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The job of God is already taken

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In a year of turmoil and challenge, it is important to remember that no one has it all figured out. As we continue to look to the promise of what America is about and work to make it a land for everyone, here—in a Saturday grab bag—are thoughts from writers and songs from musicians to help us move forward.

GUIDING US THROUGH A WORLD WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND

My friend and mentor Frank Wade likes to remind us that the job of God is already taken. That’s always important to remember, but especially in times like these. Frank, an Episcopal priest, sent around a sermon for Palm Sunday to his many friends and he added this coda:

“With the tragic events of Holy Week and the similarly tragic events in the news, it is important to remember that our faith does not explain the world. It guides us through a world we cannot understand.”

Anne Lamott, writing in her Hallelujah Anyway! Substack, notes that a friend told her once “that when he thinks he is in charge of all of life, he remembers little kids sitting in car seats with steering wheels, thinking they are making the car turn left, or right.” She also is fond of reminding people who are working to keep the faith in democracy and love in these times, to remember Wendell Berry’s line about being joyful although you have considered all the evidence.

Good advice.

CURIOSITY AND A BEGINNER’S MIND

Our daughter, in her wonderfully named Substack The Clairevoyant Report, posted a terrific April Fools Day post on The Wisdom of Naïveté. Claire begins by noting that in our culture, we tend to look down upon naïveté, considering this quality the sign of someone immature, unintelligent, unrealistic, or simply less “evolved.”

“But what do we miss out on when we insist that we must have everything figured out before we even embark? Curiosity and a beginner’s mind allow us to explore new possibilities, consider divergent paths, and perceive what lies ahead with fresh eyes. Embracing the ‘not knowing’ can lead us in directions beyond our prior imagination.”

Claire is using naïveté as a positive force, and I agree with her perspective. Later in the post, she asks her readers to consider “where in my life am I getting in my own way by believing I already know how things will go?”

The writer Rebecca Solnit has one example that responds to Claire’s question.

In her book Call Them by Their True Names:  American Crises (and Essays), Solnit includes an essay—Naive Cynicism—that flips the idea of cynicism and naïveté on its head.

“Naïve cynics shoot down possibilities, including the possibility of exploring the full complexity of any situation. They take aim at the less cynical, so that cynicism becomes a defensive posture and an avoidance of dissent. They recruit through brutality. If you set purity and perfection as your goals, you have an almost foolproof system according to which everything will necessarily fall short. . . . Cynics are often disappointed idealists and upholders of unrealistic standards.  They are uncomfortable with victories, because victories are almost always temporary, incomplete, and compromised.”

Claire is a thoughtful writer. I encourage you to read her post . . . and to subscribe!

ACTIVISM AS THE ANTIDOTE TO FEAR

On “No Kings” Saturday, A. D. Blair reminded us in Why We Fight that “politics doesn’t stop in an authoritarian system and we cannot give up the struggle.” The most direct and reliable consequence of cynicism isn’t wisdom, it’s passivity.

As my Congressman, Jamie Raskin, reminds us, “Activism is the antidote to fear.”

THIS LAND IS OUR LAND

This is as good a day as any to return to celebrate the Woody Guthrie 1940 classic This Land is Your Land. Many of us believe, for a variety of reasons, that it should be the national anthem. No less an authority than Bruce Springsteen has said, it is “one of the most beautiful songs ever written about America.”

North Dakota Sunflowers

Guthrie wrote This Land is Your Land during the Great Depression in response to Irving Berlin’s God Bless America. There’s a wonderful book by John Shaw entitled This Land That I Love: Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and the Story of Two American Anthems. As Shaw describes it, Guthrie was hitchhiking his way to New York City when he became upset over hearing the Kate Smith version of Berlin’s song over and over again during the trip. Guthrie sat down and wrote a song in anger, but his revisions over time turned it into one of the most shared and beloved songs in our nation’s history. I’ll begin with the unvarnished recording from Woody, with the bonus of a picture of him playing his famous “This machine kills fascists” guitar. (Note: The song ends about the 2:40 mark in the video)

I also have a couple of other great takes on the song. Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings play a wonderfully up-tempo soul version that goes all the way with the inclusion of the verses usually left out. Jones commands the stage and I could listen to this celebration of America over and over again.

As I’ve written before, one of the most moving versions—with an emotion that cuts to the heart of what Woody was saying—is the one by Bruce Springsteen, which he began adding to his live shows in 1980. In this deeply felt and chilling version from a 1985 concert at LA’s Memorial Coliseum, Springsteen notes in his intro that, “What’s so great about (the song) is that it gets right to the heart of the promise of what our country was suppose to be about.” He adds that he sings it with the reminder that “with countries, just like with people, it’s easy to let the best of yourself slip away.”

WHO MATTERS

The history of this country, writes Rebecca Solnit in Visions of Life / Agents of Death: On Love Thy Neighbor and Love Thy Nature is, at its best . . .

” . . . a broadening and deepening of who matters, with the end of slavery, the beginning of rights for women, movements for racial justice and disability and LGBTQ rights, the very recent public recognition of the profound wrongness of the genocide and dispossession of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.”

Her newest book looks at all that we’ve achieved in these areas. The current administration supported by the Republican Party “is all about trying to run the process backward to make women and BIPOC people less equal again, to erase the ‘certain inalienable rights’ that undocumented immigrants and refugees share with the rest of us, to make gender back into airtight boxes, to reinstate the inequality behind colonialism.”

To see the implications of this attempt to turn back the clock, read Alan Elrod’s Abuser Politics: Christian Male Supremacists Want Women to Shut Up in Liberal Currents. “The desire for quiet women—really for silent women—in every public forum is neither about adherence to Biblical truth nor the revelation of natural law.”

Solnit and Elrod’s perspectives fit in well with Celeste Davis and her writing in the Substack newsletter Matriarchal Blessing about the one word that is seldom used to explain why so many men are in the Epstein files. We talk endlessly about the factors that make rape easier, but never about the factors that cause rape in the first place. It isn’t wealth, elite networks, institutional failure, or blackmail.

It is patriarchy.

And yes, I know that as a straight, white, male in America today, I have received privileges that gave me a certain confidence as I navigated life. A confidence that was often undeserved and unearned. But beginning with the guidance of two broad-minded and inclusive parents, I have been working hard to ensure that my world view includes, as Davis puts it, an unshakable understanding of women as living human beings who have just as much to contribute to the world as men. I work to ensure that my sense of worth has absolutely nothing to do with domination.

To return to Davis and her post on the Epstein files:

“. . . if we keep only talking about all the things that make rape easier (money, power, elite networks, anonymity) and never talk about the things that actually cause the desire to rape in the first place (entitlement, domination, patriarchy), then we will continue on our insane, unending weed whacking quest without ever pulling up the root.”

WE CAN DO HARD THINGS

The posts about the attempted silencing of women reminded me of an amazing occurrence I witnessed in Madagascar on March 8th during International Women’s Day. As I wrote a few weeks ago, we arrived in the city of Hellville (Andoany) amidst a huge celebration of International Women’s Day, referred to as “Valo Mars” in Madagascar.

Women’s groups came to Hellville from throughout the region to march in the local parade. Focused on honoring women’s strength, heritage, and contribution to society, it is a significant day for recognizing local women’s roles in development, culture, and craftsmanship. The parade of women dressed to represent their local communities or organizations was an amazing sight that stretched for more than a mile throughout the main section of the city.

In 2022, poet and songwriter Carrie Newcomer sang the song You Can Do This Hard Thing live at an annual International Women’s Day Performance, and it includes a wonderful introduction. It seems an appropriate coda to what all these writers and musicians are telling us in these times.

More to come . . .

DJB

Rainbow by Cindy Lever from Pixabay. Photo of lightening strikes by Marc Renken on Unsplash. Monarch butterfly (the only monarch we want) and images across America by DJB. Grand Canyon by Claire Brown. Madagascar parade by DJB.

Journeys

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Travel that changed my perspective, expanded my horizons, and . . . in the process . . . shaped my life.

Journeys are literal and figurative, temporal and spiritual. Interior journeys can take place without leaving home. Obviously not all life-changing travel has to be to distant lands. Recently, however, I have been thinking of past journeys in my life where I have moved physically as well as emotionally and intellectually. I’ve wanted to reflect on what I gained from seeing more of the world and what we have to lose as travel becomes more difficult in this time of self-inflicted geopolitical suicide.

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware.”

Martin Buber

I was in college before I took my first airplane ride. It was another fifteen years after that before I traveled outside the U.S. Growing up in a large, middle-class family in the 1950s and 1960s, we didn’t just jump on an airplane when we felt the urge. Nonetheless, I caught the travel bug early.

Pico Iyer has touched on the subject of why we travel in a way that reflects my experience.

