The Globe

This color font in honor of the beautiful giant blue ball we live on, Earth, as seen from space, right, it’s always swirling blues and greens and whisping white clouds patches…

Aren’t we GORGEOUS?!

At the Jr High open house, they had paper mache globes that the kids made in Art class, hung all about in the hallways.. I wish I had my camera, they were so cute and all so different and unique… One was squashed and smashed in, it looked like the kid put his fist through it, but then he painted it just the same, and it was… tragic, and at the same time, adorable…sigh…

Oh, it’s a theme around here recently, globes …  I spent all last week teaching parallels and meridians, latitudes and longitudes… in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades… I was really on a roll by the end of the week, I was perfecting my basketball-finger spin with a 24″ diameter globe… just kidding, I would never spin such a beautiful piece of equipment, especially since I’ve been shopping for globes recently, and am far, far, far too well acquainted with the actual monetary VALUE of that 24″ diameter globe… Mamma pajama! Globes be expensive, ya’ll… Don’t take globes fer granted…

A couple years ago, I sorta had a tiny “globe fetish” going on… the fetish was tiny, not the globes… I started collecting old globes at yard sales… until I had 3 or 4 rolling around in my house, I even had one hanging from a string in the dining room for a while… Eventually I got tired of kicking them around, re-taping them together at the Equator, explaining to my kids why there’s no longer a place called Czechoslovakia… which always led to depressing explanations of the unexplainable…… ethnic cleansing… war… occupation…sigh… old globes can be DEPRESSING, ya’ll!!  Eventually my little collection of out-dated globes found their way back to the Goodwill, or out to the garbage can…

Also, speaking of places that don’t exist any more… my favorite word, I think, in all the English language, should anyone ever enquire, is “Abyssinia”, which used to what are now the countries called “Ethiopia” and “Eritria”…  I prefer Abyssinia… If I had another child, I would name it Abyssinia, and never shorten it to Abby. NEVER.

Not that there’s anything wrong with Abby…

I just love Abyssinia.

I also love “Artemissia.” If I had twins, I would name them Artemissia and Abyssinia. Well, that’s not going to happen…. I will have to get some more Boston Terrier puppies… I can’t let two such beautiful names go to waste… is what I’m thinking…

I have Artemisia growing out back in a giant galvanized tub, it’s the softest, most lovely plant, some days I go outside and I stick my FACE directly into the plant, so I can feel it against my skin… and then I open my eyes in there and pretend I’m a teeny tiny person in a giant, soft, fluffy forest…

The reason I’m shopping for globes recently is this: a while back I bought a black Replogle globe at the Salvation Army for $8. At the time I thought I was that was a bit much to pay for a globe… I thought The Army was rippin’ me off….  little did I know what a bargain that was! It’s actually a really beautiful globe, with dual-axis-meridian mounting, which is crucial, CRUCIAL I TELL YOU, because if you don’t have dual-axis-meridian mounting you are not living! You are not gonna be looking at Antarctica very well either! Dual axis is the bomb!

So we’ve had this globe about a year now, we keep it in the dining room, it’s got pointy little mountains, (that’s called “physiographic relief,” ask for it by name…) and the  beautiful black oceans…. Plus the stand itself is a a heavy, embossed metal, it’s super fancy and I just never noticed before how beautiful it actually is… or how totally and completely WORTH the $8 I paid for it… until I started shopping for globes…

The reason I’m shopping for globes recently is this: So Zack and Franki use the globe a lot, and it’s cool, because it’s actually an Up-to-Date globe, Eritria is Eritria, the Czechs have their own Republic and the Slovaks have their own… Slovakia, or Land Of Slovaks… Slovakians… whatever… I hope everyone’s happy with what they got… even the Uzbekistanianites… So the kids use the Bargain Globe a LOT, expecially Zack, Zack has become some sort of a Social Studies SUPER GEEK, he started with the 50 States, and now he’s memorizing all the capitols of the world, PLUS the State capitols, PLUS the presidents, and did I mention his preoccupation with all things DELAWARE, he’s really into Delaware…

Well, all of this globe usage was bound to lead to problems…

One day last week, there was one heck of a ruckus in my house, between my children. Franki and Zack were fighting over the globe. I knoooooow, what a couple of nerds, right?! They were actually scuffling and snatching at and grabbing and struggling back and forth for that globe! I had to break it up! It was the funniest fight ever! I had to confiscate the friggin’ GLOBE! I felt ridiculous putting the globe on top of the refrigerator, to which all Objects of Dispute are relegated… 

That’s when I realized what I had to do for the boy’s November birthday… his own globe. I went for the larger size,  16: diameter, mostly because my own eye-sight is going, the boy is always calling me over to look at something on the globe, and durnd if I can read those tiny cities! Also, I wanted a floor globe for him, because for whatever reason, he is super impressed by floor globes… Dual-axis meridian mounting, and physiological relief mapping, these were prerequisites, of course… It’s also got topographic shading! Can you imagine, all this in ONE globe? : 

 

It arrives today sometime, I just ordered it yesterday from Amazon! It ships from somewhere near Harrisburg… must be our destiny!!! Okay, so I’m a little excitable about globes…

 

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