Do you break things when you get mad?
Eat a box of chocolates cause youre feelin bad?
Do you paint your toes cause you bite your nails?
Call up momma when all else fails?”
Who Are You When Im Not Looking? – Blake Shelton
Musical variety shows have been around as long as publicly-consumed media, beginning with traveling vaudeville shows to radio shows, to television shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show, and now to the modern era of musical competition shows, which really reached the masses with American Idol.
Blake Shelton has built his career around musical competition shows. He came to Nashville to pursue a singing career at 17, working at Sony Music on the production side, but without a recording contract. He was slated to be part of the first season of Nashville Star, a country music singing competition, in 2003, however, he finally was able to record and release his first studio album, and it took off so much that he was deemed too successful to be part of the show. He has appeared as a judge on multiple musical competition shows, most notably for The Voice from 2011 to 2023.
Originally recorded by Joe Nichols, Sheltons version of Who Are You…? was released in 2010 and garnered much more success, reaching the top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100, a rare occurrence for a country radio single.
In the song, the writer is reflecting on his love for his partner that could blind him to the bad habits that she may have, and he playfully calls out some of the possible things that his partner may do when he isnt around.
Frequently, were given the portrait of someone, whether historic or current, that is a very partial view of the person. Our modern world utilizes social media to put forth a significantly skewed view where we present only what we want the world to see.
In reality, the truth always seems to come to the surface, no matter how hard we try to block it. Five hundred years ago, the lack of reliable recording of history allowed for more of a persons discretions to go unnoticed or to not be connected.
In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison first declared the observance of Columbus Day as a federal holiday. The official date was changed to the second Monday in October in 1971.
Within 20 years of that official date, Columbus Day began to be renamed across the country, and South Dakota was actually the first state to do so on a statewide level. In 1989, the South Dakota legislature unanimously passed legislation proposed by Governor George S. Mickelson to proclaim 1990 as the Year of Reconciliation between the state and the various indigenous tribes housed within the state. Part of that year of reconciliation included changing Columbus Day to Native American Day within the state. This year will be the 35th anniversary of the first Native American Day in South Dakota, and the state has not observed Columbus Day as such since.
The beginning of the movement to establish Columbus Day in the country really hinged on a push from Italian-Americans, who sought to be recognized for their contributions to the establishment and growth of the nation, in an era when Italians, Irish, Jewish, and other groups who were not Anglo-Saxon attempted to forge a historical belonging in the young country.
Columbus was Italian, born in 1451 in Genoa. He sought to find fame and fortune by opening a new trade route for Europe with the Far East, and he felt he could sail West from Europe and land in India, unaware that there were two full continents spanning north to south in between.
It was because of that misguided perception that he had reached India that Columbus referred to the people of the land he encountered as Indians, a name still utilized to brand indigenous people in North, Central, and South America.
Interestingly, Columbus never set foot in North America, making him an awkward choice for the United States to acknowledge. He first landed in the Caribbean, then in subsequent voyages back to America, he explored what is now Central America and the northern coast of South America.
While the destruction of the native people in each spot where he landed is a legacy all its own, Columbus was rejected multiple times for funding for his first American voyage due to a reputation for being cruel and heartless in trading expeditions he led in his youth, including fathering at least two children by slave girls and/or prostitutes at port cities along the path of his travels.
His cruelty and specifically his abuse of women continued as a colonial governor upon his visits back to the New World, and he was eventually removed from the post and arrested. He was released after serving multiple years, convicted of mismanaging the assets of the kingdom of Spain. After his release, he privately funded his fourth and final voyage to the Western Hemisphere, though he returned with illness that would eventually claim his life at 54.
Certainly, Columbuss stubborn insistence on traveling West to find a new trade route led to an age of exploration that led to a connection of the world that didnt exist before his travels. Of course, he is simply one of many who had discovered America – and not the first. The Norse had established outposts in Canada and even explored into the continent along what is now known as the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes, with archaeological records dating back to roughly five hundred years before Columbus reached the Caribbean.
Columbus also never believed he had found a previously undocumented land mass. He went to his grave insisting that his discovery was simply landing in the East Indies, and he insisted on further voyages to find the locations of the spices and fabrics that Europe acquired in trade from the Far East at the time.
In his later years, Columbus became more religious, and he insisted that he had religious reasons behind his explorations, though this was never stated as part of any manifest filed with his financiers for the voyages. In fact, all archaeological exploration in the Western Hemisphere has indicated that the first Bibles to be brought to the Americas did not arrive until 100 years after Columbuss last voyage.
He was interviewed often in his final years, and many of those interviews, along with some of the anti-Anglo-Saxon narrative mentioned previously, informed Washington Irvings writing on Columbus, which then became the narrative utilized by many schools for decades until recently.
With the incredible wealth that the new land brought to Europe, one would assume that a sort of celebration of Columbus is celebrated in Europe, but there is none. Upon gaining independence, nearly every Central American and Caribbean nation where he touched erased Columbus from their educational history, considering him among a litany of intrusive conquerors, more than an explorer.
That leaves the US as the lone country in the world dedicating a day annually to someone who never set foot on the continent, let alone in the country.
There are some who are utilizing current social and political movements to consider moving on from Columbus Day to a day recognizing the contributions of the indigenous people of the state as woke, but in reality, how odd would it be to have a day in this country to recognize Tim Berners-Lee every year simply because he was the head of a group of researchers who created the World Wide Web, something that revolutionized worldwide communication and worldwide trade, though he was never an American? Thats really where were at right now with the verified contribution that Columbus made to the world that actually directly impacted the US.
The real image of Columbus, as revealed now, likely would not be considered someone to emulate or honor.
On Monday, when children are home from school and youre looking to educate them on why that is, you can educate them on the work of Gov. Mickelson, who was bold enough to make South Dakota the first state to recognize Native Americans and to do so in what was a re-election year for him (he would defeat Democrat opponent Bob Samuelson, earning nearly 59% of the vote).
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