From Round to Square (and back)

For The Emperor's Teacher, scroll down (↓) to "Topics." It's the management book that will rock the world (and break the vase, as you will see). Click or paste the following link for a recent profile of the project: http://magazine.beloit.edu/?story_id=240813&issue_id=240610

A new post appears every day at 12:05* (CDT). There's more, though. Take a look at the right-hand side of the page for over four years of material (2,000 posts and growing) from Seinfeld and country music to every single day of the Chinese lunar calendar...translated. Look here ↓ and explore a little. It will take you all the way down the page...from round to square (and back again).
*Occasionally I will leave a long post up for thirty-six hours, and post a shorter entry at noon the next day.

Saturday, August 17, 2013

From the Geil Archive (2)—Sacred Mountain Map

Two years ago on Round and Square (17 August 2011)—Seinfeld Ethnography: Bad Boy
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Please Note: All photographs marked "DHS" are with permission of the Doylestown Historical Society. All marked "RL" are my own pictures. None of these may not be reused without permission (e-mail me about mine, and I will put you in touch with DHS if you need to contact them). Photographs marked "RF" are "royalty free."
[a] Pathways RL
Click here for other posts in the Round and Square series "From the Geil Archive":
               Introduction                          1-Southern Mountain Museum             2-Sacred Mountain Map           
               3-Hat and Cattle                   4-Seeking Anthropology                       5-Curly Fives
               6-How to Write the Book      7-Mortarboard Man                               8-Orator
Even at this early date (the research interns haven't even arrived in Doylestown yet, and you don't even know their names), we'll do a few Geil tidbits before getting a big helping over the course of the fall. These are just the hors d'oeuvres, you see.

But they're good. Awful good, as we say back home.
[b] Movin' DHS

Today, I will show you my favorite single item from the entire 10,000 pages of the Geil archive. I got goosebumps when I first saw it, and I never tire of looking at it. It is a map William Edgar Geil drew of the five sacred mountains of China. It shows that he "got" the cosmology, and understood the proper directions of the seasons, colors, planets, and, well, just plain ol' movement for the quasi-mythological Former Kings (先王). 

Geil understood, and this map shows it. Not only does he have the mountains laid out in nice, proportional style, but he shows the well-established route (east, to south, to center, to west, to north, and back east to start it over again...spring, to summer, to mid-year, to autumn, to winter, and spring come 'round again). It's a bunch of ideas (trust me) in the form of a handy little map that shows that Geil was hardly all bluff and no larnin' (all hat and no cattle).

He knew a little something about Chinese history and culture, and I love his little page. Take a look. It isn't fancy, but it has all the goods. I also like the fact that what I regard as his "deepest" single page of notes has financial calculations computed on the side. This is another side of Geil you will discover if you stay with these posts.

Click here for other posts in the Round and Square series "From the Geil Archive":
               Introduction                          1-Southern Mountain Museum             2-Sacred Mountain Map           
               3-Hat and Cattle                   4-Seeking Anthropology                       5-Curly Fives
               6-How to Write the Book      7-Mortarboard Man                               8-Orator
[c] Jam-packed DHS

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