Running a Small Country

Somehow, I missed the memo on Nunavut, and my globe ended up broken. However, there is a silver lining. You get to learn some geography.

April is about to start, which means it’s time for the A- Z blog challenge. This was a blog post challenge in 2010 by J. Lenni Dorner and friends. The requirement is to write 26 posts using letters of the alphabet. People interpret that different ways, but my way is to pick a single theme, then cover them all within the month of April. The hard part is always Q, J, Z, and X. I’m going to cheat on X; I’ll warn you in advance.

I wasn’t sure if I was up to the challenge for this, my seventh year in a row. I’ve loved doing it since 2020. I’ve learned a lot (hope you have too), and it kick-started a book-writing career for me. Olympics, Accounting, Silk Road, didn’t we have fun on Ancient Inventions last year? How could I not? You can even peruse prior years in the menu above.

On the other hand, I’m writing a book (see the “Holiday” widget on the site), and it’s due in the summer. I’m still volunteering at two tax sites, and we’re about to leave on a vacation for the last half of the month. Do I dare? I don’t have time for this…But the thing about writing is that it begets more writing. So let’s do it!

Here’s my pledge to myself: 300 words or less. For the A to Z posts themselves, not counting this one. Can I do it? Maybe with a little “facts” thrown on the side and some pre-planning. My posts are usually six or seven times longer, so that’s a hard challenge, but I will make time to be brief. Here we go!

My A-Z 2026 theme: SMALL COUNTRIES.

What and Why? Read on.

I Dropped the World

Last week, we were catching up on back episodes of the Jeopardy Invitational—yes, we’re two months behind, so no spoilers! They had a rather hard geography question about Northern Canada, and I missed it because I did not remember parts of the Northwest Territory being renamed Nunavut. Canadians, I apologize; it was all the way back in 1999.

Geography has always been a trivial Achilles heel for me and KK. We were on a progressive trivia team once, meaning five games, and we came in second because we could not get the capital cities for Uganda and Belarus. Yes, Kampala and Minsk, I know that NOW.

Planning to look for Nunavut, I got my world globe off the mantelpiece, and, as I carried it over to the table, it slipped it out of my hands and bounced on the floor. The globe is fragile, people! It broke off its stand and went hurtling through space… thankfully, the gravitational force kept it…. Well, on the ground. Earth’s gravity saved Earth, hooray! Not exactly, though. It’s really not useful off the stand, which was plastic and broken.

But it was clearly a sign!

As I was thinking about Small Countries as a theme, I remembered a description KK had ascribed to a business colleague, who said of the administrator: She just needs a small country to run. I know a few people like that. Do you?

The World Has Changed

As it happens, this globe was kind of old. All globes age. My first instinct—because, as you know, I like facts, I’m an “um actually…” kind of person—was that I had been using wrong information for a while. My globe was out of date, in so many ways. Flawed!

Looking closely, I noticed that it didn’t even have South Sudan carved out, let alone Nunavut. What a howling error! Then, I started to think, wouldn’t I have to buy a new globe every year or so to keep up? This one was so old it still had Yugoslavia. Yes, kids that was a giant country that is now divided: Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia & Herzo–, I’ll write etc. so I don’t have to look up all the countries that used to be Yugoslavia.

But really the idea of a stable map, that snapshot of the land at a moment in time, gives a false impression. Boundaries are not stable. We know they are not. You know, for instance, that streets in your municipality are regularly rerouted, two lanes made to three, three lanes to two with a bike lane, and so on. If they can repave and repaint the streets frequently Here, they can surely redraw the country divisions over There. And often do.

Unless you’re teaching Geography, you can’t really afford to replace your globe every few years. In fact, I did an inventory of my fact-based stuff, and it turns out that I had three globes, two world maps, and a globe puzzle. (Plus, wow, maps of Europe, the Pacific Ocean, US Water systems…. I’m literally swimming in maps. But somehow still can’t remember the capital of Belarus. Minsk. Minsk.)

However, all of my world maps are out of date. They always will be. I resolved not to beat myself up about it. The key may be to know what is wrong. My broken globe at least had a Kazakhstan, which means it was post USSR, which means post 1991.

