The start of the season brings out the best in baseball songs.
Baseball is a game made for songs. With the conclusion of the thrilling World Baseball Classic and opening day just around the corner, let’s take a listen to some of the best.
We’ll get it started with the Boss. My friend Dolores, who loves baseball and Springsteen with equal passion, would say that’s only right.
The two do seem to go together. In a great piece for the New York Times, Rustin Dodd wrote,
“I once saw a Springsteen concert in Phoenix during spring training and ended up sitting about 10 feet from a veteran major leaguer. He was there with family and stayed rather reserved the whole night, but when ‘The Boss’ started playing ‘Glory Days,’ they all went nuts.”
The marriage between music and baseball dates back more than a century, notes the Times. So let’s go back a few years to Les Brown and His Orchestra’s Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio. “They don’t make ditties like they used to,” writes Andy McCullough in that same New York Times piece. “This right here is a ditty.” The lyrics tell the tale of Joe DiMaggio’s famous 56-game hitting streak.
Last year the Toronto Blue Jays had a marvelous run all the way to the World Series, giving us one of the most memorable fall classics in a long time. The Blue Jays and Dodgers played one for the ages. We’ll salute those valiant warriors from north of the border with OK, Blue Jays!
FOLKIES LOVES BASEBALL
Folkies of all stripes have always had a soft spot for baseball. Here are three. First, Peter, Paul, and Mary’s Right Field followed by John McCutcheon’s Baseball on The Block.
And then who knew that Bob Freakin’ Dylan wrote a song about Catfish Hunter?!? Well, I bet my friend Oakley Pearson did.
“Lazy stadium night Catfish on the mound ‘Strike three,’ the umpire said Batter have to go back and sit down Catfish, million-dollar-man Nobody can throw the ball like Catfish can“
CHARACTERS
Bill “Spaceman” Lee
Baseball is full of interesting, shall we say, “personalities.” Mickey Mantle certainly was one. Andy McCullough had this insightful comment about the ability of baseball and baseball players to affect us in ways that go far beyond the game.
“The footprints that ballplayers leave on our cultural memory extend beyond the diamond. For “The Mick,” his ability to carouse was almost as legendary as his ability to clout a baseball. Hence the line in this mournful tune from a band from Norway of all places: ‘I was feeling Mickey Mantle … wasted.’”
Bill Lee was a true baseball character. As another writer said, his “natural sinkerball is dwarfed in baseball memory by his natural inability to utter a dull sentence.” Warren Zevon captured Lee’s personality brilliantly in only 97 seconds.
PERSONAL MEMORIES
Program from my first ever MLB game in 1963 at Wrigley Field. Cubs vs. Cardinals.
I loved Steve Goodman, as he was an everyman folksinger. When the Cubbies came back to stay alive in the 2016 World Series by winning Game 5, Wrigley Field burst into communal singing with his Go Cubs Go. As the top commentator says, “The best announcers know when to shut up and let the moment speak. Perfect example.” It pairs nicely with Goodman playing A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request.
Talking Baseball by Terry Cashman offers a tour through baseball history. Hey, I remember a lot of these guys!
SAY HEY
Willie Mays was my favorite player ever. Full stop. McCullough noted that “(t)here is something soothing about hearing Claude and Cliff Trenier opine about ‘The Say Hey Kid’ running the bases like a choo-choo train and making the turn around second like an aeroplane. I couldn’t agree more.
Willie, of course, played centerfield like no one else. I think John Fogerty’s Centerfield belongs on any list of great baseball songs and not only because it has a role in the best of all baseball films, Bull Durham. All you have to do is be at a ballpark and watch people sing along when it is played to know how much it connects. “Put me in coach” indeed!
PEOPLE ARE GOOD FOR YOU
Baseball is boring. Until it isn’t. Even with the new pitch clock working its magic, there’s still a lot of standing around. There’s time between each half-inning to chat. Before the bottom of the seventh, the entire crowd stands up and sings Take Me Out to the Ballgame—a wonderfully anachronistic moment of civic harmony as seen below at Dodger Stadium.
The World Baseball Classic reminded us of what it means to play for joy.
This is the first of three baseball-themed posts over the next few days as we wrap up the WBC and head toward opening day.
Regular readers know that I love Joe Posnanski. How, you may ask, can I love a balding, usually overweight, 59-year-old sportswriter?
