Jewel of the Universe

Here is a remarkable piece of art that I missed back in 2012 and have not been able to find any recent information about. English-Chinese artist Chris Chamberlain created this world map from stained glass and jewels.

-image via Acte Gratuit

-via My Modern Met

He describes his 2+ year process in a video. He hand cut over a quarter of a million pieces of glass and 1,238 gemstones. He used zircons for many cities. There is one diamond representing Freetown, Sierra Leone. Rubies were used to indicate religious centers such as Jerusalem and Mecca. He also used emeralds and sapphires. Here is one detailed area of the map.

Since this is glass it is meant to be illuminated from behind. This image, via ArtRabbit gives some idea of what that looks like.

He also illuminated the map in his video but it is a little hard to appreciate it from a YouTube screen shot.

He mentioned that the work is for sale and I imagine it must have sold because there is no further information about the artist of the work and the web site set up for the artwork no longer exists. For a few more pictures and details (includes the one below) see this page on My Modern Met. 

Our Drying Planet

A recent study in the journal Science and illustrated by ProPublica details how the Earth’s land is drying. Water is being diverted to the oceans by melting glaciers, agricultural runoff and by pumping aquifers. The story incorporates a spinning globe as you scroll down, highlighting problem areas

Earth’s supply of fresh water is quickly disappearing leading to a “a critical, emerging threat to humanity.” Aquifers are being pumped out causing groundwater depletion. This has become one of the largest contributors to sea level rise and is causing the land to sink as shown dramatically by this illustration.

Some of the world’s most important food producing areas such as the Nile and Mekong River deltas are threatened. This subsidence is also happening in many major cities, compounding the flooding problems that are increasing due to rising sea levels. 

The ProPublica story includes maps showing global water loss as well as these problem areas of North and South America.

The scarcity of water is being used as a weapon in many conflict zones around the world the world. Without a global framework or governmental regulations these problems will continue to grow. The article mentions some policies that have worked, at least temporarily and suggests that a policy that looks at water as a national security concern, may be able to counterbalance special interests and forces of habit. Scroll through the ProPublica site for more details and illustrations.

Traffic Counts, 1925

I found this 1925 traffic count map on the Library of Congress website while looking for maps by Howard Fogel, last week’s mystery cartographer.

This blueprint style map uses line thickness. I like how they hollowed out the big cities, otherwise the thick lines would take over the entire area. It also lists traffic counts, which at the time could range from 8,000 daily vehicles traveling north from Chicago, 

to a mere 50 or so south of Buffalo in western South Dakota and 65 between Buffalo and Bison (what we call buffalo are really bison, not true buffalo if you like being picky).

There were 6,000 cars heading west from Milwaukee. Today’s Wisconsin DOT Traffic Counts Map shows 166,000 daily cars.

They don't make maps like that anymore. The current map seems to be lacking a bit of the human touch.
 

The Mysterious Howard Fogel

 I had an opportunity to try out an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool to help college instructors brainstorm class activities. I asked the tool to suggest a class syllabus about mid 20th Century pictorial cartography. The AI (based on Claude) suggested highlighting various cartographers including Howard Fogel. Having never heard of him I asked some follow up questions that did not get me any closer to this person. After my session was over I went directly to Claude, who had no results about him. A search of various platforms and map sites came up empty, except for this one map attributed to “Fogel” from Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc.

I contacted the company to ask if they had any more knowledge about “Fogel” and the answer was no. The author is merely “Fogel”. If anyone out there knows anything about Howard Fogel, please let me know. Is this just be some kind of strange AI fabrication? In the meantime let’s appreciate Fogel’s (one and only?) map.. . 

A film crew spotlights the centrality of the hotel, across from the Chinese theatre and adjacent to the other theaters and television studios. Mickey Mouse points out the numbered landmarks. There’s a bunch of fun going on as people are playing golf, tennis and polo, racing horses, conducting orchestras at the Hollywood Bowl, watching sports at the Coliseum, having picnics and flying their planes, all while the cops are guarding Beverly Hills. Downtown Los Angeles is just a tiny sideshow in the far corner. You’d barely know it’s there. The flip side of the map shows you all the exciting hotel details. Let's "thrill to the pageantry"!

