Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Place Names in Michigan
I was born in Michigan, and I have lived virtually my entire life here. At one time or another, I've traveled to just about every corner of my native state. I'm sure that your states have some pretty fun place names, too (I'm thinking of one small town in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in particular) (also Pee Pee Creek, and its eponymous township, in Pike County, Ohio), but here's a sampler from where I live. . .
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In Michigan, we have both a Hell and a Paradise. In Hell, there is, as you might suspect, a bar (called the Dam Site Inn, as it sits next to, you know, a dam), and a post-office/country store/gift shop (called The Handbasket), where you can buy a "We've Been Through Hell Together" bumper sticker, or a miniature baseball bat, bearing the inscription, "Genuine, Official Bat Out of Hell". (Incidentally, the road into Hell from the east is named Darwin Road; just sayin'. . .) On the other hand, Jen and I spent a night in Paradise on our honeymoon (really! It's the closest town to Tahquamenon Falls) (that's ta-KWA-ma-non). . .
We have both a Romulus and a Remus, which are pretty much the polar opposite of twin cities, even aside from the fact that they're 150 miles apart. Romulus is the home of Detroit / Wayne County Metropolitan Airport; Remus is the post office (and that's just about all there is there) closest to the farm where my dad grew up. . .
And not far from Remus is Mount Pleasant, which sits on some of the flattest land in the state of Michigan. Some years ago, there was a waggish bumper sticker proclaiming, "I Climbed Mount Pleasant". . .
Then there's Needmore; I've been there, and they do. . .
And Maybee; or, you know, Maybee not. . .
And speaking of bees, way Up North, there's a tiny village called Topinabee; go ahead, guess how to say it, I'll wait. . . It's top-in-a-BEE. . .
Then there's Paw Paw, which is not far from Kalamazoo, about which more below. As it turns out, it's actually named for the pawpaw fruit which was abundant in the area, once upon a time. Nowadays, it's more-or-less the center of Michigan's southern wine region, besides having a cute name. (And hey, we've got Paw Paw, Ohio's got Pee Pee; anybody care to raise their hand for Poo Poo?)
Michgan's 'Thumb' is home to a couple of my favorites: Bad Axe (which is, you know, a pretty BA name for a town) and Ubly. I understand what a bad axe is, as opposed to a good one; I'm just not sure I'd name a town after one. And then, I imagine the cheerleading squad from Ubly High chanting, "U - B - L - Y, We ain't got no alibi, we're Ubly!" And I wonder if the winner of the local beauty pageant might really be called 'Miss Ubly'. . .
Also in Michigan's Thumb is the village of Yale, pronounced just like the Ivy League university, which hosts the annual Bologna Festival, and elects a Bologna Queen to preside over the festivities. . .
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Native-American-derived place names can be an ongoing fount of amusement, for folks whose minds twist that way -
Of course, as I promised, there's Kalamazoo - When I was in college, there was a guy from New Jersey who lived on my dorm floor, who went through most of the fall term insisting that Kalamazoo wasn't a real place, and someone had obviously made it up as a joke. Finally, we introduced him to a guy who was, you know, actually FROM Kalamazoo. . .
And heck, even Michigan itself, which derives from the Ojibwa 'mitchee-gamee' which, in turn, is related to 'gitchee-gumee' (as in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha), meaning 'Big Water', which seems sufficiently self-evident. . .
Also the Manitou Islands, in northern Lake Michigan.
Then there's Muskegon (mus-KEE-gun) and Ontonagon (on-tuh-NOGgin), which, in spite of what they look like, really aren't geometric figures. . .
On the border between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin lies the city of Menominee, which I can't say without imagining a cheesy chorus singing "doot-DOO-du-du-doo" in the background. . .
And of course, the aforementioned Tahquamenon Falls and Topinabee. And even Saginaw, though I've never hitch-hiked there. . .
