Vaughan Cornish : geographer

Vaughan Cornish was one of the most influential geographers of his time. He was born in the 1860s in Suffolk, and had a career spanning 60 years. He was President of the Geographical Association during that time.

Last Friday, while putting some boxes down in the warehouse at Solly Street in preparation for the official opening (of which more later), I found a brown cardboard box, which was labelled "Vaughan Cornish Original Prints" and excitedly opened it to find about 50 large prints on thick card, several of them stamped as being entered for the 1904 St. Louis photographic exposition. Took a few images of some of them...

Some of them featured pictures of wave forms, an area which Cornish was particularly interested in.
I loved the silvered blue finish on some of the prints, which had faded in the century since they had been made, and then hand labelled by Cornish himself. There was also a print taken after an earthquake in the Caribbean, which I had read about him experiencing (he was injured in the event), and a snowdrift in Manitoba (another area that he was interested in)
Made me re-visit a plan that I had about 5 years ago to write a short book(let) on Cornish, when I did a bit of research about him.
Might be worth rethinking... would be a good excuse to delve into the GA and RGS archives, and also apparently those of the University of Oxford.

There's a good article on Vaughan by Andrew Goudie (another influential geographer) on JSTOR, and the abstract provides a few clues to follow up on his various interests.

I also have a copy of the book "The Beauties of Scenery", which was an attempt of his to objectively evaluate the landscape, and is worth hunting out in a second hand book-shop.

Google Books has a few links such as HERE

66 degrees North

Just writing something on the clothing company 66 degrees North - this is a company which, according to its tagline has been "Keeping Iceland warm since 1926" (which is nearly half past seven...)
I like the company's website with its organic look, and also the way that they "connect" with the landscape and the climate of Iceland.
They also have an annual event linked in with climate change which involves climbing glaciers.
The clothes were a bit out of my price range, but will keep an eye on the website for sale items :)

Noticed that they also have a grant for expeditions, so will try to put something together for that perhaps.

How green is your newspaper ?

That's the latest of the Guardian's series of carbon footprint features which have previously included the impacts of a pint of a beer...

International Human Development Indicator Map

The UN has released a useful GIS-style website which allows users to map and interpret data relating to development indicators.
Thanks to Tom Biebrach for the tip-off...

Map My Followers

Those of you with a Twitter account will perhaps be interested to see where in the world the people who follow you are from.
With MAP MY FOLLOWERS you can do that.

Don't forget to remove the authorisation to access your account once the maps have been produced, and change your password to be really secure...

My UK & World follower maps

Primary Champions: Anita Ganeri and Al Humphreys

The Primary Champions network has been boosted by the support of Anita Ganeri: author of the 'Horrible Geography' series, and Al Humphreys whose adventures have been mentioned on this blog many times before.

If you are involved with PRIMARY GEOGRAPHY, sign up to the Primary Champions network.

Iceland - Nature's playground

Just watched this rather nice promotional DVD which I was handed by Sigga Groa from Visit Iceland...
The Icelandic Tourist Board very kindly sponsored the meal that we had on the final night of the recent trip, and we sampled the fish and other local food at Restaurant Reykjavik. The ICE BAR was closed, unfortunately...

The meal and wine were excellent, and when I went out to take a few night time snaps, the first snows of winter were falling outside..

The return of the Geography Flash Meeting

Thanks to Tony Cassidy for resurrecting the Geography Flash Meetings that took place on Thursday nights last term.
Good to chat with other people about a range of topics...
Visit the WIKI PAGE to access a recording of the meeting, and get details on the dates of the next one(s) as well as agenda items.

Tony also shared his PODCASTS which are available via iTunes.

Localism and CPRE

The Campaign to Protect Rural England is a long-running and influential organisation.

Their latest campaign is related to the idea of LOCALISM.

This is a relatively new change to the planning regulations which allows local people more of a say as to what gets built in their neighbourhoods. Would be useful for those looking at RURAL ISSUES and landscape change.

High Speed Trains through the Chilterns...

There has been quite a lot of opposition to the proposed high-speed train route through the Chilterns. 
Posted here to remind me, as this is a context that we're developing for the ESRI / GA GIS courses...

Two wheels good...

A sample resource can be obtained from Harper Collins.
It's a sample of the ONLINE RESOURCES which will accompany a new textbook series due to be published in Spring 2011. It's been written by an authoring team, edited by David Rayner, and with a lot of input from the Geographical Association. I've been working on the teachers materials.
Sign up for e-mail updates to receive the free 7 page resources as a PDF.

Authentic Learning

Spent quite a lot of time early last week writing some materials which are due shortly to a publisher. Lots to write, and not much time to write it, but am getting through it.
One of the things I came across was the idea of 'Authentic Learning' which was not completely new to me, but I was interested to refresh my memory.

A useful resource on Authentic Learning  (PDF download) for those who are interested...

Shells on the beach

An old favourite GUARDIAN article that I used to use...

Describes the way that coastal erosion is affecting the Holderness coastline, and removing material from the Rolston Firing range just south of Hornsea.

There are stories of people taking unexploded shells home and using them for doorstops for years...
A very different kind of shell to find on the beach...

Chinese Christmas

My "sleeps til Christmas" iPhone app tells me that there are a total of 50 sleeps until the big day...
Here's a YouTube video that describes our debt to China for 'creating' Christmas....

Ian Hardie and Thorvaldseyri

Good to see the Rayburn Iceland Travel Guide getting an award at the recent SAGT Conference in the non-book category.

Ian was also featured in the SAGT magazine I blogged about previously. He has a house around 10 miles from the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, and was home during the eruption and had some incredible experiences observing the activity.
As it turns out Georgina Sawyer, a vulcanologist from Cambridge University, who accompanied the trip that we made last week, was also in the area and spent several weeks travelling up and down the roads to the south and west of the volcano collecting measurements of volcanic gases for her research.

Here's a picture of some of the ash from the eruption, along with tephra from earlier eruptions.
Picture taken near the Skogafoss waterfall.

Another place that I enjoyed visiting was the farm at Thorvaldseyri, where we met with Ólafur Eggertsson whose family had worked the land for generations.
He told us about the eruption, and the evacuation, and showed us some of the amazing photos he took that made it into the world's newspapers at the time.


Will blog further about the visit to Thorvaldseyri....

Ciao Italia

Apparently young Italians are leaving the country in large number, which doesn't help overturn the problems of a falling birth rate.
This TIME MAGAZINE article has more information.
Useful for POPULATION related topics.

Landlocked no longer ?

An intriguing story in the Guardian about the handing over of a small piece of the Peruvian shoreline to Bolivia, which is a landlocked neighbour of Peru.

This will give Bolivia a small piece of coastline, which it has never had before, and the 1.4 square miles will be leased for the next 99 years.


What other gifts have nations given each other in the past ?

Hallgrimskirkja Panorama Photosynth

On the last day of the visit to Iceland (did I mention I've been to Iceland...) I bought a ticket to ride

To ride to the top of the church tower, and have a panoramic view over Reykjavik... Took 74 pictures from all sides of the tower, and then used Microsoft Photosynth to stitch them together.

The result, which took a couple of hours to render while I carried on working on other things can be seen below. You will need to install something called MICROSOFT SILVERLIGHT to see the full 'synth' (and it crashed my Chrome browser just now... perhaps because that's a Google product ?)




Enjoy....

One of our journals is missing....

Actually, there are several specific issues of some of our earlier journals which are missing from the Geographical Association archive.
The plan is for there to be a complete set of all journals bound for the archives, but for whatever reason, there are a few gaps at the moment...
Your help in locating these missing journals would be appreciated. Have a quick look in cupboards and bookcases and see if you have the missing ones (though this is fairly speculative !)

I think I might have some of these potentially - off to have a look now...

GA JOURNALS NEEDED FOR GA ARCHIVE/REFERENCE SETS

JOURNAL	ISSUE	DATE
Primary Geographer	1	Spr 1989
	2	Aut 1989
	20	Jan 1995
	21	Apr 1995
	22	Jul 1995
	43	Jan 2010
Teaching Geography	Vol 13, No 1	Jan 1988
	Vol 13, No 3	Jun 1988
	Vol 30, No 1	Spr 2005
	Vol 30, No 2	Sum 2005
	Vol 31, No 3	Aut 2006
	Vol 32, No 2	Sum 2007
	Vol 32, No 3	Aut 2007
	Vol 33, No 3	Aut 2008
Geography	Vol 91, Pt 2	Sum 2006
	Vol 93, Pt 2	Sum 2008
	Vol 94, Pt 3	Aut 2009
GA News	Issue 51	Apr 1998
	Issue 53	Oct 1998
	Issue 71	Apr 2003
	Issue 73	Oct 2003
	Issue 75	Apr 2004
	Issue 76	Jul 2004
	Issue 77	Oct 2004
	Issue 78	Jan 2005
	Issue 79	Apr 2005
GA Magazine	Issue 1	Aut 2005
	Issue 6	Sum 2007

Update - thanks to Graeme Eyre for getting in touch to say that he has some of these journals...
An updated list will be posted next week...

Pakistan Flood Relief music, featuring Peter Gabriel

Wear your wellies to work

...on the 5th of November...

First photo show...

Low res images, and some quick iPad manipulations with Photoshop Express and Tilt Shift apps....

Iceland

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National Geographic Freshwater missions

14th-20th November is Geography Awareness Week and the focus is on freshwater. The fantastic Sarah Caban at My Wonderful World, National Geographic’s campaign for geography, asked the Geography Collective to create a booklet of freshwater missions and we were delighted to help out. 

You can download all 7 missions from the Learn about Freshwater section of the site here. To whet (or in this case, more likely wet) your appetite here is the first of the missions..

Direct from the campaign, here is what it is all about:

“Water is one of the defining issues of the 21^st century. Of all the water on the planet, less than 1% is available for human use. Will we have enough to support a growing global population, and how will a changing climate affect access to freshwater around the world? Discover the fascinating geography of Earth’s most precious natural resource through activities, multimedia, quizzes, and more this Geography Awareness Week—and learn what you can to do help, both globally and locally.

Launched in 1987 by presidential proclamation, Geography Awareness Week is an annual opportunity for families and schools to engage in fun, educational experiences that draw attention to Geo-Literacy and the importance of geographic understanding in ensuring our nation’s economic competitiveness, national security, environmental sustainability, and the livability of our communities in the 21^stcentury.”

Browse, download and let everyone you know about the Freshwater resources for teachers and students here.

Back from Iceland...

There'll be a blast of stuff from Iceland to come over the coming weeks.
Here's a quick slideshow from my first (low definition) images, with plenty more to come...
I took around 1000 pictures in the end, with some real favourites amongst them...



For another teacher's perspective on their visit, with some great advice on pre-inspection preparation, and a dose of technology to capture the experience, check out David Rogers' Iceland blog post with a taster of his images.

Thanks to Travelbound for giving me such an amazing 5 day introduction to ICELAND. Thanks to all for the company during the trip. Having grabbed my case last night off the baggage reclaim, I legged it through to the tube, and jumped on the 9.15 train with 10 seconds to spare before it set off, and was home before midnight....


More to come on my NICELAND ICELAND BLOG too.

Here are the slides that I'd prepared for the first night...

Iceland

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