Off the Map

To My Ever Loyal Subjects
From Your Humble Servant, Her Majesty of Maps

It is with a sad heart and a deep sense of sorrow that I regretfully inform you that after much thought and deliberation, back and forth, give and take, sturm und drang (yeah, I looked it up!), I have made the painful yet inevitable decision:

Done.

Ye royal boyfriend has made Her Majesty an offer which ye (or, she) could not refuse. And believe it or not, and believe me when I say I NEVER thought this would happen, I am moving to, of all places:

Ohio.

Seriously. Ohio.

So suddenly, I need to pack (boxes or garbage bags? boxes or garbage bags?), help ye royal bf get rid of all (!!!) the “stuff” I do not wish to surround myself with and which does not meet with my royal sensibilities, and prepare myself to live in… Ohio.

Ohio!!!!!

So much to do, so little time. As a result, I have had to make some sacrifices. And you, my loyal subjects, are my sacrifice. This blog has been a blast. I have loved pretending that the scores or hundreds of you (some days are better than others) who wander to this page every day have said to yourself “very, very cool!” when looking at some neat or weird map. But alas… Googling takes time, and I am just plum out of it.

Mucho gracias for your readership and your interest, for your comments and your ideas. I loved following your leads and your links.

And I wish you the best in all your future endeavors. Map well.

Arms Race

Not to pat myself on the back or anything… but Her Majesty, your royal servant of the map, is truly on the cutting edge. Remember my stalking obsession with mapping celebrities? And remember my posts about map tattoos? Well, I’ve found the jackpot!

Who knew… that one of Angelina Jolie’s tattoos is the map coordinates of the birthplaces of her children?

MapBlogMap(Blog)

So here’s a neat (and somewhat obvious, which makes it all the neater) idea – a map of bloggers who blog about maps and other things. Check it out for NYC: http://www.nycbloggers.com/

Please Don't Stop the Music

Help. I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. Waaaaaaay too much time on my hands yesterday. I’m now listening to map music.

Love this!

Famous, I guess.

Fun! (And annoying)

Check out the first track – not my style and very short but I can only imagine what the rest of it is like.

(Gracias, StrangeMaps, for the image. “This is a pretty clever translation of the shape of the world’s continents into the dots, ties and bars of traditional musical notation, but ironically, its main claim to harmony is visual, not aural.”)

Been There Done That, Still in Awe

Some friends were in Baltimore for the Preakness festivities (not the actual race, mind you, just the drinking in the infield) so naturally, when they asked what there was to do in Baltimore, I whisked them away to the Walters Art Museum. (If I have to tell the truth… they asked to go.) Seriously… if you haven’t gone to see the exhibit Maps: Finding our Place in the World, then go. It’s only up for until June 8. My favorite map has changed – I’m now deciding if I like the map of Huron, IL made by Abe Lincoln (THE Abe Lincoln. How cool is that?) or the Rand McNally guide with directions (did I mention this once before?... the book which provides directions with a photo of every turn in a route)?

Inter-state – Inter-esting

Cool. A map of the US Interstate system. Who cares if it’s not actually correct.

One Park

I’m heading over to the Current Gallery this weekend to check out Welcome to One Park. Parks and People put together the exhibit about turning our local parks into one giant, connected park. Neat idea! And I’ve been promised there are lots of maps. So, in advance…very cool. See for yourself.

Aram Barthell, Hero

Dear Aram, You should see me now, sitting on my sofa, with a huge smile on my face. And I’m giggling like a schoolgirl. You are clever and awesome. Her Majesty bows to you.

Out of Control

Stop the madness. I am losing it. Everywhere I turn… everything I see… is a map.

This is the table at the fast food place where I got my lunch on Thursday.

This is the floor of the warehouse where I had to pick something up.

Oooooh, Shiny!

Being Her Majesty and all, I really think that I should have my own collection of crowned jewels. So, if anyone is interested in helping me out…I am thinking that this globe, covered in 500,000 crystals, might be a good start.

