A Google Doodle Honoring the 120th Anniversary of Pearl Buck's Birth?

Today Google debuted another Doodle.  Some users of the world's most popular search engine logged on today and saw San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge instead of the usual Google logo.  In a post on their Google+ feed the company explained that the doodle celebrates it's 75th Anniversary.  Google frequently marks significant events and anniversaries with doodles, such as the birthday of some significant figure or the anniversary of an important event in human history.

The birthday of composer Igor Stravinsky and filmmaker Federico Fellini have been celebrated on anniversaries of their birth, as have the anniversaries of the flight of the first man in space.  They can be limited to specific regions, countries, and groups of countries or they can be run worldwide.

Sometimes the doodle are animated or interactive.  Click here and hit play and you can listen to my composition recorded on the synthesizer that took the place of the logo on May 23, the 78th birthday of Robert Moog, creator of the Moog Synthesizer.  Turn your volume down. It's bad! 

June 26th is the 120th anniversary of the birth of Pearl S. Buck.  Surely she is as worthy of a Google Doodle as most of the figures the company has already honored! 

Subtle and Not So Subtle Changes

Sometimes when I close the office at the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace something catches my eye and instead of leaving right away I linger, my attention captured by something that is going on on the grounds.  Our groundhog guests have moved from under the porch of the Stulting House to under the Carpenter Shack.  That's good because they're no longer undermining the porch of a National Historic Structure, not so good because it's awfully close to the garden!  But they're as cute as ever, darn those things! 

This would be the Good Earth Garden

After locking up I walked around outside to see if things were growing in the garden yet, and if they had done any damage.  Whenever I seem them out of their borrow they are nibbling on wild flowers, in other words, the weeds in the yard.  But that may well be because that is all that is available so far this year.  Once that garden is producing delicious vegetables, it may be too much to pass up.

Pocahontas Times Article on Good Earth Garden

The Pocahontas Times has published an article on the Farm to Schools program in Pocahontas County that mentions the garden planted by the 3 through 5th grade students of Hillsboro Elementary School in the Good Earth Garden of Pearl S. Buck Birthplace.  It also includes photos of the the students' visit to the garden on Thursday, May 3.

Click the link to read, "Farm to School teaching students about gardening, healthy foods."

(Photo by: Suzanne Stewart)  Farm to School AmeriCorps volunteer Adrienne Cedarleaf, talks to students from Hillsboro Elementary School. 

Pearl S. Buck and Marlinton Middle School in Morocco

An interesting comment came through our Facebook page today from Rachid Aadnani who teaches Arabic at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. 

I read Pearl S. Buck's novel The Good Earth, translated into Arabic as الأرض الطيبة when I was in high school in Morocco. Great to see a page devoted to her. It was one of the first texts I read that were set in Asia. Absolutely loved that novel. It actually made me want to read more and more. So, thank you Ms. Buck!!!

Included with the message was the cover of the Arabic translation you see to the right.  Literature can be a really important tool for self-discovery, and understanding, but equally importantly, it can help us understand people who different from us.  It shows us the characteristics and emotions we share, and helps us understand how differences may not necessarily be all the strange after all.  Pearl Buck was a master of that.  She did not hide the exotic nature of the cultures she wrote about, be it her ancestral, the one she was born into but has little experience of until she returned to the United States as an adult, or her adopted culture.  Rather she treated them as matter of fact, and cut straight to the essence of the story.  Maybe this is why Pearl Buck is such a major figure of world literature, as appreciated abroad as she is here.