Those of you who are of a similar persuasion will know that tonight is Burns Night. For those of you of some other persuasion, Burns Night is the annual celebration of the birthday and life of Scotland’s favorite poet, Robert Burns. The celebratory feast includes a traditional fare—haggis (more, later), neeps (mashed turnips), and tatties (mashed potatoes)—and a litany of toasts and speeches that include such standards as the Selkirk Grace, Burns own “Address to the Haggis,” a Toast to the Lassies, the Reply to the Laddies, and eventually, the Toast to the Immortal Memory (to Burns, of course), all washed down by wee drams of Scotland’s most famous export, its “water of life,” better known the world over as whisky. 

The meal begins with a hearty Scottish soup, a worthy preamble to the main event. Cue the haggis: that savory, delectable cannonball to the stomach that Burns lauded as the “great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race.” Haggis is made from sheep’s offal (bits of heart, lung, and liver), mixed with onion, suet, oatmeal, salt, and seasoning, all boiled together in a bag traditionally made from the animal’s stomach. I know that may not sound like gourmet food to you, but then I bet neither does sweetbreads, or, for that matter, scrapple. You like scrapple, don’t you? (Not you, Eggman.)

Haggis arrives at the table to the skirl of the pipes. That’s usually my job. I like it because the hours are few and the pay is good. It comes, courtesy of the host, not in coin of the realm, but in the form of yet another wee dram, drained from a quaish, the traditional shallow two-handled Scottish drinking cup. Leave it to the Scots to invent a two-handled cup; it’s both graceful and highly functional because it steadies the hand so nary a drop is ever spilled. Waste not, want not!

And the meal goes on and on, toast after toast. By the time dessert arrives (cranachan or perhaps tipsy laird), the mood is, well, jovial. Only after the last wee dram is sipped and savored, the host may call for a vote of thanks, and it’s then that the revelers will stand, link hands and arms, and join in singing Burns’ most beloved song, “Auld Land Syne.”

The first Burns Night was hosted by a handful of Burns friends and held, in memoriam, in 1801, just five years after the Bard’s death. The first two celebratory Burns Nights were actually held on January 29, but upon closer examination of the Ayrshire parish records, it was determined that Burns was actually born on the 25th, and subsequent celebrations observed that date. The Scottish Parliament considers Burns Night to be an important cultural heritage event. Some think this is because Burns was the first poet to write in Scots, one of the indigenous languages of Scotland, but I think it has as much to do with ensuring that Scotland’s consumption of whisky remains, well, let’s say world-class. No doubt, Burns himself would have approved. A modest man, he was nevertheless known for well, let’s say, his less than angelic behavior, an admirable trait apparently not lost on the lassies of Ayrshire.

So Slainte Mhath to all, and never may the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley!

I’ll be right back. Well, maybe the day after tomorrow…

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

A friend recently introduced me to the work of Phyllis Theroux. I was only a few pages into her memoir The Journal Keeper when this line jumped out at me: “It is such a gift to coincide with where you live.” And there you have it: that’s exactly how I feel about the place where I now reside: our little row house on Cannon Street in the historic heart of Chestertown.

When it comes to coinciding with places I’ve lived, I’ve been lucky. There was a wonderful old farmhouse on the campus of the school where I once worked that needed a caretaker; a second floor shotgun apartment in the Georgetown section of Washington that opened onto a gorgeous hidden garden; an apartment in the old, grey town of St. Andrews, Scotland that was next to a castle and overlooked the North Sea; a traditional Tunisian house with simple spare rooms radiating off a central courtyard covered by a grape arbor. In each, I was happy, and that happiness was indeed a gift that coincided with the place where I lived.

In another week, my wife and I will celebrate our first decade in Chestertown. Our house may be small, but its front porch opens onto a world where friends drop in and all are welcome. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is about this place that so satisfies my soul. Maybe it’s the open streetscape or the mottled sycamore that provides us with summer shade; the mix of interesting people that meander by; our neighbors and our shared white picket fences; the rich though sometimes poignant history and architecture of four old homes in a colonial town; the ebb and flow of the nearby river; the latent fertility of the farmers’ fields now sleeping under a sheet of snow just around the corner. Yes; all those elements and some other, more ephemeral qualities, too: the blush of light that bathes us with soft colors at sunset; the brilliance of the stars shining like diamonds in the nighttime sky; the hush of our darkened street; the smell of fresh bread from the bakery next door; the ricochet of laughter or the quiet hum of conversation on the porch. Bits we notice and pieces we take for granted. Nothing is perfect, but except for all the leaves that drop from that mottled sycamore tree in the fall, the gift of this place comes pretty darn close.