It is part of Swarovski Crystal Palace, “an exhibition that pushes the boundaries of crystal to create contemporary interpretations of lighting, furniture and design.”

More importantly, it’s an awesome globe!
(Early Christmas present anyone?)

Land Of Make Believe

One of my new GMU geography class buddies mentioned her favorite map of all time, The Land of Make Believe.” So naturally, I checked it out. You can too.

Freaking Out Children since the 1930’s
Found: Land of Make Believe

Those Crazy College Kids… Visit the Walters

So, like, I mean, there is, like, this college class? And they, like, went to see the maps exhibit at, you know, the Walters Art Museum? And, like, for extra credit, they had to post a little sumpin’ sumpin’ on their blogs about the exhibit? And, like, it’s kinda neat to see what they said? So, like, if you wanna? You can read them here?

http://bensays2002.blogspot.com/2008/04/map-festival.html

http://ilikegeostuff.blogspot.com/2008/04/map-festival.html

http://dlader.blogspot.com/

http://serious310.blogspot.com/

http://procopiocartography.blogspot.com/2008/04/i-am-seaky-i-take-pictures-at-map.html

http://mp411.blogspot.com/

http://cartography310.blogspot.com/

http://rkcartboggle.blogspot.com/

Nonetheless, the students’ comments are pretty interesting, both for what they say about the exhibit and about college students. There are a couple of comments that the exhibit is small. Ok, but not really! There are more than 100 incredibly famous, important maps. I don’t know anyone who breezed through the exhibit or who didn’t follow their “it was smaller than I expected comment” with “but it was so cool!!”

Hey student Martha – “they didn’t have anything cool for sale.” What are you talking about?!? The lobby at the Walters is a huge gift shop with a ton of cool map stuff? It ain’t a Nordstroms, girlfriend!

Student Daniel…. you wanted to see more recent maps? Maybe I can explain. You see, honey, it’s a museum. The exhibit is about important maps in HISTORY. You know, that class you sleep through every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning.

And OMG! Give me a break. I hope your grades aren’t based on your command of the English language or your ability to spell words like “there” and “supposed.”

But I am impressed. You’re very polite. Every one of you who sneakily took pictures, even though you knew you weren’t supposed to, noted it in your blog. Very thoughtful (but still against the rules). And you’re very honest young people. (Or as student Ben would say, “young ppl.”) Some of you even titled your blogs “Extra Credit” instead of pretending you really would have written about it anyway. Commendable. And you’re taking a college class about maps – how cool is THAT?!?

Puzzling

National Geographic Online has atlas puzzles - very, very cool! Addictive but in a good way. Go jigsaw your little heart out! I am not to blame for lost hours of productivity.

Look Now Look All Around

Clearly I was going to go see something that City Paper described as “an elusive little show” about mapping. And I did. “Look Now Look All Around” is at the Maryland State Arts Council offices on West Ostend Street. Cool stuff – I especially liked the conversational maps by Emily Hunter. (hey… is this the Emily Hunter from Maryland Art Place?) Art meets language at the corner of Mapping and Interpretation. Nice!

Where in the World is…?

A Friend Of A Friend sent me this photo. (My reputation as Her Majesty is spreading; I’m not sure if I’m flattered or a little bit creeped out.) My FOAF’s family has a wall-mounted map in their house where they plot every place they’ve been -- one color pin for trips where FOAF goes alone, another color for where Mrs. FOAF has been, and a third color for where they have been with their little FOAF kid-lings. Cool idea… and lucky kids! Look at all those pins in the Caribbean and Europe.

Down to the Wire

You know by now that I’m not the craft type. But I’ll make an exception – when it’s a cool map. Like these, made by “The Wire Lady” Elizabeth Berrian. Suitable for hanging.

Never Lost

The guy who helps me at my neighborhood Kinko’s has a tattoo of Poland on his arm. It got me thinking… and you know what that means…. Check these out

Ouch. But very cool.

