 Hi, thank you for tuning in to ACMI, Children's, Stories and Art. Alright, today we have a wonderful story about Plum Island, a place just north of Boston, which is filled with adventures and creative scenes and just, oh, it's going to be so much fun to explore this story, and this is my little friend the sequel, and you're going to see him in some amazing pictures and places, and I'm going to believe that I got him to sit on top of a car and to be in places you wouldn't expect, so let's open the book and go on up to Plum Island in Newburyport, alright, here's the book that I wrote two or three summers after visiting a friend on Plum Island, and I just fell in love with it, and summer isn't over, so there's plenty of time to go visit Plum Island. Plum Island is a magical place to explore on a hot summer day. It's filled with visible and hidden secrets to enchant all who visit for a day or decide to stay forever. Just pack up your car and allow a friendly seagull to guide you, and guess what? There's one right there in my hand, not this little fellow, but as you drive over the drawbridge from Newburyport, a panorama of welcoming signs and sounds flood your senses. The colorful Plum Island sign, just a few steps ahead, assures you that your adventure has begun. Upreezes, scented by salty sea air, blow through the open window of your car, while tall clumps of grasses growing at the edge of the road leading to the beaches wave to you as you pass. And there's little gully sitting right there in the grasses. Their spindly fingers point towards an old deserted house which stands alone. It's painted with layers of faded pink paint which crumbles and peels each year, adding character as a house filled with mysterious stories yet to be told. Father along the road, spreading out along the marshes, a cluster of cottages and houses come into focus overlapping rooftops and balconies and backyard treasures remind one of a playful village. Children may have built with their topsy-turvy imaginations a perfect blend of carefree living and fun imagining having all those sticks in front of your house. People would stop and say, I bet they have fun inside there. Just before you reach the beach, you catch a glimpse of a small shop and eating spots where the locals and tourists enjoy having food and drinks while listening to music and sharing a few concocted sea shantytales. Then when you reach the beach, you throw off your shoes and walk barefooted in the sand heading towards the ocean. It's an aha moment. There she is. She didn't fade into a spell cast over the area during the winter hurricanes. Sitting out across the horizon, the ocean sparkling blue waters which display an array of motorboats and families. Their sunbathing and splashing in the waves, they invite you to stay awhile. Her sandy beaches reflect the stress she's endured for years, yet she sends a message to you that she'll never succumb to the torrential forces of nature. She'll always be there to remind you of her indomitable spirit. That's the way it is on Plum Island, year after year. Now, as you lay on the beach under an umbrella, you hear the cries of your gull once again. Yes, another place he wants you to explore on the island. It's the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge. Your territory reserved for 300 species of birds that inhabit Plum Island. Along the way, you pass colorful houses, rooftops and patios, painted purple and orange, and blue and white, entryways accented by beautiful beds of flowers. They're all there too. And up until now, your vision of the island has been experienced with your wide open eyes. Everything tells you that in order to discover the secret world of the Plum Island birds, a shift must be made. You need binoculars and a camera. As you enter the refuge, you see bird watchers carefully scanning the horizon and treetops for birds with their high powered lenses and photographic equipment. Each day, rare birds appear to be photographed and shared with another rare species, the bird-watching folk. If the birds could speak, we might hear them chirping or squawking out these messages. Oh, it's just fine if you take my picture, but please don't paint me on a plate or a teacup. Promise me. Oh no! How did I get myself into this stick fix? I'm not vain, I'm on a photo shoot, guarding my bedazzling egret plumage secret. Hey, you want to see my tongue? I just don't share it with everybody, but I'll let you see it. You keep walking through the bird refuge until you come to an observation tower named Hellcat Tower. You climb to the top of the sturdy metal structure and there you are, feeling as if you are standing on top of nature's world of breathtaking beauty. Oh, if you go there, absolutely climb that tower. And below the tower, as the Parker River gently undulates through the reeds and catanine tail, something catches your eye. Amazingly enough, the Blue River and Green Reeds have conspired to create the design of a floating bird. It's surreal. Look at that. Looks just like a big duck or a goose. It's floating in the grasses. You realize that the sun will soon be setting and there's one last place you'd like to explore at the opposite end of the island. Here's little gully. On your way to the Plum Island lighthouse, you pass a tower of handmade birdhouses attached to a streetlight pole and are reminded of the cleverness and fun-loving natures of the islanders. Look at those. And then when you reach the lighthouse, you're surprised to find it's sitting on a grassy plot of land, far from the ocean. It is rich with history, which includes being moved inland. You climb the stairs and have one last awe-inspiring view of Plum Island from the lighthouse tower, way up there. As you pack up your car and say goodbye to your seaworthy guide, he lingers on top of your car and then flies back to the ocean to join his family. Your day of