(Author’s Note: This recalls a Musing from December, 2020.)

It just so happens that the first day of this new month falls on a Museday, the weekday formerly known as Tuesday. I hope you all remembered to say “Rabbit Rabbit!” when you woke up this morning. If you did, July will be lucky for you. If you didn’t, you might want to stay in bed for the rest of the month. Just sayin’…

In case you don’t happen to practice rabbit-rabbitology, it works like this: upon waking on the first day of a new month, you must immediately say “Rabbit! Rabbit!” If you do, you’ll have good luck throughout the month. However, if you should happen to forget, well, some things are better left unsaid. Despite what Wikipedia thinks, this is not just a silly superstition; it’s a cold, hard fact—just ask all the lucky individuals who hit the lottery after shouting RABBIT RABBIT like a lunatic on the first day of their lucky month.

Some rabbiteers, especially British ones, believe it’s essential to invoke three rabbits upon waking, not just two. I think that’s a bit of overkill but so what? We need all the luck we can get these days. Who knows? Maybe if I remember to say “Rabbit! Rabbit!” on the first day of August, I’ll wake up to find out these last few months were just a bad dream.

Rabbits, especially ones with cute little feet, have always been associated with good luck. Why is that? Why don’t we have key chains featuring curly pig’s tails or furry llama’s ears? I’m surprised that PETA hasn’t done as much to protect rabbits’ feet as it has to safeguard all those feisty minks from the mean furriers who would make them into fashionable fur coats. My wife has one such coat hidden away in a closet, far from the prying eyes of any anyone who might make her life miserable if she wore it to the grocery store on some frosty winter day. She claims it isn’t really hers —“it belonged to my mother!”—so, of course, she’s not culpable.

Back in the day, we used rabbit ears for better reception on our old black-and-white television sets. Was that because their ears were as lucky as their feet? What about their little cottontails? Aren’t they lucky, too? All the rabbits I know have refused to comment on the matter.

Rabbits abound—as they are wont to do—in literature. Peter bedeviled Mr. McGregor in his garden. Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail are beloved by generations of children, as is Margery Williams’ “Velveteen Rabbit.” It was the White Rabbit, running late as usual, who led Alice down to Wonderland, and that same rabbit caused my generation to tune in to Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane. My own two children loved their tactile storybook “Pat the Bunny,” while I, reader of record in our household, preferred Richard Adams’ debut novel, “Watership Down,” a wonderful story about a nest of rabbits seeking to establish a new home after their old warren was destroyed. That book was rejected seven times before Rex Collings, Ltd, a one-man publishing operation in London, saw the light in 1972. The book won several major awards and became a series on Netflix. How’s that for good luck!!

Some people believe luck is self-made. One works hard or practices hard, and, lo-and-behold, one gets lucky. Maybe, but I prefer to thank those two (or three) little rabbits who are working hard to send a monthly dose of good luck to all those of us who believe in them. I think of them akin to Santa’s elves, laboring away up in their North Pole workshop, big ears and all.

Rabbits have always been symbols of fertility. At Easter, one even shows up with a basket full of colored eggs, a mixed metaphor if ever I saw one. Maybe that’s a rabbit’s dirty little secret: a rabbit can even get lucky with a chicken.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His editorials and reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores. His newest novel, “The People Game,” hits the market in February, 2026. His website is musingjamie.net.

 

 

Morning:

I know a place where the view never gets old. The back deck faces almost due east, and at daybreak, the sky glows with promise, especially today because we’re at the summer solstice, the first full day of summer and the longest day of the year. There’s both promise and warning here: the forecast promises sunny and warm (but not too warm!) weather, perfect for a wedding ceremony later in the day. But warning, too: we’ve turned another planetary corner and now, we’re headed back into darkness. It will take months to get there, but this turning is as inevitable as it is worrisome. Time is passing…

But let’s just take today as it comes. Two young people will be taking the plunge, joining their lives and families together in ties that bind, no matter what may come. That is worthy of celebration and more— of hope. God knows we need all the hope we can get these days, and so we’ll witness their vows, then sing and dance ’til the cows come home, and since it’s the summer solstice, I’m sure those cows will be celebrating until the wee hours of another morning. That’s how it should be, isn’t it?

