Smells of New York

New York Times: Scents and the City By Jason Logan. An interactive map of the smells of New York:

New York secretes its fullest range of smells in the summer; disgusting or enticing, delicate or overpowering, they are liberated by the heat. So one sweltering weekend, I set out to navigate the city by nose...

Fortunately, for all of us, they have not yet perfected Internet smell-o-vision...

HT to Gwen

#460

O Shenandoah

The Library of Congress has an online exhibit of a very important map from the American Civil War. In O Shenandoah, I Long to Map You, Jennifer Gavin describes the cartographic efforts of Jedediah Hotchkiss. His hand drawn maps, many drawn from horseback, were "extraordinary for their accuracy." These maps were an essential tool used by Gen. Robert E. Lee in his many military successes.

On exhibit is Hotchkiss' Map of the Shenandoah Valley. The site allows you to zoom in to examine the detail:



I am reminded then, to share with you my two Civil War related map postcards. The first represents Lee and his generals examining a map (a Hotchkiss?)



Here is a map and panorama of people and events of the Civil War (click on image for a larger view).



This map is also available as a 1000-Piece Jigsaw Puzzle.

HT to Angela

Hawaii IS in Africa

Pinko Magazine offers an exclusive peak at Rejected Town Hall Rally Posters, including this one, sure to have been popular among birthers:

Omey Island

Sean Corcoran is an Artist based in Waterford, Ireland. Well, I grew up in Waterford, Michigan. So, that's as good a reason as any to highlight his work:

Here is the map section from the Map + Guide + DVD that I have created of Omey Island, a tidal Island in Connemara off the coast of Galway in the west of Ireland. Below is some of the text and images from the Guide and a preview of the DVD;

From the mainland at Claddaghduff the island is inconspicuous and almost hidden. In fact you could drive along the coast road and not even realise the island exists in the panoramic view below you.

The island appears to only be accessible during low-tide...

Antique Puzzle and Game Maps

New this week at Bibliodyssey: Antique Puzzle and Game Maps:



"You cannot teach geography in any way so effectually as by setting the pupil to construct the map from the dissected parts."

Map puzzles and map games have been used for centuries to teach geography.

Hawaii Statehood Semi-Centennial

On August 21, 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed
the proclamation officially welcoming Hawaii as the 50th state of the union.




The Official Hawaii Statehood site.

Not all Hawaiians accept the legitimacy of the annexation and statehood of their islands. Some would like to see a restoration of the Kingdom of Hawaii. Some have gone to great lengths to make their point.

Others get very touchy when anyone makes fun of their little piece of paradise, such as when Saturday Night Live did a skit about two men tired of working in the tourist industry (see it on Hulu).

Hawaii is proud to be the birthplace of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States... or is he? Just as the Hawaiian lunatic fringe has been questioning the legitimacy of their statehood, the right-wing lunatic fringe has been trying to question the President's citizenship. Is Hawaii the real reason the Birthers don't like Obama?

Meanwhile, enjoy my Hawaii map beach towel. My cats do.



Previously on Cartophilia: Miserable Hawaii

#455

John Quincy Adams Twitters His Way to St. Petersburg

On August 5, 1809, John Quincy Adams, future president, and son of a former president, set sail from Boston on his way to St. Petersburg. President James Madison had appointed Adams minister plenipotentiary to Russia. Like most learned men of that time, Adams kept a journal of his activities (like a blog) with lengthy descriptions of this thoughts and activities. In addition, he also kept a ledger with brief one-line-a-day entries (not unlike Twitter). Since August 5, 2009, the Massachusetts Historical Society has been posting John Quincy Adams's line-a-day diary entries on Twitter, exactly 200 years later.

They have also created a Google map to chart his progress (his shipboard Tweets included latitude and longitude):

Literary San Francisco

From the cover of the San Francisco Chronicle's book review section in July:

A nub of 47 square miles, much of it punctuated by vertigo-inducing hills, most of it surrounded by ocean water - half of it the open, not-so-tranquil Pacific, the other half the calm, protected currents of a gray-blue bay.

Just as San Francisco has been shaped by its dramatic earthquake-scarred, coastal setting, the city, despite its relative youth, has also been defined by legions of writers whose words have brought it to life. Jack London, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Alice Adams, Amy Tan, Michelle Tea - they have all etched the landscape for us.

UPDATE 8/20: Illustration by Ian Huebert.

