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.

2014: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Birthplace

In this 1970 photo Pearl Buck begins the restoration of her home by knocking out a piece of porch railing of her Birthplace while back West Virginia for an environmental seminar.  Four years later we held out grand opening on May 4, 1974.  Sadly, Pearl died at the beginning of March in 1973, so she didn't get to see the opening, but it must have already been clear the house would indeed be successful as a gateway to "new hopes, dreams and ways of life" as she wished it to be. 

The project was and has continued to be a community endeavor.  In the coming months we'll post photos and stories of that effort in this blog.  Everyone involved with the Birthplace, from the moment a commitment was made to save the home to today should feel some sense of pride in the collaborative endeavor.

May 4, 2014 will mark the 40th Anniversary of our opening, and we think it deserves to be celebrated.  Unfortunately, that porch railing that Pearl S. Buck is knocking taking a whack at in the picture is once again in need of repairs and painting, as is the entire house.

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.

Pearl S. Buck in Schools and Universities Today

Pearl grew up in this home in Zhenjiang China and then
was a teacher herself, at the university there. 
All rights reserved by meckleychina

Do you study the life of Pearl S. Buck at your school?  

In a recent New Yorker article "Why is Literary Fame So Unpredictable?," Tom Vanderbilt uses Pearl S. Buck as proof that literary prizes do little to ensure the enduring reputation of an author, and asserts that her work is hardly read anymore.  I don't know how Pearl Buck stacks up against her contemporaries in terms of how much she is read these days, but Vanderbilt seems to have forgotten that The Good Earth, the best-selling, highly acclaimed novel that was most responsible for getting Pearl Buck all those honors back in the 1930s, received a huge boost in sales when Oprah's Book Club featured it in 2004.  

Landscaping the Grounds of Pearl S. Buck Birthplace

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.