NAI Blog

I grew up in my father’s lawn mower business. It was hard to love that, but even as a child I understood  that it supported our family. My mother and sister had a florist shop downtown in Vandalia, Illinois. Talk around home was about landscaping and flowers and plants. By age 13 I was working at both businesses in bookkeeping, shipping, making corsages, running errands and whatever else was needed. I wanted to be a biologist and was totally fascinated by nature, but mostly by animals in and around water. All of this led to a growing interest in bonsai and koi ponds. A brief trip to Japan about ten years ago really brought this fascination to life and now bonsai and koi represent a significant portion of our gardening efforts at home.

This week, my wife and I are in Japan, visiting friends and spending a week of vacation. We began our week in Tokyo with sushi for breakfast in Tsukiji Market. Then we boarded the Tokyo subway and traveled forty minutes to the northeast to visit the Shunkaen Bonsai Museum and meet Bonsai Master Kunio Kobayashi. The high stucco wall on the outside gave us no idea what was inside. Just a sign in Japanese identified the place. We entered through a doorway and met Valentine, a young man from Germany, who invited us to pay the 800 Yen (about $9) to enter and led us on a fascinating interpretive tour.

Valentine explained that he came to Japan to study with Kobayashi-san two years ago. He will spend four to five years in his apprenticeship to the bonsai master. He showed us around the collection of famous bonsai trees of 500 or more years old, many that had been previously owned by  well-known and important people around the world. One is valued at more than one million dollars. We saw the bonsai “hotel” where customers can store individual bonsai plants for weeks, months, or years at a time and know they will be well cared for. The continuous work of the master and his apprentices can be viewed by guests throughout their visit as plants are moved, potted, shaped, trimmed, and watered in a calming bustle of daily activity all around the grounds. A display building constructed in traditional style with tatami floor mats and natural wood was a highlight of the visit. Valentine invited us to remove our shoes as we entered the building to observe the custom common in traditional homes and buildings.

The exhibits in the museum were extraordinary in their simplicity. One exhibit contains a very old and interesting bonsai tree on one side of a well lit niche. A painting hangs in the center with an image of the sun and water below. A small statue on the far left of a man wearing traditional robes sits on a raised wooden platform. Together they create a unity of form that is elegant in its simplicity. Valentine explained that the beauty of simplicity is valued in this expression of art.

We ended our tour with a cup of green tea and a visit with Master Kobayashi. The museum sells a book about Kobayashi-san and his life’s work and one wall of the final tearoom displays memorabilia from bonsai competitions, but most of the museum lacks any written or descriptions of the collections. The grounds, buildings and tour blend together in harmonious union, providing what was for me, a completely satisfying experience that was a great example of good interpretation. We came away with a new understanding of the significance of bonsai and how it represents the beauty of simplicity and connection to nature – two very important aspects of Japanese culture.

- Tim Merriman

Is there anything more appealing than a sea otter? YES! A sea otter pup! Somehow nature has made these pups smaller, fuzzier, friskier and even cuter than the adult version. You just can help but love ‘em.

I had a chance to watch this adoration for otter pups in action this week as we put a pup in the Sea Otter exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Within hours the word was out and people were flocking to the aquarium to see this new addition. Within 24 hours the number of adoring otter fans coming to see the pup was climbing into the thousands. I can think of a lot of human celebrities that would like to have that kind of drawing power!

Kit, the new 11-week-old pup, is in the exhibit with an adult female sea otter by the name of Mae. Kit came to us as a orphan that was observed swimming from one female to another in Morro Bay, in a rather sad version of “Are you my mom?” After being rejected by a number of females, the biologist observer determined that Kit was an orphan and the decision was made to bring her to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. There we have three female sea otters that serve as surrogate mothers for young pups, raising the pups for release back to the wild. However, the available surrogate moms were already bonded with other orphan pups, so what do we do with Kit? As luck would have it, there was an opening for another otter in our Sea Otter exhibit, so Kit was bound for stardom as the newest member of the exhibit otter team.

I enjoy watching wildlife, but I also enjoy but I also enjoy watching people watching wildlife. Watching the public view this otter pup as been a lot of fun. As a scientist, I’m aware of the pitfalls of anthropomorphism, but it just can’t be avoided with otters. I hear the word “cute” uttered by nearly every viewer, along with “loveable,” and a fair amount of baby talk with Kit (who probably doesn’t hear much of this through the exhibit windows).

