SOME DISRESPECT FOR BOUNDARIES AND NAMES

 

A Brownsville blogger reported recently that I was currently residing in Iowa with my traveling nurse wife.

That's a bit misleading as Ana and I are legal residents of Texas, well actually, "occupied Mexico" as my niece would phrase it.

And, our current physical location can easily be found on the map of the Republic of Texas above.  Just follow the Des Moines River until it reaches that yellow border line.

Please don't try to lecture me on Texas history even if you took that subject in school.

I've read and reread James Michener's work of historical fiction, The Eagle and the Raven, and I have equal parts hatred and respect for Mexican General Santa Ana and Sam Houston, the first President of Texas.

Anyway, boundaries are meaningless dots on a map and "fixing the border" is mere campaign rhetoric.

The scariest book on south Texas used to be titled "The History of the King Ranch," but author Mona D. Sizer has retitled her work "King Ranch Story~Truth and Myth."

The book will make the hairs on your back stand at attention as it chronicles the ghosts that inhabit that chunk of land between Raymondville and Sarita and the tales of those who've tried to cross on foot.

Almost more than I disrespect boundary lines, I have even more hatred for the name of the state where I was born~Washington, a phony compromise name made as a requirement for statehood in 1889.

The name Columbia was favored by locals in honor of the thunderous river that originates in British Columbia, crosses the state before emptying into the mighty Pacific.

Mt. Tacoma

The compromise name of Tacoma, the name indigenous people used for the mountain dominating the region was also rejected.   

Instead, English Captain George Vancouver, who observed the mountain while surveying the coast in 1792, named it after a friend, Rear Admiral Peter Rainier.