today I learned that there’s a town in Quebec where a bunch of people grow giant pumpkins, and on one very special day a year, cut them up, empty them, and use them as a canoe. then have a race. a pumpkin race. it’s even called ‘the potirothon’, from potiron (pumpkin) and marathon.
i’ll never understand why we don’t call countries the names they actually call themselves
like, i know this is a weeaboo-sounding example, but let’s start with Japan. They call themselves Nippon or Nihon depending on… i guess, the speaker’s accent??? or their level of formality while speaking??? I dunno. But we still called them Zipangu for like a few hundred years. And now we call them Japan.
All because Marco Polo asked someone in China about that island over there and they said “oh that’s Cipangu” and Marco Polo was like “Oh, Zipangu, cool.” And then he went back to Italy and said “Y’ALL THERE’S THIS DOPE-ASS ISLAND CALLED ZIPANGU” and people back in Italy were like “An island called Giappone? Dope.”
And this pattern of people mishearing people kept repeating until we got to “Japan.”
And we still call them Japan even though we know better. Because fuck you, Marco Polo asked the wrong person 500 years ago and misheard them and we’re sticking to that, I guess.
that was literally just the world’s worst game of telephone
99% Invisible just did a great piece on Sears and how they also functioned to equalize home ownership for people of color in America, because you could get A MORTGAGE AND A HOUSE through the mail. It’s called The House That Came In The Mail and it’s a wonderful history of Sears Roebuck homes as well.
Alexis 