Noon:

 There was a time when I believed I was made of iron, and that the universe was a benevolent place, capable of human manipulation. I stood atop mountains and surveyed my domains like Alexander the Great, or Genghis Khan, or even Louis XIV, the “Sun King.” But now I think I was more like Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s fabled “King of Kings,” whose “frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command” said everything there was to say about mortal hubris, but nothing about the ravages of time. When a traveler from an antique land stumbled upon a crumbling statue in the desert, all that remained of Ozymandias’ was his shattered visage and the haunting inscription on the statue’s pedestal: “Look on my works, ye mighty and despair!” On that day, this once great king of kings was trunkless and decayed, a “colossal wreck,” in an empty landscape “boundless and bare,” where “the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

But I didn’t know any of that at my noon. Then, there was more daylight ahead of me than behind, so I went blithely about my own business, deaf to the barely audible ticking of the clock. It seemed to me there was time enough for everything, and everything seemed possible. If there were thunderstorms on the horizon, I didn’t see them coming my way. I just rowed merrily along on a boundless incoming tide, oblivious to rapids that lay upriver.

Night:

And now it’s getting dark, the sun is setting. The evening light glows warm and lovely, but it also hides the stones that lie beneath the surface and the shadows that lurk along the riverbank. I need to find a place to rest for the night.

A few days ago, I learned that someone I once cared for deeply had died. That was bad enough, but to make matters worse, she had died two years ago, the victim of a cruel and relentless disease. And I never knew she was gone; I didn’t feel her passing in my bones. The whispering universe that had once been my friend forgot to tell me of her struggle and pain. I probably wouldn’t have been able to do anything about that, but I just should have known. I would like to have been able to say goodbye to her, if only to myself.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores. His website is musingjamie.net.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fourth hole at Chester River Golf Club is a par three over water. Depending on the pin placement, from the regular tees, a successful shot—one that lands safely on the green—requires a carry of somewhere between 130 and 155 yards, and on many days, the wind makes the hole play a bit longer. It’s a lovely hole, but don’t be fooled: it can bite.

A few years ago, I was playing with my friend Key. I stepped onto the fourth tee, addressed the ball, and sent it—plunk!—to a watery grave. At that point, I had two options: I could hit my next shot from the drop area which was considerably closer to the green, or drop another ball on the tee on the line of my previous shot. Both options carried a one-stroke penalty. I’ll admit that I was frustrated so maybe that’s why I selected the second (and riskier) option. I dropped another ball on the tee, swung, and the ball flew up and away. It landed on the green, took a hop or two, and rolled straight into the hole. Later that afternoon, when I told my guru Eggman about what had happened, he yawned and said, “just another ho-hum par.”

Of course, he was right; my score on the hole was just a three that day. But there are threes and then there are threes, and this three was the latter. Keeping score matters.

I find myself keeping score a lot lately. Not as often on the Chester River golf course, but rather on the golf course of my life. I look back and see the error of my ways, and I remember the few times I hit it in the hole. I have no doubt I am many strokes over par on that particular golf course, but the memory of unexpected, even miraculous, recoveries help to soften the blow.

If keeping score matters, so does forgiveness. Here’s an example of what I mean by that: I am twelve years old, in seventh grade. Remarkably, I am in a front-row seat in Forbes Field watching my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates play the vaunted New York Yankees in the first game of the 1960 World Series. Mickey Mantle is at bat. I whisper a little prayer, something along the lines of “God, if You let me get a foul ball, I promise I will become a minister.” On the very next pitch—I swear this is true!—Mantle takes a mighty cut, nicks a piece of the ball, and that ball rolls right toward me. I lean over the railing and pick it up: a foul ball—a World Series foul ball off the bat of Mickey Mantle! I am beyond dizzy with excitement, until it hits me: I just made a promise to God. Now what do I do?

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve told this story to two people: my wife and a kind friend. (He and I happened to be on the Chester River golf course at the time.) I’d been thinking a lot about that day so many years ago, and I’m haunted by the memory because I did not fulfill the promise I made to God. But both my wife and my friend said essentially the same thing to me: look at the scorecard of your life. There are many ways to be a minister, and God is probably not too disappointed in you. Late in the game, that thought comforts me.

There are threes and then there are threes. There are ministers and then there are ways to minister.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores.

