Source: Page 65 of “Our National Capital and its un-Americanized Americans” by Theodore Noyes

Following up on the Ogden Memo, I decided to post the “Cole Memo” below:

MEMORANDUM FOR UNITED STATES ATTORNEYS

FROM: James M. Cole
Deputy Attorney General

SUBJECT: Guidance Regarding the Ogden Memo in Jurisdictions
Seeking to Authorize Marijuana for Medical Use

Over the last several months some of you have requested the Department’s assistance in responding to inquiries from State and local governments seeking guidance about the Department’s position on enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) in jurisdictions that have under consideration, or have implemented, legislation that would sanction and regulate the commercial cultivation and distribution ofmarijuana purportedly for medical use. Some of these jurisdictions have considered approving the cultivation of large quantities of marijuana, or broadening the regulation and taxation of the substance. You may have seen letters responding to these inquiries by several United States Attorneys. Those letters are entirely consistent with the October 2009 memorandum issued by Deputy Attorney General David Ogden to federal prosecutors in States that have enacted laws authorizing the medical use of marijuana (the “Ogden Memo“).

The Department ofJustice is committed to the enforcement ofthe Controlled Substances Act in all States. Congress has determined that marijuana is a dangerous drug and that the illegal distribution and sale of marijuana is a serious crime that provides a significant source of revenue to large scale criminal enterprises, gangs, and cartels. The Ogden Memorandum provides guidance to you in deploying your resources to enforce the CSA as part of the exercise of the broad discretion you are given to address federal criminal matters within your districts.

A number of states have enacted some form of legislation relating to the medical use of marijuana. Accordingly, the Ogden Memo reiterated to you that prosecution of significant traffickers of illegal drugs, including marijuana, remains a core priority, but advised that it is likely not an efficient use of federal resources to focus enforcement efforts on individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses who use marijuana as part of a recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law, or their caregivers. The term “caregiver” as used in the memorandum meant just that: individuals providing care to individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses, not commercial operations cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana. The Department’s view of the efficient use of limited federal resources as articulated in the Ogden Memorandum has not changed. There has, however, been an increase in the scope of commercial cultivation, sale, distribution and use of marijuana for purported medical purposes. For example, within the past 12 months, several jurisdictions have considered or enacted legislation to authorize multiple large-scale, privately-operated industrial marijuana cultivation centers. Some of these planned facilities have revenue projections of millions of dollars based on the planned cultivation of tens of thousands of cannabis plants.

The Ogden Memorandum was never intended to shield such activities from federal enforcement action and prosecution, even where those activities purport to comply with state law. Persons who are in the business of cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana, and those who knowingly facilitate such activities, are in violation of the Controlled Substances Act, regardless of state law. Consistent with resource constraints and the discretion you may exercise in your district, such persons are subject to federal enforcement action, including potential prosecution. State laws or local ordinances are not a defense to civil or criminal enforcement of federal law with respect to such conduct, including enforcement of the CSA. Those who engage in transactions involving the proceeds of such activity may also be in violation of federal money laundering statutes and other federal financial laws.

The Department of Justice is tasked with enforcing existing federal criminal laws in all states, and enforcement of the CSA has long been and remains a core priority.

cc:
Lanny A. Breuer
Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division
B. Todd Jones

United States Attorney
District of Minnesota
Chair, AGAC

Michele M. Leonhart
Administrator
Drug Enforcement Administration

H. Marshall Jarrett
Director
Executive Office for United States Attorneys

Kevin L. Perkins
Assistant Director
Criminal Investigative Division
Federal Bureau of Investigations

In the yesterday’s newspaper article the DOJ’s 2009 Ogden Memo was mentioned, here is the full text of the document:

MEMORANDUM FOR SELECTED UNITED STATES ATTORNEYS

FROM: David W. Ogden
Deputy Attorney General

SUBJECT: Investigations and Prosecutions in States
Authorizing the Medical Use of Marijuana

This memorandum provides clarification and guidance to federal prosecutors in States that have enacted laws authorizing the medical use of marijuana. These laws vary in their substantive provisions and in the extent of state regulatory oversight, both among the enacting States and among local jurisdictions within those States. Rather than developing different guidelines for every possible variant of state and local law, this memorandum provides uniform guidance to focus federal investigations and prosecutions in these States on core federal enforcement priorities.

The Department of Justice is committed to the enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act in all States. Congress has determined that marijuana is a dangerous drug, and the illegal distribution and sale of marijuana is a serious crime and provides a significant source of revenue to large-scale criminal enterprises, gangs, and cartels. One timely example underscores the importance of our efforts to prosecute significant marijuana traffickers: marijuana distribution in the United States remains the single largest source of revenue for the Mexican cartels.

The Department is also committed to making efficient and rational use of its limited investigative and prosecutorial resources. In general, United States Attorneys are vested with “plenary authority with regard to federal criminal matters” within their districts. USAM 9-2.001. In exercising this authority, United States Attorneys are “invested by statute and delegation from the Attorney General with the broadest discretion in the exercise of such authority.” Id. This authority should, of course, be exercised consistent with Department priorities and guidance. The prosecution of significant traffickers of illegal drugs, including marijuana, and the disruption of illegal drug manufacturing and trafficking networks continues to be a core priority in the Department’s efforts against narcotics and dangerous drugs, and the Department’s investigative and prosecutorial resources should be directed towards these objectives. As a general matter, pursuit of these priorities should not focus federal resources in your States on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana. For example, prosecution of individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses who use marijuana as part of a recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law, or those caregivers in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state law who provide such individuals with marijuana, is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources. On the other hand, prosecution of commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continues to be an enforcement priority of the Department. To be sure, claims of compliance with state or local law may mask operations inconsistent with the terms, conditions, or purposes of those laws, and federal law enforcement should not be deterred by such assertions when otherwise pursuing the Department’s core enforcement priorities.

Typically, when any of the following characteristics is present, the conduct will not be in clear and unambiguous compliance with applicable state law and may indicate illegal drug
trafficking activity of potential federal interest:

• unlawful possession or unlawful use of firearms;
• violence;
• sales to minors;
• financial and marketing activities inconsistent with the terms, conditions, or purposes of state law, including evidence of money laundering activity and/or financial gains or excessive amounts of cash inconsistent with purported compliance with state or local law;
• amounts of marijuana inconsistent with purported compliance with state or local law;
• illegal possession or sale of other controlled substances; or
• ties to other criminal enterprises.

