Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney: Re-imagined
An eclectic group of people lived in quaint houses scattered about a small mid-western town called Carlinville. All around the town, there were beautiful, flowering plants. When people got off the train or visited the library, they enjoyed the pretty landscape. But it was not always so.
When they were younger, each of the people who lived about Carlinville decided to do three things:
- Live in the beautiful mid-west
- Make a contribution with their talents in worthy professional pursuits
- Make the world a more beautiful place
So they set out to do those things. They spent their years as coal miners, teachers, superintendents, business professionals, mothers and fathers. They made Carlinville better with their vocations and their example.
The years went by, and they realized they still had one thing they needed to accomplish:
Make the world a more beautiful place.
One day, they noticed that the city's public buildings were pretty and yet bare. They also noticed that in order to keep a community flourishing, the bees needed plants to buzz around and pollen to spread. Then they realized that they could make the city more beautiful, provide for the bees, and fulfill their desire to make the world more beautiful, one landmark at a time.
So, they went to their houses and asked others for access to their yards as well, and they began digging up the flowering plants that grew there. They took their donated plants and their ambition, and they began to plant the things bees love all over the city of Carlinville.
Everywhere they worked, the city took on a new glow. And so did the people. The bees were happy, and it turns out that what makes bees happy makes people happy, too. They attended council meetings to update the city's leadership about their projects, and they all supported one another in the ways they worked to make the city a lovely place to live, contribute and make the world more beautiful. They even prompted the City of Carlinville to be declared the first Bee City in Illinois.
The next spring, there will be bees and beauty everywhere, and the little group of community volunteers will have made a difference in the city and in the residents' lives.
I know this because these people are my fellow citizens, in the town I call home. And they have inspired our community's young people to start on their own goals of making the world a more beautiful place, teaching volunteerism and community from the dirt up.
I, too, will live in this quaint, mid-western town called Carlinville. I, too, will make a contribution with worthy professional pursuits. And I, too, will make the world a more beautiful place.
