ABC Wednesday Archives - Page 2 of 91

Holiday places, Xmas faces

Santa Claus dons his beachwear

Santa Claus.IN
Back in 2017, The Census Bureau put out this list of holiday places:

“Some names of places associated with the holiday season consist of a dozen places named Holly, including Mount Holly, N.C. (population 14,495), and Holly Springs, Miss. (7,682).

“There is Snowflake, Ariz. (5,764); Santa Claus, Ind. (2,463); North Pole, Alaska (2,232); Noel, Mo. (1,816); and — if you know about reindeer — Dasher, Ga. (979), and Rudolph, Wis. (430). There is also Unity, Ore. (68).”

What, no Bethlehem, PA (population 75,707 in 2017)?

Traveller.com in Australia

It recommended over a dozen holiday places, including:

New York City, NY

“Surely you know what Christmas in the Big Apple looks like, thanks to countless movies: Christmas lights, cheesy muzak, preferably a light dusting of snow.

“The world’s tallest Christmas tree is lit at the Rockefeller Center in early December. Ice skating below it is a must for wintertime visitors, as is checking out the window displays in New York’s largest department stores. Finish with a New York Ballet performance of ‘The Nutcracker’ for a Christmas straight out of central casting.

San Juan, PR

“A small island with a big personality, Puerto Rico serves up a sunny Christmas with a salsa beat and a side dish of spit-roasted pig. Festivities last from early December to Three Kings Day on 6 January. From mid-December churches conduct dawn masses rich with Christmas carols, while exuberant roving groups of carolers travel from house to house and make merry.

“The big feast is held on Christmas Eve, followed by Midnight Mass. For season-setting decorations, head to City Hall on the Plaza de Armas and the fairy-lit promenade Paseo de la Princesa.”

CNN

The network updated this list of holiday places in September 2019. It ALSO suggested New York City.

Honolulu, HI

“Santa Claus dons his beach wear for the Christmas celebrations in Hawaii. What the Aloha State lacks in snow it more than makes up for in festive vibes of peace and goodwill.

“The celebrations center around Honolulu City Lights, a monthlong Christmas display with an opening parade, live music, and a 15-meter Christmas tree…

“At 6 meters tall (almost 20 feet) Shaka Santa — Mr. Claus dressed down in red shorts and open shirt — takes pride of place downtown, seated next to his mu’umu’u-wearing wife, Tutu Mele.”

Quebec City, QC

“A haven for environmentally friendly, outdoor enthusiasts, Quebec bustles with winter activity, offering holiday programs for all tastes.

“Old Quebec is turned into a picturesque Christmas village. Sausage and roast chestnut lovers can browse the wares at the German Christmas market. The more religiously inclined can wander an exposition of nativity scenes from around the world…
“And when Christmas is over, there’s Quebec Winter Carnival from February 7 to 16, 2020.”

Santa Claus, IN

“Christmas is a year-round occasion in this town… [It] gets thousands of letters a year from children trying to reach St. Nick himself. A group of volunteers called Santa’s Elves was set up in the mid-1930s to reply to each letter.
“The Land of Lights display is a 1.2-mile drive around the Lake Rudolph Campground & RV Resort.

Xmas places for ABC Wednesday

4 W’s, from coast to almost coast

The 2006 Olin International Reunion was in Kennewick, WA

stamps texas to wyoming
WA Washington, a US state in the Northwest, historically abbreviated Wash. It’s often referred to a Washington state, to delineate it from the national capital on the other side of the country. Capital: Olympia. Largest city: Seattle.

The 2006 Olin International Reunion was in August in Kennewick, the eastern part of the state. My wife and I briefly considered going, but with a two-year-old, who wailed on an hour-long car ride, we decided a transcontinental flight at that time was not in our plans.

WI Wisconsin, a state in the Midwest US, historically abbreviated Wisc. Capital: Madison. Largest city: Milwaukee, a city I associate with beer. The TV sitcom show Laverne & Shirley was based there.

The major sports franchise in the smallest city metropolis is the Green Bay Packers, which won the first two Super Bowl NFL championship games.

The one time I was in Wisconsin was 1988. I was working for FantaCo, the comic book store/publisher. I was accompanying Mario Bruni to the Capital City Distributors trade show in Madison. We were there to promote some Mars Attacks cards which Mario had designed and FantaCo was publishing. This was in a period before Diamond had become the only player in the comic book direct market.

Madison was a beautiful city, located on a couple of lakes. It seemed like a place I could live if ever I were to move.

Mountain State

WV West Virginia, a state in the Appalachian region of the southern US, sometimes abbreviated W. Va. Capital and largest city: Charleston.

I always had an odd affection for the state, which broke off from Virginia during the Civil War, and joined the Union in 1863. As a kid in Binghamton, I could pick up the country music powerhouse WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia late at night. The station apparently abandoned the format in favor of talk radio in 1997.

When my family used to drive from Albany, NY to Charlotte, NC, where my parents lived, we’d almost always stay in Martinsburg, West Virginia, which was about halfway. We had been there enough times to identify the restaurants and hotels, practically from memory.

WY Wyoming, a state in the US Rocky Mountains, sometimes abbreviated Wyo. Capital and largest city: Cheyenne.

Although the state is the 10th largest by area, it is the least populous state in the country, with fewer than 600,000 people. It’s also the second most sparsely populated state, behind Alaska.

Thus ends our run of the 50 US states, and related geographies.

The who, what, when, where, why of ABC Wednesday

Two Virgins and the Vermont Republic

Virgin Queen

Vermont road map VA Virginia, a state – a commonwealth – in the southeastern US. Capital: Richmond. Largest city: Virginia Beach.

Since I wrote about Virginia five years ago, I’ll just note that the state was “named for Queen Elizabeth I of England, who was known as the Virgin Queen. Historians think the English adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh suggested the name about 1584.”

VI Virgin Islands, a US territory in the Caribbean. Capital and largest city: Charlotte Amalie, on the island of St. Thomas.

The US Virgin Islands were sold to the United States by Denmark in the Treaty of the Danish West Indies of 1917. Other islands in the archipelago are controlled by the United Kingdom.

“Christopher Columbus named the islands after Saint Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins (Spanish: Santa Úrsula y las Once Mil Vírgenes), shortened to the Virgins (las Vírgenes). ”

GREEN Mountain State

VT Vermont, a New England state of the US. Capital: Montpelier. Largest city: Burlington

I wrote about our 2015 vacation. The truth is, I’ve been all over Vermont. A wedding on Lake Champlain, several choir performances in my Methodist days, even shopping. Of course, I’m inherently fond of the state, since it involves the color green.

On the Travel Trivia website, it listed 5 Countries That No Longer Exist. One was the Vermont Republic.

“On January 15, 1777, Vermont became the Vermont Republic, with its own Declaration of Independence, elected assembly, money, postal service, military, and diplomatic relations. Vermont was joined in its decade and a half of sovereignty by sixteen New Hampshire towns and a few more from New York.

“They were eventually given back to their states when Vermont joined the union [in 1791 when it became the 14th state], but it was a process by which Congress, New York, and New Hampshire recognized Vermont’s sovereignty. That means Vermont’s time as an independent nation wasn’t a fun historical quirk; it was a tangible expression of North American international freedom.”

For the verdant ABC Wednesday

That time in Utah when…

Snowbird

I saw a Utah license plate this autumn in Albany

UM United States Minor Outlying Islands are “eight United States insular areas in the Pacific Ocean (Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, Palmyra Atoll, and Wake Island) and one in the Caribbean Sea (Navassa Island)…

“Except for Palmyra Atoll, all of these islands are unincorporated, unorganized territories of the United States. As of 2019, none of the islands have any permanent residents.”

UT Utah, a state in the western US. Capital and largest city: Salt Lake City. The state is known for the 28 million acre-feet of briny water that comprises the Great Salt Lake. It is the sixth-largest lake in the US, after the Great Lakes. The second-largest lake that sits completely within the United States borders is significantly more saline than other large lakes.

