Having just returned from Wales I would like to share with you two stories. Although we are the Puffin Foundation West, we had never seen puffins in their natural habitat. We missed them on the coast of Ireland a few years ago; we have not been to Alaska or seen them in Maine so, seeing puffins – even seeing one – was on the to do PAIL list. We drove from London to Cardiff and decided to visit Skomer Island about 110 miles west of the capital to board a boat to take us to the island which has provided a fantastic habitat for ground nesting birds. The Puffins had just returned to the island and we were actually on one of the first small boats that had passengers this season that saw thousands of puffins…and, thousands, and YES, I cried. An accurate census of puffins is difficult, but the best estimates indicates that there may be about 10,000 breeding pairs on Skomer which is managed by the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales and over 300,000 historic burrows where they lay their one egg a year that will become a puffling around July should the parents, who mate for life, find enough food whilst waiting for the egg to hatch. They actually take turns sitting on the egg as each respective parent searches for food in the sea. The puffins have no predators like snakes on the island, and their only fear are from some birds of prey. The pufflings, by the way, are ushered into the sea at about six weeks by their parents with a sink or swim attitude and their threat comes from being eaten by arctic grey seals who also make some of the outcroppings around the island their summer home.
Two days later we took off again from Cardiff to a town called Aberfam. We had given a small grassroots grant to a composer this year named Laura Siersema who has composed an elegy for the 116 students and 28 adults who lost their lives 50 years ago in this small mining town when a tidal wave of coal sludge rushed down the mountain and buried the town’s school. 144 persons lost their lives, an entire generation of children. Although the National Coal Board was found 100% responsible for this tragedy…NO ONE WENT TO JAIL. Mark and I visited the Memorial Garden erected on the site of the school and found that in 1997 Queen Elizabeth planted a tree in honor of those lives lost. We also drove around this very narrow hilly tiny town looking for a civic authority in which to leave with them a copy of the front page article Laura’s work which also had historic pictures. The town was so depressed and small we only found a bar and two churches and a convenience store that had the town’s POST OFFICE within. I walked in and there in a red shirt was the official POST OFFICE MISTRESS and I explained that we were here to pay our respects on this 50th anniversary to the town and all the lives lost and to leave her a copy of the article with her so the town knew that others too remembered! I leave you here with two PDF’s that speak about the disaster and Ms. Siersema’s work. PLEASE READ ABOUT THIS TRAGEDY. Her piece is written for 7 pianos and picks and shovels.
It is a project that is sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts and you too can make a donation
https://www.nyfa.org/fstransaction/pay/0dfbf35b-5e69-4267-af4f-4d2818861176.
