Beyond Pen Pals Educational Outreach in its Second Year

The Birthplace is continuing is Beyond Pen Pals program this year, once again working with the 8th grade class taught by Jan Jonese at Marlinton Middle School.  According to an article on the collaboration in the May 2nd edition of the Pocahontas Times, 

Pearl S. Buck Birthplace volunteers Chris Butsavage and Jolie Lewis are working with the students in the Beyond Pen Pals program, which connects them with a classroom in Bandung, Indonesia.

Butsavage just happens to be friends with a teacher in Bandung who helped connect the classrooms.

“I’ve been very close friends with him,” Butsavage said. “We went to college together at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. He’s teaching English [there].”  Click here to read more.

What's On the Menu in Collaboration Class Today?

Marlinton Middle School in Arabic, Maghribi Calligraphy

There was a bit of a party atmosphere in the 8th grade classroom of Language Arts teacher Mrs. Jonese today as we held our final gathering for the Beyond Pen Pals Collaboration Project. Joining us for the event were Sue Groves, Acting Executive Director from the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace and Jolie Lewis, Vice-President of the Birthplace Foundation Board, who joined us virtually in a Google Hangout.  The students enjoyed egg rolls and fried rice from China Palace in Lewisburg, while drinking Moroccan mint tea and good old fashioned sweet iced tea from right here at home.

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.

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.