2 - Preview of the Atlas

In the previous blog post, I was talking about a potpourri of various topics related to Pennsylvania.  Sadly, they probably won't make it to the atlas after a bit of extra thought (the previous blog post's purpose was to show that I was doing research and I wanted to present the fun parts of it).  I will still include several related topics other than just the physical and political geography of Pennsylvania.  And for once, I'll stop being vague and actually give you an outline of what this atlas will include:

COVER
WHERE IN THE WORLD?
OVERVIEW
- History
- Demographics
PHYSICAL
- Regions
- Rivers
- Elevation
POLITICAL
- Counties
- Cities
- Politics
APPENDIX: CLIMATE

In all honesty, I have been procrastinating quite a bit.  Yes, I have been reading up on all things Pennsylvania, but I haven't quite started the actual atlas.  In order to show you that I have, here is my rudimentary cover:



Of course, I haven't done anything else other than this cover (the atlas will be in black and white so my printer won't die), but I will begin to churn out the atlas in these final weeks.  Perhaps I will also write supplementary blog posts including these components of my atlas to prove I've been making progress, but we'll see about that later. 

The outline I supplied above is probably not sufficient (rats, I wanted to be vague), so I'd might as well specify these components even further.  At the end you shall see that making an atlas is no easy task.  The definition of an atlas is a "collection of maps", but this atlas is also a guide, so there will be a lot of accompanying text to make sense of the map (assuming you're a buffoon, you'll need it).

In the very beginning is the cover, which shall be one page only.  Please note the orientation of the cover, because the entire atlas will be landscape.

The next section is called "WHERE IN THE WORLD?".  This section should also be one page long and its ultimate purpose is to state where Pennsylvania is in the world using maps and text.  I will provide a hand-drawn* map of the world and highlight where Pennsylvania is, but I will also show it in relation to the United States. 

*All maps will actually be made with a computer because hand-drawing requires paper which is difficult to make digital and the quality will invariably suffer.  I will not draw from memory because the quality of the map will suffer, but I will also not trace mainly because I'm terrible at tracing.  The maps will be copied with my eye.  Accounting for time constraints, I will also not obsess over minute things such as if everything is lined up to latitude and longitude, because the maps aren't the centre of my atlas - they share that with the accompanying text.

After that section is an overview of Pennsylvania.  Here is where I had originally intended to put the interesting (or not) information in the previous blog post, but now it will just contain a brief history as well as the demographics of Pennsylvania.  In case you didn't know, demography is the study of human populations and is closely tied to geography (geography affects demographic distributions).  Each should be about a page long, but that may change. 

This map has no label, but if you have a decent understanding in geography, you'll know what theme this map addresses.  Do YOU know what the colours mean here?

After the overview comes the physical geography of the state, with one page each devoted to addressing the physical (not political) regions of Pennsylvania, the major rivers of this state, and major features in elevation (mountains, valleys, &c).  I had originally intended for this section to be of roughly equal length to the following political geography section, but there simply isn't as much to say about the natural features of the state compared to the artificial/human features.

Therefore, most of my atlas will address Pennsylvania's political geography.  One page will be devoted to electoral geography (how people vote in certain areas), but most of this section (and of the atlas as a whole) will address Pennsylvania's dozens of counties and major cities.  Each entry of a county and city may also include its local history and demographics (the overview section which includes these addresses them as it pertains to the entire state). 

This is a tall task because Pennsylvania has SIXTY-SEVEN (67) counties and I am determined to address them all.  If I can't, I will address them in bulk as in by region.  Indeed, this will not fit into one page, but I will die if I devote one page to each county.  I will probably be very brief about each county so I could fit at least five into each page.  Even so, that'd still be around a dozen pages of my atlas just of counties, but this is the boring part of the atlas and is meant as just a reference (even I don't read those parts of atlases... okay, I do).

As for the cities, I will not talk about every city and town in the state because that is impossible. I will probably just talk about the major/largest cities of Pennsylvania. Each city will include more information than those that will be found in an entry for a county, but because I'll do fewer cities, the sections for cities and counties should be around the same.

The atlas will end with an appendix that addresses the general climate of the state as a return to physical geography.  This will probably be one page.

Well, I hope that was an exhaustive layout of what you could expect from the atlas I'm making.  My fingers certainly are exhausted, and that seems so boring that your eyes may be exhausted as well.  Well, what's necessary to be put on must be included.  Phew.

Commented on the blogs of Frederik Sorg-Taylor, Eric Lang, and Paul Scott