Mega Maps Medley
I’m severely geographically challenged. It’s rare that I get any of those darned blue questions right in Trivial Pursuit. And, no joke, I got lost in a parking lot the other day (on a campus named after presidential candidate and New York governor W. Averell Harriman).
Maybe if maps were delightfully anthropomorphized like Laurie Keller’s The Scrambled States of America they would hold my interest longer. At some point along the way, I started adding eyeballs, dialog, and little personalities to my map doodles and found them less threatening. Even so, I relied on crowdsourcing to figure out which state I’d drawn in one of the doodles below.
The idea for this post rattled around my noggin for a while, but the day I finally decided to pull it together I attended a book launch webinar for Ariel Aberg-Riger’s gorgeous new book America Redux. Check out her article I read right after. On second thought, don’t. If you read her article before this, this post will seem very meh. You’ll just have to trust me. The maps in her article seemed gloriously serendipitous.
But I digress. I got lost in my meandering intro.
Here are a few maps from my sketchbooks, kinda sorta in chronological order:
Sorry, mon frère!
I’m not gonna lie. This animation took me forever but was soooo much fun to bring these guys to life. (My excitement in no way indicates that I condone this behavior. Wanna see what this looked like in my sketchbook? Take a peek!)
The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, by Lindsay M. Chervinsky
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Regional differences
Back in the day, reputation was everything for public servants… they had to be honorable and exceptional. How they lived, dressed, and behaved was very important. Regional differences (and whatnot) made this tricky though. New York might think they were playing it cool and not being fancy. But then another state may be rolling their eyes at New York’s aristocratic tendencies.
FUN FACT! The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, by Lindsay M. Chervinsky is not just an excellent book that sheds light on how our government was formed. Until recently, it also had the most entries in my Things That Sound Dirty But Aren’t list. A very prestigious honor indeed.
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Bungtown
I learned what bungs are when I read that Calvin Coolidge “saves at the spigot and wastes at the bunghole.” But that doesn’t mean I giggle any less.
Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy, by Nathaniel Philbrick
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[shrug]
North Carolina and Rhode Island still hadn’t ratified the freaking Constitution, so George Washington skipped right over them on his big tour of the country.
Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy, by Nathaniel Philbrick
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Full steam ahead
This blew my mind. Way back when the first steamboat was introduced, the trip from NYC to Albany took 32 hours. Only eight years later, Robert Livingston could make the same trip in just 18 hours.
Bobs' Folly: Fulton, Livingston and the Steamboat, by Travis M. Bowman
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OH! Ohio!
Humphry Marshall called Henry Clay a name, so obviously that meant they needed to shoot it out for honor and stuff. The problem was that Kentucky had outlawed dueling. No biggie! With a borrowed set of pistols and a hospitable neighboring state, it all worked out!
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The Van Buren Boys gang
Martin Van Buren was the first POTUS from New York. (As of when I’m typing this, New York boasts the third most presidents (with Van Buren the first of five)… following Ohio (with seven) and Virginia (with eight). That’s hardly my favorite “first” Van Buren fact. He’s also the first president born in the United States. And the first whose first language wasn’t English.
He’s also the only president in my sketchbooks accompanied by a doodle of Cosmo Kramer. Upside down, because it’s the only way I could get him to fit. And I thought upside down would mask how terrible the drawing is (look at those teeny tiny hands holding a salt shaker, with eight fingers extended. Get it? Because Van Buren was the eighth president?) Find the full sketchbook spread here if you want to see the rest.
From Martin Van Buren, by Ted Widmer
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Convict Wars, etc.
This was a rough book to read. 1. According to V.O. Key, Jr., “of all of the American states, Virginia can lay claim to the most thorough control by an oligarchy.” While they’d outlawed the Klan and (comparatively speaking) had fewer lynchings, they used used “clever legal rules” to maintain low voter turnout and stay powerful. 2. With many tough subjects, and in particular this book, it is very difficult for me to accurately summarize facts and events without sounding like an a-hole. Just read this book. It’s eye-opening and I didn’t do it justice. 3. After Emancipation, Tennessee figured out a way to get cheap labor. Arrest a bunch of men for the tiniest of infractions. Then rent them out to mining companies. Easy-peasy! And gross.
