Tampa Memorial Dinner   Two days ago we had here in Tampa the third and final memorial dinner for Beverly, following the Consignment to the Sea in New York and the Memorial Service and Reception in Minneapolis. We had a private room at Roy's, one in which Bev and I had dined and had been to a couple of wine tastings, so there was a connection. There were sixteen of us, people we know from Eden Bay in the Dominican Republic, who have watched it develop over the years. A few people had been to Roy's with us for Bev's birthday two years ago, but it was new to the others, and I think everyone enjoyed the dinner. In the beginning I read the Words for Beverly, as earlier. I was wondering which of the friends in the room had known Beverly the longest. In Minnesota it would have been easy, everyone's known her forever, but here, as I had figured it out, it wasn't me.

If you recall the story as I've told it, Bev and I met after dinner the first day of the Middlebury German School summer session in 1961. Making conversation, we asked who each other's roommates were in the dorms, and after Bev said Rita, I realized it was the same Rita I had known in the German Department at Queens College a few years earlier. But the new twist to that story is that, if that's the case, Rita would have met Bev a few hours before dinner that afternoon when everyone had first arrived. Therefore, the person at the Tampa dinner who had known Bev the longest was not me, it was, by a few hours, Rita, sitting next to me. They continued as roommates for the year at the University of Mainz that followed.

A series of interesting coincidences happened before and during the memorial dinner. My mail being forwarded from New York had been grossly delayed, but a large envelope arrived that afternoon. It included a nice condolence letter from one of Bev's colleagues from the 1960's, which I was then able to pass around the dinner table. But more important, the current issue of the rather slick Middlebury College Alumni Magazine, which comes out four times a year, was forwarded in this mailing. Over more than four decades, I'd leaf through the articles in this magazine and would review the obituaries toward the back. It did occur to me over time that one day, we'd be in there. As I suspected, in the back of this issue was Bev's obituary, right at the top of a page:

62 Beverly Johnson DiNapoli, 67, M.A. German (D.M.L. German '80), of Bedford, N.Y., on October 9, 2004. She is survived by husband Vincent DiNapoli (D.M.L. German '80).

The listing goes by the year you got your degree, so the Master of Arts was awarded in 1962, followed by the Doctor of Modern Languages in 1980. The only minor error is that they llisted Bedford as where she lived. Actually, that's where she worked. No problem, but it led to one of the coincidences.

The first coincidence is that the obituary arrived the day of the memorial dinner.

Then, I've mentioned that Christopher Reeve died the day after Beverly, October 10, of the same cause, organ failure due to infection. But I didn't know that he had been given an Honorary Degree from Middlebury. Apparently, his wife was a Middlebury alumna, and they both had been given honorary degrees last year and codelivered the commencement address. As it turned out, his half-column obituary is on the previous page, back-to-back with Beverly's.

The third coincidence is that Reeve lived in Bedford, N.Y., so the fact that Bev's place of work was listed for her seemed like it was meant to be.

Finally, at the dinner, it was noticed that, although his father used the name Reeve, both his mother and brother used her maiden name, which was Johnson.

I recently mentioned my growing involvement with "commercial friends". As I was showing some of our guests around the main part of the restaurant, including the open kitchen, Rand Packard, who is the Head Chef and one of the owners, saw me and reached over the counter to shake hands and offer condolences. He said the next time I come in he'd "take care of me". I'm not sure what he meant, but it sounds good. Unfortunately, it'll be a while until I'm back. After the main course was served, I asked the waiter if Rand could step into the room, at which point I introduced him to the group, and he went around and chatted a bit.

Continents   Going now in an entirely different direction, I want to use geography to make a point. There are traditional ways to look at things, and there are more logical contemporary, de facto ways to look at things. I am not necessarily urging the dropping of tradition; I feel there is a "dual reality" way of considering things where you can see both sides. Look at it the old way, and a new way, and accept both, according to needs.

Keeping that in mind, here's the statement I'm going to defend:

This will obviously involve a discussion of continents. Unless you have a photographic memory for geography, I'm sure an atlas or globe will be useful.

How many continents are there? Were you told seven in the third grade? Well, you can argue it that way. But how about six? Maybe even four? You often hear someone say "Everybody knows...." But maybe it's healthy to question what everybody supposedly knows. If nothing more, it makes for a good intellectual discussion.

We need a definition. What is a continent? Let's try this: A continent is an oversized island.

