Today is Columbus Day — which, to me, is the day those of us in the US celebrate Myth and Storytelling. After all, the account of Columbus given to me in my 8th grade history book was far from a complete and accurate description of the Italian man who lived in 1492.<\/p>\n
If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, you can find plenty of sites on the internet that offer a wide variety of descriptions and analyses of Columbus. To some he was a Visionary; to others, the Devil Incarnate. Take a look at all the data, and then you tell me–which of those stories is most true?<\/p>\n
I would say none of them. Or maybe all of them. I don’t know. I wasn’t there and even if I was there, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have had any idea what was going on because I rarely have any idea what’s going on. \u00a0But that’s probably just me, and I’ve noticed a lot of people aren’t me. \u00a0You, for example, aren’t me. \u00a0And everyone else. \u00a0But I digress . . .<\/p>\n
Anyway, I’ve also noticed that some people get really up-tight about asserting THEIR particular version of a story, as if the slightest hint of disagreement is a lethal threat to their own existence. Maybe that’s where the idea for “Columbus Day” came from in the first place–as a way to give one particular version of a story the authority of law. But aren’t laws just stories told in Legalese instead of plain English?<\/p>\n
Again, I don’t know. What I do know is that facts have a weird way of changing over time and our perception of them changes constantly as well. I definitely don’t look at Columbus today the same way I did when I was in 8th grade. So rather than latching onto any one version of what happened in 1492 and fighting for that version until I’m dead, I prefer to look at our infinite renditions of any story as an example of the awesome creative powers of the human species.<\/p>\n
But that’s just my story. What’s yours?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today is Columbus Day — which, to me, is the day those of us in the US celebrate Myth and Storytelling. After all, the account of Columbus given to me in my 8th grade history book was far from a complete and accurate description of the Italian man who lived in 1492. If you’re not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":348,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions\/348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}