Christoffa Corombo Day

Our local teachers' union negotiated a day off last Friday. They called it "I-Day," short for "Instructional Day." I-day is basically a bonus day for lazy teachers to be free of classroom responsibilities so that they can do all the grading that they used to get done without a day off.

God forbid that our school district schedule the day off today (or better yet tomorrow, October 12), the traditional Columbus Day holiday. Poor old Christopher has suffered greatly under revisionist historians' censorship pen. School children no longer learn to sing, "In fourteen hundred, ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Columbus did not depart from the exploitative norms of the time; he abused slaves and the Native Americans that he mistakenly called, "Indios," believing that he had reached the shores of Asia. And of course, the discovery of the Americas by Europeans would lead to the conquest of the lands and subjugation of its native inhabitants in the four centuries that followed. So--forget his vision, courage, and accomplishment in putting together a flotilla of three ships that would challenge the ignorant misconceptions of the time and extend the frontiers of scientific knowledge. Fall afoul of our politically-correctness history squad, and you're relegated to footnote status for all time.

Or not. Eat some Genoa salami today and tomorrow in honor of Christopher Columbus, or maybe some Spanish food in honor of Ferdinand and Isabella, who bankrolled his explorations. Isabella, for sure, wanted to bring Christianity to the native peoples, and that, in itself was a good thing, even if the cruelty of the times (think Spanish Inquisition) horribly stained her vision, and Columbus' mission.

Three cheers for the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria! Three cheers for the Genovese man known as "Christoffa Corombo" in his native tongue. He sought to prove that the world was round and to find a fast route to the Far East, and stumbled upon the Americas in the process. That's rather notable, si?