4 posts tagged “whispering giant”

We're getting into the home stretch for the video release of "Peter Toth and the Trail of the Whispering Giants," the film I made about Pete's work on Waokiye. In the meantime, we interviewed friends, fans and others and came up with a nice little documentary. CreateSpace/Amazon is finishing up on the final production end and they should be available for sale soon. In the meantime, here's the clip from YouTube: 

  https://www.createspace.com/267617

Once again, a great time was had at Cabot's Pueblo Museum on June 6. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, Cabot's is one of the desert's treasures, and their annual fundraiser is always a great time for a great cause. Getting your picture taken with a cute burro, in this case miniature donkey Romeo - and the disembodied hand of Galena, Don Reed in the Hawaiian shirt, Jane Pojawa with the big smile, and native ceramicist Tony Soares in the back row with yours truly - is just one of the many perks. It has been just great to see Cabot's Pueblo Museum become the center of Desert Hot Springs over just the past couple o' years and we certainly wish them all the best in the future.

 

Folks, you know I'm a huge fan of woodcarver Peter Toth. Toth has traveled to every single state to carve a giant head that is representative of the indigenous people in that area.

I've been covering our local "Indian Monument," Waokiye pretty extensively in previous posts. Waokiye just got some much-needed restoration work done in February and I'm going to be releasing the video of that work in a couple o' weeks.

Now, as I said before, I'm a big fan of the Whispering Giants, but that is nothing compared to Bonnie and David Schumaker; they literally plan their trips around going to see the Giants, and have "bagged" most of them. Dave has set up a beautiful website with photos and stories about all the Giants they've collected. The Schumakers planned a trip to Hawaii to get one of the last ones on their list.

When this message from Dave came across my digital desk, I just about fell out of my chair! This

Giant needs some help fast - people of Hawaii, you need to do something about this horrible situation! "The second day, armed with pre-researched location directions, we drove to find the statue," he said. "Asking a local, we found, to our dismay, that the statue and the house it was in front of, had been demolished. I talked with a person that lived across the street and he told me to talk with the man who lived next door to the statue. Finding and talking with that man revealed to me that just maybe the contractor had secretly saved the statue!

We drove to a small northern island town and asked around. A man directed us to a man who carved small statues for sale.

Yes, he had seen it and he told us how to get there. His directions were confusing and we ended seven miles away before we asked again. A man who was at this place finally said, “follow me”, and he drove us back to where we started. He pulled over at the site and got out and came over and said, “I can’t believe it is gone!” He thought maybe they had laid the statue flat on the ground, so we walked across a field looking for it. We came to a dirt road and followed it about a block. We spotted the back of the log and when we arrived at the front of it, there he was, in all his glory. Standing in the middle of a compost pile! We called the contractor for more information concerning the fate of the statue, and as of this writing have not heard back from him.

- Dave & Bonnie"

Maui Pohaku Loa, we're wishing you the best. Hang in there - it ain't over til it's over.

Dave Schumaker 

 

 

As I mentioned in my "Waokiye" post http://ravenjake.vox.com/library/post/waokiye-and-the-trail-of-the-whispering-giants.html, an artist, Peter Toth, used to drive around the country carving giant Indian heads. He did at least one in each state - including Alaska and Hawaii - and a couple more in Canada. He did this mainly as a way to raise awareness about Native Americans and point out, quite rightly, that we are on Indian land; no matter what state of the Union you're in, an indigenous American was there first.

Now this body of work is collectively called "The Trail of the Whispering Giants." You can check out descriptions of the work in the Smithsonian archives:http://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=121763SJ4T822.1551&profile=ariall&uri=link=3100006~!209292~!3100001~!3100002&aspect=Browse&menu=search&ri=2&source=~!siartinventories&term=Toth%2C+Peter%2C+1947-+%2C+sculptor.&index=#focus

And then there are other folks who make it their business to follow the Trail of the Whispering Giants, "collecting" the giants on their travels. David Schumaker http://www.dcschumaker.com/default.html is one such fellow, Bob Clenandin ais another and you can also find some waymarkers who are doing a terrific job of pinpointing exactly where these guys are at http://www.waymarking.com/cat/details.aspx?f=1&guid=8fbd270d-3a97-42ab-8631-b73cf6c32335&wo=True&sg=56bdf13c-28aa-49aa-89bf-14fb69a3a46d And Flickr has a couple of categories for shutterbugs who can't resist a good-looking model that doesn't move http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Peter%20Toth&w=all

Wolf Toth isn't "done" yet - now that the giants are getting on a bit, they need repairing and Waokiye is slated for some fairly major elective surgery in November 2008. So to that end, over here at the Raven Jake Command Center, where we're very fond of this project, my lovely sidekick has been compiling a Google Map of Whispering Giants. Now this isn't the work of any one researcher - we're shaking the bushes and leaving no stone unturned. The geocatchers have done the best job with finding them, Dave Shumaker takes the best photos of them and the Smithsonian does the best job of describing them - and about 20 other people have picked up the slack and filled in the missing pieces of the puzzle. As more info becomes available, we'll keep updating for the latest on the Whispering Giant circut.

Here are a sampling of photos (that I didn't take) of some of the Whispering Giants:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=107348785646573726339.000453306dab0e2d89264&ll=41.376809,-113.203125&spn=56.497569,105.644531&z=3