Looking at old neighborhoods in Google Maps
I read of research lately where older people were re-vitalized a little by being in surroundings like they had when they were younger. I can’t find the reference, though.
It is true that we have 7 or 8 senses, such as social sense of a group and the sense of what emotions we are feeling. Still the main two are sight and sound. Sitting at the computer, I looked up my address when I was in the middle grades of school. The Google maps gave me the option of seeing street-level scenes at that location. Instantly, I was transported to the apartment we lived in at the time. I was standing in front of the building looking at the exact front door I used about sixty years ago and the exact front windows I looked through. That was the living room in which I found that swallowing chewing tobacco really did lead to sickness and vomiting.
The suddenness of the change from my computer desk to the 6th grade long ago brought tears to my eyes. I often tell people that tears are merely a sign of very high emotion and are not necessarily sad. Once when my wife and I drove through areas of Vermont 30 years after I worked there as a young man, I was overcome with sympathy for that young man’s worries and concerns. I had a very hard time stopping my sobbing. I was surprised at my reaction and I was equally surprised at the depth of emotional shock, although good shock, at Google’s sudden transport of me through time and space.
Not every location has a street view available. If you put a street, community and state into Google maps, you will get a map. A right click along the street on the map brings up both a browser short menu and a Google short menu. Select the browser menu “properties” to get it out of the way. Then select “Where’s here?” from the Google window and you will get an address on the street. Click on it and look for “Street View” in the window that pops up. What you are looking for to see places is that “Street View”.
If the street view is available, it will enable you to look down the street and to look at what is along either side of the street. Here is an example from Google Maps of the street view of the First Unitarian Church in downtown Baltimore. Click on “Street View” and then drag the picture which will pivot until you can see the large church on the left. It takes a little practice but it is a very fast and inexpensive way to travel all over.
