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Rest in Peace, Mr. Baseball

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Bob Uecker, the Hall of Fame announcer known by so many as “Mr. Baseball”, died yesterday at the age of 90. Born to Swiss immigrant parents in 1934, he served in the Army before signing with the Milwaukee Braves. His telling of that moment, like so many others in his life, came with a self-deprecating joke.

“’You know, I signed with the Milwaukee Braves for $3,000,’ Uecker once said. ‘That bothered my dad at the time because he didn’t have that kind of dough to pay out. But eventually, he scraped it up.’”

Uecker had, to put it mildly, a modest big league career. But it got him into baseball and provided a treasure trove of stories. He talked about those modest accomplishments, among the biggest being his three home runs off of three Hall of Fame pitchers—Gaylord Perry, Ferguson Jenkins, and Sandy Koufax—as was being intentionally walked by Koufax.

When it came to that intentional walk, he joked, “I was pretty proud of that until I heard that the commissioner wrote Koufax a letter telling him the next time something like that happened, he’d be fined for damaging the image of the game.”

“I hit a homer off Sandy Koufax,” Uecker said in an interview with his NBC broadcast partner Bob Costas. “Each time I see him, I apologize. I was worried that it’d keep him out of the Hall of Fame.”

In addition to his five decades as one of baseball’s best and most unique announcers, Uecker was well known in pop culture. He was the humorous broadcaster from the movie “Major League” . . .

an iconic pitchman for Miller Lite commercials . . .

(NOTE: The first one below was filmed at Dodger Stadium, where Uecker is told by an usher that he is in the wrong seat. “I must be in the front rowwww,” Uecker cooed. But the next scene shows Uecker sitting in the last row of the upper deck. Decades later, the Brewers installed a statue of Uecker in the last row of the upper deck at American Family Field amid what the club calls the “Uecker seats.” It’s one of two Uecker statues on the stadium grounds today.) The second is a classic where Ueck stars with Rodney Dangerfield and a host of other big-name stars.)

and a frequent guest on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.”

Uecker could make anything funny. He was traded in 1964 to the St. Louis Cardinals, and as he points out in his Hall of Fame acceptance speech, when he won the Ford Frick Award for Announcers, the Cards immediately won the World Series.

Those Cardinals did come from 11 games back to win the pennant, but Ueck did not play in the World Series.

“’I was on the disabled list,’ he told Bob Costas and Joe Morgan in the booth during Game 6 of the 1995 World Series.

Costas: Fouled to the screen. Why were you on the disabled list?

Uecker: I got hepatitis.

Costas: Swing and a miss. How did you get hepatitis?

Uecker: The trainer injected me with it.”

That Hall of Fame speech is 18 minutes of unscripted joy. Seeing Willie Mays, Reggie Jackson, and so many baseball greats wiping their eyes as Uecker deadpanned his way through the talk is priceless. Of course, he did have one quibble about his induction.

“You know, of all of the things that I’ve done, this has always been number one: Baseball. The commercials, the films, the television series, I could never wait for everything to get over to get back to baseball. I still, and this is not sour grapes by any means, still think I should have gone in as a player.”

Bob Uecker, Hall of Fame Induction Speech (line begins at around the 10:45 mark)

Here’s how Joe Posnanski described that moment yesterday in a loving tribute.

“Bob Uecker followed up that line, that incredible line, the funniest line ever uttered in any Hall of Fame speech—which, by the way, he ad-libbed along with the rest of the speech—with eight seconds of deadpan silence and let the laughter build all around him. That’s how it was his whole life. Laughter always built around him.”

Go read Posnanski’s farewell to Mr. Baseball. He includes some classic moments, such as the famous team photograph the Cardinals took in ’64, which they had to discard because Ueck and Bob Gibson are holding hands and smiling as if they’re a couple.

Will Sammon also has a terrific appreciation in The Athletic, and Adam McCalvy touches on a number of Uecker highlights for MLB. Go to YouTube, type in Uecker’s name, and go down a rabbit hole.

I’ll end with one of my favorite Ueck stories, which was his famous advice about catching the knuckleball. He told this after he’d allowed a record 25 passed balls and 31 wild pitches in just 48 starts, most of them with Phil Niekro on the mound.

“The best way,” he said, “is to wait for it to stop rolling and then pick it up.”

Thanks for the love and laughter, Mr. Baseball. Rest in peace.

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo credit: MLB.com

Honestly people . . . read a history book!

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The slow death of the California dream, an article in the Spectator, showed up in my morning LinkedIn feed. A former colleague in the preservation field had posted it with this short, and to-the-point rejoinder:

“‘The Romans built aqueducts stretching hundreds of miles in less time than it takes to permit an outbuilding in California—and their aqueducts actually held water.’ I can’t believe someone actually wrote this line. Sure we have bureaucracy, but you know what the Romans had that we didn’t? Slaves. That’s right! Slavery. Don’t have to pay your workers . . . no unions . . . etc. Yes, the Romans were brilliant engineers and brought us amazing civil works . . . but up to 30% of the population were slaves. Yep, things sure move quicker when there aren’t 8 billion people on the planet using all the same resources and your government is based on an Emperor. Honestly people . . . read a history book.”

My comment to Allyson’s* post was succinct. I simply said, “Read history, indeed! Preach it, Allyson!!”

For something more thoughtful than “why can’t we build aqueducts like the Romans use to do?” I recommend my friend Charles R. Wolfe’s Place Shock in Los Angeles. In his essay anticipating the rebuilding of Los Angeles, Chuck “evokes a range of regulatory approaches, the writing of the late Mike Davis, and the realities of political expediency to explore what place restoration will mean,” ending with these two paragraphs:

“Los Angeles’s challenge is efficiently rebuilding homes and infrastructure while acknowledging how actual rebuilding transcends the physical. It’s about encouraging the intangible, honoring memories, and cultivating a sense of belonging.

Paradise is fragile, says climate change and its progeny of storms, melts, heat, and drought. In this case, it’s a matter of purposely reflecting on how resilience and beauty coexist amid political compromises and Davis’s ecology of fear.”

