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From the bookshelf: August 2026

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Five books at a minimum. Every month. A variety of topics from different genres. Here is the list from August 2026.

So You Want to Own Greenland? Lessons from the Vikings to Trump (2025) by Elizabeth Buchanan is an easy-to-read overview of Greenland’s history and current state of play in international affairs. Beginning with its discovery by Erik the Red and his Viking band around 982 CE and the migration from North America of the Inuit population around 1200, Greenland has been disputed space. When a Danish-Norwegian missionary arrived in 1721 the descendants of Erik the Red had mysteriously vanished. From the auspicious beginning of a lost colony of Vikings we are taken through various upheavals: the Napoleonic Wars, two previous U.S. attempts to buy Greenland, the gradual breaking free of Greenland from its Danish colonial chains, the important role of the island in both world wars, and more. Buchanan wants us to understand that Greenland has a long and complicated history, which is important in today’s context of a changing international power balance, fears of China’s rise, and growing global resource insecurity.

Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund (2026) by Molly Crabapple is history and memoir with an anti-Zionist point of view. Crabapple (née Jennifer Caban), a New York born and based award-winning illustrator, comes across a watercolor—Itka the Bundist, Breaking Windows—that was among a group of “memory paintings” by her great-grandfather Sam Rothbort. He created these works in the aftermath of the Holocaust with the hope of resurrecting the vanished world of his shtetl childhood in the Russian Empire’s Pale of Settlement. The watercolor was the great-granddaughter’s introduction to the Jewish Bund and it led her on a years-long search to discover more about this major secular, socialist movement devoted to class struggle that began in the late 19th century. Calling upon deep historical research and sources, Crabapple goes into great detail on how the Bund broke with the Bolsheviks, fought the Zionists, and tried to resist the fascists. Each of these efforts is important, but in this politically influenced work Crabapple returns on numerous occasions to focus on the Bund’s fight with the Zionists.

Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village (2021) by Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper is a tongue-in-cheek send-up of the classic English murder mystery where the most dangerous place to visit is the narrow old lanes, the manor house, and the church in a small rural village. The authors begin with a “note to the gentle reader” that makes every attempt to keep you from booking that dream vacation. However, knowing that you will probably go ahead and pursue that trip, they are prepared—with witty writing and Gorey-esque drawings—to point out all the horrors you will face. A weekend “roaming narrow old lanes, touring the faded glories of a country manor, and quaffing pints in the pub” sounds very charming. That is, unless you have the misfortune of finding yourself in an English Murder Village.

Foster (2010, 2022) by Claire Keegan is a perfect introduction for, and complement to, her more recent works. Set in rural Ireland it tells the story of a young girl who is taken by her father to live with relatives on a nearby farm while her mother is having a baby. She has no idea when, or if, she will return to her own home. The girl’s family is overwhelmed while the relatives, Mr. and Mrs. Kinsella, are affectionate and clearly intent on providing loving care to a person whose day-to-day existence has been rough and chaotic. The Kinsellas provide a foundation for the young girl to grow and blossom. Yet their secrets, as well as those of her parents, are hidden but not far from the surface. Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and how “painful unaccustomed love and tenderness can be, because they accentuate what’s been lacking.” It breaks one’s heart, but then also offers up hope out of the loss.

So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men (2023) by Claire Keegan features three recently expanded works that explore gender dynamics through the lens of love, betrayal, lack of generosity, lust, and the weight of expectations. Keegan is a brilliant writer who brings simplicity and power together in a way that calls you to return to re-read passages and stories to unlock their mystery and savor her observations. These are not simple and easy works of romance. Conflict is at the heart of each story and it is clear where the author places much of the blame. Keegan’s book resonates as a very thoughtful and challenging work with depths of emotion that one might not expect with such clear, simple writing. And as a member of the gender that shoulders the brunt of the criticism in her writing, I can see much, unfortunately, that rings true.

The Cloak and Dagger Club (2026) by Jackie McMahon introduces us to the smart, up-and-coming detective heroine Lucy Hubbard. Her first mystery has been published to strong sales and glowing reviews and she finds herself swept up in the literary world of 1930 Britain’s best-known detective novelist, Horace Hazelmoor, president of The Cloak and Dagger Club and a bombastic bully. She attends her first meeting of these writers of murder mysteries and is dazzled by the assembled talent. However, when her former fiancé Frank Murray joins them she is slightly unnerved and works to keep their former relationship secret. Horace gets drunk, starts an argument, and a fight ensues. Carried to his room to sleep it off, he is found dead two days later, stabbed in the back. Frank, who was threatening to overtake Horace as Britain’s favorite crime writer, is the prime suspect. Lucy has convinced herself that she no longer has feelings for her childhood friend turned former lover, but she knows that he could never have killed Horace and they begin their own side investigation to find the real murderer. McMahon’s winning debut novel features intriguing characters, a cleverly devised puzzle, light romance, and sharp, easy to digest writing.

A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry (1994) by Mary Oliver was written with writers in mind, but it is also a welcoming space for readers of poetry to gain insights into the “thoughtful machinery” of the poem. Oliver asks her readers to be mindful about each part of the process of creating “a type of love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind.” To write well and memorably, she reminds us, “it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers.” Throughout this slim but rich volume Oliver draws on the works of other poets—Walt Whitman (one of her favorites), Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, and more—to help us see how to read, write, and understand poetry.

The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi (2024) by Wright Thompson is a shocking, deep, historical, and yet fresh account of one of the most consequential murders of the twentieth century. When young Emmett Till was abducted, tortured, and killed in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman, the nation began to awaken to the pervasive racism of the South. It gave powerful fuel to the civil rights movement. The local cover-up of what really happened began almost immediately, however, and continues to this day. Thompson, a native of the Delta born in 1976, didn’t learn about Till’s murder and its place in the nation’s history until he left the state to go to college. He has returned to live in his homeland and—through this very personal yet universal work—to seek to understand the centuries of economic history, exploitation, and lies that brought young Emmett Till and as many as eight white residents of the Delta to a barn owned by one of the killers for a night of horrific torture and murder.

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

Keep reading!

More to come . . .

DJB

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

Open book image by Getty Images via Unsplash

A remarkable debut

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The debut novel by a talented and daring Iranian-American poet, author, and teacher came to me via conversations with booksellers at Little District Books, individuals who clearly love their work and their community.

Installment #19 in my series on the region’s independent bookshops.

A friend who joined me on a recent bookstore visit wrote to say that she was reading the “very lovely” little book she bought while we were together. It was “something I wouldn’t have picked but for standing in the store talking about it. So a reminder to myself to buy more books in real life!”

Talking about books with friends and booklovers while perusing the stacks of a shop with a niche or perhaps even quirky personality is one of the joys I’m discovering on my journey through the Washington region’s 30 independent bookstores.

I was hoping to find a booklover to guide me in my discovery at Little District Books on Capitol Hill. When you walk in “you won’t have to look for the LGBTQ+ section,” asserts the shops website, “because every single book in our store is written by, about, and for queer folks!”

I knew that going in. As a well-read straight man I’ve devoured countless works by queer authors through the years, from Hans Christian Anderson, W.H. Auden, and Mary Oliver to Ocean Vuong, Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde. But I don’t regularly read books written specifically about or for queer folks, so I wasn’t sure what I’d find. I should not have worried.

In June 2022, Patrick Kern, a federal government lawyer, opened Little District Books along Barracks Row—the city’s first LGBTQIA-focused bookstore since Lambda Rising closed in 2009. From the very beginning he hoped to open a bigger space if the community would support it. Once the readers came, expanding became a matter of finding the right location.

