Preservation and Current Use
Buck herself was heavily involved in the preservation and restoration of the house. In the book My Mother's House she shared her vision for the museum:
If it (the house) ever lives again, and God grant it may for my Mother's memory, I hope it will live a new life, not for myself or for my family but for people. I would like it to belong to everyone who cares to go there. From that home has come so much life - that it ought never to die or fall into ruin. For my ancestors, it provided shelter and home in a new land, a house where they lived their new lives with traditional dignity... For my mother, it provided a home, living forever in her thought and memory, though she made dwelling places in a far country. For me it is a living heart in the country I knew was my own but which was strange to me until I returned to the house where I was born. For me that house was a gateway to America. May it live again, my Mother's house, and may it prove for others, too, a gateway to new thoughts and dreams and ways of life.
Guided tours of the house are available May 1 - November 1, Mondays, and Thursdays through Saturday, or by appointment. The site also hosts various events throughout the year, including:
- The Annual Pearl S. Buck International Writers’ Workshop Community members and aspiring authors learn about the art of writing from experts in the field through creative explorations of Pearl's novels.
- Hillsboro's annual Little Levels Heritage Fair, the last weekend in June, showcases the history and heritage of the Little Levels region through arts and crafts displays, food, music, a parade, rodeo and youth horse events, and other activities.
Read more about this topic: Pearl S. Buck Birthplace
Famous quotes containing the words preservation and, preservation and/or current:
“The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self.... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“The preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.”
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
“You will belong to that minority which, according to current Washington doctrine, must be protected in its affluence lest its energy and initiative be impaired. Your position will be in contrast to that of the poor, to whom money, especially if it is from public sources, is held to be deeply damaging.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)