More to come . . .

DJB

*Dr. Allyson Brooks is the State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO) for the State of Washington. For those not in the field, the SHPO—appointed by the governor—is the public servant responsible for managing the government’s response to cultural heritage in each state. Allyson—who is one of the most effective SHPOs in the country—has served in this position for 26 years. She was appointed by Governor Jay Inslee and two previous governors, serving as the chief executive’s primary adviser and policy expert on all issues related to the state’s cultural resources. As SHPO she “represents the Governor and the agency to state legislators, the Congressional delegation, government agencies, developers, community stakeholders, the general public, and tribal representatives.”

Photo by chris robert on Unsplash

Systemic change only occurs after acknowledging a systemic problem

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Technology’s take-over of our lives, our privacy, our norms, and our government has grown exponentially in recent years. In the past decade under the cover of “innovation” . . .

“. . . technology companies have successfully resisted regulation and have even begun to seize power from governments themselves. Facial recognition firms track citizens for police surveillance. Cryptocurrency has wiped out the personal savings of millions and threatens the stability of the global financial system. Spyware companies sell digital intelligence tools to anyone who can afford them. This new reality—where unregulated technology has become a forceful instrument for autocrats around the world—is terrible news for democracies and citizens.”

Like the author of a new book that provides evidence-based and instructional stories—sobering as they are—of these atrocities, “I do not want to live in a world dictated by technology companies and their executives.” Tech leaders, it can be shown, “do not have the mandate or, frankly, the ethics necessary to govern so much of our societies.”

The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley (2024) by Marietje Schaake is an extraordinarily frightening and important new work on how the tech giants of Silicon Valley have become “too big to fail and thus too big to regulate, causing harm to all of us.” With a subject that is large and technically complex, Schaake has written a book that is both engaging and readable, even for the non-expert. Which is a good thing, because what she describes affects each one of us. The ultimate result of this coup is “the fundamental erosion of personal freedom and democratic norms” all for the benefit of American oligarchs.

We think of oligarchs as Gilded Age tycoons or current-day Russians who built their fortunes on mineral extraction and transportation monopolies. As Mother Jones senior reporter Tim Murphy describes it, however, American oligarchs offer “a twist on the pilfering of the commons that produced Russia’s. It is built on a different kind of resource, not nickel or potash, but you—your data, your attention, your money, your public square.”

Jeff Bezos has famously used all of those things—our data, attention, and money—to enrich himself and destroy local economies, entire industries, and now the public square that was the free press. The resignation of Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes after one of her cartoons was killed by the editorial board led me to finally pull the plug on our decades-long Post subscription.

“The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump. There have been multiple articles recently about these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-lago. The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner.”

Other principled and contrarian voices have also left the Washington Post in protest in recent days.

Bezos, Mark Zuckerburg, and Elon Musk are just the most visible of the tech billionaires who do not have allegiance to our country or to democracy. And frankly, we’ve no one to blame for their takeover of our lives and our government but ourselves. The “great outsourcing of our government,” writes Schaake, “is fundamentally rewriting the social contract between the democratic state and its citizens.”

A single very wealthy man (Musk) largely controls United States space capabilities. “And that happened because the U.S. pretty much just … handed it over to him.”

“He has no loyalty to any particular government, and often acts directly against the interests of his own. He single-handedly sabotaged a Ukrainian naval attack on invading Russian forces, despite the United States’ firm support for Ukraine, and was later revealed to be in “regular contact” with murderous Russian strongman Vladimir Putin while making such decisions.

He controls a major means of public communication, which he uses primarily as propaganda machine for misleading the public and boosting destabilizing—and often violent—anti-government voices.”

Hunter Lazzaro, Uncharted Blue

In her book, Schaake provides detail—in straightforward language without the hyperbole found on the internet—about why she wants governments to proactively prevent companies from harming citizens. Such a notion is seen by many of our tech oligarchs as quaint and old-fashioned, but Schaake describes why this is critical for democracy’s survival. Her chapter on cryptocurrency alone should be required reading for all thinking citizens of the world.

To provide another example she turns to Palantir, an analytics company that gets data directly from law enforcement and other government agencies and then analysis it with little transparency before repackaging it to sell to governments into “actionable insights.” This business model means that the company . . .

“profits handsomely—sometimes tens of millions of dollars per contract—on processes that cannot be scrutinized or interrogated by citizens. Why, exactly, should democracies put up with that?”

Schaake provides a road map for how governments and their citizens, can survive. As Mike O’Sullivan wrote in Forbes, “These are sensible proposals, but likely the very opposite of what Donald Trump might instigate as a set of policies.” And therein lies our newest challenge.

Brian Gardiner writes in a review of the book in the MIT Technology Review that the group of men (and they are almost all men) who are pilfering our public square are “seemingly incapable of serious self-reflection—men who believe unequivocally in their own greatness and who are comfortable making decisions on behalf of hundreds of millions of people who did not elect them, and who do not necessarily share their values.” How do you deal with them? “You regulate them, of course. Or at least you regulate the companies they run and fund.”

That may seem like a hopeless task in today’s world, but fortunately, history shows that there are ways we can stand up for our rights.

Both the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration of Independence affirm that “legitimacy presumes consent—that the consent of the governed as at the heart of the notion of a social contract between citizens and their governments, which sees citizens give up some of their freedoms in favor of shared rules of the commons.” Democratic governments “must extend norms and rules to ensure safety in the digital world.”

It is up to us. Our democracy depends upon it.

More to come . . .

DJB

NOTE: I’ve been highlighting worries about technology’s over-reach for twelve years. Here’s a sampling of MORE TO COME essays on the topic.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

From the bookshelf: December 2024

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Each month my goal is to read a minimum of five books on a variety of topics from different genres. Here are the books I read in December 2024. If you click on the title, you’ll go to the longer post on MORE TO COME. Enjoy.

Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (2008) by Timothy Brook is a work of history that opens up the world for the reader. Using the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, he encourages us to view certain objects as doors which we can “step through into the teeming social, economic and political context which lies beyond.” Those doors include a beaver hat, Chinese porcelain, a geographer’s map, and more. Once we step into these worlds, Brook then deftly explains how the early years of the seventeenth century took mankind from isolated communities to interconnected worlds. It is, as one reviewer noted, an exhilarating piece of history.

Age of Folly: America Abandons Its Democracy (2016) by Lewis H. Lapham surveys the period from 1990 to 2015 to make the strong case that America’s imperial impulses have shaken our democratic principles. Drawn from monthly commentaries produced as the editor of Harper’s Magazine and essays written as backstory to various issues of Lapham’s Quarterly, Lapham makes the case for history as folly’s antidote. Lapham wants to teach us that “we have less reason to fear what might happen tomorrow than to beware what happened yesterday.” A nation denied knowledge of its past, he asserts, “cannot make sense of its present or imagine its future.”

Don’t think of an elephant: Know your values and frame the debate (2004) by George Lakoff is about framing messages. “Framing is about ideas—ideas that come before policy, ideas that make sense of facts, ideas that are proactive not reactive, positive not negative, ideas that need to be communicated out loud every day in public.” Don’t use the language that the right-wing wants you to use, Lakoff asserts, because their language picks out a frame—and it won’t be the frame we want. Framing is about getting language that fits your worldview—your values. And yet it goes beyond language. Ideas are core. Language simply “carries those ideas, evokes those ideas.”

How to Fight (2017) by Thich Nhat Hanh with illustrations by Jason DeAntonis begins by reminding us that how we respond to unkindness by others is a practiced habit, resulting from well-worn pathways in our brains. We feel slighted and we generally retaliate immediately. However, we can change our minds and develop new habits, new ways of approaching life’s challenges. In these short meditations, Thich Nhat Hanh “instructs us exactly how to transform our craving and confusion.” Paradoxically, we have to learn to take good care of our suffering in order to help others do the same.

Avant-Garde in the Cornfields: Architecture, Landscape, and Preservation in New Harmony (2019) edited by Ben Nicholson and Michelangelo Sabatino is a scholarly exploration of an iconic small town in Indiana that provides insights and new perspective into architecture, landscape, preservation, spirituality, and philanthropy.  Avant-Garde in the Cornfields traces how nineteenth century utopian aspirations based on the renewal of society through faith and later science became the touchstone for a transformation through preservation and reinvention of New Harmony’s traditions. An expansive vision of the third “utopian” chapter in New Harmony’s history which the editors have brought together in one eclectic, in-depth, and ultimately satisfying volume, this story of how the extraordinary past and present of New Harmony continue to thrive today is worthy of consideration in our own troubled times.

What’s on the nightstand for January (subject to change at the whims of the reader)

Keep reading!

More to come…

DJB

NOTE: Click to see the books I read in November of 2024 and to see the books I read in 2024. Also check out Ten tips for reading five books a month.

Man reading in park from Pixabay

Joy, dreams, faith, honesty, melancholy . . . and riff raff

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Last month The Bitter Southerner website* posted Let Her Cook: The Best Southern Albums of 2024, an eclectic list of 20 albums curated by the TBS staff. There are well-known names (Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Brittany Howard) and everything from folk to pop to rock to rap. Today I’ve focused on six of these artists to highlight names and music that, with one or two exceptions, may be new to you. Each segment quotes from the TBS article and includes one video (except when there are two.)

Enjoy!

Joy Oladokun

Nigerian American singer-songwriter Joy Oladokun was born in Delaware, raised in Arizona, and is now based in Nashville, that hotbed of country and Americana music. In many ways, Oladokun reminds me of the folksingers of my youth, as I wrote in a 2023 post. She has a beautiful and soulful voice, often heard over the delicate sound of her acoustic guitar. Her songs are poetry for today’s America, sung with pain and passion.

“Joy Oladokun’s Observations from a Crowded Room feels like a deep exhale after holding it together for way too long. Blending folk, pop, gospel, and touches of R&B, it’s smooth and meditative but still knows how to groove. Oladokun explores the exhaustion of constantly pushing through—fitting into spaces where you don’t feel welcome, balancing faith, family, substances, and the endless weight of vulnerability. The album opener ‘Letter from a Blackbird’ is written like a reflective contemporary response to the iconic Beatles’ track. ‘Flowers’ and ‘Good Enough’ are gentle, acoustic, and sweet, offering moments of quiet reflection. In contrast, ‘Hollywood’ and ‘Drugs’ hit harder—raw, intense, and emotionally charged, capturing the ache of navigating a life that drains you . . . It’s an album about being tired but honest, creating something beautiful even when you’re at your limit.”

The Bitter Southerner

Here I pair Letter from a Blackbird with Oladokun’s beautiful cover of the Beatles’ original that inspired the new tune.

Sierra Ferrell

One of the brightest young stars in roots music today, Sierra Ferrell brings “a dose of beautifully strange magic to everything she touches.”

“Whimsical, wild and yearning, Sierra Ferrell’s Trail of Flowers is a force. Ferrell pays homage to her roots and those of country, bluegrass and soul genres, weaving it all together with her timeless velvety voice. This album spans decades, creating a mix of sounds and feelings that are both contemporary and classic . . . Somehow hopeful and heartbroken all at once, Sierra Ferrell has mastered the art of loneliness, love and good-old-fashioned country music.” 

The Bitter Southerner

Madi Diaz

“Madi Diaz’s Weird Faith feels like cracking open someone’s diary and reading the messiest, most unfiltered pages. The lyrics are blunt, intimate, and shift moods so quickly it’s almost hard to keep up, but that’s what makes it so painfully relatable. Diaz has created an undeniably pretty album, with soft sweet acoustic guitar and stunningly clear vocals throughout. The album hones in on the early stages of a relationship, when you’re spiraling over whether you can trust them yet . . . Tracks like ‘Hurting You’ and the Kacey Musgraves duet ‘Don’t Do Me Good’ are slow and syrupy, while ‘Obsessive Thoughts’ and ‘Worst Case Scenario’ explode with raw, chaotic energy.”

