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The Big Burn

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I am always thrilled when I see an op-ed column in the New York Times by Timothy Egan.  It is not because I’ve actually met him, or because I think his book The Worst Hard Time is a terrific history of the Dust Bowl – although both are true.

I’m thrilled because he is the only semi-regular columnist in the print version of the Times who provides thoughtful commentary from outside the New York-to-Washington echo chamber.  You see, Egan is third generation Pacific Northwesterner, and that fact infuses his writing – whether it be an opinion column in the Times or his latest book, The Big Burn.

I had the chance to meet and talk with Egan when I introduced him at our National Main Streets Conference in Seattle several years ago.  His comments at the time on the future of small town rural America were insightful and challenging.  His opinion columns in the Times provide similar insights from a different perspective that is uniquely (among his columnist peers) western.

The Big Burn is the story of the founding of the U.S. Forest Service by Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester Gifford Pinchot.  Fighting against the greed of the Gilded Age, Roosevelt and Pinchot invented the word “conservation” and created a public lands area that became the size of France.  This is land we own.  And in The Big Burn, Egan tells how the largest wildfire in American history destroyed much of the forest land of the Pacific Northwest in 1910, yet saved our National Forests and the concept of public ownership.  In service just five years at the time, Pinchot’s rangers showed remarkable heroism in battling the blaze and in the process turned public opinion in favor of saving public lands.  The fire became the creation myth of the U.S. Forest Service.

Egan’s writing is engaging and quickly moves the reader through this parallel track of environmental history and Great Man historical narrative.  Even if you aren’t from the Pacific Northwest, you’ll enjoy this compelling tale that is equal parts tragic and heroic.

What follows is a short video of the author talking about the impact of the fire and about the key themes of his book.

More to come…

DJB

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Summer Saturdays are the Best

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The joyful photograph at the top of the post – which comes from the wonderful photo/blog Real People Eat Local (check it out for their delicious pictures) – is a perfect encapsulation of our day.  Summer Saturdays really are the best!

Today started relatively early (by Saturday standards) as Andrew had to be at the Cathedral for a choral practice at 8 a.m.  Our car is in the shop this weekend waiting for a leaky fuel pump to be repaired (one never wants to smell gasoline in your home garage), so Candice, Andrew and I had to juggle our schedules around the availability of Zipcars – the wonderful car sharing service we swear by.  Because we have some 25 Zipcars within about 3 blocks of our house, we picked one up (a little Honda) and were on our way by 7:30.  Urban living is great!

Swim team meets the past six weeks have their own charm, but they have disrupted the Saturday morning ritual Candice and I established this year.  So we were pleased to get back to the gym for a morning workout, followed by our stroll shopping through the Silver Spring Farmers Market.  Our farmers market isn’t as large as some (we’re talking about you, Dupont Circle) but we love our high quality and growing group of area farmers and other local food sellers.  We bought our usual pastry treat from Praline Bakery and picked up some wonderful bread from Atwater’s Bakery.  We stopped and chatted with our new friend Julie Gray Stinar at Evensong Farms (pictured in the photo at the top), where we picked up some eggs (they have THE BEST!) and a chicken.  Julie and her dad Tom Gray (yes, bluegrass fans, the original bass player with the Seldom Scene) told us about the next Bluegrass in the Barn show at Evensong on October 10, 2010 (10/10/10 as Julie noted).  We attended the last one and had a blast.

The Evensong Farms connection is too strange to be anything but true.  Julie and her husband Brent actually found their farm through the historic house ads in Preservation magazine (the magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, where I work).   And their hosting of a semi-regular bluegrass series just cements our admiration for what they are doing.

The farmers market is also a great place to run into friends, and this morning we were lucky enough to see a dear friend and her daughter, who was in town for a visit.  Twenty minutes later we had caught up on the family news and had also gotten a hot tip to try out 8407 kitchen bar – a new local restaurant with a chef we’d admired at his earlier job.

