map | Matthew Dicks

Democratic Republic of the Congo, of course!

By Matthew Dicks | June 21, 2017 |

My daughter, Clara, is a bit of a geography nut. At the tender age of eight, I would venture to suggest that she knows more about world geography than most human beings. And it has nothing to do with her intelligence or our attempt to instill a love of geography in her. She simply became…

Emergency and Evacuation Plan maps should not be designed to produce panic

By Matthew Dicks | February 23, 2015 |

Just a thought, but perhaps your Emergency and Evacuation Plan map shouldn’t indicate your present position in an amorphous speech bubble that seems to engender a sense of flame, heat, and panic, and shouts the three words with the use of an exclamation point. The message should be: “You are here.” This one reads: “AH!…

I think my wife married me to compensate for her lack of a sense of direction.

By Matthew Dicks | January 20, 2015 |

I’ve always been able to navigate well without a map. Years ago, in a time before GPS, I brought Elysha – who was still my girlfriend – to Rhode Island to visit my mother. When we arrived at my mother’s building, I suddenly remembered that she had moved across town just a week before. In…