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A rose by any other name... North Dakota: Non Compass Mentis?By Rick Horowitz And friends (cue the flags and the patriotic anthems), that's what's so great about this great country of ours: If we don't like something, we don't just whine about it. We take action! We don't like stumbling around in a dark closet trying to find exactly the right necktie? No problem -- somebody invents the illuminated, motorized tie rack. We don't like sneezing every time we walk into a room filled with felines? Not to worry -- somebody's already hard at work trying to create the genetically altered, non-allergenic cat. We don't like what people think about the state we're in? Well, that depends on the state. Consider North Dakota. This isn't something you do very often, I realize. I mean, once you've squeezed your brain hard enough to remember that the capital of North Dakota is Bismarck, and marveled at how exciting it must be to live in a state whose capital has the same name as a herring... Lawrence Welk came from North Dakota, the almanac says. (I have no reason to doubt it.) And Angie Dickinson. And Phil Jackson. The state bird is the western meadowlark. The state song is "North Dakota Hymn." Need a minute to catch your breath? Anyway: Some people in North Dakota believe that what their state needs right about now is an image makeover. And that the way to do that is to change its name. They want to get rid of "North." They want to be, simply, "Dakota." Need a minute to stop giggling? "The word sometimes just gives people a bad perception," says Roger Reierson, who's chairman of North Dakota's chamber of commerce. And from Ed Schafer, a former North Dakota governor (but you knew that, didn't you?): "People have such an instant thing about how North Dakota is cold and snowy and flat." The ex-gov is being much too hard on the old home place. I've actually been to North Dakota, and I didn't find it cold and snowy at all. Of course, I was there in August. I wouldn't vouch for it in December -- or, for that matter, July. I didn't even find it flat. In fact, I remember spending some perfectly elevated time -- some of the quietest outdoor minutes I've ever spent in my life, as it happens -- on a camping trip in North Dakota, looking out across mile after mile of gorgeous emptiness from the top of some ridge. Of course that was years ago. Maybe there's been erosion. But certainly not from millions of tourist and investor feet tromping across the state, that's for sure. And that's a problem. But it's always been a problem, which is why the de-Northifying movement bubbled up way back in the 1940s, and again in the 1980s. It didn't get anywhere. Is the third time the charm? I wouldn't hold my frosted breath. So it gets a trifle brisk up there in wintertime -- is changing the name going to change the thermometer? Not a dot. If "North" were the hang-up, North Carolina would be renting out long johns instead of beach houses. It isn't doing any such thing. So what about poor North Dakota? Is it just supposed to sit there, underheated and underappreciated? Probably. It's practically un-American, I know, not to take matters into your own hands, not to reinvent yourself as often as necessary to give you the stature you so richly deserve. But I'm thinking the old Jimmy Buffett song had it about right: "changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes." Unless those folks can come up with a U-Haul big enough and strong enough to drag the whole state -- lock, stock and Dinosaur Museum -- a thousand miles closer to the equator, they're pretty much out of luck, climatological-image-wise. Although South Saskatchewan has a certain ring to it... Posted 6/28/01. It's
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Rick Horowitz
