Julie Tharp: Marshfield Cultural Fair
In an effort to put world cultures in some sort of numerical perspective, Ms. Tharp said we should imagine the population of the world as a village of 1000. If that were the case, 584 villagers would be Asians, 124 Africans, 95 Europeans, 84 Latin Americans, 55 Soviets, 52 North Americans, and 6 Australians/New Zealanders.
In this village, there would be 329 Christians, 178 Moslems, 167 “non-religious”, l32 Hindus, 60 Buddhists, 45 atheists, 3 Jews, & 86 of all other religions. One third of the villagers would be children, half below the poverty level and half not immunized. Only one-third of the villagers would have access to clean drinking water. Half of the adults in this village are illiterate.
Julie asked us, what do we make of this information? How do we react to it? The Marshfield Cultural Affair, Julie said, is an attempt to help us connect to these demographics. The Fair provides an opportunity for celebrating other cultures, for distributing basic social justice information, and coming together in “neighborly celebration.”
The fair provides a variety of international entertainment including belly dancing, mariachi, river dance clogging, and Mexican dance. Children are entertained by story tellers and puppet shows. Attendees will be exposed to the lovely strains of Scottish bagpipers and fiddlers.
We can also acquire valuable skill sets, such as sari-wrapping, henna painting, and feng shui. Many displays will provide information from all corners of the world. But the best part may be the many international foods available from vendors. This year’s Cultural Fair will be held February 22 at UW-Marshfield/Wood County.
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A member of Rotary since 1987, Georgette has been deeply involved in our international outreach via water purification, books and computers to South America, our world community service committee. Very much a pioneer, Georgette was our club's first woman president (1997-98) and is the first woman to receive the Service Above Self award in 2007. Georgette is a graduate of Goddard College in Vermont. She taught for 17 years at UW-Marshfield/Wood County. Now in private business, she serves as an investment manager specializing in social-conscious investments as well as retirement planning. She has been married to Don Beyer since 1985.
