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To wander. To dawdle. To live.

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Wander. Dawdle. Already two of my favorite words, they now seem perfect for a gap year.

For years I looked for books to help encourage my desire for a slowing down of the daily rat race. Not surprisingly, I tended to find and read them while on vacation.

The Wandering Mind
The Wandering Mind by Michael Corballis

One winter holiday, when one usually focuses on resolutions for the new year, I was instead leisurely enjoying a book on the wandering mind. Author Michael C. Corballis wrote, “It seems we are programmed to alternate between mind-wandering and paying attention, and our minds are designed to wander whether we like it or not.” That sure rings true in my experience.

In The Wandering Mind: What the Brain Does When You’re Not Looking, Corballis argues that,

“Mind wandering has many constructive and adaptive features — indeed, we probably couldn’t do without it. It includes mental time travel — the wandering back and forth through time, not only to plan our futures based on past experience, but also to generate a continuous sense of who we are. Mind-wandering allows us to inhabit the minds of others, increasing empathy and understanding. Through mind-wandering we invent, tell stories, expand our mental horizons. Mind-wandering underwrites creativity, whether as a Wordsworth wandering lonely as a cloud, or an Einstein imagining himself travelling on a beam of a light.”

There is a creative purpose to wandering, daydreaming, even to boredom. Corballis uses a great deal of recent neurological research to demonstrate that memory — while important to us as humans — is not always what we make of it. He quotes American poet Marie Howe, who said, “Memory is a poet, not a historian.” The mind-wandering that is memory is more like telling a story, and the story that it tells is as often directed to the future as to the past. In other words, creativity.

Can we encourage the benefits of mind-wandering and daydreaming? Well, we can dawdle.

E.B. White once wrote, “The curse of flight is speed. Or, rather, the curse of flight is that no opportunity exists for dawdling.”

I read a good bit of White while on another vacation, near his long-time Brooklin home in Maine. The first dictionary definition of dawdle is “to waste time,” but then options such as “moving slowly and idly” are put forth, as is “languid” and “saunter.” Not surprisingly, I prefer the latter choices. In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America’s Most Companionable of Writers, includes gems that give hints of his preference for a life of wandering and dawdling.

  • Never hurry and never worry! (Charlotte’s Web)
  • If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. (E.B. White: A Biography)
  • I discovered by test that fully ninety per cent of whatever was on my desk at any given moment were IN things. Only ten percent were OUT things — almost too few to warrant a special container. This, in general, must be true of other people’s lives too. It is the reason lives get so cluttered up — so many things (except money) filtering in, so few things (except strength) draining out. (One Man’s Meat)

Comedian Stephen Wright once said, “I was trying to daydream but my mind kept wandering.” This dawdling stuff is harder than you think.

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

Installment #7 of The Gap Year Chronicles

Image by chulmin park from Pixabay

Right or lefgt

Making big decisions

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After running through the woods in the gathering darkness, four young people warily approach an old house. The dialogue begins:

“Let’s hide in the attic.  No, in the basement.” They look around wildly, and one female pleads “Why can’t we just get in the running car?” A male character responds, “Are you crazy? Let’s hide behind the chainsaws.”

The voice-over comes in to say, “If you’re in a horror movie, you make poor decisions. It’s what you do.” After the pitch for saving money with Geico Insurance, there is the scream, “Run for the cemetery!” and all four take off from the garage full of chainsaws to . . . who knows what.  But we’re safe in assuming it will be bad.

I still laugh every time I see this clever commercial.

Decisions. We all face them. And making big or difficult decisions isn’t easy, even if you’ve never been in a horror movie. But we all see examples of poor decisions leading to disastrous consequences on a daily basis.

When we have to make quick decisions, we usually rely on our fast, highly intuitive, emotional thinking.  Many quick decisions can be handled by following the instincts we’ve honed over time. But they don’t always turn out to be correct, so thankfully there are ways to improve our decision-making on the fly. Learning to recognize and address situations in which we regularly make mistakes is just one example.

It is in the faulty long-term decision where so many of today’s challenges begin, however.

On the personal level, important life decisions require context that emotion and intuition cannot adequately address. When I was in my twenties and deciding where I wanted to work and live, more often than not I pulled out a piece of paper and wrote a list of pros and cons for each major decision, a technique that has lasted through the centuries. I still remember that a key argument against moving to an unnamed city where I had a job offer was the fact that it regularly topped the list of communities with the state’s highest temperature on any given day. That approach was no different than the one taken almost two hundred years ago by Charles Darwin when he was 29 years old and trying to decide if he would stay single or get married.

“Under the heading ‘not marry’ he noted the benefits of remaining a bachelor, including ‘conversation of clever men at clubs’; under ‘marry’ he included ‘children (if it please God)’ and ‘charms of music and female chitchat.’”

Be careful what you commit to paper, unless you don’t mind sounding hopelessly dated (or worse).

