Baldo by Hector D. Cantú and Carlos Castellanos for October 08, 2012

October 9th is Leif Erikson Day.

Not sure if we should celebrate Columbus at all. He wasn’t the first, he got it wrong, and then when he did get here, he imprisoned and annihilated much of the people he encountered. The population of what is now Haiti was virtually wiped out.http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/hispaniola/index.html

We celebrate it because his “discovery” opened the colonization of the continent by Europeans, and open trade routes to the vast resources of the “Americas” (actually named after Americo Vaspucci – hope I spelled his name correctly).

I am fascinated by the theory that Chinese treasure fleets arrived in the Atlantic 70 years before Columbus. The book is “1421: The year China discovered America” by Gavin Menzies.

I used to get the day off school, which was excellent because it was my birthday.

The “Dia de la raza” holiday is excellent. It’s not really celebrating the guy who didn’t really discover America and bring conquering and disease, but it does celebrate the diversity of people we have in the Americas today, and for those of us in the Americas, well, I guess that’s the best spin we can put on those conflicting feelings we have nowadays between kind of wishing the indigenous peoples had been left alone in peace (or rather, fighting just amongst themselves from time to time) and the fact that we rather enjoy being alive and living in this beautiful place.

baldo shows intellegence sometimes

phritzg: And now they almost all fall on a Monday, so the usual week-end backlog is added to the holiday backlog. Back in my day, we didn’t even have vehicles, but had to take the bus. One bus driver accused us of putting a good pack mule out of work and we really couldn’t argue the point. I actually got to meet some post office pack mules coming out of Supai, AZ, once.

Not at my Grandson’s school…their off school today and tomorrow to celebrate.

Read the real story of Columbus in “Lies My Teacher Taught Me.” The ‘great explorer’ turned out to be a nasty, heartless jerk whose lust for money and favor was his primary motivation. Source: well-preserved letters from men who sailed with him, many times! Amazing what they overlooked when we were in school—and still today!

Its really easy to vilify a time period. We have the luxury to look back and say ‘this and that is wrong’. Do I look back and wish it didn’t happen that way, yes. But it did, and instead of constantly complaining about what are ancestors did wrong, why don’t we learn instead. We still have hatred and still discriminated against those who are different than us. Are we really any better? I know most will have something to say about me, but think about it. What atrocities go on today, that we are just ignoring.

As I read it Baldo and friends do not get the day off from school?

We always had Columbus Day off from school and I know that schools on Long Island, NY still have it off (except I suspect some private religious schools).

Columbus did not loom significantly in the English colonies and USA until the late 1800’s when they realized it had been 400 years since he first came to the Americas. The celebration of same was delayed. The Colombian Exposition was in Chicago in 1893, 401 years after 1492.

in my house we just call it international genocide day…..seems more accurate

Here in Spain it’s called Día de la Hispanidad and it’s a day off. More than just the discovery, we celebrate the many different cultures that stemed from it.