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Remembering Doc Watson

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I know when I’ve been inspired by a performer or a piece of music…I change the strings on my guitars. Since hearing a wonderful Tim O’Brien remembrance of the late Doc Watson, I’ve got brand new strings on two of my guitars.  It’s that good.

Friday evenings I’ll often ramble through YouTube videos, starting with a musician I enjoy and seeing where the recommendations take me.  More times than not, I will find a video or two that opens up a new perspective on a well-known performer.  Such was the case last evening.

I’ve always enjoyed Tim O’Brien, seeing him live most recently at this summer’s Red Wing Roots Festival.  But until I heard this video from a 2012 Kennedy Center performance, I didn’t know that Doc was his musical hero — although the news wasn’t much of a shock.  I believe it was Bill Clinton who said — when giving Doc the National Medal of Arts award — that every baby boomer who picked up an acoustic guitar tried, at some point, to emulate Doc’s playing.

In this 13 minute “Talking Doc Watson Deep River Blues,” O’Brien expands on a blog post he wrote for his website all the while playing the signature Delmore Brothers’ Deep River Blues that Doc made his own.  O’Brien — a wonderful songwriter — packs whimsy and wisdom into this story of stopping by Doc’s house a few months before Doc died.  It is another take on Doc’s amazing legacy.

And I totally get the desire to sit down and talk with Doc for an afternoon – a desire that O’Brien acted upon even in the face of a North Carolina snowstorm.  Several years ago, a former colleague (who thankfully was a colleague for only a short period of time), asked me that stupid parlor game question of “Who would you like to have for dinner if you could pick anyone in the world or in history?”  I know the correct answers are ones like Thomas Jefferson, Nelson Mandela, and then you have to throw in an unexpected one that shows how clever and sophisticated you are.  Well, the first name out of my mouth was Doc Watson, because it was true.  She scoffed, but I’m sorry that I never had a chance to talk to Doc and tell him that he was a hero of mine as well.

So pull up a chair and enjoy Tim O’Brien’s remembrance of the day he decided to act and reach out to a musical hero.

More to come…

DJB

Image: Doc Watson playing his last Merlefest, in April 2012 by DJB

Play ball…and bring along the puck

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U.S. Cellular Field rises like an impenetrable fortress alongside the Dan Ryan expressway in South Side Chicago as fans walk over from the L train station.  After spending time at neighborhood friendly PNC Park, Coors Field, Wrigley Field, the new Busch Stadium, and AT&T Park in the past couple of years, I was reminded last evening that not all stadium architects and planners were thinking “retro is good” in the early 1990s – that is, unless you think the era we should pine for requires our designers to emulate the outside of Tropicana Field.

To be fair, U.S. Cellular Field (then known as the “new” Comiskey Park) opened in 1991 a year before Baltimore opened the beautiful Camden Yards in 1992 and turned stadium design both backwards and forward at the same time.  But they still play baseball in both of them, and I’ve even seen a good game in Oakland.  So enough, already.  Play ball!

White Sox and Blackhawks Scarf

Last evening I crossed the halfway point in my quest to visit all 30 major league baseball stadiums with a visit to U.S. Cellular Field to see the home-standing Chicago White Sox take on the division leading Detroit Tigers.  And, as the title and picture above suggest, it was Chicago Blackhawks Night at the ballpark.  The Stanley Cup champions brought some hockey sensibilities to a crowd that I suspect doesn’t need much encouragement in that area.  This is a heavy metal type of stadium and fan base.

But the entire price of admission was worth it to hear Jim Cornelison — the singer for the Chicago Blackhawks — perform the National Anthem while the entire stadium stomped and cheered throughout the song.  Unbelievable!

White Sox National Anthem 091013

(And if you don’t believe me, check out his performance last year from a Blackhawks/Red Wings game in the video below.  If we’re going to have an unsingable national anthem, then this is how it should be sung…by professionals!)