The simple “pros and cons” list does not factor in our overconfidence and willingness to accept unsound arguments, if they support a conclusion we believe to be true. That faulty thought process and reliance on bad stories and bad facts has led millions of Americans to make political decisions that are clearly against their best interests. The Michael Lewis 2018 book The Fifth Risk chronicles a number of poor decisions made by people who claim to hate the government because of ideological beliefs, yet couldn’t live without substantial government assistance and the important things that the government does for them behind the scenes on a daily basis. Because knowledge makes life messier, addressing the facts makes it “more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview.” The more rural the American, “the more dependent he is for his way of life on the U.S. government. And the more rural the American, the more likely he was to have voted for Donald Trump.” This is the same Trump administration that proposes massive cuts to rural development and has imposed tariffs that cost American farmers billions of dollars.

Today we have a growing body of science that helps us consider how best to approach the making of difficult decisions, if we choose to use that information. And that choice is important, because in this age of information overload we can throw up our hands and choose an easy path that may take us in ways we will regret in the years ahead.

We usually have many options to consider in making major decisions, yet we seldom look beyond the obvious. As Daniel Kahneman has written in Thinking, Fast and Slow, it is more important for our brain to have a coherent story in order to ease cognitive processing than it is to look at a range of alternatives that may challenge our basic assumptions. In other words, we are lazy. As a result we don’t look for or absorb things that are outside, or that challenge, our comfort level.

How can we get around this illusion that we know more than we really do? Instead of facing questions as “either/or” decisions, it is helpful to approach them as you would multiple forks in the road. Put several alternatives on the table and work through those scenarios in some detail. Don’t make major decisions alone.  Involve others — preferably who bring different perspectives and cultural contexts to the table — to broaden your insight. I’ve encouraged teams to think not only about good, acceptable, and bad outcomes, but also to engage in a “premortem” where one travels forward in time and looks at why a specific decision was a horrible failure — before ever committing to a single approach. Developed by Dr. Gary Klein, the premortem, in Kahneman’s telling, helps us overcome groupthink (if you are making this decision with others), and it unleashes “the imagination of knowledgeable individuals in a much-needed direction.”

Steven Johnson, author of the forthcoming book Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most, quotes Nobel prize winning economist Thomas Schelling, who observed, “One thing a person cannot do, no matter how rigorous his analysis or heroic his imagination, is to draw up a list of things that would never occur to him.” However, if we want to make good decisions, we have to push ourselves to do just that. Finding fresh sightlines from which to view options is a good first start.

Have a great week.

More to come…

DJB

Installment #6 of the Gap Year Chronicles

Image caption: Right or left may not be our only options

The ORACLE of Takoma Park

The American equation

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It was an easy call as to which Washington region July 4th celebration to attend in 2019.

I’ve been writing about the July 4th parade in nearby Takoma Park for the past decade, and each year has featured a different spin on wackiness. In 2012, it was the precision grill team (with signs of cherry pie and the tag line: “You want a piece of this?!”) along with Mitt Romney’s poor dog Seamus, of the famous car top ride to Canada. Elvis made one of his frequent appearances in 2014, as did the Takoma Park Kinetic Sculpture Racing Team. Last  year was a well-received appearance by the Mad Dog PAC featuring their MAGA (Mobsters Are Governing America) float and stickers.

Admittedly, it will be difficult to match the antics of the “Salute to America” — featuring “your favorite president, me!” — on the National Mall this afternoon, but in looking for the real spirit of America, I know I can find an important piece of it here in the region’s only nuclear free zone. We weren’t disappointed.

TP Reel Mower Precision Drill Team
Reel Mower Precision Drill Team

In addition to the Takoma Park Kinetic Kommunity, the fantastic ORACLE (two guys in Swami hats driving cupcakes who would answer any question…you had to be there), and the always popular Panquility Steel Band, we saw a return of the Reel Mower Precision Drill Team, reminding everyone that “reel mowers don’t use gas and pollute the air.” Small pushbacks against climate deniers were scattered throughout the parade.

Vanadu
Vanadu

“Vanadu” is a regular favorite that defies description other than it shows the eccentricity of American ingenuity.

Two of the biggest crowd pleasers in this decidedly progressive town — outside of the hardest working man in politics, local Congressman Jamie Raskin — were the Mad Dog PAC float (a Trump-themed rat) and a guest appearance by the Baby Trump blimp, before he heads to the National Mall for the afternoon events.

Baby Trump
Baby Trump makes a guest appearance on July 4th in Takoma Park

Because it isn’t an election year, we didn’t see quite as many candidates in the parade, but there was still — contrary to the right wing entertainment universe talking points — a diverse group of issues and points of view which were all treated respectfully.  There’s your Seventh Day Adventists Children’s Choir, the Freemasons, the One Leg Up Pet Walkers, the Girl and Boy Scouts, the public works vehicles (love the lawn mower guy spinning around in circles again this year), a variety of public officials from both political parties, the Intergalactic Female Motorcycle Federation, the Green Party, the Silver Spring Yacht Club, and the Takoma Park Lesbians and Gays all mixed together.

