The poet Gary Snyder once said, “Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.”

Stuart and I found a place called Stratford Woods four years ago, dug in (literally) with the first new house in a 22-lot development, and looked for an opportunity to help build community.  The picture above shows the pathway we built in our backyard.  Everyone in the community is invited to use it to explore the trails Stuart blazed into the five acres of woods that is part of a nature preserve that surrounds our house.

Place pulls us downward to the earth our home, but people pull us upward toward each other and toward God. A new neighborhood presents a tabula rasa for community.  Stuart and I (and eventually everyone else who joined the community) used three tools.  Anyone else can use these also: (1) conscious intent to be a good neighbor, (2) an electronic spreadsheet, and (3) brownies! With these three ingredients you can recreate a 21st-century equivalent of Little House on the Prairie complete with book club, Euchre Night, Girls Night Out, Block Parties, Potlucks, ad infinitum.

Today in America very few people know their neighbors well.  Some don’t even know their names.  This is a problem we could fix easily if only one person in each neighborhood started the chain reaction of love.  Here’s a recipe:

Take one ounce of intention and mix it with one plate of brownies.  Walk to the neighbors’ house when they are home, introduce yourself, give the brownies, leave a spreadsheet with basic info–names, address, place of work, and email.  Fill in the names of the neighbors on a new spreadsheet so that you can continue building the database of all the people in your neighborhood, one visit and one plate of brownies at a time.

Soon, when the trick or treaters knock on your door, you will know that they are not just the neighbor kids–they are Nick, Aarti, and Akash.  And their parents came from California and India.

Knowing the names is essential to telling the stories.  And telling the stories is essential to building community.  What else can we do to take responsibility to build community?  What have you done in your special place?

Without the Kalamazoo Gazette Literary Award Competition of 2007, I would not be writing this blog.  Each year the announcement of the award kicks me into gear again, and I review what I have written that might fit.  The writing itself happens throughout the year, often in 2-3 day retreats at Gilchrist, the Fetzer Institute retreat center.  Here you sit at a window of your own brick hermitage and invite your dreams to come, your memories to return.

I have tried a few other contests. I won an honorable mention in the creative nonfiction/memoir category at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Workshop in 2007 and in 2008 won an honorable mention and the chance to read my essay at the San Francisco Public Library though the Soul-Making Literary Contest, sponsored by the PEN women of San Francisco and broadcast on the PBS outlet there.  I chose not to travel to San Francisco to do this, but the encouragement inspired me to keep writing.

Now that my friends and readers know I enjoy contests, they send me notices of them.  The purpose of this blog is to share some of these notices and invite you, gentle reader, to consider entering one of your own.

My friend and neighbor Hope, who says she wants to be my agent, sent me this Cheerios children’s book contest announcement.

My friend Susan sent me an announcement of the contest at Writer’s Digest.  If you win, you not only get a cash prize but also a free trip to New York and a meeting with agent and editor.

If you go to the About section of this blog, or just click here, you can find an announcement of a new contest from Memoir (and) journal I reviewed here.

If you subscribe to any writer’s magazine, Poet and Writer’s, Writer’s Digest, The Writer and The Writer’s Chronicle, you can learn about scores of contests in every season of the year.  Many of these publications have electronic newsletters to alert you about deadlines and guidelines.

And this website aggregates contest announcements from all of the above!  You can just click on the month that gives you enough time your article and find several contests willing to receive it.

Will I submit any of my own writing to any of these contests?  Only if I can get a few weekends set up at Gilchrist.  Better get on the calendar!

I leave you with a poem published in the Gilchrist Newsletter, which you can subscribe to free here.

L e a v i n g  P r a i r i e  H o u s e

At Gilchrist Retreat Center, September 8, 2008

The Lancaster County country woman in me

enjoys buffing countertops clean,

wants to fling open the windows,

work up a sweat, imitating the ladies of the

sewing circle who came to clean our house

after one of Mother’s miscarriages.  Within minutes

the new shine on the kitchen floor matched

the triumphant shine of their eyes.

