Mapmaker, mapmaker, draw me a map

Why is upstate New York considered up? Well, if you look at a map of New York state, we are closer to the top than, say, New York City, which is clearly downstate. Albany folks, however, call us downstaters. Alaskans call all of us the lower 48. The North Pole is the top of the world and Antarctica the bottom. Our perception of the world is shaped by the way our maps are oriented when they print them.We think of a printed map as if we were holding it up in front of us. Everything is printed so that in order to read the place names north must be at the top. This does not actually mean that the places at the top of the map are physically higher, but we tend to think of it that way. I remember reading that if you buy a world map in Russia, the country in the middle of the map is Russia, not the United States. How confusing the maps printed at the North Pole must be. Which way is up now?Some people will argue that upstate is at a higher elevation, thus it is up. Well, if that is the criteria, what happens on those volcanic islands where the entire circumference is lower than the volcanic peak in the center? If you say you are going up island, there is no problem. When you say you are going down island you could be going anywhere. This could explain why they so often suffer from arrested development. They spend too much time trying to find each other instead of developing their civilizations.I am suspicious that some of the states pay off the cartographers. My Rand McNally devotes a full page to the state of Colorado. It does the same for Connecticut. Connecticut is one-third the size of Colorado, but it looks the same size in the atlas. I wonder if Russia is really that big or did they slip a few rubles to the map maker? If you read about the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, you will find references to the conquest of the kingdom of the Upper Nile. This always confused me because when you look at the map you kind of wonder what all the fuss was about. I mean, there it is, right there where all the Egyptians live. Then I discovered that upper and lower were terms related to up river and down river. So Upper Nile is actually down and Lower Nile is actually up. This becomes very confusing when your river flows sideways, like the Amazon.I have two map programs on my computer. It makes it easier to look things up ... or is it down?Bill Abrams resides out west, or is it upstate, in Pine Plains.