September 3^rd marked Year 11 since Hook “took flight on the wings of a wasp to another place and time.” That’s a closing line from a story, The Nature Walk, that I’ve told on stage about Hook and me, about how he got me to fall in love with him on our third date. (More on storytelling, Moth storytelling specifically, a little later in this post.)

Any apprehension about this year’s Hookversary was due to September 3^rd 2024 finally falling on a Tuesday, the day of the week that Hook originally died. It took eleven years for the alignment of the date & day to mimic the original death day back in 2013. I was sort of expecting to be a bit wigged out by it all, but I wasn’t. Not at all. There’s always a little sadness, but this year there was no repressed guilt or forlorn thoughts or secret desires of any kind. Maybe some wistful musings like, Why didn’t you cook for him more? (Regret is a terrible thing.) Or, He would have loved to collect insects on this farm. (Probably, but Hook wouldn’t have wanted to pay. My baby was frugal, and I loved that about him.)

Yes! I spent this year’s Hookversary on a writers’ farm outside of Baltimore, Maryland, in a quaint village called Reistertown, at a place called Good Contrivance Farm. Whether writer workshops are on the farm’s calendar or not, any writer is welcome to rent either the three-story, renovated Barn Loft or the single-level Hen House Cottage. You need only to submit a writing sample and a writer’s resume (probably to prove that you are indeed a writer and not a traveler simply trying to secure a super cute place for a minimal charge). Photos of the Barn Loft: https://historicfarm.org/stay-at-the-farm/

What I enjoyed the most about the Barn Loft was how filled with books it was. They were spread out on every shelf, on all three floors. There were the classics and modern bestsellers, as well as less well-known titles and authors that I wouldn’t have even known about if I hadn’t walked from floor to floor reading every, single book spine. By the end of my week, I had bookmarked three different books (one for each floor) and started a new READ THESE FIRST book list. I was so corny; I said a personal good-bye to each of my favorites.   

But it wasn’t only writing and reading and reminiscing. I drove into Baltimore proper for an Orioles game, and on the 30-minute drive from the farm to the city, other drivers kept honking at me. One guy even gave me the finger …. WTH? Turns out that my rental car had Florida license plates, which I was driving through downtown Baltimore to get to the Orioles Yard on game day with Tampa Bay. I really had to laugh at that one. Lucky me, the Baltimore Orioles won: something to something.

I chose Maryland because it was one of five U.S. states that I’d yet to visit. Of the remaining four (Alaska, North Dakota, Delaware, South Carolina), Alaska is the only place I’d still like to spend at least a month exploring. Maybe in 2025. There are a lot of maybes for 2025, because I have this disease in which everything sounds interesting, and I must resist signing up for everything.  

About the Farm

The Good Contrivance Farm is owned and managed by a Professor of Writing at Loyola University Maryland, and whose partner of 25 years passed away three days before my reservation began. Although his wife’s death was not unexpected, it was tragic. They had purchased the farm to renovate it after renovating a Victorian home in Baltimore a decade earlier; and they’d been living their long-term plans when her illness began in her late 50s. She was simply too young, and only two years older than Hook had been when he passed at 59.

The owner and I never made contact in person while I was at the farm. It’s possible we subconsciously avoided each other. He needed to grieve, and I needed not to grieve. Above all, I wanted to be sensitive to his mourning so that he could process this huge, permanent hole in his life. One early evening as I was winding down my day, I heard him playing his drum set in the farm’s School House. Before dusk, it sounded therapeutic; by the time dark settled in, the banging sounded painful, until finally the drumming quieted. It was a not-so-silent reminder that everyone grieves differently.

My second week in Maryland was completely in Baltimore. I opted for a morning bus tour featuring the life and death of writer, Edgar Allan Poe, and a history of the state of Maryland.

Two odd things: first, the tour guide never mentioned the indigenous groups that existed and still exist today in Maryland. How do you skip thousands of years of history? I wondered if maybe the guide simply did not know. It’s disheartening how many states fail to acknowledge and teach the history of the original People of the land named the United States today. Maybe I should have shared with the tour guide: primarily the Algonquin (sometimes spelled Algonquian) and the Iroquois (Iroquian). Do not get me started . . .

But then, the guide brushed over slavery as if it had not been prevalent in the first 200 years of the state’s existence. I was starting to question how much the guide actually knew that didn’t revolve around presenting Maryland in only a positive manner. It’s blasphemous to whitewash our history simply because it’s not Rockwellian.

