Most people don’t really think about how geographic information provides the framework for our entire existence. We exist as living organisms in time and space. Our minds may be occupied with far-way thoughts, but our memories are inextricably tied to the place where they were created. As long as we live and breathe, we always have a location. Shakespeare’s Hamlet said “To be or not to be, that is the question.” Surveyors say, “To be is to occupy a position relative to two axes.”

Roger Sherman He was descended from the Shermans of Yaxley, in the county of Suffolk, England, who were landed gentry who had helped to frame the British Constitution. Born in 1721, the second of seven children of William and Mehatabel Sherman, Roger became farmer and a cordwainer (a person who makes shoes and other items from leather) like his Puritan father.

Berntsen International, maker of InfraMarker® Connected RFID™, announces a new release of the InfraMarker Mobile App, the field data collection component of the popular InfraMarker Connected RFID solution.

I’m a real history buff and I will use almost any excuse to dig into the past and learn something new. So guess what? Earlier this month we celebrated Columbus Day, which is increasingly being celebrated as Native American Day, which leads me to a related surveying question – How are Indian Trust Lands surveyed?

As promised in my National Parks Month blog, I said I’d be posting from my vacation to tour just a few of our national treasures. We finished a great time at Mount Rushmore, and then we visited Zion National Park.

The Oxford Dictionary defines "breathtaking" as: astonishing or awe-inspiring in quality, so as to take one's breath away.

To say Zion National Park is breathtaking is an understatement. Words just cannot describe and pictures just don't do it justice. I’ll try with a few, though – sublime, magnificent, glorious, mind-blowing , splendid, and my favorite – divine!

Do you know what a Hedonometer is? Yeah, me neither until just recently. No, it’s not another ancient surveying tool – it’s actually an analysis that determines how happy people are by their tweets.

The Vermont Complex Systems Center analyzes 50 million tweets per day, scoring happiness based on the categories of words that people use. It turns out that the pandemic produced the deepest and longest period of national malaise since the Hedonometer started in 2008. Fortunately, things are trending up as the pandemic is easing in most parts of the country.

Surveyors have been doing their job for millennia, and the ingenuity (and accuracy) of ancient instruments is mind-boggling. My last blog was focused on the surveyors of ancient Egypt, who were responsible for laying out temples, palaces, pyramids, boundaries for the Pharaoh to be able to levy taxes accurately.

Urban flooding results in more than $9 billion in damages annually, while federal funding to support stormwater maintenance/upgrades averages about $250 million annually. It’s not surprising that stormwater infrastructure is in bad shape and has earned a grade of “D” from the ASCE.

The United Nations passed a resolution creating this day to celebrate the creative economy, which actually makes a lot of sense, considering the entire world is just beginning to come out of a pandemic that really forced us all to get creative just to do our jobs.

Fortunately, surveyors have made creativity a way of life. It seems like we have a pretty straightforward job – use our tools to verify property lines, monitor structures for movement over time, lay out the lines for construction, etc.

In the US, everybody knows a little bit about the Declaration of Independence. This document was the formal announcement of the split between the Colonies and the British Crown – ultimately creating the United States of America.

Berntsen International, the leader in infrastructure marking solutions, announces that it has earned the Esri Release Ready Specialty status. This designation recognizes companies, products and solutions that integrate with Esri technology and are created by partners with expertise in leveraging Esri solutions and software.

As a surveyor, did you ever have the opportunity to be part of a historic project? Jack Savlan, now of Milwaukee, did. He was one of the surveyors on the original Cadastral Survey of the Navajo Nation that began on June 21, 1982 at the corner of the sections 35 and 36, T24N, R14W, New Mexico Principal Meridian. Jack’s going to take over the blog for today and share this incredible experience.

It’s well-known that a number of our presidents were surveyors – Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and even Roosevelt (kind of).

Did you ever wonder how the early surveyors learned how to survey? Many biographies say these men were “self-taught” . . . for Washington and Jefferson, this means they got a copy of “Geodaesia,” the first surveying book created for the New World surveyor.

In 1632, Maryland (governed by the Calvert family) was granted “that part of the Bay of Delaware which Lieth under the Fortieth Degree of North Latitude”. Unfortunately, the fortieth parallel ran right through the middle of Philadelphia, cutting it off from its only harbor. Pennsylvania (governed by the Penn family), didn’t think this was fair, and the case dragged out in English courts for decades. By 1750, a boundary was agreed upon - on paper.

Georg wasn’t always a business owner. Back in 1996, he was working for a company that sold construction products and had the opportunity to see the problems surveyors faced on construction sites, particularly issues with Finished Floor Level (FFL).

He says “Back in early 1996, I visited a good customer on a construction site and observed him scraping off plaster from the wall to search for a pencil line that marked the Finished Floor Level.

I was on the back ridge of maples where a large 30” hemlock stands; the branches were covered with snow – it looked like a Christmas card! Birds were chirping and the tracks of deer, fox and snowshoe rabbits were outlined in the pristine, crunchy snow. An eagle made a slow, silent arc overhead. I couldn’t think of anywhere in the world I’d rather be than on this plot of land in the forest.

Looking back at the start of our nation, there are those that stand out for their singular contributions that laid the foundations of democracy. Surveyors, including Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, literally set the boundaries of our country and its ideals. Other surveyors made significant and lasting contributions, including Benjamin Bannaker.

Little did I know that dusty old geography would become the one of the most interesting (and explosively-growing) fields in science. Today Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is shaking up the world of geography – and statistics, data analysis, spatial data, modeling, geostatistics, cartography, data integration, GPS – and on and on.­

As any surveyor knows, our nation was built on surveying, with many of our early leaders getting their start as surveyors (Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson, to name a few). Early surveyors laid the essential groundwork for land records that have served us well for many years. Unfortunately, land records in many states are based on original surveys done in the 1800s or even earlier. That’s fine when land remains unchanged for decades . . .

As a member of the Point of Beginning (POB) Advisory Board, I have a unique opportunity to reach out to a larger audience about surveying and geomatics subjects that are of great importance.

One of the most important subjects to me (and to the surveying profession) is letting young people know about our exciting and fulfilling profession.