The game itself was about what you would expect from a division-leading team with a hobbled but still potent potential back-to-back Triple Crown winner, and the last team in the division, now 24.5 games back and playing out the string.  Final score:  9-1 Tigers. That MVP candidate, Miguel Cabrera, didn’t do a lot last evening, going 0-5 and only once taking a shot that was caught up against the wall in right field.  But his running mate Prince Fielder was hitting rockets all night, going 4-5 including a bullet that screamed out of the park in a heartbeat in the third.  He may be rotund (they play behind him at first, which generates a lot of “run Prince run” catcalls), but Fielder has some pop in that bat.

Unfortunately the White Sox played a bit like the Keystone Cops.  I was sitting on the first base side and had perfect views of 3 of the 4 errors – two on easy throws that got away from third baseman Conor Gillaspie (he made another fielding error late in the game to hit the trifecta), and one on a muffed catch by Paul Konerko when Gillaspie made a good throw.  (Perhaps he was surprised.)  Adam Dunn’s night reminded me of why I was glad when the Nationals didn’t resign him a couple of years ago.

But that’s baseball.  Sometimes you win.  Sometimes you lose.  Sometimes it rains.  With a steamy 90 degree temperature at the start of the game, some of the crowd of a little more than 19,000 might have appreciated some rain.  And as is typical in these cities that are so close and where the rivalries go back decades, there were many Detroit fans among those 19,000 last evening.

It was a fun night.  Anytime you get to ride the L in Chicago (Purple Line from Evanston down to the Red Line, which has been rerouted a bit while they do repairs…are all Red Lines in need of repairs?) with the great people of that wonderful city, then take in a night at the ballpark, it is time well spent.

Thanks Chicago…and don’t forget to stand for the National Anthem!

More to come…

DJB

Image: U.S. Cellular Field by DJB

Labor Day Grab Bag

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Claire digs in at Founding FarmersWhat do empty nesting, Keith Olbermann, a day at the pool, good food, and Lee Daniels’ The Butler have in common?  They are all part of this Labor Day grab bag of (relatively) quick observations – because it is still summer and I don’t want to work too hard writing long blog posts!

Hopes for Year 3 of Empty Nesting:  As of 6 a.m. on Saturday, our third year of “empty nesting” officially began.  Candice and I took Claire to the airport for her flight to California.  Andrew went back to school about 10 days ago (even though – as you can see below – he is also managing to fit in things not school-related). My hope is that Empty Nesting: Year 3 will be the first “normal” one, following our health problems of the first year and the rehab-focused Year 2.  After extensive rehabilitation and a few months of myofascial release, Candice is walking – and feeling – better than she has in five years.  In fact, she’s so positive about myofascial release that she turned Claire into a believer and I go on Monday for my first session. We may all be skipping around the house later this year!

But permit me one last reflection before ENY3 begins in force. This summer was perhaps the last where both children will be home for the entire three months, if the current plans for study abroad come through next year. As I’ve written recently, it was great having Andrew and Claire (and their many friends) home this year. (A mother told us that the second year of empty nesting was the “bed-and-breakfast” year when the children are home and their friends from college all come to DC for the summer.  That was certainly our experience…and we loved it.)  With twins and friends in tow we went to baseball games (my passion, not the twins, but they indulged me). We ate prodigious amounts of good food…up to the night before Claire took off for school.  Some great finds this year:  Eleven and Deluca’s Diner in Pittsburgh; Kapnos, Mike Isabella’s new Greek restaurant in DC; Acqua Al 2 with its great Italian food just steps from Eastern Market; the food trucks at the NoMa film festival; and Pho14, the Vietnamese restaurant in Adams Morgan.  We also visited (and revisited) many old favorites, from Surfside in Glover Park, to Jackie’s in Silver Spring to Dolci Gelati in Takoma Park. It was also fun to have the twins pick out restaurants this summer.  Andrew included four ethnic restaurants as his staycation contribution, and Claire took us to one of her favorites – Founding Farmers – so she could enjoy the red velvet pancakes shown at the top of the post. We also followed Andrew and Claire’s lead in just getting out and enjoying the city.  As you can see below, Andrew has carried this forward upon his return to Providence.  He sent the following photograph this weekend from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  The inside family joke is that Andrew has a poster of this Degas painting, Race Horses at Longchamp, in his room.

Andrew and Degas in Boston 083113

While we enjoyed our first couple of years of empty nesting, this summer was a wonderful reminder of why we love being around the twins…especially as they grow into adulthood.

