WHERE'S THE BORDER? (PART 2)

Some more on borders this week. There was a time when my home state of Illinois had an international boarder. Well, it wasn't Illinois in those days. It was the Northwest Territory. Up until 1803 the Mississippi River formed the boundary between the United States and French Louisiana. So the area that would become Illinois bordered a foreign country. Fortunately, good old Tom Jefferson had the sense to buy Louisiana from Napoleon at a clearance sale. He was one smart man. I wish we could turn up more presidents like him. Of course, he'd never get elected today since even in his own day he was labeled an atheist and he liked French cooking. Not to mention that his Vice-President, Aaron Burr, shot the former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton to death in a duel. At least Vice-President Cheney only wounded someone.

Anyone looking quickly at a map of the United States would conclude that the Mississippi River is still the western border of Illinois. Not quite true, as you would discover if you tried to travel from Chicago to Kaskaskia. I'm not sure why you'd want to go to Kaskskia since only nine people live there, but if you did, you'd have to cross the Mississippi into Missouri and then drive to Kaskaskia. It's west of the river. It wasn't always there, but it is now, and that's an interesting tale.

Kaskaskia was founded in 1703 by the French where the Kaskaskia River meets the Mississippi. The French abandoned the village after the French and Indian war. The British occupied the site and built Fort Gage there. Now the story gets good. On July 4, 1778, during the Revolutionary War, General George Rodgers Clark captured Fort Gage without firing a shot. I'll bet all of you East Coasters thought the Revolutionary War was only fought in the East. Hah!

Kaskaskia became one of the largest cities in the west, having around 7,000 inhabitants at its peak. It was the capital of the Illinois Territory and the first capital of the State of Illinois. But in 1820 the capital was moved to Vandalia, and the city was in trouble. (What goes around comes around. Thanks to Abe Lincoln and a bunch of other legislators, the capital got moved to Springfield in 1837. Nya-nya-nya-nya-nya!) The city really sunk when an 1844 flood nearly wiped the town out. They moved the town further south, but it flooded again in 1881. The old town and original state house (pictured) disappeared under the waters, and the Mississippi cut a new channel to the east turning the area around Kaskaskia into an island.

I have one more border story that has a vague connection to Kaskaskia. In 1815 a 21-year-old-lawyer Daniel Pope Cook moved to Kaskaskia. Eventually he would move to Washington and become a friend of John Quincy Adams. He was influential in Illinois politics, becoming the first Attorney General and second congressman from Illinois, but he died at the young age of 33. Cook's uncle, Nathaniel Pope, had been territorial representative of Illinois in congress. (By the way, Nathaniel's brotherJohn was the Senator from Kentucky). As Illinois prepared for statehood, Pope got the congress to move the border north 41 miles which put Fort Dearborn (the site of Chicago) in Illinois instead of Wisconsin.

My gosh, think of the consequence of putting Chicago in the Dairy State. Maybe the Chicago Bears would be the Chicago Cows. The Chicago Cubs the Chicago Calves. Can you imagine Al Capone living in Wisconsin? (Actually, he did have a place in Wisconsin. I've been there.) Can you imagine Elliot Ness arresting Capone and saying, "Now, Al, you've been a bad boy, so we're gonna make you muck out all the cattle barns for the next 20 years. I hope you learn your lesson. You betcha." All of Chicago owes a vote of thanks to Nathaniel Pope for preventing that disaster.

Anywho, as Northern Illinois (not Southern Wisconsin) grew, it got divided into counties. Guess what thy named the one in the north-east with the growing village of Chicago? They couldn't name it Pope County because they already had named one in Southern Illinois for Nathaniel Pope. So they named it Cook County, after Nathaniel's nephew Daniel Pope Cook. 'Member him? You might find it interesting to know that Cook married Catherine Edwards, the daughter of Illinois' third governor, Ninian Edwards. Catherine had a brother, also named Ninian, who married Elizabeth Todd whose sister Mary Todd, married Abraham Lincoln. Oh yes, Lincoln appointed Nathaniel Pope's son, John, (who was also a second cousin of Mary Todd Lincoln) a Major General in command of the Army of Virginia. Daniel Cook's son John was also made a Major General. From what I can tell, most of the male population of the Union states were made generals at one time or another during the Civil War, except for Lincoln's own son Robert Todd Lincoln who only got to be a Captain.

