Places I've called home and schools I've attended
Maps. They can tell us a lot about a lot. Yes, that statement was vague because, as I’m learning, maps are good for specific reasons, and, depending on what reasons you are using them for, you can leave out or include too little/too much. In the field of Religious Studies, maps can be incredibly useful. Sure, you have your maps that can distinguish between certain religious populations who live here or there, even finer tuned maps of “color lines,” so to say, showing partitions between religious communities in a particular neighborhood/city, but maps can also enlighten us on a myriad of other sorts of information such as pilgrimages. In an earlier post, I talked about the Braj area, where a certain David Haberman discussed his journey through a Krishna Bhakti pilgrimage and explored the awesome devotional experiences of Krishna bhaktis. Haberman included pictures of maps in his book to help the reader envision what/where he was. However, black ink on white paper, albeit a map, can only take the reader so far.
Enter in the digital age. Now the popular at large has access to map building programs free at their fingertips and the possibilities are endless. Where Haberman was retelling pastimes of Krishna in the lush Braj area, Google Earth shows that the area isn’t quite so lush, in fact, it borders desert land. It looks rocky. Now the reader can apply this information to the book and see how BIG the Braj pilgrimage is and the conditions people walk through barefoot or in constant prostration!
I’ve decided to take a spin on this map making technology and gain some practice with it in hopes of showing religious data in this fascinating new way one day. I started off small, just a pilgrimage of my own: Home. I was a military child and never had the opportunity of growing up amongst friends in one spot for a majority of my life. Because of this, I have no place to call home. Everywhere I go is home in a sense, less I orient myself to my dear mother. In that case, Ohio is home, but it still doesn’t feel like it should. So, where I am, I am home. This has both its advantages and disadvantages but that is neither here nor there. At the moment, we are focusing on maps. The embedded map is of my home. It’s my own pilgrimage in my attempt to find home, I suppose.
I tried creating this in Google Earth, but that was a terribly difficult program to figure out. After three (3) hours I gave up. I moved on to Google Maps and had a much easier time. I lost the luxury of the 3D images of Google Earth and some more complicated applications, but I don’t even think I’m ready to go all that deep just yet, anyway. Google Maps was simple: drop a pin here, look up pictures, draw lines, and BOOM. There it is. There are some base map options that looked really cool, but, for this particular project, I felt that the satellite map was the best. This way one can see the types of lush, or lack thereof, environments I’ve lived in. The other base maps really took away from environment but they could have added other elements to it if I wanted to really focus on one particular city I’ve lived in. The only thing I wish I could have done is created a tour. Instead, I had to draw lines, number them, and hope that the reader is able to follow the complicated key that I created. I labeled points by dates and Google Maps didn’t really have a good way of indicating some sort of sequential order that I could customize. A tour, some sort of interactive platform like Prezi, could have really helped any map reader: start here, move there, pictures, little ti bits of info, move to the next. I know there is a tour building program out there on the interwebs, so next time I will use that.
All in all, getting a stronger grip on these kinds of programs can really elevate my field. Seeing the physical space people practice their religion is another tool under my belt that strengths my insights. It opens another world of possibilities and I’m excited for this new adventure.