Now, on to the grab bag…

“Day-to-Day” with Keith Olbermann: I have always enjoyed Olbermann’s unique – many would say skewed – perspective on life.  I was a fan of his early SportsCenter days on ESPN, and I also was a regular viewer of his stimulating – and tumultuous – stint on MSNBC.  So I was pleased when ESPN signed him for a return gig that began in late August.  My first chance to see his new show was last Tuesday, and he didn’t disappoint.  Case in point: during the sports highlights he duly noted that an injured player was “day-to-day.”  Then, with just the right pause, he added, “But aren’t we all?”  I was in a hotel room and laughed out loud.  Priceless.

Saying So-Long to the Pool:  I’ve written before about how our neighborhood pool has been a wonderful part of our family’s summer life for many years.  Now that we’re no longer involved with the swim team, I seldom go.  (This year, I’ve been twice and both times involved food!)  Claire and Andrew taught swim lessons again this summer, and Candice still enjoys the occasional afternoon around the pool with a good book and the opportunity to take a refreshing dip to cool down.  But I still relish the Labor Day tradition of saying so-long and was thrilled when the pool hosted a pork barbecue cook-out on Saturday.  Candice called some long-time friends and the four of us enjoyed a couple of hours sharing stories, good food, and the sunshine.  Summer weekends are made for slower rhythms – if we’re smart enough to follow.

Things to Read:  As a country, we are destroying the concept of a public good.  I wrote about that in a recent blog post on The Unwinding. And in today’s New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof takes direct aim at a government that is allowing the trashing of our public lands.  Kristof’s best line?

What our ancestors were able to create when we were a poor country, we are unable to sustain even now that we are rich. That’s not because of resources. It’s because they were visionaries, and we are blind.

Well worth the read.

The Nats Have a Pulse:  When the Nationals finally start playing well, win 8 of 10, sweep the Marlins, and have their fan base excited about the possibility of meaningful September baseball, they lay two big eggs against the woeful Mets.  Both Friday and Saturday games were painful, for different reasons.  And Sunday looked to be more of the same.  But they woke up in the 8th, scored 3, and salvaged a game out of the series.  Yes, they gained a game in the wild card race…but they are at 6 1/2 games out which is exactly where they were when the weekend started.  Had they swept this series, they would be 4 1/2 out…and we’d really be excited.  So I’ll keep watching, but I don’t hold out much hope.

The Butler…or Beginning our Oscar Watch:  Regular readers know that Candice and I have taken to watching all the Best Picture nominees before the Academy Awards ceremony.  The first year we made the decision to do this about six weeks before the show…and we had to catch several movies on the computer screen as opposed to the big screen.  Last year we were prepared and kept an eye out for the movies that were generating Oscar buzz as they were released.  That worked out well, so we’ve started to pay attention to this year’s films.  In that spirit, we went to see Lee Daniels’ The Butler tonight, and both thought it was a strong movie and a certain Oscar contender.

Forest Whitaker is a terrific actor and did a great job with the character of Cecil Gaines – the White House butler based upon the real-life story of Eugene Allen.  Oprah Winfrey was great as Cecil’s wife Gloria – I felt she owned that part.  None of the “presidents” resembled their historical characters, but despite how much that bugged the Washington Post, it really didn’t matter and it certainly doesn’t affect the movie.  (To see a different take on the movie than the bad Post review, read A.O. Scott’s piece in the New York Times.)  Jane Fonda, in a cameo as Nancy Reagan, of all people, showed she really can act.

The movie weaves together the story of the civil rights movement in broad strokes and personal stories. I’m of an age that I don’t remember the 1950s, but by the 1960s I was aware of what was happening around me in the South – at places like the Woolworth’s counter in nearby Nashville, where a sit-in is depicted in the movie. And unfortunately, the hatred and violence shown in The Butler ring all too true.  When people today speak of how we’ve changed and no longer need enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, they have selective amnesia about the past and selective vision about how much of that history of racism in America still remains.  The line in the movie that really stuck with me was when Cecil takes Gloria back to see the sharecropper cabin his family lived in when picking cotton on a southern plantation.  The emotionally difficult first scene took place here and permeates the rest of the movie.  Cecil’s powerful remembrance is along the line of, “Americans will condemn concentration camps, and yet we had these concentration camps for more than 200 years.”

