Tag Archives: learning

Looking Back on the Outer Edge of Forever

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“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

—Marcel Proust (1871–1922). from his The Captive (1923), the fifth volume of his seven-part masterpiece In Search of Lost Time. Proust’s exploration of memory and perception reshaped modern literature.

Somewhere I saw it. Everywhere, maybe. Nowhere? Wherever—it grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go.

It was the gripping question:

“What would you tell your 18-year-old self?”

It lingered—since forever. Or yesterday? Either way, one morning not long ago, I tried to get rid of it by tossing it out to others—as if the orphaned question might leave me alone once it found a new home.

The replies were as varied as I expected, and as humorous and matter-of-fact, too:

“Buy stock in Apple and Amazon.”

“Be good at life; cultivate a well-rounded lifestyle.”

“Be patient; trust in God.”

“Serve God better.”

“Stay young; don’t age.”

“Be friends with your mom. Spend more time with family. Don’t let important things slide.”

“Don’t worry about impressing anyone other than yourself.”

Almost always, their offerings included a request to hear what I would have told my 18-year-old self. As a result, the question dug itself more deeply into my being, as I stalled by answering:

“I’m still thinking.”

It was true. But I knew I had to answer the question, too, not for them, but for me.

Several possibilities surfaced.

The first was rather light-hearted:

“You don’t have to have it all figured out. Just stay curious, kind, and honest. Don’t waste your energy chasing approval. Learn to cook, listen more than you talk, and remember: dogs and good people can tell when your heart’s true. Oh, and wear sunscreen.”

I dissed it immediately (though it carried some truths). Then I came up with:

“Don’t rush. The world will still be there when you’re ready to meet it. Pay attention to seemingingly insignificant things. They’re where meaning hides. Keep your humor close and your integrity closer. Fall in love, but don’t lose yourself in the process. And when life hands you a fork in the road, check which one smells like supper.”

I didn’t like that any better, though it, too, spoke truth. I was certain I could nail it with a third attempt:

“You think you know who you are right now, but you’re only meeting the opening act. Be kind. Be curious. And don’t confuse noise for meaning. The world rewards loudness, but grace whispers. Listen to that whisper. It’s you, becoming.”

Then six words sauntered past, not so much tinged with regret as with remembrance. Six words. Six.

“Be a citizen of the world.”

Those words had crossed my path before. In fact, I remember exactly when—not the actual date but instead the general timeframe and the location.

It would have been in the early 1980s, when I was working at the Library of Congress. I was standing in the Main Reading Room of the Jefferson Building, as captivated by its grandeur as I had been when I first started working there in 1969.

Above me, light spilled through the dome like revelation. Gold, marble, and fresco conspired to make the air itself feel sacred, as if thought had taken on architecture. Beyond those arches, knowledge waited in silence, breathing through pages and time.

Even now, I can close my eyes and see it: the way the dome seemed to rise into forever—an invitation, a reminder—that the world was larger than any one life, and I was already standing in the heart of it.

As an editor of the National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints—the “bibliographic wonder of the world”—I knew every alcove, every corridor, every one of its 532 miles of bookshelves, holding more than 110 million items in nearly every language and format. I had walked those miles over and over again doing my editorial research. I had come to learn that knowledge knows no barrier. I had come to learn that it transcends time and place.

At the same time, I decided that I could transcend place, too. With my experience and credentials, I began to imagine working in the world’s great libraries—first the Library of Congress, then The British Library, then the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, then the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma.

I didn’t know where the journey would end, but it gave me a dream, a dream of being a citizen of the world of learning.

More than that, it was a dream untainted by pretense—never by the notion of being uppity. Instead, it was a simple dream. I figured that if I had made it from the coal camps of West Virginia to the hallowed halls of our nation’s library, I could pack up whatever it was that had brought me that far and go throughout the world, savoring knowledge and learning—and perhaps, over time, gaining a smidgen of wisdom.

But here’s the catch. If transcending geography is the measure of my dream’s fulfillment—the wanderlust, the scholar’s yearning for marble floors, old paper, and the hum of languages not my own—then, at first glance, I failed. I never made it to any of the world’s great libraries except the Library of Congress.

However, as I look back through my life-lens of 78 years come November 20, I realize that maybe I went beyond the geographic destinations that I set for myself.

I went from the mountains of West Virginia to the monuments of D.C., from there to the marshlands of South Carolina where I earned my Ph.D., from there back home to the monuments, and, from there, at last, to the Shenandoah Valley and college teaching that took me internationally via Zoom and tapped into Open Educational Resources that did away with the restrictive border of printed books.

In a sense, then, although I didn’t cross country borders, I crossed the borders of ideas, with my voice carrying me farther than my feet ever needed to.

I’ve managed to live generously, teach across generations, write with empathy, research with joy, garden with gratitude, cook with curiosity, and love with intentionality. In all of that, I have been that citizen of the world—not by passport stamps, but by curiosity. By compassion. By connection.

Maybe that’s the truth I’d offer my 18-year-old self:

“You don’t have to travel the world to belong to it.
You only have to live with your eyes open.”

I Hear Educators Singing: Paying It Forward

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“Teachers are those who use themselves as bridges, over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own.”

—Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957), Greek novelist and philosopher, best known for Zorba the Greek.

Whenever I think of Labor Day—not just today, the official day of celebration, but at any time of the year—I hear Walt Whitman’s poem, “I Hear America Singing.”

In spirit, it remains one of the most comprehensive and inclusive celebrations of labor I know. Whitman exalts the varied carols of America: mechanics, carpenters, boatmen, masons, shoemakers, wood-cutters, mothers, wives, girls, fellows—

“Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else.”

Even though Whitman’s intent was to celebrate all labor, I’ve often wished he had stretched his litany further: to nurses and caregivers, to social workers and librarians, to the quiet hands who stock shelves at dawn or clean buildings long after everyone else has gone home. So many vital songs go unsung. And yet, by inference, perhaps he did include them—since he was singing America itself, and since his deepest wish was to be the poet of Democracy, the poet of the people, all people.

I especially wish–maybe with a touch of occupational selfishness–that he had included educators—those whose labor shapes every other voice in the chorus. Educators labor not with saw or chisel, but with patience, persistence, and vision—tools just as demanding as Whitman’s mechanics and masons. Their labor is not confined to the classroom or the clock. For many—certainly for me—it was twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I went to bed thinking about my students and woke up thinking about them again. Lessons, endless papers, worries, hopes—and encouragement, too—followed me everywhere. Teaching was never a job; it was a calling that claimed my whole self. Like countless other educators, I gave my students my all—and then more.

Educators also give second chances, ignite new beginnings, and shape futures that might otherwise have been lost.

A day never passes that I don’t think about one or more of the bridge builders who taught me—my third-grade teacher who handed me Robert Frost’s poems and lit a lifelong love of language, or my high school biology teacher who welcomed us to his desk day after day, giving us not just knowledge but his time, his presence, himself. My college and university professors, too, showed me that education was not a finish line but a lifelong pursuit. Their labor was quiet, personal, and lasting.

I know this firsthand. I walked the bridge that educators built for me, and in time I became a builder myself—pouring my own labor into students, carrying them forward just as others once carried me.

And when I needed a bridge of my own, the Virginia Community College System gave me not just one opportunity, but two. In 1998 after I left the Library of Congress, it opened the door for me to finally live my childhood dream of teaching English. And years later, through the Chancellor’s Commonwealth Professorship Program, it offered me something even rarer—a second chance to complete research I had set aside nearly forty years earlier. That truth has reshaped how I see education itself. It’s not only about beginnings. It’s also about returnings. Sometimes, opportunity does knock twice. The Virginia Community College System gave me mine.

It gave me that second chance with Unmasking The Humourist: Alexander Gordon’s Lost Essays of Colonial Charleston, South Carolina. What began as a graduate paper in 1973—sparked by the encouragement of mentors like Calhoun Winton and J. A. Leo Lemay—has at last found its full voice. The forgotten essays of colonial Charleston have their rightful place in American literary tradition, and I have had the rare privilege of finishing the work I once left behind.

That’s why I dedicated Unmasking The Humourist to the Virginia Community College System and its educators:

―For the Virginia Community College System―
───────────────
Dedicated to transforming lives and expanding possibilities throughout its 23 colleges, proving that education is not just about learning, but about unlocking potential, shaping futures, and ensuring that no great idea goes unfinished.

And because words alone weren’t enough, I decided to act on that dedication. I have never forgotten the benefactors—sometimes unseen, sometimes unknown—who helped carry me across my own bridge: from a coal camp childhood to a college classroom, to a professor’s life I once only dreamed of. Their quiet generosity made my journey possible.

All proceeds from the sale of this book
will be donated to
The Virginia Foundation for Community College Education

On this Labor Day, I hear Whitman’s chorus again. It grows stronger, more complete, when we hear the steady song of educators—singing what belongs to them, and to none else. Their song is the bridge that carries not just students, but all of us, forward.

Three Days, Three Reveals. Unveiling Three Surprises from More Wit and Wisdom, One Day at a Time.

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Remember my January 22 post Exciting News: More Wit and Wisdom Headed Your Way? I had just put the final touches on a 390-page manuscript for my new book More Wit and Wisdom: Another Year of Foolin’ Around in Bed, and I had submitted it to my publisher, Luminare Press. It brought together a whopping 93,897 words that I poured my heart and soul into during 2023. Yes, you read that right—93,897 words of pure wit, wisdom, and a dash of my trademark humor and modesty!

In my post, I also teased you by announcing that the book has three surprises.

● First, the dedication.

● Second, a preface that is one of the best essays that I’ve written, ever!

● The third is that all proceeds from the sale of the book (and the eventual movie rights) will benefit a special cause.

Up until now, I have kept all three surprises close to my chest, known but to me, to God, and to Luminare.

But now that the book is getting closer and closer to publication, I’m taking three days–May 7, May 8, and May 9–to reveal the three surprises to you.

Today, May 7, it gives me great pleasure to reveal the DEDICATION:

Educators have had my back for my entire life. Growing up in the coal fields of Southern West Virginia, I was blessed to have some of the best educators in the world. They knew the subjects that they taught, and they taught those subjects with passion. Perhaps more important, they loved their students and took personal interest in us. They were living witnesses: we could transform our lives through education just as education had transformed their lives.

My third-grade teacher at Shady Spring Elementary School introduced me to Robert Frost’s poetry. I fell in love–and remain in love–with poetry, and Frost remains my favorite poet. Other teachers pulled me toward Scripps National Spelling Bee Competitions and Voice of Democracy Competitions. And I will always remember the teacher who got me hooked on the parts of speech and sentence diagramming. She knew that she had unleashed a wild child in love with the power of language.

My teachers at Shady Spring High School remain in my memory, too. One showed me that powerful writing and hefty revision go hand in hand. Another helped me realize that typing and bookkeeping were solid backup skills that could open other career paths if my dream of going to college had to be deferred. And what a critical contribution my high school biology teacher provided by welcoming me and several other students to crash his desk every day at lunch, day after day, week after week, semester after semester, from our sophomore year all the way through graduation. Those lunch-time conversations were far more important than any lunch before or since. He gave us his time. He gave us himself.

My professors at Alderson-Broaddus University added wonderfully rich dimensions to my life. Most of them lived on campus–on faculty row–and our classes were so small that we were often their dinner guests. They helped me see the human side of the academic ivory tower that later I would strive to model. My advisor, in her fifties, finished her doctoral degree while I studied under her and served as her Work Study. She gave me an appreciation of lifelong learning.

As a graduate student at the University of South Carolina, phenomenal educators continued to enrich my life. I’m thinking of my advisor who turned me on to textual bibliography. Another professor introduced me to Mary E. Wilkins Freeman–the ongoing focal point of my scholarly research from then until now. I’m recalling, too, the professor who lectured, literary work in hand and not a lecture note in sight, with fiery passion and exultant joy. He allowed himself to be slain in the intellectual moment just as my mother always allowed herself to be slain in the spiritual moment. Through his teaching, I saw the best of both worlds–his and my mother’s. I had a vision of the educator that I would strive to be.

I am honored and humbled to dedicate More Wit and Wisdom: Another Year of Foolin’ Around in Bed to educators around the world because they know that education holds the power to transform lives.

Stay tuned! Tomorrow, I will unveil surprise #2 from More Wit and Wisdom!