A story

In 1994, I did something fairly stupid in Utah that affects me to this day. I attended the ASBDC conference in Snowbird. The place is 29 miles from Salt Lake International Airport, located near the town of Alta in Little Cottonwood Canyon.

Alta’s base elevation is 8,530 ft (2,600 m). It was beautiful. Behind the site of the conference was a picturesque mountain. Since the event had not started yet, and I had nothing better to do, I started climbing up, just to get a better view.

Eh, I decided to climb up a little farther, and maybe just a tad more. Then I got so far up that I figured I should keep on climbing. I was just pulling on rocks and branches. If they withstood being pulled on thrice, I’d use them to pull myself up.

Just as I was about to reach the top, I pulled on a branch three times. For good measure, I tried it once more and it came loose, falling down the mountain. Yikes, that could have me tumbling – I’ve since checked – 2,538 ft or 774 m.

What goes up…

Now the descent. I tried to brake myself from going too fast. I got maybe a third of the way down and I began sliding. I wasn’t too worried until my left leg got caught in a hole, while the rest of my body weight was going downhill.

My left knee starting hurting, a LOT. Somehow, I crawled the rest of my way down, then the few dozen meters to where we were staying. I came across some I knew from New York State and he drove me to an urgent care place. This was the first time I’d been to one.

An urgent care locale is for when you really need some medical care, but you don’t need the lifesaving care from an emergency room. The doctor told me that I had a torn meniscus in my left knee. He gave me the X-rays to bring to a doctor in Albany to get fixed, which happened.

That knew, though, has never been the same. I wear a brace on it, especially if I’m walking any distance. It is probably arthritic, and I experience pain there regularly.

To soothe my pain, here’s the website of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Up to ABC Wednesday

T for Texas, T for Tennessee

Lorraine Motel

Texas.Tennessee T for Texas, T for Tennessee. This is a reference to a Jimmie Rogers song that was covered by several artists, including Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The version I first heard, segueing into another song, was by the Everly Brothers.

The states are separated by Arkansas, where I have never been, though my wife’s best friend moved there several years ago.

Tennessee Waltz

I’ve been to Tennessee twice. the first time was in 1970. A bunch of us high school kids raised money to visit Fayette County, which was described to us as the poorest county in the country. It was certainly very rural.

On that trip, we traveled rather quickly to Memphis, where we saw the Lorraine Motel. That was the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It would subsequently be turned into a civil rights museum.

Memphis Blues – Duke Ellington

The other was c 2002 when I attended the Association of Small Business Development Centers conference in the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, which was part mall, part amusement park.

Crazy Town – Jason Aldean

TN Tennessee, a state in the southeast US, historically abbreviated Tenn. Capital and largest city: Nashville.

Tennessee Waltz – Connie Francis

The Six Flags of Texas

If you’re not from the United States, you may or may not realize that Texas has an oversized presence in the American narrative. It has a unique history. It was controlled by Spain for three centuries, interrupted by a five-year rule by France. From 1821 to 1836, it was under Mexican control; remember the Alamo.

Then in 1836, it was a republic until 1845, when it became a US state. It’s been that ever since. Well, except for that period between 1861 and 1865.

Everything is bigger in Texas. It was the largest state by area until Alaska supplanted it in 1959. Now Texas is the second-largest state in terms of population. It has the biggest state fair.

TX Texas, a state in the south-central US, abbreviated Tex. Largest city: Houston, the fourth largest in the US, while San Antonio is seventh. “Dallas–Fort Worth and Greater Houston are the fourth and fifth largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country, respectively.” Capital: Austin, the second-most populous state capital in the US, after Phoenix, AZ.

I went to a Texas state conference of Small Business Development Centers in 1996. It was held in Galveston, on the Gulf Coast. I woke up at 6 a.m. Eastern time, which was 5 in the Central Time Zone. I walked out on a jetty, and I stood there as the tide came in; it was glorious. Later, I saw a Houston Astros game in the Astrodome, which was not a great place to see baseball.

There are tons of songs about Texas. My favorite is That’s Right, You’re Not from Texas by Lyle Lovett.

ABC Wednesday