Oh, Noble Holstonia!

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Yesterday, I got an email from one Jim Glanville, modestly titled "Of Possible Interest."  In its entirety, it reads:

Mr. Swanwick:

A few days ago I posted  http://www.holstonia.net/files/Paq&CabOnLine.pdf. It notes your recent book.

Jim Glanville 


It turns out that Mr. Glanville is a retired chemist who is writing a dual biography of Paquiquinero, the "first gentleman of Virginia"and an early Native American patriot, and James Branch Cabell, who wrote a historical novel about him.  My contribution (and a very small one it is) was to write What Can be Saved From the Wreckage?, a literary overview of  Cabell which briefly dealt with that book.


Being an inquisitive man, I naturally snooped about the parent website and found that it deals with Holstonia, the biogeological province of southern Virginia and Northern Tennessee created by the headwaters of the Holston River.  A region that he Glanville named and defined.  You can find the maps here.  


This is not only eccentric, but is the sort of eccentricity we need a lot more of.  What microregional area do you inhabit?  How much have you done to promote it?


You can find out more about Glanville here in an article that makes him out to be quite an admirable man.  I particularly like his dogged determination to record the history of the Olin chemical plant, despite the disinterest of all contemporary historical journals.  A century (or two or nine) from now, researchers will bless his name.

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