See the U.S.A.

Written by Kara Bowman, Educator

If you live in America, or even if you don’t, it’s likely that you’ve had the urge to see for yourself some of this huge, varied, spectacular land of ours. Everything is available here: a rich history, awe-inspiring natural environments, incredible man-made wonders, varied peoples and cultures, and spiritual inspiration. Part of loving our country is seeing our country, and so my brother and I were inspired when we were in college to take our turn making a trip across our great land.

Our particular trip had the dual purpose of moving my brother from an internship in Silicon Valley back to his college in Michigan so we had our start and end points. We plotted a southerly route through Los Angeles, Arizona, Texas and Missouri in order to avoid snow in the mountains, seeing as we were too cheap to buy chains. We had plenty of time though, to meander and stop to see great sights along the way.

I arrived on an airplane at 2am and awoke the next morning to a torrential downpour that was equaled in its fury only by its rarity, or so I was told. My brother had not finished his errands before moving, so I climbed into the passenger seat, which was gathering water from a large drip where the windshield met the frame, and I spent my Northern California sightseeing time slogging through the rain doing errands. Oh well, there was much more to see ahead of us.

Unfortunately, due to the rain and the schedule of someone we were driving to LA, we decided not to take Highway 1 along the coast, one of the most scenic highways in the world. We made it to Disneyland (and swiftly spent our budget for several days), but misestimated the distance from there to the house of some relatives we were visiting, so we had to skeedaddle in order to spend the day driving across LA (or so it felt). We got slightly lost in those pre-cell phone, pre-internet days, so we pulled up in Laguna Beach several hours late but thankfully in time to sleep. Years later, I found out that our relatives saw our old station wagon with the 2x4 bumper pull away from the curb in the morning and were certain we were never going to make it home.

So, the next day, we were really setting off. We were very focused on reaching the Grand Canyon and spending a couple of days there so we blew some money on a hotel for efficiency, even though our plan was to camp. When we were fifteen miles from the lip of the canyon, our car suddenly came down with an illness. We sputtered to the side of the road at a little metropolis boasting a motel with an attached ‘fine dining establishment’, a gift shop, and a gas station/auto repair shop. We were told the car had a small problem and needed a part which could be ordered for delivery in four short days. My brother and I bonded over cribbage, HBO and anticipating the daily restaurant special while we bided our time. Once the car was repaired, we drove to the edge of the Grand Canyon, took a good long look, and headed back to the highway in order to make up for lost time. About twenty miles down the road, the car quit completely. Some nice Canadians stopped (“you never pass a car on the side of the road in wintertime in Canada”), removed the new thermostat, which hadn’t been the problem, diagnosed the problem, and sent us to the nearest repair shop. Two days later, we were on the road again to Texas.

It’s just possible that our current image of Texas might be slightly influenced by the fact that we spent our time there on the floor in the hallway of a Holiday Inn with several hundred other people after the highways were closed due to ‘the worst ice-storm we can remember’. Another great meal in a hotel restaurant and we were rolling again.

About this time, we pulled into a gas station and two men came running up to helpfully inform us that our tires were about to blow but they could sell us new ones at a good price. Wanting to be savvy travelers, but being completely naïve about cars, my brother and I decided our tires probably weren’t about to blow but we’d better not drive at night just in case – especially since our wooden bumper wouldn’t hold a jack.

This is when my brother decided it would be a good time to get sick. We called our grandparents to check in and must have sounded pathetic because, frugal as they were, they immediately offered us money to fly home. Abandoning the car wouldn’t have been an obstacle but, unfortunately, my brother had agreed to drop a friend’s TV set at his house in Indiana so we were saddled with our good deed and had to turn down the offer.