The stain of racism is America’s original sin.  The Butler – dedicated to those who marched and fought to help erase that stain – is well worth seeing.  And on this Labor Day, it is also important to remember those black men and women who labored as domestic servants: butlers, maids, Pullman porters.  We forget that our labor force has always included African-Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and immigrants of every stripe.  The Butler reminds us – as we stand in an era where the powerful often denigrates labor – that these individuals also made their invaluable contribution, working with pride and dignity.

More to come…

DJB

Summer Reading 2013, Continued: The Unwinding

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Beach Reading 2013American journalist, novelist, and playwright George Packer wrote one of the most insightful works about America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq in his 2005 book The Assassins’ Gate:  America in Iraq. So when I heard that Packer had a new work out on the demise of the American social contract, I quickly picked it up and added it to my summer reading pile.

The Unwinding:  An Inner History of the New America is a very important work by a gifted observer and interpreter of American life.  It is not light summer reading.  Packer’s work can be hard to read – not because it is dense (it is anything but).  The Unwinding is difficult because almost any reader of this work is likely to find someone captured on its pages who represents his or her way of thinking and his or her life, and realizes the sad place we all find ourselves in today.

Packer’s work follows about ten individuals – most not well-known – over the course of the last 30 years, during the time when,

…the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way.  Like any great change, the unwinding began at countless times, in countless ways – and at some moment the country, always the same country, crossed a line of history and became irretrievably different.

Those profiled include a factory worker in the rust belt, a Washington insider, a journalist in Tampa, and a Silicon Valley billionaire.  They come from all sides of the political spectrum, and it is interesting to see how their perspectives change chapter by chapter as time passes on and the institutions around them crumble.  Interspersed with these profiles are short vignettes of some 20 famous people from the past three decades, ranging from Jay-Z to Colin Powell, Alice Waters to Andrew Breitbart, Newt Gingrich to Elizabeth Warren.

The bottom line of Packer’s compelling work:  we’ve left the social compact – the caring for others that once defined America and helped build the world’s most productive middle class – in order to chase individual greed and power.  The monied interests and their helpers in government have forgotten about “We the People” and instead have focused on “I, Me, Mine.” And no where is his aim more devastating – and to my mind more accurate – than in his portrait of Mr. Sam Walton.

Sam Walton grew up a child of the Great Depression and – like many of his generation – developed a penny-pinching habit that he took to extremes. In five devastating pages that are worth the price of the book, Parker takes us through Walton’s career from the Walton 5&10 in Bentonville to the point – after his death – where six of the surviving Waltons would have as much money as the bottom 30 percent of Americans.

Think about that.  Six people have more money than 94 million Americans combined.

Parker’s final paragraph in the Walton profile says it all:

And it was only after his death, after Wal-Mart’s downhome founder was no longer its public face, that the country began to understand what his company had done.  Over the years, America had become more like Wal-Mart.  It had gotten cheap.  Prices were lower, and wages were lower.  There were fewer union factory jobs, and more part-time jobs as store greeters.  The small towns where Mr. Sam had seen his opportunity were getting poorer, which meant that consumers there depended more and more on everyday low prices, and made every last purchase at Wal-Mart, and maybe had to work there, too.  The hollowing out of the heartland was good for the company’s bottom line.  And in parts of the country that were getting richer, on the coasts and in some of the big cities, many consumers regarded Wal-Mart and its vast aisles full of crappy, if not dangerous, Chinese-made goods with horror, and instead purchased their shoes and meat in expensive boutiques as if overpaying might inoculate them against the spread of cheapness, while stores like Macy’s, the bastions of a former middle-class economy, faded out, and America began to look once more like the country Mr. Sam had grown up in.

As I read this well-conceived and well-written literary triumph, I couldn’t help but wonder about my role in the dissolution of the social compact in this country. Isn’t that what works of great moral force should do?  This difficult book needs to be read by everyone – and especially those who have found a way to thrive as our nation frays at the seams.

