When I first came to the United States of America more than 30 years ago, I was naturally curious about things that were very different from what I was used to in Sri Lanka. The ‘American accent,’ I knew was different and it took me a while to get used to it. There were things that I just couldn’t get and things that really fascinated me. Like vehicle number plates, or ‘license plates’ as they were called.
I can’t recall what made me notice them. I was struck by the fact that vehicles registered in different states had unique signatures. The backgrounds were different but this didn’t catch my attention as much as the taglines.
Since I was living in Massachusetts at the time, most vehicles were from that state. A large number were from the New England region, so I did catch the mottos, let’s say, of Connecticut (Constitution State), Maine (Vacation Land), New Hampshire (Live Free or Die), Rhode Island (Ocean State) and Vermont (Green Mountain State). New York wasn’t too far away, so I got to see the ‘Empire State’ signature as well. Massachusetts plates had ‘Spirit of America.’
This was pre-internet, note. I couldn’t look these up online. I had to depend on chance sightings of out-of-state vehicles and memory. I did travel a bit so at one point I knew what was written on the license plates of probably half the states.
This is about Pennsylvania. Officially, ‘The Keystone State,’ Pennsylvania cars did have that on the license plates, but the legend on the majority of vehicles from that state that I noticed was ‘You’ve got a friend in Pennsylvania.’
Warm, I thought. Welcoming.
Now, back in the USA and resident in Philadelphia these days, I hardly see vehicles from New England. It’s mostly Pennsylvania with a sizable number of vehicles from New Jersey (Garden State) and some from New York (Empire State).
I am yet to see ‘You’ve got a friend in Pennsylvania.’ I am yet to see ‘Keystone State.’ Instead, there’s ‘visitPA.com.' An invitation, yes, but not welcoming, not warm, and nothing to tell me why I should be visiting PA (the letters that precede the 2213 Pennsylvania zip codes — and yes, I got that from the net, the number not the letters) assuming I was in some other state and had seen a Pennsylvania number plate.
Why, I wondered. Why had they changed it? Why should I visit PA or Pennsylvania? It’s like saying ‘I am good.’ It’s as if the point needs to be made in order to dispel any suspicion of me being bad. It’s like saying ‘Buy this.’ Or ‘that.’ Or ‘something else.’ Buy, but we won’t tell you why you should buy it; buy it because we say you should. Something like that. There’s a dash of arrogance there.
The plates of New Mexico (Land of Enchantment), West Virginia (Wild, Wonderful), Arizona (Grand Canyon State), Minnesota (10,000 Lakes), South Dakota (Great Faces, Great Places), Washington (Evergreen State) and even Kentucky (Bluegrass State) are advertisements. There’s something that makes one curious, makes one think about visiting. ‘Virginia is for Lovers,’ is cute while Kentucky’s ‘In God We Trust’ made me think, ‘Um…okaaaay…’ Not compelling enough. You have your beliefs, I have mine and anyway, what you believe is not what makes someone want to visit you, is it?
Pennsylvania. I’ve got friends in Pennsylvania. They are warm, friendly, decent people. ‘You’ve got a friend in Pennsylvania,’ is something else. It would tell me something like this, ‘don’t worry if you don’t know anyone in Pennsylvania, we have friendship and warmth and you won’t feel like a stranger.’
‘visitPA.com'? Nah.
Other articles in this series:
A gateway to illumination in West Virginia
Through strange fissures into magical orchards
There's sea glass love few will see
Re-residencing Lakdasa Wikkramasinha
Poisoning poets and shredding books of verse
The responsible will not be broken
Ownership and tenuriality of the Wissahickon
Did you notice the 'tiny, tiny wayside flowers'?
Gifts, gifting and their rubbishing
Journalism inadvertently learned
Reflections on the young poetic heart
Wordaholic, trynasty and other portmanteaus
The 'Loku Aiya' of all 'Paththara Mallis'
Subverting the indecency of the mind
Character theft and the perennial question 'who am I?'