We drove through Missouri and did get to see the arch, so that was a highlight. By the time we got to Indiana (after making a three hour round-trip TV detour that seemed like nothing when we were looking at the map back in California), it was December 31st. We stopped in a small town motel, having given up on our plans to camp several states ago due to feeling sorry for ourselves, and were looking forward to seeing the only entertainment in town: a disco band at the Holiday Inn. Unfortunately, my index finger took the rare lull in the action as an opportunity to swell up and turn green. Thinking it was just an infection, I was going to see how it was in the morning but we made the mistake of calling our mother to wish her a Happy New Year. After diagnosing my malady over the phone, she pronounced that I had blood poisoning so we were off to find an emergency room. We drove around for some time before we came upon a sign marked “Indian Hospital”. We walked around the darkened exterior and found a kindly nurse who gave me a tube of ointment for my infection – no charge – and sent us on our way. Being too tired and in too much pain to party down, we hit the sack at 11pm.

Another 300 miles (at 55 miles per hour, thanks to President Carter), and we were home. After calculating the number of sights we’d seen on our great adventure, we arrived at the number two: a few minutes staring at the Grand Canyon and a photo of the St. Louis arch taken from the car window while we were moving.

So what did we learn by seeing America up close and personal? By all means, go out and experience what our wonderful land has to offer. Just remember to take a lot of money and a very good traveling partner. And to call your mother once you’ve arrived safely home.

Feeling inspired to discover our magnificent country for yourself? Maybe you’d be better off staying home and exploring these products from the Museum Tour catalog. You can start by reading Great States with your kids to learn about the history and geography of each state. With little ones, you can read Follow That Map, which teaches map skills as Sally searches for a mischievous dog and cat on the lam. Experience our national pastime from the comfort of home with Old Century Baseball, a handcrafted pinball-style game. You can even build a Native American Village with our creative diorama kit.

The Environmental Movement: Where Are We Now?

Written by Kara Bowman, Educator

“Pollution, pollution,
Wear a gas mask and a veil,
Then you can breathe,
Long as you don’t inhale.”
From Pollution by Tom Lehrer

When I was a girl in the 1960’s, I remember taking the trash outside, dumping it in the big can, and wondering where it went. One lucky day, I got to accompany my father to the county dump. I remember being flabbergasted at the scale and the smell, but especially by the concept. I clearly remember thinking, “This is it? This the great plan the grown-ups have for all of the trash we make? They dump it in the ground and cover it up?” Even at age six, I sensed that this was not a good, or sustainable, idea.

The environmental movement burst into the national consciousness in the 1962 with the publication of "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson. "Silent Spring" galvanized public opinion in the same way Uncle Tom’s Cabin had done a century before with slavery. "Silent Spring" spent 31 weeks on the best-seller list, and the public had a collective shift in understanding our interdependent relationship with nature. Prior to this time, the environmental movement was focused on preserving individual habitats from development, such as our National Parks, and solving specific problems, such as oil spills. It wasn’t thought that humans could impact the environment on such a large scale that our very lifestyle could poison us and make our communities, and the earth itself, uninhabitable. Before "Silent Spring", we were operating under the western expansion beliefs that nature was so vast it could heal itself and that there would always be more.

The idea of limitless resources ran smack into reality in the early 1960’s when people began naming what they saw around them and demanding action. In the eleven years following the publication of "Silent Spring", Congress passed the Wilderness Act, the Clean Air Act, the Water Pollution Control Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and established the Environmental Protection Agency. As Dr. Suess so eloquently put it in his 1971 book The Lorax, “"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” In the 1970’s, we were all speaking for the trees.

We’ve now had a couple of generations come of age since the birth of the modern environmental movement. With Generation X (born about 1964-1979) and Generation Y (born about 1980-2000) growing up in an era of heightened environmental awareness and higher stakes, we take it on faith that the younger generation is even more motivated than their elders to clean up the legacy we have left them. This turns out not to be true, however.

