My father is in love with
maps. On our hearth in the family room rests a withering State Farm Insurance atlas: only a quarter of the cover remains intact (the rest most likely consumed by one of our many pets over the years), the staples of the bind have fallen out, the corners of the pages roll toward the center fold. Inside, intertwining lines of neon pink and yellow slither along the rough pages--these are the roads my father has traversed over the seventy-five-and-counting years of his life, and he still keeps track of traveled highways each new route he takes. You can imagine, then, that my siblings and I from an early age were exposed to his many maps and, subsequently, were taught how to read them.
Here begins my rant.
Regardless of whether he/she has a map-loving father or not, everyone should know how to read a map. Everyone.
GPS, of course, has handicapped so many people today when it comes to
navigating the road. And it frustrates me. So when I came across a blog post titled
"Does the GPS Take the Fun Out of Driving? And Make Us Stupider, More Locked Up in Ourselves, and Less Open to the World?", I was obviously moved to read it. The Big Think post highlights the main points of another essay,
"GPS and the End of the Road" by Ari N. Schulman. It is a long read, but well worth it (with some fantastic references to Kerouac and other literary figures!).
NB: I will be using an atlas only on my road trip next summer.