I hope to write about old honest Abe for next week.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne



2784

WHERE'S THE BORDER? (PART 1)

I was listening to an old recording of Groucho Marx's radio quiz show, "You Bet Your Life." The thousand dollar question was, "Which of the 48 states is closest to the North Pole." Note this is before Alaska became a state. My little brain answered "Maine," but something in me said that was wrong. Maine only looks to be the farthest north on some maps because of the type of projection used to make the map. But if it isn't Maine, what state is it? The couple guessed Wisconsin, which I knew was wrong. The correct answer was Minnesota. Now, had I been a Minnesotan and had to draw maps of that state instead of my native Illinois, I would have been familiar with the little projection in the boundary of Minnesota that juts north of the 49th parallel. The area, called the Northwest Angle, includes Lake of the Woods and a small bit of land, Angle Township. There is another bit of land nearby, Elm Point. Both of these pieces of American soil can only be reached by water, or by traveling through Canada. They must have been the origin of that saying, "You can't get there from here."

It seems this irregularity came about because the framers of the treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War didn't have a very good idea what that part of North America was like. They were using the Mitchell map (pictured) which showed the Mississippi River running into Canada, which it doesn't. Since the border between British and American lands was to run from the north edge of Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi, no one could be sure where the boarder was. They later tried to fix it by running the border from Lake of the Woods along the 49th parallel, but nobody had a clear picture of what the land actually looked like there. When a survey team actually got to the site and plotted the border they discovered that some US land was cut off from the rest of the US by the Lake of the Woods. Well, that was just too bad, because it was US territory now, so there.

This wasn't the only case of people drawing boundaries without being sure where they went. Remember all that stuff you learned in school about the Oregon Territory and the slogan, "Fifty-four Forty or fight"? It was about where the boarder between the US and British Columbia should be. Eventually they settled on the 49th parallel (it had worked out in Minnesota after all) with a slight adjustment so that all of Vancouver Island would belong to Britain. Once again nobody knew what was really there until a British survey discovered that a tiny piece of the Tsawwassen Peninsula, Point Roberts, had got assigned to the U.S. instead of Britain. Once again the Americans acquired land that could only be reached by boat or through Canada.

I understand this has worked out all right for many Canadians who have Post Office boxes in Point Roberts so they can have goods sent to them from the U.S. without paying foreign mailing costs. It must really be a pain, though, for the Americans up there. Every time they want to go the county seat for something, they have to go through customs each way. That wasn't so bad years ago, but now you need a passport. I hope U.S. Customs is a lot more understanding than the Transportation Security Agency is. You know them. Those are the folks that take away your shoes and belt and expect you to hobble through a metal detector to make sure you're not carrying nuclear weapons or toothpaste into the airport.

Of course the largest of the enclaves separated from the rest of the United States is the largest state, Alaska. I remember when it became a state, there were grave questions about whether a state that didn't touch the rest of the country could be a legitimate state. Anyway, it became a state and there were 49 stars on the US flag, except in my elementary school classroom. Everybody knew Hawaii would become a state the next year and there would be 50 stars on the flag, so why waste money buying 49 star flags that would be outdated in a year?

William Seward, U.S. Secretary of State under Lincoln and Johnson arranged the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, about 2 cents an acre. People laughed at "Seward's Icebox." After they found gold in Alaska, people stopped laughing. The purchase was a great move. Imagine if Russia still owned Alaska. The old Soviet Union could have put missiles in our back yard instead of in Cuba in the 1960s. Maybe instead of invading Georgia (the country, not the state), they would have invaded Washington (the state, not the city.) Maybe Sarah Pallin would be running for vice-president of Russia. (Do they have vice-presidents in Russia? Must check.)

The worst consequence of Alaska still belonging to Russia is that we would never have had one of my favorite TV shows, "Northern Exposure." It took place in the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska which was really Roslyn, Washington. Talk about border confusion. Of course the show itself was confused because Cicely was supposed to be in the fictional Arrowhead County, but Alaska has boroughs, not counties.

I suppose one should mention Hawaii which is a collection of islands, but still a state in the U.S. I read about some ding-dong claiming Barak Obama wasn't really a U.S. citizen because his father wasn't a citizen or his mother wasn't old enough or some such nonsense. For gosh sakes he was born in Hawaii. Look at a map. That's the United States. It was a state when he was born. If you are born in the U.S. you are a citizen. Besides under the law, anyone born in Hawaii after April 30, 1900 is a U.S. citizen. How come nobody ever asks about John McCain who was born in the Panama Canal Zone which we gave back to Panama? Does that mean he's eligible to run for president of Panama in case this U.S. Presidency thing doesn't work out. Well, that's the sort of stuff that comes up during the silly season of politics.

I'll have more about borders next time. Just remember that borders are only lines that people draw on maps hoping to convince people who live inside the lines that they are supposed to hate people outside the lines. Don't believe them. God doesn't draw lines to separate people. God loves everyone. Remember that little kids draw outside the lines, and they don't hate anyone.