exploration feels so complete. You head back over the bridge, feeling plump as a plum, all filled up with the visible and hidden delights you have discovered on Plum Island. You are certain you will return again and again. Here's little gully in the boat. It's the end of the story, but it's not the end of the fun that we might have because I have all kinds of ideas for you. What if you were to set up in your yard little places, just like all those birdhouses on that pole where people would stop and say, oh, these people must be playful in having fun in their house? So let's take a look and I'll share with you some ideas I thought of, which would be so easy for you to create. Okay? Be right back. Stay right there. Okay, here we are at a table filled with ideas for you or things that you can do, easy things that you could do to make your home, your front yard, your deck, your steps in your house, whatever, a fun place to look like there's fun going on inside. Now here's a little boat, is this not cute? That was kind of like the one at the end of the story and here's a little bear sitting on it. Now what if you put this on the stairs of your house and just every day rotated notes like have a good day or come over and play one day or we've got fun going on at 12 o'clock this afternoon. Come see what it is. You could put on a little play or do something, but this would be a cute little setup to put on your porch. Here's another idea. Remember all the birdhouses all stacked up on that pole. I don't know how they got them all there, but here's a birdhouse I made. And then I found this at this giveaway box and that would be the second one I'd put on my tree and then maybe I'd find some little birds or I'd make them and then I'd have a tree that had three little birdhouses on it. Wouldn't that be kind of cute? I think so. So then here's another idea. I love making things out of natural objects. Now these are just sticks. Kind of look like nothing standing up, but if you spread them you can make like a teepee and you could have a teepee village right in your front yard and then you could stick little animals in it and then you could write a little sign and say, want to come over to my house and help expand the stick village and people could bring their little animals and leave them. Now right on spy pond right now there is something that looks kind of like this on a bigger scale and it's right along the bike path and I created it with a fairy village for kids to come and make little stick trees and they've done this and there is a whole village there. You could have one in your own front yard. Would that not be cute? So we've got this and then here's another idea. You know what, in a month or so Halloween is coming up. What if you had a little Halloween pumpkin and you put it on your front steps and every week from now until then you set up some ideas and one thing you might do is put a little sign and put it in here. I didn't make the sign, but you say we're going to have a ghost taunt at Saturday afternoon at two o'clock and then kids come over and then you make a whole lot of ghosts and then you have kids make little ghosts and you put them on sticks and then you plant them all over your yard and then you have a little ghost taunt. Would that not be fun? I think so. I'd love to come if you did. So I'm going to put these right in here and here's another idea. You could have kids come over and paint rocks and you could have them in the little pumpkin and then outside and say on another Saturday come over and let's paint a spooky rock and then you put all kinds of colors orange and black and put a little weird message like big boohoo or whatever you want. You kids always have great ideas. So that would be a fun idea. And then people would, you could start collecting stones right now and then have them make a stone and then bring them back. And there's a garden right by the ballpark that I took these away from because I created a garden, a weaving garden. You may have gone there and if you haven't, take a walk there and get ideas for things that you could do in your own yard that have been done there. And that's where these rocks, as I said, had come from. This is another great idea. All along the bike path there are rocks. I collected many of them and others did too. And you can make a cairn village. Cairns are stacks of rocks and they have done this for ages historically. And you could have these beautiful cairn statues in your yard or on your steps. And then you could take a little animal, one of your little pets, and then put it right near. What do you think of my cairn? And all kinds of great things you can do with natural objects and that's what I would love for all of you to do because that's exactly what they do on Plum Island. And I have one more thing to share with people who are watching. Here is a wonderful book and it was created by neighbors of mine on Linwood Ave. I live on Spy Pond and they live right up the street. And they are the most creative, fun-loving, wonderful family. And they wrote this whole book. It's called Authentic Fulfillment. Creative Practices, Stories, and Life Lessons. And inside, this might be a book your parents want. There are all kinds of ideas for making family life fun. And on the back you can see this is the house, their front door. And they have this great sign up at the top. It says the wildest dreams and they have flowers growing and statues in their yard. They're a wonderful example of people that like to do the kinds of things that they do on Plum Island. So you can order this book on Amazon. And it's called Authentic Fulfillment by Anne and Christopher Elinger. And you can also buy my book, which has been there for a couple years, Exploring Plum Island by Peggy Benner. We hope you've enjoyed the show. Stay tuned for more. Bye. And have fun creating right in your own front yard. Bye.