Arctic Animal Parade! – Ithaca Puppet Pod

Arctic Animal Parade –

In 2020 the Ithaca Puppet Pod paraded 3 times in different locations in Ithaca NY! The parade came back again in February of 2023.

We celebrated World Puppetry Day with our Arctic Animal parade at the Children’s Garden. Animals danced around and puppet postcards were given out. People could take postcards home, cut them out and make a fun puppet! Detailed instructions here.

Did you see the parade? Did you get a special paper puppet postcard? CLICK on the postcard of your animal below for helpful tips on making your puppet:

“A fundamental difference between our culture and [Inuit] culture… …is that we have irrevocably separated ourselves from the world that animals occupy. We have turned all animals and elements of the natural world into objects. We manipulate them to serve the complicated ends of our destiny. [The Inuit] do not grasp this separation easily. For many of them, to make this separation is analogous to cutting oneself off from light or water. It is hard to imagine how to do it.”
Barry López, Arctic Dreams

“Whatever evaluation we finally make of a stretch of land, however, no matter how profound or accurate, we will find it inadequate. The land retains an identity of its own, still deeper and more subtle than we can know. Our obligation toward it then becomes simple: to approach with an uncalculating mind, with an attitude of regard. To try to sense the range and variety of its expression—its weather and colors and animals. To intend from the beginning to preserve some of the mystery within it as a kind of wisdom to be experienced, not questioned. And to be alert for its openings, for that moment when something sacred reveals itself within the mundane, and you know the land knows you are there.”
― Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams

“At the heart of this story, I think, is a simple, abiding belief: it is possible to live wisely on the land, and to live well. And in behaving respectfully toward all that the land contains, it is possible to imagine a stifling ignorance falling away from us.”
― Barry López, Arctic Dreams