Senators draw maps of their home states

Marilyn sez, "To kick off Geography Awareness Week, National Geographic asked all the senators in Congress to draw their home states freehand. Some of the results are pretty funny!"

(Shown here: Al Franken's cartographically masterful Minnesota rendering)

Senators: Can You Draw Your State? (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Previously:

Al Franken draws map of the US - Boing Boing

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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EMJ

All the people worth noting in AF’s home town are white, middle aged men.
Jardine

I bet if I tried to draw a map of my province, it would be pretty bad. People in Saskatchewan would have it easy. People in Nunavut would be screwed.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Thank you, IronEdithKidd. When I wrote that, I was hoping I’d get a giggle out of someone from Hennepin County.
allennoble

I think it would be much more interesting to get them to attempt to draw maps of other countries and states.

You could start with something easy like Italy and then throw in something like Scotland or Siberia.

Limiting this to US states reinforces rather than defeats geographic myopia.
- ZippySpincycle
  
  Oh, come, now! This is the USA we’re talking about–your expectations are absurdly high.
  
  After all, when it comes to finding things on maps, “U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as…”
Glossolalia Black

612, represent!
uglyredhonda

His drawing makes it ambiguous, but Chambliss is actually a senator from Georgia, not Alabama.

Years ago, I was on a team representing Georgia. The drawing of the state was so off that we jokingly referred to ourselves as “Team Missouri”.
Ghede

I love the Wyoming and North Dakota. Those states were BUILT to be drawn. River/mountain based borders are a pain in the butt to get right.
IronEdithKidd

Teresa has made my day with her apt description of several TC ‘burbs. I grew up on the other side of the MN river. White pretty well met bread out there, too. We had more identical twins than minorities in my graduating class.

Senators from Georgia: Epic Geography Fail.
Bevatron Repairman

Susan Collins’ Maine is pretty stout.
Guysmiley

North Dakota’s eastern border is a river. It just gets averaged out into a mostly straight line.
Marcelo

Senator Franken can draw the entire country freehand, including all the states and how they border one another. Seriously.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HfcrqXtxOM

clearer more fast motion version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-FYyuvrRk
Marcelo

I just saw that you had covered that already. Never mind. :)
Tweeker

I cant be the only one who immediately thought overpressure map.
Kieran O’Neill

How beautiful.

I wonder how much the senators willingness to do this reflects on their pride for their home state (and hence how well they represent their constituents)?
Anonymous

Now let’s see the House of Representatives tackle this.
- SeppTB
  
  Lets not only see the House Reps do this, but then also draw their gerrymandered district inside their state!
Hal Eckhart

Senator Al makes me proud to be a Minnesnowtan!
Anonymous

Several years ago, I left Minnesota and moved to Georgia. This is just the most recent reminder of just how far of a fall that was.
Anonymous

No kidding, poor Rhode Island the state that gave Senator Reed… Go Frankin, MN is the greatest place on earth!
airship

I hope they get Senator Harken to draw Iowa, and not Senator Grassley. Grassley thinks he represents Wall Street, so his map would be way off. At least he would be able to indicate where the ‘bull’ is.
jtegnell

The Senator from Maine seems, to my eye, to have traced it. At the very least it looks like she was staring intently at a map when she did it.

Georgia is a disgrace.
Zadaz

I think both of the senators for Georgia may have been drawing a different state. Or at least a map using some kind of n-dimensional projection. But they get points for being honest. The senator from Wyoming obviously traced a CD case.
Alex_M

Seriously, how busy is a guy like Mark Udall to not have time to do this? Your state is a rectangle, man! :)
Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Right, EMJ @16. Because the disjunct-list joke would have worked so much better if he’d said “Sharon Isbin” instead of “Norman Ornstein.”

What a lost opportunity! He could have had his audience distractedly saying “Who? Sharon Isbin? Have I heard that name before? Where did I hear it?” instead of “Al Franken, the Coen brothers, Thomas Friedman, and Norman Ornstein … that’s a weird assortment.” And because the audience would go on being mildly distracted by trying to figure out where they’d heard of Sharon Isbin, they wouldn’t have the second-order reaction they’d otherwise have to Franken’s list a beat or two later: realizing that everyone mentioned in it is Jewish. Which actually does say something interesting about diversity and segregation in American life.

But hey, what’s that compared to shoehorning in a mention of Sharon Isbin? Who is, I’ll note, every bit as white and middle-aged (and, I believe, Jewish) as Franken, Friedman, Ornstein, and the Coens.

You are such a plodding thinker.

Why are the people in Franken’s list white? Gosh, I don’t know. What excuse can there be for Franken to ignore the vibrant, centuries-old Creole culture of St. Louis Park? After all, it partakes of the same rich ethnic diversity which has shaped its neighboring community of Minnetonka, and made Edina the Home of the Blues.

(For those of you who don’t know the Minneapolis area: I’m being unkind to EMJ. St. Louis Park, like those other communities, is a monument to booming midcentury suburban development. It is, and has always been, ninetysomething percent white. The only way EMJ could come up with a nationally famous nonwhite native of St. Louis Park would be to engage in wanton cultural misappropriation by swiping Prince from the central Twin Cities proper. )
MarkM

I can hear the (republican) senators right now:
“razzle frazzle Franken thinks he’s so smart that he can draw his state or all 50 states razzle frazzle i could draw my state if i wanted to but i dont want to frazzle”
MrsBug

I can’t believe Levin or Stabenow didn’t draw Michigan! I mean, how hard is it to draw a mitten and our little shark up top? C’mon!
pjcamp

That’s probably because Chambliss is from Georgia.

And we do apologize for that.
Anonymous

Collins (Maine) cheated.