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

For the past 26 years the Monterey Bay Aquarium has been the official orphanage and hospital for sea otters in California. During that time over 500 sea otters have been brought in to the Aquarium’s Sea Otter Research & Conservation (SORAC) program. Some of these have been adults that were hit by boats or exhibiting symptoms of disease or parasite infestation. Many have been pups that were separated from mom during storms or mom died before the pup was old enough to be on its own.

In recent weeks we received two new sea otter orphans with an interesting connection—in both cases their mothers had been killed by great white sharks. We’ve known for years that white sharks will occasionally bite a sea otter. This has never quite made sense to me as the larger white sharks that feed on marine mammals seem to go for seals and sea lions that have a lot of blubber. There’s not really any fat on a sea otter, not many calories for a hungry shark looking for energy. In any case, this is a serious matter for the otter and may prove fatal—but not always. Which brings me to the story of Pirate, a sea otter that was part of our SORAC program several years ago.

Pirate came to us as a pup and went spent some time at the Aquarium growing up and learning the survival skills that every successful sea otter practices. We released Pirate in Monterey Bay, and he spent a little time hanging around the kelp beds near the Aquarium, then moved on. All seemed to be going well until we got a call one day regarding an injured sea otter. When we retrieved the animal, it was Pirate! He had been bitten by a white shark and survived with a few lacerations. Our veterinarian, Dr. Murray, is an expert with sea otters, and was able to stitch up Pirate’s wounds. A few weeks of healing and Pirate was ready for life back in Monterey Bay. A happy ending to a close encounter with a great white shark…almost.

Less than a year later, Pirate was seen swimming right off the Aquarium deck, and something wasn’t right. His forearm appeared to be injured. Pirate was easily captured and brought back to Dr. Murray to see what was going on. His forearm was chewed up—several bone fractures and deep lacerations with evidence once again that this was the work of a great white shark! Our guess is that Pirate saw the shark coming this time and straight-armed the shark, perhaps saving his life but sacrificing a limb. This damage was going to take more than a few stitches to repair this time. Otters rely extensively on their forelimbs to pick up shellfish, retrieve stones, and to crack the shells of their food against the stones. In short, they can’t eat without strong forearms, and otters eat constantly. So the only option was to try to repair Pirate’s forearm.

Working with a veterinary orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Murray conducted what was the most extensive surgery ever performed on a sea otter at that time. Plates and screws were used to secure the fragmented bones in Pirate’s forearm. Many stitches later, Pirate was back on the road to recovery once again. Regular observation with an infrared camera helped measure how much heat was being lost where the fur was shaved for surgery. (Sea otters rely on their fur for insulation in that cold ocean water since they don’t have fat or blubber.) In the next few weeks Pirate’s fur was growing back and the bones were knitting. The SORAC team was heartened to see Pirate begin using his repaired forearm to start foraging and feeding again. It was time once again for Pirate to return to Monterey Bay.

It seemed like Pirate had some fateful connection to Great White Sharks, and he ran out of happy endings a few months later. We received a report of an injured sea otter on a local beach. When the SORAC team arrived, they found Pirate. He had yet a third encounter with a great white, and this time his injures were so massive that he didn’t survive.

Pirate had made history in the sea otter world. He had survived two shark attacks.  He made a significant contribution to our veterinary knowledge of treating sea otters, spending more time in surgery than any other sea otter. Moreover, Pirate’s fighting spirit was an inspiration for our SORAC team members that fight every day for the survival of sea otters.

—Jim Covel

In 1980 a horror film was released entitled “The Fog.” In this film a small town on the California coast was enshrouded in fog at night. As the fog rolled in, it brought with it the spirits of mariners lost in a nearby shipwreck. I’m not sure which was more troublesome to the town’s residents—the spirits or the thick fog itself. Either way, it made an interesting plot if you enjoy scary movies.

