Where is Guahan?

A century ago, we might have had a better idea, but since 1918, this territory has been known as Guam. Yesterday, Governor Camacho signed an order changing the name back to Guahan for territorial-government purposes, but the U.S. Congress must agree for the name change to have full legal effect.

To answer the original question, by the way, Guam (Guahana) is the largest of the Mariana Islands (and as such, neighboring the world's deepest ocean trench). It is in the far western Pacific Ocean, about 6,000 miles from San Francisco.


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Coffee Shop Urban Geography

This Boston Globe article about the trade-offs among parking, traffic, and outdoor seating caught my eye for several reasons. First, it brings together two of my interests as a geographer: urban development and coffee. Second, the focus of the article is Caffe Graffiti in Boston's North End. One of my students recently reviewed the cafe for my Secret Life of Coffee shop; her review is one of the first on my new Yelp channel for the class. We am hoping to use some of this cafe's innovations -- such as the erasable-brick fundraising wall -- in our own Ben Linder Cafe at Bridgewater.

The controversy at the center of this article is whether to allow significant expansion of the outdoor dining area at the cafe, at the expense of overnight residential parking and the movement of traffic. The fact that something as small as a patio could become such an important focal point for competing spatial interests is a sign of just how fine-grained and intricate the urban landscape of the North End has become. I have enjoyed a few visits to the neighborhood -- particularly since I became interested in coffee. I look forward to spending some time there this summer, having recently read Dark Tide with Pam. (See her review as part of the Massachusetts entry in her Celebrating the States blog.) It is a tragic story that also conveys the rich history and social cohesion of the North End.

Another reason that I need to visit this summer is that I think the situation is in flux, and the details are not yet reflected on Google Maps, which appears to show a previous occupant in the location of Caffe Graffiti, with plenty of outdoor seating already in place. So I need to do a little of what we geographers call "ground truthing." Of course, I'll have a cappuccino with that!


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Honduran journalists killed

As the United States, Nicaragua, and other countries consider normalizing relations with Honduras -- where a military coup ousted the government of President Zalaya in 2009 -- journalists are increasingly the targets of violence. Television news anchor Jorge Alberto Orellana is the latest victim, shot as he left his studio Tuesday evening. Six or seven journalists have been killed this year, for reasons that are not clear but with little investigative response from the new government.


Journalists are a critical part of any democratic society. The new government of Honduras begins under a cloud because of the coup that took place prior to its election.

British Warship Surfaces on Cape Cod

This story about the emergence of a ship that sank over two centuries ago is a vivid illustration of the fluid nature of coastal landforms. This is particularly so on the very outer portion of Cape Cod, which is composed entirely of materials that have been transported by currents from elsewhere on the Cape. The parent material, in turn was brought to the Upper Cape by glaciers, during a time when none of the surrounding land was under water.

The Story of Bottled Water

There is no clearer illustration of the capacity of marketers to manufacture demand than the current obsession with bottled water. I've been given bottled water by poor farmers at the top of a mountain in Guatemala, and it has become a requirement for conferences and guest speakers anywhere in the world. People who had not heard of bottled water a generation ago will now pay the equivalent of 5 to 8 dollars a gallon for it.

In the Story of Bottled Water, Annie Leonard explains how this has come about, what is wrong with it, and what to do about it. The human and environmental costs are huge for a few minutes of convenience, so much of the answer revolves around finding ways to make safe water convenient, as it should be. This is one of the goals, incidentally, of the proposed Ben Linder Cafe at Bridgewater State College will be to eliminate the demand for bottled water in the new science building ... as a step toward eliminating it campus-wide.

Bottled soft drinks are no better -- they are essentially bottled water with high-fructose corn syrup, which itself is a menace.

I look forward to explore the rest of the Story of Stuff web site for more of Annie Leonard's straightforward and light-hearted descriptions of critical issues surrounding resource use.

The Geographer and some geographers

Jan Vermeer was a Dutch painter of the 17th Century who is a bit of a hero to geographers for this work, known simply as "The Geographer," which depicts a geographer in a moment of insight as he pores over a map, surrounded by maps and a globe.

Of course, I've always been interested in this painting because of the belief -- conceited, perhaps -- that Vermeer's geographer looks a lot like a particular contemporary geographer, shown on the left here:

Yes, that is Dr. Hayes-Boh, before he was a Dr. or a Hayes, shown on Keuka Lake with honorary geographer Pamela, before she was a librarian or a Boh. Most people recognize Pam in this photo much more easily than they do me!

When looking at this with our geography majors yesterday, we noticed another resemblance. Vermeer's geographer, poring over his map, put several of us in mind of Katie Spotz, shown below preparing for her recent voyage across the Atlantic.

Her Row for Water project has been an inspiration to hundreds of our EarthView students this year.

Who Can Dig to China?

Edited March 30, 2020

Many of us who grew up in the United States learned an expression about digging to China -- the idea being that if we could dig a really deep hole, we would come out on the other side of the Earth, and that would put us in China. I still say this to my geography students quite often, testing whether they are awake and paying attention.

Assuming super-powerful digging equipment and super-human digging crews (not susceptible to huge pressures and high temperatures), we could dig from the United States to China, but we would have to begin our hole at an angle of about 45 degrees in the right direction, not straight down.

If we were to dig straight down, where would we end up? At our antipode, of course! Since the earth is covered almost 70 percent by water, most people who start on land would end up coming out in the water on the other side of the earth. To figure out exactly where that would be, use your latitude and subtract your longitude from 180, and then flip hemispheres.

42º N, 71º W is opposite 42º S, 109º E

Antipodes Map  enables users to view antipodes of any place on earth on paired Google maps.

Population Density Thought Experiment

If the entire United States population lived at the density found in Brooklyn, New York, how much space would we need? What would be the advantages of such a move, if it were somehow to take place? What would be the disadvantages?

See the United States of Brooklyn posting on Strange Maps for the answer to the first question and some preliminary ideas about the consequences. Whatever you think of the idea, this thought experiment points out some of the trade-offs created by sprawl.

Always a Coffee Connection

I went to Anime Boston unprepared to take photos, except with my phone. And though there were plenty of amazing and beautiful costumes, I resisted the urge to click away, until I saw this engaging trio just outside the Hynes entrance. I'm always on the lookout for new coffee connections. The "waitress" on the right was quite amused when I showed her the alias on my conference name badge: "Dr. Java," but I did not understand what this was all about until I showed the photo to a student I happened to see inside a bit later. Apparently, this trio has something to do with a popular detective video game.

Lone Star Pilgrims

Texas is big. Really big. Some of the counties would make decent states if they were in New England. When I drove 108 miles each way to teach a night class (from Pharr to Alice and back to Pharr), I spent much of that time driving through one ranch. That ranch -- the King Ranch -- has its own Chevy truck edition.

I lived in Texas for three years, and I've now been in Massachusetts for almost 13. (It is easy to keep track, since our daughter was born practically 5 minutes after our moving truck arrived.) During those three brief years, we learned quite a bit about Texas and got to visit many parts of it, especially since driving out of the state in almost any direction required more than a day of driving (except due South -- Mexico in 10 minutes from our house). We visited every county in West Texas, for example.

Aside from NPR, I used to get a lot of my local information from Texas Monthly, which featured ads and articles that were clearly aimed at people who would get on an airplane to go shopping or visit a museum or restaurant elsewhere in the state. We were in Texas just long enough that we were starting to become those people. We once drove 250 miles round-trip to see the Nutcracker with some friends, and we did fly to Ft. Worth (pronounced "fo-at wuth")  to see an exhibit of landscape prints. Did I mention it is a big state?

Today, however, I get a lot of my local news from the Boston Globe, the daily digest of the Hub of the Universe (where a friend of mine is a brilliant editor). From the article 21st-century pioneers, I learned about Texarrakis -- the ambitious project of four young Bostonians who are about to find out just how big West Texas is. One of them purchased over 8 square miles of west Texas on eBay for about the cost of a decent couch. To purchase that much land in Greater Boston would set you back billions of dollars, and the process would have you tied up with lawyers for the rest of your natural life.

But land is plentiful in West Texas, giving these four friends a chance to learn a lot about living close to the land and -- through their various electronic outlets -- sharing what they learn with the rest of us.