COLUMBUS: History retold

I read your paper when we were coming through your beautiful town a month ago. I saw the article about Christopher Columbus by your Sholeh Patrick. I first heard this now bandwagon retelling of history made by a professor at a Stanford Alumni College in the mid-1980s.

To denigrate an early, pre-Magellan explorer, who lived at a time when conventional wisdom taught that the Earth was flat, is ridiculous. Without serious navigation skills, he would have been lost at sea. Unlike Neil Armstrong, Columbus had no “Houston” to call in case of disaster. It is also ridiculous to claim that he discovered nothing because he landed in the “wrong country,” when many Americans today can’t even find their way to the corner store without GPS.

As for the pillaging of the New World by the Columbus gang, the real blame can be laid at the feet of Queen Isabella who financed the trip. In addition to decimating the Muslim and Jewish populations of Spain, she is the one who proudly wore the jewels and enjoyed the riches that the explorers brought home.

In some parts of California, we still try to keep our identity politics straight and find it disingenuous to blame a white man for the sins of a white woman.

MICHAEL HANSEN

Carmel, Calif.