I’m sure there is a universal appeal with babies of nearly any species that triggers maternal or parental responses, at least in mammals. We’ve all seen the photos of pigs nursing tiger kittens or a female tiger nurturing piglets—there are many amazing examples of this phenomenon. Of course we humans will adopt all manner of creatures and try to raise them. Our heart just goes out to orphans of nearly any species, and sea otters are no exception.

From an objective, scientific standpoint, it can be argued focusing on raising a single individual animal may be using up valuable resources that would be better spent on recovering entire populations or habitats. That’s true in nearly all cases. However, sometimes we need to focus on an individual representative of that species–an ambassador if you will–to rally our support for saving the population in the wild. That’s my hope for Kit, that she’ll help us understand the need to care for sea otters everywhere on our coast, and to ensure a healthy ocean home in which to live. That’s a lot to communicate from one little otter pup, but she seems to have a big ability to inspire us.

If you’d like to take a look at Kit, you can watch a YouTube video (above) or tune into the Otter Cam at the Monterey Bay Aquarium: http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/efc/efc_otter/otter_cam.aspx.

I was just reading Doug Knapp’s blog on “Facilitation.” I agree with all he says about facilitation vs. communication. I have always believed that the best presenters engage the audience by asking questions. It reminds me very much of being in church as a child. The preacher preached and we listened. Questions were asked, but always rhetorically. “Do you want to go to heaven?” Hmmm. I remember the joke that used to be told about that. One fellow when asked that question said “NO!” The preacher followed up with, “You really don’t want to go to heaven some day?” The man countered. “Oh sure. Some day. I thought you were getting up a load to go right now.” I wandered down joke road for a moment and may have missed my point. The point is there was never a conversation at the church I attended. The preacher in the joke really didn’t expect an answer either, but he did start a conversation – accidentally.

My favorite teachers in school not only asked lots of questions, they tolerated respectful arguments or disagreements. They allowed multiple perspectives to come out in a class discussion. I also had teachers who lectured and I slept through many of those lectures.

Conversations are powerful and this isn’t new. Socrates (470-399 B.C.) proposed it a long time ago. If you Google “Socratic questioning” you will get Changingminds.org as one of the first options to look at. They point out that questioning of this kind can be used to help the listener or student answer her or his own question.

We teach questioning technique in the Certified Interpretive Guide course in four basic question categories. They are open, focusing, interpretive and capstone. These are great tools for someone who is new at using questioning to get people started in a conversation. Ideally we leave the audience with more questions in their own minds after our presentation.

We also have an opportunity through questioning to conduct informal surveys with each audience. How many have been here before (hold up a hand)? Who is afraid of snake? How many of you remember the Challenger accident (space vehicle explosion)? Asked early in a conversation, we find out what people know, believe, where they come from and what brought them to our place.

The very notion that we EDUCATE people seems wrong to me. Albert Einstein said, The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. People educate themselves when their curiosity and their ambition collaborate to understand something more deeply. We are at our best when we facilitate that.

Isn’t it more respectful of our audience to start a conversation? Ask questions that we may or may not be able to answer ourselves. Listen to what the audience says in response. It helps us immediately know more about their beliefs. We find out what they already know. We get a sense of their world and political views in many cases. It helps us make our point of view easier to understand.

The best thing about a conversation as an approach to interpretation is that we can learn and grow from every one. Our audience is often a mix of people who are wise, well-informed, thoughtful and engaged along with some who lack those admirable traits. If we stand and talk as the unquestioned expert, we gain little but narcissistic self-esteem. We get more real appreciation from our audience when we get to know each other more deeply.

Social science research suggests that people will change their attitudes, beliefs and behaviors if they arrive at a new point of view through their conversations – internal and external. A great speaker/facilitator engages us so deeply that we leave talking to ourselves or to our friends about what was discussed. Sam Ham points out that getting people to THINK should be our main objective. That can lead to what we want from interpretive experiences. We want people to become better stewards of resources who actively participate in protection of great places and stories. We often have specific measurable objectives, and invariably they involve some change in visitor behavior.

Socrates was put to death for corrupting the youth of his day with his deep philosophical questioning. Most of us live in places where we are free to start conversations. We just need to start more conversations.

