Happy Thanksgiving!

Tomorrow is the always great Turkey Day, a wonderful time for getting together with family and loved ones, counting your blessings, and eating until you pass out.

What's that? You don't have a recipe for the potluck picked out?

Well, luckily, in 2009 the New York Times compiled what people were searching for the day before Thanksgiving using AllRecipes.com, and made a series of maps showing where those recipes were most frequently searched. That should be a lovely place to get some inspiration and choose something to make for your family. By far, the most popular search was for "sweet potato casserole"-- and with good cause. Those things are delicious!

It's interesting to see which search terms were extremely localized, such as "corn pudding" or "broccoli casserole" (visible to the left of the main map in the image below):

Hopefully flipping through those maps should give you some ideas, or at least a little entertainment.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

LocalHarvest.org

Have you been hearing about the economic and environmental benefits of buying local produce, but are unsure of how to go about looking for the resources necessary to find what you need? Look no further! LocalHarvest.org, founded in 1998, is a very helpful website that shows you farmers' markets, grocery stores, and many other places where you can get sustainably-grown produce, grass-fed meats, and lots of other interesting goods.

Here's a screenshot of the map on the front page zoomed in on Ann Arbor.

And there's no reason to think that produce will be unavailable during the winter months, either-- some of these places offer frozen or preserved foods as well as fresh.

Common Census

The CommonCensus Map Project is an attempt to map the 'spheres of influence' present in the United States, as reported by people who visit the site. It's interesting to see how, in some cases, people feel more influenced by big cities in neighboring states than anything within their own state.

As you can see from the zoom-in feature, the two most influential cities in Michigan are listed as Detroit and Grand Rapids, and we lose a corner of the state to Chicago's influence.

The site is still collecting data, so feel free to go and add your voice!

We're moving!

If you've been to the Map Library recently, you may have noticed that some changes are afoot. Later this month, we'll be moving to the second floor of the Hatcher Graduate Library to form part of the new Stephen S. Clark Library for Maps, Government Information and Spatial and Numeric Data Services. All of our wooden map cases were moved downstairs earlier this week, and more cases are moving today.


Moving cases out of the Map Library

  

Clark Library entranceway and display cases

The new reference desk

West side of the library

 

East side, facing the connector to the Shapiro Library



We're planning to open to the public on Monday, November 14th. There will also be an official opening celebration on Friday, December 2nd at 4pm.

Happy Halloween!

Ah, Halloween. That special time of year (and my personal favorite holiday) where people don costumes and eat far more candy than they should. An occasion for spending time with friends and frightening off the evil spirits, and carving jack-o'-lanterns to remind us of the souls trapped in Purgatory. Or just because it's a fun tradition. 

In honor of Halloween tomorrow, here is a map created by Esri showing where the most money in America was spent on children's Halloween costumes last year.

Unsurprisingly, urban areas tend to spend more money, though sometimes they are outshone by the folk in suburban areas, which is shown by doughnut-like shapes of darker color-- for examples, look at the ones around Minneapolis, Minnesota, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Orlando, Floria.

I hope you all dress up and have a happy and safe Halloween!

Here is a larger version of the map.

Watersheds in Michigan

Watersheds, or drainage basins, are areas of land where all the water under it and all the water that drains off of it ends up in the same place. Oftentimes sediment, pollution, and fertilizer runoff can be deposited and concentrated in their watersheds, which is why it's important to remember to be cautious when dealing with substances that may end up in the groundwater.

The Hydrologic Studies Unit of the Land and Water Management Division in the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality made this helpful map to let people know which major watershed they were in.

Washtenaw County is mostly in the Huron watershed, but fairly large parts of it are also in the Raisin and Stony Creek watersheds.

See a larger and more complete version (including the U.P. and the legend) of the map here, and read more about watersheds here or here.

Fall foliage maps

The Weather Channel has kindly provided an interactive map for those who want to know when the peak colors of fall will be gracing the branches of trees in their area.

Here we can see that, in early October, the Ann Arbor region (as well as most of the rest of the mitten) was still a little short of its peak:

Stay tuned, folks! The best is yet to come!