April 2022 Director’s Corner

“The commonality between science and art is in trying to see profoundly – to develop strategies of seeing and showing.” – Edward Tufte

This month’s CRC Roundtable focused on the way that “seeing and showing”, via storytelling in words and photographs, furthers our intentions and actions towards the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort.

Recent events across the world have pointed out how easily we can become overwhelmed by big, global problems. When facing mounting bad news, we struggle with how to take the first step and contribute to solutions. From what I’ve experienced, art often provides an entrance ramp onto the reflection and action highway that our usual daily forms of communication simply don’t.

I’m reminded of a conversational blindspot from a wonderful book by Judith Glaser titled Conversational Intelligence. Blindspot number four of five is the assumption that we remember what others say when we actually remember what we think about what others say. Researchers have found out that we drop out of conversations every 12-18 seconds to process what people are saying. We often remember what we think about those words rather than the words themselves. In other words, our internal listening and dialogue trumps the other person’s speech, often meaning that we get caught in our own loop of thinking. But stories and visuals seem to leapfrog this process and allow us to be simply moved – to quiet ourselves long enough that we can hear our hearts and be open to a different message.

These two speakers have spent a long time applying their gifts of storytelling and photography to the Chesapeake Bay, both individually and in collaboration. They create quiet spaces that allow us to pause, if even momentarily, and listen to our hearts. Our speakers’ roles in conveying stories about natural beauty, culture, and history of this extraordinary place are crucial. History helps us paint a detailed picture of where we stand, and I think that only then can we imagine where we can go.

Our March speakers led us along the edge of the Chesapeake, where water and land meet. With beautiful photography and poignant memoirs, we journeyed through marshes and island communities to explore the essence of the Chesapeake Bay.