Author: DJB

Pandora Radio and Ben’s Chili Bowl

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A couple of random topics about unique institutions that you may find of interest… Pandora Radio – My friend and colleague Scott Gerloff introduced me to Pandora Radio, the Internet radio station that allows you to program your own music.  If you’ve never tried Pandora, I recommend you pay it a visit.  No matter your musical taste, you’ll enjoy it…because you get to program it! In a posting today on the Bluegrass Blog, there’s a story about the difficulties Pandora is facing due to royalty issues with the music industry.  Check out the blog, learn more about Pandora, and become a listener.  Let’s hope we can all enjoy it for a long time to come. Ben’s Chili Bowl – There’s a Washington institution celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and the blog at PreservationNation captured the celebration at Ben’s Chili Bowl on historic U Street in a posting today.  The Washington Post also had a terrific article earlier this week that covers the history – and future – of Ben’s.  After coming back from two weeks …

Boswell on China

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Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post is one of the smartest sportswriters on the planet.  (For evidence see Why Is Baseball So Much Better Than Football.)  So I found his column today on the Beijing Olympics (They Made the Buses Run on Time) to be smart, funny, and – I suspect – pretty accurate.  My father often told me, “Don’t believe everything you see on TV.”  Many of you who don’t normally read the sports pages of the Post will find Boswell’s comments of interest. More to come… DJB

Practicing

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Four restful days on the Patuxent River in Southern Maryland brought our summer holiday to a close.  We used this time for unwinding from our western travels, reading, talking as a family – but mostly for being.  The sunset on the river was illustrative of the four wonderful days of weather we experienced…nary a day when the AC was required…but it also struck us as appropriate for an end-of-summer-holiday post. We’ve been fortunate enough to have access to this retreat for nine years, and there are some traditional activities we’ve taken on during that time.  While our visit was shortened this year, we were still able to visit Cone Island at Solomon’s to buy the traditional “Monster” ice cream cones that Andrew and Claire showcase below.  It just wouldn’t be a summer without a Monster! Candice and I were also able to finish some reading over the weekend.  Candice completed an out-of-print book she bought on Amazon entitled Nourishing the Soul:  Discovering the Sacred in Everyday Life and said it was transformative in its insights.  …

Interviews with Dobro Master Jerry Douglas

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My father sent along the news that WPLN public radio in Nashville featured an interview on August 18th with Dobro master Jerry Douglas that some readers will find interesting.  The interview and an on-line web extra are available at WPLN’s web site.   Many of you will recognize Douglas’ name from his work with Alison Kraus + Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas, but those of us who’ve been listening to bluegrass and new acoustic music since the 1970s know that he’s played with just about everyone – from the Country Gentlemen (his first professional gig as a teenager), to J.D. Crowe and the New South (with bandmates Tony Rice and Ricky Skaggs), to Boone Creek, to Nashville session man extraordinaire from the 1980s on.  At least one regular reader of More to Come thinks Jerry Douglas is God.  If you want to see him live, go to YouTube to see this great set from Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Festival featuring Vince Gill and Jerry Douglas. This posting reminds me that I haven’t made my quarterly update on …

IMT Concerts Begin Fall Season

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I have found one of the best acoustic music/folk concert series in the Washington area is hosted on Monday evenings during the school year by the Institute of Musical Traditions.  IMT is headquartered at Takoma Park’s House of Musical Traditions, but the concerts are held at St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church on Old Georgetown Road in Rockville.  Click on the link to find this fall’s schedule.  This is a very friendly venue, where IMT sells homemade cookies and other treats in addition to CDs of the featured artist.  Over the course of several years, I’ve heard some tremendous musicians (including the great guitarist John Jorgenson and west coast bluegrass fiddler Laurie Lewis among many others) and have run into good friends and music lovers like Max and Mary van Balgooy and Tom Dews (a well-respected regional singer-songerwriter in his own right).  For this fall, several acts caught my eye, including the great Irish fiddler Kevin Burke on September 29th and the band Nightingale on October 6th.   I was introduced to the latter by my Staunton friends Jim and Constance Harrington & …

Stadium Memories

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Some people read 1000 Places to Visit Before You Die and think about how many they can check off in a year.  My quest is more modest:  to visit all the major league baseball stadiums in the next ten years.  I’m about 1/3 of the way through my list, but I have to admit that given stadium demolitions, I’ve had to make up my own rules about what counts.  Essentially, I’m just trying to get to at least one stadium  per team. So along that line, I wanted to let you know there’s a great online story – accompanying a magazine feature in Preservation – of Yankee Stadium memories on PreservationNation.org.  If you like baseball stadiums and/or baseball stories, check it out. FYI, this has been a good year in my quest.  So far I’ve visited three new (for me) parks this year:  Oakland (with Anthea and all the folks from the Trust’s Western Office), Coors Field in Denver (with Mountains/Plains Office Director Barb and Dolores), and – of course – the new Nationals Park …

A few “classic” photos

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I mentioned in an earlier post that my daughter Claire took black & white photos during our western trip on my old film camera that she calls “the classic.”  We just had that film processed (since Claire doesn’t have access to the dark room at school during the summer) and I thought I’d post a couple of her shots for all to see.  The shot above was taken in the church yard of the 1760 mission church in Las Trampas, on the High Road to Taos.  Claire said this was her favorite of about 140 shots she took during the trip.  The second photo I’ve posted is from Acoma, where Claire took two full rolls of film.  She loved the mission church at Acoma, so I’ve posted a shot she took of the bell tower early in our tour of the site.  There are so many great opportunities for photos at Acoma — the buildings and landscape are so evocative both individually and together.  In the photo at right, I liked the interplay of the …

Charles Wolfe Inducted into IBMA Hall of Fame

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When I was a young undergraduate student at Middle Tennessee in the late 1970s, there were two English professors who influenced my life in ways that I’m still only understanding.  One was Ralph Hyde, who was serving as editor of the Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin.  Ralph published the first articles of mine in a professional journal or magazine, introduced me to the rich cultural traditions of the mid-South, and gave me my first bottle of moonshine.  I still think all three are significant in shaping my life (although that’s the first and only time I drank moonshine!) The other was Charles Wolfe, who taught English, succeeded Ralph as the editor of the TFS Bulletin, and – most importantly – brought scholarship and love to old time and bluegrass music.  Charles was an avid collector, writer, and recorder of music from the mid-South, and I was lucky enough to be with him on occasions when he was recording or interviewing some of the area’s old-time musicians. Just the other day my father sent me a note saying that Charles – who …

Rafting the Rio Grande

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We awoke early this morning as we were heading out to raft the Rio Grande River south of Taos (see photo at left).  As everyone in town had promised, the rainy, cool evening gave way to a beautiful, sunny, yet cool morning.  Bundled up with fleeces, but in our quick-drying shorts (i.e., bathing suits and gym pants) we shivered our way to the little town of Pilar to meet with our guide from Far Flung Adventures. Claire has a classmate named Pilar, so we began by taking 12 different photographs around the “Pilar Yacht Club” (actually, a little hole in the wall – see photo below) so they could post a Where in the World is Pilar? album for her Facebook page.  Then we met up with Hank, Bill, and Erica – the three Far Flung Adventures guides. After a quick safety lecture, we joined up with Hank – a late 50s river guide, metal artist and all-round outdoors guy who was perfect for the four of us.  With Andrew and Claire in the front, Candice and …