A Lost Art (One More on Dictionaries)

This post has moved to imby.net

Old Atlases, Printed Maps

There is another book that I like to put on my music stand (see my previous post on old dictionaries): my old Times Atlas of the World, found in a used bookstore 10 years ago. It's old enough to show a divided Germany, Leningrad-in-the-USSR instead of St. Petersburg-in-Russia, and countless other geo-anachronisms, but oh, is it beautiful to look at. And really, do we care what the politicians say about where the borders are, or whose ego is institutionalized on the city masthead? Yes, ok, sometimes we do need to know such facts. But that's what Internet maps are good at. I am well aware of the other ways that computerized maps and atlases are superior to the soon-to-be obsolete printed variety: they are up-to-date (i.e. -to-the-minute), truly comprehensive, and augmented in infinite ways with personalized layers of meaning (see the history of natural disasters for the city you're visiting, or see where the coffee shops are).

Claims of comprehensiveness and currency in a printed atlas always assume you will buy the latest version, which, if you are buying a nice atlas, may run you a few hundred dollars. And why would you not buy a nice atlas? You can get ugly atlases online. So, my recommendation for the killer combination? A nice old Atlas (cheaper, probably prettier, and still 90% accurate) and the Internet to supplement your old beauty with the latest facts. The picture above, of Oban, in Scotland, is from my old Times atlas (be sure to click on the image to see a bigger version).

I love maps, and love studying maps of a place before, and after, visiting it for real. My introduction to maps was via the topographic maps produced by the United States Geological Survey, used by everyone from soldiers to miners to hikers for navigating in the wilderness. There was a USGS office in Menlo Park, a few miles from where I grew up, so we got to browse the beautiful, poster-sized, four-color maps whenever we wanted. On a trip to my wife's family home in Greece, I visited that country's equivalent of the USGS, the Greek Army Mapping Office. My brother-in-law and I were planning to climb Mt. Olympus, and I also had plans to camp out in the Peloponnese. When I asked for the maps that covered the westernmost finger of that peninsula, the army officer looked at me suspiciously. He fetched his commanding officer and they grilled me: "Why do you want to go there? There is no camping there! What is your business?" I tried to assure them (with the help of my Greek brother-in-law) that I was just going to find a place to put down my bag on the coast and enjoy the sea and stars. They never did give me that map. I forgot about the incident until I was awakened on my hillside perch near Koroni, overlooking the Mediterranean, by what sounded like bombs going off. What had sounded like bombs going off was in fact bombs going off .... Turns out the Greek Air Force likes to practice their aim on the little island of Skhiza, which was just about a mile south of my sleeping bag. I watched jets looping and dropping bombs for an hour. No wonder the army guy was suspicious.

Since I can't show the map with Skhiza on it (ahem) ... here is my Greek Army Map of Cape Tenaron, about 40 miles southeast of my camping spot near Koroni. Maybe nothing is as interesting as being woken up by jets dropping bombs at the foot of your sleeping bag, but the topo map below shows the tip of the Mani Peninsula, itself a very interesting place: in the cove near the southern end, surrounded by wind-torn, razor-sharp white rock and ancient ruins, is the cave of Tenaron, the mythical entrance to Hades.



Strangely, USGS topo maps were the thing that reignited my interest in computers, after many years of abstinence: in the mid-nineties, a San Francisco company, Wildflower Productions (now owned by National Geographic), was scanning all the topographic maps for the United States, in various scales, digitally stitching them together, and adding tools for searching and customizing. When I first got a look at their product on the shelves at REI where I worked, I called the company and asked them what I needed in my new computer (the one I didn't have yet) to run their product. At the time, I didn't care what else the computer could do.

I still have a soft spot for this product because it's based on pictures of real maps, made to be held in your hand. The computerized version allows me to look at topo maps for anywhere in the country, and of course you can't own that many printed maps. I understand how computers add value here. But I still say printed maps and atlases are so much more beautiful and satisfying to hold. And they provide much the same opportunity for serendipitous discovery that a printed dictionary does, as I detailed in my previous post. The maps in my world atlas are produced by the famous John Bartholomew & Son cartographers in the UK. Their maps, especially the old, hand-lettered ones, are so pretty to look at, and so clear. Am I repeating myself?



If you can afford the already-obsolete current edition of the Times World Atlas (obsolete, because world atlases go out-of-date about as fast as newspapers these days), here is a link to the Twelfth Edition of the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World. But my strong recommendation is to search your local used bookstore for an older version, if only for the joy of the maps.

Old Dictionaries, Old Meanings

This post moved to imby.net

Cartier-Bresson Has My Back

This post has moved to http://www.imby.net/20090214/cartier-bresson-has-my-back/

More Homemade Stuff - Not Just For Hippies

If Panasonic were to make a lens hood for my LX3 digital camera, it would probably cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $50. All the accessories for this camera are ridiculously expensive.


I wanted a way to protect my little camera from the rain and ended up with a perfect lens hood in the bargain, for about 2 dollars and a half-hour of work. The project was featured on instructables.com (where you can read about the benefits of the hood, and the process of customizing a $2 piece of plumbing for my high-end digicam):

Digital Lens Hood / Rain Hood on instructables.com

One of a number of clearing houses for the DIY set, instructables.com is a great place to find elegant (or funky) ways to solve any problem you can think of, usually for cheap or free, from recycled or otherwise lowtech stuff. Make Magazine (and their Web space and blog) also features daily projects for solving problems in ways that will save you lots of money and give you lots of low-tech satisfaction: solve a problem by making something and you are beating a socioeconomic system that only knows how to offer prepackaged, mass-produced solutions for high prices.

Another Nice Steel Knife

This post has move to imby.net

Henri Cartier-Bresson on Natural Light

This post has moved to http://www.imby.net/20090201/henri-cartier-bresson-on-natural-light/

Andy Goldsworthy on Tech

Sculptor Andy Goldsworthy writes on his process: "The work itself determines the nature of its making. I enjoy the freedom of just using my hands and 'found' tools - a sharp stone, the quill of a feather, thorns. I am not playing the primitive. I use my hands because this is the best way to do most of my work. If I need tools, then I will use them. Technology, travel and tools are part of my life and if needed should be part of my work also. A camera is used to document, an excavator to move earth, snowballs are carried cross country by articulated truck."*

I am very comfortable with this pragmatic approach to technology. The problem (here begins my opinion) is not technology, in itself, it's in the adoption of technology, or technique, as "the way" (or even "the best way") to fulfill a desire. When a community (artists, for example) discovers a piece of technology that makes a part of their job easier, or a technique is developed that introduces efficiencies into a process, this is not a bad thing, per se. But if technique precedes meditation, exploration, and inspiration, then creativity withers.

-----
*From the introduction, Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature.Take a look at Andy Goldsworthy's other books at Amazon.The DVD, Rivers and Tides is a very good documentary, rich and satisfying. Remember, if you can find these books at a local independent bookstore, get on your bike and go. Photo of The Neuberger Cairn (2001) at SUNY, is from Wikimedia Commons, and is in the public domain.

Old Places (The San Gregorio Store)

From the so-close-and-yet-so-wonderfully-far-away dept., a 30 minute drive from Silicon Valley will take you to a place that feels far, far away and a long time ago. The San Gregorio Store is a place that could be the Anti-Tech Museum. The single building is essentially the downtown of a sub-300-population oceanside community (most of which is not visible from the store), what used to be a hotel and hub for San Franciscan weekenders in stagecoaches.

The store, which has been in operation for 120 years, is simple in architecture, and is filled with stuff of simple goodness. While, on the other side of the Santa Cruz mountains, Silicon Valley patrons can now sit down in restaurants with touch-screens for ordering their food (and then for playing video games), the San Gregorio Store has no flickering screens at all. It does have a historic bar to sit at where conversation happens, and tables set up by a wood stove and shelves of books for borrowing (and others for buying).

The store is isolated enough to stock some essential groceries, but not so much that you'd come here if you needed to stock up. But you can find a good selection of local beers (at the bar and in the fridges), oil lamps, glassware, denim, cast iron cookware, some good looking puzzles, socially progressive reading matter ("World Atlas of Biodiversity"), posters (of Bob Marley, Albert Einstein, and Marian Anderson, for example) and bluegrass music (live, if you come at the right times). In what may be the only nod to the store's proximity to Silicon Valley, you won't find cowboy hats here, only "cowtechnician hats".

It is a country store, but "country" in the way that only a large metropolitan area like the San Francisco Bay Area can produce. In other words: liberal, humanist, and intellectual, where in some other places, "country" might mean conservative, hick, and unread. Bay Area "country" means laid back ... in a socially and politically intense kind of way. The prices also betray the fact that the store is close to a major metro area: it's a bit hard for me to justify buying a t-shirt for over 20 bucks. But if that's the price of keeping a place like this on the map, then it's cheaper than a museum (and there is none of the staged feel of a museum to the San Gregorio Store).

The San Gregorio Store is on Hwy 84, just off the Pacific Coast Highway and just North of Pescadero, another old California town. Take 84 west from the store for one minute and you're at the Pacific Ocean, where the breakers will drown out all the noise and memory of the modern world. Take Hwy 84 east for thirty minutes and, as you re-enter the modern world, one of the first restaurants you'll come to is Buck's of Woodside, where bits of famous and ground-breaking computer technology are framed on the walls, gifts from famous and ground-breaking tech pioneers, many of whom were funded in part while lunching at Buck's with venture capitalists. That's the spectrum right there: the old towns of the Pacific Coast on one end of the 84, and a Silicon Valley deal-making hub on the other. Noisy waves to the west, bits of tech to the east. ... Go West, (low tech) traveler*.

The San Gregorio Store
 37°19'37.21"N
122°23'12.07"W

*that is, find the point on your compass which leads you away from industry and development for a spell, and go that way.

Home-Made Leather Wallet

This post has moved to imby.net