Please leave...

I was walking past one of the bridge houses along the Chicago River this morning, and I noticed that I could see right into it, and there was a sign on the wall. (You may have to look at the larger image to read it.)

Maps of France - chain of thought

This illustration is from a great blog I don't read often enough, Strange Maps: Squaring the Hexagon.

Which leads me to some other thoughts:

• I have never been able to see how the map of France suggests a hexagon. Maybe a kind of a star, the kind a little kid would draw, but not a hexagon.
• When I was in college, I found a wonderful stained glass window in an antique store. I was told it had been pulled from an old building in Indianapolis. It was about four feet on a side, square, and it was a fine map of France, divided up into its old regions, not the modern départements. Its borders were small squares with the blasons of, well, I suppose dukedoms or something. It was the unimaginable sum of $400. Don't I wish I could go back and buy it now!
• (That same antique store had a priest's kit for administering the last rites and a stuffed mongoose engaged in combat with a stuffed snake. Mercy!)
• I also wish I'd gotten the ring I saw once that had a ruby flanked by two Indian heads back to back wearing feather headdresses. I would have been just as taken with it when I was seven.
• And I can't omit (though I should) the idiomatic meaning of faire une carte de France...

Uh huh.