The Bitter Southerner

Maggie Rose

Born in Potomac, Maryland, the Nashville based singer-songwriter Maggie Rose has been making a name for herself in rock-and-roll, soul, folk, funk, and R&B for several years, as I noted in 2021. A gifted vocalist, Rose has worked with some of the top names in the field. 

“Right out of the gate, this album [No One Gets Out Alive] is beautiful and powerful. Its title track opener has so much energy, and its classic emotive soul sound brings the great Carole King to mind. Maggie Rose’s vocals are truly stunning throughout—she has technical skill and vulnerability out the wazoo. This album has a timeless wisdom, celebrating intuition alongside honesty and self worth . . . On the so-dang-funky ‘Underestimate Me,’ Rose’s cup runneth over with swagger and confidence as she literally begs someone to let her prove them wrong. ‘Only Time Around’ is a sweet song about trusting yourself and living in the present, reassuring advice we can all use in these times of transition.”

The Bitter Southerner

We’ll feature that funky Underestimate Me followed by the album’s title track.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings

I have loved the aching, soulful music of Welch and Rawlings for more than two decades. They have a deceptively simple yet oh so deep style, as I wrote in a 2020 MTC post. 

“Gillian Welch’s voice is as golden as ever, and David Rawlings’ technical skill on guitar is mesmerizing. This year, the two country and folk legends brought us the smooth, steady and beautiful Woodland . . . With a more orchestral production than older projects, this album stands out most on tracks like ‘What We Had’ and sticks to their timeless folk sound on tunes like ‘Here Stands A Woman.’ The harmonies are effortlessly balanced, showcasing years of intuitive collaboration. No drama, no overpowering. Just pure magic.

This record, released three months before November, leaves us wondering if they’re psychic. How else could they create something so melancholy before we even knew we’d have to be?” 

The Bitter Southerner

Two songs perfectly exemplify this melancholy vibe: Empty Trainload of Sky and What We Had.

Hurray for the Riff Raff

“Old soul lyricism, rich metaphors and even richer vocals shine on The Past Is Still Alive by Hurray For The Riff Raff. This record is smooth and silky on ‘Colossus of Roads’ and ‘Ogallala,’ with a bit of crunch on tracks like ‘Hawkmoon’; and it all flows. Through this project, Alynda Segarra gives sage advice: you can try and outrun the past, but you won’t get far—and maybe that’s not such a bad thing . . . This fall has been painful, and as they told us even before the election, ‘we’re reckoning with our history and thinking about how our country was formed, and also how we might envision a future.’ Like a lightning bug, Segarra has captured a full human experience: rusty trains, midwest sunrises, garbage, Narcan and the beauty of queerness glow in the palm of their hand.” 

The Bitter Southerner

Let’s end with Hawkmoon from Hurray for the Riff Raff’s new album along with their cover of the timeless Townes Van Zandt tune Pancho and Lefty.

More to come . . .

DJB

*From the website: A beacon from the American South and a bellwether for the nation, The Bitter Southerner is an Athens, Ga.-based independent publisher, founded in 2013, that connects an activated and vocal global community working to make the South, and America, a better place. Today, The Bitter Southerner publishes three print magazines annually, books under its BS Publishing imprint, the “Batch” podcast, and offers iconic apparel and home goods in the BS General Store.

Photo of antique equipment on South Georgia farm by cbrennan poole on Unsplash

The questions we ask about the facts of history

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Several strands of the history happening in this moment are rolling around in my head. Rather than try and pull together one coherent essay today, I’ll simply capture those strands and encourage you to go to the primary sources. Perhaps later MTC posts will return to these themes.

As you read these pieces, keep this quote from historian Emory Thomas in mind.

“History, defined as ‘facts about the past’ does not change all that much. But we change; the present changes. And so those questions we ask those ‘facts about the past’ change considerably, as does the emphasis we give to some of those facts as opposed to other facts.”

Emory M. Thomas, “The Confederate Nation 1861-1865” (2011 edition)

God did a good thing when he made your dad

President Jimmy Carter lies in state in the capitol rotunda

The eulogies for former president Jimmy Carter at the state funeral on Thursday, January 9th held at the Washington National Cathedral were rich, filled with love, and spoken from the heart. They also helped to correct and update the history around the former president.

Heather Cox Richardson captured many of the best remembrances in her Letters from an American newsletter. As she noted, by virtue of living to be 100 Carter survived many of his contemporaries. But his former vice president, Walter Mondale, as well as the man he defeated for the presidency, Gerald Ford, both left behind eulogies which were read by their sons.

“Mondale recalled Carter’s ‘extraordinary years of principled and decent leadership, [and] his courageous commitment to civil rights and human rights.’ He recalled that toward the end of their time in the White House, in the years immediately after the tumultuous years of President Richard Nixon, with his covert bombing of Cambodia and cover-up of the Watergate break-in, the two men were summing up their administration. The sentence they came up with was: ‘We told the truth, we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace.'”

Ford’s son Steve fulfilled his father’s promise to deliver a eulogy. “Ford . . . noted that the former president ‘pursued brotherhood across boundaries of nationhood, across boundaries of tradition, across boundaries of caste. In America’s urban neighborhoods and in rural villages around the world, he reminded us that Christ had been a carpenter.’”

Steve Ford added his own remembrance when he spoke directly to the Carter children and said, “God did a good thing when he made your dad.”

Perhaps the most moving eulogy came from Carter’s grandson Jason, chair of the Carter Center’s board of trustees and a former Georgia state senator, who emphasized President Carter’s “integrity: his grandfather’s political convictions reflected his private beliefs.”

