In winter 2016 issue

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JVA InterpNews

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The International Heritage Interpretation e-Magazine.

Merry Christmas.

Wow - where did the year go? This issue of IN is huge - and IN is growing. What an amazing collection of articles. But wait till you see the Jan/Feb 2017 issue - already filling up. IN is the MOST widely read of a ANY interpretive magazine or publication.

Reaching over 300,000 in 60 countries taking us over 5 years to develop. So if you want more than a handful of folks to read your article, IN is the place to publish your work.

So what's new? The Heritage Interpretation Training Center has added 3 new courses in heritage interpretation training - we now offer 37 college level courses in interpretation, more than any other organizations combined. And we are the leaders in college level interpretive training courses.

- Our newest interpretation text book - The Interpretive Writers Guidebook. Available by the end of the year.

- We are looking for international Associate IN Editors to help us find more international articles ... interested?

- We are looking for articles for our Jan/Feb 2017 issue - interested in sharing your ideas with 300,000 ?

- Our interpretive training courses are going live - we can teach at YOUR site/for your organization - ask for details.

You can now ADVERTISE in InterpNEWS- want 300K to learn about your products & Services??? JV In This Issue:

Page:

- Interpreting Yellowstone Bison - NPS - Is Interpretation Stagnant? John Veverka - Interpreting Mexico's Crystal Caves. Neil Shea - Interpreting the History of Christmas History Channel Staff.

- Interpreting the giant tortoises of the Galapagos The Galapagos Conservancy - Interpreting The King of Pipes: The Meerschaum John Veverka - Magna Science Adventure Centre in Rotherham. Steelos Gallery Exhibition Dan Boys - New “On Fire” pottery exhibit, The Rockwell Museum of Western Art. Crystal McKenzie, Inc. - James Knox Polk: Possible Stories from His Mother, a Rigid Presbyterian - Martha Macdonald - Monarch Butterfly Migration and Overwintering. USDA Forest Service - Easter Island and interpreting lost stories. Lost Civilizations.

- Every Stone, a Story, The Tale of a pebble. Ed Clifton.

- Whiffenpoof Song” and wanderlust at imaginary journeys. Dr. Martha Benn Macdonald - Using pop culture, trending topics, and regional influences to facilitate connection during zookeeper presentations - Tami Jo Brightrall - When is a bug more than a bug? When it's a Hercules Beetle. IN Editors - The National Park Service Climate Change project. Jon Kovach - The Whole Is Cooler Than The Pieces. Eahan Rotman - Book Review : Interpretive design and the Dance of Experience Bill Reynolds

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InterpNEWS is published six times a year as a FREE John Veverka & Associates publication and published as a service to the interpretive profession. If you would like to be added to our mailing list just send an e-mail to jvainterp@aol.com and we will add you to our growing mailing list. Contributions of articles are welcomed. It you would like to have an article published in InterpNEWS let me know what you have in mind. Cover photo: Yellowstone Bison. www.heritageinterp.com , jvainterp@aol.com. SKYPE: jvainterp.

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Interpreting Yellowstone Bison NPS News Release

Bison are the largest mammals in Yellowstone National Park. They are strictly vegetarian, a grazer of grasslands and sedges in the meadows, the foothills, and even the high-elevation, forested plateaus of Yellowstone. Bison males, called bulls, can weigh upwards of 1,800 pounds. Females (cows) average about 1,000 pounds. Both stand approximately six feet tall at the shoulder, and can move with surprising speed to defend their young or when approached too closely by people. Bison breed from mid-July to mid-August, and bear one calf in April and May. Some wolf predation of bison is documented in Canada and has recently been observed in Yellowstone.

Yellowstone is the only place in the lower 48 states where a population of wild bison has persisted since prehistoric times, although fewer than 50 native bison remained here in 1902. Fearing extinction, the park imported 21 bison from two privately-owned herds, as foundation stock for a bison ranching project that spanned 50 years at the Buffalo Ranch in Yellowstone's Lamar Valley. Activities there included irrigation, hayfeeding, roundups, culling, and predator control, to artificially ensure herd survival. By the 1920s, some intermingling of the introduced and wild bison had begun. With protection from poaching, the native and transplanted populations increased. In 1936, bison were transplanted to historic habitats in the Firehole River and Hayden Valley. In 1954, the entire population numbered 1,477. Bison were trapped and herds periodically reduced until 1967, when only 397 bison were counted parkwide. All bison herd reduction activities were phased out after 1966, again allowing natural ecological processes to determine bison numbers and distribution.

Although winterkill takes a toll, by 1996 bison numbers had increased to about 3,500.

Bison are nomadic grazers, wandering high on Yellowstone's grassy plateaus in summer. Despite their slow gait, bison are surprisingly fast for animals that weigh more than half a ton. In winter, they use their large heads like a plow to push aside snow and find winter food. In the park interior where snows are deep, they winter in thermally influenced areas and around the geyser basins. Bison also move to winter range in the northern part of Yellowstone.

Bison are enjoyed by visitors, celebrated by conservationists, and revered by Native Americans. Why are they a management challenge? One reason is that about half of Yellowstone's bison have been exposed to brucellosis, a bacterial disease that came to this continent with European cattle and may cause cattle to miscarry. The disease has little effect on park bison and has never been transmitted from wild bison to a visitor or to domestic livestock. Despite the very low risk to humans and livestock today, since the possibility of contagion exists, the State of Montana believes its "brucellosis-free" status may be jeopardized if bison are in proximity to cattle.

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Although the risk is very low, if cattle become infected, ranchers can be prevented from shipping livestock out of state until stringent testing and quarantine requirements are met. Although scientists are studying new possibilities, there is yet no known safe, effective brucellosis vaccine for bison. Ironically, elk in the ecosystem also carry the disease, but this popular game species is not considered a threat to livestock.

Yellowstone wildlife freely move across boundaries set a century ago without knowledge of each animal's habitat needs. But bison are not always unwelcome outside the park. In the park managers have tried to limit bison use of lands outside the park through public hunting, hazing bison back inside park boundaries, capture, testing for exposure to brucellosis, and shipping them to slaughter. Since 1990, state and federal agency personnel have shot bison that leave the park. During the severe winter of 1996-1997, nearly 1,100 bison were sent to slaughter. The carcasses sold at public auction, or shot and given to Native Americans. These actions reduced the bison population to about 2,200 in 1997-1998. In the mild winter of 1997-1998, only 11 bison were killed in management actions, all in January, and all from the West Yellowstone area. Six bison were shot and five were sent to slaughter. Through the winter another 21 bison are known to have died, 12 of natural causes, and 9 from other causes such as collisions with vehicles.

The NPS, U.S.D.A. Forest Service, U.S.D.A. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and the State of Montana completed a Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Interagency Bison Management Plan for the State of Montana and Yellowstone National Park for public release on June 12, 1998. The purpose is to maintain a wild free-ranging bison population and to address the risk of brucellosis transmissions to protect the economic interest and viability of the livestock industry in Montana. Alternatives being considered range from: allowing bison to freely range over a large portion of public land inside and outside the park; managing bison like elk and other wildlife through controlled hunting outside park boundaries; and attempting to eradicate brucellosis by capturing, testing, and slaughtering infected bison at numerous facilities constructed inside the park. Additional options include purchase of additional winter range; attacking brucellosis with a (yet unknown) safe and effective vaccine for bison; and quarantine of animals at appropriate locations such as Indian Reservations or other suitable sites outside Yellowstone.

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Is Interpretation Stagnant?

John Veverka Director The Heritage Interpretation Training Center Sr. Instructor, Kansas State University - Global Campus.

Associate Editor, the Journal of Interpretation Research

The slow flow of new ideas enters the pond of "the way we have always done it" - and then disappears.

When I discovered the interpretive profession back in 1974 after having a summer job as a seasonal interpretive naturalist, I got lucky. When I went back to Ohio State University as a zoology major I was able to change my major to interpretation. Yes, way back then you could get a B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. majoring in interpretation.

We had 6 interpretive courses in the undergraduate program, and two graduate courses in interpretation, including a course on "Interpretive Research and Theory". I still have my notes from interpretation 510 - the introduction to interpretation course. Later on I had the opportunity to teach the advanced Interpretive Master Planning course at Ohio State and then later, while working on a Ph.D. in interpretation, teach the introductory and advanced interpretation courses at Michigan State University.

During the 1970's and early 1980's - I call the "golden age" of interpretation - there were many universities teaching interpretation, and at the Association of Interpretive Naturalists (now NAI) National Conference those universities brought vans full of their interpretive students to present their research papers in the "interpretive research tracks" of the conference. The profession was "hot", had great leaders within the profession as coaches and teachers, and super interpretive research programs at universities going full throttle.

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Let's fast forward to 2016. I recently attended a interpretation seminar with a presentation on what is interpretation. As I listened to the presentation it was like the person was using my interpretation course notes from 1974. Where was all the new stuff, new ideas, new theories, new models of the interpretive communication process? The person doing the presentation had no professional training in interpretation themselves. And this is one of the stagnate areas - people teaching interpretation who have had no actual training in it - teaching old ideas (30+ years old) as "new" and state-of-the-art of the profession. The profession is stagnate because there isn't a large cadre of interpretive experts working to keep it fresh and advancing. So here are some problem areas causing the stagnate pool we need to work on.

- There are fewer universities teaching more than one "general" course in interpretation.

- There are even fewer universities with professors having their graduate students doing relevant research (M.S. thesis and dissertations) in new interpretive theory, techniques and visitor studies.

- Most interpretive organizations are not focused on interpretive training, and those that do, such as the National Association for Interpretation, are only doing a few entry level courses.

- There are too many interpretive consultants that have no training in interpretation and magically become experts when their business cards arrive, and don't have any ideas about advanced levels of interpretive communications to apply to projects - so keep doing things the same old way.... over and over again.

So how do we begin to unplug the drain, then let in and keep fresh water flowing, using new opportunities for teaching and advancing the interpretive profession? One key option is training interpreters to actually "be" interpreters. What are some of the new concepts and topic areas today's interpreters need to be trained in? Here are a few: - Mass customization and markets of one (these are books).

- The experience economy and experience based program/services development.

- Marketing and visitor studies for heritage sites and attractions.

- Interpretive writing and advanced interpretive writing (museum labels, etc.).

- Financial aspects of operating and managing an interpretive organization.

- Cost/contact and cost effectiveness of interpretive programs and services. If you spend $1.00 on interpretation for your agency is your agency receiving $5.00 in benefits from that interpretive investment?

- Creating recreational learning environments and experiences to enhance memory retention.

- Visitor psychology (how visitors learn and remember from their visit).

- Conducting interpretive operation feasibility analysis for new facilities.

- Interpreter training and Interpretive coaching techniques.

- Updates on new interpretive services and media technology.

- Conducting evaluation studies (pre-post test evaluation for exhibits, media, services).

- Management of volunteer programs (how do you fire a volunteer?).

- How to plan and conduct interpretive research studies and programs.

We currently teach, through the Heritage Interpretation Training Center, 33 college level courses in heritage interpretation. So these courses already exist.

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What can we/agencies and organizations do to un-plug the drain and get the profession moving again creating more jobs and opportunities for interpreters and success for interpretive organizations? Here are a few ideas: 1. If you're an interpreter and have little or no formal training in it - get more training.

2. If you're doing any visitor research, trying new techniques, etc. present your work and findings at a conference or write an article about it to share what you learned.

3. If you're an individual interpreter, join any/all interpretive organizations you can to receive their journals, take their courses or webinars and attend their conferences.

4. If you're an organization, try to lobby local universities or colleges to offer interpretive courses and majors.

There are several universities that do offer interpretive courses in the US, Canada and the UK. Support them in these efforts and market them to your membership. Otherwise, develop and offer these courses yourselves.

5. If you're an expert in interpretation (with training in interpretation and years of experience doing interpretation) become a coach or certified interpretive trainer. Share what you have learned and encourage new interpreters to build on what you know to help advance the profession further.

Here are a few resources to help get innovative interpretation flowing again: - Heritage Interpretation Training Center: http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpretive_training_center_course _catalogue_.html - InterpNEWS - The Heritage Interpretation e-Magazine.

Subscriptions are FREE. Back issues can be read at: www.issue.com/interpnews. Write an article for us: http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpnews.html - The National Association for Interpretation: http://www.interpnet.com/ Workshops and training.

- Association for Heritage Interpretation: http://www.ahi.org.uk/ - Interpret Europe: http://www.interpret-europe.net/top.html If you would like to chat more about any of this rant feel free to contact me.

John Veverka jvainterp@aol.com www.heritageinterp.com

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Interpreting Mexico's Crystal Caves.

By Neil Shea National Geographic Staff Photograph by Carsten Peter, Speleoresearch & Films

In a nearly empty cantina in a dark desert town, the short, drunk man makes his pitch. Beside him on the billiards table sits a chunk of rock the size of home plate. Dozens of purple and white crystals push up from it like shards of glass. "Yours for $300," he says. "No? One hundred. A steal!" The three or four other patrons glance past their beers, thinking it over: Should they offer their crystals too? Rock dust on the green felt, cowboy ballads on the jukebox. Above the bar, a sign reads, "Happy Hour: 8 a.m. to 9 p.m."

This remote part of northern Mexico, an hour or so south of Chihuahua, is famous for crystals, and paychecks at the local lead and silver mine, where almost everyone works, are meager enough to inspire a black market.

"Thirty dollars." He leans in. "Ten." It's hard to take him seriously. Earlier in the day, in a cave deep below the bar, I crawled among the world's largest crystals, a forest of them, broad and thick, some more than 30 feet long and half a million years old. So clear, so luminous, they seemed extraterrestrial. They make the chunk on the pool table seem dull as a paperweight.

