Balto - Part 1 (with Jennifer Keating)
My partner Jennifer Keating and I are sitting down to watch a middle-school favorite of hers, Balto (1995). I haven’t seen the movie, but its description reminds me — quite naturally! — of Ralph Bakshi’s Heavy Traffic (1973), which my parents let me watch (watched with me, actually) and way, way too young an age. Here’s a Mental Floss article explaining the myth that the clerks at Ellis Island “Americanized” the names of incoming immigrants. The short version is that the clerks didn’t actually change anyone’s name because they didn’t actually record any names: they only checked them against the passenger manifests of the ships. So, there you go. Tell your uncle to stop telling that story at Thanksgiving.
