Author: Twelve Mile Circle
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Counting Border Crossings – Updated
Several years ago, way back in November 2009, Twelve Mile Circle published an article called Counting Border Crossings. It revealed a new way to track travels suggested by loyal reader Jon Persky. Many people count nations, states, provinces, département, territories, counties or whatever. Jon’s method counted a place only when an adventurer traversed each border…
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Richmond Ad Infinitum
I came across an interesting naming string as I researched Noble Layers. It didn’t quite fit the definition of that earlier article. Even so I found it fascinating in its own right, and it deserved recognition. Richemont, Seine-Maritime It began, maybe, in a remote corner of Normandy a millennium ago. There stood the village of…
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Noble Layers
Washington State provided a nice example of presidential layering down to a county, a community and ultimately to a body of water. I couldn’t find any better example. However, I wondered whether I might be able to do something similar on a different tack. Many eastern states reflected another set of leaders, the noble men…
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Presidential Layers
Twelve Mile Circle discovered quite the layering of Presidential place names recently, completely by accident. I tried to find a better example during the larger part of an afternoon and never came close. Someone from the audience should feel free to post a comment with better results. Washington State George Washington as the first President…
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Venice of Whatever
I kept running into places that compared themselves to Venice as I uncovered canal superlatives. Literally dozens of places described themselves that way. It made things easy for Twelve Mile Circle too. I could select whatever examples I wanted today because I couldn’t possibly cover them all. That seemed like an excellent opportunity to create…
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On Canals
In Latin, the word canna means reed, the root of canalis meaning “water pipe, groove, [or] channel.” The French language retained this term as it evolved from Latin, and the English language adopted it to describe a pipe for transporting liquid. This transformed to its modern English usage by the Seventeenth Century to represent an…
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Digging for Minerals
A mine is a hole in the ground owned by a liar (attributed to Mark Twain). I began some initial planning for a brief county counting trip to West Virginia that I hope to undertake in a couple of months. Examining potential routes, I noted a county called Mineral that I would hit in some…
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Weather or Not
Several places named Hurricane — all found far from a coastline — interested me a few weeks ago. From there I wrote a simple article I called Inland Hurricane. I also wondered if the same peculiarity extended to other weather phenomena so I began to search some more. I found mixed results. Even so I…
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Moorish Revival
Occasionally Twelve Mile Circle likes to feature lesser known architectural styles. For example Rock Cut, Pueblo Deco, Egyptian Rivival and Octagons all appeared in these pages. I came across another one I found both fascinating and rare that I wanted to share. I’d never heard of Moorish Revival before. This design became modestly popular during…
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What the Dell?
My annual long relaxing August weekend in Wisconsin came to an end. I can’t think of any place I’d rather pass the time for a few days than Wisconsin — in the summer. Many people who come to this part of the country end up in Wisconsin Dells. I never thought much about the definition…