Category: History
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Brief Stop in San Antonio
Business brought me to San Antonio, Texas this week. Even so, I still had a few moments to poke around the usual tourist spots. My luggage wanted to visit a little longer so it took a free vacation courtesy of American Airlines. Hopefully we’ll be reunited this weekend. Remember the Alamo I first stopped at…
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Inconvenient Rivers
Those pesky rivers! People go to great trouble to designate a river as a boundary, decide who has ownership or how it will be split, draw all those maps, and then the river has the audacity to jump its bank and form a new channel. Does this mean the boundary automatically changes too? Of course…
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Gambling Banned in Nevada!… (in tiny pockets)
Think of Nevada and the cacophony of Las Vegas springs to mind as a reflex.[1] It’s a familiar refrain that repeats across hundreds of desert towns large and small. Envision a symbiotic intertwining of a state economy and a robust gaming industry. Entire towns have even blossomed simply to entice the residents of stricter states…
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Union Jack over the USA
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland proudly flies the Union Flag, often called the Union Jack. It retains an official or semi-official designation throughout the Commonwealth Realm. Oddly, it also flies over a tiny corner of the United States with the explicit approval of the American government. I’m not talking about Hawaii…
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Florida’s Southern Keys, Part II
We’ll be wandering our way back up the Florida keys later this morning. Then we’ll head home in a couple of days, after one more stop. My internet access will be sporadic so I’ll post this entry a little early and get back to my normal schedule when I return. Notably, I am not a…
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Florida’s Southern Keys, Part I
I’ll start off by saying that there’s a special place in heaven for those who leave unsecured WiFi connections open and available for public use. I thought I’d be totally disconnected from the outside world except for an occasional traipsing down to an Internet cafe but for an unknown Good Samaritan. Thank you stranger. You’ve…
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Likoma and Chizumulu
Examine the international boundaries that run through Lake Malawi (or Lake Nyasa as it’s also known) in Africa. Something odd will appear. No, it’s not the disputed border between Malawi and Tanzania which perhaps I’ll save for another day. Rather, notice the small circles of Malawian territory within the territorial waters of its neighbor Mozambique.…
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Canadian Border Anomalies
I’ve discussed border anomalies between the United States and Canada before. Previously I focused on little areas of the U.S. separated from the rest of the country such as Point Roberts, the Northwest Angle and Alburg, Vermont. Here I give equal time to the Canadians. I’ll outline a couple of instances where citizens of that…
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Reconciliation
I mentioned Brian Brown’s wonderful Vanishing South Georgia website previously as I explored leaf-vein patterns left behind by swamp drainage. Brian uses an interesting minimalist approach. It allows imagery to portray a wistful almost melancholy longing for a heritage slowly slipping away. He’s attempting to preserve it all visually before it decomposes back into the…
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The Largest Smallest US County (a.k.a. it sucks getting old)
Did yesterday’s dispatch seem a little shorter than usual? That’s because it was half the length I’d intended. To summarize briefly, each of the fifty United States has a smallest and a largest county. Yesterday I featured the largest of those smallest counties. Today I’ll take the opposite tack and present the smallest of the…