Geography -- What It Is

I'm a geographer. Yes, I study rocks, but I'm not a geologist. I consider weather and climate when I study people--but I know the environment doesn't determine a culture's development. Hydrology and oceanography are cool. Please don't feel threatened just because I know about economic, political, and cultural globalization. I read Darwin, Lovelock, Marx, and Tuan--all in geography classes. The newspaper calls me a local historian. My neighbors think I'm an expert on roads. I hang out in cemeteries. I've served in government--far more successfully than the self-proclaimed "business experts." Capitals? I really haven't memorized them, thank you. But I can think spatially and holistically. I love my planet. I'm interdisciplinary. I'm a geographer.

The "I" above is a fellow geographer with the Facebook identity "Church of Geography," who posted that explanation along with the Princess Bride meme. It serves as an opening to a conversation I have had for several years now through this blog, whose main purpose is to provide the widest possible array of examples a geographic perspective.

Readers who have not already done so are invited to browse the blog for such examples, or to use the keyword or search functions (on the left of the screen or top of the screen, respectively) to see if I have tackled some topic of interest to you from a geographic perspective.

Of course, to some extent "geography" does mean what one thinks it means: knowing where things are does matter.