Also Wequetonsing (wek-weh-TAHN-sing), just because it sounds cool. . .
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The French fur traders who roamed the Great Lakes region before the days of settled civilization bequeathed us with some place names that are wonderfully counter-intuitive to English-speakers -
Start with one with which you're probably all familiar - Sault Ste. Marie (known more coloquially as 'The Soo', which is pretty much a dead giveaway for how to pronounce the first French word in the name), meaning, 'St. Mary's Falls, since there is a long stretch of rapids in the St. Mary's River there, which, in the fullness of time, necessitated the digging of the Soo Locks.
There's Mackinac Island and the Straits of Mackinac, spanned by a majestic bridge bearing the same name. The village on the south shore of the straits punted, and called themselves Mackinaw City, with a 'w'; I suppose, because they got tired of tourists from out-of-state calling them Mackin-ACK (somewhere, Billy Joel is singing, 'ack-ack-ack-ack-ack'). . .
Twenty miles or so east of the Straits of Mackinac is Bois Blanc Island ('white woods'). Which all the locals know is pronounced 'Bob-Lo'.
And Cadillac, which is in the opposite corner of the Lower Peninsula from where luxury cars are made. . .
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We Michiganders (or Michiganians; I think it's still something of an open question) also seem to have a unique proclivity for 'mispronouncing' place names, particularly ones that have obviously been borrowed from other places and things whose pronunciation is well-established. A few examples -
Lake Orion - Not The Hunter from your star chart; this one is pronounced ORRY-un.
Charlotte - The emPHAsis goes on the second sylLABle: sher-LOTT (some locals aren't very punctilious about the 'r', and it comes out more like 'sha-LOTT'). Once, when I was in college, there was a girl named Charlotte in one of my classes (pronounced in the usual way); one might think, given the large city in North Carolina, and the eponymous children's-story spider, that the pronunciation of her name might seem somewhat obvious, but the instructor kept calling her sher-LOTT, for the entire term. . .
Milan - Named after the city in Italy, right? Maybe, but it's pronounced MY-lun. . .
Chesaning - Just look at it, and you think you know how to say it; but it's chess-NING
Pompeii - POMpey-eye; 'nuff said
And Durand - DOO-rand; I am not making any of this up.
Armada - Think of the Spanish fleet that sailed against England in the 1500s? Try ar-MAY-da. . .
Mikado - In a similar vein, it's mi-KAY-doh
Argentine - the final syllable sounds like the points of a fork (I know, right?)
And, it's not the general, common, pronunciation, but I can't resist mentioning that my mother-in-law (who, I should also mention, I dearly love, and is the best MIL anyone could ever have) pronounces Lake Huron, and the city of Port Huron, at its southern terminus, not HYER-ahn (or maybe HYOO-rawn, if you affect a slightly snooty accent), like most of us do, but homophonically with 'urine' (dropping the leading 'H', and clipping the second syllable just a bit); sometimes the city comes out sounding like 'porch urine', like your dog had an accident. I've not been above asking (teasingly) (very affectionately teasingly) if the water at the southern end of the lake had a yellowish hue, or what. . .
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And finally, we come to my favorite river, the Tittabawassee River (pronounced pretty much how it looks: titta-ba-WAH-see); just because it's fun to say 'Tittabawassee'. . .
"Tittabawassee". . . heh. . .
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And wow - yesterday got up to 60F around these parts (and Friday was in the 50s, so the snow was all gone). I really wasn't feeling good. At all. I think I had some kind of very mild flu, or something; just kinda achy and lethargic. But you don't get many 60-degree days in January around here, so I dragged the bike out of the basement and got out for 10 miles, just because. Now, 10 miles is just barely enough to get out to the cornfields and wave before heading back into town. But it's miles; real, live, outdoors-on-the-road miles (and it's odd, how 45 minutes on the road will wear me out WAY more than an hour on the stationary bike indoors). And this is now the 23rd consecutive month in which I've had outdoor miles; the last time I flipped the page on the calendar without any outdoor miles was at the end of February 2011. . .
