Writing Oxford: Life in a Small Town

A pilot becomes a painter, documenting a half century of a small town and becomes a part of the story he is telling--community exhibits, his paintings hanging on residents' walls, the side of the market bearing a mural of his work.

A real estate agent, who sails, carves decoys and models, and writes books and poetry about his hometown, starts a tradition of decorating docks along the creek with Christmas trees, that are still lit every December. An award bearing his name is given out each year to the people who are doing the most to honor the town's past and move it forward.

A World War II photographer turns his lens to the small community he calls home and helps pen the definitive history book of the town's first three centuries. And along the way, he helps save the old school building, turning it into a community center.

Howard Lapp, Doug Hanks Jr., and Norman Harrington. Just three examples, but ones that float to the front of my mind, about how individuals can and do make a difference in Oxford, Md., and how Oxford's collective history is told through the stories of its people.

This is obviously the case with any small town or community, but Oxford is the one that I know and whose names and people I know and have seen in action. The chapters of the town's history are people and a person has the chance to be an integral part of the story.

I think I have felt that more in Oxford than anywhere else, which is maybe what keeps me close, or brings me back. Oxford's is a story that is unfolding, and anyone could play a big part in what that story is or what it becomes.

In 1704, Oxford was one of Maryland's most important cities. By 1800, it was desolate. In 1900, the town had ten general stores, five seafood packing houses, two restaurants, two physicians, two blacksmiths, two hotels, a flour mill, shipbuilder, cooper, dentist, brick manufacturer, undertaker, druggist, barber, shoemaker, sailmaker, newspaper, bank, and four churches (citing "From Pot Pie to Hell and Damnation: An Illustrated Gazetteer of Talbot County").

I'm not saying Oxford could return as a hub of commerce, nor that that would be a good thing. In my lifetime it's been a town known for boat yards, restaurants, brick sidewalks, boats, and water. A number of the people who live here found it by sailing and decided to call it home. That's pretty damn cool.

I don't claim any special knowledge or insight into Oxford's future. No predictions or prophesies here. What I like is seeing how people, individuals, have made a difference; have shaped the town and helped create what it has been and what it is. And knowing that for wherever the town goes, those people are here now, living and/or working and helping it get there. People whose vision, whose efforts, whose eccentricities, whose time, whose senses of humor, all make a difference and make up the town.

Vocation, Commitment, and Making a Life

I've never wanted "technical writer" written on my tombstone. But frequently over the last five years of driving 70 miles each way to work in Washington, D.C., that has felt like the direction my life was going. It was a decision I made to make a better living, to make more money than I could on the Eastern Shore. I don't regret it. I am thankful to have had those opportunities. I have been grateful for every job I have had. Any complaint I could levy fully falls under first world problems. Quit your bellyaching and go to work.

But D.C. and technical writing left me twice in a lurch. Reeling and trying to figure out what would come next. And for better or worse, I am an introspective idealist; a day dreamer. I've never cared for the status quo, and I've never wanted to show up to work to punch a clock and collect a paycheck. I've always wanted to do something with my professional life, my vocation. At one point I thought that would be as a college philosophy professor. Then I fell into museums and cultural organizations. There is something about working for an organization whose mission pushes for cultural, social, or civic causes that finger the heart strings. And then there is this whole writing thing, which has been wrapped up in one of my life's great passions since I was 14.

I want work to be meaningful, both in general and for me. But I am also a father to two wonderful daughters, for whom I need to provide. I wrestled with trying to continue driving four-to-five hours a day for a bigger paycheck, coming home beat and beat down. Or to try to make a better life, rather than just a better living; a way to be creative, to be a part of the community, to make things happen and to make a difference.

I have that opportunity when I start later this month as Executive Director of the Oxford Community Center (OCC) in Oxford, Md. It is a professional homecoming to the Eastern Shore, It is a chance to re-connect, re-engage the community I love and where I have grown up and always lived. It is a chance to help guide an organization poised to take big steps toward anchoring the word "community" for a growing audience. It is a seven mile commute, not a 70 mile commute, a commute I will do by bike sometimes in the summer, and even by stand-up paddleboard here and there.

This blog is a place to talk about life more than making a living. So that is what I will stick with here. Working back on the Shore is also, and foremost, a commitment to my daughters, to have time with them, instead of spending that time driving. It is evenings playing catch with lacrosse sticks or Nerf wars with the sun still up; it is a weekday evening with ice cream in the park. It is opening my heart and soul instead of hardening them. It is finding happiness and being the father the girls deserve in their lives.

OCC is also an opportunity to walk closer to my dreams. I have heard Jim Carey in my head frequently this winter using his father's example, saying, "You can fail at what you DON'T want, so you might as well take the chance on doing what you love."

This is also a conscious decision to commit to my writing. To using the time I am getting back each day and the time when I don't have the girls, to make more happen with writing for magazines, for websites, and taking on writing projects to try to make a name as a writer. Dreams are no better than idle thoughts unless I try to make them real.

The past few months I've been living closer to my heart (cue the Rush song). I've been looking and feeling more deeply. I've been connecting in ways that I had forgotten. Love, family, vocation, dreams. Re-connecting to heart and soul and life. Not just making a better living, but making a better life.

Community

Photo by Diving Dog Creative Solutions.

