Deep South Texas is expecting severe weather today with some potent looking cells already popping up in the Rio Grande Valley where over 5 inches of rain has fallen since the weekend. Prior to my live hit on MSNBC in the 11am hour, I looked up Rio Grande on the internet for proper pronunciation as I have heard several versions from Rio GrandAY to Rio GrandEE to Rio Grande (silent e). Just as I thought, the e is silent -- that is if you are pronouncing it in English. Although fluent in French, my Spanish leaves much to be desired so I went with the English version. Curious as to why this is worthy of a blog? Next paragraph please:

Upon reading about the Rio Grande (silent "e") Valley, to my surprise I discovered that it actually is not a valley, but rather a floodplain (how fitting considering today's flood watch in the region). It is also accurately called a delta (in geography and meteorology textbooks only). However, early Mexican settlers thought that the word "valley" would be more attractive and appealing to tourists. I think they were right. The Rio Grande Valley certainly sounds sexier than the Rio Grande floodplain - who would want to go to the Rio Grande floodplain? The word "delta" is less known and more ambiguous than "valley" and "floodplain". It is defined as a deposit at the mouth of a river, but I'm willing to bet that the most common associations with "delta" are the airline (Delta airlines) and for college students, the Greek letter.

It's just another example of the importance of marketing and packaging which takes us all over the nation. A phoenix is actually a mythical bird that dies in flames and is reborn from the ashes - interestingly, it is also the name attributed to the capital of Arizona. A more appropriate name would have been Dry, Arizona or Arid, Arizona. But somebody decided to give this county seat of Maricopa County some mythical history. I don't think that any mythical sacred firebirds have ever been spotted in Phoenix. Similarly, it is certainly up for debate whether or not Los Angeles actually has angels inhabiting it. The point of importance is that packaging on many levels is an important part of our daily lives - it's all how you sell it.