My weekly newspaper column: Lessons of hurricanes

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Also available online at:
www.cumberlink.com/articles/2005/09/22/editorial/rich_l...



Disasters bring geography refresher
By Rich Lewis, September 22, 2005

The American writer and journalist Ambrose Bierce is credited with the observation that "War is God's way of teaching geography to Americans."

In his wryly cynical way, Bierce made a good point there. People often rush to globes and maps to locate the places where our soldiers are fighting, and often follow that up with more research. And, of course, newspapers and television screens are filled with maps and other relevant geographic information about the war zone.

I remember pulling a double-page map of Iraq out of Newsweek magazine the week the U.S. invaded. In fact, the map is still stuck to the side of our refrigerator and I often look at it.

I've been thinking about Bierce's famous remark because it occurred to me that if he had been alive this year, he might have revised it to say, "War and hurricanes are God's way of teaching geography to Americans."

I don't know about you, but since Katrina, and now with the rapidly strengthening Rita, I've been endlessly looking at maps of the Gulf region.

That includes wall maps, but also the charts and maps provided online by various weather services — most often the ones at the NOAA National Hurricane Center (www.nhc.noaa.gov ).

Before Katrina, for example, I had a general idea of where New Orleans is, but nothing very specific. I certainly couldn't have told you whether Lake Ponchartrain was north or south of the French Quarter, or where the Mississippi was in relation to the lake.

But I know those details very well now — not to mention where the Ninth Ward and Lake Borgne are.

Rita has turned my attention westward, to Texas. As of this writing, the storm is predicted to land somewhere between Corpus Christi and Houston and I now have a much better sense of where and how far apart they are, and what's in between.

The Florida Keys were in the news earlier this week because Rita threatened them and prompted evacuations, but the place that repeatedly turned up in weather reports and bulletins that caught my attention was the Dry Tortugas.

I confess that if you had given me a geography test a month ago and asked where the Dry Tortugas are, I'd probably have said somewhere in the Pacific or maybe near Australia or off the coast of... what?... Peru?

Nah.

The Tortugas are a cluster of seven coral-and-sand reefs about 70 miles west of Key West. All together, they make up a Dry Tortugas National Park.

It's an interesting place, first discovered in 1513 by Ponce de Leon, the famous explorer.

Ponce found lots of "tortugas" or giant sea turtles on the reefs, hence the name. Sailors eventually realized there was no fresh water there, hence the "dry."

The U.S. military planned to build a massive fort there, but Fort Jefferson was never completed and is now a central attraction of the park. During the Civil War, the fort was a prison for captured Union deserters. Four of the men convicted in connection with Lincoln's assassination in 1865 were sent there as well.

Well, you can see I've been a good student in God's hurricane class.

However, all this education has been made much easier and more fun by a new tool you definitely have to check out.

In June, Google launched an online service called "Google Earth."

It's free, and for those of you who haven't tried it, it's amazing.

The small program, which you have to download and install on your computer (earth.google.com), uses satellite photos and other maps to allow you to tour the planet from as high in the sky or as close to the ground as you wish.

You can float or fly over the Earth's surface, dipping down to inspect a continent, country or street. One guy in Italy actually discovered an ancient Roman villa in his back yard while using Google Earth.

Whether your villa is visible depends on your location and the available satellite shots. I can see my house, but the image is fuzzy. However, my parents' house in Massachusetts is plainly visible, right down to the two pear trees in their back yard.

I didn't just find New Orleans on a flat map, but visually "walked" down its streets with Google Earth.

The program is especially popular with teens because they like to track down their own houses and schools and such. But they also then get caught up searching for things like the Great Wall of China and Yankee Stadium. Painless education.

Google Earth offers you the world in a way you've never seen it before — and makes navigating the globe as easy as moving your mouse.

Unfortunately, the program is not yet available for Macs, and you need a fast Internet connection and a fairly new PC to run it.

But when you can get it, get it. You may find yourself staying up long into the night traveling the globe and ooo-ing and ahhh-ing over what you find.

Yes, wars and hurricanes may be God's way of teaching geography, but Google Earth is the tool he needed to make the lessons stick.

Rich Lewis' e-mail address is:

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