“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.”
Cadastral Adjective: A type of map used to show ownership of land, especially for taxation. Example: “The county recorder’s cadesteral map showed that she owned the land.”
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
A website that I have touted before is Bridge Hunter. It is a user developed guide to the historic and interesting bridges in the United States. Kind of a Wikipedia for bridges, it is very popular with engineers and others that like to see great engineering. Recently I was asked by someone for advise on where to snorkel in Hawaii and by someone else for advise on where to snorkel in Belize. I did a search for a Bridge Hunter equivalent for snorkeling and didn’t… Read More »Snorkel Hunter
So here is the math. Romney will probably get roughly the same number of votes as John McCain did in 2008 but he will win. And the reason is pretty simple. Many of the “enthusiasm voters” who heard “Hope and Change” four years ago are going to stay at home this cycle. About eight million people voted for the first time in 2008 for Obama. They are the young and minorities but now they are disillusioned and busy looking for jobs. Many of them won’t… Read More »Why Obama Will Lose in November
Lake Avenue is one of the major streets in Pasadena. Before the revival of Old Pasadena it was also the main shopping district. Today’s question is: How did it come to be called Lake Avenue when a Google map of the area doesn’t show a lake within twenty miles? A map from the 1920’s answers the question. The map was made by the Automobile Club when their slogan was “Good Roads.” Zooming in on the south end of Lake Avenue we find the answer to… Read More »How Lake Avenue Got Its Name
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