[Magdalen] Speaking of unfortunate names

[Joseph Cirou]

Probably wavy  (HI Brud)

Joe


-----Original Message-----
>From: Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com>
>Sent: Jun 1, 2016 11:51 AM
>To: "magdalen at herberthouse.org" <magdalen at herberthouse.org>
>Subject: Re: [Magdalen] Speaking of unfortunate names
>
>And speaking of high schools with weird names, there is, or was, a rural
>high school "up nort" somewhere in Wisconsin called Ondossagon. There isn't
>a town by that name, so I'm not quite sure where it is. One year back
>before they divided the state high school basketball tournament into
>classes by size, the "cinderella" team happened to be the one from
>Ondossagon, leading one of the sportswriters in Madison to quip, "Just what
>kind of geometric figure is an ondossagon?"
>
>On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 11:34 AM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen <
>magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> In a message dated 6/1/2016 10:45:32 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
>> jay.weigel at gmail.com writes:
>>
>> Brud's  mention of Rush City reminded me of the high school near where a
>> friend  used to live. It used to be the consolidated high school of
>> Galesville and  Ettrick, Wisconsin, and was known as Gale-Ettrick. It was
>> around when I was  in high school, even. Sometime in the 1970s it swallowed
>> up the high school  in nearby Trempealeau and became
>> Galesville-Ettrick-Trempealeau, or, Lord  forgive us all,
>> Gale-Ettrick-Tremplo. It was abbreviated and known by  students far and
>> wide
>> as G.E.T.  High.>>>>>>>>
>>
>> Trempealeau County is named for the cone shaped "mountain," part
>> of the Mississippi bluff region in the so called "Driftless Area," an  area
>> never glaciated and therefore characteristically rugged for the Upper
>> Midwest.  The French stands for "mountain steeped in water."
>>
>> The County is just south of Eau Claire, and when we traveled down
>> Wis 93, we were always trying to spot the terminal moraine of
>> the last glaciation about 15,000 years ago.
>>
>> My maternal side family is in this region, centered on Eleva, but
>> also in Independence and Blair (where I get my lefse).  My  namesake
>> and godchild, David Pedersen and family have a home on one of the
>> sharp bluffs near Eleva with a view that could as well be in the
>> Appalachians.  The difference is that this is rich farm country,  and
>> the valleys are heavily farmed.  Another of my cousins is one of  a
>> group of four farmers that shepherd as many as 800 Holsteins.
>>
>>
>> David Strang.
>>
>>
>>