If I won the lottery, I'd buy a house in Oxford, the town I grew up in, and I would throw myself fully into my writing. If it was a big enough lottery, I'd move a bunch of friends with young families down there with us, so all of our kids would know the town as their home. It's a pretty simple dream, as dreams go. Idyllic, maybe.

I was telling a friend recently that there are two times when driving that I can feel my soul lighten: 1) driving eastbound across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and 2) slowing down to 25 mph as you come into Oxford and looking up Town Creek as you round the causeway. These are moments when I truly know I am home.

I've been working in Washington, D.C., for close to four years now, with a summer sabbatical thrown in this year. Prior to my across the pond commute, I worked for 10-plus years for two non-profit organizations that were big parts of the Eastern Shore community. My job kept me dialed in, whereas the past four years have kept me tuned out. Though I live here, our girls go to school and play youth sports here, I haven't felt connected.

That's why I can't thank Eastern Shore Savvy enough. The two articles I write for them each month have helped me reconnect. I've caught up with an iconic high school teacher; dug into the history of the church I grew up in; and explored the tradition of Oxford's Town Creek Christmas lights. Here's a working list of the people and places I've written about.

These are stories I probably wouldn't have written. They don't really fit into the local paper, and working full-time in DC, I'm not about to go shopping story ideas around. And with every interview, rekindling connections with people and places, I feel more a part of what's going on around me. I'm exploring things I'm curious about and maybe telling stories that wouldn't be told otherwise.

I'm feeling more rooted. And more like a storyteller. Amen.

A brand world

I'm a brand nerd. But only for cool companies if that wins me back any hip points.

I dig companies and people who put themselves out into the world and say, "Check me out, this is who and what  I am."

When I read Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard's book, "Let My People Go Surfing," I immediately wished I could work somewhere with that vibe.

Watching the Element Skateboards documentary, "Make it Count," on Fuel TV makes me wish I could have married my long-professed love of skateboarding with writing and communications; being a part of  a grassroots up, socially conscious skateboard brand would be the sh$%. Original Skateboards is a company I love seeing what they do next.

I get charged up watching friends at Rise Up Coffee and Evolution Craft Brewing Co. growing their companies and brands--double bonus that they make tasty forms of my favorite beverages...

I think it comes down to putting yourself out there in the world. Of guys and girls having an incredible passion and compelling vision and working like mad and having a blast building that vision and surrounding themselves with people who want to do the same.

It's creating a community as well as a company. It's creating a vibe and groove to bring folks into.

I'm a sucker for a story. And when brands tell a story that I feel includes how I see myself, it's easy to end up a loyalist.

For me, that's a skateboarding, trail running, free form writing, water loving, football/baseball following, coffee and beer drinking, music devouring, manically reading 30-something husband and father of curious girls. Not sure the size of that demographic.

Off the Shelf: "A Moveable Feast"

Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast," will never be put in a box in my house. I keep it on a bookshelf where I can get to it or at least see it as a reminder. I'm not given to re-reading books particularly, but I like it as a visual prompt, something to kickstart my cranium.

Writing is a solitary (read lonely) pursuit, as is running and a lot of the things I find myself drawn to. At the same time I am drawn to chilling with like-minded folk and being a part of a creative community. That's part of the reason the Rise Up Runners group has had such a big impact on me, my pursuits, circle of friends, etc. When I can share experiences and accomplishments with and of others--finishing a marathon, a PR, finding a new trail, stumbling upon a sublime scene--it somehow deepens the whole deal.

That's harder to come by in writing, being able to find that sense of shared, creative community. Those folks who, by their own writing and inquiries and commitment and curiosity and enthusiasm, also push/encourage others to do the same. "A Moveable Feast" tracks Hemingway (he wrote it, so I guess more accurately he tracks himself) in Paris in the 1920s after he's made a BIG decision to kick journalism to the curb and dedicate himself to writing his own truth, his own art. How many people come to a point in their lives where they opt not to make that tough choice? Imagine all the stuff high school and college English students wouldn't have to read if Hemingway had not made that call ;)

Hemingway describing Paris and the other writers and cats around him is eye opening for anyone who has only come to know F. Scott Fitzgerald by reading Gatsby or Ezra Pound by scratching their head through the Cantos. H (we'll call him "H" to save time) runs into them, parties with them, talks shop with them, those who have made the call to make the attempt to be writers and who would all end up being widely studied and read by all of us that follow. They became their own creative community. H describes them and the whole experience with the irreverence with which we talk about our own peeps. Refreshing and inspiring for a 20-something wanna-be writer who picks up the book just after graduating as an English/philosophy student, who has always thought about writing and has only know the Paris-in-the-20s luminaries through their books an people writing about their books.

I like thinking about them on the ground floor, as they went about their business. The same as I like thinking about the Founding Fathers of our country in the way Joseph Ellis does in "Founding Brothers"--as cats that wake up in the morning and go about their business and make decisions the way any of us do. They had a conviction that those decisions and actions might amount to something, but no guarantees.

So when I wake up and knock back some coffee and contemplate what I will do with the morning or the day or the weekend, I look over at the bookshelf and I catch a glimpse of "A Moveable Feast." Perspective. A kick in the arse. The rest is up for grabs.