But ouch!

Day and Night

If you’re reading this in, say, Helsinki, and it’s oh, let’s say 9 pm here in Baltimore, then you should be in bed, fast asleep. It’s 4 in the morning there, nuthead! How do I know? Here’s how.

Raise Your Hand

So here’s a neat thing… the Hand Drawn Map Association! www.handmaps.org (Who knew?!) What a way cool idea – a repository of, you guessed it, hand-drawn maps. I love it. I’m in. (see above: showing my mother how to get to Holy Frijoles in Hampden)

The Karmphleuterstam Provinces?

Or a map depicting the political divisions of Traignothingham following the Mreptipol uprising? The topography of Ghreishenstat? Geothermographical waves in Qarestinen following the 2001 hurricane?

Nope. Just the bark of a tree at Pompeii. (I found this photo I took many years ago while I while organizing my pics last night.)

Let’s Map Some Trees

Hey tree huggers: this Saturday is the opening event for the Urban Forest Project here in B’More. There are all these really cool designy banners being put up all over the city that celebrate trees and a driving tour (map above) where you can check them out. Here are the detes. I may check out the party Saturday at “the Beach” at Hopkins… free bands, why not?

Maps in Clay! (Who Knew?)

I’ve never been one for molding things out of clay. After all, I AM her majesty. (Plus, I once took a pottery class and let’s just say things came out somewhat bumpy and lumpy… which made me grumpy.) But I am definitely pro-looking-at-people’s-work-who-are- sculpturally-inclined. And combine that with something about maps, and I’m there!

This past weekend I checked out another Baltimore Festival of Maps exhibition, Terra Incognita at Baltimore Clayworks. Rebecca Harvey, the awesomely mappy curator of the exhibit, wrote in something I saw “ I am interested in looking at the work of these artists in terms of mapping, in expanding the definition to include the abstraction of form and meaning, in a stripping away to uncover meaning. Can a map be a line, a pattern, a series of objects? How do we map the unknown? ” A woman after my own heart!

The exhibit has a little bit of everything, from colorful vases to circles filled with red clay (you know, like dirt) to shiny dinosaurs with their heads in the clouds. Very, very cool. Check out the exhibit for yourself at Clayworks’ online gallery. (You really should come to Baltimore for all this, my friends. You think I’m just going to keep filling you in on all the mappiness going on here. Well… maybe.)

I See London

I’ve only been to London once and I am not planning on going any time soon. I don’t know anyone in London. And frankly, I don’t even know what most of what the maps are showing -- but this is waaaaaaaay cool. A University College researcher used the names of registered London voters to map the ethnicity of the city based on another researcher’s probability of what ethnicity the name was. (Get it?) (My people live north of central London.)

The map is also a cool way to check out lots of other way cool stuff that I don’t really know what it is but it’s still way cool. You can see the real routes of the London subway overlayed on the real city, crime, poverty, housing costs… neat-o!

See the Walters Exhibit from Your Barcalounger!

Just in case you’re not in Baltimore, or near Baltimore, or coming to Baltimore (c’mon – it’s a nice place!) … you can still have a guided tour of the maps exhibit at the Walters Art Museum. Check out the YouTube videos with the curator Will Noel. Not quite the real thing but unless you’re coming to Charm City, you can sorta kinda get a sense of the exhibit. And it’s not so bad listening to Will’s oh-so-sexy voice of Noel wax prolific about things like cholera and Inuits, and say things like “the oldest map – evah!”

Ah-Choo(se a Map)

Did you miss me? Her Majesty has been sneezing up a royal storm and coughing up ye annual royal phlegm the past few days. I’ve been a little under the weather and off the map. Not my favorite time of year. … except it gave me an excuse to do this:

The American Lung Association’s allergy map.

Check out the location of you favorite type of pollen (I’m more of a Betula Populifolia gal).

Who knew – sneeze fetishes! Had I known, I would have been the belle of the ball this week.

