A wise scholar once asked me, more or less, why I was blogging.
My answer (which I tried to keep brief enough to remain readable) is:
Research takes a long time, and discoveries generally lead to more questions. Some of the research questions I have now are ones I couldn’t have even asked 5 or 10 or 20 years ago (having not been to Canada yet, in some timelines!). And some of the most fruitful “research” discussions I have had (especially lately) have been intermixed in a group chat about camping (yet another thing that would not have been possible pre-smart-phone). The (best) thing about the internet is when it turns into an extended group chat about topics that I want to nerd out about, but sometimes the way to get to that conversation is through another one.
I have more files of images and half-finished abstracts and unfinished writing projects than I will ever be able to complete — and I think that’s a Good Thing! It also means that I want to get as much of the data that I have already collected out into the world to enable others to ask different (or new, or better) questions about some of the topics that I am interested in so that I can then read and cite whatever they write about cartoons, cartography, symbols, settler colonialism, communication, and so forth. Hence the generous (?) over-sharing of my cartoon / carto-caricature collections – if someone can use them for pro-social purposes, then that’s what they are there for! (Plenty of images are already being used for anti-social purposes, so no more of that, please.)
There are so many sources all over to explore – this blog is just an assortment of items on topics of interest to me. Sort of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler meets a Holodeck situation, only use a combination that would be clearer in your own mind for that analogy.
In any case, my belated reply to the question (9 years on!) is this: my publication policy is that I want ideas to get out there and get better. My research won’t be improved upon by sitting on my computer (and I have a real sketchy history of maintaining my files on computers or in hard copy! Water tends to find my things.). Now seems like a good time to link to my collection of quotes about curiosity.
As Alice Munro puts it in “Meneseteung” (1988):
I thought that there wasn’t anybody alive in the world but me who would know this, who would make the connection. And I would be the last person to do so. But perhaps this isn’t so. People are curious. A few people are. They will be driven to find things out, even trivial things. They will put things together, knowing all along that they may be mistaken. You see them going around with notebooks, scraping the dirt off gravestones, reading microfilm, just in the hope of seeing this trickle in time, making a connection, rescuing one thing from the rubbish.
Stay curious – share in the trivial things – put them together – happy reading & writing, folx!
Carto-Caricatures: Cartographic Caricatures 