Maryland - “Fatti Maschii Parole Femine”

Your script should say Maryland J.H.

Polish at the top.

I'm there.

I just made my window so small, I thought I still saw my part of the script, and it turned out all I could see was yours.

And it was one line.

Script, what are you talking about, Janet?

This is just an impromptu conversation that we have about states.

And that's true.

My way of saying impromptu is to use the word script.

It's a little confusing for people.

Well, now that we're off book, Julian, leave all of this in.

Hello, my name is John Hodgkin.

And And my name is Janet Varney.

And welcome, friends, to ePluribus Motto, the show that celebrates the official and unofficial state mottos, slogans, birds, snacks, beverages, mammals, and monsters in the for now, United States.

Welcome to ePluribus Motto Season 2.

Thank you, Maximum Fund members, for making the season possible and sending Janet and me upon this wild trivia tour of inarguably the most controversial land chunk of this continent.

Not just this continent, also the Pacific and the Caribbean, because, of course, when we're talking about that USA, we're not just talking about states, we're talking about commonwealths, territories,

and how many federal districts?

I believe it's one and one only.

One and only one.

Combine them all, you get 65

different things.

Yeah.

And so we are taking this nation in small doses, which is frankly recommended, in seasons of roughly 10 at a time.

That's right.

And this season, I got to tell you, we are going all over the place.

Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kentucky, New Mexico, Oregon, Iowa, Pennsylvania are only national Sylvania.

And Nevada or Nevada.

Keep your cards and letters, guys.

I can't believe we only have one Sylvania.

What is wrong with us?

Why is there no new Massachusettslania?

Massachusetts, that's very sweet.

Yeah, I said new Massachusettslania.

That's a new

inventing.

Well, that suggests that there is one in Europe, so think again.

Think again.

Listen, friends, if you know or love these places, I would lean to the real places and not the fictitious ones we just came up with.

If you know and love these places, and if you have interesting facts, memories, regional accents even, I would love to hear some regional accents that you would like to share with us.

Please, please accept our invitation to send us an email or a voice memo at emailpluribusmato at maximumfun.org.

Now this season, we will be covering that one and only one federal district known colloquially as Washington District of Columbia.

I don't like to call it a district.

I like to call it a pre-state one of these days.

But first, we've got to cover the swampy ground from which that taxed but not represented capital city was carved.

Virginia is part of that swampy ground.

We covered that last season.

And now that's right.

We turn to the old line state, also the old bay state, aka Crabland, USA, or Crabland, aka

the state whose flag is most likely to induce an accidental seizure.

We're talking about Maryland.

Janet, what do you think of when you think of Maryland?

I have not been to Maryland.

So for me, the first thing that comes to mind is the city and surrounding area of Baltimore, which I have been exposed to through numerous types of media and also friends who have lived there.

But again, have not been there.

Yes.

But you've never been to Maryland?

I've never been to Maryland.

Gosh.

I know.

Well, I'm about to take you on a whirlwind tour

of this state known as the Land of Mary.

Do you know the state motto of Maryland?

No.

I didn't do any homework.

Good, because it's my turn.

Great.

And actually, I've known this one for a while because it's what we in the science of motology.

Motology.

It's a technical doozy.

Okay.

First of all, it's the only state motto with its roots that are not in Latin or in Greek or English.

It's the only state motto whose motto is in Italian,

which is to say that you don't speak this motto out loud.

You do it with your hands.

No, it's words.

It's real words.

Janet, I have written down for you the actual words that form the motto of Maryland in archaic Italian.

Okay.

Because Italian is actually a compilation of multiple dialects.

Of course, this is the older version, so you can take a chance or a try.

So do you want to take a chance and try pronouncing it?

I would love to.

I need to show up for you and our friendship and this podcast, no matter what I think is going to happen in the next few moments.

I'm going to, oh, it's very hard not to affect

an Italian accent.

I think I may just have to do it.

Why would you not?

Yeah, I think I may just have to do it.

First of all, let's acknowledge, and I was not even doing this on purpose.

I immediately raised one of my hands.

Of course.

I didn't have a choice.

I'm basically sitting on the other hand so that I'm not using both hands.

Yeah.

So far, so good.

Fatty mashy parole femini.

Yes, fatty masky paroli femini.

Fatty masky, of course, being my nickname when I used to play the

harlequin in the comedia dell'arte.

Oh no.

No.

But translated

for many decades by the state of Maryland as manly deeds, womanly words.

Okay, I do know this.

I do know this because I can't remember if we talked about it on the podcast or if I just

had a conversation about it with listeners, perhaps even someone who ended up getting a, like a, you know, a drawing from me.

I just remember for sure someone weighing in on, yeah, on that.

Yeah, when you look.

Yikes.

When you're in Rhode Island, it's like, hope, all right, fine.

When you're in Connecticut, he who transplants survives or whatever.

I don't even know what it means.

Move along.

Yeah.

But when someone hits you with manly deeds, womanly words,

it's like, all right, pretty aggro, pretty binary, pretty gentle.

I'm not going to let you buy me a drink, person who says that to me.

I'm certainly not going to leave with you.

I'm going to.

Don't leave your drink unattended around this motto.

I will not leave my drink unattended.

I will probably leave the establishment altogether.

Yeah.

Look, this motto is just going on podcasts and just asking questions.

You know what I mean?

You make some good points, this motto.

Some interesting points.

Look, it is not, that is not the translation that is used now, but it was until, and it was printed that way for the, as a translation.

I mean, I think the literal translation is,

uh,

uh, what was it?

All deeds are masculine, all words are feminine, maybe?

I don't know.

I guess I will just quickly say, I know we don't have to spend the entire episode on this motto, but I would not have thought that parole or parole

would be words when we think of, when how we describe parole is like, you know, hey, you're a person who was imprisoned and now you have your freedom.

That's the etymology about that.

Kind of interesting, yeah.

Well, anyway, that was the translation that was officially used until 2017 when the state of Maryland was like, this is kind of a bad look.

And they revised the translation to its current strong deeds, gentle words, which is that better?

I don't know.

I think, what are you going to do with those four words?

I mean, that's the best they could soften it, but if you're staring at it, it's extremely clear to me that the words masculine and feminine are represented no matter what.

So, you know what I mean?

They just sort of were like, uh,

other than just changing it altogether, what are you going to do?

In any case, before it got fobbed onto the double-sided seal of Maryland, that motto was

since 1622, the family motto of John Calvert and his sons, aka the Barons of Baltimore.

Oh.

Which I thought was a famous unfilmed Barry Levinson movie.

Deep cut for those of you who worked in video stores in the 90s.

I'm going to say probably we have quite a few.

These are my people.

Now, yeah, exactly.

And the Barons of Baltimore, that is an official title that John Calvert had in the 16th and 17th centuries.

And we'll get to that family in a moment.

But, you know, the land surrounding the Chesapeake Bay that we now know as Maryland was and remains the ancestral home of many native peoples before George Calvert showed up with some bullshit piece of paper from King Charles I.

Those peoples include the Nanticoke peoples, the Pocomoke, the Lenape, among many others, and continuing communities of Piscataway and Achahonock peoples.

And forgive me, I'm sure I mispronounced those names, and those names are probably

European makeshift names for the actual native language names in any case.

They were there and they continue to be there.

But in the early 1630s, George Calvert wanted to be there.

George Calvert was an English politician and rich fella.

He was named in Irish peerage as Lord Baltimore.