The contemplative in me is a wilder animal,

needs to be coaxed to come out,

needs to put an arm around the waist of the country woman,

bring her to this rocking chair for a rest,

take her dishrag in hand and remind her of Brother Lawrence

baking bread with prayers,

slowly, with great attention to every sense,

awake to the every-day miracles

of muscle, earth, air, wind, and fire

that make ordinary work possible

When these two go at it, the country woman and the monk,

tug-of-war follows.

So I rise early before the dawn.  I clean one area of the hermitage at a time.

First the new sheets, bursting smooth from caresses of all four corners,

Covered with prayers for the next pilgrim.

While I work, the sun shows up, spreading

slow, golden light across the pale sky.

I offer my applause and thanks for another day,

sitting with the last cup of coffee

in the velvet rocker in front of the fireplace,

contemplating the spent ashes of three riotous fires.

The poet’s image of the fire fusing with the rose holds my attention

As my hands take up the dust bin and brush.

When John the caretaker comes to help take my baggage to the car,

I am ready, smiling and happy.

The country woman wipes her hands one more time on her apron

while inside her Brother Lawrence whispers:

this morning is all you have.

The only difference between this morning and

the last morning is that today

you know the time.

You know the place.

Adirondack chair overlooking the prairie at Gilchrist.

I am responding to reader requests to offer more stories from my own life as well as to offer writing tips for other memoir writers.  Let me know if this kind of post hits the mark, or not, for you.

Ask memoir writers what their greatest challenge is and many will say, “how and when do I share my writing with the relatives and friends who are part of my story?”  Up to now, when I finished a personal essay, I sent it off to my family to make sure there were no gross inaccuracies and because I thought they would enjoy seeing what I wrote.  They did, and I appreciated their corrections and suggestions.

But this week I am going home to see most of my siblings and my mother.  I will be carrying a story that won first place in the Kalamazoo Gazette Literary Award competition and was published in a special literary edition on March 29, 2009.  It’s called “My Mother’s Pulpit,” and you can read it here.  I chose not to tell my mother about this story or to send a copy to her.  I want to deliver it to her in print and read it to her in person.  I think, hope, pray she will love it and see it for what it is–a tribute to her indomitable spirit.

But since the story reveals that she embarrassed me, like most mothers do to most daughters at some point, I am a little nervous about her reaction.

Some memoir writers have written about this dilemma.  Annie Dillard shares her work with family members in advance of publication.  Jeanette Walls, in The Glass Castle, amazingly, has the full support of her mother in telling the story of how she became Park Avenue daughter who has a baglady mother.

Other writers, such as Augusten Burroughs in Running with Scissors, however, have been sued by family members or friends or have become estranged from them because their versions of the truth clash, or they simply don’t want the family dirty laundry put on the line.

Truman Capote alienated nearly every friend he had left after the publication of Answered Prayers. No amount of fame or literary achievement would be worth that to me.

Another way, oddly enough, that friends and relatives can take offense results from not mentioning them. Memoir writers probably ought to place gargoyles on their houses to protect themselves from all potential hazards of the calling.

I take comfort in the case of the residents of Willa Cather’s hometown of Red Cloud, Nebraska, which at first did not like the way she portrayed them in her stories and novels.  Now Red Cloud proudly displays itself as the place that fostered Cather’s imagination, and the economy of the whole town is heavily dependent on the devoted pilgrims who come to visit the places she described in book after book.

I am hoping that Mother, who gave all her children a love of stories, will understand both my motive and my structure and characterization in the recently published story. I have counted on her unconditional love all my life, and I know I can count on it one more time.  She plays the same role in my memories of childhood that she played in all the war-time Manheim Township High School dramas–leading lady.

Do any of you have advice for me?  Personal experiences to offer?

I was in second grade.  The teacher put a word up on the chalk board and asked us to figure out what it was.  M-A-N-U-R-E

Looking back, one wonders why Mrs. Rothenberger picked that word for a competition to motivate second graders, but at the time all I knew was that we were given a challenge, and I already loved challenges.  Many of us knew the first three letters spelled MAN, but those last three letters threw us off.  I knew I had seen a word about that length somewhere else.  Where was it??  I went to the back of the room to look and, sure enough, there was a book with a word–MANUEL–almost like the one on the board.  Close, but no cigar.

