This week’s MotD Theme: A-Round the Globe in 7 Days
So far this week we looked at globes from the outside. Coronelli’s globes contain hatchways that let you go inside them. The Unisphere, from the 1964/65 New York World’s Fair, gives a great view of the inside…from a distance. The mandala-to-color globe from Sunday lets us see outside and a bit inside. But what about actually going into a globe to experience it from the inside?
In Boston, MA at the Mary Baker Eddy Library we can do just that, in their Mapparium. This spectacular three-story stained glass globe, with a walkway through the center allows people to visit to the very center of the globe…to view the world from the inside. How cool is that! And yes, it is open to the public.
From the MBE Library site:
The Mapparium was conceived by the architect of the Christian Science Publishing Society building, Chester Lindsay Churchill, as a symbol for the global outreach of The Christian Science Monitor. Mary Baker Eddy founded the Monitor in 1908 and gave it the mission “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” Originally called “the Glass Room” or “the Globe Room,” Mapparium comes from the Latin words mappa (“map”) and arium (“a place for”).
From Emma and Stewart, of Brown Bear Travels, they offer an interesting perspective of the mapparium:
The globe was made in 1935, and has never been updated. So you can stare at the huge European empires of countries like Britain and France, look at the size of Germany before WWII, spot how Alaska and Hawaii aren’t American states yet, marvel at the size of the USSR, ponder at what the hell Tannu Tuva is, check out old place names like Siam, see a unified Korea (under Japanese rule), and see why flights from the UK to North America look like they travel in a huge arc (whereas in reality they don’t, it’s more or less a straight line).
View more images of the Mapparium at the bottom of the Mary Baker Eddy Library Mapparium page.
Inspiration For Today
A possible downside to globes, as pointed out by Emma and Stewart, they reflect time and space in the moment people created them. Over time, things, people, boundaries, landmarks change which require the globes to be brought up-to-date otherwise they become outdated and useless. While great from a historical point of view, it fails to reflect the current status of our planet.
On a personal level, today’s MotD asks us to ponder our psyche as if a globe. Do we reflect our current status of being or do we reflect old, outdated beliefs and thoughts about ourselves? It may be time to redraw our boundaries.
Happy Coloring!
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