Who Dat Nation?

Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints for conquering the United Countries of Football

2009 UCF Conference Championships

Conference Championships this weekend in the United Countries of Football.

Congratulations to the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints. We'll see these two Football "Countries" fight it out in two weeks! Peyton Manning will play against his old "home team" (he was born in New Orleans, and his Dad, Archie Manning, used to play for the Saints).



So, were all these playoffs necessary? At the end of the day, the two teams with the best records in their conference go to the Super Bowl.

My early prediction is that the Colts will win another Super Bowl. But good on the Saints for finally making it to the big game.

#535

2009 UCF Divisional Playoffs

Divisional Playoffs this weekend in the United Countries of Football.

As a sports fan, I was happy to see the Colts win and the Cowboys lose. As a poor mapmaker, I was happy to see the Ravens lose so that I wouldn't have two purple Football Countries.



Next week, for the first time in NFL history, both Conference Championship games will be held indoors. I'm looking for a Colts/Saints Super Bowl.

2009 UCF Wildcard Weekend

Last week I introduced the end-of-2009 NFL season United Countries of Football map.

Tonight, after an exciting overtime win by the Cardinals, the Wild-Card round of the playoffs have ended. Four Football Nations have been vanquished: Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New England and Green Bay. The new map stands at this:



Aside from my disappointment at the Bengal's loss and the Cowboy's win, I did pick 3 out of 4 correctly. However, I have a problem with the map. Once again I used poor color choices and now the Minnesota Vikings' and the Baltimore Ravens' territory is colored with the same shade of violet!

Therefore, next weekend, I will find myself rooting for the Vikings over the Dallas Cowboys (I would anyway), and I will naturally be rooting for the Indianapolis Colts over the Ravens. Then all things will be map-color-well.

#525

2009 United Countries of Football

The NFL 2009 regular season has come to an end. For the third year, I am playing around with the imaginary United Countries of Football.



What if the fans of each team formed their own country, and by the end of the season, Divisional Champions have "conquered" their foes? Why the cartogram? See the original post for more details.

Senators Draw Home States

We all know that Sen. Al Franken can draw all 50 states from memory, but can your U.S. Senator draw your state? To help kick off Geography Awareness Week, National Geographic invited all 100 U.S. Senators to draw a map of their home state from memory and to label at least three important places. It seems only eleven twelve of them were brave enough to give it a try, including Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Susan Collins of Maine:





Michael Enzi of Wyoming also participated, but I think those square states are just too easy...

HT to Marilyn Terrell

Maps of the Peace Corps

"Maps of the Peace Corps" is a showcase of maps made by Peace Corps Volunteers from five decades of volunteer service around the world.

Two of the hand drawn maps from the collection:



Location: Quimbaya, Colombia
Volunteer: Larry Larrichio
Decade: 1960s



Location: Koyena, Mali
Volunteer: Judy Mead
Decade: 1990s

Steelers Nation

Thanks to the Steelers for winning the Super Bowl. I get to use my Pennsylvania/USA graphic afterall:

Hand Drawn Map Contest

The Hand Drawn Map Association will be publishing a collection of hand drawn maps with the Princeton Architectural Press. To celebrate and help collect interesting maps for possible inclusion in our upcoming book, they will be running a contest over the next few months.

Submit a hand drawn map to the Association before April 30, 2009, and you may win a "super-limited edition monoprint".

2008 UCF Conference Championships

I have to confess that I am disappointed with this particular match-up the the Super Bowl:



My disappointment has nothing to do with the Steelers or Cardinals. I was just hoping for an All-Pennsylvania Super Bowl. I even made this cool map to commemorate it. If not that, then perhaps a Mason-Dixon Super Bowl between the Baltimore Ravens and one of the Pensylvania teams... Or I would have been happy with a Ravens vs. Cardinals or Eagles... for the first ever All-Bird Super Bowl. But no... we've got the Pittsburgh Steelers vs. the Arizona Cardinals. Where's the hook? Where's the gimmick?

Oh well, congratulations to both teams. Here's to great Super Bowl game in two weeks!

2008 UCF Divisional Weekend

Down to four NFL teams left.



Once again, my Super Bowl predictions are in the crapper... So, now I'll predict a Pittsburgh v. Philadelphia (All Pennsylvania) Super Bowl.

With my track record that is, of course, the kiss of death.

2008 UCF Wildcard Weekend

Last week I introduced the end-of-2008 NFL season United Countries of Football map:



I am Indianapolis Colts fan, and was disappointed that they lost on Saturday and will not go forward. I found I had an unusual basis for the teams I rooted for on Sunday. As you can see on the map above, I made some poor choices of colors. I gave the Minnesota Vikings and the Baltimore Ravens the same shade of purple, and I gave the San Diego Chargers and the Miami Dolphins similar shades of orange! What if the wrong teams win and their colors mix, or I have to change colors? Thanks to the Eagles and the Ravens, that is no longer a problem...



Now I have each team with a unique color. I am predicting a blue and blue Super Bowl this year, Tennessee Titans v. New York Giants... we'll see... I'm usually very wrong.

I should have taken map color advice from John Krygier's book, Making Maps.

#320

2008 United Countries of Football

The NFL 2008 regular season has come to an end. Just as I did last season, I am playing around with the imaginary United Countries of Football.



What if the fans of each team formed their own country, and by the end of the season, Divisional Champions have "conquered" their foes? See the original post for more details.

