My wife and I love to travel - and over the course of the last 13 years have now covered all 50 states. And we have found interesting things on every journey, in every destination. People have been there before us, and have created things or brought things with them and left them there. Buildings, public spaces, community institutions, and memories of those who have passed through that same landscape at some point in history. We love finding the small stories and inspecting them for ourselves - a dent in the sidewalk where a piece of Sputnik crashed into town, the chapel where Joan of Arc prayed before her execution - in Wisconsin! A childhood memory of FDR showing up at church and clanking down the aisle in his leg braces. A place that inspired a song on a winter's day, or the place where Tony Bennett first sang the song that changed his career.
We visit with Jay, a childhood friend, at his home in New Hampshire every few years, and in the past have shared with him our tales of history. He happens to be the editor of Southwest Airline's excellent in-flight magazine, called Spirit. And so on a visit a few years ago, he said "Would you be interested in writing an article on some of these pieces of history that you have found in your travels?" To that point in life, I had always looked at writing as the path not taken; I've always been able to spill out my thoughts onto paper - I have been journaling since 10th grade - so the writing part was not threatening. But I had never really done it with a view to publication, with things like editors and deadlines involved. Having an editor? No, I thought I would welcome that - I am always open to advice from people who do things better than I do, and people who have experience in areas that I don't. Deadlines? A necessary evil to motivate those like me who sometimes lack discipline. Jay added "And of course we would pay you for it." Pay me? To write? That closed the deal.
I started an outline, and listed all of the stories that could qualify for this project - and did a short summary of each one - the particular wrinkle in history that I found in each place. Jay called them "slivers" of history. And so that became the title. I had delusions of grandeur - why not write one every month - each one focusing on a history story found in one of the markets that Southwest serves? And maybe they would fly me to each place each month to look for those slivers? Certain things are too good to be true - and that delusion was one of them. Jay reined me in - let's just do this first story and then see what comes of it.
A few months later, he had chosen the slivers he wanted, I had sent him write ups, he had edited them down to a few paragraphs and included the other information he wanted in each one, and we had a final article. Very little of "me" had made it into the final article, but my name was on the byline. The article was published in the February 2013 edition of Spirit. I received several notes from old friends who flew that month - "Are you the famous writer of that article?" I finally had my 15 minutes of fame in life. And a nice check in the mail to boot. I was officially a "writer", because I had been published, and paid for it.
I was left with 25+ good ideas for fuller articles. And we have had 5 more years of travel since then, and more slivers have accumulated. I have during those 5 years featured "Write those history articles!" on my To Do list. And now it is a new year - and I enter brimming with confidence that this is the year I begin actually doing some of those items and crossing them off the list. Today at lunch I saw this empty blog, and thought "Just start with that first one - you do't even have to write it. Just post it." But you can't attach pdf files to these blogs. You have to use photos, and that means exporting pdf files to jpg files and then uploading them and playing with the formatting to see if they will display and will be readable. We will see if that works. And if it does, and if you are reading this, it did, then I will have broken the ice on the project. I look forward to reminding myself of some of these places we have been, and what we have found, and that will motivate me to begin to set my own deadlines and write on a regular basis in 2018.
So today is a beginning. Five years late, but history never gets old!