Environmental Defense released poll findings comparing environmental attitudes of young adults (18-25 year-olds), with those of the Baby Boom generation who came of age around the first Earth Day in 1970 (45-55 year-olds). "We undertook this effort expecting to find significant differences between the generations," said Fred Krupp, Executive Director of Environmental Defense. "And while those exist, we were struck more by the similarities. Baby Boomers and the Internet Generation (a subset of Gen Y) share the same concerns about the environment and agree that individual actions can make the difference when it comes to protecting the planet." (San Diego Earth Times)

Awareness of environmental problems is one thing, but taking action is another. As Marshall McLuhan exclaimed, “There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.” When we look at acting, rather than awareness, the difference between the generations grows. People who came of age when the environmental movement was bursting into our collective consciousness are more likely to take personal responsibility for being part of the solution. Analysis of a longitudinal study found that, except for a slight uptick in the early 1990’s, there has been a three-decade long decline in the number of youth 1) taking personal responsibility for the environment, 2) participating in conservation behaviors, and 3) agreeing with the concept that resources are scarce. “Findings reveal that youth tend to assign responsibility for the environment to the government and consumers rather than accepting personal responsibility.” (Environment and Behavior, Examining Trends in Adolescent Environmental Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors Across Three Decades, May 5, 2009) So it turns out that the latest generation is no more environmentally aware than Baby Boomers, and is less likely to take personal action on environmental issues. As a recent article put it, “Young people, in the popular imagination, are more environmentally conscious than the rest of us. But a new analysis of 30 years worth of data suggests that if we're waiting for a child to lead us out of the wilderness of environmental degradation, we may be waiting a long time.” (Tom Jacobs, Generation ‘Green’ Environmentally Oblivious, Miller-McCune, May 25, 2009)

How can we help motivate the younger generation? How can we share the reality of the situation without imparting a sense of hopelessness that can be paralyzing? We can help them follow the path of E.B. White who said, “I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.” We can help our children become respectful of nature by encouraging a personal relationship with nature from an early age. Rather than starting with the boring and tedious solutions, such as composting, we can begin by instilling a sense of awe and wonder about what we are trying to save. Spend time outdoors camping, fishing, hiking, and picnicking. Plant a garden. Identify birds. Collect rocks. Paint the landscape. Do whatever catches their interest and generates enthusiasm for nature.

We can also help our children learn about the interconnections in nature, which will help them think as environmentalists. As John Muir put it, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” Read to them about environmental issues in order to educate them about the problems we face. Talk to them about your thoughts. I think it’s best not to be heavy-handed but to find where their heart lies and encourage whichever piece of environmentalism speaks to them. In my mind, the goal is not so much to create all of the specific behaviors you would like to see (such as awareness of wasting electricity or recycling), but to help grow a passion for thinking environmentally.

If you can plant the seeds, you can eventually stand back and watch them sprout and grow. I had this experience when my four year old son went on a field trip with his preschool class to a lumberyard. The manager was proudly showing the class around when he recklessly asked the group of tots whether there were any questions. “Yes,” answered my son. “Why are you trying to kill us?” After much sputtering on the part of the manager, my son explained, “Trees make air we breathe and you are cutting down trees, so you are killing us.” While his execution left a little to be desired in terms of finesse, his logic was ironclad and I was very proud that day of the little environmentalist I was growing.

Museum Tour offers many ways to encourage the budding environmentalist in your family. Celebrate their love of living nature with the Butterfly Pavillion, an AntWorks, Planet Frog, or the Carnivorous Creations terrarium. Go outside into nature with your younger child with Science on a Nature Walk. Or delve into exploring problems and solutions with your older child with the Global Warming Kit. Museum Tour has products for environmentalists of every age and interest.

Fun with Statistics

Written by Kara Bowman, Educator

“The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.” Rita Mae Brown

The longer you live, the longer your life expectancy is. Sounds wrong, doesn’t it? Think about it a minute. If you’re a 50 years old male, your life expectancy is 78.5 years. If you make it to 60, you’re life expectancy is now 80.4 years. It increased because the 78.5 figure included those people who passed away over the last ten years. If you can hold out until 100, you will live to 102, on average. (To find your life expectancy based on your gender and current age, check out the Social Security Administration’s Actuarial Tables).

