WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE STANS?

Grand Uncle Olaf Opseth was a reader. He was also a collector of books. Grandma said her brother had so many she didn't even know where to start counting. Many of them were lost to mold and poor storing. A few sets of leather bound books were given to Julia, his sister.

Grandma had them for several years until she decided she really wanted that glass cabinet for pretty things like dishes and cups. She gave the books to Old Trunks in about 1964 and they have been with me ever since. In Fargo, they are displayed in the glass doored book cases which separate the dining room from the living room in this 1922 house.

Richard, a former classmate, sent me a link called Rethinking Schools online. It is an urban educational source. The instructions state to drag each country name to its proper place on the map. Now, this is an up to date map and it sure does look like there are a lot of new countries on here that weren't on here before! This is not an explanation as to why I got an F, only that the names are foreign to me. By hook, crook, and comparison, I did get most of the countries filled in. I will admit I had one left over but if I was putting a fan together, I would have parts left over, too!

Now, one of Grand Uncle Olaf's sets of books is named, Ridpath's History of the World in nine volumes. The last copyright is 1901.

Now, most of us know where Jordan, Damascus, Mt. Sinai, and Mt. Ararat, Jerusalem, and Egypt are because of our early Christian teachings. We may know where Turkey is because Becki Ferber was there was an exchange student. The Persian Gulf war was play by play so we should know where that is.

We can guess that Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan must be in a cluster as we have heard about our troops fighting there for too long.

If we even had World Geography in high school, no doubt our books were grossly out of date.
A 1939 text book would indeed offer Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Jerusalem, Armenia, Turkey, Iran, and even Kuwait--etc, etc, etc. We need to understand that pre WWII, most of the Middle East was still protected by Britain, France and Italy. Only Turkey and Iran were independent.

I don't know the answers, I still get an F. I just hope someone does whack off a piece of the United States and become independent.

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What it looks like to me is, Persia exploded one day and gave us countries like Uzberkistan, Kyrgystan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikstan.