![\"Winnie-the-Pooh](\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/picWinniePoohHouseHarvard130113_0033w.jpg\")
<\/a>George Eastman occupies a gray-green home about a 10-minute walk from Pooh\u2019s house. Over the years, the 86-year-old studied philosophy at Harvard, then clinical psychology at New York University. He taught music therapy at Berklee College of Music and has maintained a private clinical psychology practice in Cambridge since 1982.<\/p>\n
Somewhere around the early to mid 1990s, he began taking care of Pooh\u2019s house. It was a full tree then\u2014perhaps a chestnut, he says. \u201cAt that particular time, my second family, my young children, we would be passing by that\u2014they usually went to the Christian Science Church, went with their mother, but occasionally I\u2019d accompany them. There was a sort of vestige of Pooh\u2019s house there, a sign that said \u2018Pooh.'”<\/p>\n
He replaced the faded sign and added a door. \u201cThere was a natural hole there that could lend itself,\u201d Eastman says. \u201cThere was a little sign over it, but no door. I wanted to give is some more verisimilitude by adding the door.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Another Winnie-the-Pooh house<\/a> was created on Cambridge\u2019s Hurlbut Street by Cambridge sculptor Mitch Ryerson from a stump left from a silver maple after it was damaged by an April 1, 1997, storm. That Pooh house was removed last year because of rot at the stump\u2019s base and to make room for city pipe replacement and repaving.)<\/p>\n Harvard\u2019s Pooh house is a magical spot. Sometimes there were Pooh figurines. Sometimes the Pooh house would be decorated for Halloween or Christmas. In 1997, Harvard Magazine reported<\/a> that a home for Piglet had appeared with a nameplate and yellow door across the path from Pooh\u2019s abode. Then a trapdoor marking the location of Rabbit\u2019s house showed up nearby. People would leave pennies that the family would collect and donate to their church.<\/p>\n \u201cWinnie-the-Pooh\u201d is \u201ca psychological study of personality types,\u201d Eastman says, intended \u201cto depict different personality types in a nonjudgmental way, in a humorous, almost loveable way. I consider that to be very positive. You notice that death doesn\u2019t play any part in Winnie-the-Pooh. It\u2019s as though things are going to go on, frozen in time. \u2026 Which is a child\u2019s perception of reality.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I would read to my children, it was always an occasion for discussion. We\u2019d talk about, Why is Piglet so afraid? Why is Piglet so preoccupied with his vulnerability? It became clear to me that Milne was preoccupied with different personality types,\u201d Eastman says. There\u2019s the pessimist Eeyore \u201cwho believes nothing will ever turn out right,\u201d and the exuberant Tigger, running headlong into messes, not sure what he wants. \u201cEach one of those animal totems represents a human personality.\u201d And there\u2019s Christopher Robin, \u201ca better aspect of the human being, kind and loving and caring.\u201d<\/p>\n But someone(s)\u2014Eastman suspected it was a local high school student\u2014\u201cwould destroy whatever door I\u2019d put up and rip off the sign. It was very sad.\u201d Sometimes the door would be broken in a matter of days, sometimes in a month\u2019s time. \u201cEventually I just got tired of repairing it.\u201d<\/p>\n In June 2012, the tree’s<\/a> poor health prompted Harvard to chop it down<\/a>, leaving a tall stump. \u201cIt was an ancient tree and apparently it was diseased and because it was so close to the Science Building they were afraid of it,\u201d Eastman says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a loss when it was cut down. I felt very sad about that. It was a surprise to me,\u201d Eastman says. Some time later, \u201cI talked to a workman who came out one day when I was repairing it. And I said, \u2018Are you going to do anything about the stump and the weathering?\u2019 And about a month later the roof appeared.\u201d<\/p>\n Eastman says, \u201cThere is a deep human aspiration to not have things end. The tree has come to the end. It has been cut. Entropy is destroying the tree. But Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh can go on as long as humans are able to read. The tree is a reflection of reality. And my letting it go is a reflection of my practice as a Buddhist. Christopher Robin doesn\u2019t change, but the tree is changing and it will probably eventually be ground down to nothing so what was once the home of Pooh will no longer exist.\u201d<\/p>\n In the years since, Eastman has been easing out of his caretaking duties. \u201cAs the children grew up and have left, in a way I was partly maintaining it for them, so that motivation left. I also decided that if this was an important project someone else could take it over. But, however, I have been thinking of making another Pooh sign and putting it somewhere above that opening to re-identify it as Pooh\u2019s house.\u201d<\/p>\n Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n Just north of Harvard Yard in Cambridge sits the Harvard Science Building. And just to its left, on its west side facing toward Cambridge Common, is the stump of a tree, topped by a red shingle roof. At the bottom is a hole painted blue inside that serves as a door. Though in much disrepair, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3800,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,107,192,105,582],"tags":[42,68],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8150"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8150"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8171,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8150\/revisions\/8171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/a>
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