Columbus Day
Monday, October 10th, 2022 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioIt was a strangely easy day at work today, because school was closed! Nobody even turned the lights on... just sun through the windows and the emergency lights in the halls as it slowly set.
It was weird how silent the building was, when it's normally absolute chaos when I get there at 3PM, and the kids are lining up in the halls to wait for the busses.
No bathrooms to clean, no garbage or vacuuming to do. So I cleaned windows, and finally got around to emptying all the pencil sharpeners in all my classrooms... something I always forget to do on a normal day.
In my earphones, I finally picked up where I'd left off on a audiobook I was listening to back in July. And it made me think about how much had changed since then, when I was still doing wind chime wind tests.
I definitely didn't think I'd have two new cats and be emptying pencil sharpeners in an elementary school, here in October... or that the crooked mulberry was only a couple months away from falling over.
------------{=0=}------------
Columbus Day is, many will agree, our stupidest federal holiday. The whole weird fixation with Columbus in the US goes back to 1792... when the country was only a couple decades old and still not on good terms at all with England.
It was the 300th anniversary of his 1492 voyage, and he was Italian, rather than English, so it seemed fun to celebrate him as the guy who discovered the new world... even though he only discovered the Bahamas... by accident... thought he was in India... and never had a clue that North America existed!
But in the 1800s, and Italian immigrant wrote an extremely popular, but also extremely propagandistic biography of Columbus... for the sole purpose of giving other Italian immigrants a hero to identify with... and that's how he wound up getting a holiday.
He's basically the Italian answer to Saint Patrick, for the Irish... only St. Pat wasn't a genocidal maniac. He kept it to the simple steamrolling of indigenous religion in Ireland.
--<>--
I remember being taught about Columbus in kindergarten! Not even first grade, but Kindergarten!
And as Mrs. Wallow read us a little story about Columbus, she actually had props to hold up for us, to help us get the concepts.
She'd be like, "Everybody thought the world was flat, like a pancake," and she'd hold up the fake plastic pancake, "But Columbus knew the world was round, like an apple!" She held up the fake plastic apple.
I honestly believe this is why we have flat earthers in the 21st Century... even though there were no flat earthers back in antiquity. These idiots were taught as kids, that flat earth was once an accepted European doctrine!
I remember thinking, well into grade school, that Columbus was literally the first man who ever had the insight that the world might be a globe... and that the whole purpose of his 1492 voyage was to prove to the skeptics that he was right!
In reality, everybody knew the planet was a globe in his day, but in Europe they were desperate to figure out a way to trade with East Asia, without having to sail all the way around Africa... because the overland trade routes were controlled by mysterious foreigners who were charging too much money for shit!
Or something like that... I'm not super versed on that part of history, so don't quote me.
At any rate, Columbus was just a greedy merchant, who wanted so badly for the answer to be... just sail west around the back side of the planet... that he convinced himself that the whole globe was a lot smaller than everybody thought!
And, it's not just that he blundered into the Bahamas, and thought he was in India... it's that even if the America's hadn't been there, and he'd made it around to East Asia... he STILL would not have been in INDIA! He would've been in, like, CHINA!
I mean... he really had absolutely no idea what he was doing!
--<>--
It's only been since about 1992 that the full story, about him, effectively inventing the slave trade, in addition to being a brutal mass murderer, and ruthless plunderer... finally started to break through the myth making, and touch the public consciousness.
And by then, the holiday had been celebrated in some official capacity, around the US for about 70 years.
FDR made it a Federal holiday, in 1934, to be observed on October 12th... the date of his first landing in the Bahamas.
And it wasn't until 1971 that it got bundled into the Monday holiday bunch, as the second Monday of October.
------------{=0=}------------
It's worth noting here that, in the United States, there's no such thing as a, national holiday.
What we have are, federal holidays... recognized by the federal government, which the individual states can observe, or not!
Federal holidays are simply... days that the employees of the federal government have off!.. including the post office.
Most state governments, and public schools also take these days off, along with most banking institutions... but they don't have to.
The total list of US federal holidays is;
...with Juneteenth just added to the list last year!
--<>--
Never in my life, have I had Columbus Day off, from school or work... and still not even today!
All public schools have it off, but I went to a Catholic school and they never took it off, even though Columbus was Catholic!
And I've never worked a job that included Columbus Day in their repertoire of days off... or days you get time and a half for working.
For most US workers, it's just; New Year, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, & Christmas.
--<>--
I'm a pseudo government worker now?.. because GeoStaff has a union contract with the... county?... to staff public schools with housekeepers.
But we work Columbus Day and Veterans Day... so that we can take the day before and after Thanksgiving off. And I don't even see how that works, because I... don't... think... the schools have all those days off, do they?
I guess we'll look at that more closely later on in November.
------------{=0=}------------
In the final analysis, Federal holidays are kind of a grab bag of negotiation points for workers in the US, with some of them being more negotiable than others.
But culturally, Columbus Day means almost nothing to anybody but Italians in New York City, and public school kids.
I've still never had the day off, but... this was the first Columbus Day of my life where I noticed a difference at work, and had an easy day!.. for what that's worth.