“We don’t travel,” Iyer wrote, “in order to move around—you’re traveling in order to be moved.  And really what you’re seeing is not just the Grand Canyon or the Great Wall but some moods or intimations or places inside yourself that you never ordinarily see when you’re sleepwalking through your daily life . . . there’s this great undiscovered terrain that Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Merton and Emily Dickinson fearlessly investigated, and I want to follow in their footsteps.”

As Sarah Wilkie has noted, those of us with the means and inclination to travel are rewarded with amazing opportunities to learn about different cultures, different landscapes, different environments. We also learn about how similar we are to others around the world. Travel—which is truly a privilege—helps us learn to celebrate our diversity and rejoice in our similarities.

What follows are short takes on fifteen journeys that changed my life.

Springfield and Chicago 1963

The first family vacation I remember was a trip to Illinois in 1963. Two places shaped me forever: Wrigley Field, where I saw my first major league baseball game and became a fan for life; and Abraham Lincoln’s Home in Springfield, a place of autobiography. It was something from this place that gave Lincoln the strength and character to lead a nation.

Out of the ordinary can come extraordinary people.

Philadelphia 1976

Photo of Jimmy Carter campaigning in Philadelphia. I’m captured in this photograph, just to the left of the hat being waved in the front of the crowd.

A few weeks before the first national post-Watergate election I traveled to Philadelphia on my first airplane flight to attend my first National Trust Annual Preservation Conference—beginning a string of 41 over my career. Being in the rooms where the founders debated concepts such as the self-evident truths of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness made history come alive. The relevance of past, place, and present also exploded in my face when I wedged my way into the tens of thousands who filled four streets that came together at an intersection where Jimmy Carter was scheduled for a massive downtown rally. Here I was, participating in the political process in the city where the concept of a government, deriving powers from the consent of the governed, had its most powerful realization.

In casting my first vote for president, I would soon be a part of what Abraham Lincoln famously said was the ongoing fight to see if a nation dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal” can long endure. That fight continues.

Charlottesville 1982

At Prospect Hill in 1982
Honeymoon at Prospect Hill

As a graduate student in Atlanta in 1982, I found time during spring break to marry Candice and take a honeymoon trip to Prospect Hill—a 1732 farmhouse bed & breakfast outside Charlottesville that has since gone upscale. A year later we moved to Staunton, just over the mountain, where we grew together as a couple, welcomed our children, and gathered lifetime friends and memories from our 15 years there.

Journeys are often about finding either something we’ve lost or discovery of something we’ve never seen before. And when we’re lucky, a journey with a lifetime partner is one of extraordinary discovery. I’ve been very, very lucky.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

Marcel Proust

Richmond 1993

My favorite baby picture

On a bright, clear, and wintery Sunday morning—December 20, 1992—two infants, each barely over 5 pounds in size, entered and forever changed our world. Of course, we didn’t know it at the time, because we wouldn’t learn of Andrew and Claire’s birth from the adoption agency until the next morning. 

The journey I’m focused on here took place on January 14, 1993. We drove to Richmond in the morning, met them and their foster mom at the adoption agency, and then put them in their car seats and into our hearts forever. When we returned to Staunton they received a royal welcome from friends and family who decorated the house with balloons, left strollers and diapers on the front porch, and brought food over by the boat load. It was a good thing, because we were outnumbered. Twin infants and two adults . . . thank God the reinforcements arrived soon!

Through the years the milestones have been chronicled on More to Come. To watch them grow into the wonderful adults they’ve become has been the joy of our lives. We remember each phase of that growth, knowing that it wasn’t always easy (for them or for us), but secure in the knowledge that they were surrounded by love.

Whenever the passage of time comes up, I usually relay this story from 2014 of a mom with a set of boy-girl twins in front of me in the drug store line, with the children in their two-seater stroller. The kids were beautiful, and they were having the most wonderful conversation about shoes. The mom was so patient and kind. It was a joy to simply stand there and watch the love.

After passing along their prescription, the mom gathered her things to leave. I asked about the twins’ age. She replied that they were two-and-a-half. I smiled, and said I had 21-year-old boy-girl twins, and this brought back lots of memories. The mom asked if I had any advice. I replied simply, “Savor every moment.”

Northern Ireland 1998

One of my first real overseas trips was to Northern Ireland in December of 1998, just eight months after the Good Friday Peace Accords were signed. Belfast was just stepping away from The Troubles. Boarder crossings were no longer gated and controlled by armed soldiers. The constantly changing coastal landscapes of County Antrim and the Giants Causeway captivated and moved the soul.

In the cold of the coming winter I also discovered that Irish whiskey is great for warming chilled bones.

The Nobel Peace Prizes were awarded for the Good Friday Accords on our last day in the country. When I returned last fall I found a small remembrance at City Hall in Belfast of the transformative and life-changing work of President Bill Clinton and Senator George Mitchell in helping bring about those agreements. U.S. involvement meant something positive in the world. Today, more than ever, we need to hear and reflect upon these stories of American courage and leadership in difficult times.

Cuba 2001

I was on a small private plane with five other National Trust and ICOMOS representatives traveling to Cuba just two months after 9/11. We were meeting with the mayor of Havana and other representatives to discuss heritage conservation efforts. I’ll never forget the wealth—and the deterioration—of the historic architecture, the “time stands still” look from the 1950s, the eagerness of the government officials to show us small pockets of extraordinary preservation efforts, and the friendliness of the Cuban people.

History is always layered, much more complicated than the stories we often hear, and always under construction. Self-serving political slogans from all sides do little to make life better for a country’s citizens.

Ukraine 2006

Virtually every week since Russia illegally invaded Ukraine in 2022 I have thought back to my visit in 2006. In the words of Chris Hedges, Putin’s war in Ukraine is a “mythic” war, where those involved seek to imbue events with meanings they do not have. Of all the wonders of Ukraine I saw on that trip—Odessa, Yalta, and more—it was when we left the coastal resort cities and visited a small, rural village that the people of the country became much more than just workers in the hospitality and tourism industry.

One memory—that of a villager gathering reeds in the waterways near his home to use on his thatched roof—is what remains most vivid in my mind as I think of how the courageous Ukrainian people continue to defend democracy, even as our support ebbs and flows.

India 2007

This is the first view one has when visiting the Taj Mahal

In December of 2007, I traveled to India to participate in the establishment of the International National Trusts Organisation (INTO). It was an extraordinary trip which included an opportunity to see heritage conservation work in practice in South Asia; share the stage with the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh; visit Gandhi’s grave; and spend days touring world renowned sites such as the Taj Mahal.

I was reminded again and again of the longevity of history in India, where cultural worldviews have evolved over thousands of years, and how their perspective differs from the often truncated story we tell of our country.

Four Corners 2008

In the summer of 2008 our family took a two-week car tour of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. We marveled at the expansive western landscape; spent a magical day at the spiritual home of the Acoma pueblo; saw wonderful sights, not the least of which was a meteor shower over the Grand Canyon; and took our turn standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona.

Both Candice and I had taken fondly remembered western trips with our families when we were young. We were reminded that you can use your own memories in positive ways to build new, unique ones for your children. 

Normandy 2013

If you don’t cry at Normandy, you may not have a soul.

Utah Beach. Omaha Beach. Row after row of headstones—crosses and the Star of David—most with the names of men and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice. Others honoring those whose names are known only to God. Our 90-year-old next-door neighbor at the time told us he’d never been to Normandy but he had flown “over it on D-Day, trying to take out a German gun placement.” We were able to show August the photos of the beaches and, yes, the craters that remain from the bombs that fell on that day.

Ordinary men and women doing extraordinary things. Heroes all. And some live next door.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost Tour 2014

Largest Ball of Twine

In the summer before Claire’s senior year in college, the two of us drove 4,590 miles and passed through 13 states to get from Washington, DC, to Claremont, CA. We called it our Not All Who Wander Are Lost tour. Yes, we took the northern route to go to Southern California. Over the course of the 19 days I wrote about the plains, mountains, valleys, coast lines, Great Lakes . . . you name it. To look at our country’s landscape day after day, as it changes going east to west and then north to south, is a life-enriching experience. Every mountain range we crossed was unique and breathtaking in its own way. Our rivers and lakes can be both powerful and peaceful. Unfortunately we have destroyed much of what is wonderful and beautiful about our country through greed and horrible development decisions.

I’m thankful I had a chance to see both the good and the bad with my extraordinary daughter. Let’s hope her generation and those that follow have enough time and political will to reset our destructive environmental policies, especially after this current period of backlash and rule by oligarchs.

“We are living through a revolt against the future. The future will prevail.”