Saji Coomaraswamy and rewards that matter
Seeing, unseeing and seeing again
Alex Carey and the (small) matter of legacy
The insomnial dreams of Kapila Kumara Kalinga
The clothes we wear and the clothes that wear us (down)
Every mountain, every rock, is sacred
Manufacturing passivity and obedience
Sanjeew Lonliyes: rawness unplugged, unlimited
In praise of courage, determination and insanity
The relative values of life and death
Poetry and poets will not be buried
Reunion Peradeniya (1980-1990)
Sorrowing and delighting the world
Encounters with Liyanage Amarakeerthi
Letters that cut and heal the heart
A forgotten dawn song from Embilipitiya
The soft rain of neighbourliness
Reflections on waves and markings
Respond to insults in line with the Akkosa Sutra
The right time, the right person
The silent equivalent of a thousand words
Crazy cousins are besties for life
The lost lyrics of Premakeerthi de Alwis
Consolation prizes in competitions no one ever wins
Blackness, whiteness and black-whiteness
Inscriptions: stubborn and erasable
Deveni: a priceless one-word koan
Recovering run-on lines and lost punctuation
'Wetness' is not the preserve of the Dry Zone
On sweeping close to one's feet
Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California
To be an island like the Roberts...
Debts that can never be repaid in full
An island which no flood can overwhelm
A melody faint and yet not beyond hearing
Heart dances that cannot be choreographed
Remembering to forget and forgetting to remember
Authors are assassinated, readers are immortal
It is good to be conscious of nudities
Saturday slides in after Monday and Sunday somersaults into Friday
There's a one in a million and a one in ten
Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California
Hemantha Gunawardena's signature
Architectures of the demolished
The exotic lunacy of parting gifts
Who the heck do you think I am?
Those fascinating 'Chitra Katha'
So how are things in Sri Lanka?
The sweetest three-letter poem
Teams, team-thinking, team-spirit and leadership
The songs we could sing in lifeboats when we are shipwrecked
Jekhan Aruliah set a ball rolling in Jaffna
Awaiting arrivals unlike any other
Teachers and students sometimes reverse roles
Colombo, Colombo, Colombo and so forth
The slowest road to Kumarigama, Ampara
Some play music, others listen
Mind and hearts, loquacious and taciturn
I am at Jaga Food, where are you?
On separating the missing from the disappeared
And intangible republics will save the day (as they always have)
The circuitous logic of Tony Muller
Rohana Kalyanaratne, an unforgettable 'Loku Aiya'
Mowgli, the Greatest Archaeologist
Figures and disfigurement, rocks and roses
Sujith Rathnayake and incarcerations imposed and embraced
Some stories are written on the covers themselves
A poetic enclave in the Republic of Literature
Landcapes of gone-time and going-time
The best insurance against the loud and repeated lie
So what if the best flutes will not go to the best flautists?
There's dust and words awaiting us at crossroads and crosswords
A song of terraced paddy fields
Of ants, bridges and possibilities
From A through Aardvark to Zyzzyva
Words, their potency, appropriation and abuse
Who did not listen, who's not listening still?
If you remember Kobe, visit GOAT Mountain
The world is made for re-colouring
No 27, Dickman's Road, Colombo 5
Visual cartographers and cartography
Ithaca from a long ago and right now
Lessons written in invisible ink
The amazing quality of 'equal-kindness'
The interchangeability of light and darkness
Sisterhood: moments, just moments
Chess is my life and perhaps your too
Reflections on ownership and belonging
The integrity of Nadeesha Rajapaksha
Signatures in the seasons of love
To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows
Fragrances that will not be bottled
Colours and textures of living heritage
Countries of the past, present and future
Books launched and not-yet-launched
The sunrise as viewed from sacred mountains
Isaiah 58: 12-16 and the true meaning of grace
The age of Frederick Algernon Trotteville
Live and tell the tale as you will
Between struggle and cooperation
Neruda, Sekara and literary dimensions
Paul Christopher's heart of many chambers
Calmness gracefully cascades in the Dumbara Hills
Serendipitous amber rules the world
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