by Alan Leftridge
“I have a gift for you.”
I am fortunate that during my training seminars I have the prospect of learning ideas and techniques from the participants. During introductions, I challenge the participants to relate one thing about themselves that no one else in the group knows. Even long-time acquaintances are eager to share something new, and the stories are enlightening and often amusing. It was at a recent training when a member introduced himself and demonstrated a good example of making intellectual and emotional connections.
“My story begins with my great-great-great-grandfather, who at 10 years old accompanied his father to Philadelphia in the spring of 1862. Abraham Lincoln happened to be in Philadelphia, too.”
He scanned the group and challenged us to recall the magnitude of Lincoln’s presidency and tumultuous times.
“By chance, they encountered Lincoln in central Philadelphia. The father, anxious to give his son a chance to meet the president, approached him. The father introduced himself and his son, and they both shook Lincoln’s hand.”
He continued, “The story shifts to 40 years later when the boy, now a man, is congratulating his own son who is graduating from law school. ‘My son,’ he solemnly declared, ‘I have a gift to go along with my best wishes.’ He reached out and shook his son’s hand. ‘You have now shaken the hand that shook Abraham Lincoln’s.’ Since that day, the tradition stayed in the family, with each father passing along his gift to the next generation.”
He looked around the room again, “And so it was, when I finished college, my father presented me with the gift of the handshake. Now, I want to shake each of your hands, so that you too will have shaken the hand of the man, who shook the hand of the man, who shook the hand of the man, who shook the hand of Abraham Lincoln.”
Everyone in the seminar was delighted with his story, and I was impressed with how he connected our cognitive perceptions of Abraham Lincoln with a personal emotion.
Most frontline and nonpersonal interpretation is geared toward imparting information through words. We find it easy to construct these concrete interpretive messages because our formal schooling emphasizes and rewards acquisition of information and logic. As a result, interpreters often forgo attempting to establish meanings through emotion.
Roger Sperry won the Nobel Prize in physiology in 1981 for discovering that each hemisphere of the brain “thinks” in a different way. The left side processes written and spoken information, words, and logic. The right side of the brain establishes meanings through visualization, creativity, and emotion. Acknowledging the importance of the two ways of processing information helps us design more complete interpretive opportunities. Here is another example of making connections using the intellectual and emotional parts of the brain.
Although the calendar declares it is springtime, I acknowledge spring’s arrival with the return of broad-tailed hummingbirds. Broad-tailed hummingbirds are fascinating to me for several reasons, including: they hunt insects in flight, they will return to my property and use the same nest as last year, and they winter as far south as Guatemala. Traveling to and from Guatemala requires some of these finger-length birds weighing little more than a penny to cross part of the Gulf of Mexico. Once they begin that segment of the flight, there is no turning back. The birds must make the long trip without stopping. They often bunch along the coastline waiting for barometric pressure and weather conditions to be favorable, and then leave in mass. A mistake could bring peril. A human analogy might be when you need to make a long trip in your car while on a tight schedule. You start the engine, look at the gas gauge and calculate whether you have enough fuel to arrive at your destination without stopping for gas. You determine that you can, but without total certainty. What if you run out of gas on a deserted stretch of road? Are you willing to face the consequences of an empty tank?
Hummingbirds may not feel a sense of anxiety over their situation, but you can when you consider your own. Through personification, you can apply feelings about your situation to the birds’—and feel emotion for the difficulty they face. By providing new information concerning the broad-tailed hummingbird, I have provoked the opportunity for you to make both an intellectual connection (imagine the weight and length of the bird) and an emotional connection (applying its migration to a travel situation familiar to you).
We interpreters want to help visitors make connections that will last a lifetime. The catch is that in order to get the most from the brain, we need to target both sides. Coupling feelings with information strengthens the cognitive and emotive capabilities of the brain, providing a better opportunity for us to meet our interpretive goals.
Alan Leftridge is a contract interpretive trainer, visitor services trainer, and interpretive writer based out of the Swan Valley of Montana. Contact him at www.leftridge.com.
