Fwd: shapefile/NCL help

I'm a graduate student at the University of Maine. I'm currently taking a
NCL scripting class and am really new to NCL coding. For a portion of my
dissertation I need to plot shapefiles using NCL. We just updated to
version 6.1.2 and I've been trying to plot using gsn_add_shapefile_polygons
but keep getting an error message "Argument type mismatch on argument (2)
of (gsn_add_shapefile_polygons) can not coerce". This is a really simple
shapefile of US state boundaries and I only want to plot the outlines but
haven't had any luck. I've attached the script for your convince. The
shapefile, even compressed would not send. I tried to upload it to the ftp
site following the directions provided but couldn't. I downloaded it from
the national atlas.
http://www.nationalatlas.gov/atlasftp.html?openChapters=chpbound#chpbound

I'm also wondering how the geographic coordinate system and datums work in
NCL. The shapefile has a projected coordinate system of North American
Lambert con but a geographic coordinated system and datum of NA 1983 datum.
 Does the original coordinate systems matter when adding them in NCL?
 There is a bunch of code at the bottom of the script that I commented out.
The commented out code was another attempt to add the shapefile. I realize
I could do this using ncl and not a shapefile but I am starting
easy because the other shapefiles I will be plotting are more complex so I
thought I would try something easy first!
Thank you for your time!
Jenny

-- 
Jennifer McCabe
PhD Student, Ecology and Environmental Science
204 Roger Clapp Greenhouse, UMaine
Orono, ME 04469
p:307-413-5512
jennifer.mccabe@maine.edu <jennifer.mccabe@maine.edu>
-- 
Jennifer McCabe
PhD Student, Ecology and Environmental Science
204 Roger Clapp Greenhouse, UMaine
Orono, ME 04469
p:307-413-5512
jennifer.mccabe@maine.edu <jennifer.mccabe@maine.edu>

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