Of course, no State can authorize violations of federal law, and the list of factors above is not intended to describe exhaustively when a federal prosecution may be warranted. Accordingly, in prosecutions under the Controlled Substances Act, federal prosecutors are not expected to charge, prove, or otherwise establish any state law violations. Indeed, this memorandum does not alter in any way the Department’s authority to enforce federal law, including laws prohibiting the manufacture, production, distribution, possession, or use of marijuana on federal property. This guidance regarding resource allocation does not “legalize” marijuana or provide a legal defense to a violation of federal law, nor is it intended to create any privileges, benefits, or rights, substantive or procedural, enforceable by any individual, party or witness in any administrative, civil, or criminal matter. Nor does clear and unambiguous compliance with state law or the absence of one or all of the above factors create a legal defense to a violation of the Controlled Substances Act. Rather, this memorandum is intended solely as a guide to the exercise of investigative and prosecutorial discretion.

Finally, nothing herein precludes investigation or prosecution where there is a reasonable basis to believe that compliance with state law is being invoked as a pretext for the production or distribution of marijuana for purposes not authorized by state law. Nor does this guidance preclude investigation or prosecution, even when there is clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state law, in particular circumstances where investigation or prosecution otherwise serves important federal interests.

Your offices should continue to review marijuana cases for prosecution on a case-by-case basis, consistent with the guidance on resource allocation and federal priorities set forth herein, the consideration of requests for federal assistance from state and local law enforcement authorities, and the Principles of Federal Prosecution.

cc: All United States Attorneys

Lanny A. Breuer
Assistant Attorney General
Criminal Division

B. Todd Jones
United States Attorney
District of Minnesota
Chair, Attorney General’s Advisory Committee

Michele M. Leonhart
Acting Administrator
Drug Enforcement Administration

H. Marshall Jarrett
Director
Executive Office for United States Attorneys

Kevin L. Perkins
Assistant Director
Criminal Investigative Division
Federal Bureau of Investigation

Today I was in the Washington Post article about the progress of the District’s medical cannabis program.

‘Glacial’ pace

Still, some possible participants — such as Nikolas Schiller — consider the city’s pace “glacial.” Schiller’s group, D.C. Patients’ Cooperative, identified potential cultivation and dispensary sites in the city after the law passed.

Concerned about the program’s pace, the cooperative did not sign any leases, and many of those sites are no longer available. Schiller, the only paid staff member, was laid off by the group’s investors.

This paragraph in article is slightly incorrect. I wasn’t laid off by the group’s investors. As a board member of the non-profit, hired as an independent contractor by the non-profit, I voted to lay off myself with the majority of board members. It’s not that I was failing to do my job properly, rather, after waiting nearly 18 months and seeing no progress, DCPC decided to stop wasting resources on a program that was moving so slowly.

Official: Medical marijuana in D.C. by May 2012

By Victor Zapana, Washington Post, Published: July 29

A year after the District legalized medical marijuana, nobody is legally growing or selling it. Patients once thought that they could be getting the drug by early 2011, but bureaucratic delays and the city’s caution in implementing its drug law have caused some would-be patients and entrepreneurs to fume.

But things appear to be picking up. District regulators are forging ahead despite a recent Justice Department memo that has worried coordinators of medical-marijuana programs nationwide, and city officials said Tuesday that dozens of individuals and businesses will be allowed to apply for licenses to operate five dispensaries and 10 cultivation centers.

City officials expect patients to have access to medicinal marijuana — which advocates say can relieve pain and stimulate the appetite — by May 2012.

“This is a very complicated process,” said D.C. Health Director Mohammad N. Akhter. “The community should be very pleased that we are moving forward with this and are doing things in a way that will make sure the program will be here to stay.”

Still, some people are skeptical. District officials have already missed a launch goal set when the law went into effect July 27, 2010.

“I don’t believe they’re going to be ready to deliver” by May, said Nancy Miranda, 37, a Columbia Heights resident who said she wants to use prescription marijuana for her migraine headaches. “If they do, they’ll surprise me and, of course, make me very happy.”

Akhter said recent changes in the program — including the decision by Mayor Vincent Gray (D) in April to have the Health Department run the application process — caused some delays.

“Once you move something like this, you need to do new rules and regulations and it needs to go to the council,” Akhter said. “Considering all of those things, it has moved very expeditiously.”

Akhter would not identify the approved applicants — they are scheduled to be announced Friday — but he expects candidates to file proposals by Sept. 9. A six-member panel — a patient advocate and representatives from five city departments — will review the proposals with commissioners of affected Advisory Neighborhood Commissions over three months, he said.

Akhter said that he expects license awardees to be named by year’s end and that marijuana should be ready to be dispensed by next May. “When this program gets implemented, it’s going to be the tightest-controlled program in the United States,” he said.

‘Glacial’ pace

Still, some possible participants — such as Nikolas Schiller — consider the city’s pace “glacial.” Schiller’s group, D.C. Patients’ Cooperative, identified potential cultivation and dispensary sites in the city after the law passed.

Concerned about the program’s pace, the cooperative did not sign any leases, and many of those sites are no longer available. Schiller, the only paid staff member, was laid off by the group’s investors.

Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) said that although he wants the process to move quickly, he appreciates the city’s deliberate approach, even as some community activists have become “impatient.”

Being careful is important, marijuana policy experts say, because recent raids and Justice Department communications indicate that the federal government might still choose to prosecute state-licensed medical-marijuana operators.

The Justice memo

For some experts, a Justice Department memo written in June by Deputy U.S. Attorney General James M. Cole suggests that prosecutors can target state-licensed dispensaries and cultivation centers because, Cole wrote, people “in the business of cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana, and those who knowingly facilitate such activities,” violate federal law, regardless of state law.

District officials “should be concerned” about the memo, said Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist who supports the legalization of marijuana.

Justice Department spokeswoman Jessica A. Smith said in an e-mail that the memo “reinforces” departmental drug policy “in light of changing state laws and increased commercial cultivation of marijuana for purported medical purposes.”

Varied responses

National responses to the memo have varied. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has continued a statewide hold on issuing dispensary licenses, saying that the memo “offers little more than continued confusion and doublespeak.” And New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) announced a plan last week to create six new dispensaries.

Beatrice “B.B.” Otero, D.C. deputy mayor for health and human services, said in a statement that the Gray administration does not want to “put anything forward that could jeopardize the implementation of the law.”