Edgar Allan Poe wasn’t even born in Maryland but in Boston, Massachusetts. Baltimore’s claim to his fame is that he launched his literary career in the city, if dying homeless and destitute is still considered a literary career. And it wasn’t only alcoholism and gambling that contributed to his demise. Poe was rarely paid for his most famous writings. Works like The Raven and Annabel Le yielded a pittance yet they were published frequently in the U.S. and the U.K. Any subsequent payments and why Poe was penniless when he died were by-products of his grieving for his young wife who died early in their marriage, as well as the non-existence of copyright law or literary licensing that could have provided him with regular earnings. Finally, Poe’s foster family’s unwillingness to support him if he insisted on remaining a writer (which he did) meant, Poe had no safety net.

Copyright laws would not exist until the early 1900s and Poe died in the mid-1800s. (According to Wikipedia, Poe was found drunk and unconscious in a bar then he died; according to our tour guide, Poe was found on the sidewalk outside of the bar, unconscious and bedraggled.) The creepiest part of the tour was learning that Poe’s coffin had been dug up three times and moved, and it seems only the tourism industry benefited.

Learning history is important. Reading the truth about Edgar Allan Poe’s life shed light on his melancholy writings. Without knowing who he was and what he suffered, it would not be as easy to interpret why his writings could be so dark and haunting.

Virgo and Year of the Dragon

I turn 60 in September yet I feel 16 inside and that’s how I know I’m aging, because only someone with white hair like mine, not grey but strikingly white, would say something so stupid. According to a drunk man at the Orioles game whose seat was next to mine, I “couldn’t even hear him” even though he screamed directly into my ear every time the Orioles hit a foul ball. So many foul balls. His wife kept apologizing for her husband’s obnoxious behavior, but I had a ballpark hot dog in one hand and a beer in the other, and I’m still 59 for another week so who needs eardrums.  

I have struggled with celebrating / not celebrating my birthday for the last 11 years, because it loomed two weeks after Hook’s death. Being out of Austin always made it more agreeable, because I was creating new memories. But this year like last year, I will be in Austin, and I will not avoid my birthday. That is my commitment to myself.

The Moth:  Buy Your Ticket

A short shout out to myself – can I do that? I’ve been invited by The Moth, the gurus of oral storytelling, to share a Hook story during their annual Mainstage show in Austin at the Paramount theatre. A forthcoming blog post about who and what The Moth is and how this invite came to be is coming. For now, and if you’re interested, you can buy a ticket to this Wednesday, December 4^th 2024 event: https://tickets.austintheatre.org/11479

Hook Fellows

Although last on today’s blog but always first in my heart, we have the 2024 update on the Dr. Allan W. Hook Endowed Wild Basin Creative Research Fund aka Hook Wild Basin Fund. The fund is healthy, and I am happy and the Wild Basin is doing what they do best: overseeing research and programs for students and the Austin community-at-large.

Since the fund’s inception in 2013, the Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve, co-managed by St. Edward’s University, has awarded 84 students with Hook Fellowships. Over the last eleven years, we have increased our monetary awards from $1,000 fellowships to $5,000 fellowships per student plus $1,500 for supplies and $1,500 for a mentor stipend. Go big or go home. 😉

Students must either have a professor and/or a qualified expert that monitors the research methodology, their results, and the final report/presentation. (Many of our Hook Fellows actually present their findings at national conferences, which is a big plus on their resumes.) This year our Hook Fellows — and I say “our” meaning yours and mine, because Hook and I may have kicked off this endowment before he died, but it was You and every Donor who contributed $5,000 or $5 to the fund that made these fellowship awards possible – so, our Hook Fellows for 2024 are:

Ava Perry and Amelia Valencia: Seasonal Dynamics of Anuran Skin Microbiomes at Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve: A Longitudinal Metagenomic Study

Grace Hosek: Best practices for managing ornamental invasive species in the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve using community education and incentive programs

Jordan Sanders: Effects of Advanced Footwear Technology in Trail Running Shoes on Running Economy and Biomechanics 

Nina Collard: The Effects of Urbanization on Riparian Vegetation Communities in Austin, TX 

Willa Pabst: A conundrum of conservation: Measuring the impact of European Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) presence on wild bee populations and foraging patterns within the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve

For Hook, today and always.

(Earth, Wind, and Fire’s September keeps playing in a loop in my head!)

I am headed home . . .