This web page is my final project for the class Earth Centered Children
in the Virtual Age which I took at the Residential
College in the University of Michigan
in Ann Arbor, Michigan during Fall Term 1998. Earth Centered Children,
taught by Professor Elizabeth Goodenough, explored the secret spaces of
children through literature and first-hand experience with local kids,
and the development of childhood through history. This seminar culminated
with a Symposium
on the Secret Spaces of Childhood which was held at the University of Michigan
November 13-14, 1998.
My final project draws on autobiographical material~ stories and photographs~
and fantastical elements. I have brought it all together here on
the Internet, where the non-linear nature of the World Wide Web does better
justice to my work than a bound book would. As the name of my course
elucidates, we are in the Virtual Age. It is time we begin to understand
and embrace this new facet of our world, for the Virtual Age is affecting
all of us, the children especially~ and it is not going away.
Herein I have attempted to create a tale and a world reminiscent of childhood from a now adult perspective. We were all children once, we have these memories. Yet we are fascinated with childhood and children as if it were an alien culture we were studying. No~ it is in our back and front yards, at the dinner table, in old boxes of school papers, at the grocery store, in photoalbums, in the memories of our families, in our own dreams. It is time now to re-explore, re-discover, re-claim the wonder and beauty of childhood.