today, i visited some very specialized libraries on the local state university campus. namely, the geography library and the map library (and yes, they actually are two separate entities). i’m doing a project for my graduate class on dr. seuss (did you know that his name is supposed to be pronounced “zoice”?) and we have a list of different types of materials that we’re supposed to look our person up in. one of those types of materials is maps and atlases. not really sure how that’s supposed to related to him (his birthplace? where he’s buried?) but i thought i’d check out these odd libraries anyway.
i went to the geography library first and when i explained what i was looking for the librarian lit up and showed me the book “there’s a map in my lap” written in the style of dr. seuss, in which the cat in the hat, aided by thing 1 and thing 2, explain to the children about maps–how to read them, the many different kinds of maps that exist, etc. i was not impressed much with the writing (pay attention to meter, people! it’s important! seuss would have wanted you to!) but the illustrations were okay (if just a bit more strictly educational and less zany than the original). i was mostly impressed that the library had anything at all that related to my project! i think it might have been the first time anyone had actually looked at that book.
next, i visited the map library. this library is full of flat drawers, loaded with maps of all kinds. all. kinds. plus, they have a large collection of aerial photographs. i asked about seuss and got the impression that if i could tell them where he was buried (or whatever) that they could show me a map of where the cemetary is, but other than that, there wasn’t much. so i decided to explore the aerial photographs a bit. i found photographs of the area i live in now from 1937 and 1950. they were so cool. apparently, sometime around 1937, they tried to put in a housing development right around where i live today, but the ground was too soft and swampy and things kept sinking. the few streets around my house are all that still exist. on the 1937 photograph, you can clearly see roads that, if they do still exist, are completely overgrown and not drive-able. in the 1950 photograph, parts of the road are missing and my house doesn’t exist yet (i think it was built in 1952). today, on the land that couldn’t be developed, they have created a “nature preserve.” i am fascinated by the way cities are shaped. before i learned all of this, i thought it was just a nice thing to have this forest in the middle of town. that maybe the city planners were being considerate and leaving a bit of nature in the middle of an urban space. now i know that if we could have built on top of it, we would have. the aerial photographs make that so clear. the “city” as it was then was still very small and the area i live in now was bordered by fields. and really, 1937 wasn’t really all that long ago. crazy.
