NAI Blog

Today, August 31, 2010 would have been my father’s 100^th birthday. Unfortunately he didn’t make it to 100, but he accomplished a lot in the years he had. As the first municipal park naturalist in the western US, he helped break ground for a lot of us that followed down that path. That path has grown, perhaps even split in a few places over the years. And there’s no doubt this path is sometimes rocky with steep slopes and lots of fascinating twists and turn—but then any curved path holds the most interest.

In the first half of the 20^th century the people that interpreted natural history were commonly referred to as naturalists or nature guides, and they often came from a different place than today’s interpreters. The naturalist was often a field scientist, with a detailed knowledge of botany, zoology, geology, paleontology or other formal “ologies.” Colleagues that interpreted cultural history often came from a formal background in history, anthropology, archeology or related disciplines and went by the title of historian. In other words, without the formal discipline of interpretation in that era, naturalists and historians came from other formal academic disciplines. For example, Dr. Loye Miller and Dr. Harold Bryant who initiated interpretive programs for the National Park Service in Yosemite were both zoology professors from UC Berkeley.

My father was cut from that same cloth. He was a talented botanist and ornithologist that started out working as a field scientist and collector for museums like the American Museum of Natural History and the California Academy of Sciences. But there was something different about some of these naturalists. Their mastery of the subject matter was driven by this intense sense of discovery and curiosity, and often fueled an incredible sense of awe about the world around them—the same qualities that create some of our most inspired interpreters. This is perhaps where the path split from the technically proficient naturalists to branch off toward today’s interpreters. My father made that split in the 1940s when he began doing interpretive programs at Lakeside Park in Oakland, California. On a national/international scale we saw people like Rachel Carson, Jacques Cousteau, Aldo Leopold and many others with solid academic credentials turn toward connecting nature to the larger public, following in the footsteps of John Muir and Enos Mills. Parallel efforts brought cultural history and anthropology out of the halls of academia to make cultural heritage meaningful for the larger American public.

I was always a bit disappointed that my father didn’t consider himself an interpreter. He was always at home with any group of birdwatchers or botanists, but felt a little ill at ease at a gathering of contemporary interpreters. I think it may have been that so many of us also have backgrounds in communications, sociology, psychology or other areas of social sciences—perhaps we just seemed like a slightly different species. We’ve certainly added more layers of technology, methodology, research findings and evaluation to the tool kit of today’s interpreter, but our work still revolves around the fundamental relationship of people and resources. Even though many of those formal naturalists or historians can tell spell-binding stories or answer nearly any question you can think of regarding their resource, I always fear we may leave them behind if we’re not careful to acknowledge them as peers and colleagues. They are a big part of our professional heritage and we need to build on their good work, not leave it behind.

I’m willing to bet that wherever you practice, whatever your place or resource may be, there are people that have gone before you that were passionate scientists and historians, that discovered and described the unique nature of your resource. I would urge you to find those people, talk with them (if they’re still alive) or read their work, and dig through the layers of technical information to the deeper sense of discovery that drove their passion. That’s where you can tap into some very real and authentic inspiration to interpret your resource.

As for me, every time I’m looking for a little inspiration I just have to think back to a little boy sitting next to his dad in the hollowed stump of an ancient redwood tree in the Oakland hills, listening to stories of grizzly bears and lumberjacks. We all have a chance to pass that inspiration on to the children that will follow us. If you do it well, perhaps some child out there will celebrate your 100^th birthday.

—Jim Covel

Bison in Yellowstone National Park.

The U.S. Government and President Obama are soliciting ideas about protecting the places we love in the nation. There are public hearings being held all over the United States and their America’s Great Outdoors Initiative website allows you to post your ideas. I posted my ideas there as follows.

I find the comments on my post there interesting for they reflect the broad range of thinking in the U.S. about government intervention and shared responsibility. Some do not want the government in our lives in any manner whatever – no taxes, no public education, just NO.

Those of us who love parks, wilderness, natural areas, clean air, clean water and a healthy environment know that the shared responsibility for those must depend on all of us. Leaving people to their own with no protection of natural resources would doom mankind to an early extinction at our own hands. There are those who would cut every last tree, mine every mountain and drain every oil basin, no matter what the damage to our land, air and water.

