Read My Pins (24 page)

THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.

Speaking at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, Earth Day, 1998. On the opposite page is a group of environmental advocates.

Grasshopper, Landau;

cicada, Iradj Moini;

fly with pearl, Iradj Moini, green ladybug, Sandor;

two blue horseflies, designer unknown;

green, purple, and blue beetle, Kenneth Jay Lane.

In 2008, I was invited to participate in an excursion to the Arctic along with an eclectic boatload of scientists, academics, businesspeople, philanthropists, musicians, and my grandson David. The sponsors were the National Geographic Society and the Aspen Institute. The theme was climate change; the scenery included melting ice and worried polar bears. Although others brought back photos and T-shirts, I returned with a pin. The gift of Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of ocean physics, and his wife, Stefanie, a jewelry maker, the pin is shaped like a
C
with a white pearl attached at the top and bottom. The letter represents carbon; the round pearls are
O
for oxygen. Together, they symbolize carbon dioxide, a major cause of global warming. With each pin sold, the Rahmstorfs are able to buy and retire a ton of CO
₂
from the European Union Emissions Trading System, thus reducing global emissions by that amount.

There is one other pin that is in a category by itself.

In the fall of 2006, I spoke at the D-Day Museum in New Orleans, at an event delayed for a year because of Hurricane Katrina. This gave me an opportunity to look around the city, large parts of which remained in ruins. I was saddened by the contrast between the museum—which celebrated America at its best—and the shabby treatment accorded to the residents of one of our country’s most beautiful and historic cities.

At the reception following my speech, a young man bearing a small box approached me. Inside the box was a pin. “My mother loved you,” he explained, “and she knew that you liked and wore pins. My father gave her this one for their fiftieth wedding anniversary. She died as a result of Katrina, and my father and I think she would have wanted you to have it. It would be an honor to her if you would accept it.” I am not often speechless, nor am I quick to tear up, but this gift pushed me to the brink. The young man’s father, I discovered, had earned two Purple Hearts fighting the
Nazis in France, having suffered a bayonet wound and still carrying shrapnel in his left calf. His name is J.J. Witmeyer Jr.; he and his wife, Thais Audrey, were married for sixty-two years.

CO
₂
,
Stefanie Rahmstorf; polar bear, Lea Stein.

Katrina pin, designer unknown.

I call it the Katrina pin, a flower composed of amethysts and diamonds. I wear it as a reminder that jewelry’s greatest value comes not from intrinsic materials or brilliant designs but from the emotions we invest. The most cherished attributes are not those that dazzle the eye but those that recall to the mind the face and spirit of a loved one.

Wrapping Up Bow, designer unknown.

As these pages illustrate, pins are inherently expressive. Elegant or plain, they reveal much about who we are and how we hope to be perceived. Styles have changed through the years, as has jewelry’s role in relations between the genders and in the affairs of state. I was fortunate to serve at a time and in a place that allowed me to experiment by using pins to communicate a diplomatic message. One might scoff and say that my pins didn’t exactly shake the world. To that I can reply only that shaking the world is precisely the opposite of what diplomats are placed on Earth to do.

Black-eyed Susan, Sandor;