City and Justice Department officials have met to discuss Cole’s memo, according to authorities. Otero said Gray thinks that the city’s program will allow licensed operators to work “in a safe and medically appropriate manner.”

The process continues on Friday. Akhter said the application will ask for prospective locations and plans for on-site security and public education about the drug.

E-mails, interviews and letters of intent submitted by prospective applicants provide some ideas about where facilities might go. Some suggested sites in warehouses near busy thoroughfares; others targeted commercial districts across the city.

For and against

O. Wesley Martin wants to run a dispensary and cultivation center in the bustling H Street NE corridor. In an e-mail, Martin said that he has met with area business owners and that “everyone is anxiously awaiting my debut.”

Some are not, however. “We’re against that. We’re for Jesus,” Anthony Chloe, manager of a Salvation Army thrift store, said when told of the possibility of a medical-marijuana facility nearby.

But Jonathan de la Cruz, 23, is happy that the District has made progress.

De la Cruz — paralyzed from the chest down after he was shot in February 2009 — said he buys marijuana illegally to ease leg spasms. A Hyattsville resident, he said he plans to move to the District and then obtain a prescription for marijuana.

De la Cruz said he knows what he is doing is illegal, but he agreed to tell his story because he thinks medical marijuana is much-needed by those with severe ailments and disabilities.

“Let’s speed up the process and make sure we get there,” he said. “There are people who need it.”

This cartoon shows the DC Colonist trying to enter the voting booth, but is told by Uncle Sam to go to the tax or selective service booths. The cartoon implies that the while District residents pay taxes & go to war for America, they are not permitted the sacred right to vote in U.S. elections. Thus DC residents fight & die in American wars and pay taxes to the Federal government, but at the same time, have no say who makes the decisions regarding taxation, war, and peace.

Source: Page 53 of “Our National Capital and its un-Americanized Americans” by Theodore Noyes

Today I setup the sound system for a somber vigil outside of the White House. Forty years ago today President Nixon declared a War on Drugs at a press conference and since then the United States has wasted trillions of dollars on an unwinnable war against the personal freedoms of American citizens. As you can read below, Nixon did not explicitly use the term “War on Drugs” at that press conference but instead used terminology that references combat. I can’t help but wonder, how much longer until this war is over?

Ladies and gentlemen:

I would like to summarize for you the meeting that I have just had with the bipartisan leaders which began at 8 o’clock and was completed 2 hours later.

I began the meeting by making this statement, which I think needs to be made to the Nation:

America’s public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.

I have asked the Congress to provide the legislative authority and the funds to fuel this kind of an offensive. This will be a worldwide offensive dealing with the problems of sources of supply, as well as Americans who may be stationed abroad, wherever they are in the world. It will be government wide, pulling together the nine different fragmented areas within the government in which this problem is now being handled, and it will be nationwide in terms of a new educational program that we trust will result from the discussions that we have had.

With regard to this offensive, it is necessary first to have a new organization, and the new organization will be within the White House. Dr. Jaffe, who will be one of the briefers here today, will be the man directly responsible. He will report directly to me, and he will have the responsibility to take all of the Government agencies, nine, that deal with the problems of rehabilitation, in which his primary responsibilities will be research and education, and see that they work not at cross-purposes, but work together in dealing with the problem.

If we are going to have a successful offensive, we need more money. Consequently, I am asking the Congress for $155 million in new funds, which will bring the total amount this year in the budget for drug abuse, both in enforcement and treatment, to over $350 million.

As far as the new money is concerned, incidentally, I have made it clear to the leaders that if this is not enough, if more can be used, if Dr. Jaffe, after studying this problem, finds that we can use more, more will be provided. In order to defeat this enemy which is causing such great concern, and correctly so, to so many American families, money will be provided to the extent that it is necessary and to the extent that it will be useful.

Finally, in order for this program to be effective, it is necessary that it be conducted on a basis in which the American people all join in it. That is why the meeting was bipartisan; bipartisan because we needed the support of the Congress, but bipartisan because we needed the leadership of the Members of the Congress in this field.

Fundamentally, it is essential for the American people to be alerted to this danger, to recognize that it is a danger that will not pass with the passing of the war in Vietnam which has brought to our attention the fact that a number of young Americans have become addicts as they serve abroad, whether in Vietnam, or Europe, or other places. Because the problem existed before we became involved in Vietnam; it will continue to exist afterwards. That is why this offensive deals with the problem there, in Europe, but will then go on to deal with the problem throughout America.

One final word with regard to Presidential responsibility in this respect. I very much hesitate always to bring some new responsibility into the White House, because there are so many here, and I believe in delegating those responsibilities to the departments. But I consider this problem so urgent–I also found that it was scattered so much throughout the Government, with so much conflict, without coordination–that it had to be brought into the White House.

Consequently, I have brought Dr. Jaffe into the White House, directly reporting to me, so that we have not only the responsibility but the authority to see that we wage this offensive effectively and in a coordinated way.

The briefing team will now be ready to answer any questions on the technical details of the program.

Back in mid-May, late at night after a few of our friends had gotten out of jail after being arrested outside of the U.S. Capitol demonstrating in favor of voting rights & statehood for DC, Ally B., Adam E., and myself were discussing ways we could do another action. I brought up the idea of using Flag Day as an upcoming day that people could mobilize around and everyone agreed that there was enough time to plan & execute an event. Inspired by Shana Glickfield’s collection of DC Flag tattoos, together we wrote the first press release and since Adam & I were busy working on other projects, Ally did the rest of the organizing for “DC Flag Day in the Flesh“. In all, this was one of the best events I’ve ever helped to organize because we had such a great turnout and very positive media coverage. I’m looking forward to helping organize the second annual DC Flag Day in the Flesh :-) I’d like to get the folks from Guinness Book of World Records to come and document “the most tattooed ‘state’ flags in one location.”

Inked and Non-Inked Gather in Dupont Circle

Celebrate Flag Day Tuesday, June 14, 6-8 pm

It is well known that thousands of District of Columbia residents past and present sport DC flag tattoos. In fact, George Washington, whose family crest is the source of the DC flag, would never have predicted that so many would passionately adorn themselves to show their civic pride. Over the years, the “Three Stars and Two Bars” has come to symbolize over 600,000 Americans who can not enact their own laws nor elect voting representatives to the House and Senate.

This Flag Day 2011 we encourage a large gathering of people with DC Flag tattoo’s and those that support them as a way to get under the skin of America and bring attention to DC’s lack of rights in Congress.