I visited Little District in their new location on a hot July day after already spending time in the nearby Capitol Hill Books and East City Book Shop. The three are within easy walking distance. As Kern told the Washington City Paper:

“The new location puts Little District on a busy main stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue alongside neighborhood staples such as East City Bookshop and Labyrinth Games. The prime location, Kern believes, will encourage customers to stop in as they browse other nearby stores. He also welcomes the chance to be closer to another bookstore, which he sees as an opportunity.

‘The net effect of having a bunch of bookstores together is people spend money on books,’ he says. ‘More readers will come here because we’re together. … We have different audiences and we don’t have that much overlap in what we have in the store.'”

Before arriving I perused the staff recommendations on the website. They offered up multiple possibilities. I spoke with the staffer at the front desk, told them of my quest, and said I would probably ask for assistance after I spent some time checking out the inventory in the large and welcoming space. Thirty minutes later I was still uncertain what to select, but my conversation with the very helpful staff and the onsite recommendation by Rahaf led me to select a National Book Award finalist that had generated a great deal of praise for a first-time novelist. As my friend noted, this was a work I wouldn’t have picked but for standing in the store talking about it.

Martyr! (2024) by Kaveh Akbar is an astonishing debut novel by a talented and daring Iranian-American poet, author, and teacher. The use of language, the multiple voices, the weaving of contemporary and historical text, the very subject matter about the meaning of life and death all come together in a way that is fresh and funny and savvy and sad all at the same time. Akbar’s writing is so alive and compelling, even when dealing with the protagonist’s overwhelming sadness.

Martyr! follows recovering alcoholic Cyrus Shams as he “wrestles with difficult questions of how to be an artist, an Iranian man, and how to give your life (and death) meaning.” Cyrus came from Tehran to live in Indiana with his father after his mother, Roya, dies. The New York Times review describes the circumstances of her tragic death.

“Just a few months after Cyrus was born, Roya boarded a plane from Tehran to Dubai to visit her brother Arash, ‘who had been unwell since serving in the Iranian Army against Iraq.’ Soon after her plane took off, it was blown up by a missile fired from a U.S. Navy warship: ‘Just shot out of the sky. Like a goose.’

The reference is to the notorious real-life destruction of Iran Air Flight 665 by the U.S.S. Vincennes in 1988. Sixty-six children were aboard Flight 665—Cyrus should have been the 67th, but Roya decided to leave her son home because he was so young.”

The mother’s death affects them all. Arash, the uncle, has hallucinations and falls into deeper despair. Ali, his father, immigrates with his son to America—the country that killed his wife—and takes back-breaking work in an industrial poultry farm in Fort Wayne. He has difficulty sleeping and yet tries to hold it together until his son gets to college. Cyrus uses his wild dreams, art, addiction, and sex to try and forget about the ache in his heart and the feeling of death that both surrounds and calls to him.

The story moves back and forth across time. We see Roya, Ali, and Cyrus before the fatal plane ride. Arash serves as an angel of death on the battlefield to help wounded soldiers make the journey to the next life, service that has led to his despair. Not all of the sections are believable. At times the book, like life, seems over-the-top. But the overall effect pulls the reader along. And given where I purchased the book, one reviewer made a point that resonated with me.

“As a representation of queer relationships, this novel is excellent—it depicts multiple generations of queer couplings without flinching. Avoiding the tragic queer narrative which feels so familiar in mainstream media, Akbar portrays queer relationships as just as complicated, tender, and full of ups and downs as any other relationship. No character in this novel is shown as struggling with their sexuality, a welcome change from persistent media ‘coming out’ stories and other exhausted queer media representations. In Martyr!, queer people are simply living their lives and loving each other, and this is refreshing to see as well as masterfully depicted.”

The book’s focus is tightened when friend and sometime lover Zee mentions an Iranian artist, Orkideh, to Cyrus. Orkideh is dying of cancer and, in a final piece of performance art is talking about death with anyone who will visit her at the Brooklyn Museum. Cyrus goes to talk with the artist about how one makes one’s death matter. She teases him about becoming a cliché — “another death-obsessed Iranian man.” Yet their conversations, along with her story and her secrets, bring Cyrus to fully face his art, life, and death.

Akbar creates this debut work of prose with energetic and creative writing and wit. A National Book Award finalist named among the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2024, Martyr! has been reviewed in multiple places. A few you might find insightful include:

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to talk about books, in person, with someone who clearly loves their work and their community. I’m thankful for the staff recommendations at Little District that led me to a book I would not normally have chosen. Martyr! has introduced me to a writer and a world that pushes at the boundaries of my worldview, broadening my perspective of both writing and life.

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo from Shiraz, Iran by Abolfazl Ranjbar on Unsplash

Exploring DC’s independent bookshops: A Labor Day update

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An update on my visits to all 30 independent bookshops in the Washington, DC region, plus an appreciation for Bold Fork Books, which is closing September 30th.

Last January I set out on what one new friend described as an “exquisite venture” to explore all 30* independent bookshops in the DC region, write about each experience, and review a book purchased during my visit. And what a journey of discovery it has been! The range, scope and diversity of these shops is matched only by the enthusiasm, professionalism, and knowledge of the owners and staff who share their love of books and reading with others on a daily basis.

My goal was to fully complete this quest in 2026. Since Labor Day traditionally signals that we are three-quarters of the way through the year, I can report at this benchmark that I’ve finished one part but still have work to do before year’s end to mark this bucket list goal as fully complete.

  • Task one: Visit all 30 independent bookshops.
    • Check!
  • Task two: Read a book purchased from each shop and then write about my experience in that store and a review of the book on MORE TO COME.
    • We’re getting there!

Here’s an update for those following along, with a special thanks to the shop owners and staff who have assisted me in my visits and to the friends who have joined me to show off a favorite store or in exploring new places.

INDEPENDENT BOOKSHOPS VISITED AND REVIEWED

At this point in the year I have visited eighteen DC-area independent bookstores, written about the experience, and reviewed a book purchased from that bookseller. Each installment has information about the shop (with links) and my take on the book I purchased at that store.

  • Installment #5: WONDERLAND BOOKS, Bethesda
    • Review: Thomas Gilbert’s Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America’s First Baseball Hero
  • Installment #8: BOL, Brookland
    • Review: Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits
  • Installment #10: JF BOOKS, Dupont Circle
    • Review: Yiyun Li’s Things in Nature Merely Grow, the 2026 Pulitzer Prize winner for Memoir
  • Installment #15: KRAMERS, Dupont Circle
    • Review: Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry

INDEPENDENT BOOKSHOPS VISITED BUT NOT YET REVIEWED

There are twelve independent bookstores remaining to complete this journey. I’ve visited each of those twelve in 2026 and have purchased at least one book (and usually more). Reading those books and writing my reviews are among my primary tasks for the last four months of the year.

