The Cartographer’s Guild encouraged me in my map making. Since then I noticed how maps disinter our understanding of the world. Maps do not show us where things are or where things were. They reveal who we are and how we think.
Take Hecataeus:
He’s missing a couple two or three continents. His world is all he sees.
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As an aficionado of Gilded Age America, I covet all things wood, brass and leather. I made a board about it on my Pinterest immediately after receiving my confirmation e-mail last June. If you scroll through, you’ll see a lot of steampunk but that’s only because steam-punky things take up a very small sliver of Gilded Age lore. There’s also tons of stuff you might find at The Art of Manliness site or even the old Whiskerino themes. Basically, some day I want to work in an office that crosses that of Indiana Jones:
The critics somewhere are poking fun of Indiana Beach, I’m sure. They’re making fun of the lazy river for being named “Action River” – the antithesis of lazy. They’re laghing at the pond-scum covered sand in the makeshift beach. They’re scoffing at the water park that, if Schliterbahn is a 10, ranks somewhere around the 1 end of the spectrum. Milk’s shooting out their noses as they laugh at the wooden coasters that shrink only a few hours north from Holiday World’s award-winning thrill rides. The condos wouldn’t be big enough, the lake not wide enough, the trails not daring enough, the food not delicate enough for their liking. They might even take a jab at the patrons who, like me, wore palm tree board shorts and a plaid pearl-snap shirt together.
Taken as separate entities, the water park, theme park, arcade, condominium, lake, trails, shops and food joints rot away next to competitors like Schliterbahn, Holiday World, and Six Flags LA (is that even still open?)
But we didn’t take them separately for family vacation. Our condo was inside the park grounds so I walked a meek 100 feet to the water park and theme rides. I could cart-wheel thrice in the morning to land on the boat dock and hit the glassy surface of Lake Schafer at seven A.M. whichever days I wanted. (Weeee bit of a morning person). There was plenty of space to write, read three books, play cornhole with the fam, make a giant whirlpool, learn to wakeboard finally, eat homemade french fries, towel-pop my cousin’s boyfriend with a colossal rat-tail, try two new coasters (both worth it), loose my lucky white kerchief in the lazy river only to find it again and watch fireworks explode over the water from the vantage point of the scrambler (some mortar debris landed in our seat). Yes, critics, you’re right. When taken alone, the component parts of Indiana Beach are lame compared their peers.
Taken together, they made the perfect family vacation.
It’s unhelpful to segregate separate segments of a unified whole in order to tear it down. What would be more helpful would be to compare it against other all-inclusive family vacations.
Seriously, if it was good enough for Al Capone to build a house there, it’s good enough for me.
