The Journey
18/05/25 09:58
May 18, 2025 (Vol. 19 No. 20) - It is graduation season across the U.S.A. From kindergarten ceremonies to doctoral hoodings, this is the time of year we mark milestones and passages in our lives. However, as we are often reminded, it is not the destination that matters as much as the journey. That it is why I wrote my newest novel, In the Moment: The Journey of the Class of '70, to be released by Pegasus Publishers on May 29. It follows the exploits and times of students in a small rural town during the turbulent 1960's. Its setting is St. Michaels, a historic community located on Maryland's Eastern Shore. It is a time and a place with which I am intimately familiar. I went to school in St. Michaels (pictured above) during the 1960's and graduated from nearby Easton High School in 1970. While the story about students such as Blake Hopkins, Freddy Harrison, Liz Langford and Sammy Releford is purely fictional, the surrounding narrative in which the story is set is not. For kids growing up in Talbot County schools, it was a period of civil rights, integration, war and political upheaval. While I don't envy the young men growing up in today's discordant society, at least they did not face the very real threat of being drafted into military service to fight in a war few understood and even fewer supported. The first time I ever saw a black person in one of my classes was the seventh grade. A young man named Gilbert became my first black acquaintance. (I wrote about that experience in a February 16, 2013, blog post.) After losing touch with him after transferring to Easton two years later, we have reconnected in recent years. In fact, his insights into being one of the first black students to attend a previously all-white school were invaluable. It was a time dominated by bigger-than-life personalities, such as John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. There were a number of cultural interlopers who many today may have forgotten, such as George Wallace and Spiro Agnew. Of course, there was the music that matched the time's sometimes inspirational, sometimes revolutionary, often times reactionary and occasionally raunchy vibes. For those of us in the Class of '70, they were exciting times. However, I have no doubt that the students graduating from high school and college this month - most of them born after the 9/11 attacks - believe this is the most interesting of times. And yet I hope that as they cross that stage to be handed their diploma, they have been instilled with the same values my generation and those before were. I'd like to think those are values of decency, humility, kindness, compassion and a willingness to demonstrate a generosity of the heart. I know that I have not always lived up to those values. But I have tried. As, the students of the Class of 2025 embark upon the next phase of their lives, I hope they recognize it is not about the piece of paper they've just been handed. It's about where they've been and where they're going. It is not about the destination. It is about the journey. That's it for now. Fear the Turtle. (Photo courtesy Talbot County Historical Society)