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[ Music ]
>> Chautauqua 2010 is brought to you
by the Maryland Humanities Council,
a private educational nonprofit organization that stimulates
and promotes, inform dialogue and civic engagement
on issues critical to Marylanders.
[ Music ]
>> Hello and welcome to Chautauqua.
I'm Angela Rice Beemer here at the Germantown Campus
of Montgomery College.
Chautauqua is a living history program
where scholar actors portray famous
and influential historical characters.
This year's theme is "Beyond Boundaries."
And tonight Chautauqua character expanded the boundaries
for all of us.
He was a man of trees and flowers, but also a sailor,
a scientific farmer, and a journalist.
He believed that cities should be built with nature
and parks all around us.
Someone once said of him that he built palace grounds
for common people.
He was America's foremost landscape architect,
Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr.
>> Good evening!
>> Good evening.
>> Fred Olmsted.
I was born in Hartford on April 26 of 1822.
My mother died tragically when I was only four.
My father was a dry good salesman
and he owned his store, well off.
He was the kindest man as I looked back from years ahead
that there ever could have been.
In the beginning when I was a small boy he'd take me
out into the fields around our home.
And then he took me on trips to northern New England
to the White Mountains and to Niagara Falls.
One evening when we were walking to the woods,
it was late by the time we were getting back home.
And it was dark so we could see the stars
and I watched my father look up and he was pointing
at one bright star and I heard him say, "Our infinite love."
And I knew he was speaking of my mother.
My brother John was only one when our mother died.
I used to take John on walks,
in fact one time we walked all the way to my mother's hometown
in Cheshire to visit our uncle and the sister of our mother.
Then there was my grandfather, he was a sea captain,
once when I was struggling and trying
to understand what it was I was going to do
in my life I was lying down in front of the elm tree,
in front of our home and my grandfather came up and he said,
"Fred, what is it you're doing?"
And I said, "Grandfather I'm looking up at all the branches
and all the different ways they're going and I'm thinking
about my life and wondering what is it that I'm going to do."
Well, my grandfather looked down at me and said, "You know Fred,
I planted this tree and it's the most important thing I ever did
in my life."
And that made a big impression on me.
My schooling wasn't very much at all.
I was sent away probably because I wasn't getting along too well
with my stepmother.
My father sent me to a series of ministers
and they made me work hard and I learned some things,
but there was a minister sort of person
who was telling stories once in a while when the minister is out
and he'd come into the room and we'd be laughing and he come
over and he'd hit me with a broom on the shoulders.
And then when I was 14 I developed a very serious case
of poison sumac.
And the doctors were very worried then they said,
"Fred must rest his eyes."
I told my father I couldn't continue to prepare for Yale.
So it took almost a year for me to recover and slowly I started
to walk out into the woods and I basically became a vagabond
out there in the fields and climbing the hills and walking
through the forest, along the streams, letting sort
of nature be my teacher.
At 18 my father got very concerned of what I might do,
he knew of a dry goods store down there
in Manhattan, New York.
So he took me down, he set me up in the room over in Brooklyn.
And I used to take the ferry across to this dry good store
and I worked hard and I got promotions.
And soon I was working all day
and then keeping the books half the night.
And I forgot that what was I doing here this wasn't going
to be the life that I was thinking about envisioning.
I wanted to get back to the hills
and the woods and the streams.
The only thing I did recall was when I cross the ferry
and all those great sailing vessels there in the China trade
and I thought of my grandfather.
When I went back to Hartford and I began again walking
and kept thinking about those sailing vessels and I said
to my father, "Do you think it would be possible to go out
and to be one of those ships" and my father said,
"I will see what I can do."
I was successful in getting on the Ronaldson with Captain Fox.
Well, a couple of things I learned.
I learned first that I wasn't going to be much of a sailor,
because for about three weeks I was over the deck.
[ Laughter ]
The other thing that struck me was Captain Fox seemed
to be a nice individual, but as the trip went
on he became more brutal in his language
and actually more brutal in his physical attacks,
because one time there was a young sailor
who we knew hadn't stolen money, but he accused him.
He got the first mate to hold them down
and he beat him, beat him.