But it got me to MANU–and from there, I could get the the R sound.  MANUR, MANNER, MANOR, none of these were right.  I could make sounds in my head, but the word I sounded out also had to make sense. It had to conform to some object or idea in the world.  And these sounds were tricky.  The URE sound in MANURE was pronounced OOR, not UR or YOUR but OOR.  Both the sound and the sense eluded me and most of the class for some time.  Then, I got it!

Saint Paul was struck by lightening on the road to Damascus.  I was struck just as suddenly by immediate, certain revelation.  That word was MANURE!!! Being from the farm, I certainly knew what the word meant.  I was a little shocked to see it there on the board, but, boy was I excited.  Before I knew it, the word was not only in my head but out of my mouth.  Not in a whisper but with a shout. As I looked up, radiant with my new knowledge, expecting beatification, I saw Mrs. Rothenberger’s face go red with anger.

I was lucky, I guess.  Saint Paul was blinded; I was merely gagged.  Mrs. R went to her drawer, got out some masking tape, and put it on my mouth.  I had to keep it on a long time.

And thus, my first intellectual breakthrough and one of my most remembered public humiliations coincided.

I tell this story as an answer to Susan Neufeldt’s question to me a few weeks go–can you remember your first intellectual epiphany?  Here’s her own memory about her first remembered intellectual breakthrough: “I can remember the moment when I figured out I could do math–something I thought I couldn’t do anymore–one morning in the bright light that comes before daylight savings when I was doing my seventh grade math with a protractor, and I can remember when I caught fire personally and intellectually in Mlle. Winfield’s French 3 class my junior year in high school.  We read St. Exupery’s Little Prince and I could suddenly understand the deeper lesson and think about that as well as the story.  I was so excited I could hardly stay in my chair.”

The most famous story about breaking through is probably the one in The Miracle Worker when Annie Sullivan teaches Helen Keller the meaning of W-A-T-E-R.

What is your intellectual breakthrough story?  Any miracles, large or small?

The question comes to me from a blogger in Orange County, CA, who has a following in her own blog from ex-patriots all over the world.  What did you learn from your students in Haiti and in the Ivory Coast?

First of all, you need to know about the Goshen College Study-Service Term (SST).  This program, begun in 1968, is unique in American higher education.  First, it is a general education requirement.  That means the vast majority of students study abroad for one semester.  Second, it takes place in a significantly different (not junior year abroad in Europe!) culture from that of the U.S. (right now that means Jamaica, Peru, China) and over the years students have studied in more than 15 countries.  And third, it includes some kind of service–a mini-Peace Corps-like experience.

My husband Stuart and I were faculty leaders in Haiti 1981-82.

We had another group of Haiti SSTers whose picture I could not locate.  Anyone reading this post who has such a picture–please send it!

Below is our Ivory Coast group (1993).

A number of our students during these three semesters are now our friends on Facebook. I invite them to make comments on what they now value about the experience, looking back.  Here are a few memories labeled by what I learned.

Curiosity

I was 33 years old, the mother of a 5-year-old and a recently minted PhD when our family went to Haiti.  I loved the country immediately and was heartbroken by it at the same time.  So much poverty and ecological degradation, yet so much beauty, joy, and spiritual energy.  When our first group of students disembarked, one month after our own arrival, Stuart, Anthony, and I were excited.  We rode with them from the airport to the unit house on the little bus driven by Danilo, our storytelling driver.  The students wasted no time in jumping into the new culture.  “Bon soir!” they shouted to bystanders as we pulled out of the airport driveway.  Soon they were kissing host family members on both checks.  And then they were whisked away.  They told us tales in their journals of how they learned.  Often it was from their younger “brothers” and “sisters” whose simpler vocabularies, patience, and curiosity turned them into great teachers.

Here’s one of those young teachers–Francesca–cavorting in the wild flowers with our son Anthony.

