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"Regarding your interaction with the teachers, I learned a great deal. You surpassed my expectations." Pat from Maryland |
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Archive for 2009
Back to Boston
Written on Sunday, June 14th, 2009 [permanent link]
In the first week of June, 2009, I went back to Boston with my sons for my 20th college reunion. The studying I did inside and outside the classroom really sharpened my love of history (I didn’t go to college planning to major in history — REALLY! But taking a few classes really sold me on it). I made sure that the bricks of Harvard Square weren’t the only bricks we hiked across . . .
Right after our flight landed, we hiked around downtown Boston. First stop: the Battle of Bunker Hill! Except that the monument stands on Breed’s Hill, which was the taller hill and better to defend. The Redcoats didn’t take Breed’s Hill until their third charge and paid a heavy price for this high ground. Which is now surrounded by very fancy townhomes. Samuel the Teenager bravely vowed to climb the 300 steps of the monument with his backpack on; I forebade it — and bravely volunteered to guard their backs at the bottom as they both went. They made it! And I didn’t!!!
Then we hiked down Breed’s Hill to the dock where the USS Constitution is being refurbished. Samuel instantly renamed “Old Ironsides” to be “Old Tarp Covering.”I learned a lot of things on our tour of the ship (which is still commissioned in the US Navy – it could go to war if we needed it!). Its guns recoil at 30 mph when fired. That’s a lot of recoil. So even when the captain calls for a “broadside,” they would fire only half the guns at once — firing all of them would tip the ship!
The USS Constitution is docked at what was the Charlestown Navy Yard until it closed in the early 1970s. We saw the drydocks created to clean up sailing ships but used all the way into the Cold War. I loved seeing the old cranes and equipment left at the dock. AND seeing what happens to history on waterfront property: the molding drydocks sit beneath old, smallish workshops of beautifully-worn brick, and both shipyard relics rest in the shadow of a giant new brick and glass condo!!!
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Tags: author, Bentley Boyd, Boston, Chester the Crab, Constitution, graphic novel, Harvard, history, history comics, Massachusetts, Old Ironsides
Posted in Historical Travel | No Comments »
From Louisville to Lynchburg!
Written on Friday, May 29th, 2009 [permanent link]
Last week I got to spend time in Louisville, KY, then lead Ohio students on tours of Jamestown and finish with a trip to talk to teachers in Lynchburg, VA. That’s a lot of mileage for history education!
My trip to Louisville, KY, began with cheese grits and “spiced berry pie” at the painted eatery shown above: Lynn’s Paradise Cafe, a beautiful burst of quirky local color. It was like eating in the middle of Mardi Gras! My host, Malana Salyer from the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, was right on with this breakfast choice!
I did two things for the McConnell Center in Louisville: speak directly to teachers in their outreach program (I was the wrapup to a year of study about the Civil War, so we brainstormed some cartoons and tried to analyze what they had learned) and visit several of those teachers’ schools to talk to students. I do a lot of these Author’s Purpose talks in the spring; what makes each one interesting to me is the character of each different school building and the ideas from the different students. In Louisville I did three sessions at the Brown School, a beautiful downtown school that teaches all grades, K-12! It was fascinating to see all the ages mixing when the day ended. (The auditorium also had some beautiful 1950s tile walls that must have been hand-glued because there were four different creme colors of tile in no noticeable pattern; so I linked that tile to one of my cartoons about Roman mosaic art!)
After two days in Louisville, I flew back to Williamsburg for a 12-hour day of guiding three charter buses of middle schoolers through Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg. Then Thursday was six hours of driving so I could talk to teachers in Lynchburg, VA, about how to use comix in the classroom. Once I get my audience to agree on the terms of comix, I test those terms. I had fun showing the Lynchburg teachers a page from a beautiful comic called “Meridian,” about a girl with powers. No word balloons on the page I show, but a lot of cursive writing in boxes — just like the writing in journals that many teachers have their fourth- and fifth-graders do!
The teacher training was at Amazement Square, a fantastic children’s museum right on the James River at the edge of Lynchburg’s downtown. For the past four years I have drawn an educational comic strip for the museum — one created to fill the gap after Chester the Crab ended as a newspaper feature! (The Lynchburg News & Advance was the first paper beyond the Daily Press to run the Chester comic, and when those 5 years of stories ended, they wanted to keep providing material for their younger readers; the newspaper approached the museum, and the museum called me) The strip features bug characters that were designed before I came along. It’s been fun to bring personality to beautiful characters that had been used in limited ways before I got ahold of them. The Lynchburg teachers seemed psyched for Year Five of The Adventures of Scorpy Bug. You can see examples of Scorpy’s stories at: www.amazementsquare.com/scorpy/
Tags: Amazement Square, Bentley Boyd, comic book, Kentucky, Louisville, Lynchburg, Lynn's Paradise Cafe, Virginia
Posted in Author's Purpose, Historical Travel | No Comments »
Marine Corps museum visit
Written on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 [permanent link]
Last week I traveled to the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, VA, with my sons’ Boy Scout troop and squeezed in a book signing and some research for a World War I comic I plan to work on later this year. You can see by my left hand that I did bring the crab hat — the staff at the gift shop absolutely insisted that I wear it during the signing, but they couldn’t make me wear it through the museum!
The Marine Corps began as soldiers stationed on sailing warships, ready to go ashore to keep peace or ready to provide extra firepower in ship-to-ship fighting. The museum is full of cool figures that show the different eras of the Corps — You wouldn’t think statues could still interest us in our video-saturated digital WWW.com world. But getting up close to real equipment and VERY realistic figures does shoot a charge down your spine! There are some surprises for visitors as they round certain corners . . .
It helps that some galleries put you in the action itself. A room about the Korean War is dark and cold. A Vietnam War gallery puts you on a hilltop at the Khe Sanh base in some high heat, and you get there by going though a rattling, noisy helicopter hatch. If you look closely you can see a rat figure scurrying around. Better than a video game? Close. I loved getting photos at close and unusual angles, which will help in future drawings. In the main atrium of the National Museum of the Marine Corps there is a World War I fighter hung from the ceiling, and I relished the chance to get an image from an angle I wouldn’t normally find in a magazine or website.
The National Museum of the Marine Corps is not all blood n’ guts (tho there is plenty of that). There’s a theater you can sit in to watch World War II-era newsreels and cartoons. The gallery that introduces the World War II storyline shows two women reacting to news of Pearl Harbor — there’s even a broken teacup on the floor. (But it does feel odd that the narrative here includes video playing on the wallpaper; it gives the impression of television when we’re looking at an era when almost everyone got their news from the radio, as the women are doing.)
This museum debuted in late 2006 as part of a wave of new brick-and-mortar galleries trying to immerse visitors in video and other sensations to bring history stories alive. It succeeds!
Tags: Bentley Boyd, Boy Scouts, Chester Comix, graphic novels, history, National Museum of the Marine Corps, Troop 180
Posted in Historical Travel | 2 Comments »