My first riding was named at sea and I wrote what can atone for?
What can retain?
What can restore the humanity degraded by the brutal beating
from a depraved tyrant?
Well, I got back.
When I landed in New York, I saw my father and he walked right
through me, he didn't recognize me.
It took me about half a year to recover and then I went
down to Yale where my brother had enrolled.
And with John, I met some of his wonderful friends,
one in particular, that was Charlie Brace.
Later on Charlie was able to create something
that I thought was one of the most worthwhile projects
in America and that was the Children's Aid Society
in New York City, where he take the kids off the streets
and provide a home.
Then there was Fred Kingsbury.
Fred Kingsbury was sort of an insightful person at least
when he wrote to John and wrote this about me,
he said Fred is an enthusiastic type of individual.
The world needs people like him.
He'll fail at one thing and then he'll move on and fail
with something else, and then he'll move
on to a third and fail at that.
The rest of us will be blubbering and crying
about the failure of the first.
Well, it seemed that they're at school at Yale.
There were two things that I began thinking about, one was--
and most importantly I was in love.
Elizabeth Baldwin, Lizzie Baldwin,
daughter of the governor who was the most beautiful woman
in Hartford according to the other guys as well as myself.
And she unfortunately didn't accept me.
I thought it was probably because I wasn't at Yale.
I had no schooling.
But she gave me three gifts, one when she said
to me Fred you are very great man, you have a great intellect.
And secondly, you have the capacity
to do many things for our nation.
And thirdly, she gave me this book, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
essays like self reliance.
And that book stayed by the side of my bed
for the rest of my life.
The other romance that I turned to was farming.
It became clear that farming was needed to take a change
and develop scientific farming.
So my father got a place for me up in New York to Mr. Geddes
who was known throughout the northeast as a good farmer.
And then, I heard about a farm for sale,
down there at Sachem Head where the family vacationed.
And I thought that's exactly where I want to go,
so my father purchased that farm for me.
And I went down
and unfortunately I hadn't really checked
or had Mr. Geddes come down.
I worked and I planted and cultivated,
but the farm was used up, the ground was used up.
The only thing I really did was I planted a couple of trees
and I had envisioned them around the farm house.
Well, I read another advertisement for a farm
down at Staten Island, so I sat down and I wrote to my father,
"Dear father, there's a farm on Staten Island
that I think will be just perfect."
Well, I went down there and I begin to get very excited
about farming because things were working.
And not only where they're working for myself
after a couple of years, but I look--
people were coming to me saying Mr. Olmsted how do you do this?
How is this working?
And I had developed different areas of the farm
and fenced them in and protected them and put drainage in.
And that's where I developed the word of communicativeness,
that we should communicate across fences
to other people who, yes, may be we were in competition in a way,
but if we were to have a civil society we had
to have a dialogue.
And we developed the Staten Island Agricultural Society,
and people were excited about it.
Then one day, I heard that John
and Charlie Brace were going to go to England.
Well, John wasn't too well
and father had already sent them to England.
So I sat down and I wrote, "Dear father, I think it's important
that I go to England to learn about scientific farming
and the greater degree from a different perspective".
All my kind and generous father, agreed.
So, off to England we went.
We landed in Liverpool and we were getting something to eat
and evidently the man at the store overheard our conversation
and he said, "Boys, from the way you're talking you want
to go to this park."
And I said, "Certainly we'll go."
So he gave us directions and took us about half an hour
to get there and as I walked to the park he told us
that this was just a swampland and a lot of rocks.
But there with these rolling hills now.
And this weeding pass and a stream, this was such beauty
that it was so grasping.
And I thought to myself, more importantly look
at the people, people from all over.
This is a democratic park.
And that got to me and I went back and I wrote a book "Walks
and Talks of an American Farmer in England."
And at one point I wrote what artist so noble, as he who,
with conceiving power and beauty sketches the outline
and writes the colors, and directs the shadows of a picture
so great that nature will be employed upon it
for generations.
And I also wrote, "Dame Nature is a gentlewoman."
No guide's fee will get you her attention,
nor abrupt demand hardly will she bear her questioning,
nor the direct gaze into her beauty.
