De-rangement
In Ancient Mesopotamia the rulers granted farm land by inscribing rights and boundaries on melon-sized stones. An abstract grid does the job in most U.S. states. Jefferson’s theoretical system of Townships and Ranges was intended to encourage farming, repay war debts and fund another cornerstone of democracy: public education. It did not fully succeed. Nor did it fully factor the costs of dicing up and giving away the ancestral homes of others. The Ohio State University, a land-grant institution in the first state to be gridded out by the Feds, lies tight in the grain of this history. It is as good a place as any to rethink the structure and stewardship of the land, what and from whom we learn, and how the one shapes the other.
