Awhile back, I mentioned a wonderful essay that was sent to me by a woman who lives in the Flint Hills of Kansas. Her
website is definitely worth checking out, especially if you are in the mood to have your consciousness raised. Click on "Tallgrass Tales" to read Marva's collections of essays, poems and stories. I think this particular essay should be required reading for all.
COLOR MY WORLD by Marva L. Weigelt
Right from the start, the coloring seduced me. First came the eight fat primary crayons, chunky and imprecise, wielded in my infant fist like weapons against the unbearable blankness of rough Manila paper. There were no lines to stay inside of yet; in the beginning, I defined my own boundaries.
Eight was the magic multiple for Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith, the geniuses behind the invention of Crayola® crayons in 1903. Seven days of creation, days of the week, notes in the musical scale, seas on the earth, but eight crayons, as if that one extra stick of color conferred the potential to construct the eighth wonder of the world. The distinct fragrance of paraffin wax and pigment is to the present day a referential scent I associate with contentedness, creativity and abundance.
As I grew, the spectrum allotted to me increased correspondingly with my maturity: 8, 16, 24, 32, 48 colors—with which size the coveted built-in sharpener arrived—64, 72—and here the growth paused until I was in my 30s. My advanced age did not stop me from buying the 80, 96 and 120-count boxes, although I was bitter over the retirement of two of my favorite colors—raw umber and maize. I refused, however, to purchase the 150-Count Telescoping Crayon Tower, not because of the profanity of such new colors as Jazzberry Jam, Razzmatazz and Macaroni & Cheese, but because Hallmark, which now owns Binney & Smith, has violated a fundamental Law of the Crayon Universe—150 is not divisible by eight.
Crayons ruled the bold, bright, waxy domain of primitive design in which fine delineation was not yet required. Subtlety came later, when they took away our recesses, but permitted us to render with colored pencils. I recall loving geography class for the maps in our textbooks and the larger-scale U.S. and world maps that pulled down like window blinds in front of the blackboard, but even more for the blank maps fresh from the Ditto machine, still damp and reeking with the heady scent of solvent. So faint and fleeting did the aniline purple appear on the page that I hurried to embark upon the assignment, fearing that the borders of the African countries might disappear.
I dutifully copied out the country names and capitals in as neat a hand as I could manage, but in my haste to get to what I considered the heart of the task, I fear I missed the point. I carried the mapmaking art to new heights, placing the pebbled cover of a hardback book under the oceans and other textured surfaces—placemats, doilies, a block of wood—under the countries to give the illusion of raised relief to my maps. I drew in rivers and mountains, tastefully decorating the continents from sea to shining sea—I colored the world with flair. What I did not do particularly well was learn world geography, except in the most rudimentary way.
I took a few geography quizzes on the Internet to assess my knowledge base. I only missed one question on the World Quiz (where is the Southern Ocean?)—identifying continents and oceans—but otherwise, the results were dismal. I scored 24% on the Africa map quiz, 38% on Europe, 59% on South America and 90% on the U.S. state and capitals geography quiz. I was afraid to try the Asia quiz. How could I have executed so many beautiful maps and learned so little about the world?
In my defense, the tests are on flat, featureless maps with only the outlines of continents and countries. I think I’d have fared much better with a few rivers and mountain ranges thrown in for orientation. I was musing on my geographical shortcomings when, ironically, Jane handed me a passport application last night. I am among the 80% of Americans who, up until the recent issuance of new Homeland Security mandates, did not have passports. I have traveled just over the border into Mexico once and into a few of the Canadian provinces, but I have never been off the North American continent. When I consider that about 64% of the world’s 232 countries and self- governing territories are smaller than the state of Kansas (heck, the 75 smallest would all fit in Kansas together with room left over), it’s easy to see why I’ve kept plenty busy for almost half a century exploring and memorizing the geography of my own homeland. Incidentally, you don’t need to know anything about the world to get a passport.
Thomas Swick, in an article lamenting our Americentric geographical illiteracy, noted this irony:
We eat sushi and dance salsa and practice yoga. How much more cosmopolitan can we be? Well, cosmopolitan enough to be able to name and locate on a map the places from which those three things came. [Via magazine, May 2007]
“The world we know is the world we’ve seen,” Swick concludes, and I agree, with the exception that I believe it’s possible to develop at least a measure of familiarity without actually traveling. What is necessary is a connection of some vitality—lively stories and details, the particular sounds and scents of a place, the undulation of the landscape, the lilt of the local tongue—a sense of human habitation and significance. What I notice as I look at unlabeled maps of the world is that I can most readily locate the countries from which I have met someone—Stephen from Ireland, Leon from Poland, Raija from Finland, Ton and Ans from the Netherlands, Prathiba from India—because I’ve been given a reason to care, the shape of a human heart to associate with the boundaries of a country on the map.
With this in mind, I went in search of names, faces and stories to connect me to new places. As synchronicity would have it, my friend Don sent me a link for a Kansas City photographer’s blog. The entry at the head of the page was accompanied by a photograph of crayons, markers and colored pencils that Gloria Baker Feinstein and others will be taking to the St. Mary Kevin Orphanage Motherhood in Kajjansi, Uganda to use in art classes this December. I felt a physical jolt, as if two wires had been connected to complete a circuit.
The blog led me to the website for Change the Truth, a not-for-profit Gloria launched after a 2006 trip to Uganda brought her attention to the plight of a few of the 2.2 million Ugandan children who’ve lost one or both parents to civil war or HIV/AIDS. A compelling video on the site introduced me to Henry Semanda, Vincent Emma and Shamim Nambatya, young teens whose stories flew me across the continents and oceans on the wings of compassion. These are the hearts I will use to humanize my map as I color my world in a new way—one country at a time—starting with Uganda.
Two checks sit on my desk as I write this, awaiting deposit in the bank. Again in the spirit of synchronous divine timing, it seems clear that these monies are meant to travel to Uganda. Together, they are enough to pay for one year’s school fees for a child whose world and possibilities will expand as a result. I hope I will someday know that child’s name.
In future, I shall keep my map close at hand, and when I meet someone new I will ask them to mark their homeland on the map and tell me a story, so that even without artful techniques for shading and stippling, my map will acquire color and texture, taking on a life—many lives—of its own.
©2007 Marva L. Weigelt
http://www.republicofgrass.com
Note: Since Marva wrote this, she has indeed made a contribution to Change the Truth and is now sponsoring and writing to a young girl named Zaber. How cool is that?
