dròm_et_rêve wrote:Incidentally, I'm intrigued about your Virginia monologues (;D
is North Virginia rather different from South Virginia politically?
Short answer: yes.
Longer answer:
Arlington is the small, rectangular "red" county in the very northeast corner of Virginia in
this map, bordering on the Potomac River and Washington, DC. Actually, there are three small counties up there: Alexandria, Falls Church, and Arlington. Falls Church is very small--off the northwest tip of Arlington--and Alexandria is south of Arlington. By this map, it looks like most of Virginia is Republican, with a few counties in the east and far west voting Democrat.
But, this is slightly misleading. In
this map, you can see that a lot of counties in the east of the state voted for Gore, and
this one show that Bush found lots of support in the west. Of course, there is some division between northern and southern Virginia, but I suppose that a lot of it is east-west, which is probably why RJB was careful to point out that many in northern Virginia feel the same way about people from southern
and western Virginia.
On
yet another map, you can see that most of Gore's votes came from urban centers in Virginia--Charlottesville, Richmond, Petersburg, the area around Norfolk, and the DC-metropolitan area. Bush's votes came from slightly smaller cities and most rural areas. Population statistics can be found
here by city and
here by county. (An interesting note: Arlington is one of the few counties in Virginia that does not contain any cities, so it is often mistaken as a city itself. I believe that Alexandria and Falls Church are actually independent cities often incorrectly called counties, as I myself did earlier in this very post.)
Anyway, there are political differences betweeen northern and southern Virginia, but they also occur between eastern and western Virginia, and between rural and urban Virginia (the suburbs are a mix between rural and urban, in Virginia and all over America). Yet, you still hear people from northwestern Virginia calling those in northeastern "southern Virginians," and vice versa.
I believe that the terminology--the usage of "north" and "south" to describe so many differences within the Commonwealth of Virginia--is the lasting impact of the Civil War in Virginia. Arlington (and Alexandria, possibly) used to be part of the District of Columbia, Union forts used to be along the Potomac, Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy, and the state of Virginia was constantly heatedly contested throughout the war. Brothers in Virginian families were often known to fight on the opposing sides of the war, as was the case with my ancestors in that one-quarter of my family that lived in the United States before the 1920s. Virginia was full of supporters of the South (Confederate States) and supporters of the North (United States), somewhat divided by geography within the state. And the terms stuck, although the capitalization was diminished, even though the ideals and practices of both sides have changed dramatically since the Civil War.
Anyway, dròm, that was probably much more than you cared to read about the subject. Hopefully, I answered your initial question, and that the extra bit I threw in added some extra interesting information. Most of it was fact (the stuff with links), and some was my opinion. I hope, though, that my ideas were clear and that my opinions were sensible (RJB, were they?). Thanks for reading this far, if you made it!
And, longest answer:
Way too long to post here. Perhaps I'll write a book about this very topic someday. I'll let you know if I do.
(Note: I didn't really proofread or spellcheck this post, so apologies if the writing is rather rough; I got excited and had to post
right away.)
. I wanted to say something about her perfume, but I left it.
