European American ethnic festivals play an important role in the maintenance of folk traditions and ethnic identity in America. Many of these festivals were established during a mid-twentieth-century period of diminishing Old World identity among second and third generation immigrants. The celebrations sought not only to revive ethnic identification by highlighting customs such as cuisine, music and dance, but also to boost the local economy by tapping into a burgeoning tourism destination market. Wilber, Nebraska, home to a large population of Czech Americans, resurrected such a festival in 1962 that had not been celebrated since 1937, and this paper explores a number of geographical, historical, cultural and political factors contributing to its initial and continued popularity as a regional ethnic festival. Also discussed are the commodified cultural items, including food, polka music, craftwork and traditional clothing that provide Czech Americans a means to engage in and maintain a satisfying level of ethnic identity without exerting significant amounts of money and time. The Czech Festival continues to benefit Wilber economically with tens of thousands of tourist visits each year, and surveys indicate that the maintenance of ethnic customs and identity in the community is increasingly becoming dependent on the festival.

The 2008 election cycle signaled a recent high in Democratic voting in the State of Wisconsin. At the national level, Wisconsin awarded its electoral votes to Democrat Barack Obama. Democrats performed well at the state level too, taking control of the State Assembly, State Senate, and Governor's mansion, a first since 1986. By 2010, in the wake of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, voters turned their attention away from Democrats. Nationally, Democrats lost 63 seats in the House of Representatives and clung to a three seat majority in the US Senate. Wisconsin voters propelled Republicans to victory in unprecedented fashion, making it the only state in the 2010 election cycle in which one party lost majorities in both houses of the state legislature and the governorship. The purpose of this paper is to use cartographic illustrations at the county and voting district levels to provide spatial evidence of voting patterns in the State of Wisconsin. County-level analysis is provided for the 2008 presidential and the 2010 gubernatorial elections, while voting district-level analysis is conducted for the 2010 gubernatorial election. Voting district results are the smallest scale of voting results available to the public and allow a more intimate and local contextual analysis of election patterns. This study also provides a technological framework for troubleshooting election reporting methods that do not align with voting district shapefiles in a GIS format.

Athletic team names are a fascinating yet understudied topic in onomastics. Inspired by the work of Nuessel (1994) and Smith (1997) and framed by the extensive toponymy approach described by Tent (2015), this study proposes a taxonomy of team names and mascots used by high schools in the United States. A list of 20,853 schools procured from the Clell Wade Coaches Directory catalyzed the study, and content analysis of school websites and social media accounts determined the mascots of ambiguous team names. The results include seven general categories: humans, fauna, flora, inanimate objects and phenomena, deities and spiritual beings, mythological creatures and beings, and schools not using team names. Most schools use an animal or human mascot, and prevailing themes among all names include a strong degree of convention in their selection, a high frequency of bellicosity in their character, and a small but notable observance of local distinctiveness in their presence.

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Growing student interest in sports provides geography teachers with a special opportunity to make connections between it and fundamental concepts in the discipline. This article examines the structure, arrangement, relationships, and distinctions among minor league baseball franchise locations, stadia, and team names, and presents examples of their applicability to teaching the five themes of geography and addressing many of the national geography standards in introductory human geography courses.