Freud was not the only one who took dreams seriously. My mother did, too.
Admittedly, her belief was more Biblical than psychological. Nonetheless, my mother could—and often would—quote Scripture verbatim and at length—verse after verse, from Genesis to Revelations and many books in between—to convince her husband and six children that dreams could hold profound messages and meanings; that we could interpret dreams; and that dreams could take us inward—to our psychological, spiritual, and physical selves—and outward—to a collective consciousness linking all the ages and bringing us all together.
Dream talk was part of our daily ritual, though never before seven in the morning, lest the dreams might come true. We could share any dream, but mother focused on those that lingered in the psyche as the ones possessing possible significance and meriting analysis. Rarely did my mother proffer interpretations of other people’s dreams. Instead, she listened and redirected us to discover how our dreams made us feel. I was fascinated by her dream analysis—nearly self psychoanalysis—and by the uncanny way that so many of her dreams tapped into profound spiritual truths.
Early in my life, my mother made a believer out of me. I remain so, especially since her death twelve years ago today. Two nights prior, I had three dreams in quick succession, with short-lived awakenings and instantaneous interpretations.
DREAM ONE. Mom was home, observing how hot it felt inside the house. She got up out of bed and walked out on the porch where it was so much cooler. As she reached her arms up toward a blue, blue sky, the wind blew her hair upwards and furled the skirt of her gossamer dress all around her. Mom started smiling and laughing and twirling—around and around and around.
Interpretation. Is Mom dead? No longer paralyzed? For the first time in six years, she’s out of bed—walking and dancing. She’s ecstatically happy.
DREAM TWO. Mom, costumed as a white mouse, performing. Her audience, amused by her antics. Their reward? An encore—more frolics, much laughter.
Interpretation. Freed from the journey, freed from the maze, Mom blissfully celebrates her new path.
DREAM THREE. Mom entered a softly lighted room. Dad was sitting in a recliner, as was his practice before his death. Beside him, a table with lamp; to the right, another chair. Mom walked over, sat down in the chair, smiled at my Dad, and turned off the lamp. The room slowly—ever so slowly—fell into warm darkness.
Interpretation. It is finished. Mom and Dad are reunited. The circle is unbroken.
When I awakened, my dreams lingered, vibrant and vivid. I felt—no, knew—deep down in my soul that my mother, who celebrated her ninety-eighth birthday two weeks before, came to me in those three dreams to prepare me for her death.
Two days later, Mom died.
God called her home. Forever dancing with a heavenly host of saints and angels, Mom finished the circle.
“If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures. Sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hey, folks. Listen up. We need to do something about the bad rap that work seems to be getting!
Witness what happened to work in 2021: The Great Resignation. The Big Quit. The Great American Walkout.
But even before the Pandemic, job satisfaction wasn’t the greatest. A comprehensive study conducted jointly by the Lumina Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Omidyar Network, and Gallup found that more than half of U. S. workers are unhappy in their jobs.
That’s unacceptable. That’s downright dreadful, especially since we spend about a third of our life working. It seems to me that what we do for a third of our life ought to make us happy.
As for me, I must be blessed. No, I must be super blessed because I have always loved my work, whatever it happened to be at the time that I happened to be doing the work that I was doing. And believe me: I’ve worked far more than one third of my life.
I’ve worked my entire life. In fact, just the other day, I said to a friend, with no hint of whining, with no intent of complaining, and with no lament of exhaustion: “I was born working.”
Exaggerated? Perhaps. All right. Of course. It is.
Nonetheless, I’m betting that I did something to help my mother speed up my birth so that I could get into the world and begin my world of work. Since she’s no longer alive, she can neither verify nor dispute my claim, so I’m safe with my exaggeration.
Nonetheless, I’m here to give work a better rap. I’m here to sing work’s praises.
If those folks can sing about work, why can’t I blog about it? Besides, work is what I’ve always done, and work has always worked for me.
Read on, work with me, and you’ll see for yourself.
I have vivid pre-school memories of scrabbling up and down and all around the slate dump behind our West Virginia home, looking for scrap iron. The “Iron Man” paid a good price for our finds. I say “our” because my brothers and sisters joined in as did most, if not all, of the kids in our coal camp.
