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Home » I consider today Columbus Day …

I consider today Columbus Day …

The New Neo Posted on by

… although it’s not officially till Monday. But October 12 is the real day, and it’s the one we celebrated when I was a child and before holidays were moved to Mondays.

I recently listened to a series on Columbus from “The Rest is History,” and I enjoyed it immensely. So informative and so engrossing!
There are four episodes, and here they are in order:

Comments

I consider today Columbus Day … — 35 Comments

  2. Samuel Eliot Morison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus is a classic, the definitive biography.

  3. IO49, I have both, including another volume. We are having to move to a smaller place and I will have to give them away. Golden Years, my ass.

  4. Mike K – ‘Golden Years, my ass.’

    🙂 Sorry for smiling – just too funny. Have no clue what “IO49” means, but apparently people have different views on Golden Age also. 🙂

    Generally speaking, those Golden Years begin as experts say, at age 65 and last until at least 80 or longer, if you’re lucky.

    My started at 62, and each year has gotten better—until 78+ so far. An *AMAZING* time of life, especially here in America, IMHO.

    Thank you Christopher Columbus!

  5. I forgot Indigenous Peoples Day is the old Columbus Day.
    I hate Leftists.
    Seen it pointed out, American Indians had no written language.

  6. Mike K:

    Don’t do it! Never give away a Samuel Eliot Morison book!

    One of my greatest treasures is the complete 15-volume History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, by Morison. Hardback, every volume in pristine condition. I acquired it, FREE, from the estate of a University of Chicago professor with whom I was acquainted. Shortly after he passed, his children opened up his apartment to friends and acquaintances, allowing us to wander through it and take any one or more of the thousands of books still on his book shelves. I found the Morison series and snatched it up, before representatives of Powell’s Used Books and O’Gara’s, who were also wandering the premises, discovered it. I’m such a lucky guy.

    I plan to read the whole series from cover(s) to cover(s) during the dark cold days of the coming northwest Indiana winter.

    Best wishes for you in your new home.

  8. I just said to my husband, “Today is Columbus Day, before it became every holiday had to be on a Monday for the benefit of our ‘Public Servants'”. And then I pulled up your post.

  9. “Golden Years, my ass.” – Mike K

    Yep, they’re golden until you reach that stage where you have to part with many of the things you have loved. My eyes are so bad, I can only read a book on Kindle. Four years ago, I downsized my rather large book collection. It was like losing beloved old friends. I hear you.

    I’m still glad to be alive even though age has robbed me of many things I value. Fortunately, I still have a decent memory – so I can relive the good times. When the memory goes, I can’t imagine what it will be like to still be doddering around.
    Oh well, “Que sera, sera.”

  10. Irish, I am envious. Should be a great read. I just have his “Two Ocean War”.

    As they say, History is complicated. But, as is the wont now adays, look at bygone Actors in History, with a Lense of today’s moral (or lack thereof) compass. What they did, they did.

  11. Re: Golden Years

    I’m having a ball learning French and now electric guitar.

    I bought the Rick Beato video guitar courses and got my posture and tendinitis issues sorted. I’m mostly self-learning but I trust Rick to give me good hints and a roadmap.

    There’s a whole world revolving around the electric guitar. I can now understand the attraction it has. There is so much to learn. There are so many ways to personalize one’s music. There is so much lore and history which, in a tiny way, one becomes part of.

    Strapping on my guitar feels right. I’ve never felt that way about a musical instrument before.

  13. huxley:

    Can you recommend a basic French learning program? I’m planning a trip to Normandy and Brittany in the spring, and I want to be able to communicate with the natives.

    P.S. Anyone else here who has recommendations in this regard, please chime in.

  14. J.J.

    After what I’ve been through over the past year, I’m just glad to be alive, mobile, and [passably] sentient.

  15. Can you recommend a basic French learning program?

    IrishOtter49:

    I use LingQ, which is more of a tool than a program. It has a reasonable monthly fee. It works for French and multiple other languages.

    https://www.lingq.com/

    LingQ allows you to go through content a sentence at a time. You can select words, phrases or sentences for translation or for audio.

