Because it is Monday

West Virginia pops up in the 1860s due to the Civil War, but what's going on in Oklahoma in the 1890s?

7 Quick Takes: Mappity Maps

--1--

I am the co-director of the Youth Group at Saint Martin de Porres Church, a working class mission church.The Youth Group is tiny with an even tinier budget. It's a struggle to find a balance between the desire to be of service, to have some fun, and to accomplish this without spending all our time fundraising. Our answer to the problem is called the Pilgrims of the Holy Family. The closest description I can give is to liken it to Boy Scouts for Catholics, badges and all.

But coed...

...and holy...

You know, with saints...

--2--

This month we are working on the Pathfinding Badge: maps and orienteering.  I love maps. I peruse maps. This has given me every excuse to spend entire evenings of precious mommy-of-five free-time pouring over maps and compasses. In fact, an entire Youth Group meeting was spent in our local library. Not only did the Reference Librarian bring us maps and atlases from the Reference Section, she brought them up from the basement archives, too. But to top it off we were allowed to visit the locked research room chock full of historically precious articles: maps among them. We read a bit from Cook's voyages, laughing with the librarian over the ffs for ss and joking with a lisp. We read maps in French, Spanish, and Latin, giggling over inaccuracies and marveling at the amount of human history told in them. We held settlers' trail maps, terrain maps, and settlement maps. We imagined battles, plotted routes, and wondered, all while breathing the rarefied air of the historian: that smell of ancient parchment.

As a special treat, since we were Catholic, we were allowed to open and explore a Bishop's personal papers, in Spanish, from the early 1800s. Particularly touching were the photographs of his mother and father. I can not begin to tell you how amazing an experience we had.

--3--

Meanwhile, if I never mentioned that I love maps, you must know it by now. When my husband wants to get me an extra special gift, he does not buy jewelry, he buys maps. He's done it twice now and I am the proud owner of one replicated 19th Century world map and two antique sets of social studies maps from a 1950s classroom. They are more precious to me than gold. I am a Mappy. I admit it. If given a choice between driving to a destination and navigating: I'll take the map!

--4--

Which means that, yes, I know how to find you. I have an interior map that activates when I hear a place name. You say, "Phoenix, Arizona" and my interior life resembles one giant four dimensional map (time is a dimension. I factor it in calculating air, car, and covered wagon travel times). Since I've driven there, this interior map actually contains highway numbers, alternate routes, seasonal climate factors, and mountain ranges. This is so innate that I tend to point in the direction you should travel if you want to meet whomever I happen to be discussing, even when they live on another continent.

If we've met and you live someplace I've never been to, I've Googled you. Just for the map, you understand.

--5--

If you don't know how to negotiate a map and compass, I found this video to teach the skill to the Youth Group. It's a quick and easy How-To.

--6--

In the above video, PackRat brings up declination and promises to explain how to compensate for it in another video. Since he explained compasses and maps so clearly, I sought out his explanation of declination, too. It's just as clear and simple as the first video.

The Magnetic North that attracts the needle of your compass and true North are not the same. It's due to the fascinating fact that our magnetic core shifts around somehow and causes our planet's magnetic field to change by 7 minutes (spatially, not temporally) a year, which is enough that maps have to be constantly updated because of it. You have to do a little math to keep from missing your destination.

Declination becomes important the farther you travel, especially if you are traveling long distances. If you are hiking in an area with 10 degrees of declination, you will be 1,000 feet off course in a single mile. In longer distances, that 10 degrees will matter more and more. Miss a port by 10 degrees after traveling 1,000 miles over the open sea and you could wind up in an entirely different country.





For those of you who like to get your Geek on, you can go to this web page and find out your city's declination.You plug in your U.S. Zip Code or your country and city to find your Latitude and Longitude coordinates, and the page will calculate it for you. You can even track the changes in declination through time. For example the declination of Washington, D.C., is -11.2. It used to be -6.1 in 1913. Back in 1776, the declination was -0.9. I find it fascinating that the world under our feet seems so stable, when in fact, even something as accurate as a compass can steer you wrong.

--7--

My confessor, Father Barnabus, is still undergoing treatment and could use your prayers. His spirits are good, but his activities are very limited. He could use the spiritual support. In fact, he'd be the first to remind me to include all priests in this prayer request. Priests need our prayers even when they aren't undergoing chemo.