2010 may go down as the summer of fog here on the central California coast. Fog was our constant companion nearly every day in July, and so far that trend is continuing into August. A persistent trough of low pressure off the California coast has been building a fog bank nearly 3,000 feet thick throughout the summer. Summer temperatures are averaging 2-3 degrees Fahrenheit lower in San Francisco, and Los Angeles is also experiencing an unusually cool summer.

If you’re living in most other parts of the United States, you may be experiencing one of the hottest summers on record. I’ve talked to quite a few visitors from the East Coast and Midwest that came to escape a persistent heat wave in their home region. As far as they’re concerned, our cool, foggy summer is one of the greatest tourist attractions California has to offer this year.

While one heat wave or cold snap doesn’t connote a change in climate, these phenomena may be connected in some ways to the larger issue of climate change. As we add more heat energy to our atmosphere, we’re providing additional energy to high and low pressure systems, more moisture through increased evaporation. You might think of this as “global wierding” rather than global warming. It means our weather may become more extreme—be it hot or cold, wet or dry. So far, 2010 seems to be the poster child for global wierding, with the extreme winter on the East Coast, followed by a particularly hot summer, with a few floods thrown in across the country. If we humans are generating a malevolent regime of weather as we alter the climate, I guess I’ll take some extra fog over all the other possibilities.

While our coastal fog doesn’t harbor ghostly apparitions, it does bring some interesting visitors to the coast. Our fog is a direct result of cooler water near shore, which usually means our upwelling cycle has stocked local waters with lots of nutrients. Thus the fog is often associated with improved fishing, more squids and small fishes that attract more marine mammals and seabirds. It’s an interesting coincidence that we’re having the coolest, foggiest summer in perhaps 30 years, and we’re having one of the biggest boom years for krill—as well as the largest numbers of blue whales and humpback whales that we’ve seen in three decades. Or perhaps it’s not a coincidence at all.

The fog is also related to some terrestrial phenomena around Monterey Bay. The magnificent redwood trees exist south of San Francisco because of this fog. They’re able to live in small groves, hunkered down where fog is funneled into coastal canyons. The design of their foliage enables the redwoods to condense droplets from the fog and drip this added precipitation around their roots. This provides enough soil moisture to get the trees through an otherwise rainless summer season, and also provides a microclimate for a special community of plants and animals that exist around the feet of these giants.

So I guess I shouldn’t complain about the overcast weather. Our coastal systems—both on the land and in the water—would not be the same without this foggy phenomenon. I’ll just put on a jacket and go whale watching….

—Jim Covel

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

There have been many models to predict decision-making behavior through the years. Our modern industry of marketing and advertising is based largely on decision-making models. After all, the goal of most advertising is to persuade you to engage in a particular behavior—namely purchasing a particular product or service. Whether we like to admit it or not, most interpreters are in a similar business. We’re trying to persuade our audience to engage in particular behaviors, such as resource conservation, protecting heritage sites, supporting the organizations that make our work possible. So there may be some merit in keeping up with current thought and practice in the marketing world.

I recently read some work by Dr. James March, Professor Emeritus in Political Science and Business at Stanford University. Dr. March developed a model based on two key dimensions in making decisions; 1) logical consequences of behavior and 2) the propensity for humans to be attracted to behaviors that reinforce our image or identity. Persuading someone to take a particular action in order to avoid dire consequences (threat appeal) can sometimes get short-term results, but seldom changes long-term behavior. Engaging in behavior that is consistent with some aspect of your identity (or who you aspire to be) is a far more attractive proposition, and one that is more likely to be reinforced by intrinsic rewards.

One of the challenges we face in conservation education is getting people to adopt conservation behaviors, and Dr. March’s model may help explain why we aren’t more effective in this endeavor. It seems like so much of the time we’re telling people about the consequences of inaction on environmental issues. If I keep burning fossil fuels, I’m adding to climate change. If I eat rock cod, I’m depleting a valuable fishery. In other words, the messaging around many conservation issues tends to focus on the bad outcomes that will result if we don’t change our ways. That may be true, but it’s not very motivating. If the messages reinforced our affinity for nature and painted a picture of a sustainable future that we could enjoy—we might be more willing to consider long-term changes in our behavior. Focusing on gains is going to be more popular that focusing on losses—so let’s frame things in terms of all the good we have to gain.