I mentioned that Andrew had a rehearsal this morning.  He’s come full circle, from singing as a young treble in the National Cathedral Choir to now being “one of the men” as a tenor singing with the trebles who were in town this week for the Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) program at the cathedral.  This afternoon we all headed out to St. Francis Church in Potomac to hear a concert by the choir, under the direction of English composer David Ogden.  It was a glorious hour of  music and I was reminded again that “singing really is praying twice.”

Andrew had to work his desk job at the pool this evening (and we had to return our Mini-Cooper – Zipcar #2 for the day), so Candice and I decided to act on our friend’s tip and try out 8407 kitchen bar.  It was – in a word – wonderful.  Silver Spring has an over-abundance of chain restaurants, but not enough top quality independent eateries.  This one, located one block from us across from the Metro station, quickly jumped near the top of our list and will, no doubt, become a favorite local spot.  Check it out Washington-area food fans.

And then to top off the day as I’m headed to bed, Ryan Zimmerman hits a 3-run walk-off home run for the Nationals and the Nats beat the Phillies 7-5 for their second straight win against the boys from just up I-95!

Summer Saturdays are the best!!

More to come…

DJB

Divisionals

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How hot can it be?

Shortly after 8 a.m. this morning the sun topped the trees and began to bake our group of swim team parents who had camped out poolside  to cheer for the Gators in the annual Divisionals swim meet.  We were competing in Division E this year, which was a stretch for our ladies and gentlemen.  But the team gave it their best and ended up 4th out of the six-team division.  We had some amazing efforts by our swimmers, including a new pool record set by one of Claire’s best friends in 15-18 girls breaststroke.  And they did it with temperatures nearing 100 and the heat index going to 105 degrees and higher.  How hot can it be?  It was brutal.

Andrew made divisionals this year in two races, the 15-18 boys 200 meter medley relay (swimming backstroke) and the 100 meter breaststroke.  The relay boys were up against some tough competition, but knocked time off their personal best.

But it was in the breaststroke where Andrew had his best race of the year.  Swimming in the first heat (meaning there are six boys with better times in the second heat), he started strong and made his final turn neck and neck with the swimmer in lane 4.  With a great finish, he took first in his heat and knocked about two-and-a-half seconds off his personal best.  Woo hoo!

On to the team banquet tomorrow evening, then we’ve finished summer swim team for another year.  It is a bittersweet feeling.  I’ll enjoy getting my Saturday mornings back (I’ve missed the gym and farmers’ market) but it also signals that summer’s a little more than half over.  And as Andrew and Claire push toward the end of high school, we only have one more of these special summers left.

Gretchen Rubin reminds us that days are long, but years are short.

How true, how true.

More to come…

DJB

A Crooked Road

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One of Nashville’s best songwriters begins his newest album with the following words:

“I walk a crooked road to get to where I’m going,

to get to where I’m going I walk a crooked road

and only when I’m looking back I see the straight & narrow

I see the straight & narrow when I walk a crooked road.“

Darrell Scott has written great tunes for the Dixie Chicks (Long Time Gone), Patty Loveless (You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive) and dozens more.  His last album, a gem entitled Modern Hymns, showcased

“Songs and artists/songwriters whose music shook me as a kid (with ears nearly as big as my heart). They guided the way to my own path as a singer-songwriter . . . These songs speak to the human condition . . . in all of our aching and beautiful glory . . . These songs are the truth . . .“

Scott has a wonderful gravelly voice and is a masterful musician.  I love his work.

So I eagerly snapped up the album when I came across his most recent work last week, the deeply personal A Crooked Road. This is as autobiographical as Scott can be, touching on 30 years of love gained and love lost.  Scott plays all the instruments and supplies all the voices, and it never gets boring.  There are great tunes here, with some of my favorites including The Day Before Thanksgiving, A Father’s Song, Snow Queen and Drama Llama, and the one that helps wrap up this two-CD set, This Time ‘Round. And to prove he can turn a witty phrase with the best of Nashville’s Tin Pan Alley writers, For Suzanne begins with,

She’s been written in song by the best of names,

Stephen Foster, Leonard Cohen, and Sweet Baby James. 

