Geography and Quotations

What Geography Is:

I hardly ever go anywhere that, upon hearing I'm a geographer, someone asks me what geography really is and what I really do - as if geography is simply my cover for clandestine activities. Most people seem to be under the impression that geography is merely memorizing the locations of place names. Although that is an important and useful skill for anyone, not just for a geographer, it has about as much relevance to geography as a vocabulary table has to literature. Geographic literacy is necessary for us to understand global events and cultures. Geography, as a spatial science, can be applied to the study of a vast array of subjects because everything has place. Historians look at the world chronologically or temporally, political scientists and economists look at the world structurally, geographers look at the world spatially. But geography also draws upon other fields, becoming interdisciplinary in nature - not narrowly focusing on one topic because in this world today things are very interrelated and affect other things and are affected by other things in a countless variety of ways.

Basically, there are five themes of geography:

1. Location - Relative Location and Absolute Location
2. Place - Human Characteristics and Physical Characteristics
3. Human-Environmental Interactions - Humans adapt to the environment, Humans modify the environment, Humans depend on the environment
4. Movement - People, Goods, Ideas
5. Regions - Formal, Functional, Vernacular (perceptual)

The study of geography can be divided into six elements (as described by the National Geography Standards - http://www.ncge.org/publications/tutorial/standards/):

1. The world in spatial terms - The structuring of geographic information, the ordering of knowledge into real and mental maps, and the spatial analysis of that information.
2. Places and regions - The basic units of geography and how those units are organized differently by different people.
3. Physical systems - Physical and environmental phenomena, such as land forms and climate, and their interaction through ecosystems, renewable resources, and the hydrologic cycle.
4. Human systems - Human populations and their economic activities, migration patterns, settlement patterns, territorial arrangements, and political conflicts.
5. Environment and society - Interaction between physical and human systems and identification of the central role of resources in environment-society links.
6. The uses of geography - how to apply geography as a component and tool to understand the past, interpret the present, and plan for the future.

I found the following article by Harm de Blij, a leading geographer, interesting: http://oupblog.typepad.com/oupblog/2005/08/uncle_sam_wants.html

Here is another interesting link. This is a geographic literacy survey commissioned by National Geographic of 18-24 year olds in 2002. The results are both surprising and disturbing:http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geosurvey/

On to other things...

I was also just reminded of a quotation by Winston Churchill that I heard Dr. Henry Kissinger quote at a speech he gave that I attended a few months ago. I thought this quote by Winsotn Churchill is still quite applicaple today, which is probably why Dr. Kissinger chose to end his talk with it:

"What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun."

Also, since I'm in a quotations mood, here are some more passages and quotes that I've admired for quite some time:

If I Had My Child to Raise Over Again
by Diane Loomans, from Full Esteem Ahead
“If I had my child to raise all over again, I’d finger paint more, and point the finger less.I’d do less correcting, and more connecting.I’d take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.I would care to know less, and know to care more.I’d take more hikes and fly more kites.I’d stop playing serious, and seriously play.I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars.I’d do more hugging, and less tugging.I would be firm less often, and affirm much more.I’d build self-esteem first, and the house later.I’d teach less about the love of power,And more about the power of love.”

The Art of Giving
By Kent Nerburn, from Letters to My Son
“Remember to be gentle with yourself and others. We are all children of chance, and none can say why some fields will blossom and others lay brown beneath the August sun. Care for those around you. Look past your differences. Their dreams are no less than yours, their choices in life no more easily made. And give. Find in any way you can, of whatever you possess. To give is to love. To withhold is to wither. Care less for your harvest than how it is shared, and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace.”

"To act and act wisely when the time for action comes,
To wait and wait patiently when it is time for repose,
Put mankind in accord with the rising and falling tides of affairs
So that with nature and law at his back, and truth and
Beneficence as his beacon light, he may accomplish wonders."
-- Helena Petrova Blavatsky

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
-- Mark Twain