»In which we are stuck in these maps and legends

The New York Times describes restoration of a acres-large terrazzo map in the Tent of Tomorrow, part of the fabled World Fair of 1964-1965.

Just what you would do with such a map — other than admire it — is unclear. Even after conservation, it would be too fragile and uneven to serve as a walking surface, much less a driving surface. (One World’s Fair-era photo shows a girl at the wheel of a toy car tooling down Route 83 out of Fredonia.) And it will almost certainly never again be used as a concert venue, as it was in the late 1960s, or as a skating rink, as it was in the early 1970s, when the terrazzo was covered with a layer of polyurethane.

This feels like an episode from a story by Jorge Luis Borges, in which an imagined world is laid out as part of a funfair; eventually Scharlach the Dandy runs his well-meaning quarry to ground, explaining that the hapless academic was drawn in by the promise of an antique manuscript, clues to which were found only in the map. The manuscript does not exist; the map was made for a promotion with a children's breakfast-cereal company; and the academic was the last witness in a case against the Dandy.