Very few of us have a good sense for statistics unless we work with them. As a culture, we are fascinated with statistics, though, from trivia games to airline ontime arrivals, to political polls, to every kind of sports statistics humans can think of. Here are a few of the figures someone has taken the time to calculate. The average human produces 25,000 quarts of saliva in a lifetime, enough to fill two swimming pools. Fashion models’ measurements are 33-23-33 on average, while American women are 38-32-41. If it can be counted or measured, you can rest assured that someone will count it or measure it.

I had a funny experience years ago when I worked for a bank and we were scouting locations for new bank branches. We were looking for certain age and income characteristics by census tract when we came across a tract that looked different from the rest. Tract #1191 was typical, with 48% of the population male, 26% under age 18, and 75% of the houses owner-occupied. The next tract we looked at, #1220, showed males comprising 98% of the population, 2% of whom were under age 18, and 98% of the houses were rented. We were sure the data was wrong and were about to contact the publisher when we thought to take a look at a map. It turned out that the tract we were considering for a new bank branch contained 54 houses plus San Quentin Prison. I’ve always used this as a reminder not to turn my brain off when looking at numbers but to ask myself what they mean. (If you’d like to play with the government’s census data, take a look here. It’s a lot of fun and you paid for it so you might as well enjoy it!)

Context means everything when it comes to numbers because our brains are constantly trying to impute meaning. I’ll give you an example: What do you think when you hear that 1,000 hectares of old growth-forest are clear-cut each year in Tazmania? You may have been outraged or saddened to hear that because your brain is trying to figure out how to categorize it and decided to group it with ‘destruction of the environment’ thoughts. What if you then learned that there are 1.5 million hectares of old-growth forest in Tazmania, most of which is protected from cutting in National Parks or protected reserves? Does this context change the way you view the first statement? One habit we can get into in order to protect ourselves from faulty assumptions is to ask ourselves what the facts are and separate them from our judgments.

How numbers are gathered often impacts the results. The very wording of a question can elicit very different responses. Much has been written on this subject, but I will share a simple example as an illustration. In 2003, people were asked whether they would, “favor or oppose taking military action in Iraq to end Saddam Hussein's rule, “ 68% favored taking action. When people were asked whether they would, “favor or oppose taking military action in Iraq to end Saddam Hussein's rule even if it meant that U.S. forces might suffer thousands of casualties,” the number favoring intervention dropped to 43%. Partisan organizations often purposely use questions designed to elicit the response they want, although reputable polling firms try hard not to do this.

Finally, there is the math itself. Anyone who has had an elementary Probability and Statistics course might remember that random sampling only produces a confidence that 95 or 98 percent of the time, the real number (ie. the number if every member of the population was measured) would be close to the number derived from the sample. This means that if you read a hundred statistics, several will be off significantly. And that’s given a well-designed random sample. The classic case of a bad sample resulted in a photo of President-elect Truman holding up a newspaper with the headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman”. The newspaper had conducted a poll by telephone at a time when only wealthier households had telephones. Since these families were more likely to vote for Dewey, the sample wasn’t random and the results were just slightly off, shall we say.

So, the next time you read some numbers, caveat emptor, or, as Lewis Carroll put it, “If you want to inspire confidence, give plenty of statistics. It does not matter that they should be accurate, or even intelligible, as long as there are enough of them.” But that’s a cynical note to end on, so maybe we should end with the king of pollsters, George Gallup, who said, “Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can be counted.” You can count on that.

Museum Tour has many fun and engaging ways to help the children in your life with their math literacy. A Balance Kit is a hands-on way for preschoolers to gain number sense. When they’re a little older, get them Building Thinking Skills software for computer-lovers or 101 Math and Science Activities which they can do alone or with help. The book, Nibbling on Einstein's brain, helps you sort good from misleading information in science. My family loves Shut the Box, which is a fun game of probability for kids and adults. Have fun!