  • BARDS ALLEY, Vienna
    • The Fifth Year by Marlen Haushofer
  • BERGSTROM PRESS & BOOKS, Kensington
    • Karl Schlögel’s Ukraine: A Nation on the Borderland
  • KENSINGTON ROW BOOKSHOP, Kensington
    • Bridges of Washington, D.C.: A History & Guide by Bob Dover
  • LITTLE DISTRICT BOOKS, Barracks Road
    • Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!
  • LOYALTY BOOKSTORE, Petworth
    • Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known by George M. Johnson or How We See It: The World Looks at America in the Age of Trump edited by The Dial
  • MAHOGANY BOOKS, National Harbor
    • Redeem a Nation: The Century-long Battle to Restore the Soul of America by Damario Solomon-Simmons
  • MIDDLE EAST BOOKS, Dupont Circle
    • Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This or Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account
  • OLD TOWN BOOKS, Alexandria
    • Joyce Chaplin’s The Franklin Stove: An Unintended American Revolution or They Stole a City: Wilmington’s White Supremacist Coup and the Families Who Live with Its Legacy by Lauren Collins
  • SANKOFA BOOKS, Howard University/Georgia Avenue
    • The Soul of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
  • SCRAWL BOOKS, Reston
    • Colin Asher’s The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music
  • SECOND STORY BOOKS, Dupont Circle
    • Daniel James Brown’s The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
  • SOLID STATE BOOKS, Shaw
    • Lives of the Saints by Nancy Lemann

AN APPRECIATION FOR BOLD FORK BOOKS

It may seem strange to mourn the loss of an independent bookstore as one would a person, but I’ve become very attached to these small shops throughout the DC region that buck major corporate trends to bring the community the passion, knowledge, interests, and loves of our neighbors. Thus I mourned when Candice and a friend both sent me notices saying that Mt. Pleasant’s Bold Fork Books was closing on September 30th.

The city’s only culinary bookshop, Bold Fork brought together those who loved food, books, creativity, and moxie. The staff, as shown in the picture above from the April Independent Bookstore Crawl, was friendly and knowledgeable. The selection was unique. We made a recent farewell visit two days after they announced the closing to pick up 12 back issues of Gourmet magazine that Candice was missing from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s . . . but that Bold Fork had in its collection.

The letter from owners Clementine Thomas & Sam Vasfi (pictured above) was both sad (because of the loss) and maddening (because of what this administration is doing to our city).

“We’re writing to you with some very difficult news. After almost six joyful years, Bold Fork Books will be closing on September 30th.

This has been a brutal year for our bookstore—from the immovable realities of narrow margins, fixed expenses, and the creep of online retailers to the hits DC has taken from the federal government’s actions. Business has slowed, costs have gone up, and there’s no indication these trendlines will change anytime soon. Like so many of our fellow small businesses, we’ve tried to come up with solutions, but the fundamentals have become insurmountable.

We can’t put into words how much this community means to us. Books we can’t stop talking about, conversations that spill out onto the sidewalk, authors and cooks and thinkers we admire, and the people who have walked through our doors have made this little shop so much bigger than we ever imagined it could be.

We want to make the most of our last month together, with plenty of opportunities to gather, connect, and celebrate. We’ll have more to share soon on this. At the end of the day, Bold Fork Books is a place: four walls, some shelves, and a whole lot of books. What made it special was always you – the people who supported us from near and far.

Thank you all for the journey of a lifetime.”

Thank you, Clementine and Sam, for taking a bold leap and bringing joy to DC-area book lovers and cooks for over six years. May you never stop dreaming.

WRAPPING UP

At year’s end I will:

  • post a final update with links to all 30 installments in the series, and
  • return to consider key lessons learned from each bookstore as part of this wonderful journey.

Thanks for joining me along the way, and keep reading!

More to come . . .

DJB

*For much of the year I settled on 29 as the number of independent bookshops in the immediate DC region. But after walking past it hundreds of times, it finally dawned on me that the small book/record shop literally across the street from my house—Mojomala: Books, Records & Cool Stuff—was not just a fly-by-night pop-up. Their inventory is as extensive, interesting, and intriguing as many of the other small shops in my list, and they’ve been around since December of 2023. So, I now have a nice round 30 bookshops to visit in 2026!

Photo of bookmarks by DJB

Listen with more than your ears and see with more than your eyes

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Touchstone phrases can be practical and yet mystical. Poetic. Perhaps a little old-fashioned but still current and contemporary.

Singer, songwriter, and poet Carrie Newcomer had a wonderful end of summer reflection entitled You Speak To My Condition. She began by noting that the title was a phrase she encountered when she first started spending time with Quakers.

“The phrase is used when you want to let someone know that their words have touched you and you appreciate the spirit contained in those words. It is more than you understand me. ‘You speak to my condition’ acknowledges something true at the heart of the words spoken, it names something that I may be living but do not know yet how to put it into language. The phrase is an expression of gratitude and a recognition of something shared and human—you spoke and we recognized one another in some essential way.”

Newcomer writes about the joy of finding phrases that become touchstones. I have discovered a few myself in this third stage of life, usually when I’ve taken the time to sit and linger. To tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold. Wonder.

I’m an impatient person by nature, and lingering, waiting, pondering don’t always come naturally. Someone close to me says that I still speak too frequently before I’ve stopped to think. Perhaps they recognize that I have not yet fully broken the habit of thinking while male. That individual is correct, and they tell me this out of love.

But I do recognize my condition and am working to take time to see and listen in new ways. My friend and mentor Frank Wade writes that “the Chinese have a saying, ‘Most of what we see is behind our eyes.’” In other words, Frank notes, we see what we expect to see, not necessarily what is really there. We force the world into our preconceptions and because of that we miss a lot.

That’s not the kind of sight I’m working to develop.

Newcomer calls us, instead, to listen with more than our ears and see with more than our eyes. Several touchstones for her came from those more expansive ways of listening and seeing.

“We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it.”

Mary Oliver

“Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.”

Terry Tempest Williams

“What we do in love and kindness is all we’ll ever leave behind.”

“I will always love you.”

TOUCHSTONES THAT SPEAK TO ME

I’ve gathered several touchstones in recent years, phrases that speak to me. Most are reminders to be open to—and participate fully in—joy.

Frank Wade (there he is again) preached a sermon on the well-known Parable of the Sower this past July where he spoke about the good news we may have missed.

“The seeds are opportunities for us to participate in that joy, to join in the same things that give joy to the full heart of God. They are invitations to wonder, graciousness, generosity, forgiveness, affirmation, reconciliation, praise, peace, calm, quiet, beauty, gentleness, and charity to name only a few. Those opportunities are around us in abundance, are they not? That good news is the first point of the parable.”

These opportunities are around us in abundance. But the complexity of life often blinds me to their existence. Writer Satya Robyn wrote of the same condition. When she steps out gently from the busyness of life to engage the world through curiosity and wonder, however, Robyn stops struggling. She floats as in a river, embracing the liminality.

The unpredictability is how I learn. The uncontrollability is how my heart is stretched open. Not dodging things means I end up bashing into joy.

Now that I am retired, I have a new life description: I am bashing into joy.

Bash into joy has become one of my touchstone phrases, and I remind readers of it regularly in the words used to conclude my monthly summaries. Here are a few others:

“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”

Mary Oliver

“Take time to dawdle and dream.”

A paraphrase of E.B. White

“Memory is a poet, not a historian.”

Marie Howe

“We are here to keep watch, not to keep.”

Kathryn Schulz

“Try to be nice. Always be kind.”

Newcomer ends her meditation with the hope that we will speak in a way that shapes air into language and spirit into meaning. “May we speak from our hearts and to one another’s condition.” And then she shares this lovely song, Say It Anyway, from Mary Chapin Carpenter.

“When it’s time to take the measure of our days
The ones that shine will hold hands with the ones that fade
I think we’re getting closer to it every day
It goes without saying, but say it anyway”

One or more of your touchstones may go without saying . . . but say it anyway.

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo of woman and seashell by Anastasiya Badun on Unsplash. Other photos from Unspash and Pixabay.

Six beverages and the shaping of human destiny

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Tom Standage writes that beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola tell the story of humanity, from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century, in ways you may never have imagined.

Installment #18 in my series on the region’s independent bookshops.

