Cancer Maps

Dr. Jospeh Fraumeni, a pioneering researcher of epidemiology, died a couple of weeks ago. Among his achievements were the first maps of cancer deaths in the United States. Here are two early maps.

These maps eventually became an atlas of cancer mortality published by the National Cancer Institute. You can see the entire atlas here but be warned, it’s huge and may take a long time to load.

The atlas maps begin with overall maps, broken down by race and gender before breaking them down further by types of cancer.

There is a bias in that there are many more maps showing white people than black and no other races (or genders) are accounted for. Anyway it is interesting to see the male/female contrasts here-above is white male, below white female.

One difference that really stands out is “cancer alley” in Louisiana. Are males contracting cancer at work, where presumably there are fewer females employed in these chemical industries? Similar disparities appear in coastal parts of Georgia, the Carolinas and Texas. Here are the maps for blacks. Notice the they do not have the finer county breakdown, nor is there data for the earlier 1950-69 time period.

All of these maps show a similar pattern of lower rates in the southeast and southwest. You can see more, including interactive and story maps at gis.cancer.gov. Here is a sample from the urban-rural disparity story map. I manipulated this image slightly so the legend and map appear together.

This quote from the gis.cancer site summarizes Dr Fraumeni's ideas that led to developing these maps. “The spatial context in which people live is an important factor in cancer etiology and outcomes influencing a person’s risk of developing cancer, accessibility and quality of preventive and treatment services, and quality of life after surviving cancer.“

Skpe a Scientist

Skype a Scientist is an organization that matches scientists with classrooms across the United States. Their annual United States of Science Challenge seeks to fill a certain number of classrooms in each state with donations. This map is a bit, ummm, unscientific maybe but it shows empty bubbles as classrooms waiting to be matched (?)

I’m not sure what the Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty is doing inside two of the three Wyoming bubbles, or for that matter why Wyoming only has three bubbles. He’s also hiding in small bubbles in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Also, the colors only seem to exist as some kind of regional differentiation. Most states appear to be full but there are still opportunities within most regions of the country. 

Maps for the U.S. Semiquincentennial

Semiquincentennial is a mouthful. So much that my spell check doesn’t believe it’s a word. The Bicentennial, which I’m old enough to remember well was easier to pronounce, and celebrate. I won’t make any grand statements, instead here are some fun, interesting or alternative maps of the United States to celebrate its 250th birthday.

I’ll start with the original inhabitants of this land. This is one of the maps of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, previously featured here in this post.

Tribal Map 2000

You can see the whole map here.

License Plate Map (one of many)

-via Photowall

If the states were based on watersheds: The United Watershed States of America

-via Next City

The United States drawn as Fifty States with Equal Population

This is an attempt from Neil Freeman to make the Electoral College more fair - good luck either way that! More here.

Speculative fiction - USA in the Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle is a 1962 novel by Philip K. Dick, which imagines a world in which the Axis powers won World War II. Map from Wikimedia Commons. It looks like Long Island might be safe. I’m not sure where some of these oddly specific boundary jogs come from.

A less depressing speculative map (unless you hate rail) - Sci fi coast to coast high speed rail network. 

-via Greater Greater Washington

Finally, for dessert here is the Most Popular Pie by State

-via Holiday Calendar

Cool Spaces

Europe has been very hot lately. The City of London created a cool spaces map last year highlighting indoor spaces, water fountains (the small blue dots), shade, and cooler areas of the city. 

The interactive map lets you choose what you want to see, filter for only air conditioned spaces and click points for more information. 

If you have your own venue, you can register it with the city to be on the map.

Here is a striking heat map from The Evening Standard, showing London’s hottest and coolest spots, from 2022 data. They are remarkably close together. Stay cool!

Atlanta Soccer Map

Veazy Studio, previously featured here for the ATL Rap Map, has a new Atlanta Soccer Map just in time for that city’s World Cup hosting duties. 

The map took “just under 100 hours to create” and he does a convincing job of selling Atlanta as a soccer destination. Here is a detail of the east downtown area showing stores, fields and bars where people go to watch games - assuming FIFA allows them to be shown.

There’s also a list of Atlanta’s soccer “culture makers“

Bonus map section (!!!!!!!!) - my sister alerted me to Veazy’s Barbecue Map, which is how I discovered the soccer map.

The above image is not very readable but here is a detail from the Costco Connection.

The Mysterious "Frenchman's Map" of Williamsburg

While visiting family in Virginia this week, we made a trip to Colonial Williamsburg (CW), a good place to go during the 250th anniversary of the United States. While there I came across a cartographic mystery. The “Frenchman’s Map” was said to be instrumental in the restoration of the colonial village. The black and white version above is from Wikimedia commons. 

Here is a piece of a colorized version of the map that is for sale at the CW bookstore. 

There is a lot of detail but very little explanatory text, leading many to believe that this is merely a draft version with the final version yet undiscovered. This and the following conjectures are largely from In Search of the Frenchman’s Map, as well as the book The Mysteries of the “Frenchman’s Map” of Williamsburg, Virginia by Alan Simpson. Yes, there is an entire book dedicated to this map! It is speculated that the map was drawn for French troops who set up their winter quarters in Williamsburg in 1781-82. The map is similar to ones of nearby Yorktown and Hampton drawn by the Berthier brothers of France, but those maps are more complete. It is also likely that it was traced from another version given a series of pinholes in it. 

It is also a mystery as to who the “Frenchman” was. There is no signature on the map and the caption is not in the same handwriting as the rest of the text. Finally, the date on the caption is May 11, 1782, which would have been well after it was needed. 

While visiting the engravers shop in the village, I saw a tray she had been working on with the map etched into it. 

The map has some remarkable details, though described as “impressionistic“ in the article referenced above. It shows building outlines, fences and in some cases even indicating specific trees with dots. Here is the map followed by a detail from the tray’s engraving. 

The folded paper map they hand out to visitors has many nice details too and the building coloring is useful. This is most of the map, trimmed to fit the page better. You can see entire map and guide here. 

By contrast here’s the Frenchman’s version. 

The article on the CW site (the first one listed above) is an interesting short read. It goes into a lot more depth about these mysteries including details of how it was obtained after being lost for a century.

Rose Hill Cemetery

Old Friend of the blog Michael Karpovage whose Pictorial Savannah map was highlighted here many years back has a new map of Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon, Georgia. This is “not just a cemetery map, but a passionately built tribute to the namesake and creative visionary behind the landscape”. Mr. Simri Rose was an urban planner, horticulturalist and historian who aided in laying out the City of Macon. 

This cemetery was part of the Rural Cemetery Movement, establishing cemeteries as parks and escapes from the crowded nearby cities. 

The map also includes the adjoining Oak Ridge Cemetery that was set aside for the city’s black population, segregated even in death. Famous people buried here include 4 of the 6 original members of the Allman Brothers Band, who are interred together in a family style plot. 

The map has a “mushroom tour” of Allman Brothers sites that you can follow on a purple dotted line. The mushrooms are an homage to the psychedelic imagery of their 1970’s era.

Included in the tour are the graves of Elizabeth Reed and Little Martha as well as Phil Walden, co-founder of Capricorn Records. A few pictures from their album covers and publicity shots were taken here as well. 

There is also a video tour that Karpovage narrates on his page. He takes you on his bicycle through many of the Allman Brothers sites as well as monuments to other significant residents such as Colonel Joseph Bond, whose original marble statue was confiscated en route to Macon and is now in a cemetery in Kentucky.