sister cities

It was a bit disheartening to learn, a few months ago, that some communities of the British Isles were formally severing ties, de-twaining themselves from twin towns and villages in continental Europe.
The relations, I suppose, had gone mostly inactive with cultural exchanges and engagements rarer and rarer and only with the guilt-inducing (or affirming) reminders on the city-limits sign. There was also the instigation that the ties were not only irrelevant but came out of a backlash against EU politicking and monetary policy. One remote Scots village in the Highlands, home to some three hundred residents, called Glenelg is bucking the trend, however, and embracing the notion of adopting a sister location. Those cartographers and explorers mapping out the Martian rover Curiosity’s route named a certain geological feature along the path, one which Curiosity will pass on its venture outward and again on its way back, after this settlement’s namesake in the Northwest Territories in Canada with a palindromical name. Residents are very proud of this distinction and are the first village to pair itself with an extraterrestrial locale.