 

The New Yorker Cover and its Imitators

 In 1976, Saul Steinberg illustrated this famous cover for the New Yorker.

The humorously exaggerated myopia of a “typical“ New Yorker led to many imitations across the world. I found a bunch of examples on the David Rumsey Map Collection when looking for something completely unrelated. Here is Milwaukee. 

Interestingly this version has a foreground as well as a background. It also features a better sense of geographic accuracy than the original though the China-Japan-Russia bit is basically duplicated. Look at tiny little Chicago! Saratoga Springs is an interesting addition though its location in Connecticut is a bit off.

 Here is another example with mountains and skiers.

An international perspective, looking westward from Les Deux Magots.

Here is a looking east perspective. This one shows rival colleges. Perhaps ones with better geography departments as the distant locations of Heidelberg and Eton are flipped.

This one is probably my favorite. “One of Chicago’s two great airports“ exaggerating the centrality of Midway while implying that you need to travel almost to Siberia just to get to the chaos of O’Hare Airport.

Flood Zone Exemptions for Camp Mystic

Last week’s devastating floods in central Texas killed more than two dozen people, many of them at Camp Mystic, a children’s camp for girls. The camp asked FEMA to change their flood maps after a 2011 revision placed much of the camp in a floodplain. FEMA responded by removing more than a dozen buildings from their flood zones in 2013 and then again in 2019 and 2020. Buildings outside of the 100 year flood zone (areas that tend to flood much more frequently than every 100 years) are exempt from needing flood insurance. They are also exempt from more stringent requirements such as elevating the buildings or shoring up their foundations. 

Here is a screen shot from FEMA’s map showing the “floodway” (the zone where water moves quickly during a flood) in the hatched colors and the 100 year flood zone in blue. This is where many of the girls were swept away by moving water. Some of the cabins were in the orange or unshaded areas which are not considered part of the flood zone.

 Another section further up Cypress Creek shows more clearly that many cabins are outside of the blue 100 year floodplain.

First Street, a climate risk modeling agency drew their own maps showing an increased risk of flooding for many of the cabins exempted from FEMA’s maps.

map from First Street, via KUT Austin

An excellent article from NPR's KUT affiliate in Austin shows these maps and provides links to letters of map amendment asking for exemptions of certain buildings.

Banana Point

Banana Point (Pointe de Banana) is a peninsula at the mouth of the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). I was looking at the area on Google Maps when I found this image.

Image by local guide Fabrice Kaj

What is this map? Where does it reside? Does it just sit on the beach, getting wet? Probably not. I did some research but the only thing I could come up with is this Facebook video, showing a local historian and sailor (name not listed as far as I can tell, though he is referred to as the "library of the Republic" ).

Image via Facebook

My poor translation abilities mean that some of my takeaways from the video may be incorrect. The "bibliotheque" stands at the mouth of the river pointing out the various features of the map and gives a little history and geography of the area.

Image via Facebook

 

 

 

Banana Point is the large crown-like symbol. The map is oriented so south is at the top and looks to Angola. Curiously after a mere 35 kilometers of DRC coastline to the north, you are in Angola again, in the exclave of Cabinda. The Congo River has the third largest discharge and is the deepest river in the world. The flow between Banana Point and Angola is broken into three zones with the middle 2 kilometers representing the river flow out to sea. I believe the video states that the river flows 135 kilometers beyond the mouth into the ocean.

Portuguese sailors knew they were near a large river's mouth when their ship was suddenly pushed to the west by the current.  The islands inland from the mouth are full of mangroves and contained native settlements when colonists took over. The large island marked Bulambemba was taken over and used as a prison by the colonists. Diogo Cão was credited in Europe for having "discovered" the river's mouth in 1482 but, of course, there were millennia of history and knowledge of the river's geography and culture before him.