I got this feeling this won’t be the same. 

My love song for Suzanne.

Nashville has a treasure trove of good songwriters.  Darrell Scott is among the best.

Enjoy the video of the title cut, and enjoy the album.

More to come…

DJB

A Takoma Park July 4th Celebration

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Yes, that’s a “precision drill team” made up of environmentally friendly reel mowers you see in the picture.  (See my update at the end of the post)

Welcome to the Takoma Park July 4th Parade.

Folks who live in the Washington area have a wide range of Independence Day festivities to choose from.  You can have your fireworks on the National Mall, as far as I’m concerned.  My favorite thing is to hop on the Metro, take a short ride to the next station, and then head into downtown Takoma Park, MD, for the annual 4th of July parade.  We’ve done it for years, and it takes some major event to pull us away from this family tradition.

Takoma Park is known – to put it mildly – for its political activism and progressive outlook.  For instance, it is the only “nuclear free zone” in the DC metropolitan area.  Takoma Park also has a well-deserved reputation as  being a bit quirky.  Many of our friends from the pool and the twins’ schools live in the city, so we’re always looking to visit and support them.

Today Candice and I took up our traditional spot along a shady sidewalk on Maple Street to watch this year’s version of the parade.  The teenagers doing jump rope tricks were a hit with young and old alike.  The parade always features a couple of steel drum outfits, with their groupies jiving and dancing alongside the floats from where this wonderful Caribbean-influenced music pours forth.

This year brought some rich political activism, from “Declare Your Independence from Big Money in Politics” to a clever campaign to get the local school board to listen to the Young Activists at Piney Branch elementary school who have raised over $10,000 to buy and operate a dishwasher as part of a no styrofoam project.  Children and parents passed out the styrofoam trays, which are now used once per child every day in the schools across Montgomery County and then sent to be incinerated.  Slogans calling for the board of education to listen to the children, save money and “Speed up the Piney Branch Pilot Project” were written on the trays.  We all let the board of education members know where we stood on environmental and fiscal waste as they came by in their cars.

It wouldn’t be Takoma Park without a bit of political theater.  This year the “Ru Paul Tea Party” candidate for state senate brought out laughter and commentary alike.  I’m not sure which Tea Party sign was the most humorous, the call for drilling local Sligo Creek, paving over the Chesapeake Bay, or the sign that called the float “Sarah Palin approved” and then added “The Founding Fathers were geniuses – They wouldn’t let ME vote!”

Luckily we haven’t lost our right of free speech (which we were reminded of by handouts of the Bill of Rights by the local VFW post).  Enjoy the rest of the photos, and Happy 4th of July!

And, of course, there’s always the final clean-up.

More to come…

DJB

Update: A Washington Post photo essay today noted that The Scottish Reels (the name of the drill team at the top of the post) won first prize in the parade’s Wacky Tacky Takoma Award.

Happy 60th, Helen and Tom

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Today – June 30, 2010 – is the 60th anniversary of the wedding of my mother and father:  Helen and Tom Brown.

Mom passed away on January 1, 1998, but my father is getting ready to celebrate his 85th birthday next Monday, July 5th.  I spent a day with him last Sunday and was reminded again of how much Mom and Daddy (I am from the South) loved each other and how that has affected my view of the world.

My Mom was generally considered to be a saint, and dying at a relatively young age from cancer only cemented that view in all our minds.  I wrote her birthday greetings on what would have been her 78th birthday a couple of years ago, and that pretty much sums up how we all feel about her.

My father is a bit more complicated…which also makes him very interesting.

Mother once described my father as having a mouth “always turned up in a perpetual smile” but apparently it wasn’t always so.  Several years ago Daddy sent us some thoughts he had written while on retreat, which included the following:

“When I was young I had a poor self-image.  I was skinny, not athletic, wore glasses and was not really accomplished in any area.  I did fairly well in my studies.  As a result I compensated for this by criticizing others.  This bad attitude was called to my attention in a peculiar way while I was in the Navy.  One day a man said to me, ‘Brown, why do you think everybody but you is full of shit?’  He expressed it very well.”

