Last year I was in Brattleboro, Vermont and saw an interesting map on display. It is part of the Brattleboro Words Project. The project “connects community members to the Brattleboro area’s unique history, the art of audio storytelling - and each other” through audio pieces, maps and a GPS app that leads listeners on an audio journey of local people and places. There are two maps; a city (above) and regional map. They can be downloaded here. Indigenous Abenaki names are given equal weight on the map. Examples include the town name, Wantastegok and the river Kwenitekw. Here is a picture zoomed into downtown to appreciate the handmade details. The regional map features portraits featuring notable people with local ties such as Rudyard Kipling, Saul Bellow and Daisy Turner. Here is the Brattleboro area. The process of creating these murals and maps is very interesting. It started with 10 clay landscape mural tiles, about 12 lbs each, 16"x16". They were hand carved by Natalie Blake Studios lead designer Cynthia Parker-Houghton. She was nice enough to share some details of the creation process: “I took the information for the rivers off a Google Map, which I then re-oriented and then distorted distorted to give a birds eye view. So it was as if seen from the top of Mount Wantasticuit on the NewHampshire side of the Connecticut River gazing out West over Brattleboro and the surrounding region. "I had this map printed out large at a print shop and then used it as a template to lay out the clay forms to represent the topography of the mountains. After this I draped square slabs of clay over the forms. These slabs then dried for a few days and then could be lifted to remove the clay mountain forms and also the paper templates. I believe I had a second set of paper templates printed which were slightly smaller to adjust for the clay shrinkage. I used this second paper template to mark out the rivers. I did this by drawing over the river lines with a pen which pressed through the paper to leave marks on the clay. "Once the marks were made I removed the paper template and carved the details of the map. I carved away the iron oxide slip that had been painted over the entire surface. Wherever I carved it revealed the white clay. After we bisque fired the tiles, we used an industrial sprayer to apply the transparent glaze colors over the black and white image. We then fired it for a second time to a high temperature.” Here are the tiles seen hanging at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center. The map was created from photographs of the mural with text added digitally. Here is a video if you want to dig more into the details of the creation process. Brattleboro Words is a project of the National Endowment for the Humanities. They will be revamping the map for 2026 when the whole Trail will be featured on the new Amtrak station outside track facing side of building.  The project also has a podcast - https://brattleboro-words-trail-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/ (available free all formats Apple, Spotify etc...) https://brattleborowords.org

Mapping Prejudice is a project by a team of scholars and activists at the University of Minnesota. The project maps racial covenants, clauses that were inserted into property deeds to keep people who were not White from buying or occupying homes.  The mapping page has an animation that show the growth of these covenants in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area from 4 in 1910 to over 32,000 in 1963. Or you can see all of them with their details. The green color does not stand out great again the gray background though. There are also some static maps showing racial covenants in the area. This one does a good job of showing how they cluster around the Minneapolis city boundaries. This is an ongoing process and you can volunteer to help find racial covenants in deeds and participate in community mapping sessions.

When white people like me write about Black History Month, it can seem quite performative. However, in an era when our “leaders” are trying to erase black history, it is important for all of us to keep it visible. This poem map was inspired by a Langston Hughes poem called “Let America be America Again”, the full text of it can be found here.  Map help from Project Linework

Last week we lost our dog, Luko (a shortened version of an overly long-winded name he came with.) Lots of people will tell you they have the best dog but he was truly one of a kind. Completely sweet and a delight to all who have known him. A few years ago I made a colored pencil map of his world. I didn’t think it was very good at the time so I never posted it here. It also was a bit problematic because I used a very light pencil so even after contrast and brightness adjustments, it’s a bit hard to read. The photos were added after the fact and placed close to where they were taken. North is not up on this map, uphill is up. This is dedicated to his memory. Enjoy.