Shoals

Herodotus laid down his world on parchment with ink. Samuel de Champlain traveled with paper and pencil. They - and every mapmaker in between and since - created map objects that were imbued with authority. [Read More]

A recent post from the world of crowdsourced mapping has me thinking about food availability and the nature of poverty in the United States. The Brooklyn Food Coalition has begun a community food survey, collecting location and stocking information for food stores throughout the borough. The aim is partly to... [Read More]

As the dust settles following the 2010 midterm elections, we’re back to agonizing over the political nature of spatial relationships. Both sides are gearing up for the state-level redistricting fights that will occur with the arrival of data from the most recent nationwide census. Gerrymandering is the oldest geostatistical art,... [Read More]

In the split second after the gunshot, I wasn’t sure if ducking was a sufficient response. [Read More]

Hiking back up the valley on Saturday evening was a trip. The Nagua river was still too deep to ford, so I took the high road along the northern ridge and got an eyeful. Scrambling over and under downed trees as I climbed to the first hill, I came to... [Read More]

Going to San Francisco. Not San Francisco CA but San Francisco de Macoris, at the center of the Dominican Republic. The trip there from Nagua is one of life’s great pleasures, sitting in the bed of a pickup truck with Paul Simon’s Graceland playing on my headphones. The sun is... [Read More]

Here I sit in air-conditioned Santo Domingo, typing with my left hand because my right is currently in a cast, wrist sprained but fortunately not broken. I will likely soon be found by the Dominican constabulary and disavowed by the US embassy. For those of you who are interested and... [Read More]

The sun tends to burn hot into the valley mornings. The Nagua river loses its blanket of mist an hour past dawn, but the hanging trees will be dripping with dew until midmorning. Then the gathering heat will be mercifully pushing the mosquitoes back into their refuges and the roosters... [Read More]