In that same reflection, Daddy noted that identity crises can come at various points in your life.  When he retired, he no longer worked as an engineer and was asking “Who Am I?”  It was then, he notes, that he came to see that his primary identity was “a child of God.”

Don’t think that because he’s a Christian and Baptist that Daddy is a member of the Christian Right.  Nope, he’s a card-carrying member of the Christian Left and has come to be known for his regular letters to the editor in both the Nashville and Murfreesboro papers to set his neighbors straight about Baptist history, the separation of church and state, and the Constitution.  This is a man who took out a subscription to Mother Jones when he was in his 70s.  When the church he’d been a member of since the 1960s went through some upheavals, he took a two-year sabbatical from First Baptist and went to a black Baptist church, where they “show a little emotion.”  He has e-mail pals all over the world and we all receive updates from my father about twice a week with bits of wisdom.

Daddy is a great reader and gifter (if that’s a word) of books.  When I was home last weekend, he gave me a copy of Bill of Wrongs:  The Executive Branch’s Assault on America’s Fundamental Rights by that late, great unreconstructed Texas liberal Molly Ivins.  He’d bought it at the cheap book bin – only to come home and discover he already had two copies!  This is the kind of Molly Ivins quote that my dad would find hilarious:

“I am not anti-gun. I’m pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We’d turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don’t ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.”

God, I miss Molly Ivins…but I digress.

Daddy and I were having our traditional breakfast at City Cafe in Murfreesboro on Monday morning, before I headed off to Rock Castle and then Nashville for work.  We were talking about the fact that their 60th anniversary would have been this week, and then our conversation turned to a cabin in the North Carolina mountains that my sister and her husband own.  Daddy said wistfully, “Helen and I always talked about having a little cabin in North Carolina.”  I responded that he now had the cabin without the hassles of ownership, and he said quietly, “Yes, but I don’t have Helen.”

85 and still in love with the woman he married…that’s my Dad.

As I was leaving Nashville, I commented to some friends via email that there were more guitars per capita in the Nashville airport than in any other airport in the world.  Three guitars and their owners passed me just as I was writing the email.  My favorite sticker on a guitar case that passed by simply said, “Don’t Postpone Joy.”

It is a sentiment my father would endorse.

Happy anniversary and happy birthday, Daddy.

Love,

DJB

Ouch!

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I usually love to listen to baseball on the radio.

Tonight was not usual.

On the drive home from BWI Airport following a quick trip to Nashville, I tuned in to the 7th inning of the Washington Nationals vs. Atlanta Braves game.  According to the announcers, the first six innings were well-played and scoreless.

The seventh was neither (well-played nor scoreless).

For all the T-ball aged readers of More to Come… here are things you’ll learn when you make it to Little League.  (Apparently the Nats skipped that level of baseball development.)

First, when the #6 hitter has a lead-off double and you are the #7 hitter, you do not sacrifice bunt.  By bunting you put all the pressure on the #8 hitter because the pitcher bats in the #9 hole.  Of course, for the Nats tonight the #7 hitter bunts for a sacrifice in that situation, then the #8 hitter makes an out (a likely occurence for all #8 hitters – there’s a reason they are there) and all of a sudden the pitcher – who is throwing a shutout – is supposed to drive in the run.  You know how often pitchers drive in runs with two outs.

Second, when you get a double play ball hit to you at shortstop, you turn the double play.  Ian Desmond booted a tailor-made double play in the bottom of the 7th.  Instead of two outs and one on at third, the bases are loaded with no outs.

Third, when you are a weak-armed center fielder and a sac fly is hit to you with the bases loaded, you throw the ball to second to keep the double play in order.  You do not throw the ball to third, where you have no chance to get an out and you give up second base to the runner on first.  Of course, Nyjer Morgan throws to third.  Both runners score.

It is tough to be a fan of a team playing the worst baseball in the majors at the moment.