Some of the more successful conservation efforts in the past century have been based on a positive vision of the future. The nation’s national parks were initiated as a way to protect wildlife and timber from widespread poaching efforts. However, from the perspective of the American public, this was a program to protect the nation’s unique natural and cultural wonders for all time—and folks got behind it. Ducks Unlimited was founded to set aside wetlands and waterfowl habitat with the vision of maintaining waterfowl populations into the future—and both hunters and birdwatchers happily support the organization.

It’s also helpful to reinforce aspects of your audience’s identity that are consistent with the behavior or decision you want them to adopt. If you’re trying to nurture supporters for your nature center—let’s call it the Norman Marsh Nature Center, how about addressing you’re audience as “friends of the Norman Marsh Nature Center” or “wise students of nature” or some other complimentary term. Sam Ham refers to that technique as labeling, and it’s one of my favorites. Reinforcing desired aspects of identity helps to reinforce decisions that support that identity. So if I see myself as a friend of the nature center, I’m more likely to make choices that support the mission of that institution.

We interpreters tend to be passionate about the resources we’re protecting—we wouldn’t be as effective without that passion. However, that can lead us to using consequence-based arguments to help get our audience to act.  Just remember that using positive emotional connections and appealing to the positive aspects of your audience’s identity is going to inspire long-term commitment to positive choices.

—Jim Covel

Thimbleberry photo by Chris Diewald from flickr.com

I look forward to a particular tradition this time of the summer—harvesting some of nature’s bounty in the form of wild berries.  Over the past few weeks I’ve been observing the blossoms on the elderberries and huckleberries, then watching the fruit slowly forming and ripening.  The thimbleberries came first this year.  There are never enough to preserve, so I just eat them as I encounter them walking along some of the shaded canyon slopes where they thrive.  The sky blue bloom is forming on the elderberries, so they’ll be ready soon.  I’ll probably have to wait until late August to gather huckleberries in this part of the country, and it’s well worth the wait.

I inherited this taste for berries from my parents.  My father had his favorite berry-picking sites in the hills around Oakland and Berkeley.  Many a Saturday morning was spent picking blackberries, elderberries and huckleberries throughout the summer.  We’d bring the bounty home where my mother would create the most incredible jam, jelly, pies, muffins and other goodies with these berries.  Any extras would go in the freezer so we could enjoy some of these summer treats throughout the year.  To this day I would bet money that the absolute best PB&J sandwiches are made with elderberry jelly.

Of course I’m not the only one interested in the summer berry crop.  There are quite a few critters that are also watching to see when their favorite berries are ripe for the picking.  One of the elderberry bushes I used to frequent was on the edge of a thicket that was home to a covey of quail.  During the berry season, the quail were often in the upper branches eating the berries I couldn’t reach.  As long as I went about my business quietly, the quail were happy to stay put and share the berries with me.  Through the years I’ve run into foxes, raccoons, skunks, opossums and a wide variety of birds in berry patches.  Thus picking turned into a combination of ritual and summer celebration, sharing the best nature has to offer with my fellow berry fans.

From time to time I think about what it was like picking berries in the past when the California grizzly bear was common in many parts of the state.  These bears were also big berry eaters, and they weren’t as good about sharing the resource as the raccoons and foxes.  Accounts of some of the early settlers in California advised taking a rifle when going after berries and checking the brush and thickets thoroughly to avoid surprising a snacking bear.  Life is a little more safe and simple in the berry patch today.

When appropriate, I’ve included some berry tasting for the audience on a nature walk.  We’re always trying to make use of multiple senses in interpretation, and taste is perhaps the most challenging sense to use.  There just aren’t that many things that are safe or appropriate to taste in nature, compared to the sounds, sights, and feel of so many nature objects.  But berries combine some interesting taste sensations with great stories.

