Mapping Community for the next 365 Days (via Posts)

Yesterday, day one of 2013, I wrote then hiked. While on the streets and hills, I listened to the most recent rendition of This American Life featuring the theme "Mapping" - a throwback to an episode that was first aired in 1998 (the year of my first official teaching job). Each story followed the five senses and how humans make sense of the world - its communities - through sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and feelings (well, one segment highlighted an electronic nose). I especially appreciated the prologue this week and the insight of Denis Wood in Act One who described his work as the poetics of cartography.

I love the idea of that space is a poem. I instantly thought of my next door neighbor at Fairfield University, Dr. Marsha Alibrandi, who teaches history methods. She spent her career working with GIS and GSP mapping and, as a colleague, she's been an important part of my Connecticut community. The "write" side of my brain envisions projects for students where they dream creative ways to map their neighborhood (spaces I eat Cheetos, locations of everyone's first kiss, areas where people are most likely to skin their knees).

I was intrigued by Denis Wood's description of graffiti and pumpkin mapping which he used to make his case about the art of mapping. Looking at his own neighborhood, he artistically recreated zones of life through labeling how the space was used and/or not used (and what this means in the larger novel of life). We are a categorical creature and, I suppose, this is why we love maps.

I like thinking about how to reshape a location through noticing specific details: lawns with dog poop, houses with cigarette butts in the front yard, people with manicured yards, homes with SUVs, cat people, etc. It's endless how many ways one can understand and conceptualize the territories where they live.

My own community in Stratford, for example, intrigues me. The landscape is hilly, the traffic insane, and the curves of winding streets have a billion ways they be depicted visually. Sure, they could represent the Google maps we frequently see via online environments, but they might also be more creative.

I think, like writing, cartographers who commit to mapping the world around them are the ones who experience agency and command. This, I feel, contrasts with having to recall how others describe and label things (and is why I would much rather give tools to kids so they create rather than handing them a multiple choice test).

Either way, I will spend the next 365 days "mapping" (poetic or not) my thinking on how communities are created, established, built, and brought down. This is why I was intrigued by listening to this particular episode of This American Life on my first day 2013.