The Citizen, 2008-05-22, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 22, 2008. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
Looking ahead
Don’t you love countries with sensible
names? Germany is the land of the
Germans, as Scotland is the land of
the Scots.
England took its name from the Angles;
Denmark is home to the Danes as Finland is to
Finns.
Some place names serve as personal
mementos. Bolivia pays homage to Simon
Bolivar. Tasmania commemorates the Dutch
explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman.
Colombia? A national monument to
Christopher Columbus.
Then of course there’s our next-door
neighbour, also bearing a highly rational, hero-
honouring monicker. The United States
of…America. Named, the history books tell
us, after Amerigo Vespucci, a 15th century
Italian mariner.
The question is: why?
No question that Vespucci existed – only
that anybody would ever want to honour him.
The man was born in Florence in 1454, died
in Seville, Spain in 1512. In between, he did a
little of this and that, including stints at map-
making, selling gemstones and hitching rides
on ships exploring the New World that had just
opened up, bumping along in Columbus’s
wake and making two voyages along the east
coast of South America between 1499 and
1502.
Like Columbus, Vespucci never did actually
set his slippered foot on North American soil.
Nevertheless he managed somehow to get two
continents and what is currently the world’s
most powerful nation named after him.
Not bad, for a pimp, a blackmailer and a
slave-trader – for Vespucci was all of those,
too.
Make no mistake – Signor Vespucci was not
a nice guy. He bullshat his way onto a supply
ship supporting Columbus’ second voyage by
pretending to be an expert in celestial
navigation.
He was lying, but Vespucci usually was.
Hustling was what Vespucci did best. Self-
promotion was his main product. He boasted
to anyone who would listen that he had
unlocked the ages-old mystery of longitude – a
riddle which had bedeviled mariners for ages.
In fact, the problem would not be solved for
another 300 years after his death.
That didn’t stop Vespucci from adding it to
his bogus curriculum vitae. He was never shy
about claiming glory – his or anyone else’s.
In a famous account of the period known as
the Soderni letter (author unknown, but
sounding suspiciously like you-know-who),
the writer describes the New World as
populated by giants, cannibals and sexually
insatiable Amazons.
The letter also describes the exploits of one
Amerigo Vespucci at great length and in
glowing terms, and it attributes the discovery
of the New World and its wonders not to
Christopher Columbus, but to surprise,
surprise – our friend Amerigo.
Bogus or not, the letter convinced a German
by the name of Martin Waldseemuller, the
premier cartographer of the era. He quite
literally put Vespucci on the map. He took his
name and Latinized it to Americus Vespucius.
And then, because other continents – Asia,
Africa, Australia – had feminine names, he
feminized Americus.
And that’s how we got America – North,
South and United States of.
But half a millennium on, the story still
carries a suspicious whiff of dubiety. Whoever
heard of a continent or a country adopting the
first, rather than the last name of its hero? It’s
Bolivia, not Simonia. Tasmania, not Abelland.
Colombia, not Cristoforia.
So how come George W. Bush isn’t forty-
third president of the United States of
Vespuccia?
Some observers contend we’re barking up
the wrong historical tree altogether. They
claim we’ve got the wrong Amerigo.
Sylvain Fribourg, an amateur historian
living in California, points out that more than
three decades before Columbus’ famous first
voyage, a well-heeled Welshman and member
of the British Royal Court was financing
fishing expeditions to this part of the planet.
He was the chief sponsor of John Cabot’s
historic voyage to Newfoundland in 1497.
His name appeared on maps that Columbus
(and undoubtedly Vespucci) saw years before
the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria set sail
from Cadiz.
That name? Richard….Amerike.
It’s a fine old Welsh name. There’s even an
Amerike(can) coat of arms. It’s made up of
stars. And stripes.
It would be nice if someone could
definitively prove our neighbours intended
to honour the long-forgotten British
merchant. Amerike the savvy Welshman is a
more savoury character to hang a country’s
name on than Amerigo the two-bit Florentine
hustler.
Besides, with political correctness and all,
how long could it be before we’d have to sit
through baseball games starting off with
thousands of fans intoning the words to
Vespuccia the Beautiful?
Arthur
Black
Other Views What’s in a name?You may well ask
Premier Dalton McGuinty is looking for
a new image – he wants to be known as
The Family Guy.
The Liberal premier can hardly complete a
sentence these days without emphasizing he is
trying to help families, or mentioning his own
– his father, mother, wife, four children and
even his grandmother.
McGuinty referred to his mother twice on
the same issue recently, saying she “gave me
hell” when he first proposed the legislature
drop its daily recital of The Lord’s Prayer and
substitute one that more reflects the province’s
diversity.
Protests are mounting and McGuinty has
now added “this is not an easy thing for my
mother,” a Roman Catholic, and he appreciates
her concern, but his job is to represent all
Ontario.
It does not harm a premier to show he has a
mother and cares what she thinks and he looks
even-handed when he says he has to serve the
whole community.
McGuinty often refers to his late father,
Dalton senior, also an MPP, particularly as
having stirred his interest in contributing to
public life.