Courage

It takes a lot of courage to live in someone else’s home in a strange land, speaking their language imperfectly, and losing the comfort of the familiar.  As leaders, we had our own family around us and our own house to live in.  Students were quick to point out that they were subject to more culture shock than we were due to these facts.  They were right.  Of course, it takes a little courage to take on the responsibility of the health, wellbeing, and learning of 12-23 other people, but we didn’t argue about who was braver.  We helped each other focus.  There were mishaps of all kinds from the minor cuts and scrapes to some truly scary situations.  And some students were struggling with difficulties at home that we knew only superficially.  But every student taught us something about our own fears and how to face them.

Students read their journals aloud in some of our meetings.  We would laugh and cry together, releasing fear and gathering strength from each other.  I remember stories about witnessing a beating, seeing vigilante justice in the streets, trying to explain complicated ideas in French and feeling like a fool, feelings of anger toward “ugly Americans” on cruise ships who tossed quarters into the ocean to watch the poor Haitians dive for them.  Students absorbed these shocks and found equilibrium in the midst of great change.  We admired them and found it easy to put our arms around them, literally and figuratively.

Humility

We were not experts in almost anything on SST.  We were not excellent speakers of French or Creole.  We were not anthropologists or comparative religion or literature savants.  We were instead immersed, like the students themselves, in reading as much as we could about the culture, making friends at the university with professors who lectured on their specialties to all of us.  We learned that we could be servants of our students in facilitating learning and that as they learned something new, we did also.

Students also learned humility.  The majority of them were white and the majority of the host country citizens were black.  The complications of navigating racial difference in this setting helped them become more aware of what it feels like to be in a minority.  The perceptions of America abroad, often created by television and movies, made it hard for our students to feel understood as individuals rather than types.  This, too, was humbling.

Love

The most important lesson our students taught us was love.  At the end of every semester, after students had returned from spending six weeks in the villages and towns outside the capitol city, they greeted us and each other with shouts of joy and tears of gratitude for all that they had learned.  They shared stories of looking up at the stars at night through the open roof of a shack and feeling wonder–wealth–in the midst of what would have seemed like deprivation before.  They told us of the farewells they had experienced as a whole village walked with them, carrying their bags to the bus station, and they marveled at the way their complicated lives had simplified when there was time to talk and walk and experience nature.  Sometimes they told us they felt wrapped in God’s love and in the prayers of friends and family even in the loneliest, scariest times.  Othertimes, they trusted us with the depth of their despair–another form of love. They thanked us for being their surrogate parents, cultural guides, nurses and doctors, guidance counselors, and friends.  We thanked them for their resilience, curiosity, comradeship, energy, and insight.

But we can never thank them, and the people of Haiti and Cote d”Ivoire who shared their lives with us, enough.  We lived enough in these three semesters to continue learning the rest of our lives.

Thank you, SSTers, wherever you are!  And I hope at least a few of you add your own thoughts below.

What have you learned from your experiences in a foreign land, whether on SST or in any other setting?

DK Matai, a blogger and business executive I met in Geneva several years ago, sent out a message to his incredible world-wide network of friends that seemed like a pure gem of experience to me.  My father’s favorite saying was, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”  DK’s story is a more elegant, eloquent English equivalent.  DK’s response when I asked for his permission to reblog his post with him as guest was this:

Dear Shirley

Whilst there is nothing worthy within the autobiographical story, you are welcome to use it as you deem fit.  As far as describing me is concerned, there is nothing really worthwhile to describe…

All the best

DK

Not only is he a good writer with a good story, but he is humble too!  Here’s the URL for his post. I’ve also pasted it into this post below.

Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble!

A personal story…

London, UK – 30th March 2009, 08:11 GMT

As a young graduate engineer, nearly two decades ago, I met a charming man who had been the Chief Executive of Rolls-Royce. I had the pleasure of working with him on some global aviation projects with British, European, Canadian and American aerospace companies.

This distinguished Englishman was extremely bright, very knowledgeable and highly eccentric! Very English qualities those! He would do things carefully and methodically without making mistakes, especially where it mattered. Otherwise, if one were to watch him pour tea followed by a teaspoon of sugar, most of it was out of the cup, on the table and then on the floor!

If he would spot a mistake in his personal communication, he would always revert back and clean it off, and then proceed further. He would apologise profusely for any small mistake in handling human relationships and feelings especially in his written communication, which was always immaculate.

