Beachcombing

Yesterday I was very thankful to learn that CSULB President Jane Close Conoley is planning to retire at the end of the current academic year. While she was praised in other local media for ten years of accomplishments as the first CSULB woman president, I’ll forever remember her for murdering Prospector Pete.

As a believer that those who change or ignore history are destined to repeat it, I think Conoley’s legacy will be for trashing my alma mater’s 70-year-old 49er namesake because it was linked to the 1849 Gold Rush “at a time in history when the indigenous peoples of California endured subjugation, violence and threats of genocide.”

Never mind the fact that, in 1949, Prospector Pete evolved from Founding President Pete Peterson’s common references to having struck the gold of education by establishing Long Beach State College. Those of us who attended the college in the 1960s were more attuned to Peterson’s interpretation than Jane’s, whose bungling of this issue was out of touch with reality.

It has been said that you can’t change history. “These things happened the way they did. What you can change is how you look at it and how you understand that it takes the good moments and it takes the difficult moments to move forward.”

As recently stated in this column, I strongly doubt the objectivity and accuracy of a 2019 poll taken on the topic by students, which resulted in the Prospector Pete statue being moved to lower campus and the adoption of a shark mascot named Elbee. Allowing amateurs to dictate the branding of an entire institution is wrong.

With Conoley’s pending retirement, I’ll be sending a letter to President Trump requesting that he hire her to re-brand the American eagle as Orca Sam, otherwise known as the killer whale. This would be the perfect image for a president intent on “draining the swamp.”

More words of wisdom:

• If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free! — P. J. O’Rourke
• In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. —Voltaire (1764)
• Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you! — Pericles (430 B.C.)
• No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. — Mark Twain (1866)
• Talk is cheap, except when Congress does it. — Anonymous
• The government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. — Ronald Reagan
• The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. — Winston Churchill
• The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. — Mark Twain
• There is no distinctly Native American criminal class, save Congress. — Mark Twain
• What this country needs are more unemployed politicians —Edward Langley, Artist (1928-1995)
• A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have. — Thomas Jefferson
• We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. — Aesop

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