The rake lay across the heart, as if it were Cupid’s arrow. Beads of water gathered on the thermos, upright on the nearby stone bench, right beside St. Francis of Assisi. Leather gloves and pruning shears bore witness to a gardener. Gary.
I couldn’t see him, but I knew he couldn’t be far away because his seafoam, floppy hat was not on the bench with his other things.
I knew what he was up to.
The time had come for him to do what I had done down through the years since I built the garden, filling it in with tons of tan pea gravel and surrounding it with a hedge of Little Missy boxwood.
Early on, the labor of weeding was easy. The pea gravel kept unwanted growth under control and beneath the surface. But over time the AngelinaSedum, filling the two circles in the heart’s upper lobes and surrounding the Magnolia in the lower cusp’s circle, died out but not before leaping over the rings that held them. Small chartreuse-yellow clusters softened the heart but lessened its definition.
Gary, my partner—the man who now shares this mountain life me—was doing more than weeding. He had already restored the flagstone pathway leading from heart to home and back again. Now he was planting healing Ajuga that will settle in and stay within the upper rings, eventually sending up purple spikes. Now he was cleaning, making everything as pristine as the day I finished my handiwork. I sat down on the bench, surveyed the slope, and sighed,
“Well done.”
I never had any intention of building the heart garden. My late partner Allen and I had tamed our mountaintop wilderness with so many paradisiacal garden beds that we had declared a moratorium:
“No more.”
But when Allen died and I reflected on where I would scatter his ashes, as mutually agreed upon, I could not for the life of me decide upon the right spot.
We had talked about resting places on our mountaintop, usually settling on the peony garden. Once, even, Allen suggested the Koi Pond would be perfect, but amid laughter, we both exclaimed:
“Oh, no! What happens when the pond filters get cleaned.”
Then, a few months after his death, he came to me in a dream, his voice carrying into my awakening and lingering there:
“Build my heart.”
I knew where. Near the house, at road’s edge—an untamed area we thought about gardening if we ever gave our moratorium a reprieve.
I had no idea how, but I figured a little math and lots of heart would make it happen.
And it did. I marked off an area twenty feet wide and thirty feet deep, sketched a heart with a black water hose, freed the earth of weeds, and blanketed it with pea gravel running deep. For Allen’s celebration of life, I surrounded the heart with SunPatiens, alternating red and white with tears and rain. I bought a wooden Zen rake, perfect for committing Allen’s ashes to the gravel, leaving tracings that mirrored the heart’s design, growing smaller and smaller as the center neared. Later, I planted the boxwood hedge.
Thus, the heart’s beginning.
Time has been kind. But still, the heart needs Gary’s loving care and tenderness. It rests within the landscape, its presence a part of forever.
The morning after Gary finished, we decided to amble down the path, pristinely cleaned and gently curved, with the heart in clear view.
“You go ahead. I’ll be there shortly.”
“No. I’ll wait. For you.”
It was peaceful and inviting.
We talked a little less than usual, as the morning chill quickened us and a Northern Cardinal in the treetops above whistled out its own litany of little questions.
“I want your ashes to be happy here.”
They will.
And when Gary’s time comes, I’ll board the train, his weight on my lap, my hands on the box, making his final journey to Minnesota where his story began.
“Like an old friend waiting on the porch, Poor Brentford appears at the entrance to each section, tips his hat, shares a thought, and invites readers to come a little farther along.”
Drumroll, please!
The moment absolutely no one has been waiting for has arrived!
I’m pleased to announce that Up to No Good, the fifth book in TheWired ResearcherSeries and my fourth InBed book, is now available.
But before I tell you where to find it, let me tell you why it’s different.
For the past several years, I’ve been foolin’ around in bed. Stop right there! Don’t you dare call the authorities. I’m talking about writing.
The first volume appeared in 2023. Two more followed. Each gathered together a year’s worth of essays from The Wired Researcher, preserving them much as they originally appeared—one after another, week after week, moving steadily forward through time.
There was something honest about that approach. Readers experienced the essays in much the same order that I lived them.
But while assembling this fourth volume, I discovered something that surprised me.
A collection gathers.
A book shapes.
The distinction may sound small, but it changed everything.
For the first time, I stopped thinking primarily about chronology and started thinking about conversation.
● What happens when essays written months apart find themselves side by side?
● What emerges when humor sits next to heartbreak?
● What new meaning appears when an essay about gardening quietly speaks to one about grief, love, aging, democracy, memory, or biscuits?
The more I explored those questions, the more I realized that this volume wanted to become something different.
Not merely a collection.
A book.
A reading experience.
In the introduction, I explain that these essays are grouped “by the questions they worry, the moments they linger over, the emotional weather they share.”
That simple shift transformed the project.
Essays began speaking to one another.
Patterns emerged.
Themes surfaced that I hadn’t fully recognized when writing the individual pieces.
Then something else happened.
Poor Brentford Lee got involved.
Those of you who have followed my blog know Poor Brentford—the mountain philosopher, accidental theologian, occasional dispenser of homespun wisdom, and longtime observer of life’s oddities and wonders.
In earlier volumes, Poor Brentford mostly wandered in and out of individual essays.
This time, he grabbed hold of the entire book.
As the sections took shape, Poor Brentford somehow appointed himself official greeter, introducing each one with a bit of homespun wisdom uniquely his own.
“Most of what saves us wasn’t planned. It just kept growing anyway.”
“Everybody’s handed something they didn’t order. The rest is choice.”
“We were just boxwoods until someone believed we could be part of something beautiful.”
Frankly, I’m not sure I had much say in the matter.
Poor Brentford can be bodacious that way.
The result is that he now wanders throughout the book, standing at the entrance to every section, tipping his hat, offering a thought, and inviting readers to come a little farther along.
In many ways, Poor Brentford became the connective thread that helped transform a collection of essays into a unified reading experience.
Instead of moving week by week through a calendar year, readers move through twelve thematic landscapes:
What Grows, Teaches explores gardens, reinvention, second chances, patience, and grace.
What We Do with What We’re Given examines mishearings, limitations, temptations, acceptance, and the choices that shape a life.
Chosen Ground asks what it means to belong—to a place, to a memory, and ultimately to ourselves.
Those We Carry reflects on the people who continue to live within us long after they are gone.
Plagiarism À La Carte celebrates borrowing, influence, recipes, wit, and the occasional joyful act of making something unmistakably your own.
What We Lean On explores the quiet structures that steady us through uncertainty, solitude, and change.
On Our Own Terms examines aging, authenticity, self-authorship, and the liberating realization that we no longer need permission to be ourselves.
Giving Forward honors educators, mentors, benefactors, and all those who quietly build bridges for others.
Together, One ventures into fascinating territory where human curiosity meets artificial intelligence and asks what happens when we learn alongside the tools we create.
Literary Wanderings follows books, writers, forgotten voices, and the ideas that continue to shape us.
Choosing Love Again explores something I never expected to experience at this stage of life: the extraordinary privilege of falling in love once more.
And finally, When Democracy Falters gathers essays written from the conviction that citizenship is not a spectator sport and that silence carries consequences of its own.
Looking back, I realize that what changed wasn’t merely the arrangement of the essays.
What changed was the way I saw them.