More to come…

DJB

Listening and the Labyrinth: A Day of Silent Retreat at Dayspring

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Lake of the Saints, Photo from Dayspring Retreat Center

Lake of the Saints, Photo from Dayspring Retreat Center

Candice was the final family member to introduce her activity to us in this year’s “plan your own vacation.”  We had spent a wonderful weekend in Pittsburgh to check another ballpark off my bucket list and took in Fallingwater on the way home.  Andrew has now taken us to three of his four ethnic restaurants as he worked to expand our culinary horizons.  (Tonight’s visit to Mike Isabella’s new Greek restaurant Kapnos tops the list in my book…and was the best Greek food I’ve had in quite some time.) We arrived home yesterday from three days at the beach – courtesy of Claire – and threw in an outdoor viewing of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for good measure.

So the bar was high as Candice took control.

For twelve years, Candice has been a regular participant in Quiet Days and Ember Day silent retreats at Dayspring, a beautiful rural oasis in Montgomery County.  The Retreat Center was begun as a place for Sabbath rest and reflection by the ground-breaking Church of the Saviour, established in Washington, D.C. by Gordon Cosby in the 1940s as an alternative vision of the church.  She always returns home refreshed and revived, and suggested as one of her two vacation activities that the three of us join her for the August Quiet Day.

This morning, Candice, Claire, Andrew and I were among approximately 15 participants in a half-day silent retreat. Candice had bought each of us a new journal and, in addition to lunch, had provided readings on silent retreats, walking the labyrinth, Ember Days, Henri Nouwen, and other topics.  After a short introduction and meditation of poetry and song, the silent retreat began.

Each of us structured our day as we wanted.  Candice only asked that we join her down at the creek during the morning – one of her favorite spots on earth.

After a number of discussions over vacation, I had decided to focus on listening – and to put everything through that prism.  I felt it was an area where I was ripe for growth.

The picture perfect summer weather encouraged us to leave the lodge and travel through meadow, forest, and trails.  At one point I ended up at the Labyrinth.  I’ve read about the spiritual experience of walking the labyrinth, but until this afternoon had never tried it myself.  As the paper Candice provided us noted,

There is no right or wrong way to walk a labyrinth as it is an activity that becomes a metaphor for your unique spiritual journey.  Some people walk with the intention to address an issue in their lives, some walk for healing, others to pray and meditate.  Still others walk simply to open themselves to the presence of the Holy.

I walked with the intention of thinking about listening.  And what I found surprised me.  Having never thought much about the path of a labyrinth, I suppose I expected a more-or-less circular route that bore in towards the center.   But what I discovered was that early in the walk I was near the center, but then looked up a few steps later to find myself out on the edge.  That seemingly random relationship to the center was a key part of the process.  Since there is only one way to walk a labyrinth physically, it dawned on me that my conception of walking along a circular path and getting closer and closer to the center – or the truth, the Holy, or whatever you want to call it – was all wrong.  In thinking about this through the context of listening, I realized that we have to intentionally and continually listen – because our relationship to the center varies so widely along the journey.  It was one more thing to add to my journal of the day as I listened to what my feet and eyes were showing me.

I can’t speak for Andrew and Claire, but I found Candice’s first of two contributions to our family time together to be very meaningful and very rewarding.  Thank you, my love.

More to come…

DJB

Beach Bums and Ferris Bueller…A Perfect Combination

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Matching Parents We’ve been beach bums during our staycation for the past three days…and it has been wonderfully relaxing.  A short three-day-two-night jaunt to nearby Bethany Beach, Delaware was Claire’s contribution to the “let the family build a stay-at-home (almost) vacation around activities each wants to do.”

So, what did we do?

Not much.

We laid out on the beach for hours on end, reading, enjoying the breezes, and getting up for an occasional Kohr Brothers frozen custard cone.  (Make mine vanilla, dipped in chocolate, please.)  We walked around the town at night.  We ate really good food (truly) both nights…but the best was at Patsy’s in Bethany Beach on Tuesday evening.  I was able to have my soft shell crabs.  We watched a good friend and her group compete on America’s Got Talent (a first for me…and probably a last).