“’As governor of Georgia half a century ago, he preached an end to racial discrimination and an end to mass incarceration. As president in the 1970s…he protected more land than any other president in history…. He was a climate warrior who pushed for a world where we conserved energy, limited emissions, and traded our reliance on fossil fuels for expanded renewable sources. By the way, he cut the deficit, wanted to decriminalize marijuana, deregulated so many industries that he gave us cheap flights and…craft beer. Basically, all of those years ago, he was the first millennial. And he could make great playlists.’

Jason Carter called his grandfather’s life a “love story, about love for his fellow humans and about living out the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.”

On a 2007 visit to Savelugu Hospital in Ghana, President Jimmy Carter asks a group of children if they’ve had Guinea worm. A raised hand is a yes. (credit: Louise Gubb/Carter Center)

Carter noted that ‘this disease [Guinea worm] is not eliminated with medicine. It’s eliminated…by neighbors talking to neighbors about how to collect water in the poorest and most marginalized villages in the world. And those neighbors truly were my grandfather’s partners for the past forty years [and have] demonstrated their own power to change their world.’ When Jimmy Carter ‘saw a tiny 600-person village that everybody else thinks of as poor, he recognized it. That’s where he was from. That’s who he was.’ He saw it as ‘a place to find partnership and power and a place to carry out that commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. Essentially, he eradicated a disease with love and respect. He waged peace with love and respect. He led this nation with love and respect.’”

Love and respect.

President Joe Biden focused on what he called Carter’s “enduring attribute: character, character, character.” 

“‘At our best,’ Biden said, ‘we share the better parts of ourselves: joy, solidarity, love, commitment. Not for reward, but in reverence for the incredible gift of life we’ve all been granted. To make every minute of our time here on Earth count.’

‘That’s the definition of a good life,’ Biden said. It was the life Jimmy Carter lived for 100 years: a “good life of purpose and meaning, of character driven by destiny and filled with the power of faith, hope, and love.”

The history you didn’t get in school

Bunk is a shared home for the web’s most interesting thinking about American history. By highlighting some of the many points of connection between overlapping stories and interpretations, the editors seek to create a fuller and more honest portrayal of our shared past and “reveal the extent to which every representation is part of a longer conversation.”

On January 9th, the editors published their compilation of the Best Online History Writing of 2024. The entire list of 40 essays is fascinating, but I want to highlight two that caught my eye on first review.

Innocent mayhem that hints at a darker side of things

Credit: RichardScarry.com

This year is the 50th anniversary of Richard Scarry’s 1974 Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, which strikes Chris Ware, writing in the Yale Review with a piece included in Bunk’s Top 40 list in the “Culture” section, as “a commemoration worthy of ballyhoo.”

The entire story is worth your time, as you’ll find insights and plenty of cultural history.

“The Busytown books were enormous successes in America. But Scarry wrote and drew them in Switzerland, where he decided to move in 1967 after a three-week ski vacation with his son,” writes Ware. “What seems to have been an impulsive decision starts to makes sense if you’ve spent a few days immersed in Scarry’s work writing an essay for The Yale Review: a decidedly un-American tone runs through much of it.” Ware continues. “By ‘un-American’ I don’t mean anti-American. Instead, I mean there’s a top-down, citizen-as-responsible-contributor, sense-of-oneself-as-part-of-something-bigger that feels, well, civilized.”

“In Busytown there’s just enough innocent mayhem and tripping and falling to hint at a darker side of things, like failing 1970s marriages and the things on television news that adults were always yelling about.”

History lessons from a horror writer

Horror writer Grady Hendrix, writes The Unspoken Issue Haunting the Whole Election a week before the November election for Slate in a piece chosen by the Bunk editors for the top 40 list in the “Memory” section. Hendrix believes the horror genre has political lessons for us.

“Next week, we face an election in which one campaign declares ‘Let’s turn the page!,’ while the other looks at the country, pronounces it a hellscape, and promises to ‘Make America Great Again!’ In their own ways, both candidates want to bury the past and offer a vision of a brighter future. But if we Make America Great Again, we will create a literal underground of trans people, immigrants, and pregnant women who will have to break the law to survive. If we ‘turn the page,’ there will still be millions of people trapped beneath it who feel that Trump gave them a voice. And those people aren’t going anywhere, even if they lose their political power. We can call Trump the Big Orange Cheeto or the Fascist in Chief, but like it or not, there are millions of Americans who believe in what he has to offer and connect with him in a profound way. Maybe they’re all stupid? Maybe every single one of them is an idiot, and those of us who read (and write for) Slate are smarter and better educated and superior in every way. Maybe all the deaths, the isolation of lockdown, all this struggle to change the country, maybe it’ll all just disappear into the past and never be heard from again. Maybe.

But I’m a horror writer. And the one thing horror has taught me is that you can wish it away, you can lock the doors and draw the curtains, you can even burn it alive—but the past always comes back. Just when you’ve finally relaxed, just when you’ve nailed the last board over the final window and locked dead bolts on all the doors, it’ll come crawling out of its grave and smash through the walls or break through the floor. The past always, always, always returns, looking for its pound of flesh. And horror has one other lesson to teach us: We won’t see how it manifests until it’s far too late.”

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo of historical photographs by Mr Cup / Fabien Barral on Unsplash

The crucible of the life cycle

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Winter arrived with a vengeance this week.

We had our first significant snowfall of the season in the region on Monday. With an Arctic vortex bearing down, the temperatures will stay below freezing for the foreseeable future, meaning that the six-ten inches or so of snow that arrived isn’t going anywhere soon. Minnesotans know how to live with this weather and enjoy it. For those of us raised in the South, not so much.

Winter can be difficult. We may feel isolated as friends hunker down in their homes. The cold itself can be a challenge, something I’m finding to be true as I age. To others, the apparent death of life—as nature drops its spring/summer/fall finery and turns within itself for sustenance—can bring on depression.

First snow of the season in Silver Spring. Several more inches arrived on our deck before the day was over.

We’re also facing the existential dread (or so it seems) of another four years of political madness and folly. And it’s not even February, which—I believe—is the longest month of the year.

How do we cope and find hope in difficult and troubled times?

