98 - ‘On the Road’ Map: Kerouac Traces His Trip

Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell (MA) Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac, and in spite of his fancy name, his French-Canadian parents had to emigrate to Massachusetts to find work. When he died in St Petersburg (FL) 47 years later, Kerouac’s total estate amounted to under 100 dollars. Yet he’ll be immortal as long as books are read, if mainly for just one of his several works: ‘On the Road’, based on his hitchhiking trips around the US.

Kerouac went to study at Columbia in New York on an athletics scholarship, but he quickly joined a group of iconoclastic young poets who later became known as the Beat Generation. Kerouac’s ‘Spontaneous Prose’, an improvised, almost jazz-like style of writing later better known as ‘Stream of Consciousness’, inspired other writers and artists such as Bob Dylan (although Truman Capote famously dissed the technique by saying “That’s not writing, that’s typing.”)

His desire to break free of social mores and restrictions intertwined with his experimentation with drugs – as an ‘expert’ in both, he became some sort of spiritual guru to the 1960s counterculture. He is both referred to as ‘King of the Beats’ as well as Father of the Hippies.

In 1942, Kerouac joined the Merchant Marine and a year later, the US Navy. After the war, he was discharged on psychiatric grounds. He took to ‘drifting’ around the country, alternated with homely periods at home with his mom at Ozone Park in Queens, NYC.

In three weeks in April 1951, Kerouac wrote ‘On the Road’, the book that would make him famous. But only belatedly: the book was first published six years later, and only after severe revisions demanded by the publisher, Viking Press. To mark the 50th anniversary of first publishing, an uncensored edition will be published this year.

In ‘On the Road’, Kerouac tells the thinly veiled autobiographical tale of his trips through the US and Mexico with his friend Neal Cassady (‘Dean Moriarty’ in the book; Kerouacs narrator is called ‘Sal Paradise’). Interestingly, Kerouac never had a driver’s licence until he was 34 (in 1956), meaning that in the time of the ‘On the Road’ trips – to quote the title of a song by the band Guided by Voices – ‘Kerouac Never Drove, So He Never Drove Alone’.

This map was found at the Kerouac Corner of a website called www.wordsareimportant.com. This map , apparently from one of Kerouac’s own diaries, shows the itinerary of a trip from July to October 1947, much of which would later serve as the backdrop for ‘On the Road’:

New York City
Chicago
Davenport
Des Moines
North Platte
Cheyenne
(Denver
Central City)
Laramie
Salt Lake
Reno
San Francisco
Madera
Fresno
Selma
Los Angeles
Prescott
Albuquerque
Dalhart
Kansas City
St Louis
Indianapolis
Columbus
Pittsburgh
Washington DC
New York City

97 – Where (and How) Evolution Is Taught In the US

Scientists generally accept the theory of evolution as the back-story of how animal species (including humans) came into being over a period of several billion years. Religious literalists maintain their belief in creation, as laid down in the Bible: God made the earth and all that is on it (including humans, after His own image) in one week, a couple of thousand years ago.

These are the extreme positions in a debate that has been raging for years now in the United States, and more particularly in the school system. Since each state can determine what should be in the local schools’ curriculum, the teaching of evolution and/or creation differs throughout the country. Yet contrary to what one might think, it’s not so that creation is taught in the Bible Belt states (in the South), and evolution in more liberal states (everywhere else).

This map is taken here from the website Science Against Evolution, which quite cleverly tries to win the debate for creation by arguing that the theory of evolution itself has been discredited by scientific evidence and by numerous scientists. However, the map is drawn up by a proponent of evolution, as can be deduced from the remarks on the map and even its colours (green is good, red is bad).

Green indicates that evolution theory is taught in a ‘very good/excellent’ way. These states include the liberal states of

• California (“Well organized”)
• Rhode Island
• Connecticut
• New Jersey
• Pennsylvania and
• Delaware.

But also a Midwestern, more conservative state such as

• Indiana (”Exemplary”)

and even two southern states with a reputation for religiosity:

• North Carolina (“Model of good organization”) and
• South Carolina (“Thorough and challenging treatment”).

Yellow indicates indicates where evolution is taught in a ‘satisfactory/good’ manner. This includes the majority of states, from the north and west not usually included in the Bible Belt, such as

• Washington
• Oregon (“solid if uninspired”)
• Idaho
• Montana (“human evolution ignored”)
• South Dakota
• Nebraska (“marred by creationist notions”)
• Minnesota
• Michigan
• New York (“inclusion of creationist jargon”)
• Vermont and
• Massachusetts (“marred by creationist jargon”)

Similarly, the colour red, indicating where the teaching of evolution is’ unsatisfactory, useless or absent’, is spread out across the entire country, not just in the South:

• North Dakota
• Wyoming
• Illinois (“an embarrassment”)
• Ohio (“the E-word is avoided”)
• Maine (“useless”) and
• Mississippi (“Mississippi seems determined to keep evolution outside its borders”)

The map first appeared in 2002 in Scientific American, and was based on data collected by Lawrence S. Lerner of California State University at Long Beach.