It’s easy. He gets joy.
Joe looks for joy. He writes with joy. He brings a child’s joy to his craft. He understands that these are just games that are best approached with joy. He saves his wrath (such as it is) for suits, pompous players, and spoiled sports who work to dislocate the joy in our games.
Today’s short post is to urge you to drop what you are doing and read Joe’s take—entitled Freedom for What?—on the World Baseball Classic. I’ll give you a few excerpts, but you need to read the whole thing. Just do it. You can thank me later.
Joe begins by wondering why this tournament was “so absurdly awesome?”
“Why is it that I have friends, moderate baseball fans at best, who were OBSESSED with the WBC, who were constantly texting me to chat about the Italian baseball players taking shots of espresso and kissing each other on the cheeks, or the Mexican players putting a giant sombrero on the head of the guy who hit a home run, or that fun thing the U.S. team did where they … I’m just joking, they had no fun at all this entire tournament.”
That last sentence sets up the premise of this entire essay.
Unlike in the corporate culture of Major League Baseball, every team at the WBC was different.
“They played differently. They celebrated differently. They danced differently. They reflected their nation’s pride. Winning mattered, sure, but winning wasn’t everything. Playing was everything. Enjoying the moment was everything. This was baseball bursting with color, life, energy. Each hit was a party. Each run was a carnival.
And all the while, you had the loaded and glum U.S. team as a contrast, as if they were determined to represent the dreariest possible way to play baseball. The MLB way. Nobody ever seemed to even smile. . . . A lot has been written about the militaristic vibe this team disseminated (undoubtedly WITH the express written consent of Major League Baseball), but one thing that really struck me was how wrong they got it.”
There is a glorification of the military in a lot of the way MLB and other professional sports display their “patriotism.” The military is important, but we forget why we have a military when we fall into the FOX network jingoistic coverage. But as Joe points out, these athletes are being paid handsomely to sacrifice nothing. They are playing a kid’s game.
And with that, he goes into the heart of the essay.
“You can salute each other like children playing war games, and you can speak platitudes about freedom, but doing so, to me, misses the whole point. Freedom for what? If you believe deeply in American freedom, then you must believe in those things that make freedom worthwhile, no? What are those things? How about teachers who dedicate their lives to educating our children? How about the Grand Ole Opry? The Apollo Theater? Broadway? How about the first responders who arrive in the bleakest moments?
How about Casablanca and Sinners and Singing in the Rain?“
He’s just getting warmed up.
“How about the neighbors who mow the lawn of the elderly couple two houses down? How about the waiter or waitress who remembers your order at the diner, the bookstore owner who is dying to tell you about a book you will absolutely love, the bar band breaking into “Sweet Caroline,” and the way everyone in the place sings along? How about the crossing guards who know every kid’s name, the auto mechanics who tell you that, actually, the fix was a lot simpler than you thought, the mother who brings orange slices for everyone at Little League games?
How about chili in Cincinnati, pizza in New York, clam chowder in New England, hot dogs in Chicago, a Polish Boy in Cleveland, barbecue in Kansas City, gumbo in New Orleans, fajitas in Texas, fish tacos in San Diego?”
There’s more, but I’ll stop because I’m sure I’ve already exceeded fair use and I REALLY want you to read Joe’s entire column.
The top commentator on the piece wrote: “This is a more elegant and profound critique of US militarism than anything our so called leaders have managed this year. It’s a classic piece, rooted in the best of newspaper sports column writing.” I couldn’t agree more.
When Bryce Harper hit a massive game-tying home run in the bottom of the 8th inning, one that could have flipped the game over to the Americans, he didn’t dance around the bases or clap for joy. Instead, when he rounded third he stared at the camera, saluted something, and gave his best sports villain look. It was actually kind of embarrassing.
In Tuesday night’s final, Venezuela was just so much more fun to watch. As one commentator notes, the “US vibe was like watching a Cold War era Russian team stressing that if they didn’t win the gold medal it meant no food for their family.”
Based on the comments, Joe struck a nerve. Real patriotism, noted one, “is not the mindless, hollow jingoism that is so prevalent today. Real patriotism is celebrating all of the ordinary Americans that (often thanklessly) make this country work every day and all of the wonderful, diverse, unique aspects of American culture.”