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In Michigan, we have both a Hell and a Paradise. In Hell, there is, as you might suspect, a bar (called the Dam Site Inn, as it sits next to, you know, a dam), and a post-office/country store/gift shop (called The Handbasket), where you can buy a "We've Been Through Hell Together" bumper sticker, or a miniature baseball bat, bearing the inscription, "Genuine, Official Bat Out of Hell". (Incidentally, the road into Hell from the east is named Darwin Road; just sayin'. . .) On the other hand, Jen and I spent a night in Paradise on our honeymoon (really! It's the closest town to Tahquamenon Falls) (that's ta-KWA-ma-non). . .
We have both a Romulus and a Remus, which are pretty much the polar opposite of twin cities, even aside from the fact that they're 150 miles apart. Romulus is the home of Detroit / Wayne County Metropolitan Airport; Remus is the post office (and that's just about all there is there) closest to the farm where my dad grew up. . .
And not far from Remus is Mount Pleasant, which sits on some of the flattest land in the state of Michigan. Some years ago, there was a waggish bumper sticker proclaiming, "I Climbed Mount Pleasant". . .
Then there's Needmore; I've been there, and they do. . .
And Maybee; or, you know, Maybee not. . .
And speaking of bees, way Up North, there's a tiny village called Topinabee; go ahead, guess how to say it, I'll wait. . . It's top-in-a-BEE. . .
Then there's Paw Paw, which is not far from Kalamazoo, about which more below. As it turns out, it's actually named for the pawpaw fruit which was abundant in the area, once upon a time. Nowadays, it's more-or-less the center of Michigan's southern wine region, besides having a cute name. (And hey, we've got Paw Paw, Ohio's got Pee Pee; anybody care to raise their hand for Poo Poo?)
Michgan's 'Thumb' is home to a couple of my favorites: Bad Axe (which is, you know, a pretty BA name for a town) and Ubly. I understand what a bad axe is, as opposed to a good one; I'm just not sure I'd name a town after one. And then, I imagine the cheerleading squad from Ubly High chanting, "U - B - L - Y, We ain't got no alibi, we're Ubly!" And I wonder if the winner of the local beauty pageant might really be called 'Miss Ubly'. . .
Also in Michigan's Thumb is the village of Yale, pronounced just like the Ivy League university, which hosts the annual Bologna Festival, and elects a Bologna Queen to preside over the festivities. . .
-------------------------
Native-American-derived place names can be an ongoing fount of amusement, for folks whose minds twist that way -
Of course, as I promised, there's Kalamazoo - When I was in college, there was a guy from New Jersey who lived on my dorm floor, who went through most of the fall term insisting that Kalamazoo wasn't a real place, and someone had obviously made it up as a joke. Finally, we introduced him to a guy who was, you know, actually FROM Kalamazoo. . .
And heck, even Michigan itself, which derives from the Ojibwa 'mitchee-gamee' which, in turn, is related to 'gitchee-gumee' (as in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha), meaning 'Big Water', which seems sufficiently self-evident. . .
Also the Manitou Islands, in northern Lake Michigan.
Then there's Muskegon (mus-KEE-gun) and Ontonagon (on-tuh-NOGgin), which, in spite of what they look like, really aren't geometric figures. . .
On the border between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin lies the city of Menominee, which I can't say without imagining a cheesy chorus singing "doot-DOO-du-du-doo" in the background. . .
And of course, the aforementioned Tahquamenon Falls and Topinabee. And even Saginaw, though I've never hitch-hiked there. . .
Also Wequetonsing (wek-weh-TAHN-sing), just because it sounds cool. . .
