{"id":408,"date":"2005-04-15T03:12:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-15T03:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=408"},"modified":"2005-04-15T03:12:00","modified_gmt":"2005-04-15T03:12:00","slug":"408","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=408","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The devil gets all the good topography<\/strong><\/p>\n

A man in California thinks that having a mountain named Mount Diablo has negative effects<\/a>. (Also linked here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

“Words have power, and when you start mentioning words that come from the dark side, evil thrives,” Mijares told the Contra Costa Times. “When I take boys camping on the mountain, I don’t even like to say its name. I have to explain what the name means. Why should we have a main feature of our community that celebrates the devil?”<\/em><\/p>\n

Back in the mid-1980s when I was in graduate school, I wanted to write a paper on how so many interesting Earth features in the United States had “devil” in their names. For instance, a side canyon to the Arkansas River north of here is called “Devil’s Hole,” also known as “Big Hole.” And of course there is Devil’s Tower<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I got busy and never wrote the paper–I could not fit it into any of my course work. But I still think that there is something to be said about Americans’ ambivalent relationship to the landscape, which is both sacralized and mistrusted in our mythic mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The devil gets all the good topography A man in California thinks that having a mountain named Mount Diablo has negative effects. (Also linked here.) “Words have power, and when you start mentioning words that come from the dark side, evil thrives,” Mijares told the Contra Costa Times. “When I take boys camping on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-408","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":345,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=345","url_meta":{"origin":408,"position":0},"title":"Moab is not yet destroyed\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 2, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Moab is not yet destroyed One of the guys whose rants are collected under the name of the prophet Isaiah once ranted,\" \u201cOn the night when Ar is sacked, Moab meets her doom\/ on the night when Kir is sacked, Moab meets her doom\" (Isaiah 15:1). I can say that\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11135,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11135","url_meta":{"origin":408,"position":1},"title":"“Witchy” Cave Is New Obstacle to Mine Expansion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 10, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"When I went to graduate school, I wanted to write a paper on how so many interesting natural sites have \"Devil\" or \"Devil's\" in their name. Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming might be the best-known in the United States.((The federal government has been confused by the possessive apostrophe since\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":839,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=839","url_meta":{"origin":408,"position":2},"title":"If you blog it, they will come","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 21, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Some recent splashes in Hardscrabble Creek. Everybody's doing it.quirky findings agricultural plantshow to pronounce chasdream of recently deceased dogwolf in navajoSex in the culture of the Indians in the 1600sworship in Greek letterwriting a letter to ELMER for kidssheela na gig statue buyDR Australian 43 heaven devil holeWhat do all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"weirdness\"","block_context":{"text":"weirdness","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=weirdness"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":705,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=705","url_meta":{"origin":408,"position":3},"title":"Eros in the classroom","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 19, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I was talking with one of the librarians at school last week, and although I do not remember how it came up, I said something about the \"erotic side\" of teaching.Her eyes widened a little, so I had to explain myself: I do not mean going to bed with one's\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":225,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=225","url_meta":{"origin":408,"position":4},"title":"The Mystery of Wicca Lake","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 22, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"No, that's not the title of another of Llewellyn Publications' ventures into \"occult\" fiction. It's a question that has been bothering me since my return from British Columbia. That area of SE British Columbia was settled in the 1890s, first by miners. Ninety years later--1983--the provincial government set 49,893 hectares\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"British Columbia\"","block_context":{"text":"British Columbia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=british-columbia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9327,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9327","url_meta":{"origin":408,"position":5},"title":"The Best New Book about the Salem Witch Trials","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 24, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Wouldn't you like to live in an enchanted world, where everything in nature brought messages from gods and spirits? The New England Puritans did so, but with a smaller cast of characters: their God and their Devil. But there were lots of messages all the same: If your cow died,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/the-witches.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}