Come celebrate DC Flag Tattoos, paint large Give Me a Vote Hands, and find out what you can do to get DC equal representation in Congress.

WHO: Inked, non-Inked, and all who LOVE DC
WHAT: Flag Day DC Celebration, Speakers sponsored by DC Vote, Art sponsored by Give Me a Vote and Albus Cavus, and surprises!
WHEN: Tuesday, June 14, 2011, 6pm to 8pm
WHERE: Dupont Circle, Washington DC, USA
“Home of Taxation Without Representation”

A couple photographs of me from BYT by Dakota Fine

DC Flag Tattoo Day – June 14 by Brandon Bloch

Video by Mike Flugennock

Video by Edgar Elmore

Video by Matt Bevilacqua

Press:
+ D.C. faithful get inked, rally for representation – Washington Post
+ D.C. Flag Tattoo Day: Show off your city pride – AP via Washington Post
+ D.C. residents to celebrate flag tattoos – AP via WTOP
+ D.C. residents to celebrate flag tattoos – AP via Federal News Radio
+ Tattooed DC Residents Push for Representation – WMAL
+ Flag day is for… showing off tattoos? – Seattle Post-Intelligencer
+ D.C. Ink: Flag-Tatted to Gather at Dupont Tomorrow – DCist
+ Photo Booth: D.C. Flag Tattoo Day – DCist
+ DC Flag Tattoo Day: Does it Matter If You’re Not Punk? – Washingtonian
+ With flag tattoos, D.C. residents seek representation in Congress – Scripps Howard
+ D.C. Flag Tattoo Day mixes District flag with tattoos – TBD
+ D.C. Flag Day tattoos: The Polaroids – TBD
+ Got a DC Flag Tattoo? Celebrate Today – NBC Washington
+ Showing off some inked skin for D.C. – WJLA
+ D.C. Flag Tattoos We Don’t Endorse, Even for Voting Rights – Washington City Paper
+ Welcome to Our Strife, Tattoo – Washington City Paper
+ Norton Commends Youth Activism and Achievements Today at Two Separate Events, DC Flag Day Tattoo Rally and Ballou STAY High School Graduation – Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC)
+ DC Statehood advocates unveil DC flag tattoos for Flag Day – DC Direct Action News
+ Photos: DC Flag Tattoo Day! Go DC! #dcflagtattoo #dcvote – Vincent Gallegos
+ DC Flag Tattoo Day – Frank Turner
+ DC Flag Tattoo Day – Borderstan

From the Washington Post article:

When Allyson Behnke’s friend was arrested back in May for rallying in support of District representation in Congress, she and a few others started brainstorming ways to raise awareness for the cause in a more entertaining way. Somebody mentioned Flag Day, and an idea tattooed itself on her mind.

How the States Got Their Shapes – Episode 6 – Use It or Lose It
If you thought our borders were set in stone, you’d be wrong. Who stole a corner of Washington, DC? Is Ohio actually a state? And why isn’t St. Louis our nation’s capital? One thing’s for sure — our map could look very different. How did we create order out of so much chaos? With the vote.

Back in November of 2010 I was invited by a producer from Half Yard Productions to be interviewed for the upcoming History Channel show “How the States Got Their Shapes.” Near the Lincoln Memorial, I was interviewed by host Brian Unger for a good 30 minutes, but after watching tonight’s episode about Washington, DC, I found that most of the interview was left on the cutting room floor. Nonetheless, I came across as knowledgeable (albeit briefly) and the episode did a decent job at explaining some of the issues residents of the District of Columbia face (like no Congressional representation). If you have a chance, watch the rerun of Episode 6 “Use It or Lose It” on the History Channel or purchase a digital copy from Amazon.com.

Geohumanities, the recently published book that features my map “The Modern Geographer” on the cover, was reviewed in the New York Times by Stanley Fish:

The Triumph of the Humanities

By STANLEY FISH

Our house in the western Catskills overlooks the Pepacton Reservoir, a 20-mile ribbon of water between Margaretville and Downsville. Maps on the Internet, depending on their scale and detail, will show you where the reservoir is in relation to nearby towns and roads. What they won’t show you, although every resident of the area knows about them, are the four towns — Arena, Shavertown, Union Grove and Pepacton — that were flooded in the middle ‘50s so that the reservoir could be constructed. (Today, after more than 50 years, resentment against New York City remains strong.)

The maps and pictures of the reservoir are determinedly linear; the eye follows the water in its journey down Route 30 toward the city. But for the the old-timers, and the new-timers who have been caught up in the romance of the lost towns, the eye stops and looks down to what are now the geological layers of civilizations, one on the surface and claiming a literal, no-nonsense empirical reality (“If you want get from Andes to Downsville, you can travel on either side of the reservoir”), and the other below the surface, where lie subterranean Brigadoons that emerge not every hundred years but whenever the reservoir gets so low that pieces of a drowned culture suddenly and unnervingly come into view. At those moments the eye simply cannot travel the straight line encouraged by visible coherences and road signs; the natural pull of forward progress is forestalled and one begins to ruminate on what lies beneath our every step as we raise our feet to take the next one.

There is now a (relatively) new discipline in which this breaking down of time into spatial units that are read vertically rather than horizontally is the obligatory gesture. It calls itself GeoHumanities and its project is nicely encapsulated in the title of one of the essays in a collection that officially announces the emergence of a field of study. The collection is called “GeoHumanities: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place”; the essay (by Edward L. Ayers, an historian and president of the University of Richmond) is entitled “Mapping Time.”

Ayers’s project is to map the changes that followed upon the emancipation of the slaves after the Civil War. He and his colleagues begin with a simple map and then they locate populations on the landscape and “put down one layer after another: of race, of wealth, of literacy, of water courses, of roads, of railways, of soil type, of voting patterns, of social structure.”

The layered picture that results can then be “read” and a story can be told, the story of complex relationships that are frozen by the analysis but which, of course, are really in motion. The next step is to acknowledge the motion by using cinematic techniques that present the passage of time as spatial units that succeed one another. “By converting time to motion,” says Ayers, “we can visualize the passage of time (as one watches the hands of a clock move).”

Ayers calls this technique of representation “deep contingency,” and he acknowledges its artificiality. The metaphor of a layered reality “is a fiction of course, since the layers continually interact and the ‘top’ layer of humans constantly changes the ‘bottom’ layer of landscape; but it is a useful fiction, since it reminds us of the structural depth of time and experience.” The project is a synthesis of geography (now renamed Geographic Information Science, or GIS) and history: “GIS is about patterns and structures; history is about motion; by integrating the two, we can see layers of events, layers of the consequences of unpredictability.”