Nothing compares with the giants found in Cueva de los Cristales, or Cave of Crystals. The limestone cavern and its glittering beams were discovered in 2000 by a pair of brothers drilling nearly a thousand feet below ground in the Naica mine, one of Mexico's most productive, yielding tons of lead and silver each year. The brothers were astonished by their find, but it was not without precedent. The geologic processes that create lead and silver also provide raw materials for crystals, and at Naica, miners had hammered into chambers of impressive, though much smaller, crystals before. But as news spread of the massive crystals' discovery, the question confronting scientists became: How did they grow so big?

It takes 20 minutes to get to the cave entrance by van through a winding mine shaft. A screen drops from the van's ceiling and Michael Jackson videos play, a feature designed to entertain visitors as they descend into darkness and heat. In many caves and mines the temperature remains constant and cool, but the Naica mine gets hotter with depth because it lies above an intrusion of magma about a mile below the surface. Within the cave itself, the temperature leaps to 112 degrees Fahrenheit with 90 to 100 percent humidity—hot enough that each visit carries the risk of heatstroke. By the time we reach the entrance, everyone glistens with sweat.

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Preparing to enter the cave is like gearing up for a space walk. I pull on a vest with more than a dozen palm-size ice packs sewn into pockets across the chest and back. Then another vest to insulate the ice against the heat. Then, over everything, a bright orange caving suit. A helmet, a headlamp, a respirator mask blowing ice-cooled air. Gloves, boots. Even for cavers cocooned in all this protective gear, the heat is exhausting and dangerous; most trips inside last no more than 20 minutes. Giovanni Badino, a physicist from the Italian exploration group La Venta, leads us in.

Fallen obelisks, pillars of light, the crystals are enormous, some several feet thick. On the floor and walls are clumps of smaller crystals, sharp as blades and flawlessly transparent. Badino proceeds slowly, careful not to damage the crystals, which are made of selenite, a form of the common mineral gypsum. Selenite is translucent and soft, easily scratched by boot heels, even fingernails. Despite the ice suits, the heat and humidity are oppressive. I remove the mask for a moment and suck in wet, hot air. My lungs want to refuse it. There is a damp, heavy scent of earth and an absolute stillness.

Miserable conditions for humans, a perfect nursery for crystals.

In their architecture crystals embody law and order, stacks of molecules assembled according to rigid rules. But crystals also reflect their environment. Spanish crystallographer Juan Manuel García-Ruiz was one of the first to study the Naica crystals beginning in 2001. More familiar with microscopic crystals, García was dizzied by the proportions of the Naica giants. By examining bubbles of liquid trapped inside the crystals, García and his colleagues pieced together the story of the crystals' growth. For hundreds of thousands of years, groundwater saturated with calcium sulfate filtered through the many caves at Naica, warmed by heat from the magma below. As the magma cooled, water temperature inside the cave eventually stabilized at about 136°F. At this temperature minerals in the water began converting to selenite, molecules of which were laid down like tiny bricks to form crystals. In other caves under the mountain, the temperature fluctuated or the environment was somehow disturbed, resulting in different and smaller crystals. But inside the Cave of Crystals, conditions remained unchanged for millennia. Above ground, volcanoes exploded and ice sheets pulverized the continents. Human generations came and went. Below, enwombed in silence and near complete stasis, the crystals steadily grew. Only around 1985, when miners using massive pumps lowered the water table and unknowingly drained the cave, did the process of accretion stop.

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In the presence of such beauty and strangeness, people cast around for familiar metaphors. Staring at the crystals, García decided the cavern reminded him of a cathedral; he called it the Sistine Chapel of crystals. In both cathedrals and crystals there's a sense of permanence and tranquility that transcends the buzz of surface life. In both there is the suggestion of worlds beyond us.

Note: The cave’s temperature is 50ºC and 100% humidity, where man can survive only a few minutes. It will continue to be explored with new, specially designed gear, which allows the explorer to remain in the cave for almost one hour. The Crystals’ Cave gives us a glimpse into geological time, thanks to new space-age technology.

Exploring teams, film teams and scientists continue to risk their lives at these hellish temperatures, in order to document this gorgeous underground fantasy-land for future generations.

Some web sites to visit: http://www.dogonews.com/20 http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/crystal-giants/shea-text11/7/28/mexicos-crystal-caves

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Interpreting the History of Christmas.

The History Channel Staff.

Christmas is both a sacred religious holiday and a worldwide cultural and commercial phenomenon. For two millennia, people around the world have been observing it with traditions and practices that are both religious and secular in nature.

Christians celebrate Christmas Day as the anniversary of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, a spiritual leader whose teachings form the basis of their religion. Popular customs include exchanging gifts, decorating Christmas trees, attending church, sharing meals with family and friends and, of course, waiting for Santa Claus to arrive. December 25–Christmas Day–has been a federal holiday in the United States since 1870.

AN ANCIENT HOLIDAY The middle of winter has long been a time of celebration around the world. Centuries before the arrival of the man called Jesus, early Europeans celebrated light and birth in the darkest days of winter. Many peoples rejoiced during the winter solstice, when the worst of the winter was behind them and they could look forward to longer days and extended hours of sunlight.

In Scandinavia, the Norse celebrated Yule from December 21, the winter solstice, through January. In recognition of the return of the sun, fathers and sons would bring home large logs, which they would set on fire.

The people would feast until the log burned out, which could take as many as 12 days. The Norse believed that each spark from the fire represented a new pig or calf that would be born during the coming year.

The end of December was a perfect time for celebration in most areas of Europe. At that time of year, most cattle were slaughtered so they would not have to be fed during the winter. For many, it was the only time of year when they had a supply of fresh meat. In addition, most wine and beer made during the year was finally fermented and ready for drinking.

In Germany, people honored the pagan god Oden during the mid-winter holiday. Germans were terrified of Oden, as they believed he made nocturnal flights through the sky to observe his people, and then decide who would prosper or perish. Because of his presence, many people chose to stay inside.

SATURNALIA In Rome, where winters were not as harsh as those in the far north, Saturnalia—a holiday in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture—was celebrated. Beginning in the week leading up to the winter solstice and continuing for a full month, Saturnalia was a hedonistic time, when food and drink were plentiful and the normal Roman social order was turned upside down. For a month, slaves would become masters. Peasants were in command of the city. Business and schools were closed so that everyone could join in the fun.

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Also around the time of the winter solstice, Romans observed Juvenalia, a feast honoring the children of Rome. In addition, members of the upper classes often celebrated the birthday of Mithra, the god of the unconquerable sun, on December 25. It was believed that Mithra, an infant god, was born of a rock. For some Romans, Mithra’s birthday was the most sacred day of the year.

In the early years of Christianity, Easter was the main holiday; the birth of Jesus was not celebrated. In the fourth century, church officials decided to institute the birth of Jesus as a holiday. Unfortunately, the Bible does not mention date for his birth (a fact Puritans later pointed out in order to deny the legitimacy of the celebration). Although some evidence suggests that his birth may have occurred in the spring (why would shepherds be herding in the middle of winter?), Pope Julius I chose December 25. It is commonly believed that the church chose this date in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival. First called the Feast of the Nativity, the custom spread to Egypt by 432 and to England by the end of the sixth century. By the end of the eighth century, the celebration of Christmas had spread all the way to Scandinavia.

Today, in the Greek and Russian orthodox churches, Christmas is celebrated 13 days after the 25th, which is also referred to as the Epiphany or Three Kings Day. This is the day it is believed that the three wise men finally found Jesus in the manger.

By holding Christmas at the same time as traditional winter solstice festivals, church leaders increased the chances that Christmas would be popularly embraced, but gave up the ability to dictate how it was celebrated.

By the Middle Ages, Christianity had, for the most part, replaced pagan religion. On Christmas, believers attended church, then celebrated raucously in a drunken, carnival-like atmosphere similar to today’s Mardi Gras. Each year, a beggar or student would be crowned the “lord of misrule” and eager celebrants played the part of his subjects. The poor would go to the houses of the rich and demand their best food and drink. If owners failed to comply, their visitors would most likely terrorize them with mischief. Christmas became the time of year when the upper classes could repay their real or imagined “debt” to society by entertaining less fortunate citizens.

AN OUTLAW CHRISTMAS In the early 17th century, a wave of religious reform changed the way Christmas was celebrated in Europe.

When Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan forces took over England in 1645, they vowed to rid England of decadence and, as part of their effort, cancelled Christmas. By popular demand, Charles II was restored to the throne and, with him, came the return of the popular holiday.

The pilgrims, English separatists that came to America in 1620, were even more orthodox in their Puritan beliefs than Cromwell. As a result, Christmas was not a holiday in early America. From 1659 to 1681, the celebration of Christmas was actually outlawed in Boston. Anyone exhibiting the Christmas spirit was fined five shillings. By contrast, in the Jamestown settlement, Captain John Smith reported that Christmas was enjoyed by all and passed without incident.

After the American Revolution, English customs fell out of favor, including Christmas. In fact, Christmas wasn’t declared a federal holiday until June 26, 1870.

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IRVING REINVENTS CHRISTMAS It wasn’t until the 19th century that Americans began to embrace Christmas. Americans re-invented Christmas, and changed it from a raucous carnival holiday into a family-centered day of peace and nostalgia. But what about the 1800s peaked American interest in the holiday?

The early 19th century was a period of class conflict and turmoil. During this time, unemployment was high and gang rioting by the disenchanted classes often occurred during the Christmas season. In 1828, the New York city council instituted the city’s first police force in response to a Christmas riot. This catalyzed certain members of the upper classes to begin to change the way Christmas was celebrated in America.

In 1819, best-selling author Washington Irving wrote The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, gent., a series of stories about the celebration of Christmas in an English manor house. The sketches feature a squire who invited the peasants into his home for the holiday. In contrast to the problems faced in American society, the two groups mingled effortlessly. In Irving’s mind, Christmas should be a peaceful, warm-hearted holiday bringing groups together across lines of wealth or social status. Irving’s fictitious celebrants enjoyed “ancient customs,” including the crowning of a Lord of Misrule. Irving’s book, however, was not based on any holiday celebration he had attended – in fact, many historians say that Irving’s account actually “invented” tradition by implying that it described the true customs of the season.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL Also around this time, English author Charles Dickens created the classic holiday tale, A Christmas Carol. The story’s message-the importance of charity and good will towards all humankind-struck a powerful chord in the United States and England and showed members of Victorian society the benefits of celebrating the holiday.

The family was also becoming less disciplined and more sensitive to the emotional needs of children during the early 1800s. Christmas provided families with a day when they could lavish attention-and gifts-on their children without appearing to “spoil” them.

As Americans began to embrace Christmas as a perfect family holiday, old customs were unearthed. People looked toward recent immigrants and Catholic and Episcopalian churches to see how the day should be celebrated. In the next 100 years, Americans built a Christmas tradition all their own that included pieces of many other customs, including decorating trees, sending holiday cards, and gift-giving.

Although most families quickly bought into the idea that they were celebrating Christmas how it had been done for centuries, Americans had really re-invented a holiday to fill the cultural needs of a growing nation.

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CHRISTMAS FACTS 

Each year, 30-35 million real Christmas trees are sold in the United States alone. There are 21,000 Christmas tree growers in the United States, and trees usually grow for about 15 years before they are sold.

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Today, in the Greek and Russian orthodox churches, Christmas is celebrated 13 days after the 25th, which is also referred to as the Epiphany or Three Kings Day. This is the day it is believed that the three wise men finally found Jesus in the manger.

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In the Middle Ages, Christmas celebrations were rowdy and raucous—a lot like today’s Mardi Gras parties.

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From 1659 to 1681, the celebration of Christmas was outlawed in Boston, and law-breakers were fined five shillings.

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Christmas was declared a federal holiday in the United States on June 26, 1870.

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The first eggnog made in the United States was consumed in Captain John Smith’s 1607 Jamestown settlement.

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Poinsettia plants are named after Joel R. Poinsett, an American minister to Mexico, who brought the redand-green plant from Mexico to America in 1828.

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The Salvation Army has been sending Santa Claus-clad donation collectors into the streets since the 1890s.

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Rudolph, “the most famous reindeer of all,” was the product of Robert L. May’s imagination in 1939. The copywriter wrote a poem about the reindeer to help lure customers into the Montgomery Ward department store.

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Construction workers started the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree tradition in 1931.

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Interpreting the giant tortoises of the Galapagos.

The Galapagos Conservancy

The giant tortoises of Galapagos are among the most famous of the unique fauna of the Islands. While giant tortoises once thrived on most of the continents of the world, the Galapagos tortoises now represent one of the remaining two groups of giant tortoises in the entire world — the other group living on Aldabra Atoll in the Indian Ocean. The Galapagos Islands were named for their giant tortoises; the old Spanish word galapago meant saddle, a term early explorers used for the tortoises due to the shape of their shells.

The closest living relative of the Galapagos giant tortoise is the small Chaco tortoise from South America, although it is not a direct ancestor. Scientists believe the first tortoises arrived to Galapagos 2–3 million years ago by drifting 600 miles from the South American coast on vegetation rafts or on their own. They were already large animals before arriving in Galapagos. Colonizing the eastern-most islands of Española and San Cristóbal first, they then dispersed throughout the archipelago, eventually establishing at least 14 separate populations on ten of the largest Galapagos Islands.

Although there is a great amount of variation in size and shape among Galapagos tortoises, two main morphological forms exist — the domed carapace (similar to their ancestral form) and the saddle-backed carapace. The domed tortoises tend to be much larger in size and do not have the upward thrust to the front of their carapace; they live on the larger, higher islands with humid highlands where forage is generally abundant and easily available. Saddle-backed shells evolved on the arid islands in response to the lack of available food during drought. The front of the carapace angles upward, allowing the tortoise to extend its head higher to reach the higher vegetation, such as cactus pads.

