Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about writing. I have no doubt that it’s because I’ve been writing these posts faithfully every week for nearly an entire year. And I have no doubt that it’s also because I’m teaching Creative Writing this semester. Naturally, I spend lots of my time talking with aspiring writers about writing.
In fact, when I met with my students last week, we did two, one-minute reflections.
For the first, we reflected on the joy of writing. Let me share some of their responses:
● Creating my own world.
● Finding words that describe my own feelings.
● Gaining an understanding of my own life.
● Discovering something about my own identity.
● Daydreaming.
● Letting my thoughts spew out.
● Getting it done–the rhythm, the music, the wish, the dream, and the fear.
For the second reflection, we tackled the challenges of writing. Again, let me share:
● Getting started.
● Finding an interesting topic.
● Putting myself into my writing.
● Encouraging my paragraphs to talk to one another.
● Choosing which idea to explore.
● Connecting the beginning, the middle, and the end.
● Accepting my writing as it is.
I had planned a third reflection, but we ran out of time. Here’s what it would have been: discoveries about writing.
For this one, I’ll take the lead, sharing my own ideas, based largely on what I’ve discovered about writing as I wrote my weekly blog posts this year.
By and large, what I’ve discovered has been by way of reminders. To start, writing isn’t easy. It isn’t spontaneous. And it isn’t magical.
Here’s something else that I have rediscovered. Writing is work. It’s hard work. It’s lots of hard work.
Work. Hard work. Lots of hard work.That’s my mantra these days when I’m working with other aspiring writers. I front-load the conversation: get ready for rich, robust, and heavy mental lifting.
At the same time, over the last year I’ve reminded myself–and others–that even though the hard art of writing isn’t magical, it is filled with magical moments.
Let me share some of mine.
Magical Moment. Getting hooked on an idea that makes my world fade away.
Magical Moment. Letting an idea explode in my mind as magically as Pop Rocks explode in my mouth.
Magical Moment. Focusing on old-soul insights that have come back to me from far, far away and from long, long ago.
Magical Moment. Fooling around with organizing what I’m writing until I get comfy with one structure that pulls me in close and whispers, “Yes. Let’s do it.”
Don’t get too excited by these moments. They are magical. But let me remind you: they are not magic.
And trust me. The next part–the actual writing–has no magic at all. Sometimes, it might not even have magical moments. The actual writing can be grueling, if not downright defeating, especially since first drafts never hit the mark. Never. Mine don’t, at any rate. Sometimes, even my 13th draft doesn’t seem quite right. How’s this for a confession? Sometimes, I’ve gone as high as 22 drafts. Admittedly, the differences between any two drafts are sometimes majorly minor, and the changes will be unknown forever to all except me. Nonetheless, the work of writing–of revising–goes on and on and on.
And writers keep at it. I keep at it, knowing that what I write will never be perfect, but knowing, too, that at some point it’s as good as it’s going to get.
What I have discovered as well is the simple fact that my scholarly writing is in many ways far easier than writing my personal essays like today’s post. My own scholarly work on The Humourist as well as on Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, for example, has singleness of purpose and focus. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy.
On the other hand, writing my weekly blog is more challenging, mainly because I don’t focus on the same topic every week. My topics change. As reluctant as I am to admit it, I’ll admit it anyway: I’m never sure from one week to the next exactly what topic will bubble up.
That’s not to say that I don’t have lots of ideas for my posts. I do. I have plenty. In fact, whenever I have an idea for a post, I immediately start a WordPress draft. I give it a working title, and I include as many notes as possible so that when I return, I can glide back into my thinking and writing groove.
Right now, for example, I have 25 drafts in various stages of completion, ranging from “The Power of Showing Up” to “Dating after Twenty-Two” to “Mishaps Make Memories.” I suppose I could also mention “Working Out a Plan” or “A Horrorscopic Week” or “What My Father Saw.” Or I could mention that I might have “My Gardening Attire” finished by next week. I might. But, on the other hand, I might not.
I’m not trying to generate future blog traffic by teasing you with alluring and inviting titles that may or may not morph into posts. Simply put, I have come to the realization that my ideas must germinate in the dark caverns of mindfulness and mindlessness. They must sprout and pop up whenever they are ready for the light of day. No sooner. No later.
All of my tentative topics and all of their accompanying draft notes are simply placeholders. Nothing more.
Yet it occurs to me that maybe they are far more than mere placeholders.
They are talismans. Not to bring me power. Not to bring me luck. But rather to bring me back to the illuminated intensity of the split second when an idea sought refuge within me and pleaded for a some-day home.
What I have discovered, then, is that I need lots and lots of talismans. They are my antidote to the numbness and paralysis that I know fully well will set in if I have no writing options. I don’t write well when my storehouse of options is empty. When that happens, I feel that I have forced myself into the all-too-tight corset of being compelled to write on one topic and one topic only.
On the other hand, when I have many, many topics, one of them might be precisely the one that captures my fancy precisely when my fancy needs to be captured.
It won’t have anything to do with talismanic luck. And it won’t have anything to do with magic.
It will have everything to do with my willingness to let my ideas take their own shape, whatever those shapes might be, without being corseted, without being laced up, and without being forced.
I want my ideas:
● to leave themselves ample space to move around in.
● to do what they want to do.
● to be what they want to be.
It’s really straightforward. My greatest discovery about my own writing is my everlasting need to unlace the corset that constricts my thoughts. It’s my everlasting need to let my ideas breathe and expand freely, whenever and however they wish.
Love sacrifices all things to bless the thing it loves.
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803 -1873; English writer and politician)
Somehow, as my 75th birthday gets closer and closer, I rarely think about myself as the baby of the family.
But I am. And trust me: the youngest in the family–at least in mine–is always the baby.
Aside from the dubious distinction of being the baby, I’m not sure that the status ever included many other benefits.
Well, maybe one. When I was born, my oldest brother and sister became rocking rivals:
“It’s my turn to rock Brentford Lee tonight.”
“No, it’s not. You rocked him last night.”
I was rocked a lot. My oldest sister still reminds me.
And, on reflection, maybe being the baby came with a second benefit. My middle sister pretended that she was my mother. I had double doses of motherly affection. She still reminds me.
What sweetened my baby-of-the-family deal, though, was the simple fact that I was born smiling. “Little Mister Sunshine” became my nickname.
Naturally, the twofer combination–baby and smile–came to mean one thing and one thing only: Brentford Lee could do no wrong.
I am certain that I was capable of doing lots of wrong. More, I could have done so and gotten away with it easily. But, by and large, during my childhood–and continuing thereafter–I tried my best to do no wrong. When I did, I tried my best to right the wrong as soon as I could, especially if the wrong had been prompted by anger. My mother taught me and my siblings to not let the sun go down on our wrath.
Once as a teenager, however, my anger caused a great hurt–to others and to me–and I did not make amends before the sun went down.
I remember that fall day as vividly as if it were yesterday.
It was at the start of my freshman year, and something happened in school that ticked me off. Whatever it was had to have been of no real consequence. I can’t remember the details at all, not even one.
But I do remember that the short walk from the bus stop to my home was not long enough to soften the sharp edge of my anger.
As I approached the house, I saw on the front porch a brand new, light brown, faux-wood, metal cabinet. It had two doors that opened out from the middle, and it was about four feet wide and six feet or so tall.
I went right past it, deliberately banging the screen door against the wooden frame as I walked inside. My mother was standing at the kitchen stove with a big smile on her face, not to be undone as I slammed my books on the kitchen table.
“What is that ugly thing on the porch?”
My mother looked at me and started to respond, but my ongoing rant gave her no chance. She kept on cooking dinner.
“It’s hideous, just hideous.”
My mother remained silent, as I marched back out to have a second look, banging the screen door, going out and coming back in again.