That is, we can read events not merely historically, as the product of the events preceding them, but geologically, as the location of sedimented patterns of culture, economics, politics, agriculture. What is being attempted is a reorientation of perception, an alternative way of interpreting the world in which “space is not merely in the service of time, but has a poetics of its own, which reveals itself through a geographical or topological imagination rather than a historical one” (Paul Smethurst, “The Postmodern Chronotope”).

The interplay in these quotations between a literary and a geographical vocabulary tells us what GeoHumanities is all about; it is the elaboration, by methods derived from the humanities, of “the stratified record upon which we set our feet” (the title of another essay and a quote from Thomas Mann). It is the realization, in a style of analysis, of the “spatial turn,” a “critical shift that divested geography of its largely passive role as history’s ‘stage’ and brought to the fore intersections between the humanities and the earth sciences” (Peta Mitchell in “GeoHumanities”).

“Intersections” is perhaps too weak a word, because it suggests two disciplines that retain their distinctiveness but collaborate occasionally on a specific project. The stronger assertion, made by many in the volume, is that the division between empirical/descriptive disciplines and interpretive disciplines is itself a fiction and one that stands in the way of the production of knowledge.

An apparently empirical project like geography is, and always has been, interpretive through and through. “The map has always been a political agent”(Lize Mogel), has always had a “generative power” (Emily Eliza Scott), and that power can only be released and studied by those who approach their work in the manner of literary critics. Geography “demands a reader who is at once an archeologist, geologist and geographer, a reader who … is at all times attentive to the stratification of history, memory, language, and landscape and who can read obliquely through their layers” (Peta Mitchell).

If interpretive methods and perspectives are necessary to the practice of geography, they are no less necessary to other projects supposedly separate from the project of the humanities. And that is why, in addition to GeoHumanities, we now have Biohumanities (“the humanities not only comment on the significance or implications of biological knowledge, but add to our understanding of biology itself” — Karola Stotz and Paul E. Griffiths), Disability Studies (of which the X-Men films might be both a representation and an instance), Metahistory (the study of the irreducibly narrative basis of historical “fact”), Law and Literature (the laying bare of the rhetorical and literary strategies giving form to every assertion in the law), Cultural Anthropology (an inquiry into the very possibility of anthropological observation that begins by acknowledging the inescapability of perspective and the ubiquity of interpretation), Cultural Sociology (“the commitment to hermeneutically reconstructing social texts in a rich and persuasive way” — Jeffrey C. Alexander and Philip Smith), and other hybrids already emergent and soon to emerge.

What this all suggests is that while we have been anguishing over the fate of the humanities, the humanities have been busily moving into, and even colonizing, the fields that were supposedly displacing them. In the ‘70s and the ‘80s the humanities exported theory to the social sciences and (with less influence) to the sciences; many disciplines saw a pitched battle between the new watchwords — perspective, contingency, dispersion, multi-vocality, intertextuality — and the traditional techniques of dispassionate observation, the collection of evidence, the drawing of warranted conclusions and the establishing of solid fact. Now the dust has settled and the invaded disciplines have incorporated much of what they resisted. Propositions that once seemed outlandish — all knowledge is mediated, even our certainties are socially constructed — are now routinely asserted in precincts where they were once feared as the harbingers of chaos and corrosive relativism.

One could say then that the humanities are the victors in the theory wars; nearly everyone now dances to their tune. But this conceptual triumph has not brought with it a proportionate share of resources or institutional support. Perhaps administrators still think of the humanities as the province of precious insights that offer little to those who are charged with the task of making sense of the world. Volumes like “GeoHumanities” tell a different story, and it is one that cannot be rehearsed too often.

When I was on the top of Pike’s Peak yesterday, I discovered that the song America the Beautiful was inspired by Katharine Lee Bates trip to the summit of Pike’s Peak in 1893. She later wrote of her trip:

One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. We hired a prairie wagon. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse.

Seventeen years later composer Samuel A. Ward rewrote Katharine Lee Bates poem into what is sung today. Below are the two versions side by side:

Today my step-father & I decided to play tourists and take the Pike’s Peak Cog Railway up to the top of Pike’s Peak. I’m slightly ashamed to say that this was my first time to the summit of a 14er in Colorado. I’ve been up a few high-13ers, but never a 14er, until today (and by way of a train instead of a trail!).

From the top I could see distant forest fires that were burning to the west as well as the entire expanse of Colorado Springs to the east. I can see why the earlier explorers found this mountain to be of such military importance- you can see for miles in all directions. After walking around the summit, we went inside the welcome center and I bought some of their fresh donuts for the slow ride back down the mountain.

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Clip #1 = view of an unnamed peak near Mount Yale and snow in the forest
Clip #2 = view of the snow-covered meadow near Kroenke Lake
Clip #3 = “Hello from the base of the Continental Divide”
Clip #4 = driving away from the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness Area with Mount Princeton off in the distance.

One of my goals for the trip to Colorado was to return to the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness Area. After some cursory planning, my step-father & I decided to spend three days in the backcountry near Buena Vista, Colorado. The ultimate destination was Kroenke Lake, which is situated at the base of the continental divide in the San Isabel National Forest. The plan was to hike as far as possible the first day, setup camp for the night, the following day hike to Kroenke Lake, and the final day hike back to the trailhead. While we were expecting there to be some snow still on the ground (it’s June after all), we were not expecting to hit dense snowpack within the first mile of hiking toward our destination. We ultimately pitched our tent on a snow bank that was nearest to dry land about 2.5 miles from the trailhead. Earlier this year I purchased snowshoes and by the end of the trip I sincerely wished that I had brought them! All in all, I love backpacking in this part of Colorado! My next goal for this area to is to climb one of the Collegiate Peaks.

View of Mount Princeton from Buena Vista, Colorado.

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At least the snow kept our beer cold :-)

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My favorite wildlife that we encountered at Kroenke Lake was the Wilson’s Warbler.
Its an absolutely gorgeous bird!

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Crossing snow-fed mountain streams can be a bit precarious.

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I’m not a big into rock climbing, but my mom really wanted to take me to one of her favorite climbs “Madacat” in Pike National Forest. I used borrowed climbing shoes, which were slightly too small, and while I didn’t fall once while climbing, my feet were in severe pain by the end of the day.