HT to Orange

Kathi Flood

Kathi Flood is a visual artist, guerilla sociologist, storyteller and educator.

As a guerrilla sociologist, I make farcical, narrative assemblages, wallworks and installations that heroicize the sweaty, vulnerable, fumbling, stuttering, impulsive aspects of humanity in the face of corporate globalization and it’s resultant dehumanizing effects. I chew on issues that threaten our self-reliance, such as surveillance, demographic over-quantification and standardization. I do it tongue-in-cheek, crammed with worthy objects, objects with a rugged complexion and empathetic potential.

This piece, Sky Form, particularly caught my eye:

I translated a stained woman's form into a cloudy sky. Our house is on the breast, our local stores across the bottom, and a grungy shawl hangs loose against her back.

New York Pops Up

An excellent info-graphic that uses a "3-D" effect to portray population. In this case, it contrasts the population shift that goes on in New York City (a portion of Manhattan, to be specific) between day and night. The bars showing relative numbers looks like a stratospheric city skyline:



I got a chuckle when my imagination created the image of a city with massive towers that rise out of the ground as workers arrive in the morning, and recess in the evening as all the workers go home. No need for elevators!

Via The Urbanophile

Birds Bring World Peace?

There's a young lady who works in my department. Normally she is dressed in black, her T-shirts usually depict punk bands, death, or other depressing subjects.

So imagine my surprise when she walked in other day wearing this:



"It was the only thing clean."

Birds, helping hands, peace, love... and a map!

#450

Map Addict

I just finished reading Map Addict by Mike Parker.

"My name is Mike and I am a map addict. There, it's said!"

Like me, Mike has loved maps since he was a wee tyke. He became addicted the Ordinance Survey, the official map set published by the British government, covering every square inch of the island nation. Today he is a travel writer and television and radio personality.

In his book, he not only shares the story of his personal journey with maps, but he also includes chapters on the history of British cartography, how they won the Prime Meridian competition, the most interesting and boring maps, and wages a one-man war against the "moronic blandishments of the Sat Nav age."

Not too surprising, I enjoyed this book immensely. My only complaint is that for a book about maps, there are relatively few illustrations.

So, as if the fact that this book is about a map addict, one who is more of a fanatic than me (hard to believe), wasn't enough to recommend this book... When I finished, I browsed the Bibliography and found in the "Blog and Discussion" section, several map blogs with which I am familiar... and this!

Cartophilia "great blog, newsy and always thoughtful"

Sweet! I have been acknowledged in print! I am somebody.

Fab Maps

Tired of trying to refold your paper tourist map? Rand McNally has come out with a series of handy cloth maps of several U.S. cities with popular tourist areas, including Washington, Boston, Seattle and Las Vegas. These maps require no folding and are made of washable microfiber fabric, they will not tear or wrinkle, even when wet.

But wait! That's not all! They also serve as a soft cleaning cloth for glasses or a camera lense!

Also available from Amazon.

Counties and Interstates

Last week, I posted the very popular Ohio is a Piano wherein Andy Woodruff at Cartogrammar mentioned his Counties Visited Map. Andy has noted every county in the United States that he has visited during his travels. I also know that Michael5000 has been recording his counties. Not to be outdone, I created my own:



Click on map for larger view.

I suppose each county recorder can use his or her own criteria, but I counted any county in which I have set foot, whether it was me driving, me as a passenger, or even got off a plane in an airport. Thus, any of the isolated green spots you see above were trips by air to places like Salt Lake City and Boston, with the exception of Niagara Falls, NY, by way of Ontario.

Unfortunately, I did mine the hard way... I took a blank county map and filled it in county by county with Windows Paint. It wasn't until I started preparing this post that I realized that Andy used a really cool tool at Counties.Visitedmap.com. The site creates your maps and keeps statistics for you. I may have to explore this further.

But wait! That's not all!

Last week, I also shared with you the Interstate Highway System as Transit Map and I wondered, how would my travels on the Interstate Highway System appear on that map. Here you go... another 40 minutes of my life I will never get back (but hey, you're reading this, so don't talk):



UPDATE: For those of you interested in collecting counties, Andy has provided some addional useful links:
The Extra Miler Club
Why do you think they call them counties?

UPDATE 8/14: I redid my counties visited map using the Counties.VisitedMap.com mentioned above. This is the one I'll keep up to date:

Its a Heat Wave! (Burning in my heart)

The U.S. is in the middle of a heat wave... we're feeling sort of grilled...

