Cookie Dough and Columbus

Last Sunday was a glorious one. Was I out enjoying our first true dose of sunshine for the year or perhaps at a casino hitting jackpot upon jackpot? Neither. That was Saturday (except for the jackpot thing). Sunday was an all day "write this paper or die" kinda' day for this week is concert week and (for me) that means that school work has to be carefully budgeted between practicing, rehersing, and sectionals.

The paper to which I refer is one for my current world history class. I'm writing about of Old World expansion and its environmental effects on the New World. I needed/wanted to have sources from the time the explorers reached out across the great oceans to try and get a first-hand perspective. My library search led me to the diaries of Christopher Columbus. In it lay translations to English of his diaries from the day before he and his ships left to after his well known voyage. I've never been fascinated quite this way by a book before.

Well, like most people, I got a case of the munchies whilst I read. So I got a snack (which, being a college student, is limited to the food I steal borrow from the UC or gifts from relatives in far off lands) to quell my craving. I then pondered the implications of what I was doing...

It took Columbus about 3 months to reach the islands that we know as the Bahamas. He fought famine, elements of weather, and his own will to get there. He was motivated by his nationalism, by God, and by the presumption that he could discover means by which he could become wealthy. I, a college student riding the wave toward the 21st century, sat in my room with a machine that can touch nearly every corner of the world in mere seconds while I scooped at my snack of sugary chocolate chip cookie dough.

Baffled by this unique combination of events, I was prompted to write this. Realizing the distance (literally and otherwise) the human race has come in a mere five centuries is a true shock. As a geology student, I'm taught how long and arduous the world works to create itself around us. Yet the swarm of humanity and civilization that has swelled on this planet in the last 100,000 years has changed Her face in more ways than can be counted. I close by pondering what will happen to our next New World...

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