Happy AF Day

And I don’t mean Abercrombie & Fitch! (I’m not that kind of princess).

It’s April Fools Day, which reminded me of one of my favorite maps - the “View of the World From 9^th Avenue” from the New Yorker. (Is it a cartoon? is it a map?... does it really matter?)

That reminded me of the “New Yorkistan” map from the New Yorker.

Here’s an interesting article about this genre of map.

Mapping Harry Potter

How good are the Harry Potter books? So good that many people have drawn maps of Hogwarts based on the descriptions in the book – and they are wonderfully, surprisingly similar. Steve Vander Ark has created a scarily extensive (and I mean, yikes!) website of all-things-Harry Potter (so much so that JK Rowling sued him) with an Atlas of Hogwarts. It shows different peoples' maps of Hogwarts. Check it out, and if you dare, wander over to the other 700 pages of Harryphenalia. Seriously, yikes!

ZipScribble

Asks a Mr. Robert Kosara: “What would happen if you were to connect all the ZIP codes in the US in ascending order? Is there a system behind the assignment of ZIP codes? Are they organized in a grid? The result is surprising and much more interesting than expected.” Here’s his answer.

I Missed My Calling

The first time I said it, it was ridiculous. The second time, I was being facetious. Now, I’m beginning to wonder.

I should have been a curator.

Check out Gary Vikan’s blog post about Maps: Finding Our Place in the World. He is the very well known, very well educated, very well spoken director at the Walters Art Museum. There are about a gazillion incredible, famous, important, way cool maps in the exhibit that he could have written about. Let’s see, we got the Leo Belgicus lion map…. Napoleon’s march… the mammoth Coronelli Celestial globes…the first map ever made…. but noooooooooo! – he picks the same map that I said (to you) a few days ago was one of my favorites.

It’s now my favorite.

Hey Dr. Vikan, I have an MS degree! (Map Smarts). I received my PhD (Plotting Hard Directions). I studied at the Sorbonne (if by Sorbonne, you mean “so, you’re boning up on maps?”) If you need an extra curator, give me a shout.

Mapping Mount Vernon - The Good, The Bad and... The No Comment

It is a gorgeous day in Baltimore and I used it as an opportunity to kill two birds (orioles, naturally) with one stone. I whipped out the Literary Mount Vernon Map, created by the Maryland Humanities Council for the Baltimore Festival of Maps, which I picked up last weekend, and started off on my walking tour. Naturally, I couldn’t ignore the infamous and forever to be famous gold chain link fence surrounding the Mount Vernon Parks.

First, Literary Mount Vernon. As I’ve said before, who knew?!... that F. Scott Fitzgerald and Tupac Shakur lived practically across the street from each other (not at the same time mind you, but still very cool). All of the ‘characters’ of Mount Vernon look like little bobble-heads! If you want to check it out for yourself, you can pick up a map at the Humanities Council or download one from their website.

And then…the Fence. No comment.

On Repeat

You know how a song gets stuck in your head and you can’t stop singing it to yourself? Well, I’ve got 100 images stuck in my head. I can’t stop thinking about Maps: Finding Our Place in the World at the Walters Art Musuem.

I’m trying to pick my favorite piece in the exhibit. So far (for the moment, temporarily, for now) I’ve narrowed it down to two.

Geological map of England 1815-17

“The Map that Changed the World”, as it is often called, is very, very cool. It is the first geological map of England and it helped to correctly date the earth for the first time (not that there’s anything wrong with using the Bible as your guide, mind you). Plus – it is huge – 6’x 9’!

Map of London on Glove for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

Yes, I know the glove map is everywhere. It’s been a little over used to promote the exhibit - blah, blah, blah. Nonetheless it is very cool to actually see it in person. It was created for the first Worlds Fair in 1815. A lady visitor could wear it on her left hand and point out her destination with her right. A fashion accessory AND a map - what more could a girl ask for?

A new look at U.S.

I’m not sure which is cooler – the map showing the influence of major cities or the neat magnifying function.

