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Created: February 26, 2004
Latest Update: February 26, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

On Monarch Butterflies

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, February 2004.
"Fair use" encouraged.

While browsing through the website of the The Smithsonian Magazine for March, 2004, I found a fascinating article on Monarch Butterflies and attempts to preserve theit habitat in Michoacan, Mexico, to permit the butterflies to survive. The article includes an invitation to visit with the family that is doing this preservation work. What a wonderful opportunity to change interpassivity into interactivity!

Maybe you can't go there - it's a bit of a way for us. But you could exhange e-mails and photos and interests. Such a project would fit wonderfully into the Spring Exhibit. Perhaps the Alcala family will send you more information for your project.

Jose Luis Alvarez Alcala's Family: Patricia, Jose, Patricia's sister Sylvie, Leo, Lucas

Here's the Michoacan Website, which won a Smithsonian sustainable tourism award.

Background:

I wanted to know more about sustainable tourism, and this year's winners didn't come up when I linked. So I tried past winners. That's where I found the Michoacan Monarchs site. I checked it out on my way back to look for present winners, but was stopped by the extent to which the site accomplishes some of what we try to do in our Naked Space Exhibits. The site includes beautiful photos, a story, a problem issue that matters to all of us, and invites our participation, not just by asking for money, which I suppose we all need, but by inviting us to share their interests with them! Gee, maybe they could come up for our exhibit in the Spring! The building of interpersonal relationships across local places is one way to bring the global world more gently together.

So here are some hints if you're interested:

Theory:

• Interpassivity and Interactivity, and how they might be interpreted in this project.
• Links that you can see and share with the Michoacan project.
• Ways in which you can spread information about the project in our own local area.
• An understanding and explication of the methodology of the Michoacan project, and ways in which that methodology might work in our own local area.
• Try to provide ways in which local people might respond interpassively, interactively. Be aware of the difference, and of the difference that might make in the methodology for your project.