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Today we are going rock climbing at a place my mom & step father regularly climb at. On the way to the site I snapped this photograph of the burnt remains of Colorado’s largest fire, the 2002 Haymen Fire.

Spotted on Monaco Parkway in Denver, Colorado. Sucks there was no sidewalk.

I’m heading to Colorado for the next 10 days. I took this grainy photo on the pilot’s luggage while I was waiting on the tarmac to enter the plane: “It’s All Good”

Its All Good" /> Its All Good" title="Grainy photograph of a bumper sticker on a briefcase that says It's All Good in a design like the Colorado license plate" />

While this broadleaf escarole was mostly devoured by aphids earlier this Spring, it survived long enough to bloom. The flowers look nearly identical to chicory.

I want to take this cucumber plant outside and put it into the ground, but all of the other cucumber seedlings I germinated this year have been killed by birds, mammals, and insects…. Poor cucumber flower, you will get pollinated soon enough.

My map “The Modern Geographer” graces the cover of this new book published by Routledge. This map was previously used as the cover art for the symposium program that helped lay the groundwork for this book. I received my copy and am looking forward to reading it.

Publication Date: May 26, 2011

In the past decade, there has been a convergence of transdisciplinary thought characterized by geography’s engagement with the humanities, and the humanities’ integration of place and the tools of geography into its studies.

GeoHumanities maps this emerging intellectual terrain with thirty cutting edge contributions from internationally renowned scholars, architects, artists, activists, and scientists. This book explores the humanities’ rapidly expanding engagement with geography, and the multi-methodological inquiries that analyze the meanings of place, and then reconstructs those meanings to provoke new knowledge as well as the possibility of altered political practices. It is no coincidence that the geohumanities are forcefully emerging at a time of immense intellectual and social change. This book focuses on a range of topics to address urgent contemporary imperatives, such as the link between creativity and place; altered practices of spatial literacy; the increasing complexity of visual representation in art, culture, and science and the ubiquitous presence of geospatial technologies in the Information Age.

GeoHumanties is essential reading for students wishing to understand the intellectual trends and forces driving scholarship and research at the intersections of geography and the humanities disciplines. These trends hold far-reaching implications for future work in these disciplines, and for understanding the changes gripping our societies and our globalizing world.

About the Authors
Michael Dear is Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California Berkeley. His interests are in comparative urbanism and the US-Mexico borderlands. Recent publications include: Urban Latino Cultures; la vida latina en L.A., The Postmodern Urban Condition, and Postborder City: cultural spaces of Bajalta California.

Jim Ketchum is special projects coordinator and newsletter editor for the Association of American Geographers in Washington, D.C. A cultural geographer with interests in contemporary art and visual culture, his research examines the ways that artists use geographic perspectives and technologies in responding to war. He received his PhD from Syracuse University in 2005.

Sarah Luria is Associate Professor of English at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is the author of Capital Speculations: Writing and Building Washington, D.C. (University of New Hampshire Press, 2006). Her current book project is a study of land surveying and property making in the work of Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, and Robert Moses.

Doug Richardson is Executive Director of the Association of American Geographers (AAG). He previously founded and was President of the firm GeoResearch, Inc., which invented, developed, and patented the first interactive GPS/GIS (global positioning system/geographic information system) technology, leading to major advances in the ways geographic information is collected, mapped, integrated, and used within geography and in society at large. He has worked closely with American Indian tribes for over twenty years on cultural and ecological issues, and is the Project Director of the AAG’s National Endowment for the Humanities funded Historical GIS Clearinghouse and Online Research Forum.

Related Entries:

• The Triumph of the Humanities By Stanley Fish, New York Times
• GeoHumanities: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place
• Don't buy these books...
• Bright Felon: Autobiography And Cities By Kazim Ali Is Now Available
• Cities & Nature is now available
• Cities & Nature - My first book cover
• Central Park Quilt - North

I found this map posted inside a bus stop in Adams Morgan last week.

For the last month my broadleaf escarole plant (an Endive, or type of Chicory) on my balcony has been invaded by tiny insects. Mostly aphids, I believe. I opted to not use any pesticides or neem oil to remove the infestation simply to see what damage such pests can do to the quasi-everlasting plant.

Source: Page 46 of “Our National Capital and its un-Americanized Americans” by Theodore Noyes

This morning when I went to my backyard I noticed the glass vase moving around on the ground. Upon seeing that it was actually a Mourning Dove stuck in a glass vase, I quickly ran upstairs and got my camera so I could film my attempt at freeing the stuck bird….

Tonight I took some more photographs of the “VIP” (very important plants) that I’m growing in my bedroom. I look forward to planting these outdoors later this month.

Close-up Photograph of the pink Green Bean Flower

Photograph of a baby Smokey Bronze Fennel in the foreground, green beans on the right, and basil in the background.

Photograph of the baby sweet basil plant

Close-up Photograph of the Pink Green Bean Flower

Photograph of the Pink Green Bean Flower, Basil, Smokey Bronze Fennel, and Jaloro Pepper Plant

Close-up Photograph of the Pink Green Bean Flower

Today I went to Capitol Hill to attend “the District of Columbia’s Fiscal Year 2012 Budget: Ensuring Fiscal Sustainability” hearing dressed in colonial attire. You can see me in the screen shot from the start of the 2nd Panel:

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Mayor Gray, Chairman Brown to testify to Oversight Hearing on D.C. Budget

WASHINGTON- The House Committee on Oversight and Government D.C. subcommittee will host the top two at-large elected officials in the District on Thursday at 8:45 a.m. Mayor Vincent Gray and Council Chairman Kwame Brown will testify at a hearing on the District’s Fiscal Year 2012 budget.

The subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-SC., has called the hearing to examine the fiscal sustainability of D.C. spending. In 1995 the District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Act established a five member “Control Board” to oversee financial matters. The Control Board was disbanded in 2001 when District had achieved four consecutive balanced budgets and met other criteria. There are seven separate “triggers” which would automatically revive the Control Board.

In addition to the two elected officials, D.C. Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi will testify on a separate panel. Full witness list and hearing information can be found below. Testimony will be posted as it becomes available at http://oversight.house.gov/

WHAT: The District of Columbia’s Fiscal Year 2012 Budget: Ensuring Fiscal Sustainability

WHO: Subcommittee on Health Care, DC, Census, and the National Archives, Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-SC.