When I’m watching the Takoma Park parade each year, I’m reminded of a passage from one of my favorite essays by Lewis Lapham entitled Who and What Is American?

“The American equation rests on the habit of holding our fellow citizens in thoughtful regard not because they are exceptional (or famous, or beautiful, or rich) but simply because they are our fellow citizens. If we abandon the sense of mutual respect, we abandon the premise as well as the machinery of the American enterprise.

What joins the Americans one to another is not a common nationality, language, race, or ancestry (all of which testify to the burdens of the past) but rather their complicity in a shared work of the imagination. My love of country follows from my love of its freedoms, not from my pride in its fleets or its armies or its gross national product. Construed as a means and not an end, the Constitution stands as the premise for a narrative rather than a plan for an invasion or a monument. The narrative was always plural—not one story but many stories….”

The love of our country follows from the love of its freedoms, not its military might.  The real spirit of America is that complicity in a shared work of the imagination. I’m glad I continue to find it — in all its quirkiness — in a small Maryland community along Maple Avenue.

The Morning Few band
A perennial favorite, “The Morning Few” band

More to come…

DJB

Image: The ORACLE of Takoma Park knows all (credit DJB)

Happy Birthday, Lilly

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Lilly at Blessing of the Animals

My long-time partner in morning ritual

July 2nd was Lilly’s birthday.

That means nothing to anyone outside the four people in our family, but to us it brings back great memories of our wonderful Sussex Spaniel, Lilly. It has now been ten years since she was last with us, but anytime we gather, her name inevitably comes up.

I’ve told the story before of how Lilly joined our family, after her “show career” was over. When “Stump” — another Sussex Spaniel — won Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club show, I knew that inevitably I’d be stopped during my morning ritual of walking Lilly by someone who was fascinated to see this breed ambling* along the streets of Silver Spring. Lilly was also a fixture at the annual Blessing of the Animals at the Washington National Cathedral, where her dark coat and “Sussex Smile” would draw attention.

When we said farewell to Lilly, I wrote a long post that included our best Lilly stories. Most show her faithful and gracious side, but she wasn’t always that way. Sussex Spaniels were bred as working dogs, and although she was small she was strong, powerful, and protective of her family. Probably our favorite “Lilly being Lilly” story is the saga of the cleaning ladies.

“Lilly wasn’t always old, and she wasn’t always peaceful with everyone who came to the house…especially our cleaning ladies. I don’t know if it was the vacuum cleaner (which she always hated) or the fact that she felt that Candice was threatened when they were here, but she would bark incessantly when the house was being cleaned. One time she went beyond barking and nipped the ankle of our wonderful cleaning lady. Candice ran upstairs to wake up Andrew (it was summer) to have him translate in Spanish with our cleaning lady who was too distraught to speak in English. He was successful in convincing her not to quit on the spot. When Andrew and Candice tell the story now, they break up laughing at the absurdity of the scene. Afterwards, Lilly was banished to the garage or a locked up room every other Wednesday.”

As Lilly got older, she epitomized the traits that Gene Weingarten captured so beautifully in his book Old Dogs Are the Best Dogs:

“But it is not until a dog gets old that his most important virtues ripen and coalesce. Old dogs can be cloudy-eyed and grouchy, gray of muzzle, graceless of gait, odd of habit, hard of hearing, pimply, wheezy, lazy and lumpy. But to anyone who has ever known an old dog, these flaws are of little consequence. Old dogs are vulnerable. They show exorbitant gratitude and limitless trust. They are without artifice. They are funny in new and unexpected ways. But, above all, they seem at peace.”

Andrew recently sent us a video he took from a dog show in London.  He came across a group of Sussex Spaniels, and they immediately bonded as he found just the right places to rub and scratch. The joy in his voice and hands is palpable. And Claire — who was the force behind Lilly coming to our family — became the first among us to bring a new pet into her life. She and her partner recently acquired a Russian Siberian cat they named Chai (short for Tchaikovsky). A cat fits her lifestyle (and apartment regulations) at the moment. It has been great getting our Chai “picture of the day” which brings back memories of delightful pets from all our pasts . . . none more wonderful than our Lilly.

Showing vulnerability, exorbitant gratitude and limitless trust. In her old age, Lilly exhibited those traits every day. We could all do worse.

More to come…

DJB

*At that point in time, Lilly was getting old, and ambling was about the best she could do.

 

Nationals Logo

Baseball is boring. Then suddenly it isn’t.

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I know I’m going to jinx them. I just know it.

As soon as you start talking about the Nationals this year, they do a face plant and fall back off the pace. Again. Their bullpen implodes. Again. They remind you that Mike Rizzo isn’t a genius when it comes to constructing bullpens or picking managers. Again.

Nonetheless, I’m going to take a chance. And I’m doing so because Max Scherzer is worth it.

