Local poet remembers the Natural History Club of Turner

By Paula Varney Anderson

“The Natural History Building of Turner Center, Maine”

A remembrance in honor of Hazel Talbot Leavitt and all her friends who enriched our love of nature.

I remember childhood through this place, our grandmothers
selling cupcakes, pies, and punch. Our mothers and aunts
and grandmothers too, bringing a variety of vases — containers filled
with flowers and fauna; milk cans, buckets, and precious
heirlooms spilling with the seasons best, arranged
artistically for the day – The Annual Flower Show.

I remember the children running around, picking violets,
being reminded not to go out back and over the bank; and also
themselves, ourselves, bringing our “cigar case” miniature
worlds, our “arrangements” of painted or crayoned,
or collaged back grounds, and the boxes filled
with moss, grass, twigs, tinfoil ponds, and little scenes depicting
everyday, life in nature.

It was a gentle, intelligent, botanical celebration, our introduction
to the joys of natural history, by The Natural History Club,
of Turner, Maine, a Treasure.

We remember.