He was a Catholic, which is important to the history of Maryland to some degree.

And he worked his persuasive, womanly words upon King Charles I to get permission to settle the region.

Baltimore's aim was to create a haven for persecuted English Catholics while at the same time persecuting and displacing the native people already there.

So thus founding Maryland upon the most manly deed of all willful ignorance of one's own hypocrisy.

There's your motto.

There's your motto.

Janet, he didn't want to call it Maryland.

This George Calvert, the lord of Baltimore.

Do you know what he wanted to call this strangely shaped land draped across the marshy shoulders of the bay?

First of all, I love everything that you just said in terms of your description.

Yeah.

That was beautiful.

It gave me an image of a sexy swamp monster.

We'll get to that later.

Trust me.

Oh, good.

Oh, good.

Good, good, good, good.

I am going to guess that his name was George Calvert.

I'm going to guess that he wanted to call it like

Calverten.

Calvertston.

You're absolutely right.

He wanted to call it crescentia.

Wait, what did you say?

I don't remember.

I blacked out because I was looking at the flag.

Crescentia.

Like the word crescent with an IA at the end, which I guess means land of growth.

Oh, is it?

It's not like it's a crescent-shaped something.

Well, I would have thought so because, you know, the Chesapeake Bay, the land does sort of drape around, as I say, the Chesapeake Bay, but that's not what it is.

It means land of growth, but it doesn't matter because King Charles I

wanted to be called something else.

He wanted to be called Terra Mariae, the the land of Mary in Latin, aka his wife, Henrietta Maria of France, aka the Queen of England.

Thus it was called Maryland, and King Charles won that fight because by the time the charter was finally granted in 1632, George Calvert was dead.

Goodbye.

Leaving that land of Mary to his son Cecil, the second Lord Baltimore, because of nepotism.

Wow, congratulations, Cecil.

Yeah, that's how things worked then, and that's how they work now.

So, Janet,

thank you for your nice comment about my description of Maryland being a weird cloak draped across the shoulders of the Chesapeake Bay.

But let's take a look at the map.

How would you describe the shape, and I would say strange shape of the state?

Yeah, this is, I mean, it's, I can't say

I can't say that it's called, I mean, I can't say it's a crescent.

I mean, I see the idea.

I mean, I guess if you were squinting and then had 17 drinks, do not try this at home, maybe you'd start to see a crested shape.

Right.

What I am looking at,

oh boy, this is a real challenge.

And I did not look this up in advance.

So I am looking at this shape.

It is, it looks like,

it looks like someone who has just done a very poor job of putting together two corners of a jigsaw puzzle

and accidentally built it out to the right and gone, this can't be right.

I was also thinking discarded jigsaw puzzle piece.

Oh, good.

Okay, all right.

I feel like that either means we're on the right track or just that you and I should be friends and are.

Good job, sir.

It looks like it's being defined more by the absence of something than by the presence of something, if that makes sense.

Well, that's true.

I mean, it is defined by the absence of land in the Chesapeake Bay, particularly.

There you go.

One of the most

grand and beautiful bays in North America, in my opinion.

And I've seen a few of them.

It also kind of looks like a bottle opener to me.

Sure, I see that.

Like something you would open a pop-up and I mean, the main thing I'm seeing, I'm looking over at this little,

this little, this, this piece of it that is over on the right that is sort of, it looks like a little lizard crawling angrily as it cries out, crawling, trying to get to the top corner of the state.

That's what that looks like to me.

Well, let's talk about that little piece on the right for a second because that,

so Maryland is divided primarily by the chesapeake bay on the west it's the it's where the capital is annapolis and baltimore etc and on the east you have the eastern shores now you see that big

that big lump of a peninsula hanging down from where maryland and new jersey meet that's called the delmarva peninsula okay and that is called the delmarva peninsula because on that peninsula are portions of three states delaware maryland and virginia clever

delmarva And I have driven down the Delmarva Peninsula, and that is a different world.

Oh, really?

Oh, it is extremely rural.

Okay.

Extremely southern in ways that the western portions of Maryland are not because now we're in the world of blue state territory, Washington, D.C., obviously Northern Virginia, that's that area.

Still very rural, still very beautiful.

But Delmarva is

just agricultural land.

Okay.

And kind of

a lost plateau.

You know, there are dinosaurs there.

It's a lost world.

That's what I'm talking about.

Great, cool.

So the Delmarva Peninsula is home to many things,

including Ocean City, Maryland, which is known as the Second Ocean City.

To those of you who joined me in summering with your grandmother in Ocean City, New Jersey.

I'll never forget it.

Everyone did that.

I've never been to Ocean City, Maryland.

I hear it's nice.

I also hear it's the home of the state cocktail, the birthplace that is, the Orange Crush.

Thank you for the tip, listener, David B., the Orange Crush Cocktail invented at the Harborside Bar and Grill in West Ocean City, Maryland, in

the old, old timey time of 1995.

Okay.

Hold on.

I'm just playing a spin doctor song in my head as we speak.

Don't ask me.

That may have been before 1995.

Oh, go ahead.

No, go ahead and add us.

Great.

It's a concoction of vodka, freshly squeezed oranges, and triple sick, topped off with a splash of lemon lime soda.

I don't have a problem with that.

No, I think it sounds all right.

But it also sounds like the name of a soda called Orange Crush.

Yes.

So which came first?

I promise you Orange Crush did.

It also does not sound like a cocktail to me.

It sounds like a mixed drink.

But save that for the mixology pedants.

Let's move along.

Now, to the left, if you're looking at it on a map of the Delmarva Peninsula, is that amazing Chesapeake Bay.

We'll talk about that a little later on, but let's travel west for a moment.

This is the part of Maryland that I have certainly never been to.

There is this narrow tendril of a withered arm

following

the border with Pennsylvania to the north and the course of the Potomac River from the southeast all the way up to West Virginia

with one really narrow part.

Can you see that on the map?

Yeah, it's so tiny, it's like almost nothing.

Yeah, this little narrow part is where Interstates 70 and 68 intersect.

It is home to the town of Hancock, Maryland, which is shoved into this 1.8-mile gap

between the Potomac and Pennsylvania.

It is really tiny there.

And I tried very hard to find one interesting thing about Hancock, Maryland.

And do you think that I succeeded?

I'm afraid, by the way you've set that up that the answer is no.

Well, let me give you an idea.

I went to the Wikipedia page for Hancock, Maryland, population 1,557,

total of 2.98 square miles of land.

And I went down to notable people,

including

Robert Brady, once one president of Boston College, Ike Powers, a baseball player for the Philadelphia A's.

So that's an old school team.

I must apologize that I haven't ooeded or awed even once yet.

Yeah, I have both too soon.

It's not great.

Charles H.

Rowland or Rowland, who was a Republican member of the U.S.

House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

That guy just left.

Richard K.

Sutherland, who was General Douglas MacArthur's chief of staff.

But then William Dorsey Swan.

Now,

William Dorsey Swan is a really interesting person.

Uh-oh, okay.

All right.

We got something here.

Born in 1860, died December 23rd, 1925.

He was a black man born into slavery, and I'm just quoting from the article here.

Uh-huh.

The first person in the United States to lead a gay resistance group

and the first known person to self-identify, self-identify as a queen of drag.

If I may, ooh, and ah.

Incredible, right?

So look, I'm.

Wow.

I learned this from Wikipedia.

There is a book about Swan that I think is still forthcoming

by an author named Channing Gerard Joseph.

