More Than Peanuts

Our adventure today was a visit to the nearby George Washington Carver National Monument, at his birthplace in Diamond, MO. We had noted on the website that a photographic program Who Was George Washington Carver? was scheduled at 1:00 p.m. A guided tour of the 3/4 mile Carver Nature Trail is offered daily at 10 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., so we planned to join it after the 1:00 p.m. program.

We arrived at the visitor center at 12:30 p.m., so we had some time to view the exhibits before the program.

At 1:00 we went to the program location and found ourselves the only attendees, so we had our own private ranger, Tim Van Cleave. The same thing happened at the guided tour.

One of the main impressions we came away with is that George Washington Carver was a much more complex person than we had realized. He was curious about everything and had a drive for learning. He also had musical and artistic talents, including knitting and crocheting as well as painting and drawing. He valued the practical--putting food on the table--and the aesthetic--providing a selection of paint colors from the local clay so that poor farmers could have beauty in their lives.

We were moved by several quotations from Carver's writing and speeches, like these:

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.

Learn to do common things uncommonly well; we must always keep in mind that anything that helps fill the dinner pail is valuable.

We have so much noise now that we hear nothing but noise. It comes and goes and that’s all of it, just noise.  We can’t think very well now because there are so many noises of different kinds.

Here's Ranger Tim showing us the original monument installed by the National Park Service.

This reconstruction marks the probable location of the 12' x 12' log cabin in which George was born to his mother, Mary, a slave owned by Moses and Susan Carver. He and his mother were kidnapped, and only George was found and returned. The Carvers raised George and his brother Jim.

Moses and Susan Carver are buried in a small cemetery on the grounds of the monument.

For dinner I made a recipe for Brussels sprouts with walnuts and cranberries that Carol had given me. We really enjoyed the ones she had made, but mine just didn't taste the same.