Christopher Columbus

Columbus: Explorer or evildoer? Discoverer or despoiler? Nearly five centuries after his epic 70-day voyage, this native of Italy and agent of Spain is at the center of a tricky cross-current equal to any encountered when he headed West to find East in 1492. Just consider some Columbus Day events this year. Replicas of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria departed Spain yesterday on a journey retracing Columbus' Atlantic route. In the District of Columbia, a ceremony at the Columbus statue and a reception at the Columbus Club kick off a yearlong national observance.

If it were up to Paula DiPerna, we'd be having a Mrs. Columbus Day parade, or at least a Mr. and Mrs. Columbus Day Parade. DiPerna, a vice president of the Cousteau Society, has written a novel titled "The Discoveries of Mrs. Christopher Columbus: His Wife's Version" (Permanent Press / $24). The way DiPerna sees it, if it weren't for his wife, Felipa, Columbus would be just another forgotten 15th-century businessman instead of the European credited with "discovering" America.

Christopher Columbus had to depend on more than a crude quadrant and compass to get to the New World last week. Nearly 500 years after stumbling upon the Bahamas while trying to sail to China, his vehicle of choice was not the Santa Maria, the Pinta or even his favorite, the Nina. He chose a van big enough to haul a 20-foot-long mural by Emanuel Leutze of his departure from Palos in Spain, scale models of his ships, an hourglass, maps, a globe, microphones, a slide projector and screen, a wooden parrot and 500 pennies.

It's been almost seven years since Carlton Fowler sat at the scuffed desk next to his bed to script his first letter about the deplorable state of the statue of Columbus. That was before his hair turned white, before his wife, Helen Elizabeth, died, before diabetes turned his eyes bad. Today, from an armchair in the living room of his Collingswood home, Fowler, 77, points to a manila envelope bursting at the seams with more than 200 letters to show for those years - years he spent calling and writing to find someone, anyone, to back him. Years he spent trying to save the 1,000-pound, marble monument to Christopher Columbus that stands ravaged by vandals and years of neglect in Camden's Farnham Park.

The celebration of the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' first voyage to the Americas already has sparked much fierce ideological debate over vocabulary, interpretation and even mood. Columbus, we are told, was no heroic "discoverer" of a New World; as some now see it, he was a villain who pillaged and polluted another old one. At the very least, say the fence-straddlers, his was not a "discovery. " The approved word for 1992 is "encounter. " And, while we're at it, strike the term "celebration.

Hey, Columbus, ya shoulda stayed home. Shouldn't have come to America. Definitely shouldn't have come up the Delaware. The Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria - the replicas from Spain, that is - sailed into Philadelphia yesterday, 500 years late and a couple thousand miles away from any historically relevant point, expecting a hero's welcome. Instead they got bludgeoned by the vast array of anti-Columbus forces that have so much to do in '92. They got: Victimized by a cruel, crafty hoax.

Well, I finally got to perform a wedding ceremony. On July 9, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., I officially tied the matrimonial knot for two consenting adults. It was a deeply moving ceremony, and the bride looked radiant in her temporary teeth. But I am getting ahead of my story. You may recall that a while back I wrote a column stating that I was an official notary public in Florida, and I was eager to commit a wedding. That column generated quite a bit of mail, including some letters from irate notary publics who felt that I was making fun of notaryhood.

In the late autumn twilight, the statue of Christopher Columbus looms over its little patch of Farnham Park in Camden like a marble ghost. It is imposing - until you get up close and you see what weather, pollution and vandals have done to it over the years. The face has been eaten away by the elements so that it looks as if it is in the advanced stages of leprosy. The left arm is missing entirely, probably knocked away by cultural nitwits. The beautiful white Italian marble is defaced with indecipherable scrawls.

I'd been hanging around the Italian Riviera checking out Camogli's fish festival, hiking in the Cinque Terre, and trying to soak up a little culture by reading Ezra Pound's Cantos in the sidewalk cafe in front of the waterfront apartment where he lived in Rapallo, a town so beautiful that it makes you daydream about what it would be like to win the lottery or a pile of money in Vegas, enough to allow you to live there. Now it was time to close the books, hop on a train, and head for home.

From his perch inside the chauffeured golf cart, Cavalier Severino "Sevy" Verna Jr. scowled. The crowd at Broad and Snyder was a bit thinner than he'd like, but what do you expect at 12:30 p.m. on a Sunday? "It's gravy time. They're still stirring the macaroni," he explained, a 67-year-old Italian American with a hungry belly of his own. "They wouldn't care if Christopher Columbus himself came marching down the street. It's time to eat. " By 1 p.m., as Verna predicted, a healthy horde was waiting, balloons and silly string in hand, at Marconi Plaza at Broad Street and Oregon Avenue, the center of attractions for the annual Columbus Day parade.