Tortoise History in Galapagos Of all of the native species of Galapagos, giant tortoises were the most devastated after the endemic rice rats, with the majority of rice rat species now extinct. One of the giant tortoise’s most amazing adaptations — its ability to survive without food or water for up to a year — was also the indirect cause of its demise. Once buccaneers, whalers and fur sealers discovered that they could have fresh meat for their long voyages by storing live giant tortoises in the holds of their ships, massive exploitation of the species began. Tortoises were also exploited for their oil, which was used to light the lamps of Quito. Two centuries of exploitation resulted in the loss of between 100,000 to 200,000 tortoises. Three species have been extinct for some time, and a fourth species lost its last member, Lonesome George, in June of 2012. It is estimated that 20,000–25,000 wild tortoises live on the islands today.

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In addition to their direct exploitation by humans for both food and oil, giant tortoises faced other challenges due to the introduction of exotic species by human visitors. They suffered — and continue to suffer on some islands — predation on tortoise eggs and hatchlings by rats, pigs, and voracious ants, and competition for food and habitat with goats and other large mammals.

With the establishment of the Galapagos National Park and the Charles Darwin Foundation in 1959, a systematic review of the status of the tortoise populations began. Only 11 of the 14 originally named populations remained and most of these were endangered if not already on the brink of extinction. The only thing saving several of the populations was the longevity of tortoises, keeping some old adults alive until conservation efforts could save their species.

Tortoise Taxonomy The taxonomy of giant tortoises has changed over the decades since they were first named. Today the different populations are considered separate species of the genus, Chelonoidis. There are currently 14 species, although recent genetic studies are beginning to show major differences among some populations on the same island.

Giant tortoises were native to each of the big islands (Española, Fernandina, Floreana, Pinta, Pinzón, San Cristóbal, Santa Cruz, Santa Fe and Santiago) as well as the five major volcanoes on Isabela Island (Wolf, Darwin, Alcedo, Sierra Negra and Cerro Azul). Tortoises are now extinct on Fernandina (due to volcanism), Floreana, and Santa Fe (both due to exploitation). Pinta Island had a single known tortoise, Lonesome George, who lived up until June of 2012 at the Tortoise Center on Santa Cruz where he spent the last 40 years of his life. George’s remains are being preserved and will go on display permanently in Galapagos in 2014.

The Life of a Tortoise Compared to humans, giant tortoises might deserve to be called “lazy,” spending an average of 16 hours a day resting. Their activity level is driven by ambient temperature and food availability. In the cool season, they are active at midday, sleeping in in the morning and hitting the sack early in the afternoon. In the hot season, their active period is early morning and late afternoon, while midday finds them resting and trying to keep cool under the shade of a bush or half-submerged in muddy wallows.

Galapagos tortoises are herbivorous, feeding primarily on cactus pads, grasses, and native fruit. They drink large quantities of water when available that they can store in their bladders for long periods of time.

Tortoises breed primarily during the hot season (January to May), though tortoises can be seen mating any month of the year. During the cool season (June to November), female tortoises migrate to nesting zones (generally in more arid areas) to lay their eggs. A female can lay from 1-4 nests over a nesting season (June to December). She digs the hole with her hind feet, then lets the eggs drop down into the nest, and finally covers it again with her hind feet. She never sees what she is doing. The number of eggs ranges from 2-7 for saddlebacked tortoises to sometimes more than 20-25 eggs for domed tortoises. The eggs incubate from 110 to 175 days (incubation periods depend on the month the nest was laid, with eggs laid early in the cool season requiring longer incubation periods than eggs laid at the end of the cool season when the majority of their incubation will occur at the start of the hot season). After hatching, the young hatchlings remain in the nest for a few weeks before emerging out a small hole adjacent to the nest cap.

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Tortoise Speak Tortoises have several ways of communicating with each other. The only known vocalization in Galapagos tortoises is the sound that males make when mating — a bellowing, periodic “groan” that sounds similar to a loudly mooing cow. Female tortoises make no vocalizations at all. The main method of tortoise communication is behavioral. Like many other species, they have ways of conveying dominance and defending themselves.

Competing tortoises will stand tall, face each other with mouths agape, and stretch their necks up as high as possible. The highest head nearly always “wins,” while the loser retreats submissively into the brush.

Fine Feathered Friends It is quite common to see the tiny birds of Galapagos, such as Darwin’s finches and Vermillion Flycatchers, perched on top of the shells of their oversized giant tortoise companions. Some finch species have developed a mutualistic relationship with giant tortoises, feeding on the ticks that hide in the folds of the tortoise’s reptilian skin. In fact, these birds will dance around in front of the tortoise to indicate that they are ready to eat, and the tortoise then responds by standing tall and stretching out its neck to “expose the buffet.”

The Galapagos Conservancy http://www.galapagos.org/about_galapagos/about-galapagos/biodiversity/tortoises/

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Interpreting The King of Pipes: The Meerschaum John A. Veverka Director, Heritage Interpretation Training Center.

My relationship with Meerschaum pipes goes back a few year when I was a pipe smoker (no, I don't smoke now). When in the Army and stationed in Germany I discovered these pipe and really loved them for their art work - all hand carved - more than smoking with them. And I have quite a few in my collection. When visiting small historic museums and looking through the cases I always see some of these hiding in the corner and the staff not knowing their real value and stories associated with them. So I thought I would take some time to reveal the story of Meerschaum Pipes.

And Just What is Meerschaum Anyway?

Meerschaum is a clay-like white mineral known for its porous nature. The use of meerschaum for pipe making dates back to the early 18th century, and many examples of meerschaum pipes still exist, some even unsmoked, as they were often seen as art as much as smoking implements and were kept behind glass. Meerschaum is valued by pipe makers and collectors for three reasons. Most notably for the tobacco enthusiast, meerschaum does not burn as opposed to briar or other traditional pipe materials, allowing for a purer smoke. Aesthetically, meerschaum is noted for two key characteristics. First, the softness of the mineral makes it very suitable for carving, with designs ranging from basic to extravagant The characteristic most prized by collectors, however, is due to the composition of the mineral itself.

Meerschaum is by nature extremely porous. Indeed, the quality of meerschaum can be tested by wetting your finger and rubbing the mineral. If the moisture absorbs, you know you’ve got the good stuff. Thus, when a meerschaum pipe is smoked, the oils and other byproducts of the process are absorbed into the pipe itself, eventually coloring the pipe from its original whitish-cream color through a spectrum of woody yellows, nutty browns, and deep reds. This coloration only adds to the individuality of each meerschaum pipe. As pipe smokers usually consider their pipes a very personal item, these characteristics, which combine to make each pipe not only unique but decidedly personal, are what make the meerschaum pipes the king of the tobacco world and a must have for collectors.

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The Song of the Pipe When the night air is shading ’round you, And the lake is lying still; When you hear the evening tuning, Of the lonely whippoorwill; When the woods are big and silent, And the world seems all at rest; And the cheerful fire is blazing, Then your good old pipe is best.

When you are tired out from tramping, Through the winding forest ways; And you’ve had your trout and coffee, And you dream of future days; When you sit close to the fire, Then the time is surely ripe; With the owl’s bark resounding, To fill up the good old pipe When the dreary rain is falling, And the world is wet and gray; When the loon’s long, dismal holler, Rolls out clear and dies away; When the woods are all a dripping, From the alder to the oak; Then just lay back in your chair, And hit good old pipe, and smoke Earle P. Stafford

Making the Meerschaum Pipe While meerschaum deposits are relatively rare, there are several located across the globe, most notably those of the Eskişehir region in Northwest Turkey. The overwhelming majority of meerschaum pipes on the market today are crafted with material from the mines in Turkey. Several grades of meerschaum pipes exist, and the quality of the pipe depends not only on where the meerschaum comes from, but the process with which it was obtained

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A quality meerschaum pipe must be carved from a solid block of meerschaum, and the deeper the meerschaum deposit, the better quality of mineral you will have. By utilizing a solid block of meerschaum and carving out the pipe design, all the attributes of the meerschaum, its porous and easy to carve nature, are perfectly preserved. Lower quality meerschaum pipes are made from the dust and shavings that are left over from the mining and carving process.

These leftovers are then mechanically pressed into solid form, resulting in a product which is to solid meerschaum as particle board is to oak. Pressed meerschaum pipes do not retain the porous nature of their solid block counterparts and are typically sold at bargain prices to amateurs who do not know any better.

Your first mental image of a meerschaum pipe is probably that of a white pipe carved to resemble a pirate head, or possibly a Viking. Such designs are relatively common, and certainly the most memorable, but there exists a myriad of styles and designs ranging from the simple to the simply ostentatious. Many meerschaum purists prefer simple bowl designs which resemble standard briar pipes and showcase the coloring and smoking quality of the meerschaum the best. Others, however, are drawn to the ornate carvings and designs available.

Designs range from simple patterns carved into the bowl of the pipe, to a bowl being cradled by a hand or claw, to heads of various historical characters and beyond. Here’s just a few examples of the artwork that can be created in the hands of a skilled meerschaum craftsman

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Magna Science Adventure Centre in Rotherham.

Steelos Gallery Exhibition Dan Boys

Magna is an exciting journey into the world of steelmaking. The Templeborough steelworks (as it was called) was once the largest electric melting shop in the world and the site’s industrial history stretches back to Roman times. ‘Steel, Peech and Tozer’ was the company, but everyone called it ‘Steelos’.

Previously the concrete bunker through which visitors first entered Magna was dark and uninspiring. With funding secured through the Heritage Lottery Fund, Magna were able to commission Audio Trails to turn this dour space into a vibrant exhibition that reveals the 2000 year history of steelmaking on this site.

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Listening posts with stories about the people that worked at Steelos (left). The hearth and murals stay in-situ – everything else can be removed from the bunker in less than 2 hours (right).

The interpretation panels provide a timeline and insight into the people that worked here. You can listen to their stories and read more about the site’s history on two touch screens embedded in the reverse of the curved map wall, which depicts how the site has grown over the years. A projector plays footage of the Steelworks from its heyday.

The Steelos Gallery can also be completely stripped from the room in two hours, allowing corporate events, raves and other revenue making activities to utilise the room, without causing damage to the exhibition. Our innovative design allows the panels and curved wall to be unclipped and wheeled away. However, a flavour of the Works is always present in the shape of a hearth door and wall mural.

“From the outset the project ran smoothly with good two way communications between Magna and the design team. Audio Trails were quick to get to grips with the core aims and then pulled together all the threads for a great final design. Delivered on time and on budget. We would happily use Audio trails for future projects.”

Stuart Ballard, Education and Fundraising Director, Magna The Steelos Gallery was our first full foray into exhibition design, and we are very proud of the results. If you’d like to know more about the project please get in touch.

For this project we ably assisted by a great team of associates: Heritage Interactive, Hammer Design and The Mural Artists. audiotrails.co.uk danboys@audiotrails.co.uk 40 Strettea Lane, Higham, Derbyshire, DE55 6EJ 07800 799561

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New “On Fire” pottery exhibit, The Rockwell Museum of Western Art. Art Crystal McKenzie, Inc.

Before launching the brand new “On Fire” pottery exhibit, The Rockwell Museum of Western Art sought to create new marketing collateral that would be both compelling & interactive while improving their art labeling system. Crystal McKenzie, Inc., a brand strategy and multi-disciplinary multi disciplinary communications design agency based in NYC, was brought on to identify the best solution for communicating, displaying, and encouraging visitor interaction with the detailed information from the 100 pieces on display.

Tablet Kiosk Museum Solution Visitors use a touch-screen screen tablet in an accessible enclosure custom designed by Hadley Exhibits Inc. to view the relevant labels for the item (or items) they are interested in learning more about. Should they prefer to take that information with them, a QR code feature allows them to load the information on their own phone and walk around the museum to view. This mobile use of already-compiled already compiled and accessible information illustrates the many opportunities to transition from self self-service to mobile to digital gital signage, and then to web. With integration of information and message across mediums, CMI has created a seamless visitor experience that carries through each visitor contact with the Rockwell Museum’s brand and messaging. CMI’s team consisted of Creative eative Director Brian Jones, Graphic Designer Paul Kwak and Hadley Exhibits Inc. (hadleyexhibitsinc.com) representative Patrick Caveny.

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The Rockwell Museum Team consisted of the following members:  James Peck, Curator of Exhibits  Beth Manwaring, Director of Marketing & Communications  Melissa Murray, Museum Educator  Mary Mix, Senior Museum Educator  Kristin Swain, Executive Director  The Rockwell Museum, with the help of Crystal McKenzie, Inc., met its goal to utilize interactive and digital technologies in its galleries to enhance the visitor experience. Active participation, engaging learning experiences, and user-friendly access to information were all achieved with the use of tablet kiosks. The tablets were locked down by KioWarekiosk software and configured to provide access to the content and materials created and provided by the CMI/Rockwell Museum team. KioWare allows the tablets to function in a locked down mode that restricts the user to only the application or websites that The Rockwell Museum permits. This protects both the user and the device from misuse, ensure privacy, & results in a reliable & innovative experience.

Why Digital?

Digital solutions provide benefits such as easily updated content, and are both environmentally friendly and saves on printing costs. Users find technology engaging and interactivity to draw interest. Text size can be modified to accommodate a plethora of visual needs. While challenges exist, namely a need for internet connectivity and set up costs, the use of tablets can lower the initial output with wifi providing a portable and reliable connection source.

The feedback has been positive since the exhibit’s opening in April of this year. Kristin Swain, Executive Director of The Rockwell Museum addresses the project, “We are focused on providing information in a user-friendly way to our guests. This sleek and contemporary software application provides a platform for The Rockwell to be innovative and creative while enhancing the visitor experience."

With great projects like this CMI marketing solution for the Rockwell Museum’s On Fire! Exhibit, it is clear to see that kiosks can be an added tool for use in the wise agency’s toolbox. Utilizing mediums such as kiosks and mobile technology in conjunction with great design and implementation, Crystal McKenzie, Inc. and The Rockwell Museum illustrate that museums can benefit from innovation, providing visitors with an enhanced experience that highlights the museum’s exhibit while maintaining substance, history, and educational value.

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The On Fire Exhibit will be on display at The Rockwell Museum until April 1, 2016. From The Rockwell Museum’s site, “More than a museum displaying exquisite pieces, The Rockwell is a unique community center where people enjoy, connect, and reflect on the essence of the American spirit, character and values through the eyes of American artists.” Information about this exhibit and others can be found at Rockwellmuseum.org.

Rockwellmuseum.org About Crystal McKenzie, Inc. CMI (cminyc.com)) provides signage solutions to help their clients improve their bottom line and increase the value of their products and services. From strategy through implementation, CMI delivers construction project communications, community relations, master master wayfinding systems, signage solutions and results. Services include all phases of development including the preparation of requirements and design specifications, preparation of test plans and procedures, workflow management consulting, digital asset management m anagement systems, and web web-based document delivery systems.

About KioWare Founded in 1991 to provide client server software development, Analytical Design Solutions Inc. (ADSI) developed KioWare (www.kioware.com), ), award winning kiosk system software for the Windows OS in 2001, and KioWare for Android software in 2012. KioWare deploys browser-based browser applications ns into a kiosk mode environment easily and inexpensively, securing the operating system, and allowing users to access only the application. Each client has the ability to customize KioWare to his or her needs, with a product line ranging from basic browser-lockdown brows to robust server based remote monitoring.

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“James Knox Polk: Possible Stories from His Mother, a Rigid Presbyterian” Working with/Training Docents

By Dr. Martha Benn Macdonald

How do you train docents? So much depends on their age. Are they millennials who all too often prefer to text, rather than engage, or are they older individuals who may prefer to tell their own tale? Not only might we want to find out the age of docents, but also we should know their sex and race. What motivates people to become docents? Can we trust these individuals to be safe with children? Do they have hidden desires? To be assured, I would personally recommend a course in Safety with a certified counselor, an overview of the historical site, and a demonstration in the art of telling stories.

Following safety training, I would give an overview of the historical site, then test each docent’s knowledge, both in writing and through a presentation. You want to make certain that what he/she says is truthful, but also engaging and involves the audience. You do not want this, as you well know, to reference Dr. Veverka, for your interpretation to be some boring lecture with dates, and so forth.

Today, I told stories at the James Polk Birthplace in Pineville, North Carolina (photo below). Despite the threat of another thunderstorm, many visitors, both children and adults, came. What kinds of stories might little James, the first of ten children whose mother was a lateral descendant of John Knox, that stern follower of John Calvin (her name was Jane Knox Polk, an ardent Presbyterian), have heard? She may have told him about stories about why and how she and her husband came to the colonies, but, above all, she would have read her first son and his siblings stories from The Holy Bible, perhaps “Samson and Delilah,” “David and Goliath,” “The Good Samaritan,” the “Birth of Jesus,” and others.

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Even though the marriage between Jane Knox and Samuel Polk took place on Christmas Day, there were no holiday commemorations. Because Jane’s husband was a Deist, the minister would not baptize their baby; he was christened many years later in Columbia, Tennessee, before he died.

Although I was not there today to train docents, I observed that the junior docents were gracious, polite, and knowledgeable. They invited visitors to tour the two historical buildings, a kitchen and a cabin, which had been restored, according to Angela Thorpe, historical interpreter at the James Polk Birthplace. These restorations were based on sketches of the original buildings. These original buildings deteriorated, along with the gravesite, after Samuel Polk sold the land to neighbors and moved to Duck River Valley in Tennessee. The neighbors wanted the land---150 acres, not the home, kitchen, or any outbuildings such as the corn crib, slave cabins (Sara inherited two slaves from her father, and, of course, Samuel would have had slaves to help farm the land). It seems interesting to note that James was a sickly child who endured the removal of kidney when without any anesthesia.

Were I to train any docents there, I would encourage them to engage visitors in their interpretation, to find out who they are, to pick up on cues, and to learn the art of telling stories (please see the third paragraph).

You might be wondering exactly what I did. To begin, I asked the visitors to introduce themselves and to share what they knew about James Knox Polk since they had come through the Visitor Center, had seen the short film, and had walked around the museum which offers artifacts people can hold. In addition, there’s a delightful gift shop where visitors can buy such items as quill pins, cards, a booklet on hornbooks, and sample games from the colonial period.

Then, oddly enough, on the sixteenth of July, I decided to make a piñata because, after all, James Knox Polk, annexed states near Mexico and was responsible for the war between the United States and Mexico. One child found a stick, and, finally, after the efforts of others, he pierced the piñata, and candy spilled onto the cloths which Angela had carefully placed on the lawn under the tents (rain predicted, the sky threatening). The children squealed with delight as they gathered candy, parents and grandparents approving. Then I told the visitors about Mrs. Polk’s work on the plantation----herb and vegetable gardening (uses of herbs), ringing a chicken’s neck to roast over in the fire pit in the kitchen, spinning, weaving, quilting, to name a few her many chores. My audience was spellbound as I demonstrated each with gestures, voice changes, and facial expressions.

I continued with the story of “David and Goliath,” including the children during the telling, “Samson and Delilah,” and others, to name a few. Then, I asked them to help me figure out an ending for an historical story I’ve been working on for several years. The young boy, his bright blue eyes beaming, put his elbow on his chin, then a few seconds later, came up with an interesting conclusion. We talked about the Polk’s long trip to Tennessee, what Polk learned in school, how he met his wife, Sarah Childress, and when and where he and his younger brothers and sisters might have heard folk tales. Asking the children to tell me which stories they wanted to hear pleased them. I passed out cards with titles. After a child selected a tale, I told the story. My stories today included “Hansel and Gretel,” “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” “Snow White and Rose Red,” “Tam Lin,” “The Twelve Windows,” “Dick Whittington and His Cat,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Puss n’ Boots,” and more. Toward the end of the second hour, one little girl begged for another story. “Please tell me ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’”

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I used gestures, my voice, props which I asked children to hold and manipulate, and my cane which I took for dramatic effect. After telling each tale, we “gently” did some critical thinking, i.e., how did certain characters relate to people today. They learned lessons about people today through story and analysis. At one point, I asked participants to tell a story about a couple of pictures which I displayed, and we began a round-robin story.

The event was fun and very interactive. “You are the event of the day, ‘old-fashioned family storytelling,’” Angela had written in her email asking me to come on July 16. For two hours, then, I shared stories. I encourage you to research and develop your own method of sharing stories, along with the other arts.

Sometimes I dance, sing, or play my psaltery; sometimes I share pictures. After all, we learn, grow, and change through the arts. I will, of course, tell visitors that Polk was the eleventh president of the United States.

Discussing his political life was not my focus.

Analysis: I believe that there is a general theme sentence, along with tangibles, intangibles, and universals to which we can all relate. To use Prof. Veverka’s words, I believe that my story telling was “perked up” through action words, vivid imagery, and gestures, to name a few. In addition, I have analyzed the objectives: Learning: Visitors will know who James Knox Polk was, where he spent his early childhood, his family life, and stories he may have enjoyed.

Behavioral: Each participant will probably want to make a contribution to the James Polk Birthplace. Even though it is a small site which board members and others once fought to preserve, the offerings are marvelous: there’s Polk’s birthday celebration on November 5 (he was born on Nov. 2, 1795), a spring celebration, Christmas commemorations, and more. It is not that Jane Knox Polk, being a stern Presbyterian, would have invited neighbors over for wine, but she may have put out a few sprigs of holly around the cabin for her family to enjoy(we do not know that she did not), and she just may have recalled a few really early Scottish carols, for example, “Baloo Lammy” (again, we do not know that she did not). Every detail is not recorded. We can make inferences in interpretation.

Emotional: Visitors will want to learn, among others, how to tell at least one story, how stories relate to our lives, and how we can change our behaviors and attitudes if we wish. For example, even though he was poor, both Dick Whittington in the cat story and the swine herdsman in “Twelve Windows” had the courage to ask a question and try. Each was successful.

Martha Benn Macdonald, Ph.D., college English instructor, published author, and performer. doctorbenn@gmail.com

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Monarch Butterfly Migration and Over-wintering.

USDA Forest Service

As I was working on this issue (in September) - I was noticing the monarch butterflies moving through my garden in the backyard. When I see them I know that fall is not too far away. I remember attending a National Association for Interpretation conference a few years park in California and one of the field trip sites was to a park that was a monarch overwintering site. As we walked through a small valley filled with eucalyptus trees, you could see every tree branch loaded and straining with thousands of monarchs hanging on to them. What a sight ! So when I spied the monarchs moving through my backyard, it triggered my memories of that trip, so I thought I would give you more information of monarch migration - thanks to the USDA Forest Service. JV Migration and Overwintering The annual migration of North America’s monarch butterfly is a unique and amazing phenomenon. The monarch is the only butterfly known to make a two-way migration as birds do. Unlike other butterflies that can overwinter as larvae, pupae, or even as adults in some species, monarchs cannot survive the cold winters of northern climates. Using environmental cues, the monarchs know when it is time to travel south for the winter.

Monarchs use a combination of air currents and thermals to travel long distances. Some fly as far as 3,000 miles to reach their winter home!

You can help.

Every backyard can become an oasis for monarchs and other pollinators, even in cities. Schools, youth and community groups, businesses, and state and local governments can engage in planting native milkweed and protecting monarch habitat along roadsides, rights of way, and other public and private lands.

Where do Monarchs Go? Monarchs in Eastern North America have a second home in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico. Monarchs in Western North America overwinter in California.

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Eastern North American Population Overwintering in Mexico The eastern population of North America’s monarchs overwinters in the same 11 to 12 mountain areas in the States of Mexico and Michoacan from October to late March.

Monarchs roost for the winter in oyamel fir forests at an elevation of 2,400 to 3,600 meters (nearly 2 miles above sea level). The mountain hillsides of oyamel forest provide an ideal microclimate for the butterflies. Here temperatures range from 0 to 15 degrees Celsius. If the temperature is lower, the monarchs will be forced to use their fat reserves. The humidity in the oyamel forest assures the monarchs won’t dry out allowing them to conserve their energy

Directional Aids Researchers are still investigating what directional aids monarchs use to find their overwintering location. It appears to be a combination of directional aids such as the magnetic pull of the earth and the position of the sun among others, not one in particular.

Clustering in Colonies Monarchs cluster together to stay warm. Tens of thousands of monarchs can cluster on a single tree. Although monarchs alone weigh less than a gram, tens of thousands of them weigh a lot. Oyamel trees are generally able to support the clustering butterflies, but sometimes branches break.

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Protection of Oyamel Forest Conservation of overwintering habitat is very important to the survival of monarchs. The Mexican Government recognized the importance of oyamel forests to monarch butterflies and created the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in 1986.

Western North American Population Monarchs living west of the Rocky Mountain range in North America overwinter in California along the Pacific coast near Santa Cruz and San Diego. Here microclimatic conditions are very similar to that in central Mexico. Monarchs roost in eucalyptus, Monterey pines, and Monterey cypresses in California.

Flyways Traveling South Eastern North American monarchs fly south using several flyways then merge into a single flyway in Central Texas. It is truly amazing that these monarchs know the way to the overwintering sites even though this migrating generation has never before been to Mexico!

Monarch Butterfly Fall Migration Patterns. Base map source: USGS National Atlas.

Congregation Sites Monarchs only travel during the day and need to find a roost at night. Monarchs gather close together during the cool autumn evenings. Roost sites are important to the monarch migration. Many of these locations are used year after year. Often pine, fir and cedar trees are chosen for roosting. These trees have thick canopies that moderate the temperature and humidity at the roost site. In the mornings, monarchs bask in the sunlight to warm themselves.

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Monarchs at sunrise on wild black cherry (Prunus serotina) tree roost. Photo by Denise Gibbs.

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Monarchs basking at sunrise before taking flight from a bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica) thicket roost site. Photo by Denise Gibbs

Use of Peninsulas Monarchs traveling south congregate on peninsulas. The shape of the peninsula funnels the migrating butterflies. At its tip, the monarchs find the shortest distance across open water. They congregate along the shore to wait for a gentle breeze to help them across.

Traveling North As warm temperatures and lengthening days arrive, the migratory generation of monarchs finishes the development they halted prior to their migration. They become reproductive, breed and lay the eggs of the new generation. This starts the northern journey back to North America. Unlike the generation before them, who made a one-generation journey south, successive generations make the journey north.

Monarch Butterfly Spring and Summer Migration Patterns. Base map source: USGS National Atlas.

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Multiple Generations Generation 1 monarchs are the offspring of the monarchs who overwintered in Mexico. Each successive generation travels farther north. It will take 3-4 generations to reach the northern United States and Canada.

We are Connected Because all the migrating monarchs are concentrated in just a few locations during the winter, they are especially vulnerable to harsh weather and to human activities that disrupt or destroy their habitat. This can reduce the number of monarchs that leave the overwintering sites in the spring. Similarly, migrating and breeding monarch populations are vulnerable to harsh weather and to human activities that reduce milkweed and nectar sources. This can reduce the number of monarchs that reach overwintering sites.

