The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

Carthage, Jasper County

Discussion

August 3, 2008

Jo Ellis: Carver's life etched on stage

CARTHAGE, Mo. — August promises to continue a summer of entertaining events in Carthage. This weekend, “Listening to the Still Small Voice: The Story of George Washington Carver,” a one-man play written by Paxton J. Williams, executive director of the Carver Birthplace Association, will be performed at Stone’s Throw Dinner Theatre with Williams in the title role.

The play follows Carver from the time he was born into slavery in Civil War-era Missouri to his life as a famed scientist, educator and humanitarian, and the beloved “Wizard of Tuskegee.” He affected, and was affected by, such historical figures as Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington, Henry Ford, Henry Wallace, Thomas Edison, Will Rogers, Joseph Stalin and Mahatma Gandhi.

“This performance will certainly show that there is more to Dr. Carver than his 300-plus uses for the peanut,” Williams said.

Williams is a graduate of Iowa State University (also Carver’s alma mater), the University of Michigan and the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, where he studied as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar. While in England, he was a staff member of the U.K.’s largest arts center devoted to African, Afro-Caribbean and Asian arts and culture.

There is no question of his forgetting his lines, as he has performed the play more than 100 times in England and 17 U.S. states since 2000. Williams has been in two previous Stone’s Throw productions, playing Hoke Colburn in “Driving Miss Daisy” and Tom Robinson in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

The two performances are scheduled for 7 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday, with each to be followed by a dessert reception and a live auction of contributed items to jointly benefit Stone’s Throw and the Carver Birthplace Association. Auctioneers will be White Oak Auction Service and Kip Smith Auction Service. Tickets are $12.50 per person. Call (417) 358-9665 or (417) 358-7268 or e-mail bbell23@ecarthage.com for reservations, and come prepared to bid in this worthy cause.

Puzzle exhibit

All month, the Powers Museum will have on exhibit a display of jigsaw puzzles from the 1910-1930s era. Of special interest to Carthage residents are the “Topsy Turvy” jigsaw puzzles that were made here by Perry and Lorraine Riley when they lived on South Main Street and later on Grant Street.

These were unique in that they could be custom-ordered with personal names or shapes according to a customer’s special interests or hobbies; or customers could ask for a favorite artist’s print to be transformed into a puzzle.

Just as we rent movies today for home entertainment, jigsaw puzzles could be rented in the 1930s through a lending library at Ramsay’s Department Store for those who could not afford to purchase them. At about a penny per piece (a 300-piece puzzle would cost $3), the handmade, custom puzzles don’t seem expensive now, but remember, it was the Depression.

Possibly, with today’s high prices and lost jobs, we have come full cycle, for in that same 1930s tradition, the Powers Museum is opening a puzzle-lending library with donated contemporary puzzles that can be lent for a period of three weeks to school groups, families and senior centers.

If you prefer getting your hands on an “original,” visit the Powers Museum any Tuesday in August and test your visual spatial skills on a “Topsy Turvy” puzzle from the 1930s, or even earlier puzzles made by Parker Brothers Co. Michelle Hansford, museum curator, said that if visitors cannot join in the fun on a Tuesday, there could be an opportunity to participate on other days, “if you will just ask.”

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Carthage, Jasper County
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