The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    PONCE DE LEON & GEORGE W. BUSH

    By Richard Day on Tue, 04/02/2013 - 10:16pm |

    Juan Ponce de León.jpg

     

    JUAN PONCE DE LEON

    I just caught this little squib at the NYT about the seeker of the Fountain of Youth.

    Evidently they are going to put the SOB on a postage stamp or something commemorating things the bastard never accomplished.

    A certain T.D. Altman does the honors here; Altman is an historian who just published a history of Florida.

    This little squib had me laughing so hard I just could not ignore it.

    These celebrations are a fiesta of illusion. As Spain’s conquistadors discovered, and we too often forget, Florida is like Play-Doh. Take the goo; mold it to your dream. Then watch the dream ooze back into goo. Contrary to what our school books taught us, Ponce did not discover Florida. He never did much of anything here except get himself killed.


    Florida probably was first sighted by Portuguese navigators, or perhaps by the Cabots sailing from England. Either way, it started appearing on maps as early as 1500. By 1510, its distinctive peninsular shape had emerged clearly on maps in Europe. By 1513, when Ponce de Léon first arrived, so many Europeans had visited Florida that some Indians greeted him in Spanish.


    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/opinion/ponce-de-leon-exposed.html?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20130402&_r=0


     

    Ponce was only the first dreamer to have Florida swallow up his ambitions. Arriving in 1539, Hernando de Soto wandered fruitlessly across the future southeast before dying mad and broke, having squandered his fortune in gold looted from Peru. He did leave one legacy: his pigs, the ancestors of the feral pigs that today rummage around America in the millions. De Soto was the Johnny Appleseed of pigs. That account of his explorations you were taught in school was made up by a Congressional commission in the 1930s.


    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/opinion/ponce-de-leon-exposed.html?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20130402&_r=0


    De Leon, it turns out was simply a penniless suicide.

    At least de Soto was the Johnny Appleseed of pigs for chrissakes! hahahaah

    George W. Bush might well have a shot at a revised history after all.

    Pudge Luntz's great-grandchild might be able to remold w's 'legacy' into something approaching de Soto's and Leon's after all.

    Of course Bush will only survive as an icon if and only if it turns out that the bytes and bits of the internet degrade over time; kind of like radioactive stuff!

    2239: George W. Bush, as President of the United Federation established a brand new manner in which to teach the children of North America; he refused to let go of the children's behinds.

    President Bush also was single-handedly responsible for establishing the United Muslim Brotherhood; an organization established in the Middle East that eventually threw the entire Western tyranical empire out of Asia for a millennium.

    That's all I got!

    Comments

    Hernando de Soto landed his ships about 10 miles from where I live.  Somewhere at the mouth of the Manatee River that flows into the south west corner of Tampa Bay.  Tampa Bay was shallow and where the river comes out is deeper.  That is not in dispute but where he went after he got into Alabama is.  They have uncovered a few sites that they attribute to de Soto in Florida.  He was looking for gold but didn't find any cities with it like he found in Lima on his first trip.  He spread disease and left pigs and horses behind.  Ponte Verda, Florida celibrated 500 year aniversery of Ponce de Leon's landing on it's shores yesterday.  I guess that is why the op-ed piece was written.  There was other places too on the east coast of Florida that had events April 2. 


    by trkingmomoe on Wed, 04/03/2013 - 6:45am

    No that is interesting.

    I guess I should pick up a copy of Altman's book as long as it is printed in soft cover!


    by Richard Day on Wed, 04/03/2013 - 8:57am

    Thank you for this.   I'm going to be laughing about it all day.  

     

    The lesson from this, I think, is clear:  If you are the Johnny Appleseed of pigs, you will have a clunky car named after you.  On the other hand, if you discover Hudson Bay and a river and explore most of the Eastern part of Canada and New York, you will also have a clunky car named after you. The only way to be an explorer and NOT have a clunky car named after you is to pretend to find the fountain of youth ... and then get shot with an arrow and die.

    Unfortunately, George W. Bush will never have a clunky car named after him.

     


    by MrSmith1 on Wed, 04/03/2013 - 7:54am

    You make great points here Smith and it reminds me of something along similar lines.

    It turns out that Sir Rust Bucket, the knighted explorer who discovered New Jersey is almost totally ignored in today's school textbooks.


    by Richard Day on Wed, 04/03/2013 - 8:50am