In today’s America, we’ve so forgotten about the joy in life. People like Joe help us reclaim it.
More to come . . .
DJB
Photos from the 1960s from Getty Images on Unsplash.
A photographic review of our recent NTT tour of The Seychelles and Madagascar.
In late February and early March we were on the other side of the world, exploring the island nations of Seychelles and Madagascar. To get there, we took two very long flights, stopping over in Abu Dhabi along the way.
INTERRUPTION FOR BAD DAD JOKE: How do you tell the difference between people who fly through Dubai and those who fly through Abu Dhabi? Those who fly through Dubai don’t like The Flintstones. Those who fly through Abu Dhabi Do.
I’m sorry.
Of course by the time we were ready to come home flying through Abu Dhabi was not an option thanks to someone’s “excursion” into Iran. I’ll reserve comments for another time.
After our arrival we put our feet up by the pool as our bodies adjusted to the big time change. (Seychelles and Madagascar are, as I said, on the other side of the world from the US . . . a nine-hour time difference from the east coast.)
But we soon felt refreshed and joined up with our fellow National Trust Tour travelers. Over the course of two weeks we explored ten islands in the Seychelles and Madagascar archipelagos, beginning with the famous granite islands at the northern tip of the Seychelles, working our way down to the country’s Outer Islands, and ending up at the northern tip of Madagascar, the world’s fourth largest island (behind Greenland, New Guinea, and Borneo).
Both countries took up their current locations in the Indian Ocean as part of the well-known continental drift but are still considered culturally and physically part of Africa. The culture in Seychelles is an eclectic mix of French, British, Indian and African influences, with Chinese elements included. There was no indigenous population before colonization brought African slaves to the island. Madagascar, although with an indigenous population and a stronger French heritage, nonetheless has a similar set of cultural influences. Both have been independent nations since the 1960s. Seychelles is the richest nation per capita in Africa, while Madagascar is often cited in the top five of the poorest. Those contrasts were quickly evident as we toured both nations.
I gave a visual teaser of our trip in yesterday’s post (see The dandelion principle), and today I’ll provide a more extensive travelogue. As I mentioned this was an expedition, full of wet landings off of zodiacs, muddy trails, snorkeling around coral reefs, and mountain views accessible only via rock and and root-strewn trails.
LA DIGUE ISLAND
Our cruise on the small Ponant ship Le Bellot first took us to La Digue, the third largest island in the Seychelles and the one we visited with the most extensive and diverse tourism infrastructure. Interestingly, one of the first places we visited was not a natural site but was instead L’Union Estate Park, a former coconut and vanilla plantation that provided real insight into La Digue’s colonial history. It was a good reminder of the mix of cultures we saw throughout the trip.
From the estate it was a short drive to the Anse Source d’Argent beaches, picture perfect tropical scenes with soft sand and granite boulders.
ARIDE AND CURIEUSE ISLANDS
Early in the trip we anchored off Aride and Curieuse islands. Aride is a “seabird citadel,” home to some 112 species of birds including 30 species of rare birds. Curieuse was especially fascinating, as it is home to hundreds of giant tortoises which live to be 200 years old among the lush mangrove forest. A mile-long hike, which began near the ruins of a historic leper colony, took us through this ever changing and verdant landscape. Those who wished to snorkel could also explore the underwater species in this national marine park. We ended our tour of the “granite islands” the following day with a stop in Remire Island.
Ruins of a historic leper colony
The granitic islands of Seychelles are the world’s only mid-oceanic granitic islands, forming the cultural and economic heart of the nation. These 41 ancient, steep-sided islands (about 750 million years old) are part of the Inner Islands, including Mahé, Praslin, and La Digue, and each features iconic, weathered granite boulders.
ST. FRANÇOIS ISLAND AND FARQUHAR ATOLL
Enjoying tea time on Le Bellot
Our wonderful and adventuresome National Trust Tour travelers to the Seychelles and Madagascar
As we entered March we made our first stop in the remote Outer Islands of the Seychelles. Both of these rarely visited islands have diverse marine life without human intervention. Since this is in the tropics, it rains every day, but the rainbows over the Indian Ocean are nice tradeoffs.