Who breaks their nose (in a freak bunting accident, no less), then 24 hours later goes out with said broken nose and amazing black eye and punches out 10 Phillies (boo Bryce Harper) via strikeouts? Then five days later throws one-hit shutout ball — again with 10 strikeouts — against the Marlins? Finally, yesterday, in his first return to Detroit since signing with the Nats as a free agent, Max — still with a discolored eye and broken nose — goes 8 innings and has 14 strikeouts in a 2-1 win that brings the Nats home for July 4th with a 5-1 road trip.  Max has 10 strikeouts or more in 90 games in his career and he’s had such a dominant June that he’s firmly inserted in the conversations around the race to win the Cy Young award for best pitcher.

Legend of Max
The Legend of Max Scherzer (photo credit: BreakingT.com – you can buy the shirt and/or the mug!)

We are so lucky to get to watch a future Hall-of-Famer every five nights.

Getting the opportunity to see something special even in the midst of general mediocrity (the Nats are only one game over .500 after several strong weeks) reminded me of a post from one of baseball’s best writers. On September 29, 2011 — after arguably the craziest night ever in baseball* — I wrote a post urging everyone to read Joe Posnanski’s column about that evening entitled Baseball Night in America, which sadly has now been taken off the internet. I can’t quote the whole thing, but here are a handful of gems from this column about baseball . . . and life. First this:

“There is nothing in baseball as jarring as a blind-side hit, as jaw-dropping as a perfect alley-oop, as tense and heart-pounding as a breakaway. And the hard thing to explain, the impossible thing, is that many of us love baseball not in spite of these failings but because of them.”

Then this:

“I never argue with people who say baseball is boring, because baseball is boring. And then, suddenly, it isn’t. And that’s what makes it great.”

Followed by this:

“And on this wonderful baseball night, this wonderful thought struck me: Raul Ibanez at age 39, in the 12th inning of what was for him and his team a game without consequence, had run his heart out to first base though the double play was almost certain. Why are you doing this? Maybe it’s because sometimes, when it seems least likely, we might find the best in ourselves.”

And Joe ends with this gem:

“Baseball, like life, revolves around anticlimax. That’s what you get most of the time. You stand in driver’s license lines, and watch Alfredo Aceves shake off signals, and sit through your children’s swim meets, and see bases loaded rallies die, and fill up your car’s tires with air and endure an inning with three pitching changes, a sacrifice bunt and an intentional walk.

But then, every now and again, something happens. Something memorable. Something magnificent. Something staggering. Your child wins the race. Your team wins in the ninth. You get pulled over for speeding. And in that moment — awesome or lousy — you are living something you will never forget, something that jumps out of the toneless roar of day-to-day life.

The Braves failed to score. Papelbon blew the lead. Longoria homered in the 12th. Elation. Sadness. Mayhem. Champagne. Sleepless fury. Never been a night like it. Funny, if I was trying to explain baseball to someone who had never heard of it, I wouldn’t tell them about Wednesday night. No, it seems to me that it isn’t Wednesday night that makes baseball great. It’s all the years you spend waiting for Wednesday night that makes baseball great.”

As Joe says, baseball is boring, until it isn’t. Just like life. Go Nats!

More to come…

DJB

*UPDATE NUMBER 1: On September 28, 2011, four teams went into the 162nd and final game of the season tied for their league’s wild card slot, to get into the playoffs. After each relevant game began according to what one would expect, they all deviated into one crazy, unpredictable, wild, and emotional night of baseball.

UPDATE NUMBER 2: Clearly I didn’t jinx them this year.

Hasten Down the Wind Album Cover

Create at the intersection of experience and innovation

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In the recently released documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, country music legend Dolly Parton comments that “Linda could literally sing everything.” The film soon cuts to Ronstadt — who famously sang folk, pop, rock, country, R&B, Cajun, operetta, the Great American Songbook and traditional Mexican music in a long and successful career — as she dryly remarks, “People would think I was trying to reinvent myself, but I never invented myself in the first place.”There is a great deal of wisdom in those few words.

Today we hear about reinventing yourself for the information age. Creating your new personal brand. Unmooring yourself from your past to create a new you.

Most of that reinvention messaging is…what’s the technical term again? Ah yes. Hogwash.

The assumption that you need to jettison the past as if it never existed and doesn’t matter is central to the modern idea of reinvention. Many writers have commented that the American myth is built upon jettisoning the old in order to glorify the new. Similarly, the concept of American exceptionalism is constructed on the idea that we created something new out of whole cloth; a “new history” if you will. These myths affect how we see places as well as people. We tear down old buildings to replace them with new structures that do not have the beauty, durability, or connections over time that help create our memories and identity. And as people, we seek to avoid old age at all costs. (At least we do so mentally, if — like everyone else — you can’t figure out a way to stay alive and not add a year to your life every 365 days.) Again, I say, hogwash.

