Acadia National Park in Maine consists of roughly 41,000 acres of land in all its forms of diversity: There are granite cliffs that lay barren the way the side of a mountain looks after a construction crew has come by. On the hilly parts, there are evergreens--spruce, fir trees, pine, hardwoods. If you stand for a little bit and take a whiff, you can smell the hint of amber. There are 500 different types of wildflowers--most of them yellow and purple. Birds and tadpoles mingle in harmony.

Human beings have always been attracted to all that qualifies as the biggest, the mostest, the winningest, but Acadia challenges this very notion of superlatives: Nothing in the park really stands out in that manner. There a rivers, but they are not the longest rivers; there are caves, but not the deepest caves, and there are mountains, but not the tallest mountains. Instead, small lakes invite you to stand still and reflect as they do, and trees invite you to rest under their shade.

All of this is a gift, the guidebook states. Acadia National Park is a gift by nature, but it is also a gift by individuals to other generations. Over the years, individuals bought plots of land from the area that Samuel de Champlain in 1604 christened "L'Isle des Monts Deserts"--Island of barren mountains--to save it from development or settlement. Eventually, these individuals had the foresight to donate the land to the government to create the first (and second most-visited) national park. Various individuals--wealthy, white--built carriage roads through the park to facilitate travel to the various park attractions, but to keep cars out. They built bridges because they liked bridges, and turned them over to the government to preserve and keep up for the enjoyment of countless generations and individuals--strangers, really--to come. They--the Rockefellers, the Roosevelts, the Vanderbilts, and others--had the foresight to leave a little piece of heaven that, the introductory video implied, we ought to be grateful for.

It is difficult to draw any morals from this: The ability to engage in this "stewardship" was certainly limited to wealthy, white, landowners with the means and the wherewithal and connections to arrange for the creation of a national park, and it is questionable whether they really did so entirely for altruistic reasons--until a great fire destroyed them, many had built vast and private mansion in the area, essentially turning the entire plot of land into a country club. Nevertheless, their desire to "leave a better world for their children" is a very powerful rhetorical argument for social change that is difficult to oppose.

As our multicultural world undergoes vast growing pains and increasingly becomes intercultural, progressive social change has not cast itself in the language of stewardship and leaving the world a better place for their children--it has always been an afterthought if mentioned at all. Mostly, oppressed groups and disadvantaged minorities--the ones forced to undergo a hand-to-mouth experience--have neither the chance nor the opportunity to think in terms of coming generations when the present generation is still concerned with fighting for equal pay for women or equal representation for minorities, for example. Stewardship and the forward-looking philosophy then, perhaps, is something to be turned to only when the present needs have been fulfilled.

But this is not true. To cast the battle for social justice in terms of stewardship and in terms of leaving the world a better place for future generations might be a better strategy for getting equality and equity now. Arguments for social justice have more appeal when they are not about splitting the pie evenly so that all members at the table will be able to eat, but when they are about splitting the pie evenly so that the children of those at the table will be able to eat. Suddenly the stakes are higher, and more appealing. By casting arguments for social justice in terms of the future, and not simply the present, we invoke our "common destiny" and those in power and those out of power share a common goal.

At Inthefray.com, stewardship is part of our mission. Ours is a kind of intellectual stewardship--our articles, our photos, our stories, our poems are all published in the hopes of providing the rhetoric and the arguments which future readers might use in their arguments and appeals and debates so that they might make this world a fairer place, for now, and for the future. We invite you to help us in our mission by reading, sharing, and reacting to our work.

Alexander Nguyen
President, Inthefray.com
Bar Harbor, Maine (September 1)

Mailbag

Where would you send your kids?

Regarding "Bolton Hill 21217," by Nicole Leistikow (Identify, April 2002)

I read with interest your article on the parents in Bolton Hill who are having to make tough decisions about their children's education. I, too, live in Baltimore, and am having a real struggle when it comes to where I should send my son Myles (he's two).

While I don't buy into the hype of putting a two-year-old on a "fast track" to Yale, I don't feel like making Myles's education into a social experiment--do I just throw up my hands and take the easy road by putting him into private schools? Unfortunately, I think that's the road I'm going to travel. I think it would be unfair to my son to compromise his education just to make a point--to stand for the city's failing schools. At a recent neighborhood gathering, we were talking about schools--not one of the parents in the group sent or is sending his or her child to public schools.

I don't think it's fair, but what do you do when you're given the choice of a good education for your child or a bad one? A school with active parents who care about the children or a school with parents who never make an appearance unless it's to pick up their child for discipline problems?

Thanks for the article--it definitely made me think.

Carol Ott
Barre Circle, Baltimore, Maryland
csott@csottdesign.com

Stewardship by the people

Story Index