Pollyanna Park - A Unique Place to Open Eyes and Minds (maybe hearts too)
Jim and Ann Coady, formerly members of the Long Island Affiliate Chapter, joined the virtual Affiliate Chapter when they moved to Wisconsin to be closer to their children. Both were also on the MAC 2020 Planning Committee. In earlier years, Jim and Ann served in Columbia, South American with the Peace Corps. They are retired now but Ann continues to use her social work background traveling to disaster sites with the American Red Cross. Jim, an architect by training, has the kind of creative, indefatigable mind that makes retirement elusive. Jim’s article that follows (also submitted to NCR) is testimony to that. It will capture your attention right from the start. (Bob Short)
One of Jim’s designed areas for Pollyanna Park
I almost never agree with our current president, but I do believe he was right…sort of…when he referred to the desecration and destruction of many of the historic bronze, copper, and marble sculptures, as an attempt to erase the individuals or events they portrayed, from our history.
I am sure that it is also how the actions of those individuals certainly looked to many Americans. But in any number of cases, conventional paths of removal were not working for those who were most affected by the symbolism of the statuary. For many of us there does come a point where enough is enough, the tipping point is reached, and the pot, and the boiling water, hit the fan.
In 1993, in Budapest, Hungry, Memento Park was opened. In it were placed many of the statues that country’s citizenry toppled following the end of Communism and the establishment of a democratic government. That park gives the citizens of Hungry today a glimpse of how the message of Communism was reinforced and propagandized in the official narratives and images of that dark period of Hungarian history.
I must say that I was particularly struck by the use of the sculptural remains of Stalin. All that remained of that great man after his bronze image was toppled, were his booths.
For the US to strive, grow, prosper and come together as a nation, we, similar to the Hungarians, also need to understand our history. We need to understand it without the jingoistic, nationalistic, simplistic patter that so often defines the understanding most of us have of our heroes and our symbols.
Counter to our present president’s grand idea for a park of heroes, I would propose that the National Park Service gather up the fallen statues—and some that while still standing that should have been removed from public places a long time ago—and use them as the seedlings for a new national park.
A park where Americans will be able to go and truly educate themselves about prominent historical figures and events in America’s past, along with the symbols of our culture that have figured in the life and development of this country, and which, knowingly or unknowingly, have formed many of our own attitudes, goals, values, purposes, and views of others and ourselves.*
I’m an architect (now retired…sort of), so I tend to think in possibilities by way of images and descriptives that can serve as creative catalysts for Imagineering a physical environment (a park such as this) that honors honesty, clarity, and validity of historic truth telling.
The park’s sculptures would not be limited to statues of statesmen (and stateswomen) generals and soldiers, poets and explorers. Writers and musicians, vocalists, comedians and cartoonists, would eventually all have an opportunity to be included. Culture symbols would also be represented. Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, the Gold Dust Twins…the list goes on. The deciding factor would be the impact that person, event or thing had on development of US culture, and that it can be presented based on facts, not fiction, or fuzzy thinking.
The park would be meant to be experienced and explored. [A few paragraphs describing the experience are extracted here from this post anticipating that they’ll appear in NCR or another publication.]
We can all learn from history’s metal and stone reminders of what we thought, what we believed, and what we did. I believe that we need to place them front and center where we can see them, acknowledge them, learn from them, and move on from them.
Respectfully, Jim Coady.
In an earlier writing of the article, Jim spoke of “a newly created national park in a remote area (preferably a barren wasteland) suffering economically for lack of job opportunities.”