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?

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.

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.

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

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!

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)

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.)

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!

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.