Word: columbus
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...have little memory for weather, but Yardstick recalls that last Monday the climate was not conducive to protesting Columbus Day. It was cold. But it was also cold three years ago, when Yardstick was a first-year in Weld Hall and Columbus Day protesters chattered outside his window all night long, exchanging the kind of ideas that only emerge in the generous, delirious pall of late night. And on every single recent Columbus Day prior to last Monday, there was another sleep-over j’accuse colloquium on the steps of Widener Library...
...last Monday there was not. In the afternoon, about 15 people assembled on the Memorial Church steps for a discussion of “The Legacy of Columbus.” It was scheduled to last two hours, but could hardly muster enough energy for one. None of the speakers were particularly angry or protesty. For instance, someone who had been raised on a reservation gave a gently moving talk about what Columbus represents to him: subjugation, national forgetfulness, etc?...
...futile to dispute people’s associations of Christopher Columbus with mass murder, oppression and the appalling conditions that still exist on reservations. And maybe it doesn’t help that we have assigned Columbus a holiday, which is basically the most vague, imprecise and symbolic honor we can bestow...
However, Yardstick does protest the unfortunate fact that, because Columbus has his own holiday, he is a rich target for coarse cartooning. Yardstick also protests that it is ahistorical to view Columbus through the lens of today’s moral standards. It is the kind of work that pop historians have done for years with their Troubled Genius biographies: Kepler was a nut, Hemingway was a drunk, and don’t get us started on Rousseau...
Yardstick submits that Columbus was as brave as all the myths and rhyming couplets say he was. Columbus was a fanatical leader with a superior sense of Manifest Destiny, like Hemingway with more focus, like Kepler with a better-developed sense of history, like Rousseau with more diplomatic facility. Columbus’ lifetime achievements are monumental: He captured the faltering imagination of Western Europe. He gave to her people the only the thing that could resuscitate her failing fortunes: hope...