-------------------------
The French fur traders who roamed the Great Lakes region before the days of settled civilization bequeathed us with some place names that are wonderfully counter-intuitive to English-speakers -
Start with one with which you're probably all familiar - Sault Ste. Marie (known more coloquially as 'The Soo', which is pretty much a dead giveaway for how to pronounce the first French word in the name), meaning, 'St. Mary's Falls, since there is a long stretch of rapids in the St. Mary's River there, which, in the fullness of time, necessitated the digging of the Soo Locks.
There's Mackinac Island and the Straits of Mackinac, spanned by a majestic bridge bearing the same name. The village on the south shore of the straits punted, and called themselves Mackinaw City, with a 'w'; I suppose, because they got tired of tourists from out-of-state calling them Mackin-ACK (somewhere, Billy Joel is singing, 'ack-ack-ack-ack-ack'). . .
Twenty miles or so east of the Straits of Mackinac is Bois Blanc Island ('white woods'). Which all the locals know is pronounced 'Bob-Lo'.
And Cadillac, which is in the opposite corner of the Lower Peninsula from where luxury cars are made. . .
-------------------------
We Michiganders (or Michiganians; I think it's still something of an open question) also seem to have a unique proclivity for 'mispronouncing' place names, particularly ones that have obviously been borrowed from other places and things whose pronunciation is well-established. A few examples -
Lake Orion - Not The Hunter from your star chart; this one is pronounced ORRY-un.
Charlotte - The emPHAsis goes on the second sylLABle: sher-LOTT (some locals aren't very punctilious about the 'r', and it comes out more like 'sha-LOTT'). Once, when I was in college, there was a girl named Charlotte in one of my classes (pronounced in the usual way); one might think, given the large city in North Carolina, and the eponymous children's-story spider, that the pronunciation of her name might seem somewhat obvious, but the instructor kept calling her sher-LOTT, for the entire term. . .
Milan - Named after the city in Italy, right? Maybe, but it's pronounced MY-lun. . .
Chesaning - Just look at it, and you think you know how to say it; but it's chess-NING
Pompeii - POMpey-eye; 'nuff said
And Durand - DOO-rand; I am not making any of this up.
Armada - Think of the Spanish fleet that sailed against England in the 1500s? Try ar-MAY-da. . .
Mikado - In a similar vein, it's mi-KAY-doh
Argentine - the final syllable sounds like the points of a fork (I know, right?)
And, it's not the general, common, pronunciation, but I can't resist mentioning that my mother-in-law (who, I should also mention, I dearly love, and is the best MIL anyone could ever have) pronounces Lake Huron, and the city of Port Huron, at its southern terminus, not HYER-ahn (or maybe HYOO-rawn, if you affect a slightly snooty accent), like most of us do, but homophonically with 'urine' (dropping the leading 'H', and clipping the second syllable just a bit); sometimes the city comes out sounding like 'porch urine', like your dog had an accident. I've not been above asking (teasingly) (very affectionately teasingly) if the water at the southern end of the lake had a yellowish hue, or what. . .
-------------------------
And finally, we come to my favorite river, the Tittabawassee River (pronounced pretty much how it looks: titta-ba-WAH-see); just because it's fun to say 'Tittabawassee'. . .
"Tittabawassee". . . heh. . .
*************************
And wow - yesterday got up to 60F around these parts (and Friday was in the 50s, so the snow was all gone). I really wasn't feeling good. At all. I think I had some kind of very mild flu, or something; just kinda achy and lethargic. But you don't get many 60-degree days in January around here, so I dragged the bike out of the basement and got out for 10 miles, just because. Now, 10 miles is just barely enough to get out to the cornfields and wave before heading back into town. But it's miles; real, live, outdoors-on-the-road miles (and it's odd, how 45 minutes on the road will wear me out WAY more than an hour on the stationary bike indoors). And this is now the 23rd consecutive month in which I've had outdoor miles; the last time I flipped the page on the calendar without any outdoor miles was at the end of February 2011. . .
