The scarlet ibis was inspired by the painting by Maria Sibylla Merian, a 17th c. artist, entomologist, single mother and world traveler. The scarlet ibis represents how something fragile and beautiful can so easily be lost in the story by the same name, written by James Hurst, 1960. The words first written by Gerda Lerner, “no thinking man has ever been threatened in his self definition and his love life as the price for his thinking”