Reflection: On Barnum and Abbey

            A couple of weeks ago, I presented, along with my group, and discussed snippets of work by P.T. Barnum and Edward Abbey. Recently, I’ve noticed that ever since I’ve been considering what they’ve written more often. Beginning with P.T. Barnum who made a good point about billboard advertising. This point is being made with ignoring his sexist language, as I was appalled with him bringing up, “any man with a beautiful wife or daughter would probably feel disagreeably, if he should find branded indelibly across her smooth-white forehead, or on her snowy shoulder in blue and red letters such a phrase as this: ‘Try the Jigamaree Bitters!” (82). I have always found billboards to be extremely distracting and, if I’m being frank, ugly as well. Growing up, I’ve taken multiple road trips due to moving and have glanced out the window to see the nice scenery just to find a billboard for a business having a call to action to call a number presented on it. I always thought this weird to do, since we try to eliminate the problem of texting and driving, but it must be fine if a billboard tells you to do it. I also thought it was interesting with Barnum pointing out the monstrosity of advertising in this way due to the fact that Barnum is credited with creating the first billboard for his circuses.

            Moving on to Edward Abbey, I thought his views on accessibility to state parks were a little extreme but he does raise some valid points. While I think it is valid that he raises a point that cars would overrun the parks and may be a factor in their destruction down the line, his view that we should not have sympathy or accessibility to parks for children and elderly people due to the later having “the opportunity to see the country when it was still relatively unspoiled” (428) was too extreme. There are also sick and handicapped people he doesn’t really account for with his suggestion that there should be shuttle buses if people cannot bike in the national parks.

            Abbey did make me think of how often I am in the car, whether that is on route to school or a long road trip. Last spring break I went up to Colorado with some friends and we also stopped by the Palo Alto canyon on the way up there. Even through the canyon we spent most of it in the car; part of it was that it was turning evening and another part was that we didn’t have time to hike extensively up there, but I can’t help but think that this is what Abbey was talking about with cars and parks. Even though the drive to Colorado was long, I realize I spent most of the car ride sleeping or playing on my phone instead of looking around and seeing the nature around me. By reading and presenting on Abbey, I feel like I’m more conscious of this and in the future I will want to use cars less and experience nature more.