Shoals

AUTHOR’S NOTE, 2023: Heaven help those who revisit their decade-old writing. The piece below is over-the-top, post-apocalytic-zeitgeist-driven, and - worst of all - factually incorrect. At the time I was frankly guessing about the history of Mauretania Tingitana, I name-checked the wrong Ptolemey, and I referenced the Ostrogothic sack of... [Read More]

Now that the floodwaters have receded, it’s really important to document the extent of the water before the traces change. Emergency management agencies still have their hands full, but they’ve recommended we collect geolocated photos of high water marks around the state - these help with mapping the effects and... [Read More]

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]