Knowing Home
I'm going to send you an annoying link here in a moment, but first I have a few words to say about maps.
Well, a link to an annoying site, then. Can't blame the poor link.
And annoying might not be the right word. Frustrating, maybe.
On the wall above my computer, in the upper reaches of my vision as I work, are two maps. One is of the world, and the other the Pacific Northwest. And in my peripheral vision toward the right is my globe, of course.
I guess it's possible to read into this a desire to feel part of the world, being alone so much of the time in my basement office. But I think I just like maps.
I don't know why this is, or when it started. Maybe it's just a symptom of midlife wondering, thinking of all the places I've never been.
My friend, Larry, served nearly 30 years on the seas, first with the Navy and then on science vessels, and he's got wonderful stories of what he's seen and how he's felt. He also writes a weekly newspaper column and occasionally drops in his sea stories. There's a book there, I tell him. There will be, too, I think.
I asked him once about Cape Horn, the legendary End Of The Earth, where penguins scramble on rocky coasts, which Magellan bypassed in favor of the horrific straits that bear his name. Larry made a face.
"It's terrible," he said. "The wind blows all the way around the world there." This is something a seaman would say, of course. I still think I'd like to go.
There's also something about connections, I think. I look at satellite maps sometimes, skipping around the world by mouse click. If you go up to Canada, then head east, by the time you get to Hudson Bay or so (if you're at the right height) you start to glimpse Greenland, then Iceland and Ireland. It's easy to imagine a Viking getting blown off course and ending up in North America, centuries before Columbus. The story of that first, short-lived Viking settlement in the New World is a fascinating one to me.
So I look at my maps and my globe, and hope some elementary school teacher somewhere is proud of me. I can tell you which is Uruguay and which is Paraguay. I can point out Chad and Sudan and Morroco. I can find the Black Sea blindfolded. And so on. I'm a dreamin' geography fool.
But how well do I know my own country?
I found a site yesterday, a little Flash program that purports to be a third grade-level U.S. geography exam. There is a snicker in all this, a hint of "just how dumb are you?" that irritates me, but I do love my maps.
So there's a map of the continental United States with 48 blank states and a list of 48 names, and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to fill in the blanks.
I would just like to say to those of you on the East Coast: You have some really small states. You have states that out here on the West Coast we would probably refer to as neighborhoods. We have Wal-Marts bigger than Rhode Island. On a Saturday afternoon, one of our malls contains more people than Vermont.
So I was a little shaky. I know my West, of course, and most of the south. And I know where Minnesota is, and of course knowing North Dakota gets you South for free. Same with the Carolinas. West Virginia and VA are tricky but only the first time.
There were lots of times.
I spent the better part of an hour doing this, and it stopped being fun quickly. Part of the problem was being a little shaky in the middle. I kept getting Illinois and Indiana confused. And New England was a big blank, a lot of guess work and learning as I went.
And every time I'd lose, I'd get some snide screen that told me I'd failed the third grade. I could have lived without that.
The problem here, and why this is less a tool than a game, is that there's a time limit. For some reason, the creators of this site decided that 3 minutes and 36 seconds was long enough for a third grader. That's about 4 seconds a state, 4 seconds to drag and drop, not counting the times your fingers slip and a buzzer sounds and you have to do it again.
I found it impossible to do on my laptop. You really need a mouse. I went to the upstairs computer and finished on my first try, but it was close. I question this whole third grader thing.
Anyway. Here it is, if you have some time or like maps or are a bit of a masochist, like me. Idaho is next to Washington. Vermont is next to New Hampshire. Tennessee is easy, as is Texas.
I can't help you on Indiana, though. You're on your own there.
12:55:21 PM 
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