call it Kuwohi
Uluru and Denali …
Mackinaw or nac?

The U.S. Board of Geographic Names this week approved a formal request by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. to change the name of the highest peak in the sprawling Great Smoky Mountains National Park from Clingman’s Dome to Kuwohi.

Kuwohi, pronounced “ku-whoa-hee,” is one of the most popular sites in the park, with more than 650,000 visitors per year. It is the tallest point in Tennessee, the third-highest summit east of the Mississippi River.

I do want to point out that Clingman’s Dome was NOT named after a General in the Confederate States Army but it was named after a feller who went on to become a General in the CSA. Not that this makes any difference but I was happy to learn that back in the day geographer Arnold Guyot was not trying to honor anyone connected with the Confederates but a fellow geographer. A small, and now moot, point.

This is not something that has been proposed or something that has been set in motion, this is a done deal starting last Wednesday.

Who knew the U.S. Board of Geographic Names could move so fast?

The highest mountain in the Smokies is now Kuwohi.

And aside for the need for lots of new signs and maps in the National Park, the matter has been settled.

And I think that’s fine.

When the Australians changed the name of Ayers Rock to Uluru, Bill Bryson wrote that Uluru was “its more respectful Aboriginal name.”

When President Obama changed the name of Mount McKinley back to Denali, not much more than some odd Ohioans even seemed to notice.

I have to point out that Denali is a perfectly beautiful name and that opinion has nothing to do with that I have a beautiful Grand daughter by that name.

I grew up in the Great Lakes State of Michigan.

The road map of Michigan is filled with Anishinaabe names that carry over from the days before Europeans got to the place.

Consider the names of Michigan rivers like Potagannissing and Sebewaing.

In his book about traveling around the United States, Blue Highways (Boston, Little, Brown, 1982), William Least Heat Moon writes, “On a map, lower Michigan looks like a mitten with the squatty peninsula between Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron forming the Thumb. A region distinctive enough to have a name was the only lure I needed, but also it didn’t hurt to have towns with fine, unpronounceable names like Quanicassee, Sebewaing, Wahjamega, or other names like Pigeon, Bad Axe, Pinnebog, Rescue, Snover, and—what may be the worst town name in the nation— Freidberger.”

Then there is the Mackinaw region of Michigan that includes upper lower Michigan and lower upper Michigan in an area called ‘The Straits of Machinaw” or is Mackinac or Michilimackinac?

Michigan’s own, Bruce Catton, in his book, Michigan: A Bicentennial History (New York, Norton, 1976) put it this way:

Michilimackinac is a stumbling block for anyone who writes or talks about Michigan. There are innumerable ways to spell it, there is argument over its meaning, and there is no logic whatever to its pronunciation; on top of which, it does not stay put properly as a historic place should. Before Marquette’s time, the name was applied to the entire Straits area, which was the Michilimackinac country. Today, mercifully abbreviated to Mackinac, the name is applied only to the island out in the Straits — a beautiful place, the only spot in the state of Michigan where no automobiles are allowed. South of the island, at the tip of the lower peninsula, there is a village named Mackinaw City; perversely, here the name is spelled the way the name of the island is pronounced. In any case, when Marquette and his charges arrived, the great name was being applied to a more or less intermittent and informal trading center that had come into existence around a little bay on the east side of a point on the north shore of the Straits. Later, it meant the Mackinaw City area, where a notable fort was built, and still later it meant the island, where there was another notable fort. Men said that Michilimackinac meant “great turtle,” in the Ottawas’ language, but an Ottawa chief in the nineteenth century said that this was not so at all; the name came, he insisted, from a small tribe that originally lived on the island, a folk called the Mi-shene-mackinaw-go; and anyone who wants to go into it more deeply is quite free to do so.

Kuwohi.

Uluru.

Denali.

Anyone who wants to go into it more deeply is quite free to do so.

BTW: My sister and brother in law just sent us a care package of Mackinac Island Fudge – I can attest … there is nothing like in the world 🙂

fear, uncertainty among
consumers businesses and
among investors

It was the line after the line that was the source for this haiku that caught me eye and that line being:

Truly the hat-trick.

This is from the article, With the best glasses donor money can buy, surely Starmer can see that this week has been a total disaster by Marina Hyde in the Guardian.

I hate finding facts based on ‘polls’ but when the polls show that the only British Prime Minister to have lower poll popularity numbers that Mr. Keith Starmer (on the job now for about 44 days) was the Prime Minister one before the last one, Liz Truss.