Whatever borders you cross, may the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne





2715

WHAT IT MEANS

In our last episode, I mean in my last blog, I used the word "inept," in the sense of not being able to do something properly. I thought about that word for a while. The "in" part must mean "not" so the word means "not ept," except there is no such word as "ept"in English. This is one of those curious aspects of our language that makes it so difficult to learn. I got our my two-volume The World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary to explored the word. It is from the Latin word ineptus which derives from the negative prefix in plus the word aptus meaning apt. My gosh, there it is, "apt." Someone who is inept is "not apt." It was those old Romans who monkeyed with the vowels changing "a" to "e." I bet they did that just to annoy their Saxon enemies who they knew would adopt Latin words into their language.

Being an obsessive person, I launched into further dictionary explorations. There are several meaning to apt: likely, appropriate, quick to learn. All derive from the Latin meaning of aptus, fitting or joined. My little brain realized adapt must also come from this same source. Adapt is to make something fit. Adaptation is something I deal with all the time–like connecting your DVD to the VCR so it plays through and old TV. Adaptation is the solution to the old adage, "You can't put square pegs in round holes." Sure you can. You adapt. You just need the right tools, either a knife to whittle the ends of the square pegs or a very large hammer to put those pegs in their places whether they like it or not. (I suppose today it wouldn't be politically correct to call them square pegs. They are "roundness-challenged pegs" or maybe "exceptional pegs." What we're really supposed to do is make the round holes square. Boy, am I ever going to get into trouble with that.)

Then I thought of another word, "adept." I knew it had a meaning of being skilled and that it also had an older meaning related to alchemy. It turns up in fantasy novels as referring to skilled magicians. Since "adept" looks so much like "inepet." I assumed they had the same root. I was at first quite disappointed to find that the medieval Latin adeptus came from the verb adispisci to attain. How is this possible that two such similar words should have different derivations? Ah, but I was forgetting everything I had learned in Latin class. The various forms of verbs can depart substantially from their root forms. It turns out that the perfect participle for this verb is out old friend aptus, so much hunch was right.

In the course of investigating this I discovered that the word "apt" in Czech is schopný, in Danish, dygtig, in Estonian, taibukas, and in Latvian, apdavinats . From that limited investigation, only Latvian seems to have used the Latin root, or perhaps some Indo-European root.

Then in the middle of a sleepless night, I thought up this sentence: "The inept adept adapted and became apt."

All of this probably bores both of my readers to tears. I can't help it. I find origins of language interesting. If that makes me rather eccentric, well I'm in good company. I have been reading George Guest's book, A Guest at Cambridge. Dr. Guest had been organist and choirmaster at St. John's College, Cambridge, England, for years and years. In that time Guest got to know quite a few clergy. From what I have read, the Church of England seems to have had more than its fair share of odd-duck clerics. Think of the Rev'd Charles L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) for example. Someone whose hobby is taking photos of little girls not wearing any clothes is pretty strange. In any case, Dr. Guest tells a story about Minor Cannon Aubrey Baxter whose hobby was the origin of words. One day Baxter happened on a mother and her young children who were touring Chester Cathedral. "'Good morning, madam, do you know how we came by the word "journeyman" It comes from the French word, jour = day, and signifies a person who is paid by the day, rather than the week, month or year.' And he went off, leaving behind one very perplexed lady."

Ah, yes. A friend of mine once wrote a letter of recommendation which described be as being like a Victorian Church of England minister who has tea in the morning with the Ladies Missionary Society, then retires to his study in the afternoon to write the definitive commentary on 1 Corinthians. Yes, well, the tea drinking part is right, although they don't make tea in our woman's group.

Maybe it would be a good time to have a cup of tea. Tea drinking is one thing I'm usually not inept at. Except for the time the handle fell off the mug.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

INEPTITUDE

I keep wondering when I became so technologically inept. When I was a youngster, I knew about all the latest stuff. I built a crystal radio all by myself. I knew how to use tape recorders and could wire stereo systems. I knew what the various pins on vacuum tubes connected to inside. And then, then something went wrong. Now I know nothing. Everything mystifies me.

It started when I went back to college for my master's degree in adult education. We had to take a course in research and statistics (commonly called sadistics). At first everything we did involved paper, pencil and calculator, but toward the end we moved on to using an IBM PC. I remember sitting in the library in front of one of the two computers available to us mere students. I couldn't even figure out how to turn it on. It took several minutes before I could find the switch located for some unknown reason in the back of the computer. That was the first sign of technological ineptitude creeping in.

