Don’t worry, I don’t really feel guilty, just noting that many Jews left Spain during that time because they were forced to or else.
My direct family came over in the early 1900’s, but my “people” were displaced for centuries.
As for Disco, I have never had any part of that, except for one song by Tavares in the 1970’s “Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel” which was quite popular when my wife and I first met and we both remember that song for reasons other than the song itself.
Now “Indy” music is another story. That is new stuff, some of which is quite good. Even an old timer like me can appreciate it.
Dave and Dude,
That movie Saturday Night Fever was filmed where I grew up. Many of the shots were on streets that I knew well. The restaurant they were eating at used to be a flourist. It was on 94th street where 5th avenue met 4th avenue. The liquor store was Harbour Liquors about 1 block away from the restaurant. That is about as close as I come to Disco (previous exception noted). I had moved out of that area about 5 years before the film.
I grew up on Motown and Atlantic songs, with some jazz thrown in to the mix.
Marvin Gaye, Smokey, Gladys Night and the Pips, the Marvelettes, Otis etc.
Otis was sittin on the dock of the bay watchin’ the tide roll in, waiting for the outgoing tide to do some good striper fishin’. He just didn’t say that because he did not want to loose his support from PETA.
Yeah Dave, give it all away. You must admit, it did not compare to your satin shirt with the ruffeled collar, or that polyester leasure suit you wore to Josko’s for dinner. No wonder Josko’s son would not sit at the dinner table with you. And then after that at the motel… I won’t go into that because I promised you that I would not tell anyone anything for at least a year, and longer if you gave me another payment to keep my mouth closed.
While Jed’s forebears were forced out of Spain, not the first European expulsion of Jews, mine were forced from the Pale of
Settlement about four centuries later. We were apparently less quick on the uptake, believing that someday we would be welcome.
As for the question of Europeans settling the new world and displacing the local indigenous peoples, I refuse to feel any guilt.
History is full of accounts of a more technologically advanced civilization displacing a less advanced. The bronze and iron age societies in Europe and the Med Rim displaced stone age peoples. Cro Magnon displaced Neaderthals. When a more advanced culture meets a less advanced, they fornicate, fight, and the less advanced is absorbed or displaced. Always!
The conclusion was foregone from the voyages of the Vikings and the other early navigators.
While it is popular and makes us feel good to feast upon the myth of the noble savage, to equate primitive inhabitants as good vs more advance evil, the same people that blame America for the WTC attacks are first to suggest that land be returned to tribal groups that no longer occupy that land.
The U.S. has an abominable history of breaking treaties made with Native Americans. So do all modern nations with their once more primitive citizens. But however sad that history, we can only live in the present if we want to succeed. Native Americans can enjoy the protection of treaty reservations with more or less sucess or can compete as equals in the melting pot.
I’d rather see them compete while maintaing tribal and historical associations and traditions when possible. I’ve talked to too many who exist only on their reservations, mourning lost culture and lost land. It is as sad as those Jews who brought the Pale and the stetl to America as protection from change.
Only when we are challenged do we learn and grow.
aka Cap’n Yid.
Stev Lenon, 91B20’68-'69
When the dawn came up like thunder
Roger, do you get that from eating bad food? And is the condition a precursor to ulcers? Maybe if you took some Tums, your indigenous (or whatever) would go away.
Hmmmmmmmm???
Snow on the roof but with fire still in the hearth