WHEN/WHERE: 8:45 a.m. on Thursday May 12th in 2154 Rayburn House Office Building

Witnesses:

Panel I

• The Honorable Vincent Gray, Mayor, District of Columbia

• The Honorable Kwame Brown, Chairman, DC City Council

Panel II

• Dr. Natwar Gandhi,Chief Financial Officer, District of Columbia

• Mr. Jim Dinegar, CEO, DC Board of Trade

• Mr. Matt Fabian, Managing Director, Municipal Market Advisors

• Dr. Alice M. Rivlin, the Brookings Institution; former Chair of the Control Board

source

Before the hearing began.

Before the hearing began.

Before the hearing began.

After the first panel of Mayor Vincent Gray and District Council Chairman Kwame Brown was over.

Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform, Darrell Issa of California.

I’ve become a big fan of the perennial pink chives (Allium schoenoprasum) that I started growing a few years ago. I’m going to save these flowers to harvest their seed for next year’s garden.

Related Gardening Entries:

• The Broadleaf Batavian Escarole Blooms
• Poor Cucumber Flower
• The Aphid Invasion of the Escarole
• Photographs of Pink Green Bean Flowers, Basil, and Smokey Bronze Fennel
• Blooming Pink Chives & the Air Conditioner
• Water droplets on green bean leaves
• Photographs of a Ladybug in the garden
• Photographs of pink chive buds
• You know it's spring when daffodils begin to bloom
• Springtime photographs of sedum telephium ‘Autumn Joy’
• Empty Planters (not for long)
• Photographs of the 2011 Indoor Germination Station
• Basil Sprouts
• Agent Orange? A chemical defoliant used on my neighbor's backyard
• Baby Potato
• YouTube Video Showing Where George Washington Grew Hemp at Mount Vernon
• YouTube Videos, Photos, and Newspaper Articles About American Farmers and Businessmen Planting Hemp Seeds at the DEA Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia
• Growing a Jaloro plant on my back deck - Part Five [The Second Harvest]
• The Scourge of this Summer's Garden: Spider Mites
• Photographs from Park(ing) Day DC 2009
• Growing a Jaloro plant on my back deck - Part Four
• Growing a Jaloro plant on my back deck - Part Three
• Growing a Jaloro plant on my back deck - Part Two
• Growing a Jaloro plant on my back deck - Part One
• seeds of change

Today I attended the Americans for Safe Access demonstration at the Department of Justice Building in downtown Washington, DC.

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This was written by Steph Sherer:

Stand in solidarity with me for a National Day of Action this Monday, May 2, 2011. Our community is sick and tired. We are suffering from chronic or debilitating conditions, and we are weary of false promises that do nothing to protect our rights as patients.

After previously giving us a false sense of security, the Obama administration now continues to ignore state laws and raid medical cannabis patients and facilities, while creating new ways to marginalize our community, including issues related to patient privacy, access, banking, taxation, and threats of filing suit against state employees who participate in upholding state law. This community is still under attack.

Just yesterday, our community witnessed raid activity in Washington State and on Monday, our community will lose two more of our brothers and sisters to the failed war on drugs. Dale Shafer and Dr. Mollie fry will turn themselves over to federal agents to serve five-year mandatory minimum sentences for legally participating in state sanctioned medical cannabis programs. Enough is enough and Monday, May 2, 2011 is our time to take stand against federal interference!

Fellow community members and local activists are preparing to deliver ASA’s Cease and Desist to local DEA offices and federal buildings across the country. Commit to do the same. Join activists in several cities across the country. Locations include, but are not limited to, the following areas: Washington State, Oregon, Rhode Island, Colorado, Montana, Michigan, Maine, New Jersey, Washington, DC, California, Arizona, Nevada, and Maryland. To find out what is going on in your area, email action@safeaccessnow.org, or print out the Cease and Desist Order and take it to a local DEA Office or Federal Building near you on Monday!! Remember: if you don’t stand up for safe access, who will?

Special Patients’ Rights Rallies will be occurring in both Washington, DC outside of the Department of Justice at 12pEST (event flyer) and outside of the Federal Courthouse in Sacramento, CA at 12pPST for Dale Schafer and Dr. Mollie Fry (event flyer).

It’s thanks to the support from our members that ASA is able to hold Days of Action like this one. Please consider making a donation to ASA today, so we can continue to strengthen our fight for safe access.

I look forward to participating in our National Day of Action for patients’ rights with you on Monday, May 2, 2011.

One night I was in my backyard and I heard the sound of a rat stuck inside one of the empty trashcans. Every few moments the poor rat would try to jump out of the trashcan, but it couldn’t grasp the small hole at the top of the trashcan, and would land back at the bottom of the trashcan. By morning it would die of exhaustion and/or starvation.

For a moment I thought this was the ultimate rat trap, but a week later I was saddened to see a different rat jump out of the can after some trash had been placed inside of it. The trap only worked if the trashcan was empty. To my dismay, a few nights later I a saw an even larger rat jump out of the empty trashcan and I realized that some type of cage would be needed to hold the rat within the trap.

Using some extra chicken wire and a little bit of string, I’ve caught 3 rats using this trap. The trick is to keep the trash can empty of waste (decoy!) and leave the caging on top of the trashcan near the hole. If I hear a rat inside the bin, I quickly put the cage on and tie it down. Oh, rats!

Some of the plants for this year’s garden I’ve been growing in my bedroom. I’ve dubbed these plants the VIPs, which stands for “Very Important Plants.” The close-up photographs above show how water droplets on the leaves beautifully reflect light. If you look closely, you can see the coil of the compact fluorescent light bulb reflected in the droplet.

I spotted this little ladybug crawling through the Rose of Sharon bush the other day. I wish there were more ladybugs so they’d eat all the aphids I know will be coming to the garden later this year.

About three years ago I planted these chives and every year since I’ve been either harvesting these pink chive buds & adding them to salads (they taste like an onion) or I’ve let them get pollinated, then wait a couple weeks, and harvested their tiny black seeds in order to grow more chives. I’ve read that they’ve been used throughout history as a means to naturally prevent bugs from eating different plants in the garden. In practice, however, I haven’t seem chives be very effective combating the aphids.

These daffodils were planted a long time ago and I’m thankful they bloom every spring :-)

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I’m not a fan nuclear power. While it happens to be one of the cheapest fuel that is known to man, its also the most deadly. Years ago I made my first map of a U.S. nuclear reactor, Enrico Fermi Nuclear Reactor Quilt, and then followed it up with “Terra Fermi,” an interactive Google Earth Globe, to highlight this intrinsic danger. Given the ease in which the imagery of nuclear power plants can be obtained, I intend to make more maps of nuclear reactors to highlight their fragile existence.

