From my 4th grade spelling & map reading classes:

G - George
E - Edward's
O - Old
G - Grandfather
R - Rode
A - A
P - Pig
H - Home
Y - Yesterday

Book of lists links facts with fun

Local author knows where roller skaters roam,
and he even tackles serious subjects
By John Wilkens
January 9, 2005

Brandt Maxwell calls himself a geography geek.

He's always been one.

When he was a kid, growing up in Kansas, he invented a
pretend continent in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean,
complete with mountains and cities.

Fascinated by the weather, topography and food of distant
places, he became a rabid traveler. At age 36, he's already
been to all 50 states in America and to more than 50
foreign countries.

Maxwell has always liked lists, too. One of his favorite
books as a child was the sprawling collection of oddities
and little-known facts called "The Book of Lists."

He was intrigued by how it ranked people, places and things
in surprising ways, how he could look at one list, and then
another, and draw his own associations and conclusions. It
made him think.

Now Maxwell, who works as a meteorologist for the National
Weather Service, has come out with his own book of lists.
About geography, of course.

Called "The Largest U.S. Cities Named After a Food," the
paperback has 500 lists in it, a compendium of the weird
and the insightful, the funny and the serious.

Want to know which U.S. cities are the windiest during the
month of January? It's in the book.

Want to know which cities have the greatest immigrant
diversity?   Page 204.

"I wanted to do a book that would give people an improved
appreciation for geography," Maxwell said. "I want them to
know geography is something that's fun, not the heavy
subject they might think it is."

What's fun for him, he said, is the joy of discovery that
comes from visiting a new place or studying it. He figures
he got some of that curiosity from his mother. "She's nosy,
and so am I," he said.

When it came time for college, though, he didn't wander far.
He got a bachelor's and a master's degree in atmospheric
sciences from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, his
hometown.

He joined the weather service in 1995 and came to Southern
California later that same year. He's been here ever since.
He works at the local headquarters in Rancho Bernardo, where
he's one of four forecasters.

He started the book about four years ago. (He knows what
you're thinking:  Weather man in this county? Must have a
lot of time on his hands.)

Some of the lists, like those involving climate, were easy
for him to compile. There's a whole chapter about rain and
heat and snow and tornadoes. Southern California, as might
be expected, shows up on several lists that have to do with
good weather - "Largest U.S. Cities With Mild Winter
Climates," for example, and "Snowfall in Unexpected Places"
(a 1967 storm dumped about three inches on Fallbrook).

Other lists were sparked by his travels. When he was in
South Africa, in Lesotho, he was startled to see a sign
advertising a ski resort. He found it hard to picture snow
in this place more commonly associated with round huts and
grass roofs.

But picture it he did, and Africa wound up on the list
called "Some Exotic Ski Resorts Around the World." (The
others are in Bolivia,  India, Iran and China.)

A lot of the lists are just for fun, he said. One of the
first ones he compiled, and also one of the longest, is
of strange place names in the United States. It runs from
Accident, Md., to Zilwaukee, Mich., with nods in between
to such oddballs as Boring, Ore., Dumbell, Wyo., and
Toad Suck, Ark.

One list names the states with the highest per-capita
number of roller-skating rinks, and one identifies the
states with the highest percentage of oldies rock stations.

But Maxwell said he also wanted more thought-provoking fare.
So there are several lists about the death penalty. One
identifies the United States as among the seven countries
that recently have executed people who were under 18 when
they committed their crimes.  He admitted he finds the
practice abhorrent, but he said he wasn't trying to make
any political statements.

If people read the list and find themselves bothered (or
not) that America is ranked right up there with Iran,
Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, that's fine, he said.
But his main goal is to educate.  "I want to get people
thinking," he said. "The more aware we are, the better."

His only agenda is to help boost our understanding of
geography. In the introduction of his book, he points
to a 2002 survey in which 11 percent of Americans between
the ages of 18 and 24 could not locate their own country
on an unlabeled world map.

"It's kind of strange, kind of sad," he said. "We deal with
so many foreign countries now - we travel there as tourists,
we have business arrangements, people come here to live. It
would be more unifying if we knew more about these places."

He's not sure why we're so illiterate in the subject, but he
suspects it starts in school. Either geography doesn't get
emphasized enough, he said, or it's taught in a way that
bores kids.

The glazed-eye factor - some people start to nod off when
they hear the word "geography" - is one of the reasons he
and the publisher, Santa Monica Press, gave his book its
offbeat title.

"It says right away that this is not an average geography
book, and that you probably are going to find things you
never thought about before," Maxwell said.

His own love of other places has spilled into various parts
of his life. He likes to cook interesting foods - and by
interesting he usually means foreign. He invents his own
dishes. One favorite is a curry made with oyster mushrooms.

He sold the book in an unusual way - without an agent.
Maxwell said he had heard it can take a long time to find an
agent, time he felt he didn't have. He worried his lists
would grow stale.

"I figured I would try to sell the book to a publisher
myself, and if that didn't work then I'd look for an agent,"
he said. He landed a contract about a month after sending
out the manuscript.

There are no plans for a second volume, although he still
finds himself thinking about and compiling lists. He posts
a new one every week on his Web site, www.geographylists.com.

Maybe if there is a sequel, our city will do better. Most of
the time it's listed in the book, the city is in the middle
somewhere. "It was disappointing," he said. "I really wanted
this area to be the overwhelming leader in something."

If only the founders had named it after a food.