In 1977, the Kinney Shoe Corporation, in cooperation with the President’s Council on Physical Fitness put out a series of walking tour brochures for historical sites across the United States. Perhaps the idea was, walk more, wear down your shoes and buy some more.

Here is an example from Paterson, New Jersey, “America’s first great industrial city”. Alexander Hamilton saw the power potential of the Great Falls of the Passaic River, the second largest waterfall east of the Mississippi River.

The walks range from rustic, historic ambles (I chose this one for both personal history and because it’s near where I’m writing this from),

 to college towns,

 to downtown tours,

 museum and garden loops,

and finally to a “redwood grove near Santa Cruz”.

Along the way, you learn about the ghosts of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Mann and John O'Hara haunting the libraries and tap rooms of Princeton, Chicago's architecture, the friendliness of Woodstock, Illinois, miscellaneous redwood facts and that Scottsdale, Arizona has some of the "prettiest women".
 

Three Part World

Via Newsweek - The current tyrants governments of the United States, Russia and China may be wishing for a three superpower world where spheres of influence are carved up among them.  

You can hover to identify the countries.

 Apparently the southern hemisphere does not rate much with any of these leaders so maybe that’s the place to go if you’re looking for freedom.

 

Medieval Murder Maps

Medieval Murder Maps is a project of the Violence Research Center at the University of Cambridge. Using data from the coroners of the cities of London, Oxford and York they have created maps showing the locations of murders in the 14th Century.

Sadly the image above (from York) does not indicate death by pancake. That is merely the murderers name, though it makes for a great headline. The red icons indicate female victims or perpetrators while blue are men. here is a legend to translate the murder weapon,

and incident type.

London, unlike the other cities has a full menu of incident types.

A click on an incident gives you more information.

Unlike today, murders correlate more with areas of affluence and college students are frequently listed. In London there is a large cluster or murders on the western end of Cheapside (or Westcheap), an area of upscale clothing stores now.

The background maps are from the Historic Towns Trust who create modern digital historic maps that represent the towns as they appeared at the time. For London, you can also switch backgrounds to see a map from Braun and Hogenburg, circa 1560.

Credit to a recent Washington Post article for bringing this site to my attention. Explore on your own here.

Random Italy Maps

I will finish off my series of posts from my recent trip to Italy with a few random maps I saw in my travels. Hopefully these are interesting beyond my personal whims.

I will start with this raised relief map of the Valpolicella wine region hanging on the wall of the Tenuta Santa Maria winery. 

Here is a close up to better see the nice three dimensional detail. The winery is located at the red dot.

Nearby the winery in Fumane (upper left of the above map) we had a fantastic meal at the Enoteca Valpolicella, part of a group of slow food Premiate Trattorie Italiane. "21 establishments that share the same values, starting from the desire to communicate and promote the territory they belong to through the culture of good food made of ancient traditions and family warmth." Their web site has this map so you can travel your way through the country eating some of the best regional food in each area. The sommelier could even point out the window to where the wine came from!

While the above map could be described as "nothing special" I like the antique like look of the terrain and appreciate when anyone takes the time to make a map that doesn't come from Google.

Speaking of nothing special here is a hand drawn map hanging in the Pesce Rosso (red fish) gallery in the town of Bassano del Grappa. It basically says see our other location across the river but does a nice job illustrating Bassano's famous Andrea Palladio designed bridge.

Another shop in Bassano sells amber jewelry and features this hand drawn map of the Amber Trail hanging on its wall.

This was a trade route used to bring amber from the Baltic countries to the Mediterranean via Venice. The trail has a trans-national greenway running through Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. 

That concludes the "random maps I took photos of" series.