The there was the year I received a DVD player as a gift for Christmas. I had used VCRs before so I was convinced there would be no problem. I read the instruction book (yes, I read those), looked through all the various cables, studied the places to connect things on the DVD player and TV and was stumped. I could not figure out any way to connect the thing, at least not any way that actually produced sound and/or a picture. I contacted the Sony corporation which treated me like a "intellectually challenged" person and told me there was no way to connect the DVD player to my ancient television. Ancient! Why I only bought it about 20 years before, a perfectly good COLOR TV that replaced my even more ancient black and white model. Eventually I found someone learned enough to explain to me that if I connected my DVD player to the VCR and then connected the VCR to the TV it would work. Sure enough, they were right. I can't help but feel that this Rube Goldberg system was a technological step backwards, but what do I know?

About a year ago I bought a digital camera for the church. I thought we should move into the 21st century. It's not cost effective to get a artist like Lukas Cranach to draw pictures of the new remembers when they join. A digital photo is much more practical. Besides they can be posted on the church web site. Visit us at Our Saviour Church (Note: I don't post them. Matt does it. He knows what he's doing.) Anyway, the first Sunday I tried to use the camera, I couldn't even turn it on. I had to get Tyler, one of our more technically astute teens, to turn it on. I don't seem to be that good taking pictures, at least not as good as I was with old-fashioned film. Many times I click the shutter and nothing happens. After a few attempts, I turn the camera down to look at the screen, and it takes a picture of my shoes. I've taken more pictures of shoes than a professional footwear photographer. A couple of times I've snapped a pic only to discover I have taken a mini movie. I didn't even know it did that.

This past week has been a 1-2-3 punch of ineptitude. It started Tuesday when I had to buy minutes for my cell phone. I have a cell phone to use in emergencies–just in case. Many years ago my car overheated in the middle of the Florida Everglades so I came to appreciate how useful a cell phone would have been. I got one with pre-paid minutes so I can control the cost. I spend about $10 a year on it. So I find the code to press in order to add minutes, get connected to headquarters, but have a terrible time entering the many numbers of my credit card. My old, fat, arthritic fingers don't work like they used to. I can still thumb my nose at people, but pushing tiny buttons is a challenge. Eventually I made so many mistakes I got connected to a real live person. The first thing they asked was the last four digits of my cell phone number. I have no idea what they are. I never use my number or give it out. Now I am aware I can make the cell phone tell me the number, but I'm not sure how to do that. Besides it requires me to press the buttons again which is what caused the problem in the first place. After some moments I completed that process, glad to be done with it for another year.

Then there is my watch. I always buy exactly the same model Timex digital watch every time I need a new watch. It has four buttons on it, but I am never sure which button does what. If I push the one I think lights up the face, it sets off an alarm. Or if I try to adjust for Daylight Savings Time, my watch starts showing that it's 13 o'clock. Or it just does things by itself. Right now it beeps twice every hour on the hour day and night. I know if you press the right button it stops, but I don't know which one that is. And then Friday my watch bit me. I was sitting in the examining room at the doctor's office when I looked at my watch to see how long it had been. The back of my wrist near my watch had two little holes that were bleeding quite nicely as if a tiny vampire had fanged me. Being in a medical establishment, I found a piece of gauze and held it over the punctures until they stopped bleeding. I threw the bloody gauze in the bio-hazard disposal container. (I didn't want to infect anyone with watch vampireism.) The doctor was just finishing his examination of me when he spotted the wounds. "How long have you had that?" he inquired. "About ten minutes," I replied. He got out his little light and glasses and concluded it was probably from my watch and then wanted to put disinfectant on me and a bandage. I declined the offer. If I bandaged every scrape, cut, bump, and burn I give myself I'd look like a mummy.

The coup de gras came Sunday. We had a wonderful group of interpretive dancers from the Bethesda School of the Performing Arts participate in the service. Just before they were to perform, I was handed a CD to put on the church CD player. I wasn't prepared for that, but I thought there would be no problem. After all, I had wired the system myself. Wrong. I put the disc in, pressed play on the remote and nothing happened. (I later discovered someone had taken the batteries out of the remote.) No problem, I just push the button on the player by hand. Wrong again. No sound came out. I pushed buttons, tuned dials, looked at the wiring. I couldn't make anything work. They had to perform without the CD. Monday morning I tried the system again intent on finding the problem. It worked perfectly the first time.

All right now, you little microchips are ganging up on me. Well, I'll fix you. There's a hurricane heading our way which will probably knock out the electricity. Then all you electronics will starve to death for lack of power. Bwaahaahaa! Except for the camera that uses batteries. And my watch, which uses a battery. And the remote control which uses batteries if I could fund the right size. Forget about it. I have to go find my kerosene lantern. No plugs. No batteries. Except I'm out of lamp oil. Aw nuts.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne