Bilingual Street

Since our university's One Book One Community program began in 2010, it has brought many excellent books to the attention of our university, local schools, and our town at large -- often bringing the author of the book to our campus for a public lecture. Whenever I can manage to align it with my own curriculum -- and I usually can -- I assign the book to one or more of my classes.

One such selection -- The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan -- was so valuable to my students that I have continued to assign it every semester in my online survey course, Geography of the Developing World. The in-depth narrative by this journalist about one very important part of the world is the perfect complement to the systematic coverage in the course's main text by the late, great geographer Dr. Harm de Blij.

NPR journailst Joanna Kakissis tells a contemporary tale that echoes Tolan's earlier work. She visits Asael Street, in the Abu Tor neighborhood of East Jerusalem. This very street had once been the de facto border between Israel and Jordan, before Jordan was pushed back a half-century ago. Since then, people have coexisted across lines of ethnicity, religion, and language -- corresponding generally to the literal line of the street itself. Her reporting focuses on those who are consciously -- if slowly -- building a community, beginning with learning each others' languages.


During an age of increasing fragmentation and fear, these three minutes of audio remind us that people can make choices about whether and how to form relationships, and how they are going to define the spaces in which they live.

Photo: Yaacov Lozowick

At the very beginning of the story, Kakissis mentions "the street of the book." I did a little bit of digging, because I thought that perhaps there was a library connection to be found. In fact, it seems, she was referring to the 2015 book A Street Divided: Stories From Jerusalem’s Alley of God. A 2011 blog post by Yaacov Lozowick argues for keeping the street united. His photographs help him to make the case for unity and allow readers to develop a richer sense of the place.

Google Maps shows the proximity -- indeed the alignment -- of Asael Street with the 1949 Armistice Line, and a maze of crisscrossing streets and relict borders.

Lagniappe
I write this as my own university south of Boston debates its core curriculum, from which the foreign-language requirement was recklessly removed about a decade ago. None of the current proposals include returning it, but many faculty members are pushing the matter. Firstly, many of us are astounded that we even have to debate this, since high schools in our area actually have a stronger standard that the university. Secondly, we see rising xenophobia as giving global education even more urgency. During the earlier debate, I outlined reasons to support language education in a modest page entitled Small World. These are ideas that the residents of Asael Street have taken to heart.

Tour de Bridgewater Ouest

When leaving Bridgewater for points north, we nearly always drive through an intersection in the center of West Bridgewater (more on the historical geography of that statement in our Bridgewaters Project blog). 

Traffic had become problematic as a growing number of vehicles tried to navigate the narrow, complicated intersection with inadequate turn lanes. We were therefore relieved when this became one of those "shovel-ready" projects funded by federal stimulus money.

I was in disbelief when I first saw the estimate of the time that would be required for construction, and was fascinated as we watched the entire area dug, redug, filled, and realigned over long months. One building was removed entirely so that trucks could turn safely around the northwest corner of the intersection.

The final result is a bit bewildering, and beyond the driving skills of many Bay Staters (who are not strictly interested in lane markings). It could have been made much simpler with the elimination of a few rarely-used options around the circle in the southwest quadrant. But on the whole cars and trucks can move a bit more safely and a lot more quickly through the crossing of Routes 106 and 28.

Which brings us to one geographic oddity: the bike lanes. In each direction, the engineers included an 86-foot-long bicycle lane. They are parallel to each other, between travel lanes and turning lanes. We understand that inclusion of such lanes must have been specified in the guidance documents for this new construction. But we cannot imagine how a bike could enter and then leave these lanes, unless it is magic (think Harry Potter's Platform 9-3/4) or a very special race, perhaps the Tour de Bridgewater Ouest. (Thanks to my favorite librarian for coining that.)

Here is the entire intersection in context -- perhaps brave cyclists will see a way through it that I cannot. For now, I'm sticking to boats for my muscle-powered locomotion.

Coffee Origins and Terroir

Writing for Slate, Stephen Kearse asks "What Defines a Coffee's Terroir?" and provides some preliminary answers, beginning with the subtitle: "Country of origin is just the beginning." His story begins with his realization that the fact that his enjoyment of one Ethiopian coffee did not translate to a similar experience with all the coffees he encountered from that country, which as he points out is the birthplace of coffee -- the only place that Arabica grows wild. 

Geographic differences at a finer scale can influence the flavor of coffee -- from elevation, aspect, and slope to meso- or microclimatic variations to very important differences in soil composition. The human geography of variation in cultivation and processing are also important. Incidentally, Kearse focuses on two of these factors -- topography and climate. He erroneously uses the word "geography" for topography; "geography and climate" is like "vegetables and carrots" or "colors and red."  

MattiaATH/iStock via Slate
Learn more about Ethiopian coffees from George Howell, the roaster from
Acton, Massachusetts who introduced the terroir concept to coffee.

The second line of the article provides a hint about the author's age, which is to say he is at least a few years younger than I am. He became accustomed to scorched, flavored coffees in graduate school. While my wife and I were in graduate school -- after I had become a coffee drinker but long before I became a coffee maven -- we were part of the experiment by Folgers that paved the way for the broad marketing of flavored coffees. If he were much younger than I, though, he would have more likely been accustomed to the Keurig, which provides stale, weak, overpriced coffee, but not scorched coffee.

Kearse is correct, of course, that national borders do not fully define coffee terroir, though they do often provide hints to broad categories of flavor characteristics. He is also correct that annual variations in temperature and in the timing and amount of precipitation mean that specific locations will produce flavors that vary somewhat from year to year. I do not think those variations are commonly as dramatic as he suggests, nor do I think that micro-terroir at the scale of 1 hectare (2.47 acres) is commonly discernible. 

I agree with him in the main, however, and also with his suggestion that our impressions of flavor have something to do with our experience of a place, either directly or by association. He mentions the Ethiopian restaurants of Washington, DC; my strongest associations of course are with Nicaragua. Knowing that independent experts have judged some of my friends' coffees there the very best in the world only reinforces my natural tendency to favor coffees from anywhere in the country. The suggestibility of tasting results -- even among professional tasters -- has been documented for wine and I will admit there is a strong dose of it in coffee as well.

Lagniappe

Like Stephen Kearse, I have spent some time exploring the trendy restaurants of my home town, and the Adams-Morgan neighborhood is especially rich in its offerings from Ethiopian and indeed the entire world. I particularly remember an Ethiopian restaurant so authentic that it did not have plates or utensils -- serving all food on large breads in the traditional manner. It even had Ethiopian beer. So when the coffee menu was brought out -- an entire little book -- I was expecting to see coffees of Oromia, Yirgacheffe, and so on. Rather, it was a collection of mixed drinks -- Irish Coffees and the like. So I asked about the coffee itself. "What kind of coffee is used in these drinks?" I wanted to know. The server was confused by my question, and consulted a manager. "American. Regular American," came the answer.  I tried later to connect this restaurant with an ethical supplier -- Deans Beans -- but the restaurant would not even acknowledge the samples of fair-trade, organic Ethiopian coffee that company sent. Like most restaurants, even this most authentic Ethiopian place relied on a regional coffee service whose main selling points are price and maintenance of the brewing equipment.

To learn more about the people behind Ethiopian coffee and the trading systems that disadvantage them, I recommend Black Gold.

A Decreasing Increase

This graph shows the rate of human population year-by-year since 1951.  Notice that it has been in decline throughout most of that time.  How is it, then, that the human population has grown by billions during my lifetime and  we expect to gain about  2 billion more people by the middle of the century.

Graph source: worldometers
Note: a 2-percent growth rate results in doubling every 35 years
A 1.2-percent growth rate, every 58 year
During this period, world population nearly tripled, from 2.7 to 7.3 billion

A Dark and Stormy Night

To understand how this is possible I need to start with the story about the misconceptions* surrounding population change. This story goes way back, decades ago, to an evening in Cambridge Massachusetts. It was a dark and stormy night on the campus of Harvard University. A young divinity student who would eventually become a professor of mine decided to go to a lecture over at the Harvard business school. The speaker was a famous businessperson, perhaps one of the most famous in the world, though few know his name today.

Because it was a dark and stormy night very few people were in attendance, so Young Tom the divinity student** had the opportunity to venture a question after the lecture. His question was this:  “Mr. Kroc, Why are there no salad at McDonald’s?” As I mentioned, this young man was to become an old professor of this old professor, so this was many years ago, before the days of salads at McDonald’s. And the speaker was Ray Kroc, the chief executive of McDonald’s.

“Because it’s a hamburger place!” was his first answer, but Tom  pressed him about the the importance of having other other options.

“Well,” Mr. Kroc continued, “we have done extensive studies of Seventh-Day Adventists and we have learned that there are not enough of them to sustain a salad menu at McDonald’s.” It was from the story that I learned – and I think even young Tom the divinity student had learned – that about half of Seventh-day Adventists in the United States are vegetarian.

“That is not the only reason to be a vegetarian,” Tom replied, now entering a bit of a debate with one of the wealthiest people on the planet.  “What other possible reason could they have?” Mr. Kroc stammered,  for it was truly beyond his comprehension that someone would avoid meat unless they thought God was telling them to.

“Well,” Tom replied,  some people are concerned for animal welfare -- Mr. Kroc grunted but Tom continued -- “and people are trying to eat lower on the food chain because of their concern for starvation around the world.”

“Starvation? There’s no such thing as starvation,” he groused. “Don’t you watch the news?” asked Tom, straining in disbelief. “What about this Sahel? What about the Biafra children?”

“Well,  if they are starving ... it’s their own fault.”  Blaming the poor for their misery has long been a habit of the wealthy.  And then the punchline: “They’re breeding like rabbits."

Breeding like rabbits.

These three words stopped Tom in his tracks, and caused him to repeat the story countless times, as I have done in the years since I took his class. The rich give birth; the poor breed. And if population growth is making food scarce -- as it was at the time -- it must be because of more breeding.

Demographic Transition Model (DTM)

Demographers and geographers know that this is a misconception, commonly held though it is. Birth rates do fluctuate, but populations grow only modestly when birth rates increase. They grow dramatically when death rates decrease, and during the middle of the twentieth century, they were doing exactly that. Because of improvements in the availability of medicine -- particularly vaccines -- and high-yield crops, death rates fells quickly in many parts of the world -- falling much more quickly than birth rates tend to rise. 

Following World War II, for the first time in human history, death rates decreased in places that were not undergoing enough economic growth to sustain significantly more people. Population growth was therefore both unprecedented and problematic. The 1968 publication of The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich was the first widely-known description of the growth itself and of its potential to outstrip resources on a global scale. 

Ehrlich was scorned by some for his pessimism -- even though his most dire predictions did actually come to pass -- as many believed that the planet was simply too vast to be impacted seriously by humans. We are indeed on a giant sphere, 8,000 miles in diameter. But all of our resource comes from very near the surface of that sphere, and all of our pollution remains in that same thin layer of the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. 

Geographers also know that not all parts of the sphere are created equal. Seven tenths of the surface is covered by deep salt water, most of which sustains only a minimal amount of biological activity. The vast majority of food from the oceans is found on continental-shelf areas that comprise just 2 percent of the total. Similarly, most land areas are too cold, too high, too wet, or too dry to sustain settled agriculture without significant artificial inputs. Just 13 percent of the land surface is considered arable (farmable), and ALL of the good farmland is already in use either for farming or for more remunerative urban uses. Humans already use all of the good land and a good bit of the marginal land.

Image: Geography Fieldwork

Just after Ehrlich's book -- and perhaps to some degree because of it -- the rate of population growth began gradually to decline, as indicated in the graph above. This was the result of many factors, some related to intentional policies and others relating to feedbacks in the system. Known as the demographic transition, the conditions that accelerate population growth often lead to reduced birth rates in subsequent generations, and these changes actually continue to this day. Without them, population would already have passed 10 billion. Have a good look at the worldometers population page for a second-by-second estimate of the population (nearing 7,500,000,000 at the moment) and a lot of other ways of visualizing and understanding of demographic change.

Among many other cool visuals, the worldometer population page includes a 2000-year graph of human population that allows users to zoom in specific time frames. I use it here to approximate period shown on the natural-increase graph at the top of this post.

My Good News from Gorongosa post discusses the ecological implications of the century of rapid population growth from 1950 to 2050, and points to the original article "The Bottleneck," E.O. Wilson's excellent description of how this has happened and what it means. We can be concerned about the inexorable momentum of population growth, while being somewhat relieved that there is an end in sight... at least for those young enough to live to the middle of this century. Natural resources, ecosystems, and species that survive until 2050 will still face challenges from human activity, but a growing human population will not be one of them.

Lagniappe: Salad

Careful readers will note that McDonald's does of course have salads now, and might be wondering whether our young seminarian and his bold questions played a role. Sadly, no. Salad at McDonald's was literally an "over my dead body" thing, not appearing until 1985, when Mr. Kroc (1902-1984) was safely in the ground and for sure not coming back. His wife Joan lived until 2003. I do not know whether she played a role, but I have noticed that she is a generous funder of public radio, a cause I do not imagine Ray would have supported.

May 2020 Kroc-family update: When I posted this in March 2017, I did not realize that my guesswork about Joan and Ray Kroc was a well-known story (to others). In 2016, it was the subject of a book by Lisa Napoli and a film starring Michael Keaton. Author Napoli discussed their fascinating marriage with one of my favorite journalists, Scott Simon:

And another lagniappe: Science

Humans are innovative of course, and we have placed a lot of faith in science and technology to avert disaster as a population grows rapidly on a finite earth. But we also live in an era -- in the United States, at least -- in which the denial of science is widespread, greatly limiting our ability to employ it for adaptation.

*misconception: no pun intended, but my favorite librarian noticed
** Young Tom went on to be Dr. Tom Benson, who taught philosophy and religion at UMBC and started the interdisciplinary studies program there. It was with his help that I ended up with 12 internship credits in religious studies from a job he helped me secure at a UU church. He also introduced me to John McPhee, one of my favorite writers. Tom went on to be the president of Green Mountain College in Vermont, known in some circles as the first environmentally focused college. This has been on my mind of late (winter 2026) because that college closed some time after Tom retired, and its current owner is seeking to give it away. I am tempted!

Coffee Care Slides

The quality of a cup of coffee depends on what has happened to the coffee from the moment a seed was selected and planted until that coffee was poured. A lot of my writing, learning, and teaching is about those first 40 or so steps, but the final ten steps or so also matter: we can show respect for the work of farmers by taking good care of the coffee they have provided. We can also enjoy a tastier cup, free of added cream and sugar, if we pay attention to freshness, roast, grind, brewing, and yes, even pouring.

My Coffee Care page points to some expert resources on the subject of coffee preparation; I offer about 20 slides (with annotations below) for some of what I have learned about getting the best cup I can from the coffees that come my way.

NOTE: I chose not to delete the first slide in this set -- my effort to grow coffee at home in 2012. It showed me just how difficult coffee cultivation really is. My farm did not last long.

 

N 43° 59' 38.927" W 71° 23' 45.27''

I share this spoken-word performance for no reason other than its title, which refers to a location on the Sabbaday Brook near the Kancamagus Highway in New Hampshire. Once source suggests that this is where the songwriter nearly drowned as a child, but that source also indicates it is in Vermont, so I need to do a little more research.

This YouTube version blurs the original album cover for the non-naturist viewer.

I know of only one other song named for coordinates.  N 42° 6' 3.001" W 71° 55' 3.295" is from the same album -- Goodness -- by the band known as The Hotelier.

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

We spend about 10x as much on the military as we do on diplomacy and aid. Fine, weapons are expensive. (That is where the money goes, not to soldiers or veterans).

But increasing the big one and slashing the small one is Washington-only mathematics. It will leave us more in debt AND more vulnerable. And that is not just a wooly-headed professor talking: 121 retired generals and admirals have said the same thing. 

Have a listen:

Cut aid diplomacy, and people will die. In many places. In various ways. Refugees will be greater in number and greater in desperation; embassies and military personnel will be less aware of potential threats. Communicable diseases will spread more easily. Moreover, many positive experiences and relationships will be lost, and our standing in the world will be diminished.
All to save small amounts of money while spending continues unchecked in other areas.

Bad Salamander

The Mass Moments list to which I subscribe recently reminded us of an ignoble anniversary -- the creation north of Boston of the gerrymander -- a legislative district crafted by Elbridge Gerry (pronounced "Gary") and shaped like a salamander. Very early in the history of the United States -- at the first opportunity, actually -- a politician figured out how to select his voters, while giving the appearance that the opposite was taking place.

How can people not go to jail for this kind of fraud?

Back in 2010, I wrote in some detail about the sordid geography of gerrymandering -- including some examples of shameless disenfranchisement. Article One: Enumeration refers to the fact that the framers of the Constitution tried to avoid exactly this problem, putting the geographic exercise known as Census at the very beginning of the document.

Right after the anniversary, I learned of a special summer course on redistricting offered by Tufts University in Boston. The course is intended mainly for mathematicians -- the word "geometry" is used instead of geography -- but it does acknowledge the role of Geographic Information Systems in creating districts.

The technology can be put to honest or dishonest uses; the key is distancing incumbents from the process, as former California Gov. Schwarzenegger makes clear in his comparison of Congress to herpes. Another practical explanation of the problem is found in series of hypothetical voting districts published by the Washington Post in 2015.

Seeing the limits of gerrymandering, some politicians are getting desperate -- fabricating voter fraud in order to justify any regulation that they think would give them an edge in choosing their voters. Congress also continues to deny full representation to more than 600,000 citizens in the District of Columbia. The concept of one person, one vote continues to be elusive.

PERU Geography of Coffee & Climate Change

BSU Travel Course

NOTE (March 9, 2018): We offered this course in July 2017, but did not have sufficient enrollment to run it. We hope to offer it in the future and would very much welcome in-service teachers!

Join BSU geographers Dr. Rob Hellström and Dr. James Hayes-Bohanan for the experience of a lifetime this summer. And earn 3 credits in the process.

Two geographers are offering this version of the department's popular Geography of Coffee travel course in South America for the first time. Since 2006, the course has been offered in Nicaragua almost every January, and more than 100 participants have found it to be a life-changing experience, many of them returning on their own for weeks or even years at a time.

Bringing the course to Peru allows us to visit a coffee-growing area whose harvest season coincides with our northern-hemisphere summer break. Climate change has become an important part of all serous discussions of coffee; this course allows us to visit important climate-change research stations and coffee farms in the same journey.

This travel course begins with a drive from Lima to research stations in the Andes Mountains at elevations of 13,000 feet, where Dr. Hellström and his students and colleagues are studying the retreat of important glaciers. Our travel to the study site will include exploration of the contemporary cultural landscape and archeology of this part of the Andes, in part to give participants time to adjust to the very high altitude.

From there, we will return to Lima and then travel by air to the upper reaches of the Amazon Basin in the northern part of Peru. There we will spend several days visiting the Oro Verde Cooperative -- a network of farmers who produce organic coffee and cacao for export to Deans Beans in Orange, Massachusetts. We will learn all of the steps that are required to grow, harvest, and produce high-quality coffee and chocolate. We will also learn how working cooperatively allows farmers to contribute directly to the economic and social development of their communities.

Coffee (left) and cacao in the Oro Verde community.

This course will include instruction from the two professors and from local experts throughout the journey. Logistical support is being provided by an outfitter with whom  Dr. Hellström  has worked many times in previous travel. Translation from Spanish and Quechua will by provided throughout, but any competency in these languages will be put to good use.

Details of the program, dates, cost, and itinerary are on the Peru Program brochure (pdf)..

Learn more about Dr.  's climate research from BSU Weather - Peru. Learn more about Dr. Hayes-Bohanan's coffee teaching from www.DOCTOR.coffee. For questions about the content of the course, contact us at rhellstrom@bridgew.edu or jhayesboh@bridgew.edu. For questions about registration, payment, or financial aid, please contact the Study Abroad office at bridgew.edu/studyabroad or studyabroad@bridgew.edu or 508-531-6183.

This course is available to all. Financial aid may be available to BSU students with FAFSA on file. Aid application deadline is March 3, 2017.

Wheel of Geography

I have long appreciated this graphic by the late, great Dr. Harm de Blij, who was perhaps the most prolific writer of geography texts of all time, and a friend of our geography department in Bridgewater. (For more, see our department's remembrance page and a link to all de Blij references on this blog for more about this remarkable geographer.)

Seen more broadly, geography is at the intersection between two areas of learning that are considered areas of critical need in education: STEM education and Global Education.

At the intersection of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) and
Global Education

Geography in 3-4-5

It is fair to ask a bit more of geography. The fact that it seems to overlap with everything does not tell us what it is. The lack of clear limits suggests it is not about anything at all, as a geologist colleague once told me. For him, most disciplines have a clear subject, such as rocks. In reality, even geology is not defined by the rocks themselves, but to a set of questions, theories and practices related to rocks. Climbing rocks and making granite countertops, for example, are not geology, nor is throwing rocks at passersby.

Geography can be understood, as a discipline concerned with three questions, four traditions, and five themes. To wit:

3 Questions. Geography asks -- of just about anything -- Where is it? Why is it there? So what? We notice locations, patterns, and spatial relationships. Then we try to describe them, explain them, and apply them to problem-solving.

4 Traditions. Since the late 19th century, much of the work of academic geographers has fallen into several areas, identified in a famous speech to geography educators by William Pattison in 1960, available here with his own 1990 words of reflection. A few generations of geographers have found it helpful to place our own work in one or more of his broad traditions: spatial, area studies, man-land (now known as human-environment), and earth science.

5 Themes. When we teach geography, we try to include several of five themes that tend to define geographic thinking: Location, Place (it is not the same as location), Human/Environmental Interaction (there's Pattison again), Movement, and Regions. Read this NCGE Five Themes introduction to see what geographers mean when we use these terms.

Bouns: 18 Standards. If you have gotten this far and still want more details about geography is, please have a look at the National Geography Frameworks -- 18 ways to demonstrate geographic competence. The 18 standards are identified online, and a published version details benchmarks at three different grade levels (4, 8, and 12). The guidance document is published by National Geographic, based on its collaboration with three other major organizations -- the National Council for Geography Education, the American Association of Geographers, and the American Geographical Society. Together they inform our advice to curriculum committees and educational programs throughout the United States.

Advocacy. Geographers consider all of this pretty important for understanding the "real world" and our place within it. I have been working with colleagues in the Massachusetts Geographic Alliance and our allies in the Massachusetts Legislature to bring geography awareness to a wide audience and to return geographic education to a prominent place in the K12 curriculum. This advocacy work is considered so relevant to the Frameworks that a photo (taken by a BSU geography alumna) of a globe we brought to the State House is included at the beginning of both its print and online versions.