If you are interested in having your business recognized as a sponsor of the 2nd Annual Pearl S. Duck Croquet Tournament, you will need to act fast, as we are already starting to send materials to be prepared. Different things need to go at different times, depending how long preparation takes, and t-shirts take the longest.
Fortunately, we found an enthusiastic partner early, and are proud to announce that Boxley is our presenting sponsor this
year. The t-shirt design has been developed with Allegheny T-Shirts, and you can already order one for free in your size when you register in advance for the tournament.
Do you know of a good place to distribute Pearl S. Buck Birthplace rack cards, not only to visitors, but also to people from the area who haven't visited in a long time and should see what's new? If so, come by and pick up some cards, or let us know the place, and we'll send some. I don't see the cards in very many places, when I travel around the area.
Tours and gift shop sales are an important revenue stream if the birthplace intends to continue an active schedule of programs and cultural activities, and there was a significant drop off last year. So help us get the word out. Place cards in your place of business, businesses you patronize, libraries, or anywhere else where it is appropriate and permitted. If you are passing by tourist spots like hotels, visitor centers, or landmarks or museums and have time to check in, see if they have the rack cards.
You can also help by sharing links to our blog, Facebook page or site when you're online. Let's get the word out. Pearl's Mother's House can only live again if there are people in it to keep it lively!
The Pearl S. Buck Birthplace has partnered with Amazon.comso that a portion of the proceeds from your purchases at the world's most successful e-commerce site can benefit the birthplace, provided you begin your shopping from any of the links embedded on the sites of the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace Foundation. We have also begun listing items available for sale in our Gift Shop on Amazon at www.amazon.com/shops/PearlSBuckBirthplace
People all over the world can already purchase from our Gift Shop via our web site, and the inventory will generally be much more complete. The advantage offered by Amazon is that it lists our products alongside all other results whenever anyone searches on relevant terms. So someone who is a fan of Pearl Buck and is searching for her her works would see the limited edition, new signed copies that you currently have to go to our website to see in their search results.
On Tuesday, June 26, 6:00 p.m. Jim Minick will be at the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace for a dual purpose event, sharing tips on raising wild blueberries and reading from his award-winning, 2010 book, just released on paperback, The Blueberry Years: A Memoir of Farm and Family. A variety of delicious, homemade blueberry treats will also be available!
The Blueberry Years captures the story of Minick’s experience creating and operating one of the mid-Atlantic’s first certified-organic, pick-your-own blueberry farms. For a decade, the author and his wife planted, pruned, and picked while also opening the field to hundreds of people who came to harvest berries. These pickers shared blueberry-flavored moonshine and sober religion, warm hugs and cool hats, and always bushels of stories.
The Pearl S. Buck Birthplace has joined the Amazon Associates Program. Click on any of the links in this post to purchase the book through Amazon, and a portion of the sales will benefit the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace through this program. Whenever you begin your Amazon shopping from a link on a site of the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace a percentage of the proceeds of anything you purchase will benefit our work. You can begin your search in the box below.
In June you'll see the "Open" flag on Sundays, too.
On Sundays in June the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace will be open a half day on Sundays, opening at noon. So if you're in the mood for a Sunday drive, why not make the birthplace your destination?
We frequently receive request for Sunday hours, so we are doing this on a trail basis to see how it goes. We will offer tours at the regular times: 12:30 pm and 2:30 pm. We try to offer tours anytime visitors show up during our open hours, but we have very limited staff on site and they are responsible for everything, so these regularly scheduled times are the only times that we can guarantee a guide will be available. At any other time, you may have to wait a while.
Don't forget the Birthplace is already open Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, with tours at 10:30 am, 12:30 pm and 2:30 pm. With local schools finishing early due to the mild winter, you may be looking for something to do when the weather isn't conducive to being outside.
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.
It's Spring, so things have started to bloom around the birthplace. I'm fascinated by the different pace at which this happens, especially by the large maples in front of the house, which are already green and bushy at the top, but only starting to reveal their leaves on the branches closer to the ground. I suppose that's what happens when I tree grows so tall and majestic. Higher branches reach up for sun, lower ones are blocked by their shade.
That's not all that is changing on the grounds of the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace, where we're giving Mother Nature a little assistance. If you stop by and walk around the back of the Stulting House, you'll see that our large Good Earth Garden has been "plowed, disked, and tilled," and tomorrow students from Hillsboro Elementary School will come to the Birthplace to do some planting. Let's hope the garden is as fruitful as last year, when at least 600 lbs of produce were donated from it to local food pantries. We hope to meet or exceed that amount again this year. The gardens are a valuable teaching tool, that make the grounds more enticing and appealing. It's gratifying they can also meet this real need.
On Sunday representatives of Pearl S. Buck International in Bucks County, Pennsylvania came to Pocahontas County to visit the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace and to see the performance of Welcome Home at at the Opera House in Marlinton. Here are just a few pictures. Watch this blog for more about the day.
From front to back, Interim Executive Director Sue Groves and Former Executive Director Timothy VanReenen greet guests from Pearl S. Buck International, including CEO Janet Mintzer, in the black coat.
The delegation from PSBI included dignitaries, staff and volunteers.
Intelligencer writer Rayna Polsky recently shared a post on her visit to the Pearl Buck Birthplace. She lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and just happened upon the Birthplace while driving through. Bucks County is where Pearl lived out the later years of her life after returning from China. I posted a link to the article below. Also, to learn more about Pearl S. Buck International in Bucks County, PA, you can go here: http://www.psbi.org
so that a portion of the proceeds from your purchases at the world's most successful e-commerce site can benefit the birthplace, provided you begin your shopping from any of the links embedded on the sites of the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace Foundation. We have also begun listing items available for sale in our Gift Shop on Amazon at www.amazon.com/shops/PearlSBuckBirthplace
. A variety of delicious, homemade blueberry treats will also be available!
It's Spring, so things have started to bloom around the birthplace. I'm fascinated by the different pace at which this happens, especially by the large maples in front of the house, which are already green and bushy at the top, but only starting to reveal their leaves on the branches closer to the ground. I suppose that's what happens when I tree grows so tall and majestic. Higher branches reach up for sun, lower ones are blocked by their shade.
