* * Getting older

Every year for something like the past 38 years, Randy Marchany of Blacksburg has been hosting a birthday party for himself and several college buddies who were born within days of his birthday in July.  My birthday, coincidentally, is in July as well.  Randy is a charismatic and musically talented man towards whom people naturally gravitate.  I have been a guest at this party for the past several years. 

This past Saturday night, we arrived to find perhaps 25 or 30 people already there.  One of the people there was a man named Andy who was a former customer of mine when I ran a printing company.  I had read in the obituary pages of our local newspaper recently that he had lost his wife to cancer only two weeks earlier.  I had written him a condolence note and he acknowledged receiving it.  He appeared to be in reasonable spirits under the circumstances.  His wife had been sick for many years and I guessed that he had accepted the inevitability of her demise.

At one point as I was mulling around, I noticed a brown T-shirt hanging on a coat hanger from an outdoor pavilion.  Printed on it were the words, “I’m not dead yet.”  I didn’t have a chance to look closely before I was distracted by someone but I remember seeing a number of handwritten notes scribbled on it.

A few moments later, a pert, petite woman, perhaps in her 60s, introduced herself to me.  Her name was JJ.  She said, “I noticed you looking at my shirt.  It is in reference to the fact that I have stage four colon cancer.  All predictions are that this will be the last edition of this party I will be able to attend.”

I mentioned to JJ that Andy had lost his wife and she asked me if I thought she could speak with him.  I told her I was sure it was fine and I took her over to meet him.  I stopped back to see them later and apparently they had a lively conversation.

A few moments later, I found myself in conversation with another old friend, a man named Jim who was scheduled for knee replacement surgery.

I will be 57 years old next month and most of the people at this party were 60 years old or more.  I think pondering one’s own mortality is not an exercise that should occupy a lot of our everyday thoughts, unless we are suffering an incurable disease.  Both of my parents are in reasonable health in their early 80s.  I have always felt that if I were able to avoid serious accidents I would consider 100 years of age to be a reasonable expectation for myself.  However, it is certainly not a foregone conclusion.

The next morning I spoke with JJ and again at breakfast.  She was curious about my life and my work.  She grew up in a Virginia town along the border with West Virginia.  Her town was one of many featured in my first book, The Spine of the Virginias.  I told her about it and when she handed over the money to pay for it, I went fiddling around for change.  She grinned good-naturedly and said, “A few cents in change really doesn’t matter much to me at this stage of my life.”

I was impressed by the equanimity she showed and I wondered if I would have shown the same grace if similarly afflicted.



* * Catching up with the Blumenthals

Last evening, we got together with the Blumenthals.

Jan and Shelley Blumenthal are our next door neighbors.  They’re familiar to just about everybody between the ages of 15 and 40 in our town of Blacksburg, and many more people besides.  Jan and Shelley are teachers.

Jan retired just a few weeks ago from a career teaching choir at Blacksburg High School.  Shelley has been a guidance counselor there for many years.  He’s also the soccer coach.

But these things really don’t come close to describing the impact that these two people have had on our community.

Each year, Jan is the host of an annual recital concert for all of her students for that year.  This year with her retirement looming, something special happened.  Her current students used Facebook and other media to invite past students to take part in a celebratory song to send Jan happily into her retirement.  Nearly 100 current and past students, some of the older ones with children of their own others pregnant, appeared onstage and sang the song Seasons of Love (from the opera Rent) together. 

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets
In midnights, in cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife
In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, a year in the life?
How about love?
Measure in love

From all accounts, it was a completely emotional experience and everyone was in tears by the time it was over.  Shelley said, “I am usually pretty unemotional about these things but I was crying like a baby.”

Our daughter, Whitney, was one of Jan’s past students who came and sang onstage.  She echoed Shelley’s sentiment that everyone was just overwhelmed with emotion.

