John Leeke mentioned the idea of spreading the IPTW to Alabama etc. My
brother, Jim Follett, mentioned he thought Alabama etc. needed more dirt work
than hand. Bryan asked for a clarification. I responded, and caused Bryan to
respond wondering what the hell I was talking about, to which I now respond.
I see on BP an effort to put common definitions on the table. I support this
initiative and encourage it by falling out of my chair, therefore causing
everyone to get alarmed and insist on some decorum at the table.
We all carry different maps. There is that idea that was bouncing around on
BP of getting historic preservation on the psychic map. Which psychic map? We
all have different psychic maps.
After 40 years of relating to each other I may have no idea what my brother
meant by his comment, then again, it has never stopped me from pretending to
understand. We also seem to have just fine of a time missunderstanding past
each other, it is a habit we seem to enjoy.
What I was expressing was an early map of mine which I shared with my brother,
and a few others. As a kid we had five acres of woods and a lot of sticks and
stones to play with. We called it a sand pile, though there was not much sand,
mostly leaf humus. I’m not sure how it started but we sat down in the dirt and
built villages, towns, communities, cities, kingdoms, and empires out of the
sticks, stones, and dirt. When we moved to the local crick (a small creek) we
had merchant fleets that we enjoyed chasing and sinking. We were always flying
off somewhere, to a rotted stump or the barbecue pit (our earliest experience
of skyscrapers).
You can make a semi-circle of small stones and set a flat stone on top and
call it a house. It can also serve as a redoubt for gray or blue plastic Civil
War soldiers. Small twigs pounded into the ground would serve as corrals for
the twisted horses, chickens, and pigs. You can then take a larger rock and
drop it out of the sky on your houses, like with Enola Gay. Sometimes you miss
and the puppeteers get bruised. A different sort of experience than Sim City.
Our bombs were not always smart and on occasion we hit each other. This
usually resulted in our neglecting the empire while a more godlike battle
ensued, therefore saving the empire, and all it’s little buildings for another
day... preservation by neglect.
At about 11 years I stood up one day and said I was leaving the sand pile, I
felt an urge for a wider mapping of my world. I have been working my way back
ever since.
When I lived in the Washington, DC area I drove cab in MD for 14 days. During
that time if I fell asleep I dreamed the map. Much of my supervisory career in
construction has consisted of driving to some other place, like the hardware
store or the stone quarry. I have always had a need to know where things are,
and who is where there with them as well. The buildings are a decoration to
the human play. I like driving around, it is an extension of Sam Walton’s idea
of management by wandering around. I keep the world in an orderly fashion by
visiting it often. It helps to have well developed psychic maps. I encourage
everyone to develop good maps in their heads. After I mastered the wandering
in DC I was able to move to NYC. I continued to make a living, not so much
from having intelligence, as from being able to be sent somwhere with the
expectation that I would return in a reasonable amount of time. I continue to
wander around. Wandering around is the best part of my work.
Outside of my maps, as with everyone else, there is a vast nothingness that I
have heard is populated. I go there once in a while in order to find the
other, something different than myself.
One aspect of my early map development was visiting all these historic
villages in the US and Canada. My brother has these places in his map as well.
I don’t share his psychic map of Alabama. Then again, he does not share many
of my maps.
Which gets back to John Leeke’s original suggestion... that consideration
should be made for staging future “trade” (IPTW) oriented events with more
imagination regarding American geography, the distribution and character of
historic structures, and the distibution of those skilled (or unskilled but
still stuck with the task) in maintaining these structures.
][<en Follett
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