The Itch is Back

[Cynthia Gentry]

Can you imagine being a 6-year-old girl and climbing into this nest with your best friends? I can see covering the floor of the nest with some kind of soft grasses or even blankets... I'd love for them to be able to bring big pillows and have a spend-the-night party in there. It's brilliant.  It's on a blog from Teesha Moore. Apparently she stumbled upon this wonder in Big Sur somewhere. Who could have built it? I wish I knew.

I stumbled upon this picture when I was supposed to be working. I can't help it.  Well, I kind of am working, but I float away on tangents thanks to this Internet thing, and now I've discovered something called Pinterest.com. People "pin" cool pictures of things they love. Try focusing on your work with that around. I entered "treehouse" in the search box and POOF! - three hours are gone. Do you blame me? Look at this nest.

Perhaps you've heard me mention this before, but the quote for my senior picture in my high school annual was, "I meant to do my work today, but a brown bird sang in the apple tree." These days they call it "ADD" like there's something wrong with wonder, and imagination, and dreaming, and floating away on a cloud. 

Oh, wait. I do have things to do. Lucky for me, my job is cool things like this tree house. Now, we've all got to show our communities that we CAN make playgrounds that are unique, inspiring, beautiful, really fun, safe, and that don't look like every other playground in the city. 

The itch in the title is the way I get when I get an image in my brain and I want desperately to build it. 

One day soon educators, administrators, park departments, community leaders and the like will all realize that serious times call for serious measures...... MAGNIFICENCE is what is required to slay the onslaught of mediocrity and fear. Magnificence and wonder.

We must scratch that itch to create wonder-filled things for our children and ourselves.