Art, Family, Fantasy, History, home, Travel, Uncategorized

Push Pin Traveler

32 Comments

My father had a huge map of the world mounted on a bulletin board and hung in his bedroom. He had two colors of push pins… white ones for places where he and my mom had played tennis and yellow ones for places where he had jogged.  There were pins in a few countries outside the US and lots of pins inside the US.  A lot more white ones for tennis than yellow ones for jogging.

Many of my folks things went into storage when they downsized and after a few different “clean up the storage” sessions, no one is quite sure what happened to the map. I’ve always wished that I had it.  As someone who travels for their work, I’ve always thought it would be fun to have a map.

YA and I have had two bulletin boards for years and made the decision a couple of weeks ago that we could easily consolidate everything onto one board. You know where this is going, right?  I went online the next day and ordered a world map and a box of multi-colored push pins.  I now have the map mounted, but of course, tried to guess the size screws I needed for the job, so now I’ll be making another trip to the hardware store.

I will not be doing any kind of color coding but have decided that each US state will only get one pin, even if I’ve been to multiple places in that state (although I am debating about a separate pin for the Grand Canyon – my map, my rules, right?) I did decide that I would wait to put the pins in until the map is on the wall, since I don’t want to risk any of the pins falling out to become dog treats while I’m installing it.  Hopefully it will be up in the next day or so.

You have a space on the wall. What would you like to put there?

 

 

32 thoughts on “Push Pin Traveler”

  1. is the grand canyon one of your top spots? it’s been on my bucket list for years and i hope to get it done sometime soon.
    i had a friend who put a world map 8 ‘ tall and 15’ wide on his office wall. he said he saw the msp in a catalog and measured his wall and couldn’t imagine anything else there after that
    he put pushpins in it too and traveled quite a bit and i could see how each pushpin could remind you of an event or memory that would be a plus. personally i think one per state is missing an opportunity
    fargo and medora give me completely different impressions of north dakota
    china is so big and so different when you move a couple thousand miles kind of like new york vs new mexico
    my walls are appreciated and utilized. art is the usual thing but in my new transient life sometimes i just let it slide. i look at walls and have great ideas if things to do with them but… it requires that i find the idea paring get it up to snuff and surround it with the finishing touches that make it work. when i do that i actually love it so maybe i should just bite the billet and do it. life’s too short not to be in the midst of the nice.

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        1. A friend of mine once said that Fargo Moorhesd was a nice place to live but you really wouldn’t want to visit there.

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  2. I have a large framed laminated world map hanging in my den with colored pins documenting my travel destinations. I have pins on every continent (and Oceania) with the exception of Antarctica – which I hope to remedy in the next year and a half. So far my country count is just over 50. There are some gaps: in the US, some deep south states plus Alaska; in Europe I have managed to miss several biggies including Norway, Poland, Switzerland, the Greek Islands, Ireland, and Scotland; in South America I still want to visit Ecuador (and the Galapagos); I will be in Morocco this October which finishes up Africa except for Namibia and more of Botswana.

    In re-reading this it sounds like I am bragging, which is not my intention. Travel is one of my passions and I am lucky enough to have friends who share that passion. It seems like no matter where we travel, our list of places to discover keeps getting longer. There are so many benefits from seeing other countries/cultures – especially discovering that people around the world, no matter their skin color, religion, economic status, or other labels, are not so different from us.

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  3. my mom moved into a one bedroom apt with very little wall space and she put up 5 pictures and was out of space. she is the kind of person who finds interesting buttons and mounts them in a picture frame and so i grabbed a bunch of those things and did a collage on the wall then another one in another spot it looks great feels great and is fun to do.
    i am amazed when i go into someone’s house who has blank wall. i don’t get it .
    hospitals with space left open i don’t get it
    i do have an artist friend who leave walls at a minimum. she lives in a river valley and overlooks a marvelous view and said she doesn’t want to detract from the natural beauty. i get it but that’s why an art gallery everywhere at the hospital is the right thing.

    i have recently began looking at boring buildings as i drive along ( yesterday i took a picture to design and forward) and i envision the mosaics made of ceramic glazed tiles etc.

    a new project for my spare time

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    1. Yes, all the asst. living places my mom has lived in have had hallways lined with art, probably that residents brought with them and donated to the cause. She loved looking at all the art as we traveled through. The nursing home she’s in now has some, but it needs more thought.

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  4. My walls are pretty full. I would have no problem finding space for a certificate from the State of ND in honor of my service and wishing me well in my retirement. That space will go unfilled for a couple of years.

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  5. I regard myself as a person who is–and always has been–too poor to travel. But when I do the sums, my life’s journey doesn’t look so puny. I’ve traveled to 26 states plus three US owned lands (Washington DC, Virgin Islands, Dry Tortugas). I’ve traveled to four Canadian provinces. My list of “foreign” travel is shamefully short: England,Scotland, Wales.

    I’ve traveled little in the US south. Except for New York and Virginia, I’ve never set foot in the Eastern seaboard states. Notable omissions in my US travel: Texas, Alaska and the Grand Canyon.

