Big Sky

Here is a map of Montana by The New Yorker veteran Roz Chast from April of 1996.  This ran about a year after the Unabomber was caught and about a year after the Oklahoma City bombing.  This issue of The New Yorker hit the stands just before the Columbine shootings took place.

The "gorgeous mosaic" reference in the title comes from New York City Mayor David Dinkins who described the city's diversity thusly.  So this is a joke about diversity, or possibly the lack thereof.

Clicking on it might not make it large enough to read.  Here's a run-down of the captions:

• Obsessed environmentalists
• Obsessed anti-environmentalists
• UFO buffs
• Militia groups
• Organised tax-dodgers
• Mad bombers
• Right-wing religious fanatics
• Macho writers, their hippie wives and their hippie children
• Hollywood pseudo-cowboys in need of privacy, open air, and a full-time personal staff of forty

This version will be larger and more legible.  It comes from that great site "Strange Maps" which has a more in-depth discussion of it than i care to tackle right now.  :

I also want to mention that today, with Montana, this is the 15th state referenced in this blog.  Only 35 to go (and i already got D.C.)