It supposedly was going to be published a few years ago.

I haven't seen if it's been published yet.

I can't wait to read it whenever I can get my hands on it.

It's called House of Swan.

But rather than just paraphrase the Wikipedia page, I'll just read it a little bit to you because it's amazing.

Yeah.

So Swan was born in March 1860, an enslaved person.

He was the fifth oldest child in a Protestant family with 13 children.

He was enslaved in Hancock, Maryland.

After the Civil War, his parents were able to buy a farm.

He worked as a hotel waiter.

But here's the important part: starting in the 1880s, Swan organized a series of drag balls in Washington, D.C.

in the 1880s.

I am blown away right now.

Yeah, most of the attendees of Swan's gatherings were men, and I'm presuming primarily black men, who were formerly enslaved and gathered to dance in satin and silk dresses.

The group, consisting of former slaves, quote, and rebel drag queens, unquote, was known as the House of Swan.

I mean,

as you're saying this, I'm realizing I think I've heard of this.

I mean, this is such a legacy.

And if you're a fan of things like RuPaul's drag race or Poe's or any number of other amazing,

and when you speak to drag queens and talk about the community and where the origins of all of that, it does make sense that we are going this far back.

But it's still, and I openly and very confidently use this word, fabulous.

Yeah.

Swan was arrested in police raids, including the first documented case of an arrest for female impersonation in the United States on April 12, 1888.

That was at his 30th birthday.

And according to the Washington Post article at the time, he was arrayed in a gorgeous dress of cream-colored satin.

And after they raided the birthday celebration, Swan was bursting with rage and stood up to one of the officers and declared, you are no gentleman.

His choice to resist that night rather than submit passively, quote, marks one of the earliest known instances of violent resistance in the name of gay rights.

Wow.

It became more difficult for Swan to throw parties even in secret.

And in 1896, he was convicted of keeping a disorderly house, which is a euphemism for running a brothel.

He was sentenced to 10 months in jail.

He requested a pardon from Grover Cleveland.

Guess what?

Grover said, no way, but Swan was the first American on record who preserved legal and political action to defend the LGBTQ plus community's right to gather.

Passed away at the age of 65 in 1925.

And again, if you want to know more,

go look look it up.

But it's an incredible story.

And boy, oh boy, did William Dorsey Swan really make a hash of that dumb gender binary motto?

Didn't he slash she slash they?

Indeed.

Sorry, Henrietta Marie, Queen of England.

All hail, the true queen of Maryland, William Dorsey Swan.

Manly, womanly, gender non-binarily, decent skinned words.

Amazing.

Oh my goodness.

Okay, well, listen, if

I know

streaming services, and I feel I do, I hope they get it it right because I look forward to a wonderful mini-series based on this book that I hope is extraordinarily successful.

This is the kind of story that we love to tell, we love to see depicted, and could be just absolutely wonderful.

And if you know more about William Dorsey Swan, obviously William Dorsey Swan's and the House of Swan parties were happening in Washington, D.C., not Hancock, Maryland.

Right.

Though that was Swan's original home.

But when we cover D.C.

coming up, if you know anything you'd like us to know about William Dorsey Swan or the drag balls of the late 1880s and 90s,

let us know.

Email for busmatto at maximumfun.org is the easy-to-remember email address.

Meanwhile, we're going to take a little break when we come back.

State stuff,

including a butterfly, a bird, a cake, and a letter from Megan

regarding the state song, plus

that bananas flag.

Oh, the flag.

flag.

Hi, this is Amelia from Maryland.

And I do mean Maryland, although you could say Maryland with a silent D or Merlin like the wizard.

All three are acceptable and you probably won't hear Merlin unless you are in southern Maryland or on the Eastern Shore.

The one pronunciation you will not hear is Mary Land.

Don't ever say that.

People will look at you very strangely.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother, me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while, maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up.

But no.

No, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into into a big crypto thing.

Yeah.

You don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcast.

Hi, no, this is

Dr.

Andrew Johnstone from Maryland, which is the correct pronunciation of the state, even though I got a PhD, so I had to learn to stop talking like that.

Where I am from?

On the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, hon, where we don't really, we got a lot of O's.

Our O's are real long, which Baltimore also has got going, but we say it real good over on the shore, too.

We go down the Atlantic Ocean.

the Atlantic Ocean, not the Atlantic Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean.

Oh, water!

That's right.

That one throws people off, too.

Anyway, I wanted to just give you that sample.

Thank you.

Welcome back to ePluribus Motto.

I'm Janet Varney.

And my name remains John Hodgman.

I'm the co-host.

And this episode, I'm leading the dance by presenting to Janet some facts about the state of Maryland, continuing now with that vexillological menace,

the Maryland state flag.

I don't know if you've ever seen the Maryland state flag before, Janet.

Take a look at the,

I put it in a little document here for you.

Yeah.

How does that make you feel?

I have seen it, and it is, I just cannot wait to find out what the impetus and inspiration was behind this, other than,

hey, let's try to create the first optical illusion.

Magic eye.

Am I looking at a vase or two people kissing, but also,

hey, let me wave a flag and get some race cars?

I mean, there is just, I have so many questions, but I think they all boil down to, huh?

Yeah, everyone should stop.

If you don't know this flag, everyone should stop and Google the flag now.

And when you wake up on the floor in about 30 minutes,

you will know just how sort of contrasty.

I don't know.

Here's the official vexillological description.

By vexillology, I'm talking about the study of flags and seals and signs and symbols.

But also, I am vexing.

I'm vexed by this flag.

It's very vexing.

In vexillological terms, it is described thusly: quarterly, first and fourth,

a pally of six ore and sable, a bend counterchanged for Calvert.

Second and third quarterly, Argent and Gulis, a cross-botany counter-charged for Crossland.

No, this isn't explaining any, this isn't helping anyone at any time ever in the history of flags.

So, if you're looking at in the top left and bottom right corner, there are alternating stripes of black and yellow.

And those stripes alternate in a way that truly dazzle the eye.

Yeah.

You know, and that I don't know how to describe it.

Just look at it.

You'll know what what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

And then in the top right and bottom left corners, there are two red and white crosses, but again, alternating colors, red and white in a way the whole thing kind of makes your eyes water.

You know what?

I will say this.

What this reminds me of is there was a period in time where I know, and I actually know this because of a different podcast that I do from time to time called Braving the Elements, that in looking at the Avatar verse, the Avatar of the Last Airbender Universe, I stumbled upon information about like turn-of-the-century battleships that instead of being camouflaged, they dazzled them in such a way that they certainly would not be camouflaged in any way.

You would see them very clearly, but because of the designs upon them, a potential enemy would not be able to tell the size, the distance, etc., of this ship.

And if you look at it, it really does.

These ships also have this kind of similar quality as the flag, which is to say, what am I looking at?

Yeah, make it look like a trend.

Someone quick, grab a telescope.

What am I even looking at?

Yeah.

Well, the flag was derived from, not surprisingly, the coat of arms of the Barons Baltimore.

The red and yellow chevrons representing the Calvert family.

That was their historic family flag.

And the red and white crosses representing the arms of the first Baron Baltimore's mother, or maybe the second Baron Baltimore.

Anyway, Alicia Crossland of Yorkshire.

That was her family.

The cross, the red and white cross was her family flag.

And in both cases, you can imagine, this is going back to Elizabethan times and presumably before you would want flags that were highly visible.

