Month: June 2023

What’s in a Name? America’s Native and Spirit Names

On By marmietedwardsIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

What’s in a Name?

My natural curiosity awakens when I stop to think about unusual names. But I haven’t thought about those I come across daily when I walk, drive into town, or cross streets and rivers. Where I live carries a raft of history—past and present– and I bet the same is true for you. These hot days give us time to slow our roll and investigate. (See what chilling Americans coast-to-coast are drinking to reduce the temperature.)

What’s your Spirit Name? Check this out.

Austin, now known here as “the music capitol” of America, owes its name to a Virginia-born man, Stephen F. Austin. If his father had not died prematurely, he might not have taken the lead in populating the edge between Mexico and Texas. Austin led a group of settlers onto Mexican land that, in his lifetime, became Texan. He became bold and spent two years in prison in Mexico after telling Texans to declare their freedom BEFORE negotiate with the Mexican government were complete. Of course his imprisonment turned Austin against Mexico and towards the US. In the end, Sam Houston defeated him to be president of the new republic, but Austin served briefly as Texas Secretary of State until his death in 1836 from pneumonia

            Austin could be a modern man, at least in his wish for Texas, February 6, 1835:

I hope that a dead calm will reign all over Texas for many years to come— And that there will be no more excitements of any kind whatever.  Steve F. Austin                                     

Without “excitements,” would it be Austin?

Maybe Austin is so named, because it is smaller than Houston. (😊) Kidding aside. Austin led colonization of Texas, when it was still Mexican territory and represented Mexico up until 1835 prior to the Mexican-American War. Then he led one battle before handing the reigns over to Sam Houston, knowing his military ability, and lost an election to him to preside over the new republic. But Austin became Secretary of State, a role that fit him well.

Austin knew his strength to be in diplomacy and convincing others to join the cause, whether becoming a settler or joining the war. He drew crowds and soldiers for the Texas cause in New Orleans and Memphis on his way to Washington to gain federal support in 1835. Never healthy after contracting malaria years earlier, he contracted pneumonia and died in 1836 at 44.

Today, I take the name Texas for granted, though there are times when I’d instead rely on my former residence in Virginia or Indiana as my heritage. Texas is a vast, diverse state that pulls me into discovery mode. I learned that Texas is one of 26 U.S. states with Native American names.

A Spaniard, Alonso Alvarez de Pineda, not a name I remember from school, is credited as being the first European explorer to map the Gulf of Mexico and likely started the competition that brought Europeans to what would become Texas. He didn’t get the bragging rights to the state. Instead, the state’s name came from the Caddo tribe (taysha maybe?), meaning “friend.”

I want to think the bad blood between the explorers, the native population, and Caddo ancestors began later. Initially, the tribes and the early settlers had something in common—survival—and worked together. I see how the heat today makes some of us combine forces to exist in a place much warmer than we ever thought it would be. But tempers can also flare as the temperature rises if we do not check ourselves. (Maybe while Texans spend their weekends inside chilling at 70-78 degrees, they might consider a day of camaraderie and maybe sip a libation listed near the end—to take the temperature down a couple of points—to help the energy grid from bursting again!)

You might be surprised if you come from the other 22 states named by Indigenous people. I’ll list some states here and let you check out this site for others:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_place_names_of_Native_American_origin_in_the_United_States

Alabama          Alibamu tribe, Creek Confederacy                 “clears the thicket”

Alaska             Alakshak                                                         “peninsula”

Idaho               Comanche                                                       “Idahi”

                        Shoshone  “ee-dah-how”                                “Good Morning”

Kentucky                                                                     “meadow lands” “dark and bloody ground”

Mississippi       Choctaw                                              “Great Water” or “Father of Waters”

New Mexico    Mertili                                                              Aztec god

Ohio                Iroquois                                                           “beautiful”

Tennessee        Cherokee   Tanasi                                            “river of the great bend”

Wisconsin        “Wishkonsing”                                                “place of the beaver”

Indigenous people roamed this vast continent before Spanish and French explorers visited the Gulf Coast in the 15th century. Being a Midwesterner originally, I learned the names of maybe a dozen northern tribes and the notorious Apache, Comanche, and Cherokee I learned from television. I did not realize more than 58 named tribes, representing probably a fraction of those who wandered the lower 48 pre-American history and are yet to be unearthed.

Some of the names carry humor today like Chicago, which the Potomi named “checaugou” which translates to “wild onions,” but others called “field of garlic,” which might have been prized then, but carry an acquired scent today. Another name seems to link the present with the past: New Orleans, “Malbanchia,” a place for foreign languages,” in an area that drew all the explorers and today hosts 17 railroads and people from every nation on earth for the food, music, and the culture. New York’s Manna hata, “island of the hills.” Maybe some of the hills were leveled to create the foundation for all those skyscrapers or maybe “hills” refers to the heights above the city that would be much easier to see without thousands of tall buildings.