 

 

 

We were in Annapolis last week to celebrate a family milestone. A year ago, my wife’s son and his beloved headed out to Colorado, ostensibly to attend a couple of concerts. But that’s not all they did: they also got married! It was a genius move: they had the wedding of their dreams without all the attendant family hullabaloo— just two people saying “I do” to each other under a sound track provided by a guitarist from one of their favorite bands and a rushing mountain stream. When we got word of their ceremony, we were surprised and maybe even a little stunned, but that quickly turned to elation because we realized that this was exactly the way Marcus and Lauren wanted to begin the rest of their lives together,

While we were in Annapolis, we stayed with family who live on the Eastport side of Spa Creek. From the deck of their comfortable home, the view never gets old. When the weather is right and I have some time on my hands, I’m perfectly content to sit quietly and enjoy the play of light and the passing parade of boats. Like Peter Sellers’ character Chauncey Gardner in “Being There,” I, too, “like to watch.”

I feel the same way about our front porch in Chestertown: that view never gets old either. But views are only the manifestation of our personal perspectives. From one side of our front porch, my view is of the lovely pocket green space across the street. However, if I switch to the other side of the porch—my wife’s preferred side—my perspective changes. I see Jane’s Church and the Wine & Cheese Shop, two of our town’s most important landmarks. I suppose the best view would be from the middle of the porch, but my usual seat is often slightly left of center. Now remember, I’m only talking about where I like to sit on the porch.

Let’s face it: your point of view is critical. It informs your world. It centers you. It’s either the first step of your next journey, or the last step of your previous journey. Maybe it can even make you feel like the Greek philosopher Archimedes when he discerned the principle of the lever: “Give me a place to stand (or in my case, to sit) and I will move the earth.”

But back to that happy day in Annapolis. I was comfortably ensconced on Emme’s and Poppy’s deck in cool, sunny weather, watching the clouds drift over the spire of St. Mary’s church on the Annapolis side of Spa Creek. It was Memorial Day weekend, so there was an endless parade of boats going up and down the creek, most of them bedecked with flags and bunting, the unmistakable signal of oncoming summer. It was a lovely day in the new month of ‘Maycember,’ that deceptively busy time of year marked by celebrations of all kinds of endings and beginnings. Teachers know another school year is almost over. Seniors are being launched into the world with words of varying degrees of wisdom from all those graduation speakers I warned you about a couple of weeks ago. The world is looking rosier by the day. But I’m neither a Pollyanna, nor oblivious to all that is going on in the world, both at home and abroad. I feel the chaos in my bones. Nevertheless, in that brief moment under scudding clouds and despite the chilly breeze, I felt something akin to hope because the best view was just coming into focus: we were finally going to gather and celebrate the next new branch on our family’s tall tree.

Welcome aboard, Lauren, Andrew, and Daniel!

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores.

 

 

 

 

 

’Tis the season of new beginnings. And so we celebrate the completion of one phase of our lives and the commencement of the next by donning all that academic regalia—our caps, gowns, and hoods—and step off into an unknown future with all the pomp and circumstance we can muster. We’ll joyfully move the tassels on our mortarboards from right to left, the traditional signal that tells all the world we are no longer merely undergraduates, but full-fledged GRADUATES! So, Gaudeamus igitur, everybody; Let us rejoice today, for now that we are armed with all this knowledge, we’re ready to take on this brave, new, crazy world, and make it better once and for all! Really?

I have a friend who used to make it his business to annually compile a list of significant commencement speakers and their words of wisdom. I haven’t heard from him for a while, but maybe he was on to something. Surely someone will say something somewhere that will make it all right again. So I’ve decided to explore the universe of this year’s graduation speakers. Who are they ? What words of wisdom will be spoken? Will they be sane or silly? You decide…

I’ll warn you: it’s a long and certainly incomplete list, but don’t worry; I’ve culled it for you. There are, of course, lots of politicians, because what politician worth his or her salt can pass up a chance to step up to the microphone and pontificate? But there are plenty of others on the guest speakers’ list, too: activists, actors, artists, and athletes; business leaders and bureaucrats, professors and philanthropists, scientists and soldiers. A plethora of illustrious alums. Even a Muppet! Ready? Let’s go!

Want to be entertained? Sandra Oh is speaking at Dartmouth while Henry Winkler—the Fonz!—is at Georgetown.  LeVar Burton—aka Kunta Kinte—is the speaker at Howard University and Steve Carrell is on the podium at Northwestern. Snoop Dogg will do his thing at USC. Usher is at Emory University in Atlanta, and Elizabeth Banks (“The Hunger Games”) is at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. And down in Nashville, Gary Sinise, Forrest Gump’s Lieutenant Dan, will be at Vanderbilt

Jerome Powell will deliver Princeton’s commencement speech. Wonder what’s on his mind? Kristi Noem will be keeping the homeland secure at Dakota State. And Donald Trump is on the list—twice: once at West Point and again at the University of Alabama. Hold on to your mortarboards!