On my tour of the Washington region’s 30 independent bookstores I have met dozens of individuals who greet you with a cheery hello, point inquirers towards a section of the shop that may be hidden within the maze of stacks, stock (and restock) the shelves to ensure customers can browse the full collection, and stop what they are doing to have a discussion about a favorite book or an author. Bookstore staff are, almost without fail, knowledgeable and passionate.

Those traits are often on display in the written staff recommendations.

One of the fascinating aspects of bookshops is the staff review. Typically handwritten and signed notes of 30 words or less, these little missives are taped to the shelf underneath particular works. Occasionally they may involve something as simple as a post-it note describing a book as “Moving and brilliant—a novel about connections.”

Staff reviews were part of the experience when my dear friend and former colleague Judy Moak joined me on my recent visit to One More Page Books in Arlington. A store that promises “books, wine, and chocolate” has just about all the necessities of life covered. Suggestions of special treats from the staff help in making choices among the shop’s many delights.

Before Judy arrived I introduced myself and my bucket list quest to Leila, the store’s welcoming and informative manager. One More Page was founded in 2011 and is a woman-owned independent bookshop “where a love of reading is cultivated alongside friendship, acceptance, and connection.” The shop strives “to be a gathering place for the community and nurturing environment for diverse authors and readers.” My friend and author Julia Rocchi told me that the book launch party in 2022 for her debut work Amen? Questions for a God I Hope Exists was hosted by One More Page. Leila directed me to the local authors’ shelves along with other sections of interest. It quickly became clear she knew her inventory and her customers.

Judy arrived and we spent the better part of an hour working our way through the stacks, discussing various books we’d read (or wanted to read). As is my habit I ended up with more than one selection. But near the end of our time we turned to the shelves with staff recommendations. Judy pulled out one selection with an ingenious title and said she had read it and found it fascinating. Her recommendation, plus those of the staff member and Leila, sealed the deal.

Lesson learned: when you visit the treasures that are independent bookshops take the time to check out the staff reviews. More often than not they will open new worlds and introduce talented new authors into your reading rotation.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses (2005) by Tom Standage is a delightful and thoughtful way of seeing history through a different lens. In this case the author divides world history into beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and Coca-Cola ages. While it may sound frivolous, Standage has important points to make about how our tastes for beverage evolved and why that drove major changes throughout the world. As humans moved from hunter-gatherers to agriculture our ancestors began to cultivate grain. That led to storage, which led to fermentation and beer. Add the creation of crockery and humans finally had an alternative to water, which six millennia ago was the only beverage available. Around 4000 BCE, human beings learned to stick straws into big, communally shared beer vessels. And as we discover throughout this work, once a new drink is created, our world changes.

For each of these eras, Standage begins with an in-depth dive into how the beverage was discovered or invented. Beer seems, from the start, to have had an important function as a social drink and as a driver of civilization. This Stone Age brew became the drink of the Civilized Man in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia, and it quickly became a form of currency. The builders of the pyramids were paid in beer. Standage also shows us a somewhat cryptic description of the brewing process that suggests that beer was the focus of the world’s oldest written recipe.

Wine’s origins also stretch back to prehistory and many first hear about it in the biblical story of Noah, who is said to have planted the first vineyard on the slopes of Mount Ararat after being delivered from the flood. Vines were being cultivated on Crete by 2500 BCE and possibly on mainland Greece as well. It is the Greeks who brought wine to the world and, along with it, the foundations for modern Western politics, philosophy, science, and law. Wine was consumed at formal drinking parties, or symposia, which were venues for “playful but adversarial discussion.” The climate and terrain of the Greek islands and mainland were ideal for viticulture. As with beer, wine became a symbol of wealth and commerce. By the sixth century BCE, the property owning classes in Athens were categorized according to their vineyard holdings. In so many ways wine embodied and helped shape Greek culture.

As they did with architecture, religion, philosophy, governance and more, the Romans took wine from the Greeks and made it their own. In the hands of the Romans, who by the middle of the second century BCE had displaced the Greeks as the central power in the Mediterranean basin, wine was central to the growth of empire. The Romans replaced the ideal of the noble farmer with a much more commercial approach to wine, based in large estates operated by slaves. As their empire spread, so did the cultivation of vines, but the best wine always arrived at the port of Ostia (now a fascinating archaeological site) and ended up in Rome.

Excavated street and buildings
Mosaic of Fishmongers
Niche for household gods
Tombs
Excavations at Ostia Antica
Amore e Psiche
Capitolium

Wine was a universal staple in both Greece and Rome, but the Romans developed it into a symbol of social differentiation. Standage also explores the reasons why Christians drink but Muslims don’t; the drinking patterns of modern Europeans (beer in northern Europe, wine in the south); and the way that the wine culture continues to shape our politics, business development, and social patterns.

The middle sections of the book examine the rise of spirits and the role distilled liquors played in colonialism and the growth of America; the coffee-fueled Age of Reason that sobered up both business owners and workers to help shape the Industrial Revolution; and the fascinating rise of tea, the drink the British used to conquer the world. The ties between these beverages and the history of the age are examined in depth, and always with the author’s clever focus and tight reliance on historical evidence.

The final chapters look at Coca-Cola and the rise of America. Coca-Cola’s creation myth, as told by the company, is bunk. John Pemberton was “an experienced maker of patent medicines, the quack remedies that were hugely popular in America in the late nineteenth century.”

“Its creation was not the accidental concoction of an amateur experimenting in his garden, but the deliberate and painstaking culmination of months of work by an experienced maker of quack remedies.”

While popular in the United States, Coca-Cola only became a truly global brand in the wake of America’s emergence as a global superpower, with the abandonment of its longtime policy of isolationism. Standage has a fascinating section of how the Coca-Cola company worked tirelessly to tie the brand to patriotism and the war effort during WWII. As an example, Robert Woodruff, president of the company, issued an order that “every man in uniform gets a bottle of Coca-Cola for five cents, wherever he is, and whatever it costs the company.” Standage notes that the company “missed no opportunity to emphasize the totemic nature of the drink to America’s distant servicemen.” That kick-started Coke’s global growth that continued through the rest of the 20th century, as America extended its reach into every part of the world. Coke was “unquestionably the drink of the twentieth century and all that went with it: the rise of America, the victory of capitalism over communism, and the rise of globalization.”

However, as the twenty-first century has begun, Standage brings the reader back to the beginning. Water, the first drink to “steer the course of human history,” now ten thousand years later, is back in the driver’s seat.

This fascinating work provides an effective and engaging way to consider history and human development. “When you next raise some beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, or Coca-Cola to your lips,” Standage writes, “think about how it contains more than mere alcohol or caffeine. There is history, too, amid its swirling depths.”

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo of drinks at the top of the post by Moritz Mentges on Unsplash. Other photos of drinks from Unsplash. Photos from Ostia by DJB from 2016.

Observations from . . . August 2026

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This summary of the August posts from the MORE TO COME newsletter finds me considering the stories and myths that we tell ourselves in today’s world.

We all choose our myths. Some can be illuminating and positive; others are powerfully destructive. Many have elements of both, mixed together in this crazy stew of life. John Updike called them both the deliverance and the curse:

“We tell ourselves a story to survive and then that story consumes us, destroys us.” 

Myths help us chart our way and make sense of what is essentially mystery. We latch onto myths in our origin stories, in our memories of family, in our national narratives, in our deepest spiritual beliefs. Like you, I have my own personal myths, some of which I have explored and deconstructed.

This month I interviewed Wright Thompson for the latest in my Author Q&A series on MORE TO COME. Myth plays an important role in Thompson’s writing. A native of Mississippi, he thinks about being Southern and how there’s a responsibility to “shake off the comforting blanket of myth and see ourselves clearly . . . (with) our long history of trying to do the right thing while benefiting mightily from the wrong thing.”

Myths can be uplifting but they can also subvert freedom. The latter “work hard to prevent change from happening. They are powerful. But they are not all-powerful,” asserts journalist Nesrine Malik.

The strength of myths is not in facts but in narratives. That’s true for both positive and negative myths. It is impossible to fight the fake facts of negative or destructive myths with other facts. What is needed are new stories that are not just the correction of old stories, but are visions that assert that “for societies to evolve, an old order must change.” Minnesota-based novelist Heather Demetrios wrote “The only thing I know that can effectively change hearts and minds is story. The ONLY thing that I have ever, ever seen melt an icy soul is when someone hears another’s story.” 

The stories of the people of the Twin Cities earlier this year helped change destructive myths about immigrants.

Dolly Parton, who passed away this month, spent a lifetime living out of an abundance of kindness while sharing her story that exploded negative myths about women, rural poverty, appearance, and exclusivity.

Stories—told by real people—can change the myths that subvert freedom.

I’ve been reading and thinking about myths and stories and responsibility and kindness and change during these dog days of summer. Let’s begin by seeing which ones resonated with the readers of MORE TO COME.

READER FAVORITES

On a hot August Delta day in 1955, fourteen year old Emmett Till of Chicago became an unintentional martyr of the modern Civil Rights movement. Till was abducted, tortured, and murdered while visiting relatives in Mississippi. His mother’s insistence on a public funeral and open casket, so others could see how the murderers had beaten and mutilated her son, focused attention on America’s racism and violent caste system as few events up to that time had done.

Two years ago a native son of the Delta revisited Till’s murder, producing a searing, powerful work—an incredible piece of writing, reporting, and reflection—that reminds us of what is at stake in the current attempt to erase difficult histories from the national narrative. That author, Wright Thompson, wrote The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi, which was named TIME‘s #1 Nonfiction Book of the Year for 2024.

In The wages of erasure is reenactment—a MTC reader favorite for August—Wright spoke with me about the book, deep history and inherited sin, heroes, William Faulkner and Charley Patton and Muddy Waters, the effects of the erasure of history, and more. Wright’s thoughts are well worth your time.

Dolly Parton

The other Reader Favorite this month was my remembrance of Dolly Parton—singer, songwriter, entertainer, actress, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and “what your mom used to refer to as just plain good people”—who passed away at the age of 80.

Dolly Parton, RIP was my post for one of the few people who could bring together blue and red Americans, straight and gay communities, grandmothers and granddaughters, rich and poor. Dolly bridged all those divides and more.

Too many people in our country believe the myths that the right place for a woman is in the home, that kindness is weakness, that some people are better than others. One of the writers I quote in this piece—after noting the debt that country and female artists owed to Parton for her trailblazing work over almost 60 years—placed a nice frame around Dolly’s ability to destroy those myths:

“And, really, anyone with a sense of moral decency, is in her debt for the simple but unending good she promoted, whether it was through children’s literacy programs, scholarships, vaccine research or the obvious right that everyone, regardless of genre, race, sexual orientation or ethnic background was deserving of love, respect and acknowledgement.

The latter may prove to be the most vital and lasting component of Parton’s legacy. Exclusivity simply did not exist in her world. Her music and life embraced everyone. And let’s face it, folks, not all artists and entertainers, especially select members of country music’s more self-righteous regions, promoted such generosity.”

Her passing leaves a hole in hearts all around the world.

EVEN IN THE HEAT OF SUMMER, THE INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE TOUR CONTINUES!

I’ve picked up the pace in visiting the DC region’s 30 independent bookstores and writing about these wonderful places and the treasures I discovered along the journey. We’re now past the half-way mark! Here are the shops and books I reviewed in August:

  • Installment #14: EAST CITY BOOKSHOP, Capitol Hill
  • Installment #16: CAPITOL HILL BOOKS, Capitol Hill

Look for a more complete update around Labor Day.

During August I also completed a challenge for Bethesda’s Wonderland Books which you can see at Summer reading . . . check! And to find short reviews of the works I read last month see From the bookshelf: July 2026.

Those who read more books live longer.

EVERYTHING ELSE THAT TICKLED MY FANCY

Five other posts rounded out my August writings on MORE TO COME:

  • Glen Hansard, RIP—Hansard, who passed away in late July—“gathered people together,” showing “that kindness is its own kind of song.”
  • Twenty-four down, six to go!—Reporting on my recent visit to Globe Life Field, home of the Texas Rangers, part of my journey to visit all 30 MLB ballparks.

WE ALL NEED SOMEONE

Here’s a little bonus for this month . . . because we all need someone to lean on.

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 July 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.

Dog days photo by Ignacio Amenábar on Unsplash

Twenty-four down, six to go!

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Moving one step closer to a bucket list goal to visit all 30 MLB ballparks

Last week I boarded an airplane for a one-night trip to Arlington, Texas, to visit “Globe Life Stadium,” the corporate-named home of the Texas Rangers. I knew I was getting near the Lone Star State when the airline map showed us flying near the Gulf of Mexico . . . oh wait, United Airlines—like way too many corporate entities in this country—just had to suck up to a lifelong con man and convicted felon.

Jeez. I don’t have a lot of confidence in an airline that doesn’t even know where we are. One day future historians will shake their heads at our stupidity.

As long-time readers and friends know, I am on a bucket-list quest to visit all 30 Major League ballparks.* However, it had been three years since I’d traveled to one of the cities remaining on my list.

Located on the appropriately named Nolan Ryan Expressway, smack in the middle of the maze of highways that makes up the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex, the home of the Texas Rangers was one of those places I was going to have to make an intentional trip to see. I checked the schedule and found that my Washington Nationals were playing Texas this month. I was in!

Thanks to frequent flyer miles and motel points, Tuesday of last week found me walking near AT&T Stadium (home of the Cowboys), past the old and much more visually appealing home of the Rangers (now dubbed Choctaw Stadium for a gambling enterprise, of course), and into the gates of Globe Life Field following two Nats fans attired in Turner and Scherzer jerseys (those were the days when the owners cared about winning). I made it in time to watch my hometown team take batting practice and to check off stadium #24 in my quest.

Have I mentioned that it was 105 degrees with a hot breeze blowing as I walked that 20 minutes from the hotel to the stadium? Brutal.

When I planned this trip, the Nats were actually generating some excitement, playing a little better than .500 ball. Then at the trade deadline the Lerners, who own the team, do what they have done since winning the 2019 World Series: they trade off their good (and higher-priced) players for “prospects.” Since that magical year its been pretty thin gruel.

Have I mentioned the Nationals need to fire their owners?

I was wearing my 2019 World Series Champions hat and an old Nationals City Connect t-shirt (still my favorite). While I was watching batting practice, Robbie and Larry—the two folks wearing those old Nats jerseys—came up to join me. They live in Rockville and are on the same quest I am to visit all 30 MLB stadiums. Globe Life Field was #27 for Robbie while it was #29 for Larry.

I told my new friends that this was the first in my quest to actually involve the Nats as the visiting team. Robbie said that several years ago she and Larry adjusted their journeys to coincide with Nationals away games and that they liked the experience. It was an interesting adjustment for me. There were a good number of fans wearing their Nats gear beyond the three of us. Everyone—from the stadium personnel to the concessionaires to the Rangers fans—could see our allegiance.

By the end of the evening I actually found it appealing to have that connection to the visiting team. I don’t know if my Nats gear made a difference, but all the locals were exceptionally friendly. Ticket takers and information staff quickly pointed me in the right direction on more than one occasion. The guy who sold me my beef brisket sandwich and beer asked if we could help out the home team by letting them win. I told him that his odds were pretty good, as we’d been playing down-in-the-dumps since the trade deadline and our best player, James Wood, was injured.

My seat was just below the press box, similar to the location of my regular perch in Section 313 in Nationals Stadium (N-A-T-S, Nats, Nats, Nats, Woo!). Unlike at home, that section of Globe Life Field was sparsely settled. Nonetheless, the three women and one man sitting in front of me, all in Rangers attire, were scoring the game—a very good sign for an evening of intelligent baseball conversation.

I asked what they liked best about the stadium. One woman laughed and said “the roof.”

If you look at this line from the box score you’ll see why. The temperature outside was 105 degrees, but the official scorer noted that inside we were sitting in a comfortable environment of 74 degrees. The roof was closed.

Umpires: HP: Chad Fairchild. 1B: Bill Miller. 2B: John Bacon. 3B: Brian Walsh.   Weather: 74 degrees, Roof Closed.   T: 2:34.   Att: 22,126.

That same individual told me that she had “sweated pounds away” at the old Rangers ballpark each summer.

In addition to the nice people, I have to give it to the Rangers for their choice of music. When a Ranger scored and the Nationals challenged the safe call at home plate in the third inning, the stadium’s music director played the following inspired choice:

The video reviewers confirmed the umpire’s safe call, so they did “let it be.”

I also loved it that the “Ranger Fans Sing-a-long” held in one of the between-innings slots featured this classic. I can attest that not only Ranger fans were singing!

Not everything about the venue was great. As is true in most of the new stadiums with retractable roofs, you feel as if you are inside a very large parking garage. Then there is the lame mascot race. The Rangers claim that the “Racing Dots” are MLB’s first mascot race. It doesn’t matter. The thrill of racing dots is incomprehensible. The fans in front of me said they were big fans of Washington’s Presidents Race. After seeing what they have to endure each game, I can only imagine that they pine for a good set of racing mascots. Like dead presidents. Or sausages.

Even with the heat outside, the racing dots and a Nationals 5-0 loss—extending their losing streak to four games—all in all it was a very enjoyable evening. Thanks to all my new-found friends for their Texas hospitality.

Twenty-four down, six to go!

Here are the ballparks still to be visited. Let me know if you’d like to join me on one of these journeys.

  • Arizona Diamondbacks – Chase Field
  • Detroit Tigers – Comerica Park (I’ve seen it, but not to watch a ballgame)
  • Los Angeles Dodgers – Dodger Stadium (I’ve had offers from friends in LA to join them to see the Dodgers. I’ll probably try and get my daughter Claire to fly down from the Bay Area for a visit with me as well, especially since she’s been there multiple times. I’ve seen more ball parks with my daughter than with any other individual. I do love her so!)
With Claire at the Big A
Selfie at ATT Park
With Claire at Target Field
Progressive Field Cleveland
Claire at a Dodgers Game
Family time at Nats Park
  • Miami Marlins – Marlins Park (Hey, maybe I should wait a few years and I could also work in a visit to the Donald Trump Presidential Library. Or not.)
  • New York Yankees – Yankee Stadium (I know—how can I not have made it to Yankee stadium yet?! Just goes to show I’ve never been a big Yankees fan. I’m actually saving this for last.)
  • Toronto Blue Jays – Rogers Centre (Candice and I are planning a trip to Toronto, perhaps next year.)

More to come . . .

DJB

*I do have some rules for this quest. First, drive-by viewings don’t count. I have to actually see a game. I use to buy a hat of the local team to prove I’d been there, but it was suggested that I have enough caps so that’s no longer necessary.

Finally, demolitions have wreaked havoc with these plans. I decided—in a totally arbitrary way since I am the commissioner and umpire for this game—that if I’ve seen a team in their home ballpark that has since been demolished, then it counts against my list. After spending many misbegotten days of my young adulthood in Atlanta Fulton County Stadium, I don’t intend on visiting the Disneyland that is now home to the Atlanta Braves. What type of team uproots its stadium from the traditional home of its most loyal fan base. That’s a rhetorical question, as two-thirds of the owners in MLB have done it at one time or another.

Dolly Parton, RIP

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Dolly Parton—singer, songwriter, entertainer, actress, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and “what your mom used to refer to as just plain good people”—passed away on Tuesday at the age of 80 after a brief battle with cancer. Her death leaves a big hole in hearts around the world.

Dolly Parton passed away on Tuesday at the age of 80 after a brief battle with cancer. Few people—much less entertainers and celebrities—could bring together blue and red Americans, straight and gay communities, grandmothers and granddaughters, rich and poor.

Dolly Parton bridged those divides, and more.

In its obituary, the New York Times wrote:

“With her voluptuous figure, sparkly stage costumes and blond bouffant wigs, she was likened by the writer Chet Flippo to the Big Rock Candy Mountain, the Depression-era symbol of abundance. Her songs spoke to millions, confronting privation and loss even as they radiated possibility and hope.”

Dolly Parton

Growing up near Nashville in the 1960s, I was first introduced to Dolly and her exceptional gifts through the Porter Wagoner TV show where she was featured as the “girl singer.” But she had higher aspirations, and over the course of a career spanning six decades she earned the affection so many bestowed upon her. She was always well known as an entertainer, but it took longer for her songwriting talent to be recognized as among the best in popular music.

Dolly wrote the truth from a woman’s perspective in a way that broke through the tight gender-defining rules imposed by country music.

On the occasion of Dolly’s 50th anniversary on the Grand Ole Opry in 2019, writer Mary Elizabeth Williams had an article in Salon on why Dolly was such a force of nature. Williams wrote,

“Dolly Parton is, quantifiably, one of the most loved personalities in the world. She’s also a deceptively complex American figure. On a superficial level, she’s a twangy blonde with a wig collection to rival RuPaul, a body that defies the laws of physics and a proudly gaudy sartorial aesthetic. ‘It costs a lot of money to look this cheap,’ she’s famously explained. But you don’t have to look very far under the rhinestones to see that she’s one our greatest American songwriters, a virtuoso musician, an actress, an entrepreneur, a philanthropist and what your mom used to refer to as just plain good people. Her larger-than-life persona makes her a great entertainer. Her intelligence and authenticity make her an icon.”

Writing yesterday in The Musical Box, Walter Tunis framed it well when he suggested that “we talk about ‘larger than life’ figures all the time, but Dolly’s stature as an artist and humanitarian went a few light years beyond large.” After noting the debt that country and female artists owed to Parton for her trailblazing work over almost 60 years, Tunis notes:

“And, really, anyone with a sense of moral decency, is in her debt for the simple but unending good she promoted, whether it was through children’s literacy programs, scholarships, vaccine research or the obvious right that everyone, regardless of genre, race, sexual orientation or ethnic background was deserving of love, respect and acknowledgement.

The latter may prove to be the most vital and lasting component of Parton’s legacy. Exclusivity simply did not exist in her world. Her music and life embraced everyone. And let’s face it, folks, not all artists and entertainers, especially select members of country music’s more self-righteous regions, promoted such generosity.”

The historian and social critic Rebecca Solnit, writing in her Meditations in an Emergency newsletter, called her “Our Goddess of Kindness,” and featured the billboard with Dolly’s picture on it imploring us to “find the good in everybody.”

“Down home and brilliant, feminist and feminine, glitter-bedecked and generous, country and cosmopolitan, funny and soulful. In her songs and interviews and in 9 to 5, the movie about workplace sexual harassment she co-starred in with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, she was a hell of a feminist all the way back to songs like 1968’s Just Because I’m a Woman, with the lyrics:

My mistakes are no worse than yours
Just because I’m a woman“

Solnit notes that Parton took stands, “often in her own country way, trying to avoid what might seem like partisanship.” She spoke up “against racism and, in the summer of 2020, for Black Lives Matter, for queer and trans people, for women’s rights.”

“And she sang it too, most recently in Traveling Through for the trans-themed film Transamerica and the song Rainbowland with her goddaughter Miley Cyrus. Dolly Parton was hugely loved by the queer community and she loved them back. In Rainbowland godmother and goddaughter sing:

Wouldn’t it be nice to live in paradise? 
Where we’re free to be exactly who we are 
Let’s all dig down deep inside 
Brush the judgment and fear aside“

Personally, I always loved Dolly’s take on the Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the country in 2020. “I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen,” she told Billboard magazine.

“And of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!” 

God, we’re going to miss that refreshing honesty. And all the good she did in the world.

At the height of the pandemic I wrote a post entitled Did you have Dolly Parton helping to fund COVID-19 vaccine on your 2020 bingo card? Of course we didn’t, but of course, she did.

There’s so much of Dolly’s musical catalog to explore, and I definitely recommend what Parton self-describes as her “sad ass songs” from the early years. Here she was often taking traditional murder ballads like Knoxville Girl and recasting them from the woman’s (i.e., the victim’s) point of view. She also wrote great songs of empowerment, such as Coat of Many Colors, a fantastic song about not letting poverty, and others’ point of view, change your self perception.

“But they didn’t understand it, and I tried to make them see
One is only poor, only if they choose to be
Now I know we had no money, but I was rich as I could be
In my coat of many colors my momma made for me”

Dolly penned some of the best lines in country music, like, “In my Tennessee mountain home, life is as peaceful as a baby’s sigh.” One of my favorites is, “You don’t know love from Shinola.” I can think of so many people in a certain administration this line could apply to:

“Your attitude stinks and I hate it
You’re arrogant, cocky and rude
You’re selfish, conceited and jaded
Everything’s all about you
You think that I’m lucky to have you
You think you’re so handsome, so what
I’m callin’ you out cause I don’t need this crap
I’m gettin’ myself outta Dodge
Cause you don’t know love from Shinola”

Being a bluegrass fan I was thrilled when Dolly turned her attention to her roots in that music with 1999’s The Grass is Blue. Her next two albums, Little Sparrow in 2001 and 2002’s Halos & Horns, carried on a similar vein. The latter included the wonderful “I’m Gone”—one of my favorite Parton tunes because it so clearly captures the “I’m in charge of me” part of Parton’s persona in the humorous way that endears her to so many.

“You can tell the truth or you can lie
You can say I left you or I died
Say I’m in the Himalayas on some spiritual quest
And could spend years lookin’ for the light
Say I’m in the witness program with the F.B.I.,
Say a U.F.O. abducted me from home
You can say what you chose, but I tell you the truth
You can say for sure I’m gone, ’cause I’m gone”

Williams’ 2019 article covered Dolly’s ability to connect with so many, her status as “a full blown hero” cemented by her “supreme grace.”

“When an embittered Porter Wagoner sued his star protégé for breach of contract, she simply settled out of court. When he fell on hard times later, she bought his songwriting catalogue and then gave it back to him, because, as she recalls on Dolly Parton’s America, ‘I wanted his kids to have it. That was one of my gifts thanking him.’

When the scientists behind the world’s first cloned sheep named her Dolly — because she sprang from a mammary gland cell, GET IT? — Parton laughed it off by inviting her woolly namesake to visit Dollywood. And when she wanted to honor her father, who had to quit school to support his family and never learned to read, she started her Imagination Library. Since 1995, it’s given away over 100 million books* to children around the world. Those are the actions of a person whose seat of power comes from a place of profound compassion.”

My son Andrew came up to my writing studio yesterday with the news of Dolly’s passing. He knew I’d want to know. Later he mentioned that he’d listened to her sing the song Applejack, which could be a description of her life after death:

“That’s when I was just a kid and now that I am grown
All I have are memories, old AppleJack is gone
Oh but he left me his banjo and it always takes me back
And everytime I play it I still hear AppleJack
Play a song for me AppleJack, AppleJack
Play a song for me and I’ll sing
Play a song for me AppleJack, AppleJack
Play a song, let your banjo ring”

A true treasure. Let’s all play and sing and live life with the supreme grace and kindness that she modeled for us all.

Rest in peace, Dolly Parton.

More to come . . .

DJB

UPDATE: In addition to the admirations and remembrances included above, several writers have written especially poignant and/or insightful posts about Parton and her impact on the world. I encourage you to check out the following:

Historian Heather Cox Richardson—Letters from an American, August 26, 2026

“When children age out of Dolly’s Imagination Library, they receive a final letter from her hoping they would ‘have a great time’ in school and urging them to keep reading.

The letter ends: ‘You and all of your friends are very special. There is no limit to what you can do or how far you can go. Just remember the lessons my family taught me—dream big dreams; learn everything you can learn; and care for all those who care for you. You do all of these things and you can be anyone you want to be.

‘You are terrific, and remember…

‘I Will Always Love You,

‘Dolly.’”

Journalist and author Leonard Pitts, Jr.—Leonard’s Substack, She Walked in Grace

“Her family is asking that in lieu of flowers, mourners donate to Dolly’s Imagination Library. That would be an excellent way to honor her. Here’s another: make it a point today to take yourself a little less seriously, to have a good laugh or to not look down on somebody because they are different. Instead of looking down, maybe look beyond the boundaries and limits of your own life. Say or give something nice to somebody else, do a decent turn for some stranger, for no other reason than that they need it. That, after all, is the ultimate lesson of her life, the real reason this loss stings just a little more than others.

It doesn’t hurt like this because Dolly Parton was great.

It hurts because Dolly Parton was good.”

Tommy Tomlinson—The Writing Shed, The greatest living American

“The photo above is the Dolly Parton mural in West Asheville, North Carolina. There’s a story about it that I’ll tell in a minute. For now I wanted to mention that it’s the mural in West Asheville so I could distinguish it from the Dolly Parton mural in Indianapolis; or the Dolly Parton mural in Chicago; or the one in Ringgold, Georgia; the one in Costa Mesa, California; the one in Lexington, Kentucky; the one in Appomattox, Virginia; the ones all over Tennessee—Nashville, Knoxville, Pigeon Forge—or the one here in Charlotte, not two miles from our house. I’m sure there are more but I stopped scrolling the Dolly Parton mural image search so I could get down some words.

One way to measure who we love in this country is to see who we paint on the sides of buildings. I doubt there are many people painted on the sides of more buildings in this great land than Dolly Parton, who somehow died Tuesday at the age of 80, although death is an odd notion when it comes to Dolly, because obviously what she did and who she was will live forever.”

*The number of books distributed to children through Dolly’s Imagination Library has now grown to 300 million.

Photo of Dolly Parton’s “Kindness” billboard via Meditations in an Emergency.

Molded by the past, yet inevitably changed by the future

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I found Molly Crabapple’s story of the Jewish Bund to be an ambitious yet flawed work of personal discovery. It was appropriate that I came upon the work at Lost City Books, where one has the chance to visit diverse places, ideas, time periods and experiences.

Installment #17 in my series on the region’s independent bookshops.

During the 2026 Independent Bookstore Crawl in late April, we visited a very crowded Lost City Books in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of DC. To put it simply, I loved this bookshop dedicated to a rediscovery of both past and present, “a chance to visit diverse places, ideas, time periods and experiences.” Through the sale of both used and new books, Lost City wants to reach those who are “curious—emotionally, intellectually, psychologically—about the world, the mind, and the imagination.”