°¦}
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
It was weird how silent the building was, when it's normally absolute chaos when I get there at 3PM, and the kids are lining up in the halls to wait for the busses.
No bathrooms to clean, no garbage or vacuuming to do. So I cleaned windows, and finally got around to emptying all the pencil sharpeners in all my classrooms... something I always forget to do on a normal day.
In my earphones, I finally picked up where I'd left off on a audiobook I was listening to back in July. And it made me think about how much had changed since then, when I was still doing wind chime wind tests.
I definitely didn't think I'd have two new cats and be emptying pencil sharpeners in an elementary school, here in October... or that the crooked mulberry was only a couple months away from falling over.
Columbus Day is, many will agree, our stupidest federal holiday. The whole weird fixation with Columbus in the US goes back to 1792... when the country was only a couple decades old and still not on good terms at all with England.
It was the 300th anniversary of his 1492 voyage, and he was Italian, rather than English, so it seemed fun to celebrate him as the guy who discovered the new world... even though he only discovered the Bahamas... by accident... thought he was in India... and never had a clue that North America existed!
But in the 1800s, and Italian immigrant wrote an extremely popular, but also extremely propagandistic biography of Columbus... for the sole purpose of giving other Italian immigrants a hero to identify with... and that's how he wound up getting a holiday.
He's basically the Italian answer to Saint Patrick, for the Irish... only St. Pat wasn't a genocidal maniac. He kept it to the simple steamrolling of indigenous religion in Ireland.
I remember being taught about Columbus in kindergarten! Not even first grade, but Kindergarten!
And as Mrs. Wallow read us a little story about Columbus, she actually had props to hold up for us, to help us get the concepts.
She'd be like, "Everybody thought the world was flat, like a pancake," and she'd hold up the fake plastic pancake, "But Columbus knew the world was round, like an apple!" She held up the fake plastic apple.
I honestly believe this is why we have flat earthers in the 21st Century... even though there were no flat earthers back in antiquity. These idiots were taught as kids, that flat earth was once an accepted European doctrine!
I remember thinking, well into grade school, that Columbus was literally the first man who ever had the insight that the world might be a globe... and that the whole purpose of his 1492 voyage was to prove to the skeptics that he was right!
In reality, everybody knew the planet was a globe in his day, but in Europe they were desperate to figure out a way to trade with East Asia, without having to sail all the way around Africa... because the overland trade routes were controlled by mysterious foreigners who were charging too much money for shit!
Or something like that... I'm not super versed on that part of history, so don't quote me.
At any rate, Columbus was just a greedy merchant, who wanted so badly for the answer to be... just sail west around the back side of the planet... that he convinced himself that the whole globe was a lot smaller than everybody thought!
And, it's not just that he blundered into the Bahamas, and thought he was in India... it's that even if the America's hadn't been there, and he'd made it around to East Asia... he STILL would not have been in INDIA! He would've been in, like, CHINA!
I mean... he really had absolutely no idea what he was doing!
It's only been since about 1992 that the full story, about him, effectively inventing the slave trade, in addition to being a brutal mass murderer, and ruthless plunderer... finally started to break through the myth making, and touch the public consciousness.
And by then, the holiday had been celebrated in some official capacity, around the US for about 70 years.
FDR made it a Federal holiday, in 1934, to be observed on October 12th... the date of his first landing in the Bahamas.
And it wasn't until 1971 that it got bundled into the Monday holiday bunch, as the second Monday of October.
It's worth noting here that, in the United States, there's no such thing as a, national holiday.
What we have are, federal holidays... recognized by the federal government, which the individual states can observe, or not!
Federal holidays are simply... days that the employees of the federal government have off!.. including the post office.
Most state governments, and public schools also take these days off, along with most banking institutions... but they don't have to.
The total list of US federal holidays is;
- New Year
- Martin Luther King Day
- President's Day
- Memorial Day
- Juneteenth
- Independence Day
- Labor Day
- Columbus Day
- Veterans Day
- Thanksgiving
- Christmas
...with Juneteenth just added to the list last year!
Never in my life, have I had Columbus Day off, from school or work... and still not even today!
All public schools have it off, but I went to a Catholic school and they never took it off, even though Columbus was Catholic!
And I've never worked a job that included Columbus Day in their repertoire of days off... or days you get time and a half for working.
For most US workers, it's just; New Year, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, & Christmas.
I'm a pseudo government worker now?.. because GeoStaff has a union contract with the... county?... to staff public schools with housekeepers.
But we work Columbus Day and Veterans Day... so that we can take the day before and after Thanksgiving off. And I don't even see how that works, because I... don't... think... the schools have all those days off, do they?
I guess we'll look at that more closely later on in November.
In the final analysis, Federal holidays are kind of a grab bag of negotiation points for workers in the US, with some of them being more negotiable than others.
But culturally, Columbus Day means almost nothing to anybody but Italians in New York City, and public school kids.
I've still never had the day off, but... this was the first Columbus Day of my life where I noticed a difference at work, and had an easy day!.. for what that's worth.
°¦}