Some of us come from here; others, like me, came from away. I like to think that this town found me, not the other way ‘round, but however the connection was made, I’m more than grateful. Now with ten good years under my belt here, I’m beginning to feel the pull of forever, something I’ve never experienced before. That feeling may be the wrapping paper and bow on the gift this place has bestowed on me.

Ms. Theroux is a native Californian who long ago uprooted herself and moved to Washington. (She now lives in the small town of Ashland, Virginia.) I imagine she is a pretty close observer of people and places, so her gifts have likely been copious, too. Maybe some day, we’ll compare notes and reminisce about the wayside inns where we stopped along our winding way. Maybe on our porch. I’d like that.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

 

 

Football season is in full swing and if your favorite team is going to win its next big game, it’s going to need plenty of solid blocks and some bone-crushing tackles. Without one or the other, let alone both, you’re not likely to make it into the post-season.

And in case you should need to lift a heavy load one of these days, another kind of block and tackle is likely to be your best friend. The mechanics are relatively simple: a block and tackle amplifies the tension force in a rope, enabling it to lift a load far above and beyond its normal capacity. Now I don’t know about you, but my own “normal capacity” has been getting more and more dubious lately, so any help I can get will be readily accepted!

Think about it: we’re into Year Three of the pandemic. Winter went from sixty to twenty-five as though it had just seen a hidden state trooper with a radar gun. The political divide is wider than Grand Canyon, there is rampant racial and gender inequity, the planet is sweating (the recent snowfall notwithstanding), and after ninety-nine years as the life of the party, Betty White finally went home. So there’s a lot of heavy lifting to do in the new year. We’re going to need a big block and tackle.

Teachers are going to need a block and tackle. Our children are falling behind in school. Our schools don’t know if they’ll be open from one day to the next. Administrators are stressed; teachers are stressed; parents are stressed; students are stressed. Teen suicide is on an alarming rise, particularly among girls. That all amounts to a decidedly unproductive learning environment, one that will require lots of heavy lifting by all of us, not just today, but for years to come.

First responders are going to need lots of blocks and tackles. Doctors, nurses, ER personnel; paramedics and essential workers; police and firefighters: a block and tackle for each, please. And while it may be true that the Omicron variant is less virulent than its Delta predecessor, the unvaccinated are paying an overly high price for their indifference or skepticism, as are those who care for them. If you’ve not already done so, please get vaccinated.

Politicians need to learn how to use a block and tackle. We need leadership, not partisanship. If our great experiment in democracy is going to survive, let alone thrive, then people at the federal, state, and local levels will have to start pulling on the tackles of government together, always in the direction of the common good.

Small business owners, particularly those who make their living in the hospitality industry, have huge loads to lift. Staffing problems, supply chain chaos, inflation—all parts of the enormous challenges these good folk face every day. I’d provide each with a block and tackle if I could.

Veterans are suffering; they need their own particular blocks and tackles. PTSD, traumatic injury, civilian reentry: more heavy loads to lift for those who have served and, for that matter, for those who continue to serve. Thank you!

I’m sure the list could go on. Just remember the physics of a block and tackle: it amplifies the tension force in a rope, enabling it to lift a load above and beyond its “normal capacity.” Clearly, we’re living through times that are anything but normal, and so the ropes we will need to pull us through this thick muck must have an higher-than-normal tension force or they will fray and break. We also need to do a better job of pulling together: one, two, three—heave! A one-handed pull here or a small tug there won’t get the job done. A block and tackle is a mechanical team effort, as is the effort required from those supplying the energy to operate it.

Happy New Year! I hope we can all pull together and make it into the post-season. And rest in peace, Betty.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

 

 

Uncle Dale and Aunt Bubbles lived in a rambling old house comfortably seated on the south shore of Conneaut Lake in northwestern Pennsylvania. Every summer, all the local cousins would gather there, and my mother, father, and I would make the two-and-a-half hour drive from Pittsburgh (we were birds that sat on a far-away branch of the family tree) to renew old bonds. I don’t know what the grown-ups did during the day, but the cousins took turns sitting on Uncle Dale’s considerable lap as he drove us around on an antique farm tractor, swam or water-skied in the lake, went to bed on a screened sleeping porch, and, on the next morning, tumbled down to the kitchen for bacon and pancakes while Aunt Bubbles poured juice and warbled “I’m Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage.”

But first, I had to learn how to make it past the downstairs knight. There were two empty suits of armor in that old house: an upstairs knight and a downstairs knight. The upstairs knight always seemed to me a benign presence in the hallway, but for some irrational reason, the downstairs knight scared the bejesus out of me. For the first couple of years, when it was time for bed, my father had to carry me past the downstairs knight. Eventually, I was able to summon up the courage to dash past him on my way upstairs, probably because none of my other cousins seemed to have any fear of the downstairs knight. By the time I was a teenager, I had completely outgrown my fear of that empty iron suit and hardly gave it a glance when it was time for bed. I had forgotten to be afraid.

Maybe that passage marked the dividing line between childhood and—if not adulthood—at least adolescence. Shortly thereafter, on a warm summer evening, one of my cousins and I snuck into the little room where Uncle Dale often retreated with his cronies to play cards and raided the little refrigerator that hummed under the picture of a tableful of dogs playing poker. It was there that I took my first sip of beer (a Schiltz), another momentous step on the slippery slope to being a grown up.

The downstairs knight became nothing more than a mute and impassive witness to my teenage years. If I thought about him at all, it was to only to shake my head at how babyish it was to have been afraid of such a shadow. Whatever it was about him that had scared me as a child—like the alligator that once lived under my bed—now, I just whistled in the dark when I walked past him on my way upstairs.

Uncle Dale and Aunt Bubbles passed away long ago. Their house on the lake was sold to strangers. I haven’t seen any of my cousins since Hector was a pup. Who knows whatever became of the downstairs knight? But maybe I do know. Lately I’ve heard him clanking about in my mind, reclaiming his fearsome shape and stature as I begin to be afraid of the dark again. The years are beginning to turn back on themselves. Fear abounds these days—maybe not the baseless kind of fear a child once had for a suit of armor, but real fear about how things can quickly spin out of control, about how life can change in the blink of an eye. Now I realize that when I whistle in the dark, it’s nothing more than teenage bravado. Maybe it’s only a cruel trick of aging, but as much as I would like to think I’m still a brave boy, I know I’m really not.

It’s late; the sky is getting dark. There’s heat lightning out over the lake and a far-off roll of summer thunder. My father bends down, hoists me up. I wrap my arms tightly around his neck and turn my face away as he carries me past the downstairs knight, up the stairs, to bed.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

We all know the feeling, but it took the Welsh to give it a name. Hiraeth: the deep longing one feels for a person or place that has been lost or is gone forever. There is no exact equivalent word in English. “Nostalgia” comes close; so does “homesick,” but neither really captures the deep yearning, perhaps tinged with grief, that is implicit in the Welsh concept of hiraeth.

The blind English poet John Milton might have been coming to terms with his own sense of hiraeth when he dictated his masterpiece “Paradise Lost”—the epic that recounts the eternal battle between Satan and humankind that was first joined when the snake tempted Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit that grew on the tree of life. To Milton, ever since that delicious little bite, humans have been overcome with a deep longing to return to a place of innocence and safety—Eden, before the fall. Home; the place where we all belong.

My personal hiraeth is a little less biblical. I’ve always had a mystical connection with Scotland. My seven-times great grandfather emigrated from there in 1763, and, to my knowledge, none of his Americanized descendants have ever expressed any particular interest in the old country. That is, until I came along. At the age of six, I pestered my parents for a kilt. I was twelve years old when my parents indulged me and took me to Edinburgh to experience the Tattoo. In my twenties, I learned to play the bagpipes. At the age of forty, I sought solace in the hills of Scotland following my divorce, and at sixty, I jumped at the chance to spend six months on sabbatical in St. Andrews. By my own count, I’ve made the reverse trip across the water six or seven times and I’m longing to go again when Covid allows me to travel. I have a deep longing for Scotland; the hireath variety of longing.

