Rhody Universe: Luxembourg

Following up on yesterday’s comment on Luxembourg (a.k.a. “the European Rhode Island”), I thought I’d take a look our prospects for establishing some kind of cross-cultural, international exchange. The country the size of Rhode Island is land-locked, which doesn’t bode well. But it does share the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation’s affinity for long names. Officially, it’s the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Unlike Rhody, however, you won’t hear folks in the grand duchy calling their homeland Lux or Luxy. Their motto is “Mir welle bleiwe wat mir sinn,” which is Luxembourgish (yes, it’s an official language, much like Rhode Islandese), for “We want to remain what we are.” Not as eloquent, perhaps, as “Hope,” but most of us feel the same way here in Rhode Island. Luxembourg, like Rhode Island, is a secular state but is predominantly Roman Catholic. It’s divided into three districts instead of five counties, 12 cantons instead of 39 towns, and 116 communes instead of a nebulous number of villages. Luxembourg has the highest gross national product per capita in the world. Rhode Island, thanks to the likes of the Farrelly Brothers and “Family Guy,” has the highest output of grossness per capita in the world. The 2008 Guinness Book of World Records indicates that Luxembourg consumes more alcohol than any country in the world. Anyone out there know what the Luxembourgish is for “packie”?

(Blogger’s note: Blog on the Half Shell is unplugging for a few days. Back next week.)

One size fits all

While discussing trivial matters of globe and state during a Bastille Day party in Providence over the weekend, friend and Blog on the Half Shell reader David Steinbrick casually mentioned that my efforts to reduce the phrase “size of Rhode Island” to the acronym “sori” were misguided. It turns out that “sori” is already an acronym – for Special Olympics Rhode Island, which Dave has been involved with for several years. In desperation, I turned to the online dictionary of units of measurement, hoping to find inspiration among the “tithings” (old English land areas) and “Pfiffs” (small units of beer) within. There, among the dropped Rs, stuck smack-dab between “rhm” (a unit used in physics to measure the strength of gamma rays) and “ri” (a traditional Japanese unit of distance, similar in length to the European “league”), I found the following:

Rhode Island – the smallest state of the U.S., Rhode Island has long served as an informal unit of area in statements such as “an iceberg 1.5 times the size of Rhode Island has broken off from Antarctica.” Rhode Island has a land area of about 1045 square miles or 2706 square kilometers. Europeans might note that Luxembourg (2586 square kilometers) provides a comparable unit.

So it’s official. The “Rhode Island” is a unit of measurement. Coming soon: Size of Rhode Island tape measures at an Ocean State Job Lot near you.