Forest Service Monarch monitoring site: http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/Monarch_Butterfly/migration/index.shtml For a Monarch Butterfly manual check out this Forest Service Link: http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/Monarch_Butterfly/teacherandstudent/index. shtml#royalmail

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Easter Island and interpreting lost stories.

Lost Civilizations.

For the holiday issue of InterpNEWS I wanted to find several articles that I think interpreters will find interesting and fun to read, mixed in with our other creative article contributions. This article is one that the I found with a group called Lost Civilizations which has many "free use" articles. I hope you enjoy this one and have a great holiday. JV Easter Island is the world's most isolated inhabited island. It is also one of the most mysterious. Eastern Island is roughly midway between Chile and Tahiti. The triangular shaped island (Easter Island) is made mostly of volcanic rock. Small coral formations exist along the shoreline, but the lack of a coral reef has allowed the sea to cut cliffs around much of the island. The coastline has many lava tubes and volcanic caves. The only sandy beaches are on the northeast coast. t. Easter Island we think of huge stone carved figures - Easter Island Stones (or Eastern Island Stones).

The inhabitants of this charming and mysterious place called their land: Te Pito o TeHenua, 'the navel of the world.'

It sits in the South Pacific Ocean 2,300 miles west of South America, 2,500 miles southeast of Tahiti, 4,300 miles south of Hawaii, ii, 3,700 miles north of Antarctica. The closest other inhabited island is 1,260 miles away tiny Pitcairn Island where the mutineers of the H.M.S. Bounty settled in 1790.

Archaeological evidence indicates discovery of the eastern island by Polynesians at about 400 AD. In 1722, a Dutch explorer, Jacob Roggeveen, sighted and visited the island. This happened to be on a Sunday, Easter Sunday to be precise, and the name stuck: Easter Island (Isla de Pascua in Spanish).

What he discovered on Easter Island were three distinct groups of people, Dark skinned, Red skinned, and very Pale skinned People with red hair".

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The Polynesian name of the island is Rapanui, which is a name given by a Tahitian visitor in the 19th century who says that the island looked like the Tahitian island of 'Rapa,' but bigger, 'Nui.' Inhabitants are of Polynesian descent, but for decades anthropologists have argued the true origins of these people, some claiming that ancient South-American mariners settled the island first.

What many early explorers who visited the Easter island found, was a scattered population with almost no culture they could remember and without any links to the outside world.

The Easter islanders were easy prey for 19th century slave traders which depreciated even more their precarious culture, knowledge of the past, and skills of the ancestors.

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THE MOAI

When we think of Eastern Island we think of huge stone carved figures -monoliths- that dot the coastline.

They are called Moai and are carved from island rock.

The Moai are seen all over the island, and in different shapes, sizes, and stages of completion. Many Moaiare left unfinished at the quarry site. No one is sure yet as to what purposes did the Moai served, but outside scholarly research together with accumulated local knowledge, shows evidence that the Moai were carved by the ancestors of the present inhabitants.

Ron Fisher in his work Easter Island Brooding Sentinels of Stone, mentions as one explanation for the statues that "two classes of people, the-so-called Long Ears and Short Ears, lived on the island. The Short Ears were enslaved by the Long Ears, who forced the Short Ears to carve the Moai. After many generations and during a rebellion, the Short Ears surprised the Long Ears killing them all, which explains the abrupt end of the statuecarving.

Some of the Moai face the sea - most face inland to watch over the villages.

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Many of them were buried up to their shoulders and thereby appearing as disembodied heads.

All of the Moai were toppled in tribal wars about 250 years ago. Many have recently been rebuilt - starting in the 1950's. They sit on rocky lava strewn about telling a story of fallen monuments of a long lost civilization who created them. The Moai were depictions of their ancestors. The Rapa Nui were ancestor worshipers and only had one diety - "Make Make". The Moai were excavated for the first time by Thor Heyerdahl in the 1950's and were photographed at that time.

Moai sit on platforms - ceremonial shrines called Ahu.

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Ahu Akivi is an especially sacred place.

Ahu Akivi is a sanctuary and celestial observatory built about 1500 AD which was the subject of the first serious restoration accomplished on Easter Island by archaeologists William Mulloy and Gonzalo Figueroa, with excellent results. As in the case of many religious structures on Easter Island, it has been situated with astronomical precision: it's seven statues look towards the point where the sun sets during the equinox.

Ahu Akivi is an unusual site in several respects. A low ahu supports 7 statues all very similar in height and style. The site is odd in that it is located far inland and the statues were erected to face the ocean. The only site where this was done. Like other Easter Island sites the statues were found knocked off the ahu, lying face down in the ground. In 1960, Archeologist William Mulloy's team spent several months raising the statues to their original positions.

During the excavation and restoration of this site many cremation pits were uncovered behind the ahu. The pits contained fragments of bone, shells, fishing implements, and obsidian flakes. Whether sites like these were used regularly for cremations and or burials is not certain. At other sites skeletons have been found buried within the ahu structure, but these burials are believed to have occurred after the statues were toppled.

Folklore holds that its seven moai represent the seven young explorers that legend says the Polynesian King Hotu Matu'a dispatched from across the seas, probably from the Marquesas Islands, to find this new homeland for him and his people. They are among the few moai that face the sea.

These seven stone giants may well symbolize those seven explorers, but no one knows for sure. Just as no one knows what any of the moai really represent or why only a few of them face the sea.

Thanks to Lost Civilizations for permission to reprint this article. http://www.lost-civilizations.net

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JVA InterpNews EVERY STONE, A STORY: THE TALE OF A PEBBLE. Ed Clifton Geologist

The Middle School of Pacific Grove, California is blessed with a superb science teacher—the kind who not only talks about volcanoes, but creates them in the classroom. And when her volcanoes erupt, some blow all the way to the ceiling, to the delight of the students and the consternation of the custodial staff. She teaches geology to seventh-graders using the theme, “Every Stone, a Story”. I have been privileged to talk to her classes about the history of the earth, and her theme resonates personally with me.

I came to geology when I was of middle-school age, living on a small farm in northeastern Ohio. A gravel pit not far from our house exposed outwash gravel from a great glacier of the Pleistocene. It contained an amazing variety of rocksscraped from the land by the ice mass that crept south from Canada. I collected interesting-looking pebbles, and a geologist friend of my parents, who dropped by every so often on his way home from work, would identify the pebbles and tell me their history. I learned that every stone, every rock, every hill, every valley has a story that, with keen observation and a knowledge of the past, could be deciphered. How could I have been other than a geologist?

And so, to our story……

The pebble nestled in the palm of the little girl’s hand. It was an ordinary pebble, round and dark, similar to most of the pebbles on this Central California beach. The girl was not quite sure why she had picked it up— perhaps because it just fit in the palm of her hand. When she looked at it closely, she could see that it was not uniformly dark, but contained tiny elongate whitish specks and clots of even darker material (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. A pebble typical of certain beaches in Central California. It is composed of pyroclastic rock that geologists call “tuff”. The small white flecks (many of which are sub-rectangular) are tiny crystals, probably of a feldspar mineral, a typical component of igneous rocks. The dark masses are likely fragments of volcanic rock that lack crystals.

Some of these appear to be ringed by tiny crystals, as if they encrusted a tiny piece of hot, still-plastic volcanic debris.

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She wondered what all that meant before tossing the pebble back into the sea. She left the beach, still wondering what the pebble was and why it looked the way it did. The pebble, meanwhile, rolled back and forth with the waves, as it had for years… and as it did 50 million years earlier on a beach far to the south.

Even then the pebble was old. Its origins lay much earlier, in a fiery explosive eruption of an ancient volcano, probably in what today is northern coastal Mexico. It closely resembles volcanic rocks of Jurassic age (±150200 million years ago) that crop out in that region. The whitish specks are tiny feldspar crystals, which grew in the throat of a volcano, until an eruption chilled the molten rock, leaving them forever tiny. The dark clots are small fragments of rock that may have been somewhat plastic as they amalgamated (one even appeared to have collected a coating of small whitish crystals). The pebble represents one of the most fearsome events in an explosive volcanic eruption: a “pyroclastic flow”.

The western coast of North America has, for at least the past two hundred million years, been the site of collision of great plates of the earth’s crust. Such collision generates strato volcanoes like those in the Cascades or Central America—volcanoes that are subject to explosive eruptions that generate immense dense bursts of gas and superheated volcanic ash. With an internal temperature that can approach 1,800 °F, the clouds thus formed become pyroclastic flows that race down mountain slopes at speeds that approach 450 mph, destroying all living things in their path (Fig. 2). As the material in the flow congeals, it solidifies into a pyroclastic rock (“pyro” referring to its fiery origin and “clastic” to its composition of rock and ash fragments).

Thus was the rock that composed the pebble created.

Figure 2. Example of the origin of the rock that produced the pebble, 150-200 million years ago. Pyroclastic flow of superheated steam and incandescent volcanic ash race downhill after an explosive volcanic eruption at Mount St. Helens. Photo by Peter Lipman, U. S. Geological Survey

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Rocks exposed to the elements at the earth’s surface eventually disintegrate into fragments, and one of the fragments that spalled off the pyroclastic rock was a bit larger than the little girl’s pebble and had sharp, angular edges. Subsequent rainfall deluges washed this fragment downhill into a mountain stream, where it rolled and tumbled downstream with every flood. Abrasion during these events smoothed the sharp edges and the pebble took a rounded form much like it has today (Fig. 3). We cannot say how long this took or what happened—a hundred million years or so of the pebble’s history is lost in the mist of geologic time.

Figure 3. Example of boulders and pebbles being rounded by abrasion in a fast-flowing stream. Most of the rounding probably occurs during flood events in which the moving pebbles collide. There is no way of knowing when the pebble achieved its shape, but it likely occurred between 100-150 million years ago.

We do know that 50-55 million years ago, a river brought the pebble and many others to a beach in what today is northwestern Mexico. And there it remained (Fig. 4), becoming still more rounded as it rolled beneath the waves, until a great storm (or a powerful earthquake) dislodged the pebble and its neighbors, and a powerful avalanche of sand, mud and pebbles swept them into the inky depths of a submarine canyon that lay just offshore

Figure 4.The pebbled may have lain on a beach like this on the coast of northwestern Mexico, 50-55 million years ago.

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For a while, the pebble lay exposed on the sea floor, jostled only by bizarre sea creatures that crawled across the canyon floor. Then, a new undersea avalanche of sand and mud covered the pebble. With time, the pebble became deeply buried as more and more sediment accumulated above it. As the weight of the overlying sediment mass grew, the spaces between the sand grains that enclosed the pebble shrank. The sand grains began to interlock and the shrinking pore spaces filled with precipitating minerals. The pebble, locked in a increasingly hardened mass of sand and pebbles, became part of a rock: a conglomerate.

And there it might have stayed, but for a coincidence in the movement of the great plates that divide the earth’s crust. An immense oceanic plate (which today we call the “Pacific Plate”) moved north toward the coast, supplanting the crustal plate that had long collided with North America. Sometime around 30 million years ago, the Pacific Plate obliquely struck the North American Plate. The Pacific Plate began to grind against the North American continent and a process that continues today along the coast of most of California and Baja California.

The immense forces generated by the oblique collision fractured the some of the westernmost continent into large blocks. One such block detached 10-20 million years ago from the North American Plate and adhered to the north-moving Pacific Plate (Fig. 5). Our pebble lay within this block. The conglomerate that contained it moved from its origins in northwestern Mexico to its present location on the coast of Central California, a journey of 700-800 miles!

Figure 5. As a result of movement of giant plates of the earth’s crust, the pebble, now encased in conglomerate and still deeply buried(at “X”) is part of a large block (orange area) of the continent that broke off and is now moving northwest with the Pacific Plate.

Illustration indicates possible situation 10 million years ago. Paleogeographic background

by Ron Blakey, Colorado Plateau Geosystems.

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The conglomerate not only moved northward with the Pacific Plate, but within the last million years, it rose upward to its current position near present-day sea level. In the time frame of human history, storm waves (Fig. 6) fractured the rock and exposed the pebble to sunlight for the first time in 55 million years. Additional erosion unbound the pebble from its rocky prison and freed it to roll about once again on a beach, where a little girl picked it up.

Figure 6. Within the past million years, forces in the earth’s crust raised the conglomerate in which the pebble resided to present-daysea level. Storm waves eroded the sandstone that cemented the conglomerate, and the resistant pebble broke free. It accumulated on a beach with other pebbles, where a little girl picked it up.

The little girl who had held the pebble thought about it on the way home, and how cool it felt in her hand. She liked pebbles! In due time she would be a highly respected geophysicist on the staff of Stanford University.

And the pebble? Well, it will last for another hundred million years. I can only imagine the adventures that await it.

The next time you pick up a pebble, look at it closely. You likely contain a remarkable story in your hand.

Ed Clifton eclifton@earthlink.net Retired geologist (U. S. Geological Survey and Conoco, Inc.)

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Whiffenpoof Song” by Meade Minnigerode and my mind, a wanderlust at imaginary journeys.

Dr. Martha Benn Macdonald

Excited over telling stories at the James Knox Polk birthplace in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, on July 16, 2016, I began gathering my tales. That same evening, I also began sorting (I move from one activity to another, from one room to another, for wandering gives me ideas) In the pantry, going through a collection of sheet music----from Baroque to pre-World War II, I found “The Whiffenpoof Song” by Meade Minnigerode and others. My mind, a wanderlust at imaginary journeys to make connections and see relationships, murmured to itself, “Could Meadebe a descendant of Dr. Charles Frederick Minnigerode who taught languages at the College of William and Mary and introduced the children at the St. George Tucker house in Williamsburg to the German custom of the Christmas tree around 1845?