Anand Giridharadas

Rome 2016

Pantheon ceiling and light
The Pantheon ceiling and light

I was so very fortunate to have six weeks at the American Academy in Rome as part of a sabbatical. It provided the opportunity to immerse myself in the life, architecture, food, people, and culture of an international city for weeks at a time. My former colleague Tom Mayes, a fellow of the Academy, has written that, “Old places are beautiful,” fully recognizing that beauty is not a simple topic. Nonetheless this one sentence captures key elements for me, while also describing my time in Rome:

As I read and talk to people about beauty, a few words and phrases capture the experiences I’ve had—and that I believe other people also have—at beautiful old places: delight, exhilarating surprise, speechlessness, the language of timeless reality, echo of an ideal, sudden unexpected harmony of the body, mind and world.

Japan 2019

Todai-ji Temple in Nara
Todai-ji Temple in Nara, Japan, a World Heritage Site

Six weeks after my retirement I joined a two-week exploration of Japan. The World Heritage sites were powerful and moving, especially as one found places away from the crowds to privately indulge in the architecture, gardens, and spiritual meaning of the spaces. More modern sites, such as Hiroshima and I.M. Pei’s Miho Museum, were also important touchstones for understanding parts of history and life in today’s Japan.

Once again it was at the more out-of-the-way places where I found the time and space to connect more deeply with the culture of our host nation. The small traditional village of Uchiko on Shikoku Island featured an exquisite, full-scale kabuki theatre, one of my favorite buildings from the entire tour. Similarly, Toko-ji in Hagi, a medieval center of Japan, was a large site where you could lose yourself among the hundreds of moss-covered stone lanterns guarding the graves of five Mori lords.

As was true often throughout this trip, the effect at Toko-ji was sublime.

Mekong River Cruise 2022

It was a thing of beauty.

Standing on the bank of the Siem Reap River near the Terrace of the Leper King in Angkor Thom, Cambodia, the young man cast his fishing net much as his ancestors had done over the centuries. My camera froze that moment from our two week visit to Vietnam and Cambodia in October of 2022, but it was the timelessness I wanted to capture.

The practice of heritage conservation works within a world touched by the passage of hours, days, years, decades, and centuries. Landmarks, you see, are not created by architects and builders alone. What really makes a site a landmark is the place it holds in a community’s memory. Memories are created over time. Memories are poets, not historians. Memories can be deeply spiritual.

My memories from one of the most extraordinary journeys I’ve been privileged to make will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Next year Candice and I are revisiting this land to once again explore the rich history and vibrant culture of tropical Indochina as National Trust Tours takes us to Vietnam & Cambodia—Cruising the Mekong River. If you care to join us, I promise it will touch you in deep and meaningful ways.

Paris 2022/2025

Finally, our family first visited Paris in 2022 as a celebration of our 40th wedding anniversary, and we returned in 2025 for an even longer stay in France to celebrate my 70th birthday. Maybe the best way to express why we return and return (and plan to return again) is simply to call upon the incomparable Tatiana Eva-Marie for one explanation.

“If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.”

Carl Jung

Travel, by placing us in an environment that is different from what we experience in our daily lives, puts us in the frame of mind to live in ways that bring wonder, joy, and empathy. Our journeys are more meaningful when we keep some room in our hearts for the unimaginable. Travel allows us time to dawdle and dream, and perhaps even to be bewildered!

I have found that when you travel it pays to leave enough empty space to feel and experience life. Those gaps are where the magic begins. And when you think of the places you’ve been, as I do here, don’t be too hard on yourself if a few of the facts slip. Just get the poetry right.

More to come . . .

DJB

Lincoln homeplace photo by Yinan Chen from Pixabay. Photo of Northern Ireland’s Dunluce castle by Claire Brown from a 2009 youth group pilgrimage. Havana photo from Unsplash. Goulding’s View at Monument Valley by Claire Brown. DJB at the World’s Largest Ball of Twine by Claire Brown. Bridge in Paris by Leonard Cotte on Unsplash. Sunrise over Angkor Wat photo at the top of the post and all other pictures not credited are by DJB

Observations from . . . March 2026

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A summary of the March posts from the MORE TO COME newsletter.

(NOTE: If you are reading this post via email, click on the title to see the online version, so you can read the entire poem included here.)

March is my favorite month.

This is the time of year that begins my annual trip around the sun. Birthday celebrations and best wishes from family and friends spark many happy memories. But they also bring to mind special remembrances of Mom and Dad. That’s where all the love began.

Then I’ve always appreciated the fact that our anniversary arrives on or around the spring equinox. Light overtakes darkness, new possibilities abound, the cherry blossoms explode, and after a period of wintering all seems bright and exuberant. That seems appropriate for the celebration of a marriage, whether in its first year or its 44th.

Finally, baseball season begins in March. Bart Giamatti—PhD professor in comparative literature, president of Yale University, commissioner of baseball, and a lifelong fan of the Boston Red Sox until his untimely death in 1989—once wrote about how baseball is designed to break your heart . . . but only after two glorious opening acts.

“The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.”

There are those who learn after a few times and leave baseball and sports behind, Giamatti writes. They have the wisdom to know that nothing lasts.

“I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles.  I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.”

In the chaos that is our national political life, what helps us see those things that last forever might as well be love, hope, joy, and living in the moment. That’s the promise of March to me.

Let’s jump in and see what caught my eye this month in MORE TO COME.

READER FAVORITES

The first part of the month was spent on the other side of the world as we traveled with National Trust Tours to the Seychelles and Madagascar. The longer visual travelogue of our journey—Passage from the Seychelles to Madagascar—was the top reader favorite this month. There you will discover lemurs, giant tortoises, chameleons, waterfalls, an amazing International Women’s Day parade in Hellville, Madagascar, and much more.

Those of us with the means and inclination to travel are rewarded with amazing opportunities to learn about different cultures, different landscapes, different environments. We also learn about how similar we are to others around the world. Travel—which is truly a privilege—helps us learn to celebrate our diversity and rejoice in our similarities.

Next year Candice and I are revisiting a land that will be included in any list of the most memorable journeys of my life. We’ll explore the rich history and vibrant culture of tropical Indochina as National Trust Tours takes us to Vietnam & Cambodia—Cruising the Mekong River. I promise it will touch you in deep and meaningful ways. Come travel with us!

A FINE WAY TO CELEBRATE

A giant tortoise can live to be 200, so this one that we saw in the Seychelles probably has a few years on me. Nonetheless, I began another trip around the sun myself this month. A fine way to celebrate a special day has a bit of an animal theme to it, as I quote the Billy Collins poem Once in a Dog’s Age.

Every creature moves along

the treadmill of time at its own pace,

most insects hurrying along,

while the tortoise lumbers under its armor.

WE’RE TALKING BASEBALL

Did I mention that baseball season has begun?

My exuberance bubbled over in March as I posted three columns focused on this timeless game.

  • Playing for joy came at the end of a thrilling World Baseball Classic. Most of the teams involved, but not all, reminded us of what it means to play for joy.
  • Take me out to the ballgame looks at some of the best of the songs about baseball. Who knew that Bob Dylan wrote a song about Catfish Hunter?!

BOOKS AND MORE

Baseball books I’ve read through the years

I also read the following this past month:

  • The dandelion principle is my take on the fascinating Why Fish Don’t Exist, which is part biography, part memoir, and part scientific thriller. I paired it with a few photos from our trip as a visual teaser.
  • Celebration of interdependence is my review of the wonderful Clint Smith book of poems Above Ground. It is also my fourth installment in the series on independent bookshops in the DC region.
  • There is a war on history that has about as much to do with history as the “occupation” of Washington or Minneapolis has to do with crime. A new book of essays written by one of our country’s most distinguished historians arrives into this moment like a bracing breath of fresh air. I review Eric Foner’s newest work in Illuminating the past in light of the present.
  • The narrative of America considers Walter Isaacson’s short book on the second sentence in the Declaration of Independence (“We hold these truths . . .”).

You can discover the books reviewed last month in From the bookshelf: February 2026 along with this month’s summary in From the bookshelf: March 2026. Finally, you’ll find links to stories from a few writers who have important things to say in A Saturday grab bag: The Ides of March edition.

COMMENTS I LOVED

Nats Rainbow
Nothing says hope and joy better than a rainbow at a baseball stadium

In response to my baseball-themed post Playing for joy, Brilliant Reader and baseball fan Robyn Ryle commented on Joe Posnanski’s column about the soullessness of the American men’s baseball team during the World Baseball Classic.

“This was amazing! Thanks for calling it to my attention. He summarized everything I felt watching Team U.S.A. but had not yet wrapped words around. They were joyless! Which is exactly one of the things that happens in the slide into authoritarianism, because joy is subversive. And, yes, when Harper hit that home run and saluted for the camera, I was grossed out, not impressed. It was all just very yuck.”

Oh, and Robyn is the author of the novel Sex of the Midwest, which you should absolutely read.

DON’T POSTPONE JOY

Thanks, as always, for reading. Your friendship, support and feedback mean more than I can ever express.

As you travel life’s highways be open to love; thirst for wonder; undertake some mindful, transformative walking every day. Recognize the incredible privilege that most of us have and think about how to put that privilege to use for good. Women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants, public servants, and others can feel especially vulnerable . . . because they are. Work hard for justice and democracy as the fight never ends.

But also keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable. Take time to dawdle and dream. Let yourself be bewildered!

Leave enough empty space to feel and experience life. Those gaps are where the magic begins. When times get rough, let your memories wander back to some wonderful place with remembrances of family and friends. But don’t be too hard on yourself if a few of the facts slip. Just get the poetry right.

Be comfortable in the mystery. Seek the uplifting spirit that leads to a life of grace and wonder.

Grace to help us remember that we can do hard things. “Grace to never sell yourself short; Grace to risk something big for something good; and Grace to remember the world is now too dangerous for anything but the truth and too small for anything but love . . .”

Wonder to help us remember that “we are here to keep watch, not to keep.” Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. And bash into some joy along the way.

Life is finite . . . love is not.

Try to be nice. Always be kind.

More to come . . .

DJB

For the February 2026 summary, click here.

You can subscribe to MORE TO COME by going to the small “Follow” box that is on the right-hand column of the site (on the desktop version) or at the bottom right on your mobile device. It is great to hear from readers, and if you like them feel free to share these posts on your own social media platforms.

From the bookshelf: March 2026

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Five books. Every month. A variety of topics from different genres. Here is the list from March 2026.

Our Fragile Freedoms: Essays (2025) by Eric Foner makes it clear in a little under 60 essays that while there is no single “correct” way to study history, we must engage seriously with the past if we are to unlock and confront some of the most difficult challenges we face today. Foner looks at history through the lens of his own groundbreaking work around the Civil War and Reconstruction as well as from the perspective of a wide range of professional historians working in the field. The latter comes primarily from book reviews that provide the reader with context and new insights. Foner views the horrors of slavery and the violent return to white rule that came at the end of Reconstruction with his eyes wide open. Many of the essays and reviews seek to move us past the “consensus” of the Jim Crow era that the “Negro Rule” of Reconstruction was corrupt and ineffective while praising the white “redeemers” who used violence to stop Blacks from voting, holding office and owning property. It is a consensus that has been repudiated by professional historians but that is still a widely-held belief by large portions of the American public. In clear and cogent writing easily accessible to a wider mass audience, Foner works to help us address the question of whether America can ever escape the legacy of slavery without a more honest examination of the past.

The Greatest Sentence Ever Written (2025) by Walter Isaacson examines the narrative of America through the lens of the second sentence in the Declaration of Independence. In 67 short pages Isaacson makes it clear that while we think of Thomas Jefferson as the author of one of the world’s most famous documents, he really just wrote the first draft which was then edited and changed multiple times. The drafting committee, including Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, made substantial alterations, including to the first phrase, which Jefferson penned as “We hold these truths to be sacred . . . .” It was Franklin who crossed out “sacred” and inserted “self-evident.” From there Isaacson takes us through what the men (and they were all men) were thinking and the cultural and intellectual influences that swirled around them. These truths became the “creed that bound a diverse group of pilgrims and immigrants into one nation.” The Declaration of Independence, as written in 1776 and then reinforced “four score and seven years” later at Gettysburg by Abraham Lincoln, defined both our common ground and our aspirations. It is in the exploration of what constitutes that common ground and how we continue to hold on to it in perilous times where Isaacson makes his case: We must seek those truths once again if we are to survive as a democracy.

Why Baseball Matters (2018) by Susan Jacoby is the author’s personal story about how she came to love the game while watching it on television in her grandfather’s bar, a no-holds-barred defense against changes to the integrity of the game, and a worried meditation on how the game can survive in our age of short attention spans. Reading this work some eight years after it was published—a time when the sport made significant changes (largely positive) to move the speed of the games back to their historic and natural pace while also succumbing to big-time gambling that threatens to wreck all professional sports—provides us with a perspective against which to evaluate Jacoby’s work. She only answers the key question in the title at the end. Baseball matters, she decides, because it provides genuine nourishment rather than junk food. It demands attention in an attention-free era. It matters because the same game can essentially be played on a small town sandlot by young fans learning about loss (the best fail two out of three times), teamwork, and love . . . just as you can in a big league park. It matters because it “has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to reinvent itself in times of immense social change.” Baseball matters because it still lends itself, Jacoby asserts, to a unique conflation of the game itself with American virtue.

Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life (2020) by Lulu Miller is part biography, part memoir, and part scientific thriller. Miller began this work studying David Starr Jordan—a taxonomist, a man who would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day, and the president first of Indiana University and then Stanford. Even though the universe seemed to conspire against his work—his specimen collections were demolished three times by natural disasters—Miller was initially taken with how he fought back against the chaos. Her life was falling apart at the time, it wasn’t clear why any one person mattered in the greater scheme of things, and she thought Jordan may have found a way to carry on in the face of multiple disasters which would have destroyed lesser individuals. But as she dug deeper she discovered a darker, more troubling story. As president Jordan worked to cover up the poisoning of university founder Jane Stanford at the time she was preparing to have him removed. After he was forced out at Stanford Jordan remained active in the scientific community of the day, enthusiastically embracing eugenics, the discredited movement of the late 19th and early 20th century broadly defined as the use of selective breeding to improve the human race. Miller comes to the realization in this sometimes dark but ultimately uplifting book that from “the perspective of the stars or infinity or some eugenics dream of perfection” one life doesn’t seem to matter. But this is just one of infinite perspectives. Although Charles Darwin was often misunderstood, it is his creed that human beings . . . and all living creatures . . . in tangible, concrete ways matter to this planet.

Above Ground: Poems (2023) by Clint Smith explores the emotional terrain of fatherhood in works that are touching, light-hearted, gripping, loving, insightful, disturbing, and delightful. In other words, they are just like being a parent. Smith is a gifted writer who looks deeply at lineage and the history surrounding being black in America. He is also discovering the world anew through the eyes of a child, with the curiosity and joy that often comes when one encounters life for the first time. As the publisher notes, Above Ground “wrestles with how we hold wonder and despair in the same hands, how we carry intimate moments of joy and a collective sense of mourning in the same body.” I had a range of emotions reading the collection: delight, laughter, and recognition of life with children, certainly. But also sadness at the world our children—and especially children of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and children of immigrants—inhabit today. Smith has captured the joys and sorrows of life through vibrant poems that look at the everyday occurrences of parenting.

WHAT’S ON THE NIGHTSTAND FOR APRIL (Subject to change at the whims of the reader)

Keep reading!

More to come . . .

DJB

NOTE: Click to see the books I read in February of 2026 and to see the books I read in 2025. 

Photo of Boy Reading by Ben White on Unsplash

View from my World Series seat

Baseball is the belly-button of our society

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At the conclusion of a fantastic World Baseball Classic (congratulations Venezuela) and the beginning of what promises to be another lost regular season wandering in the wilderness for my Washington Nationals, I go through my regular spring training routine of reading about the game.

Bill “Spaceman” Lee—the effective 1970s reliever for the Boston Red Sox and the Montreal Expos whose “natural sinkerball is dwarfed in baseball memory by his natural inability to utter a dull sentence”—once told the Los Angeles Times that “Baseball is the belly-button of our society. Straighten out baseball, you’ll straighten out the rest of the world.”

That quote is the epigraph of the conclusion to a work that I found largely frustrating in part because of the writer’s insistence on continually re-plowing soil she had already tilled and in part because I simply disagree—based on first-hand experience—with her take on changes to speed up the game. It isn’t the fault of the author, but I was also reminded of what the scourge of gambling has done to the game since the book was written in 2018.

This slim volume illustrates the challenges of the Yale University Press series “Why X Matters.” This is the fifth I’ve read from this series. In the hands of the right author these short works illuminate and expand our horizons. When the author’s point-of-view gets in the way of the subject, however, they can become personal polemics that frustrate all but the true believers.

Why Baseball Matters (2018) by Susan Jacoby is the author’s personal story about how she came to love the game while watching it on television in her grandfather’s bar, a no-holds-barred defense against changes to the integrity of the game, and a worried meditation on how the game can survive in our age of short attention spans and social media takes that do not support baseball’s natural rhythms. Reading this work some eight years after it was published—a time when the sport made significant changes (largely positive) to move the speed of the games back to their historic and natural pace while also succumbing to big-time gambling that threatens to wreck all professional sports—provides us with a perspective against which to evaluate Jacoby’s work.

It isn’t until the conclusion, when she moves beyond baseball’s vulnerabilities (some repeated again and again) that she answers the key question in the title. Baseball matters, she decides, because it provides genuine nourishment rather than junk food. It demands attention in an attention-free era. It matters because the same game can essentially be played on a small town sandlot by young fans learning about loss (the best fail two out of three times), teamwork, and love . . . just as you can in a big league park. It matters because it “has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to reinvent itself in times of immense social change.” Baseball matters because it still lends itself, Jacoby asserts, to a unique conflation of the game itself with American virtue.

“The emotions baseball is capable of evoking are part of its special currency, but it is a currency that can easily be devalued if used in an exclusionary, aggressive fashion.”

Jacoby spends a great deal of time worried about the proposed rules (at the time) to speed up the game. What she never really addresses, however, is how much the modern game has dramatically slowed down, adding almost an hour on average to the historic pace, as we waited for batters to play with their batting gloves (I’m looking at you Bryce Harper), pitchers to throw over to first countless times, and everyone to take “lollygagging” to new extremes. I saw my first major league game in 1963 in Wrigley Field. Bob Gibson and the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Chicago Cubs 4-1 in a brisk two hours and four minutes. The game needed to be reset, and the pitch clock, the rules on throwing over to first, and other changes have been—to my mind—very successful.

Jacoby also addresses the problem of gambling and baseball, and it is here that she’s spot on. She notes, as I have as well, that any time baseball has become involved with gambling, however indirect, it doesn’t turn out well. My first inclination is to say that I’m not a fan of the automated balls-and-strikes change because we’re doing it to provide precision to gamblers when they bet big sums. But . . . then I watch a game like the World Baseball Classic between the US and the Dominican Republic and see an umpire make two terrible third strike calls late in the game—one to Juan Soto who has the best eye for the strike zone I’ve ever seen—and I think perhaps its time. Here’s how Joe Posnanski described the umpire’s performance.

“Yes, home plate umpire Corey Blaser rang up Soto on a pitch that wasn’t even close to a strike, and while this wasn’t what made the game unsatisfying—as most of you know, a worse call was yet to come—it really struck me wrong. I couldn’t even believe how much that call ticked me off. . . .

. . . the humanity of umpiring has already been taken out of the game . . . except for ball-strike calls. And with the Automated Ball Strike challenge system coming in 2026, that last bit of humanity will begin to disappear.

Is that something worth mourning?

Well, it’s not if, in the eighth inning of a tight and exciting one-run game between the United States and the Dominican Republic, Corey Blaser thinks he knows the strike zone better than Juan Freaking Soto.”

The thing is, the most egregious call came in the next inning and it ended the game when Blaser rang up Geraldo Perdomo after a breathtaking eight-pitch at-bat on a pitch that was so far below the strike zone even a blind man could see it.

Joe said that a few people wrote that “Sunday’s game was basically one long advertisement for the ABS Challenge System.” I have to agree.

Each year during spring training I pick a baseball book to read. Over the years I’ve amassed quite a collection.

My rather unruly collection of books about the game I love.

As you can tell, as I was finishing this book I took in the closing games of the 2026 WBC. And that wonderful experience—from the raucous fans of the Latin American teams to the tight drama on the faces of the Japanese and American players to the unexpected delight of Italy’s rise through the ranks—suggested that Jacoby’s worry about baseball’s communicability in international settings was misplaced. I’ll enter the regular season with hope, but knowing that my Nationals still don’t seem to have a plan, or an ownership group, to lead them beyond a basic AAA-level team. Oh well.

The bottom line is that Why Baseball Matters is a mixed bag. But to return to the Spaceman, I’ll let Jacoby explain why he’s so right to bring the belly-button into baseball.

“Calling baseball America’s belly-button—that primal remnant of everyone’s first medium of nourishment and entry into the world—is exactly right, just as reverential descriptions of the game as a metaphor for and evidence of American exceptionalism and goodness are exactly wrong . . . Baseball matters because it provides genuine nourishment rather than junk food . . . [and] we cannot afford to lose a game that demands our attention to provide its nourishment.”

Play ball!

More to come . . .

DJB

NOTE: For other MTC reviews of books in this Yale University Press series “Why X Matters” see my takes on:

I have also read, but did not post a review at the time of Why Preservation Matters.

Top image of Nats stadium in happier days: Game three of the 2019 World Series

Nats Rainbow

Take me out to the ballgame

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The start of the season brings out the best in baseball songs.

Baseball is a game made for songs. With the conclusion of the thrilling World Baseball Classic and opening day just around the corner, let’s take a listen to some of the best.

We’ll get it started with the Boss. My friend Dolores, who loves baseball and Springsteen with equal passion, would say that’s only right.

The two do seem to go together. In a great piece for the New York Times, Rustin Dodd wrote,

“I once saw a Springsteen concert in Phoenix during spring training and ended up sitting about 10 feet from a veteran major leaguer. He was there with family and stayed rather reserved the whole night, but when ‘The Boss’ started playing ‘Glory Days,’ they all went nuts.”

The marriage between music and baseball dates back more than a century, notes the Times. So let’s go back a few years to Les Brown and His Orchestra’s Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio. “They don’t make ditties like they used to,” writes Andy McCullough in that same New York Times piece. “This right here is a ditty.” The lyrics tell the tale of Joe DiMaggio’s famous 56-game hitting streak.

Last year the Toronto Blue Jays had a marvelous run all the way to the World Series, giving us one of the most memorable fall classics in a long time. The Blue Jays and Dodgers played one for the ages. We’ll salute those valiant warriors from north of the border with OK, Blue Jays!

FOLKIES LOVES BASEBALL

Folkies of all stripes have always had a soft spot for baseball. Here are three. First, Peter, Paul, and Mary’s Right Field followed by John McCutcheon’s Baseball on The Block.

And then who knew that Bob Freakin’ Dylan wrote a song about Catfish Hunter?!? Well, I bet my friend Oakley Pearson did.

“Lazy stadium night
Catfish on the mound
‘Strike three,’ the umpire said
Batter have to go back and sit down
Catfish, million-dollar-man
Nobody can throw the ball like Catfish can“

CHARACTERS

Bill “Spaceman” Lee

Baseball is full of interesting, shall we say, “personalities.” Mickey Mantle certainly was one. Andy McCullough had this insightful comment about the ability of baseball and baseball players to affect us in ways that go far beyond the game.

“The footprints that ballplayers leave on our cultural memory extend beyond the diamond. For “The Mick,” his ability to carouse was almost as legendary as his ability to clout a baseball. Hence the line in this mournful tune from a band from Norway of all places: ‘I was feeling Mickey Mantle … wasted.’” 

Bill Lee was a true baseball character. As another writer said, his “natural sinkerball is dwarfed in baseball memory by his natural inability to utter a dull sentence.” Warren Zevon captured Lee’s personality brilliantly in only 97 seconds.

PERSONAL MEMORIES

Program from my first ever MLB game in 1963 at Wrigley Field. Cubs vs. Cardinals.

I loved Steve Goodman, as he was an everyman folksinger. When the Cubbies came back to stay alive in the 2016 World Series by winning Game 5, Wrigley Field burst into communal singing with his Go Cubs Go. As the top commentator says, “The best announcers know when to shut up and let the moment speak. Perfect example.” It pairs nicely with Goodman playing A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request.

Talking Baseball by Terry Cashman offers a tour through baseball history. Hey, I remember a lot of these guys!

SAY HEY

Willie Mays was my favorite player ever. Full stop. McCullough noted that “(t)here is something soothing about hearing Claude and Cliff Trenier opine about ‘The Say Hey Kid’ running the bases like a choo-choo train and making the turn around second like an aeroplane. I couldn’t agree more. 

I miss Willie Mays.

Willie, of course, played centerfield like no one else. I think John Fogerty’s Centerfield belongs on any list of great baseball songs and not only because it has a role in the best of all baseball films, Bull Durham. All you have to do is be at a ballpark and watch people sing along when it is played to know how much it connects. “Put me in coach” indeed!

PEOPLE ARE GOOD FOR YOU

Baseball is boring. Until it isn’t. Even with the new pitch clock working its magic, there’s still a lot of standing around. There’s time between each half-inning to chat. Before the bottom of the seventh, the entire crowd stands up and sings Take Me Out to the Ballgame—a wonderfully anachronistic moment of civic harmony as seen below at Dodger Stadium.

America needs more communal singing.

It’s time to get out to the ballpark and play ball!

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo of a summer rainbow over Nationals Stadium by DJB

Playing for joy

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The World Baseball Classic reminded us of what it means to play for joy.

This is the first of three baseball-themed posts over the next few days as we wrap up the WBC and head toward opening day.

Regular readers know that I love Joe Posnanski. How, you may ask, can I love a balding, usually overweight, 59-year-old sportswriter?

It’s easy. He gets joy.

Joe looks for joy. He writes with joy. He brings a child’s joy to his craft. He understands that these are just games that are best approached with joy. He saves his wrath (such as it is) for suits, pompous players, and spoiled sports who work to dislocate the joy in our games.