View the Google Map of Calvert Cliffs, Maryland.

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Related Maryland Entries:

• Calvert Cliffs Quilt
• EARLY SECESSION DAYS - The Washington Times, August 12, 1900
• Does Virginia Own Alexandria County? - The Washington Herald, January 18, 1910
• Map Tattoo: The State of Maryland
• Photo of the Sandy Spring Friends School Quilt Printed on Polyester Fabric
• [Commissioned Map] Sandy Spring Friends School Quilt
• [Commissioned Map] Sandy Spring Friends School – Tessellation Five
• [Commissioned Map] Sandy Spring Friends School – Tessellation Four
• [Commissioned Map] Sandy Spring Friends School – Tessellation Three
• [Commissioned Map] Sandy Spring Friends School – Tessellation Two
• [Found Maps] License Plate Maps of DC & Maryland at Artomatic 2009
• [Commissioned Map] Sandy Spring Friends School - Tessellation One
• National Harbor 2006 - A Quicktime Virtual Reality Environment
• Featured on-line with the Maps exhibition at the Walters Museum
• 2008 Washington, DC Area Calendar
• Mount Vernon Quilt #6
• Mount Vernon Quilt #5
• Mount Vernon Quilt #4
• Mount Vernon Quilt #3
• Mount Vernon Quilt #2
• Mount Vernon Quilt
• Silver Spring Quilt #3
• Silver Spring Quilt #2
• Silver Spring Quilt
• Annapolis Quilt
• Bethesda Quilt #2
• Bethesda Quilt
• Starscape Animations
• Baltimore Mandala Animated
• Baltimore Mandala
• Baltimore Lenz #3
• Baltimore Lenz #2
• Baltimore Lenz
• Star of Baltimore
• Abstract Baltimore
• Baltimore World Trade Center...

Soon there will be a garden…

I can truthfully say that I use the internet to grow my vegetables! For the last few years I’ve been using the passive heat from my cable modem & router to germinate my seeds. It’s pretty simple to do: find a leak-proof plastic container, throw in some dirt, add seeds of what you want to grow, add some (but not too much) water, and then place it on your cable modem or internet router. Seeds do not need light to grow, rather they need heat and moisture to germinate. By using the passive heat from the cable modem & router, I can grow just about anything…

This year I decided to scale up my efforts,

and added a couple lights and some reflective aluminum foil.

Within a month most seeds will sprout and will then be transplanted into larger containers outside…

Using last year’s seeds I was able to quickly germinate this year’s supply of sweet basil.

The photograph below shows why I maintain a container garden:

Last fall I planted some potatoes to see if they would grow and sure enough a few did. I think this one looks like Venus of Willendorf.

Scan from the Internet Archive

Related Retrocession Entries:

• Letter from Hannis Taylor to Honorable Thomas H. Carter, United States Senator, Rendering An Opinion As To The Constitutionality of the Act of Retrocession of 1846 - January 17, 1910
• Debate in the U.S. Senate Concerning An Act to Retrocede the County of Alexandria, in the District of Columbia, to the State of Virginia - Thursday, July 2, 1846
• GAMBLERS MAY GET ALEXANDRIA FOR US - The Washington Times, October 16, 1905
• PLEA FOR RESTORATION OF ALEXANDRIA COUNTY - The Washington Times, April 13, 1902
• EARLY SECESSION DAYS - The Washington Times, August 12, 1900
• Act of Cession from the State of Virginia - December 3, 1789
• Debate in the U.S. House of Representatives Concerning An Act to Retrocede the County of Alexandria, in the District of Columbia, to the State of Virginia, Friday, May 8, 1846
• RETROCESSION OF ALEXANDRIA – A Speech by R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, before the U.S. House of Representatives, May 8th, 1846
• A Shower of Proclamations: Arlington Heights - The New York Times, May 9, 1861
• Phillips v. Payne, 92 US 130 – Supreme Court - October Term, 1875
• RETROCESSION OF ALEXANDRIA – The New York Times, August 17, 1873
• S280 - A Bill To Repeal an Act Entitled ''An Act to Retrocede the County of Alexandria, in the District of Columbia, to the State of Virginia" - United States Senate, April 23, 1866
• ALEXANDRIA AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA - The Alexandria Gazette, June 9, 1909
• STILL AFTER ALEXANDRIA - The Alexandria Gazette, June 5th, 1909
• A Bill To Extend The Limits of the District of Columbia - The Alexandria Gazette, June 1, 1909
• Anxious To Come Back - The Washington Post, July 24, 1890
• Does Virginia Own Alexandria County? - The Washington Herald, January 18, 1910
• Text of H.R. 259 - An act to retrocede the county of Alexandria, in the District of Columbia, to the State of Virginia

I noticed my friend’s leather jacket last winter but I never got around to taking a photograph of it.

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Using a portion of Madison Offset, I created a couple more tessellations and ultimately this fractal Octagon Quilt Projection Map.

View the Google Map of Madison, Wisconsin.

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Related Wisconsin Entries:

• Madison Quilt
• Madison Offset
• Racine Quilt #2
• Racine Quilt

I was at a bar in Mount Pleasant with my friend and a lady brought her baby hedgehog to the bar. I’m not sure if that was a wise move…

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With the protests taking place inside of the Wisconsin State Capitol, I decided to make a map of the area around the building.

View the Google Map of Madison, Wisconsin.

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Related Wisconsin Entries:

• Madison Quilt
• Madison Offset
• Racine Quilt #2
• Racine Quilt

I had a great time skiing with friends at Snow Shoe Mountain Resort! This photo above was taken from my friend’s balcony looking west from Cheat Mountain (4,848 ft), which is the second highest mountain in West Virginia.

We were heading out to Snow Shoe Mountain Ski Resort and decided to stop at a Wally-World. It had been years since I had been in Wal-Mart and I hope it is years before I go back. I found it rather funny that they had bullets for sale but we couldn’t find any guns.

I was walking home earlier and spotted this awesome parking job. I can’t believe someone would actually leave their car parked like that.

Thank you Congressman Serrano for speaking up for the 600,000 American citizens of the District of Columbia.

Although planes cannot fly directly over DC, those planes that fly around DC still have their exhaust lines float over the city. I took this photograph because I thought it was interesting the way the lines cut up the sky.