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Might Dr. Minnigerode have known one of my favorite writers, Edgar Allan Poe? Indeed, the song’s front cover with its Gothic-style tower, if dark tangled ivy climbed the walls, might remind one of Poe’s haunted castles.  And where might Polk fit in? The fact that he and Poe both died in 1849 is purely coincidental. Let’s generally review the lives of each one and determine if there are possible similarities without manipulating their roles or without playing with these gentlemen as if they were characters on the chessboard.

What I am offering, simply a journal wanderlust to make possible connections,is something I find engaging, creative, challenging, and, yes, fun. In fact, my dear friend, something of a legend herself, Caroline White Dozier, a Virginian whom I knew when I taught at William and Mary and who died at nearly 105 years old, described herself as a wanderlust. “Whenever someone invited me to travel, I did; in fact, I latched onto life and never let go. I was afraid I would miss something. I guess you could call me a wanderlust,” she laughed, at 95.

Please enjoy my wanderlust journal of making possible connections. Please join me as we look at the lives of James K. Polk (1795-1849); Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849); and Dr. Charles Minnigerode (1814-1894).

As Erinnae Cline, Director of the Library at York Technical College, recently said, “Well, Poe and Minnigerode both contributed to The Southern Literary Messenger, and Polk sometimes dined with the founder of the journal. Minnigerode also baptized Jefferson Davis and often prayed with him.”

Wonder what Polk and the founder of The Southern Literary Messenger discussed? Perhaps they talked about Andrew Jackson or writing. They may have talked about Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and stories. Most of us know that Polk greatly admired Andrew Jackson and was sometimes called “Young Hickory.” Both Jackson and Polk were from the Carolinas, and both moved to Tennessee. Polk’s family left Pineville, North Carolina, when James was around ten and settled in the Duck River Valley in the rolling hills of Middle Tennessee to farm (his father later went into business. Wonder what kinds of stories Polk’s mother, a stern Presbyterian and lateral descendant of John Knox, told her eldest child? Probably Biblical tales, wouldn’t you think (perhaps “David and Goliath,” “Samson and Delilah,” or the “Birth of Jesus,” to name a few, or stories about traveling by land and sea to Mecklenburg County? Polk received a classical education at the Zion Church Academy in Murfreesboro, where he met his future wife, Sarah Childress, a Presbyterian, and he returned to North Carolina to attend the University, from which he was graduated. After that he studied law and practiced law in Columbia, Tennessee. Scholars agree that he was a brilliant orator and attorney. As eleventh president of the United States, Polk was responsible for the annexation of Texas, among others, and successfully handled the Mexican War. His diary has been invaluable to history students and many others.

Polk did not run for a second term, and he was not baptized as an infant. Why wasn’t he baptized as an infant?

After all, his mother was a staunch Presbyterian. His father, however, was a Deist who at the Christening, according to Angela Thorpe, interpreter at the Polk Birthplace, refused to profess his belief in Christ. When the father refused, so, too, did the minister, an equally strong Calvinist. Jane Knox Polk was furious. Polk was baptized as a Methodist, not a Presbyterian, not long before he died.

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We could write many journal entries not only about Polk, but also about Edgar Allan Poe, that wonderful writer of the imagination, the haunting, the dreary, and the “Gothic,” a writer who influenced many other poets and fiction writers and who contributed frequently to The Southern Literary Messenger and served at some juncture as editor. We all know that Poe’s parents, David Poe and Elizabeth Arnold Poe, were performers who traveled either by boat or coach up and down the East coast acting. His mother also had a beautiful voice. Poe’s father abandoned his family when the child was quite young, and his mother died soon thereafter of tuberculosis. John Allan, an extremely rich plantation owner and merchant, took little Edgar in and gave him the middle name of Allan. Edgar was close to his foster-mother, Frances, just as he was to his own mother. Frances Allan, like Elizabeth Poe, died of tuberculosis. Poe and his foster-father were not at all close. They disagreed much of the time.

Annemarie Beebe, Executive Director of the Board of the Poe Museum in Richmond, said that the Allans took Poe abroad where he received an education at several schools, in particular, Bransby Manor, where he learned French and Latin. When the family returned to Richmond, Poe took classes at a school conducted, first, by Joseph Clarke, and, then, by William Burke. The schoolmasters were stern. A student was lashed if he could not recite the poetic line called for at roll call. We all know Poe’s gift with words.

Unlike Polk whose father farmed and had slaves, and then later became a mercantilist, Poe’s own father was an actor, but his foster-father was a wealthy tobacco merchant with a number of slaves. Instead of studying, as Polk had done, Poe, when at the University of Virginia and at West Point, chose another avenue, drinking, gambling, playing cards, and enjoying the pleasures of opium and such, and writing articles, poetry, and fiction.

Despite arguments over what Poe exactly wrote and what his editor did to Poe’s writings, what we have reveals Poe’s brilliance. Poe had a magical way with words, imagery, figures of speech, and he brought his stories to life with characters who through their gestures, dialogue, behavior, and more, became real to his audiences. As we know, Poe influenced many writers.

Where does Minnigerode fit into my wanderlust? Following some political disputes in Germany, where he was a Lutheran, Minnigerode ultimately sailed to the states. He taught languages at the College of William and Mary and converted to the Episcopal Church. He served as rector at several churches, including St. Paul’s in Richmond (on the same site as Monumental Episcopal where Poe was baptized and where the Richmond Theatre had stood until it burned) and at Bruton Parish Episcopal Church in Williamsburg, Virginia. Like Polk and Poe, Minnigerode met a number of influential individuals, and he was also a gifted writer and speaker. He was also an Episcopal priest, professor, and a storyteller. His path may well have crossed Poe or Polk’s. We do not know because every individual’s experiences are not always recorded. Some individuals destroy notes and letters they once wrote and/or burned journal entries.

As different as their lives were, these three gentlemen were similar in certain ways. All received a classical education, cherished their wives, and made lasting contributions to culture and society.

To begin, they all received a classical education which included, as we know, grammar, rhetoric, spelling, Latin, and Greek, perhaps other languages, and possibly Hebrew, as it did for Minnigerode, who, of course, spoke his native German fluently. Even though Poe did not finish college, he delved deeply in language and literature. A master of poetry and the short story, for which he wrote a formula, we all recall “The Raven,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and so many other poems and stories.

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In addition, their family backgrounds were not unalike. Polk wanted to be an attorney, a politician, unlike his merchant father, and Poe and John Allan were incredibly incompatible. Studies show that the two were at odds much of the time, for Poe wanted to be a writer. John Allan left nothing in his will for his foster son. Poe struggled financially. Even though Poe was a ladies’ man, according to some interpreters, he remained faithful to his much younger wife and cousin, Virginia Clemm, who died of tuberculosis. The couple never had children. Neither did Polk and his wife although they were devoted to each other. Scholars have said James and Sarah were best friends. He died of cholera, and Sarah remained a widow for over forty years, living at their home in Columbia, Tennessee. Dr. Minnigerode married Mary Carter, a North Carolinian, and their affection for one another caused comment by parishioners, in particular.

Despite their humble, uncertain beginnings, each traveled and made lasting contributions in various ways to culture and society. We remember Polk for a number of reasons, not the least of which included his having kidney stones removed without anesthesia when he was fairly young. We remember what he accomplished during his four years in the White House. He was known for his belief in Manifest Destiny for the United States. Further, we have learned from his diary that he and Sarah entertained, enjoyed children, and celebrated Christmas. Polk sent Christmas cards. Did Poe celebrate Christmas? Critics debate that one. We do know that he was baptized in Richmond, and we are probably not wrong in suggesting that the Allans entertained and visited famous Virginians, including the Randolphs, and other friends who celebrated Christmas. Even if “The Bells” is not associated with Christmas, we may imagine church bells pealing across cities on Christmas morn. What about Minnigerode?

Frederick Wills Boelt, a native of Williamsburg, historian, and member of the Jamestown Society, and the First Families of Virginia, said that when the grandchildren of Saint George Tucker were bored one cold December afternoon, Dr. Minnigerode, who was close friends with Saint George Tucker’s son and his family and lived in the historic home, invited the children to create a Christmas tree, German style. Someone cut down a small evergreen tree and brought it into the house where the German gentlemen strung the tree with popcorn, perhaps cranberries and lighted candles, and put it on the table. He may have taught the children a German carol or two and told them stories. From 1845 on, every family in Williamsburg had a Christmas tree, and there were Yuletide gatherings. Unlike other cities and villages in Virginia, Williamsburg did not have a Christmas tree until Dr. Minnigerode introduced that German custom.

The fact that these 19th-century gentlemen (yes, Polk was born in 1795) inspired me to go on a wanderlust journal (hoping not to be begging the question) suggests Coleridge’s words: “willing suspension of disbelief that constitutes poetic faith,” along with Mary Oliver’s “The World offers itself to your imagination.”

Works Cited Beebe, Annemarie. Personal Interview. 16 July 2016.

Boelt, Frederick Wills. Personal Interview. 12 July 2016.

Cline, Erinnae. Personal Interview. 14. July 2016.

Thorpe, Angela. Personal Interview. 19 July 2016.

By Martha Benn Macdonald, Ph.D., English instructor, published author, NAI Certified Interpreter, and Performer.

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Using pop culture, trending topics, and regional influences to facilitate connection during zookeeper presentations.

Tami Jo Brightrall Lead Keeper/ Hamill Family Playzoo & Wild Encounters Brookfield Zoo; Chicago Zoological Society

Let’s face it, the world is a very trendy place! From fashion and food to architecture and music, we are all faced with keeping up to date with the “coolest” and most influential trends. Pop culture on the internet, television, radio, movies, apps and games is very influential in society and carries considerable weight in our culture. Children watching animated films, millennials downloading apps, and baby boomers keeping up with college roommates on Facebook are all inundated with images and themes that are concentrated with content that ebbs and flows constantly.

Working in AZA accredited zoos for more than 20 years, I’ve been tasked with creating and implementing hundreds of chats, presentations, and events for the general public “zoogoer” in several different regions of the country. Aza.org shows us that zoological parks host over 181 million visitors annually (that’s more than every type of U.S. professional sporting event combined), and the opportunity to spread positive messages about conservation, nature, and respect for the natural world are plenty and available to institutions who are successful in making their messages stick with their guests.

The mission at the Brookfield Zoo is to “inspire conservation leadership by connecting people with wildlife and nature”. The word connecting is striking here, because that’s where the influence lies. Many times as zookeepers, we have a very small amount of time to capture a child’s attention. Standing on the lawn with a bearded dragon and 50-60 gathered people around can be challenging when the audience is coming and going throughout the presentation. Imagine, however if the children hear “how many of you have seen the movie How to Train Your Dragon?” It’s something relevant, a pop culture reference that grabs attention and increases focus on the presenter. Then by taking this chance to let them know that we, too, train our dragons using a target pole and reinforcing them with mealworms is a fantastic way to make a connection that sticks with them!

When the new iphone 6 was released, millions of excited teens, parents, and bloggers walked throughout the zoo Instagramming photos of baby zebras and selfies while touching stingrays. In fact, according to aza.org, zoo-goers use social media to follow and post on their favorite zoo’s pages in staggering numbers: o o o o o

Facebook: 16,005,181+ followers Twitter: 1,983,169+ followers Instagram: 881,752+ followers Pinterest: 116,561+ followers YouTube: 230+ million views

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Imagine a zookeeper standing in front of the gorilla exhibit talking about the newest member of the troop, baby Zachary! Once this keeper says “how many of you were lucky enough to get the new iphone this weekend?”, excited guests smile and raise their phones up with pride, like they have a golden ticket, ready to post the next viral video of a walrus spitting on their grandma or two adorable otters holding hands. The keeper then mentions “Please take this time to recycle your old iphone. Did you know that the power to help gorillas is right in your hand? There’s a substance called coltan used to make your phone. The main area where coltan is mined also contains the Kahuzi Biega National Park, home of the Mountain Gorilla. In this area the gorilla population has been cut nearly in half as the ground is cleared to make mining easier. Not only has this reduced the available food for the gorillas, the poverty caused by the displacement of the local populations by the miners has led to gorillas being killed and their meat being sold as "bush meat" to the miners and rebel armies that control the area. Imagine how easy it is for you to directly help gorillas!” This type of interpretation takes something guests are excited about and links it not only to our message, but gives them actionable steps they can take as a consumer to assist. With millennials being very “cause” driven, this is important in facilitating change and giving the guests the type of zoo experience they are looking for.

More and more, zoo guests are looking for direct contact with animals, experiences that can be shared, Tweeted, posted, put online for everyone to see. Selfies with swimming polar bears, adults getting sea lion kisses, and brilliant scarlet macaws flying over their heads at the free flight bird show gather “likes” online and promote the zoo as well. When zoos offer “Backstage Adventures”, guests can register for a private experience that provides everything they’re looking for. Connection, closeness, an opportunity to make every one of your Snapchat friends jealous for weeks to come. The remarkable thing is, these programs many times have participation based on trends. In 2005 & 2006 the movies “Happy Feet” and “March of the Penguins” were released, and were seen by millions of people. Shortly after, Brookfield Zoo’s backstage penguin encounters rose by 25%. Kristen Bell, a popular actress posted a video in 2013 of her experience meeting a sloth. This viral video, shared on the Ellen DeGeneres show, has more than 23 million views. Sloths are now on lunch boxes, tshirts, hand bags, and phone cases. They steal the show in the new Zootopia movie, and are now being requested by wedding parties to hang out during their cocktail reception at the zoo. Sloths are everywhere in pop culture, and we can use this to help get our message across. Simply put, you want an engaged, excited audience at the zoo? Bring out Elsie the two-toed sloth and you’ll have it. A perfect chance to get that message across about South American habitat destruction. “Recycle your water bottles folks, remember to hook up your rain barrels this spring when gardening!” When combined with a sloth, your message is that much more powerful, because the emotional connection is already extremely strong due to pop culture.

