Category: Cities/Towns
-
Cactus
The previous article about Spanish punctuation embedded in various place names in the United States made my mind wander to the Desert Southwest. Then it led me down a mental tangent related to cacti for some unknown reason. As I daydreamed, I considered, perhaps I should examine places named cactus. There weren’t many, and even…
-
Officially Tilde
I received a message recently from a 12MC reader in Cañon City, Colorado. I couldn’t help noticing the tilde, the little squiggle over the letter “ñ.” That of course was punctuation used in Spanish, not English, so it caught my eye. Very few places in the United States include diacritical marks recognized officially by the…
-
Turpan Depression
Are you ready for another installment in my occasional series on lowpoints? I am. Everyone always focuses on the greatest of mountains and the highest of elevations. Lowpoints need a little love too, especially those below sea level, and the further down the better. I turned my attention to China, a nation that does not…
-
Overheard in Mexico
A Wikipedia page caught my attention lately, an article on the Languages of Mexico. Spanish naturally came to mind and the vast majority of its 120 million citizens do speak that. I figured there were probably a number of indigenous languages as well and that was likewise true. For example at least a million people…
-
Ireland, Part 5 (Maintaining My Lists)
I couldn’t change my personality quirks even though I changed my location. In fact, a few peculiarities rooted in my mild compulsion to count and collect things seemed to be enhanced in this kind of situation. I searched earnestly for attractions aligning with those interests and pursued a means to incorporate them into the larger…
-
Ireland, Part 2 (A Distressing Period)
Somewhere close to 8.2 million people lived in Ireland in 1841. Then came Phytopthora Infestans, a fungus-like microorganism that attacked Irish potato fields with a fearsome blight and utter devastation. The Great Famine killed more than a million people outright through starvation and disease between 1845 and 1850. Two million survivors fled their native land…
-
Ireland, Part 1 (Castles and Ruins)
My typing fingers grew a little rusty over the last couple of weeks. Those of you who follow 12MC on Twitter already knew that I was in Ireland because I posted a steady stream of photographs. What may have been less understood was that I wrote all Twelve Mile Circle articles ahead of time. That’s…
-
Delphia
The start for this research came from a recent tragic incident, a drowning at Triadelphia Reservoir in Maryland. My sympathies extend to the young victim’s family and friends of course. Afterwards I began to wonder how the reservoir got its unusual name. How did a triad (a group of three) apply to “Delphia.” The most…
-
4 Nations, 2 Tripoints, 1 Lake
I thought I’d written an article about Africa’s Lake Chad a long time ago. Naturally I was surprised to see it still listed on my potential topics spreadsheet when I culled it recently. A quick search of the 12MC WordPress database found minor references to Lake Chad and little else. So I guess I should…