Ronstadt’s own story is instructive.  She was a young woman of 18 with a tremendous gift — her voice and a keen musical ear — when she moved to L.A. in 1964 as bands such as The Byrds were changing the nature of folk, country, and rock music.  Between that year and 2011, when Parkinson’s disease forced her from her chosen career, Ronstadt built on her past to forge an eclectic and wildly successful legacy in the music business. Between her grandfather (leader of a large traditional Mexican band), her father (who sang frequently in a beautiful tenor voice and listened to the Met every Saturday with his wife and daughter), her mother (a lover of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas), her brother (a treble in a world-class boys choir), and her sister (a Hank Williams fan), Ronstadt absorbed and integrated an incredibly wide and diverse range of musical styles.

She then used the folk and rock influences to craft a period in her career when she was playing sold out stadiums across the world; appeared simultaneously on the rock, country, and R&B charts (a first for any artist); and had posters gracing many a college dorm room.* But rather than continue doing the same thing forever,** she drew on her mother’s love of operetta to bring The Pirates of Penzance to a new generation of fans. Her own affection for the Great American Songbook led to the recording of an album with Nelson Riddle, the legendary arranger who helped craft the sound of that era. The traditional country music she heard growing up in the Southwest became the base for the Trio albums, in which she collaborated with Parton and Emmylou Harris. Similarly, her last studio album was a beautiful, yet underappreciated, series of duets with Cajun musician Ann Savoy. Finally, her Mexican grandfather’s heritage was the inspiration for Canciones de Mi Padre, which became the biggest-selling Spanish-language album ever.  Notice that every one of those forays into new musical territories for one of the world’s most successful country-rockers came from her past. It didn’t require reinvention.

What Ronstadt and millions of others have done is create at the intersection of experience and innovation. Marc Freedman has written about the “dangerous myth of reinvention” because he sees the traditional story as detrimental to real midlife renewal. I would add that if we “invent” and then “reinvent” ourselves, we are in danger of never working from our true core.  Authenticity is one reason why I’ve always been fascinated with Linda Ronstadt. Through her autobiography and this 2019 documentary**, new generations may come to know this artist with the wide musical tastes, the chops to sing well in disparate styles, sharp mind, and — relevant to this day and age — strong political positions. One of the more fascinating clips in the film has an interviewer suggesting that Ronstadt’s political stances are controversial, after he was taken by surprise with her response to a question. She shoots back, “They’re not.  Who likes nuclear war?” No need for reinvention here. While clothes, haircuts, boyfriends, and even musical styles changed over time, that voice—the authentic self—is clear, centered by a nurturing past, and was not invented by a need for a personal brand or by a record company marketer.

Authenticity is called for when Freedman encourages us to “think less about reinvention and more about forging ahead in ways that draw on our accumulated knowledge—what former Alvin Ailey star Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish describes as ‘all the things that life has put into you.’”

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

*Guilty

**How embarrassing is it to see that the Rolling Stones are going back out on tour to play all the same songs again—after it was originally postponed so Mick Jagger could have heart surgery!

***While this is not a review, the film is terrific!  Four stars.  But you already know that I’m a fan.

Installment #5 in the Gap Year Chronicles

Lincoln Memorial

Honor our children

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“Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them.”

This Abraham Lincoln quote, from a letter he wrote prior to his election, was part of my Presidents Day post two years ago. It came back to me as I read today’s news reports about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in this country’s immigration detention centers. In those subhuman camps, degradation of our fellow travelers appears to be not only the result of our actions but the actual policy objective. If immigrating to the U.S. is seen as difficult, the thinking goes, perhaps fewer will attempt the journey.

We may say, “We’re better than this.” But at the moment, this is what we are as a country. Our institutions are under attack, not only in spirit but at the very core of their existence. We have purported leaders who only want to elevate people who look, think, and act like themselves, conveniently forgetting the “self-evident truth” that “all men are created equal.” As they undertake these policies, they repeatedly lie about the purpose and the outcome of their work.

Elevation of all fellow travelers, while administered throughout our history in a haphazard fashion, has nonetheless been a core ideal of the United States from the day that our founding document asserted that all are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” However, in today’s political climate we have a government that went to federal court to argue that it shouldn’t be required to give detained migrant children toothbrushes, soap, towels, showers or even half a night’s sleep inside Border Patrol detention facilities.  Our government also takes a humanitarian aid volunteer to federal court for the “crime” of leaving food, jugs of water, and blankets in the desert so that refugees stranded in this no-man’s land wouldn’t die. The real time parallels to the parable of the Good Samaritan are clear and chilling.

Writing on the Feast of Nativity of John the Baptist, my friend Deborah Meister focuses on the children, and notes that the story of John’s birth is about the upending of human order.  Why?

“According to the angel, so that one will come “to turn the hearts of fathers to the children.” (Luke 1:17). It is a strange phrase; it rings oddly on our ears, which are more accustomed to the fifth commandment, which enjoins children to honor their parents. But to honor one’s children is to be attentive to the future: to be aware of the kind of world we are bequeathing to them.