Because if you were going to follow your,

if you were a serf going to be conscripted into some dumb battle by your lord

and die for nothing,

you probably would want to make sure that you were fighting the right army and not your friends.

Okay.

So following a flag, you would want the flag to be very visible, but that's speculation on my part.

But I can say that it did come up in the Civil War because Maryland was loyal to the Union, but it had slavery and a lot of Confederate sympathizers in it, particularly in the southern counties and on those eastern shores that we talked about of the Chesapeake Bay on the Delmarva Peninsula.

And during the Civil War, Confederate sympathizers and soldiers would wear the Crossland cross on on their uniforms to signify support for the Confederacy.

Boo.

Yeah, that's right.

I said it, boo.

Whereas the Unionists, yay, arguably, they wore the black and yellow Calvert images.

And so

that was one way that Marylanders divided themselves until after the war, they were all smashed back together into one state and into this beautiful, unstable monstrosity of a flag and arguably nation.

The first modern form of this flag was flown in Baltimore in 1880, just before William Swan started doing those drag balls in D.C.

That said, the mashup of the two designs pre-existed 1880 by far.

They were already on the coat of arms of Maryland and as well on both sides of its state seal going back to the

late 17th century.

And I did say both sides of the the state seal.

Yeah.

Because

not many state seals have two sides, but Maryland does.

Yeah, I think we had one.

I want to say we had one that was one of my presentations in season one.

I'm trying to remember which one it was.

Listeners, remind us.

That's right.

I'm sure you will.

So the state seal is fine.

On the front, it's a farmer and a fisher person.

representing two of the major forms of agriculture back then, or, you know, commerce, agriculture and fishing.

Sure.

And that famous motto, fatty masky, et cetera, et cetera.

On the other side, it's that Nepo baby himself, Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore II,

in a suit of armor and astride a rearing horse celebrating the triumph of unearned privilege.

Yeah.

Thank goodness.

It really, really needed that other side.

It really needed that other side.

Oh, you got to give Cecil his due, right?

He's his own man.

He's his own man.

Just inheritance.

Decent looking horse.

Decent looking horse.

I don't don't know the name of the horse.

If you know the name of the horse, you know where to let us know.

Email pluribismano at maximumfund.org.

But Janet, go back and look at the flag for a second.

Sorry to make you.

Do I have to?

Yeah, please.

Okay.

When you look at that flag, what kind of cat do you think of?

What?

Well, I don't know.

Like, what kind of cat do you think of?

What kind of cat do I think of when I look at the visually confusing, emotionally upsetting flag of Maryland?

Let's stay with the visually confusing part because I don't want to say these cats are particularly upsetting.

I don't know.

Well, I mean, I certainly don't either without knowing where this is going.

Well, you see, think of a tuxedo cat.

I really wouldn't.

You know what a tuxedo cat is, right?

I do.

Yeah, a black and white cat that looks like it's wearing a tuxedo.

Right.

Yeah.

I wouldn't think of that.

No.

Yeah.

I guess maybe like a tortoise or like a

spot, some sort of spotted cheetah, maybe.

How domestic are we going here?

I think a torty is a really good guess.

Okay.

Because that's, I don't know the precise difference, but it's close enough for me to calico.

Oh, there you go.

The calico-coated cat is the state cat of Maryland because

of its resemblance to the flag.

Well, obviously, I'm looking at.

Okay, I mean.

It's variegated, multicolored.

This flag should be so lucky as to look like an adorable calico cat.

I mean, honestly.

But noted.

What if the state flag was just this wonderful cat?

I'd be so on board.

I'd go to Maryland every day.

But, you know, tortoise shell or torties, tortoiseshell-coated cats have a similar variegated coat.

You mentioned them.

Something I just learned about them.

Do you know that almost all of them are female?

No, I didn't know.

It's a genetic.

The tortoise shell coat is a genetic expression.

Typically.

Typically of female-gendered cats.

There are male gendered, there are male cali, excuse me, tortoiseshell cats, but they tend to be sterile.

so there you go just some cat that's very interesting shout out to torties and shout out to calicos there you go calico cats are great and i don't think that they're upsetting the way the flag is i couldn't agree more the flag also influenced the choice of the official state insect which is of course the baltimore checker spot butterfly never heard of it looking at right now agree that's pretty spot on i have to say good job isn't it strange that so many things in maryland look like this dumb flag yeah i mean it it's it's that thing where it's like, is it stochasticity where I'm just, we're looking for that, but I guess it's not because they have made that link for us.

And in some cases, maybe, I mean, God, I could imagine them being like, we got to bring in this butterfly.

We know it's not a native species, but we got to populate it in Maryland so that we can make it our state butterfly.

The Baltimore checker spot, Euphidryas phaeton, is a North American butterfly.

It's been the official state insect of Maryland since 1973, named for the first Lord Baltimore due to its similarity of colors in the family crest, the Baltimore Family Crest.

What else was named for the first Lord Baltimore?

Oh, I don't know, maybe Baltimore.

Fair.

Now, you've never been to Baltimore, which surprises me because it's a terrific city.

I know.

And we're going to talk about it in a second, but Janet, if you were going to name one

famous Maryland drag queen aside from William Dorsey Swan.

Yes.

And in this case, a native of Baltimore.

Okay.

Would you guess?

I would guess.

I mean, I don't, again, I'm limited in my knowledge, but am I correct in Divine?

Yeah, right?

Divine.

Yeah.

Of course, the answer is Divine.

Born Harris Glenn Milstead in 1945 and dying much too soon in 1988.

Indeed.

Divine was the muse, aside from being an incredible performer and presence and activist in their own right, Divine was indeed the muse to to fellow Baltimore native John Waters, who I am grateful to say is still alive.

Yes.

And still wonderful.

Yes.

And you probably know him from multiple quotes across all social media.

If you go home with someone and they don't have any books in their apartment, don't fuck them.

One of the many wise words.

Love.

I once drove by John Waters' house in Baltimore, and I was very, it was very happy to me.

I'm very happy to say that John Waters calls the Bay Area home, and

we just absolutely love him.

We've had him participate and be invited to many Sketchfest events because we're always trying to get John Waters anywhere near us.

He's a hero.

And guess what?

Janet, Baltimore is also the birthplace of Thurgood Marshall.

Legend.

Obviously, the first, but no, a real person, not just a legend.

John?

May I sidebar with you?

You may.

I'll allow it.

Marshall was obviously the first black Supreme Court justice.

He had been denied entry to the law school at the University of Maryland.

So he intended Howard instead and got his law degree there.

And once a lawyer, he sued the University of Maryland for not letting him in.

And he won.

And the University of Maryland was one of the first all-white law schools that were forced to integrate and admit non-white people, which is pretty incredible, among all the other things that Thurgood Marshall did.

Oh, yes.

And I learned a little bit about that from Austin James, who is a person that I'll talk about a little bit later.

Okay.

But first, Janet, you have told me you have never been to Baltimore, and I feel I feel upset about this.

I do too.

It's just, it's one of those cities that

I have a very bad habit,

which is that in my adult life in the last 15 years, I have been extremely lucky to be invited to many different cities across the United States and beyond to do events, to do performances, to do convention appearances.

You never did a Legend of Korra convention in in Baltimore?

I have been invited and my schedule didn't allow, but instead of doing the smart thing, which is I've always wanted to go to Baltimore.

Just go, Janet.

Don't wait for someone to ask you.

I have somehow allowed this problem to continue.

And like, I want to go.

But I really do.

I really want to go to Baltimore.

