What's in a Notice? by Ken Gibbs

For most of us, our names stay with us for life and for ever thereafter. Imagine referring to someone by a different name from the one with which he/she/they were invested at birth, when they die ? The mind boggles – imagine the size of the Excel Worksheet necessary to record such changes especially if aliases should be included ?

As has been said for a very long time, the only certainties in life are “Birth, death and taxes”. Actually, that isn’t strictly accurate as the quote or something akin to it are alleged to have come from Margaret Mitchell’s novel, ‘Gone with the Wind’ (1936) or from Benjamin Franklin who was credited with saying that “nothing is certain but death and taxes" in 1789.

One wonders whether the American administration is aware of this fact ? Their grip on geography appears to be somewhat shaky going on the 10% tariff that was to be ‘levied’ on Heard Island and MacDonald Islands (HIMIs) which are inhabited only by penguins and seals.

Now, if the tariffs didn’t work there, then should the place(s) be re-named to make it/them sound more credible or official ? I don’t think this would receive anyone’s ‘seal of approval’, do you ?

As everyone knows, the Caribbean Islands mostly can be found in the Gulf of Mexico.  But because a certain American couldn’t find it in his atlas, he thought that renaming it as ‘The Gulf of America’, might make it easier for him to find. Memory or vanity ? Does he really expect all users of Google/Apple Maps in the USA to ‘believe’ in such a name change ? Unlikely.

Now, the President of the United States of America, like all humans before him and after him, too, has a limited life span, so that when he finally dies much of what he did during his lifetime will be forgotten. As has happened with virtually all autocrats before him.

Now we have the renaming – apparently without Constitutional authority – of ‘Lake Ontario’ as ‘Lake America’. If he is planning on renaming every water body which touches the USA, he’s got many declarations to make before completing it; to what end, one wonders ? Will it include what is currently known throughout the world as ‘The Niagara Falls’ ? And how will he handle the other Great Lakes ? Lake America 2, Lake America 3, etc., etc. ?

Whatever the case, he had best hurry as it seems the mid-term elections might change the balance of power – and where would that leave him ? Perhaps his motto ‘MAGA’ will return to haunt him because many would like to ‘Make America Great Again’ especially through Democratic wins in the House of Representatives and the Senate. 

When, finally, common sense is allowed to prevail again, it’s nice to know that a reversion to the historically assigned names for ‘The Gulf of Mexico’ and ‘Lake Ontario’ will be restored by the flip of a software switch to what was there originally. No need to buy new atlases. One of the few advantages of our, modern, electronic world ?