After my family moved away to another West Virginia town when I was seven, I discovered that the citizenry there could not only afford bottled soft drinks–Coke, Dr. Pepper, Pepsi–but also could afford to toss the empty bottles thoughtlessly out of their vehicles onto the side of the road. That’s when I discovered that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I collected those bottles, washed them up to their original sparkle, returned them proudly to the local general store, and walked away with three cents per bottle, fully believing that I was fast becoming the richest kid in town.
Around the same time, one of my older brothers found out that folks in our new town loved to fish, especially with night crawlers–large, slimy, segmented worms, with a wide reddish purple band just behind a large head and a body tapering back sometimes as far as 10 inches to a flat tail. Luckily, our yard seemed to be a breeding ground for the anglers’ preferred bait. Weekend nights would find me and my older brother and my older sisters out in the yard with flashlights, searching for nightcrawlers. We became experts in pulling them ever so gently from the ground, ever mindful of increasing our collective earnings by a nickel for each live worm. Before long, we had a nightcrawler monopoly with our local bait shop. We had hit pay dirt, and we knew it.
I branched out to another work endeavor: mowing neighbors’ yards. It didn’t pay much–a quarter a lawn. But it wasn’t as much about growing rich as it was the rich satisfaction that I derived from seeing my beautifully landscaped yards. I remember one in particular. I would spend the entire day cutting the grass, edging around the garden beds and walkways, refreshing the mulch, deadheading and pruning. Sometimes when day was done, I would sprawl out in the grass and play out in my mind the answers that I would give the interviewer who would one day seek me out before featuring my client’s yard in Better Homes and Gardens.
Those work stints joyed me all the up to, through, and out of high school. The summer after graduation, I worked at an explosives company, high up on a mountain, a mile or so from the nearest town. All by myself, I managed an office of one–me. I did it all. Bookkeeping. Typing. Answering the phones. Monitoring the scales and recording weights as trucks went out with explosives and came back empty. In my starched shirt and full Windsor-knot tie, I was the master of all that I surveyed all alone on a mountain top, a mile from nowhere.
When I went to college in the fall, I continued working for the next four years. Work Study. Dorm Counselor. Summer Discovery English tutor. Mail carrier–United States Senate. Intern– former Department of Health, Education and Welfare (Division of the Two-Year College). In all those positions, I enjoyed the work, I enjoyed my colleagues, and I enjoyed the networking.
Work continued through graduate school. Research Assistant for one of the world’s most respected textual bibliographers. Teaching Assistant in one of the country’s best university English departments. Again, the work, those with whom I worked, my students, and my research on Mary E. Wilkins Freeman all brought joy beyond measure. Somes days I pinched myself because it all seemed too good to be true.
We’re nearing the end of my working man’s chronicles, so keep working with me.
After graduate school, I kept right on working. First at the Library of Congress (LOC), where I had a rich, twenty-five-year career. Editor, MARC Project. Editor, National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints. Training Coordinator, United States Copyright Office. Director, Internship Program. Special Assistant, Human Resources. Little wonder that I still consider the LOC to be the best agency in the entire federal sector.
After retiring from the LOC, I became a professor of English at Lord Fairfax Community College (becoming Laurel Ridge Community College). For twenty-three years (teaching twelve months a year, every year), “Professor” has been music to my mountain ears, the completion of a melody that I first started hearing as a coal camp kid. Little wonder that I consider Lord Fairfax/Laurel Ridge Community College and the thousands of students I’ve taught to be the best community college and the best students in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
At the end of this fall semester, I will retire. But guess what? I will keep right on working at something.
Teaching: visiting professor doors may open and I may enter. Research: visiting scholar doors may open and I may enter–my work on Mary E. Wilkins Freeman is ongoing. And how about my love of gardening (see my The Joy of Weeding) and my love of baking (see my Oh, No! Sourdough!andBaking Up My Past) and my love of company (see my My Imaginary Guests).
But here’s the bottom line. Whatever work comes my way, I will work to make sure that I’m enjoying the work that I’m doing!
OMG! Do you mean to tell me that you had to work with me all the way through this post just to hear me blurt out that we have to work at enjoying the work that we do. It’s so true that it’s worth repeating. We have to work at enjoying the work that we do.
Maybe–just maybe–the attitude that we bring to our work determines, as much as anything else, the praises that we are able to offer up.
Max Ehrmann (1872-1945), American scholar and poet. Written in 1927, “Desiderata” is Ehrmann’s most widely known poem. It’s an inspiration to all, especially graduates.
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.
Anaïs Nin
Without doubt, I love all of the English classes that I teach, but my Creative Writing classes always tug a little tighter at my heartstrings. I think I know why. We write. We draft. We workshop. We revise. We share. We bond. Together.
Aside from valuing writers’ bond, I like writing with my students because I want them to see that seasoned writers struggle perhaps as much as fledgling writers. I want them to see that writing is work. No, I want them to see that writing is hard work. More, I want them to see that with lots and lots of mental lifting they can become agile writing gymnasts.
Here’s another reason why I like to write with my students. As an educator, I want to experience, as nearly as possible, what my students experience: coming up with a topic to meet someone else’s requirements; developing a draft; workshopping the draft with peers; revising the draft based on peer feedback and personal afterthoughts; and sharing with the class the woven words of heart, mind, and soul.
Also, as an educator I want to feel the pain of jumping through the same deadline hoops that “the good professor” imposes on his students. It’s a much-needed lesson in humility, one that I can experience every two weeks, since that’s the allotted timeframe for each writing assignment: drafting; workshopping; revising; and sharing. Spread over a 14-week semester, I am humbled seven times.
In the past, I’ve done my “writing-with-my-students” stint once or twice each semester, eventually bowing out as the semester progressed because of the full range of my professorial responsibilities, namely commitments to other classes. And that is true. Can any full-time professor be a full-time writer? I doubt it.
My students, generally, are full-time students with the full range of their own full-time student responsibilities, and yet I expect them to be full-time writers, too.
This semester I promised myself that I wouldn’t bow out of writing with my students. Actually, I established more rigorous requirements for me than for them. I decided to write and publish a blog post every week.
I did not make known my personal commitment. Nonetheless, week by week, I chatted with my students about my writing. I wanted them to know that I was writing and that I had my own self-imposed goals and Monday deadlines.
At the end of this semester, we celebrated and reflected on our growth and accomplishments as writers. During my reflections, I projected my blog so that the class could see it on the big screen. Several students follow the blog and others are regular visitors, so they knew already that I had published 24 posts this semester. But those completed posts weren’t at the heart of my sharing. Rather, I wanted to watch their faces when my 17 drafts–at various stages of completion–popped up on the screen.
When I finished, one of my students pinned me to the wall with a pointed question: “Where do you find those ideas?”
How do I answer a question like that? To answer assumes that I can provide directions–a map, if you will–to the magical land where ideas reside.
I wish that I could. Sadly, I can’t.
I’m not certain that I even understand what it means to “find” ideas. Where do I look? And how shall I begin? And how do I know when I’ve found one?
As for me, I don’t go around looking for writing ideas. However, I do go around listening to the world. My world. Inner. Outer.
When I listen–when I am attentive–ideas seem to “find” their way to me. This post is a good example. My student’s question captured my fancy: “Where do you find those ideas?” And in response to his question, I shared with the class a writing idea that found its way to me that very morning.
Its working title is “Growing Up More than Once.” While driving to campus, I had been thinking about Fall 2022 as my last semester of teaching. In the midst of my reverie, I had an insight. I’ve grown up three times. Once in the traditional way that we all grow up and launch our own lives. Next was growing up as a researcher and scholar at the University of South Carolina and the Library of Congress. Now I’ve grown up as an educator at Lord Fairfax Community College. And as this phase comes to an end, another phase will open, giving me an opportunity to grow up once more! I will share no more for now. Otherwise, I won’t have anything more to say when I get around to writing that post.
But here’s my point. I didn’t go looking for that idea. Seemingly, the idea came looking for me. And as soon as it found me, I captured the tentative title and a barebones outline in a WordPress draft as soon as I walked into my office and turned on my computer. Some might call it journaling. But it’s not. I don’t journal. For me, it’s simpling listening. It’s being attentive. Then it’s taking the time to honor an idea that found its way to me.
The same thing holds true for this post. It found me during class when my student asked, “Where do you find those ideas?” Perhaps equally important, the question continued to abide with me as I drove home. Now here I am extending my answer to Morgan through this post. The idea found me; called for–no, demanded–exploration; and I’m honoring the call.
I’ve just shared how one idea found me while teaching and how another idea found me while driving. Other ideas find me when I least expect to be found. Biking, indoors and out. Listening to gospel music. Taking a shower. Pulling weeds in my garden.
For me, it seems that whenever I lose myself–whenever I’m doing something that takes me away from me–a door opens and an idea enters, hoping for home and for honor.
Those are the best directions that I can give to the magical land of ideas.
“’Can I bring you some of my sourdough starter. Would you like that?’ Hattie raised an eyebrow at me. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It is quite a commitment. I had some before and I didn’t look after it. It died and I felt terrible.'”
Sally Andrew, The Milk Tart Murders (2022)
When I was a graduate student at the University of South Carolina (Columbia), I became a sourdough master, partly because I lived the life of a starving grad student but largely because I loved practicing a culinary art with spores going all the way back to ancient Egyptian times. And whenever I wanted, I could fast forward to the more recent and better-known traditions of the California Gold Rush miners who were known as “Sourdoughs.”
With equal speed, I could shift my focus from sourdough histories to sourdough geographies. Did you know that the flavor of sourdough differs from region to region? It does. The reason is simple. Microbes differ from place to place. Plus, bakers in different regions have varying flour preferences and differing ways of starting their starters.
Working with my own sourdough was so fascinating and my baked goods–primarily bread and pancakes–were so delicious that I kept my sourdough culture alive and well throughout grad school and throughout my subsequent career at the Library of Congress.
Oddly enough, when I moved from Capitol Hill to the Shenandoah Valley, my sourdough starter died. Maybe it didn’t like fresh country air as much as I. I doubt it. I probably got so blown away by country air and country living that I neglected to give my sourdough culture the care, attention, and regular use that it requires, even in the country.
Obviously, without my own starter, I had to stop baking my own sourdough bread. No big deal. I could easily buy some pretty good sourdough loaves in my local grocery stores. I say “pretty good” because store-bought sourdough bread always smacks of commercial yeast. A real sourdough aficionado would never, ever–absolutely never, ever–use commercial yeast to boost a sourdough starter that wasn’t strong enough to rise up on its own. No way. The beauty of working with sourdough is slowing down, taking time, and letting Mother Nature work her own Poppin’ Fresh, Pillsbury Doughboy magic. Rise up. Rise up.
But a few weeks ago, I got a hankering to bake some sourdough bread. So I decided to make room in my life once again for sourdough starter.
No big deal. It’s simple and straightforward. Using a wooden spoon, I mixed up 120 grams of whole wheat flour with 120 grams of water in a glass jar, covered it with cheesecloth, put it in a warm kitchen spot, and waited for my mountain spores to start their mountain magic.
By day two, little bubbles bounced gleefully up and down and all around. The magical sourdough dance of life had begun!
At that point, I knew exactly what to do. Discard half of the starter. Then feed the remaining starter 120 grams of all-purpose flour and 120 grams of water. As always, mix it all up with a wooden spoon, cover with cheesecloth, and return the jar to a warm kitchen spot.
However, I ran smackdab into a major crisis of monumental magnitude, ethical and economical.
Here’s the ethical part. The “discard” starter is filled with living microorganisms. While I had absolutely no qualms whatsoever about baking it to death for my own betterment and joy–not to mention the joy and betterment of those with whom I share–I was distressed thinking about throwing it out–discarding it–as of no worth.
Here’s the economical part. I am a big believer in “Waste not, want not.” I can’t throw away something that I might be able to put to good use. The mere thought makes every fiber of my being quake.
My compound crisis that day resulted in two jars of starter on my counter, instead of the single jar that I should have had.
On day three, I suffered just as much as I had the day before. Yep. You guessed it. Now I was parenting and feeding four jars of sourdough starter.
Day four doubled my joy and my responsibility: eight jars.
Day five, sixteen jars.
Now, come on folks. This is getting serious–alarmingly so–because it takes seven days or longer for a starter to mature and be so full of vim and vigor and little yeasties that it can transform any kitchen into a Sourdough Sanctuary.
You do the math. (After all, I teach English. What do I know about math?) But as near as I can figure, by day seven–if I continued to adhere to my high standards of sourdough ethics and economics–my counter would be covered with 64 jars of sourdough starter, each one needing love and feeding. I could manage the love. I could manage feeding. But what the heck! I don’t even own that many Weck jars. Besides, I don’t need all that sourdough. Neither baker nor bakery am I.
Thank God, I came up with a brilliant plan: reach out to friends and offer up my precious sourdough starters for adoption. Surely my friends would save me from myself.
Thus began my noble quest to rid myself of my own madness.
ME TO A FRIEND. “If you have any interest in adopting a jar [of sourdough starter]–with a full commitment to having it bring you baking joy for years into the future–I’ll be glad to share with you, and I will even forego the customary adoption process that I am told is customary in matters of bake such as this. Just let me know!”
FRIEND TO ME. “Well, I’d love to know about that ‘adoption process’ for hand-reared sourdough, but I daren’t risk actually adopting any cuz I have a feeling it would die before I got any use out of it and I don’t want to risk experiencing any ritualistic unpleasantness that might have made up part of the adoption process. If you want to give me a loaf or a waffle, though, I’d be entirely grateful!”
Well, phooey! How’s that for a friend? She wants all the gain without any of the pain. Hmpff!
At that point, I knew that my efforts to place my starters up for adoption were going nowhere fast.
Here’s what I came up with as an alternative. Rather than watch jars of sourdough starter double every day, why not bake with the sourdough discards?
I love to bake, you know. You definitely know that if you read and remember my post “Baking Up My Past.” (And if have not read it, read it. And if you have read it but don’t remember it, I won’t say, “Shame on you.” But, really! Shame on you. Re-read it to lessen the shame that you’re surely feeling.)
But returning to the serious matter of turning my sourdough discards into delights rather than tossing them into the compost heap as of no worth, I did as my friend–the same one who chose not to adopt one of my starving starters–always reminds me to do whenever I share with her one of my many and endless brilliant ideas: “Google that.”
And that’s just what I did! I googled, “Baking with sourdough discard.”
Dare I share with you my utter shock and amazement when I discovered that lots and lots of other folks had stolen my brilliant idea–just as lots and lots of folks have stolen my other brilliant ideas in the past–and had posted hundreds of recipes without giving me even the slightest crumb of credit, not even in Baking Notes. Well, I have never. (But rest assured: I have.)
The only thing that lessened my shock and amazement was the fact that some of those sourdough discard recipes sounded so good that I decided to try them.
I knew just where to start. Sourdough bread. I had made it before. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
Next? Sourdough pancakes. I had made them before, too, but these would be super special because I could open up my last bottle of Brattleboro (VT) Maple Syrup that I bought in 2019 when I was guest speaker in the town where Mary E. Wilkins Freeman launched her distinguished writing career. Oh, my!!! I was not disappointed. Those pancakes were well worth the wait.
Then came sourdough waffles. Vanilla one day. Chocolate, the next. Both days, Brattleboro maple syrup presided.
Then came sourdough muffins, lots and lots of jumbo, bakery-style muffins. Morning Glory. Blueberry. Triple Chocolate. Lemon White Chocolate Chip. Banana Chocolate Chip. To my great joy, the sourdough muffins proofed to be exceptional. My neighbors, friends, colleagues, students (and one stranger) gave rave (and ravenous) reviews.
I knew, though, that I needed to move past breakfast. How could I use my sourdough for dinner? Of course! Pizza. Imagine your favorite pizza, and I’ll guarantee that it will be better with a sourdough crust.
My sourdough chicken and dumplings were heavenly. I confess that I had some major doubts about sourdough cornbread, but it proofed to be the best ever.
And you can’t have dinner without dessert. How about Sourdough Chocolate Orange Bundt Cake? You want some? Excellent! You won’t be disappointed. What’s that? With ice-cream? Sure thing. Vanilla. Homemade. On the house.
I am happy to report that I have baked the good bake so successfully and so frequently that now I am the proud parent of sourdough-starter triplets. All three jars are in the fridge where they can chill with one another for an entire week before I have to care for them again.
At this point, I have a plan. That’s right: you guessed it. It’s brilliant. Here it is. I’ll spend this coming weekend having my own sourdough bake off.
To start, I will use one entire jar of starter–every last drop of it–for making several loaves of sourdough bread.
Then I will use the second jar–every last drop of it–to make assorted sourdough muffins.
“What about that third jar?” I hear someone asking. Don’t worry. It will be an “only,” but it won’t be lonely. I will love it and nourish it and use it forever and forever and forever, and I will bake really good bakes, bake by bake by bake.
Better still, every time I bake with it, I will do so with an abundance of bubbly joy, knowing that I saved myself from parenting the 64 jars of little yeasties that I nearly found myself parenting.
And, best of all, I will no longer walk into my kitchen sighing under my breath, “Oh, no! Sourdough.”
The Wired Researcher 