My Life on a Wall

One day in the late 1970s, Mrs. Smalley, a favorite teacher at Hagan Elementary School in Poughkeepsie, New York, assigned her third grade class a group project: create a diorama about nomads.

Our group’s diorama scene featured Aboriginals communities in Australia. This may be a false memory, but I also recall talking about the Mongols in Mongolia and the Bushman of the Kalahari. Decades later, I found a “news clipping” featuring our project, but, to be honest, my little stuffed animal Roo from Winnie-the-Pooh was my primary reminiscence from that period of life.

Along with Roo, a nomadic spirit was my life-long lesson from third grade. I would fall in love and live in Australia for a bit. I would then travel across Mongolia on the Trans-Mongolian Railroad. Across the remote Steppes, I drank too much homemade vodka and carried home a pair of Mongolian riding boots and a Samovar gifted to me by some Russian traders. Later, I also would see the deserts and plains of Africa - although not the Kalahari. Not Yet.

The brown cardboard backdrop of our nomadic diorama evolved into a built-in bookcase that I designed. It’s littered with the trophies of my nomadic wanderings as well as heirlooms from our family’s ancestry and my childhood.

I call this diorama “My Life on a Wall”.

Image taken with CampSnap Pro