EF Education’s Live the Language campaign shows how learning the basics of foreign language helps enrich the spirit of travel through the pairing of typography and cinematography. It makes for a beautiful combination.

There are eight total. They are all fantastic.

Via: “The Beautiful Typography of Live the Language” at Drawar.

It’s been a subject on this site several times – from a short story about my time on the Underground to my constant pining for this Underground poster. Something about the mix of maps and public transport and England and colored lines really strikes me as the perfect intersection of everything that’s great about the world. And, I think cartography is pretty sweet. It’s the Buster Bluth in me, I suppose.

What’s REALLY great about the map, though, is its dedication to usability. It’s not a perfect rendering of the Underground lines (here’s what it would look like); instead, it offers relative – and parallel – tracks in an effort to both rein in the system’s wandering tunnels and improve readability. From a recent post by Theo Inglis:

The problem was that the train lines were getting longer and this made it impossible to fit everything into one map. Keeping it geographically accurate would have meant that the centre became smaller and harder to read, and the centre is the most densely packed and most important part. In comes Harry Beck in 1931, inspired by electronic circuit diagrams he had the idea of scrapping geographical accuracy and making all lines straight with only 45 and 90 degree angles. Design history was made and the map has barely changed since, becoming an icon and one of the easiest to use maps in the world!

The evolution of the map shows a reliance on traditional cartography giving way to a surprisingly forward-looking design that still holds up today.

Kottke.org has a fantastic run down of this post and a whole bunch more on the greatest map ever created.

Thirteen days ago, my mother told me that my grandmother wasn’t doing very well. She was very sick. She sounded awful.

Twelve days ago, I concluded that I was no longer going on vacation. I was travelling to say goodbye to my grandmother.

I was wrong. Thankfully, blessedly wrong.

1.

In January 2006, my family – mother, brother, Kerrie and me – flew to Idaho to spend a surprise post-Christmas week with my grandfather. We knew why we were really going, though: my grandfather had lung cancer, which had spread into his brain. We were travelling to spend time with him before he was gone.

This came just five months after Kerrie and I had made the same trip – a vacation this time. At that time, the cancer was still in its infancy, and my grandfather was actively going through treatment, his nurses confident in his recovery, my family positive that we’d make it through the ordeal.

The shift from summer to winter saw my grandfather grow worse. Where he was once full of life – sick, pained, but still in good spirits – he was now tired and weak. We celebrated the holiday. We hung tight as he became sicker, his lucidness beginning to wane from day to day, and we hoped for a miracle.

A week later, he was gone.

2.

I have never been one to dwell on death. I know that my time will come when my time comes, that there is little I can do to stop the inevitability of death, and all I can do is hope that it comes much later than sooner. That doesn’t change one simple fact, though: I’m scared of it.

So when my grandmother went in for testing, I wasn’t ready to admit it. When that lump appeared, I wasn’t ready to acknowledge it. When that diagnosis came back – that it had been removed, and we’re all just waiting to make sure it worked, and that she should be alright but we really don’t know – I wasn’t comfortable.

The uncertainty was awful.

And then, she got sick. Wouldn’t leave her chair. Ran out of energy after just a few hours.

Suddenly, everything became so urgent. Suddenly, I found myself dwelling on death.

3.

Turns out, my grandmother is going to be okay. As far as we know, right now.

Over this last week, we saw my grandmother’s color return. She didn’t leave the house except to get tests and results, but those results were positive. She still sat in her bedroom, but so did we. And at times, we didn’t. At times, we convened around the dining room table. Like we always have. Like we always will.

She was still tired, but she was there. THERE. That’s all she needed, too: to be there, with us, cracking the same jokes, living the same life, bringing us together as a family as she’s always done, even when the family didn’t want to be brought together at all.

I pulled out of the driveway without tears. Not because I fought them back, but because I knew everything was going to be okay.

As far as we know. Right now.

4.

My grandfather never really left us, it seems. His ashes, encased in a beautiful wooden urn with a burned-in image of the Tetons, still sit on my grandmother’s china cabinet next to the ashes of his dog, Darby. She’s been unable to bury either box. They simply mean too much.

He never really left us in the spiritual sense, as well. His stories still live on and his presence still surrounds the valley. The small engine shop he owned in Jackson – now known simply as the last location of a failed art gallery – still features the same antique gas pump as a decade ago. The two houses he built for himself and my grandmother – one on each side of the Teton pass – still stand as reminders of his skill.

And his memory lives on, expanding as we drive through the valley, suffocating my fear of death, helping me understand that, as hippie-dippy as it sounds, we all live on in those we’ve influenced, and that there’s no point in focusing on death.

Death is simply the point where life ends. And up until that point, life is life. Life is only life.

After that point, life is the only thing we remember.

5.

We don’t go to those who are dying to say goodbye, because goodbye doesn’t need to be said face-to-face. Instead, we go to celebrate life. We go to spend time with those we love, regardless of the outcome.

