states Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Ramblin' with Roger

Not in an upstate New York State of mind

I REALLY liked Madison, Wisconsin when I was there in 1988. Always appreciate the state’s progressive tradition.

LONG-time blogger Dustbury asks a question for this round of Ask Roger Anything:

If a purely arbitrary decision was handed down to the effect that you could no longer remain in upstate New York, where would you first consider going?

I’ve thought on this a lot, actually. It’s pretty much a process of elimination.

Not moving to anywhere there is no fresh water, so desert states such as Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico are definitely out. California – well, is the big earthquake still coming?

I’d like to be out of direct range of hurricanes, which eliminates Florida, not that I wouldn’t have passed on it for other reasons; and the parts of the states on the Gulf coast and southern part of the Atlantic are unlikely.

Not Texas, because Texas is Texas.

I’m wary of being in tornado alley, which seems to encompass much of the center of the country from Oklahoma to Ohio.

Places I had considered before I’m now rethinking; I worry about Washington and Oregon after the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown in Japan, maybe not enough to eliminate them, but it’s a factor. I wouldn’t pass on all the states along with the flood-prone Mississippi River, but any place that’s flooded in the last 15 years, I can imagine flooding again.

I hear the Deep South is more enlightened than it used to be; not sure I’d want to move there.

I REALLY liked Madison, Wisconsin when I was there in 1988. Always appreciate the state’s progressive tradition. Don’t love the current governor, though.

Do I want somewhere warmer? Certainly NOT colder, which eliminates Minnesota and Maine.

Ultimately, it would be either in a small college town or a larger college town with decent mass transit in New England, but probably not Connecticut, which often feels like suburbia. Rhode Island is a possibility. I’m fond of Northampton, Massachusetts.

My pick, all things being equal, is southern Vermont. After all, Vermont was part of New York, before it was broken off to become the 14th state. Both New York and Vermont have a maple syrup tradition. And, in spite of damage from some recent hurricanes, both tend to be out of hurricane alley.

M is for M states

Ole Miss went feminist to become a Ms. Also, ms is the abbreviation for manuscripts.

In the United States, there are eight states that begin with the letter M, tied with the letter N. But N has the advantage of descriptive adjectives New (Hampshire, Jersey, Mexico, York) and North (Carolina and Dakota); only Nebraska and Nevada are one-word states.

In 1963, ZIP Codes were introduced, although many large cities were divided into zones 20 years earlier. At the same time, the Post Office introduced two-letter abbreviations for the states, to accommodate space for the ZIP Codes.

The ones for the letter M tell stories about the states:

MA – Massachusetts. The mother of the country. Where the Pilgrims landed – on Plymouth Rock, and where the American Revolution was fomented, at the Boston massacre, then the tea party, and finally with the battles of Lexington and Concord. The second and sixth Presidents, both named Adams, were born there.

MD – Maryland. Home of Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, plus other facilities with doctors.

ME – Maine. Rugged individuals, who wear clothing from L.L. Bean of Freeport, founded 100 years ago by Leon Leonwood Bean. It was part of Massachusetts until it became a state as a result of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, when it was admitted as a free state, as Missouri joined as a slave state.

MI – Michigan. A state which suffered greatly during the recent recession (oh, mi), but which appears to be coming back strong, with improved auto sales leading the way (oh, mi!)

MN – Minnesota. M and N are adjacent letters, nearly twins in the cursive. Likewise, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are related, yet quite separate cities.

MO – Missouri. The big mo, or momentum towards the Pacific Ocean, Missouri was the starting point of the Pony Express and is considered the Gateway to the west; thus the arch. It’s also the home of the defending World Series champions, the St. Louis Cardinals, who, after their 130th game of the 2011 season on August 24, were 10 1/2 games behind the Wild Card leading Atlanta Braves, with only 32 games remaining. They went 23-9 to finish 90-72, a game ahead of Atlanta’s 89-73, the largest comeback in history after 130 games.

MS – Mississippi. Ole Miss went feminist to become a Ms. Also, ms is the abbreviation for manuscripts, and there is a strong tradition of Mississippi writers, including John Grisham, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, and many more.

MT – Montana. Of course, mt is the abbreviation for a mountain, and the Big Sky State is in the Rocky Mountains.

OBVIOUSLY, the Post Office was thinking about these things when they assigned the two-letter state designations almost a half-century ago.

ABC Wednesday – Round 10

S for Severed States

The part of Missouri Compromise allowing Congress control of slavery in the newly emerging territories was declared unconstitutional.

I saw this article recently in the Wall Street Journal about some people on Long Island wanting to secede from the rest of New York State for a bunch of reasons; it won’t happen, BTW, because the state legislature wouldn’t allow it. But it reminded me that the 50 states in the US were not always the size that they are currently.

Even before there was a United States, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York all insisted that Vermont was a part of their state. That’s why Vermont declared itself a kingdom in 1777, and Vermonters to this day refer to the state as the “Northeast Kingdom”, though it became the first state after the original 13.

In the early days of the Union:
Connecticut laid claim on a piece of what is now northern Ohio
Kentucky would be carved out of what was part of Virginia
*Georgia included the northern portions of what is now both Alabama and Mississippi

Of course, the Louisiana Purchase changed the equation, with the federal government attempting to control all the unincorporated territories of the country, sometimes with resistance at the state level.

Read about the Wisconsin-Michigan kerfluffle.

What is now Maine was once part of Massachusetts, plus some territory claimed by Britain as part of Canada. Maine (free) and Missouri (slave) became states in 1820 and 1821, respectively, I remember from my American history, as a result of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which “stipulated that all the Louisiana Purchase territory north of the southern boundary of Missouri, except Missouri, would be free, and the territory below that line would be slave.”

The Missouri Compromise was repealed by the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which brought those states into the Union but eliminated the provision limiting slavery. Indeed, the part of the Missouri Compromise that allowing Congress to control slavery in the newly emerging territories was declared unconstitutional in the horrific 1857 Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court.

This led to the American Civil War, during which the northwest counties of Virginia seceded from Virginia to become West Virginia. (WV is the answer to the trivia question: “Which state east of the Mississippi River was the last to join the union?”

Read about some of the United States’ international boundary disputes here, and about the curious case of the Republic of Texas here.

ABC Wednesday