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asakiyumeThe first part is an appreciation of a nice display of a great picture book, Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History, by Vashti Harrison, in a beautiful setting, the Silvio Conte Nature Trail in Hadley, MA.
The second part is a querulous complaint about a similar but poorly done nature-trail-storybook display.
The Silvio Conte Nature Trail is great if you want a very easy but very pretty walk, maybe with a friend you haven't seen for a while. It goes over a river, through trees and reed beds, and it has vistas where you can see old farm land and hawks.
I went walking there with a friend in early February, and we noticed, partway through the walk, that there were pictures displayed in cases--each one featuring a black woman who had accomplished good things. Some of them were ones we've all heard of, like Sojourner Truth or Ida B. Wells, but there were others I hadn't heard of, like Mary Eliza Mahoney (1845–1926), a nurse who worked up and down the East Coast...
(Click through the photos to see them bigger)
... and Alma Woodsey Thomas (1891–1978), an artist. I like about her story that she only began to paint seriously after she retired from teaching, and she had a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art--the first solo show there of an African American Woman--when she was 82.
The exhibit was special for Black History Month. The cases the pictures were in are very sturdy and weather resistant, and I'm pretty sure I recall other books displayed in them. The only complaint I have was that I had no idea whether the display was of a series of paintings, maybe by a local artist, or whether it was pages from a picture book. We found the first case in the series, which was the introduction--but the artist/author's name wasn't on it, nor the name of the book. I had to Google "cute cartoon famous Black women" to find out that yes, it was a book. Maaaaaybe I missed a sign with that information on it, but I doubt it.
I've seen similar displays elsewhere, but doing them well--by which I mean, so that they're protected from the elements and don't blow away--takes some thought and work, which apparently not everyone is up to. There's a small patch of conserved land across the street from my old high school in upstate NY--the place with the woodland marimba--and they made a display of The Scarecrow, a picture book by Beth Ferry, illustrated by the Fan Brothers. I've been to that little conservation spot three times. The first time, nothing was being displayed. The second time, this story was being displayed--but most of the pages had already fallen down, and in some cases the stake they'd been attached to had fallen over too. And the third time, the story pages were still lying like bits of rubbish along the perimeter of the trail.
The story pages had been laminated, which means they could survive being rained and snowed on. But they were big, and only attached to their stake (a single stake for each page) by velcro. Even when they were successfully on the stake, they sagged because they were so wide and had nothing to hold them spread out. It was really distressing to see them still lying there on my third visit: whoever had made the installation had apparently just put it up and never looked back. As a consequence, what had originally been intended as an added attraction had turned into something actively detracting from the environment of the location.
Maybe partly because of the frustration I felt, seeing that, I began to wonder about the whole project of displaying picture books on a nature trail. Picture books are nice things--I like them very much. And nature trails are nice things--I like them very much too. And there's no reason you can't combine the two (if you think about how to do it responsibly), but by the same token, there's not really any reason why you should. It almost feels as if there's no confidence in what the trail itself, all on its own, has to offer. Why not let an experience of the trail be an experience of the trail--the plants and animals and skies and weather, and what you can happen to see and hear and feel and smell all around you?
Ah well. It's fine to have the picture books. I really enjoyed the Little Leaders. I was just really frustrated with the picture-book-turned-trash in the other case.
The second part is a querulous complaint about a similar but poorly done nature-trail-storybook display.
The Silvio Conte Nature Trail is great if you want a very easy but very pretty walk, maybe with a friend you haven't seen for a while. It goes over a river, through trees and reed beds, and it has vistas where you can see old farm land and hawks.
I went walking there with a friend in early February, and we noticed, partway through the walk, that there were pictures displayed in cases--each one featuring a black woman who had accomplished good things. Some of them were ones we've all heard of, like Sojourner Truth or Ida B. Wells, but there were others I hadn't heard of, like Mary Eliza Mahoney (1845–1926), a nurse who worked up and down the East Coast...
(Click through the photos to see them bigger)
... and Alma Woodsey Thomas (1891–1978), an artist. I like about her story that she only began to paint seriously after she retired from teaching, and she had a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art--the first solo show there of an African American Woman--when she was 82.
The exhibit was special for Black History Month. The cases the pictures were in are very sturdy and weather resistant, and I'm pretty sure I recall other books displayed in them. The only complaint I have was that I had no idea whether the display was of a series of paintings, maybe by a local artist, or whether it was pages from a picture book. We found the first case in the series, which was the introduction--but the artist/author's name wasn't on it, nor the name of the book. I had to Google "cute cartoon famous Black women" to find out that yes, it was a book. Maaaaaybe I missed a sign with that information on it, but I doubt it.
I've seen similar displays elsewhere, but doing them well--by which I mean, so that they're protected from the elements and don't blow away--takes some thought and work, which apparently not everyone is up to. There's a small patch of conserved land across the street from my old high school in upstate NY--the place with the woodland marimba--and they made a display of The Scarecrow, a picture book by Beth Ferry, illustrated by the Fan Brothers. I've been to that little conservation spot three times. The first time, nothing was being displayed. The second time, this story was being displayed--but most of the pages had already fallen down, and in some cases the stake they'd been attached to had fallen over too. And the third time, the story pages were still lying like bits of rubbish along the perimeter of the trail.
The story pages had been laminated, which means they could survive being rained and snowed on. But they were big, and only attached to their stake (a single stake for each page) by velcro. Even when they were successfully on the stake, they sagged because they were so wide and had nothing to hold them spread out. It was really distressing to see them still lying there on my third visit: whoever had made the installation had apparently just put it up and never looked back. As a consequence, what had originally been intended as an added attraction had turned into something actively detracting from the environment of the location.
Maybe partly because of the frustration I felt, seeing that, I began to wonder about the whole project of displaying picture books on a nature trail. Picture books are nice things--I like them very much. And nature trails are nice things--I like them very much too. And there's no reason you can't combine the two (if you think about how to do it responsibly), but by the same token, there's not really any reason why you should. It almost feels as if there's no confidence in what the trail itself, all on its own, has to offer. Why not let an experience of the trail be an experience of the trail--the plants and animals and skies and weather, and what you can happen to see and hear and feel and smell all around you?
Ah well. It's fine to have the picture books. I really enjoyed the Little Leaders. I was just really frustrated with the picture-book-turned-trash in the other case.