Because it is Monday

Monday and the Laundry Monster attacked and killed my washing machine. It's just Monday. Nothing personal.



see more Funny Graphs
...I guess T-Rex got a little hungry, too. A continent is missing.

Mappity Maps

I read maps like I read cookbooks: for fun. For some of you both of these habits will be even more evidence for the necessity of that "unfollow button" I've so courteously supplied on here somewhere. (look in the left margin)

The foodies among you can nod sagely about the experience of reading through a new cookbook and daydreaming about serving up Beef Bourguignon with homemade bread sticks or maybe a homemade braided French Roll--not to mention the pleasure of indulging in the fantasy of having four spare hours or so on any given day to devote to one dish. There really are people who do these sorts of things and I admit I am such a one as these.

But I am talking about a rarer bird: the mappie. Yes, there are a few mappies out there, and yes, they do subscribe to National Geographic, but not for the articles or photos--for the centerfolds!

Mappies are the happy few among us who toss the magazine aside and sit down to ogle their lovely map inserts. "Cool," you might hear from the mappie if you happen to be the unfortunate spouse of one, "I wonder if this is the trench they were talking about with those worms that breathe sulfur? Look how deep it is!" There will be an attempt to clarify how deep the trench is and how steep via further discussion about contour lines. The spouse, who actually read the National Geographic article, will likely attempt a clarification about the facts of marine life and that the "worms" in question were not actually sulfur breathing but were, in fact, non-photosynthesis dependent. Both attempts will meet with that well worn look that clearly asks, "Why are you sidetracking this conversation?"

One of my guilty pleasures in life is reading the maps on the walls of my son's ENT. I have not gone so far as to rejoice in ear infections, but I have never minded the wait. The doctor has got the entire US coastline represented in various maps around the waiting and exam rooms. How cool is that? Providentially my son had an appointment at the same time a friend was living in Saint Kitts. I was able to estimate a sailing route there from both the Florida Keys and the port at Norfolk before we were called back to another map...er...the exam room.

Like the foodie plans meals, the mappie plans routes. This mappie recently had the pleasure of pointing out that Bethlehem is within 5 miles of Jerusalem during an on-line conversation about the Nativity (a fact I happen to know because I'd recently read a map of the area). That conversation was not nearly as exciting as the further study of the area's maps and a pleasurable interlude with Middle Eastern maps in general that it engendered. Did you know that Google Maps shows public restrooms and gas stations in Nazareth? Or that there is a Latin Quarter where you'll find the Church of the Annunciation? (Attention Mappies: that's a link to the actual map! Have fun! See you in a few hours!)

That link alone will be worth more than the entire blog post to the average mappie, and since they are now eyeball deep in Israeli maps, we can carry on this discussion without them. They'll be back, though. I have the temptation of more map links at the end of the post, so we'll need to be quick about it if we want to say anything derogatory.

Yes, maps to the mappie are like cookbooks to the foodie or LSD to the hippie. They open up a whole new world of possibilities. The veil of the ordinary is lifted temporarily and the imagination becomes the driver of the intellect. Mountain ranges become scalable to the middle aged and out of shape. Oceans depths fathomable to the air breather and thalassophobic. Travel is possible to the single income family of seven!

Well, at least possible for the mappie. No one else is interested, really.

Until now!

I have great pleasure to announce the development of another mappie in the family. Although his interest may be temporary, my son has begun to study maps! We have a map of the world on our living room wall--yes, for me, it is like a Van Gogh--and lately he can be found standing on the couch with his nose to the wall studying it. What gives me great hope is that yesterday he drew his first map! It was of his room, and guess what? He drew a picture of it first and then mapped it and then proceeded to explain to me the differences between the two!

I couldn't have been happier. Not only am I proud of him, I may finally have someone to read my atlas with! And maybe, one day, when someone asks him where his Maga lives, he will point Northeast before saying, "In Virginia." Just like Mom!

Some favorite Maps of Mine:

Donner Pass Contour Map

Donner Pass Satellite Map

Map of Earth's Techtonic Plates

Cool interactive map of the DC Metro System

Saint Kitts

Plattsburgh

This just in from @amethystsees! Collections of maps! I'll be blogging again in a few months!