Baltimore.

Baltimore.

Baltimore.

I can't do that accent.

We'll talk about it in a second, but I'll just say this.

The last time I was in Baltimore was definitely for a book tour.

And I haven't been back since.

Okay.

So,

you know, you're not wrong to wait for a reason to go, particularly if you live on the other side of the country, which you do.

Which I do.

Me, I need no reason.

I should just go down there and visit again.

I love Baltimore, the city that reads Charm City, Charm City.

Other names for it.

Baltimore is the home of National Bohemian Beer, with its mascot, Mr.

Bo, who's this like

a mustachio gentleman.

He looks like the weird third cousin of both the Pringles guy and the Monopoly man.

I'm so glad that we have so many products that are keeping the white monarchy in America alive and well.

I sent you a photo.

I didn't take it, but it's a photo of a billboard.

I think the last time I went to Baltimore, which is some time ago, I took the train.

And passing through, I saw this billboard and I loved it so much.

So Mr.

Bo is a beloved

mascot.

He's the mascot of this beer national bohemian.

It was enjoyed primarily in Baltimore.

and

he's on his knees with a diamond ring proposing to the Utz girl.

Utz chips?

Now, Utz, of course, from Hanover, Pennsylvania.

Okay.

But that girl that he's proposing to is the famous weird side-eye mascot

who is known as the Utz girl.

And this is a billboard for Smith Jewelers in Baltimore where Baltimore gets engaged.

I have heard that maybe this billboard isn't there anymore.

Please let us know if it is gone, but it was one of my favorite things to see.

Now,

does Mr.

Bo have only one eye?

Mr.

Bo, I don't think, I think it's just stylistic.

Okay.

Let me check.

Stylistic or not, I'm going to go ahead and say

he only has one eye in this picture.

I know I'm seeing only one eye.

I may not know much.

Well, it says here, according to the internet, the company's mascot, the one-eyed handlebar, mustachioed okay

all right has been a recognizable icon since his introduction in 1936.

why why does he only have one eye i think it's supposed to be a monocle

i can't help you i can't help you with that i can't answer that there is not a hint there's no reason that I can see visually for him not to have another eye.

There's no eye patch.

There's no

not room.

It's not like it's like, oh, there's no room.

You just can't see it.

Or the way he's tilting his head.

He has one bright, big,

enthusiastic eye with a very dilated pupil.

Look, this was advertising in the late 30s, 1936.

Mr.

Bo was introduced to, I wouldn't say the world, but definitely the region surrounding Baltimore, where he is primarily still known.

A couple of years later,

a German-Jewish survival of Kristallnacht

who had been arrested during that horrible night,

but was rescued by his family who had already emigrated to Baltimore.

They paid a bunch of money to get him out of jail and get him to Baltimore.

And he started a company that produced a, let's say, a signature Baltimore product.

Do you know what it is?

Old Bay Spice Blend.

I'll just tell you.

Oh, we all know Old Bay.

We've all heard of Old Bay.

It was, he founded the Baltimore Spice Company and found and created Old Bay Spice Blend, a delicious brand, shrimp and crab seasoning, later renamed Old Bay, because that's better.

And I love Old Bay.

It's really good.

And you know what it's really good on, Janet?

French fries.

Okay.

Oh,

you know what?

I've had it on French fries, and I must agree.

I must agree.

I had the Krabby fries on the boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey.

That was very good to me.

It is also, I think, you probably are familiar with The Wire.

I really tried to avoid bringing up The Wire right away because I know that Baltimore is like, yes, we are more than just The Wire, everyone.

Please have a break.

I've already talked about Old Bay and Natty Bo.

Are we allowed to talk about The Wire now?

I'm happy to move into The Wire because it is incredibly iconic.

It remains, in my opinion, one of the best shows of all time.

It really cracked open for many people the sort of idea of exposure, of course, based on

real life experience, but it really cracked open this idea of, I think, at a time where we were still pretty pro-cop in terms of how we were depicting them in the media, now I think it's a little more balanced.

It was, it's, it really revealed, uh, same as like homicide life on the streets, I think, was, was similarly inspired, right?

Um, that was a Barry Levinson joint.

Barry Levinson being the

bard of cinematic Baltimore.

Yeah, that that uh that, you know, some shit goes down,

not just in the criminal underworld of various places, but because of very identifiable systemic reasons,

also on the side of law enforcement, you may find a fair amount of corruption and brokenness.

Of course, The Wire was created by David Simon, who was born in Washington, D.C.,

but went to the University of Maryland, College Park, and worked for many years as a journalist, the Baltimore Sun.

Hooray for print journalism.

I don't mess around with X anymore or Twitter or whatever you want to call it.

David Simon used to take people down so hard over there.

Oh, yeah.

So much.

He's very comfortable with his breadth of knowledge and

impatience towards certain points of view.

And, you know, he shares his knowledge, not always in an abusive way, but in a

helpful way.

Like I consulted with him via direct message back before Elon Musk regarding some details of the Baltimore accent.

And he wrote me back.

We'd never met, and he just wrote me back a lot of information.

I love that.

Now the Baltimore accent is a very interesting regional accent.

I think it's a very special accent indeed.

You know, my mom grew up in Philadelphia and her five sisters all speak with a very thick,

with a very pronounced Philadelphian accent.

Those are the two.

Which I can't really do.

I know that you say spoon instead of spoon.

It's one of my favorite pieces of that.

Yeah.

I can do John Worcester's imitation of a Philadelphia accent from the best show when he goes, yeah, they serve Ring Bologna de Bois that I go to.

And that's as close as I can get to the Philadelphia accent.

The Baltimore or Baltimore accent is pretty close.

Yeah, they definitely have that smooth ooh sound that's got extra diphthong action.

And if you want to hear some, you could do worse.

Than John Bernthal's impersonation of it on We Own This City, which was the show that David Simon Simon made.

It was an adaptation of a nonfiction book about a corrupt police task force in Baltimore, which is incredible.

And if you haven't watched The Wire, go watch The Wire.

You can hear an authentic Baltimore accent in the person of Jay Landsman, who portrays Lieutenant Mello in the Hamsterdam season.

Great Baltimore accents, also.

Yeah, the Hamsterdam season, but sprinkled throughout.

And I just find that ooh sound to be so satisfying.

It's so soothing.

It's very soothing.

Well, it feels so outside of anything you hear anywhere else in the United States.

Like it just doesn't show up in

our Americana in terms of our language, our accents.

It feels like it's come from something else, like it comes from something Norwegian or again, I'm not a linguist, so I don't know, but it's just a very unique sound.

Well, we'll talk a little bit about another unique Marylandian accent a little later in this episode.

There are speculations, I'm sure, about the origins of this accent.

It is primarily a white working class accent in the Baltimore area, just as the Philadelphia accent is in Philadelphia.

But if you want to, and I suspect it's disappearing, but if you do want to hear an authentic one, go check out that.

I guess it's the third season of The Wire, the Hamsterdam season.

Lieutenant Mello, who's the

second in command to the police captain in that one, is played by Jay Landsman, who's a Baltimore native.

He's got a great accent.

He always keeps saying to people, don't get captured.

Captured.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now, Dominic West, who played McNulty, one of the stars of The Wire and one of the lead characters, is not a Baltimore person, and he wisely never attempted a Baltimore accent.

He is a Yorkshire man,

like Calvert and Crossland

before him.

Did not try to do that.

It's a funny coincidence, kind of.