    You can add content you want to study by hand or peruse the vast library of content that LingQ provides. LingQ does provide survival French modules and Easy French News.

    LingQ is all that I have used for the past 20 months — mostly I read/listen to French novels. I’m quite happy with my results. I have my criticisms of its design and implementation, but the underlying idea is brilliant.

  16. Where I live they are calling it “Indigenous People’s Day.”

    I had to laugh when I saw a “Happy Indigenous People’s Day” meme showing Aztecs cutting the heart out of a sacrificial victim.

  19. Clarifying my comment @ 12:58 pm on Golden Years

    Did not mean that “each year has gotten better” physically – I suspect that focusing on the physical could/would be disastrous for the Golden Years experience, what with the body being in the process of dying.

    I look at birth as a merging of the physical/flesh with the spirit/Self/soul – which continues thru childhood onto adulthood.

    I see the Golden Years as a unmixing/detaching/disengaging of the physical/flesh with the spirit/Self/soul, with the spirit/Self/soul at its highest point in the physical world (for me anyway) – which continues until the body dies.

    (BTW, thanks for the update IO49 – I had been searching for some kind of important book volume info..?!)

  20. I have a hardbound copy of Samuel Eliot Morrison’s History of the United States (1965), that I got from a used book store for a dollar. (Today it would be $3.) Better read it before my eyes go bad.

  22. Marisa, today is White Guilt Day?! I thought that was May 27 or something! Or was it last month? I get confused; there are so many claimants. Anyway, thanks, I guess! 🙂 (Do we get cake?)

  24. IrishOtter49:

    Whatever else you do, sign up for a free ChatGPT 3.5 account. Chat is great at languages.

    https://openai.com/chatgpt/overview/

    You can ask Chat to break down a sentence into its component parts and explain them.

    Also great for explaining French expressions and idioms which make no sense when translated into literal English.

    The other day I ran into un coup de tête which literally means “a blow to the head,” but as an expression can mean “on a whim.”

  26. Philip Sells
    Marisa, today is White Guilt Day?! I thought that was May 27 or something! Or was it last month? I get confused; there are so many claimants.

    EVERY DAY is White Guilt Day. Just like Prince Spaghetti Day. 🙂

    Both of my mother’s brothers married women who were 1/8 Indian/Native American. Do my cousins, with their 1/16, participate in White Guilt Day as Aggrieved Victims or as THE GUILTY? Maybe
    15/16 of the Days as TheGuilty and 1/16 of the days as the Aggrieved Victims.

    And where do the victims of Aztec human sacrifice fit in? Eh, AMLO?

  29. Have I missed any post reporting that some experts are now claiming Columbus was Jewish, but hiding it?
    So many great Jews throughout history.

  30. There are few places on Earth that haven’t at one time, or another, been invaded and colonized by other people. The right of conquest of other territory and people was an accepted principle. In fact, it was accepted as recently as WWI and WWII. Those two awful wars gave birth to the idea that conquest and colonization of other nations and peoples was unacceptable.

    Slavery, also an accepted practice from ancient times until the mid 1800s, was a similar issue – that of using force to acquire land, people, and resources.

    Thus, the conquest of the Americas is still on people’s minds but cannot be judged by the principles that have emerged since 1918. The idea that the indigenous people of the Americas are owed reparations is the worst and most divisive idea the Marxists have come up with yet. There is no better way to destroy unity than to vilify people who are long dead for having the grit and ambition to create a prosperous society under the commonly accepted rules of the time.

    I’ve seen some presentations on TV about the Pre-Incan cultures of South America. Very interesting stuff, (I’ve been fortunate enough to visit some of the sites such as Chan Chan in Peru) but the programs were shot through with accusations against the Spanish colonizers – intimating that there was something uniquely evil about what they did. It wasn’t. Similar colonizing was taking place in Africa, in India, in the Middle East, etc.

    These pro-reparations people need to be refuted at every turn. The idea is a con – a something for nothing scheme.

  33. He was Italian, he was Greek, he was Jewish… everyone wants a piece of him (so to speak). Next they’ll be saying his great-great-great-grandmother’s third cousin was related to St. Patrick’s deacon!

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