you’re looking for who actually first landed on the American mainland, whether North, South, or Central, that probably was John Cabot (surprise!) who landed in modern Canada in 1497. Columbus didn’t reach the South American mainland until his third voyage in 1499, and Vespucci landed in South America in 1500. Although the Vikings were known to have reached what is now Greenland as early as before 1100 their presence on mainland America has not been clearly documented before the 16th century. Columbus’s crimes are well-documented, but in 15th century Europe everybody who ran afoul of royalty would be accused and convicted of something, many of those some things quite routine for the rest of the populace.
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20191014_152221The “fact” most people seem to get the most mileage from is that Columbus could not have discovered America because there were already people living here. Again true, there were people living here, but then not true because that’s not what a discovery is. That would be like saying Neil Armstrong discovered the Moon because when he landed on it there were no people there. Of course the discovery of the Moon happened hundreds of thousands of years ago when the first eyes looked to the sky one night and saw a a big round, bright object. It isn’t whether people were here or not, it was a discovery for the Europeans because they did not know that this “it” was here. That discovery led to greatest period of trade and colonization that the world had seen yet or since.
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But of all the facts, suppositions, non facts, and inaccuracies, the one of most importance today is this – you can stop wondering when the mail is going to come.
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Finding America

Michael Leave a comment

Happy Columbus Day. Sort of. Traditionally in the United States Columbus Day was established on October 12 commemorating the day when Columbus landed on what is now San Salvador in the Bahamas. But then the greater American tradition of moving as many holidays to a Monday to create 3 day weekends overwhelmed the quaintness of memorializing an event on the date the event happened so we are celebrating it on the second Monday of October, October 10 this year, instead.

Now we can contrast that with the traditionally traditional argument that we shouldn’t be celebrating a Columbus Day at all, on a Monday or a twelfth day, or an any day. We should instead recognize the contribution of Leif Erikson who landed on what is now Newfoundland almost 500 years before Columbus made his pitch to Ferdinand and Isabella. To that end we have Leif Erikson Day celebrated on October 9, every year. Nobody really knows exacnewworldtly when Leif wandered past Baffin Island so somebody picked that date because it is the day an organized group of Scandinavian immigrants reached New York City in 1895.

One thing that is certain is that even though Columbus made 4 trips from Europe to “The New World,” the only time he actually landed on continental soil he was somewhere around modern day Honduras, fairly far from Washington D.C. where all the fuss about what day to celebrate emanates. On at least two of those voyages, the first and the fourth, his expressed intent was to land on land bearing resemblance to Asia or India. On the second and third voyages he at least partly intended to colonize the islands he had previously visited. None of the four were huge successes but he did well enough to warrant all federal employees getting an extra day off and have a city in Ohio named after him, all from a country within whose border he never trod.

A bit less certain is if Leif even meant to sail past Baffin Island. Leif was the second son of Erik the Red, who established a settlement on Greenland in 980. We don’t know if he was born there or on Iceland from where the family moved, perhaps urgently. Around 1000, Leif Erikson sailed from Greenland to Norway, hung out with King Olaf I for a while, converted to Christianity, and was to return to Greenland to spread the new faith. Many believe that Erikson’s landing on the north coast of Newfoundland was due to missing Greenland on that return. Whether he missed it or intentionally detoured his return to find new lands for subsequent explorers, he eventually made it to the settlement on Greenland and never returned to the continent. But that one stop made him the darling of anti-Columbian agitators and gets him a day of observance and a presidential proclamation every year, all from a country within whose border he never trod.

Continuing to contrast, it can be argued that it’s inappropriate to recognize anybody’s discovery of America since there were already people living here. How they got here is somewhat fuzzy due to the lack of record keeping from 10,000 years ago but they came from Siberia, Australia, or the Middle East depending on your source and/or obsession.

Then again…archeologists can deduce American societal findings dating earlier than the 25,000 years ago that migration would have been practical and there are indeed native cultural formations.It could be that those who place original settlements in America to a time the world began its exit from the most recent ice age (and the beginning of global warming?) may be the ones who should get an extra day off in October.

Whatever camp you belong to, don’t look for mail this morning.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?