Katherine May writes in Wintering that these months are necessary and a good time to step back. They are also a metaphor for the idea of retreat. Winter, you see, “is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”

Parker Palmer takes on the same theme in Seasons.

“. . . winter has an even greater gift to give. It comes when the sky is clear, the sun brilliant, the trees bare, and the first snow yet to come. It is the gift of utter clarity … Winter clears the landscape, however brutally, giving us a chance to see ourselves and each other more clearly, to see the very ground of our being.”

Clarity and hope

Clarity in troubled times is important. Difficulties require clear thinking. But at the same time it is important that we not give up hope. As Rebecca Solnit reminds us, hope demands things that despair does not. “Hopefulness is risky,” writes the historian, author, and activist, “since it is after all a form of trust, trust in the unknown and the possible, even in discontinuity.”

We have to understand that “to be hopeful is to take on a different persona, one that risks disappointment, betrayal…” And still, historians and theologians remind us that hope can carry us forward. Not the greeting card type of hope but the gritty kind “that gets up every morning and chooses to try to make the world just a little kinder (or better) in your own way.” Hope that is clear-eyed and grounded in memory. Historian Howard Zinn spoke of how important hope is in difficult times.

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Howard Zinn from “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress”

Reenacting creation

The Friends of Silence remind us at this time of year that stillness and reflection are key to our retreat, our replenishment, our renewal.

Photo by Klim Musalimov on Unsplash

Bill Brown was a prolific poet and beloved teacher from Dyersburg, Tennessee. Chapter 16 recently referenced one of his poems that speaks to the possibilities of winter—and hope.

In Praise of Winter Trees

A closed heart can’t greet
a winter sky. Even a rain puddle
is filled by it, and a horse trough,
and the slow current of creeks.

Winter trees, sycamore and oak,
reach for the sky to offer praise –
stark, hard praise, born from all
those rooted years of bearing

the sky’s weight. Some nights
an open heart is filled with vast
spaces between stars the mind
can’t grasp. The thought of heaven

is not so much mammothed by
the sky’s grandeur, but mystified
beyond our silly notions. Winter
trees aren’t arrogant; they praise

no flags, no denominations,
they owe allegiance to the soil.
My sister, when she was younger,
awoke in winter to hold her arms

up to the sky, shiver in the wholeness
of it, let shadows of winter trees
dance sunlight across her face.
Oak, beech, sycamore, maple, and gum,

reenact creation, drop their seeds
from the sky, make their homes
in star dust, and reach back
toward heaven. Trees suffer

drought and freezing rain, accept
the annual tilt toward shorter days.
Some ancient hope, like winter light,
is allied with the gravity of stars.

Bill Brown from the collection “Late Winter” (2008)

Here’s wishing you a period of retreat, clarity of vision, and the sustenance of hope during this time of winter.

More to come . . .

DJB

Winter landscape from Pixabay.

Savor life’s gentle moments

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We live in an anger-filled age. After an initial period of community care, the pandemic quickly “blanketed the country in misery and left us at each other’s throats. One of the most revealing data points is that during the pandemic, pedestrian deaths skyrocketed. People were just driving angry.”

I still see this almost every morning on my walk in downtown Silver Spring. Drivers run red lights and ignore stop signs. They honk at the car in front of them a millisecond after the light turns green. Too many drivers speed through heavily traveled pedestrian zones used by the elderly or race through residential neighborhoods filled with children on their way to school.

Since when did stop signs and red lights become suggestions?

At the beginning of 2025 we are halfway through the 2020s and several years out from the worst of the pandemic. Yet we haven’t adjusted our frustrations. We were angry at having to be confined by the pandemic, and we remain frustrated and frightened long after the worst of it has passed. We let our good habits atrophy as we sat in our pajamas at home and several years later we still haven’t moved past those base instincts. Too many of us act like children throwing a temper tantrum. We don’t have the discipline to focus on what’s essential, what matters, what’s around us.

So much of our anger, I’m afraid, comes from trying to control things that are, frankly, uncontrollable.

Letting go of control is hard. Really hard. With all the anxiety and pressure in today’s world, the tendency is to gather all we think we must do and hold on tight. But the fact is that we don’t have that much control. We may act as if we do, but our time will not stretch on indefinitely even though we work, plan, and live as if that’s the case. It is the desire to control, to try and ensure that our efforts will always be successful, that actually restricts us. This desire also keeps us from finding our true nature, our souls.

“Hard work and drawing up plans are helpful, but not always. We do not build our souls as much as we find them along the way. We discover them by accident as much as by intention. There is a time to take our lives in hand, but there is also a time to take our hands off our lives, and to leave what seems apparent and trust ourselves to the hidden.”

Marv and Nancy Hiles, Iona Center of Healdsburg, CA

When we open our eyes to how life really works—when we pay attention, in other words—we come to at least see, if not fully accept, the paradox of limitations. Only when we let go of the need to control do our lives become more productive, meaningful, and joyful. When we let go of the need to control, we can more easily accept—and even rejoice in—the life we are given. We open ourselves to seeing that our days are exceptional even when they are ordinary.

We may even find our souls.

We each have the ability to choose to let go of the anger and anxiety that is pushing us to race through life, acting out in bad ways. We have the ability to make the choice to step through the door. To release the hard grip we have on our lives.

Ryan Holiday quotes the Roman philosopher Seneca who said, “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” These worst-case scenarios rarely happen, “and yet, the time and energy anxiety steals are gone forever.”

Anxiety comes from within us. We can choose to let it go. Slowing down to savor life’s gentle moments can help.

If we slow down we can take the time and notice all the wonder that is around us. We can think before we react. We can find the good in others. We can choose to put aside our screens and get outside for a walk. We can make the conscious decision to pick up a book and read. And yes, we can find surprising amounts of joy and wonder as we drive.

This often happens to me on 16th Street, NW in Washington.

Part of the city’s original plan, 16th Street was an early location for embassies and churches.  Most of the embassies have left, but one of the charms of the street is the beautiful church and institutional architecture that’s interspersed throughout the neighborhoods. 

