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Having just returned from eight days in England, I was slightly at a loss about what to feature in my weekly post this afternoon. But an item in today’s news caught my attention and got me thinking about geography. According to the 2008 Farm Bill that the U.S. Congress just passed this summer, all unprocessed meat, produce, as well as selected nuts will have to be labeled with their country of origin beginning next Tuesday, September 30. Touted as a safety measure to help American consumers make informed decisions about their food purchases, I wonder if it will do anything to improve our geographic literacy. Are we just a nation of shoppers looking for a bargain and familiar brands, or are we prepared to educate ourselves about how and where the things we eat are raised, grown, fertilized, or slaughtered? Although symbols and flags have not been deemed permissible labels (personally, I think small silhouettes of each country would be truly—pun intended—COOL), I’m of the belief that such abbreviations might actually force us to learn even more than we will from the names of countries alone. Just think of all the moms and dads pushing their inquisitive children around grocery stores in Maine or California. What questions might they ask upon spotting a piece of fruit bearing the image of Chile’s long, sinuous outline, or a package of peanuts stickered with the vaguely Pac-Man-esque shape of Senegal?

Learn more here and here.

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Ben Keene is the editor of Oxford Atlas of the World. Check out some of his previous places of the week.

Arizona Strip

Coordinates: 36 50 N 113 0 W

Approximate area: 7,878 sq mi (20,404 sq km)

Last week I made my first visit to the Beehive State, or Utah as most of us know it, for some hiking, camping, and a bit of exploration via hybrid car. On Sunday, as I headed back to the airport, I decided to take a short detour to a region that the Bureau of Land Management includes “among the most remote and rugged public land in the lower 48 states.” Just over Arizona’s northern border, this two million acre swathe of sandstone mesas and ponderosa forest was covered in enough lush grass around the turn of the last century to support tens of thousands of cattle. Extensive logging and overgrazing reduced much of the land to desert scrub so while ranching persists here on the Arizona Strip, the number of animals isn’t nearly what it used to be. In fact, as I drove through the Kaibab Paiute Indian Reservation east of Fredonia, I saw little evidence of the human history that has unfolded here save for telephone poles, barbed wire fences, and rarely, a modest house.

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Chin Hills, Burma

Coordinates: 22 30 N 93 30 E

Maximum elevation: 10,018 feet (3,053 m)

Desperately trying to keep the Taxman at bay for a few more hours, I wound up at my favorite Monday night watering hole with a few friends last night, earnestly discussing the summer foods we enjoyed most. After listening to everyone’s peculiar arguments I found myself championing the mango as the perfect fruit for warmer days ahead. And yet as I tried to explain its versatility as an ingredient and its unrivaled popularity (the National Mango Board claims that more fresh mangos are eaten every day than any other fruit in the world), I realized that I knew precious little about its geographical origins.

As it turns out, this succulent relative of the cashew and the pistachio has been consumed in India for thousands of years, although it didn’t reach the United States until the late nineteenth century. Pinpointing the location of the first mango, when there are hundreds of varieties of the plant today, is not something I wanted to undertake but fortunately others had already agreed on the higher terrain forming the border between India and Burma (Myanmar). Running north-south, the evergreen-clad Chin Hills stretch across much of this tropical zone, and may hide an ancient progenitor in their forested slopes.

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Bruges, Belgium

Coordinates: 51 13 N 3 13 E

Population: 117,025 (2004 est.)

Earlier this month a new crime caper opened in theaters across the country with a rather unusual setting. Instead of a menacing metropolis teeming with villains and oozing with urban grit and gloom, director Martin McDonagh chose to shoot his film in the medieval Belgian city that appears in the title: Bruges. (more…)

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I'm happy to be participating in the Keene college owl project. In conjunction with Keene's children's literature festival the college is asking children's illustrators to donate an illustration of an owl (the school's mascot) to their wonderful collection of original children's book art. And since Keene not too far from where I live and my old high school mascot was also an owl I was happy to contribute.

I started out with an owl on a branch.



I thought it turned out all right, but I figured Keene had plenty of owls sitting on tree branches. So I tried to think of something that might be a little more unusual. Something you don't usually see owls doing. Like, I don't know, shopping for moth-mallows at the local Owl-Mart.

Last week for my inaugural column here at OUPblog I talked about how new words bubble up into the English lexicon and how Oxford lexicographers judge which ones deserve inclusion in new editions of our dictionaries. But we’re keeping tabs on many other more subtle aspects of our changing language beyond the flashy lexical newcomers. Take spelling errors, for instance. Dictionaries are, of course, expected to give the standard spellings of words and phrases, reflecting what is generally considered the most correct and acceptable in written English. But sometimes common misspellings tell us fascinating things about how writers navigate the tricky waters of English orthography. And sometimes once-nonstandard spellings become so widely accepted that they even (gasp) make it into the pages of the dictionary. (more…)

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