“Who’s it for?” I asked, showing an unbecoming attitude that still makes me cringe.
My mother’s “It’s for you” hung in the air, echoing against itself over and over in my mind. “It’s for you. It’s for you. It’s …”
She smiled softly as she kept on cooking.
“Your dad and I thought that you might like to have a wardrobe of your own to keep all your new school clothes in.”
I had always loved clothes, and now that I was in high school, I loved them even more. Sweaters. Slacks. Socks. Always matching. Always the best that my summer yard mowing jobs could buy. Always bought on lay-away at the best men’s store in a small city nearby. My mother took great pride in how I dressed, and she took even greater pride in knowing that I was known as the best dressed kid in school.
“For me? I don’t want it. That wardrobe is so ugly. I’ll never use it. Never.”
My mother looked away and didn’t say another word about the wardrobe. Her face was still. Her smile, broken. Her joy, gone.
And that ended it. My dad put the wardrobe downstairs. I don’t remember who used it. It didn’t matter to me that it was a wardrobe of my own. What mattered to me was that I thought it was ugly. What mattered to me was that I vowed to never use it. What mattered to me was that I never did.
The wardrobe was still downstairs when I graduated from high school with honors and went away to college.
It was still downstairs when I graduated from college with honors and moved to our Nation’s Capital.
The wardrobe was still downstairs when I started working at the Library of Congress.
When I came back home for visits during those late teenage and early adult years, neither my mother, my father, nor I ever mentioned my wardrobe. It was as if it had never entered our home. Yet it had entered, and it remained.
And then the day came when the wardrobe of my own rose up from afar, right in front of me, right before my very eyes.
I was struggling with my monthly budget. My handsome salary as an editor at the Library of Congress had an equally handsome competitor: the high cost of living in D.C., combined with paying off student loans. As I did my math, I suddenly realized that I just couldn’t have everything that I wanted. I had to make hard choices. I had to make painful sacrifices just to make ends meet.
In a flash, I realized that when my parents chose to buy me a wardrobe of my own, they chose to make sacrifices. My mom chose to do without her new dress. My dad chose to do without his new shoes. My siblings who were still at home had no choice. This time my parents chose to sacrifice for me as they had chosen to sacrifice for all of us, all down through the years.
Immediately, I picked up the phone and called my mom and dad. We had a long, long conversation about a wardrobe of my own.
I don’t know when “I’m sorry” brought forth such joyful tears.
The tears could not undo that teenage day when I was so lacking in gratitude. But my mom and dad let me unburden my sorrow, and across the miles and across the great expanse of time, they washed it away with their unconditional love.
Seven years had passed, but, finally, the evening sun went down on a wardrobe of my own.
And if you aren’t thinking that you’ve read this post before, you are probably asking yourself, “What’s going on with the Good Professor’s seeming propensity for being in bed?”
Excellent question! I won’t try to pull the sheets over your eyes. It’s simple. “In Bed” makes the title catchy. It certainly makes me lie down and take notice. You’ll take notice, too, when I tell you that, on average, we spend 33 years of our life in bed: 26 years, sleeping; 7 years, trying to doze off.
If the “In Bed” part didn’t grab your attention, “with writers” surely did!
And I’ll bet I know what you’re thinking right now. Come on. Fess up. You’re wondering what they’re doing in bed. And now you’ve got me wondering, too. I’ll be right back.
Thanks for your patience. I had to do a little research. If you were wondering whether they were having…you know...sex, you won’t be impressed by the answer that I just discovered. On average, having…you know…takes up only about one third of a year (117 days) in the course of our entire life. Ironically, people think about having…you know...nearly 19 times a day. I guess we spend far more time thinking about having…you know…than we do enjoying…having you know.
Sadly, I suspect that the 117 days of romance is substantially lower with writers, particularly those who write in bed. I doubt that they would want to be interrupted with their word play. Maybe that’s why William Byrd II (Colonial Virginia aristocrat and man of letters; member of the Governor’s Council; and founder of Richmond, VA) had a fondness for romantic interludes on the billiard table. “He what?” someone gasped in disbelief. Yep. I tease you not. For your own in-bed reading, check out The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover (1709-1712). The content of his diary remained a secret until the 1940s when it was decoded. Now I know that I have whetted your literary appetite. Here, let me tease you more with an excerpt from his diary:
“in the afternoon my wife and I had a little quarrel which I reconciled with a flourish. It is to be observed that the flourish was on the billiard table.”
Now you know why he wrote his diary in code. Check it out, but not now. Or, if you must, please come back and finish this post.
But let’s get our writers back in bed where we found them to begin with.
For what it’s worth, I was in bed already, and I intend to stay there, smackdab in the middle. After all, it’s my bed, and in bed is where I write my blog posts. But I’m the not-so-famous writer mentioned in the title, so enough about me. Let’s snuggle up with some famous writers who wrote in bed, and, for the time being they can join me in mine.
Surprisingly, not many writers actually write in bed. That suits me just fine. Although my bed is big–fit for a queen–I still need to be able to pull up the sheets and get comfy.
Little chance of my doing that any time soon. Long-legged Mark Twain has jumped in already. What a bed hog: writing and smoking at the same time. He’s got some nerve! “Just try it in bed sometime. I sit up with a pipe in my mouth and a board on my knees, and I scribble away. Thinking is easy work, and there isn’t much labor in moving your fingers sufficiently to get the words down” (New York Times, “How Mark Twain Writes in Bed,” April 12, 1902).
Joining Twain is Edith Wharton, author of The Age of Innocence. (Well, maybe, innocent, but, after all, she is in bed with Twain even if I am the one who put the two side by side.) Wharton liked to write in bed because it freed her from wearing her corset, thereby liberating her thoughts. Now, at least, we all know where she kept her mind.
And I suppose we have to invite Truman Capote to hop in. He’s often quoted as saying: “I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy.”
On the other side of the bed–to my right–let’s put some European writers. For bed-balance, we’ll add three only, arranged in the same gender order as the Americans: Boy. Girl. Boy.
To my right, William Wordsworth. He wrote his poems in bed in complete darkness, and, if he lost a sheet of paper in bed, he started over. It was easier than rummaging around under the sheets. Thank God for small mercies.
On his right is Dame Edith Sitwell who slept in a coffin from time to time. Without a doubt, she’ll enjoy being in bed for a change, especially since she once commented, “All women should have a day a week in bed.” That’s all fine and dandy as long as they’re not in my bed.
To Sitwell’s right is Marcel Proust, right on the edge of the bed. Writing in bed was not a quirk for him. It was a requirement. Age and illness forced him to stay in bed, and it was in bed where he completed Remembrance of Things Past as well as In Search of Lost Time. On the edge of the bed seemed perfect so that he could get in and out with greater ease.
OMG! I just heard a loud thud. Did you? Let me take a look. Sure enough. The not-so-famous American writer who thought up these shenanigans in the first place is at it again. He has pushed the European writers right out of the bed onto the floor.
Oh, no. I just heard another thud, though not quite as loud. Let me lean across the bed and have a look-see. As I live and breathe! Capote, Wharton, and Twain are all piled up on the Oriental rug. Twain is still smoking his pipe. Wharton is suddenly looking for her corset. And Capote is leaning back, still smoking his cigarette. Maybe he and Twain can blow smoke at one another while Wharton laces up her corset.
Well, at least the Americans landed softly. I really meant no harm, but I had no choice other than to kick the three of them out, too. Seven in my bed was six too many.
I don’t know about you, but it’s perfectly clear to me that writers–whether famous or not-so-famous–make strange bedfellows.
I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such things as crawl upon earth.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948; Indian lawyer, politician, social activist, and writer; embraced nonviolent resistance; inspired movements for civil rights and freedom around the world)
The blacksnake and I friended the moment we first laid eyes on one another.
