Don't know exactly where I was that morning, but when I came around the front of the house, this guy, Joseph Kerski, is on our front lawn. No, what's behind him is not our front lawn, and, the fact is, he wasn't exactly on our front lawn. He was just across the street, this guy and a female companion I just assumed was his spouse--maybe not.
Anyway, there they stood as if assessing the lot, which happens to be empty and for sale. What I always liked about that lot was a big o'er-hanging cottonwood, the kind of tree most likely to succeed even though it's most hated. The lot across the street slopes gently to a draw which is mostly nothing but sunflowers and cattails unless the river's raging. It's a fine lot, just south of us. Truth be told, I even considered it before buying across the street for the open view of prairie.
The two of them weren't more than fifty feet from me when this guy sees me and comes walking over, introduces himself, and lets me know what their prospecting was all about. No, he's not interested in buying the lot.
He made what they were up to sound like a really big deal. When I say it now, I don't imagine anyone who takes the time to read all of this will be as impressed as I was, which is to say, really impressed, almost as impressed as he was. Excitement--real, bona fide passion--almost always sells, and this guy sold me on the fact, which he quickly revealed, that I was most truly blessed to be living right here, at a significant intersection of the world. (He didn't say it that way, but some of that passion sticks.)
The two of them claimed to have located the intersection of importance in latitude and longitude, just across the street, maybe fifty feet into the empty lot over there. Let me try to show you.
Here we are, circled in red. There's a tiny red check right across the street, where they were standing. What's there, they claimed, was pretty-near the exact intersection of lines of latitude and longitude--the 43rd parallel at the 96th meridian. I don't even know how to say it.
And here we are, a bit closer at the same address.
They were aboard a double-decker van, a huge thing on a small body, a kind of stunted English two-decker. Geography lit him up the way anything from Frozen lights up my four-year-old granddaughter. Most everything he measured, it seemed, he did with his phone, but he was, for the fifteen minutes they stopped and did their calculating, something akin to a kid with a new toy, even though nothing his toolbox was new.
He wrote me a note later, and showed me the path to his website, where that good time enthusiasm just about runs wild. He's man on a mission, that is to bring the good news of geography to a world standing in need.
He didn't try, but something tells me he'd sell you that tie--or give it away if you pay some attention to what he calls "spatial education," which I'm still not sure I can understand any time soon, although the easiest summary of what he's up to would be to see students in schools learn more about the actual, real, natural world beneath their feet.
It's about latitude and longitude, and the GPS on your phone, and like knowing where you're standing on is earth, like understanding that just beyond your sidewalk is a spot of land that's really distinguished, which is what he told me. Spatial education may not increase the price tag on our house, but it's unique and individual and, good night! you ought to appreciate it.
Loved the visit. Ever since, I've been wondering how on earth to tell everyone else what an amazing thing sits there in the grass just a few feet from the curb of Andrews Court, Alton.
Should really have more visits.
He's big, big, big on GIS (Geographic Information Systems):
GIS is a key technology for our 21st century world. As we have increased pressure on the environment, as we have increased population, we have to grapple with and deal with and solve these spatial problems from a local to global scale.
If I'm right about his work, he's deadly serious (far more lively than deadly) about GIS because understanding our world spatially helps us know more about what he calls "the wheres of why."
All of that in my front yard. I really ought to put up a sign. It's all quite amazing.
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If you'd like to see and hear him, go to one of his Ted Talks, his website, or just google him--the man has got some kind of web presence.
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