Growing up, I had a favorite game, maybe you played it, too. Every time we drove over the bridge, I’d sit up as tall as I could, scanning both sides of the canal and counting boats as quickly as possible. The outcome was predictable: whoever sat on the side of the car with the most boats won. I’ll admit, I still play. How could you not? Am I really supposed to ignore a canal full of boats and instead focus on how unnervingly close we are to the sidewalk, or the car approaching head on in the...

While attending Salem State University for my undergraduate degree in public history, I was fortunate to secure an internship in the archives of Salem Maritime National Historic Site, the nation’s oldest national historic site. One of my key tasks was digitizing and identifying their image collection, which includes thousands of photographs, slides and postcards. I spent countless hours online toggling between Historic Aerials and Google Street View, painstakingly shifting my gaze between...