Claire thought it would be funny to post the picture of Candice and me walking down the street with the title of “Matching Parents” on Instagram…and immediately picked up a number of “likes.”  Candice and I just told her we were dressing comfortably!

And then we did more of nothing.

But Claire wasn’t finished.  When we arrived home, after a quick trip to wash the car, we headed down to NoMa (North of Massachusetts Avenue) for the NoMaBID’s weekly  Summer Screen 2013 showing of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off at an open lot near the NoMa Metro station.  (Only bummer of the entire three days…we saw a young lady get her iPhone ripped off right in front of us.  We tried to help by calling the Metro police and helping her track the jerk – but we don’t know how it ended.)

The food from the food trucks at the Summer Screen event was terrific (love those fish tacos), and the movie is a hoot.  The best part?  Watching half of a city block full of people in NoMa get up and do the twist during the movie’s “Twist and Shout” scene.

To keep in the Beach Bum/Leisure Rules theme, let’s enjoy Ferris singing one more time.

More to come…

DJB

That’s More Like It

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Strasburg First Complete Game August 11, 2013In a year of struggles, today’s Nationals/Phillies series wrap-up was one of the feel-good games of 2013.

The day:  Beautiful late afternoon game at the ballpark with 32,355 other fans…including Andrew!  Third game in 8 days, and second with Andrew.  (Can you tell I’m on vacation!) Temps in the low 80s, and Section 313 starts out in the shade!  Smart decision to take the scorecard. Even the President’s Race was funny: each president wipes out Sharknado (don’t ask…something to do with the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week), Bill Taft gives him a body slam for good measure, and Teddy wins.

On to the game itself…

Stephen Strasburg:  First career complete game and a shutout for good measure.  No Philly makes it into scoring position. Totally dominant. Ten strikeouts. One walk. 99 total pitches – 66 strikes.

Jayson Werth:  Second three-hit game in a row. Hitting ropes to left field.  Werewolf in London walk-up music shows he doesn’t take himself too seriously. Scores – along with Ian Desmond – on one of the best hustle/heads-up plays of the year when Chase Utley’s throw home is offline, allowing Werth to score, followed quickly by Desmond when he saw the catcher take his time getting to the ball.

Wilson Ramos:  Continues his hot hitting, going 2-for-4, inching closer to .300.  Drives in a run.  He and Strasburg even combine to throw out Domonic Brown in a rare caught stealing for the Nats.

Denard Span: Two hits, one run scored, and one RBI.  Starts the game off strong and showing some signs of life on offense.

Steve Lombardozzi:  Three-hit game after getting a rare start at second base, with a RBI.

Nats in general:  Playing with pep in their step.  Executing the fundamentals.  Looking like they are having fun.  Series sweep (only 4th time this year).

Don’t get too excited.  The Phillies are getting old quickly and are not the same team that seemed poised to dominate the N.L. East just a couple of years ago. We are still 8 back in the wild card race.  But as I wrote on Wednesday after the dreary loss to the Braves, let’s all chill and enjoy whatever is left of the season. And that goes for the Nats as well as the fans.  I still believe in the Church of Baseball…and tonight really fed the soul.

More to come…

DJB

Summer in the City

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Rockville Swing Band at Glen EchoTaking a vacation in  your hometown – or a staycation as it is commonly referred to – can be a great experience when you live in a city as rich in talent and activities as Washington.

Earlier this evening Candice, Andrew, and I enjoyed dinner at the Irish Inn at Glen Echo (technically, Andrew only joined us for tea at the end of the meal) and then walked next door to the wonderful Glen Echo park to take in the free Thursday evening concerts.  Tonight’s entertainment came via the Rockville Swing Band, and they had the old bumper car pavilion jumping.  It was hard to know where to keep your eyes – on the musicians or on the terrific dancers, some of whom were in their late 70s and still cutting the rug with the best of them.

We were in Glen Echo because Claire was wrapping up a six-week glass blowing course.  Claire decided that she wanted to take two arts classes – totally non-credit – over the summer just to feed her curiosity and her soul.

I took a couple of snapshots of our Claire at work, and I hope you’ll enjoy them.