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, all the actors are English, I guess.

So that's what happens.

All right.

No, he never really tried to do the Baltimore accent, which is a good idea.

He did essay one of the great Baltimoreisms in one episode, which I alluded to earlier, which is Hun.

When you finish, it's like, how you doing there, hun?

Yeah.

And it's this episode, I don't remember what it was, and I feel like he said it, but in any case,

he drunkenly drives his car into a tree, which is pretty typical for this character.

It's like 2 a.m.

And he goes into an all-night diner, and he asks the diner waitress, can I get Scrapple with that, hun?

Scrapple, of course, being

the great cornmeal and pig waste product paste

that is fried up in Philadelphia, Maryland, Virginia,

and Delaware, all over that Delmarva Peninsula for sure.

Got to get rid of that

drunkenness.

Yeah, and Baltimore as well.

I love Scrapple so much.

Baltimore Scrapple is terrific.

I watched that scene.

I was so excited that he even mentioned Scrapple on it.

And he says, Can I get some Scrapple with that, hun?

And the diner waitress says, You can get anything you want.

And then they smash cut to the two of them doing it.

Woo!

That's the incredible Baltimore pickup line.

They smash cut to them smashing.

And of course, in Baltimore, there is the very famous baseball team called the Baltimore Orioles, for whom the bird was named.

Did you know that?

Hold on, hold on.

Hold on.

I'm telling you the truth.

Hold on, huh.

The bird was named for the baseball team.

People don't know that.

That's not true.

Oh,

no.

You think this bird came around after 1894 when they named the baseball team the Baltimore Orioles?

No.

That bird's been around for a long time.

Yeah.

The baseball team was named for the bird.

The Baltimore Oriel looks like the flag, too.

Yeah, you think that's a coincidence, Janet Varney?

Geez, from here forth stems everything.

I mean, gosh, I guess I appreciate it from a like theme restaurant sort of perspective.

Like, we have a strong point of view.

We are married to this flag, Mary Land,

and we are going to keep showing the receipts for why.

We are going to keep justifying it by picking beautiful things in nature and then pointing at our flag and going, see, our flag's also beautiful.

I love that.

Yeah, that bald memorial is obviously the state bird.

I've never discovered a region so committed to a color scheme.

No, I

me neither.

Since Pittsburgh, really, because in Pittsburgh.

You know, all of the sports teams, they're black and gold.

Okay.

Well, we'll get into that when we start doing cities.

Yeah,

city mottos, city symbols, city colors.

No, it's it's got it's got a real mix, this Baltimore Oriole of uh orange and white and black.

It's a real cute.

I ain't trying to say it's not cute, it's real cute.

And look, I was looking for something interesting about the Oriole.

I mean, it's you know, whatever.

It's a it's the New World Oriole, it's not the same as the European Oriole and blah, blah, blah.

Why is the Oreo called the Oreo?

Makes me wonder if somehow

it has a cream filling well i mean it's black and white and it uh sounds like the word orole

let's move on

here's what i found a direct quote from wikipedia thanks to the wikipedia writer who wrote this because this is a great a great little chunk of prose unlike american robins and many other fruit-eating birds baltimore orioles seem to prefer only ripe dark-colored fruit.

Orioles seek out the darkest mulberries, the reddest cherries, and the deepest purple grapes, and will ignore green grapes and yellow cherries, even if they are ripe.

Okay, little bird snobs.

I love it.

A really picky bird.

Well, that's a lot about Baltimore.

You've never been, and I guess you've never been to Annapolis either, have you?

I haven't.

But people, I know that people go to school in Annapolis.

Isn't that where?

That's where the U.S.

Naval Academy is.

There you go.

It's the western terminus of the great Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

Did you go to Charles Greer and Abigail Evans' wedding in the the 90s?

I missed it.

I had a thing.

I had a thing.

They got married in Annapolis because I think that's where she is from.

And I remember that I went to this wedding because he was a room, a housemate of mine in college

and a friend.

And I remember that she was married on a specific street.

Or maybe her house was on a specific street.

I don't remember what it was.

The name of the street was Silopana.

Oh.

Which is Annapolis Backwards.

The end.

No, really?

Yep.

All right.

I never forgot it.

Okay.

I hope you're doing great out there, Charles and Abigail.

We're about to take a break before we turn to that mighty Chesapeake Bay, and we reveal Maryland's not technically official, but we're going to call it official state cryptid.

Ooh.

But first, a letter from listener Megan regarding the state song.

Megan says, hi there.

I lived in Maryland from age 3 to 24.

I'm currently 36.

Happy birthday.

I was a staff sergeant in the Maryland Defense Force, MDDF.

Only 19 states have defense forces, and Maryland is one of them.

Did not know this.

Thank you, Megan.

The MDDF is actually an unarmed group largely providing volunteer services.

Megan, I'm glad that you stuck that in there right away, because I already had questions, and now they've been answered.

No, it sounds very terrifying.

And I think that

it's like a supplementary branch of the National Guard.

Okay, in this case.

Yeah, so largely providing volunteer services, including a medical corps that was deployed during Hurricane Katrina and a military band, which was my unit.

Megan, I'm falling deeper and deeper in love with you by the sentence.

I play euphonium baritone and I played trombone.

Low brass kicks ass.

That's a quote inside of Megan's letter.

Couldn't agree more, and I enjoy your old school winky emoji.

Yeah, you can attribute that quote to both of us because we agree.

Low brass kicks ass.

Wonderful.

My former commanding officer, Hari Villanu, I'm going to say Hari.

I don't know if it is.

I think that's right.

Hari Villanuva.

Ooh, oh, did you feel?

I said Villanueva.

I really tried to slip in a little something in there.

Baltimore it up.

Failed?

Sure, I did.

But I tried Villa Nueva, I suppose.

Villa Nueva?

Yeah.

Hari Villa Nueva now runs Taps Across America, an org that aims to provide live trumpet players for the funerals of veterans.

I love this.

And guess what?

He also officiated Megan's wedding.

Back to Megan's letter.

One of the songs my unit performed was a state song, Maryland, My Maryland.

It is sung/slash played to the tune of O Christmas Tree and includes truly wild lyrics like Remember Howard's warlike thrust and Huzzah, she spurns the northern scum.

All right, so that was a lyric that

I didn't know.

In my mind, I was turning it into like an ecodiversity, like a threat.

Like, you know how there are those special like mussels that are like mollusks that can ruin the whole ecosystem of

a lake or a body of water?

Yeah, Be careful

in the garden.

There you go.

In my mind, it was a dangerous algae.

The northern scum.

That came, that just happened to come from Canada.

It's nobody's fault.

It's neither good nor bad.

But unfortunately, we did need Maryland to take back control of its own ecosystem and get rid of that northern scum.

There you go, everyone.

I mean, invasive species are a real issue in the Chesapeake Bay, which is

where you get a lot of oysters and a lot of fishing is done there.

But I don't think that that's what it was.

That's what we call eco-washing.

Straight-up hate.

The eco-washed problematic song.

A straight-up hate song.

And it was repealed in 2021.

But the good news is this means that Maryland does not have a state song currently.

Great.

And I do not know what the music scene is like in Maryland.

I know that the dream pop band Beach House originates in Maryland.

No problem with Beach House.

If you've got a favorite Maryland band or a favorite Maryland themed or produced song, let us know, won't you?

Email ProbusMott at maximumfun.org and maybe we'll send your letter along to the statehouse in Annapolis right there on Silopana Street.