- Tim Merriman

I love to watch the Olympics! I suspect that holds true for a large part of the population around the world. And for a couple of weeks every two years, a significant part of humanity sets aside many other pursuits to follow the competition between the world’s best athletes.

Of course, the concept of competition is not limited to human kind. Virtually every living organism competes for key resources—food, space, shelter and more. Competition at that level can literally mean life or death, and losing that competition can have serious consequences. There are other forms of contests in nature– such as rights to mate, to occupy prime territory or other forms of dominance–that are very important but where a loss may not cost you your life. It’s interesting to see how various creatures have developed some form of ritualized combat to establish a dominance hierarchy without killing each other. Various contests that demonstrate strength or fitness may be involved, along with some amazing posturing, calls and behaviors that may also intimidate competitors. By now you’re probably visualizing bighorn rams crashing into each other, wolves biting each other or elephants engaged in a shoving match.

I suspect some of that idea of ritualized combat is part of the foundation for competitive sports among us humans. As we humans began enjoying increasing success in basic survival skills, we didn’t have to devote all our attention to staying alive. That made it possible to develop richer material culture, larger, more stable and more complex communities, and games that sharpen and test our skills. Instead of running for our life to escape a large predator, we could run in competition against each other. Throwing stones, spears and axes at a target sharpened skills that might be needed in hunting or defense. Through the millennia, the equipment grew more sophisticated and the games grew more complex. But they’re still based on that deeper human quality of honing our personal abilities and testing our skills.

One of my favorite examples of ritualized combat comes from a custom of several of our Native American groups in Northern California. When there was a dispute between two groups, first some form of restitution or payment was demanded to resolve the dispute. If that arrangement was rejected, then the situation might escalate to a face-off. The two groups would face off in a clearing, hurling jeers and insults at each other. This yelling match might go on for some time, until someone on one side or the other would eventually throw a stone or stick, perhaps take a swing at the opposing side. When that happened, the aggressor and his/her side was declared the loser in the dispute. You see the first one to lose their temper was deemed to have less strength and discipline, so they lost. Wouldn’t it be great if we all adopted that approach to settling disputes?

Olympic competition is an expression of some of the best traits of our species. Individuals compete against each other, but also compete against themselves to beat their own previous performance. Athletes also compete on behalf of their sponsoring nations, so there’s also a strong element of national pride. However, all the world is willing to rise above that national focus and come together to celebrate the triumphs of individual athletes. For when any of us wins or sets a new record, we all win. That’s where competition rises to its highest level, when we extend the capacity of the human species.

Perhaps someday we’ll reach a point where ritualized combat and competition will eliminate the need for actual combat among nations. Wouldn’t you rather watch a great cross-country race than an arms race between countries?

Kelly Farrell of Arkansas State Parks recently let us know of an interesting article in the New Scientist on “Five emotions you never knew you had.” It points out that psychologists recognize six basic emotions: joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust. This article delves into five additional emotions that may be of more interest to heritage interpreters than the original six. They are elevation, interest, gratitude, confusion and pride.

The article is interesting in general, but I was particularly attracted to the specific emotion, “interest.” Interest is described as “the curious emotion.” We talk about that in the social marketing continuum of “curiosity to awareness to understanding to caring about and caring for.” The final stage of “caring for” is the same as “stewardship.”

Emotions are supposed to have some survival value and its easy to see how “interest” or “curiosity” could be critical to surviving in a world where finding new food or shelter might rely on that behavior. We rely on human curiosity to bring people to our sites and programs. We recognize that lots of other places and activities compete for their time and interest.

Tilden’s First Principle gets at creating “interest” in a basic way. Relate to something in the life of your audience. They already have an “interest” in all sorts of things. The more we know about our audience, the easier it is to tap into their interests. If you don’t know what interests them, use “universals.” Family, fear, life, hope, faith and love are examples of universals that all humans share. Those can be used as the connection to get people started, to make them curious enough to want to know more.

Movie trailers are especially good at building curiosity or interest in their products through short clips. Often these focus on universals such as life, death, adventure, mystery, romance and intrigue. They rely on our natural interest in these common scenarios and use that interest to take us deeper into their stories.

The article about emotions describes the overload of information that we all experience these days. Interpreters have to be good at creating interest through communication techniques and real life experiences. Our experiences may be richer and more important than a movie or video game, but we have to attract our audience away from those media. And they are everywhere.