Farquhar Atoll was especially fascinating. In the Seychelles, half a million terns nest on islands such as this. “Fledglings must eventually take to the wing, but danger lurks beneath the waves, where giant trevally fish leap clear out of the water to snatch the birds.” We saw the fish swimming just off shore, but the birds were staying clear of the area while we visited.
Trevally fish swimming just off shore at Farquhar Atoll
Our day at the Farquhar Atoll featured an afternoon zodiac tour of the lagoon, which was teeming with birds along the shoreline and in the trees.
MADAGASCAR AND THE MONTAGNE D’AMBRE NATIONAL PARK
We sailed into Madagascar on my birthday, where the captain, the head of the naturalist team, our dinner table guests, and the good folks at Gohagan Travel all wished me happy travels in this upcoming trip around the sun.
Of special interest here was the walk through Montagne d’Ambre National Park, the nation’s first and home to a number of endemic species, including very tiny chameleon. The park lies in the far north of the island on a volcanic massif and is a little cooler and fresher than the surrounding area.
NOSY KOMBA: LEMUR ISLAND!
On March 7th we anchored off Nosy Komba, known throughout the world as Lemur Island. One first strolls through the village which is lively and full of entrepreneurs, craftspeople, and life on this Saturday.
We then entered into the lemur preserve, where we saw plenty of these endearing animals which are endemic to Madagascar, having evolved there separately to apes and monkeys, their closest relatives.
There are no poisonous snakes on Madagascar, but boa constrictors are natural predators that lemurs must avoid if they want to keep leaping from tree to tree. We saw a few boas sunning themselves on this warm day, just waiting for their chance for a meal. Oh, and those of us who watch too much sports on television may be excused for thinking geckos live only in Geico insurance commercials, but they were certainly present in Nosy Komba.
The preserve also included giant tortoises, and it was great to see the lemurs having fun leaping from back to back on these unmoved ancient animals.
In the afternoon, Candice went snorkeling among the coral reefs of Nosy Tanikeley. She returned exclaiming about the beauty of the fish in this protected marine reserve.
VALO MARS
We arrived in the city of Hellville (Andoany) on March 8, our final full day of the tour amidst a huge celebration of International Women’s Day, referred to as “Valo Mars” in Madagascar. Women’s groups came to Hellville from Nosy Be and throughout the region to march in the local parade. Focused on honoring women’s strength, heritage, and contribution to society, it is a significant day for recognizing local women’s roles in development, culture, and craftsmanship, and while we saw the parade in full force, Volo Mars also features other special events, speeches, and community gatherings. It was an amazing sight that stretched throughout the main section of the city.
We ended this tour with a visit to Nosy Be’s fragrant Ylang-Ylang distillery, a music and dance celebration, and one last spectacular sunset over the Indian Ocean.
I was reminded when looking at another site that travel is a privilege. Candice and I know and recognize that fact on every one of these NTT trips. Here’s how travel photographer Sarah from the U.K. describes it:
“Those of us with the means and inclination to do so are rewarded with amazing opportunities to learn about different cultures, different landscapes, different environments. And in seeing those differences I think we discover something very important, which is that however different our lifestyles, at heart people have more in common than you might think. We learn to value diversity, to respect other viewpoints and to rejoice in our similarities.”
I couldn’t have said it better. Come travel with NTT in the future. We’d love to meet you!
More to come . . .
DJB
Photo at the top of post of smooth granite boulders on Seychelles’ La Digue Island as seen during our recent visit (credit: Studio Ponant). Photo of NTT travelers by Studio Ponant. All other photos by DJB (or, when we’re the subject, by fellow travelers).
Thoughts and images from our recent trip to The Seychelles and Madagascar, with an assist from a remarkable book by Lulu Miller.
Our National Trust Tours visit earlier this month to the Seychelles and Madagascar was classified as an expedition. Think wet landings off of zodiacs, muddy trails, snorkeling around coral reefs, and mountain views accessible via “stairs” that contained more rough rocks than standard treads and risers. Seychelles and Madagascar are places where the natural environment is both awe inspiring and exotic to our Western eyes. The built environment is often an afterthought. As I toured and lectured, I worked to continually recognize the continuum of time in this place. What we saw—both the natural and built environment—is all a part of our shared story as humans.
Many of us were seeing nature in a fresh and completely different context. My perspective was widened when I came across the following quote in a book I was reading while on the tour. The author made the point that we should follow the dandelion principle to achieve a more accurate way of seeing nature.