More to come…

DJB

Claire glassblowing at Glen EchoClaire in glassblowing class at Glen Echo

Summer Reading 2013, Part II: Or How the Nats Lost Their Way

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Way of BasballTechnically, I read Shawn Green’s unique little memoir/meditation The Way of Baseball before summer began, but after a night at the ballpark watching our Nats utterly fold in a three-game series sweep by the division leading Braves and reading Tom Boswell’s insightful (as always) column about how this year’s season went so wrong, I was reminded of how much I enjoyed this book.

Let’s begin with Boswell and the Nats.

For two-thirds of a season we’ve been told that the Nats had “too much talent” to keep playing this poorly, and that they would switch it on in time to get back in the pennant race.  But the Braves put an end to that kind of talk, with as utterly dominating a three-game series as you could have where the total run differential was only 5 runs for the three games.  Boswell put it best when he described the sweep as “an execution by proper execution.”

Amen.

The Nats played so effortlessly last year that it is easy to forget how difficult baseball can be if your head is just a little bit out-of-whack.  And with the Nats, these heads are more than a little out-of-whack. They are head cases, but as a friend says, “They are our head cases.” The equilibrium on the team was changed when Michael Morse’s big bat and free spirit was traded away and Denard Span’s terrific defense but anemic offense was put in its place. Drew Storen…well, let’s don’t go there…but his problems are emblematic of the bullpen as a whole.  And Davey Johnson, after his infamous “World Series or Bust” mantra for 2013, too often looks clueless and old, and very much not in control of his clubhouse and especially his hot-headed, talented but not perfect 20-year-old left fielder.  Boswell nails it all much more eloquently than I ever would, so I’ll direct you to his column.  But these Nats have played horrible fundamental baseball all season long, and that’s just inexcusable for a team with this type of talent.

Boswell sums it up with the following:

The Nats really are a talented, hard-working team with a good clubhouse and decent people. But they’ve been rattled, pressing, joyless and awful at fundamentals since April. They should reduce their season to a manageable goal: Play smart, focused baseball as a group, work to improve individually and have a reasonably loose and enjoyable time while you’re doing it. That actually can be done. The rest always takes care of itself.

And that brings me to Shawn Green’s book.

Green, a former Dodger (along with three other teams), has written a short memoir on his baseball career and the art of hitting that is really a meditation on how to approach life. A Jewish ballplayer drawing on Buddhist principles, Green describes the art of hitting as “finding stillness at 95 miles per hour.”  The chapter titles fit a baseball book (“The Zone”) as well as a handbook on eastern philosophy (“Awareness” and “Stillness.”)

In the chapter entitled “Ego,” Green has a quote that fits this Nats team to a T.  He says,

“…it’s not uncommon to make the mistake of comparing where we are in our lives to where we should be. The truth is that there is no such thing as where we should be; we are where we are, period.”

The Nats need to realize they are where they are and just start to enjoy the game today.  And for us fans, a long-time Red Sox fan and friend of mine reminded me that we really are “short-suffering Nats fans.”  Wait until we go 80+ years without a title before we bring out the poison.

Let’s all chill.  See you at Nationals Park on Sunday evening.  I still believe in the Church of Baseball.

More to come…

DJB

My That’s Spicy!

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David at Lucy's with Candice, Andrew and ClaireIn planning this year’s staycation, everyone in the family picked one thing (or a series of related things) for the family to experience.  Andrew’s contribution?  Why four nights of ethnic dining in and around the Washington area.

First up:  Lucy’s Ethiopian Restaurant in Silver Spring!

Andrew and Claire have both discovered Ethiopian food over the past year, and they love it.  For Candice and me, it was a first.

The Washington Post recently had a strong review of Lucy’s which we took along for the evening, and the reviewer sent us toward some terrific tasting dishes. Between the four of us we enjoyed lamb, beef, collard greens and a wonderful misir wot dish (or split lentils).

Lucy’s is fast gaining a reputation as one of the best Ethiopian restaurants in the region, with food that is spicy and delicious.  But if you chose to go, just remember – you can leave your knife and fork at home.  Thanks to the injera (a spongy bread) for wrapping, this is all finger food.

Enjoy.

More to come…

DJB