Scent of Home

On a walk through my parents' old neighborhood in Lexington, where I sniff deeply of the mown grass to see if I can detect the scent of home. 

It's there, I know it is, though I can't put my finger on exactly what's different. 

Is it the bluegrass, full of calcium from the limestone-rich soil? 

Is it the way the light strikes the lawns and releases an aroma?

Or is it knowing that the bones of my ancestors lie in cemeteries just miles away? 

Photo Finish!

A photo finish was just what we needed yesterday, or at least just what I needed. A chance to lose the self in the moment, the moment being the "most exciting two minutes in sports," the Kentucky Derby. 

In this case, those two minutes were followed by several more minutes of uncertainty as judges studied a photograph of the race's conclusion, the first time since 1996 that such a move has been necessary. When the ruling came down — Mystik Dan by a nose — the crowd erupted. The 18-1 shot had bested Sierra Leone (9-2) and Forever Young (7-1). 

To see those three thoroughbreds thundering to the finish line, looking for all the world like a single unit, was to see grace in motion.

(A 1953 photo finish of the first triple dead heat in harness racing. Photo: Wikipedia)

Treasures from the Vault

I returned from Lexington with something I absolutely need no more of, and that would be books. 

But who could resist the Annie Dillard compilation (even though I have these books in other forms), the Bread Loaf anthology or This Trembling Land, by a Kentucky author whose father owned the farm where I rode horses as a young girl?

There's also a workbook (covered in a brown paper from a grocery bag) that dates back to my first-grade class. These are the kind of goodies that can still be found in what was once my parents' and is now my brother's home. I think of them as treasures from the vault.

Grounding

When I try to name it I come up short. Is it depth that I feel here in my hometown? Is it community? 

In so many ways, I don't know this place. Like any healthy city, it keeps growing and changing. And for most of my life, I've done my growing and changing somewhere else. 

But when I visit Lexington, when I stroll down Central Avenue or Ashland or South Hanover, I'm walking through layers of personal and family history.

If I lived here, these layers might weigh me down. But since I don't, they ground me. 

Sold Out at Singletary

In Kentucky for the weekend, I take in a sold-out concert at the Singletary Center for the Arts, including a spirited performance of the Mozart Requiem. The stage was packed with the orchestra and combined choirs of the University of Kentucky. 

The last time I was at this venue I was on the stage. Last night I was (gratefully) in the audience. And what an audience it was: attentive, respectful, spirited, just what the excellent music deserved. When the final notes sounded, the audience leapt to its feet for a standing ovation.

Though I love attending musical events in the D.C. area, I especially enjoyed last night's performance. There was a communal feeling to it, a sense of togetherness among musicians and listeners, as we all fell under the spell of the Lacrimosa, said to contain the last eight bars of music Mozart wrote. 

Of Roses and Crowns

Over the weekend, a day bracketed by rituals. One ancient, the other "only" 149 years old. 

I woke up at 6 a.m., early enough to catch much of the coronation of King Charles III.  The choirs, the sixth-century prayer book, the procession, the golden carriage. A glimpse into the Middle Ages.

And then, at 6 p.m., the Kentucky Derby, with its come-from-behind, 15-1 shot Mage. More rituals: the call to post, the starting bell, the breathless commentary of the Run for the Roses. 

We measure our lives by rituals and routines, but I've seldom experienced such an oddly juxtaposed and striking pair of them.

(Photo of King Edward's crown courtesy Wikipedia)

For Love of Place

On this earth day I'm thinking about the places I love best on this planet: my home in Virginia, starting with the house and yard and moving beyond to woodland paths and trails, the spokes of a wheel of caring.

My hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, with its old brick homes and its new distillery district; with its rolling grasslands, shaggy limestone cliffs, white fences and horse farms.

Other places I have lived and loved: New York City, which inspired and thrilled me in my youth and revives me still. Chicago, which I heard about all my young life and where I went to college.  Petit Jean Mountain in Arkansas, with its friendly people and its views that go on forever. And Groton, Massachusetts, small town extraordinaire, where I gave birth to our first child. 

On Earth Day we honor this, our only planet, and think about ways to protect and promote its health and longterm viability. But all this protection and promotion starts with love. It's love that emboldens us, that helps us make the tough choices, do the hard things. Unless we truly care about the earth, what incentive do we have to safeguard it?   

(Above: Joe Pye weed blooms in a Kentucky meadow on a perfect August morning, 2021.)

Far Away and Close at Hand

Since witnessing sunrise on the beach last week I've been thinking how nice it is to have a view of the horizon. It doesn't have to be the Atlantic through a scrim of dune grass. I'd welcome any view that took me out of tangled green. 

Be careful what you wish for, though, I tell myself. Spending time in bare, flat places makes me realize how soothing is the company of trees, how subtle but important is the rise and fall of the land on which we find ourselves.

How lovely it would be to have it both ways, to have the openness of the horizon and the coziness of trees — the greensward and the den, the faraway and the close-at-hand. It just occurred to me that I grew up in such a place, the natural savannah land of central Kentucky, the Bluegrass. No wonder I want it all.

(The sun slants low over the Osage orange trees on Pisgah Pike in Woodford County, Kentucky.) 

Black and White

When she was young, my daughter Celia once asked me if the past was lived only in black-and-white. It was a good question, I thought, since that's the way she'd seen it depicted in old photographs. 

But as those of us who've lived in the past (at least her past) can attest, it happens in color. 

I spent a few hours in the black-and-white past last night, perusing a book of photographs of Lexington, Kentucky. Many of the snapshots were taken in the 1930s, when my parents were children. There were the storefronts (including Leet's, owned by my great uncle), the interurbans (street cars that went into surrounding small towns) and the intersections (Main and Lime) of their youth.

While the photos were sepia-toned, I reminded myself that Mom and Dad saw these sights ... in color.

In Kentucky, Rain and Tears

When I was strolling on the beach recently a fellow walker greeted me with "Go, Hoosiers!" I almost cheered him on. There are plenty of Hoosiers in my family and I went to college in Indiana for two years. Then I realized what he was up to. I'd almost forgotten that I was wearing my Kentucky T-shirt that day. He was asserting dominance. 

There's been no forgetting my home state these last few days. As more tragic reports flow from the flooding in Whitesburg and Hazard and other Appalachian towns, it's hard not to think about the dire straits in which my fellow Kentuckians find themselves. 

These people had so little to begin with. They live on steep mountain roads with creeks in their backyards. The rains that triggered floods and mudslides are supposed to happen once or twice in a thousand years. People weren't expecting creeks to become raging torrents that lifted up refrigerators and cars and, worst of all, swept away children and parents and brothers and sisters. 

More rain fell last night in Kentucky ... and more tears, too. 

(On dryer ground: a photo taken last year in central Kentucky.)

The Woodsman

Like Johnny Appleseed, Daniel Boone is part legend, and many of the images we have of him are false. He did not wear a coonskin cap, did not discover Cumberland Gap and was not the first settler to arrive in Kentucky. 

But he did guide many through the Gap and he, more than anyone else, helped settle the Bluegrass State. In fact, one of the chief ironies of Boone's life (1734-1820) is that he, more than anyone else, helped ruin the wilderness he loved. 

The Daniel Boone that emerges from Robert Morgan's biography is a bright, humble, kind man, a woodsman more at home in the forest than anywhere else and as sympathetic to Native Americans as most any of his generation. 

Often in debt, Boone learned the hard way that his personality was better suited to the edges of civilization than to its midst. But not before he may have had this realization, Morgan writes: 

By 1788 the irony could not have been lost on Boone that he, as much as any other single human being, had helped create the world that was now repugnant to him, so raging and relentless in growth and greed. And he must have seen, perhaps for the first time, the contradiction and conflict at the heart of so much of his effort: to lead white people into the wilderness and make it safe for them was to destroy the very object of his quest.

(Boone's first view of Kentucky by William Tylee Ranney, 1849, courtesy Wikipedia) 

80-1 ... 91-1

When I wrote Saturday's post, which only alluded to the Derby, I didn't know what a Derby it would be. Didn't know that friends and family would be calling and texting to share their amazement. Didn't know that Rich Strike, the horse with the second-longest odds ever, would win the race. 

What I had forgotten until my brother reminded me yesterday was that the horse who won with the longest odds ever was Donerail, 91-1, named for Donerail Station in Scott County, Kentucky. It's a horse I've heard about since I was a child, a horse Mom would have bet on, for sure, if only she had been alive and of betting age at the time (1913). 

As the descendants of both Donnellys and Scotts, as the proud daughter of a long-shot bettor, as a fan of hopeless causes everywhere, Rich Strike, I salute you!

The Meadow Land

It's the first Saturday in May, the one day of the year when Kentucky takes center stage in the sporting world. But this first Saturday in May I'm thinking of a different sort of Kentucky and Kentuckian. I'm knee-deep into Boone: A Biography by Robert Morgan. 

I've been learning a lot about my home state. For instance, the name doesn't necessarily mean "dark and bloody ground." It could be Shawnee for "at the head of the river." Or Wyandotte for "the land of tomorrow." Or Iroquois for "the meadow land"—kenta (level) and aki (place).  

That one makes the most sense: it captures the open savannah for which the Bluegrass region is known. 

But whatever the origin, Morgan says, "some words have a resonance, a color, and are memorable even before we know what they mean. We love to say them just to feel them in the air and on our tongue."

Amen, Mr. Morgan. 

Old House

Whenever I'm in Lexington I make the pilgrimage and drive to the houses where I grew up. Unlike my own children, who know only this much-loved and much-battered center-hall colonial, I had three places to call home. 

My sister and I drove past one of them last month. It's a house I lived in only two-and-a-half years, the one I returned to from college and my early work years in Chicago. But though my time in the house was short, it left a big impression. 

I'm not used to seeing the house from the back, but we drove down a cul-de-sac that gave us this view, that showed us the deck that's been added, the trees that have grown up in the decades we've been gone. 

When I look at this photo, I see not just a ranch-style house with a walk-out basement and steep driveway, but the rooms inside ... and the people who used to live in them. 

The Lexingtonians

Yesterday's memorial service paid tribute to a husband, son, brother, uncle, cousin and friend. But most of all, it paid tribute to an artist.

My cousin Pat was a painter, musician and filmmaker. He was, as many recalled, a man who created the life he wanted to live ... and managed to live it in the town where he was born.

I think many of us in the audience thought about our own lives, weighed them against his, measured the tradeoffs, the staying put versus the leaving.  

My cousin Brian, Pat's brother, summed it up best when he spoke: "Today I'm not just proud to be a brother, I'm proud to be a Lexingtonian."

And though the family members in attendance now reside in Brussels, Paris, California, New York, Michigan, Virginia, Ohio,  Maryland and D.C.,  yesterday we were all Lexingtonians. 

Winter Again

From shorts to shudders: that's what the weather has given us in the last 24 hours. Yesterday, Lexingtonians were bopping around in t-shirts and cut-offs. Today they're donning parkas and gloves.

For many people in the middle to eastern half of the country, Standard Time is going out with a bang — wind chills in the teens and (at least in Lexington) five or so inches of snow on the ground.

It's a good day to stay inside and visit with family, which is what I'm doing. 

The sun is bright and there's a warmup in the forecast but, at least for now, it's winter again.

(You'd have to look hard to see crocuses blooming today.)

Back in the Bluegrass

By Winchester the land has changed, has taken on the open feel of the Bluegrass. It's close in Mount Sterling, but not quite there. 

So I felt myself exhale a little when we got to that point on our drive yesterday, savoring that feeling of home.

It's a feeling I've been enjoying all day. 

For Mayfield

I heard about Kentucky when good friends wrote to ask if my brother was OK. I checked the news then and learned of the horrible tornadoes that ripped through the country's midsection. So this post is a lament: it's a cry of solidarity for the residents of Mayfield, Kentucky, a town I'm embarrassed to say I had never heard of until Saturday, native Kentuckian that I am. 

At first, I thought it was Maysville that had been hit, a river town near where some of Dad's kin were born. But no, it was, as I often say about Kentucky towns whose names I don't recognize, "in the western part of the state." And it truly is there, close to both Tennessee and Missouri, more midwestern than southern. Dawson Springs is there, too—another town hit by the deadly twisters. 

I keep thinking about the folks in the candle factory, perhaps some of them working an extra shift since it's Christmas time and they could use the money. I think about the malls where those candles might be sold. Do we need those candles? Not really, but yes, because the residents of Mayfield need those jobs. 

It could have been any kind of factory, though. And it could have been any place. But it was in Kentucky, so my heart is even heavier. 

(Dark clouds outside of Nicholasville, from my August trip to Kentucky)

Scott Hotel

Only time for a short walk yesterday, but I had a destination in mind: the Scott Hotel, once owned by my grandfather and great uncle. Mom and her family lived at the hotel intermittently through the years, sharing quarters with the horsemen and the tobacco farmers in to sell their crops. 

The hotel was right across from the Southern Railway Depot, a natural place to stay for a night or two if you were in Lexington on business.

It was a less likely place to house three young daughters and a son. But these were different times, harder in some ways, easier in others.

The hotel is abandoned now, has been for years. It stands in mute testimony to those long-ago lives. 

Olmsted in Kentucky

I learned through weekend wanderings that famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted once turned his attention to my hometown. 

He and his brother, as the marker explains, had a hand in designing Transylvania Park, where the lovely Lexington Library once reigned; Ashland Park, where I spotted this sign; and Woodland Park, one of my favorite haunts.

It doesn't surprise me. These places may not be the Chicago World's Fair or Central Park (two of Olmsted's more well-known accomplishments), but in them the built and natural environments work together. They have a beauty and a presence — a  sense of having always been there.