Whatever the case, the past gives us plenty to investigate. At the same time, we can sip ubiquitous Arnold Palmers, Kentucky Mint Juleps, Long Island Iced Tea, New Orleans Hurricanes, Nebraska’s Red Beer, and Floridian Mojitos. Here’s the recipe for California’s Date Shakes:

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1013314-california-date-shake/

Stay cool and enjoy the summer. There’s still plenty to come.

On Voting: The Constitution Says?

On By marmietedwardsIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

                Before you get carried away, this does not reflect the evening’s news that’s flooding the airwaves about another indictment. Instead, I’m referring to a Supreme Court 5-4 decision Thursday morning reaffirming the remaining powers of the 1965 Act and finding Alabama’s 2022 political maps to be unconstitutional. We’re talking about the right to vote. If you thought the Constitution guaranteed it, read on.

Alabama’s newly outlined maps roped minority voters into one Congressional District. These maps freed the state’s six other districts to be majority GOP while 40 percent of the voters are Black.

Thursday’s Allen v. Mulligan decision is surprising because Chief Justice Roberts expressed his skepticism about the Voting Rights Act in 22013 when he wrote the opinion in a North Carolina case that took the heart out of the Act. Times change, and now we see a justice’s opinion might flip as well. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote a voting rights opinion for the Court in 2011 that weakened the law’s authority over polling rules that reduced the clout of minority voters. 

The actual shock in preparing this blog? I wanted to point to the Constitution or the Bill of Rights as a sign that all American citizens have a right to vote. But it’s not there.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which carried this ruling, outlaws voting practices that deny minority voters equal voice at the polls. This includes writing political maps that skew the vote and dilute minority voters’ power. Bernard Grofman, an election-law scholar at the University of California, Irvine, and Bryan L. Sells, a Georgia lawyer who was a special litigator of voting-rights cases in the Justice Department from 2010-2015, both consider this to be a strong decision.

A lawyer friend pointed out that Supreme Court Justices may have considered public opinion weighing against them during consideration of the Alabama case, despite our hopes and their claims that the law is always behind their decisions. The Supreme Court in March 2023 had a 31% favorability rating on Statista, with many of the justices hovering around 20%, only Sotomayor at around 40%, and Thomas at 27% rose above. Could this have encouraged Judge Roberts and others to take another look at the legal precedent? (This rating came before the revelation of Thomas’s free round-the-world travel from a conservative donor).

To put the current standing of the right to vote in perspective, for all of us: In 2021, legislators saw the largest turnout of voters since 1900, panicked, hearing claims of voter fraud screamed from yelled about from nearly every cable channel, and missed something. Mail-in votes, which many states have had without incidence for several years, provided a welcome convenience to elderly, disabled, and working-from-home round-the-clock parents. They took to it in droves. But some elected politicians feared an increase in voters rather than applauding it. Inspired by the big lie of stolen elections or using it as a ruse to tighten the rolls, 19 states passed 34 new laws that make voting harder, but they tended to target Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans.

In the Supreme Court redistricting case, Alabama provided a defense against their maps being biased that left more than a few scratching their heads. The state held that the Voting Rights should be repealed and replaced with a race-blind approach that would remove racial equality and access to the polls. A decision to abandon the Voting Rights Act could return us to the time in 1965 when just three blacks held statewide office among 11 former Confederate states and just 6.7% of the Blacks in Mississippi were registered to vote. Now, 300 Blacks hold statewide offices, and 60% of Mississippi Blacks are registered to vote, but the job is not complete. The Act in addition to Blacks also supports Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native American citizens in ensuring their right to vote.

The Cook Report, an unbiased analysis of previous and upcoming elections, reviewed the 2022 campaigns and found races in Alabama would be more competitive after this decision. A voting rights case in South Carolina, expected to come before the Court, could also impact races in Louisiana and South Carolina, among others where political maps require review for political bias.

Chief Justice Roberts will have another chance to consider the Voting Rights Act when SC NAACP v. Alexander, a different redistricting case, reaches the Supreme Court this term. Let’s hope he looks at the precedence set by a 1964 decision by Justice Earl Warren, Reynolds v. Sims, that set the precedent that every vote has an equal value.

It turns out the Founders were just as afraid to extend the vote as some legislators today fear fairly mapping out voting districts or planning to ease the voting process today. (Example: Republican Congress fails to support mail-in voting nationwide. But it will likely be a tropical day in Antarctica before a Republican Congress agrees to extend the vote). To help remedy the omission of voting rights in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, Democrats introduced a bill to make it a federal law for American citizens to have the right to vote. (The GOP-dominated Congress never allowed it to be considered in House committee, much less scheduled it for a vote). America could be brought up to date and make reality the words:

“All men (and women) are created equal (and if a citizens over 18), you have the right to vote and have it count.”

Let your Member of Congress know you support S 2747, Freedom to Vote Act, granting a statutory right to vote, introduced by Senator Klobuchar on 10/20/2021.