St. John the Baptist Russian Orthodox Cathedral, one block off 16th Street in Washington

Rock Creek Park fronts much of the western edge of the street as I head south from Silver Spring. The park is enchanting every time of year, but I especially like the winter, when you can see deeper into the forest and be mesmerized by the sculptural nature of the trees without their leaves.

Rock Creek Park photo by Sara Cottle on Unsplash

The street also features the mansions of the Gold Coast—home for decades to many of Washington’s most affluent and accomplished African Americans. Colorado Avenue is a hidden gem, with a terrific two-block display of Gothic Revival residential architecture. I often take a slow turn down Blagden Terrace, which has a marvelous array of architectural styles in one short block.

Blagden Terrace architecture

As I cross Rock Creek at Pierce Mill, I also slow down and look at the dam, which was constructed in 1904 purely for aesthetic reasons. The visual effect is quite wonderful. On Sunday mornings, when we generally share the road only with joggers, hikers, and cyclists, Candice calls it our moment of Zen.

Historic postcard of the 1904 dam across Rock Creek at Pierce Mill in Washington

Driving the speed limit and following traffic regulations is about caring for others and their safety. It is one way we can live together more peacefully in community. At this slower pace, I am also able to enjoy the beauty—both natural and man-made—that is abundant in Washington.

If you find yourself still angry over the pandemic, or politics, or personal slights, slow down in everything you do. Let go. Loosen the grip you have on your life. Savor the gentle moments. We cannot always be in control.

Photo by Joshua Woroniecki on Unsplash

More to come . . .

DJB

Door photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash.

Rules for the road of life

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The New Year is a time when many think of resolutions, perhaps focused on personal ways to respond to our current reality. Unfortunately, too many of us still find ourselves in “an in-between time of rupture and searching and unmourned losses and so many callings yet to heed, so much change to absorb and propel,” as Krista Tippett wrote in 2021.

For more than a decade, I have taken a route away from annual resolutions. In 2013 I established several rules of how I want to live day-to-day. “Life learnings” are what the essayist Maria Popova calls her list.

Designed to help direct me during both good and difficult times, my rules came as the result of a more intentional focus on life’s journey rather than relying on a changing list of resolutions to respond to the challenges of the moment. These personal guidelines are not quite principles but rather serve as reminders of how I want to live over time.

Computer wallpaper with DJB’s life rules

As has been the case in recent years, I highlight each rule followed by a reference to a MORE TO COME essay providing context and examples for these personal rules. They are given to provide hope in the remarkable nature of life, even in the midst of trying times.

Rule #1. Be Grateful. Be Thankful. Be Compassionate. Every Day. 

Gratitude doesn’t always come naturally, which is why this rule leads my list. The practice of gratitude (November 23rd) speaks to the fact that it is all too easy to give thanks when everything is going well, but paradoxically it is in the most challenging of times when it is so very important to be open to gratefulness and to remember to be thankful. Thanksgiving itself came from a time of violence. Thoughtfulness becomes thankfulness. Gratitude leads to generosity and kindness to others.

Rule #2. Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life. 

I like to observe the world at the speed of walking, which makes putting one foot in front of the other my main form of exercise. Committed to transformation (July 21st) considers how we can walk into a state of well-being. Walk into our best thoughts. Walk to be transformed.

Rule #3. Listen more than you talk.

Understanding needs to happen before transformation can take place. Listening, as always, is key. Listening to others. Listening to ourselves. Gentleness is powerful. Stillness is strength. (December 17th) explores the wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh. “Sometimes,” writes the famous Buddhist monk, activist, and spiritual leader, “when we attempt to listen to another person, we can’t hear them because we haven’t listened to ourselves first.” We have such strong emotions and feelings that they often overshadow what others are saying and what is happening in the world. I still struggle with this life rule.

Rule #4. Spend less than you make. 

In Margareta Magnusson’s witty look at how to age gracefully she encourages us to live within our means . . . always good advice no matter our stage along the journey. Magnusson’s book is full of great suggestions for a happier next third of life, which I explore in Living exuberantly (September 25, 2023). The necessity of winter (January 17th) suggests that fallow times are good periods to consider new practices.

Rule #5. Quit eating crap! Eat less of everything else. 

Laugh. Think. Cry. (January 8th) looks at the many ways our family tries to follow this life rule when it comes to food. The meditations of the compelling four-hour movie Menus-Plaisirs around what matters—a devotion to craft, the beauty of nature, the love of food, and familial bonds—touched me deeply in places too little explored in everyday life.

Rule #6. Play (music), read, write

I actually updated this one on the first day of 2025, after originally posting the essay on MTC. As I thought about this rule, I remembered that for several years I’ve had “Passions” on my daily task list and under that I remind myself to “play, read, write”—which is shorthand for play music, read from a book, and write something useful (at least to me) every day.

I grew up singing at home with my brothers and sisters while mom played the piano.  A kind of alchemy (March 9th) makes the case that America needs more communal singing. Singing for many of us is something we do because we can. Singing together is something we should do because it helps break down the isolation that tears at too many souls, bringing us together into a supportive community and sustaining us during good times and bad. An increase in communal singing would be another small step towards healing the estrangements in our civic life. 

Regular readers know that I come from parents who were voracious readers, and they passed that gene along to me. The 2024 year-end reading list (December 20th) is a good place to see how I did this past year.

And Letter to the world (November 6, 2023), where I discuss “why” this newsletter exists, helps explain my need to write something of value each day.

Rule #7. Connect and commit. 

Conversation and connection are at the heart of living together as humans. “To communicate with someone, we must connect with them.” But I—like millions of others—consistently make a mess of this basic task. “The single biggest problem with communication,” said the playwright George Bernard Shaw, “is the illusion it has taken place.” How we communicate and connect (June 5th) is my reminder of the importance of this life rule.

Visiting my 50th state!

Rule #8. Don’t be a Grumpy Old Man. Enjoy life! 