A hundred years ago most Americans lived on farms and learning about food, land and energy was a part of everyday life. Young people today assume that food comes from grocery stores and energy comes from wall sockets. How would they learn about the real sources. Simcity and similar video games do teach about such things in a virtual environment, but nothing helps you understand how the world works as well as hands-on experiences with the real places and things.

I would like to see every 18-year old give some period of time to her/his community, parks, non-profit service organizations or military service with no exemptions at all. We would all learn earlier in our work lives what value there is in public service. It would provide a valuable opportunity for contextual learning in all directions. Military personnel face those realities on our behalf.

During the hard times of the Great Depression, my father worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) cutting trees in Illinois. He had a 7^th grade education and was unemployed with three children to feed. He used to complain of the long days of outdoor labor and low pay but later would brag of the good work that was done and the value of a job of any kind in those dark days.

In my first job as a park ranger and visitor center manager, I was very aware that the visitor center was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps as a picnic shelter. Later walls were added along with exhibits and a visitor contact area. I often had young workers from Youth Conservation Corps or Young Adult Conservation Corps helping me. I’ve written before in this blog about the great experiences with those programs. They give young people a better understanding of how the world really functions. All the resources we use in life still come from the Earth.

The America’s Great Outdoors Initiative is a great chance for you to share your ideas or give your view on the ideas of others. It is especially a good time to share the value of outdoor experiences for young people to learn about our planet. I welcome whatever judgment you make of my suggestions.

-Tim Merriman

Chief of Interpretation Larry Frederick orients us to the popular Sheep Lakes area of Rocky Mountain National Park.

NAI just finished hosting the Civic Tourism III Conference in Fort Collins and it was very exciting. Despite light attendance of 63 agency staffers, interpreters, convention and visitor bureau staff and community volunteers, those present were enthusiastic about doing more to help communities have the kind of tourism they want.

Dan Shilling’s book, Civic Tourism: The Poetry and Politics of Place, was given to each attendee. The book emphasizes that civic tourism should include the triple bottom line of equity (social), environment and economics, invest in the story and connect with the public. Tourism is one of the top three economic forces in every state in the U.S., but there is no cabinet level position for tourism in the federal government. Many states have a tourism office that only spends money on advertising. They want more people to come but do not invest in development of the “STORY,” the product, the visitor experience, the attractions.

The Estes Park Museum tells the story of the community very well.

At Civic Tourism III we had a full day of mobile workshops that took groups out to Blackhawk/Central City, Estes Park and Fort Collins with varied attractions and tourism hosts. We wanted to study and compare communities who encourage tourism and learn what we could from them. Blackhawk is a gambling and mining town. Estes Park is a gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park and has always been a tourist town. Fort Collins has a central theme of “where renewal is a way of life with a focus on “Beets, Brews and Bikes.” The sugar beet industry was the main community support for decades, but is gone. Micro-breweries like New Belgium and Odell’s are a part of the current lifestyle with their tasting rooms and unique stories. The lifestyles of the community today are very much about renewal and sustainability.

Dave DiMatteo at New Belgium interprets their story and core values.

We took the participants to New Belgium, where they interpret their beer with the story of founder Jeff Lebesch bicycling across Belgium, meeting brewmeisters and doing lots of tasting. Each employee gets a free trip to bicycle across Belgium at their five-year anniversary. It is  likely the “greenest” brewery in the nation with its own wind farm for electricity generation.  They have made sustainability and wise use of resources part of their core values along with bicycle events (Tour de Fat), employee ownership and a rich culture of storytelling. They tell their story very well.

One enduring observation of the three communities visited and the many communities discussed was the lack of a town’s abilities to tell the story on the streets. Estes Park explained they get three million visitors downtown but only about 12,000 at the local museum, which tells the story of Estes very well. It’s three blocks from the high traffic zones.

Can you tell the community story on the streets and why should you? Towns usually have a unique, authentic story or stories that arise from their natural and cultural assets and history. Often these days the story is covered up or lost in the melee of highways, franchise stores and strangely themed neighborhoods. James Howard Kuntsler described this phenomenon in his book, The Geography of Nowhere.  If we don’t tell our story on the streets, we may be a “been there, done that” visitor experience, another generic community. Most will not visit the local museum and dig out the deeper identity of the community.

A city interpretive guide starts our walking tour near the Roman Baths.

I have tried to think of where I’ve seen a town’s story thoughtfully told at the street level in diverse ways. Providence, Rhode Island, and the Blackstone Valley do a good job with their visitor center museum combination. Mystic, Connecticut, has incredible attractions and some downtown interpretive signage that shares their rich history. Bath, England, has wonderful street interpretive tours that engage visitors with their unique history. Singapore has interesting signage on their major streets that tell the fascinating story of how a trading post turned into a major seaport and industrial city-nation in a fairly short period of time.

Interpretive planning has largely been focused on sites like parks, zoos, historic houses, museums and aquariums in the past. In recent years the Scenic Byways Resource Center has introduced corridors and communities to interpretive planning as an opportunity to share their stories. A very few CVBs like Great Bend Kansas have been out front acquiring interpretive planning skills to plan holistic experiences for visitors. Kris Collier as President and CEO of the Great Bend CVB is a Certified Interpretive Trainer and Planner who works with local attractions to build a culture of collaboration among the rural communities in her region. It can be done, but it takes leadership.

It is exciting to think about what our diverse towns and communities might be like if they embraced their local stories and became skilled at telling them. NAI’s interpretive planning courses can be hosted anywhere and the towns and cities of North America pose a great opportunity. We need to put our stories on the streets, but we have to plan it and not just hope it happens.

-Tim Merriman

Photo by Mark M : http://www.sxc.hu/profile/phirefast

There are few things that can blend the unique nature and culture of a region as well as regional cuisine. Food has all the ingredients for good interpretation—it’s multi-sensory, participatory, full of emotional connections as well as intellectual content. If you’re trying to convey a sense of place or heritage in a way that appeals to a diverse audience, try going through their stomachs to reach their hearts and minds.

One of my favorite examples of the food-interpretation connection is the Hawaiian Luau (pictured above) that is often part of the visitor experience in the islands. At an authentic luau, you not only get to eat great food, but you hear the stories behind the food, where it comes from, how it’s prepared, and the cultural context and rituals that accompany serving and consuming certain foods. For example, I was curious why I often saw small fishes, such as squirrel fish or small mullet, for sale at fish auctions or the supermarket. It turns out that the traditional Hawaiian diet was lacking in calcium. So eating small fishes—including the bones—was a way to provide a source of calcium. That practice also is a more sustainable way to eat—harvesting fishes that are lower on the food chain that reproduce and grow more quickly. Thus learning about local diets also means learning about the natural resources of the region, the effects of seasons and weather, and knowing more about the lifestyles of traditional consumers. One soon realizes that the indigenous peoples of each region invented the idea of “eating local” long before it became today’s dining fashion.

I’ve seen a number of interpretive programs that use this approach with great success. In South Africa we feasted on corn meal beer, sadza, mopane worms and dried fish. In the arctic, it was caribou jerky and fried char (I took a pass on the muktuk). In central California the menu includes acorn mush, Manzanita berry ale, perhaps some dried salmon or venison. Now that I think about it—most of my memories of places include the food that is associated with that locale and the indigenous culture.

However I also see that food connection slowly fading in so many places. With a little sleuthing one could usually find a café or restaurant that specialized in “local dishes” or traditional foods. That’s changing as larger market chains and franchise restaurants overtake individual proprietorships and the local flavor (literally) is disappearing from our landscape.

Interpretive settings may be one of the last holdouts where traditional foods are available, with a side dish of interpretation to explain the cultural practices associated with harvesting and preparing the food. In fact, interpretive venues—such as historic farms—may be one of the last places where people can see where their food comes from. Years ago the talented interpreters at East Bay Regional Park District started doing a “super market nature walk” for inner city kids in the San Francisco Bay Area. On these walks the kids were amazed to learn that carrots and potatoes grew in the soil, that milk (and beef) came from cows, or that a huge portion of our diet comes from grass in one form or another (i.e. wheat, corn, rice, etc.). After an hour in the supermarket those kids had a different perspective on the food they ate—and perhaps they made better food choices in the future.

I’m willing to bet that many of us talk about what birds and animals eat, or the foods that pioneers or native tribes lived on, but how often do we connect that to our modern diets? We can help our audiences learn about healthy choices in today’s diet by knowing more about what our ancestors ate in the past—and it can be a tasty lesson in the bargain!

—Jim Covel

Bob Hinkle introduces the planning class to the West Creek Reservation site for the new WaterShed project.

I’m not in the new sitcom, Hot in Cleveland. I’m in Cleveland and it’s not hot this week, temperature-wise. But it is really HOT in our business due to Cleveland Metroparks (CM). Bob Hinkle is the Chief of Outdoor Education and for 39 years he has been a member of NAI and AIN before that, one of our two parent organizations. His leadership in CM’s education and interpretive programs for 28 years has been amazing. Dr. Bob, as many affectionately call him, has encouraged professional development as a cultural norm in this old and revered park district.

This is our fourth interpretive planning course in Cleveland at his request and managers of nature centers and programs in this system are required to earn the Certified Interpretive Manager or Planner credential. CM’s planner, landscape architect and designers have had the planner course, helping them work together with site managers and interpreters, all using a common process and planning vocabulary.

Lisa Brochu explains logic models with an example.

This week’s course is working on the challenge of planning the interpretive elements on the WaterShed grounds that augment the services of the building in achieving site objectives. Participants are from all over the U.S. and Canada along with six staff members of CM, with varying levels of experience in interpretive planning and graphic design. During the course, participants are exposed to planning principles and processes, then apply what they’ve learned to the on-site project challenge.

The culture of professional development and interpretive planning encouraged by Bob Hinkle is important to the success of CM’s six nature centers and other outdoor programs. Large organizations with  policies, politics and bureaucracy can end up with a “can’t do it” emotional environment, but thoughtful training and planning keeps professionals open to personal growth and empowers them with an understanding of what they CAN DO cost effectively and efficiently. CM continues to invest in helping their dedicated professionals grow and become better planners – that’s HOT and is making a difference in Cleveland.

-Tim Merriman

Freeman Tilden’s Six Principles of Interpretation (Interpreting Our Heritage, 1957) have endured as wisdom about the profession for 53 years. In 1998 Ted Cable and Larry Beck updated them as the first six in their Fifteen Guiding Principles in their excellent book, Interpretation for the 21st Century. So I hereby propose the 7th or 16th Principle, depending on whether you cite Tilden or Cable and Beck. It is:

“Interpretation is management.”

For all my 40 years in the field I’ve heard, “Interpretation is a management tool.” The difference between that statement and the belief that interpretation is management is subtle, but important. A tool can be picked up or left in the toolshed. It may or may not be useful depending on how someone wants to solve a particular problem. If we believe that interpretation is management, then it becomes an integral part of every operation, not an option.

Hundreds of social science and communications studies document the ability of well-planned communication to influence attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. Using that knowledge, we can design thematic programs and media that help achieve our objectives.

I first heard Mike Watson, former Superintendent of Mather Training Center for National Park Service, say, “Interpretation is management” many years ago. The more I’ve thought about it over the years, the more convinced I am that this idea should be fundamental to how we think and teach in this profession. In 2007 we added the words “mission-based” to our definition of interpretation after deep discussions with other professionals in the Definitions Project that produced a new lexicon for the field.

To me this Sixteenth Principle is key because it suggests that what we do must be designed to make a difference in pursuit of our mission. Few managers will keep interpretive programs through thick and thin unless it has value as management. It’s the 7th or 16th Principle of interpretation in my view.

-Tim Merriman

Tomo Hara of Japan, Rick Morales from Panama and Tim Merriman chat at the 2010 International Conference in Townsville, Australia.

More than 40 years ago my college roommate, Bernie, told me that his supervisor in the guidance counseling office at Southern Illinois University shared the secret of long relationships. It was simple – “Give 100%, expect nothing back. Don’t think you are in a 50/50 relationship with your spouse, friends, customers or anyone. You’ll begin to feel you’re giving 55? and they are only giving 45%. You turn a relationship into a contest. Then someone has to win and someone has to lose. It was a wise thought back then and one I need as a reminder every day or two.

If you care enough about thoughtful relationships to give 100% and just be surprised and pleased at anything shared back with you, you will do well with relationships. I was not surprised today to get a promotion from the Simple Truths website indicating they sell a book based on this idea as the 100/0 Principle. I know the notion is at least 40 years old, but perhaps it is thousands of years old, as old as relationships.

Interpreters meet people daily with an opportunity to create lasting relationships. The visitor or guest that seems to be with us for the day may return, tell a friend or not see us for decades. Just this past year a woman from Illinois contacted me by Facebook to ask if I am the same Tim Merriman who worked at Giant City State Park. Geri explained she is a Postmaster in a town near where I grew up. She visited the park and attended my snake program and I showed her family the behind the scenes animals during their visit. She said it made a great impression and she raised her children to be respectful of wildlife and snakes especially. I was pleased to learn more about her life, family and deep interest in nature and we continue as Facebook friends.

Our investment in others will come back in great ways if we do not expect it to be an equal exchange. We share all we can and should expect that an investment in honest, thoughtful communication will lead better places, even if we disagree at times. I am not suggesting we be doormats, just not turn relationships into contests with a winner and loser. We can and should have honest dialogues about real issues of importance.

Relationships with partners, donors, members, supporters and guests are easier if you take personal responsibility for communicating well. Honesty is important. But honesty can be a bludgeon or it can be helpful in a relationship. It depends on the kindness in the delivery. Helping a colleague perform better may require some honest advice from a friendly perspective. If it just sounds like criticism, it doesn’t work as well. It can also be opening an honest discussion rather than a heated disagreement. Either can be about the same issues, but the one with empathy is likely to help the relationship grow.

I claim no personal mastery of all of this. Every day is a challenge in finding the right words in each relationship. It is all worth the effort to do better in every circumstance. Complaints are especially an opportunity to work on relationships. The LAST method is often taught by trainers as a way of remembering the right reaction to complaints. LAST stands for Listen, Apologize, Soften and Thank.

In application it sounds something like. “Umm, OK (listen while they explain), I apologize for what happened. That would upset me as well. Let’s talk about how we might make this situation better for you. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We only get better if we know what is not working.” It’s easy to be defensive (I know, I’ve done that too often), throw someone under the bus (the blame game), or over react. Most folks just want a fair hearing and fixing a problem will often result in a better relationship, maybe a lasting one. Sometimes they know there is no real “fix.” They just want to vent and be heard to protect a future guest from whatever happened.

Relationships take honest effort on our part and listening skills. We cannot expect others to do their part. We only control ourselves. Every day we have new opportunities to create great new relationships that will enrich our lives and our organizations. It is not always easy, but it is worth the effort.

-Tim Merriman

This spring, I had an opportunity to visit an aboriginal cultural center in Queensland, Australia, this spring. It wasn’t a large or fancy facility, but it held some art and objects that were very meaningful to the people of the tribes that maintained the center. They had a name for this special place—the “keeping place.” It is a place where things that are meaningful to a group of people are kept safe.

Ever since, I’ve been captivated by this term and the concept. It would be easy to cast the keeping place as another type of museum—but it’s more than that. Objects came and went as they were actively being used by the members of those tribes. It seemed more like a “heritage lending library” than a repository of artifacts. In this way, it was helping to keep the culture alive by providing ongoing access to the meaningful objects that were important symbols to the people.

Perhaps the keeping place is a bit like a story. If someone tells you a good story, consider it a gift. If you write that story down, you may have preserved it for posterity. However, that story only stays alive if it is told and re-told. The memory of the teller is kept alive if the story is re-told in the tradition in which it was learned. Maintaining the tradition of the telling is part of maintaining the culture the story belongs to. Preserving a story on paper doesn’t really accomplish that larger goal of continuing a culture. So like telling a traditional story, the goal of the keeping place is to keep the culture alive.

Many of us work in positions where we are responsible for preserving a cultural or natural resource—perhaps a collection of objects, a historic structure, a place where a significant event took place, a unique example of nature’s wonders. In every case, some group of people identified that resource as having such significance that it should be kept intact. This is our version of the keeping place—helping to keep safe those things that are part of our cultural and natural heritage. We become the keepers of each keeping place.

As interpreters, we are also the storytellers of these keeping places. Our responsibility goes beyond preservation and documentation—we are responsible for keeping the resource alive by telling the stories that made it meaningful to the founders and make it meaningful for today’s audiences. In some cases those founders are aboriginal people and we are losing the languages of the stories, the names of the sacred places, and we have an even greater challenge to keep those stories alive, to do justice to the idea of the keeping place.

Where I live in Monterey, California, the local Rumsian Ohlone tribe was swallowed up so quickly by the Spanish and then Americans, that their language had become extinct and with it, their stories and names. A neighbor, Linda Yamane, is a descendent of the Rumsian. Her grandmother told her many traditional stories as a child, including names and some other key words. Years later, Linda located some ancient wax cylinder recordings of Rumsian stories in a vault at The University of California, Berkeley—the same stories her grandmother told her! Listening to the recordings and matching words with the meanings she learned as a child, she slowly resurrected the stories and ultimately the Rumsian language. The tribe regained an important part of its heritage and identity. Telling the traditional stories literally helped keep the Rumsian culture alive.

Storytellers are the keepers of the essence of nearly every culture. We interpreters play an essential role in maintaining a sense of heritage for any resource we interpret. Every day you have an opportunity to convey that essence of people and place to your audience. Decades from now a future president, CEO, or teacher will have a greater sense of their heritage because of a story you tell a child today.

—Jim Covel

I once heard a motivational speaker point out that the most innovative thing an older organization can do is to QUIT doing the WRONG things. That made great sense to me. Innovating with new initiatives may be fun and a future step for innovation. Stopping current waste requires no new great ideas. We just need a way to evaluate our existing activities.

Interpretive organizations have varied profit centers or programmatic activities. We may not think of them as business units, but they function that way. You can plot them on a mission-money matrix as an analytical process. If profit is the top of the vertical axis and loss at the bottom, then a positive mission orientation is on the right of a horizontal axis. The left end of the horizontal axis is unrelated to the mission of the organization.

You can write the name of your business or program activities on individual post-it notes and place them on the matrix to see visually how your overall business looks. This can be done with your staff or management team and you can discuss each item to determine if it indeed makes a profit or not. Volunteer hours are valued by the U.S. government at about $20 per hour and it’s good to use that value when assessing programs that rely on volunteer effort.

Sector I is where we place activities that make a profit and clearly are related to our mission. Those are keepers and they are somewhat hard to find. Nonprofits and governmental agencies often do mission-related activities that lose money. The profit-making sector would be doing the activity if it was easy to make a profit at it.

I used to manage a nature center that had 10,000 to 17,000 grade school children visiting each year and paying $3.50 per child for the 3 hour program. Our costs were about $30,000 a year to make $40,000 a year in fees. Interns were the field teachers and they received only free housing and a food stipend. The program made money and was mission-centric so we kept that.

Sector II is where you place activities that lose money but really support your mission. That’s why government or nonprofits exist. We take on community or public service roles that require donations or tax subsidies. These are usually keepers but you can have too many of them. Something must offset the losses such as donations, grants, government money, etc. If all of your post-its end up in Sector 2, your organization may not be sustainable. You lose a little each year and your organization is on a downward slide toward insolvency.

We held an annual Clean up the Rivers Day at the nature center and that cost us staff time, fuel for vehicles and food for volunteers. We did have some co-sponsorships from businesses but the event lost money. It was very mission-oriented, but not easy to turn into a profitable activity. However, it cleaned up the river corridors we used for programs, demonstrated to the community our commitment to resource conservation and made the river corridors more safe for all users. It was a keeper also.

Sector III is where you place activities or programs that make a profit but do not advance your mission. These can be anything from a car wash to an annual auction or gambling event. If they are profitable, we may need to keep doing them. These Sector III activities often can be pushed into Sector I by making them more mission related.