Teaching literature for decades trained me to look beneath the surface, to ask how individual parts contribute to larger meanings. Somewhere along the way, I began applying that same close reading to my own writing.
The result is this book.
Some readers will recognize essays they first encountered on the blog. I hope they do. But I also hope they’ll discover something new in the conversations those essays now have with one another.
Others will be encountering many of these pieces for the first time.
Either way, my hope is that readers will find themselves lingering.
Laughing.
Remembering.
Questioning.
Growing.
Perhaps even falling a little more deeply in love with life itself.
After all, that’s what these essays have been teaching me all along.
In Bed and Up to No Good: Foolin’ Around by Choice is now available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
If you’d like to see what happens when a collection becomes a book—and when Poor Brentford appoints himself tour guide—I’d be honored to have you join me for the journey.
And as always, thank you for reading. Without readers, essays are merely conversations waiting to happen.
“Language is fossil poetry.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). American essayist and philosopher, leading voice of the Transcendentalist movement.
Savannahians have long dubbed their city the Hostess of the South. Many also claim that Jones Street is the most beautiful street in the city. Maybe so. Brick by brick, it unfurls like a quiet benediction: a ribbon of warm red paving stones softened by time, shaded by live oaks whose arms stretch overhead, heavy with Spanish moss filtering the light into a perpetual late-afternoon glow. Federal and Greek Revival townhouses stand shoulder to shoulder, dignified but never aloof, their brick façades punctuated by deep green shutters, wrought-iron balconies, and stoops that rise just enough to suggest ceremony without pretension. Lantern-lit doors—some painted a daring lacquered red—open onto iron urns spilling over with ferns and flowering vines, blurring the line between garden and street. Even the street’s history seems layered into the view, so that walking Jones Street feels less like moving through space than through time, where elegance lingers and beauty is not announced but assumed.
Some Savannahians even maintain that the expression “keeping up with the Joneses” began because of the luxurious homes built along Jones Street. I had never heard that claim until friends visited Savannah and later shared it—along with a stream of photographs—on Facebook. I knew the expression, of course, but I had never heard it tethered to a specific place, much less to a famous street down South.
The claim fueled the researcher in me, leading me to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). If the phrase is anchored to Jones Street in Savannah, the OED editors are unaware of it. They credit the expression instead to Arthur Ragland “Pop” Momand, who in 1913 launched his New York Globe comic strip, Keeping Up with the Joneses. The strip drew on Momand’s experiences in Nassau County, New York, rather than on any known connection to Savannah’s storied street.
I could have let the matter rest there. OED consulted. Myth gently dispelled. Case closed. But curiosity and further digging—beyond the OED and into archival material, historical accounts, and even the occasionally useful corridors of YouTube—clarified the matter. Since Momand’s comic strip emerged from New York, the Joneses in question were almost certainly New York Joneses. And in the late nineteenth century, that name carried weight. The Livingstons, the Schermerhorns, the Masons, and the Jones family were counted among New York’s old-money elite. Mason and Jones controlled what was then the third-largest bank in the country—Chemical Bank—and their combined wealth ranked among the most formidable in New York’s financial world.
Within that circle, Elizabeth Schermerhorn Jones stood at the center of social gravity. She did not merely inhabit high society; she defined it. Her standards of dress, decorum, and domestic display shaped the expectations of an entire class. Others did not simply admire—they imitated. To be fashionable was to approximate her taste. To be modern was to anticipate it. Her Newport summer residence, constructed in 1853, became a symbol of that authority—an architectural declaration of wealth and refinement that drew attention and, inevitably, comparison.
After her death in 1886, the house passed through multiple owners, declined, and was eventually sold at foreclosure in 1934. Today only the reinforced shell remains, its walls braced in a quiet act of preservation—as if even the structure itself were still attempting, in some small way, to keep up the Joneses.
English is full of such borrowed names, reminders that language often preserves the reputations—and sometimes the accidents—of the people who once carried them.
A few examples may surprise you. Others will feel as familiar as the words themselves.
Did you know that the Earl of Sandwich, pressed by appetite and convenience at the gaming table, is said to have solved his dilemma by placing meat between slices of bread, allowing him to eat without interrupting play. Whether the story is embroidered or not, the word sandwich endured. What began as a practical solution became a culinary staple, and the man himself receded into the background, leaving behind a word now spoken far more often than his title ever was.
Then we have Captain Charles Boycott, an English land agent in nineteenth-century Ireland, who found himself the target of organized social and economic resistance from protesting tenants. Rather than confront him directly, the community withdrew—refusing to work his land, speak his name, or acknowledge his presence. The strategy proved so effective that his surname—boycott—entered the language as a verb, now used globally to describe collective refusal. The man was resisted; the name persisted.
Or what about Étienne de Silhouette? An eighteenth-century French finance minister known for his austerity measures lent his name—somewhat unfairly—to a form of portraiture defined by its simplicity. The inexpensive shadow profiles that became fashionable during his tenure were mockingly associated with his economic policies. Over time, the satire softened, and the word silhouette came to describe not frugality but form itself: an outline, a presence reduced to its essential shape.
The word dunce offers an even stranger reversal. It derives from the medieval philosopher John Duns Scotus, whose followers were once regarded as careful and rigorous thinkers. They wore distinctive pointed caps as a mark of their intellectual tradition. Yet in time, critics of scholasticism turned the name into an insult. The scholar became a fool, and the cap a symbol of ignorance—a reminder that language does not always preserve reputation so much as it repurposes it.
Then we have Amelia Bloomer. She did not invent the garment that bears her name, but she did something perhaps more enduring: she advocated for its adoption. A nineteenth-century reformer, she promoted a style of dress that allowed women greater freedom of movement—looser trousers gathered at the ankle, worn beneath a shortened skirt. The look was practical, even liberating, but it was also controversial. Her name became attached to the style, and with it, to the broader idea that clothing could signal change. What was once a subject of ridicule now reads as an early gesture toward autonomy.
And let’s not forget James Brudenell, the 7th Earl of Cardigan, who is remembered for leading the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War. Less dramatically, though perhaps more enduringly, his name came to be associated with the knitted wool jacket worn by British officers under their uniforms. The cardigan, as it is now known, has long since shed its military associations. It remains, instead, as a quiet example of how even the most turbulent histories can soften into something familiar, worn close, and almost entirely detached from their origins.
So the more I explore borrowed names that have crept into our language, perhaps Savannah can keep its story. Jones Street may not have given us the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses,” but it hardly needs the credit to justify the legend.
Language often works this way. A person’s name slips quietly into common speech, the individual gradually fading while the word remains, carrying only the echo of its origin. And when a story is told often enough—beautifully enough, and in just the right light—its beginning can begin to matter less than its appeal. In the end, what we are really keeping up with may not be the Joneses at all, but the enduring human habit of turning beauty, memory, and rumor into something that feels like truth—and is repeated as if it were true.
“The first porch is where you find your voice. The second porch is where your voice finds others.” —Poor Brentford Lee (b. 1947. Keeper of two porches, one mountain, one dog, and an inexhaustible supply of things worth saying—none of which he has to say alone anymore, thanks to his partner, Gary.)
Dear Faithful Readers,
You’ve been here with me on the porch since—well, some of you since the very beginning, back when I built it as nothing more than a place where you could pull up a chair and talk with me about the joys, challenges, and discoveries of research. We kept right on doing that from 2012 to 2021 when I decided to make the porch a little more fun by bringing you weekly creative nonfiction essays.