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Epiphany
Today is Epiphany, marking the end of the Season of Christmas (I'm never sure as to whether Christmas is the First Day of Christmas, or Epiphany is the Twelfth; not that it matters all that much. . .) In some Christian traditions, mainly in the East, Epiphany, not Christmas, is the day for exchanging of gifts (after the example of the Magi, I suppose), and, at least in terms of public celebration, Epiphany is a bigger deal than Christmas is.
'Epiphany' means, literally, 'revelation' or 'manifestation'. Jesus might have been born on Christmas, but Epiphany is when He 'went public', so to speak. The readings for Epiphany rotate among the visit of the Magi (Matthew 2:1-12), the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:21-40), and Jesus' Baptism by John the Baptist (John 1:29-34). All of which represent, in varying ways, Jesus being 'made manifest' to the world He came to save.
I have especially come to appreciate the story of the Magi, and what it represents. There is a delightful irony in the fact that God, who forbade the Jews to practice astrology, gave the Magi a 'sign in the heavens', to announce the coming of His Son in the flesh to Gentiles. Of course, God knew that the learned Gentiles would notice, and be impressed by such a sign, and He wasn't above letting them know, in a way they could comprehend, that something big was going down in Bethlehem, and they wouldn't want to miss it. . . Put another way, the stars don't move us, God moves the stars. . . And even today, I suppose, God leaves signs of Himself to be noticed, and understood by those 'who have eyes to see, and ears to hear', even among secular modern folks.
And, oh, to be Simeon, or John the Baptist, waiting to see the Promised One, the Desired of the Nations, and then finally to see and recognize Him. I can understand Simeon saying, "Now, Lord, you can dismiss Your servant in peace". . . That was it; he was waiting to see the Messiah, and there He was. Now, so to speak, old Simeon could die happy. I have often wondered, if Jesus came today, would I recognize Him? Would I have the eyes and ears to see and hear when He came among us? Or would I be like those in Jesus' day who were so focused in on their own notions of 'what the Messiah will be like', or 'what God must be like', that they didn't recognize Him when He stood in their midst?
Oh, Lord, have mercy; let me have 'eyes to see, and ears to hear'. . .
'Epiphany' means, literally, 'revelation' or 'manifestation'. Jesus might have been born on Christmas, but Epiphany is when He 'went public', so to speak. The readings for Epiphany rotate among the visit of the Magi (Matthew 2:1-12), the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:21-40), and Jesus' Baptism by John the Baptist (John 1:29-34). All of which represent, in varying ways, Jesus being 'made manifest' to the world He came to save.
I have especially come to appreciate the story of the Magi, and what it represents. There is a delightful irony in the fact that God, who forbade the Jews to practice astrology, gave the Magi a 'sign in the heavens', to announce the coming of His Son in the flesh to Gentiles. Of course, God knew that the learned Gentiles would notice, and be impressed by such a sign, and He wasn't above letting them know, in a way they could comprehend, that something big was going down in Bethlehem, and they wouldn't want to miss it. . . Put another way, the stars don't move us, God moves the stars. . . And even today, I suppose, God leaves signs of Himself to be noticed, and understood by those 'who have eyes to see, and ears to hear', even among secular modern folks.
And, oh, to be Simeon, or John the Baptist, waiting to see the Promised One, the Desired of the Nations, and then finally to see and recognize Him. I can understand Simeon saying, "Now, Lord, you can dismiss Your servant in peace". . . That was it; he was waiting to see the Messiah, and there He was. Now, so to speak, old Simeon could die happy. I have often wondered, if Jesus came today, would I recognize Him? Would I have the eyes and ears to see and hear when He came among us? Or would I be like those in Jesus' day who were so focused in on their own notions of 'what the Messiah will be like', or 'what God must be like', that they didn't recognize Him when He stood in their midst?
Oh, Lord, have mercy; let me have 'eyes to see, and ears to hear'. . .
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