A Road Trip Beyond Expectations

Posted on June 26, 2023 by Brent L. Kendrick

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Robert Burns (1759-1796; considered to be the National Poet of Scotland; from his “To a Mouse”)

Without a doubt, you’re familiar with the poetic lines, “The best laid schemes of mice and men often go astray,” even if you don’t know that Robert Burns penned them.

The lines express a universal truth. Yet, many people have trouble accepting it. Or, maybe, they simply have trouble admitting it when their meticulous plans go awry, sometimes dreadfully so.

Down through the years, it’s happened to me so often that I can accept the poem’s truth readily. More important, I don’t mind admitting it when my best-laid plans flop.

My recent trip to Vermont is a perfect example. I planned it way back in March, just as soon as I knew that my edition of Green Mountain Stories would be launched in Burlington on May 25 and again in Brattleboro on May 30.

I decided that it could also be a much-needed vay-kay for me and my dog Ruby.

But let me ask you this. Have you ever gone on a 10-day road trip with your furry, four-legged best friend, alone with no other person traveling with you?

If so, you know already what I had to learn the hard way: it’s not really your road trip. It’s your dog’s. As I made my careful plans, it became obvious to me that everything was being built around Ruby’s needs:

● How far could she ride in a day?

● Would the hotel mid-way up and mid-way back accept a dog?

● Would the VRBO home rental in Burlington accept a dog? What about a yard so that Ruby could play?

● Would the VRBO home rental in Brattleboro accept a dog? What about a yard so that Ruby could play?

Those were my big concerns. I won’t bother you with the small ones because just a few days before my trip, my best-laid plans fell apart.

It became clear to me, to Ruby, and to our veterinarian that she would be happier staying at a pet spa rather than staying stressed out for such a long trip.

By then, it was too late to change any of my lodging arrangements. The cancellation windows had closed.

● Yeah. It would have been great to stay in swanky downtown hotels and walk to restaurants and nightspots.

● Yeah. It would have been great to fly to Vermont. Or, maybe, drive to DC’s Union Station and journey by Amtrak.

But those options were never part of my Rubyesque best-laid plans. Now it was too late. Fine. I knew that the book launches would go well. As for the rest of the road trip without Ruby, I was determined to make the most of the situation.

At that point, I had no great expectations. None. But that was okay, too. Sometimes life gets better when we expect less. And so it came to be on this trip. My serendipitous encounters took me far greater distances than the distance I would travel. Let me share a few with you.

By the time that I reached Hazelton, PA–three hours or so from my home in Edinburg, VA, driving North on I-81–it was as if I had stepped back into early Spring. The forest canopy was see-through thin, and the leaves were so small, so new, so filled with promise that I immediately started reciting to myself, aloud, for no one else was around to hear, Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay”:

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief.
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I love that poem on so many levels, not the least of which is knowing how much effort Frost put into revising it. It didn’t spring into existence as the exquisite 8-line octave that we know. The revision history of the poem–even my sketchy recollection of it–fascinates me because Frost maintained that he did not revise his poems a lot. Here’s how he put it:

A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and having carried the poet with it (“The Figure a Poem Makes,” Collected Poems, 1939).

Frost might disagree, but it seems to me that he worried “Nothing Gold Can Stay” into existence. Let me explain. It started out as three octaves, for a total of 24 lines. More important, the original title was “Nothing Golden Stays.” Well, hello. Duh! Of course, nothing golden stays. Golden is a characteristic. It’s not the real thing.

But after four or five needed revisions, Frost distilled 24 poetic lines into the 8 that we enjoy today, and he changed golden to gold, knowing fully well that if nothing gold can stay we had all damned well better sit up and take notice, especially considering that even Eden sank to grief.

I could go on and on about this poem, but if I do, I’ll not be able to share other parts of my road trip that exceeded expectations. I had better put the pedal to the metal.

Wow! Two asphalt-hours are in my rear-view mirror, I didn’t get a speeding ticket, and I’ve reached my trip’s mid-way destination, headed north: a hotel in Johnson City, NY.

Approaching the city, I was thrilled beyond expectations to see a sign: HOME OF DAVID SEDARIS. Sedaris is one of my favorite writers, yet I had no idea that he was from Johnson City. Imagine that! And here I was sleeping … right in his … home … town. That’s almost downright sultry.

I’ve known Sedaris–not personally but rather as a humorist, comedian, and author–for decades, going all the way back to 1992 when National Public Radio broadcast his essay “Santaland Diaries.” I have always appreciated and enjoyed his self-deprecating humor, his candor about growing up gay in middle-class America in the late Sixties and the early Seventies, and his open-and-oft-written-about commitment to his long-time partner Hugh Hamrick. Hamrick has a few things to say about their relationship, too: “Hugh Hamrick—David Sedaris’ Boyfriend—Finally Tells His Side of Their Story.”

After I got settled in my Johnson City hotel room, I decided that I’d spend the evening in bed with Sedaris. (Re-reading some of his essays on my all-time favorites list.)

It was a “wild night, wild night.“ (Of reading.) I awakened the next morning refreshed and ready to continue my journey.

Not long after leaving Johnson City, I saw signs announcing that I was in New York State’s Southern Tier. I’m not sure why, but I always chuckle when I see those Southern Tier signs. But my laughter subsided as I started seeing birch trees everywhere, as far as I could see. And I immediately thought of Robert Frost’s poem, “Birches,” but since I have written extensively about that poem already in my “A Swinger of Birches,” I will say no more about the poem here except to quote its opening lines:

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

An hour or so later, I started seeing signs for Cooperstown, NY. It goes without saying that I fully expected to see a sign: HOME OF JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. I had every right to have that expectation since the town was named after the Cooper family, since Cooper was America’s first novelist to earn his living as a writer, and since Cooperstown and the surrounding frontier served as the backdrop for The Pioneers, the first of five novels in his Leatherstocking Tales.

I did not see the sign that I had expected. Instead, I saw signs announcing Cooperstown as Home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. It’s too bad that Cooper’s hometown doesn’t consider him to be a Major League player.

An hour or so later, I approached Saratoga Springs, NY. I was ecstatic. Saratoga Springs. The setting for most of the action in Sherwood Anderson’s famous rite-of-passage short story “I Want to Know Why.”

But about Saratoga. We was there six days and not a soul from home seen us and everything came off just as we wanted it to, fine weather and horses and races and all. We beat our way home and Bildad gave us a basket with fried chicken and bread and other eatables in, and I had eighteen dollars when we got back to Beckersville. Mother jawed and cried but Pop didn’t say much. I told everything we done except one thing. I did and saw that alone. That’s what I’m writing about. It got me upset. I think about it at night. Here it is.

How’s that. The unnamed fifteen-year-old narrator goes back home and tells his parents everything that happened in Saratoga except for the one thing that he “did and saw alone.”

What he doesn’t tell his parents is the passion and love that he feels for Jerry Tilford, a horse trainer. What he doesn’t tell his parents is what he saw Tilford doing in a farmhouse with a “bad woman.” What he doesn’t tell his parents is how he felt about Tilford when he saw what he saw:

Then, all of a sudden, I began to hate that man. I wanted to scream and rush into the room and kill him. I never had such a feeling before. I was mad clean through and I cried and my fists were doubled up so my finger nails cut my hands.

The story ends the next spring with the narrator, nearly sixteen, still wanting to know why Jerry Tilford did what he did. I suspect that the narrator spent his entire life being upset by his feelings and by Jerry’s actions. I suspect that the narrator spent his entire life wondering why things didn’t work out as he hoped they would work out.

It’s one of the most haunting stories about coming-of-age, sexual desire, and rejection that you can ever hope to read. Anderson deals with the topic far more overtly in his story “The Man Who Became a Woman.” After you read that story, you simply must read Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919). It’s an overlooked classic in American literature.

Two hours or so later, I reached my first book-launch destination: Burlington, VT. I am embarrassed to say that even though I love Ben & Jerry’s Ice-Cream, I had no idea that Burlington has been its home since 1978 when they started dishing it out. Today, it’s still their home, with 282 million pints of deliciousness churned annually.

After Burlington, I headed south to Brattleboro for a second launch of Green Mountain Stories. Obviously, I need not remind you that Mary E. Wilkins Freeman–the author of Green Mountain Stories–launched her career in Brattleboro.

What else can I share about Brattleboro that might exceed your expectations?

Royall Tyler, America’s first playwright whose The Contrast (1787) still enjoys theatrical productions, moved to Brattleboro in 1801 and is buried there in Prospect Hill Cemetery.

Then, of course, we have Rudyard Kipling, English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist, known for being the first English-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature (1907). What most folks don’t know is that he married Caroline Balestier of Brattleboro in 1892, moved there–initially living in Bliss Cottage where he wrote The Jungle Book (1894)–and then built Naulakha, which is on the Landmark Trust USA. What even fewer people know is that Freeman met Kipling in the Spring of 1892, on one of her return visits to Brattleboro. Later, she wrote to a friend:

The spell of Ruddy’s eyes have faded away, but my heart still clings to the coupe driver. (Letter 111 to Evelyn Sawyer Severance, The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, ed. with Biographical/Critical Introductions by Brent L. Kendrick. Scarecrow, 1985.)

And what almost no one knows is that Saul Bellow–acclaimed Canadian-American Nobel Laureate in Literature and author of such noteworthy novels as Dangling Man (1944), The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Seize the Day (1956), and Henderson the Rain King (1959)–lived in Brattleboro for the last 26 years of his life and is buried there in the Shir He Harim Jewish Cemetery section of Morningside Cemetery.

The morning after my Brattleboro book launch, I started the long drive back home. I intended it to be a straight shot on interstates. Somehow–accidentally, I should add–my Gladiator’s Navigation System was programmed to AVOID HIGHWAYS. And I was programmed to DON’T THINK. I just kept right on going down one country back road after another, paying them nary no mind whatsoever. After all, I was getting an up-close-and-personal view of Vermont’s Green Mountains.

The next thing I knew, I was approaching Ulster, NY, with signs announcing HEADLESS HORSEMAN HAYRIDES AND HAUNTED HOUSES. Oh. My. God. How the hell did I end up in the Lower Catskills where folks still scare themselves with Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820).

Suffice it to say, I had given myself my own fright. Immediately, I adjusted my Navigation System, got back on my intended route, settled in to Cruise Control, and clicked my boots together three times, saying “There’s no place like home.”

Before I knew it, I had picked up Ruby from the pet spa. As I drove back up my mountain road, I shared with her brief highlights of my road trip beyond expectations. But as soon as I saw our house, I stopped my storytelling and shouted:

“But anyway, Ruby, we’re home–home.”

“Sit Down.” “No, I Can’t Sit Down.”

Posted on June 12, 2023 by Brent L. Kendrick

There can be no joy in living without joy in work.
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274; Italian philosopher and theologian, often seen as a foundational figure of modern thought.)

The Sheep’s Rain this year nearly did me in.

“What the hell is the Sheep’s Rain?” someone just bleated.

If you don’t know, don’t bother asking Google. I just did and found nothing. Absolutely nothing.

So let me tell you all about the Sheep’s Rain, just as my mother told me all about it when I was a child. Without fail, at least in Virginia (where she grew up) and in West Virginia (where she lived after she married my dad) a cold rain always fell around the middle of May, the temps dropped to lower than usual, and the rain kept falling for ten days or so. Farmers never sheared their sheep until after that cold rainy spell in May. They knew that if they did, their sheep would develop pneumonia and die.

Having lived in West Virginia, DC, and Virginia for my entire life–except for five years in South Carolina–I have witnessed the Sheep’s Rain every year since my mother explained it to me when I was a child.

However, when I started thinking about this post, I started asking people I know in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where I live if they had ever heard of the Sheep’s Rain. No one–not even farmers–had any idea what I was talking about.

Who knows. Maybe it was a term used by farmers in Patrick County where my mother grew up. Maybe she, in turn, kept right on referring to the Sheep’s Rain down through the years, dutifully passing the name of this annual weather phenomenon on to her children who still talk about it.

I always believed my mother, of course, and it goes without saying that I still do.

But it does seem to me that I should be able to give you a far better explanation of the Sheep’s Rain than the one that I just gave. Agreed? Thank you. Let’s all have a brief learning moment. I simply must see what the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has to say. I’ll be right back.

Well, I have good news and bad news.

I’ll start with the bad news. The OED has no recorded usage of the Sheep’s Rain. Ever.

I am flabbergasted.

Here’s the good news. I will send this post to the OED editors so that they can use it as the first-known printed usage of the term Sheep’s Rain. I never dreamt that this post would immortalize me, my mother, and the Sheep’s Rain. Wouldn’t it be truly funny if it did! Well, it might. Stranger things have happened.

Now that we’ve gotten all of that out of the way–thank God for small mercies–let me get back to sharing with you why the Sheep’s Rain this year nearly did me in.

A warm spell lulled me into believing that spring was slipping softly and certainly into an early summer. I went ahead and moved all of my houseplants–tropicals and cacti–deck side.

I convinced myself that the Sheep’s Rain might just pass us by this year.

In fact, I started doing heavy pruning, weedwhacking, and brush cutting. I had a plan that would keep me busy for at least a week.

But to my surprise, the Sheep’s Rain snuck up on me and put a wet, cold damper on my plans to work outdoors.

No problem. I am a resourceful fellow, not easily outdone.

I simply shifted my focus to indoors. I cleaned the house. That was a marvelous solution for the first day of the Sheep’s Rain that imprisoned me indoors unexpectedly.

Fine. I can be resourceful for more than one day. Day two found me joyfully polishing the interiors of all my windows. My entire home seemed to be one window after another, bouncing their sparkling, streak-free reflections everywhere. I was finished by noon.

I spent the afternoon re-reading George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo for the fifth time.

Then I leisured my way through my dinner prep as the fire roared red in my kitchen fireplace.

Bedtime came early, and the next morning came even earlier as day three of the Sheep’s Rain imprinted itself on my deepening pain.

No problem. My resourcefulness prompted me to bike longer, pump iron longer, read longer, research longer, nap longer, and take longer for dinner.

But. Geez. How much of a good thing can a mountain man take?

I mean. Don’t get me wrong. I love–absolutely love–all of those things. But in their midst, I need something else that I wasn’t getting.

And that’s why the Sheep’s Rain this year nearly did me in.

What I needed–what I wasn’t getting–were the benefits that go hand in hand with hard work.

Stop right now. Don’t even go there. I’m fully aware that cooking and cleaning and reading and research and writing and biking and lifting weights all require hard work, sometimes far more than others are willing to acknowledge.

But I needed to get down and dirty with manual work that leaves the muscles I know feeling sorer than they’ve ever felt before, and that leaves the muscles I don’t know, knowing that they had damned well better get with the program.

I needed to raise my 8-pound maul mid-air and thrust it back down with such force that round after round of oak would pile up in mound after mound of split wood.

I needed to bring order to all of that mounded chaos at day’s end by rhythmically stacking it all into perfectly measured and balanced cords of firewood.

I needed spurt after spurt after spurt of endorphins to be released, to pump me up, to clear my brain, and to make me see rainbow after rainbow after rainbow. Rainbows of hope, arching over me, arching around me, arching behind me, and arching ahead of me. Rainbows. Hope. Everywhere.

Somehow the more that I write about it, the more I’m coming to realize that the Sheep’s Rain this year really didn’t nearly do me in.

Instead, it impressed upon me what I have realized so many times before. I need manual labor to spur me on with my creative labors and my intellectual labors.

Instead, it impressed upon me the wish that when my now is done and my forever begins, I want to keep right on working.

When I reach my home in that land somewhere–that world to come somewhere–I want to be of like mind with that old gospel song:

“Sit down.”

“No, I can’t sit down. I just got to Heaven, and I got to walk around.”

And you had damned well better believe that I won’t be walking around gawking at those twelve gates of single pearls and those transparent streets of pure gold.

I’ll be walking around with a can of Pledge in one hand and a microfiber dust cloth in the other. Somebody, after all, will have to keep all those splendiferous furnishings clean. I won’t mind at all.

After I’m done with dusting, I hope to find a hand plow so that I can start tilling all those fertile fields and get an early start on gardening. From time to time, maybe I’ll get to work up a heady sweat by moving rocks as big as the biggest boulders I’ve ever moved in my whole life.

After the gardening and the dusting, maybe I can work in the bakery for a few hours a day. I’ll be sure to bring along a little jar of my sourdough starter, grown from spores back home on my mountaintop in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. And, for good measure, I’ll bring extra copies of “Oh, No! Sourdough!” for folks who just want to sit around all day, reading.

As for me, one thing’s for sure. I won’t be sitting around, and I won’t be sitting down. Whenever I reach my home in whatever world is yet to come, I’ll be smackdab at the head of the line, looking for work, because my joy in living is upgirded by my joy in working, now and forever.

A Fragrant Patch of Dill

Posted on May 22, 2023 by Brent L. Kendrick

“There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again.”
Elizabeth Lawrence (1904-1985; internationally known gardener, considered to be one of the top twenty-five gardeners of all time).

Last night for dinner, I had a hankering for something. I didn’t know quite what. I wanted something light but rich. Is that a contradiction or what? I guess it depends on how you look at it. To me, the two extremes seemed not only desirable but also possible.

Beyond that, all that I knew about my hankering was that I wanted it to be maybe just a little lemony and maybe just a little grassy and with maybe just a hint of anise or licorice. In that instant of maybe’s, I knew that my hankering needed to honor dill. Fresh dill. Fragrant dill.

Simply put, my stomach was growling me to pursue an entrée that was light, rich, lemony and dilly.

I cannot help but pause here and ask:

“Within those parameters, what entrée would you have plated for yourself?”

And, of course, you have every right to pause here and ask the same of me:

“Within those parameters, what entrée did you plate for yourself?”

And, as you know fully well, I will answer your question fully.

I’m always telling friends about my dinners, often sending them photos, whereupon they invariably message me that I need to feature my food on Instagram, whereupon I always ask:

“Does that mean that I have achieved the culinary level of Food Porn?”

I’m still waiting for answers.

But I won’t keep you waiting. I will tell you what I made.

As I drove to the grocery store to get some fresh ingredients–the essence of everything that I plate up–I started thinking about pasta in vodka sauce, but a red sauce seemed too heavy. How about pasta in a white vodka sauce? Perfect. Butter and cream equal richness. I could add marinated artichoke hearts for a subtle tang. The focal point could be ruffle-edged ravioli, domed with ground chicken. Stir in some freshly squeezed lemon juice. Top with an abundance of fresh dill. My. Perfect. Plate. And it was my perfect plate for that night’s dinner. Light. Rich. Lemony. Dilly.

As I sat at my table, feeling ever so satisfied with the luscious entrée that I created without benefit of recipe, I floated suddenly out of my mountain-top dining room. I floated out of the Shenandoah Valley where I live. I floated out of 2023.

I landed in 1957. I landed in my West Virginia boyhood hometown. I landed in the yard where I had played so often with Stevie, a childhood friend.

I went right past the galvanized tubs, always there in his yard, always with one or more catfish swimming around in fresh clean water to soften the muddiness inherent in their taste.

I went right past the foldable, aluminum-frame, green-and-white webbed lawn chairs, circling a ribbed, split-oak basket filled with corn, hands of all ages rhythmically shucking, tossing the shucks and silks into brown paper sacks getting fuller and fuller.

I went right past the two side-by-side mulberry trees–umbrellas above us–as we sat beneath, competing with the darting black-capped, gray catbirds for the ripest, thumb-sized mulberries certain to stain our clothes as much as they purpled our teeth and tongues.

I went right past the stone granary–stifling hot inside from the sun outside, blazing down on the uninsulated tin roof. On the lower floor, corn drying in chicken-wire bins; on the upper, walnuts blackening on thick, chestnut floors.

I went right past Stevie’s aproned mother, flinging rainbows of dishwater into the kitchen-stoop air.

I went right past all of those things.

Instead, I floated to a warm, misty summer rain falling on a large patch of dill, large beyond the need to measure, but at least 30 feet by 30 feet–large enough for two young boys to lose themselves.

Stevie and I would strip down to our skivvies and run with wild, barefoot abandon through the patch of dill, as mindless of our innocence as we were mindful of the heady fragrance scenting the air and our bodies as we rubbed against the dill on those summer days when misty rain fell.

And so, it was. My impromptu dinner–built around little more than a hankering that begged for fulfillment–took me back to that self-same patch of dill. It took me back with such vibrant and vivid certainty that if I had a patch of dill right here on my mountain and if the warm summer rain fell upon it now as it fell upon it then, I vow that I would–in this, my 75th summer–strip down to my skivvies and run barefoot through the enchanted patch, confident that my rubbings against the dill would burst wide open those magical days of childhood innocence, as fragrant as ever again.

Human Being, Not Human Doing

Posted on May 1, 2023 by Brent L. Kendrick

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961; Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst; father of analytical psychology.)

The rain was steady and heavy all night. I say “all night,” but I’m not really certain when it started. It’s not as if it awakened me, and I looked at the clock and whispered to my sleeping self, “Ah, it’s raining.” But I could hear it, even as it lulled me into a deeper and more restful slumber.

When I awakened, the raindrops were pearling their way down the window panes. As I lay in bed–looking and listening–I knew that Plan B would govern my day.

Plan A had been to continue my yard work. This year, my focus is more on “taking out” than on “putting in.” I have lots and lots of shrubs–especially rhododendrons–that have outgrown the spaces where I planted them. For some, a heavy pruning will restore their vitality and their appearance. For others, pruning will neither restore their vitality nor their beauty. They have to be removed. So that’s what I’ve been doing. Pruning. Removing. Hauling truckload after truckload to the landfill. That was my Plan A.

But I had checked the weather forecast before going to bed and knew the strong likelihood of rain.

That was when I came up with Plan B. I could spend the day doing some extra indoor biking. Then, I could start rearranging the artwork in my office–a task that I have needed to tackle for months, but one that I have managed to avoid doing with full success. And betwixt and between, I could make Ukrainian Sauerkraut Soup–perfect for a chilly, rainy-day dinner–and I could bake Jumbo Sourdough Banana Nut Muffins–a perfect way to use up this week’s sourdough discard.

It was settled. Plan B, it would be.

But before I started to execute that plan, I perused my smartphone news. As I did, I was ever aware of the rain, still falling hypnotically. For a second, I considered stopping the pendulum on my grandfather clock so that the only sound would be the rhythm of the falling rain. Then, in the next second, I looked out the window onto my deck. I could see the raindrops dropping one by one off the scalloped edges of my Asian patio umbrella–all wet with green bamboo, red sun, pink blossoms, and blue happiness. And for another second, I considered trying to count the drops as they fell, starting at the 6:30 position on the umbrella, proceeding clockwise, counting every sliding raindrop, working my way back home, and then beginning anew.

As I considered those thoughts, I glanced down at the next news flash to discover an article from Open Culture: “Stephen King Recommends 96 Books that Aspiring Writers Should Read.” I knew immediately that it was not newsy at all. I had read that same article nearly a decade ago. I perused the list anyway, discovering that I could not claim to have read any more of those books now than I could claim to have read them then. As I reached the end of the article, I found that King had updated his list: “Stephen King Creates a List of 82 Books for Aspiring Writers (to Supplement an Earlier List of 96 Books.)” I scanned that list quickly.

Somehow, I was brought back to the reality of my grandfather clock still ticking. I had not stopped the clock as I had considered doing. I was brought back to the reality of the raindrops still falling off the scalloped edges of my Asian patio umbrella. I had not counted the raindrops as I had considered doing.

I was brought back to the haunting reality that my day was wasting away.

I still needed to meditate so that I could get started with my Plan B. Meditation does not come easy for me, even after years of daily practice. I’m finding, though, that I can sit with myself for longer and longer periods of time without my mind being pulled in the direction of all the other things that I could be doing.

But on this day, when the “all” of the day seemed to be wrapped up in the “all” of the rain, I decided to sit for a shorter-than-usual spell. Ten minutes. No more. I had things to do on my Plan B.

I was drawn to an 11-minute mindfulness session. Surely, I could spare an extra minute, especially since the title tugged at me: “Human Being, Not Human Doing.”

“If you’re like most people, you probably feel like you have to be constantly doing something.”

I was stunned. How on earth did acclaimed meditation coach Lynne Goldberg know so perfectly how I was feeling? How I feel so often?

In her meditation session, she explores the roots of our obsession with doing, tracing the origins all the way back to our childhoods when others praised us for doing things that we were good at doing. Art. Dance. Music. Sports. Wordplay. She continues her exploration–even into relationships–noting that the praise we receive for the things that we do begins to validate us and our self-worth.

And then she drives home her point. Validation through doing is external, controlled by others. It leaves us with the feeling that we have to continue to do–to perform–in order to get those accolades. To feel loved. To maintain that sense of self-worth. Interestingly enough, we’re not even aware that it’s happening.

“At your essence, you are a human being, not a human doing. You are loved and worthy and enough exactly as you are. The only approval that you need is that of your own.”

“Well, of course,” I say to myself. The notion of loving yourself–of approving yourself–goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks even if it did not enter mainstream psyche and pop culture until the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the Hippies of the 1960s.

More, I’m not quite certain that I agree with Goldberg’s tack of tracing our emphasis on doing to the praise that we received from doing things well as long ago as our infancy. It seems to me that we need to consider other possibilities. The joy and love of work. The joy and love of doing. The joy and love of creating. The internal, self-validation that doing things well brings us even when others are totally unaware that we’re doing them.

But I’m not going to quibble over any of those possible disagreements right now.

For now, I’m just glad that I stumbled upon Goldberg’s meditation.

For now, I think that I will revisit King’s recommended reading lists and start to read–or reread–one of the books that I find there.

For now, I think that I will count the raindrops as they fall off the scalloped edges of my Asian patio umbrella.

For now, I think that I will stop the pendulum on my grandfather clock.

For now, I think that I will continue lounging in my azure blue linen bathrobe as noon approaches and as rain continues.

For now, I think that scrambled eggs on toast might be perfect for dinner.

For now, I think that I’m really enjoying doing nothing more than just being.

More Mishaps & Memories

Posted on April 24, 2023 by Brent L. Kendrick

“I’ve learned so much from my mistakes … I’m thinking of making some more.”
Cheryl Cole (b. 1983; English singer and television personality.)

Well, I don’t know about you, but this past week has been quite a week for me. I daresay that it would have been for you, too, if you had disclosed as much about yourself–for the whole world to see–as I did last week in my “M & M’s: Mishaps and Memories.”

I mean, it wasn’t too bad that I fessed up to not remembering the mishap that prompted the post in the first place, and it wasn’t too bad that I shared two foot-in-mouth mishaps. But what on earth possessed me–at the end of the post–to mention my IQ test.

Without a doubt, I did not need to bring up my IQ. Even now, after considerable reflection, I don’t know why I did. It’s not as if I don’t have an IQ. I do. But–brace yourself–I had to take my IQ test twice to find out my score.

Right now, the foot in my mouth is getting harder and harder to swallow, so I had just as well tell you all about my IQ test mishap so that I can gulp–and you can gasp–and we can all be done with it.

I was in the third grade. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention to the test directions. I don’t remember. I just thought that it was one more fun thing to do on one more fun-filled school day. And everything was going along just fine until I got to the third test question. It was a math question, and it must have been a real challenge. I kept working away on it, and just when I figured out the answer, the exam time was up.

I flunked my IQ test.

“What do you mean? Of course, Brentford Lee has an IQ.”

“But it can’t be determined because he only answered three questions. He didn’t finish the test.”

“Well, give it to him again and make sure he knows that he has to answer all the questions.”

The whole mishap was more embarrassing for my parents than it was for me. It didn’t bother me too much because, in my mind, I blamed them. After all, they were the ones who had taught me:

If a job is once begun

Never leave until it’s done.

Be it’s labor great or small,

Do it well or not at all.

Naturally, when I was challenged by that math question, it became my job. I kept working on it all the way to the end of the exam time. In my mind, that question became my great labor. I was fiercely determined to figure it out. Until I did–and I did, eventually–I couldn’t begin to think about all those other questions. In my mind, they didn’t even exist.

Well, like I said, I had to take the test again to establish for someone’s benefit that I had an IQ. I guess I showed them a thing or two because I didn’t have to take it a third time.

But don’t ask me to tell you my IQ score. I can no more remember it than I can remember my Myers-Briggs personality type. I always have to have Jenni remind me. (Dear Readers, you do remember Jenni, right? She’s my dear colleague, who set me up for this mishaps-and-memories nonsense in the first place.) Anyway, I’m 75% certain that I’m an ENFJ. It’s the 25% J part that always causes me to ask Jenny. Unlike me, she remembers everything.

Here. I’ll prove it. I just sent her a text message:

What is my Myers Briggs type?

If I recall correctly, aren’t you ENFP?

P?

I know the E and P for sure. The other two I think are right…

See. I told you. Jenni remembered. I am ENFP, and I’m sticking with it for now.

Wow! I’m glad that I told you all about my IQ mishap.

Now I can move on.

I mentioned last week that the mishap that sparked last week’s post might have had something to do with cooking or baking.

Now, however, I don’t think that it had anything to do with baking. I have shared my one memorable baking mishap already in my “Baking Up My Past.” Remember? In my first childhood baking adventure, I measured the baking powder incorrectly. Neither I nor my mother knew until batter oozed out the door of our South Bend, woodburning-cookstove, onto the kitchen floor.

Obviously, I have had other baking mishaps down through the years. But I have my reputation to protect–in my own mind, at least, even if nowhere else–so I’ll keep those to myself.

As for cooking mishaps, I do have one that always makes me laugh. It proves, once again, how naive and innocent and unschooled I am in the ways of the world.

I’m not certain, however, that it can be considered cooking. Is popping popcorn cooking? And it involves a microwave. I’m fairly certain that preparing anything in a microwave can not be considered cooking.

Nonetheless, here’s the laughable mishap that might have been related to cooking, depending on your culinary views.

For years, I would have nothing to do with microwaves. But the time came when my oldest sister Audrey talked me into letting her gift me with a microwave. As near as I can remember, it would have been around 1994 when my now full-time home in the Shenandoah Valley was then just a weekend getaway. She thought that I could use the microwave, if for nothing else, for popping popcorn. I mean, who doesn’t like popcorn? So I accepted her gift, not realizing how big the microwave was nor how much it weighed. It was, after all, 1994, and by then microwaves had advanced a lot, and they were much smaller than the commercial refrigerator-sized RadarRanges that Raytheon brought out in the 1940s. I assumed that my gift would be modern and small, too.

Small? Not. It was huge. It took up nearly all of the island counter space in what was then my super-small, weekend kitchen.

But, hey. I’m always up for a popping good time. So I bought a box of Jolly Time popcorn packets.

I put a pack in my clunker microwave and stood there in full anticipation.

Nothing. No popping sounds. No popcorn aromas.

Nothing.

I tried again. Nothing. As my IQ test mishap demonstrates, I don’t give up. I went through the entire damn box and my entire damn evening. Nothing.

The next day, I took the box and all of the unpopped packets back to the store.

“I want to get my Jolly Time money back. This popcorn must be old. None of it would pop.”

I walked away with a refund.

A few weeks later, my sister called to see how I was enjoying the microwave.

I told her about my disappointing popcorn experience.

“What cooking mode did you have it on?”

“Say whaat? Cooking mode?”

She explained the controls and the various options.

“Run into the kitchen and check. I’ll stay on the line.”

I was back in a sec.

“It’s on … Defrost.”

Dang. Defrost. Needless to say, I felt like an idiot. For some reason, I never did like that microwave after that memorable mishap.

At last, I remember the mishap that started all of these confessions. It was decidedly a technological mishap, even more embarrassing than the microwave one.

This mishap happened in the late 1980s or early 1990s when Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone introduced Caller ID to its subscribers in Washington, DC. I had just launched my own side gig–Potomac Research Organization (PRO)–and I felt a compelling need to monitor my incoming calls.

Instanter I went downtown and bought myself new phones so that I would know who was calling me.

As soon as I installed them, I called my sister in Richmond:

“Hey. I just bought these new Caller ID phones. Call me so I can see who’s calling.”

She did. Her name and number did not show up on my phone.

I did the same thing with my oldest sister in West Virginia.

She called me. Again, her name and number did not show up on my phone.

I unplugged my phones, boxed them up, and on Monday, I marched in the store, asking that my defective phones be replaced.

What do you mean by defective?

I explained in detail my two “test” experiments with my two sisters.

The salesperson looked at me with a smirky smile that still makes me cringe:

“Have you enrolled in Caller ID with Chesapeake and Potomac?”

“Say whaaaaat? Do you mean to tell me that I have to buy new phones AND enroll in Caller ID? Well, I have never.”

I got my money back, and I was perfectly happy living my life exactly as I had been living it: answering my phone without knowing who was calling. Or not answering it at all.

Yes, indeed! Caller ID was the mishap that sparked the idea for last week’s post and for this one, too.

I wish that I could say that I have learned a lot from my mishaps. I haven’t. And I wish that I could say that I won’t have any more mishaps. But I will. And I will keep right on laughing through all the memories.

M & M’s: Mishaps & Memories

Posted on April 17, 2023 by Brent L. Kendrick

“To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.”
William Arthur Ward (1921-1994; American motivational writer.)

Memory of an elephant. Yep. That’s exactly what I’ve got, and you–My Dear Readers–can vouch for me. As you know, I can drone on and on about many things, especially about my elephant memory. I did so just week before last in “Dating after Twenty-Three.” Remember? Of course, you do.

But here’s the thing. For this week’s post, I’m in a bit of a pickle. I’m having a memory lapse.

Don’t worry. I’m sure that it’s minor, and I’m sure that it’s momentary. But for the life of me, I can’t remember what the hell this post is supposed to be about. I don’t mean in the broadest sense of its content. Of course, I know that fully well: mishaps and memories.

The idea sparked as miraculously as spontaneous combustion one day last fall when a dear colleague and I were exchanging lighthearted banter, and I ended up fessing up to one of the many mishaps that I’ve suffered down through the years that ended up as memories.

As soon as I shared it with her, she quipped:

“That would be an excellent angle for one of your blog posts.”

I agreed. Almost immediately, I started a draft and made it as far as the preliminary title: “Mishaps and Memories.” In an instant, the two M’s seemed sweet enough to melt in my mouth, so the working title became the final title of today’s delectable treat: “M & M’s: Mishaps & Memories.”

Immediately, I loved the quadruple alliteration as well as the double ampersand. I still love them. Plus, in high school, I learned that every good title has a main title and a subtitle, separated with a colon. Can you believe that I remembered that little rule after all these years and used it here with a full measure of success?

But I sure wish that I could remember the memorable mishap that sparked this idea the day that my colleague and I were having such frivolous merriment on paid college time. (Oops! Did I just say that? Well, so be it. It’s not a problem for me anyway because I’m no longer on the college’s payroll. I’m reinventing myself at my own expense. It’s no problem for my colleague either because I have not disclosed her identity.)

Let’s see. What can I do to jog my memory? I know. I’ll use my alphabet technique for remembering things. Starting with the letter A, I’ll slowly work my way through the alphabet, lingering on each letter for a bit. When I get to the letter of whatever it is that I’m trying to remember, the entire word will flash apocalyptically across my mind.

Well, I’ve been from A to Z and back. Not once. Not twice. But three times. No apocalypse.

Well, duh. Why don’t I just text Jenny? I’m sure that she would remember our conversation. On the other hand, doing that would give me a ready answer and spoil all my fun and yours, too.

If I keep at it, I’m sure that I’ll remember. Aside from my foolproof alphabet technique, I have another technique for remembering things. But right now, I can’t remember it either.

So where was I? Oh, yes. I remember. I was trying to remember my memorable mishaps.

Well, let me just start sharing some, and as I share, maybe–just maybe–I’ll remember the one that Jenny thought was so riveting.

The mishap that I am about to share was the result of my naivete and innocence coupled with my polite and courteous outspokenness, for which I am so well known.

When I started my Federal career, I was part of a large editorial team. One of my co-workers was Ed-–h B-l-–r. After a year or so, I transferred to another editorial position in the same Federal agency, but in a different building.

On my first day in my new position, I was introduced to one of my fellow editors, H-l-n B-l—r.

Since their last names were the same, I assumed that they were related, and I was so delighted with myself that I had a perfect way to get into a perfect conversation with her.

“It’s an honor to meet you. Are you related to Ed–h B-l—r?”

“Do you mean the bitch who stole my husband?”

What an embarrassing mishap. Now, though, it’s a funny memory.

Okay. Let’s try another mishap confirming that I am naive, innocent, and downright dumb when it comes to being politely and courteously outspoken.

Fast-forward, if you will, a good number of years. Same Federal agency. Different position. Different building.

In that position, I had to review everything that the staff ghostwrote for my boss, the director.

One memo caused me to have some major concerns, and I called them to B-n’s attention.

“Go down there right now and tell N-r- that this is nothing but a piece of sh-t.”

I did as directed.

“Good morning, N-r-.” I flashed my widest smile as I handed her the document. “B-n told me to tell you that this memo is nothing but a piece of sh-t.”

N-r- stormed out, taking the stairs to B-n’s office on the sixth floor. I took the elevator, hoping to warn B-n. Fury must have wings. She beat me to his office where I found her giving him a piece of … her mind.

Sadly, these two foot-in-mouth mishaps haven’t taken me any closer to the mishap that I’m struggling to remember.

Maybe it had something to do with technology?

Maybe it had something to do with cooking or baking?

Maybe it had something to do with both?

Surely, it didn’t have anything to do with my IQ test. I don’t think that I have ever disclosed that mishap to one single solitary living soul. No, not one.

And, please, please, please, Dear Colleague who was with me when the idea combusted originally: do NOT reveal your identity by commenting on this post to tell me the memorable mishap that I can’t remember. You must remember that I have done everything in my power to keep it concealed.

Also, doing so would make me look really dumb. Work with me. Give me a little more time. By next week’s post, I’ll surely remember the memorable mishap that I can’t remember right now.

Wrapping My Arms Around All

Posted on April 10, 2023 by Brent L. Kendrick

“Diversity is a fact, but inclusion is a choice we make every day.”
–Nellie Borrero (Global Inclusion and Diversity Manager, Accenture)

Ask those who know me, and they will tell you that I’m a hugger. Ask those who didn’t know me once upon a time, and they’ll tell you that they weren’t strangers for long: I hugged them, too. I can’t help myself. I was born hugging, and I was born smiling. Seventy-five years later, I’m still smiling and still hugging. Go figure.

It’s fair to say, I suppose, that this hugging-and-smiling-thing that I’ve got going is part of my nature. I was born with that genetic disposition. But it’s equally fair to say, I suppose, that it’s part of my nurture. I grew up in an environment that encouraged everyone to embrace everyone, figuratively and literally.

For me, the nurturing environment was the coalfields of Southern West Virginia, sprinkled with veins of coal that ran out too soon and with rays of hope that would not fade. Hardship has a magical way of bringing people together. Of getting folks to wrap their arms around one another to show acceptance. Of getting folks to wrap their arms around one another to affirm goodness. Of getting folks to wrap their arms around one another to claim better.

Coal-camp kids know the love language of hugs, probably far better than adults, because they hug daily at the flour-sack-apron level and at the tarnished-belt-buckle level.

They hug weekly at the worn-hymnal level. I remember one song in particular that still reverberates in my ears:

Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world;
Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in His sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

As I sang, I was convinced that the “little children” in the song were me and my friends, mingling together the many colors of our ethnicities. Blacks. Greeks. Hispanics. Hungarians. Italians. Puerto Ricans. Whites. And I was equally convinced that “the world” in the song had to be my coal-camp world where I stood in church singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children.”

It would be easy for me to say that from that point forward in my life I would hug everyone. Accept everyone. Embrace everyone. Automatically. Without even thinking.

But it’s not that easy. Celebrating diversity and inclusivity is not an autonomic function like breathing. It requires conscious choices. It requires conscious vigilance. It requires conscious mindfulness.

I didn’t realize that it involved choices until I was seven, and my family moved away from our one-road-in, one-road-out coal camp.

My new world was still in Southern West Virginia. It was still in an area where coal mining was an occupation. But it was a middle-class world, one not faced with the same economic challenges that had brought ethnicities together in the coal camp where I lived before. My new friends’ dads weren’t miners like mine. They were grocers and teachers and electricians and car dealers and tire distributors and band directors. More significant, perhaps, the “little children” in this new town were mainly one ethnicity. White. Like me. We had no Black families. We had no Greek families. We had no Hungarian families. We had one Hispanic family. We had one Italian family.

My new circle of friends included White kids, and I wrapped my arms of friendship around them. But I consciously chose to wrap my arms of friendship around the Hispanic and the Italian, both my age, not only because I liked them but also because I was mindful that we faced similar challenges: mine, economic; theirs, ethnicity.

My world changed again when I went to college. There, my classmates’ parents were from all walks of life. There, I had a few classmates from various parts of the world. But, truth be told, it was largely a White-like-me world. I consciously chose to wrap my arms of friendship around other ethnicities whenever I could. My roommate one year was Black. Another year, Hindu. When I joined a fraternity, my Big Brother was Hispanic. One of my Black friends was crowned Homecoming Queen. On chilly evenings, I often draped my fraternity jacket over her shoulders, walking back to her dorm after an evening together in the Student Union.

After college, my world changed again when I moved to the Nation’s Capital and discovered the full depth and breadth of diversity: race and ethnicity, economic status, religion, age, disability, gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation.

At the same time, I continued to be aware that celebrating diversity and inclusivity requires choices and mindfulness. When I started going to church on Capitol Hill, for example, I walked into the nave and was stunned to see one Black man sitting all alone in the middle of an otherwise entirely White congregation. I could have sat anywhere, but I made a conscious and mindful choice to sit next to him. A few months later, I went to Joe’s regular church. I found myself sitting in the middle of an otherwise entirely Black congregation. When Joe came in, he could have sat anywhere, but he made a conscious and mindful choice to sit next to me.

Those examples are just that. Examples. They’re not profound. They’re not extraordinary. They’re simply intended to show that if we are to celebrate and embrace diversity and inclusivity, we must do so through conscious and mindful choices.

I would add as well that we must be vigilant. Let me share something that took me off guard a few weeks ago. My behavior surprised me. Actually, it shocked me.

I was scrolling through options for my morning meditation. Each option had a visual. I was drawn to the image of a tall thin man standing by the ocean’s edge, facing a glorious sun spreading its rays over the waters. It looked inviting.

“Perfect,” I thought.

I hit PLAY AUDIO. The soft background music began. Then, the meditation coach began talking. In an instant, the voice grated on my ears and irritated me. I hit QUIT and selected another meditation.

I did the exact same thing for the next several days.

Then, one morning I realized how judgmental I was being. I was hitting QUIT based on nothing more than voice. I didn’t give the meditation coach a chance. I didn’t give myself the opportunity to listen to the message. I didn’t give the message the opportunity to speak to my heart and uplift my soul.

When I had that realization, I made a conscious choice to listen to the meditation. I made a conscious choice to accept the voice.

It didn’t take long for me to be carried forward as the meditation coach emphasized some key points that can never be emphasized enough:

● Let go of yesterday and the past.

● Be present with yourself and those around you.

● Forgive yourself and others.

● Be aware of the sun rising, spreading its light everywhere and across everyone without any judgment.

Without any judgment.

Those three words stirred in me a profound sense of self-condemnation, for I had judged the meditation initially based on nothing more than the voice.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to course correct. Fortunately, I made a choice to listen.

I’m awfully glad that I did, for the meditation ended with a powerful message:

Wrap your arms around your body and feel the warmth of your hug and say to yourself, “Have a very good morning, me.”

The meditation made me aware that I need to be ever vigilant so that I don’t let unintentional biases slip in, skew my perspective, and deprive me of the awesome riches that await me when I wrap my arms around all.

The Frog at My Door

Posted on March 20, 2023 by Brent L. Kendrick

The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest of intentions.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900; Irish poet and playwright)

My mountain home borders the George Washington National Forest, and, as you might expect, my world is filled with frogs.

Tree frogs, especially, are everywhere. I am convinced that millions and millions surround me. Oddly, though, I don’t see them often at all. They are quite small and awesomely masterful at blending into the trees and forest floor where they live. But I hear them everywhere. Once they start singing–usually in late Spring or early Summer and continuing through mid-Fall–I am in the midst of a nightly surround-sound symphony, commencing with a twilight overture, continuing with a high-pitched repertoire throughout the night, and reaching a calming finale around daybreak the following morn.

The principal musician among the tree frogs is the Spring Peeper, camouflaged to look like tree bark–light or dark as needed. Their song is a pure-tone whistle or peep that rises slightly in pitch from beginning to end. Loud. Piercing. Distant choruses sound like the jingling of small sleigh bells.

Joining them, somewhere in the trees or on the forest floor, are wood frogs–brown, tan, or rust-colored–dark-eye mascara. Their rolling call is a soft, ducklike cackling–ca-ha-ha-ac, ca-ha-ha-ac, ca-ha-ha-ac—not too unlike a flock of quacking ducks.

And let me not forget the mottled-skinned Gray Tree Frog. It can be black or almost white, and it can change to light green, yellow, or gray. Its call is a melodious trill, lasting about half a second and repeated over and over again.

Aside from tree frogs, I have several Bull Frogs that live in my Koi Pond. Green tops. Cream or yellow bellies. Large eyes with almond-shaped pupils. I’m most fascinated by their tympana (eardrums) right behind their eyes. My bull frogs belt out loud, resonant bass notes: rumm . . . rumm . . . rumm, or, as some folks claim, “br-rum” and “jug-o-rum.” Wishful thinking.

And, of course, I have Toad Frogs. Stocky body. Clumsy gait. Dry brown skin. Warts. (No. You did not get your warts from a toad frog.) I love to watch them puff up their bodies when threatened–never by me–in an attempt to look bigger. They, too, have a call. It’s a long trill, and each male in the chorus calls at a slightly different pitch, alternating and overlapping their songs.

And, from time to time, I have seen it rain frogs. Yes. Right here in my yard.

“Say whaaaat?” someone just croaked.

Yep. It is possible to “rain frogs.” In severe weather, strong wind gusts scoop them up, blow them hither and yon in the sky, and let them fall to earth again.

Obviously, I spend a lot of time listening to frogs and watching them whenever I am blessed enough to catch sight of them. However, of all the frogs in my world, one has super special meaning.

It’s the frog at my door. My kitchen door. It’s the door that I use when I go out. It’s the door that I use when I come back in.

The frog at my door is a big frog. It’s huge. Actually, it’s the biggest frog that I’ve ever seen. Its belly is all white, a dramatic contrast to the rest of its dark green body, all splotchy with light green spots. And it has several remarkably large warts on its back. As it sits there–all puffed up–its thick lips have a wide, welcoming, fly-trap grin, and its eyes seem forever fixed on mine every time that I walk past. Sometimes, I even think that it looks up and winks at me. Whenever that happens, I always return the flirt.

“Is it real?” someone just bellowed.

Well, of course, it’s real. But it’s not alive. I put it there when I started reinventing myself and had to relocate treasures from my college office to my treasured mountain home.

Now the frog sits at my kitchen door, forever looking, forever looking.

My placement of the frog at my door was as deliberate as my purchase. The moment that I laid eyes on it–the moment that our eyes locked–it looked as if it wanted–no, needed–a kiss.

In an instant, I was reminded of the Grimm Brothers’ “The Frog Prince.”

No doubt you remember the story. It’s about a young princess who tossed her golden ball–her favorite plaything–into the air and, failing to catch it, it rolled along the ground and fell into the spring.

“Alas! if I could only get my ball again, I would give all my fine clothes and jewels, and everything that I have in the world.”

About that time, a frog popped its head out of the water and started talking. The princess dismissed him as nothing more than a frog, incapable of helping her.

Ironically, he was not interested in her possessions. All that he wanted, in exchange for retrieving her golden ball, was to have her love, to live with her, to eat from her plate, and to sleep upon her bed.

Thinking that the frog could not get out of the spring even if he could manage to retrieve her golden ball, the princess agreed.

The frog retrieved the golden ball. Overjoyed, the princess took the ball and ran home, oblivious of her promise.

The frog followed. When the King discovered what had transpired, he made his daughter honor her promise.

We all remember the rest of the story. The cruel spell was broken, and the frog turned back into a handsome prince. The prince and princess got married, and, of course, they lived happily ever after.

The fairy tale teaches children and all of us several important lessons:

● The importance of not judging people based on their appearances.

● The importance of treating everyone with love regardless of how they look.

● The importance of keeping the promises that we make.

It seems to me, though, that the fairy tale teaches us one more important lesson:

● Magic can happen when we help others meet their needs.

Think about it. The princess needed to get her ball from the bottom of the spring. The prince needed to be freed from the evil spell that had turned him into a frog.

By the end of the fairy tale, each had met the other’s needs. Magic happened.

So there you have it. That’s why I put the frog at my door. As I go out, I want to be reminded of the multitude of needs that I might encounter and the opportunities that I might have to help meet those needs.

Mind you: when I leave, I’m not headed out on a mission to find needs. I’m simply going out to take care of my own affairs, but as I do so, I hope to have a greater awareness of other people’s needs.

Their needs need not be big or earth-shattering. More often than not, they’re small. More often than not, I can’t meet them all every time that I head out. But when I can, I want to be reminded to do what I can.

● I want to be reminded to smile and be friendly to everyone, including strangers.

● I want to be reminded to buy local and to support small businesses.

● I want to be reminded to be on a first-name basis with all the grocery store clerks.

● I want to be reminded to thank the attendant at the sanitation landfill who rarely gets thanked and to remind her of the importance of the work that she does.

● I want to be reminded to see whether I can help the driver who has pulled his car off to the side of the road.

● I want to be reminded to show love to the seemingly unlovable; to make eye contact with the homeless person on the corner; to give generously; to offer to buy a meal.

● I want to be reminded that less can be more and that I can donate to others what I no longer need.

● I want to be reminded to pay it forward: to help someone starting their career; to give someone a word of encouragement; to be the shoulder that a friend can lean on.

● I want to be reminded that I might be the fire that inspires my local postmistress to go back to college.

● I want to be reminded that without even knowing it, my positivity might be the light at the end of someone’s tunnel.

I want to be reminded of all those things and so many, many more.

This much I know. When I get back home, the frog at my door will be there, waiting for me. Our eyes will lock once again, and at that moment, the frog at my door will hold me accountable: Did I do all that I could do? Did I turn my grand intentions into meaningful actions?

Maybe it’s just the frog at my door, but in my mountain world, it’s as magical as any fairy tale.

The Final Cake

Posted on March 13, 2023 by Brent L. Kendrick

Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes
the outmost—and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of
the Last Judgment.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882; AMERICAN ESSAYIST, POET, PHILOSOPHER, AND LEADER OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT; from his seminal Transcendental essay SELF-RELIANCE [1841])

Dayum! I just realized that the title of today’s post might lead you to believe that I’ve baked my last cake. Not to worry. I haven’t. I mean, after all, I’ve been stacking cakes for layers on end, and I have cakes to bake before I sleep and cakes to bake before I sleep. (Frost and I have our own thing going.)

Let me count the cakes. (Barrett–Elizabeth, not Robert–and I have our own thing going, too.) I’m thinking something like around the world in 80 cakes. (Well, dayum again. It looks as if movies and I have our own thing going. Maybe I have my own thing going with everything. No doubt. I do.)

But imagine that. Baking 80 cakes from around the world. Well. I have never, not yet at any rate. But I wonder: will I be the first? BRB.

Well, triple dayum. Every time that I have a brilliant idea, someone goes and steals it from me–right here in plain sight for everyone to see–and manages to get away with it years before I even manage to speak up and declare it in my post.

Yep. You read it right. Famed pastry chef Claire Clark has already done it: 80 Cakes from Around the World. 6 continents, 52 countries. What adventures. What delights.

OMG! I just had another brilliant idea! Forget my idea of around the world in 80 cakes. Well, actually, we can’t forget it, can we? It’s published as a book already, enjoying life everlasting to its fullest.

Fine. Since Clark’s book focuses on countries, here’s another idea. I will remove that which defines countries as countries. I’ll take away all the borders. Is that a stroke of genius or what? Then I can bake what I want to bake and not be boxed in. BRB. I have to go Google.

Well. Dayum nearly flew out of my mouth again, but I’m getting tired of saying dayum because I’ve said dayum three times already. So, dammit. I Googled, and, once again, someone stole my idea even before I had a chance to speak up and declare it here in my post.

Yep. You read it right. Jennifer Rao has poured the batter already and is baking it up as eBooks. Cakes without Borders. Volume 1: The Maiden Voyage. And she’s added another layer. Cakes without Borders Volume 2: The Journey Continues.

Fine. No problem. Since the baking borders are gone, let’s call it like it is. One World. How’s that for a simple-syrup solution? I’ll bake up One World Cakes. Forget cakes without borders. BRB. I have to go Google again.

Well, as I live and breathe. I have been duped again. What I found was not a perfect match, but it was close enough in spirit and intent that my conscience would never ever let me move ahead with what I know would become my One World Cakes empire. I can’t because Oksana Greer started her One World Cafe in 2007.

Well, I’ve gotten over the repeated theft of my ideas before I even had the chance to speak up and declare them, but now “one world” is floating around in my head. We are, you know, One World. More and more every day. One world.

But if you had asked me when peopled started talking about one world and the heightened responsibilities that we face as one world, I would have credited Pearl S. Buck, who alluded to one world in her 1950s essay “Roll Away the Stone,” contributed to NPR as part of its “This I Believe” program:

I take heart in a promising fact that the world contains food supplies sufficient for the entire earth population. Our knowledge of medical science is already sufficient to improve the health of the whole human race. Our resources and education, if administered on a world scale, can lift the intelligence of the race. All that remains is to discover how to administer upon a world scale, the benefits which some of us already have. In other words, to return to my simile, the stone must be rolled away.

But I’m glad that you didn’t ask, because I would have been wrong. Buck was not the first. Credit for the first use of one world goes all the way back to 1919:

The English idealists have followed Hegel rather than Fichte … in striving for a one-world theory, for seeing ideal values realized in the actual (Political Science Quarterly, 34: 610).

Gracious me. Have I gotten side stacked or what? If I keep this up, my post might well compete with a Smith Island Cake. Please tell me that you know about this famous cake from Smith Island, Maryland. Say whaaaat? You don’t. Well, let me take just another crumb or two to bring you into the cake know. The Smith Island Cake has been honored a mighty stack of times for the defining role that it has played in American culture. It is a super-sweet confection, consisting of at least seven thin layers with cooked fudge icing between the layers and on top. The side of the cake is often left unfrosted. (I made one once with 15 layers. Talk about a show-stopper.) Give yourself the baking challenge. Here’s Mrs. Kitching’s Original Smith Island Cake. Or, if you prefer, buy one online: Smith Island Baking Company.

Enough of Smith Island Cakes. Enough of one world and one world cakes. Enough of cakes without borders. Enough of around the world in 80 cakes. Enough of my nonsense.

It suits me just fine to let it all go. Enough is enough is enough. Besides, those who know me well know that I have baked the good bake and that I will continue to do so (The Bible and I have our own thing going, too.)

I suppose, then, that the best thing for me to do is stop salivating over the gazillion cakes that I have yet to bake and start putting the frosting on the final cake that I baked, the one that got me going with this post.

Let me tell you all about it. I promise: I’ll make it no more than a three-layer cake.

During my twenty-three years at Laurel Ridge Community College (formerly Lord Fairfax Community College), I always baked cakes for my classes, especially my Creative Writing classes. They were smaller than my other classes. Plus, I usually met with Creative Writing classes on Fridays. Bringing cake seemed perfect for a three-hour class like that.

Baking for my classes became a standard. If it was a Kendrick class, there would be Kendrick cakes. Word traveled fast. Once I walked into class on the first day and discovered that one of my students had written on the board:

We heard there would be cake.

Is that sweet or what?

I continued baking for my students throughout my teaching career, all the way through Fall 2022, my final semester as a full-time professor at Laurel Ridge. However, that semester I treated my students, week by week, to various types of sourdough muffins.

As I prepared for our final class–which turned out to be my final class, too–I had in mind my usual: celebrate my students and their writing successes.

Muffins didn’t do it for me. It just had to be a cake. I had many of my favorites lined up as possibilities, but it seemed to me that my students should get to choose.

So, for our final class, I’m baking a cake to celebrate. And here’s the deal. You get to decide what kind of cake. What would you like? Just name it. You’ll get it.

Silence fell over the very same room that I sometimes thought could never be silent.

But I learned decades ago that the best way of breaking classroom silence is to remain silent.

It always works. After a minute of silence that felt as long as a semester, one student spoke up:

German Chocolate.

Robbie, thank you very much. German Chocolate it shall be.

I was silent for a moment, pondering why Robbie was the only one bold enough to speak up and declare a preference. The others sat there as if they could not speak. The others sat there, as if they had no preferences whatsoever. I knew otherwise and started laughing a little, as I started asking why no one else spoke up. Typical responses followed:

● Social anxiety

● Didn’t know what others might think.

● Fear of being wrong.

(Hello. How can you go wrong with cake?)

● Wanted to hear what others had to say.

But here’s the thing, and it’s rather ironic. When I walked into class and asked my students what kind of celebratory cake they would like, I stood there before them ready to honor whatever they wanted.

It could have been my 15-layer Smith Island Cake. It could have been a Lady Fingers Cake–Торт “Дамские Пальчики”–from One World Cake. It could have been a Bolo de Fuba from Cake without Borders. It could have been the scandelicious Carrot Cake from 80 Cakes from Around the World. It could have been whatever their taste buds desired to taste, whatever their minds dreamt to dream.

With greater irony, they could have had more than one cake. I stood there before them ready to honor whatever they wanted.

But only one student spoke up. One lone voice prevailed. German Chocolate.

I didn’t want to turn the situation into a lecture, yet I felt that I had a responsibility to seize this moment and make it a sweet learning one.

In a flash, I thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance.” With greater speed, I found the essay on the Internet, projected it on the screen for my students to see, and read the following passage:

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost—and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this.

When we met the next week, my students were majorly impressed by my show-stopper German Chocolate Cake. Three 9-inch layers of light chocolate cake. Coconut-pecan frosting slathered between the layers, all around the sides, and on the top. Delightfully sticky. Delightfully sweet. Delightfully decadent

When the final class ended, Robbie left–cake carrier in hand, delighted to be taking home what remained of the final cake, his own sweet indulgence to share as he saw fit.

I like to believe, however, that everyone left class that day with an even sweeter realization that might serve them for a lifetime if they will only listen: the influential power of a lone voice surrounded by silence.

In Praise of Transverse Rumble Strips

Posted on March 6, 2023 by Brent L. Kendrick

“The great benefit of slowing down is reclaiming the time and tranquility to make meaningful connections–with people, with culture, with work, with nature, with our own bodies and minds”
Carl Honoré (b. 1967; In Praise of Slow: Challenging the Cult of Speed)

Come on. Fess up. Did the title of today’s post give you whiplash? Or did you find yourself asking, “What the hell?” before you virtually ran to your virtual dictionary?

Well, if you won’t fess up, I will. I had to run to my virtual dictionary. Not once. Not twice. But three times. After all, I grew up in the coal mining region of Southern West Virginia. What the hell could I be expected to know about rumble strips, transverse or otherwise? Thank you for cutting me some (coal) slack.

Back in the late 1940s when I was born, West Virginia coal camps generally had one road going in and the same road going back out. The winding, single lanes were memorably narrow.

Once, when I was about four or five, I was walking up the narrow Cherokee Road to a playmate’s home. I had almost reached my destination when I saw a humongous black snake sunning right smack-dab in front of me, just a few feet away, extending himself all the way across the road. For a moment, my bare feet froze on the tarred surface, softened by the sun. But then the curious little boy in me lifted my feet and set me free. I tip-toed to one side and looked up the bank into the weeds. Then I quieted myself to the other side, leaned in, and stretched my eyes down the rocky drop off to Windmill Gap Branch below. When I realized that I could see neither the snake’s head nor its tail, I knew that it was time for me to hightail it back home and get my mother. And that’s just what I did. By the time the two of us returned to where I had seen the snake, it had crawled off to wherever it was going before I came along. It was nowhere to be seen. Luckily, my mother knew that I would not make up a tall tale like that. As we walked back home, she shared some of her own childhood black snake tales, but that’s copy better left to another day and, perhaps, another post.

The narrow road’s tarred surface was always lots of fun even when black snakes did not impede my childhood journeys. Solitary summer hours found me walking the road, searching for small tar bubbles. I knew just how hard to press my toes so that the surface would slip and slide back and forth above its liquid soul without it spewing forth like a minor Mount Vesuvius, burning my toes.

And then, of course, with any luck it might be a summer when Ashland Coal Company resurfaced the road with a new layer of tar. Word traveled fast through the coal camp when resurfacing was going to happen, and I knew exactly where I could go to get a bird’s eye view.

All that I had to do was walk a short way up the road–past the Caprinis, the Knights, and the Wilcoxes–go up the steps with stone walls on both sides winding along the road, and climb up my favorite bean tree in the Monarchy’s front yard. Bean trees were all over the coal camp, in all the yards, planted years earlier by the coal company as a tip-of-the-coal-miners’ hard hats to ornamental landscaping. The trees are spectacular with large, heart-shaped leaves–big enough to umbrella a child in a heavy rain–and with showy, trumpet-like white flowers with purple and yellow throats–fragrant enough to take a child’s breath away on a misty morn. After blooming, the trees are covered with inedible beans, growing as long as 18 inches and anywhere from a half inch to an inch in diameter. Some people call them cigars. Either way, the tree–Catalpa bignonioides–is a member of the Catalpa family, and the beans/cigars are part of its prominent appeal.

The Monarchy’s bean tree was especially appealing to me not only because it was an easy climb but also because one of its branches extended halfway or more across the narrow, soon-to-be-resurfaced road. Sitting on that branch centered me right above the soon-to-unfold drama.

I can still see as vividly now as I saw then the truck edging closer and closer. It had a huge tank that stored and heated the tar and a distributor that spray-nozzled the tar onto the road.

Creeping along behind was the paver machine with several rollers that spread the tar across the road. Then came the machine with steel drums that compacted the surface.

But the equipment did not impress me nearly as much as the hissing steam that rose steadily from the surface and the smoky, oily smell that subdued even the fragrance of the bean tree flowers. Everything that I could see, seated there on the branch–skinny legs dangling–seemed coated in wet blackness. The road. The equipment. Even the clothes that the workers wore and even their hands that waved to me were all in stark contrast to their tanned faces, flexing wide smiles at me, the coal camp kid in khaki shorts and starched, spread-collar, white shirt, watching and smiling back from a bean tree branch just above all the men and all the action.

And even in times when the narrow road was not being resurfaced, it was always the perfect time and the perfect place for playing the perfect childhood game: hopscotch. Some chalk. A road. A kid. Some other kids. Some others, kids at heart. That’s all that it took. For joy. For exercise. For math. For putting to good use that one road in, that same road out. And here’s the good thing. Even a child like me could count with ease, using both hands, the cars coming in and going back out. Little wonder that our hopscotch patterns were nearly as permanent as if they had been stamped indelibly onto the road’s surface.

Unlike me, though, you probably weren’t born in a coal camp in the late 1940s. So you probably know all about the transverse rumble strips that I didn’t know about as a child.

But don’t be too hasty to agree, lest your eagerness embarrass you.

I’ll spare you by willingly embarrassing myself. Growing up, I missed out on rumble strips, but as an adult, I’ve heard their songs and felt their vibes.

Yet, until I started writing this post, I was not certain what the dang things were called. I had to virtually run to my virtual dictionary to find out.

Now I know. And, in case you don’t know, let me bring you into the know, too.

Rumble strips. Alert strips. Sleeper lines. They were first used in 1952 on New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway as safety features, alerting drivers who veered outside the lanes. Shoulder rumble strips as well as center line rumble strips cause sounds and vibrations, with intensities in direct proportion to the vehicle’s speed. Reminder: slow down. Reminder: be attentive.

But don’t forget about transverse rumble strips–the ones that perhaps gave you whiplash at the beginning of this post.

Sometimes, they’re temporary rumble strips, put down across the road to alert drivers to something ahead that may require a full stop, usually road maintenance.

Sometimes, they’re permanent, alerting drivers to an unexpected stop sign or intersection ahead or to a significantly lower driving speed.

Down through the years, I’ve had lots of experiences with shoulder rumbles, center line rumbles, and temporary transverse rumbles.

Truth be told, though, I can only think of one village that uses permanent transverse rumble strips, coming and going.

It’s one of my favorite places to visit. Actually, it might be my most favorite place. Mind you, though, it’s not my favorite because it’s known as the “Nation’s Horse and Hunt Capital” with fox hunting, steeple chases, and multi-million dollar estates. It’s not my favorite because of all the rich and famous people who have ties there, including Jack Kent Cooke, Robert Duvall, John F. Kennedy, Paul Mellon, and Elizabeth Taylor.

It’s my favorite for one reason and one reason only. Getting there requires me to slow down. Getting there requires me to be attentive.

It’s about 62 miles east of my home in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. You’re probably thinking that I can get there in an hour. I can’t. And that’s what I like about going there. Getting there requires me to slow down. Getting there requires me to be attentive.

Oh, I suppose that I could whiz along at 70mph on the interstate and get there faster than I do. But I don’t. I take the state roads: 55mph, slowing down from time to time to 35mph or 25mph, as I drive through some of the Valley’s blink-and-they’re-gone small towns.

But what I like is when the 55mph slows to 50mph for a long spell. It’s then that the magic begins. It’s then that I start seeing the dry stack stone walls flanking the road, frozen in time, as perfect now as when farmers first stacked stone on top of stone for miles and miles. It’s then that I start seeing gaps in the walls here and there, perhaps the work of animals, though more likely the work of Nature. It’s then that I’m reminded of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

And then 50mph eases into 35mph as I approach Aldie, dropping to 25mph as I continue through the village. Then, the calming speed pattern repeats itself as I come into Upperville.

It’s then that every fiber of my being becomes more relaxed, more alert, more attentive, quivering in my heart and my soul. It’s then that I say out loud–for me and me alone to hear: “How civilized. How incredibly civilized.”

It’s then, continuing a few miles further to my destination, that I drive across successive groupings of transverse rumble strips.

It’s then that I can actually see people and cars and dogs with heads sticking out car windows, unlike the fast-moving blurriness of Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:

Petals on a wet, black bough.

It’s then that I know. I have arrived. I’m in Middleburg, Virginia.

Soon I’ll meet my good friend Frank–from long, long ago, but not from so far, far away–and sometimes his wife Barb. We’ll meet where we always meet for lunch: King Street Oyster Bar.

And if we’re aware that we’re seated in the village’s historic past and present, midst horse country, steeple chases, fox hunts, and the rich and the famous, we never talk about it. I doubt that we’re even aware. I dare say that we’re not. Some things–like old money–never show, certainly not in Middleburg.

We’ll talk of this and that–of everything and of nothing, but always of the brininess of the oysters on the half-shell, so fresh that the ocean’s saltiness washes over our conversation.

Soon, always too soon even when it lasts for hours as ours always do, it is done. Lunch is over. We hug, then walk our separate ways, always turning around to wave, at least once, sometimes twice.

Then I start my journey home, driving back out the same road that I drove in, crossing over the rumble strips, noting the increasing speed limits. 25mph to 35mph to 50mph. And I say out loud once more–for me and me alone to hear: “How civilized. How incredibly civilized.”

When my journey morphs mysteriously to 55mph, I start to see the misty Blue Ridge Mountains rising up in the western sky. My heart quickens as I push down on the gas pedal, eager to get back to Edinburg and make the slow, bumpy drive up the one-lane-in, same-lane-out graveled road that always brings me back home.

Once again, the transverse rumble strips have worked their calming magic. Once again, I am at peace with myself and the world, as much as I was when I was a coal-camp child.

The Wired Researcher

Brent L. Kendrick's Blog on the Joys of Writing and Research

Category Archives: Memoir