Interested in Virginia’s political geography?  Stephen Farnsworth (UMW Political Science) and I just finished an article on using different cartographic techniques to visualize changes in the commonwealth’s electorate.  You’ll find it in the Virginia Newsletter, published by UVA.

Please see this announcement, which was sent to us by an alumna  Sales Associate – Federal Public Safety and Law Enforcement_DC final docx

Students in Dr. Holler’s GEOG 250 class mapped a new perspective on the 2012 Presidential election, presenting three variables in one map.  The best map from the class was a compromise of Hallie Gibson’s design and Luci Coleman’s explanatory text.  In the map, the winning party is coded in red for Republicans and blue for Democrats.  The average amount of time voters had to wait in line to cast their votes on election day is represented by proportional circle symbols.  The number of electoral votes for each state is represented by a cartogram: a value-by-area map where the value (electoral votes) is represented by areas (states).  Thus, states with many electoral votes are shown larger than normal on this map, and states with few electoral votes are shown smaller than normal.  Data of average waiting times was accessed from the New York Times article, “Waiting Times at Ballot Boxes Draw Scrutiny”, printed on February 4, 2013 and available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/us/politics/waiting-times-to-vote-at-polls-draw-scrutiny.html. The New York Times sourced the data from the 2012 Survey of the Performance of American Elections, conducted by Charles Stewart III, a professor at M.I.T.

On the last day of my recent visit to Rwanda I traveled from the capital city of Kigali, in the center of the country, through the hills to the town of Gisenyi in the Great African Rift Valley. It rained (no, make that poured) for part of the day, and a problem with the car meant that the journey back to Kigali was largely in the dark. Not ideal circumstances for taking photographs, but I managed to get enough footage to make a short, six-minute video giving some idea of the people and landscapes part Rwanda (I also took a lot of still photographs, posted here.)  

On the last day of my recent visit to Rwanda I traveled from the capital city of Kigali, in the center of the country, through the hills to the town of Gisenyi in the Great African Rift Valley. It rained (no, make that poured) for part of the day, and a problem with the car meant that the journey back to Kigali was largely in the dark. Not ideal circumstances for taking photographs, but I managed to get enough footage to make a short, six-minute video giving some idea of the people and landscapes part Rwanda (I also took a lot of still photographs, posted here.)  

For many years now, the Geography Department has hosted a research symposium and banquet. This year, they will occur on Wednesday April 17.

The symposium provides an opportunity for students to showcase their research over the past year; anyone interested may sit in on any or all of the presentations. Presentations take place in Monroe 240 throughout the day, while posters are in Monroe 319. We will have several sessions and encourage you to attend!!

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  I did something very unusual for me last Sunday: I went to church. I didn’t go to just any church; I went to an evensong service in Worcester’s magnificent cathedral, located at a site where Christian worship has been taking place since 680 CE. The structure I visited is the new cathedral; construction on it began in 1084, and took several centuries to complete. From the outside it is an imposing structure, with ornate Gothic spires, and a 62 meter high tower that dominates to town skyline. The interior is even more awe-inspiring; its huge size and lofty ceiling made me feel small and insignificant as I sat waiting for the service to start  (and even smaller and more insignificant when I noticed  that I was sitting couple of meters away from the tomb of King John, who died in 1216.)   Then came the music: how could anyone not be humbled and moved by the sounds of this huge pipe-organ and voices of the Cathedral choir in a place as beautiful as this? Despite the magnificence of the Evensong service,  I counted fewer than fifty people in the congregation, huddled together on a few pews in chancel of the vast building; at [...]

The past When I started writing this blog a little over four years ago, I thought that it really would be a blog. I would regularly write short posts in which I would use my own experiences and observations to help readers see ordinary places and issues from a geographic perspective. My readers, I thought, would mainly be students in my World Regional Geography classes at the University of Mary Washington, and I hope they would learn a little bit about both geography and  current events from it. Most of all, I hoped they would enjoy doing so. Some of what I had planned has come to pass. Most of what I have written has been based on places I have visited in the course of my travels and the people I have met along the way. Some of my posts focus on issues rather than places (gun violence, for example, or the Arab Spring protests,) and most are at least partly (and in at least one case completely) personal, at least insofar as I make myself part of the events and places I describe. But, as things have turned out, this isn’t really a blog, nor was it ever [...]

We have received several notices for internships and employment opportunities lately.  I have posted these on the Geography Club bulletin board (outside the labs) but am also posting them here.

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A little belated – but it is ONLY Day 2 in Week 2! I do already feel behind…

In this post,  announcing some internship and volunteer opportunities AmeriCorps Flyer version 3 small and  Announcements Jan 13

Add to that information about the 50th Anniversary Endowment Fund Email announcement sp 13 plus 50thAnniversaryEndowmentApp and Recommendation Form The deadline for Spring 2013 is Friday January 25 – but if you are thinking of a future project, read this information to see how you might fund it

The Geography Club had its first meeting today (Wednesday Jan 23) -highlights!

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