Wendy, it's "Día de la Raza" not "Indigenous Peoples" day out here. It's also a revisionist crock of crap. It makes me happy to be a history teacher so that I can open the minds of the students to knowing both sides of Columbus, but as Wolf pointed out, to not blame him for what others did.

The other night in the locker room after my hockey game, one of my teammates went off with the old rhyme "in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue". I made sure to add to that, "in 1492, Spain kicked out every Jew". With the Moors defeated January 1, 1492, and the expulsion of the Jews (and subsequent confiscation of their properties), Fernando e Isabel had extra "liquid assets" on hand which allowed them to even finance Columbus. Remember who he was "working for" in order to understand any of the things he did when he arrived in San Salvador...or whatever the name the place was given by the "indigenous peoples".

We seem to all agree that Colón was no saint...let's not vilify him for what Cortés and Pizarro or even the Portugese slave trade did years later. Let's punish him for his own sins, and not those of you and I.

And let's still take the 12th off if nothing more than for a great day of golf!