The Note

T H E  N O T E 

The theme of this issue is The Future. When I sat down and opened my computer to write this The Note, I found myself thinking of a map I saw recently. It's by Neil Freeman, who blogs at fakeisthenewreal.org. The map appears here on the internet and you might want to have a look at it. If you do, for heaven's sake, come back here. I'll wait.

The idea of the map is to abandon the current states of these United States, and to redraw new states of different sizes, but identical populations. That would create a more rational electoral college in presidential elections. Not a serious proposal, just a kind of exercise.

I have found myself drawn to this map. It's beautiful. All of the new states have new names, appropriate to the region. Names like Shasta, Ranier, Ozark, Tidewater, Adirondack.

And the map is not hastily done. It's beautifully detailed and rendered in the style of maps we remember from good textbooks, atlases, encyclopedia. Multiple colors. Vague topography. Highways. Cities.

Salt Lake, Mammoth, Blue Ridge, Pocono, Muskogee.

It doesn't look, somehow, like a hypothetical map. It looks real. I have wondered why I have an almost emotional reaction to it. I feel, at once, sad and hopeful when I look at it. I find myself thinking of it as the USA, made anew, sometime in a future that belongs to my grandchidren.

Allegheny, Shenandoah, Big Thicket, Maumee, Shiprock.

In a nation that so often, lately, seems broken, with such an uncertain future, I look at the map, and I'm not living in Alabama. I'm living in the northern part of the Great State of King.

I hope you enjoy Issue 61. Thanks as always to F. John Sharp, F J Bergmann, all who submitted, all whose work appears herein, and you.

Dale

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detail of map by Neil Freeman, 2012