When we would write a message either to our own team of engineers or to any of the major aerospace groups at CEO level or in-between, he would always, always sit down, take out a fountain pen, and hand-write his message before entering it on to the computer screen. He would always begin, “Dear …., start off on a personal note, move on to the subject matter and end the message with a heartfelt comment and a personal touch.”

I once said to him, your emails and letters are like Monet paintings. We ought to frame them and hang them up on walls at the National Gallery! The letters were exquisite not only for their language but also for their personal touch and layout.

I asked him, “What is the genesis of this marvellous quality?” He said: “Quidvis Recte Factum Quamvis Humile Praeclarum!” in Latin.

Then, nonchalantly, he said, “Translate it!”

O God! Me and my big mouth. It was not possible to come out of this one easily. So mimicking his quality, I sat down slowly. I said, “Give me a minute!” I took out a pen and paper and wrote the Latin words on the left and English words on the right. I thought “Praeclarum” is “very clear” and “Humile” is Humble. “Factum” is “act” and “Recte” is “rightly”. So, I said: “Very clear humility comes from right action!”

He replied, one of the two founders of Rolls-Royce, had this Latin inscription engraved on his fireplace. It means:

“Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble!”

If I had to boil down the answer to the question above to one word, what would that word be?  Curiosity, honesty, courage, persistence, gratitude, hope, forgiveness, love?

And how did I learn it?  Was it from the student evaluations which came in a big, heart-thump-inducing envelope with CONFIDENTIAL stamped all over it?  Was it in the office visits from the ones who needed me the most or wanted more than they could get in class?  Was it what I saw on their faces when we got into the “flow” of conversation about ideas?

Was it from actions I took, like giving an F for plagiarism, or deciding whether 89.6 was an A or a B, or in choosing to confront or not confront behaviors that I thought were detrimental? Was it from all that endless grading into the wee hours at night or on weekends? Was it from being invited into residence halls to talk about my life story and listen to theirs? Was it from speaking in convocation to the whole student body? Was it merely from being an observer from the window–watching those young bodies play frisbee or walk to the dining hall in gigantic, erratic clumps?

And were all my students younger than I?  What about adult students?

And what about the students in the house, my children?  What did I learn from them?

Each of these questions produces at least one story in my mind, but I will focus on the first question, what did I learn from reading student evaluations?  Can I recall any specific feedback, or do they all blend into a blur?

I learned that students can and will say almost anything when their anonymity is assured.  They will comment on your clothing, accent, or any tics they enjoy or are irritated by.  This kind of comment actually helped me digest criticism because it helped me laugh.  It’s hard to feel offended when we laugh.

I learned that I loved reading all the compliments I received on those evaluations (is that narcissism or simply being human?).  Fortunately, there were many of these, and I learned that teaching was a good fit for me as a vocation.  Nothing drives our energy more than feeling called to do our work.  When students told me that coming to class made them want to read more, write better, and study harder, I was thrilled.  But when they told me they wanted to be better people, I cried with joy.

I also learned that if a compliment carried a weight of 1, then a criticism carried a weight of 10.  I think most teachers feel this way.  What it should teach us, I think, and I hope it taught me, is to be gentler with our own students.  Not less demanding.  Just gentler.  We all wither under attack but grow when the stake is planted in the ground beside us, and someone ties a string to the stake, places us in the sunshine, and gives us water and food.

Most of the criticism I received was from grading too hard, expecting too much reading, etc.  I rather liked this kind of criticism so long as it came from a minority, which it did.

The criticisms that stung have stuck in the memory.  “You live in your head!” said one student.  “You are more concerned with style than substance,” said another. In the 1980′s and early ’90′s there were comments about feminism.  I was told I was way too feminist by some and that I was not feminist enough by others.

These remarks remain with me because they attach to my inner conflicts. Each of us has a set of polarities we negotiate in life.  One of mine is head/heart.  Another is breadth/depth.  Another is change agent/respect for tradition.  When comments zing, they teach me that I should examine where I am in the balance between these poles.  Criticism, therefore, causes self-examination and leads to strength when we are healthy.  When we are not healthy, it can lead to rumination and morbid preoccupation.  That’s why we all need to be gentle with each other.  We can never know how able the other person is to receive the truth as we see it on any particular day.

