globes

In the age of Google Earth, watches that triangulate and cars with built-in GPS, there’s something about a globe - a spherical representation of the world in miniature - that somehow endures. When did you last see a globe in an office, or a living room? American schools have seen a decline,too. 

I've always loved globes and physical maps. There was something about spinning a globe and putting my finger on it to see where I would land. Would it be in an ocean, on a place I knew or a place that was unfamiliar? A globe is something that connects us to the planet that we live on. It fueled my wanderlust in grade school and continues to do so to this day.

A globe also serves as a history lesson. Countries change their names and an old globe serves as a reminder to countries that underwent a change of name. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics changed its name to Russia in 1991.I had a friend who was born in Tanganyika which, in 1964, became the United Republic of Tanzania. 

Even though globes are not as popular as they were, the human desire to “find our place in the cosmos” has helped globes survive their original purpose - navigation - and the internet. 

"When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty."

~John Muir