Oh well.  Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

More to come…

DJB

Playing Favorites

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I picked up Top of the Order:  25 Writers Pick Their Favorite Baseball Player during the Politics & Prose sale a couple of weeks ago.  Only a handful of the writers were familiar and the inclusion of Michael Jordan (yes, that MJ) and the fictional Crash Davis in the list of favorites indicated this anthology was going to take a different tack from the typical list of baseball’s greatest hits.

Top of the Order is, at best, uneven.  I couldn’t wait to get through some of the self-indulgent essays (see Pat Jordan on Tom Seaver) which were more about the author than I cared to read.  At their best, some of the essays captured the special nature of fandom (see the obsessive Darin Strauss on Mariano Rivera) where you didn’t mind the intrusion of the writer.  Steve Almond leads off with a strong piece on Rickey Henderson that hooks the reader into this quirky collection.  Neal Pollack writes a terrific essay on Greg Maddux that demonstrates how dominant Mad Dog was through so many years in the 1990s.

But then Sean Manning’s piece on Michael Jordan and John Albert’s essay on Jeff Kent’s mustache almost made me want to put the book down.  So readers beware…you will probably find Top of the Order satisfying and frustrating at the same time.

One aspect of the book I found very appealing:  more than a handful of the essays were written by women.  And the best essay – not just by a woman but in the entire anthology – was by Carrie Rickey, film critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer, on Kevin Costner’s Crash Davis from the best baseball film ever – Bull Durham. First of all, she has the good sense to admit that she watches Bull Durham often.  So do I.  Rickey writes,

“Bull Durham” is one of the few (baseball films) to capture fully that catcher/pitcher conspiracy.  “Bang the Drum Slowly” and “A League of Their Own”are others, but they’re not so much about what happens on the field as about what happens in the heart.  “Bull Durham” is about what happens in both places – and why both places matter.

In just a few short pages, Rickey touches on many of the key scenes from the movie.  She opens with her own take of Crash’s “I believe…” soliloquy (including a terrific “I believe that the dramas of Kevin Costner are self-indulgent dreck”), recounts the evergreen of Crash teaching rookie Nuke LaLoosh his baseball clichés (“they are your friends”),  and notes that when we first meet Crash he shows the switch-hitter’s ability to digest, process, and adjust (going from denial, to anger, to acceptance in three sentences that end with “Who we play tomorrow?”)

Rickey’s essay reminds me that some of my favorite writing about baseball has been by women.  In the 2008 anthology Anatomy of Baseball, Elizabeth Bobrick’s “Oriole Magic” is worth the price of the book.  (Click on the link to read some excerpts.)

So on this Father’s Day, when so many baseball fans wax eloquently about how their fathers introduced them to the game, remember that a great many women (including my late mom) understand the game at a level many men miss.  As Rickey writes about Annie Savoy in Bull Durham,

Here is a woman who knows as much about the game as Crash.  Here is a woman for whom baseball is a religion, who sees the ballplayer who loves the game more than it does in return, and who loves him in a way that finally puts Crash’s life into balance.  And he’s evolved enough not to be intimidated by her.

Catch a game of baseball this week…and perhaps if you’re a guy, take a woman with you to help explain what’s going on with the action on the field.

More to come…

DJB

An Act of Human Failing Followed by Colossal Grace

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The June 4, 2010 posting from Baseball Musings entitled An Umpire’s Perspective led to an article on umpire-turned-poet Herm Card.

The full article is worth reading, but the ending is simply sublime:

We live in a time, Card said, in which people want instant replays, “do-agains,” the quick fix. But baseball has never lent itself to painless answers. “You’ve got to step back,” Card said, “and appreciate the larger sense of what this was.”

It was an act of human failing followed by colossal grace, which Card sees as proof enough of a perfect game.

Perfect indeed.