The concept of “biophilia” suggests that we have a natural advantage over the new digital world of interest and intrigue. Millions of years of evolution may have programmed us to be more naturally interested in living things.  Right now young people seem more interested in the imaginative worlds of TV and the Internet than the real world of the outdoors. As our youngsters bury themselves more than 35 hours a week in the digital world, we still have the opportunity to take them outside and give them real world experiences with living things. I have some faith that it will make them curious and capture their interest in lasting ways.

- Tim Merriman

I’ve always been a believer in the concept best know as “sense of place.” There are multiple definitions for sense of place. Most revolve around the perception humans have involving the natural and cultural landscape connected to a particular location. Interpretation focuses on making intellectual and emotional connections with a resource, which sounds a lot like fostering a sense of place for our audience.

Photo by Fred Fokkelman

In the budding field of ecopsychology, psychologists are looking at this phenomenon in more detail. A recent New York Times Magazine article examined this new area of ecopsychology as an attempt to examine the interaction between the human psyche and the ecosystem. The idea is that nature can optimize the human mind according to a recent article from Peter Kahn in the Journal of Environmental Psychology. His study reported that humans who were mildly stressed recovered from stress more quickly when exposed to nature than those who were exposed to natural scenes on a plasma TV. Real, authentic nature seems to have an important effect on our sense of well being.

The alternate condition might be termed “placelessness,” a location that is devoid of any unique feature, culture or character. More and more of our urban landscapes are sanitized, homogenized locations where “sameness” is all too common. Take a walk through any big mall or community of tract homes and you might be hard put to distinguish that place from thousands of others in this country. On top of this placelessness, many locations where we live now suffer deteriorating environmental quality, leading to an even more serious phenomenon termed “solastalgia” by Dr. Glenn Albrecht, professor of sustainability at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. He defined solastalgia as “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault…a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home.”

Ecopsychologists are observing this condition of solastalgia in such diverse cases as communities exposed to large mining operations to native populations that have experienced changing uses of their lands. So far, those instances have been localized, but the looming possibilities of climate change or large scale pollution may expose whole sections of the planet to solastalgia, in effect destroying our sense of place.

One of the first things we have to do is to help every person experience a proper sense of place, to form a relationship with a healthy environment. If people know and understand how important it is to maintain those unique features in our landscape (built, natural, cultural), perhaps we’ll fight actions that lead to placelessness and environmental degradation. That’s where interpreters come in, helping to connect people to the most important things in the world around them. If the ecopsychologists are correct, our sense of place is directly related to our sense of well being—our health, both physical and mental—depends upon a healthy environment. If we do this well, perhaps we can increase another phenomenon, “soliphilia: the love of and responsibility for a place, bioregion, planet and the unity of interrelated interests within it.”

If you’d like to learn more, follow this link to the article from the NY Times Magazine: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/magazine/31ecopsych-t.html .

We just returned from several days with the Buffalo Bill Historical Center Board of Trustees and administrative staff members in Washington, D.C. We provided some training on interpretive experience design. The whole group toured several museums to look at interpretive experiences on the ground. We looked at interpretive site experiences to see if they are really “on a mission.”

One of the museums we visited had no mission evident in the experience. You could guess at it from all the “stuff” we saw, but it was not clear. There was lots of stuff to see. Many in the group did not stay long. Most later commented that it was not a great interpretive experience. If you had a pre-existing interest in the subject matter, it was interesting. Without that it was boring and we left with no message or theme. The mission wasn’t clear at all.

This museum was a for profit museum, not governmentally owned or nonprofit. We thought perhaps making a profit was the only motivation. Their website stated a clear broader mission and showed a fair amount of background on that motivation. Their mission simply did not survive the planning process. If it really matters to them, they are missing the boat. Moreover, they have a membership, offsite tours and enrichment experiences listed on the website. None of those were evident in the museum experiences. These would deepen relationships with the organization and its mission but the “ask” did not happen. Later we found a small amount of information on  membership printed on the ticket, but that was not enough. Most had thrown away the ticket pretty quickly at the end of the visit.

Lisa Brochu and I wrote a chapter for a book, Free Choice Learning and the Environment, edited by John Falk, Joe E. Heimlich and Susan Foutz, entitled “From Mission to Practice.” It explains how the mission can be carried into practice better. The mission of the organization should pervade every aspect of an interpretive experience. Facility design, landscape design, food services, sales shops and even the handling of waste are part of the mission and thematic delivery.