The premier naturally is proud of his father,
but it must be said the father had nowhere near
the abilities or drive of the son.
When questioned about a pregnant 19-year-
old, arrested as a material witness and held in
jail for a week because police wanted to make
sure she testified against a male friend accused
of assaulting her, McGuinty drew a connection
to his own daughter.
He went on “I have a 26-year-old daughter.
This is a 19-year-old woman. As a father, I
think of her as still just a girl in some ways.”
Despite his fatherly instincts, the premier
said he could not second-guess a judge,
but the publicity helped her get out of jail
quickly.
The premier was asked what it means to be
poor in Ontario and replied “my grandmother
grew up poor. She was a single mother
with a limited education and five kids to
feed.”
Poverty for his grandmother meant lack of
opportunity, he said, and for her children the
way out was education and this is one reason
he has focused on improving opportunities for
schooling.
The leaders of the opposition Progressive
Conservative and New Democratic parties
were asked the same question and neither
mentioned his own family.
McGuinty brought up all his children when
asked what exercises he does and why. He said
he works out not only for his own health, “but
also because I’ve got four kids and it’s a habit
I’d like to pass on to them.”
The premier once mentioned five members
of his family in a single breath, when he
launched a campaign urging residents to
switch off electricity to save that featured a
slogan, FLICK, with its letters designed
so it looked more like an obscene four-letter
word.
McGuinty said his mother might complain,
but such a sharp-edged appeal might reach out
to younger residents like his four children in
their 20s.
McGuinty had been set on becoming known
as “the education premier,” and his ministers
often described him as this, because he
increased funds for education and built up an
amicable relationship with teachers that
helped prevent strikes.
But recently he has talked much more of his
aim to help families, working families and
low-income families, who are a much larger
group.
McGuinty designated a new annual statutory
holiday, Family Day, saying time off together
is the most valuable commodity families can
have and ended night sittings of the
legislature, partly to help women MPPs with
children, and claims it is now “family
friendly.”
Most premiers have used their families to
look human and win votes. Mike Harris said
poignantly his two young sons wondered
why he could not be home more often and Bob
Rae said he worried more when one of his
children was sick than over any affair
of state.
William Davis featured his five photogenic
children on most of his election literature.
And now McGuinty is throwing his family
into the battle.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Astrong and well-constituted man digests
his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all
included) just as he digests his meats,
even when he has some tough morsels to
swallow.
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Life is about experiences, the everyday
familiar and comfortable, the unexpected and
surprising, the new and adventurous.
Now, I’m not an adventurous sort. I don’t go
looking for exciting new ways to entertain
myself or fill my time. But occasionally, even I
need to step away from the same old, same old
and try something just a little different. For no
reason other than, as I told my husband recently,
because I can.
At the heart of that discussion with my guy
was a visit with a clairvoyant. I don’t know
many women who haven’t been to see some
someone ‘psychical’ at some point in their life.
But I, at ripe (well, possibly even beginning to
over-ripen) middle-age am a novice. In all
honesty it had never been anything I really felt
compelled to do but when a convenient
opportunity presented itself, I thought, why not.
I consider myself to be open in a spiritual sense,
and admittedly curious.
And there was really nothing to lose, except
money. In light of all the people I knew who
have had a reading of some kind, it seemed odd
that I hadn’t done this.
So now I have. Just one more experience to
cross off the list.
As for whether I thought it was worth it I
won’t bore you with details. Suffice it to say it
gave me lots to think about. I am nothing if not
introspective and I have since pondered the
comments quite a bit, and my reaction to them.
But I have also been intrigued by a broader
perspective on this. The person who did my
reading is by all accounts quite busy. What is
the attraction? What are so many looking for?
And why are the majority women?
I asked a few friends their reasons. They were
varied but consistent in one theme, the openness
to the possibility. Yet most husbands treated
their wives’ accounts with the same sense of
bewildered acceptance they view much of the
feminine world, while others positively went
into an eye-rolling frenzy.
This is not to say that men don’t visit
psychics, it’s just that I’ve never met one who
has or has any interest in it. I can only draw
from personal experience in trying to discern a
reason for this. The majority of men I know see
the world in black and white. Things are, or they
are not. Men are comfortable with logic and
reasoning. Don’t cloud their world too much
with wondering what if, look instead to what is.
The women I know would all love to do that,
but unfortunately their world is full of grey.
Things may be or should be. There are a number
of things to consider, endless possibilities that
exist for any given situation. Nothing is certain
when there are variables to factor in.
So I came up with some answers to my earlier
questions. They are based simply on personal
observation and thought. As well, I accept that
there are exceptions to every rule.
I think it’s easier for women to open
themselves to the possibility of things they
don’t or can’t understand. I think they are more
likely to look to the spiritual for answers and
find entertainment in experiences that do.
Of course it could be something much less
complex. Perhaps it’s just that women can get
away with a lot of experiences men can’t
because they don’t have to worry if their
buddies will give them a rough time.
McGuinty seeks family image
The greatest mistake you can make in life is
to be continually fearing you will make
one.
– Elbert Hubbard
Final Thought