Cue the fanfare: Katie Ledecky and her fourteen Olympic medals will be on display at Stanford. Another Olympian, Mia Hamm, is the speaker at the University of North Carolina. Simone Biles will be the speaker at Washington University in St. Louis. Ten!

Derek Jeter is on the dais at the University of Michigan and Orel Hershiser is on the mound at Bowling Green.

The Media is everywhere this spring: Scott Pelley will speak exactly for 60 Minutes at Wake Forest. Jonathan Karl is right here in Chestertown at Washington College. Al Roker is watching the weather at Siena College, and Steve Kornacki will be wearing khakis under his robe at Marist College.

Pope Leo XIV won’t be speaking at Villanova or anywhere else this year, but I wish he were. He’s seems both willing and able to speak truth to power.

My favorite? Kermit the Frog, croaking at the University of Maryland. You heard me: Kermit is coming to College Park! Will Maryland change its colors to green? Will Miss Piggy be in the audience?

So that’s the lineup, or at least some of it. As for any words of wisdom, truth, like beauty, will be in the eyes and ears of the beholders. Let’s just hope there is some humor, creativity, grace, and a sense of hope in the messages delivered. Especially hope; we need hope.

I’ll be right back.

 

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores.

My memory is increasingly suspect these days, but this really happened. At least, I think it did…

It was the summer of 1966, the months between my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college. I was heading north, part of a group of young volunteers organized by what was known at the time as The Grenfell Mission (it’s now called the Quebec-Labrador Foundation) that provided community-based support for conservation and the cultural heritage of the coasts of northern Quebec and Labrador. There were about a dozen of us who would spend the next several weeks working and living in various isolated fishing villages along the St. Lawrence River in northern Quebec. To get there, we flew commercially to Montreal, then boarded a small DC-7 that took us on to Quebec City at which point, we embarked on a packet steamer that over the course of the next three days dropped us off, one-by-one, in our assigned villages. I was the last boy to disembark. My new home would be with the Nadeau family who lived out on the quay near the village of St. Paul’s River, the last stop before the Labrador border; Newfoundland lay just off the coast.

The Nadeau family had eleven children, the eldest only a couple of years younger than I. (I would turn 18 at the end of that summer.) My “job” was to work with the young children in the village, teaching them how to swim, an essential life skill since all the boys would grow up to be fishermen, and all the girls would grow up to marry fishermen. I suppose there were other skills to impart, but in reality, I was basically a camp counselor, a tall and gangly pied-piper to the village kids who had been released from the town’s one-room schoolhouse for the few short weeks of a northern summer. Of course, what I didn’t realize at the time was that I was the one who was doing all the learning—about a different culture, a different way of life, an entirely different world. It was, to say the least, my first experience in becoming a small part of a world that was so much larger than anything I had ever known or even imagined.

Bob Bryan, the chaplain at the high school I had attended, ran the program. He was an Anglican priest and his summer parish was the Quebec-Labrador coast. To tend to his flock, he flew his own sea plane up and down the coast, baptizing babies, marrying couples, burying the dead. He was a revered figure in those parts and I wanted to be just like him someday.

On this particular day, I was with the village kids in town when we heard Bob’s plane overhead. He circled the village a couple of times, then waggled his wings, a sure sign he had something for us. I remember looking up and seeing his grinning face looking out from the pilot’s little window, just before he dropped a package that tumbled down to us. The kids rushed to open the package. Inside were two pair of boxing gloves.

Bob’s plane continued to circle above us. Immediately, the kids formed a ring and the boxing gloves were distributed. I got the first pair and an enormous teenage boy got the other pair. What happened next was…well, I don’t really remember what happened next, but it must have been the shortest match in the history of boxing. I was like one of those cartoon characters who wakes up to see little birdies swirling around his head. I think I remember seeing Bob, leaning out the window of the plane waving and laughing before he flew away.

There is no real point to this story; it’s just a memory, but, like other good memories, it recalls another time, another place, and another me. As my brother-in-law David liked to say, “It’s all good.”

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores.