Columbus Day Genocide

Every year on Columbus Day we hear of the protests and the parades marking Christopher Columbus. I grew up with Columbus as a hero. But then again George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and others have lost their heroism as well. When I googled Columbus Genocide to find out just what the controversy was all about, beleive me: there were very few postings that were even readable. They were rants and raves without any direct facts at all, there were pieces that tried to sound scholarly but made no sense. Even Wikipedia seemed to have trouble when it came to talking about the "controversy." One main source, it seems, for the genocide accusations, came from none other than Ward Churchill, who has been permanently fired from the University of Colorado for plagarism and lack of scholarly ways. In other words, he is not a credible source.

There is indeed sufficient evidence against Columbus that he treated the natives of Hispaniola like cattle, and indeed that population was nearly wiped out. The only reasonable posting I found was from cartoonist Mikhaela B. Reid in his Boiling Point blog. That is from 2002, but it holds up well. In other words, nothing has changed.

Okay, I guess all our holidays for heroes are outmoded (except perhaps Easter and Christmas, both for the same Palestinian Savior). Should we do away with Martin Luther King day, Caesar Chavez day, and the like? Isn't Labor Day celebrated for Unions? Columbus Day is celebrated on October 12 because it is the day he arrived in the New World, October 12, 1492. It has nothing to do with his birthday or etc. The celebration of the day has brought out the anti-Columbus point of view as well, so maybe we should celebrate the holiday, as others have suggested, as a point of change for all of us. It comes at a time of year when harvest festivals occur, when we are preparing for the Winter that will lead to Spring. What should we name our new holiday?

This visitor to our front window is a white-lined sphinx moth, one of the largest flying insects in some deserts. It is also known as a hummingbird moth because it hovers and feeds on nectar like a hummingbird.

Traffic Laws Have Changed

The first traffic law I was aware of that had changed over the years was U-TURNS. It used to be that you couldn't make a U-Turn unless it was posted that you could or you were in the middle of nowhere and no traffic was around. Now you just have to be careful.

I have talked earlier about the Speed Limit: the de facto speed limit is 10 miles above the posted limit.

If you were to follow at 1 car length per 10 miles of speed like you used to, or even at the 3-second rule, you will probably get honked out of existence. (I don't care, I still do.)

Apparently, the blind spot that used to exist is gone. This law of human anatomy has been repealed. That is what it seems like when you watch people in the lanes around you.

Horse Chestnut Tree

I didn't know what those pods were until someone told me: My neighbor's tree is a horse chestnut tree. The pods are all around the neighborhood, distributed by the squirrels. The horse chestnut is poisonous, in fact all parts of the tree are poisonous. It won't kill you, it will just make you stumbling around sick.

WARD CHURCHILL

You have to feel sorry for the guy. He thought he was a noted scholar, he thought he had a line on Native American history, he thought he was part Indian himself. He has found out that all of that was wrong. He even lost his ancestors.

But really: If he had come out and admitted that he really made up stories and did what he could to show the bad side, stole and plagiarized apparently most of what he did, there might have been a way to save him. The ultra liberal would-be intellectuals that still support him say that they never would have found his problems if they had not investigated his stupid 911 statement. True. Does that mean he should be able to plagiarize so long as no one notices? He was never dissed for that statement. He was dissed for being a cheat and a thief.

Who is Simon Bolivar?

I was talking to a fellow the other day who said he was Simon Bolivar. Okay, maybe he wasn't, but I was shocked at how many people had never heard of him, or just vaguely had heard his name. This guy was the biggest National Hero in Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, much of South America. Bolivia was named after him. He was the South American George Washington. And how about Joachin Murieta in Mexico? These guys should be known to everybody if we really have a global society. Maybe we are still more isolated than we ever realized.

HANDICAPPED PARKING IRRITATES SOME PEOPLE.

I don't like parking in the handicapped spaces because it makes me feel... well... handicapped. I have a charcot foot, which is the result of Diabetic Neuropathy. I have been very lucky that it has healed very well, but that is because I baby the foot. I do not wear a special boot, but I have to wear expensive shoes that accomodate my deformed right foot. The charcot foot came about because I broke my foot, and because I had no feeling in the foot, I broke it over and over again. Blood rushes to the foot, it heals very rapidly, but it breaks again. You walk on a tiny rock, your foot twists, and because you don't compensate for the twisting like normal people do, your foot will break again. X-Rays showed that the bones in the middle part of the foot where chipped, shattered and collapsed. By then, yes, I did have pain, but not nearly as much pain as the "phantom" shooting pains that I'd had when the neuropathy began years before. The arch of the foot is gone, it looks like I have two left feet.

At the same time, I need to walk on my feet fairly often to keep the blood circulating. I can walk a couple hundred feet, and in fact walking is easier than standing on the bad foot. Climbing stairs or even a step is fairly difficult. The main potential for trouble other than breaking the foot again is that I can develop ulcers on the foot if too much pressure is put on it in any one place. I drive with my left foot, I can no longer drive with a clutch.

And so, I try to park in a normal parking space, as long as it isn't too far from the door. Of course, bad weather, when I can't see what I'm walking on, means I need a handicapped space. If you see me walking from my car and you cannot tell that I am handicapped, then thank you! That is what I have tried to achieve. It just looks like a slight limp, and the foot goes off at a slight angle. But, yes, I really do appreciate a handicapped space at times.

Spring!

Sitting around the Rock Pile at work, the smokers believe we are being discriminated against.

The Rock Pile is what we called the smoking place in High School. It was at the end of the North Wing at Thomas Jefferson High School, by the Industrial Arts classes. In my Senior Year, we had Senior Hall where you could smoke inside. In college, we would make an ash tray out of the silver lining of the cigarette pack, smoke in class. When I started working, most of the problems were solved over a cigarette. My father died at an early age, probably because of smoking (Camels).

Habits are hard to break. I have tried to quit many times, I was fairly successful several times. Most recently I started again because I missed that socializing, but also because I rebelled at the anti-smoking campaigns. It makes me want to wear neither my seat-belt nor my motorcycle helmet. It seems that we are rejecting our history. Smoking in bars, and especially in Casinos, seems like it should be the last bastion of the evil curse of smoking. Let us die with dignity! Let smoking die with dignity!

Rocky Mountain News Rocky Talk Live recently had a contributor who said, "I have said many times that the 80 percent of us who don't smoke will triumph over the 20 percent of you who do. That's the way it works in a democracy. If you don't like it, you know where the door is." Wow, isn't that the same argument they used for Segregation not too long ago? Why do we need to control the lives of others?