We’re not doing so well at that, these days. Tens of thousands of children have been detained at our borders, in subhuman conditions, denied soap, toothbrushes, or warm blankets, sleeping on concrete floors and trying to eat frozen food which has not even been reheated. If these conditions had been imposed by their own parents, the U.S. government would have intervened to place the children in protective custody; today, the government inflicts such harm, while too many Americans remain silent or passive or complain but do nothing. Of the children who were born here, 21% (about fifteen million) live in poverty. Approximately 1.5 million schoolchildren are wrestling with homelessness. And that’s without even looking at the state of the ecosphere, which threatens to take away our first, last, and best home if we do not change our ways.“

Why do our politicians use their policies — supported by a not insignificant minority of Americans — to inflict such harm on so many who are defenseless? There are a host of explanations, but we regularly hear the justification that the immigration policy is designed to “protect” our homeland. We are also told that our cherished individual freedom inevitably leads to inequalities. In other words, it is a feature of our winner-take-all capitalistic system, which so many wrongly (in my view) equate as the equal of democracy.

Which brings me to the other giant we honor on Presidents Day — George Washington — a singular figure in the American revolution and the “indispensable man” as described by historian James Thomas Flexner. Washington warned that we should “Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” It strikes me that much of what we hear about the policies that harm the defenseless are promoted by “pretend patriots.”

Lincoln and Washington were, of course, flawed as men.  However, they rose above those flaws in times of great peril to the country. As in all great leaders, their words and — just as importantly — their actions resonate across different times and various political climates to touch on our responsibilities as both individuals and as members of a larger community.

Rather than faux outrage over how we revere the national anthem or the flag, honoring the defenseless among us should be a minimum standard for real patriotism in a country where the spirit of our institutions is to elevate our fellow travelers.

More to come…
DJB

Image: The Lincoln Memorial

Judgement and forgiveness

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Why do we find it so easy to judge and so hard to forgive?

Part of the answer might lie in the fact that holding grudges and passing judgement can seem so satisfying. As Tim Herrera wrote in a recent New York Times article, we may actually like them, as we “tend to them as little pets.” Anne Lamott, writing in her inimitable (some would say snarky) style in Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy, captures the same push-pull attraction when she says,

“Kindness towards others and radical kindness to ourselves buy us a shot at a warm and generous heart, which is the greatest prize of all. Do you want this, or do you want to be right? Well, can I get back to you on that?”

In our time of extreme political polarization, it may be difficult to identify the humanity amidst the ideology. The more we see religion, politics and life as a winner-take-all battle full of zero-sum calculations, forgiveness seems quaint — a lost art or forgotten concept.

This was on my mind as I entered the American Film Institute (AFI) Silver Theater last Saturday afternoon. The AFI Docs Film Festival in Washington and Silver Spring was the attraction, and there I was fortunate to see an astonishing new work:  Gay Chorus Deep South. The film’s website sets up the story.

“In response to a wave of discriminatory anti-LGBTQ laws in Southern states and the divisive 2016 election, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus embarks on a tour of the American Deep South.

Led by Gay Chorus Conductor Dr. Tim Seelig and joined by The Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir; the tour brings a message of music, love and acceptance, to communities and individuals confronting intolerance. Over 300 singers travelled from Mississippi to Tennessee through the Carolinas and over the bridge in Selma. They performed in churches, community centers and concert halls in hopes of uniting us in a time of difference. The journey also challenges Tim and other Chorus members who fled the South to confront their own fears, pain and prejudices on a journey towards reconciliation. The conversations and connections that emerge offer a glimpse of a less divided America, where the things that divide us; faith, politics, sexual identity are set aside by the soaring power of music, humanity and a little drag.”

The Director, David Charles Rodrigues, spoke after the showing about his desire to make a film that, in the light of growing hate and intolerance, looked at our need to step back and begin “judging our judgements.”

Today we are quick to judge both those we know and those we don’t know. In our news cycle, the pundits who make judgement the centerpiece of their arguments seem to be the ones who command most of the air time. It is all too easy to judge someone who is “different.”

On the other hand, we find it hard to forgive “the other” yet we too easily forget that we are the ones who may most need forgiveness. That can be hard.  We need to believe we are worthy of forgiveness and — if we have chosen hatred and intolerance — that we can change our minds.

Philosopher Hannah Arendt, in her book The Human Condition, said:

“Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer’s apprentice who lacked the formula to break the spell.”

The film had multiple stories of decades-old grudges, judgements, and separation between family, friends, and churches. It showed how those involved were the victims of the consequences of those decisions. What the Gay Men’s Chorus set out to do through their tour was to begin conversations. What these 300 singers ended up doing was to begin the process of forgiveness and healing.

Learning to forgive takes practice. But we need to understand that holding on to a judgement or a grudge is not a very good strategy for a useful life. Dr. Frederic Luskin, founder of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, suggests we,

“Get the right perspective on what is happening. Recognize that your primary distress is coming from the hurt feelings, thoughts and physical upset you are suffering now, not what offended you or hurt you two minutes — or ten years — ago.”

Judging our judgements is a good path towards forgiveness, reconciliation, and ultimately that warm and generous heart.