Lost City describes itself as “the place for explorers, for deep divers, who want the books they find to take them to a new horizon.” I’ve now made two visits and am more than inclined to say that Lost City lives up to that lofty goal.

A great deal of thought has gone into this bookshop. One can see it in the curation of both new and used books, in the layout of the store and the use of space, in the explicit way they tell Amazon to eff off, and in the care that went into their logo design.

“Our logo came from our desire to invoke the mystery of open doorways and the steps leading to the unknown, the occult and deeply spiritual symbolism of the moon . . . The shape of the doorway was inspired by the wrought iron street call boxes all over DC. These call boxes, no longer used for their original purpose, are very much an object out of time, an anachronistic object present in our current lives. This seemed a fitting shape to inform the logo of our bookstore. Its the combination of our rich histories, our passionate presence, and our bright futures that make Lost City Books the ever-growing community that it is.”

Lost City has a wide variety of works, many more than one might expect in a store this size. On my most recent visit I found an impressive display of books from “small presses we admire.” The landing between the first and second floors is a place to stop for volumes on architecture and art. The handwritten staff recommendations which can be found throughout the store lead shoppers down many interesting paths. As one might expect in Adams Morgan, there is a good selection of LGBTQ+ works and authors. I found the juxtaposition of new and used books in virtually every display pointed me in unexpected directions.

Virtually all of the independent bookstores I have visited in this year-long journey to sample all 30 in the Washington region have been created out of love and a vision for a better world through reading. Lost City Books certainly comes out of that impulse, and it follows that vision with an inspiring intentionality.

During that initial April visit I found a recently published work that was creating a good bit of buzz for its subject, style, and politics. Just the type of work to find on a discovery to broaden one’s horizons of past, present, and future.

Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund (2026) by Molly Crabapple is history and memoir with an anti-Zionist point of view. Crabapple (née Jennifer Caban), a New York born and based award-winning illustrator, comes across a watercolor—Itka the Bundist, Breaking Windows—among a group of paintings by her great-grandfather Sam Rothbort. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Rothbort created “memory paintings” with the hope of resurrecting the vanished world of his shtetl childhood in Volkovysk, a small town in the Russian Empire’s Pale of Settlement. The watercolor was the great-granddaughter’s introduction to the Jewish Bund and it led her on a years-long search to discover more about this major force in the revolutionary Left of Tsarist Russia. 

As Crabapple explains, the Bund was a secular, socialist movement devoted to class struggle that was launched and had its first period of growth in the late 19th century. The Bund organized workers’ councils and fighting units during the 1905 Russian revolution, which was ultimately suppressed. The group provided armed protection for Jewish communities during the bloody pogroms of the early 20th century, and although it was defeated and pushed out of the Soviet Union by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the Bund continued as a political force in interwar Poland. The Bund cultivated the Yiddish language and culture; sponsored schools, health facilities, sports clubs, youth groups and other institutions; and was the largest vote-getter of any Jewish party in Poland on the eve of the Nazi onslaught. Crabapple, calling upon deep historical research and sources, goes into great detail on how this early-20th-century socialist movement broke with the Bolsheviks, fought the Zionists, and tried to resist the fascists. Each of these efforts is important, but in this politically influenced work Crabapple returns on numerous occasions to focus on the Bund’s fight with the Zionists.

The title comes from a phrase that is repeated again and again in different contexts. The Bunds were not looking to move to a new/old homeland in Ottoman or British Palestine. They believed in “hereness.” To Crabapple, that meant that “Jews had the right to live in freedom and dignity wherever it was they stood. They would fight for a better and more beautiful world, even alongside people they had been raised to see as enemies.” 

I had challenges in reading this work. First, Crabapple is an award-winning illustrator whose writing skills do not meet that same standard. The book’s organization, with frequent interruptions to examine lives of individual members and leaders of the Bund, makes for a choppy read. Second, Crabapple likes to insert herself into the history. For instance, she relates a historical event associated with the Bund to her involvement and arrest in the Occupy Wall Street protests. She draws a parallel between the Bund and the Black Panthers. While some reviewers found them graceful and appropriate, these modern insertions into the story did not work for me.

Crabapple is writing to use the Bund’s history as a way to discredit Zionism in today’s world. As Sam Adler-Bell wrote in The Guardian,

“The Bundists rejected Zionism because it offended the core principle of their project: that ethnic particularity need not lead to nationalism, that it could be the basis for organizing across difference. . . . The Bundists dreamed of deliverance without exodus; the liberation of the Jews in concert with the liberation of their neighbors.”

The Holocaust made this dream, for many Jews, naive. But Crabapple makes the case that the Bund didn’t fail; it was defeated. “The difference between failure and defeat is that you fail when your own errors are what lead to your collapse,” she says. “Whereas to lose is just to be overcome by a greater force.” 

The book has received glowing reviews, as in the New York Times (What Does Judaism Look Like Without Zionism), and negative reactions, as can be found in the Fathom Journal‘s Jewish Bund Ghosts vs. Living Jewish State.

There is much to like in Here Where We Live Is Our Country. Along with others I also found much to question. This is a history of a part of Jewish life that deserves more attention. The nationalism of Zionism should also be examined, most especially in light of current events.

Crabapple’s work for me is ambitious, yet flawed. In an epigraph that she returns to at the end of the book, the author quotes the composer Gustav Mahler, a Jew who converted to Catholicism: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes. It is the preservation of fire.”

Fire, of course, is notoriously hard to tame.

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo of open air gathering of the Bundist Youth Organization in Warsaw, June of 1932 credit Bund Archives of the Jewish Labor Movement, New York

Gimmie that old Brooklyn Bluegrass

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Damn Tall Buildings, the bluegrass band from Brooklyn, delights while encouraging you to abandon your assumptions about who can play traditional music.

A few weeks ago we spent a lovely evening with friends on the lawn at Strathmore Music Center listening to a bluegrass band from Brooklyn. Yes, you read that right. Damn Tall Buildings came out of an unlikely place to build a following in the traditional world of bluegrass music.

As you would expect, they aren’t your father’s bluegrass band. Where’s the banjo, you might ask. Yet they certainly have a bluegrass vibe. This three piece ensemble featuring Avery Ballotta on fiddle, Max Capistran on guitar (and the occasional banjo), and Sasha Dubyk on bass bring swing, old-time, and jazz influences into their offerings of bluegrass and traditional music.

Now in their tenth year, the band began on the streets, busking for tips and building real connections with fans. That origin is evident in their live shows, where Capistran, who handles most of the emcee work, is an engaging and humorous presence.

At the Strathmore concert, the band included new tunes and originals, such as Turkish Airlines, What a Nice Life and Sleeping Dogs.

But they also mixed in more traditional (or traditional-sounding) pieces from the folk, bluegrass, and folk-rock canon.

As you can see in some of the older videos, the band has had periods as a four-piece group, with the addition of the banjo. And yes, they can play some of the bluegrass classics, such as Sweetheart of Mine.

The Boston Globe calls Damn Tall Buildings “The Carter Family for the millennial generation.” Damn Tall Buildings refer to themselves as an all-acoustic guerrilla roots band. While their instrumentation is that of bluegrass, they are not bound to it.

That’s a pretty good description for the band which, being from Brooklyn, makes their name—a takeoff of John Hartford’s In Tall Buildings—so appropriate.

Sit back and enjoy some bluegrass from an unexpected place.

More to come . . .

DJB

Photos of Damn Tall Buildings courtesy of the band’s website.