The Moorish Pirate Named Christopher Columbus and/or The Search For New Blogs

I’ve been on a Christopher Columbus kick lately, mainly because my eldest is on an anti- Christopher Columbus kick and has been regaling us with all of the horrific monstrous things Columbus is accused of doing. Did you know he allegedly was possibly a pirate/privateer against the Moors? (it’s hard to tell…they didn’t have social media and Alexa in those days to track everybody). In fact, it’s hard to tell much of anything about Columbus since so many of the accusations and heroics are steeped in politics and scandal. Not much has changed. Regardless, it is fairly impressive that the landlubbing son of a weaver ended up sailing across the Atlantic ocean before the Middle Ages were barely over. That would be like one of my kids ending up in the NFL.

You can read his actual logbooks here: The Journal Of Christopher Columbus

“Pinta” is not the actual name of one of the three ships, it was the nickname sailors gave it. It means “Prostitute”. Fun to think about next time you’re singing the CC song with a bunch of four year olds. The Santa Maria crashed into a reef on Christmas Eve which I’m sure was a bummer for the crabs, coral and the men who had to bail everything out and haul it to shore while Santa Claus was making his rounds. Fun to think about next time the holidays are a bit tetchy with the relatives.

I noticed the other day that my blog list is getting rather slim and I find myself skimming looking for new ones. Any recommendations? I like variety so the genre doesn’t matter. Or did everyone move on to other platforms. Sometimes I feel like the last person left who still prefers reading things over watching youtube, tiktok, or listening to podcasts.

Unpatriotic Patriotism

What if America is not the total sum of its parts…. In a rhetorical sort of way where hindsight is the opposite of 20/20. For instance, pretend “1776 to 2016” is a painting of Noah’s Ark, with bears lumbering about, zebras and camels everywhere and a rainbow going over the whole thing. But if you’d asked George Washington he would have told you in 1776 everyone thought they were painting just a picture of a bear...or maybe bears vs zebras if you were Jefferson and Hamilton.  Ahem.  

With history you don’t always know who’s going to get the biggest paintbrush and the most say. Assuredly the founding fathers saw their posterity’s future quite differently...without things like a potato famine across the ocean changing everything...or an altruistic poet writing things like “...give me your poor, your huddled masses” which would end up carrying such emotional power as to add a few kangaroos, lions and monkeys to the painting.  

Add Manifest Destiny, a few world wars and globalization and it’s like a historical game of children’s “Telephone” where “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” becomes “Ten pink elephants lit a gas car”.  

Which is what it is.  We are (for better or worse) what we are. But if the past in this case teaches anything, it’s that you can’t rely on the intrinsic correctness of whatever “picture” you think we have. Maybe the Noah’s Ark painting is actually Dick Van Dyke on a unicycle reading a children’s magazine…. And maybe that Dick Van Dyke picture is on a cereal box….floating in an ocean on the back of a mutant flamingo.   

Who knows.  

Happy Fourth!