Here’s wishing you a berry happy summer!

- Jim Covel

Monterey Bay has been invaded by whales. Every few years the krill population explodes, and that means dinner’s on for a wide variety of birds, fishes, and marine mammals that gather for the feeding opportunity. The shoals of krill are 200-300 feet thick and may extend for a couple of miles in each direction. This is the stuff that baleen whales dream of.

In a good year we may see 10-12 blue whales on the central California coast. This year over 40 blues are concentrated in Monterey Bay. There are perhaps twice that number of humpback whales along with them. These whales are in serious feeding mode. They’ve been lounging in tropical waters off Central America all winter where food is relatively scarce. So they’ve hit town with an appetite, ready to make up for many months on slim rations. The blue whales alone are consuming as much as 160 tons of krill each day collectively. You can’t get that volume of food sucking up one krill at a time. The whales look for dense swarms of krill, and then they literally take bites out of the ocean, but those bites each contain tens of thousands of krill per bite. After filtering out the sea water, you’re left with a mouth full of bright red crustaceans for lunch. This strategy only works when the krill are very dense, and scientists think blue whales move from one krill swarm to the next up and down the coast.

The humpback whales have a slightly different strategy. Several whales work together, diving under a swarm of krill and pushing them up toward the surface. They may blow a bubble ring around the krill to force them more closely together. As the krill are trapped against the surface of the ocean, the humpbacks swim up through the swarm in sequence, mouths agape, scooping up hundreds of pounds of krill in each mouthful. As the first whale hits the surface it closes its mouth to trap krill and water inside. Some krill will spill out of the side of the whale’s mouth—right into the mouth of the whale coming up next to it, and so on until perhaps five or six whales have all hit the surface and gulped a big hole through the middle of the krill swarm. This “lunge feeding” can go on for hours, and not make a dent in the big shoals of krill.

I spent the afternoon parked on top of a shoal of krill with blue whales and humpbacks feeding all around. At one point I could look directly down into the red (with krill) waters below, and see the white flippers of humpbacks rising very close to our boat! But the whales are just part of the show; many other creatures come to capitalize on the abundance of food. Blue sharks and basking sharks appear to skim krill near the surface. Albatross, shearwaters and many other seabirds come from hundreds of miles away to feed on the krill and/or small fishes and squids that are drawn to the krill. In past years I’ve caught my share of salmon around the edges of these krill swarms.

These feeding frenzies are a spectacular example of nature’s abundance in a healthy ecosystem. What I find truly amazing is how these creatures of the open ocean find these concentrated feeding opportunities with so many thousands of square miles to search. As we learn more about the lives of whales and seabirds, we’re starting see how they follow sea surface temperature gradients, pressure systems and other subtle clues that may guide them to ideal conditions that concentrate food. Whales may able to communicate across miles of open ocean, so if one whale finds the groceries, it may be able to invite others to join in the meal.

We never know how long these conditions will persist and how long the whales will stick around. We’re just enjoying the scene while it lasts, and trying to learn as much as we can while we’re observing these magnificent creatures.

—Jim Covel

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

Most of the time I spent as a park ranger was fun and rewarding to say the least. I wouldn’t trade those days for anything—except the Fourth of July. It was the one holiday I really learned to hate. We had some grand celebrations in the parks—community picnics, music, skydivers, fireworks and more. But from the ranger’s perspective, July 4 also included an exceptional assortment of drunks, auto accidents, grass fires and other events designed to vex the ranger staff. It was consistent. I could count on a couple of fires, and least one trip to the county jail, and extra reports to write about all the day’s activities. July 4 was just a day to survive and hope that it passed as quickly as possible. Sunup on July 5 was always a welcome sight.

