It's kind of hard to celebrate Columbus Day. I mean really, what exactly are we celebrating? The arrival of Europeans onto this continent was not great for the landscape or the people living here at the time. Things went downhill fast.
The book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann, is incredible revisionist history. Wow. What a place this was once upon a time.
Ah. But what's the point in getting all sentimental? Shit happens, I guess. We are, after all, a migratory species - we always have been. Our survival instinct is powerful indeed. We humans have always done everything we could to prevail over the land as well as over other clans. And then there was the smallpox, too. Yikes.
It's another lovely day in DC. The kids are out of school, the government is closed down for the day. There will be no trash pick-up, no postal delivery. But many of us are going to work as usual, including me. C'est la vie.
We Europeans and Africans have been on this land for hundreds of years, so maybe it's time to stop celebrating Columbus, and instead figure out how to become indigenous - which would mean (to me) connecting in a deep way with the land so as to inspire in every one of us a desire to nurture and care for this beautiful continent and each other. I know - I am such a dreamer! But I'm not the only one! (xx oo John Lennon.) Shalom.
14 comments:
just the other day i was mediating on this what you said - we are a migratory species...always have been, always will be.
thanks.
yep, you are a (beautiful) dreamer and not the only one.....
namaste!
Bravo Reya. I couldn't agree with you more. That last photo cracks me up. By the way, I didn't even realize it was Columbus Day until I went to the post office to ship some orders....drat.
Mouse - Namaste to you too!!
Can't help where we get born, what baggage we have to claim- I am just here, could be anywhere- - agree totally- Columbo day is just another contrivance to give the postal workers a day off.
Imagine indeed!
the first nation peoples had sorted a lot of stuff out about nature - mostly because they took what nature had sorted out for itself and blended in with that as best as possible. but as you know, there's no going back, so i say climb up one cycle on the helix and use the knowledge they assembled and meld it with the thinking around current or eveolving technolgy. somewhere in that blend is the next step (not the final and most necessary one) but the next step to reintegrate the human race into nature. steven
Columbus Day. Ah, so it is. Love the curly wicked Witch of the West feet in your pic! And black flamingos to boot!
Yeah! Let's become indigenous!
I am a dreamer too and what a nice dream.
I WANT those legs and shoes!!!!!!!
I have the day off - the gift of an extra holiday from my company. I'm grocery shopping & doing laundry to "celebrate." I did hang some towels outside to dry - that's sort of like being more in touch with nature, isn't it? :)
Bug? Love you.
From here, Old Europe, came most of the immigrants to America (except for the involuntary ones, from Africa) who now feel all like Americans. So we are all connected, to our earth, but also to our human relatives everywhere. And finally we understand, also to our animal and plant relatives.
Columbus (Cristóbal Colón) broke off to new shores, so why can`t we, with our global wisdom now?
Columbus Day is the oddest holiday in the whole calendar I think. It seems to be something that they thought was a good idea a long time ago, but now that we know better we should maybe stop doing this? My school system has a clever way around it: we didn't get Monday off, but we got Friday off in order to go to professional conferences; in this way the school acknowledges it as a sort of non-holiday.
I'm just now reading this post for the first time and am shocked but not surprised, because I started a Facebook page recently to replace Columbus Day with John Lennon Day.
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