I was recently checking a weather map of Central Tennessee, and I started noticing the names of the towns; some I knew were there, some I didn’t.  By the time I had adjusted the map somewhat, in view between the towns of Lebanon (ironic in its own right, if it weren’t for the additional linguistic miracle that it is pronounced more like the region in Tolkien’s Middle Earth called Lebennin) and Cookeville are the towns of Alexandria, Sparta, Mt. Ararat, Macedonia, Antioch, Phillipi, Carthage, and Rome.  The further irony is that these towns are so close (all of them are no more than an hour away from another), yet several of their namesakes were mortal enemies in history (c.f. the Punic Wars, Alexander‘s conquest of Persian-occupied northern Egypt).

I’m waiting to wake up one morning to find that the Barca family will have had its revenge, and (perhaps funded by the Gore family) we will read across the front page of the Tennessean:  Carthage invades Rome.  I wonder if the Wal-Mart will have enough Morton’s to finish the job?