    I have New Zealand friends who have visited every significant US National Park. I’ve only been to four.

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  6. I love maps. The idea of a map on the wall has always appealed to me. I have one of the Boundary Waters on one wall. I’d like a lovely topographical map of Lake Superior.

    I haven’t done much traveling so far in my life. I’ve worked instead. I’m not sure that’s been the right choice, but that’s what I’ve done. Because of limited financial resources (poverty), I travel to pretty much the same place all the time: Lake Superior. I can drive there and I can afford basic lodging or camping. And I can’t imagine anything more beautiful than a Lake Superior sunrise on a quiet September morning. I have a very nice memory of staying at Steve’s cabin and enjoying the quiet of the place.

    I do have a travel bucket list. I’d like to go to Greece, Italy, France, New Zealand, England and Ireland. The only two foreign countries I’ve been to are Canada and Mexico. I’ve been in a good number of US states: Hawaii, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Washington D.C., East and West Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina.

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      1. Yes, that is a very pretty map. I have one in mind that I’ve seen somewhere. I think I t was a USGS topographical map in a scale 1:24,000 which showed depths in shades of deepening blues. It might have been a watershed map. I’ve looked around on the USGS website but it’s hard to know what you’re looking at because they often say “Image Unavailable.” The maps are really inexpensive, at $9 or $10, but they fold them. I’d like to see one in a store. There are also nice maps at the Lake Superior Magazine gift shop in Duluth.

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  7. OT: I am, I think, the oldest Baboon, so I’m experiencing things that might happen to others when they get this old. In the move back to St Paul, my TV took a fatal blow to the face, so I had to replace it. Then I spent two weeks in humiliation because I couldn’t turn it on . . . or at least I couldn’t get the cable TV feed to work. Because I’m old, I blamed myself, even though five smarter and younger folks struck out when they tried to help. Then I paid $160 to bring a Best Buy technician here. He was gone in ten minutes, feeling he’d fixed me. But then I found he hadn’t really fixed the problem.

    Yesterday I did what I have come to dread: I called Comcast customer service. That call lasted nearly an hour. It would have been frustrating except the cs agent was patient. Then I had a blinding insight. Each night the cable TV box does an “update.” After each update the box went wonky. The problem wasn’t me being old. It wasn’t my TV being new. It was a misbegotten cable TV box. Ha!

    A Comcast technician was just here. He confirmed my analysis, replaced the box and left when we confirmed everything is perfect. His parting line was, “See ya later.” I said, “I hope to hell you don’t.” And now I’m smiling. I’m still a geezer, but I’m coping pretty well.

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      1. Thanks, BiR. Actually, I’m going to ask Comcast to acknowledge their fault. I struggled two weeks with deficient equipment, and it was responsible for that fee I paid to Best Buy. We’ll see what they say.

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  8. Planning big trips is so stressful, I have almost come to the conclusion that I want to do more exploring “locally”, using the broader meaning of local. There are plenty of things in upper Minnesota, and then the Driftless region (the Effigy Mounds come to mind) that I’ve never seen. I’m glad I made it over to France, and can imagine myself doing planned tours to other countries, if I had tons of money. But so far I don’t, so I think I’ll maybe go deep rather than wide.

    And to answer the question – what wall space??
    What space there is has quite a variety of either sentimental stuff, or art that appeals to me (and maybe only me!). Only a couple of things couldn’t be replaced if I came upon something enticing at a thrift shop. : )

    Some walls have practical stuff – I keep a framed map of Winona in the hallway, for convenience when we want to find an unfamiliar address. earring and necklace holders adorn one wall of my bedroom, and I have one of those plastic sleeves taped to a kitchen cupboard door where I can slip in whatever recipe I’m using (no space for one of those cookbook holders!).

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  9. I have always loved maps. When I was a kid, and dad was at sea, I always kept track of where he was on a world map on my bedroom wall. I did a lot of vicarious traveling in those days. I saved all of the colorful stamps on the letters he sent home from places that seemed exotic to me. Places like India, South Africa, Australia, and the United States.

    It’s ironic that the US is where I ended up. It was not a place that was high on my list of places I wanted to go. Of course, it never occurred to me that I’d move away from Denmark permanently.

    Most “exotic” place I’ve visited: Uzbekistan – I think, though not a place I’d want to live.

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    1. I share your fascination with maps, PJ. Maps comfort us by showing us where we are, and they thrill us by suggesting the way to experience new places. I believe the opening pages of James Dickey’s Deliverance offer a wonderful description of the appeal of maps. Meanwhile I’m watching my grandson. He has an uncanny knack for maps. In his mind he has a perfect view of how the world is arranged and how he fits in.

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  11. One of my favorite maps is from the trip that Child and I took on the train from Minneapolis to St Louis. We got an atlas from the bookstore and for every single little town that we went through, we put a little sticker on the map. It turned to be a great project and I used it in the scrap book of that trip

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  13. I’d like to take some photos of the places I’ve gone to and hang them up. Although I have plans to travel a lot so that may not be a possibility in a while. A map may end up being a better idea for me.

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