“To some people a dandelion might look like a weed, but to others that same plant can be so much more. To a herbalist, it’s a medicine—a way of detoxifying the liver, clearing the skin, and strengthening the eyes. To a painter, it’s a pigment; to a hippie, a crown; a child, a wish. To a butterfly, it’s sustenance; to a bee, a mating bed; to an ant, one point in a vast olfactory atlas.”
Lulu Miller in “Why Fish Don’t Exist”
My fellow association lecturer Vincent Resh—Professor of the Graduate School Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management at the University of California, Berkeley—spoke eloquently to our travelers about islands as laboratories of evolution. He ended his first lecture with the assertion that “We’re All Africans: Welcome Home!” The Ponant naturalist team, led by Katia Nicolet, added more site-specific context and helped us see and understand the complexity of nature on these island nations. Together they helped me and many of our fellow travelers move past one perspective to see “the messy truth of nature, the ‘whole machinery of life.”
It was as an afterthought that I picked up this particular book, a recommendation from my daughter and her boyfriend, to add to my backpack for reading on this trip to the other side of the world. I’m glad I did.
THE TRUE PATH TO PROGRESS IS PAVED NOT WITH CERTAINTY BUT DOUBT
Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life (2020) by Lulu Miller is part biography, part memoir, and part scientific thriller. One of the founding producers of Radiolab, a contributing editor and co-founder of the NPR program Invisibilia, and a Peabody award-winning journalist, Miller began this work studying David Starr Jordan—a taxonomist, a man who would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day, and the president first of Indiana University and then Stanford. Even though the universe seemed to conspire against his work—his specimen collections were demolished first by lightning, then by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake—Miller was initially taken with how he fought back against the chaos. Her life was falling apart at the time and she thought Jordan may have found a way to carry on in the face of multiple disasters which would have destroyed lesser individuals.
But as she dug deeper she discovered a darker, more troubling story which produced cracks in the heroic version Jordan wove for himself. As president Jordan worked to cover up the poisoning of university founder Jane Stanford at the time she was preparing to have him removed as president. After he eventually was forced out at Stanford, Jordan remained active in the scientific community of the day, enthusiastically embracing eugenics, the discredited movement of the late 19th and early 20th century broadly defined as the use of selective breeding to improve the human race. A Supreme Court decision in the famous Carrie Buck case paved the way for 60,000 forced sterilizations in America, the last taking place in the 1960s. We may think eugenics is ancient news confined to the dustbin of history by the Nazi atrocities, but advances in modern medicine, if left unchecked, could conceivably cause a resurgence of these old ideas. It is as current as today’s news.
Miller comes to the realization in this sometimes dark but ultimately uplifting book that from “the perspective of the stars or infinity or some eugenics dream of perfection” one life doesn’t seem to matter. But taking the dandelion principle, she makes the wonderful case that this is just one of infinite perspectives. Although Charles Darwin was often misunderstood, it is his creed, as we heard and saw in the Seychelles and Madagascar, that human beings . . . and all living creatures . . . in tangible, concrete ways matter to this planet.
A VISUAL APPETIZER
It will be at least until Wednesday when I can sort out the multitude of photos from the trip to share with you. Until then, enjoy this appetizer.
Mangroves, as seen on Curieuse Island in the Seychelles, are a great example of a part of the natural world that mean many different things, and provide a variety of essential habitats, to a multitude of species.
Madagascar’s Nosy Tanikeley—with its rich coral reef—was among the daily reminders that these are island nations: African in so many ways, but also deeply immersed in the Indian Ocean ecosystem.
Thanks to our naturalist guides, we saw more chameleons up close and personal than would have been possible had we explored on our own.
We did encounter village life along the way, as here on Madagascar’s Nosy Komba.
And I’ll end this preview with a view of the full moon over the Indian Ocean, a glorious sight no matter where in the world one lives.
More to come . . .
DJB
Photo of giant tortoise in The Seychelles from Studio Ponant March 2026.Dandelion photo from Unsplash.All other photos by DJB.
Links to stories from a few writers I follow who have important things to say.
As we approach the Ides of March, I thought I’d share a group of stories from writers I follow. I hope you’ll find something of interest among this eclectic mix.
