That’s hilarious!
Among the students I teach human geography to (here in Wisconsin, USA), the opposite is much more common – only some are aware that there IS a significant (and geographically concentrated) francophone population in Canada.
Thanks for finding time between your three square meals a day at Casa Bonita and cannabis-snow scrub spa treatments in Aspen to make a list for us.
And nor is it largely some kind of scrub desert with cacti and tumbleweeds like the popular imagination would have you believe.
The eastern third is predominantly pine forest, the Hill Country is hilly, the western part does have some desolate terrain and the panhandle is essentially Great Plains. The rest is mostly coastal plains and rolling grasslands.
In general most of the state, and especially the highly populated parts are a long way from the Texas that Hollywood portrays.
Wasn’t that the place where the rivers caught on fire back in the 70s? Or is that my misunderstanding about Cleveland. 
I learned from you in another thread, that Luxemborgian is a language. I never knew. I guess I thought you spoke German or Flemish or something.
I went to college in Maryland at the time when DC still had a low drinking age. I remember getting carded and being asked where my New Jersey accent was. I was like it’s right here. This is how we talk. The Joisey accent is confined to a very small area close to NYC. My cousins who lived on Staten Island had a very strong accent. I lived 30 miles away and sounded like I was from another country. The northern part of the state has mostly a pretty neutral northern American accent. Some of the vowels are slightly closer to New York than neutral. I tell people to contrast the voice of real Bergen County native James Gandolfini to fictional Bergen County resident Tony Soprano.
What people don’t take into account is how many in New Jersey have what I would consider a Philly/Delco accent. We visited my wife’s cousin near Atlantic City. We could have been talking to Mare of Easttown.
You joke, and I did say exaggerated, not wrong, so, while I personally don’t indulge, I did roll my eyes a few years back when my wife was in Telluride Colorado for an academic conference and I saw the hotel offering massage with reiki and jewel therapy options.
As for an Aspen Cannabis spa treatment… you’re not wrong:
Although AFAIK none of them combine snow with it yet, although many advise it to recover from a day on the ski slopes!
(Nudge: “Luxembourgish.”)
The saguaro forests near Tucson are awesome!
Thanks!
DC Metro area. We follow politics as a matter of existential necessity. If the wrong President ticks off the wrong foreign entity, the resulting bombs are coming to my back yard. I have known this since I was four years old.
And while different people will accept this with varying levels of apathy or denial, deep down we are all vigilant whenever things heat up.
That’s why the blood drains from my face when I look at your home town newspaper which doesn’t acknowledge the existence of the State Department or even Congress. How will you know when to skedaddle?
The other day I watched a YouTube video where two Brits* discuss the things that surprised them about America. At one point (about 8:12) in the video one of them refers to San Francisco as “the far north of California”, which tells me he still hasn’t grasped just how big California is. Yes, it’s “northern” California, but far from the far north – there’s still a whole lot more California north of San Francisco. If someone said “the far north” I’d assume they were talking about Crescent City or maybe Eureka/Arcata.
I’m guessing he figured out that San Francisco is far away from Los Angeles, because he drove between the two cities. So since SF is that far north of LA, it must be the far north. Surely California doesn’t extend much farther north than that (Actually, it still takes about 6 hours to drive from SF to the Oregon border).
*One of them is a Scot, but Scotland is on the Island of Great Britain so I assume it’s still correct to call him a Brit, right? Or is that something I don’t understand about Britain?
Scots have British passports but I would not casually refer to a Scot as a Brit to his face unless I knew he was okay with it. He might well be, as there is a range of opinion on the matter. But I wouldn’t assume.
But definitely hold your tongue on this in Northern Ireland.
To elucidate a little further. Great Britain is an island consisting of the countries Scotland, England and Wales. Liverpudlians would like to add “Scouse” to that but I get a bit lost there.
Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom, but it is not part of Great Britain, being a separate island shared with the Republic of Ireland. So no, the vast majority of NI will not appreciate being called British. Plus it’s just inaccurate.
Geopolitically, but not necessarily ethnically, correct. Those who voted against separation are likely to agree. It’s not a good risk to take though, because those who disagree may do so violently. And it was a verrrry close vote.
Nobody from Kansas has chimed in yet? OK, here we go.
Not all of Kansas is flat. The eastern third of the state is actually pretty hilly, and can be spectacular in places. Heck, eastern Colorado is flatter and uglier than eastern Kansas! It’s just that interminable drive between, say, Hays and Denver that has kids yelling “Are we there yet?” Because there’s a whole lot of nothing out west.
There’s not even a single nutjob in Alberta who thinks that? That’s a mighty strong claim. I’m not going to go through the complete works of Ezra Levant (for instance), but he’s used pretty strong language on occasion.
Oh, there are a few, I suppose. But nobody rises to the level of attending school board meetings and complaining about books like “Heather Has Two Mommies” in their kid’s school library. And if they do, they don’t make a big noise about it.
There are palm trees marking In-N-Out burgers. Which are also marked with lines extending out into the street.
They’re a landscaping choice. Which reminds me of back in '99. I went to traffic court in Lodi to turn in a fix-it ticket. I was early, and while we were all waiting for the courtroom doors to open, a street palm tree in front of the court building dropped a big frond on top of someone’s truck and dented the roof.
The lobby where we were waiting had big windows on the street, so the truck’s owner got to see and hear it happen. That was not his day.
On the other hand, there were witnesses that the city tree did it.
About where I live - Stockton is close enough to the San Joaquin River that we get the Delta Breeze in the evening. The Delta Breeze starts in the Bay Area, blows up the Sacramento River, across the California Delta (where the Sacramento River meets the San Joaquin River and turns toward the Bay) and up both the Sacramento and the San Joaquin Rivers. It brings cooler air. You can feel when it hits your area.
Why is it called the California Delta? Look it up. Count the “islands”. It’s a triangular braiding of interconnected rivulets. Oh, and a lot of the “islands” are below water level and surrounded by levees.
Every place is the center of the world.
We’re one of the places people are going to skedaddle to.
– I don’t think anybody else has stepped in yet to say this:
New York State is not New York City.
Not only is most of the state not in the city – most of the state is not in any city. Or any suburb, either. New York State has wilderness; and a whole shitload of farms. We’re second in the nation for apple production, third for dairy, and produce a fair chunk of nearly anything you name that can be grown where it sometimes freezes.
And once you get out of the cities we also have a lot of Republicans. Some of them more reasonable than others.
But most of the population is. True in most states.
Washington DC is an actual city. It’s not just the Federal Government. There are bus drivers, school teachers, tech workers, bartenders, etc.