I’m still at it. Nearly 750,000 words later. Yes, you read it right. Foolin’ around in bed every night with ideas and words adds up. I’m spurred on by you, my Dear Readers, whose numbers keep increasing annually! Last year, we shared more than 35,000 views right here on the porch.
But I’ve built a brand-new porch, and I want you to be the first to know about it.
Don’t worry, though. I’m not leaving The Wired Researcher porch. It will remain open virtually forever. Same Monday mornings. Same voice–mine, with Poor Brentford’s voice chiming in from time to time. We’ll both be there, waiting for you.
I just heard someone shout out:
“So, why are you building a new porch? What’s that all about?”
Well, for starters, it has better lighting, and it might just bring in more neighbors for all of us to visit and exchange ideas.
I’m counting on you to check it out. I’ve named the second porch The Kendrick Chronicles.
“Where on earth is this new porch of yours?”
Gracious me! You know that I like to take my time–slow and easy like. In a sec, I’ll give you the link so that you can check it out for yourself. And when you do, go ahead and Subscribe! From that point forward, my essays–ever goldern new one that hits the world, every Monday morning like a neighbor who always brings something worth reading and never overstays his welcome–will find their way directly to your Inbox.
You can find this new porch of mine in Substack. Here’s the link:
“What will I find when I get to this new porch of yours?”
Why, gracious me! You’ll find a comfy chair with your name on it and a handful of your favorite essays with my name on ’em:
● Redbuds of Remembrance
● Learning to Love in New Ways
● I Am Afraid
● Poor Brentford Cleans the Wax Out of His Ears
● Two, Together
● Glimpses of My Mother’s Hands
● The Ghost of Palmyra Church Road
● Truths Half-Told. Letters Half-Burned. A Legacy Waiting to Be Fully Heard.
● Carrying the Bags of Colonial America’s Humourist
And get this. If you subscribe, next week you’ll get an essay about a kitchen disaster beyond belief: “Oh, No! No Sourdough!” And the week after that, “What We Know. What We Believe.” It may be the most complete thing I’ve ever written about who I am and what I believe about what comes next.
So go on now. Pull up a chair. Same voice. Wider porch.
—Terry Tempest Williams (b. 1955. American writer and environmental activist whose lyrical essays explore the intersections of personal narrative, place, and ecological stewardship.)
Something snuck up on me yesterday.
I was talking on the phone with my 90-year-old sister when I glanced down at my smartphone, saw my WordPress dashboard—and nearly did a spit take.
Over 15,188 views this year already!
That’s already more than all of 2024, and we still have October, November, and December to go. Apparently, my little mountain corner has gone global again—and I couldn’t be more grateful.
To every one of you, My Dear Readers, who reads, comments, shares, or quietly lingers over a sentence or two: thank you. You’ve turned this space into a community of curiosity, compassion, and laughter. Every click, every view, every thoughtful message reminds me that words still matter—and that connection runs deeper than algorithms.
Your Top 10 Favorites of 2025 (So Far)
Every year tells its own story through what readers choose. This year’s list made me smile. It’s a mix of reflection, resilience, and rediscovery—with a dash of irreverence (because, well, it’s me or Poor Brentford Lee or maybe both).
● “I Am Afraid” — A wake-up call for our country—and a reminder of who we still can be.
●“The Place: Charleston” — The launch of my Unmasking The Humourist: Alexander Gordon’s Lost Essays of Colonial Charleston, South Carolina.
There’s still more to come before year’s end—new essays, reflections, maybe even a few surprises that have been sitting in my drafts waiting for the right moment. Perhaps even one or two guest posts by our famed and acclaimed Poor Brentford Lee.
I can’t promise I’ll always be profound, but I can promise I’ll keep showing up with authenticity, honesty, humor, and heart.
Thank you, My Dear Readers, for being here, for reading, and for reminding me—every day—that a single voice can still find an echo.
“The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.”
— David Hare (b. 1947.) British playwright and screenwriter, whose works probe truth, belief, and the human condition.
Sometimes in the hush of evening, when the lamp spills its amber light and the world grows gentle, I watch. His head tilts slightly, caught by the glow, and suddenly, the years loosen their grip. The lines that life has written across his face soften; the jaw loosens, light as breath; the mouth, so often set in quiet thought, curves with the ease of youth. His eyes, clear and steady, seem to brighten from within, carrying a spark that belonged first to a boy and then to a young man. Slowly, the present thins. I see him slipping into his past. Fifty. Thirty. Twenty. And then, for the briefest moment, the man beside me becomes the eighteen-year-old he once was—time erasing each layer, revealing what was always there: the young man, quietly returning.
As I glance elsewhere in the room, I see an artifact from his past—one that has crossed time and threshold to find its place in ours: the grand piano. Massive and unyielding, it took four men to wrestle it off the truck and ease it through the doorway. Yet here it rests, polished wood catching the lamplight, waiting.
At this moment, I still hear the sound as his hands moved across the piano earlier in the day—measured, assured, easy. And I heard “For All We Know” rise into the room, each note carrying a hush that reached backward in time. The melody was not just music; it was memory, and it wrapped itself around him, around me, around the room itself. Ruby retreated to the bed, but not fully at rest. She leaned forward, her body stretched long, her head angled as far as she dared—as though even she knew the swell of sound carried us into places layered and deep. She held herself at the edge, cautious not to tumble into the wandering past, into the chasms of memory, beckoning us toward knowing and truth.
Elsewhere in the room, near the piano, another layer from the past peels back. Hanging on the wall is a sepia-toned etching—Salena Gazebo, number 8 of only 200, signed by the artist Carl Johnson. The lines are delicate, deliberate: the curving path, the quiet trees, the pavilion standing open like an invitation. It feels less like a structure than a memory, as if the paper itself breathed it into being. When I look at it, I sense not just the gazebo, but the moments once lived beneath it—the warmth of gatherings, the hush of twilight, the whispered vows of past lovers who lingered there. Dream and truth blur, as though the etching had captured not a place at all but a pulse of longing and a flicker of knowledge, carrying us softly toward knowing and truth.
In another room, on top of the chest of drawers, rest family photographs. Portraits, a chorus of faces gathered through years, smiling, standing, caught in stillness. They look out across the room with a quiet weight, less about who they are than the collective feel they give: belonging, continuity, the insistence that life moves forward even as it circles back. They do not need names to speak; their presence alone is enough.
Nearby, on a table, sits something smaller, more ordinary yet no less enduring: an iron toast holder. His grandmother’s. On his mother’s side? Or, maybe, his father’s? The lineage matters less than the fact that he kept it, carried it through moves and years, never discarding, never forgetting. The metal holds more than memories of bread he may never have seen toasted. It holds a thread of persistence, a reason to keep even the smallest objects close.
In the dining room, on a side table, another artifact gleams in silver relief: The Last Supper, framed, gifted to his maternal grandparents on their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Sacred and commemorative at once, it shimmers with devotion, not only to faith but also to family. The silver has traveled down through generations, carried into his keeping, held as though letting go would diminish more than memory. It is a marker of continuity, of reverence, of love that lasted long enough to be honored.
And then there is the little boy riding a dog—a keepsake that belonged first to his father when his father was a child, before his life was cut tragically short. A small porcelain figure, a child astride a loyal companion, frozen in time. Yet in that figure is more than innocence; it is a bridge across absence, a way of knowing a father he never met. It survived when the man did not, passed on to him as both wound and inheritance, loss and gift. That little boy on the dog rides still through the years, carrying ache and legacy.
Through these artifacts, I glimpse the man I already know and love, his story unfolding in fragments that matter. In the little boy riding the dog, I see both wound and inheritance, a bridge across absence. In the Last Supper, I see reverence, devotion, love honored and passed along. In the iron toast holder, I see endurance, the instinct to keep and carry even what is small. In the family photographs, I see continuity, lives pressed together across generations. In the drawing of the gazebo, I see invitation and hush—the twilight blur where dreams fade into memory and truth. And in the grand piano, I hear the melody that threads them all together—still rising, still echoing, ever playing in the quiet of his soul.
These artifacts matter to him and, now, to me. I could point to others. But I won’t. Yet one more remains, quiet and insistent, the truest of them all—not carved in silver or pressed into porcelain, but carried in ink and idea. His 1965 high-school graduation essay. He was co-valedictorian. He was eighteen.
It rests inside his high-school yearbook, the Bluejay, its cover deep blue and gilt, its pages a mosaic of faces, cheers, and world events already turning into history. And there, slipped carefully between those pages, lies his speech—typed, carried through six decades of moves and seasons. The paper holds its shape, and the words stand sure, preserved as though waiting for their moment to be read again. In its keeping, I see more than memory; I see devotion—the instinct to preserve not only what he did but who he was becoming. It is an artifact, yes, but it is also a testament, held safe in the place that marked his youth and carried forward into the man he is now.
I smiled and whispered:
“Show me what you wrote.”
He lifted the page, holding it in his hands, just as he held it onstage sixty years ago. Soft at first, his voice grew firmer as he returned to the beliefs that had steadied him even then: that learning gives life its shape, that responsibility gives it weight, that hope gives it breath, and that perseverance gives it endurance. Sixty years have passed, yet as he read, I heard not only the boy addressing his classmates but the man beside me—the same convictions intact, the same spirit enduring.
In those moments, as his voice stretched back and returned to me across the decades, I realized that of all his artifacts, this was the richest. My partner, Gary T. Knutson, wrote those words in youth. They carried him into a future he could not yet imagine. And they anchor him still—steadying him in the present, guiding him toward tomorrow. The piano may sing, the photographs may remember, the silver may gleam, the porcelain boy may still ride—but they can only point, only hint. His own words, fragile on paper yet alive in spirit, opened the door wider. They revealed not just what he kept but who he was becoming, and who he still is.
That is the power of words—not just Gary’s words, but all our words. They outlast objects, outshine heirlooms, outlive even memory. In them can be found who we are when all else has been stripped away—values, beliefs, longings, the essence of self, laid bare. And more than that, words do not simply keep; they move. They persuade and console, ignite and endure. They reveal who we were, and they shape who we might yet become. That is their gift, and their power—becoming, in a way, stronger than stone.
Show me what you wrote, and I’ll see who you are—then, now, and still becoming. For words outlast memory and outshine the heirlooms we keep. They carry the essence. They carry the longing. And they proclaim the truths we’ve always held.
“The reader is the final arbiter of a text. Without the reader, the words are silent.”
—Margaret Atwood (b. 1939). Canadian poet, novelist, essayist, and critic, one of the most influential literary voices of our time.
My Dear Readers, I blinked yesterday, and suddenly my little corner of the internet tallied 12,000 views for 2025—with three months still to go!
That’s not just a number. It’s 12,000 moments of connection. 12,000 times someone out there paused long enough to read my words, nod, chuckle, roll an eye, or maybe even find a flicker of themselves in my essays.
And here’s the part that stuns me: with this pace, we’re on track to sail past last year’s phenomenal 15,000 peak—a record I once thought unrepeatable. But here we are, repeating (and then some).
The 10 You Loved the Loudest
Every essay I publish is a seed tossed into the world. Some sprout quietly. Some bloom bold and bright. Here are the ten that you watered most generously this year:
Whether you’ve been here since my first blog post nearly 13 years ago or you just stumbled across my latest musings, you’ve made this milestone possible. I don’t take your presence lightly.
So, here’s to you—my companions in this ongoing experiment of storytelling, memory-making, and meaning-finding. Let’s see how far we can climb before 2025 closes the books.
After all, the numbers matter—but the connections matter more.
“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945). American essayist whose work reflects the natural world as a mirror for awe and meaning, most memorably in her Pulitzer Prize–winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
What on earth am I doing writing about motherhood in the dog days of summer—the hottest, most humid stretch, when snakes go blind until their molting skin slips over their eyes—especially when I’m celebrating a mother, not my own?
I keep saying to myself:
“This would be perfect for a Mother’s Day post in May.”
But you, my Dear Reader, know that I rarely write to match the calendar—and this post won’t match it, either. That’s not to say I’ve never done it—only that I’ve never done it by design. It’s simply that from time to time an idea collides with an occasion—Mother’s Day or Father’s Day or Thanksgiving or … Hmmmm. Maybe I’ve done it more than I realize.
Anyway, if you browse through my posts, you’ll see the pattern of how I write. When something grabs hold of me and won’t let go, I know I’ve been called to share it—maybe for the greater good, even if it’s just one person who feels the same tug while reading that I felt while writing.
That’s exactly what happened with this post. Memories washed over me from long ago and far away. They had surfaced before, but only as ghostly apparitions drifting in a paused wave. This time, though, I was nearly pulled under by the current.
It began when I uncovered a hand-painted pillow I hadn’t used in years. Bold crimson flowers and curling green leaves still popped against a soft beige background. The piping had faded, and the stuffing had settled into the easy comfort of something well-loved. It was a little worn, and it was a little wistful, but it was still a bright relic from when I was just beginning to find my way.
As soon as I saw the pillow, I started remembering my neighbor who made it. She was an older woman, maybe a few years older than my Mother, but not many. She dressed neatly, always in small-print floral dresses, and, when at home, she always topped her dresses with matching aprons. Ringlets of white hair framed a face that seemed stern at first, but softened the moment she spoke. She had the bearing of someone who kept things in order—herself, her home, her garden, and her place in the community. No one ever doubted that she would follow through on whatever she took on.
Her name was Nell. Nell Barker Harris, but I never called her by her first name. My Mother taught me better. She was always Mrs. Harris to me, though I swear I had the hardest time making Mrs. sound like MIZ-iz. It always rolled off my tongue as MIZ.
My memories of her stretch back to 1958, when my parents bought our home in the subdivision that bore her last name. I had just turned eleven, and I loved exploring the uncharted woods surrounding our home and beyond.
Mrs. Harris and my Mother were good friends, sharing interests in church, cooking and canning, and working the polls on election days.
My Mother thought the world of her, and, looking back, most of what I came to know about her came from my Mother:
“MIZ Harris this …” and “MIZ Harris that …” was a constant refrain, especially during summer and fall harvests.
Many were the days my Mother sent me to the Harrises—Nell and her husband Worthy—with fresh vegetables from our garden, or to fetch canning jars—the old timey blue ones with zinc lids—or to swap a recipe.
The Harrises lived close, but their house lay just out of sight from ours. All I had to do was cut across the garden, slip past the barbed-wire fence, run down a slope, and dash up a knoll to reach their faux-stone cottage. It was one of the finer ones in our small town, with more than a hint of upper-middle-class comfort. I’d climb the steps straight to the door, where Mrs. Harris usually met me, fulfilling the errand right there on the stoop.
From those errands and my Mother’s comments, I came to know Mrs. Harris well enough that one December, I went boldly to her house on my own. My sister Judy and I had decided to put up a Christmas tree while our Mother was shopping. I had long had my eyes set on a beautiful white pine—not for Christmas, but for love—growing in the Harris’s woods where I roamed. Off I went to ask if we could cut it down. She agreed, and though the tree seemed to shrink with every drag homeward, Judy and I had it lighted and decorated by the time our Mother returned. She knew exactly how to celebrate the surprise as a tribute to childhood ingenuity.
Another time, my parents sent me over with an idea that I’d dreamt up—again involving white pines. A dead-end dirt road ran between our home and the Harris’s land that we gardened, and we thought it would be beautiful to line its 200-foot stretch with pines. I asked Mrs. Harris if we could dig saplings from her woods. She agreed, though she thought fall would be a wiser planting time.
My parents insisted amongst ourselves that proper planting and deep watering would see them through. They were hardly more than spindly stems with a few scraggly needles, more like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree than the giants we imagined. Pitiful as they were, they survived the July heat and, in time, grew straight and tall, rising with quiet majesty, as if they had always belonged there.
Later—June 1972, a few years out of college and working at the Library of Congress—I wanted more than the skyward-pointing pines. I wanted the land itself. I found myself in Mrs. Harris’s home, asking if she would sell me the very garden lots my parents and I had tended from pre-teen through early manhood.
I still remember sitting in their parlor that day—dress pants, crisp shirt, and a tie, as if I’d been summoned to defend my undergraduate honor’s thesis. I sat in an overstuffed chair in the corner, its armrests rising up to hold me accountable. The room itself seemed to echo their seriousness and my intent. Mahogany gleamed in the soft light. A large china cabinet dominated one wall, its shelves lined with Blue Willow dishes like the ones my oldest sister Audrey collected. Everything about the space spoke of order and permanence—qualities my Mother had always extolled in Mrs. Harris herself.
Across from me sat Nell and Worthy Harris, steady and composed, firing their questions in quick succession:
Why do you want the land?
Do you plan to build a house there one day?
How will you pay for it?
A bank loan? Do you understand that you’ll need a co-signer?
They had far more questions than I had answers. But a few days later, I rode with the Harrises in their blue-and-white Chevrolet to Raleigh County National Bank, a solemn drive dressed up in chrome and vinyl. I had made the appointment myself, though the banker’s name and face have faded. What remains is the setting: a huge walnut desk topped with thick glass, its surface spread with legal documents that seemed to weigh more than the paper they were printed on.
I signed, and Mrs. Harris co-signed—the literal and the metaphorical deed, both done and dated June 9. She was, after all, the owner of the land. The gleam on my face that day couldn’t have equaled hers, steady and satisfied, as though she had not only sold me a parcel of ground but had also planted me there, rooting me firmly to the very soil where those skyward pines had begun.
But the pillow dragged up one last memory of Mrs. Harris—a dim and shifting one, like an undertow I didn’t see coming.
One year—1965, just a month before graduating from high school—I nominated Mrs. Harris for “Mother of the Year.” She certainly was worthy of the recognition, although she never seemed like my Mother, not even like a mother figure, really. And now, looking back, I wonder whether it was my Mother herself who suggested the nomination. Or maybe it was my oldest sister Audrey. Both of them admired her immensely as one of the pillars of our community and the church that the three of them attended.
Whatever the springboard, I picture myself typing the letter—hunting and pecking as solemnly as if drafting a constitution—and then, with all the earnestness of seventeen, listing her many accomplishments.
I don’t remember a single sentence I wrote in that nomination, only that it won her the recognition we all thought she deserved. What I do remember is the aftermath: her picture in the newspaper, and maybe even a spot on a live radio interview, sharing her reaction:
“I’m just flabbergasted.”
Down through the years, I often found myself wondering how my Mother felt about my nominating Mrs. Harris instead of her. If she carried even a flicker of disappointment, she never showed it. And why would she? For all I know, she may have planted the idea in my head in the first place, speaking of Mrs. Harris with admiration the way she always did.
Years later, my parents came to live with me in DC after my dad suffered a stroke and needed more care than my Mother could manage alone. Audrey and I worked out a plan: summers in their own home, with her nearby to help; winters with me in DC. It was during those ten years that I found myself with a chance to do what I hadn’t done back in high school–nominate my own Mother for recognition as the remarkable woman she was.
The details of my Mother’s nomination are as vague in my memory as Mrs. Harris’s. I am fairly certain it was 1982—the year my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary—and that DC’s “beautiful music station,” WGAY (99.5), sponsored the “Mother-of-the-Month” recognition. I nominated her by focusing on her long marriage to my dad, their six children, and the challenges she faced as an aging woman caring for her invalid husband, ten years her senior. Even though they lived with me, she was the caregiver during the day, and she carried the worry with her to bed at night. That, I believed, made her worthy of being honored.
I had been notified the day before that she had won, and that the radio host would call her live between 7:15 and 7:30 the next morning. I delayed leaving for work until the call came, turning on the radio to listen. The host told her about the award, and she responded in her plain, honest way:
“I am just flabbergasted.”
And here I am, decades later, unsettled by the blur of my memories of the honors given my Mother and Mrs. Harris. I wanted the details to come alive again here, to loom as large now as they did then. So, I went looking for the scoops that might have been reported in the newspapers.
I looked and looked again, but I found no newspaper coverage of my Mother being honored as “Mother of the Month.” That’s fine. My Mother doesn’t need to live in print—she lives on in me. Besides, I know the details by heart. I listened as she heard the radio broadcaster announce her status for all the listening world to hear. The radio station hosted a dinner for her. I pinned their orchid corsage to her dress, drove the two of us to the restaurant, and sat across the table from her.
We dined at The Monocle, seated at one of its linen-draped tables where the Capitol dome seemed near enough to touch. The restaurant buzzed with the voices of staffers and senators, but none of that mattered to me. What mattered was not the food or the setting, but the way she sat taller than usual, radiant with the glow of being truly seen.
I don’t remember the menu. I don’t remember what we ate or drank. What I do remember is my Mother spotlighted there, savoring a moment that was hers alone. She wasn’t the caregiver or the dutiful wife and mother that night. She was the honored radio station guest, my celebrated Mother, and I was lucky enough to be her escort.
I fared better in my search for Mrs. Harris’s recognition. I landed on the newspaper article itself, published in the Beckley Post-Herald on April 15, 1965. I was mistaken about nominating her for Mother of the Year, yet the headline showed I wasn’t far off:
“Shady Spring Woman Is ‘Mrs. Homemaker’”
“Mrs. Homemaker of 1964 and 1965 is the title which was bestowed on Mrs. Worthy Harris of Shady Spring on Saturday afternoon at the annual Home and Sport Show sponsored by Beckley Jaycees.”
It’s a long, long article, taking up nearly a quarter of a page and featuring a full-length photograph of Mrs. Harris holding a silver platter, one of her many gifts, along with a litany of her many talents that left me nodding in remembrance:
“An active member of White Oak Baptist Church, Mrs. Harris teaches crafts such as quilting, copper and leather tooling, refinishing furniture, cooking, canning, silk screening, lamp making, teaches home demonstration club classes, judges community fairs, and does upholstering as a hobby.”
As I continued reading, I realized that I was wrong about something else, too, so wrong that I was beyond flabbergasted:
“In her letter Mrs. [Audrey] Bateman stated, ‘Variety is the spice of life, and truly Mrs. Harris can attribute her zest to living to her many activities which center around her home and community. Her most admirable quality is that she always has time for God, her family, and friends.’”
I read the paragraph three times. Even then, I could only mutter to myself:
“Impossible!”
Surely, I was the one who wrote the nomination—I’d always been the family wordsmith, and the memory still lingers.
It was then that I called Audrey. Surely, she would know. She recalled Mrs. Harris’ recognition, but she was adamant that she had not written that letter, echoing the same sentiment that I had worried about down through the years:
“I wouldn’t dare have written that letter and slighted my own mother.”
Who knows. Maybe I wrote it for her to sign.
The truth lies somewhere in the mix—me, Audrey, and my Mother. All the careful lines blur, all the edges soften, until what’s left is simply presence—fluid, unguarded, and enough.
But now, sixty years after Mrs. Harris’s well-deserved recognition, I suspect it was my Mother herself who lined things up. I’m sure she never dreamt that one day I’d be celebrating her grace—while also celebrating a mother, not my own.
won’t you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.
—Lucille Clifton (1936–2010), award-winning American poet and former Poet Laureate of Maryland, celebrated for her spare, powerful verse that gave voice to Black womanhood, resilience, and self-invention.
It hangs there—dripping in crystal like it’s late for a curtain call at the Kennedy Center. A blazing burst of light and glamour. A chandelier so decadently faceted it might’ve been smuggled out of a Versailles estate sale or rescued from a Broadway set mid-strike. And yet, here it is: mounted proudly on a ceiling so low you could toast it with your coffee mug.
Where?
Why, right here on my mountaintop, in my rustic foyer wrapped in pine-paneled nostalgia, with a Shenandoah Valley pie safe, stoically anchoring one side and a polished silver chest on the other. An antique Asian vase—graceful and aloof—presides atop the chest like it’s seen empires rise and fall. Beneath it all, an Oriental runner unspools like a red carpet nobody asked for, but everybody deserves.
And then—just beyond the shimmer—a French door opens into another room, as if the whole scene is a prelude to a slow reveal.
It shouldn’t work. I know that fully well. A chandelier like this belongs somewhere fancy and regal. But guess what? Somehow, its sparkle doesn’t clash with the country charm, at least in my mind. In fact, it crowns it. And you can rest assured. It isn’t a mistake. It’s my way of declaring that my home isn’t just a home. It’s a story–actually, it’s lots of stories–told in light and shadow. And at the center of it all? My refusal to decorate according to rules. I couldn’t even if I wanted to because I have no idea what the rules are.
But a week or so ago, my Tennessee Gary stood smackdab beneath the chandelier—looking right at me, poised (I was certain) on the cusp of praise or profundity. But the next thing I knew, he spoke six words, which made me a tad uncertain about my certainty.
“I’m not sure it belongs there.”
“What?”
“The chandelier.”
“Well, I think it’s perfect. I wasn’t about to leave it in my Capitol Hill home when I moved here. It cost me a small fortune, and besides—I like it.”
That ended it. For then.
But a few days later, Gary brought it up again.
“Actually,” he said, studying the ceiling with a fresh softness, “the chandelier grows on you. It looks quite good there.”
If that’s not a kiss-and-make-amends moment, then lay one on me.
I grinned and agreed.
And let me tell you—that right there? That’s the moment that stuck. Not the first comment, but the second. The way Gary circled back. The way he didn’t double down, but opened up. That takes grace. That takes someone who sees with more than just their eyes.
He didn’t just help me see the chandelier differently. He helped me see the whole house—and maybe even myself—with a little more curiosity. A little more clarity. And that’s when I started walking through the rooms again—not to judge or justify, but to really look. Through his eyes. Through my eyes. Through the eyes of everyone who’s ever stepped inside and wondered how on earth all of this could possibly make sense.
And yet—to me—all of this makes perfectly good sense. Placed with memory, not trend. Positioned not for symmetry but sentiment. A lifetime’s worth of objects tucked wherever I could fit them, arranged with a kind of chaotic confidence that, somehow, glows.
But, still, I heard echoes rumbling around in my memory’s storehouse:
“It’s so homey.”
“I feel so comfortable here.”
“Wow! It’s like walking through a museum.”
In the midst of those echoes, I figured out how to find comfort: find someone else who decorates the way I do! It didn’t take me long at all before I remembered someone who had lived—and decorated—with the same truth: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.
As soon as I had that recall moment, I scooched up beside her so close that I could peek over her shoulder as she penned a letter to Kate Upson Clark. And Lord have Mercy Jesus! You can’t imagine my joy when I realized that folks said the same sort of things about her home decor as they say about my mine:
“I light this room with candles in old brass candlesticks. I have dull blue-and-gilt paper on the walls, and a striped Madagascar rug over a door, and a fur rug before the hearth. It is one of the queerest looking places you ever saw, I expect. You ought to see the Randolph folks when they come in. They look doubtful in the front room, but they say it is ‘pretty.’ When they get out into the back room, they say it ‘looks just like me’. I don’t know when I shall ever find out if that is a compliment.” (Letter 46, August 12, 1889. The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Edited with Biographical/Critical Introductions and Annotations by Brent L. Kendrick. Scarecrow, 1985)
I was thrilled to know that I was “keeping house,” if you will, in style with Freeman herself, especially since she and Mark Twain were America’s most beloved late-nineteenth-century writers. It didn’t really matter that I’m as much in the dark as she was when it comes to figuring out whether folks’ comments about my home-decorating talents are compliments or not.
And believe me. My home is filled with things far-more out of place than anything in Freeman’s or even the chandelier in my foyer.
If you need more proof, just walk around the corner and take a gander at my kitchen.
Who, in their wildest imagination, would expect to see an antique, cast-iron corn sheller anchoring a kitchen wall painted a rather dull gold. There it stands—bold, barn-red wood frame worn just enough to whisper stories, and a great black flywheel so theatrical it looks like it could power Mark Twain’s steamboat. Its jagged steel teeth peer out from one side like a warning or a dare. And yes, that’s a Buddha head poised gracefully on top. And a crystal vase of dried hydrangeas beside that. And behind it all, a painting of apples that, frankly, looks like it might have been pilfered from a still-life museum.
The whole wall, absurd as it may sound, radiates a kind of balance. It shouldn’t work. But neither should a chandelier in a pine-paneled foyer—yet here we are.
Even Ruby’s dog bowls sit below it like they were placed by a set designer with a sense of humor or a flair for the unexpected. And maybe they were. After all, this isn’t just décor. It’s a declaration. I live here. I made this up.
I did. I made it all up. And if these examples of how I decorate aren’t duncified enough, walk with me to the master bedroom where you’ll witness equally outlandish shenanigans.
I mean when you walk through the door you see a full wall of glass rising two stories high, flanked in clean wood trim like a frame around nature’s own oil painting, dappled with sunlight or clouds or rain or snow depending on the season. It’s modern, no question—open, architectural, and bright. The trees outside don’t just peek in—they wave, as I peek out and wave back.
Yet, in the midst of that modernity, you see a primitive wardrobe planted firmly against the Narragansett Green wall like it wandered in from a barn and decided to stay. It doesn’t whisper for attention—it claims it, with its wide plank doors, turned feet, and a latch that looks like it could keep out winter or wolves or well-meaning minimalists. It stands there like a wooden exclamation mark at the end of a free verse stanza.
And on top? Oh, mercy. You won’t believe it.
A faux flow-blue cachepot stuffed full of peacock feathers–a riot of iridescence exploding upward. Liberace himself would approve. And to its right is a clay figure with a gaze both weary and wise, like she’s been through it all and chose to dress up anyway.
This is not a design decision. This is pageantry. This is poetry. This is proof. If you’re bold enough to mix the primitive with the peacock, you might just get something startlingly close to the divine.
I could take you through the whole house—room by room—and you’d see the same thing.
A treasure here. A treasure there. (Yes. Sometimes another person’s trash became my treasure.) And for each, I can tell you when and where I bought it, along with what I paid. But here’s the thing. I never made one single solitary purchase with an eye toward resale. I never made one single solitary purchase with an eye toward decorating. I bought each and every treasure simply because I liked it. And when I brought it home, I put it wherever I had a spot on the floor or a space on the wall.
Now, don’t go jumping to the wrong conclusion. My decorating is not as haphazard as it might sound. I do have a few notions about “where things belong” and “what goes with what.” And when I visit other folks’ homes, I never hesitate to step back and declare:
“Oh. My. God. Look at that painting. I love the way it pops on that wall.”
Well, hello. Of course, it pops. With all that negative space around it, it would have to.
Let me add this, too. I love it when I see that kind of plain, simple, and powerful artistry at play–in other people’s homes.
And who knows. Perhaps, moving forward, there might even be a snowball’s chance in hell that, with some subtle, indirect and loving guidance, I could learn to value and appreciate negative space here on the mountain, too.
But for now, my goodness! I don’t have any negative space. Everywhere you look, you see a glorious mishmash. Sentiment over symmetry. Memory over minimalism.
I know. I know. It’s homey. It’s so comfortable. It’s a museum. Also, I know it’s not for everyone. But as I look around, I realize something majorly important.
I’ve decorated my house the way I’ve lived my life.
I had no blueprint. I had no Pinterest board. I didn’t consult trends. I didn’t ask for permission. I placed things where they felt right. I trusted instinct, not instruction. I listened to heart, not head.
And I’ve done the same with the living of my days.
I didn’t wait for others to validate the things that mattered to me—my work, my relationships, my choices, or my way of making a way in a world that hadn’t made a way for gay guys like me. I’ve been both the curator and the interpreter of it all. I’ve decided what stays, what goes, what gets the spotlight, and what quietly holds meaning just for me.
And maybe—just maybe—there’s something to be said for that kind of decorating. For that kind of living. One made up along the way. One that, in the end, fits and feels just right.
Who knows what kind of unruly hodgepodge I’ll have gathered by the time I reach the end. Or what I’ll do with it when I arrive—wherever it is that I’m headed—that place none of us is exactly rushing to, despite tantalizing rumors of eternal rest and better acoustics.
But this much I do know.
If I take a notion, I might just take the chandelier with me. Not for the lighting. Not for the resale value. But as glowing, glittering, slightly-too-low-hanging proof that I never followed the map—I just kept decorating the journey. With memory. With mischief. With mismatched joy. And with the quiet grace of learning to see things through someone else’s eyes—sometimes anew.
And when I show up at whatever comes next—the pearly gates, some velvet ropes, or a reincarnation waiting room—I want folks to look at that chandelier, then look at me, and say with raised eyebrows and holy disbelief:
“I’m not sure it belongs here.”
To which I’ll smile as wide as I’m smiling right now and reply,
“Well, I wasn’t about to leave it behind. Besides, I have it on good authority—it’ll grow on you.”
And that’s the truth. It’ll grow on you. I should know because I made it all up, all along my way.
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
–Carl Sagan (1934–1996; astronomer and science communicator who inspired millions through his work on Cosmos and popular science writing.)
Tell me to do something, and I probably won’t do it. It smacks too much of being ordered around. No, thank you. Most of the time–though not always–I prefer to do the bossing.
On the other hand, suggest that I do something–maybe even challenge me to do something–and I’ll probably do it. Yes, thank you. I thrive on encouragement.
That’s exactly how today’s post began. One of my followers–my Linden Correspondent (LC)–suggested that the world at large might be revved and ready to know how my wired blog began! I thought LC’s suggestion was splendid, especially since my blog just celebrated its 12th anniversary. What better time than now to share the electrifying backstory.
With a growing readership of 13,782 (and counting!), I like to think my blog has found its niche. My readers value my blog for what it is today: a succession of riveting and captivating creative nonfiction essays that appear magically every Monday morning just in time for that first cup of coffee–that is for early risers who get their brew going early. That’s why I make a point of posting before 7am. While I sip on my coffee and savor what I wrote, I like to think that the entire world is doing the same thing.
Every Monday morning, you’ll find me in my reading chair with Ruby—my 60-pound lapdog—perusing my post while she peruses me. Sometimes, I smile and say aloud for her amusement:
“Wow, Kendrick! That’s a remarkable sentence. If you keep cranking out little gems like that, maybe one day you’ll end up somewhere as someone’s endnote.”
Yep. An endnote. Ironically, I guess that’s where we all end up: Someone’s endnote.
That’s not such a bad thing, you know. An endnote here. An endnote there. It seems to me that achieving a memorable, perhaps quotable phrase here and there is probably far wiser than having the entire canon of my work ricocheting around the world.
Stop and think about it for a minute or three. Look, for example, at what Benjamin Franklin achieved as a writer. Let’s focus on his Poor Richard’s Almanack, published annually from 1732 to 1758—nearly a quarter of a century of wit and wisdom.
Most people today can recall only a handful of Franklin’s most famous sayings, like:
● “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” ● “A penny saved is a penny earned.” ● “No gains without pains.”
Please tell me, Dear Reader, that you know those sayings, for if you don’t, you surely won’t know these:
● “Well done is better than well said.” ● “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” ● “If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.”
Indeed, Franklin managed to do both: he wrote things worth reading and did things worth writing. And, as I like to say:
“Endnoted.”
But let me take you back to where I began: the beginning of this blog.
I am so sorely tempted to say:
“It was a dark and stormy night …”
And that’s exactly what I would say, but if I said that I would have to note that Edward Bulwer-Lytton opened his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford with those words. As much as I hate to say it, because I am a stickler on documentation, I have grown weary of all the endnoting that I keep noting. Let us then move on to something that requires no noting.
Whew! I don’t know about you, but I feel notably relieved already.
LC must be relieved, too, to see that, at last, I’m getting around to sharing with the world the story behind the birth of my blog. But, as they say, every blog has its story, and mine is no exception.
Here’s what’s fascinating. Today, I am known around the world for my weekly memoir blog posts talking about anything from Aging to Zippers and about everything in between.
But when the idea for my blog came to me in 2012, I had a sharp, narrow, scholarly focus. I was working on my application for the VCCS Chancellor’s Commonwealth Professorship Program. At the heart of my application was the scholarly research that I wanted to do with a remarkable collection of Colonial American essays, songs, poems, and advertisements published pseudonymously under the name of “The Humourist” in the South Carolina Gazette during 1753-1754. The unique essays had never been reprinted, so they remained “hidden” and “undiscovered,” so to speak, in that newspaper. Further, no one knew who wrote the essays. Well, I was 99% certain that I knew, but I needed to do additional research and analysis to confirm my suspicions. In that sense, my project was a literary “whodunit” involving three things.
First, I planned to prepare a critical, annotated edition of the essays.
Second, I planned to develop a convincing case for authorial attribution based on a preponderance of internal evidence as well as on stylometrics.
Third, throughout the process of preparing the critical, annotated edition and developing a case for authorial attribution, I planned to give the essays a “close reading.” I was reminded of a quote by Robert Frost:
“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.”
I always shared that wisdom with my students. Learning to read—really read—gets to the heart of what we want our students to do, not just in English classes but across the board. When students slow down and give a text a close reading, critical thinking and intellectual discovery follow.
As Frost knew so well, that is what “learning to read” is all about. Further, when students learn how to really read, they can construct their own intellectual inquiries: “the rest can be trusted to add itself unto us.”
I always shared that belief—and approach—with my students without fail. I showed them how to learn to read, class after class, reading assignment after reading assignment, as I gave whatever literary selection we were reading my own close reading and as I made my own discoveries about a text. They were intrigued not only by my process but also by the discoveries that I made simply because of my dogged determination to give a text—any text—a close reading.
In my application, that’s precisely what I proposed to do with “The Humourist” essays. I wanted the opportunity to give the essays such a close reading that I would be able not only to establish a scholarly, annotated edition but also to identify the author.
I was really happy with that part of my application, but I knew that I needed something more. I needed a way to share my scholarly work on a regular basis with my colleagues and my students so that they could benefit, too.
I needed an idea. As I sat there on that January 8th evening, well into the third or fourth or maybe even fifth revision of my application, I started thinking about Daniel Boorstin (1975-1987), twelfth Librarian of Congress. A champion of accessibility, he worked to open the library to the public in symbolic and practical ways. He placed picnic tables and benches on Neptune Plaza, transforming it into a space for community gatherings. He initiated mid-day concerts and famously removed the chains from the majestic bronze doors at the first-floor west entrance leading to the Great Hall of the Jefferson Building. When told it would create a draft, he replied, “Great—that’s just what we need.” In a bold move, he even stopped the practice of searching visitors.
At that time, I worked at the Library of Congress as an editor of the National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints, and I well remember the occasion when the bronze doors were opened. If I am not mistaken, it was on this occasion that I heard Dr. Boorstin say:
“You never know when an idea is about to be born.“
His comment lingered, and since hearing it, I made a point to keep track of when my own ideas were born.
So it came to be. While thinking about Boorstin, ideas, and my project, I exclaimed to myself:
“Blog it!”
I knew that a blog would allow me to share with the entire world my challenges, discoveries, and joys of research.
I knew that a blog would allow me to share with others this remarkable collection of Colonial American essays, songs, poems, and advertisements. The Encyclopedia of the Essay (ed. Tracy Chevalier, 1997) placed “The Humourist” essays in the tradition of Samuel Johnson’s Rambler essays and observed that they are the only “full-fledged literary” works to have appeared in the South Carolina Gazette. Years earlier, J. A. Leo Lemay (du Pont Winterthur Professor of English at the University of Delaware) had noted in A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of Southern Literature (1969) that the essays should be edited, published, and the author identified.
This was hot! I knew that I could make “stuffy” literary research come alive in a blog. Colleagues and students and scholars and the world at large would love it. I knew they would because who wouldn’t love essays on par with Benjamin Franklin’s “Silence Dogood Letters”? Get this, too. Franklin had direct ties to the South Carolina Gazette and possibly to the author of “The Humourist” essays.
I knew, too, that aside from being in the essay tradition itself, a blog would allow me to share my project with faculty and students throughout the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), from the beginning of my work and every step of the way through completion. I realized that a blog would allow me to capture my personal experiences on a regular and ongoing basis: my work, my methods, my discoveries, my challenges and frustrations, and my joys.
I knew that a blog would allow me to do in the virtual world—using a heretofore unstudied literary work—exactly what I did in my classroom with literary works that appear in our textbooks: turn my blog followers on to the beauty of giving a text a close reading and turn them my on to “learning how to read,” showing them that once they learned how to read all else would be given to them.
That same evening, I came up with a working title: TheWiredResearcher. I Googled it and was delighted to discoverthatnosuchblog existed.
As I often do, I emailed a former student—a lover of language and words and ideas—to get her take on my blog idea.
She responded immediately:
The word “wired” will catch the attention of …The Young. They’ll think you are “hip.”
You’ll need a logo. You’ll need T-shirts with the logo on them. You need pens that say, “The Wired Researcher.” “Sold in libraries everywhere.” “Guaranteed to make study more exciting.” Oh, boy, I see tie-ins!
Clearly my former student was as wired as I was—perhaps that’s why I valued her opinions as highly as I did—but her email response gave affirmation to the title of the blog that had been born.
Here’s where the birth of the blog starts to get really sweet. I was awarded the Chancellor’s Commonwealth Professorship (2012-2014).
My first announcement appeared on October 19, 2012. It was short!
“Welcome to The Wired Researcher! Blog posts will begin on November 26, 2012.”
True to my promise, on November 26, I published “Opportunity Knocks Twice in the Virginia Community College System.” That post included the first of the historical essays that served as the nucleus for my project: “The Humourist” (November 26, 1753). Yep. Choosing to launch my blog on November 26, the same day that the Humourist launched his essays, was deliberate, and if I must say so myself, I think it was a stroke of genius!
And so, The Wired Researcher was born—not just as a blog, but as a way for me to share my love of research with a world eager to learn about my discoveries.
Now you have the inside scoop. If you want to know more, simply go back to the beginning and read all the posts from the start. But whatever you do, please make certain that you read “Colonial Charleston’s Biggest Literary Mystery Is Solved!” Yep. I solved the literary whodunit that captured me in the first place. Then you have to read “Three Special Shout-Outs!” because behind every success story are lots of people who deserve praise and thanks!
Wait! Wait! Don’t go yet. I have one or two more things to share.
When my blog started, I had around 1,750 views a year, representing 33 countries. So far this year, it has soared to an impressive 13,782 views from 152 countries! I must be writing something right!
To each and every one of you, My Dear Readers–then, now, and all along the way–a special shout-out!
To my Linden Correspondent (LC), who tossed out the idea that I share the story behind the blog, I extend asupercalifragilisticexpialidociousthank-you! (As Mary Poppins would say, nothing else captures the exuberance quite right!)
I look forward to a future of Mondays, inspired by the joy of discovery and by the connections that I’m making with all of you.
The Wired Researcher 