Our year in photos – 2014
A cross-country trip and a visit to see Andrew in Copenhagen were part of our 2014 year in photos.
Author: DJB
They can do this with their eyes closed
Monday evening’s Institute of Musical Traditions concert featured the Scottish folk music institution Battlefield Band playing to an enthusiastic full house. From the first notes from Mike Katz’s Highland pipes to the last notes of the encore, this thoroughly entertaining and professional group took the crowd on a delightful tour of traditional and contemporary Scottish folk music. Battlefield Band has gone through a variety of personnel changes over the 40 years since the group was formed. Besides the bearded multi-instrumentalist Katz, the core of the current band features fiddler Alasdair White (who has been with the band since 2001, when he was 18 years old), and vocalist/guitarist Sean O’Donnell. The band ripped through a strong first half which concluded with a “big set” of tunes featuring the pipes and twin fiddles. Then Katz came out solo to begin the second half, mesmerizing the crowd with the haunting sound of the pipes before being joined by his band mates. Then, as O’Donnell began singing a song about bagpipes, everything went dark. As in, the power went …
Exploring Savannah’s Gem of a Cathedral
A week would generally be enough time to explore large sections of a city the size of Savannah, Georgia. Time to linger among the live oaks and Spanish moss in the historic squares, eat at the growing list of restaurants, visit the museums, and share stories with friends and strangers in the coffee shops and bars scattered throughout the downtown. Plenty of time…unless one has a conference to run. Well, run is actually much too strong a word. While technically responsible for ensuring that last week’s PastForward 2014 – the National Preservation Conference went off without a hitch, there are many staff members who carry a far heavier load as we worked to reach that goal. Much of my oversight actually took place over the past 18 months. Once the week of the conference comes, I just “enjoy the field trip” as Candice – the former elementary school teacher – says at times like these. At the conference, I often have my day structured by others: be here to welcome this group, then go there …
Family, Friends, Food (Or How Candice and I Spent a Wonderful Weekend With Our Daughter)
For the second weekend in a row, we’ve enjoyed time at college with one of the twins and are the richer for the experience. I had appointments that took me to Los Angeles for two days late last week. Candice joined me so that as work wrapped up, we could take the short drive east to Claremont for a visit with Claire and her friends. Claire’s friends are much like her – sharp, inquisitive, interested in others, outgoing, and easy to be around. When we arrived on Friday evening, we stopped by Claire’s senior dorm suite and then headed to The Junction for an evening of small plates, laughter, and conversation with her suite-mates. These three young women all come from the west coast (California and Oregon) and have bonded over swimming, academics, and their shared optimism for life. We have known two of these young ladies for three years now, and have enjoyed getting to know the third over the course of this year. They all seem to be taking in everything the college …
The “Not All Who Wander Are Lost Tour” Lives On!
Regular readers will recall those intrepid travelers – Claire and David – making their way cross-country in August on what I dubbed the “Not All Who Wander Are Lost” tour. For twenty days, father and daughter crossed this great land, all the while keeping readers of More to Come… updated on our travels with daily posts, photos, and stories. It was a once-in-a-lifetime bucket list adventure for both of us. So you can imagine my delight when Claire told us a few weeks ago that she had placed a map of the US on the wall in her dorm room, with the route outlined and photos from the trip displayed along the way. Old school wall posting. Oh my…do I love that daughter of mine! The first thing I did when Candice and I walked into Claire’s dorm room on this late October/early November “she’s not coming home for Thanksgiving so we’re going out to see her” visit, was to go and see THE MAP. And I wasn’t disappointed. Just look at that beauty. Twenty …
Music of Water + Fire
Saturday evening’s WaterFire Providence – an award-winning sculpture installation featuring 100 blazing bonfires floating atop the water of Providence’s rivers – was capped with a terrific Brown University Chorus concert of Water and Fire-theme music. It was the perfect ending to a wonderful fall Saturday of activities during the university’s family weekend. After a late-night Friday dinner at Gracie’s (if you go to Providence you must eat at Gracie’s, and then have breakfast at Ellie’s, the restaurant’s partner bakery), we slept in a bit on Saturday but made it up in time for a fascinating lecture as part of the Family Weekend Forums. Professor of Medicine Richard Besdine spoke on Fit at 50, Sexy at 70, Nimble at 90: The Fundamentals of Healthy Aging to a room full of parents who looked a great deal like us! (He added the “Nimble at 90” part of the title on the fly, and noted that our children’s granddaughters – Andrew and Claire’s granddaughters – would have a life expectancy of 100.) While there wasn’t anything we hadn’t …
Beer and bluegrass
Beer and bluegrass. Betcha never thought of that combination before. Yeah, right. At a festival that took “parking lot picking” to its logical conclusion (i.e., it was held in a parking lot next to the Clarendon Courthouse Metro Station), Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen rode to the rescue when the organizers of the Clarendon Arts & Crafts Beer Festival’s Acoustic Music tent were struggling with a bad sound system and horrible logistics (the sets were almost an hour late in starting). When the Dirty Kitchen band finally began their set in the tent’s lengthening shadows, we were only ten minutes away from the festival’s posted closing hour. Somehow, with six Virginia Craft Brewers and about a dozen local food trucks to choose from, it didn’t seem to matter! The artist who was really shortchanged in the logistical and sound mess was Christie Lenee. This finger-style guitar tapper was new to me, but she has obviously been making waves in the acoustic music world for a while. Her inventive sound reminded me of Michael Hedges, but …
Cheerfulness
Cheerfulness is a choice, a habit, that we turn to each morning and “hang on to as long as possible.”
My 2014 World Series fantasy
I really don’t like the Cardinals!
Nats Forget Basics and Lose a Season
Crash Davis said it best. Baseball is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball… Last evening and early this morning as they faced an elimination game, the Nats forgot how to throw the ball, catch the ball, and hit the ball. And so – no surprise – their season ended. Throw the ball. A simple task. Unless you are Gio Gonzalez and can’t throw a strike with the bases loaded. Unless you are Aaron Barrett, and can’t find your catcher on two consecutive tosses (including an intentional Ball 4). Unless you are Adam LaRoche and you throw home when no one is actually coming home. Catch the ball. Another simple task. Unless you are Gio (there he is again), and you do your best Billy Buckner impersonation and can’t pick up a gift of a double play ball that dribbles through your legs. Unless you are Gio, Anthony Rendon, and Wilson Ramos who converge on a sacrifice bunt – a gift of an out – and …
MORE TO COME... 