The early, dew-pearled spring morning remains as fresh in my memory as if it were yesterday. I had gone to my towering compost heap, bucket in hand, to retrieve some black gold. As I knelt at the base of its old, sweet-smelling richness, I suddenly sensed eyes. Someone or something was scrutinizing me. I was being watched. I could feel it deep in my bones. I looked all around me and saw no one. Then I lifted my eyes, and there on top of the compost heap was an incredibly beautiful, brilliantly glossy blacksnake, leaning over, looking down at me with its small eyes, its tongue darting, in red contrast to its white under chin, mellowing into soft yellow. I felt neither chill nor threat. I continued my task, all the while the two of us kept returning glances as if to make certain that we did not snap our nanosecond bond, perhaps never to connect again.
Surprisingly, the bond stretched and sunned itself over the summer. Even though I was always hoping to see my blacksnake–so much so that I often went looking for him–our encounters were sudden, unexpected ones.
Not long after our initial meeting, I was hard at work, planting a new specimen tree in the upper yard. The curly, contorted willow was already a large tree with a root ball that seemed far more immense when delivered than when purchased. By the time I dug the hole and positioned the tree, I was exhausted, but I still faced watering, backfilling, watering again, and mulching. Edging near tiredom, I walked a few steps to the nearby waterhose. Reaching down, I lifted with an intent to pull. In an instant, I realized that what I had in hand had no drag. I looked. There I stood holding in midair my blacksnake friend whom I had mistaken for my black water hose. It was my second one-on-one experience. Once again our eyes locked. But this meeting was more special than the first. Now we knew one another’s touch–warmth against cold, cold against warmth. I put the blacksnake down as casually as I had picked him up, and we each continued what we were doing. I could not see him, but I sensed that he watched from somewhere nearby as I finished planting the willow.
On another occasion, I had spent the better part of my day laying stone pavers for a short walkway through the garden bed outside my kitchen and building a low stone wall along the walkway’s meandering edge. The sunny day bordered on scorch. I sat on the walkway, leaned back into the flower garden, admiring my handiwork. As I gloated, a cold black stream soft-bellied itself across my sweaty outstretched arm. I looked back and my eyes met the eyes of my friend, the blacksnake. I remained motionless, holding my breath, hoping that the snake would stop, linger, and perhaps even explore. Instead he slithered on his way, calmly and unhurriedly.
My next visitation was perhaps my most unexpected and the most short lived. One summer evening, I had gone for a walk in the yard. When I went out, I didn’t consider turning on the outdoor lights. But darkness had fallen by the time I started back. I could see my way easily enough because the indoor lights were on, including those in the foyer. Even if the lights had not been on, I could have footed along without really looking. And that’s exactly what I did, that is until my hand clutched for the storm door and instead of an iron handle I felt a cold, smooth, muscular surface, pulsing to my touch. Only then did I look. The foyer light dimly illuminated my blacksnake friend, partially coiled around the door handle, upper body stretching toward the door top and lower body draping downward. I opened the door and went inside. My friend remained outside, leaving me to wonder whether he had hoped, for once, to be visitor in my world as I had been so often in his.
That rendezvous was the most fleeting. My fifth was the most lasting. As autumn started, my late partner Allen and I grew weary of removing fallen leaves from our Koi pond and cascading waterfalls. To make our task easier, we covered both with invisible black netting.
Our solution was perfect. The leaves floated on top of the netting instead of on top of the water. But the day came when our hearts sank as we discovered a scarlet red, black-faced cardinal struggling to escape the black netting’s grab. We lifted the netting to winged flight.
“So much for that brilliant solution,” we sighed simultaneously.
I rolled the netting into a ball, left it on the small patio beside the pond, and went back indoors to help Allen with dinner.
After dinner, I went back out to throw the netting away. Reaching down, I saw my blacksnake inextricably interwined in the ball.
Allen came out to see what I was doing.
“Look at what we’ve done. This is all our fault,” I lamented. “We have to get the snake out of the netting.”
“And just how do you plan to do that without getting bitten?”
“Go get some scissors, and I’ll show you what I have in mind.”
Allen came back out with a pair of surgical scissors that he was so skilled in using.
“I’ll get a hold of the snake just behind his head so that he can’t bite me, and you cut away and remove the netting.”
Ever so cautiously, I knelt and took gentle hold of the blacksnake behind his head. Allen starting cutting away at the netting, gradually freeing the snake’s tail.
As he snipped away more and more netting, the blacksnake began coiling his emerging body ever so slowly and calmly around my arm.
As Allen snipped, I gently rubbed my other hand against the snake’s skin, making certain that no black netting had been left behind.
Finally, the moment came when Allen finished. I remained kneeling on the patio with my blacksnake friend coiled entirely around my arm.
What was I to do now? I had not planned for this moment of release, this moment of letting go.
I stood up slowly, all the while watching my blacksnake friend watching me. It was as if he knew that Allen and I had rescued him. It was as if I knew that my friend would do me no harm.
I walked up to the bank beside the waterfalls, gently lowered my snake-coiled arm to the ground, and let go my grasp around the snake’s head.
Two, together, frozen in spirit and frozen in time, just for one second and one second only. In the next, our eternity melted. My blacksnake friend started uncoiling himself from around my arm, pausing to look back. Our eyes locked one last time before he slithered his way back into our world.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
Hopefully, you paid close attention to the title of this post. I don’t want anyone jumping to the wishful conclusion that I’m fooling around. Well, I guess I am, but it’s not with someone. I’m fooling around with time which surely makes fooling around permissible albeit boring!
But let me share with you what made me start fooling around with time in the first place. When I look around me, I seem to see lots of folks who have time on their hands. Sometimes I even hear them saying to one another, “Oh, I’m just killing time.”
Thankfully, I’m not one of those folks. Instead of time on my hands, I seem to have time on my mind. I think about time a lot of the time. And I never have time to kill. I’m not even sure that I know how to kill time.
Both expressions–time on my hands and killing time–strike me as rather lame, but not lame enough to keep me from looking up their origins in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
“Time on your hands” goes back to 1668 with Flavell’s Saint Indeed Ep. Ded. sig. A7: “Leave trifling studies to such as have time lying on their hands, and know not how to imploy it.”
Of course, I am intrigued by the reference to “trifling studies,” but I don’t have time right now to look it up.
“Killing time” dates to 1751, when it appeared in Richardson’s Clarissa (ed. 3) VIII. Concl. 266: “The more active and lively amusements and Kill-times.”
In the next century, Coleridge used it in a way that intrigues me. In his Lect. Shakespeare (1856) 3, he writes: “Where the reading of novels prevails as a habit…it is not so much to be called pass-time as kill-time.” As an English professor, I am stunned that a poet would speak so unkindly of novels!
Sometimes folks killing time or with time on their hands look at me and ask, “How do you find time to do all the things that you do? You must have all the time in the world.”
I want to come back with, “Find time? How could I do that? You have 24 hours in your day, just as I do.”
But, instead, I count to ten, smile, and bide my time.
Even so, those questions set me to thinking, “How do I find time to do all that I do when I’m not foolin’ around with time?”
The answer is not as straightforward as it might seem. In reality, it’s not about finding time. It’s about managing time. It’s about realizing that when work is to be done–when goals are to be accomplished–time is not on my side. I have to worry not only about how much time I have to do the needful but also about how much time I will set aside to do the needful.
When it comes to managing time for goals and projects–both long- and short-term–I am downright SMART. I know how to get things accomplished on time or ahead of time.
S–Specific.
M–Measurable.
A–Achievable.
R–Relative.
T–Time-based.
In my head, I know that SMART can be applied successfully to daily time management, too.
But I don’t always practice what’s in my head. As a result, time and time again, I discover that I am not the best time manager, even of my own time. Nonetheless, I always develop some kind of plan for my time every day. Usually, I do that planning the night before, while lying in bed, right after I finish taking time to work on my blog post.
The way that I develop those plans has everything to do with how productive my time will be the next day.
Over time, I’ve picked up on patterns–what works and what doesn’t work.
Let me start with the latter. What doesn’t work for me is when I make sketchy notes of what I hope to accomplish for the day. I approach the plan so cavalierly that in no time, I’m done.
Here’s a perfect example of my sketchy planning for one day, a week or two ago. Let me share without any further loss of time.
Morning Goals
* Meditate
* Bike
* Student Engagement Hours at Laurel Ridge CC
By the end of such a day, I might well have accomplished those goals and more, but I know that they did not require the entire day. I’m left somewhat satisfied, but not entirely. I have the sinking feeling that time slipped through my fingers into soft, billowy expanses of nothingness.
We all need downtime like that from time to time. In fact, some of my best ideas appear in moments when seemingly I am doing nothing.
But, as a rule, I am no fonder of nothingness than I am of stillness. I like my days to be chock-full of activities so that at day’s end I can look back knowing that I had a whale of a productive time.
Here’s an example of what works best for me when I’m planning a typical day. For the time being, one example should suffice because time’s a-wastin’.
Morning Goals
5:00-5:30am | Meditate
5:30-6:30am | Bike 20 miles
6:30-7:30am | Shower, dress, and have breakfast
7:50am | Leave for Laurel Ridge CC. Stop for coffee and pastry at Flour and Water. Take the leisurely and scenic Valley Pike route to the college.
9:30am-12:30pm | Student Engagement Hours at Laurel Ridge CC
Hopefully, you get my point. When I anchor my goals to time allotted to each task, I have a specific plan for how I will spend my time.
The beauty of this approach–aside from being more productive–is that I escape to a once-upon-a-time world simply by setting aside time to motor to the college via Valley Pike–past cornfields and the meandering Shenandoah River–rather than whirring to the college mindlessly at 70 miles an hour on the interstate.
No doubt even Benjamin Franklin would have been proud of me on my days when I use time management effectively. Franklin, of course, was ahead of his time in so many ways. Aside from realizing that time is money, his way of scheduling his own days became the prototype of the American day planner.
Sadly, I am not ahead of my time, and, most assuredly, I am not a legend in my own time. But I am fully confident that my way of planning a fully productive day–of making time for the goals that I want to accomplish–will withstand the test of time.
Painfully, too, I know that time and tide wait for no man, least of all for me. For now, then, the time has come for me to stop foolin’ around with time, yours and mine.
Whenever I teach a literature course, I tell my students that aside from celebrating their achievements as they master the course content, I have one special hope for each of them. I want them to find one writer who will be their friend. One writer who will never unfriend them as other friends sometimes do. One writer who will be with them through all the storms of life, for a lifetime. A writer who will be a forever-friend.
What I have in mind is similar to the handful of real-life, forever-friends whom we might have, if we are lucky. It’s never many. At least it has never been many for me. I have perhaps one handful of such friends. All right. Perhaps two handfuls who are in the friends-forever category. With us, we’ve shared so many past experiences that even if we have not seen one another in years, when we reconnect, we pick up magically on the same conversation that we were having when we last met, and we do so without missing a beat. Friends. Forever-friends.
Writers can be our forever-friends, too, with an added bonus. We can have lots and lots of them. As we read more and more, we discover more and more writers who might end up as our friends. We like them. We like what they have to say to us. We like how they inspire us. We like how they make us believe. We like how they make us feel…unalone. We like how they heal our…brokenness. Before long, we want to hang out with them. We can. Whenever we want. For as long as we want.
The great thing about writers who are our forever-friends is that when they pop up unannounced and uninvited, it’s never a problem. We don’t have to clean for them. We don’t have to cook for them. And we don’t have to clear our calendars for them. They can tag along with us just as we are. And they will do just that if we let them.
All that we have to do is be attentive, smile when they arrive, and even smile when they leave, knowing that they will come back to visit us again and again and again.
Their arrival coincides with something that we are experiencing that makes us think of something else. It’s the power of association. Robert Frost captures it best:
“All thought is a feat of association; having what’s in front of you bring up something in your mind that you almost didn’t know you knew.”
That’s the beauty of having writers who are forever-friends. Their arrival is based exclusively on what’s right in front of you or something that you’re thinking about. Something that you almost didn’t know you knew.
No doubt, you have your own writers who are your forever-friends, just as I do.
Obviously, I don’t know about yours, but mine visit me multiple times throughout the day, every day without fail. I never know which writers will visit or when. But I go forth daily, confident of being strengthened and girded up by their company.
For example, Walt Whitman shook his silvery locks right in front of me as I was writing this post. I was thinking about the fact that only a snippet of a writer’s work comes to my mind during an association, while all the other details of the work are seemingly long forgotten. Instantly, the lines from Whitman’s “Once I Pass’d through a Popular City” flashed across my mind:
“Day by day and night by night we were together—all else has long been forgotten by me…”
Here’s another example.
When I met with my Creative Writing class for the first time this semester, I had a slap-stick time promoting this blog. It was nothing more than nonsensical banter aimed at entertaining my students, but they picked up on it.
Not long after I managed to restore myself to a modicum of seriousness, one student raised her hand as if to ask a serious question.
“Professor Kendrick, did you say that you have a blog?”
I started laughing, as did the rest of the class.
A little later on, her hand went up again. I was on to her by then, but I was having far too much fun, so I acknowledged her.
“Professor Kendrick, did you give us the name of your blog?”
(When our laughter died down, my forever-friend Edward Albee paid me a momentary visit. He has chummed me since the 1960s when I was in college and he was a controversial Broadway playwright.)
“Very funny! You know, Caitlin, my hell-bent banter to promote my blog to a brand-new group of students, reminds me of the first line from Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story.”
In the play, Jerry approaches Peter, a total stranger, sitting on a bench in Central Park.
I’ve been to the zoo. [PETER doesn’t notice.] I said, I’ve been to the zoo. MISTER, I’VE BEEN TO THE ZOO!
I was thrilled by Albee’s visit, especially since I was able to share it with my class. He came as he did and when he did because of my dogged determination to tell my students–a group of strangers, if you will–all about my blog. In the process, I remembered Jerry’s insistence on telling Peter, a total stranger, that he had been to the zoo.
My students got it. They saw the association with great clarity.
On another occasion, something similar happened at the start of the same class.
As I drove on campus. I was aware–painfully so–that the grassy, undeveloped acreage all around the college was being gobbled up by townhouses.
At the start of class, one of my students shared the same observation.
In that nanosecond, former United States Poet Laureate Phillip Levine appeared. Immediately, I walked to my teacher station, googled his poem “A Story” and flashed it on the screen for students to see as I read it aloud.
It captures perfectly what my students and I had witnessed with pain that morning.
Levine chronicles the life and death of the woods that once surrounded us and ends with a chilling doomsday prophecy:
where are the woods? They had to have been
because the continent was clothed in trees.
We all read that in school and knew it to be true.
Yet all we see are houses, rows and rows
of houses as far as sight, and where sight vanishes
into nothing, into the new world no one has seen,
there has to be more than dust, wind-borne particles
of burning earth, the earth we lost, and nothing else.
And right now as I typed the above quotation, Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell popped into my head, chanting a few lines from her “Big Yellow Taxi”:
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.
My writers–my forever-friends–visit me far more in my alone times than they do when I am teaching or, for that matter, when I am socializing.
Maybe they appear then because they know that in my alone times friends can add a richness to any moment, even ordinary ones.
Ordinary moments like weed whacking. Somehow, I end up doing that chore on Sunday instead of going to church. That’s no big deal to me. I consider myself Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR). Emily Dickinson must be SBNR, too, because she is always with me on my Sunday morns. Her “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church” overpowers the Stihl noise through all the stanzas, rising triumphantly in the final one:
God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.
Or sometimes it’s as simple as visitorial moments that occur when reading emails from regular friends who aren’t writers. Recently, a friend who is my age wrote that his hands had grown old. I sensed his sadness and immediately thought of a poem about aging by former United States Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz: “Touch Me.” It includes the poignant lines:
What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire. The longing for the dance stirs in the buried life.
One season only, and it’s done.
[…]
Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.
And then I immediately thought of Ben Speer singing “Time Has Made a Change in Me.” The title alone was touchstone sufficient. And that led me to W. S. Merwin reading his “Yesterday” with the ever-chilling line:
oh I say feeling again the cold of my father’s hand the last time
It’s amazing: the rich literary company that embraced me, all because of one single solitary email sent my way!
Sometimes, though, my forever-friends arrive as I try to make sense of all that’s going on in our world. The ongoing COVID pandemic. The invasion of Ukraine. Recent SCOTUS decisions. The January 6 Hearings. Global Warming. Poverty. Food scarcity. Gender inequality. Homophobia. Transphobia. Growing humanitarian conflicts and crises. The 21st anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on America.
Need I go on? Sadly, I could. Gladly, I won’t. It’s far too sobering.
But in those dark moments when I find myself spiritually staggering under the weight of it all, I take strength from William Faulkner’s Nobel Acceptance Speech, delivered in 1950 when the world was staggering under the burden of the Cold War:
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? […] I decline to accept the end of man. […] I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
Maybe, just maybe, the need to have writers who are our forever-friends, boils down to nothing more than this. They come regardless of what we are facing. They reassure us that goodness and mercy shall prevail. They remind us to grapple with our soul, to grapple with our spirit.
They come, as Robert Browning came to me just this second, to calm us and anchor us in the full and steadfast belief that despite all the injustices, all the wrongdoings, all the travail, and all the sorrows,
As we celebrate Labor Day–a day established to honor the American Labor Movement and all that American workers have contributed to our nation’s strength, prosperity, and well-being–let’s also take time to celebrate the dignity of work itself–all work–and to reflect on the importance of work in our own lives.
American poet Walt Whitman is in my thoughts on many days, but perhaps on no day do I think of him more than on Labor Day.
Whitman is the poet, America.
Whitman is the poet, Democracy.
Whitman is the poet, Labor.
This Labor Day, I hope that you, too, hear America singing.
I Hear America Singing
Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass, 1860 ed.)
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
Lessis more has been around since 1855 when Robert Browning coined the phrase in his “Andrea del Sarto,” a dramatic monologue inspired by the Renaissance artist having the same name as the poem’s title. Nearly one hundred years later, architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe made the phrase really popular when he adopted it as a mantra for architecture, art and design. Today,less is more is more popular than ever because minimalism is gaining more and more traction.
I get it. I guess. Well, actually, I guess that I don’t get it. To prove that I don’t get it, I had to Google some examples of less is moreso that I could include them here at the start of this post. I can’t believe that I couldn’t come up with any examples on my own, but I couldn’t.
Fortunately, I found a lot of examples on the Internet. However, only one or two of them found me nodding in agreement.
I really do understand that putting less focus on material things–consumerism–allows us to focus more on things that really matter and that bring us lasting happiness. Got it. Endorse it.
And I really do understand that minimalism can help the environment by reducing our carbon footprint. Got it. Got it. Endorse it twice over.
Those two concessions are about as far as I can go. Some of the other less-is-moreexamples leave me shaking my head.
Sleek, smaller design, often in a black and white scheme. Nope.
Decluttering. Nope. Nope.
Digital decluttering. Nope. Nope. Nope.
(If you desire a full understanding of why I dissed sleek design, decluttering, and digital decluttering, see “OHIO on My Mind.”)
Having scoffed at those examples of less is more, you can rest assured that I would never consider less is more when it comes to gardening. That’s when I draw the line in my compost heap and step across it to join sides with Robert Venturi, one of the major American architects of the twentieth century, who proclaimed that less is a bore.
As for me, I want my garden right now. No. I want it yesterday or the day before, and I want it to look as if I have been enjoying its lushness for years, if not forever.
Hear me and hear me well. Less is not more when it comes to the way that I garden. I garden, I garden my way.
I want nothing–absolutely nothing–to do with seeds. They take days to sprout, more days to grow, still more days to selectively thin, and even more days to bloom.
I want blooms, blooms, blooms. Glorious blooms. And I want them instanter.
“Those 4-inch pots are gorgeous! Look at all those blooms.”
“You must like them a lot to be buying fifteen each of three different annuals.”
“Oh, my. Yes. I love mass plantings.”
That’s a typical conversation as I make early spring pilgrimages to local garden centers, always to be reminded right after I have made my purchases:
“Keep ’em indoors until the danger of frost has passed.”
No big deal. I’ve never minded dragging a gazillion potted plants day after day–from mid-April to mid-May–in and out of my home, kitchen to deck and back again. Hey. Like I said. I want my garden yesterday or the day before. And either way I want it looking like it’s been there forever.
If you think that I have a bad attitude when it comes to seeds, I have an even worse attitude when it comes to saplings. (Think of me as a modern-day-Mae-West gardener: “When I’m good, I’m good. When I’m bad, I’m better.”)
If I’m going to plant a tree, I certainly do not expect to sit under it from the get-go and be shaded–Hmmm, that is something for me to think about–but, at least, I want it to be big enough and bold enough to cast a shadow.
When it comes to how many plants and trees I consider to be enough, it’s really simple.
For specimen plants and trees, I’m fine with one of each.
For all others, if one is good, then three, five, seven, or nine have to be better, especially since I garden in odd numbers when it comes to layout and design.
In fact, my odd-number planting rule struck me as perfect when I decided to plant bamboo. Nine clumps. Not to worry. Non-running.
That rule seemed equally perfect for my hardy bananas. Three groves. They were so small when I first planted them, that I hoped my neighbors would not notice. Trust me. They didn’t. Bigger is better even when it comes to bananas. But these days my neighbors get whiplash as they drive past, and it’s not because of our well-rutted road. Groves of big banana plants on a Virginia mountaintop make heads turn and make cars turn around.
Let’s see whether I have anything else to prove that less is not more when it comes to my gardening. Goodness! How on earth could I forget English ivy. Well, I nearly forgot it, no doubt because for once I broke my cardinal rule of planting in odd numbers. I planted the ivy in twosies. I needed ivy to hide not only a humongous and hideous stump just below my driveway but also to hide the rock wall that I built to hide the stump.
It worked so well there that I decided some ivy would soften the stone wall surrounding three sides of my Koi Pond. The fourth side, lest you think that I slighted it, is a dramatic waterfall, cascading from a height of five or seven or nine feet or so.
I wouldn’t want the world at large to know this–and I know that I can trust you, Dear Reader, to keep what I am about to say to yourself–but in my insistence on having my gardens look as if they have been around forever from day one, I confess that I may have made a mistake or five.
Mistake #1. Planting things too close together. Let’s face it. Too close is too close.
Mistake #2. See Mistake #3. My mistakes come in odd numbers only.
Mistake #3. Not paying close enough attention to how big things will grow. Double disaster. Too close and too large.
Mistake #4. See Mistake #5. My mistakes come in odd numbers only.
Mistake #5. Not fully understanding that gardeners like me who nurture and care for their gardens end up with plants and trees that are much larger than expected. Miracle Grow grows miracles.
In case you’re wondering how my less-is-not-more approach to gardening played out over time, let me share with you.
Year One. Oh, joy. This is gorgeous. This is proof. My garden looks as if it’s been here for a while. It almost has that old-garden look. So there! I knew from the get-go that less is not more.
Year Two. See Year Three. I garden in odd numbers only.
Year Three. Oh, joy of joys. Everything is so lush. The garden really does look elegant and established.
Year Four. See Year Five. I garden in odd numbers only.
Year Five. Joy to the fifth. Cheers! This is an English garden at its best. Blooms, blooms, blooms. Glorious blooms everywhere. Everything in the garden is touching. I can’t even see weeds between the plants. Maybe there are no weeds. Better still, even if the deer have been in the gardens, I can’t tell what they’ve eaten.
Year Six. See Year Seven. I garden in odd numbers only.
Year Seven. Well, if I must say so myself, the stone walls really do look mysterious hidden beneath the English ivy. Here and there the sunlight bounces off a stone. For all that I know, what I’m walking past might be the foundations of ancient Roman ruins awaiting an archaeological dig. And I am rather glad that the manicured borders around the garden beds have disappeared. Too formal was a tad too much for a mountain man like me.
Year Eight. See Year Nine. I garden in odd numbers only.
Year Nine. The season of the slow awakening finally came. I looked out my windows one day, and I realized that it was gone. All gone. To be certain, it’s all there, but now it’s all so overgrown and all so close together that it looks like an Impressionistic study in shades of emerald green.
From afar, it’s rather dramatic. But let’s face it. Gardening cannot be done from afar. Gardening requires down and dirty.
Recovery from my initial Impressionistic shock was slow, and I confess to having been in denial for a year or three. It was a downer. I felt overwhelmed by the “muchness” of it all, just as Frost’s farmer felt in “After Apple-Picking”: “For I have had too much / Of apple picking: I am overtired / Of the great harvest I myself desired.”
But I started to take heart when I started ripping out enough English ivy to fill five, seven, or maybe nine forty-five-gallon yard bags.
I got really hyped when I discovered the stone wall surrounding the red-leaf Japanese maple. Now, though, the maple has overgrown its stone wall boundaries. Joy!
“Mr. Gardener, tear down that wall.”
I did, and I rebuilt it sufficiently far away from the mature maple–exactly where I should have built it to begin with.
Then I repeated the ivy demolition on the three sides of the Koi Pond. Wow! What rocks I have! I can’t believe that I dug those stones out of the ground using just my pick and then managed to position them so expertly. They are stunning. Simply stunning. And with all that ivy gone, the pond is every bit as big as I recall it.
In case you’re wondering about the bamboo, let me just say this. Those nine clumps have an impressive diameter of six feet. Each. Non-running? Right. This bamboo is leaping! I have renamed it Bamboozle Leptomorph! (Patent pending.) I’m still trying to remove as much of it as I can from my gardens, while leaving the original clumps intact. They are gorgeous. Nonetheless, Dear Reader, if you would like to gift your best enemies with some of my bamboo, please leap out to me. You can assure them, if they ask: Clumping. Non-running. Caveat inter vivos.
No doubt you’re wondering about my bananas. Of all my less-is-not-more gardening ventures, the bananas might be my greatest success. A recent visitor commented that they reminded him of Peru! Imagine that! My own piece of Peru right here in the Shenandoah Valley. Rest assured: I’ll keep the bananas. Even though they are hardy, I have to work hard at wintering them over. When they start to outgrove their allotted space, I simply overwinter smaller sections of the groves. Or I dig up perimeter pups and give them to friends. (Enemies get the Bamboozle Leptomorph, sine caveat.)
The annuals? Never a problem because at the end of the season, Voila! They’re gone. If I want more, I’ll plant them again next year.
No doubt you know exactly where I am. That’s right. I am ripping out lots of my gardens that have exceeded by far my wildest dreams nightmares.
This fall, just as an example, I’ll be lifting and replanting 55 or so peonies that have been anchored in their spots since 1998 when I planted them with fierce determination to make them look as if they had been there forever. Trust me. These days they look as if they have been there forever and a day.
The same can be said for all of my gardens.
As I move forward with these gardening challenges opportunities, I will be gardener enough to own up to the fact that “Less is not more until it is.”
What worked great for me for so many years is now simply too much. And too much is just too much.
But, as I own up to the shortfalls, I am seeing wide open expanses opportunities that I have not seen in decades. At the same time, I am seeing metaphorical steel and copper plant markers nudging their way up through the soil here and there and everywhere: “Gardening Opportunity.” “Plant Tomorrow, Today.” “Just Plant It.”
Yep. I will savor the landscape’s openness through fall’s brilliant blaze and through winter’s snowy silence.
Come spring thaw, however, my unrepentant self and I will be right back at all the local garden centers. In all likelihood, I will do it all over again unless I somehow discover that sweet spot, somewhere between less is a bore and less is more.
What matters even more is that a Southern woman’s generosity in the face of her own starvation—“You can have the honey, but please, please don’t break my jar”—ricochets through the ages together with the Union soldiers’ noble act of harming neither the old woman nor her treasured wedding jar.
In Remembrance of Mary “Polly” Conner Slaughter (August 17, 1806-April 10, 1891)
1. Relic, n. [1]Something kept as a remembrance, souvenir, or memorial; a historical object relating to a particular person, place, or thing; a memento.
–-“Luther’s…apartment…contains his portrait, bible, and other relics.”
Piecing together the pieces of a tale is never easy. Like shards from a broken vessel, the pieces are rough edged and resist coming together again. Yet, with loving care, a craftsman can piece together the pieces, yielding—once again and for all eternity—remembrances of that which was.
May the piecing of these pieces bring forth such a tale.
2. Marriage, n.The action, or an act, of getting married; the procedure by which two people become husband and wife.
–“Euery Minister shall keepe a faithful…Record…of all Christnings, Marriages, and deaths.”
On Thursday, August 11, 1825, Mary “Polly” Conner (daughter of John David “Daniel” Conner and Lucy Fox Robertson) married Martin Slaughter (son of John Slaughter and Mary Handy). They exchanged vows at home in Elamsville, Patrick County, Virginia. Mary was eighteen, just a week shy of nineteen. Martin was twenty-three, just a few weeks shy of twenty-four. Mary’s father, an elder in the Primitive Baptist Church, gave surety, he performed the marriage ceremony, and he filed the minister’s return.
The marriage license and the return survive.
3. Infare, n. A feast or entertainment given on entering a new house; esp. at the reception of a bride in her new home.
―“The day after the wedding is the infare … the company is less numerous, and the dinner is commonly the scraps that were left at the wedding-feast.”
The next day, Polly and Martin had their infare. It is not known who attended. Polly and Martin were country people: she, a housewife; he, a farmer and later a minister. What is known is that Polly wore a special infare dress on that Friday reception in their new home. It was dark brown muslin, with an empire waist. Richly patterned in small bright red and orange oak leaves with tan acorns, it was perfect for a heavy-harvest reception. From the high neckline down to the waist were small black, ivory buttons. At the end of the long sleeves, the same. The dress shows Polly to have been tall, full bosomed, and thin waisted.
The infare dress survives.
4. Jar, n.A vessel of earthenware, stoneware, or glass, without spout or handle (or having two handles), usually more or less cylindrical in form. Orig. used only in its eastern sense of a large earthen vessel for holding water, oil, wine, etc.
―“At the dore there is a great iarre of water, with a…Ladle in it, and there they wash their feete.”
Also surviving is one marriage gift: a five-gallon stoneware jar, ovoid in shape, with two side “pocket” handles just below the rim. The handwritten note taped to the bottom of the jar authenticates the occasion. The jar itself also confirms the time period. Its thick, rolled rim and its cobalt-glazing are typical of such jars made between 1750 and 1820, more likely closer to 1820. The jar itself weighs twenty-seven pounds. When filled with water, it weighs seventy-five pounds.
The jar survives.
5. Civil War, n.War between the citizens or inhabitants of a single country, state, or community.
―“The Civil War and Reconstruction represent … an attempt on the part of the Yankee to achieve by force what he had failed to achieve by political means.”
According to the Federal Census taken on August 1, 1860, Martin Slaughter was 57; Polly, 53. They had four children living with them at home: Judith D., age 25, Martha Jane, age 16; Lavina, age 13; and Dicie Laroma, age 9. (They had six other children, no longer living at home, and thus, not enumerated on the Census: a son, John W. and five daughters: Mary Elizabeth, Lucinda Lucy, Emilia Ann “Millie”, Nina, and Rosina Lee.) Their real estate was listed with a value of $1,300 (equivalent to $456,300, using today’s economic status calculator) and their personal property was valued at $3,000 (equivalent to $1,053,000, again using today’s economic status calculator). According to family lore, “Martin Slaughter gave each of his daughters at the time of their marriage $800 in gold and a fine horse. His wealth was in gold coins, and it was thought his coins were buried near his spring when he died.” By the time of that census, Martin was a Primitive Baptist minister as well as a farmer.
The next year, 1861, the Civil War began with the Battle of Fort Sumter, April 12-14. Virginia seceded from the Union on April 17, 1861, becoming the seventh state to join the Confederate States of America. On April 19, Company D (formerly the Lafayette Guard, Petersburg) enlisted in the 12th Virginia Infantry. It reorganized on May 1, 1862, supplementing its roster with conscripts from Patrick County. John W. Slaughter (Martin and Polly’s son) enlisted and became one of Virginia’s 155,000 men who joined the Confederate Army. He fought in the Battle of Seven Pines (May 31 and June 1, Henrico County), and he fought in the Battle of Malvern Hill (July 1, Henrico County). On July 20, 1862, John died of pneumonia at a field hospital in Falling Creek, Chesterfield County, Virginia.
John W. Slaughter joined the ranks of 624,511 soldiers (Confederate and Union combined) who did not survive.
As the Civil War continued, it could not hit Martin and Polly Slaughter any harder than it had hit them in death, but it could hit them—and other Virginians—closer and closer to home. Because of Virginia’s strategic proximity to the north and because the state housed the Confederacy’s capital, Richmond, by 1864 major Union campaigns throughout the state with ongoing raids aimed at diminishing food and water supplies, left Virginians facing a level of famine they had never faced before.
Despite their economic status, Martin and Polly Slaughter were not spared from the food crisis. At one point during this period in the War, so the tale goes, Polly was at home alone, as Union soldiers approached.
Did she hear the sound of thunderous horse? A “hello” from the yard? A knock at the door? Did they enter her home?
What look was in her eyes? Fear? Confidence? Defiance? How did the soldiers see her? Old? (She was 60.) Vulnerable? Motherly?
The Union troops demanded food.
“We’ve no food left; we’ve no animals left; we’ve nothing left,” she told them. “Look all you want—there’s nothing here. All I have is a jar of honey in the spring house. You can have the honey, but please, please don’t break my jar.”
The troops advanced to the spring house and devoured the honey.
Did Polly watch as they went on their way? Did she rush to the spring house to check on her jar?
Poignantly, it had been spared.
The jar survives.
6. Gravestone, n. A stone placed over a grave, or at the entrance of a tomb; in later use also applied to an upright stone at the head or foot of a grave, bearing an inscription.
―“Cast the shadows of the gravestones on the silent graves.”
Martin Slaughter died on May 7, 1884, age 82, and was buried in the Slaughter family cemetery in Elamsville. He had carved his own soapstone grave marker:
Dear children and companion too I leave you all in God’s care. I hope we will meet in heaven above when parting and mourning is no more. Blessed are the dead that died in the Lord.
Polly died 7 years later on April 10, 1891, “Age 84Y, 7M, 24D”, and was buried beside her husband.
Their stones survive.
7. Lineage, n.Lineal descent from an ancestor; ancestry, pedigree.
―“The quiet and lowly spirit of my mother’s humble lineage.”
One daughter born to Martin and Polly plays a pivotal role in this tale. Her name was Martha, and she married John H. Adams. Two children born to Martha and John play roles in this tale as well. One daughter, Cora Belle Martha “Sweety” Delilah Adams, married Pierce Ulysses Witt; another daughter, Jo Ann Adams, married George Harbour. To Sweety and Pierce was born Bertha Pearl and to Jo Ann and George was born Clara.
As first cousins, Clara and Pearl were close and best friends until marriage and relocation separated them. After more than fifty years they were reunited when, in 1980, I took Bertha Pearl—my mother—back home to Patrick County, Virginia, to visit Clara. Although it was the first time that I had met my second cousin, it seemed that Clara and I had known one another forever. For more than a decade thereafter, mom and I made annual pilgrimages “back home” to see Cousin Clara. Through listening to all the stories that kept the two of them up until the early hours of morning, the lineage that my mom had shared with me as a child took on a richness and a life that had been missing before.
It was during one of those visits that Clara told me the story of Mary “Polly” Conner Slaughter’s encounter with the Union soldiers who took her honey but spared her honey jar. This was the moment when, in my mind, I helped Polly lift the jar filled with honey—far heavier than the 75 pounds if filled with water—and take it to the spring house.
It was during one of those visits that Clara opened up a brown paper bag and pulled out Polly Slaughter’s infare dress. This was the moment when I clasped the dress, I touched the muslin, saw the vivid red and orange leaves, and rubbed each and every button. This was the moment, even if fleeting, when I took her hand—her eyes level with mine at 5’ 8”—and danced around the room as I imagine she had danced with many of her guests at the feast she and Martin hosted after their marriage.
It was during one of those visits that Clara showed me the large charcoal-on-paper portrait of Polly Slaughter, still in its original frame though painted over with gold radiator paint. This was the moment when I saw Polly’s penetrating eyes, saw the firm resolve in her face, and understood why the Union soldiers spared her jar.
It was during one of those visits—much later, when Clara was exceedingly ill and close to death—that I went to visit her alone and found more pieces to the tale. I did not look forward to that visit, I was not certain whether she would be up for company, and I dreaded those awkward silences that punctuate conversations with the sick and dying. But I knew that I had to go to say goodbye. So, I took along some photographs of my Christmas tree from the holidays just ended. Nearly touching the Cathedral ceiling, the tree was a gorgeous sight to behold, certain to prompt conversation. And it did.
As Clara looked at one photograph in particular, one that offered up a closer view of my living room, she raised herself up in bed, saying to her daughter, “Why, Iris, looky here. Brent’s got a whole navigation of crocks just like the one Great, Great Grandma Slaughter had. You go find her crock and bring it on in here to show Brent.”
Iris came back in a few minutes, proudly holding a five-gallon stoneware crock.
“Now, Brent,” Clara said in a low, weak voice, hardly above a whisper, “that’s the jar that Great, Great Grandma Slaughter got on her wedding day. That’s the jar she always kept her honey in. That’s the jar the Union soldiers spared.”
I was thrilled and flabbergasted at the same time. Thrilled, knowing that the honey jar still survived. Flabbergasted, wondering why Clara had not shown me that honey jar during one of my many visits “back home” in search of relics.
8. Mantel, n.A shelf formed by the projecting surface of a mantelpiece.
―“Above the mantle a painting by Gordon Smith…seemed full of an energy to break free.”
Clara died on November 28, 2000. Not long after, Iris called me and wanted to know what I thought Polly Slaughter’s honey jar was worth and whether I was interested in buying it. I knew, of course, that it was a family relic of inestimable value, but as a collector of Virginia stoneware pottery, I knew, too, what the jar would fetch at auction. I offered Iris a more-than-fair market price, and she accepted.
The jar is ovoid in shape with “pocket” handles. Its base and rolled rim have the same diameter: 6 1/2 inches. It is 14 inches tall, and it is 10 ½ inches across the middle.
The jar is in my kitchen, resting securely on the mantel above the fireplace.
It continues to survive.
9. Portrait, n.A drawing or painting of a person, often mounted and framed for display, esp. one of the face or head and shoulders.
―“Fixing his starting eyes upon a portrait of Dr. Enfield which hung over the chimney.”
When I bought the jar, Iris sweetened the deal by giving me the framed portrait of Polly Slaughter. It measures 15 x 30 inches. A restoration specialist removed the gold radiator paint, revealing the original ornate composition frame of plaster, wood, and gold leaf.
The charcoal-on-paper portrait is head and shoulders. Polly looks to be around 60 or so. No doubt she sat for it just after the Civil War ended. Her hair is parted in the middle. Whether it is pulled back into a bun cannot be determined because her head is covered by an indoor, ruffle-edged bonnet, tied beneath her chin. Her dress has a small plaid pattern with a high neckline and lace collar. She’s wearing a solid black cape, typical of the period.
Her eyes penetrate, watch, follow all around the room wherever I go, and, I like to think, protect.
It seemed fitting that I hang Polly’s portrait above the mantel, just above the jar that she owned. There, she stands guard over the jar that she so treasured from the day of her marriage, all through the Civil War, and all the way until her death.
10. Survival, n.Something that continues to exist after the cessation of something else, or of other things of the kind; a surviving remnant.
–“What are they But names for that which has no name, Survivals of a vanished day?”
The survival of the portrait alone does not matter. Without the tale, it’s just one more family portrait that can be found in any antique shop. The survival of the infare dress alone does not matter. Without the tale, it’s just a rag in a brown paper sack. The survival of the honey jar alone does not matter. Without the tale, it’s like one of many that can be found throughout Virginia and the South.
What matters are the women who held in trust Polly’s jar, her dress, her portrait, and her tale and passed them on for generation after generation after generation.
What matters is the woman who posed for that portrait. What matters is the woman who wore that dress. What matters is the woman who owned that jar.
What matters even more is that a Southern woman’s generosity in the face of her own starvation—“You can have the honey, but please, please don’t break my jar”—ricochets through the ages together with the Union soldiers’ noble act of harming neither the old woman nor her treasured wedding jar.
What matters is piecing together the pieces of a tale.
[1]Throughout this tale, the word definitions along with quotations supporting the definitions are from the Oxford English Dictionary.
“If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”
Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard’s Almanac)
This week I’m thinking about education, far more than usual. The reason is simple. Exactly one week from today, I’ll be meeting a new group of community college students who have decided wisely that getting an education is their best move. With them, I’ll be standing on the brink of now and the future. It’s a new beginning for me and a new beginning for them.
As an educator, my role is to provide students with the knowledge base they need in English, especially American Literature, Appalachian Literature, and Creative Writing.
Aside from equipping them with the needed knowledge base, my goal is to turn them on.
“Turn students on to English? No way!”
“When pigs fly,” someone else squealed.
I understand. I have understood since I started teaching. From the first day that I enter a classroom at the start of a brand-new semester, mine is an uphill battle. But that’s perfectly all right. I love challenges. I have every confidence in the world that by the end of the semester my students will see that language and literature can help them discover their own worlds and the worlds around them. I have every confidence in the world that by the end of the semester my students will see that language and literature matter. “He can inspire a rock to write,” wrote one student in my early teaching career at Laurel Ridge Community College.
Nonetheless, I am aware that I may not have one student who is majoring in English. So, while I am passionate about language and literature and while I know that I can turn my students on to those subjects, I feel an equal responsibility to be passionate about education. I want my students to believe that education–their education–matters.
Sometimes getting them to believe that is an even greater challenge than turning them on to English.
I have to meet that challenge, too, right from the start, because I know that the community college graduation rate nationwide is about 62%.
I celebrate the students who make up that percentage. And I celebrate the 30% of community college students nationwide who transfer to four-year colleges and universities.
Yet, while celebrating all those students, I want to do my best to reach out to the others who might not be part of the 62% graduation rate or the 30% transfer rate unless I convince them that an education–their education–matters.
Why an education matters is abundantly clear to those of us who are educated. Career options. Job security. Expanded earnings. Networking. Professional connections. Increased happiness. Friendships. Better health. Even longevity.
I could include statistics to support those claims. I won’t. Candidly, they don’t do much for me.
And, candidly, when I talk about the practical benefits of an education–and I do–eyes glaze over and my students search for imaginary exits, especially when I start bringing in statistics to support my claims.
On the other hand, when I switch my focus to the softer side of why an education matters–the side that allows me to be personal and passionate–vision returns to glazed eyes and students return to the classroom that they just fancifully exited.
Sometimes–actually almost always–I’ll start the soft-side conversation by asking my students how many of them are the first in their family to go to college.
Usually about one third of their hands go up–a response that’s consistent with national data for community college students.
They seem to take notice when I tell them that I am a first-generation college student, too. They really take notice when I share some personal information about me. Son of a West Virginia coal miner and his wife, a Pilgrim Holiness minister. Grew up with three books in my home—the King James Bible, Webster’s Dictionary, and Sears Roebuck Catalog. Made it to the halls of the Library of Congress, which for 25 years became my home, with more than 20 million books. Then to the halls of Laurel Ridge Community College which for the last 23 years has been my home, where I’ve taught more than 7,000 students. Without being boastful, I want them to hear and see firsthand how an education transformed my life. I want to convince them that an education will transform their lives, too.
They get turned on more when I tell them that with an education they can go anywhere because they will be experts in their field. These days, I seem to have more and more students in health sciences, so I make a point of emphasizing that they can go wherever their credentials are recognized. Their eyes light up when I talk about the option of being a traveling nurse or a traveling surgical technologist. Their eyes really light up when I talk about the bonuses and salary increases that go hand in hand with adventuresome, free travel.
I remind them as well that an education empowers them to become their own knowledge navigators. I share with them what Robert Frost once wrote: “We go to college to be given one more chance to learn to read in case we haven’t learned in High School. Once we have learned to read the rest can be trusted to add itself unto us” (“Poetry and School,” The Atlantic Monthly, June 1951). Frost, of course, is talking about developing critical reading skills and critical thinking skills, both at the heart of all education.
Some days I emphasize that an education matters because it emboldens you to follow your passion. I share with them my own undergraduate struggles as English, Pre-Law, and Pre-Med messed around with my head. One day, after switching majors several times, I allowed my passion to take hold of my heart. From that point forward, English prevailed.
Or what about the notion that an education enables us to be anchored and hopeful amidst the storms of life that are certain to come our way? I’m thinking again about Robert Frost and his poem “One Step Backward Taken.” The speaker in the poem is shaken by a universal crisis, “But with one step backward taken / I saved myself from going. / A world torn loose went by me. / Then the rain stopped and the blowing, / And the sun came out to dry me.”
And how about this one that I like to use when students wonder whether an education is worth the cost, especially as their student loans grow larger and larger. I remind them that an education is one of their best investments. No one can take it away, ever. Perhaps even better is the way that the investment keeps on growing through lifelong learning.
Those are just a few of the “soft” reasons why an education matters to me. They are the ones that are on my mind this week as I anticipate next week’s new beginnings.
There’s one more, though, that’s always on my mind. It’s the University of South Carolina’s motto surrounding the seal on my doctoral class ring. It’s a quote from Ovid, “Emollit Mores Nec Sinit Esse Feros,” which translates to “Learning humanizes character and does not permit it to be cruel.”
The Wired Researcher 