I think about this often: why me? Maybe there’s an unresolved issue in some Scottish past life. Or maybe there’s some wee bubble in my DNA that keeps drawing me back to a place where I feel in my bones that I belong. No one else in my family seems to yearn for Scotland like I do; why such a deep longing—such hireath—for a country and a culture that my forebears left generations ago? I don’t know the answer to that question now, but I believe that someday, I will.

This I do know: my Celtic cousins down in Wales knew there was something in the Welsh mist, something magical and mystical that endures down through the centuries. I don’t feel that the hiraeth about which they whisper is necessarily tinged with grief, or that the place they seek is gone forever. Memories may be lodged in our minds, but they also reside in our hearts, in our blood, and in our bones. And maybe, if we listen closely enough, we can still see the old faces and hear the old stories that lie buried in the past.

But here is where I beg to differ with my Welsh friends. In their definition of hireath, they yearn for a past that is gone forever, lost. That’s not how I feel about Scotland. I don’t rue the romantic view of Scotland: its clans and castles; its kilts and pipes; its lochs and highlands; its fierce men and bonnie lassies. Life was hard back when my ancestors were living in Scotland; they sailed away. I admire Scotland more for the place it has become: an enlightened, inclusive, and evolving country that is worthy of its place in the sun of independent nations. We know there will be challenges in the years to come, but they will just that: challenges, not obstacles.

The photograph that accompanies this Musing was taken at sunrise as a friend and I set out on the second day of a forty-mile trek along the Fife Coastal Path in Scotland. We were winding our back to St. Andrews through the series of small fishing villages that dot Scotland’s North Sea coast, and on that particular day, we walked through winter’s chill, a drenching spring rain, moody autumn clouds, and bright summer sunshine. A year’s weather in a single day, but then, that’s Scotland for you. And when our destination finally came in sight, we both felt we had returned home…home to a place where we belonged.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.
Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

At this time of year, it’s all too easy to get caught up in the frenzy of the holidays. In fact, almost counterintuitively, it actually takes real effort to step back from the all the hullabaloo, breathe in and out, and be in the moment—to find what the activist poet Wallace Berry called “the peace of simple things.”

I admit that I’m as susceptible to this dangerous phenomenon as anyone else. I find that I have to remind myself that as much as I take pleasure in all things Christmasy, I always find even more pleasure in simple things—the natural beauty that surrounds us here on the Eastern Shore, the wonder in a child’s face, the warmth of a fire, or even a good night’s sleep.

Aging is a war of attrition. As the years roll by, we begin falling apart. What I took for granted yesterday becomes tomorrow’s new goal line—climbing that flight of stairs or putting on my socks. The march of time can become an ever-louder drumbeat, but one way to reduce some of that noise is to listen to the rhythm of the spheres, or, if you can’t quite hear that holy music, to your own heartbeat. Don’t try so hard; slow down; just be.

It sounds easy, but it’s not. The pace of life at this time of year conspires against us. The “to-do” list grows longer just when it should shrink. I was reminded (again) of this last week when, hurrying to an evening meeting, I was thunderstruck by a sunset unfolding over a quiet little creek near town. I was running a few minutes late and, confronted with the choice of being another minute or two behind schedule or stopping to photograph a spectacular evening sky, I chose the latter. And you know what? That brief delay didn’t matter: I got to my meeting when the choir was only on “the fourth day of Christmas” and, as we all know, the first three days keep coming back to remind us that that damn partridge in a pear tree never goes anywhere.

Birds fly south for the winter. Bears hibernate in their dens. Nature always seems to find a way to take the sting out these cold months, but we humans apparently have come to a different conclusion. Maybe we believe that by moving faster, we generate more heat, but there’s a limit to that kind of thinking. Eventually, the gears grind down and the motor overheats. Don’t get me wrong: I admire people with energy, but I respect those among us—people like Mr. Berry—who strive to find the peace in simple things.

But that striving often sounds more like a lament than a mantra for living. Mr. Berry certainly knew this because his poem “The Want of Peace” reveals the whole sorry truth:

All goes back to the earth,
and so I do not desire
pride of excess or power,
but the contentments made
by men who have had little:
the fisherman’s silence
receiving the river’s grace,
the gardener’s musing on rows.
I lack the peace of simple things.
I am never wholly in place.
I find no peace or grace.
We sell the world to buy fire,
our way lighted by burning men,
and that has bent my mind
and made me think of darkness
and wish for the dumb life of roots.

“The dumb life of roots.” Maybe Vincent Van Gogh believed in this, too, because his final painting, made in 1890, was an impression of gnarled tree roots. As for me, at this time of year, I’m satisfied enough if I can find a small measure of the fisherman’s silence or the gardener’s contemplative musing amid all the din of the season. I hope you can, too.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve rounded Thanksgiving and blown through Hanukkah. All those polite Victorians in top hats or hooped skirts looking for Mr. Dickens have come and gone. Now we’re sprinting toward Christmas, a mad dash into blown waistlines and budgets, consumerism run amok, all in the name of a poor baby born long ago on a silent night in Bethlehem. Sigh.

But be that as it may, it is, as the song says, beginning to look a lot like Christmas at our house. On the day after Thanksgiving, four of the grandkids came for a visit and, saw in hand, we headed out into Mr. Simmons’ field to bag our Christmas tree. We found a perfect specimen, and by the end of the day and minutes before Santa’s arrival on a firetruck, the tree was up in the front yard, decorated with oyster shells, and topped by a twinkling star that bears a striking resemblance to a Coronavirus. Merry Pandemic Christmas!

But it didn’t stop there. My wife has a keen eye for arranging and decorating, and Christmas is just what she needs to keep her spirits up in the thin gruel of winter. Boxes relegated to the attic for eleven months of the year come down for their month in the spotlight. There’s the bagpiping nutcracker Santa which dominates the dining room. Candles and carolers and a tabletop tree for the living room. Festive lights for the windows, a wreath and a creche and a repurposed pair of old Wellies filled with greens for the front porch. A swag for the gate and pine rope along the fence. Stockings to be hung; bows to be tied, bells to be rung. And should my Christmas magician see something slightly awry, she’ll tweak her artistry until she gets it just the way she wants it, at least for the next few minutes. Her art is always a work in progress, but I will say that when it all comes together, it’s perfect.

And while all this is going on, the season’s pace doesn’t just accelerate, it explodes. There are candles to light, gifts to wrap, fires to build, flowers to arrange, dinner parties with friends that go on much too late into the night. The house smells heavenly—a fragrant blend of beef stew simmering on the stove, roses gracing the table, and Christmas candles all aglow. There’s music and singing: joyful carols that tell tall tales of angels, shepherds, and wisemen, or soft lullabies about mangers, a certain little town, and a silent night. At some point, if we’re lucky, we’ll sit still for an evening and watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas, or sing “White Christmas” with Bing and the gang, or watch “A Christmas Story” and pray Ralph doesn’t shoot his eye out this year.

If this all sounds too much like a Norman Rockwell drawing, we know it isn’t. Sadness and loneliness and regret are as much a part of Christmas as joy and anticipation and merriment; the bitter always helps to define the sweet. Not all families are able to celebrate Christmas together; we gratefully think of soldiers deployed overseas; of folks in hospitals and the caregivers who tend them; of first responders on duty; of loved ones absent, far away, or gone forever. They are part of the meaning of Christmas, too. 

So, while there’s still time, I want to wish you all the joys of the season. I sincerely hope there are no dregs in your cup of good cheer. May your days be merry and bright and whatever you do, don’t shoot your eye out!

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.

 

Today—November 30—is St. Andrew’s Day. In Scotland, it’s celebrated as Andermas, Scotland’s official National Day and the first day of my ancestral homeland’s winter festival which also includes Hogmany (New Year’s Day) and Burns Night (the annual celebration of the birthday of Scotland’s favorite poet, Robert Burns, on January 25). But wait a minute: how did Andrew end up as Scotland’s patron saint? Wasn’t he Simon Peter’s brother, a humble Jewish fisherman eking out a living on the Sea of Galilee in a dusty corner of the Roman empire called Palestine?

In the early Christian church, Andrew was revered as the first-called of Jesus’ twelve apostles. He was also the one Jesus sent to round up those few loaves and fishes that miraculously fed the hungry crowd who came to hear the sermon on the mount. After Jesus’ death, it was Andrew who founded the first Christian church in Byzantium, a seditious act which resulted in his death by crucifixion on an x-shaped cross with bars of equal length—a crux decussata or ‘saltire.’ Why an x-shaped cross? Because Andrew did not believe he was worthy of dying on a cross similar to the one on which Jesus was crucified.

But then how did Andrew’s cross—the Saltire—come to be the insignia of Scotland? The legend is that an early Christian monk named Regulus was advised in a dream to hide some of Andrew’s bones, and then to take those relics “to the ends of the earth” for protection. He set sail from Petras in Greece in 347 with one of Andrew’s kneecaps, a bone from his upper arm, three fingers, and a tooth. When Regulus’ boat foundered off Fife on Scotland’s east coast, Regulus brought Andrew’s bones ashore and built a tower to house them. That tower eventually became part of a great new cathedral, one that gave its name to the town that grew up around it—a town better known today as the home of golf—St. Andrews, of course.

But one legend is never enough, particularly in a country like Scotland. There is a second story about how the Saltire came to be the flag of Scotland. Back in the year 832, a Pictish king by the name of Angus mac Fergus prayed to good St. Andrew on the eve of a great battle. For his devotion, Angus was granted a vision of crossed white clouds floating in a blue sky, and on the following day, he was victorious over a large army of invading Saxons at the battle of Athelstaneford. The image of crossed white clouds in a blue sky soon became Angus’ standard, and so whichever legend you choose to believe, it’s Andrew’s cross that still protects the Scots.

The Scots are, if nothing else, a canny people. By claiming Andrew as their patron saint, in 1320, Scottish nobles were able to appeal to one of Simon Peter’s descendants, Pope John, for protection against their unruly neighbors to the south who were always causing trouble. That appeal—in the form of the Declaration of Arbroath—asserted Scotland’s ancient right to be an independent kingdom, and denounced King Edward (better known as Edward Longshanks or, alas, The Hammer of the Scots) for his numerous attempts to subjugate Scotland to English rule.

The Saltire remains the proud emblem of Scottish nationalism, emblazoned in the hearts of those among us who hold that Scotland is independent, separate, and free. And today, on Andermas 2021, it’s the flag that is flying over my home.

So Happy Andermas and Saor Alba!

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.

It’s Sunday morning; friends will be coming over later today for a steaming bowl of beef stew, a green salad with pomegranate seeds, and, of course, a warm baguette with fresh French butter. There will undoubtedly be some good red wine because what’s good company, savory beef stew, and a baguette without some good red wine on the first really cold day of November?

The word “baguette” derives from the Latin baculum, meaning “staff” or “wand.” That makes good sense to me for two reasons: first, because a baguette looks like a wizard’s wand and second, we all know that even in these carbohydrate-phobic days, bread is still the staff of life. Even I, in my diet consciousness, find a fresh, warm baguette impossible to resist. The best I can hope for is moderation.

Baguettes have been around for a long time but their popularity soared in the early 18th Century when French bakers started using gurau, a highly refined Hungarian flour. Then along came the Viennese steam oven and the rest, as they say, is baking history. The French rightly claim much of the credit for inventing the baguette and they take its form and taste so seriously that the government still regulates a baguette’s weight (80 grams), maximum length (40 centimeters), and even its price—0.35 francs per loaf. If that’s not enough regulatory love, in May of this year, France submitted an application to UNESCO to give the humble baguette World Heritage status. Bon appétit!

Need any more proof of the power of the pedigree of the baguette? In April 1944, a competition called Le Grand Prix de la Baguette began in France to determine who made the best baguettes. Today, nearly 200 bakers compete each year in front of a 14-judge panel following strict guidelines. Their baguettes are judged based on baking, appearance, smell, taste, and crumb. The winner receives 4000 euros ($4,580) and supplies the French president with his daily bread for the duration of that year or until a new winner is chosen.

But wait: there’s more! There are as many stories about the origin and history of the baguette as there are neighborhood bakeries in Paris. Some say Napoleon deserves credit for the shape of the baguette because a long, thin loaf was easier for a soldier to carry. Another theory is that before the baguette came along, French workers had to carry knives to cut their bread. Since those workers had a tendency to get into fights, management came up with the idea of a long loaf that could be easily ripped apart by hand. Finally, bureaucracy reared its ugly head: in 1920, France passed a law saying that bakers could not begin working until 4am. Even that early hour didn’t give bakers enough time to bake round loaves for their customers’ breakfasts. Voilá la baguette!

There are only four ingredients in a baguette: flour, water, yeast, and salt. That’s it. Sometimes the best things in life may not be free, but they can still be simple.

Here’s the last thing I want to say about the baguettes we brought home to consume this evening. Remember I mentioned that this morning was the first really chilly one of the season? As my wife and I were walking home from the bakery, I could feel the radiant warmth of those two right-out-of-the-oven loaves under my arm. Kept my heart warm, just like she does.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.

 

 

 

At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns along the Western Front finally fell silent. Armistice Day, 1918. The Great War—the war that H.G. Wells hoped would end all wars—was over.

Or was it? The armistice had been signed at 5:10 on the morning of November 11, nearly six hours before the deadline, and news of its signing had been conveyed within the hour. But General John Pershing, Commander of the American Expeditionary Force, did not fully approve of terms of the the Armistice and consequently did not order his officers in the field to suspend any new offensives during the hours leading up to 11 o’clock. And in those few hours, there were more than 11,000 new casualties—more dead, injured, and missing than on D-Day, the day of reckoning in the war still to come.

The Armistice that was signed on November 11, 1918 was a cease-fire, not an official end to the First World War. The original duration of that Armistice was 36 days and it would have to be renewed four times before the Treaty of Versailles was finally signed outside of Paris on June 28, 1919. Its harsh terms and the punitive penalties it imposed on Germany would all-but-guarantee that another great war would engulf Europe and the world only twenty years later.

This week, we will pause again to remember what was once called Armistice Day but is now called Veterans Day. We will thank all the men and women who have served this country in peace and in war. And we will pray that we have to put an end to war once and for all, even though we know full well we haven’t.

In my lifetime, America has fought in five more wars: in Korea, in Vietnam, in the Persian Gulf, in Iraq, and, most recently, in Afghanistan. That war, America’s longest, lasted more than twenty years. More than 200,000 people died in Afghanistan, the vast majority of whom were Afghan security forces, Taliban insurgents, and civilians. For many of the nearly 35,000 maimed and wounded American military personnel and civilian contractors, the war still goes on. For many of them, it will never end.

Battles and wars are often enumerated in grim statistics. But statistics fail to convey the horrible reality of war. The forever-absent father or mother, husband or wife, brother or sister, son or daughter: how do we account for the stories of their lives that will never be told? How can we account for all the collateral damage of sorrow and loss, or for the lingering effects of nightmare PTSD, opioid addiction, and suicide? The toll of war is far too heavy to ever be fully understood or comprehended, but remembering, honoring, and thanking those who have served and those who still serve is a beginning.

Two years ago, I wanted to learn more about my father’s service in World War Two. I did some research and wrote a letter to the Army asking for his service record. A year ago, I received a brief reply telling me that many service records of World War Two veterans had been destroyed in a fire at a military archive somewhere in the Midwest. I thought that would be the end of it. Then, three weeks ago I received a small package in the mail. Inside were two medals and a lapel pin: the American Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and the Honorable Service in WWII Victory Pin. To be honest, I don’t know what to do with them. For now, they rest on my desk and make me wonder about a part of my father’s life a few years before I came along.

I hope that “Thank you for your service” never becomes just another rote phrase in our national vocabulary. It hardly begins to express my own regard for the selflessness and courage of our veterans. But it’s a good place to start.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com. He served in the Peace Corps.