Finding My Place in the World

So I think I’ve finally had time to digest all the mappy-ness I was exposed to this weekend. Not only did I get to listen to Kianga’s tour, I was privileged enough to see Maps: Finding Our Place in the World at the Walters on Friday night. (It was the Member’s Preview and my connection at the Walters scored me admission – I felt like I got the “royal” treatment.)

After all the anticipation and waiting, I was afraid the exhibit wouldn't live up to my expectations. But it did. The exhibit totally blew my mind. Looking at the maps online is cool. Seeing them first-hand, all up close and personal is very, very cool.

One of the really interesting things is the scale – the John Smith map of Virginia is smaller than I thought, while Smith’s “map that changed the world” is really quite large.

Being around so many maps, large and small, that are so important and full of history helped me better understand where my place in the world is.

There were so many maps – from Tolkien to Leonardos (yes multiple!). The whole thing made me a little dizzy. I wasn’t sure if I should spend my time looking at the HUGE Coronelli Celestial globes or gazing into the heavens of the Hubble images. It was total map overload, so much in fact that I think I will have to go back and see it again. I mean what if I missed something!

The Story of This Place

I went to my first Baltimore Festival of Maps event over the weekend. Kianga Ford (described as a “sound and installation artist” – who knew?!) was at the Maryland Humanities Council (who knew?!?) reading her story about the parks in Mt. Vernon. She was accompanied by DJ Dubble8 (who knew?!) on the turntable and computer. It was way cool – Kianga (it means sunshine – I looked it up) wrote a fiction story based on the actual places around Mt. Vernon, and DJ D8 put together this neat collection of waltzes and famous Baltimore club (who knew?!?) music. Then I got an iPod from the Contemporary Museum and listened to the tour again while actually walking around the park. The image above is the map for the tour.

The iPod tour was commissioned by the Contemporary Museum, where you too can pick up an iPod and take the tour. You can download the tour and the map from the comfort of your very own Barcalounger and there’s going to be a new tour introduced every two weeks. Way cool.

MY BFF @ NGO

I feel like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction - completely obsessed, preoccupied and a little bit in love.
A few days ago, my new best friend at National Geographic Online, Marilyn introduced me to her blog Map of the Day. Very cool blog about maps - need i say more? (Probably not but i will because it gets better.)

The blog has a daily quiz about geography or history that relates to the map of the day. I am completely addicted. So much in fact that one quiz a day isn't enough for me - I've had to rummage through the archives to get my fix. I'm already looking forward to tomorrow's question!

Thank You Eliot Spitzer

I have been fascinated by this whole Elliot Spitzer debacle. Poor Silda. But of course, I quickly recovered from my Pity Party to return to the matters at hand.

How about a map of political indiscretions in Washington DC.

Or the 1871 Hooker Map of New York City (I don’t think that’s what it means)

Speaking of which… Strangemaps has this gem showing where rapper Ludacris claims to have uh… um… ladies like Kristin.

The image at the top? That’s a plan for Washington DC drawn by a “W. Elliot” in 1833.” What do you think that W. stands for, weasel?”

Map Frenzy

Another Baltimore Sun story about maps!! Very very cool. You mean there is actually an organization for people like me? (I can hear it now: “Hi. I’m Her Majesty, and I’m a map addict…”)

This Baltimore Festival of Maps really is turning out to be a big deal. And I’m counting down the days until I, too, can go see "Maps: Finding Our Place in the World" at the Walters.

Mars and Venus

I asked an innocent question about why the mappers who respond to my blog – and probably who most likely respond to maps – tend to be men.

Cartophiliac commented that it’s probably a spatial thing between men and women… venus and mars… hens and roosters… Hillary and Bill. (Thanks for the comment, Carto!)

It got me thinking. So naturally, that got me googling. For your reading pleasure:

http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=HVhDJ2rBR1QVPwvLnLnYpFJ1f3bFrGLh6SkWTJHbFzhL4DZT5f15!-1452952156?docId=5009299535

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/07/AR2008010702043.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hometruths/directions.shtml

Something’s Coming…

There’s something in the air. Things seem just a little bit different. I smell anticipation. (Or is it just this shirt I’m wearing?)

Read the article from this past Saturday’s Baltimore Sun about the Walters’ map exhibit that opens this coming Sunday (yippee!!!! at long last!!! it’s about time!!! finally!!!) I heard that the media (make that, the “real” media) got to see it this morning. The rest of us will just have to wait until Sunday, I guess. Count me in.

Still Another Tip of the Tiara

My cup runneth over. You guys (why ARE you all guys) have been great – sending me links, responding to my posts. Thank you for you inspiration, your thoughts, and for your oh so cool maps that I have pilfered and plundered and put on display as if they were my own.

Two of my new faves:

John Krygier, wish I had you as a college professor - http://makingmaps.wordpress.com/about/

Dug – I dig your digest - http://mapoftheweek.blogspot.com/

Texture Message

After posting the map of Hull House, I found this – multivariate data with texture. I guess that means “kinda cool” in cartologyism.

One Wrong Turn and…

The royal chariot was in the shop a few days ago, so I had to rent a car for a couple of days. What was inside but --- a GPS! Awesome! Be still my heart. So of course I spent all my lunch hours (and weekend…) driving around Charm City trying to get it to slip up but alas, I couldn’t outsmart the thing.

I was telling my new buddy at the Walters about it and he told me about one of the pieces soon to be on display at the Walters big big map exhibit. The Rand McNally Chicago to Lake Geneva Photographic Automobile Guide, sort of a pre-cursor to a modern navigation system. The book was written in 1905 by H Sargent Michaels and featured “turn by turn” directions from Chicago to Lake Geneva, with photographs of each turn taken from a camera mounted on the hood of a car. Very cool, back in the day. It’s very much like (i.e., pretty similar… exactly like) a mashup of Google Maps’ new StreetView feature and Hertz’ NeverLost GPS.

H Sargent will always have a special place in my heart.

Home of the Brave

U.S. state names are replaced with countries that have similar GDPs.

Lions (To Be) Seen at the Walters Art Museum

Yes, once again, I could have been a museum curator. No more than an hour after my last post, I got an email from someone who saw it, telling me that the map with the lion is going to be in the Walters Art Museum Maps exhibit in a few weeks. He also sent me this from MapForum.com:

“The most famous of all cartographic curiosities is the 'Leo Belgicus', in which the Seventeen Provinces of the low Countries were depicted in the form of a lion. This type was first introduced by Michael Eitzinger (Aitzinger or van Aitzing) in 1583. The idea may have suggested to him by the presence of a lion in the arms of most of the Seventeen Provinces. Whatever his inspiration, the genre proved very popular, and a number of later publishers produced their own versions, some even introducing their own sub-type. One such group was the 'Leo Hollandicus', where the Seven United Provinces were depicted as a lion. Claes Jansz. Visscher was the first to publish such a map, as shown here. Visscher seems to have first published the map before 1625, the year in which the dedicatee Prince Maurice died. A second example was published dated 1633, while the third state was published in 1648, when the Spanish confirmed Dutch independence.”

And a big shout out to my anonymous buddy for letting me know. Don’t be a stranger.

Lions and Tigers and Bears

Oh, my.

Gotta Run

Yes, I am a couch potato. But once in a while, something jogs my memory and I get something in my craw(l) to trot out the old running shoes for a quick sprint around the block. Here is a cool site that helps me change it up. Just type in your zip code to see what your friends and neighbors are doing while you’re doing nothing but sitting at your computer in your sweats, reading this, eating cookies, and petting the cat.