From my vantage point, here in Crystal River, Fla., it's hard to see how Christopher Columbus - no matter how long he had been at sea - could possibly have mistaken a manatee for a mermaid, even if he did describe them in his journal in January of 1493 as being "not half as beautiful as they are painted to be. " And my vantage point is pretty conclusive: only six inches away from the wrinkly, puffy gray face of a decidedly Rubenesque, half-ton adult,...

Sure, Mark Ruffalo 's command of the thespian arts is deadly. And he has an undeniable charm. But is the Shutter Island star dangerous ? So dangerous he should be shipped off to Gitmo? Ruffalo tells GQ that the Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security has put him on a terror advisory list after he organized screenings of the film GasLand , a documentary about natural-gas drilling. Ruffalo is against the practice because of its possible effects on the water supply. "It's kind of raaadical," Ruffalo, 43, tells the mag about the pic. But is Ruffalo really a wanted, subversive guy, or just hard up for publicity?

1492. Has there been a more explosive time in Europe? It's the year when Christopher Columbus set sail. Yet it's also the year when the adventurer's royal sponsors let the Inquisition run amok in Spain. And the year when that nation, which for decades was the home of an extraordinary renaissance of Jewish and Arabic learning and art, expelled the Jews. (Not long after, the Muslims were expelled, too.) These events are woven into a beautiful tapestry in Pennsylvania author Mitchell James Kaplan's debut novel, By Fire, By Water , which has been chosen as the region's annual One Book, One Jewish Community selection.

IWALK because I am Italian-American, proud of Christopher Columbus, who discovered America. I walk because the Romans conquered half the world. Because our ancestors contributed blood, sweat, and tears, and they had dreams. On this day, we pay tribute not only to our countryman, Christopher Columbus, but to all of those who sacrificed for both countries, Italia and America. I was born in Napoli, province of Avellino, town of Montella. There I learned the meaning of gustizia, umilita, onesta (justice, humility, honesty)

Angelo Calafati munches a fistful of Cheerios. Directly across from him, his mother, Dana, coos and smiles. She holds up a stack of 10 large cards with pictures of exotic flowers, and like a gunner who has found her target, she rattles off complex names for several seconds. South African daisy. Feverfew. Greater stitchwort. Angelo grins. He shows off his two front teeth. He gazes intently at the purple prickly pear. He furrows his brow. At times, he looks away. Over the morning's breakfast at the carriage house in Oaks, Calafati, 32, will present more large flash cards, many handmade, that cover a variety of subjects: European flags, mammals, forest animals, composers, even historical farm tractors and military helicopters with model numbers.

In 1960, President John F. Kennedy said, "The American Indian is the least understood and the most misunderstood of all Americans. " He wasn't just whistling Dixie. Forty-five years have passed since he uttered that comment in a speech to a gathering of American Indian leaders in Washington, and it still has significant meaning. Note that President Kennedy said "American Indian," not "Native American. " It seems silly that so many Indians have suddenly become so conscious of using the word Indian and wrongly attribute the derivation to Christopher Columbus.

So, Teresa Cappuccio, what was Sunday's parade about? The 11-year-old paused. Err . . . "Columbus!" said her grandmother. "Columbus!" said her dad. Oh, yeah. Three generations of Cappuccios gathered at the very end of the parade route at Broad Street and Oregon Avenue yesterday to enjoy the 47th year of the procession. The day was windy and cool, the crowd polite and the Mummers colorful, but few recognized Columbus himself, riding in the parade in an unmarked convertible.

Despite what some would have us think, globalization is not a new concept. Consider this: Christopher Columbus (an Italian) was financed by Ferdinand and Isabella (Spanish monarchs) to circumvent the stranglehold Venice (an independent city-state) had on the traffic of spices from Africa, India and Asia. So on Aug. 3, 1492, Columbus set sail in search of new global trading routes and 10 weeks later bumped into the Americas. Madison Avenue would say he "opened a whole new market.

Emma Schachner is no longer a bushy-tailed fox nor a sword-wielding Viking, though she still lusts for a good adventure. Now, she is something more mundane - a junior at Bucknell University studying political science and eyeing veterinary school. But a decade ago, when she was 9, something magical happened in her neighborhood of Swarthmore. She wanted, desperately, a real Viking ship. And she got one. Her mother, Judith Byron Schachner, tells the story best, having spun the fantastic family events of 1992 into a new picture book titled Yo, Vikings!

At 916 Christian St., inside the scruffy cafeteria of the Christopher Columbus Charter School, history was made on a Tuesday in February. For the first time, mothers of students joined committees charged with aiding the 2-year-old South Philadelphia charter in just about every way: fund raising, public relations, school safety, grant writing, curriculum support, and so forth. "I volunteered for a whole year before my child enrolled here," said Sharon Thompson. "I didn't care what I did, I just did it. I wanted to get a sense of the school.