HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

On Fridays at Avenidas an instructor from Foothill Community College comes to conduct a class called Social Change.  The purpose of the class, as I understand it, is to see how various events in history - recent or not-so-recent, effect how we live.

This past Friday we went back more than 500 years to the voyages of Christopher Columbus.  It seems that once Queen Isabella of Spain approved and financed the first voyage, Columbus had a most difficult time recruiting sailors to sail with him.  First, he was a foreigner.  Then he was headed in a direction (west) that they did not trust.  It was not until a local and powerful individual by the name of Martin Alonso Pinzon decided to back Columbus, that the first journey was able to get underway.

One question that Rachel the instructor raised, was this -- What kinds of changes might have occurred if Columbus had not been able to sail?  Among the various answers was one by some wiseacre (named Meyer) who said, “We wouldn’t have Columbus Day!”  Which led the instructor to tell us that in Palos de la Frontera, the port from which Columbus first sailed, they don’t celebrate Columbus.  They celebrate Pinzon!


Humor --

It seems that Senators Hiram Fong of Hawaii and Robert Sprong of Virginia sponsored a proclamation in the United States senate to have all the church bells in Hong Kong ring out when the American table tennis team arrived there after their successful tour of mainland China.

But the senate did not pass the
Fong Sprong
Hong Kong
ping pong
ding dong
bell bill.