Least of all where her true nature be understood
from the hurry days of the traveler.
Always we must quietly and patiently wait upon her.
Well, I got back to the farm and I was captivated, you know,
by this writing that was going on and the response?
And I ask Charlie Brace what should I do?
I mean I want to start this maybe some more writing
and Charlie said to me, "Well, I tell you what Fred,
New York Times, Mr. Raymond, editor he's looking
for someone who will go south."
And I said, "Well, that sounds like the job for me."
So I went over and Charlie Brace set up the appointment.
I walk in and Mr. Raymond said to me, "Well we have a job."
I said, "I'll take it."
Well, I did take it and I went south, two trips,
and wrote three books.
And wrote over 40 articles for the Times
and on the second trip I took my brother
and we went all the way to Texas.
Father and I thought it might be good for his health,
because he having some problems
and we weren't sure what they were.
He'd also married the woman on Staten Island,
who I thought was my sweetheart.
But Mary was a vivacious person and they were
to have three children.
So at this point I said well, he came back
and he's doesn't feeling too well when we got back
from that second trip.
And I said, you know, there's opportunities
in the publishing business for me John, so would you stay
on the farm and run the farm.
And I looked around and then there was this advertisement
from Dix and Edwards, they wanted a partner.
Well, there was one problem it was going to cost 8,000 dollars
to be a partner, "Dear father."
And once again, my generous father, he made it possible
for me to become a member and we published Thoreau
and we published Melville, and I was excited so we've got
to get English authors.
So they set me to England and I got some of the English authors
that we're going to get involved.
And then, one day I got a letter from Mr. Dix and he wrote,
unfortunately, "Fred,
Mr. Edwards has embezzled our money."
Damn! Well, what I was I do to?
I was finishing my third Book "Journey
through the Back Country."
And I was seating at an inn in Connecticut, next to the sea,
and an old friend Charles Elliot came up and, "How you doing?"
Charles-- he said I'm doing fine and you?
Well, I'm not doing too well right now.
Well, you know what Fred, he says to me,
there is a job superintendent in Central Park.
I'll take it.
[ Laughter ]
It sounded to me like just the opportunity I was looking for.
So he said, "Whoa, there's competition for this."
So I went down to New York and I got my literary friends together
and had them write, but the word went
out that Mr. Olmsted is a literary man.
We want a practical man.
Well, you know, what happened on the vote?
I won by one vote and the deciding vote Washington Irving,
a literary man.
So I said to myself now is the chance to really go to work.
This is what I've been waiting for.
And for four years I worked as hard as I probably for the rest
of my life, but people said I worked day and night anyway
for the rest of my life.
But I had to prove myself at Central Park.
So, day after day I was up at dawn,
I stayed up half the night till
after midnight writing the plans for the foremen.
First we had 500, then a thousand,
then 2,000 workers out there.
The one big problem was Mr. Green, the controller.
He would not give the money that was necessary
to make the park what it should be.
And I felt we had to do it the right way.
Well, it turned out that we made progress despite Mr. Green.
And then, one day I got a letter from my father.
That John was not doing well at all.
He'd gone to Europe with his wife.
And then, I got a letter from my brother John, "Dear Fred,
it appears as if we will not see each other ever again.
I only have a few days left says the doctor.
The friendship we have had is the greatest
that I possibly could have treasured so much.
Say hello to the boys for me and do not let Mary suffer
when you are alive, your dearest brother John."
Well, what next?
Calvert Vaux, good to see you.
You say what?
There's going to be a competition,
a design competition for Central Park?
Yes, so I've convinced him he tells-- and you want me?
You think I can help you design the park?
No, I'm the superintendent.
I organize people.
I bring people together.
I get the work done.
You really think I'm an artist?
Well, then let's do it.
So we-- evenings for four months worked constantly.
They're developing the plan for Central Park.
There we had this great meadow, called the Sheep Meadow,
where you could look and see forever.
And then, there was a field
where the young children could come and could play ball.
And then there was a promenade with the elms
that we could envision, and then the lake.
And then on the hillside there we would have thousands
of rhododendrons and mountain laurel.
And they said what are you going to do
with the transfers roads across the park?
And we came up with the idea we would sink them.
So when you're looking
across the landscape you did not see the carriages
and the horses, but only far into the distance.
And we won the competition.
Well, things were going very well.
Mary and the three children were in Staten Island
and I would visit them and I sort of begin to have some
of the old feelings for Mary.
And we got married, there on June 13th of 1859.
And about a year later we had a child, our first child, a boy.
And I wanted to take Mary out and show the park
and I thought bring along the baby.
So we were riding in the carriage
and I was explaining things, then all of the sudden we came
to an area where I wanted to plant trees
and Mr. Green had not provided the funding and I hit the horse
and the horse went up and "Ah," I went down.
Mary, save the baby, save baby Mary.
My leg fell, it was broken, broken many places.
Well, I heard the doctor say when they got me to the house,
well, we got to amputate and another doctor says
if we amputate he'll die.
Well, finally after a couple a days they've done some sort
of operation, where now one leg was two inches shorter
than the other.
And I lay there in bed and I wanted
to have people just pick me up which I insisted they do
and strap me, there on a cart with the horse
so they could take me around
and I could watch the work that was going on.
And I did that for a long period of the time
and in the morning I meet with the foreman,
and then in evening I get their reports and I write the plans
and the directions for the next day.
Well, Mr. Green continued to tie my hands.
And I threatened I would leave.
Well, something happened in the country
that was more important in Central Park.
The nation was going to war.
What could I do in my condition?
I thought I would be good if I could be placed in charge
of the training of the *** after they were freed.
I was convinced we would win.
Well, a Reverend Bellows had another job for me,
Executive Secretary to Sanitary Commission.
And he said, this is a job for you.
This is the group that we privately funded,
it will be part of the government and we will be able
to go out and take care of the wounded and serve the dying.
Well, I took the job.
And they said I was going down to meet Mr. Lincoln.
Well, that would be a rare privilege,
certainly to meet this man who certainly everybody was talking
about that he had a power about him and that he clearly was one
that was going to be able to save the union.
Well, we got down there and I walked into the meeting
when Mr. Lincoln, quite frankly I was not that impressed.
Well, he seemed to gaze off as if he wasn't listening.
And then, I went to first battle of Bull Run
after the people were coming back from Washington.
And there what did I behold but a group
of just bedraggled troops that were all over the place.
They were stumbling.
There was no discipline.
And I wrote to my Mary and said, "Mary, the one thing
that the Sanitary Commission has to do is have some discipline
and it starts with the sergeant general."
And I wrote a letter for better or worst it get up to Lincoln.
"It is criminal weakness to install the responsibilities
of the sergeant general onto a self-satisfied,
supercilious, bigoted blackhead."
Well, it made an impact all right.
However, it took about three months
and then we got the change.
And then things from the top started again into order.
One of the most creative things I thought we did was
when the transports, the hospital transports,
in my idea was in the campaign of Richmond, we'd go down there
and we would have the ships, and then we could put the wounded
on the ships, and we did just that.
And then, the evening I would go up onto the deck into the rooms
where the wounded were, after midnight,
and I'd spend hours there.
And one nurse came up one time and said,
"Mr. Olmsted, why do you this?"
I said, because this is the reason we're all here.
These are the soldiers that are winning this war,
I trust for them we all agreed to death.
And I am doing my best to care for them.
Well, the conflicts continued with people
on the sanitary commission, I would draw up my plans
which I thought were organized.
I spend all night practically.
George Templeton Strong the diarist
from New York wrote a very interesting thing about me.
He said, "Olmsted is the most unique specimen
of humanity I have ever laid my eyes on.
He stays up all night and then he goes to sleep on the couch
and then he wakes up and has a cup of black coffee
and pickles for breakfast."
Well, I was only trying to get the job done,
so that the union would have strong forces.
However, I was exhausted as often I was
in all my work, through all my years.
And I became no one.
I knew I had to leave because I knew
that they really imparted me anymore.
Now, what was I going to do?
I received a letter from a Mister Dana.
He said that a group of business people had purchased the
Mariposa Goldmine in California,
supposedly the largest goldmine in California.
Well, that got my interest.
And so, I met with the group
and they said Olmsted we want you to direct us.
So I talk with Mary and I said,
"Mary I think this is my great opportunity financially
for you, for the family.
I went out west, went to the goldmine, worked again,
half the evening, sometimes right
through the night writing the plans.
And then, I got another message from New York.
The investors had been swindled.
Well, one thing happened out west there in California.
A person who I got to know said, "Take your horse and go camping
for a while down the Merced River."
And I went down the Merced River and there, I went over a hill
and then all of a sudden in a distance I saw these great,
great rock formations.
And going further I saw these falls, magnificent falls.
And then as I looked down in the valley there was the meandering
stream and beautiful flowers and delicate trees.
Yosemite, Gloria in excelsis.
I wrote back to Mary, what a magnificent land.
This must be preserved for all people of America.
And I saw selected Chairman of the Commission
and I wrote a long report focusing on the philosophy
and the practical reasons why we needed lands like these,
saved by the nation for all people.
And one day Mary came running up to me full of glee and joy.
And I said, "Mary, what is it?
What is it?"
"The union has won!"
I said, "Mary, get all the red, white, and blue we can
and get the children and decorate our home."
Well, a week later Mary came and I looked
at her face and she had tears.
"Mary, what is it?"
"The president is dead."
"No. No." How I miscalculated on this, the wisest,
smartest president we had ever had, who's brought
out union together and saved it,
but I know his spirit will continue.
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth,
upon this continent a new nation conceived in Liberty
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Well, I still had a big problem personally what was I going
to do?
I got a letter from Calvert Vaux
and Calvert Vaux said, "Come back.
Come back to New York.
I've got 400 acres of land in Brooklyn," and I did.
I went back and we created Prospect Park.
And I wrote in the report the purpose of a park is
to provide a feeling of relief for everyone who enters into it
and escape from the crowded
and cramped conditions of the city streets.
In other words, it is sense of enhanced freedom
for every person who enters this park.
Well, we decided to create Olmsted
and Vaux Landscape Architects and soon we were getting calls
from all over the nation and I was going up to the New England
to Maine, and Massachusetts and Connecticut,
and going out to Chicago and going down even
to the south to Atlanta.
And there was a conflict that developed and Calvert Vaux,
he wanted to just sort of stay more central
in New York and I said, "No.
The call is too great.
We have a responsibility and duty to do to the nation
to create these open free spaces," so we split.
Well, one of the first things I did was cross the border
and went up to Canada to Mount Royal and worked there
for four years and then followed out more
to create a park in Montreal.
And I got worried that my father was dying.
And I went up and I sat with my father
in his bed as he passed away.
"No kinder, gentle or generous person could have lived
on the phase of this earth," I said to myself.
And then, there were the children.
The baby died two weeks after the accident
and I had another son that died shortly after birth.
But on July 24th of 1870, a son was born
and I called him Theodore Perkins, but I called him
"boy, "around the house.
Then, four years after his birth, I changed his name
to Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. Then the work
in New York City became brutal.
Tammany Hall wanted to do this and wanted to that and even some
of my friends wanted to put him in museum
into the center of Central Park.
And I fought them tooth and nail and I won the battles then,
but H. H. Richardson, the great architect wanted me to come
to Boston and I took him on that and moved up to Boston,
but I wrote a report, spoils of the park in which
at one point I stated,
"Open space is the one thing you cannot get in buildings.
Picturesqueness, you can get.
Make you buildings are picturesque as they can be,
that is the beauty of the city.
On the other hand, the beauty of the park is of the fields
and woods and green pastures beside the still waters."
All through the 80s, we carried on.
I was called to California.
I was called by Governor Stanford
to design Stanford University.
I was called at Biltmore which became one
of the most important project for us, and Rick was growing up
and send him down there to learn
because we've created the Scientific School of Forestry.
And Pinchot, I got to go down and he became the Father
of Forestry in America.
However, there were conflicts at one time with Freddie,
Jr. He wrote to me and said, "Dad,
I don't think I can be a landscape architect."
I wrote him a 10-page letter saying,
"You must be a landscape architect,"
and told him all the reasons why.
This is the only thing I can bestow on you.
This is my life and this is the life for America
and there are people in different parts
of America that need you help.
I went to Baltimore and I've created one community there,
Sudbrook, but there're great people there and I tell you,
you could do a lot there in Baltimore, in Maryland
and many other states.
He decided that yes he would.
Then I got a letter that Charlie Brace had died.
I was so shocked.
The man who had the most worth while vocation.
And I sat down, I wrote a 20-page letter
to Elizabeth Baldwin Whitney and I recalled those great things
that she had told me and without her in my life I doubt very much
that I would have been successful and I thanked her.
And near the end of the letter, I wrote,
"I have sold being for doing."
And then, it seemed that I was losing--
remembering names to a certain degree.
So, I said that, all right, I'll talk to Rick and I'll talk
to John, the oldest brother who was now my partner,
my adopted brother, so we tried to get a grasp
on where things where.
Then they sent me to England
because they thought maybe a vacation would help out.
I got to England.
My mind at times was very clear
and I wrote letters back instructing the boys what they
should be doing.
Then, Mary one day was looking at me
and I said, "Mary, what is it?
Tell me. Calvert Vaux is dead?
How did he die?
They say suicide?
No. No." I've told them without Calvert Vaux, I am nothing.
How can this be, they have destroyed Calvert Vaux
in New York.
They ridiculed him.
I told them, they just shouldn't stay there in that brutal city.
Now, and then I was so upset that Mary took me back to Boston
and took me right up to Thoreau with John.
And with Rick, they'd build a home for me there.
But one day, yes maybe I did beat the horse
and maybe I did beat the keeper of the horse.
They took me back to Boston, but again,
they didn't go home and office.
They took me out to McLean Hospital,
and there I was at McLean.
I'd walk day and night sometimes across the fields.
What was it I said in that final report in the big park,
Franklin Park, what it not be for use and delight
at this time only, but let it be of such a work
that our descendants will thank us for it.
And someday, men will say, this, our fathers did for us.
And then one dark evening as I woke up, yes, mother, father,
brother John, I have felt the presence that disturbs me
with the joy of elevated thoughts.
A sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused,
who's dwelling places that of setting suns and the broad sky,
and the blue sea and in the hearts of man, and therefore,
I'm a still a lover of the streams and meadows and woods
and hills and mountains and trees and all that we behold
on this Green Earth, Gloria in excelsis.
[ Pause ]
[ Applause ]
>> We've just seen a wonderful performance
of Frederick Law Olmsted
by Gerry Wright and he's with me now.
Thank you very much for joining me.
>> Thank you, Angela.
>> I want to ask you a few questions about the character
and then some about the-- yourself and what you're doing
and how you got into this process.
But one of the quotes
that mentioned during your performance,
it really struck me.
I've been sold on being a-- I've sold be--
I've sold being for doing.
>> Correct.
>> Did Olmsted get a chance before he declined?
Did he a get a chance to actually be-- did he--
did he got a chance to-- because he worked so much.
>> I believe he was very self-critical and he was been,
he spent a lot of time with his children.
It wasn't that he was away from home all the time,
but he was so self-critical he felt he should have been doing
more with his children.
He thought he should be going out in nature and sitting
with nature but he would had so many demands on him
to do projects and each project he took so seriously
that it was good for the nation.
It was good for a private state but that was part of the nation.
It was good for a community.
So, he was driven for this feeling of duty
and the democratic way.
>> Did his-- did that come
from his family upbringing or what do you think?
Was that something unique to him or was it--
>> I think that his father who was a gentle person,
but he was very committed to the community.
He was committed to his church.
He was committed to community civic activities.
So, in a small way, each day, his father was part
of the community of Hartford.
He was a responsible business person and he cared obviously
so much for Olmsted that he provided these
different opportunities.
He bought a farm, and he bought another farm,
he paid for his trip to England.
He paid the price of 8,000 dollars
so he go into publishing.
So he was encouraging and enabling Olmsted.
And Olmsted I think felt such a responsibility from his father
to produce, produce because he'd been giving so much.