So, I guess I can now modify the question and supply an answer.  From student evaluations alone I have learned one thing:  be gentle.

I love your question, Sonia.  Do the questions above spark any new questions in you?  How about the rest of you, gentle readers?

How long have I been teaching memoir writing? On its face, the answer is, “not very,” but I can also truthfully say “about 40 years.”

How can both be true?  The recent teaching comes in the form of workshops I have blogged about previously– three sessions at the Fetzer Institute and two about workshops given at my church. Each of these experiences reminded me of how much I love the interplay between teaching and learning.

That love began in childhood with my admiration for and occasional adoration of some very good teachers.  There was Mrs. Lochner, in the sixth grade, who doubled as both the principal and a teacher at Fairland Elementary School in Manheim, PA.  She was tall, pulled her grey hair into a bun but not so tightly that wisps could not escape and form waves around her face.  When she walked, she might have been a general, striding across the battlefield, leather strop in hand.  Or a mother lion, moving so gracefully that one might forget those same liquid limbs have mawed other animals into meat in seconds.

Mrs. Lochner picked me to be a reader.  Every day I would open the book of the month to a new chapter and read to the whole class after lunch.  The book was The Wind in the Willows I wanted to be a teacher myself from that time forward.

I taught high school English for two years at Harrisonburg (VA) High School.  Then Stuart and I went to grad school at the University of Texas at Austin, where I taught in both the English and American Studies departments.  In each of these locations I taught writing, always learning myself along with the students.  I found that when I could get them engaged with their own interests, telling personal stories, they would write much better than if the were describing the pros or cons of capital punishment or other subjects remote from their view and their experience.

At Goshen College I taught English and women studies.  My favorite assignment in one of my most frequently taught courses was the personal essay, which is very much like a memoir, except that the essay still follows the thesis pattern and a memoir is more like a series of scenes.  I don’t remember any of the research papers my students wrote, and I graded into the wee hours of the night, but I do recall the personal essays–the wig worn by one student’s mother as she laughed at breast cancer and won, the way the stars looked from an outhouse at midnight in a foreign land, why Pepsi is better than Coke, a cathedral’s impact on a student’s vision and identity.

Goshen’s signature program is international service-learning in a “significantly different” (usually third world) culture.  Stuart and I led two groups of students:  Haiti in 1980-81 and the Ivory Coast, West Africa, in 1993.  All students write daily journals about their experiences, and we as leaders, read all of these. 

Here I am with son Anthony overlooking the denuded mountains outside of Port au Prince, 1981.

What have I learned from my students?  That’s a question I’ll answer next.  Have any other questions about memoir or about me?

The pattern started on our honeymoon, 1969, 40 years ago.  Stuart had $600 in his checking account when we got married.  I spent all the money I earned that summer– the summer of my 21^st birthday, the summer of Woodstock and the moon landing, and the summer of our wedding– on the wedding dress, flowers, gifts for attendents, and the wedding cake.  The picture below illustrates the dress and shows our parents as they supported us.

I was broke, but debt-free.  Stuart had a modest NDEA loan, but had that $600 in the bank.  The way he chose to spend it would become a pattern for both of us in our marriage.

Stuart had the idea the planning the honeymoon without consultation with me would be a very romantic thing to do.  I thought so too and was very curious about what location he would pick.  Would it be Niagara Falls, the destination both sets of our parents had chosen, or would it be Ocean City, the place I loved to escape to in my teenage years, or a city neither of us had never been to (that would have been every major city in the country except for Philadelphia and New York)?

Our first night stay was a Holiday Inn in Valley Forge, PA.  No jokes about the name, please.  Actually, we had plenty of jokes already.  They were written in white shoe polish all over Stuart’s ’64 maroon Ford Fairlane. “Just married.” “Going South for a little son.”  “Watch out for the lovers.”

From Valley Forge we crossed the Delaware, like George Washington, but only from the air.  We parked our car at the Philadelphia airport on our way to the destination Stuart had picked–Halifax, Nova Scotia.  I was totally entranced, both by the second airplane ride of my life and by the exotic destination I had never heard of before.

We spent a glorious eight days in Halifax, to Yarmouth, to Boston, back to Philadelphia, then to Lititz, PA, my home, to return finally to Harrisonburg, VA, close to Stuart’s home , to “take up housekeeping,” as people then said, in a tiny basement apartment.  We had $35 left to spend until Stuart’s next paycheck.  I was still an undergraduate, heading for student teaching.

I will spare you the rose-tinted details of our honeymoon adventures in the Nova Scotia lighthouses, fish markets, bus, trains, hitchhiking.  I’ll even forego the details about our first fight while walking on the Boston Common, but let me tell you about one aspect of the trip we have continued in our subsequent travels.

In one way we were profligates.  Stuart spent all his money on the plane tickets and paid for the rooms, meals, and other forms of transportation with traveler’s checks.  If we had been really cheap, we would have driven to West Virgina, stayed in a state park, had a wonderful time, and returned home after a two-hour drive with more than $500 to spend on rent, food, and tuition.

We weren’t cheap, but we were frugal.  Those traveler’s checks had to cover all our expenses–hence the hitchhiking and one or two sketchy hotels.  But making that money stretch became a big part of the adventure.  We were so excited and so in love that food fell in our priority list.  We made several meals from one loaf of bread, one jar of peanut butter, one jar of strawberry jam, a box of saltines, and two cans of sardines.  They tasted like caviar and champagne in our honeymoon bed.  Only problem was the crumbs, but that was easily handled, too.

I thought about our honeymoon and subsequent trips to Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and throughout the US because I drafted this post in Sarasota, FL, on the vacation part of a business trip.  Over our 40 years we have traveled together often, and we still enjoy traveling the way we did the first year.  We love to talk with the locals, visit them if we have friends in the area, eat the local food, walk a lot, and save dining in restaurants for special occasions, often hosting our friends.  We could afford, now, to eat three restaurant meals a day and drive or be driven everywhere.  But that would spoil some of our greatest fun.

One morning in Sarasota we walked four miles from our hotel to the amazing little neighborhood of Pinecraft, unlike no other place on earth.  Amish people from Northern Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have converged on a little spot of land not much bigger than a mile square.  They even have their own post office.

Their homes are very modest and often crowded together with maybe an RV or two on the lot and a lot of old-fashioned mobile homes scattered among the stucco and brick and stone and wood houses.  Dark-colored shirts, pants, and dresses wave on washlines in the Sarasota breeze.  Little fruitstands sprout up, first selling backyard citrus, and then at least one as a serious business.

We bought a dozen backyard red grapefruits for $1.00.  We rounded out our purchases with a pint of local strawberries and two pounds of Georgia pecans.  Lunch was mighty tasty!  We also have talked with several Amish people about the plight of their community in Elkhart County, IN (where the unemployment rate in January was 16 percent and where Barack Obama promoted his stimulus package a few weeks ago).  One woman told us that, so far, the Amish people who have lost their jobs at the RV factories have been absorbed back into the community.  The cabinet makers and woodworkers, entrepreneurs, take on the former RV workers or they return to family farms.

The Amish have their own forms of frugality.  They did not used to travel at all-except to find new land to settle.  The phrase Amish vacation is an oxymoron-or used to be–until a generation ago. They don’t travel as individuals for the sake of adventure.  They travel with members of their community in buses to visit the members of the Pinecraft community.  They bring food from home, purchase fruits and vegetables at the Amish-run stand on the edge of the community, treat themselves to ice cream cones at the drive-in across the street, ride bicycles everywhere, build houses for the birds, and plant flowers.  They always look happy despite their many layers of dark clothing, as incongruous as they may seem, playing shuffleboard under Sarasota palm trees.

Stuart and I do not have biological Amish relatives, but we have a shared history with these people that goes back nearly 500 years to Switzerland and Southern Germany.  Frugality and community, cheapness and generosity coexist.  We have tried to take the frugal, leave the cheap.  Keep community without the conformity.  Have we succeeded?  In Sarasota, walking through Pinecraft in our shorts and tee shirts, no one could tell that we are ancient kin.

But when we peel open one of our dozen-for-a-dollar grapefruits, we smile.  We are back in honeymoon land again.