I generally try and avoid stuff that gets people's, men, women and others, panties up in a bunch. While I'd love to start shit for the sake of stating shit I really kind of just stay in my lane when it comes to controversial topics. Religion, abortion, politics, and social issues are things that I really don't care to voice my two cents over or really care what someone else thinks. Now, that's not to say I didn't have fun poking fun at my Haitian students after Trump and Vance came out with...."They're eating the pets....".
I remember when the cancel culture thing started up. Not only were people being held accountable for things they thought, did, and said decades ago, but we got into a thing of trying to erase our country's history. Now, don't get me wrong, if you did something years ago and it was just coming to light, well, like they say, you wanna dance you gotta pay the band. And celebrating something that was or is offensive to somebody, while isn't good, but, it is what it is. Every single thing in the world is offensive to somebody. From Ricky Gervais, to Diddy, to The View, to Fox News, to Harris and Trump, to all of the buildings and highways named after people, to music and social media. How would and could we cancel it all?
Across the United States during the height of cancel culture we knocked down statues, renamed everything from buildings, roadways, and sports teams to satiate those that were offended by everything. Now, some may say, and I could be in agreement, that paying homage to someone or some thing that caused harm, like harm harm, to a group of people, should maybe be altered or corrected, as we become more sensitive and in the know about things we thought were once good. I'd prefer things to have and asterisk, *, with an expanded explanation, if needed, on why something, like history, would need to be edited.
That brings me to today. October 14. A day off from school. It's a federal holiday. It's a day off from the world as I have known it since I was a kid. It's one of 11 federal holidays we "celebrate" each year. Today is known as Columbus Day. It was made into law in 1937. It "celebrates", maybe erroneously, the
day Christopher Columbus "discovered" America. Allegedly. If you dig around you will find out that Columbus, an explorer of Italian descent, set foot on lands somewhere in the Bahamas, not the mainland of North America or what would become the United States of America. I don't know if he ever stood on what would become United States soil.
That was in 1492. Now I am horrible at two things, geography and history. I had to right my head and remember when the Pilgrims first settled after touching down in Plymouth, Massachusetts, which was in 1620. That wasn't with Columbus. And what about the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria? Those were the ships that were part of Columbus' journey from Spain and Portugal over towards South and North America.
So how did Columbus landing on the islands of Santo Domingo, Jamaica, and the Bahamas come to represent Italian pride for now almost a century? It seems then President Franklin D. Roosevelt was lobbied heavily by the Knights of Columbus and even the Catholic Church. In 1937 he made the day a national holiday. So every October 14th, we "celebrate", well things shut down and we have off, the day he landed in the Bahamas which really happened on October 12th.
In 1992, some 500 years later, some questioned, well I am sure people did all along, how could we celebrate Columbus discovering America if there were people living here all along? Well that led to Indigenous Peoples Day, which, some celebrate today. In fact, several states, 14 of them, and countless cities across the country, don't acknowledge Columbus Day but now call it Indigenous Peoples Day.
In October 2021 President Joe Biden signed a proclamation commemorating Indigenous Peoples Day. What are Indigenous Peoples? According to UCLA's office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, "... are the descendants of the peoples who inhabited the Americas, the Pacific, and parts of Asia and Africa prior to European Colonization". Here in America there's no doubt that Native Americans, or Indians, or the First Americans, were here before Columbus and the pilgrims "discovered" America. And there's no
doubt that when we came we didn't try to blend in but rather take them and their land over, no matter what is depicted in drawings from the First Thanksgiving which occurred over three days in 1621.
So that leads me back to today. When things are questioned, or cancelled, they lose their meaning, even if that meaning was skewed from what was really reality. Across the country this past weekend and today proud Italians will celebrate their Italian Heritage. In some cities, like Seattle below, they will celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day today.
So today I am glad to be off from work, although I really enjoy taking students to their hands-on clinical rotations. At Essex County College they have today listed as a day off for "Columbus Day", but
many colleges, like St. John's in NYC recently did, choose not to acknowledge the federal holiday. I started by writing this post, tying to figure out why I'm really off. Did Columbus "discover" America? How could he discover something that someone already knew about? Do Indigenous Peoples deserve a day of their own? Probably so. But what we have created is another divide pinning one group of Americans against another. That's just the way "they", the powers that be, like it. Rather than enjoying a day gathering around a drum circle watching traditional dance while eating a zeppole and watching a parade we hold fast to what our archaic beliefs are. In the end no one wins, except most of us have a paid day off from work and can't go to a bank or the post office.
Below is a list of Federal Holidays, next up is Veteran's Day, how can that holiday be questioned or re-written as we know it? I'm sure someone out there is offended and trying to rename it or have an add- on name to it. There are so many things we was a country should
be proud of, and things not so much. Every day in every month in every year has become a "Day". Maybe we need to just embrace each other everyday for the things that make us similar and different. We are more alike than we know and like to acknowledge. Next up, our Presidential Election, that's 21 days, 15 hours, and 54 minutes until we have something else to divide us even more. It's just sad.
Alright, let's go fishing.