Pier Gustafson

Pier Gustafson is a calligrapher, illustrator, graphic designer and artist. He specializes in customized invitations for weddings and other special events. Often, guests invited to these special events need a map to the location. If you look closely at the the invitation, you can often find a map incorporated into the design, or the map itself is the design. Two examples from Gustafson's map gallery:


Drawn tree branches made up the decorative motif of the invitation and the RSVP card as well as the envelopes. It seems that I needed to include them on the map, too. But rather than simply having them be decorative, I composed them into the actual roadways. (Though I think of myself as a realist, I did bend some botanical laws of nature with highways 12 and 37.)


The owner of a Victorian house planned a grand re-opening celebration after it had gone through extensive historic renovations. An elaborate claw-footed post holds a fringed be-tassled banner containing the text of the invitation. Only after you study it for a moment, do you realize that the post is actually the map directing his guests from Boston.

I recently discovered Pier's work after a return visit to The Hand Drawn Map Association.

Ohio Land Grants

Yesterday, I wrote about the book, How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein, and commented on the Ohio Western Reserve of Connecticut. The territory that became the State of Ohio was pieced together from lands surveyed and sold by the federal government, private individuals, and by the states of Virginia and Connecticut.

Since parts of the state were surveyed at different times, Ohio was divided into areas called survey "districts" or "land grants."


Map from the OHGenWeb Project

In addition to the Western Reserve, the "Fire Lands" were a gift from the state of Connecticut to citizens who had property destroyed by the British during the American Revolution, the "Virginia Military District" was intended to be given to Virginia's veterans, and the "Refugee Tract" was given to Canadian refugees who had helped the American colonies during the Revolutionary War. See Ohio History Central for more detail.

These details are imporant not only for historians, but also genealogists. When tracking the birth, death or property of an ancestor during the period before Ohio's statehood, it is imporant to be able to identify the territories that eventually became the different counties. Concidentally, Shawna, the Genealogy Librarian at my library shared with me some maps she drew in grade school:





I have already sent these fine maps to the Hand Drawn Map Association for inclusion in that collection.

Edible Maps

An tasty assortment of edible maps...

An exercise in map symbols from Ms. Welch's Class:





Marzipan Europe from Strange Maps:



A Somalia cake from Ms. Jimenez's Class (watch out for the pirates):



And finally, Catan Cake. An edible version of the boardgame, Settlers of Catan:



MMMmmmmmmmmaps!....

#268

Map of Staines

Do you see maps wherever you go?

Just like some religious folks see Jesus or the Virgin Mary in their cheese sandwiches, I see maps in cloud formations, rug patterns and mud puddles... is there a scientific term for this psychosis?

Here is an example of a bored restaurant host finding a map in the coffee staines of their seating chart!



From the Hand Drawn Map Association, previously mentioned here.

Hand Drawn Map Association

The Hand Drawn Map Association is collecting and displaying maps and other diagrams created by hand. This includes directions to a party, a vacation site, or the local store. In fact, as you can see below, the maps do not even have to be on paper!



Their goal is to share your maps with others and preserve them for future generations. They accept virtually any sort of submissions and according to their site, for a limited time, they will actually pay you for your hand drawn map on paper that you have found or created.

Thanks to The Map Room for the heads up.

Quastolia - The Later Years

Quastolia - The Early Years
Quastolia - The Middle Years

Eventually, Bill and I found developing our "ant countries" within the existing geography of our hometowns to be too constricting. All we could do was redraw borders in between the existing lakes and rivers. Fortunately for us, a strange spatial-temporal rift descended upon Aqceyquas, and after the dust settled, we found ourselves in a new world.

A section of a map of the new world by Bill:


The surviving residents of Quastolia and Ceygolia began the careful exploration of our new world, cleverly called "Neworld". We also conveniently dropped the notion of ants and other insects as our citizens, and proceeded to world building like our favorite fantasy and science fiction writers.

Somewhere along the line, the reconstituted nation of Quastolia became known as the Protected United Kingdom of Quastolia, with its unfortunate acronym, "PUKQ". I assume my teenaged sense of humor found that amusing.

Two of my maps of the PUKQ:




Development of our "ant countries" continued on and off throughout high school and our first year of college, whenever we felt the urge to draw a map, or write a history or heroic saga. Later, when playing Dungeons & Dragons, it was very easy for me to create a new world for use as Dungeon Master.

Another of Bill's maps. He was always a better artist:

Quastolia - The Middle Years

In an earlier post I described the origins of Quastolia. Our "ant countries" started out in our back yards, but soon after that, Bill and I expanded the geography to include more than just our home neighborhoods. Both Quastolia and Ceygolia grew to encompass most of our small towns (Bill lived in the next town to the north of mine).

A political map:


A tophographic map of sorts:


A little of both:


We continued to develop extensive economic and cultural histories for our kingdoms. The region in which our kingdoms resided was known as Aqceyquas, named after the three brothers that founded the first three kingdoms: Aq, Ceygol and Quas. Very bad epic poetry tells the story of the birth of the brothers. Their mother was the goddess Utipia. There was a falling out between Aq and his brothers, becoming a source of conflict throught the region's history. I won't bore you with the rest.

A map of Aqceyquas by Bill:


Once again, you can see the strong influence of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings in our mapmaking, especially for Bill, who was always a better artist than me.

To the right is a satelite image of Aqceyquas. Here's your challenge: I haven't named my hometown, but in other posts I have left plenty of clues as to where I am from. Can you locate Aqceyquas?

Offer your answers in the comments.

Story continued: Quastolia - The Later Years

Maps and Puzzles at National Geographic

Marilyn at Intelligent Travel also sent some info about new fun features available from National Geographic Magazine online:

Map of the Day, offers map-related news and historical events for each day of the year pulled from the Society's archives. This one caught my eye. It is a hand drawn map of Sutter's Creek, by John Marshall, locating his discovery of gold on January 24, 1848:



For additional fun, play with a map jigsaw puzzle from their atlas: