“It is not down in any map; true places never are.” Herman Melville Melville who wrote Moby Dick among other classics also made this cryptic comment. I was impressed that he ended the sentence with a verb. The map is from the cover of The Mapping of California as an Island. it was part of the Border Map collection that I donated to the ASU School of Transborder Studies about ten years ago.
“The joy of map reading has been swallowed whole into the maw of GPS technology.” Simon Winchester in Knowing What We Know Whatever happened to Gas Station Maps or in LA the Thomas Guide? On the other hand we can always find where we need to be with out ever knowing where we are going. Change is….
Provenance Noun: A record of ownership of a work of art or an antique, used as a guide to authenticity. Also the place of origin or the earliest known history of something. Example: “The provenance of many early maps is questionable.”
On Friday night November 1 I went down to ASU to see the reopening of the Imagined Borders map exhibit at the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. It was nice to see many old friends and old maps again. I was asked to make a few remarks about the exhibition which is well hung and has a very nice gallery guide with an overly flattering brief bio of me.
The exhibit is open to the public contact the School of Transborder Studies to get details. Here are my notes for the remarks I was asked to make at the opening: Read More »Imagined Borders Update
I was a map collector. In 2012 I donated the collection to The School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. Every once in a while they ask me to come down and talk about the maps and I’m always willing to do it. On November 1, 2019 they are reopening the derivative exhibition “Imagined Regions” and they have asked me to speak. I’m going to talk about maps and collecting.Read More »Maps Redeux
In September 2015 I started a discovery project with an almost 100 year old map of Pasadena. At the time I called it One City One Map Life intervened, progress was slow, but I pushed slowly forward and now I’m going to be presenting my work to the Huntington Westerners in Pasadena on March 4, 2017. Mostly what I’ve done is look in depth at some of the locations on the old map and compare photos from the 1920’s and the present. For instance: The… Read More »Good Roads
My latest map project blends technology and history. Many years ago I bought an old Automobile Club of Southern California map of Pasadena. My plan is to first accurately date the map, digitize it and pin it onto Google Earth. Then by searching the archives of the Pasadena Historical Society and other local sources pin photos of what some of the interesting points on the map looked like in about 1920 when the map was printed. I hope then to visit the sites, retake… Read More »One City One Map
The opening of the map exhibit at CECUT in Tijuana last Friday was wonderful. Carlos Garcia, Armando Orso, Simon Burrow Carlos and Armando were the prime movers in getting the exhibit approved and installed. The exhibit is the best yet. They did blowups of three of the maps that are spectacular and the space is just wonderful. I didn’t get many pictures because I was distracted by the delicious Baja Pinot Noir from Cetto Vineyards that they were pouring. We concluded the evening with dinner… Read More »CECUT Map Opening
La Frontera, which I think is the largest paper in Tijuana, ran a full page story about the opening of the Changing Boundaries map exhibit at CECUT. It appears that people of Mexico are more interested in the Changing Border (Fronteras Cambiantas) than people in the USA.
The opening of the Changing Boundaries map exhibit has been posted on the CECUT web site. You can help me a bit by going to the link and liking it on Facebook. Do it now. If you are in the San Diego area this Friday night come across the border for a pretty cool bi-cultural event. http://www.cecut.gob.mx/article/2312 To see this announcement on the CECUT website is pretty exciting. I have taken a collection of maps that I made 20 years ago and over the last… Read More »Maps in Tijuana