But also, very important, the democratic notion
that it's not just a materialistic world,
he said to his friend, Charlie Brace when he's in Germany,
"Charlie, you must come back.
We need thousands like you.
Our country is being overrun by materialism."
>> The idea of melding democracy
in the environment was important then and that was part
of how you designed some of his work, is that correct?
>> Absolutely, that's exactly correct.
It was the whole idea that the park in the center
of New York City, Central Park was open for all people.
And he actually said that sometimes it's in the summer
when the poor people don't have a chance to go away
and there won't be as many carriages as are in the spring
and the fall that I went out and I put pamphlets
out in the poor areas of the city
so that they would have the same opportunities
that the wealthy had, because it's free.
Open space is free.
>> Someone once said that he developed palace grounds
for common people and that sort of embraces that--
>> Absolutely.
I think that's the perfect example.
>> He found the healing in nature.
I've been very curious.
His father was very kind, but when he remarried,
when the father remarried, he sent Frederick away.
You've mentioned in your performance that might have been
because of a bit of friction with the stepmother?
>> Yes, that's correct.
Yes, I think that the loss of his mother I think was immense.
And I don't know whether he was cognizant
of it as a young person.
But clearly, when he took his younger brother
and they walked 16 miles to Cheshire
where their mother was born, it was like going someplace
where the spiritual presence of their mother was because that's
where she lived and grew up.
>> Yeah, yeah.
He traveled a lot.
He-- did-- much more even around the United States because he had
so many projects in different states.
Did he write a lot about that?
I know he wrote about--
in England, or was he was just working so much
that he didn't get a chance to write a lot about it?
>> He-- you're absolutely right that he was writing a lot.
And of course, the first book, Walks and Talks
of an American Farmer in England.
That was the one that inspired them and inspired other people
and that's why Charlie Brace got in the job
with the New York Times to go south.
Then he wrote three books on the economic conditions
of the slavery situation.
He was not an abolitionist.
He believed that somehow,
you have to provide economic opportunities
when *** people will going to be free and that he strived
to do because he had a--
it wasn't just he talked about things.
Now, as far as the writing is concerned, he wrote his reports
on these parks, every park he'd sit down sometimes,
all night writing the report for the park.
So, he didn't publish books after those on the south.
He would write reports for city government,
for private individuals, multitudes or reports
for Stanford, Governor Stanford, when he went out there,
multiple reports for George Vanderbilt.
We was a writer, writer, writer because he was trying
to show these are the details that are necessary if I'm going
to create a park that is acceptable to me
and acceptable to you.
>> And because he wrote, we have those records to refer to.
So, it can be duplicated and expounded upon.
Had he not written so much?
It may have-- there may have been a bit of a void
as with some other historical characters
where they did what they did but if we don't have a record,
it's not-- we don't particularly get the essence
of what they were trying to do
so that you could be done again or, as I said expounded.
>> Right, absolutely correct.
I mean, this phrase, the Genius of the Place.
I mean, like every place he went, he'd look out there
and he says other people wouldn't see it
but so he would look into what is the genius of this place.
I'm not going to just start all over a tabula rasa
and then build things, every place.
And of course, my conviction is the phrase applies
to each human being, there's a genius within everybody,
and you've just go to find that
and that's what needs to be nurtured.
Now, for Olmsted, it was the landscape that he would--
and he changed it but there was something that was natural
at the-- as the foundation that--
literally, the roots of it.
>> When you're not doing Olmsted by know that you have worked
with homeless children, tell us a little bit about some
of that work you've done.
Well, this has been the heartbeat
of my work for 52 years.
And when I came to Boston, I was not sure what I wanted to do.
But through a series of circumstances, I got involved
in working with adolescent kids and was living
with adolescent kids and then I thought
that what we needed were group homes in the city rather
than the large institutional settings
where kids were warehoused from the city.
And they were not getting education.
So, the small group home that I've been involved
with allows us to support the kid, get them up in the morning,
go the school and I could tell story after story
where kids never had that opportunity living with families
who weren't able to get them
up because they couldn't get themselves up and this is one
of the tragedies of our cities today and it still exist
and because we haven't been able to get education
into our city schools to the degree that it's needed.