That's not where it is.

I'm going to give a little spoiler before this break

that I hope that people who write in do not write in with a song that is just another song with different lyrics.

I invite you to choose something that doesn't have a tune we all already know.

From some of them.

Yeah, no.

I'd love to hear an original song by a really cool Maryland band or musical artist.

Or hip-hop.

I mean, I bet there's some really great stuff that comes out of Maryland.

I'm excited about this.

Let us know.

There's a great cake that comes out of Maryland.

We're going to talk about it after the break because we're taking one now.

Here comes a break.

The best part about living in Maryland is being able to shout at the top of your lungs, oh, during the national anthem.

There is no better cry of camaraderie in all 50 states, dare I say, in the world.

All right, friends, welcome back to EPLUBIS Motto.

I'm Janet Varney.

And I remain John Hodgman.

And let's take a moment now.

To honor America's largest estuary, we've been talking about it.

We've been dancing around this bay for a long time.

It's the watery jewel in maryland's drag queen crown

the chesapeake bay

this is an look i've seen a lot of bodies of water okay you know i've seen a lot of bays yeah seen a lot of islands

but there's something i only recently have seen spent time on the chesapeake bay and i've spent time on it meaning i traveled over the bay bridge which is a very long bridge okay and then i also traveled from the delmarva Peninsula to Virginia, which is really from Virginia to Virginia because the bottom of the Delmarva is Virginia.

But the point is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel complex,

which is like miles of bridge that then dips down and goes underwater for a couple of miles, then comes back up again, and then goes back down again.

Okay.

It's truly a big piece of water.

And it's really pretty.

And it's really true that it is home to the state crustacean, the blue crab okay

it is its waters are plied by the state sailboat the skipjack since uh 1985 the skipjack is a traditional fishing boat used on the chesapeake bay for oyster dredging very famous sailboat important to the maritime economy okay and it is the home of the smith island cake the official state dessert of Maryland.

I'm listening and I'm going to tell you right now, if you can find a way to make this cake also look like the flag, I'm going to lose my mind.

I'm going to lose

my mind.

It doesn't look like the flag, but it is visually dense.

Okay.

Because it is.

Yeah, look it up.

It is a multi-layered cake, usually eight to ten layers.

That's a lot of layers.

Thin layers of yellow cake with chocolate frosting between each layer.

It does does look like the state flag.

What are you talking about?

It's just brown and yellow.

It's black and gold.

Well, I guess you're right.

If the chocolate is

black and gold stripes.

Don't even try to tell me that this doesn't have something to do with the flag.

I can't believe I was right.

I'm in shock right now.

I'm going to try to tell you that it

doesn't have anything to do with the flag.

I don't think it has anything to do with anything other than Smith Island because Smith Island has nothing to do with anything that isn't Smith Island.

Smith Island is, I mean, look,

the Chesapeake Bay is big, right?

Okay.

It's got a lot of tidal inlets, got a lot of tiny islands, it's got 11,000 miles of shoreline.

That's a lot.

There are some small places to hide out in.

And the Smith Islanders have been hiding out for centuries.

It is the only inhabited island in the Chesapeake that is not accessible by car.

Only about 220 people live there still.

They're largely a fishing community.

And they still still speak what's called a relic dialect,

which is English with an almost colonial style accent because they've been so isolated for so long

with hints of the West Country of England and Cornwall.

So

we actually,

I don't have anyone in my life who speaks with this accent.

But there is a public domain clip of a young man speaking with this accent.

It's a really strange accent.

And maybe we'll play it now.

now.

I didn't like school much, and I'd rather work underwater than go to school.

And you still like working underwater.

Yeah.

So you think that you'll probably spend your life being a waterman?

Yeah.

I'm not sure.

And you can stay on Smith.

Yeah, as long as we can.

Tell it's here.

So look, that's that accent.

There are a lot of weird little island accents.

It's not dissimilar to.

The Outer Banks Island in North Carolina, the Okra Coke Island accent,

which is weirdly similar to the Baltimore accent.

Okra Coke, they call it Okra Coke Island.

Okra Coke.

Okra Coke.

But the point is that, like, you can get lost in that Chesapeake Bay.

It's big.

I mentioned that

its shoreline is 11,000, more than 11,000 miles.

It's longer than the entire west coast of the United States.

I'm intimidated, I'll be honest.

And that means isolation like Smith Island, right?

Sure.

But it also, all of those little places that you can go, those little estuary hide holes, the inlets and the tidal rivers, and all the communities on the islands, like you can get away from everything.

And so, that means isolation, like Smith Island, to a degree, but it also means privacy and the possibility of self-sufficiency by working the water and work by working the water.

And, you know, historically, generations of Native Americans took to the bay to escape the predations of the colonizers.

Sure.

And freed black Americans before and during and just after the Civil War, and including till today,

were

made a living working on the water.

Yeah.

Frederick Douglass escaped to freedom disguised as a freed black sailor across the Chesapeake Bay.

Yeah.

Many black sailors were worked on the Skipjacks, those oyster dredging sailing ships.

Yeah.

And some even became captains, and they were known as the Blackjacks.

That's really cool.

So I did not know anything about this, but luckily I am a user of Instagram.

Janet, did you know that?

I didn't know that.

At John Hodgman.

You can follow him there if you want.

I'm at the Drafty Pope.

Yeah, that's right.

I was very lucky that the algorithm chose for me an account by a young guy named Austin Lewis, who is not only an avid Chesapeake historian

and conservationist,

who does these incredible videos of him cleaning up garbage in the Chesapeake and talking about

not only the black history of the Chesapeake, but the overall history of the bay and the maritime commerce of the bay historically.

He also runs a life insurance brokerage.

He's a really interesting person.

His account is instagram.com/slash baylife brokerage.

And I really enjoy what he does.

Thank you, Austin.

I'm excited to check out your account.

The Chesapeake finally is also home to what I think we should now make official, the official state cryptid

Chesse.

Chessee!

Chesse is a sea serpent.

I would hope.

I would hope.

I believe I remember Chesse coming up when we had some wonderful listener interaction around and about our state cryptids episode and then the little tiny mini-up I did during Max Fun Drive.

I think we sort of leaned into

Champi being our kind of mascot for all serpent teen cryptids in the United States when we were talking about that.

But I am so excited we are giving Chessie her due.

Claims of sightings go back to 1936

when a military helicopter flying over Bush River reported, quote, something reptilian and unknown in the water.

Ooh, that's so good.

That gave me goosebumps, kind of.

Yeah.

Some people think it's a sturgeon.

Some people think it's a sea monster.

You decide.

Chessie, of course, is spelled C-H-E-S-S-I-E.

If you've ever seen Chessie or something you thought was Chesse, won't you let us know at email pluribusmonto at maximumfund.org?

Now, we do know that Champ of the Lake Champlain Lake Monster of Burlington, Vermont, is the inspiration for the

minor league baseball team, the Lake Monsters.

Yeah.

Chesse is the inspiration for a green monster mascot called Louie for the Bowie Bay Sox, which is the minor league baseball team located in Bowie or Bowie.

I don't know, Maryland.

The AA affiliate.

Why did it end up getting Louie instead of instead of Chesse?

I don't know.

Or just Bowie or whatever.

I'm just saying.

Well, you know what it is?

Chesse is the only lake or sea monster that controls and owns its own IP.

Okay,

that explains it.

It's a licensing issue.

It's not Creative Commons.

It all makes sense now.

