I’m feeling guilty about not
reading this document before adding to it.
That will probably make the prose choppy. I’m willing to forgive myself for it, though,
because rereading would waste time and may distract me from making the next entry. And I’m feeling guilty enough about the length of
time between now and the last entry.
Not that I haven’t thrown anything
out since then, I just haven’t thrown away anything significant – anything
old. It’s been more of an empty the
trash kind of thing. Although I did go through all of
the newspapers yesterday and the day before.
I clipped out the crosswords, because they’re the main reason I get the
paper. That and giving the kid taking
subscriptions a break. I used to deliver
papers at one point. Maybe I’ll write
about that later. Not today, though.
Today I have on my desk an old globe
that’s been sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks and that’s been sitting in
my closet, in plastic, for years. It’s one
that Mom and Dad used to have. It was part of
their educate the children program. The may have gotten it from an older relative. (Yes, this is the globe that I claimed to have thrown out in the last post. Give me a break, here.)
I haven’t found a date on it. But it has French West Africa on it. Germany looks like it’s all one country,
which wasn’t the case when I was small. The
USSR is there. So is a place called
Tannu-tuva, between Mongolia and the USSR.
There’s also a place called Sinkiang near that. Iran is called Persia. Saluchistan is at the top of India, which has
not yet calved off Pakistan. Thailand is
still Siam. Burma is there. I don’t remember if Burma is still Burma, but
I’m guessing not. Viet Nam is French
Indo-china, and Laos and Cambodia are nowhere to be seen. So I’m guessing there is no more Burma.
Is there still a Borneo? Was that what became Taiwan? I’ll have to google these. Line islands?
The globe says: “12 inch Standard Globe made by Replogle
Globes, Inc Chicago, Ill. Clear,
Accurate, Up-to-date. Up-to-date is a
stupid thing to put on a globe. Maybe on
the packaging, or on a removable sticker, but unless the globe is frozen in
time, it’s not going to stay up-to-date.
Nepal, now. Is there still a Nepal?
Time to toss the globe.
Gone. I have a corner of my desk back. (See. It had gotten as far as my desk, with the intent of throwing it out. If it took another month and another entry to actually toss it, I'm cool with that.)
From Google: “On August 14,
1921 the Bolsheviks
(supported by Russia) established a Tuvan People's Republic, popularly called Tannu-Tuva.
In 1926, the capital (Belotsarsk; Khem-Beldyr since 1918) was renamed Kyzyl, meaning
"Red"). Tuva was de jure an independent state between the
World Wars.”
I think there was a Kyzyl
there. Should I go pull it out and
check? No, it didn’t. That means the globe was published between
1921 and 1926. Or that they left the
capital off.
Also, according to Google: “French
West Africa (French: Afrique occidentale française, AOF) was a federation
of eight French colonial territories in Africa: Mauritania,
Senegal, French Sudan
(now Mali), French
Guinea (now Guinea),
Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Upper Volta (now Burkina
Faso), Dahomey
(now Benin) and Niger.”
As regards Sinkiang, it looks like
it was a province of China, in several forms: “In 1912, the Qing Dynasty was
replaced by the Republic of China. Yuan Dahua, the last Qing governor
of Xinjiang, fled. One of his subordinates Yang
Zengxin (杨增新),
took control of the province and acceded in name to the Republic of China in
March of the same year. Through Machiavellian politics and clever balancing of
mixed ethnic constituencies, Yang maintained control over Xinjiang until his
assassination in 1928.[26]”
So the globe shouldn’t have listed
it separately from China. We’ll see if Saluchistan
is a similar case. Nope. It looks like it got split up into bits of
Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. During
British Rule it was split into three governing areas.
Burma is officially the Union of Myanmar since 1989. And Borneo is still the third largest island
in the world. So the Kinky Friedman song
is still accurate, and the globe may or may not be accurate for that
island.
(OK, it took slightly more than another simple entry to get me to let go of the globe. And, yes, I do get distracted that easily. In fact, for me, that spate of Googling was remarkably on point.)