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

Image by Myriam Zilles from Pixabay

Blowing the Doors Off the Joint

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“You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” is the theme of this week’s AFI Docs Film Festival in Washington, where some 70 documentaries will be shown in theatres across the city over five days.  To get myself in shape, I spent Sunday and Monday watching two documentaries that are not part of the festival but are currently playing in the area. One tried — and only partially succeeded — in reaching the standards suggested by the theme. The other is a masterpiece simply because it captures a treasure at the height of her powers.  As one reviewer phrased it, “She blew the doors off the joint.”

But let’s start with the less-satisfying of the two.

Movie poster for Echo in the Canyon
Movie poster for Echo in the Canyon

Echo in the Canyon, currently playing at the E Street Cinema, is a documentary about the legendary Laurel Canyon music scene in Los Angeles from the mid-1960s. The film focuses on the music of The Byrds, The Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, and The Mamas and the Papas, and the hook is a 2015 tribute concert from current-day fans Jakob Dylan (Bob’s son), Fiona Apple, Beck, and others.  As Dylan says to kick off the concert, “Are you ready to go back to the 60s?”

Well, much like the decade (and yes, I was there for some of it), the film has its ups and downs.  The music at the time was exciting and I agree that these four bands all played influential roles. But the telling of the story here is somewhat confused, and there’s too much of Dylan and his friends talking earnestly about the staying power of the music.

Here’s what I liked:

  • Michelle Phillips, who was insightful and funny from the time she first came on screen.  I loved the comment “If The Byrds can have a hit, anybody can have a hit,” a sentiment which sent The Mamas and The Papas from New York to LA.
  • Watching Stephen Stills and Eric Clapton record a new guitar solo while on different continents (even in Stills’ reduced capacity as a musician these days).
  • Nora Jones.  My God, when she sang a duet of The Association‘s Never My Love with Jakob Dylan, it was clear that she was the most talented of the newcomers to this music, by a factor of about 10.
  • Simply being reminded of some great tunes and hearing about the cross-pollination of sounds and music.

Here’s what I didn’t like:

  • Where was Joni Mitchell?  How can you do a movie on Laurel Canyon and the California sound and have the only mention of Mitchell being Stephen Stills briefly talking about when they dated.
  • Jakob Dylan’s interviewing style. Several times the camera lingers after a comment, just to show you how cool he is.
  • The fact that there is no reference to why this period ended.  I kept waiting to hear about the Monterey Pop Festival and how much of the attention shifted in 1967 to San Francisco and the Summer of Love, or — more definitively — the Manson murders and the fear that spread throughout the area in 1969.  But nothing.  Just “puff” and it was over.
  • It was never clear if the movie was making the point that there was a “Laurel Canyon sound” or whether just a bunch of musicians happened to live in close proximity to each other.

So while Echo In the Canyon was enjoyable, it could have been much more.

Movie poster for Amazing Grace
Movie poster for Amazing Grace

On the other hand, Amazing Grace, the movie of Aretha Franklin’s 1972 recording of the gospel album of the same name, is—like the lady herself—a national treasure.  Currently showing at AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, this is a 90-minute church service.

Hallelujah!

In 1972, Franklin was at the top of her game, with 11 number one singles and five Grammy awards.  It was at that time that she decided to return to her roots — the black Baptist church — and record a gospel album.  And she literally returned to church, Watts’ New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, for a live recording over two evenings of the songs she grew up singing.  This movie, a long-lost documentary that went through technical and legal challenges, captures the recording sessions.

Where to start? Well, probably with that voice. There has never been another singer like Aretha Franklin. If you don’t believe me, just watch her command the stage with all the other divas of her day in the remarkable performance of (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.  That voice is everywhere in Amazing Grace.  Franklin barely speaks ten words during the movie, but she opens her mouth and that sound comes out.

Did I mention that the album was the best selling record  of her career, as well as the best-selling gospel album of all time?  There’s a reason for that.

The Reverend James Cleveland, who was a gospel legend himself, serves as part master of ceremonies and part preacher.  He could have tried to steal the show, but probably knew—in his heart—that it wasn’t really possible. In his introduction, he notes that Aretha could “Sing anything . . . even Three Blind Mice.” Here he plays solid back-up to the Queen.  When her whole being goes into another world during the song Amazing Grace, however, Cleveland is literally overcome. He gets up from his piano to sob into a towel.  It is an arresting, emotional moment.

The Southern California Community Choir, under the energetic direction of Alexander Hamilton, makes it all look so effortless while sporting some great Afros from the 1970s.  The small church is partially filled on the first night. However, by night number two the word has clearly gotten around, as the camera finds gospel legend Clara Ward; Aretha’s father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin; and none other than Mick Jagger in the audience . . . all going to church as Franklin testifies on song-after-song.

