AN ORANGE TREE FOREST (PART 2)

Let me digress from the book to talk about real Southern California orange trees.  Those are European olive trees above, but I chose them because they're similar in appearance to the unusual type of orange tree that I used to see on a college campus near where I live.  I liked to imagine that the trees were planted by David Fairchild, a locally famous botanist who is reputed to have been the man who introduced the Eucalyptus tree to this city.


Anyway, this campus grove was an incredibly magical and quiet place. You could easily imagine trolls and witches living there. That's amazing when you consider that there was always a hurly burly of students about fifty yards away.  The grove was accessible, and much loved, but few people wondered into it because the ground was soft and inconvenient to sandals and tennis shoes. I never saw orange throwers in there, never graffiti, and I never saw any homeless people. Most importantly, the trees were small enough that you could pack a whole magical forest into a small space. 


That last point is why I'm writing this. A tiny forest is the perfect solution for urban parks and backyards, and yet you never hear orange groves spoken about in that context. What it amounts to is that an important landscaping tool has been overlooked. That's why I was so glad to see this kids book. It's all about the fun you can have in a miniature forest.  

AN ORANGE TREE FOREST (PART 3)

Above, the momentum of the hedgerows (trees) suddenly stops at the base of the steep little hills. Nothing to do but climb over them, something kids would be only too happy to do. Of course the hills would have to appear more natural than they do here. 

Here (above) we see monkeys running across the treetops like they were paved roads.  Hmmmm, that's interesting. I guess if you had planks up there, you really could run along the tops of this kind of tree. At least if you were a kid you could.

BTW, check out the shapes and spaces in this picture. Small, densely-packed trees stand like grazing cattle on closely mowed grass.  Narrow little paths wind around the scene, giving scale to everything, and the ground is only an inch higher than the creek. I've never seen flat look so appealing.

Notice the two trees at the top that form an entrance way to the scene, and another appearance of those steep little hills in the background. Could a real landscape be made to look like this?

I hear you saying, "'Not a very handsome page," and you're right...but wait, what's that in the top of the tree?  Monkeys...and they're sitting on the top of the palm tree!  It never occurred to me til now that you could fasten a chair to the top of a palm tree and sit in it, just watching life go by on the ground.  Of course you'd have to share the space with rats and spiders. I'll bet the spiders get as big as crabs up there.

AN EXPERIMENT

'Just an experiment to see if I could "glue" two halves of a picture together in a single post. 

This is my favorite Mad cover ever.  Buyers must have felt that they got their money's worth just for the cover, and everything inside was free.  


I can't wait to see how this will interfere with the right sidebar. Don't blame Blogger. It's my fault...I want to watch the collision.

MORE MAPS (PART 1)

I hadn't intended to put up more maps, but I just came across a treasure trove of interesting cartography, and I couldn't resist putting up some examples here.  The map above is Japanese, from the time of World War l.

Above, a detail showing Western Europe. Note the arrows in Germany, including an arrow labled "Japan." What does that refer to?

I did all this research in an attempt to answer Katie's request for the address of the guy selling posters of Keith Thompson's "The Great War 1914," shown in a post below. I finally found it: 


http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/grandmap.html


The price seems steep considering the size of the poster, which is only 13" X 19." On the other hand, if the poster is half as beautiful as the reproduction on this site, it'll be worth it. 

MORE MAPS (PART 2)

Impressive, eh?  Now I feel bad about praising the Hockney-style map in one of the previous posts.  Sure it was pretty, but as the illustration above demonstrates,  for tasks like this you just can't beat draftsmanship.

Of course the best draftsmen are cartoonists (example above). It's hard to resist the conclusion that cartoonists should rule the world, but alas, the world is unconvinced.

MAPS & GLOBES (PART 1)

Globes of the Earth are fascinating to look at, but they're seldom done right.  Most people who make them seem to think that globes are just round maps. They're not. Globes are meant to awe. They should be big enough to firm up the idea of planetary volume and the wonders of physics on a grand scale. They're meant to evoke mystery and to provoke philosophical questions.  

Globes should never contain writing or be brightly colored, or contain distracting details like clouds.  They should be dark (but not black) and brooding like the one above. They should be understated.

Maps are different. They're for telling you the location and relative distance of places. A good map contains something startling, something that forces you to wake up and see the subject in a different light, like the raised map above. My favorite maps are of distant places that I'll probably never see.

A good size for a kids globe is the one above. It's big enough so you can't take in all the details in one glance, even of the side facing you. Even on a globe this size, there should be no writing and no bright colors. Mountains should only be raised very slightly and there should be no color coding for elevation.

MAPS & GLOBES (PART 2)

This (above) is a map that you can buy (click to enlarge). I think it's about 40 bucks. If anyone's interested I'll try to dig up the address.

Map people tend to like other pictures on adventure themes.  Here's (above) an interesting one.