The purple iris as the antidote to worry and sorrow (April 25th) tells the story of how as I was walking through my Silver Spring neighborhood, I came upon a tiny handmade sign among some flowers. Since it is my custom to always read the plaque, I stopped to investigate.

The little plaque read:

“I have had more than half a century of such happiness. A great deal of worry and sorrow, too, but never a worry or a sorrow that was not offset by a purple iris, a lark, a bluebird, or a dewy morning glory.”

Mary McLeod Bethune, 1875-1955

The sign sat among a stand of beautiful irises in full bloom. I’ve always had a special place in my heart for the old-fashioned iris, my mother’s favorite flower. (Mom died on this day, January 1st, in 1998.) I’m glad to know that I share at least one thing with the great educator and civil rights pioneer Mary McLeod Bethune, and that a simple purple iris can help me follow this final life rule.

As you can see, I’m working to live into Kathryn Schulz’s admonition to treat each day as the exceptional experience it is while doing my best to bash into some joy along the way.

Best wishes for a wonder-filled and remarkable 2025. As you welcome the New Year, consider making gratefulness, thankfulness, and compassion an everyday practice. I can recommend the effort!

More to come . . .

DJB

Observations from . . . December 2024

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

The turning of the year is always a time for reflection. If your life is like mine, the past twelve months provided more than enough challenges and opportunities—personally, as a nation, and as members of the global community—to reflect upon.

One thing that pleased me came last Friday morning, when Andrew—our family puzzlemaster—called out from the dining room table, “Oh Dad, you’re going to love today’s New York Times crossword puzzle.” Sure enough, the clue to #17 Across was “Stay Tuned” which led to a family post from Andrew with the picture and note, “a common phrase for us in the NYT crossword today!”

The December 27, 2024, NYT Crossword Puzzle

Among the normal book reviews and musings readers will find on MORE TO COME, I also posted a couple of year-end reflections in recent weeks. Let’s jump in to see what piqued my interest in December.

TOP READER FAVORITES FOR THE MONTH AND YEAR

One post far outpaced the others in terms of reader views this month. The 2024 year-end reading list is an annual affair where I pull together short summaries of the 60 books I read over the course of the year. After you skim my list, go to the comments to see what books other readers suggested and perhaps add your own.

I also took the time to look back over the books I read to consider what they reveal about the year I’ve just lived through. My state of mind. Stage of life. Shifting interests.  Seeing myself in the books I read: 2024 observations was an interesting exercise which I recommend to other readers.

And yesterday, I highlighted the top reader choices for the entire year. The best of the MTC newsletter: 2024 features a baker’s dozen of your favorites.

HOLIDAY MUSINGS

Three posts this December tied directly to the holiday season.

  • Gifts of music for Yuletide offered up some of my favorite tunes for the season. This post begins with The Duke Chapel Choir and our son Andrew Bearden Brown as the tenor soloist performing the Recitative Comfort Ye, My People followed by the Aria Every Valley for a performance of Messiah earlier this month. You can also go to the link to the full performance (where there are some nice comments about the tenor soloist!).*
  • As we approach New Year’s, I posted songs that focused on The Turning Year, with my wish for you to have “the power to know just what to keep and what let go.”

WRAPPING UP A YEAR OF READING WELL

I finished my year’s worth of reading in December with a number of posts, ranging from reviews to overviews.

  • The late Lewis Lapham eloquently called us to put the wisdom of the past at the service of the present, as I write in Deep in our Age of Folly.
  • New Harmony’s extraordinary past provides an object lesson in how we can use History as a touchstone for transformation, as I discuss in this review of Ben Nicholson and Michelangelo Sabatino’s in-depth, scholarly exploration of an iconic small town in Indiana.

FROM BLUES TO BALM

Bonnie Raitt

In addition to holiday tunes, I had two other musical posts this December that were polar opposites in terms of focus and style.

  • Rest in the grace of the world calls us—when despair for the world grows—to come into the peace of wild things. Here are musical settings of Wendell Berry’s beautiful poem.

JIMMY CARTER, R.I.P.

With the news on Sunday of the passing of former President Carter, I posted Remembering Jimmy Carter, which includes personal memories of the first vote I cast in a presidential election and thoughts on living ten miles from Plains during two years of the Carter presidency.

FEATURED COMMENTS

Few people fall so easily into the “Brilliant Reader” category as my friend Ed Quattlebaum. Ed taught at St. Paul’s School in Concord (where he served with the future Bishop of Washington, the late John Walker, and his wonderful wife Maria) before teaching American and European history for 36 years at Phillips Academy, Andover. He has degrees from Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley, so, as I said, “brilliant.” Plus, he’s a great baseball fan, having raised two sons who are both “in the business.” I met Ed and his equally brilliant wife Ruth on a National Trust Tour cruise of the Black Sea (they were traveling with Andover alums) in 2006, and we’ve stayed close ever sense. Ed’s only blemish is he has nice things to say about Bill Belichick, who he knew during Belichick’s one year at Phillips Academy.

Recently, I received the following email from Ed after he’d read one of my posts about books.

“This item made me think of the most eclectic, prolific, and widespread reader that I know in all 49 states.  [Can’t yet speak for Alaska.]

Which makes you a hero.”

Ed was referring to this article entitled The One Hundred Pages Strategy.

“This is exactly what it sounds like: every day, come rain or shine, on religious and secular holidays, when I travel and when I am exceptionally busy, I read at least one hundred printed pages.”

I don’t read anywhere near 100 pages a day, but I do read five books a month which astonishes way too many people. The article is a wonderful read and has inspired me to up my game . . . and cut back even more on scrolling through online junk.

CONCLUSION

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

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

When times get rough, let your memories wander back to some wonderful place with remembrances of family and friends. But don’t be too hard on yourself if a few of the facts slip. Just get the poetry right.

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

Finally, try to be nice. Always be kind.

More to come . . .

DJB

*Duke Chapel says it will take this video down after January 12th, so you may want to move quickly to see it. Hopefully Andrew will be able to use his solos on his website.

For the November 2024 summary, click here.

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

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash