Thanks to a quick, gracious reply from the GIS Mapping team at County of Santa Clara – Registrar of Voters, I have a shapefile with the precincts for Santa Clara County. You can ask for it too. I’m struck by the beauty of it:
# In R
library(ggplot2)
library(sf)
> precincts <- read_sf("~/Downloads/Precinct_Boundaries/Precinct_Boundaries.shp")
> ggplot(precincts) + geom_sf()A combination of artificial and natural, driven by people’s choices — where to live, how to draw the map — and the landscape.
I’ve been holding onto this quote from Vivian Gornick‘s memoir, “The Odd Woman and the City” for a bit:
Every night when I turn the lights out in my sixteenth-floor living room betore I go to bed, I experience a shock of pleasure as I see the banks of lighted windows rising to the sky, crowding round me, and feel myself embraced by the anonymous ingathering of city dwellers. This swarm of human hives, also hanging anchored in space, is the New York design offering generic connection. The pleasure it gives soothes beyond all explanation.
I think I might feel the same just looking at this map? It also reminds me of the joy of looking out the window of an airplane at night and wondering about the lives of all the people below.
Though it would be better if we were more careful with light.
My dad says that he was acquainted with Gornick via Gunther Moses, maybe this Gunther Moses, an electrician (Archive). Moses lent my dad a room while my dad was at City College. They got to know each other via a future parapsychologist.
We’re working on a little biography of my dad now, mostly for our family. I like this photo of him as a youngster.
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