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“A new crop of Buttinskys”
That’s how author Sarah Vowell puts it. 1. Each new American generation includes “a new crop of Buttinskys.” 2. The missionaries in Hawaii “spread the fear of God as far and wide as [Captain James] Cook’s men had spread the clap.” 3. These ding-dongs dismissed the Polynesian triangle as dumb luck when in fact, ancient Polynesians were brilliant navigators, traveling thousands of miles in their double-hulled canoes. 4. Teddy was pretty jazzed about the idea of annexing Hawaii.
Unfamiliar Fishes, by Sarah Vowell
Beware the Ocean of Animal Appetite
The missionaries in Hawaii warned everyone to steer clear of the Islands of Poverty and Brutality, while visiting Lands of Industry and Improvement… through temperance.
Side note: Missionary Daniel Dole educated the mission kids because he just couldn’t grasp Hawaiian. His son Sanford ultimately kinda sorta banned the language when he became the only president of the Republic of Hawaii. Also, Barack Obama went to the school where Sanford Dole was born / where Daniel taught.
Still on Hawaii… in the course of one year, Hawaiians lost Pearl Harbor to the U.S., Hawaiians (those without a lot of property and income, anyway) were stripped of their voting rights, and the Hawaiian king “became a puppet of a white oligarchy,” according to Sarah Vowell. The history of Hawaii is so complex and shocking and tragic.
Unfamiliar Fishes, by Sarah Vowell
In the doodle shown above… Teddy was over in Cuba during this time, where we ultimately gained control of Guantánamo Bay. He believed it was important to support people in their independence “whether they amount to much or not”. [eyeroll]
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris
(I have mixed feelings about this book.)
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Chet shat
President Grover Cleveland kicked homesteaders out of the Dakota territory after discovering that President Chester Arthur shat all over a treaty with the Winnebago & Crow Creek Indians as his administration wound down. Figuratively speaking, of course. There’s no evidence that Arthur literally shat on the treaty.
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“A funny little Catholic priest”
In one of my very favorite books ever (and certainly my favorite of the books I’ve read about Theodore Roosevelt), Roosevelt travels to South America to an unexplored section the size of Germany. “A delightful little holiday” with “just the right amount of adventure” planned by “a funny little Catholic priest.” Teddy’s words, not mine.
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard
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Maker of noise and strife
“I believe in TR, maker of noise and strive, and in ambition his only creed (my Lord), He was born of the Love of Power and suffered under William Howard Taft; he was crucified, died and buried. He descended into Africa. The third year he rose again from the jungle and ascended into favor and sitteth on the right hand of his Party…”
Democrat J. Sharpe Williams penned this wise-ass poem.
William Howard Taft: An Intimate History, Judith Icke Anderson
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Tumultuous 30s
I knew the 30s were rife with happenings, but they were even more contentious than I’d realized.
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Oopsie Daisy!
Disgraced President Richard Nixon’s disgraced Vice President Spiro Agnew accidentally waived his attorney-client privilege in his book, Go Quietly… Or Else. It led to him being sued by Maryland.
Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-Up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House, by Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz
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Lesotho!
I’m absolutely tickled by weird coincidences and the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon in general. Like how I’d never heard of Lesotho, a tiny enclaved country in Africa, until my 3rd grader did a project on it a few years ago. Then Lesotho popped up in George W. Bush’s autobiography. And shortly after, the question popped up in virtual trivia and I got it right! (A geography-based trivia question, guys!!) Coincidentally, my son came home at the same time… and shouted upstairs to me to correct my horrendous pronunciation: “LUH-SOO-TOO!!”
And speaking of popping up… in the same book, Bush mentioned the elephants doing it in the background on live TV during a press conference.
From Decision Points, by George W. Bush. Also, I believe the first and only time Bono appeared in my sketchbooks.
More maps:
Find a military map at the top of my bibliography
Read Ariel Aberg-Riger’s article that I mentioned in the intro (but then selfishly asked you not to read yet)
Or check out the posts and books below:
Into maps?
Even the faceless kind? Check out:
North American Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the Continent
by Matthew Bucklan, Victor Cizek, and Jack Dunnington
Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the World
by Ian Wright
Tiny cartographers should read:
The Scrambled States of America
by Laurie Keller
The Scrambled States of America Talent Show
by Laurie Keller
and thoughts about George Washington