Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Happy Valentine’s Day 2010

(Again, this is from an old log.)  (It's being posted in November 2011.)
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.)