That definition easily gives us Australia and Antarctica. But an island has water on all sides. Sticking to this strict definition, the third continent is NorthAmerica-SouthAmerica and the fourth continent is Africa-Europe-Asia, for a total of four continents. But that's a rather useless way to look at it. Granted there are really only four land masses, but we have to go further: Where desirable, a very short border can be drawn across an isthmus to separate "Siamese twins".

This is an improvement, and it brings us first to Panama. The "very short border" between Panama and Colombia can now, by the extended definition, be considered the separation between North America and South America.

It is important, though to realize how arbitrary this decision is about Panama. You will recall that in the early 20th Century, Panama was not independent, but was the northernmost province of Columbia. When the French were trying to dig a canal, they were working in the Panama province of Columbia. Who knows, if they had been successful, Panama might never have become independent, and it might have been named the Colombia Canal.

When the Americans took over canal construction, you'll recall those stories about how they helped local insurgents break Panama province away to become independent.

Now consider this: while Panama was part of Columbia, right up to the First World War, where was the border between North America and South America considered to be? I don't know the answer to that, and since things have changed, the question is moot, but there are two possibilities. Perhaps for simplicity's sake, the border between Costa Rica and the Panama province of Columbia was it, in other words the present border between Costa Rica and Panama. If not, then Colombia would have had to have been considered to straddle two continents, like Turkey still does. My point is, these short land borders do depend on happenstance, and could be considered variable.

Next case: Egypt's Sinai Peninsula borders on Israel. This is the "very short border" that separates Africa from Asia. But consider this situation. During the Six-Day War, Israel invaded Egypt and occupied the Sinai Peninsula, right up to the Suez Canal on its western side. Israel left after a while, but let's consider this hypothetical case. What if Israel hadn't left, and what if the Suez Canal side of the Sinai Peninsula had become the new internationally recognized border between Israel and Egypt? Would the border between Africa and Asia have been considered to have moved? Or would that larger Israel have been considered to straddle two continents?

My point is, this very short border business to define continents is highly arbitrary, and could be considered moved where logic would demand. (More important below, long border differences have been, and should be, just as arbitrary.)

Anyway, the first part of our definition gives us Australia and Antarctica, and the second gives us North America, South America, and Africa, so far totalling five. But now it really gets interesting. What do we do with the huge area that's left?

Well, we can be brutally honest with ourselves and call it Eurasia, the sixth and final continent. As you know, I'm not the first to say so, and, although it sounds like something I'd love to have done, I didn't make the name Eurasia up.

But that's too brutally honest. Not only is Eurasia just too big to be considered one continent on a practical basis (even though it's true), a cultural factor comes into play here. The civilizations in Eurasia have always made a sharp distinction between The West and The East, and that has to be taken into consideration. One practical choice could be to call them Eurasia-West and Eurasia-East. That sounds like fun to me, and really comes closest to the truth, but let's break down and just call them Europe and Asia, even though those traditional names don't sufficiently emphasize their "Siamese" status, which is grossly more evident than at Panama or Sinai, where continents are barely "joined at the hip". To take care of this last situation, we need: For cultural reasons, Eurasia needs to be separated, which can only be done by a very, very long border.

So by "forcing" the issue, six actual continents can be considered seven. Ah, but the issue remains: where shall this very long border go? Where do West and East meet? Now we get down to the nitty-gritty. And now we look at the traditional answer, and decide if it works well for us today.

Water borders are always the most obvious, and Europe has water to the south. From the Mediterranean through the complex known as the Dardanelles/Sea of Marmara/Bosporus, we reach the Black Sea. As we do this, we pass through Turkey, which straddles Europe and Asia. You may recall last summer in Vienna when we discussed the Turks occupying Europe "to the gates of Vienna". That was the Ottoman Empire, which took in all the Balkans. That was the period when the Balkans were known as the Near East, including Romania, Albania, Greece. Land was eventually regained from the Turks, that is, all but Constantinople/Istanbul and the bit of land surrounding it, so that is the last remnant of Turkey in Europe, and it is indeed considered Europe. That's the basis why Turkey is trying to enter the European Union.

You must see the irony in regard to shifting definitions in Eurasia as to the "continental" border between Europe and Asia. If the Near East almost reached Vienna, well, then that was Asia right outside of Vienna. These "continental" borders do move, according to the whim of the times.