More to come…

DJB

Economic meltdown, transitions, and roots music: Recent books on the nightstand

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My last post said More to Come… was going on sabbatical, but in cleaning up the  nightstand today I realized I’d been holding four recent books that I planned to review on the blog.  These represent my eclectic interests (which is what More to Come… is all about) as well as priorities in my life at the moment.  So in the hope that I can now hold to my promise to take the blog on sabbatical,  I’ll pass along thumbnail reviews of the four and put them in my mental “checked off” category.

The first is Michael Lewis’ terrific (as in well-written) and sobering (as in scary) The Big Short:  Inside the Doomsday Machine. This is, by far, the best known of the four and much has been written about the story of three small hedge fund managers and a bond salesman who knew what was coming before the economic meltdown of 2008.

I don’t need to elaborate because Steven Pearlstein said it all in a Washington Post review I highly recommend.  As Pearlstein  writes, “If you read only one book about the causes of the recent financial crisis, let it be Michael Lewis’s ‘The Big Short.'”  Agreed.

Lewis also has an opinion piece in today’s New York Times.  I hope that means he does not intend to stop writing about the causes and outcomes of the financial crisis anytime soon.

The second recommendation is the new book by brothers Chip and Dan Heath entitled Switch:  How to Change Things When Change is Hard. I am a big fan of their first book, Made to Stick which focused on communicating ideas that stick.  We even exchanged some correspondence to discuss a few real-life examples.  Switch is another winning book in the Heath brothers tradition.  It goes beyond the intended “business book” audience to speak to anyone trying to move individuals, families, offices, or organizations to change.

You’ll find this to be a valuable read if you’ve ever thought that “your brain isn’t of one mind.”  But change can come during times of transition, especially when you believe – as the Heath brothers do – that change isn’t an event but a process.

Now for something completely different:  Still Inside – The Tony Rice Story. Rice is – in my humble opinion – the best acoustic guitarist on the planet, and this work covers his entire life’s story and musical development.  Much of it is written in Tony’s own words or comes from remembrances from fellow musicians and friends.  The section on the development of David Grisman’s Dawg music, when Rice left his bluegrass roots and joined the seminal David Grisman Quintet in 1975, is worth the price of the book.  As Tony says, there are now at least 10 guitarists who can play circles around him while playing Rice’s own music, but none have the tone and touch…and none came up with the beautiful combination of roots, bluegrass, jazz, and even classical influences that makes the best of Dawg music still fresh some 30+ years later.  After reading the book, I recalled all those great Rice albums that I had listened to on vinyl and immediately went online and downloaded several CDs worth of music from Tony’s four decades of music.  Backwaters is Tony’s favorite, and with fresh listening I can see why.

The best part of Still Inside?  My copy of the book is inscribed “To my old pickin’ pal, David – Tony Rice.”  Now, there’s not a shred of truth in that, but my grandchildren (should I ever have any) will never know!  Thanks to my friend Leti, who stood in line at Merlefest when I couldn’t go this year and snared the best inscription ever for a guitar lover.  There are so many different phases to Tony’s music which would show his prodigious talent, but I’ve chosen his solo guitar version of Norman Blake’s Church Street Blues in the video below.  Enjoy.

The final book is another roots music work, chronicling one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century.  Meeting Jimmie Rodgers is an extensively researched work about the influences of Rodgers on a wide variety of pop and roots music of the 20th century.  There are few individuals who know more about this field than Bill Malone, so his blurb carries a great deal of weight:

“Until I read this book, I had assumed that the last word had been written on Jimmie Rodgers, the great country blues musician. But, buoyed by Barry Mazor’s keen insights, innovative research, and felicitous writing style, I have become aware of new dimensions of the Singing Brakeman’s influence on American popular music. While Rodgers drew upon a wide array of styles and genres to build his own career, it has been his legacy to shape the sounds and styles of generations of musicians, both in and outside of country music, right on up to our own time.“

My father heard Barry Mazor speak and quickly knew I’d enjoy this work.  So I jumped in when my father’s gift arrived, and haven’t been disappointed.

A best seller on the economic meltdown and four people who knew about it beforehand, a thoughtful work on transitions, and two new works on roots music pioneers.  Take your choice, and enjoy.

More to come…

DJB