Tag: Columbus Day

Columbus Day 2012

I guess I’ve gotten to the point that I find it an overreach to blame the near genocide of a people on Christopher Columbus.

Ever since I was old enough to discern things independently of what my teachers taught me, I’ve been utterly fascinated by Columbus Day. This piece notes that Columbus Day has been celebrated in the United States as early as 1792.

From Time and Date:
“Columbus Day celebrations are controversial because the settlement of Europeans in the Americas led to the deaths of a very large proportion of the native people. It has been argued that this was a direct result of Columbus’ actions. It is clear that the arrival of the European settlers led to the demise of a large proportion of the history and culture of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

It has also been argued that Columbus should not be honored for discovering the United States, as he only went as far as some islands in the Caribbean and never got as far as mainland America.”

Not to mention that whole Leif Erikson thing.

I guess I’ve gotten to the point that I find it an overreach to blame the near genocide of a people on this one guy. At the same time, his bravery going out in the unknown, traveling west to find the East, was still a gutsy act and seems to have gotten lost in the discussion. Guess I’m looking for a more nuanced approach to Columbus, such as in this Biography piece. Or we can just accept Columbus Day as part of a three-day weekend and let it go at that.

The Limestone Mansion

We did get two pieces of news from the outside world.

About three weeks after September 11, 2001, I told my wife, “We’ve got to go SOMEWHERE.” She countered that we could have a vacation right there at home. With all due respect, that was a terrible idea; my wife, I knew even then, was/is absolutely no good at what’s come to be called the ‘staycation’. She always finds something in the house that needs to be fixed or cleaned. We absolutely needed a different venue.

As it turned out, she had won, several months earlier, some drawing to stay one night at a place called the Limestone Mansion, in Cherry Valley, NY, only about an hour from Albany, and less than 20 miles from Cooperstown.

On Columbus Day weekend, we traveled to Cherry Valley for two or three days. It was a charming little town. My two most specific recollections were 1) finding a shop that made wedding cake toppers with same-sex couples, almost 10 years before gay marriage was legal in New York State, and 2) buying, as a result of the in-store play, an album by a group called the Afro Celt Sound System.

The Limestone Mansion was great. Wolfgang and Loretta were wonderful hosts. The food was quite fine. The room had great character. And the fact that there were no televisions was a definite plus. Not having phones in the room was not a problem either.

Still, we did get two pieces of news from the outside world. One, which I overheard on someone’s portable radio, was that the war in Afghanistan had begun – sigh. The second, via the one phone on the premises, is that our niece Markia was born. Those two quite disparate pieces of news have defined how I’ve thought of Columbus Day weekend ever since.

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