Check Your South Sudan

My old globe, which now needs replacing, was also light-colored. I also happen to have a dark colored one with shades of pink. As I was scrolling through choices, I wondered if there were any political biases behind the color scheme. It turns out probably not.

There is, however, a key theory called the Four-Color Map Theorem. It says that you only need four colors to produce a map where all countries or regions which touch can be separated by color. That doesn’t seem possible to me, but apparently there’s a lot of math and computer power behind it, and I do play games which you solve with four colors, so I suppose it must be true. My new globe will not be beige or pink, though. It’s going to be brightly-colored so I can see it across the room when I am playing Worldle. That’s a great game to practice geography. (By the way, according to the website photo, the new globe will say Gulf of Mexico, not that other label. Remember that? Geography is malleable.)

In the meantime, if you want to see if a map or globe you have is current, check your South Sudan. Sudan split off about 15 years ago. The split-off of Kosovo and Montenegro from Serbia happened in 2006/8 and East Timor or Timor-Leste was created in 2002. My black/pink globe doesn’t have South Sudan, but it does have Montenegro and East Timor, so it was created somewhere between 2006 and 2011. Boundaries are time-stamped.

Where in the World Do they Study Geography?

Americans don’t know much about Geography, neither our own fifty states or the other 195 countries. I know that I never had a specific class in it. We talked about other countries, but teachers didn’t really emphasize memorizing countries. KK says she had it, but missed whole sections on Europe and Asia. We both went through quality schools, ones that taught cursive and eighth grade Algebra and Huckleberry Finn without redacting and all that. But Geography somehow went out of favor in the U.S. school system, somewhere in the 1960s I think.

Oh, we had something. Hit or miss by the Social Studies teachers. I, luckily, had a sixth grade teacher that made us memorize all the countries in Africa. They do keep changing, so my long-term memory is no longer current. But I made up a song… Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Spanish Sahara, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Sudan. Works really well around the northern border countries, then I get lost in the middle. Yes, I know it’s not Spanish Sahara any more. Wait until letter “W,” it’s a fascinating story! Morocco has mined around the border–we’ll get into it around April 25 or so. Anyway, this proves that whatever you learn when you’re around ten, you can still remember fifty years later. I can’t remember what I did five minutes ago or yesterday, but my home phone number as a child was BR2-4282.

I never studied South America, though, or Europe so I have no idea where Ecuador is, sorry to my friend from Ecuador. I know NOW because I have diligently been playing Worldle, as I mentioned. My son was playing it, and I couldn’t have him know more than me, though he does, clearly, being a scientist. His brain is also 30+ years younger, unfair advantage. Still, after two years of daily practice and study, I do know where East Timor is. And Svalbard, which is one that Worldle likes to trick you with.

There are a few states that teach an actual Geography class (not just cover a little Geography in Social Studies). Ironically, these are southern states that also just might be teaching Creationism and have been purging libraries, so who knows what kind of Geography they’re learning?

I read that the reason Americans don’t teach much Geography include “curriculum overcrowding” and “stereotyped content,” i.e., biased comments about other people who live elsewhere. As to the first, if you don’t know Where, you can’t really know What. You have to make time for dull things like 2+2 and where the Strait of Hormuz is. See why you want to learn Geography? As to the second reason, you need to learn where things are, but not necessarily about who lives there and what they export. We still don’t spend enough time on the Where. Many other countries mandate Geography. It’s boring. But necessary.

Andorra First…

So that’s why I’m going to take on Small Countries. Not all countries. There are 195 at last count, and that would take half a year. Besides, you know where Brazil is, don’t you? *checks globe, yep, right there* I picked 26 small countries because the big ones get too much limelight. I did get my Majel Barrett (my AI) to help me choose a few.

A will start with Andorra… but actually, I’m going to preempt myself, briefly. My game, my rules. Before we start on April 1, I’m going to start with my little “country,” my town of Castro Valley. I thought it would be fun to learn a little about where I live so that we can compare. How big is Andorra, compared with my town? Who lives there? What do they do? And what’s interesting about it?

I bet you can guess “V” already, if you watch Jeopardy.