--- Begin Forwarded Message --- Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 12:25:38 -0400 From: ahudson <[log in to unmask]> Subject: William Heather in NYT Sender: ahudson <[log in to unmask]> The top editorial in the New York Times, for Friday, July 23, 1999, p. A26, the morning of the burial at sea of JFK, jr., wife and sister-in-law, is a meditation on William Heather's 1799 chart of coastal New England and its soundings. Quite an amazing piece, written with the understanding of a collector, or cartographic scholar, or at least one whose life has been infused with the spirit of the mapping and charting world. A portion of the first, and then the final paragraph: In 1799 a London cartographer named William Heather prepared a map of coastal New England. On Heather's chart the Atlantic Ocean is a blank, a generality of uninked paper. But Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket...are surrounded by shoals of numbers... Sailor after sailor has taken a measure of the home waters around Martha's Vineyard, but there is obviously no sounding death. Like the blank Atlantic on William Heather's chart, it is featureless. We build upon its shore, we walk its beaches. From time to time we stop looking inland, where life is, and turn to look out over an immensity that frightens us and gives us, at the same time, a certainty in which there is much consolation. The moment passes, but grief remains part of us. There is more, and I am sure it can be found on the NYT website. Thanks to Nancy Kandoian for spotting this editorial. Alice C. Hudson Map Division, NYPL --- End Forwarded Message ---