22 October 2004, Cleveland, OH
Thirty-one hundred skeletons are catalogued and curated in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. They are the unclaimed bodies of men and women who were left in the Cleveland morgue from 1900-1940. One hundred children are also part of the Hamann-Todd Collection, the largest gathering of skeletons in the world. Curators know the sex, race, weight, height, the cause of death and the date the individual died. It is "the gold standard" of a skeleton archive.
Bruce Latimer, the charismatic director of the Cleveland Museum, understands the importance of these bones, these lives.
Alongside the human skeletons are the primates, the largest assemblage of gorilla and chimp bones in the world. Latimer relied on the comparative anatomy these two collections provide when he wrote his dissertation on Lucy, one of our oldest ancestors. He was interested in the nature of her gait, how she walked upon the African savannah. He pulls out a human bone and a gorilla bone. Humurus. The size difference is staggering.
I have spent much of my life inside museums, but never have I encountered the weight of despair that I felt here, these bodies now housed in drawers of bones -- unloved, unclaimed, opening themselves to the whims of inquiry and questions of what it means to be human.
Bruce tells us that just recently, the military came to the museum to scan 2000 human skulls. They needed this information in developing and designing special helmets for the soldiers in Iraq. Bruce describes the massive amount of equipment they brought in for their study, half a semi-truck worth of materials. And the cost? Evidently, not a problem according to one of the men scanning the skulls. Since September 11, 2001, money is not an issue.
Prior to the museum visit, Patrick Kelly (from the Orion Society) and I went to breakfast at the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes. We were met by Nancy King Smith, the director and Leslie Kreg, director of education.
The story of the Nature Center is an inspiring one. In 1965, Jean Eakin and Betty Miller were among many "little ladies in white tennis shoes" who protested the construction of a freeway interchange that would cut the natural beauty of the Shaker Lakes in half. It would also have segregated the community, with African-Americans on one side of the road and a wealthy white community on the other.
Members of local garden clubs gave $10,000 to the cause. A nature center was created in 1966, a beautiful woodland area with wetlands and an array of birds. A building was erected in 1969. Neighbors of Shaker Lakes joined together and fought this freeway from 1965 through 1971, when the project was declared dead by the governor of Ohio.
Today, the Nature Center of Shaker Lakes serves over 10,000 children in the Cleveland Heights area, largely African-American students. Nancy took me on a beautiful walk where mist nets were set, and we watched a volunteer on her way to release a swamp sparrow that had been caught. David Wright and Leslie identify native plants. The beech trees are receptors of light as their yellow leaves rain down on us in peak season. It is a mosaic of fall colors mirrored in Doan Brook, the same urban river that runs underground, beneath the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
Rosemary Woodruff, a friend of the Nature Center asked me one question, "Where do we put our pain?" She spoke of her grief over seeing woods near her home clearcut for condominiums. With tears in her eyes, I saw all of our grief reflected. How to cope with the loss of wildlands be it in the redrock desert of Utah or pockets of peace in the suburbs of Cleveland?
Nancy took me to the edge of Lake Erie, and I placed my hands in the waters of this Great Lake. It appears as an inland ocean; and I imagined the time when blue pike inhabited its wild waters before they became extinct. Cormorants flew by. There were many boats out fishing for walleye. The lake is much cleaner now. She pointed to Dike 14, an environmental education collaboration to turn an 88-acre former dredge disposal site into a nature preserve, one of the few places where the public would have access to Lake Erie. Over 280 species of birds have been noted in this wildlife haven, along with red foxes and coyotes. A risk assessment is underway to see if public access is safe given its toxic past. The Nature Center of Shaker Lakes, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History are partnering with Audubon Ohio, Cleveland Metroparks, the Cuyahoga Valley National Park Association, the Earth Day Coalition, and the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center to see that Dike 14 becomes a green jewel along the shore of this extraordinary lake on the edge of Cleveland.
We passed the Cuyahoga River that burned in the 1970s, a symbol of industrial pollution. The river is being restored. We can be restored as I have been in these two days in the Buckeye state.
Today the polls report Kerry up in Ohio by 1%. Everyone I have met is completely engaged in these elections. 37% of jobs lost in this country have been lost in Ohio.
A new ad sponsored by George W. Bush is playing on television. It is a cast of wolves.
"In an increasingly dangerous world...John Kerry and the liberals in Congress slashed America's intelligence budget by 6 billion dollars."
Flash to a pack of wolves sitting in the woods...
"Weakness attracts those who are waiting, wanting to do America harm."
Wolves as symbols of evil waiting in the woods... this is what we called "I like Ike" imagery from the fifties when I worked at the Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City. But it's worse than that. This Republican ad is from the pre-Murie era in the 1940s when predators were animals to be killed, not part of the ecological balance we recognize today in predator-prey relations. Who are these people who dredge up symbols of our ignorant past. Perhaps they could visit the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes or walk in the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone on a full moon and listen.
Tomorrow, I travel to Florida. Brooke and my father will meet me in Ft. Myers. Butterflies are in my stomach; no, that's not quite true -- more like Luna moths. What will it be like to walk into the wings of this shadow play of democracy?
President George W. Bush is speaking tomorrow in Ft. Myers. I hope to hear him speak, but I doubt we can get in without showing a republican voter registration card. And I will not be signing a "loyalty oath" which is what is required, otherwise.
The students of Florida Gulf Coast University -- I can hardly wait to meet them. I cannot wait to hear what they have to say, what they have learned, and how they have been transformed. We will gather tomorrow afternoon to talk.
And then, Sunday. 1:00 p.m. We will all gather.
