Who's up for a jography quiz? Plus Garrison Keillor's "personal geography" of "home"

The cover story of the February 2014 National
Geographic is "The New Science of the Brain."

by Ken

I don't know how long National Geographic was including a monthly geography quiz on the mailing insert that includes the subscriber's address on subscription copies before I noticed it. But however long it was, it spared me that many months' or more likely years' worth of humiliation. Because once I started looking at the quizzes, I started stinking at them. So let's not kid ourselves, the fact that this month I suddenly got all five questions right probably has something to do with why I'm making a federal case of it tonight. True, one of my answers was a guess, but it was a semi-educated one; there's a limit to how many countries the answer to no. 5 could be to start with. And true, several of these questions are a lot easier than the ones we usually get in these quizzes. I mean, with the island in no. 4 identified as Hispaniola, how sad would you have to be to get this one wrong?

Still, I guessed right on no. 5, and swept the rest of the admittedly readily sweepable field.

Are you a Geo-Genius?
Test your knowledge with questions from the National Geographic Bee.

1
The Rio de la Plata borders Argentina and what smaller country?

2
The Balearic Sea and Ionian Sea are both part of what larger sea?

3
Which Southeast Asian country, crossed by the Tropic of Cancer, is bordered by India and China?

4
Cape Engaño, easternmost point on the island of Hispaniola, is in what country?

5
Xultún, a typical Maya site with mural-filled rooms, is located in which Central American country?

BUT THE MUST-READ ITEM IN THE ISSUE IS . . .


Olivia Rowe is my aunt Josephine's great-granddaughter. Her level gaze and dark hair remind me of Aunt Jo, who was a gardener and kept a flock of chickens. Olivia keeps pigeons, 14 of them. This one is named Angel.

Above is one of the illustrations that accompanies "There's No Place Like Home: A Personal Geography by Garrison Keillor" (with photos by Erika Larsen), and the caption is obviously by the author. "Home," of course, is the Twin Cities, and the promised "personal geography" isn't just mental; there is in fact a precious "crude map" drawn by the author called "TWIN CITIES (ROUGHLY)," which really does provide a nice basic orientation. ("The key to our geography," Garrison says, "is the river. Anyone can get lost trying to navigate the freeways through the suburbs, but once you find the Mississippi, you know where you are.") The map includes both of St. Paul's lakes and all six of Minneapolis's ("pools of ease and elegance on the asphalt grid"), but not Lake Minnetonka, "the prairie Riviera, off to the southwest."

Editor-in-Chief Chris Jones explains in his Editor's Note, "A Prairie Home":

A few years ago I was in the middle of a meeting when one of our senior editors ushered in a tall man with a large, expressive face, wearing owlish glasses and dressed in a khaki suit. In a voice once described as "a baritone that seems precision-engineered to narrate a documentary about glaciers," he addressed the group and pitched a story idea. He wanted, he told us, to do a story about his own "personal geography." That man was the author, radio personality, and storyteller Garrison Keillor, and there could be only one answer to the appeal.

Keillor’s reminiscence, "There's No Place Like Home," is the result. You might say it's a piece he's been writing his whole life. Ostensibly, it's about Minneapolis-St. Paul. He conjures word pictures of neighborhoods with stucco bungalows, lakes with names like Minnetonka and Nokomis, and the sweep of the rocket tail fins on a white Cadillac convertible. But it's also something different and very special.

Keillor's piece is an interior geography; it's the map of a man's soul. In summoning up the Twin Cities of his youth and adulthood, he talks about what it means to be not just from a place, but of a place. Early on, he says, he realized that Minneapolis-St. Paul was a much better place than Manhattan in which to be an original. In his essay Keillor tells us why where you come from matters. "If you want to know the truth," he says, "I feel understood there."

Keillor likes driving rural Minnesota roads. “One evening,” says photographer Erika Larsen, “I went along.” She shot this near Buffalo Lake.

Actually, it's not just "understanding" that Garrison feels in the Twin Cities. Here's how he explains it:

"So how was it to grow up there then?" they say. "Oh, you know. It could've been worse," I reply. We are not braggarts and blowhards back where I come from. But if you want to know the truth, I feel understood there. I sit down to lunch with Bill and Bob or my sister and brother whom I've known almost forever, and it's a conversation you can't have with people you met yesterday. You can flash back to 1954 and the island in the river where we used to mess around, or the front office you shared with Warren Feist that looked across the street to the Anoka Dairy, or the toboggan slope behind Corinne's house, no footnote necessary, and they are right there with you. I come home and feel so well understood. I almost don't have to say a word. I was not a good person. I have yelled at my children. I neglected my parents and was disloyal to loved ones. I have offended righteous people. People around here know all this about me, and yet they still smile and say hello, and so every day I feel forgiven. Ask me if it's a good place to live, and I don't know -- that's real estate talk -- but forgiveness and understanding, that's a beautiful combination.

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