This past week, it turns out, I didn’t say goodbye to my grandmother. Quite the opposite, actually. I spent a week wondering how I had jumped the gun, how I had assumed the end was near when the end most certainly isn’t near and I was a damned fool to believe that the end even mattered.

My grandmother may have twenty more years in her. Or not. We don’t know.

No one knows.

We do know that she’s getting better. That she has a very curable form of cancer, and that she could be healthy in no time.

That, as long as she’s living in the valley that raised her – a valley that she, in turn, has helped shape – she’s alive, and we can’t focus on anything but being alive, because there simply isn’t anything else.

Fear of death be damned.

But, you know, sometimes companies do it wrong.

Background: I sometimes forget passwords, especially those connected to sites I rarely visit. When that happens, I usually just click the “retrieve password” link. That’s what you do. That’s just how it’s done.

Often, password retrieval is a simple process. They send a message to the email associated with the account, and you click the link, and you reset the password, and then you get into your account, and hooray!

Perfect. Especially if you’re the only person with your email password. And ESPECIALLY if you’ve taken time to make a good email password, because that’s an ACTUAL account that deserves major protection, and one you should rarely forget because it’s YOUR EMAIL and there’s a good chance you have to enter the password every two days.

Other times, you’re required to answer a “security question” before getting your magic email. Such as “What is your dad’s middle name?” or “What is your waist size?” or “What did you drink the last time you threw up?” One question. Then, you get your password.

This is common with sites that need a lot of extra protection. Banks. Credit cards. Airline mile programs.

NO SERIOUSLY. Airline mile programs.

Enter Delta.

As with any airline-related web property, Delta’s site is bogged down with extraneous security and over-written drivel. It’s like one of those collections of legal books you see behind most personal injury lawyers has BLOWN UP and reanimated itself as a website.

I forgot my airline mile password, because I usually don’t care about my airline miles. I hopped in to reset my password and was greeted by a new step: selecting security questions.

Security questions are designed to offer security via a person’s history. The assumption is that the answers are known only by the person accessing the website, and are therefore more secure than an address or zip code or whatever. Also, they’re easier to REMEMBER, because they are a part of our personal history.

Delta, however, attempted to make this process as difficult as possible.

Issue Number One

First, I had to select TWO security questions.

Answers must be AT LEAST 4 CHARACTERS LONG, for some reason. Also, let me remind you, I was logging in to check airline miles. Miles that I can only use as Corey Vilhauer. Miles that do not need to be double protected, because they are useless unless I have a hundred thousand of them. Which I don’t.

Whatever, though. I chose the first one (“What is your father’s middle name?”). Then, I tried to choose the second. And I couldn’t.

Issue Number Two

I couldn’t because I was unable to nail down definitive answers to any of the remaining questions.

Understanding that these are security questions, I needed to be fully sure that the answer I gave then was an answer that can be replicated later on. The problem is, I couldn’t guarantee I’d be able to do that.

None of the questions related to DEFINITIVE answers:

1. What was your first phone number? Do I enter with dashes or without? With or without area code? Will I remember which one I did six months from now?
2. What is your paternal grandmother’s given name? I couldn’t remember this at the time. I know it now, but that wouldn’t have helped much.
3. What was your favorite place to visit as a child? I had several. How will I remember which one?
4. What is the name of your first pet? We had a dog and two cats growing up. I don’t remember which was my first, and I sure won’t remember which one I chose six months from now.
5. Where did you meet your spouse/partner? We went to high school together. Will I remember if I say “high school” or will I assume it’s something more detailed, like “biology class?”
6. What is the name of your childhood best friend? I had three very close friends. Which one will I choose?
7. What is the phone number you remember most from your childhood? Is this even a real question?

I decided to choose the last one (“What is the name of the first school you attended?”) Even then, I knew I wouldn’t remember if I answered “Lincoln High” or “Lincoln High School” or “Lincoln.”

Issue Number Three

Which brings us to the last issue. The only question I could definitively answer, I COULDN’T ACTUALLY USE.

My father’s middle name is “Lee.” Three letters.

Disqualified.

Why can’t this have been easier?

In issues of security, definitive answers are required. These wishy-washy security questions are unusable and frustrating, and the character limit for answers is misguided.

The solution is to allow a user to create BOTH the question and the answer. In my case, I could have said “Full Name of High School” and the answer would have been “Lincoln High School.” No ambiguity. I make the rules.

Instead, I fell back to a makeshift solution: I wrote the answers on a piece of paper.

Pretty safe, huh?

Something Thai, I’m sure. Something expensive and trendy.

Go ahead. I know I’ve never formally lived in the Jackson Hole area. I’ve never called it home, and that nowadays I only visit every four years and barely have any family connection in the town. Even my grandma had to ditch the place. Probably the fault of people like you. I’ll pin that you y’all, if you don’t mind.

Here’s the thing. I might not be from Jackson, but I’m fiercely protective of it. That Thai restaurant wasn’t here when I wandered its streets every summer for years. Teton Village was just a tiny little ski resort. Jackson was still overrun by cowboys, not Subarus; ranchers, not transplants.

Maybe you’ve got your own personal Jackson – some place you’ve never lived but still stick to, allowed to become a part of your soul, of which you shun visitors and push away the people who just don’t get it. That’s it, right?

They just don’t get it, do they?

Jackson isn’t my home. It never has been. Still, I consider myself a local – thanks to generations of family and history and a bunch of my own experiences – and I’ll be damned if I’m going to feel guilty about it.

Sorry, man. I know you just moved here.

But unless you’re new place has some way to replicate three decades of tradition and sheer force of connection, you’ll never be a local.

At least not in my eyes. Not in my experience.

Not to THIS local-who-never-was.

You’ve got your grandmother, who was the youngest of what seems like dozens, and you’ve got the log cabin they grew up in, and you’ve got the mountains they always looked at, every morning, EVERY morning, yet they never got sick of them, and you’ve got an entire legion of cousins and second cousins and they’re all still there. They’re all still holding tight. They’re all still representing the homeland and keeping it real.

You’ve got Great Grandma Johnston. She is barely a distant memory, but you remember the time you didn’t want to kiss her goodbye and you remember that it wasn’t long after that she died and how it’s taken you over two decades to understand that there’s no need to feel guilty. You were just a kid – a kid who was a little afraid of the super old.

And you’ve got Great Aunt Katherine. 93 years old. Your grandmother’s oldest sister. Another mother, really.

The mountains are turning brown and the pass is nearly at its safest, but traveling from city to city in western Wyoming is dangerous for your family, your memories constantly bumping up against your vehicle, too many to stop and consider and, so, you veer right and hit the pedal and dive through the barrage.

Sometimes you miss things. And sometimes, you have to let them go.

Because, after 93 years, your grandmother’s oldest sister took stock of her life, of those memories and that valley and all of those sisters and that log cabin and then considered the connections she’s made and said, “You know, that’s probably about as good as I could have hoped for.”

You might not know how it happened. In fact, you’re not surprised at all. All you know is that a keystone of the family has passed. You were close enough to feel the memories bounce off of the windshield, landing safely, looking as we passed, and understanding that we were on our way to meet family, and that there would be more chances in the future to reconnect.

With the rest of the family around. Somewhere a little more dignified.

Godspeed, Aunt Katherine. I never knew you as well as I could have. But, then again, maybe I did.

“The eastern approach to Lake Wobegon is Division Street, St. Cloud, a five-mile strip of commerce in full riot, the fast-food discount multiplex warehouse cosmos adrift in its asphalt sea, the no-man’s-land of twenty-four-hour gas stations that sell groceries and have copiers and the bright plastic restaurants where, if you ate lunch there for the rest of your life, you would never meet anybody you know or get to know anybody you meet, a tumult of architecture so cheap and gaudy and chaotic you wonder how many motorists in search of a drugstore and a bottle of aspirin wound up piling into a light pole, disoriented by flashing lights and signage and sheer free enterprise, and then the cosmos peters out and you emerge from hell and come into paradise, rural Minnesota.”
-“In Search of Lake Wobegon” – Garrison Keillor

I hold St. Cloud fondly in my heart. I love the town. I went to school, made lifelong friends and began a career in St. Cloud. And, without fail, I take an extra hour out of my day and pass through whenever I’m on my way to Minneapolis.

But, man. I’ve been there recently. And nothing has changed from this quote.

Something about the simplicity, about brush filling in the prairie gaps between mountains, about rivers that go on forever, about altitude changes that form sawtoothed horizons. Where every fence is wooden. Every bagel shop generous. Every tourist in awe, and every resident following suit.

For me, it’s the Jackson Hole area. For others, it might be the northwest. New York City. The lake district in England, or the hills of Tuscany. An area that invites painful longing; that we experience but never own, our vacations and trips merely a rental of the area, backed by deposits, contracted to be returned unscathed.

We need these areas. Not because we enjoy being someplace we’re not, but because it puts our homes in perspective.

I love northwest Wyoming – it’s the area my family settled, and the area where I spent my summers. Take away all of my ties, and I might be there in a second. Take away my family, my job, my friends, my opportunities, and I’d move to the valley in a second.

But those things are what make Sioux Falls so good.

Those things make this home.

Jackson Hole is no home. And while I still long to be back there, helping my grandmother with the lawn and staring down the Snake River, I know that it offers nothing of what good ol’ Sioux Falls does.

The valley holds my desires. The prairie holds my life.

When I was young, we’d drive past it in the early morning on the way home; our trip from Jackson Hole to Sioux Falls always included a break for the night in nearby Gillette.

It looks no bigger than a thimble. But there it is. Just a few miles away, promising something fantastic – that is, if you’re willing to veer off track and head in a different direction.

There’s a lesson there, I guess. About the limitless potential of traveling the nation’s Interstates. Or about following your dreams.

Whichever works for you this morning.

That being said, nothing warms my cockles more than London Underground poster art.