The Sopranos - Who discovered America

Tony Soprano, on of Christopher Columbus' ancestors

I don’t know if you ever watch the TV series on one of the SKY channels called “The Sopranos” but my wife and I watch it every week, we love it. We are so taken with this story about a dysfunctional family of Mafia Godfather Tony Soprano, his real family that is, as well as his Mafia “family” that we now start every Wednesday in “Mafia mode”

“Wha dis mafia mode yer tak abowt?” I hear you ask. Well, our Wednesday starts off with the normal greeting “Good morning darling, you mother*******” to which the charming reply is often “Yeah! You too you slimeball!” and we then have coffee and watch the news.

Soprano day, Wednesday, every Wednesday, we have Italian food for our evening meal, last night, for example, we had Sicilian grilled chicken in pesto sauce with Ciabatta bread, unfortunately, we can’t get Italian wine in the Andalucía mountains so we make do with Rioja.

As usual, one of us cooks the meal while the other chirps that line from the Mafia film Goodfellows “don’t put in too many f****** onions!” to which the reply is always “I never use too many f******* onions!”

If this seems sad to you, that two sane (?) adults should behave in this way, you are most likely right, so, why am I telling something you could hold against me, should I ever achieve prominence in the political world? I’ll tell you. Christopher Columbus.

Hello? Christopher Columbus, the great explorer? What would he have to do with a modern day mafia family and a couple of marginally sane people who live in Spain? The answer is America. Who discovered America? Who discovered Jamaica as well, while we are at it?

Last night’s episode saw Tony Sopranos cohorts getting upset because Columbus Day had been hijacked by some radical Native Americans who blamed Columbus for all the woes that have befallen the Native Americans, since he discovered America.

Hello? Christopher Columbus discovered America? I don’t think so! Were there no people living on that continent at the time? Aztecs for instance, the plains Indians (not called Indians at the time but called so later because soft-lad Columbus thought he had landed in India), the Taíno peoples of the Caribbean and South America, Eskimos and a host of other peoples who lived in all parts of the American continent, so how does Christopher Columbus get the credit for discovering the place? Did the first Jamaica to land in the UK write home and tell everyone that he has discovered a strange land full of very pale people who like rain? No!

Take Captain Cook, credited with “discovering” Australia and a load of other places, the fact he was killed by natives should give us a hint that he was not the first to put foot down on Australian soil.

Explorers have taken credit for work that was not theirs and I want to point this out. If you are going to discover somewhere, then make sure there is no one there when you do (Virgin Islands, for example) otherwise, people like me and some ancestors will write about you on their blogs!

What happened to the Sopranos and the Native Americans in last night’s episode? They beat the snot out of each other and all got arrested. That’s culture for you..

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Email lisa@jamaicantreasures.com
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