Accessible North

None of us can see all the wavelengths of light.  My colorblind son is flummoxed by red and green and brown.  I don’t know anyone who can see radio waves, but sophisticated telescopes translate them into visual images I can comprehend.  

Astronomer and author Noreen Grice has taken this concept one step further.  Her braille books render the universe into tactile images.  Her latest, Touch the Invisible Sky, is filled with stunning touch-and-see photographs that delight blind and sighted people alike.  As she said during an exceptional NPR interview, ”No human can see these other wavelengths so we’re all approaching it together.”  Other books in the series are Touch the Stars (the constellations in Braille), Touch the Sun (ouch!) and Touch the Universe (tactile renderings of Hubble Space Telescope photos).  You can read more about the books at You Can Do Astronomy, at HubbleSite, and in a National Geographic News review. 

Nothing in recent memory stirred my imagination like those Hubble photos.  The gorgeous backlit displays at the Dennos Museum in Traverse City were complemented by a slide talk by an astronomer.  Sounds boring, doesn’t it?  Trust me, it wasn’t.  I suspect most astronomers are divinely wacky.  It’s all that gazing into infinity.  I could practically feel my brain expanding to accommodate all the new thoughts bouncing around in there.

What are photos on the page, after all?  They’re a collection of dots of ink - an idea of the subject, not the thing itself.  What if they were a collection of dots of different sizes and shapes instead?  Same thing - different way of conveying the same idea.  Maybe all our experiences are only comprehensible through one metaphor or another. 

If you spend enough time thinking about these things you end up in the realm of poetry (or philosophy, or astrophysics - take your pick, mine’s words).  One of my favorite poems is Howard Nemerov’s The Makers: ” . . . the first to say/Star, water, stone, that said the visible/And made it bring invisibles to view/In wind and time and change, and in the mind/Itself that minded the hitherto idiot world/And spoke the speechless world and sang the towers/Of the city into the astonished sky.”   

I found another interesting take on the whole subject at Astroprof’s Page - which is also Not Boring.  Next post I promise to get back to telling you about truly accessible places to go right here on earth.  Bellaire, for example.  Stay tuned.

Whimsical themes, raised beds, touch and sniff plantings, and a tree house made of Michigan white cedar attract families to the universally accessible 4-H Children’s Garden on the MSU campus in East Lansing. On the theory that good ideas bear repeating, this spring Raven Hill Discovery Center will build its own accessible tree house in East Jordan. Anyone who’s ever fantasized about the perfect leafy hideaway is invited to contribute suggestions. Master woodworker Andre Poineau will create the final design.

Raven Hill’s tree house will be approximately 15′ x 15′, but not necessarily square, and will perch on a platform suspended eight feet above the ground by cables attached to four trees.  There might be a ramp - there might be a lift - there might be a cable car.  It will be accessible for wheelers, but the final design is up in the air . . .  (Sorry - couldn’t resist.)  This will not be an ordinary tree house.  Expect features that demonstrate principles of sound, light, motion, simple machines and nature.  Look for design elements in handcrafted glass, clay, metal, wood, fiber and stone. 

The project is funded in part by a challenge grant from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts. Raven Hill must match the $6,300 grant with $12,600 in cash and in-kind contributions.  Lots of volunteers will help build the tree house in May.  You could be one of them.

There’s a lot more information about the project on the Raven Hill website. Please call Director Cheri Leach at 231.536.3369 if you have any questions.

Trying to figure out how to make my own scribblings more universally accessible I prowl the web looking for ideas and information.  I found an absolutely spot-on remark at the Headscape site, where the designers are singing my song (on-key and in better voice):  

We understand that accessibility can be an overwhelming subject and that it can be hard to judge the return on investment. We encourage our clients to do what they can . . . rather than being put off by the enormity of the issue and doing nothing at all . . . . We do not condemn people for not considering accessibility but rather encourage those who wish to do something.

That’s just how I feel about Up North businesses who’d like to welcome everyone but have a hard time figuring out how to retrofit a 1950’s cabin to accommodate a wheelchair, or make a woodsy path comfortable for a person with a visual impairment. We’re pretty resourceful around here. We can figure out how to do this stuff.  I’m going to help.