Jan quipped, “I usually pride myself with staying abreast of what is going on around the school.  Students typically tell me what is going on.  But I had no idea this was being planned so it took me completely by surprise.  So maybe it's time for me to retire.  It was just like the closing scene from the movie, Mr. Holland’s Opus.”

Shelley has had a memorable year of his own.  His soccer teams have enjoyed unprecedented success during his tenure. According to the team's website, Shelley has, "led the Indians to 10 state championships in the past 19 years.  In the 19 years that Coach B has been head coach, he has a record of 374-28-15 for a winning pertcentage on 93.1%.  Coach B's first year as head coach, Blacksburg was the state runners-up.  Coach B has coached 37 Group AA 1st team players, 19 2nd team players and 24 honorable mention players, as well as 10 times a Blacksburg player has been named player of the year for the state. This year his team got off to a slow start of two wins and two losses before reeling off a string of victories that left them again that brought them again to the state championship where they lost a close game. He said, “I was proud of how we really came together as a team this year.”

All this was on top of the fact that the school building they’d been in for most of their careers had partially collapsed and would never again be occupied.  Last year was held in the former Middle School and those students were bused to Christiansburg each day to the former High School where I graduated in 1972 in what was an old building event then.

Shelley told a story that I hope will stick in my mind for a long time.  He said that he had had a conversation with several of his old friends from college.  Every one of them was more successful monetarily and he was.  But, “All of us agree that none are as happy with their lives as I am.”

We should all live such successful, fulfilling lives!



* * Learnin'

Some days, I want to pull out my hair (what little remains).

Since beginning the transition to becoming an author, I’ve taken on several new educational tasks. Sometimes I think I’m not smart enough for this!

Today I’m working in InDesign.  This is a software program for professional graphic designers. This program will do jumping jacks, wash the dishes, and take out the garbage (figuratively, of course) if the idiot atop the keyboard simply knows how to ask correctly. Just now, I’m trying desperately to change the font of a line of text. The font works elsewhere in the document, but it simply won’t work the place I need it to work. I’ve even tried cutting and pasting from areas that work, but the spacing goes to heck.  Not to beat myself up too badly, I did manage to design the cover and interior of my two latest books, Union, WV and Harmonic Highways, and I think they look professionally done, if I do say so myself. I also did a paying job for Dwight Hayes on the interior of his book. But the learning is extremely difficult and the rewards infrequent.

Beyond that, I’ve learned the rudiments of Squarespace, an internet based HTML generator and hosting site for websites. I got lots of help from an old friend, a “boy wonder” who was 12 when he started learning HTML.  But now I’m trying to carry the torch myself, with mixed results. This website was designed and is hosted in Squarespace.

I’m trying to learn Photoshop to make changes to my photographs.

And I’m trying to learn a new program called Scrivener, which is a tool to help writers keep thoughts organized. Conceptually it sounds like a good idaa, but the learnin' is distracting from the organizin'.

And then there’s PayPal’s Merchant Services, the state of Virginia’s on-line tax reporting system, and several other programs that I can’t think of right now.

I was discussing the occupational world with my daughter a few days ago.  She’s in the midst of a job change during the summer between her sophomore and junior years in college. I said, “Anybody can do the easy stuff – which varies from person to person.  Successful people take on the hard stuff.”  I’m swallowing a bit of my own medicine these days, it seems.  Hopefully it will someday make me successful. Hopefully while I still have some hair left.

* * Praising Dwight

ust over a year ago, I was in Rocky Mount doing research on the book that is now Harmonic Highways: Motorcycling Virginia’s Crooked Road.  I met a man named Dwight Hayes.

Dwight owns a photography studio on the edge of town.  When we met, he told me that for a long time he has wanted to write a book about his life experiences.  Dwight was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and as an adult he left the Witnesses and became a more mainstream Christian.  I don’t know what came over me at the time, but I said, “None of us are getting any younger.  If you have a book in your mind, you should get started on it.”

He explained that while he had given it a tremendous amount of thought, he was not a good writer and was not very skilled with grammar.  I said, “Why don’t I help you with?”

Over the next week or two, we exchanged ideas and finally I made a proposal to assist, which he accepted.

During the intervening year, he has routinely sent me new chapters for the book which I have reworked to improve the grammar and flow.  When I was gone to Bolivia, he took that time to run the manuscript passed several of his own advisers who helped him with the technical aspects.  Since I have been back, I have been working to typeset his document to make it ready for printing.  We have recently come to terms that will place his book under the auspices of our new acquisition in Pocahontas Press, making this the first cover we have accepted (other than my own book).

Jane and I hosted a reception the other night in Floyd to announce the release of my new book.  Dwight and his wife, Roselie, attended.  I told him how proud I was of him for devoting himself so fully to this project and to seeing it through.  He will supervise his own print production and then we will begin to work together on marketing the book.  It likely has greater marketability than any of my own books.  I take this opportunity to publicly wish him well with this project, thank him for allowing me to take part, and committing myself to helping his book achieve maximum possible success.

Way to go, Dwight!



* * Counting money

A year or so ago while doing research for my new book, Harmonic Highways: Motorcycling Virginia’s Crooked Road, I spoke with a musician in Franklin County.  I asked him if he played professionally.  He said, “There are very few musicians throughout the region who make a living from their music.  You have to be extremely talented, work very hard, and then have a lucky break.  For example, Ralph Stanley over in Coeburn has been playing music for decades but he only became well known and then rich when his rendering of O Death was featured in the movie O Brother Where Art Thou?  Most of us play to entertain ourselves and our friends, and to keep the music and the heritage alive. We’re lucky if we make enough money to pay for strings and driving expenses.”  I featured over 85 people in the book, most of them musicians.  I’m guessing that I could count on the fingers of my hands those who make a living playing music.

I’ve come to realize that writing is in many ways like making music. I know many writers now, and those that make a living at it are talented, hard-working, and yes, lucky.  Most of us seem to do it because we believe it is important to maintain the craft. I am motivated to help my readers understand the culture of Southwest Virginia and West Virginia because we are too often misunderstood and viewed derisively. But if I counted the hours I’ve spent during three years and three books of writing and calculated my income by the hour, I’m sure it would be less than at any time in my professional career. Luckily, I have other income, generated by my real estate investment, but this has diminshed greatly during this recession.

In each of my two non-fiction books, I feature dozens of people and help my readers to know them, what motivates and inspires them. People have been generous of their time and are typically thrilled and flattered to be included in a book. In return, the modest notoriety they receive from being included may or may not help them monetarily, but minimally will help readers understand the culture from which they originate.

As I have been promoting Harmonic Highways, I have sent reception invitations, press releases, and other notifications to the people featured in it. I struggled with the decision as to whether to give each person a book, something that would have cost me several hundred dollars out-of-pocket. I decided to offer a copy at half-price to anyone in it.

Over the weekend, I went to the workshop of someone in the book to see if he was interested in buying a copy. He was gone, so I left a copy with an assistant, leaving a message asking him to call me. He didn’t, but I called yesterday to follow up. When we spoke, he said tersely he’d gotten the book but had no intention of paying for it.  Then he hung-up on me. Later, I wrote him an email explaining my position as politely as possible. He replied saying, “You probably don't know this but I have been on thousands of recordings in my life so far, I've done hundreds of articles, magazines, books, newspapers etc. Until today no one has ever asked for money except for you for anything I had ever been part of.”  He went on to say that he was disappointed in how short his section was, relative to the length of the transcript.

So who’s right? His point seems to be that if he was willing to take the time to speak with me and participate, surely it was worth the cost of a book. My point is that I took most of a year of my life to research and write the book with only a glimmer of hope of one day recouping a fraction of my investment, largely to promote him and many others like him. Maybe I'm being too parsimonious, and I should spend the money to give dozens of books away. I’m still scratching my head over it.