I think Ms. Truss WAS Prime Minister for about 44 days and got to oversee the funeral of Queen Elizabeth which really was a nice bookend.

The funeral of the worlds longest reigning Monarch was during premiership of Britain’s shortest term Prime Minister.

Not sure what the over-under on that bet would have been.

Anyway … Ms. Hyde writes:

Labour took office and immediately declared things to be so dire that they were going to have to do awful and painful things to combat them – but will have left it three months before they finally explain what those awful and painful things are. This, as the former chief economist to the Bank of England Andy Haldane and many others have pointed out, has created a sense of “fear and foreboding and uncertainty among consumers, among businesses, and among investors”.

Truly the hat-trick. The current freebies row taking place during that particular information vacuum consequently feels even worse. It suggests that Starmer is a guy who talks to the public like an undertaker but in private likes the finer things in life. More than that, he feels entitled to them. That is no one’s favourite combination.

The new government in Britain, in 44 days has been able to create a sense of fear and foreboding and uncertainty among consumers.

Among businesses.

And among investors.

Truly the hat-trick.

That is no one’s favourite combination.

I kept the anglicized spelling.

Seems more posh you know that way, and it is almost a comfort that some other country seems to be as messed up as we are.

wouldn’t know where to go
if didn’t have somebody
that knowed where to go

From the line “I thought I’d go and get something to eat some place, only I wouldn’t know where to go if I didn’t have somebody with me that knowed where to go.” from the play, June Moon, a play by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner. Based on the Lardner short story “Some Like Them Cold.”

Back when I was a kid growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan in a family of 11 kids, it was rare to find myself alone in the family room with the TV.

But that’s where I was one night when I was about 12 years old.

It was bedtime and I should have been in bed but I wanted to stay up, I always wanted to stay up, and watch TV.

My Mom came in and looked at the clock and looked at me and I played my secret card.

Can we just see what is on public television?

Educational or Public TV had just arrived in our area and my Mom would never deny access to something educational.

See I would watch anything if it was on TV and I would even watch educational television if it meant not going to bed.

And you never knew what you might see our the light local PBS station.

She rolled her eyes and said okay, just for a few minutes.

I turned the TV to UHF and then turned the dial the channel 35 and sat on the floor.

What ever was on had already started and we missed the introduction.

It seemed to be a television production of a play but it was just two people, a man and woman who had just met and where on a train and talking.

The dialogue was nothing and everything at the same time and the timing of the two actors was so quick that while nothing was really happening I got drawn into their conversation.

The odd thing was, so was my Mom.

First she turned to watch for a bit.

Then she sat on the edge of chair.

And then she sat back and just took in the play.

There was a quality to the writing, the words and the acting that you could not ignore and we watched the whole play WITHOUT COMMERICIALS.

We watched the entire play together and when it was done, we looked at the clock and it was past 11 p.m.

“Get to bed,” Mom said, “that was fun.”

And she gave me hug a off I went.

Years later I can still remember parts of the dialogue and the other day I started to try and search out the play based on what I could remember.

It turns out what we had watched was a special presentation of the play, June Moon, by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner and when I learned that so many lights clicked on.

The pacing the timing of Mr. Kaufman famous for his Broadway hits.

The dialogue and words of Mr. Lardner famous for his short stories.

Stories about the new kid from the small town arriving in the big city.

Stories where the kid would say, “I thought I’d go and get something to eat some place, only I wouldn’t know where to go if I didn’t have somebody with me that knowed where to go.”

If you haven’t read Mr. Lardner I encourage you to do so, especially the short story, Golden Honeymoon where Mr. Lardner writes, “After dinner we made them come up to our house and we all set in the parlor, which the young woman had give us the use of to entertain company. We begun talking over old times and Mother said she was a-scared Mrs. Hartsell would find it tiresome listening to we three talk over old times, but as it turned out they wasn’t much chance for nobody else to talk with Mrs. Hartsell in the company. I have heard lots of women that could go it, but Hartsell’s wife takes the cake of all the women I ever seen. She told us the family history of everybody in the State of Michigan and bragged for a half hour about her son, who she said is in the drug business in Grand Rapids, and a Rotarian.”

Its as if you have to read that paragraph in one breath.

Reading Lardner is like getting on a train and you can’t get off until the next station.

I thought I’d go and get something to eat some place, only I wouldn’t know where to go if I didn’t have somebody with me that knowed where to go.

Just something charming about those words as well as the memory of the first time I heard them.