These are some of the broad brush strokes from the culmination of my memory work based on my background in neural science, my familiarity with the methods of the Memory Olympics founded by Tony Buzan, my love of the Method of Loci developed by the Romans, my experience in Waldorf education as a Waldorf teacher, and my desire to bring all of these things together. If you have any comments or questions, please post in reply. (Sky Thoth)
Hi Tracy,
In my continual musings about how to lock into meaningful geographic memory loci, I've now arrived at this sketch of how to proceed:
I very much like the idea of using 1844 as the first year of the BE calendar as the fulcrum around which to point to the past on the one hand and to the future on the other. Reasons for this are:
-- because I'm a Baha'i of course, but also,
-- because it is very practical for covering the beginning of both number lines with highly meaningful dates about which we know for certain a lot of precise historical information. The associations for
the number 1-100, both on the positive and negative side of the number line, will be like giant trees with lots of branches in temporal and spacial narrative. A lot happened from the 1700's through the 1900's that is well worth studying and remember. If we used the BC/AD calendar we'd be hard pressed to say for sure what happened PRECISELY on EACH YEAR from 100 BC through 100 AD. Scholars don't even agree on which year Jesus was born or crucified. The consensus now is that
Jesus was born in 5 BC, but that is a consensus only, and in no way a certainty. That just don't work for me for the numbers 1-100 which need to be on extremely rich, meaningful, well mark dates.
-- because the Baha'i faith in the unity of religions has received special status at the U.N. where it serves as a interfaith organizer of ceremonies.
http://www.bahai.us/social-
FOCUS ON NORTH AMERICA:
It makes sense to make North American the LOCI home of our LEXICAL melting pot of LANGUAGES because of the unique roll of the United States and Canada as immigrant countries with no overwhelmingly homogeneous colonial root (like Spain for nearly all of Latin America and like Portugal for Brazil).
THE UNITED STATES COVERING PRE-1844
It makes more sense to have the U.S. map out the past because it is the culmination of such much history for so many people and because it is the inheritor of the mantle of world empire to a degree.
CANADA POST-1844
Canada --as more of a frontier and more of a current country welcoming more new immigrants -- makes more sense as growing into the future from 1884. It also has less developed landmarks to use as LOCI, so it is better not to try to stretch thousands of years of history across it's largely uninhabited landscape, when the US works better for all of those detail. Canada can handle the 189 years past 1844 just fine, but I'm not so sure about thousands of years. It doesn't even have 1000s of counties. In fact, it has no counties at all. We will have to use Canadian Census Areas.
BALANCE of HISTORICAL and ALPHABETICAL SEQUENCING
It didn't sit well with me to order the United States Alphabetically. For one thing, starting in Alabama as the #1 state depressed me and deflated my motivation to keep working. Beyond that, moving from
Alabama to Alaska felt so weird. It didn't feel meaningful, and it didn't feel like learning anything new. Stating with the most recent place to declare statehood however, and then moving backwards from Hawaii to Delaware turned out to be a lot of fun.
ALPHABETICAL BETTER FOR NEW UNKNOWS
So now Hawaii gets to be the first Loci moving back in time starting in 1843 and BE -1. Then, when we look at all of Hawaii's counties, we will use reverse alphabetical order, moving from the end of the Alphabet to the beginning to get the sense of going back in time:
BE -1 (1843) Kauai County
BE -2 (1842) Honolulu County
BE -3 (1841) Kalawao County (where the leper colony was)
BE -4 (1840) Maui County
BE -5 (1839) Hawaii County
Alaska will be next, and they have boroughs instead of counties.
THEN MOVING FORWARD WITH CANADA...
We will move alphabetically through the census areas province by province in order of when the provinces joined the Canadian Confederation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
WE START WITH ONTARIO:
BE 1. Algoma (pop. 117,461)
BE 2. Brant (pop. 125,099)
BE 3. Bruce (pop. 65,349)
BE 4. Chatham-Kent (pop. 108,589)
BE 5. Cochrane (pop. 82,503)
BE 6. Dufferin (pop. 54,436)
BE 7. Durham (pop. 561,258)
BE 8. Elgin (pop. 85,351)
BE 9. Essex (pop. 393,402)
BE 10. Frontenac (pop. 143,865)
BE 11. Greater Sudbury (pop. 157,909)
BE 12. Grey (pop. 92,411)
BE 13. Haldimand (pop. 45,212)
BE 14. Haliburton (pop. 16,147)
BE 15. Halton (pop. 439,256)
BE 16. Hamilton (pop. 504,559)
BE 17. Hastings (pop. 130,474)
BE 18. Huron (pop. 59,325)
BE 19. Kawartha Lakes (pop. 74,561)
BE 20. Kenora (pop. 64,419)
BE 21. Lambton (pop. 128,204)
BE 22. Lanark (pop. 63,785)
BE 23. Leeds and Grenville (pop. 99,206)
BE 24. Lennox and Addington (pop. 40,542)
BE 25. Manitoulin (pop. 13,090)
BE 26. Middlesex (pop. 422,333)
BE 27. Muskoka (pop. 57,563)
BE 28. Niagara (pop. 427,421)
BE 29. Nipissing (pop. 84,688)
BE 30. Norfolk (pop. 62,563)
BE 31. Northumberland (pop. 80,963)
BE 32. Ottawa (pop. 812,129)
BE 33. Oxford (pop. 102,756)
BE 34. Parry Sound (pop. 40,918)
BE 35. Peel (pop. 1,159,405)
BE 36. Perth (pop. 74,344)
BE 37. Peterborough (pop. 133,080)
BE 38. Prescott and Russell (pop. 80,184)
BE 39. Prince Edward (pop. 25,496)
BE 40. Rainy River (pop. 21,564)
BE 41. Renfrew (pop. 97,545)
BE 42. Simcoe (pop. 422,204)
BE 43. Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry (pop. 110,399)
BE 44. Sudbury (pop. 21,392)
BE 45. Thunder Bay (pop. 149,063)
BE 46. Timiskaming (pop. 33,283)
BE 47. Toronto (pop. 2,503,281)
BE 48. Waterloo (pop. 478,121)
BE 49. Wellington (pop. 200,425)
BE 50. York (pop. 892,712)
Ontario
Quebec
Nova Scotia
New Brunswick
Manitoba
... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Quebec -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
BE 51 Abitibi
BE 52 Abitibi-Ouest
BE 53 Acton
BE 54 Antoine-Labelle
BE 55 Argenteuil
BE 56 Arthabaska
BE 57 Avignon
BE 58 Beauce-Sartigan
BE 59 Beauharnois-Salaberry
BE 60 Bellechasse
BE 61 Bonaventure
BE 62 Brome-Missisquoi
BE 63 Bécancour
BE 64 Charlevoix
BE 65 Charlevoix-Est
BE 66 Coaticook
BE 67 D'Autray
BE 68 Deux-Montagnes
BE 69 Drummond
BE 70 Francheville
BE 71 Gatineau
BE 72 Joliette
BE 73 Kamouraska
BE 74 L'Assomption
BE 75 L'Islet
BE 76 L'Érable
BE 77 L'Île-d'Orléans
BE 78 La Côte-de-Beaupré
BE 79 La Côte-de-Gaspé
BE 80 La Haute-Côte-Nord
BE 81 La Haute-Gaspésie
BE 82 La Haute-Yamaska
BE 83 La Jacques-Cartier
BE 84 La Matapédia
BE 85 La Mitis
BE 86 La Nouvelle-Beauce
BE 87 La Rivière-du-Nord
BE 88 La Tuque
BE 89 La Vallée-de-l'Or
BE 90 La Vallée-de-la-Gatineau
BE 91 La Vallée-du-Richelieu
BE 92 Lac-Saint-Jean-Est
BE 93 Lajemmerais
BE 94 Laval
BE 95 Le Domaine-du-Roy
BE 96 Le Granit
BE 97 Le Haut-Richelieu
BE 98 Le Haut-Saint-François
BE 99 Le Haut-Saint-Laurent
BE 100 Le Rocher-Percé
BE 101 Le Saguenay-et-son-Fjord
BE 102 Le Val-Saint-François
BE 103 Les Appalaches
BE 104 Les Basques
BE 105 Les Collines-de-l'Outaouais
BE 106 Les Etchemins
BE 107 Les Jardins-de-Napierville
BE 108 Les Laurentides
BE 109 Les Maskoutains
BE 111 Les Moulins
BE 112 Les Pays-d'en-Haut
BE 113 Les Sources
BE 114 Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine
BE 115 Longueuil
BE 116 Lotbinière
BE 117 Lévis
BE 118 Manicouagan
BE 119 Maria-Chapdelaine
BE 120 Maskinongé
BE 121 Matane
BE 122 Matawinie
BE 123 Memphrémagog
BE 124 Minganie--Le Golfe-du-Saint-Laurent
BE 125 Mirabel
BE 126 Montcalm
BE 127 Montmagny
BE 128 Montréal
BE 129 Mékinac
BE 130 Nicolet-Yamaska
BE 131 Nord-du-Québec
BE 132 Papineau
BE 133 Pierre-De Saurel
BE 134 Pontiac
BE 135 Portneuf
BE 136 Québec
BE 137 Rimouski-Neigette
BE 138 Rivière-du-Loup
BE 139 Robert-Cliche
BE 140 Roussillon
BE 141 Rouville
BE 142 Rouyn-Noranda
BE 143 Sept-Rivières--Caniapiscau
BE 144 Shawinigan
BE 145 Sherbrooke
BE 146 Thérèse-De Blainville
BE 147 Témiscamingue
BE 148 Témiscouata
BE 149 Vaudreuil-Soulanges
1843 + 149 = 1992... So that gets us up to the election of Bill Clinton, the first Baby Boomer president. That is a nice place for the French Loci to end.
What do you think of these brush strokes? What are your questions, doubts, reservations?
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