Author: DJB

For Mom, on what would have been her 78th birthday

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Mother was born on December 9, 1930.  Today would have been her 78th birthday, had cancer not claimed her on New Year’s Day 1998.  For the past ten years there’s seldom a day that passes without something happening that reminds me of her.  She was a remarkable woman with a large circle of friends and an even larger capacity for love and service. After I graduated from college and left home, Mother and I maintained a weekly correspondence for many years.  She was a “newsy” letter writer, with information about the family mixed in with items from town, updates on old friends, tidbits about both our careers, and extensive sports news.  (Mother was my loyal co-spectator for games on television.) Several years after she died, I published a collection of her letters from 1980 – 1997 entitled Rich in Love.  Over the course of those 17 years she wrote about love, death, babies, pets, advice, and family.  Her letters included a four-page typewritten description of our wedding she prepared for family members who couldn’t attend.  She wrote one of …

Farewell to a Great Pitcher

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I just learned that Greg Maddux – perhaps the smartest pitcher ever in Major League Baseball – has decided to retire at age 42.  As a long-time Atlanta Braves fan, I followed his career closely.  Those four Cy Young awards in a row? Amazing.  Those 355 career wins (more than any living player)?  Just as mind numbing in this age of the specialist.  Finishing number 10 on the all-time strikeout list?  Now that’s a stat that really does shock me, because I never think of Maddux as a strikeout pitcher.  But I do think of him as just the smartest guy on the field at all times. ESPN’s web site has a great column on Maddux written by Gene Wojciechowski.  He includes a wonderful story about Maddux’s smarts: In 1996, just before Maddux and the Atlanta Braves faced the New York Yankees in the World Series, pitching coach Leo Mazzone met with his starters and relievers and read them the detailed scouting reports. Maddux raised his hand after Mazzone read the report on Yankees slugger Bernie Williams. “That …

Playing Music

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Playing music with friends over Thanksgiving has pushed me to reorder my schedule to find even more time to play.  And – no surprise here – I’ve loved it.  I’m reacquainting myself with some of the playing of Norman Blake (check out the Nashville Blues video below of Norman and the Rising Fawn String Ensemble) and other musicians I admire. In the delightful book Practicing, author and musician Glenn Kurtz says, For me, sitting down to play has very little to do with discipline.  “It isn’t just education and discipline that makes one so devoted to work…it is simple joy.  It is one’s natural sense of well-being, to which nothing else can compare.”  Love of music brings me to the practice room. I am finding that joy in playing again and it is a wonderful feeling. So I’m off to play a bit now, and then tomorrow evening I’ll be at the Celtic Christmas concert of the Institute of Musical Traditions for some great acoustic guitar by Al Petteway and Robin Bullock.  If you’re in the Washington, …

St. Nicholas Day and a love of childhood

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I awoke early this morning and came downstairs while everyone is still asleep.  It is St. Nicholas Day, and I had to smile at the sight of two rather large teenage shoes — one from each child — sitting expectantly on the landing.  The memories came rushing back. We’re not German and I didn’t grow up celebrating St. Nicholas Day, but Candice loves a good holiday — especially one associated with a saint that could help counterbalance the commercialization of Christmas.  So soon after the twins arrived we decided we’d celebrate St. Nicholas Day and it became a tradition.  The gifts are similar year to year.  Candice always finds the gold coin chocolates.  The gifts are modest.  This year they include something for Claire’s hair and a “Bush countdown calendar” for our progressive teenage son.  With St. Nicholas Day, the twins birthday, and Christmas all coming within a three week period, we have to be prudent on the gift buying front. That’s what I like most about our St. Nicholas Day celebrations:  the simple nature of the children’s …

I Believe Thanksgiving is my New Favorite Holiday

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I’m not sure what has been my favorite holiday, but I think Thanksgiving has now taken over the top rung on the ladder.  I think it may be the fact that big business hasn’t yet figured out a way to commercialize it.  Or perhaps it is the fact that food plays a big role.  I like the focus on the act of being thankful for all we have in a country that’s been abundantly blessed. Then again, maybe it is just that we’ve figured out how to get together with people we really enjoy and have a very relaxing time.  Whatever the reason, it is my new favorite holiday. Candice and I have always enjoyed Thanksgiving.  For many years we traveled over the mountain from Staunton to a wonderful inn, Prospect Hill, for a bountiful Thanksgiving dinner.  It was especially meaningful to us because we honeymooned at Prospect Hill while we were very poor graduate students.  Little did we realize that just a year after our wedding we’d move to Virginia and be an hour away.  With …

Thankful for Beautiful Music

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On Thanksgiving morning, Candice and I visited our neighborhood Episcopal Church in Silver Spring.  We went to give thanks for all we have, but we also went to this particular church because we knew that one of the DC-area’s best hammered dulcimer players – Karen Ashbrook – was providing the music. Over the course of the next hour, Karen played six beautiful tunes.  Of special note was the haunting O Savior Thee – a Scottish Christmas carol – which made for a wonderful time of reflection following the readings and sermon. The small Gothic church was acoustically alive, providing a nice setting for Karen’s music.  It was a wonderful start to our Thanksgiving Day. Check out Karen and her husband Paul Oorts on this video of Irish tunes. More to come… DJB

David Grier at IMT

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All of David Grier’s guitar skills were on display tonight at the Monday evening concert of the Institute of Musical Tradition in Rockville.  Greir opened with a spirited version of Durham’s Bull, an old fiddle tune (and afterwards opined that all fiddle tunes are described as “old”), and then put on a two-hour tour de force of flatpicked guitar and bad jokes. It is a tall order to keep an audience’s interest with two hours of solo flatpicked guitar, but Grier made it look easy.  With equal measures original tunes and flatpicking chestnuts – with the occasional popular tune such as Yesterday thrown in as well – Grier showed why he’s one of the best flatpickers on the planet.  This was an evening of highlights:  the beautiful intro for Red Haired Boy, the original waltz High Atop Princess Cove, and the Stephen Foster tune Angeline the Baker among them.  One of Grier’s best recorded efforts is the Bill Monroe tune Old Ebenezer Scrooge, which he worked as a duet with bassist Todd Phillips on the Grammy award winning True Life …

Slow Blogging

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The Sunday New York Times included a story on “Slow Blogging.”  I had never heard of the term (although I am aware of the slow food movement), but I found myself agreeing with the rejection of immediacy, the thought of blogging as meditation, and the precept that not all things worth reading are written quickly.  This approach is a deliberate smack at the popular group blogs like Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Valleywag and boing-bong, which can crank out as many as 50 items a day.  On those sites, readers flood in and advertisers sign on.  Spin and snark abound.  Earnest descriptions of the first frost of the season are nowhere to be found. In between the slow bloggers and the rapid-fire ones, there is a vast middle, hundreds of thousands of writers who are not trying to attract advertising or buzz but do want to reach like-minded colleagues and friends.  These people have been the bedrock of the genre since its start, yet recently there has been a sea change in their output:  They are increasingly …

Great Acoustic Guitar in Washington

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There are few things in life I like better than the sound of an acoustic guitar.  So I’m looking forward to two upcoming concerts in the Washington, DC area by three terrific players. On Monday night, one of the best guitar flatpickers on the planet will be playing at the Institute of Musical Traditions series at Saint Mark’s Presbyterian Church in Rockville.  David Grier is well-known to flatpicking aficionados and along with a busy session schedule handles the guitar duties in the supergroup Psychograss.  Watch the video below of Grier and Wyatt Rice – younger brother of guitar superstar Tony Rice – and you’ll see why we flatpicker wanna-be’s will be in attendance on Monday, flatpicks clutched in our right hand taking in every lick. For those of you who prefer your acoustic guitar fingerstyle (which I also love), you only have to wait two weeks to December 8th for the IMT concert featuring Al Petteway, Amy White, and Robin Bullock.  Petteway and Bullock both have inventive minds and beautiful tones.  Their holiday-flavored concert, which features the silver-throated White …