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Jeanne Walker Harvey is an award-winning children’s book author. She hopes books will inspire children to realize the power and beauty of words. Ever since she was a child, Jeanne dreamed of being a children’s book author. She was quite the bookworm as a girl. She loved curling up with her family’s collie and reading, reading, reading. Every week her mom took her to the local library, and Jeanne returned home with a tower of books.
Why are you passionate about writing kid's Books?
I hold children in such high regard, and I feel a deep sense of responsibility to try to write stories that will hopefully inspire or resonate with them. I love their insights, imagination, enthusiasm, energy, humor, and compassion. The books I read as a child meant so very much to me because they expanded my world and allowed me to share in the experiences of others. If any of my books connects with a child in some such way, I'll always be greatly honored.
Maya Lin is an American architect and sculptor best known for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.Maya Lin was born on October 5, 1959, in Athens, Ohio. She received her bachelor's degree from Yale, where she studied architecture and sculpture. During her senior year she won a nationwide competition to create a design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Her minimalist design aroused controversy but has become very popular with the public over the years.
Her "What is Missing?" project is fascinating that combines many media types and historical information to connect people to species, places, and natural phenomena.
It was "the first component of her international multi-sited, multimedia art project dedicated to raising awareness about the current crisis surrounding biodiversity and habitat loss."
She faced personal critiscms and government hearings. It was at one point called "a black gash of shame and sorrow". She followed the 3 requirements: contain the names of the soldiers missing or killed (57,000 names), need to not be political, and needed to be harmonious with the site on the Washington Mall. She envisioned the cut would be a mirrored edge, like the surface of a geode. People can interact with the names and their
reflections would be mirrored on the names. It was not a wall, but
an edge on the earth, an opened side.
Born on October 5, 1959, in Athens, Ohio, Maya Lin is the daughter of Chinese intellectuals who fled their homeland in 1948, not long before the 1949 Communist takeover. Lin studied architecture and sculpture at Yale University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1981.
The design she submitted was in sharp contrast to traditional war memorials: It was a polished, V-shaped granite wall, with each side measuring 247 feet, simply inscribed with the names of the more than 58,000 soldiers killed or missing in action, listed in order of death or disappearance. The monument was graceful and abstract, built to be slightly below ground level, and it eschewed the usual heroic design often associated with such memorials. This, of course, made the work controversial.
As soon as the winning design was unveiled, a group of Vietnam veterans loudly objected to virtually all of its key traits, referring to it ungenerously as the "black gash of shame.” In the end, after much nationwide debate that reached citizens and politicians alike, three realistic figures of soldiers, along with an American flag mounted atop a 60-foot pole, were placed near the monument —close enough to be a part of it but far enough away to preserve Lin’s artistic vision.
After what proved to be a draining experience for Lin, the monument was dedicated and opened
to the public on November 11, 1982,
Veterans Day. It has since
become a massive, and emotional,
draw for tourists, with more than 10,000 people per day viewing the work. It has been noted that its polished surface reflects the viewer’s image, making each visitor one with the monument. Of the power of the work, Lin wrote, "I like to think of my work as creating a private conversation with each person, no matter how public each work is and no matter how many people are present.”
For its lasting power, the American Institute of Architects granted the monument its 25-Year Award in 2007.
- What memorials have you seen?
- Do you think Memorials are important? Why or Why not?
- Who should get to design memorials?