Just like a heatwave
Burning in my heart
Can't keep from cryin'
It's tearing me apart

HT to Matt

UPDATE 9/5: Food artist identity discovered!

The Little Man in the Map

The Little Man In the Map: With Clues To Remember All 50 States, by E. Andrew Martonyi, is an engagind little book with friendly illustrations that is designed to help school-age children learn the names and locations off all the states. Learning all 50 U.S. states is easy when you learn from The Little Man In the Map! Asked by their teacher to find clues for memorizing the states, students begin to see images: a hat, a shirt, a pair of boots formed by state boundaries. When they put some of them together, they're amazed to find the outline of a man standing in the middle of the map.

Excited by their discovery, they draw a face and arms on him and create The Little Man In the Map, whom they nickname MIM. Their imaginations bring MIM alive, and with his help they discover the surprising roles all the states can play. Soon they can spot the elf, the playful dog, the spooky head, and all the others.

Using rhyme and mnemonics, the narrator tells a story about states in each region and how they interact with each other. It has apparently been used in classrooms with great success.

Indiana is Michigan's sleeve... that's cute.

As a child, I was already in love with, and studying maps. I suspect I would have quickly become annoyed with this approach... but then I don't pretend I was a "normal" child when it comes to geography.

UPDATE 6/10/10: Just came across this YouTube video related to the book. Enjoy!



#445

Mapkini and Curtain

Today I received several photos from a Carto-friend who must remain nameless. The first one I'll show you is the shower curtain from his bathroom. I'm showing this one first as your warning. The rest of the photos are probably safe-for-work... unless you work for a very prudish employer... We'll get back to shower curtains in a moment...



This Carto-friend sent me these photos of his fiancé in the best bikini bathing suit ever.

Now, he tells me that she said it was OK for me to post these. He'd better be right, because he's getting married next week. Congratulations!

Strictly for geographic study purposes, I think we need to take a closer look at this mapkini...

This mapkini is made up of a map of United States. I think it very appropriate that the top is pieced together with Western states:



Out west, they have huge... tracts of land!



The mapkini bottom is made from Southern states...



But most interesting is the back of the mapkini bottom, with its fascinating mash-up of Montana, Kansas, Idaho and the Baja Peninsula!



This mapkini is (or was) from Victoria's Secret. However, after an extensive search of their website (again, strictly for geographic purposes) I have been unable find it available.

So, back to my Carto-friend's shower curtain. He tells me that he is pleased with the accuracy in detail of the map. Not only is it up to date with all of the changes in Eastern Europe over the last few years, it even shows Cyprus in its current divided state.



However, for some inexplicable reason, Tasmania is shown in a different color than the rest of Australia. Is there something Taz trying to tell the rest of Oz?



Thanks again, Carto-friend. Happy wedding and good luck!

Interstate Highway System as Transit Map

This week Cartogrammar is highlighting the coincidence that two different city magazines used a transit map theme for the "Best of 2009" issues this year:



Also, coincidentally this week, while looking for something else I was reminded of this clever invention: The Eisenhower Interstate System (simplified) by Chris Yates:



Previously seen here and here, and available from the designer as a print.

Little Miami Scenic Trail - Part 4

Today we completed the fourth leg of our goal to bike the entire Little Miami Scenic Trail before the end of Summer. Mrs. Cartophiliac AND Miss Cartophiliac.



Part One
Part Two
Part Three

14.7 miles from Corwin to Morrow (to Morrow, to Morrow, I love ya to Morrow...) was the most pleasant ride so far. Nearly all of it was directly adjacent to the river, which was teaming with a floatilla of canoes. In addition we passed through the Ft. Ancient State Memorial Park featuring 18,000 feet of earthen walls built 2,000 years ago by American Indians. A sweet conclusion at Miranda's Old Time Ice Cream Shop in Morrow.

Perhaps we can get out in another week or two and finish the route.

La Fin du Monde

Beer and maps! How can it go wrong? Well, at least its a good start...

Hunter shared this fine cartographic brew from the Grand Nord Blanc. La Fin Du Monde is a strong triple-style golden ale from Quebec, featuring a map of La Belle Province. Tout à fait savoureux! The Beer Advocate has given it an A for outstanding.

It's the end of the world and I feel fine.