What's in a Name?

My first two posts were about my struggles with a name for my blog. BlogoaurusRex would have been nice but it is owned by a philosophy major in Florida. I just came too late to the Blogosphere. Alas.

So I named my blog "The Ohoopee Letter News". TOLN, as it is called by its aficianados, was a short lived publication in the early to mid-nineties with a circulation of about four. It was begun by me in an effort to keep up with and make fun of my former college roommates. I think I published about four or five of them. If I can ever figure out a way to open the ancient files, I will post some of the better stories here.

The name of the original TOLN is based upon this river:

This beautiful river is the Ohoopee River in south-central Georgia. Lovely ain't it? What it doesn't show is the swarm of nose-gnats and ear-gnats or the 98-degree heat with 99-percent humidity. I went to college at Georgia Southern University. It was a long drive from Atlanta to GSU. The drive was made tortuous by the mind-numbingly boring I-16. The stretch from Macon to the GSU exit seemed to go on and on and on. The only thing to break the monotony was an occasional dead animal (usually unidentifiable) or a broken down Hyundai Excel (usually mine). Fortunately, I often rode with one of my roommates. We would find things to amuse ourselves. The purchase of a 20oz Coke and some kind of chocolate was enough to keep us awake (though it did prove an environmental hazard). About the time our sugar buzzes and caffeine highs were wearing off, dementia began to set in, and we had to talk whoever was driving from ramming the car at 70 mph into the four millionth pine tree we drove by. Then we would see it: the bridge over the beautiful Ohoopee River. It was a sign that we were nearing our exit! I am not sure how the tradition started, but we began to chant "Ohoopee, Ohoopee, Ohoopee" every time we crossed the bridge (I think it had to do with an old Indian tradition). Everyone in the vehicle had to participate, and the chanting had to continue all of the way across the bridge.

There was another reason I choose the name "Ohoopee". There was a much darker motive. A reason no one has heard until today. I had aspirations of being a writer during my days at GSU. I took a creative writing class and submitted poems to the college poetry journal. They rejected my poems. It made me bitter. The name of the journal was...The Ogeechee Review. It was named after another south Georgia river. I figured that I could sure show them by starting my own showcase for writing and using a name that parodied their name! Obviously, I was not very astute at revenge, but the Ohoopee lives on and where is the Ogeechee Review? So there. (And the editors here only occasionally reject my pieces).

As far as the "Letter News" part of the name, it is simply the reversal of "newsletter".

The Ogeechee River or an open sewer?

In keeping with the confessional nature of this piece, here is the poem I submitted:

Muliebrity

Cool freshwater tears
Melt out of not-blue icebergs,
Eroding a trough through
Base and not-cherry red cheeks.
Gravity-bent lips frown
And "words 'words' words":
Signs blowing a minty wind
Which would better fit
the other end.

By the way, muliebrity means "the essence of woman." I know, I had a bitterness problem.

Peace