So, this is the issue that I struggle now
with because I was trained in conservation
and wildlife ecology and conservation seems
to me will be almost the number one
because we don't do what Olmsted did, create open spaces,
preserve open lands, where's our environment going today.
But the inner city, I still continue to work
in and I will not stop.
I mean, they're just too much commitment
and I have kids coming up and I don't recognize them,
they're 55 years of age.
"Do you remember me Gerry?"
I said, "Give me just a first name."
"Jerome," and I said, "Jerome."
I said, "Jerome Frazier,
you were in the school when Kennedy spoke."
He says, "That was me."
We had three grads and had go into paper was three grads,
one speaker of a class.
So these are the things to me are as heart warming
as if you graduated from Harvard and I believe that we need
to develop just a wealth of young adult.
People of all ages but our young people, a commitment
for the democratic principle that the land belongs
to everyone, we need to come in and share together and we need
to share our lives together, so that kids
in the city have the best resources,
human and financial in the schools.
>> It has to do with the communicativeness
that Olmsted talked about.
Can you expound upon that a little bit more?
You mentioned it in your performance.
>> Yes, the communicativeness.
I think, I mean he comes up with these wonderful words.
You know, when I first communicativeness.
Now, for myself, it's community caring,
but I think communicativeness, it grabs you in a different way.
If I say community caring, they've heard it so many times
but communicativeness was where he would reach out.
And even though he was so opinionated
that some people would say, "Whoa,"
but he'd always be interested in what the--
where the other person was listening
where they would be a common thread
that they could work together on
and that he felt was communicativeness.
And his unfinished project was going to be this great tome,
this great book, "Barbarism and Civilization".
So, that's an unending book that humanity will never finish
from my perspective because there are always be
barbaric acts.
Each of us will do unkind things in someway but we need
to be civilized so that the civilized always has the upper
hand to keep us moving forward.
>> How did the humanities play into that?
We don't have a lot of time left but I would--
how did the humanities play into sort of bringing civility even
through the information.
For instance, even through a care that what I have learned
through Chautauqua learning about the characters,
the various historical characters that have come
through Montgomery College.
There's something to be shared from this.
I've learned about civility, the democracy,
the merging of the environment, the healing power of nature
by hearing what you have taught us about Olmsted.
Do you have some comments about some--
>> Yes, I am very enthused about the Maryland Humanities Council
and this project that's coming up to understand
about how can we be more civilized in our discourse
and the humanities I think has terrific opportunity.
I mean, as it goes back to the Greek theater, you know,
theater, what do go and what do get out of the theater?
Well, sometimes, the theater I think and get more of a message
to us then going to church because in church,
it sort of ritual sometimes.
But in theater, it can break into the heart of us
and we can be as, "Whoa, you know, that's who I am.
Whoa, wow."
And so, when we breakdown and can be accepting of ourselves
when we strayed away from the path we would like to be on,
then I think, you can have humanity.
And in art, in the theater, all these reading, literature,
this is why this program that I understand I going
to take place next year for the Maryland, overall program,
not just for Chautauqua that this is going
to be a terrific opportunity.
>> Yeah. What's next for you?
>> Well, I'll continue to do the work.
I also had this vision of 2022
when Olmsted will have his 200th birthday.
I've always tried to get people thinking about it.
And I started, well one celebration now, I said,
"Well, let's have 200."
Now, I think with all the way you can communicate these new
ways that I don't use electronically,
let's have 2022 different celebrations
in America that year.
And so, if we can get young people planting a tree
and what it grow over the next 12 years,
I think that'd being exciting project.
>> Very exciting.
Very exciting, well I'm very, very glad [Background Music]
that you brought Olmsted to us here at Montgomery College.
And I hope that you get to the 2023,
200th Anniversary celebration and continued success
in the other projects that you're doing.
It's sort of a duty and a responsibility.
>> Duty and responsibility, Olmsted would be very pleased
with the words you used.
>> Thank you.
Thank you.
And thank you very much for joining us.
You've been watching Chautauqua: Beyond Boundaries.
From the Germantown Campus of Montgomery College,
I'm Angela Rice Beemer.
Goodnight.
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