If your mission is about conservation of resources, people see the conflict when you waste resources in your food service or do not recycle. They know you are not committed when they see a conflict in delivery of the mission. So how do you keep the mission in mind while crafting a theme, designing media and developing programs? The interpretive planner should be involved in planning at the beginning of any new project, not in the middle. If the building and grounds are already designed, the opportunity to make them part of the mission delivery and theme are less likely.

Training is an important part of delivery of the mission as well. Staff and volunteers must know the mission and understand their role in delivery of the mission. The NAI Host course really helps all staff understand that role.

You should keep the interpretive planner involved throughout the design and fabrication of new buildings, exhibits or programs. There is a tendency in refinement of facilities and media for “mission drift” to occur. You may have started with great ideas about making the mission evident in the interpretive experience. They may get lost in the compromises of putting ideas on the ground.

Lisa Brochu and I teach interpretive planning courses about four or five times a year. Aligning the plan with the mission of the organization is a major focus of the course. These courses serve as a great way for consultants and contractors to add interpretive planning to their skills. These  also help managers and program supervisors to understand the planning process and learn to hire the write consultants and contractors. The next course is March 8-12, 2010, in Humacao, Puerto Rico, and a few seats are still available. You can learn more about the course and location here.

Lisa Brochu writes a weekly blog for NAI on interpretive planning and has written many blog articles on “mission.” You might enjoy reading through some of those. If you have questions about interpretive planning, do not hesitate to call her at 1-888-900-8283. We hope you’re ON A MISSION.

-Tim Merriman

One of the real plusses of interpretation is that many of us work and live in some wonderful places. While you can’t eat scenery, it certainly does nourish the soul and that has to be part of the paycheck for quite a few interpreters. And when you can share that magnificent locale with some engaging wildlife—so much the better.

It has been a real blessing in my life to be able to live and work on the edge of Monterey Bay for the past 23 years. No two days are ever the same on the bay, with an endless variety of birds, marine mammals and other creatures parading past the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Still, there are patterns in the seasonal occurrence of some wildlife, and you start to look for particular species at specific times.

January is the traditional peak of the gray whale migration past Monterey Bay. Most of those animals are moving in a line just a few hundred yards of the coast we often call the “whale highway” and they tend to cut across the mouth of Monterey Bay. However, a few of them take a scenic detour, hugging the edge of the bay, sometimes just beyond the surf line. These might be juveniles that are still learning the migration route, or seasoned veterans using the pounding surf and kelp beds to escape detection from marauding orca in the bay. Whatever the cause, I’m always on the lookout for those wandering gray whales exploring the shoreline in our part of the bay.

It must have been quite a sight when the Spanish first settled in this area, with a bay full of whales. Often, the carcasses of expired whales could be found on local beaches. California condors and grizzly bears cruised our beaches regularly, scavenging whale carcasses. In fact the holotype specimen of the California condor was collected at Pt. Pinos in Pacific Grove as the unfortunate specimen was searching the local beaches. Back then a beachcast whale carcass meant lunch for quite a few local critters. After reading those early accounts, I started thinking that it might be fun to have lunch with whales—especially if I don’t have to share with grizzlies.

It just so happens that the Aquarium’s restaurant, the Portola Café, has a commanding view of the bay. So my goal is to “have lunch with the whales” as often as possible, and I’m successful in finding a gray whale or two on over half my lunch breaks in late January. I had a special bonus this week with a thunderstorm moving over the bay while I was looking for my lunchtime whale. The sun had come out over one part of the bay, creating a rainbow against the shore—and up came my lunchtime whale! I had the mini-rainbow of the sunlight hitting the whale’s blow, against the larger rainbow from the passing thundershower.

As an interpreter, I just can’t keep those special wildlife moments to myself. I feel compelled to jump up and walk through the restaurant, pointing and shouting “Whale ho!” Fortunately, most of the diners are happy to have whales for lunch as well, so it’s a welcome intrusion.

With all the changes going on in the arctic feeding grounds for our gray whales, I’m growing a bit concerned about their long-term well being. Warming arctic waters are altering both the food supply and the timing of whale feeding and migration. So far the effects seem to be minor, but we’re watching carefully. I would certainly miss having lunch with the whales.

-Jim Covel