Today’s short post is to urge you to drop what you are doing and read Joe’s take—entitled Freedom for What?—on the World Baseball Classic. I’ll give you a few excerpts, but you need to read the whole thing. Just do it. You can thank me later.

Joe begins by wondering why this tournament was “so absurdly awesome?” 

“Why is it that I have friends, moderate baseball fans at best, who were OBSESSED with the WBC, who were constantly texting me to chat about the Italian baseball players taking shots of espresso and kissing each other on the cheeks, or the Mexican players putting a giant sombrero on the head of the guy who hit a home run, or that fun thing the U.S. team did where they … I’m just joking, they had no fun at all this entire tournament.”

That last sentence sets up the premise of this entire essay.

Unlike in the corporate culture of Major League Baseball, every team at the WBC was different.

“They played differently. They celebrated differently. They danced differently. They reflected their nation’s pride. Winning mattered, sure, but winning wasn’t everything. Playing was everything. Enjoying the moment was everything. This was baseball bursting with color, life, energy. Each hit was a party. Each run was a carnival.

And all the while, you had the loaded and glum U.S. team as a contrast, as if they were determined to represent the dreariest possible way to play baseball. The MLB way. Nobody ever seemed to even smile. . . . A lot has been written about the militaristic vibe this team disseminated (undoubtedly WITH the express written consent of Major League Baseball), but one thing that really struck me was how wrong they got it.”

There is a glorification of the military in a lot of the way MLB and other professional sports display their “patriotism.” The military is important, but we forget why we have a military when we fall into the FOX network jingoistic coverage. But as Joe points out, these athletes are being paid handsomely to sacrifice nothing. They are playing a kid’s game.

And with that, he goes into the heart of the essay.

“You can salute each other like children playing war games, and you can speak platitudes about freedom, but doing so, to me, misses the whole point. Freedom for what? If you believe deeply in American freedom, then you must believe in those things that make freedom worthwhile, no? What are those things? How about teachers who dedicate their lives to educating our children? How about the Grand Ole Opry? The Apollo Theater? Broadway? How about the first responders who arrive in the bleakest moments?

How about Casablanca and Sinners and Singing in the Rain?“

He’s just getting warmed up.

“How about the neighbors who mow the lawn of the elderly couple two houses down? How about the waiter or waitress who remembers your order at the diner, the bookstore owner who is dying to tell you about a book you will absolutely love, the bar band breaking into “Sweet Caroline,” and the way everyone in the place sings along? How about the crossing guards who know every kid’s name, the auto mechanics who tell you that, actually, the fix was a lot simpler than you thought, the mother who brings orange slices for everyone at Little League games?

How about chili in Cincinnati, pizza in New York, clam chowder in New England, hot dogs in Chicago, a Polish Boy in Cleveland, barbecue in Kansas City, gumbo in New Orleans, fajitas in Texas, fish tacos in San Diego?”

There’s more, but I’ll stop because I’m sure I’ve already exceeded fair use and I REALLY want you to read Joe’s entire column.

The top commentator on the piece wrote: “This is a more elegant and profound critique of US militarism than anything our so called leaders have managed this year. It’s a classic piece, rooted in the best of newspaper sports column writing.” I couldn’t agree more.

When Bryce Harper hit a massive game-tying home run in the bottom of the 8th inning, one that could have flipped the game over to the Americans, he didn’t dance around the bases or clap for joy. Instead, when he rounded third he stared at the camera, saluted something, and gave his best sports villain look. It was actually kind of embarrassing.

In Tuesday night’s final, Venezuela was just so much more fun to watch. As one commentator notes, the “US vibe was like watching a Cold War era Russian team stressing that if they didn’t win the gold medal it meant no food for their family.”

Based on the comments, Joe struck a nerve. Real patriotism, noted one, “is not the mindless, hollow jingoism that is so prevalent today. Real patriotism is celebrating all of the ordinary Americans that (often thanklessly) make this country work every day and all of the wonderful, diverse, unique aspects of American culture.”

In today’s America, we’ve so forgotten about the joy in life. People like Joe help us reclaim it.

More to come . . .

DJB

Photos from the 1960s from Getty Images on Unsplash.

Passage from the Seychelles to Madagascar

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A photographic review of our recent NTT tour of The Seychelles and Madagascar.

In late February and early March we were on the other side of the world, exploring the island nations of Seychelles and Madagascar. To get there, we took two very long flights, stopping over in Abu Dhabi along the way.

INTERRUPTION FOR BAD DAD JOKE: How do you tell the difference between people who fly through Dubai and those who fly through Abu Dhabi? Those who fly through Dubai don’t like The Flintstones. Those who fly through Abu Dhabi Do.

I’m sorry.

Of course by the time we were ready to come home flying through Abu Dhabi was not an option thanks to someone’s “excursion” into Iran. I’ll reserve comments for another time.

After our arrival we put our feet up by the pool as our bodies adjusted to the big time change. (Seychelles and Madagascar are, as I said, on the other side of the world from the US . . . a nine-hour time difference from the east coast.)

But we soon felt refreshed and joined up with our fellow National Trust Tour travelers. Over the course of two weeks we explored ten islands in the Seychelles and Madagascar archipelagos, beginning with the famous granite islands at the northern tip of the Seychelles, working our way down to the country’s Outer Islands, and ending up at the northern tip of Madagascar, the world’s fourth largest island (behind Greenland, New Guinea, and Borneo).

Both countries took up their current locations in the Indian Ocean as part of the well-known continental drift but are still considered culturally and physically part of Africa. The culture in Seychelles is an eclectic mix of French, British, Indian and African influences, with Chinese elements included. There was no indigenous population before colonization brought African slaves to the island. Madagascar, although with an indigenous population and a stronger French heritage, nonetheless has a similar set of cultural influences. Both have been independent nations since the 1960s. Seychelles is the richest nation per capita in Africa, while Madagascar is often cited in the top five of the poorest. Those contrasts were quickly evident as we toured both nations.

I gave a visual teaser of our trip in yesterday’s post (see The dandelion principle), and today I’ll provide a more extensive travelogue. As I mentioned this was an expedition, full of wet landings off of zodiacs, muddy trails, snorkeling around coral reefs, and mountain views accessible only via rock and and root-strewn trails.

LA DIGUE ISLAND

Our cruise on the small Ponant ship Le Bellot first took us to La Digue, the third largest island in the Seychelles and the one we visited with the most extensive and diverse tourism infrastructure. Interestingly, one of the first places we visited was not a natural site but was instead L’Union Estate Park, a former coconut and vanilla plantation that provided real insight into La Digue’s colonial history. It was a good reminder of the mix of cultures we saw throughout the trip.

From the estate it was a short drive to the Anse Source d’Argent beaches, picture perfect tropical scenes with soft sand and granite boulders.

ARIDE AND CURIEUSE ISLANDS

Early in the trip we anchored off Aride and Curieuse islands. Aride is a “seabird citadel,” home to some 112 species of birds including 30 species of rare birds. Curieuse was especially fascinating, as it is home to hundreds of giant tortoises which live to be 200 years old among the lush mangrove forest. A mile-long hike, which began near the ruins of a historic leper colony, took us through this ever changing and verdant landscape. Those who wished to snorkel could also explore the underwater species in this national marine park. We ended our tour of the “granite islands” the following day with a stop in Remire Island.

Ruins of a historic leper colony

The granitic islands of Seychelles are the world’s only mid-oceanic granitic islands, forming the cultural and economic heart of the nation. These 41 ancient, steep-sided islands (about 750 million years old) are part of the Inner Islands, including Mahé, Praslin, and La Digue, and each features iconic, weathered granite boulders.

ST. FRANÇOIS ISLAND AND FARQUHAR ATOLL

Enjoying tea time on Le Bellot
Our wonderful and adventuresome National Trust Tour travelers to the Seychelles and Madagascar

As we entered March we made our first stop in the remote Outer Islands of the Seychelles. Both of these rarely visited islands have diverse marine life without human intervention. Since this is in the tropics, it rains every day, but the rainbows over the Indian Ocean are nice tradeoffs.

Farquhar Atoll was especially fascinating. In the Seychelles, half a million terns nest on islands such as this. “Fledglings must eventually take to the wing, but danger lurks beneath the waves, where giant trevally fish leap clear out of the water to snatch the birds.” We saw the fish swimming just off shore, but the birds were staying clear of the area while we visited.

Trevally fish swimming just off shore at Farquhar Atoll

Our day at the Farquhar Atoll featured an afternoon zodiac tour of the lagoon, which was teeming with birds along the shoreline and in the trees.

MADAGASCAR AND THE MONTAGNE D’AMBRE NATIONAL PARK

We sailed into Madagascar on my birthday, where the captain, the head of the naturalist team, our dinner table guests, and the good folks at Gohagan Travel all wished me happy travels in this upcoming trip around the sun.

Of special interest here was the walk through Montagne d’Ambre National Park, the nation’s first and home to a number of endemic species, including very tiny chameleon. The park lies in the far north of the island on a volcanic massif and is a little cooler and fresher than the surrounding area.

NOSY KOMBA: LEMUR ISLAND!

On March 7th we anchored off Nosy Komba, known throughout the world as Lemur Island. One first strolls through the village which is lively and full of entrepreneurs, craftspeople, and life on this Saturday.

We then entered into the lemur preserve, where we saw plenty of these endearing animals which are endemic to Madagascar, having evolved there separately to apes and monkeys, their closest relatives.

There are no poisonous snakes on Madagascar, but boa constrictors are natural predators that lemurs must avoid if they want to keep leaping from tree to tree. We saw a few boas sunning themselves on this warm day, just waiting for their chance for a meal. Oh, and those of us who watch too much sports on television may be excused for thinking geckos live only in Geico insurance commercials, but they were certainly present in Nosy Komba.

The preserve also included giant tortoises, and it was great to see the lemurs having fun leaping from back to back on these unmoved ancient animals.

In the afternoon, Candice went snorkeling among the coral reefs of Nosy Tanikeley. She returned exclaiming about the beauty of the fish in this protected marine reserve.

VALO MARS

We arrived in the city of Hellville (Andoany) on March 8, our final full day of the tour amidst a huge celebration of International Women’s Day, referred to as “Valo Mars” in Madagascar. Women’s groups came to Hellville from Nosy Be and throughout the region to march in the local parade. Focused on honoring women’s strength, heritage, and contribution to society, it is a significant day for recognizing local women’s roles in development, culture, and craftsmanship, and while we saw the parade in full force, Volo Mars also features other special events, speeches, and community gatherings. It was an amazing sight that stretched throughout the main section of the city.

We ended this tour with a visit to Nosy Be’s fragrant Ylang-Ylang distillery, a music and dance celebration, and one last spectacular sunset over the Indian Ocean.

I was reminded when looking at another site that travel is a privilege. Candice and I know and recognize that fact on every one of these NTT trips. Here’s how travel photographer Sarah from the U.K. describes it:

“Those of us with the means and inclination to do so are rewarded with amazing opportunities to learn about different cultures, different landscapes, different environments. And in seeing those differences I think we discover something very important, which is that however different our lifestyles, at heart people have more in common than you might think. We learn to value diversity, to respect other viewpoints and to rejoice in our similarities.”

I couldn’t have said it better. Come travel with NTT in the future. We’d love to meet you!

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo at the top of post of smooth granite boulders on Seychelles’ La Digue Island as seen during our recent visit (credit: Studio Ponant). Photo of NTT travelers by Studio Ponant. All other photos by DJB (or, when we’re the subject, by fellow travelers).

The dandelion principle

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Thoughts and images from our recent trip to The Seychelles and Madagascar, with an assist from a remarkable book by Lulu Miller.

Our National Trust Tours visit earlier this month to the Seychelles and Madagascar was classified as an expedition. Think wet landings off of zodiacs, muddy trails, snorkeling around coral reefs, and mountain views accessible via “stairs” that contained more rough rocks than standard treads and risers. Seychelles and Madagascar are places where the natural environment is both awe inspiring and exotic to our Western eyes. The built environment is often an afterthought. As I toured and lectured, I worked to continually recognize the continuum of time in this place. What we saw—both the natural and built environment—is all a part of our shared story as humans.

Many of us were seeing nature in a fresh and completely different context. My perspective was widened when I came across the following quote in a book I was reading while on the tour. The author made the point that we should follow the dandelion principle to achieve a more accurate way of seeing nature.

“To some people a dandelion might look like a weed, but to others that same plant can be so much more. To a herbalist, it’s a medicine—a way of detoxifying the liver, clearing the skin, and strengthening the eyes. To a painter, it’s a pigment; to a hippie, a crown; a child, a wish. To a butterfly, it’s sustenance; to a bee, a mating bed; to an ant, one point in a vast olfactory atlas.”

Lulu Miller in “Why Fish Don’t Exist”

My fellow association lecturer Vincent Resh—Professor of the Graduate School Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management at the University of California, Berkeley—spoke eloquently to our travelers about islands as laboratories of evolution. He ended his first lecture with the assertion that “We’re All Africans: Welcome Home!” The Ponant naturalist team, led by Katia Nicolet, added more site-specific context and helped us see and understand the complexity of nature on these island nations. Together they helped me and many of our fellow travelers move past one perspective to see “the messy truth of nature, the ‘whole machinery of life.”

It was as an afterthought that I picked up this particular book, a recommendation from my daughter and her boyfriend, to add to my backpack for reading on this trip to the other side of the world. I’m glad I did.

THE TRUE PATH TO PROGRESS IS PAVED NOT WITH CERTAINTY BUT DOUBT

Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life (2020) by Lulu Miller is part biography, part memoir, and part scientific thriller. One of the founding producers of Radiolab, a contributing editor and co-founder of the NPR program Invisibilia, and a Peabody award-winning journalist, Miller began this work studying David Starr Jordan—a taxonomist, a man who would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day, and the president first of Indiana University and then Stanford. Even though the universe seemed to conspire against his work—his specimen collections were demolished first by lightning, then by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake—Miller was initially taken with how he fought back against the chaos. Her life was falling apart at the time and she thought Jordan may have found a way to carry on in the face of multiple disasters which would have destroyed lesser individuals.

But as she dug deeper she discovered a darker, more troubling story which produced cracks in the heroic version Jordan wove for himself. As president Jordan worked to cover up the poisoning of university founder Jane Stanford at the time she was preparing to have him removed as president. After he eventually was forced out at Stanford, Jordan remained active in the scientific community of the day, enthusiastically embracing eugenics, the discredited movement of the late 19th and early 20th century broadly defined as the use of selective breeding to improve the human race. A Supreme Court decision in the famous Carrie Buck case paved the way for 60,000 forced sterilizations in America, the last taking place in the 1960s. We may think eugenics is ancient news confined to the dustbin of history by the Nazi atrocities, but advances in modern medicine, if left unchecked, could conceivably cause a resurgence of these old ideas. It is as current as today’s news.

Miller comes to the realization in this sometimes dark but ultimately uplifting book that from “the perspective of the stars or infinity or some eugenics dream of perfection” one life doesn’t seem to matter. But taking the dandelion principle, she makes the wonderful case that this is just one of infinite perspectives. Although Charles Darwin was often misunderstood, it is his creed, as we heard and saw in the Seychelles and Madagascar, that human beings . . . and all living creatures . . . in tangible, concrete ways matter to this planet.

A VISUAL APPETIZER

It will be at least until Wednesday when I can sort out the multitude of photos from the trip to share with you. Until then, enjoy this appetizer.

Mangroves, as seen on Curieuse Island in the Seychelles, are a great example of a part of the natural world that mean many different things, and provide a variety of essential habitats, to a multitude of species.

Madagascar’s Nosy Tanikeley—with its rich coral reef—was among the daily reminders that these are island nations: African in so many ways, but also deeply immersed in the Indian Ocean ecosystem.

Thanks to our naturalist guides, we saw more chameleons up close and personal than would have been possible had we explored on our own.

We did encounter village life along the way, as here on Madagascar’s Nosy Komba.

And I’ll end this preview with a view of the full moon over the Indian Ocean, a glorious sight no matter where in the world one lives.

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo of giant tortoise in The Seychelles from Studio Ponant March 2026. Dandelion photo from Unsplash. All other photos by DJB.

A Saturday grab bag: The Ides of March edition

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Links to stories from a few writers I follow who have important things to say.

As we approach the Ides of March, I thought I’d share a group of stories from writers I follow. I hope you’ll find something of interest among this eclectic mix.

THE DISLOCATION OF JOY

I have written on multiple occasions about betting on sports, and how this will not end well. A mentor who is both an astute observer of life and an insightful writer added a comment to a 2021 post about the scourge of gambling in baseball. It made me stop and think.

“What truly disturbs me about sports betting is the dislocation of joy. The joy is supposed to be in watching the game. Monetizing it, as you point out, changes the focus — as if there could be no simple pleasures which are not really about cash.“

So I was pleased to see McKay Coppins piece in The Atlantic entitled Sucker: My Year as a Degenerate Gambler. It is a brilliant piece that shows, first, that two of the worst people in American life—Chris Christie, who brought a lawsuit to overturn the ban on gambling, and Samuel Alito, the justice who authored the Supreme Court decision in his favor—helped bring this scourge to the 21st century.

“G. K. Chesterton once wrote about two people who encounter a fence erected across a road. One of them demands that it be torn down; the wiser of the two responds that they should find out why it was put there in the first place before deciding on a course of action. . . .

[But] no one involved—not Alito; nor the five justices who joined him; nor the legislators in 36 states who would legalize sports betting for their constituents; nor the league commissioners, who would rush into partnerships with online sportsbooks—seemed acquainted with Chesterton’s fence.