So from Gibraltar to the east end of the Black Sea we have water borders and no problem of defining Europe. But now two land borders come up. Between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea (a misnomer; it's not connected to the ocean and should be called the Caspian Lake) we have the Caucasus region, with part of Russia, plus Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. When these three were part of the Russian empire and then the USSR they were part of Europe. Now that they are independent, they could easily be counted as part of Asia, since they border Turkey and Iran. But there's no problem that tradition prevails here, and they continue to be counted as Europe.

The border between Russia and Kazakhstan, and therefore between Europe and Asia, leaves the Caspian to the north and bends around the westernmost part of Kazakhstan. Find that location on a map and I'll make my point. So far I've not mentioned any variation in the traditional concepts of where Europe is, because they all make sense, a fact that I've taken great pains to point out.

The core of historic Russia is in Europe, along with the other Slavic peoples, the Poles, Ukranians, and so on. Even when Russia was limited to this area it was the biggest country in Europe. There were constant invasions from the East, the Mongols, Tatars, Huns. You will remember that even the Hungarians (and Finns, and Estonians) were peoples from the East who invaded Europe and stayed. I've mentioned that Hungarian (and those others) are European languages only because they're physically located in Europe, not because they're related to any surrounding languages. They're related to Siberian languages.

At any rate, with invasions coming from the East, the Ural mountains were considered for centuries some sort of barrier, in some small way protecting Russians and others from these invasions. At that point, and for good reason, the Urals were also considered the border of Europe. But this makes no sense anymore.

Picture the American colonies clustered on the east coast of North America, and also the Canadian colonies such as Ontario. In both cases settlers went west, roads and finally railroads also went west until the US and Canada reached the Pacific. The area was sparsely settled, and indiginous peoples were assimilated.

Now picture the mirror image. Russian settlers crossed the Urals going east, the area was also sparsely settled, indiginous peoples were assimilated, roads were built, the Trans Siberian Railroad was built, and Russia, too, reached the Pacific. (And beyond, to Alaska, before retreating.)

People talk of East Asia, South Asia. No one ever uses the term North Asia. That's because no one thinks of the northern part of Eurasia as being Asia. With Russia having reached across the northern part of Eurasia to the Pacific, I say Europe has a Pacific coast.

Go back to the border we left in western Kazakhstan. Traditionally it now turns north through the Urals, cutting Russia in two. I say instead, it takes a de facto course to the east, between Russia and Kazakhstan-Mongolia-China to the Pacific.

Back to the dual reality I mentioned at the beginning. The traditional border of Europe is the Urals; the de facto border is the Pacific. The Urals made sense at a time when Russia ended there. Now the Pacific makes sense.

There's a French hotel chain called Accor hotels. Sofitel hotels are one of their brands. Their website shows a world map. If you want to check the Sofitel in Minneapolis, you click on North America, it gets highlighted, then moves to a hotel list.

I find it amusing when you click on Europe. The Europe that gets highlighed goes from Atlantic to Pacific, including all of Russia. Actually, it also includes all of Turkey. When one wants to show all one's hotels, one have a commercial reason to use a de facto map!

Asia   Before leaving the general topic of continents, it is worthwhile to discuss the terminology for Asia. Even with this re-definition of Europe, Asia still remains the largest continent, and names for the several regions of Asia assume that much more importance.

The word Orient, at best poetic, should be avoided. The term Oriental is considered demeaning, and many people don't recognize its opposite, Occident, anyway.

The term Far East is used, but is a foolish term in the 21st century. It used to be far by ship from Europe, but is no longer far. Anyway, when you're already there, why call it far?

The best term is clearly East Asia to talk about China, Korea, and Japan. The area around Viet-Nam has always been called Southeast Asia. Kazakhstan and others have always been Central Asia. Somewhat less frequent is South Asia, since most of it is India anyway, but the term is used, and is valid.

The situation for the final regional term we need appears in disarray. The Near East (describing the Balkans) is gone; it's back to being part of Europe. We're discounting the term Far East as explained above. But we seem to be stuck with the term Middle East. I don't think there's much that can be done about it. West Asia would be the logical term, but people very rarely say that. Also, the term West Asia is much more precise, covering Turkey through the eastern Mediterranean (Israel, Lebanon) and over to Iraq. The term Middle East is really quite vague. In my mind, it doesn't include Turkey, and I think most people feel Egypt and perhaps its neighbors are in the Middle East, whereas they're in (North) Africa. I'm afraid we're left with the vague and outdated term Middle East, even though West Asia would be the superior term.