This can be used with sports just as easily. Snakes are one of the live animals that can create a lot of emotion from guests. From the mom who’s unsure about them to the grandpa who quickly hides behind the bushes when we bring out Medusa, our Dumeril’s ground boa, there are many people who are quick to avoid snakes or proclaim that “they HATE snakes!!!!”. If we start our presentation out with a simple “who knows who Stephan Curry and LeBron James are? Any Warriors or Cavs fans out there?” Kids start to light up, spouting off stats and light-hearted ribbing goes on between a few dads in the crowd. “Well, those two are amazing basketball players! They touch basketballs for a living. Did you know that snakes are not slimy at all? In fact, they are rather bumpy and cool…..like a basketball. If you’ve touched a basketball, you can touch a snake! Let’s see how many LeBron fans can touch Medusa, then how many Curry fans. Everyone wins the competition since they can talk to their classmates, friends, and families about the awesome experience you had at the zoo today!”

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Sometimes the connection can come from a trendy activity or idea that makes its way in to popular culture.

Urban farming is becoming as popular for the suburban family as it is for the downtown Chicago rooftop gardener. Beautiful breeds of chickens are laying eggs in homemade cedar hutches with special ramps and cheery gingham curtains. Not only serving as a source of organic food, but a member of the family who’s spoiled just as much as the resident schnauzer. When developing a chat for small children attending zoo camp, this was utilized as a way to grab their attention by including something relevant and connecting it to something at home. Our very popular “chicken chat” included a chance for the children to hand feed the chickens live mealworms and watch as they performed simple trained behaviors like targeting to a colored disk to opening their wings for scratches underneath. The children were not only engaged in the activity, but could then take that experience home to talk about more with class mates and friends with chicken coops of their own.

Events like the Summer Olympics, general elections, holidays are awesome ways to grab the attention as well. From showing how the wallaby would “beat any long jumper human out there” or talk about how the male peacocks use their feathers to “campaign for the female’s attention and win votes to be the best mate” can be extremely effective. Having our lemur troop enjoy a large Thanksgiving meal complete with primate “sweet potato pie and sugar free cranberry sauce” can connect the guests in ways that no sign or website can. A live animal, relevant to the current trends and events is extremely powerful and assists in getting the vital bits of conservation information channeled to the right spot.

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Since there are zoos all over the US and abroad in dozens of regions and climates, it’s valuable to tailor the zookeeper interpretive chats to what’s going on in your area. There are certainly different trending topics and ideas that can be connected to the Woodland Park Zoo in Washington compared with the Birmingham Zoo in central Alabama. The small amount of time a zookeeper has to grab the attention, spread the influence on caring about conservation and wildlife, and create a lasting feeling that lingers way beyond that day’s visit is so valuable and can literally change someone’s life. By using relevant ideas and making the interaction fun and engaging we can maximize the chances that these zoo visitors will grow to fill our shoes and continue to become champions for nature.

Tami Jo Brightrall Lead Keeper/ Hamill Family Playzoo & Wild Encounters Brookfield Zoo; Chicago Zoological Society 3300 Golf Road Brookfield, Il 60513 708.688.8696 Tamara.Brightrall@CZS.org Reference: AZA. "Data, Surveys, & Trends." Data, Surveys, & Trends. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 July 2016.

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When is a bug more than a bug?

When it's a Hercules Beetle!

IN Editors A Hercules Beetle larva soon to become a beetle.

On a trip to Costa Rica my wife and I first encountered Hercules Beetles. We were greeted at many rest areas during a bus tour stop with food stands, like the one in the photo to the left, with the giant beetles for you to play with or be photographed with while you were waiting for your coconut milk or snack. My wife, Judi, plays with her beetle in the photo. And yes, we wanted to take one home with us.

The Hercules beetle is one of the largest species of beetle in the world, and is natively found in the jungles of South America. The Hercules beetle is the largest and most well known of all of the rhinoceros beetles, a group of large beetles that are closely related to the famous scarab beetle.

The Hercules beetle is found throughout the tropical jungles and rainforests of Central and South America, where the Hercules beetle spends the majority of its time foraging through the leaf-litter on the forest floor in search of something to eat. The fallen debris also helps to hide this enormous insect as it moves about.

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There are thirteen known species of Hercules beetle found in the jungles of South America and the Hercules beetle was named for its sheer size as some males have been known to reach nearly 7 inches in length.

Although it is quite rare for these beetles to get quite so big, the average adult Hercules beetle is usually between four and fifteen centimeters long depending on the species.

The most distinctive feature of the Hercules beetle has to be the enormous horn-like pincers which protrude from the forehead of the males. These horns can grow longer than the Hercules beetle's body and are mainly used for solving disputes with other male Hercules beetles. Female Hercules beetles do not have horns but their bodies are thought to be larger, but shorter than their male counterparts.

The Hercules beetle is an omnivorous animal but it's diet both in its larvae and adult stages, is primarily made up of decaying plant matter. Rotting wood is the favorite meal of the Hercules beetle, along with fruits and other plant matter and the occasional small insect.

The Hercules beetle is said to be the strongest creature on earth for its size, able to carry 850 times its own body weight but these enormous insects are still hunted by numerous animals throughout the jungles of Central and South America. Bats, rats and birds are the main predators of the Hercules beetle along with reptiles and omnivorous mammals.

The larval stage of the Hercules beetle will last one to two years, with the larva growing up to 4.5 inches in length and weighing up to 120 grams. Much of the life of the Hercules beetle larva is spent tunneling through its primary food source of rotting wood. After the larval period, it transformation into a pupa and molting occurring with the Hercules beetle then emerging as an adult.

Editors note : Horned beetle species are also found in the US, but don't reach these sizes. They make interesting interpretive teaching aides, and then release them at the end of the summer or add them to your insect display. JV

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The National Park Service Climate Change project.

Jon Kovach, Project Manager, Art & Marketing Director, Pannier Graphics

Climate Change is one of the most talked about topics in the world today. For the past three years, Pannier has been working with the National Park Service (NPS) as part of a Plan, Design, Build contract to design wayside exhibits that provide awareness of the impacts of Climate Change in different areas of the country. This project was awarded as part of Pannier’s IDIQ contract with NPS. The Climate Change project was developed in two phases: phase one focused on sea level rise and phase two focused on phenology. Custom built sea level rise markers indicate current and projected sea levels to show how rising waters would affect the areas. Phase two allows visitors to become a Citizen Scientist. Picture posts are located within the parks and instruct visitors to capture landscape images, to then upload their pictures to a website. This website maintains a visual database that allows visitors to see the changes in the landscape throughout the years. Wayside exhibits interpret how climate change has negatively affected areas of the park.

Pannier led a group of designers and writers to create the wayside panels. Weekly conference calls allowed Pannier, designers and writers to communicate with the staff across all twelve involved parks, located at different corners of the country. With Climate Change being such a sensitive subject in the world today, much attention was paid to getting the facts correct without introducing any slant or bias.

Interpretive wayside exhibits were created to educate audiences about the impacts of climate change and climate friendly technologies. The waysides highlight impacts to local, site-specific resources and also call attention to regional, national and global implications of climate change. Nine of the twelve panels also include Spanish translations. Each wayside exhibit also includes a QR code that sends visitors to a microsite to dig deeper than what the wayside can offer.

Along with the exhibit bases and frames, Pannier’s drafting engineer and fabricators worked numerous hours to develop the Sea Level Rise markers. Since each site is different a lot of attention needed to be paid to assure that all the markers could work in each environment.

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“This was definitely one of the more challenging projects that we’ve approached in recent years, due not only to the complexity of the subject, but also the wide range of locations. From a research standpoint, our team of planners and designers worked hard to address all concerns. From a fabrication standpoint, we needed to design a pole that rose 20 feet in the air, out of the water, included accurate sea level rise markers (also fabricated in-house), and was not only durable, but able to be installed at each location using basic tools, all while accounting for much variability in the environment, nearby structures, and that location’s particular dimensions. Needless to say, we had our hands full. But I’m proud of the product that we created, and proud of our employees. Everything came together, shipped on time, and addressed every concern we heard.” Jon Kovach, Project Manager, Art & Marketing Director, Pannier Graphics 345 Oak Road . Gibsonia, PA 15044 www.PannierGraphics.com

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The Whole Is Cooler Than The Pieces.

Eahan Rotman Speaking Coach and Trainer

The presentation had all the right elements: an introduction, good background on the topic, 3 well-laid out points, and a clear conclusion. The presenter had taken all the right steps in preparing the talk and put a fair amount of time into his work. The problem was the end result was boring. Dull. Dry. Uninspiring.

The surprising thing is the project he is speaking on is anything but boring: – it is innovative, outdoorsy, creative, full of hope and prospect and something that 90% of people could easily support.

In his efforts to define each part of the project (the history, the pieces, the location), the speaker had lost sight of the whole, and in doing so, lost the sense of what made this project so cool in the first place. Someone had a vision for this project that was shared with others and over the course of time, they had found money and time to make it a reality. Very little, if any of the excitement or passion that allowed this project to blossom was presented in this talk.

Many speakers dissect their projects into the individual pieces and lose sight of the whole – what is it that makes your topic, your project so exciting and special? It similar to a baker talking about the ingredients, the oven, and the baking pan without ever describing the delicious, beautiful cake.

As you create your next talk, remember to include that really big cool idea that is the foundation of your entire project. Describe the end result of your project at the beginning of your talk – use it as your opener to grab the attention of your audience. Chances are the very thing that excites you about your project will excite your audience as well. Once they are excited, they may just be interested in all those pieces and details.

If you want to profit from your words, to feel more confident, increase your credibility, and deliver more effective presentations that audiences want to hear, contact iSpeakEASY at ethan@iSpeakEASY.net or (415) 342-7106.

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Book Review : Interpretive design and the Dance of Experience by: Steve Van Matre.

Institute for Earth Education, 2009.

ISBN:978-0-917011-23-8 Review by: Bill Reynolds, ex Parks Canada Interpreter reynolds.billd@gmail.com

Caution: Don’t read this book unless you are prepared to re-evaluate, reflect, and re-organize the interpretive framework you use.

If you knew a book was going to help you practice the art of seduction would you pick it up- would you grasp that this was essential to the interpreter’s role in design? As Van Matre exclaims, there is no lack of passion in this field, it just needs solid structure to accomplish experiential transformation.

The book offers a new way to look at the basis for an interpretive foundation and structure, challenging the prevalent dependence on themes to perform this role. Themes can perform well as delivery organizers but have not performed well as the framework to accomplish special place outcomes.

The world’s jewels, as the author states, are being looked after for all the earth’s passengers’ benefit. The task is to ensure visitors leave caring about the place, not just to providevisitors a good time. Interpretive design aims at developing that sense of belonging, relating, and comprehending in visitor, in order to share with others. This book is about how to engage that bodyset and mindset holistically - a very critical skill in the times ahead.

The author lays out an intentful, immersive, and inspiring form of interpretive structure that aims to illuminate the vision behind our public treasures. This proposed organizational framework is not just for imparting intended messages but for hosting, inviting, practicing, and motivating people to explore their special place and uncover universal processes.

If you are responsible to care for, share and celebrate life’s ecological and cultural treasures then you should be adding the Institute for Earth Education's Steve Van Matre‘s book Interpretive Design and the Dance of Experience to your shelf for inspiration (and a tad of frustration). Just as Steve's Earth Education: a NEW BEGINNING instigated nature educators to review their work over the last 2 decades, Interpretive Design again challenges our roles. It stresses the importance of activity over words, processes of life over the pieces of life, and experiential coaching over guiding.

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“ Interpretive design is planning enriching interactions that will produce intended outcomes.”

Van Matre challenges you, on behalf of the visitor, to: 

Craft an invitation



Be place – centred



Improve your catalyst and matchmaking skills



Convey purposeful anticipation



Choreograph a dance of discovery



Disappear…

Freeman Tilden, often considered the Father of Interpretation, created 6 principles in the 50’s that have been a foundation for the profession. The Dance of Experience builds and greatly expands on the foundation that Tilden supplied, in the spirit of continuous improvement.

A prevailing business philosophy is the belief that all innovation comes from pissed off people, which often compels entrepreneurs to redesign the poorly performing customer experience. The innovative interpretive approach being offered in this book has had a similar genesis. The wake up call quote from Tom Peters‘ Re-Imagine book : “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less,” is apropos when considering Van Matre’s expressed concern regarding the interpretive profession.

By addressing the element of design and the realm of experience so prevalent in the social and business world today, Van Matre brings interpretation into the new millennium. Our society is well entrenched into leveraging design to drive profit at the point of sale –this book is about leveraging design to drive enrichment and to dance at the point of experience. The focus on dance the author is referring to, is about capitalizing on the inherent energy a visitor brings to our public treasures. The concept of dance Van Matre uses may seem a bit foreign or ‘out there” for those in a site management or communication role, but don’t let this be a barrier to discovering the gems behind this provocative positioning.

He advocates for building on the visitor‘s proclivity to flow or dance upon site arrival and to channel that energy of anticipation directly, into discovery, experience and even love. Working with this excited state translates into helping the visitor dance with the place not sit, stand or be herded. “ Interpretive design is planning enriching interactions that will produce intended outcomes.”

Business literature dealing with the experience economy, stresses the need for customers to be exposed to the passive and active experience continuum, while blending with the absorption to immersion spectrum. This produces 4 realms of estheticism, escapism, entertainment, and education with a sweet spot of engagement and money extraction when you intersect all.

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This interpretive design treatise reflects these needs and addresses them in a more down –to –earth, conversational, values-driven and purposeful way. You are not exposed to any academic bafflegab- no cognitive or affective domains on these pages. Van Matre wants us to strive for the sweet spot that assists every visitor to have a meaningful, memorable, tangible, and flavourful experience that supports the site’s mission.

The above expressed sweet spot, departs from interpretive literature that has often stressed the motivating(?)outcomes of : 

responsible behaviour change in the way management wants,



“making the visitor care,”



evaluative recall of thematic packaged information having been effectively transferred.

The expansive treatment offered in this book, of the know-feel-do objectives sought by many interpretive approaches, reaches beyond the basic grasp of these elements. The book presents implementation outcomes beyond information transfer that involve a coaching of process, invitation and practice.

The reader is treated to a serious yet playful redefining, re-imagining and rebooting of the classic approach to resource, site, visitor, message and media analysis. I have seen some interpretive program statements that have also included an experience analysis which gets closer to what is being espoused in Van Matre’s seven chapters. The design focus is on the encounter, as expressed eloquently by the author in a Zen-like manner as simply: A visitor

A place

An enrichment

The target being aimed for is to: 

assist the visitor to be and receive, not be told



uncover and share what has been hidden, not cover the subject



expose storylines and stimulate storymaking, not be a storyteller



help visitors find good seats.

“ Interpretive design is planning enriching interactions that will produce intended outcomes.”

The goal being stressed is effective visitor immersion in the essence of your mission driven site or facility.

The focus is on experiential coaching. The emphasis is on what visitors DO. Concrete examples are provided to illustrate the experiential coaching role of the interpreter as a narrator, stage manager, and prop assistant. Improvisational theatre techniques have always emphasized sharing over telling as the audience loves to figure things out when the performer leaves a trail of bread crumbs for them and they get to participate. This sense of co-discovery is the craft of the excellent interpretive designer.

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As Van Matre proclaims, the key interpretive design outcome revolves around “shaping what is inside the visitors when they depart, where other designers focus on shaping what’s outside them when they arrive.”

Design is the #1 determinant of whether a product, service or experience stands out among the competition. Design mindfulness is prevalent today among so many endeavours. The greatest business success story of this generation is the Apple tale of design driven solutions. Starbuck’s wildly successful creation of a third place is based on ramping up the sensory atmosphere of coffee enjoyment - essentially changing a commodity, product and service transaction into an experience. Innovation by design is the priority buzzword among a range of companies in a slew of industries. Van Matre’s book brings interpretive planning into the fold of those embracing the power of design.

Steve Van Matre has accomplished a book design coup – it sparkles as a reading experience. He has accomplished the pursuit of WOW with the smooth feel, generous airy layout, engaging graphics, and colourful font face diversity. These elements combined with the progressive rainbow colour framing of every page makes for a delightful read-it almost radiates with joy. The energetic style of verbal and visual presentation is memorable. The element of reinforcement is cleverly employed throughout the book. There are many examples of “walk the talk” interpretive design principles embedded in the book.

This encourages a game of trying to decipher the design decision- making process behind different components of the book.

You are set up for a friendly, comfortable read but what is being presented is not conducive for a quick and easy skim. The stimulating flow of thoughts is punctuated with design challenges and exercises more tango than waltz. It appeals to feelings as well as intellect -a running test of sorts to see if you are granting yourself time to be “out of your mind.”

You can’t help but want to improve your interpretive design skills as the anticipated impact of a job well done oozes from every page. Hopeful passion is pressed into every sentence. The care and attention to detail is evident from the decades of observation and contemplation brought to bear by the author.

The book is interspersed with red bolded sentences like: “Interpretation is not so much experience explained as explanation experienced.”

“We remember what we feel and feel what we remember.”

I refer to them as magical mind mirrors - perplexing perspective word reversals that constantly stop you in your tracks and tickle the brain cells.

A line in the book says, “ interpretive designers are like archeologists, digging for lost treasure.” Each time I picked up the book and re-read another passage, I felt this way, as something new would be unearthed. I admit I get exhausted every time as I keep digging and discovering more insight - somewhat reminiscent of the visitor experience moving from awe to aha.

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“ Interpretive design is planning enriching interactions that will produce intended outcomes.”

If there are any criticisms, it would relate to the complexity of content in certain sections where an increased application of using examples would boost clarity. There are three types of public treasure sites recognized: preservation, collection, and recognition places. The design challenges throughout the book do reflect that variety of settings. However, the complex interpretive matrix process has been illustrated only by using a preservation place example. To enhance the reader’s understanding, it would have been exemplary to have incorporated 2 more interpretive matrices for a representative collection and recognition place. Concrete examples would also ease one’s comprehension of the listed universal strands of cultural and natural processes.

Many places can offer buildings, history, water features, woods, trails, and picnic tables but interpretive design excellence determines what distinguishes your place and can maximize the visitors’ chance to benefit from that uniqueness. Design deals with soul. Offering a differentiated life experience to visitors helps to establish a place’s value.

The concept of differentiation is a cornerstone for the tourism attraction industry. As tourism visitation is impacting our heritage treasures, it is instructive to understand the prevailing ethos. From my tourism industry experience, I have seen a pervasive trend for the successful companies to strive for a more effective connection of place with their customer, by moving from delivering a service to staging an experience. Our public jewels can be positioned this way and stay mission driven.

In the marketing field there has been momentum building around not just communicating a brand but to experiencing a brand. Some say we have moved from trademarks to lovemarks. To attain such a bond means success in interpretive design. “People value what they understand, and love what they feel.“ The author’s premise is that to love something is to cherish it, support it, and return to it. The interpretive goal is to experientially guide the visitor in moving from value to love in their dance with a place. Van Matre’s book will guide you down this path.

Do you relish yourself as a change agent? Let me know if you have an interest in an online discussion group about how to plan, design, and coach mission-driven, user- generated, experience creation. Contact me reynolds.billd@gmail.com Note: The Institute for Earth Education offers workshops on Interpretive Design the Dance of Experience and further information on purchasing books or organizing a workshop can be requested at info@ieetree.org For More information Peters, Tom. Re-Imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age. 2003, ISBN 0-7894-9647-X, Dorling Kindersley Limited.

Van Matre, Steve. Interpretive Design And The Dance Of Experience. 2009, ISBN:978-0-917011-23-8, Institute for Earth Education.

Bill’s life work has always pivoted around creating enriching experiences for people. At various points in his 45 year career, Bill has been a national park interpreter, a nature guide at an UNESCO nature reserve, a director of adult environmental education at an urban nature centre, a recreational event planner, a leisure marketing specialist for an urban park, an heritage attraction design analyst, a community tourism planner, a ranch tourism experience auditor, an agtourism development specialist, an actor, a public speaker, and a workshop trainer. Bill received a Master of Science in Interpretive Services Administration in 1978 from George Williams College, Illinois, USA. Bill presently lives in the boreal mixed wood forest, North Saskatchewan river basin, Alberta, Canada.

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InterpNEWS Marketplace

Kaser Design

InterpNEWS is now offering advertising for interpretive services and media. If you'd like to advertise with InterpNEWS let me know and we can send our advertising information to you so you too can reach our 300,000 IN recipients in 60 countries.

Advertisers in this issue: Museum Study on-line training courses.

Kaser Design Museum Fabrication Group Heritage Interpretation Training Center John Veverka & Associates Rich Pawling's History Alive!

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Online Professional Development.

MuseumStudy.com At Museum Study our mission is to help you build a better cultural institution and be a stronger member of the team that carries out the mission of your institution.

To accomplish this we provide online professional development courses on a broad range of topics important for running a cultural institution including; Administration, Exhibits & Public Programming, Facilities Management, Collections Management, and Collection Preservation & Care. Our goal is to help you develop policies, procedures and programs to increase your institutions management and operations success.

New interpretive courses for 2016 - 2017. We now offer seven courses on Interpretation that can be taken individually or together to strengthen your interpretive skill set.

For more information on these courses click the links below or visit our schedule page to see what other courses are coming in the months ahead. http://www.museumstudy.com/courses/course-schedule/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

September 6, 2016 Grants for Museums and Historic Sites Introduction to Natural History Collections Planning and Presenting Live Interpretive Programs Assessing Risk to Cultural Property 1

October 24, 2016 AASLH Basics of Archives

October 3, 2016 Preservation Principles for Cultural Institutions

November 7, 2016 Interpretive Writing Social Relevance: Environmental Sustainability in Museums AASLH Basics of Archives

October 10, 2016 Assessing Risk to Cultural Property 2

January 3, 2017 The Interpretive Exhibit Planners Toolbox

October 17, 2016 AASLH Project Management for History Professionals

February 6, 2017 Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections

For more information on our courses visit the course schedule on MuseumStudy.com.

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The Heritage Interpretation Training Center New professional development courses for heritage interpreters.

The Heritage Interpretation Training Center offers 33 professional development courses in heritage interpretation, all taught at the college level and awarding CEU credits for course completion. You can start the courses at any time an complete the courses at your own pace. You can also chat with the course instructors at any time by phone, e-mail or SKYPE. Cut and paste the link to learn more about some of our newest courses.

Advanced Interpretive Services for Chiefs of Interpretation, Interpretive Services Managers, Regional Interpretive Specialists, Park and Heritage Site Managers, and other professional interpretive specialists.

15 Units, 3 CEU Credits, Tuition: $500.00 www.heritageinterp.com/advanced_interpretation_for_chiefs_of_interp_-_in.html Planning Interpretive Trails e-LIVE Course - 13 Units - 2.5 CEU Credits $200.00 http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpretive_trails_course.html

Interpretive Writing e-LIVE Course - 8 Units and 2 CEU Credits $200.00 http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpretive_writing_course.html The Interpretive Exhibit Planners Tool Box e-LIVE course - 11 Units and 2 CEU Credits. $200.00 http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpretive_exhibits_course.html

Developing and Managing Community Interpretive Plans and Programs 12 Units, 2 CEU Credits, Course Tuition: $300.00 www.heritageinterp.com/community_interpretation_planning.html For our complete 33 course catalog: http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpretive_training_center_course_catalogue_.html

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Interpretive Planning, Training and Design - World-Wide.

JVA has been contributing to and helping to advance the interpretive profession for over 40 years. From teaching university courses in interpretation (Michigan State University, Ohio State University and New York State University and the State University of West Georgia - heritage interpretation institutes), and years of field experience doing interpretation, we are growing still.

Our services include but are not limited to: - Interpretive Master Planning.

- Interpretive Training Courses - Interpretive Exhibit Planning - Interpretive Trail Planning - Scenic Byways Interpretive Planning.

- Regional Interpretive Systems Planning - Landscape Museum Planning.

- Visitor Research and Marketing Studies.

But there is much more to us: The Heritage Interpretation Center for the Advancement of Excellence in Interpretive Planning. http://www.heritageinterp.com/the_center_for_interpretive_planning_advancement_.html The interpretive Evaluation, Visitor Studies and Interpretive Site Assessment Center. http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpretive_evaluation_visitor_studies_and_site_.html

The Heritage Interpretation Training Center

http://www.heritageinterp.com/heritage_interpretation_training_center.html

The Heritage Interpretation Resource Center

http://www.heritageinterp.com/heritage_interpretation_resource_center.html

InterpNEWS - the International Heritage Interpretation e-Magazine. http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpnews.html

John Veverka & Associates www.heritageinterp.com jvainterp@aol.com SKYPE: jvainterp

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Rich Pawling’s History Alive! joins the Heritage Interpretation Training Center Team The Heritage Interpretation Training Center is very pleased to announce that Rich Pawling's History Alive! has developed one of our newest courses for 2016:

Introduction to Developing Living History Characters and Delivering Living History Programs 10 Units, 3 CEU Credits ($275) The Course Units include: - Unit One - Interpretation Defined - Unit Two – The Value of Interpretation * The Interpreter/Living /Living Historian vs. the Reenactor * Where to start? Choosing the character to portray - Unit Three – Selecting the Best Interpretive Method * Methods of Interpretation - 1st person, 3rd person, spirit past - Unit Four – Designing the Chara Character - Unit Five – Making the Character Come Alive!

- Unit Six – Continually Adapting Your Character to Your Audience - Unit Seven – Preparation Builds Confidence - Unit Eight – Controversy Builds Interest - Unit Nine – Safety is #1 - Unit Ten – The Total Package = Success!

About the Instructor: Professor Richard Pawling Rich Pawling has over thirty-five five years of experience interpreting the natural and cultural heritage of the United States. Beginning his interpretive career as an environmental educator and later historian-naturalist historian at local and state parks, his evolution into living history began while employed as a National Park Service ranger at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site. To help visitors there understand that this now pristine site was actually a dirty, smoky iron furnace in the 1830s, he chose to portray the charcoal charcoal dust dust-covered, tobaccochewing filler of the furnace in first person. He was honored with the Freeman Tilden Award for the MidAtlantic Region of the NPS for his efforts in designing and presenting this program about the "forgotten heroes" of the past - the he common laborers. In 1991, he launched Rich Pawling’s History Alive! - his own entrepreneurial venture. His unique teaching style twice won him the Outstanding Adjunct Professor of the Year award at Penn State Berks.. Most recently, he was a full-time full instructor tructor of natural and cultural interpretation at Hocking College (Ohio) (Ohio)--inspiring the next generation of interpreters interprete and retiring from in-class teaching in 2010.

For course content details and registration information you're invited to visit the course webpage at: www.richpawling.com (clicking on “e-LIVE “ Course” under the “Training” tab) or contact Rich at: richpawling@yahoo.com. The course fee includes pdf segments of Rich's book: Old Clothes: But All I Wanted to Do Was Wear Old Clothes and Go Back to the Past Past.