It all makes sense now.

I'll just leave you with one other

lesser known Maryland cryptid.

And I'm quoting here from a News Maryland Department of Natural Resources press release dated October 4, 2024, fairly recently.

Half man, half animal, the goat man

is known.

for walking on two feet

and blamed for killing dogs.

This is also familiar.

I think someone wrote in about the goat man.

And of course, we had the whole conversation around the terrifying bipedalness

of many cryptids that seemingly should not be walking on two feet or are part human, but the bottom part is, you know, that's getting into some sort of, you know, like general kind of centaur, like fawn, like that whole kind of group of like,

is its bottom part supposed to be?

I mean, what are we talking about?

We talked about this goat man.

Be awesome if it was the top half was a goat and the bottom half was a guy.

You named it.

No.

No.

No, it's bottom half goat, classic satyr

disappointing.

Quoth the Maryland Department of Natural Resources press release, Legend of the goat man may have originated in the early 20th century, but resurfaced in the 1970s in Prince George's County, Maryland.

Some variations on the legend say he was once a scientist at Beltsville Agricultural Research Center

who was the victim of his own experiment.

Oh, that's good.

That's like eco-horror.

And again, that takes us back to the northern scum that isn't the northern scum.

So it could be

a mad scientist who is the victim of his own experiment that backfired, or it could be a deer with a skin disease.

That's killing dogs.

I don't think so, Hodges.

I don't know why

Killing dogs is not, there's no follow-up on the goat man's hatred of dogs.

Keep your dogs close and your goat men closer, I guess.

Yeah.

That's all I got for you, Janet.

I had a whole thing that I was going to tell, explain why Maryland is called the old line state.

Okay.

L-I-N-E.

And the answer is not what you think it is.

It is not because

the northern border of Maryland is the Mason-Dixon line.

But it refers to something else.

But you know what?

Look it up.

Okay.

It's not because of that old bar pickup line.

Hey,

manly deeds, womanly words.

Oh, I forgot to

which I spill a drink in your face.

No, it's not that.

Okay.

Hey, you know what I forgot to tell you?

Tell me.

Remember we were talking about the Baltimore Oriole?

Yeah.

Do you want to hear the mating call of the Baltimore Oriole?

Do you even need to hear my answer, which is unreserved?

Yeah.

I don't have a recording.

Is it yes?

Unreservedly.

Okay.

I don't have a recording, but I can do an impersonation of it.

Oh, this is you.

Okay.

This is the mating call of the Baltimore Oriel.

Okay.

Can I get scrappable with that, hun?

Can I get scrappable with that, hun?

Is this the first episode we'll end without credits or anything?

Just a hard.

A hard cut out right after this.

As long as you can make sure to include the sound of the mic dropping.

All right.

We didn't get to a lot of things.

We didn't get to Babe Ruth being from Maryland.

We didn't get to the fact that Baltimore was the city that received the first telegram.

We didn't get the first manned balloon flight in the United States

took place in Maryland.

Take that, Montgolfier Brothers.

And I'm sure there's a lot more that we missed.

If we left something out, and I'm sure we did, don't forget to scold us, hon, at emailploribusmoto at maximumfund.org.

And also, don't forget to send us your regional accents.

Yes.

Record a voice memo and send it into the email.

Yes.

And all your facts and memories and things that you want to share, not just about Maryland, but on our upcoming states as well.

Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nevada, D.C.

They're all coming up.

But now it's time to rate the state motto

on a scale of one to ten crab cakes.

Man, strong/slash manly words, gentle slash womanly deeds.

No, reverse it.

Strong slash manly deeds, gentle slash womanly words,

aka

fatty masky parole feminine.

How many crab cakes do you give it?

Hodgman, I am saying this as a person who has not yet had a meal today, and it's kind of late in the day for that to be true.

Time has gotten away from me.

And yet, my friend, I am going to go hungry because I cannot assign even one crab cake to this motto.

Zero crab cakes.

And I am hungry.

I'm going to give it half a crab cake.

Okay.

Because it's unforgettable.

Okay.

Much like the flag.

Understood.

Once you encounter it, it gives you, it's giving strong what the huh.

Uh-huh.

And then you think about it for a while.

Yeah.

And I got to give it a little bit of crab cake just for its stickiness.

I hear you.

That's what I hear you.

Okay.

I'll give it like

the sort of bits that are still in the pan that didn't coalesce with the rest of the crab cake that is still kind of fun to go around to the stove once it's cooled off and kind of inch your little fingernail underneath and scrape that loose and pop it in your mouth.

Which is almost like crab cake scrapple, based on what I've described.

The old line referred to the Maryland regiment, the Maryland 400, who covered for George Washington's retreat during the Battle of Long Island, his evacuation from Brooklyn to Maryland.

Excuse me, to Manhattan.

Maryland had nothing to do with it, except there are a bunch of guys up there who got killed in Park Slope.

Wow.

And their bodies

are thought to be somewhere underneath the playground on

Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets.

I don't know why that horror movie hasn't been made yet.

Get on it, someone.

Near the old stone house.

Okay.

So I got that in at the very very end.

Good work, my friend.

And that was a wonderful presentation of the state of Maryland.

I thank you.

I have learned so much.

Someone took you on a journey there.

I did go on a journey.

Now I think you've officially been.

I cannot agree with that.

I have not been.

It's a direction.

Yeah, but I still want to go for the first time.

Half a crab cake for the motto, but I'm going to give 10 crab cakes for the whole state.

Agreed.

I've just been in a Maryland era, it's my Discovering Maryland era, and I've driven through it a bunch now on my way to and from places, and I can't wait to stop again.

I'm in.

Someone put a show together for us.

We'll do a live show in

Baltimore.

Yeah, let's go to Baltimore.

Someone get on that stat.

I'm really excited to go.

And I want to explore that Chesapeake Bay.

It's Big Bay.

Well, that does it for this episode of ePluribus Motto.

The show was hosted by Janet Varney, me, along with me, John Hodgman.

The show is produced and edited by Julian Burrell.

Senior producer at Maximum Fun is Laura Swisher.

Our theme music was composed by Zach Burba.

Our show art was created by Paul G.

Hammond.

And friends, again, did we miss anything from Maryland that we should know about?

You can, of course, tell us all about that and more at email pluribusmotto at maximumfund.org.

You can also find us on TikTok and Instagram to tell us more about the states we've talked about so far.

Next time on ePluribus Motto, Janet Varney will present

Minnesota!

When we did a special call out for responses from listeners, Minnesota was the state that received, wait for it, by far the most listener advocacy.

We're on our way.

To our next episode, we're headed to Minnesota.

I've been to Minnesota, and I can't wait to talk about it with everybody.

You can do that accent very well.

We're going to be talking about the Twin Cities.

We're going to be talking about other parts of Minnesota.

Time I went to Morris, Minnesota to do a comedy show in a blizzard.

Great.

We're going to talk about, it's going to be so much fun.

It's the Landa Lakes, my favorite American branche.

There you go.

So let's go there soon.

And until then, remember our motto, Di Molte uno,

which is Italian for E.

pluribus Unum.

I like Di Molteuno.

Di Molte uno to you, Janet.

Hey, Di Molte uno.

And to us all.

Hey, Fatty Masky, hey.

Did you know that it is International Jazz Day?

Did I?

No.

I didn't.

That is the true sound of jazz.

Did I?

As long as we both agree that Fred from the B52s founded jazz, then yes, I agree.

That's right.

That's right.

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