Great Baltimore Fire (plus a couple of weeks)

I am soooooo sorry. I thought that I had posted this weeks ago. You Baltimoreans will understand my distress at being late…

We here in Charm City, the City That Reads, and the Greatest City in America grew up hearing about the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. Every February 7th, there are tours, exhibits, TV stories, and articles commemorating the day – well, actually the two days of the fire. Here is a way cool chronology of what happened. Nice map, neat photos – and video from 1904! A big shout out to the Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage (part of the Pratt Library, I guess) for putting this together.

Into the Fray

You may have noticed that I have stayed away from trashing Miss South Carolina Teen’s brush with map-dome. It just seemed a little too easy and not very majestic. But, with apologies to Caitlin Upton, I couldn’t resist.

(And just so you know what kind of serious princess I really am… congratulations to the lovely Lauren Elizabeth Lytle who became the new Miss SC Teen this past November. An Honor Roll student, no less.)

Chain of Fools (Including Me)

So what’s the proper blogtiquette – do I post cool maps from the blog where I found them:
http://pretavoyager.blogspot.com
/2008/02/living-cities.html

or from the site where that blogger found them:
http://swissmiss.typepad.com/weblog/2008
/01/living-patterns.html

or from the site where THAT blogger saw them:
http://designnotes.info/?p=1242

Whatever. Still pretty cool.

It’s a Small World

I spend waaaay to much time zooming in Google maps to see how close I can get. I’ve seen my car parked in front of my apartment, and my parents’ cars, and the lounge chairs at the neighborhood pool… Don’t tell anyone, but I sometimes type in any old zip code to see where I end up – I’ve gawked at everything from million dollar houses with humongous pools next to golf courses to some pretty sketchy trailer parks. It’s pretty interesting to see how the other half lives, no matter what half you happen to be.

Back in the day (if the day was in 1895), the map of the famous Chicago settlement Hull House served the same purpose. It showed the locations of 18 immigrant groups crowded into 12 blocks. This colorful, geometric spectacle is going to be on display at the Walters Art Museum’s map exhibition in March. (Keep the map on your screen for a while; people will think you’re playing Tetris.)

Body Worlds, a Map of Me

Way cool. Way way way cool. And a little creepy.

I succumbed to all the hoopla and went to see the Body Words exhibit at the Maryland Science Center. Soooooo cool. I just stood there, staring at the networks of veins and vessels, connections and contacts, muscles and membranes. There are about 10 full-size bodies, lots and lots of slices and sections… just so cool. Go.

Art = Science = Map = Way Cool

Check out Gary Vikan’s OpEd article in Sunday’s Baltimore Sun.
He’s the director of the Walters Art Museum, and he offers his take on the images as “art.” And you already know what I think of the images as “map.” Just so we’re clear.

Help Wanted

I like this map. I’m not really sure what it means or how to read it (yeah, I know, Pepsi owns Fritos and LVMH owns all the clothing labels I can’t afford, but beyond that…) If you can help me out, then help me out.

Another Tip of the Tiara

Excuse my naïve giddity but this is getting fun. The more I explore, the better it gets. Unfortunately, I am spending an unexpected amount of time checking out the way cool blogs and sites that people are sending me. (Sorry Mom. I’ll call soon. Promise.) So… another tip of the tiara to you map crazy bloggers who are making me lose sleep – and loving it.

Ok, so he’s not really a mapper blogger feller but I like how he uses maps and overlays to prove his points. Baltimore Innerspace

I know I’ve said this before, but very very cool. No doubt I will post more from here: Great Map.

On the Stage

Naturally I was compelled by the title. And then I read the description that it was “offbeat” and “evocative.” So I’m off to see “Off the Map” on the stage at the Fell’s Point Corner Theater.

I See London…

Maybe I should have been a museum curator. My 1/28 posting about subway maps…? How was I to know that probably the most famous transportation map EVER is going to be at the maps exhibition at the Walters? Now I know.

One of the way-cool maps in the Maps: Finding Our Place in the World exhibit is an original, poster-sized map of the London Underground from 1933. This map is a big deal because it is the first simple, schematic, graphic representation using straight lines and consistent angles rather than actual scale and direction.

So we get this:

rather than this: