We often don’t know what we think until we read what we write (a thought I’ve shared with students for years). For the last 1000 miles of our 3247 driving miles so far, we’ve been off of the interstate highways.

I get the anger a little better now.

Small town after small town on backroads through rural Virginia and North Carolina, the panhandle of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas there were abandoned storefronts, vacant playgrounds, an infinite number of Dollar Generals (a sure sign of poverty and the only non-gas station/convenience store in many towns), empty main streets, decrepit homes either unoccupied or in need of repair. 

In Monroeville, Alabama (home of Harper Lee and a must-stop destination for Sarah), we got into a conversation with the director of the Courthouse Museum. When asked about the ‘state’ of Monroeville (which was pretty obvious when the only seemingly active store on a beautiful square was the local equivalent of Savers) she replied, “When they ‘off-shored’ the Vanity Fair factory, the town fell apart. Yes, we have a small paper mill left but the decision to close destroyed the town. I’ve been here forty-six years, and I’m not leaving, but there aren’t jobs and nothing really for young people especially because we’re thirty miles of the interstate.” Now, I know nothing about Vanity Fair and where they sent the jobs, but I’m 100% sure that there was a decision made to increase shareholder value and profitability that gutted this town. Is it a surprise that people here want to take America back to fifty years ago when small towns and manufacturing created good jobs and solid communities?

So when one combines that daily reality in thousands of towns like Monroeville with the national tragedies in last twenty years — an opioid crisis fueled by big pharma that cost tens of thousands of lives with the support of the FDA, a housing crisis caused by predatory lending when not a single perpetrator from Wall Street went to jail that cost hundreds of thousands of people their homes, a war in Iraq fueled by misinformation that was primarily fought by those in communities like Monroeville, a nation building project in Afghanistan that cost billions after the original OBL mission was accomplished — it becomes much easier to understand why people are angry and have lost faith in their government and leadership. 

And as we’ve learned from so many societies, when there are national problems (imagined or real), there needs to be someone to blame and a desire for simple solutions. Hence…Make America great again. 

It’s too easy in the bubble of my life (that has been filled with significant unearned advantage) to say, They’re racist or They’re ignorant and don’t understand.

Though I’ve not moved closer to a Trump world, these rural miles have helped me understand some of what people I don’t know feel a little better. 

From Sarah: Palo Duro Canyon State Park (just south of Amarillo, Texas) and onto Santa Fe

We had an amazing hike in the Palo Duro Canyon State Park that appeared out of the infinite, vast flat horizon. We tested our packs that we’ll be taking to Chile. Gorgeous weather and perfect day.

Ben on top of Lighthouse:

The trail we did was Givens, Spicer, Lowry Trail to Lighthouse Trail—well-marked and beautiful.

And after a four-hour drive the next day, how joyful to see Julia and T and Isaac and Elsa! Santa Fe is just stunning—snow and sun and family love.

Stay safe. Miss you. Love you.

We have let Waze help us find our destinations, and wonderfully we’ve been off superhighways throughout most of the Panhandle of Florida and through Alabama and Mississippi. What a way to see this part of our country: its surprising emptiness, its beauty, its real poverty, the ubiquitous Dollar General stores, and always, kind people behind a counter at a gas station.

Yesterday we left the pleasantness of our friend’s Airbnb (thank you, Ned Horton!) on Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, and drove to Montgomery, Alabama. Ever since hearing Bryan Stevenson speak in Boston and seeing a 60 Minutes segment about his passion to create The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, we have wanted to visit this powerful memorial for those who were lynched in America. We hadn’t even known about The Legacy Museum. The power and intentionality of both the museum and the memorial moved us profoundly. I hope the images (all from the memorial, no photos allowed at the museum) below convey even a bit of what we experienced in those four hours.

From Montgomery we drove to Monroeville, Alabama, Harper Lee’s home in the town she based the fictional Maycomb on in To Kill a Mockingbird. The local courthouse where Lee’s father, a trial lawyer, worked is now a museum. What a treat for me; I taught To Kill a Mockingbird each of the thirty-seven years that I taught English. The novel feels quite cellular to me, her words flowing in my bloodstream.

And now here we are in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, waiting for the day to warm up a bit before we head out on the Longleaf Trace bike trail.

(At the Memorial, there are jars of soil from the places people were lynched; at The Legacy Museum there are thousands more. The number of names and jars is overwhelming.)

The Memorial outside:

And from Monroeville, Nell Harper Lee’s home,

the courtroom, that the movie based its set on:

I love that line, when I work to learn something, I remember it.

Stay safe. Miss you. Love you.

A ‘guest blog’ from Ben:

Outside of my immediate family, there is no single more important or influential person in my life than Dr. Darryl Taylor.

While for over fifty years we have joked about being ‘brothers from another mother’ – Darryl has been my big brother and role model since he arrived at Cranbrook as a Horizons Upward Bound student in the late 1960s. The barriers he has broken, the obstacles he has overcome, the integrity in which he’s lived his life, the beautiful family he’s created, the resilience he’s shown, and the mentorship he’s provided have shaped my life and view of the world in untold ways. 

His career as a dentist in the Navy took him all over the world and created stretches of time where our paths didn’t cross, but the connection was always there, and spending three days with Darryl and his wife Denise in St. Augustine has been a gift beyond measure. 

“Family” is a word that can mean many things and can bring out both the best and worst in us. With Darryl and Denise “family” over these days has meant sharing every aspect of our lives in the best possible ways – hopes and dreams for our kids, disappointments faced along the way, belly laughs from shared past experiences, and the occasional emotional moment. During delicious meals, fun at Top Golf, a walking tour of St. Augustine, and just relaxed conversations over coffee in the morning and drinks later in the day, we simply could not be more grateful to have spent this time with family. 

An evening walk in St. Augustine:

The stunning moon:

The only real golfer at Top Golf—Darryl:

And a little putting back at Darryl & Denise’s home:

How grateful we are.

Onto biking (Rails to Trails) in Tallahassee & a few days at Panama City Beach (thank you, Ned Horton!).

Stay safe. Miss you. Love you.

I remember when my parents lived at Kendal in Hanover, New Hampshire, just minutes from our place in Vermont, they’d head to Delray, Florida, for a good part of the winter. A friend of theirs, another resident at Kendal, called them cowards for escaping the below zero days and the gray curtain of sky.

We feel a little like cowards here on Kiawah Island where the sun in higher, the days stretch longer, and we can walk on the beach and bike every day. But, man, it’s beautiful!

Here are some photos of our three days, one to go and then off to St. Augustine, Florida (even more cowardly?) to see our great friends, Darryl and Denise Taylor.

Ben, ahead of me, looks like he’s biking in Cambodia tunneled by the bamboo groves and palm trees 🙂

Driving range fun:

And the birds:

And the beach:

Just the gulls and I on this morning’s walk. Here’s a link to a great poem about sea gulls by John Updike.

Stay healthy.

We’ve had such fun with family and friends in Alexandria and Chapel Hill. How unusual and meaningful to just be with people with no time crunch or fear of infection (after vaccines, boosters, and regular testing)—we feel very lucky.

We had such a great time exploring DC and having yummy meals and conversations with Abby and Paul, who are so thrilled to be getting married (5.6.2023). Paul made a memorable focaccia (photo below) for us and their friends Charlene and Adam. We left Alexandria and headed to Pittsboro (outside of Chapel Hill) to stay with our good friends, Erika and Doug Guy via Nellysford, VA where Abby and Paul will get married. What a stunning part of the country, it felt like Vermont transported to Virginia.

Predictably and seemingly effortlessly, Erika created delicious dinners, (see below) and she and Doug and their dog Bodie were welcoming and warm. Close to Chapel Hill, we found a couple of hours to see my niece, Grace and her other side of the family aunt and uncle, Ashlyn and Keith and spent a wonderful afternoon with our friend and an amazing leader, Chris Bradford. Chris co-founded the African Leadership Academy, where he stays connected and involved but now is also the president of the Morehead-Cain Program at UNC. Four hours with Chris having lunch at the Carolina Coffee Shop and walking around the lovely campus felt like a gift.

This morning we packed up the truck and pulled into Kiawah Island after four hours, through the tunnel of ancient southern oaks draped with moss. We’ve biked and walked on the beach. This is home for three days.

Not only have we loved talking and laughing with people we love, we’ve listened to great podcasts, articles on Audm, good music, and we’re reading good books (Ben is immersed in The Lincoln Highway, a book I loved, too, and I’m in the middle of Four Thousand Weeks. I’m not typically a non-fiction person, but this is good).

One article has stayed with me. You know when something you feel finally gets named and there is clarity and healing in just the naming? That’s what I felt when listening to a New York Times article by Meg Bernhard about Pauline Boss’s work and understanding of ambiguous loss. Here’s a link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/magazine/grieving-loss-closure.html

I highly recommend it.

And some photos.

Paul’s homemade focaccia:

Paul & Abby saying good bye to us in their sweatsedos:

Erika’s magic:

Grace & Ashlyn & Keith & me:

Chris & Ben & me at Chapel Hill

First hours at Kiawah, note the alligator 🙂

Stay safe. Miss you. Love you.

Ben and I knew we wanted to see the Capitol on this historic day, but we began our adventure by taking the Metro to a stop near the Spy Museum, somewhere we’ve wanted to go but could never get tickets at the last minute. What a great place! You enter and get a spy badge, a new identity, and code word (I love that mine was “Frost” :). Throughout the two hours there, we solved some stuff, learned a lot, and had fun.

The Capitol was more sobering. How close we came to losing a democracy that day, the lives lost, and the violence. Ben and I thanked each Capitol police officer we saw, which was quite emotional, for us and for them.

We ended the day at the National Gallery washed over by a plethora of stunning art:

How grateful we feel to be staying with Abby and Paul for the next few days and being immersed in all that the DC area has to offer. We’re bracing for another snow storm here…

Stay safe, everyone.

How perfect to start our journey in the state where I was born and lived for the first eighteen years of my life, where I even had a different name, Sally (my parents never even told my real name was Sarah until I was about six). The first night on the journey has been with our good friends, Mary Kate & Dave, in Lawrenceville—greeting us with warmth and an amazing eggplant parmesan, kale and avocado salad, fresh bread, and a decadent chocolate cake. As Ben said, the first stop might be the best stop. We have had a few glitches to work out as we start, a forgotten pair of hiking boots for instance (a kind neighbor will send them to us along the way) and some essentials packed deep in the truck bed we’ll have to rearrange. But we had a traffic-free drive down to New Jersey; that is a win given the years of nightmare experiences we’ve endured on the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway when my parents still lived here. Next stop Alexandria, VA with Abby and Paul (and a ton of snow!).

Here are some packing photos:

Here we are with our kind friends, Mary Kate and Dave, who make me laugh a lot and have 5 star bath towels!

To start off Ben’s retirement, we decided to get out of town. We’re loading the pickup with luggage, skis, golf clubs, and bikes and driving south on January 4th. We’ll be staying with family and friends for the most part, stopping to bike on bike trails, to play nine holes at public courses, to take covid tests, to hike along the way, and generally to be open to adventure. Sporadically, I’ll write in this blog and upload photos along the way with Ben as a guest blogger sometimes. If we’re coming your way, please reach out, we’d love to buy you a meal or coffee and find out what you’ve been up to.

Here’s our itinerary so far: NJ, DC, NC, SC, FL, New Orleans, Austin, Santa Fe (where we’ll park the truck for a month with my sister to head to Chile & Argentina), Colorado, Utah, Montana, San Francisco, and who knows after that :).

And here’s our truck (before the snow):

In the past couple of weeks, several people have asked for book recommendations; I just found the time to write these down. Here goes:

A Constellation Of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra — I learned so much about Chechnya (1996-20014) through this impressive story and these compelling characters, and the writing is brilliant; I found myself copying down many lines I just needed to save somewhere.

The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer — great writing, great story set in pre/during WWII.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr — just lovely language and characters, plot builds with such authority — WWII as well.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Goff — a husband and wife’s stories, lots of Greek tragedy here with great writing.

A Doubter’s Almanac by Ethan Canin — the compelling, tragic life of a mathematical genius.

When Breathe Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi — nonfiction, stunning writing about facing death.

She Weeps Each Time You’re Born by Quan Barry — haunting, gorgeous writing about past and present Vietnam.

The Nightingale by Krisin Hannah — strong story of two sisters in France during WWII.

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri — I’ll read anything by her J — the story of two brothers, one who straddles life in India and the US.

Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris — probably no one will love this book more than I — she’s the nonpareil of grammar; I wrote her, and she responded!

Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter by Nina MacLaughlin — nonfiction, Nobles grad who writes with power and humor about changing her life.

All That is Solid Melts Into Air by Darragh McKeon — a gripping fictional account of characters surviving the Chernobyl disaster.

Euphoria by Lily King — Lily taught at Nobles and is a warm, lovely person, and she is a fine writer. This book is loosely based on Margaret Mead’s fascinating life, love, and work in New Guinea. Great writing. Also try Father of the Rain by Lily — so powerful!

Department of Speculation by Jenny Offill — this feels like poetry; it’s beautiful, heart-breaking, funny, and moving about marriage, mothering, forgiving, and being an artist — all written in compelling, vignette-ish pieces.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout — I love this writer, and this book is about writing, too. A mother-daughter unveiling as well.

And here are five of my absolute favorites written up for an article in the Nobles Bulletin years ago with this title:

“Five Books I Wish I Hadn’t Already Read So That I Could Read Them For the First Time Again”

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss is a clever, moving novel. I definitely like this kind of book where the story unwraps slowly and mysteriously through different voices, in this case: Alma, a precocious 14 year-old; Bird, her ten-year old brother, and Leo, a retired locksmith (I love the symbolism of his being a locksmith – there is so much that must be unlocked…). You have to be comfortable with not knowing exactly what is going on all of the time, but if you stick with it, this novel delivers so much haunting beauty and knowledge of love. And the writing is just perfect.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry is a tragic, detailed saga that pulled me into India and made me have to travel there. After I finished this novel, I was sitting next to Ben and said, “You have to read this book so we can talk about it.” He did. (He’s quite obedient) He loved it, too, and we decided to go to India to see if we could create a travel and service experience for Nobles students. We did. Five groups have gone to India since our first look-see excursion. Four years ago I began teaching a senior elective on Contemporary Literature of India. All triggered by this novel…

Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese is set in Ethiopia and unravels a complex, entertaining story of intersected lives, some from Ethiopia, others from India, America, and England. There is a lot to love about this novel. There’s the Ethiopian history and political events, the intricate surgical detail (Verghese is a surgeon as well as a fine writer), and the imaginative plot. The writing is just exquisite, and the characters so interesting. I have a thing about twins in literature or plays; the twin boys in this story add such richness and complexity. I loved this book.

Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Berniéres is flat out fine story telling, unearthing a poignant love story. There are parts I had to copy in my journal, so much truth was in his words. Maybe it was so engaging because I read it first when Ben and I were on a six-month sabbatical traveling around the world with our children. I had time to read each morning when I woke up which is a luxury for me. I had the whole day to think about and remember strong images and particularly truthful passages.

The Republic of Love by Carol Shields is at times funny, detailed, and always engaging – another love story. (I’ve read every book she’s written. I wrote Carol Shields after finishing her book, Unless, as I’d heard it was her last because of a cancer diagnosis. She wrote me back a lovely hand-written card that I treasure.) This quirky love tale unveils Shields’ ability to write with such authentic voices for her characters. (The Stone Diaries, for which Shields received the Pulitzer, highlights this finesse with voice as well.) The book brims with details and has a plot that surprises and pleases, unrolling through alternating chapters from the two protagonists, Fay and Tom.

 

 

1. It’s strange to feel slightly giddy at the loss of my Kindle. It sits in the seat back pocket of 17B or in the hands of someone new. I’ve called American Airlines’ lost & found and talked to a real person, but no one has turned in my purple covered Kindle, and I am smiling having just returned from my favorite bookstore, the New England Mobile Book Fair (a place Abby, David, and I used to frequent for hours, all of us sitting or sprawled in the narrow aisles on a rainy day) with a stack of real books. I am happy with the covers. I am happy with their heft. Happy soaring, Kindle!

 

2. I am also slightly scared and excited about the coming of May. I have been selected to be poet for Tupelo Press’s 30/30 Project. Each day of May I will be posting a poem on their webpage, along with eight other poets. Even though I have created a pretty consistent discipline of writing at least two hours every day, I certainly don’t throw my unpublished work out there. But I’m eager to push myself as a writer while raising money for Tupelo Press. If you want to support this endeavor, click here.

Happy reading and writing to you, too!