Odie Henderson wrote a terrific movie review from the point of view of a former choir member in the African American church.  In it, he captures one special moment just after Aretha’s father finished speaking:

“Rev. Franklin’s words are followed by his daughter singing the first song she ever recorded, Never Grow Old, or, as we kids used to call it in church, ‘the song where they have to start dragging people out of here.’ My viewing partner, Steven Boone, and I exchanged a knowing glance just before the congregation erupted with people catching the Holy Ghost and needing to be restrained. Meanwhile, Re’s singing and her piano playing blew the doors off the joint, creating a moment of transcendence I’ve never experienced in a theater before.”

The whole movie is a powerful spiritual moment no matter what you believe.  Get yourself to a theatre and see it, if at all possible.

And now, after going to church, I’m ready for a week-long documentary festival!

More to come…

DJB

Rambling through the Cotswold countryside

Daydreaming Makes a Comeback

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“Life is already too short to waste on speed.”

I became a fan of daydreaming while on sabbatical.

Daydreaming has a long history, but in today’s culture of speed and action the idea of doing nothing generally has negative connotations. It goes by many names: boredom, weariness, ennui, lack of enthusiasm, lack of interest, apathy, sluggishness, malaise, tedium, tediousness, dullness, monotony, repetitiveness, routine, humdrum, dreariness . . . well, you get the point.

Cotswold Public Footpath
The public footpath out of Moreton-in-Marsh in the Cotswolds

I’m happy to report that the positive aspects of daydreaming are making a comeback.

When I had the time on sabbatical to stop and reflect, I realized that I was often busy simply for the sake of being (or looking) busy.  If I was busy I was doing important work.  But I began to realize that being constantly busy wasn’t healthy, productive, or fun. A number of authors have written that there is a creative purpose to daydreaming, even to boredom.  So while in Rome, I took up the habit of a daily walk without any sense of purpose other than just to exist in that space. To daydream. I enjoyed how it made me feel but admit that I had the nagging thought that while this may work in one of the world’s great cities, Silver Spring certainly isn’t Rome!

Nonetheless, upon returning to the real world I began finding time in my days to step aside from the busyness and just be; to practice the positive sides of daydreaming. That often involved walking, but not always. Sitting at a coffee shop and just enjoying the people watching became an outlet. My assistant at work became use to me saying, “I’m going to stretch my legs for a bit.”  I encouraged others on my team to do the same, because it was easy to see colleagues who filled their hours with busyness, yet were not productive, focused, or excited about their work.

Office guitar
The (home) office guitar

Edward Abbey once wrote, “Life is already too short to waste on speed.” I’ve come to embrace that approach.

Now that I am working from home, I’ve found new ways to support my habit of doing nothing.  My morning walks through downtown Silver Spring have stretched to an hour or more in length.  No music, no podcasts, just my wonderful Filter Coffeehouse canteen and my trusty shoes. And once I do get down to work, I still think about ways to break up the day.  I’ve always wanted to have a guitar next to my desk but figured that the practice would be frowned upon in an open office setting.  Less than two weeks into my gap year I brought up a chair and little Taylor travel guitar, placing them near my desk in the home office.  When I decide to take a break from writing I’ll pull out the guitar and noodle.  I’m not practicing* but simply letting my mind wander.

Rambling with the sheep
Sharing the public footpath with some four legged friends

Earlier this month I returned my daydreaming act to the international stage.  While in London, I took morning walks along High Street in Kensington, stopping along the way to sit for a while and daydream over a cup of coffee. In the Cotswolds I took advantage of the many public footpaths to ramble, a fine English tradition supported by the legally protected right of citizens and visitors to travel on foot through fields and countryside.  For our first ramble we had a bit of a purpose, in that we had a destination in mind; but I returned later in the week primarily to do nothing more than move at a leisurely pace, letting my mind and feet wander.

Imagine my surprise when the New York Times had a recent article entitled The Case for Doing Nothing.  The writer, Olga Mecking, suggests that busyness is rarely “the status indicator we’ve come to believe it is. Nonetheless, the impact is real, and instances of burnout, anxiety disorders and stress-related diseases are on the rise, not to mention millennial burnout.”

A friend recently encouraged me to leave blank time on my calendar.  Mecking makes the same point as she introduces the Dutch concept of niksen:

“…the idea of niksen is to take conscious, considered time and energy to do activities like gazing out of a window or sitting motionless. The less-enlightened might call such activities “lazy” or “wasteful.” Again: nonsense.

. . . study after study shows that feeling drowsy, exhausted or otherwise mentally depleted during the workday drastically hinders performance and productivity.  In other words: Whether at home or at work, permission granted to spend the afternoon just hanging out.”

Rarely a trendsetter, I was nonetheless glad to see others embrace the positive side of daydreaming.  Of boredom. Of doing nothing. It truly can be where the magic begins.

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

*Practicing and mindful music-making come at different times.  Embracing daydreaming and boredom doesn’t mean that one gives up on exercise, planning, meditation, or whatever else is important to your productivity and living the good life.

Installment #4 in The Gap Year Chronicles.

Photo from rambles in the Cotswold countryside by DJB