Photo by Bethany Carlson

Then one July 4 I struck up a conversation with a gentleman who was a WWII veteran. He mentioned that he loved the holiday from the aspect of family picnics, town parades and the sense of community, but he really disliked fireworks. He went on to explain about July 4, 1944 when he was fighting in the battle of Normandy. The day started with an artillery barrage and another day of fierce combat ensued. He said that for a moment, the artillery triggered a flashback to July 4 celebrations back home and a wealth of warm, vivid memories came rushing back. Those memories reminded him of what he was fighting for, and helped get him through a very difficult day. That July 4 was one he hoped to survive, and he was happy to see July 5 roll around. He never missed another July 4 after the war. However, he had developed a lifelong sensitivity to loud noises that reminded him of artillery and gun fire, so he was never excited about fireworks.

That conversation changed my attitude about July 4 as well. I realized that the July 4 holiday is a gathering together of all Americans to celebrate our heritage as a nation. It shouldn’t be a surprise that most of us choose to celebrate outdoors, because the outdoors and open spaces are such a central element of our national identity. The parks, plazas and beaches fill with people on this holiday, not just to enjoy the summer weather, but also because something just feels right about being outside, sharing food and fun with family and community. That’s who we are.

This is an opportunity for parks and historic sites to shine for a public that is again reminded about the importance of preserving and celebrating our heritage. There will always be a few folks in the crowd that behave badly, but I guess that’s good job security for rangers and enforcement staff. But the majority of folks we see on this holiday represent a grateful nation that values heritage sites and open spaces—and appreciates the people that take care of these places on our behalf.

I hope you had a good July 4 holiday—wherever you were, whatever you were doing. And if you were busy working the holiday (as many interpreters do) I wish you a peaceful and serene July 5.

—Jim Covel

Researchers at Reach Advisors have been mining a mountain of data from an in-depth survey of thousands of museum members and dedicated museum goers across the US. A number of interesting patterns are emerging, yielding helpful insights into this audience. I suspect the museum-going community may also be a part of the audience we see at nature centers, historic sites and other interpretive venues, so I’ve been very interested in the reports from Reach Advisors.

One of the significant audience segments they’ve identified is the “ultra mom.” Ultra moms are particularly active in providing a variety of experiences for their children. They want to provide opportunities for their kids to have fun and learn, and they may be frequent instigators of a family visit to the museum. In addition, the ultra-moms are more likely to be the adult that accompanies children to the museum. This group tends to be some of the most enthusiastic supporters of museums and programs for kids, and they may be some of the more steadfast members—at least as long as their children are engaged in the museum and programs.

"Ultra Mom" Sebrena Lewis with daughters Gracie and Anna at the Chicago Field Museum.

In his work on Identity-Based Motivations among audiences in zoos, aquariums and museums, John Falk identified a category of guests that he described as “Facilitators.” These were visitors who were focused on facilitating a good experience for others—often children, family members, friends—and their satisfaction was linked to the enjoyment experienced by the those they were facilitating. Moms are a classic example of this Facilitator group, and if their children are having a good time they feel they’ve been successful in providing a great experience. I see a pattern here: perhaps ultra moms are also ultra Facilitators.

But there’s that troubling trend that ultra moms tend to drop out of the museum audience as their kids get older and “outgrow” the institution. That suggests that these adults aren’t finding value for themselves in the museum, they only see it as a value for their children. So how can that be addressed? I have seen some museums (particularly children’s museums) provide coffee and some space for parents to socialize while their kids are engaged in programs. That may help nurture a social network among adults (those that are regulars at the museum) that lasts for many years, even as their kids grow older. In addition, providing programs (adventure camps, science days, student docents, etc.) that appeal to the “tween-age” and teen age audience may extend the involvement of ultra moms and their families. This has the added benefit of developing the next generation of supporters as the family stays engaged with your institution.

Look for the ultra-moms in the audience for your interpretive programs this summer and see if you observe this phenomenon. If you can connect with this segment, try to establish a relationship with the ultra moms and find out how you can better serve their needs. They may well become some of your most loyal fans and supporters—and we can’t have too many of those these days. If you’d like to read more about ultra moms, you can start with this recent blog post from Reach Advisors: http://reachadvisors.typepad.com.

—Jim Covel