At the nature center we had a golf tournament sponsored by a radio station and local market that donated about $15,000 annually from the tournament. I had to play golf, which was not my hobby but certainly not an unpleasant day. I enjoyed it. We knew that the golfers were food and beverage vendor representatives. We discussed how to make the event more useful to the nature center. We started taking birds from our raptor center to the golf tournament finish line tent to share their stories with the golfers. This was a chance to increase event co-sponsorships and get donors or partners for other programs. An auction or a sales area that also makes money for you can be mission-related if you make the items sold match your mission and member interests.

Sector IV is where you place the activities that lose money and do not advance your mission. These wear out your volunteers and sponsors doing something that does not help your organization. A car wash, a bake sale, a candy sale and varied other activities might seem to make money at first look. After you deduct the volunteer time at $20 an hour, the event is often a loser. Quit doing it

At the nature center we had a rummage sale that involved hundreds of volunteer hours to make hundreds of dollars. It was clearly not advancing our cause and it wore out volunteers sorting old clothes and toasters. We gave it up.

It is not always easy to quit doing the wrong things. Sometimes you have a boss, board member, or influential volunteer who wants to stay in the WRONG business. You can document the costs behind doing something that does not advance your mission and present that information to that person or a decision maker who works with the budget. If they are reasonable, they will see that it is better to quit the activity than continuing to lose funds at it.

If your agency or organization does not sell things or handle money, you can plot attendance or staff time or some other key parameter on the vertical axis and compare your programs using this kind of matrix. It is just a management tool that helps you have meaningful discussions with staff and governance groups. It is really innovative to quit doing the WRONG stuff.

-Tim Merriman

Please don’t quote me on the “three levels of stuff.” Let’s call it the information continuum instead. When trying to think of this interesting continuum in a Certified Interpretive Trainers class this past week,  I asked Lisa Brochu this absurd question. “What are the Three Levels of Stuff?” I clearly needed to eat a donut or something that would awaken my memory. She said, “what in the world are you talking about?” “You know, the Sue the Dinosaur Three Levels of Stuff.” That triggered her memory quickly. I can’t quote Lisa exactly but I will relate what she explained.

The Field Museum in Chicago exhibit of Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex does a great job in interpretation of the “information continuum,” as Lisa suggested, or the “Three Levels of Stuff,” as I dubbed  it. The exhibit identifies the facts about Sue – where the bones were found, who found them, which bones were found, and that Sue was a large predatory animal, a dinosaur, a Tyrannosaurus rex. Those are facts that are hard to dispute.

The exhibit further explains that there are many “theories” about Tyrannosaurus rex. Some scientists believe these predatory dinosaurs were forerunners of modern birds. The skeleton is reminiscent of a modern turkey’s skeleton with a large keeled sternum, long legs and structure that suggests they might have run very fast. But it’s all theory based on advanced study of skeletal features. We cannot be certain and future study of these traits of Sue might result in new theories or changes in current theories about Sue.

The exhibit is clear that we can “speculate” about what color Sue’s skin might have been or what noises she might have made. We have no real idea for the fossil record did not leave real evidence of those traits behind. Current methods of investigation give us clues, but we do not know enough to do more than speculate about these traits of Sue in real life.

It is fascinating how the Scopes Monkey Trial in Kentucky in 1925 pitted the theories about ancient man against the creationist beliefs suggest in the Christian Bible. The polarized views of people on both sides of the evolution debate lead some people to think everything about paleontology and evolution is either foolishness or facts depending on the camp you prefer in this didactic conversation that endures some 85 years later. And yet we can interpret with what we know by using this information continuum:

Facts – What we absolutely know

Theories – What we think, based upon the facts

Speculation – Guesses we have about various ideas that may or may not prove true in the future.

If we stretched a line from one wall of a room to the opposite wall and labeled the wall on the left “facts,” and the opposite wall “speculation,” we could hang the many things we want to say about any controversial subject in interpretation on that continuum. When interpreting historical stories, paleontological finds, and biological phenomena, we just need to be clear about what we say. There are facts. We have theories. It is okay to speculate. They are all useful in the information continuum and credibility varies from one end (the facts) to the other (pure speculation).

- Tim Merriman