By Dustin Graf
Today I was the chaperon for my grandson, Dustin, 10, as his class from up north toured the Milwaukee Public Museum. Over the years I have been to the museum many times, as a child, parent and grandparent, so I was familiar with most of the exhibits. However, for my grandson everything was new and fresh. He was excited by the exhibits, took a long look and took time to read about what he was looking at. When I started taking pictures of the exhibits with my camera he wanted to do the same. He did and took some good pictures that made the exhibits look like they were alive, like the one here. Not knowing we shot the pictures at the museum, you could mistake them for pictures of animals we took on a safari. However, after awhile when my grandson saw something new and exciting, the first thing he did was not read about the exhibit but ask for the camera to take a picture. He was more interested in taking a picture of the exhibit than in taking a long look at it and reading about it. I reminded him that first we needed to look at the exhibit and understand what it was before taking a picture. He seemed to understand that often we are quick to take a picture, freeze something even though it is not alive, before we look at it and learn about what we are seeing. We can take a picture of something without ever experiencing it.
Tomorrow we are going back to work at the DMZ Garden, putting down cardboard and wood chips. We need to cover the ground thoroughly so that nothing grows on it so we can build our own raised beds of home made soil on it. We need to kill the life growing on the lot so we can grow new life of food on the lot.
After my son and his class left the museum I stopped by the rally downtown today for human rights and dignity for all immigrants, especially Hispanics. It is strange that in this land of immigrants that we have to rally and work for the rights of immigrants. It is as if the immigrants of old, and their offspring, had frozen the rights and opportunities of this land, USA, and did not want to share them with new immigrants who come here looking for the same hope and opportunity.
If something is dead or alive or of the past or present, we need to really see it before we can capture it and freeze it in time.
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