This is the introduction to just edited road trip book about to be self published.
Although family and friends may have worried about this old lady taking off on a road trip by herself for two and one half months around the country, I knew there were certain things I would not have to worry about. After all, it was not like I was journeying into a foreign country. First, I could be assured that most of the times the toilets where I stayed would flush. Second, except in rare instances I could count on people speaking some dialect of English that I would most likely be able to understand. Third, the likelihood of terrorist attacks, tsunamis and killer tornadoes was minimal although mosquitoes might possibly be a threat. Last, I could probably count on my abundance of charm and good looks to get me out of tight places. If not, there was always the ploy of acting crazy enough to scare someone off…a pretty easy task for me.
The impetus for this road trip was the closing of my nonprofit, Earth Charter US. Now that I’m in my seventh decade, it was important for me to still feel relevant in the world. I did not want to just dodder into my nineties. Having poured myself for the past 15 years into bringing recognition to the Earth Charter, a global people’s agreement on sixteen principles for social, economic and environmental sustainability, I was feeling pretty tired. There had been some achievements but there was still so much more to do. It seemed to me that it was time for others to step forward to take the lead.
Although I did not fully recognize it at the time, the death of my husband from Alzheimer’s a few months earlier was also a motivation for the trip. I had managed to keep him at home up until four months before he died and that had been a pretty horrific journey. I was exhausted emotionally and physically. I just wanted to get the heck out of Dodge and away from all the reminders of mostly sad and stressful times.
Buried deep in my subconscious was another motivation for the trip. My dad and I were very close and everyone thought I looked like him and took after his side of the family. I was aware of similarities in our personalities as well, especially the traits of impatience on the negative side and joie de vivre on the positive. Dad died at the age of 76 of a massive heart attack and my cardiovascular system seems also to be the area that is most affected by stress. I take better care of my health than Dad and I also try to moderate a tendency towards impatience and anger. But somewhere in the depths of my mind, I wondered if I was standing up to the possibility of a visit from the Grim Reaper at the age of 76 by taking out a new lease on life with this road trip.
Before the idea for this road trip popped into my mind, I had formed a new nonprofit that was lighter in feeling than Earth Charter US although as serious in intent. It’s about my favorite things–food, wine, and inspiring conversations among friends about creative initiatives that can make a difference. In my years of working with Earth Charter, I had been inspired by the knowledge of projects that go beyond just doing good to at least laying a foundation for systemic change. I believed if I could make known these stories about folks successfully engaged in changing things for the better, that they would spark, if not actions, at least enlightened dinner conversations. I named my initiative Operation Bon Appetit because food and drink form a centerpiece of the activities. I hoped that by emphasizing the culinary aspect, I might reach people who do not see themselves as activists but do want things to become better in our society.
Originally I wanted to do a TV broadcast of me cooking while sharing these inspiring stories. I raised funds to pay a professional crew to shoot the video. The production tape was a disaster—I was stilted on camera despite the fact that I had helped with the script. Physically, I looked like a really ugly Cruella Deville—which might seem redundant but in my case it was not. I was so depressed that family members have not even seen the tape. It probably did not help that I had asked a friend to co-host with me and she is a young, lissome redhead, who shines on camera.
After that production flop, I thought about gathering video stories and making them available on our Operation Bon Appetit website. But the ones I personally knew about and wanted to feature just had not been done. It was a while before I saw myself in the role of capturing these stories on my own. However, as time passed I could not see any other way to do it because I had no funds to have them produced. Basically, what it boiled down to was I needed to take a road trip and get these stories done myself.
My over the top optimism at times has not always worked well for me. However, in this case, it was a big help in my thinking that I could pack up my Prius, learn videotaping, line up a fantastic roster of interviews across the United States and raise funds to help with expenses.
I was able to get help with funding my trip, much to my delight and that of my board of directors. I am blessed to have Lorna Taylor, who believes in me and loves the Earth Charter. She is CEO of Premier Eye Care, a very successful national company, and she came through with a monthly donation to my Cultural Innovations Agency (501c3 charitable organization) to help me make the trip happen. Her company’s policies and practices on diversity, employee wellbeing and care for the environment are in alignment with the Earth Charter’s principles for sustainability, which is the ethical framework for my nonprofit. Premier Eye Care was clearly in alignment with our values.
My lack of knowledge of video cameras, lights, microphones and filming was a bit of a sticking point. However, I learned enough about the rudiments, thanks to the mentoring by better-informed friends, to screw up my courage and leave. I never did take the camera off auto-focus, though. That would have been disastrous. It goes without saying that capturing the video stories was definitely a grassroots effort, but the videos are clearly filmed interviews with creative and passionate people successfully accomplishing innovative work.
Lining up folks to interview was really not all that difficult even though I could not promise them even 15 minutes of fame. I think the reason was that people with a passion and deep dedication just want to get their stories out. I had leads from my own national experience with Earth Charter, from friends who knew people like I was looking for, YES! Magazine, and even the New York Times.
As my trip got underway, I reduced my list to only those people who were creating transformational change beyond simply addressing symptoms of our society running amuck. I ended up traveling 13,026 miles and taping 51 interviews that really are not fluff pieces although they are uplifting. They do address systemic change. That means that replication of these projects will effect a deep shift in our cultural values away from hyper-individualism, materialism and short term gain to those based on the respect and care for the community of all life including the planet, itself.
While on the road, I also decided to add a “culinary note” to the interviews given that this road trip was an Operation Bon Appetit initiative. I asked each interviewee what his or her favorite dish was. It turned out that asking this question immediately put people at ease and so I put their response at the beginning of each video interview. In that way, the viewer gets a pretty unguarded look at the speaker before they start talking about their passion and project. On our website, we also include the recipe for the speakers’ dishes on their page in case folks want to try the dish while watching the video. I managed to remember to ask the question about 90 percent of the time
I have three daughters whom I dearly love and who, despite my not always being the mom I would like to have been, love me, too. More than that, although they sometimes joke about my earnestness about changing the world, they respect me and that makes me tear up as I write this.
However, seeing their 76-year-old mother go off on a road trip by herself caused a bit of anxiety. In the end, though, they went along with me despite their concerns and doubts. My oldest Allison is the biggest worrier and she really did not want me to go. Once I made up my mind, however, she joined the cheering section with a lot of advice about keeping a two-by-four board in my backseat to batter someone if I needed to, carrying some mace, and other methods of self-protection that I have since forgotten. I think phone calls along the way kept her fairly assured of my safety.
Andrea remained fairly silent about her concerns. Instead, she made sure I had a GPS and knew how to use it, put Find My Friends app on my iPhone so she could track me, had her husband, Mark, take my car in for pre-trip check and made sure I had packed appropriately. I knew all along the way that Andrea was watching me on the app—I think it was the first thing she checked each morning and the last thing each evening. She also reached out to friends to put me up to make sure I had supportive folks along the way. Andrea gave me the best familial expectation about how long I would last on this road trip: two months. Pretty close.
Amy also keeps her concerns pretty much to herself. I think she is torn sometimes between wanting to see me as an adult who makes her own decisions and the reality of my being my age—and, perhaps, she is also influenced by past events that demonstrated my failings in that department. In her parental mode at a birthday dinner for me at Andrea’s the evening before I left, she assured me, as I imagine she will when her own daughter goes off to college: “Mom, even if you only get to the Florida border, you have really accomplished so much just by planning this trip”. As a lover of containers of all sizes and purposes, she also made sure I would have fresh food on the road by giving me a perfectly sized insulated canvas container for cold drinks and fruit.
I think all three daughters wondered how I would fare up after leaving my condo that I love so much. I feel so at peace here and love being here. They might have also wondered about my staying with folks along the way as I also like being alone in the quiet. They had greater insight than I did at the time. I was surprised by how much I really, really missed being in my own place and there were times I desired just to be alone.
My sons in law also offered their own form of support. Mark reassured me that if at any time during my trip if I wanted to come home, he would fly out to drive my car and I could fly home. John, as is his usual way, hid his concerns behind a joke: “Mom, as soon as you leave, I am sending out a Silver Alert”—which signals there is a demented person on the road. My dearest friend and kindred spirit for over 35 years, Genie, also worried but was not pushy about it. She put a loving note in a tiny jewel case to hang on my car mirror that included the words: “Come home safe.” My sister, Peggy, also jumped in with her advice: “Janet, be sure to keep a handful of pepper in your pocket in case you have to throw it in someone’s face”. I forgot to ask if she meant whole or ground.
I’m sharing my shrimp scampi recipe here as this blog is being published on my birthday weekend and that’s the dish I requested for my celebratory dinner.
[ultimate-recipe id=”7096″ template=”101″]