Practically overnight, we took an ancient vice—long regarded as soul-rotting and civilizationally ruinous—put it on everyone’s phone, and made it as normal and frictionless as checking the weather. What could possibly go wrong?”

In this soul baring and thoughtful article, Coppins describes how he went down various gambling rabbit holes, including acquiring a loss of confidence in the games themselves.

“Sports leagues, of course, are not the first American institutions to suffer a crisis of authority in the 21st century. (See also: Wall Street, Congress, the military, the police, the press, etc.) But the recent decline of trust in sports is, to an extraordinary degree, self-inflicted and avoidable. By embracing gambling so completely—normalizing it, celebrating it, reaping massive profits from it—the leagues have all but ensured that many fans will see it as baked into the game itself . . . To watch sports in 2026 is to become, almost inevitably, a kind of conspiracy theorist.”

Coppins ends by showing how he took actions as a result of his gambling addiction that would have been unthinkable just a year ago. He notes that in 1907, a Unitarian minister, writing in The Atlantic, warned against “speculation.” “The long and costly experience of mankind bears uniform testimony against gambling,” Charles F. Dole wrote. “It is a dangerous or unsocial form of excitement; it hurts character, demoralizes industry, breeds quarrels, tempts men to self-destruction.”

Of course, he notes, not every consensus of the past is worth clinging to.

“But as a society, we are making an enormously risky bet: that we can reap the rewards of a runaway gambling industry without paying any price; that the litany of social ills long associated with this vice—addiction and impoverishment, isolation and abuse, cheating and chasing and corrosive idleness—can, this time, be kept in check; that, unlike every civilization that came before us, we can beat the house.

What are the odds that we’re right?”

MONUMENTS UP, MONUMENTS DOWN

In February the History News Network/Bunk newsletter Continuum focused on the controversies over monuments that are not new and that seemingly never end. When I lecture on tours around the world, visiting countries such as Germany, Italy, and Belgium that are also grappling with what their monuments say in the present day, I’ll remind my listeners that Americans took down their first monument 250 years ago, just days after the passage of the Declaration of Independence. After the document was read in New York City, a crowd rushed to pull down a nearby statue of King George III.

Memorialization has been an often-discussed topic in Continuum and its predecessor newsletters, beginning in 2017 (remember that the Charlottesville protests were about the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee), and again three years later, in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder. With the potential looming for more changes to the capital’s monumental landscape, the editors dedicated an edition of Continuum to the history of American monuments, and the people they have commemorated. Among the stories linked to in this fascinating newsletter is one entitled Monument Wars.

“The 2015 massacre of nine churchgoers by a white supremacist in Charleston touched off a wave of soul-searching about Confederate monuments around the country. Since then, dozens of towns and cities have decided to remove the statues in their communities. This exhibit explores discussions about what we choose to memorialize—and why.”

A MUSICAL INTERLUDE

Thanks to William Shakespeare the first thing that comes to mind around March 15th is to “Beware the Ides of March.” But for those of a certain age, you may also remember the rock band The Ides of March because of their one big hit Vehicle. Apparently they are still together, now six decades later, writing new music and playing shows. Here’s a little trip down memory lane.

LABELS CONFER JUDGEMENTS AND JUDGEMENTS MARK THE END OF THINKING

Trygve Hammer is a Marine veteran running for Congress as a Democrat in North Dakota. In a newsletter post entitled Fan Mail he shares his response to a resident of his state who asks why, as a former Marine, he’s not running as a Republican. Hammer’s reply is full of useful and thoughtful answers to questions such as this.

“Thank you for writing and for acknowledging my service. You’re right—I am a Marine. I deployed to Iraq in 2003 as an infantry officer with Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 23rd Marines. Before that, I was a helicopter pilot and forward air controller. Before that, I was enlisted in the Navy and then went to the U.S. Naval Academy.

You ask why I’m running as a Democrat in a ‘RED’ state. Here’s the thing: I’m not much for labels because they can confer judgments, and judgments mark the end of thinking. If we limit our options to ideas that come from boxes labeled ‘Conservative ideas’ or ‘Progressive ideas’ or ‘Government solutions’ or ‘Free-market solutions,’ our thinking is stunted from the beginning. So, I don’t believe in a red North Dakota or blue Minnesota. I believe North Dakota is full of people who work hard, pay their bills, and want a government that does the same. They are kind and generous by default. The folks I grew up with and the ones I worked alongside on oil rigs and on freight trains and in classrooms didn’t sort themselves by party or ideology before deciding whether to lend a hand.”

Hammer’s whole letter is worth your time, if for no other reason than it will make you think.

WHEN BOOK REVIEWS AREN’T NEWS

Jeff Bezos, who began to make his gazillion dollars by selling books, just killed off the book review section of The Washington Post. Adam Kirsch, writing in The Atlantic, wrote The Literary Ecosystem Is Dying in response.

“In a sense, the decline of book reviews, like the decline of newspapers themselves, is a story about disaggregation. Newspapers used to bundle several functions together in a way that made them both useful and profitable. A daily chunk of newsprint told you about world and local events, but also about stock prices, movie showings, potential romantic partners, and where to buy washing machines on sale. When the internet made finding that information easy and free, many people decided against paying for just the news part of the newspaper. . . .

Similarly, book reviews used to play a number of roles in the literary ecosystem. . . . But as with the newspaper, the whole was more than the sum of its parts. The most important thing that a daily book critic or a weekly book supplement does is bring a literary community into being—the kind of community that exists when people who don’t know one another are all thinking about the same thing at the same time.”

A SECOND MUSICAL INTERLUDE

Listening to The Ides of March took me down a bit of a rabbit hole with rock/jazz bands from the late 60s and early 70s. One of my favorites was Blood Sweat & Tears. Their arrangement of the Billie Holiday classic God Bless the Child still stands the test of time.

ASK THE 100 YEAR OLD QUESTION

John Sarvay, on his Notes on the Margin Substack, remembers Bill Martin, Richmond’s best friend. Bill died on December 28, 2025, after a tragic accident in downtown Richmond, Virginia. As the director of the Valentine Museum, dedicated to telling Richmond’s story, “Bill was eyes wide open about the stories that the museum could, and needed to, tell.”

Sarvay ends with five ways to channel your inner Bill Martin. This was first on that list:

“Ask the 100-Year Question—Even When It Slows the Meeting. Bill didn’t ask what could be done this quarter; he asked what story would matter after we’re gone. The Practice: In your life, in your work, introduce one question that reframes time entirely.”

YET ANOTHER MUSICAL INTERLUDE

A young and talented acoustic guitarist played most afternoons in the ship’s lounge on our recent trip to Seychelles and Madagascar. One day he launched into the familiar opening bars of Windy and Warm, the John Loudermilk classic, and I was immediately taken back to the place where I first heard the tune: Nashville’s Exit/In coming from the hands of the inimitable Doc Watson.

BREAKING EXPECTATIONS OF WHO IS RIGHT

Richard Rohr had a recent meditation entitled An Imperfect Messenger of how the very familiar story of Jonah breaks all the expectations of who is right and then remakes those expectations in favor of grace.

“Jonah thought he had the exclusive cachet of truth and thus could despise those to whom he was preaching. He wanted them to be wrong so that he could be right, yet in his anger at Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire, he failed to appreciate God’s desire to offer forgiveness and grace even to Jonah’s enemies. In fact, he even resented their joining his ‘belief club.’ He struggled mightily to accept the new ‘political’ arrangement.”  

NOT ALL ORIGIN STORIES NEED TO BE SERIOUS

Doc Watson playing his last Merlefest, in April 2012

And finally, a little fun to wrap up this grab bag from The Bluegrass Situation.

“What happens when bluegrass, heavy metal, and American roots legend collide? Welcome to ‘The Devil Went Down to Deep Gap,’ a wild, animated reimagining of the Charlie Daniels Band classic—and a high-octane Doc Watson tribute like you’ve never seen or heard before. Featuring blistering acoustic and electric guitar duels from Bryan Sutton and GRAMMY nominee Billy Strings, plus an all-star cast including Sam Bush, T. Michael Coleman, Jerry Roe, and Hall of Famer Del McCoury as the Devil himself . . . The story imagines the ‘legend we never knew’: how Arthel Watson became Doc Watson after beating the Devil in a genre-bending showdown that shifts from pure flatpicking to screaming metal solos. Paired with stunning hand-drawn animation by Pat Bradley, the video brings the surreal duel to life—from metal mayhem to heartfelt harmonies and a joyful roll call of Doc’s most beloved tunes . . . this is more than a cover—it’s a gospel-tinged celebration of roots music, rebellion, and tradition.”

More to come . . .

DJB

Removal of Statue of King George III in NYC by Johannes Adam Simon Oertel from Wikimedia