THE DISLOCATION OF JOY
I have written on multiple occasions about betting on sports, and how this will not end well. A mentor who is both an astute observer of life and an insightful writer added a comment to a 2021 post about the scourge of gambling in baseball. It made me stop and think.
“What truly disturbs me about sports betting is the dislocation of joy. The joy is supposed to be in watching the game. Monetizing it, as you point out, changes the focus — as if there could be no simple pleasures which are not really about cash.“
So I was pleased to see McKay Coppins piece in The Atlantic entitled Sucker: My Year as a Degenerate Gambler. It is a brilliant piece that shows, first, that two of the worst people in American life—Chris Christie, who brought a lawsuit to overturn the ban on gambling, and Samuel Alito, the justice who authored the Supreme Court decision in his favor—helped bring this scourge to the 21st century.
“G. K. Chesterton once wrote about two people who encounter a fence erected across a road. One of them demands that it be torn down; the wiser of the two responds that they should find out why it was put there in the first place before deciding on a course of action. . . .
[But] no one involved—not Alito; nor the five justices who joined him; nor the legislators in 36 states who would legalize sports betting for their constituents; nor the league commissioners, who would rush into partnerships with online sportsbooks—seemed acquainted with Chesterton’s fence.
Practically overnight, we took an ancient vice—long regarded as soul-rotting and civilizationally ruinous—put it on everyone’s phone, and made it as normal and frictionless as checking the weather. What could possibly go wrong?”
In this soul baring and thoughtful article, Coppins describes how he went down various gambling rabbit holes, including acquiring a loss of confidence in the games themselves.
“Sports leagues, of course, are not the first American institutions to suffer a crisis of authority in the 21st century. (See also: Wall Street, Congress, the military, the police, the press, etc.) But the recent decline of trust in sports is, to an extraordinary degree, self-inflicted and avoidable. By embracing gambling so completely—normalizing it, celebrating it, reaping massive profits from it—the leagues have all but ensured that many fans will see it as baked into the game itself . . . To watch sports in 2026 is to become, almost inevitably, a kind of conspiracy theorist.”
Coppins ends by showing how he took actions as a result of his gambling addiction that would have been unthinkable just a year ago. He notes that in 1907, a Unitarian minister, writing in The Atlantic, warned against “speculation.” “The long and costly experience of mankind bears uniform testimony against gambling,” Charles F. Dole wrote. “It is a dangerous or unsocial form of excitement; it hurts character, demoralizes industry, breeds quarrels, tempts men to self-destruction.”
Of course, he notes, not every consensus of the past is worth clinging to.
“But as a society, we are making an enormously risky bet: that we can reap the rewards of a runaway gambling industry without paying any price; that the litany of social ills long associated with this vice—addiction and impoverishment, isolation and abuse, cheating and chasing and corrosive idleness—can, this time, be kept in check; that, unlike every civilization that came before us, we can beat the house.
What are the odds that we’re right?”
MONUMENTS UP, MONUMENTS DOWN
In February the History News Network/Bunk newsletter Continuum focused on the controversies over monuments that are not new and that seemingly never end. When I lecture on tours around the world, visiting countries such as Germany, Italy, and Belgium that are also grappling with what their monuments say in the present day, I’ll remind my listeners that Americans took down their first monument 250 years ago, just days after the passage of the Declaration of Independence. After the document was read in New York City, a crowd rushed to pull down a nearby statue of King George III.
Memorialization has been an often-discussed topic in Continuum and its predecessor newsletters, beginning in 2017 (remember that the Charlottesville protests were about the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee), and again three years later, in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder. With the potential looming for more changes to the capital’s monumental landscape, the editors dedicated an edition of Continuum to the history of American monuments, and the people they have commemorated. Among the stories linked to in this fascinating newsletter is one entitled Monument Wars.
“The 2015 massacre of nine churchgoers by a white supremacist in Charleston touched off a wave of soul-searching about Confederate monuments around the country. Since then, dozens of towns and cities have decided to remove the statues in their communities. This exhibit explores discussions about what we choose to memorialize—and why.”
A MUSICAL INTERLUDE
Thanks to William Shakespeare the first thing that comes to mind around March 15th is to “Beware the Ides of March.” But for those of a certain age, you may also remember the rock band The Ides of March because of their one big hit Vehicle. Apparently they are still together, now six decades later, writing new music and playing shows. Here’s a little trip down memory lane.
LABELS CONFER JUDGEMENTS AND JUDGEMENTS MARK THE END OF THINKING
Trygve Hammer is a Marine veteran running for Congress as a Democrat in North Dakota. In a newsletter post entitled Fan Mail he shares his response to a resident of his state who asks why, as a former Marine, he’s not running as a Republican. Hammer’s reply is full of useful and thoughtful answers to questions such as this.
“Thank you for writing and for acknowledging my service. You’re right—I am a Marine. I deployed to Iraq in 2003 as an infantry officer with Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 23rd Marines. Before that, I was a helicopter pilot and forward air controller. Before that, I was enlisted in the Navy and then went to the U.S. Naval Academy.
You ask why I’m running as a Democrat in a ‘RED’ state. Here’s the thing: I’m not much for labels because they can confer judgments, and judgments mark the end of thinking. If we limit our options to ideas that come from boxes labeled ‘Conservative ideas’ or ‘Progressive ideas’ or ‘Government solutions’ or ‘Free-market solutions,’ our thinking is stunted from the beginning. So, I don’t believe in a red North Dakota or blue Minnesota. I believe North Dakota is full of people who work hard, pay their bills, and want a government that does the same. They are kind and generous by default. The folks I grew up with and the ones I worked alongside on oil rigs and on freight trains and in classrooms didn’t sort themselves by party or ideology before deciding whether to lend a hand.”
Hammer’s whole letter is worth your time, if for no other reason than it will make you think.
WHEN BOOK REVIEWS AREN’T NEWS
Jeff Bezos, who began to make his gazillion dollars by selling books, just killed off the book review section of The Washington Post. Adam Kirsch, writing in The Atlantic, wrote The Literary Ecosystem Is Dying in response.
“In a sense, the decline of book reviews, like the decline of newspapers themselves, is a story about disaggregation. Newspapers used to bundle several functions together in a way that made them both useful and profitable. A daily chunk of newsprint told you about world and local events, but also about stock prices, movie showings, potential romantic partners, and where to buy washing machines on sale. When the internet made finding that information easy and free, many people decided against paying for just the news part of the newspaper. . . .
Similarly, book reviews used to play a number of roles in the literary ecosystem. . . . But as with the newspaper, the whole was more than the sum of its parts. The most important thing that a daily book critic or a weekly book supplement does is bring a literary community into being—the kind of community that exists when people who don’t know one another are all thinking about the same thing at the same time.”
A SECOND MUSICAL INTERLUDE
Listening to The Ides of March took me down a bit of a rabbit hole with rock/jazz bands from the late 60s and early 70s. One of my favorites was Blood Sweat & Tears. Their arrangement of the Billie Holiday classic God Bless the Child still stands the test of time.
ASK THE 100 YEAR OLD QUESTION
John Sarvay, on his Notes on the Margin Substack, remembers Bill Martin, Richmond’s best friend. Bill died on December 28, 2025, after a tragic accident in downtown Richmond, Virginia. As the director of the Valentine Museum, dedicated to telling Richmond’s story, “Bill was eyes wide open about the stories that the museum could, and needed to, tell.”
Sarvay ends with five ways to channel your inner Bill Martin. This was first on that list:
“Ask the 100-Year Question—Even When It Slows the Meeting. Bill didn’t ask what could be done this quarter; he asked what story would matter after we’re gone. The Practice: In your life, in your work, introduce one question that reframes time entirely.”
YET ANOTHER MUSICAL INTERLUDE
A young and talented acoustic guitarist played most afternoons in the ship’s lounge on our recent trip to Seychelles and Madagascar. One day he launched into the familiar opening bars of Windy and Warm, the John Loudermilk classic, and I was immediately taken back to the place where I first heard the tune: Nashville’s Exit/In coming from the hands of the inimitable Doc Watson.
BREAKING EXPECTATIONS OF WHO IS RIGHT
Richard Rohr had a recent meditation entitled An Imperfect Messenger of how the very familiar story of Jonah breaks all the expectations of who is right and then remakes those expectations in favor of grace.
“Jonah thought he had the exclusive cachet of truth and thus could despise those to whom he was preaching. He wanted them to be wrong so that he could be right, yet in his anger at Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire, he failed to appreciate God’s desire to offer forgiveness and grace even to Jonah’s enemies. In fact, he even resented their joining his ‘belief club.’ He struggled mightily to accept the new ‘political’ arrangement.”
NOT ALL ORIGIN STORIES NEED TO BE SERIOUS
Doc Watson playing his last Merlefest, in April 2012
“What happens when bluegrass, heavy metal, and American roots legend collide? Welcome to ‘The Devil Went Down to Deep Gap,’ a wild, animated reimagining of the Charlie Daniels Band classic—and a high-octane Doc Watson tribute like you’ve never seen or heard before. Featuring blistering acoustic and electric guitar duels from Bryan Sutton and GRAMMY nominee Billy Strings, plus an all-star cast including Sam Bush, T. Michael Coleman, Jerry Roe, and Hall of Famer Del McCoury as the Devil himself . . . The story imagines the ‘legend we never knew’: how Arthel Watson became Doc Watson after beating the Devil in a genre-bending showdown that shifts from pure flatpicking to screaming metal solos. Paired with stunning hand-drawn animation by Pat Bradley, the video brings the surreal duel to life—from metal mayhem to heartfelt harmonies and a joyful roll call of Doc’s most beloved tunes . . . this is more than a cover—it’s a gospel-tinged celebration of roots music, rebellion, and tradition.”
More to come . . .
DJB
Removal of Statue of King George III in NYC by Johannes Adam Simon Oertel from Wikimedia
A wonderful collection of poems about fatherhood from the talented Clint Smith, a book I discovered, appropriately enough, at Busboys and Poets in this fourth installment of my exploration of independent bookshops in the Washington region.
(NOTE: If you are reading this post via email, click on the title to see the online version, so you can read the entire poems included here.)
As part of my year-long exploration of independent bookshops, I knew Busboys and Poets would be high on the list. I’ve been in half of their eight locations in the DC area at some point in the past twenty years and I pass the Takoma store several times a week, occasionally stopping in for a meal (I am partial to their chili) and to browse the community-focused bookshop. For the fourth installment in this series, * I made two stops very convenient to the Metro Red Line—Takoma and Brookland—to take a deeper dive into the socially-conscious literature that is a hallmark of these small but well-stocked stores.
The name Busboys and Poets refers to American poet Langston Hughes who worked as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel in the 1920s when he famously left his poems at the table of poet Vachel Lindsay, who then helped launch his career. It pays tribute to the idea that a “busboy” (working class) and “poet” (artist) can be the same person, reflecting the venue’s focus on connecting art, activism, and community.
Busboys and Poets (credit: Wikimedia)
Not only a restaurant, Busboys and Poets aims to be “a space in which intellectual, cultural, political, and social issues can come together for a discussion that benefits everyone.” They do this “through access to socially-conscious literature, programs, healing conversations and a respectful exchange of ideas.”
The first store, founded by artist Andy Shallal, was on 14th & V streets NW in Washington. 14th & V is located in the U Street Corridor neighborhood, known as “Black Broadway” in the 1920s, and is a major center of DC’s cultural, artistic and progressive activist scene. The Takoma store continues that theme of location in vibrant, progressive communities, and it was there that I found a wonderful book of poems by a gifted Black author and poet so appropriate to the shop’s name and themes.
Above Ground: Poems (2023) by Clint Smith explores the emotional terrain of fatherhood in works that are touching, light-hearted, gripping, loving, insightful, disturbing, and delightful. In other words, they are just like being a parent. Smith is a gifted writer who looks deeply at lineage and the history surrounding being black in America. He is also discovering the world anew through the eyes of a child, with the curiosity and joy that often comes when one encounters life for the first time. As the publisher notes, Above Ground “wrestles with how we hold wonder and despair in the same hands, how we carry intimate moments of joy and a collective sense of mourning in the same body.” I had a range of emotions reading the collection: delight, laughter, and recognition of life with children, certainly. But also sadness at the world our children—and especially children of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and children of immigrants—inhabit today. Smith has captured the joys and sorrows of life through vibrant poems that look at the everyday occurrences of parenting.
In “Waiting on a Heartbeat” Smith captures the anxiety that begins even before childbirth. He imagines his son telling him from the womb that “there is joy in being a father to a mystery.” There is the reading of Dr. Seuss each night while his son is still in the womb, and Smith comes up with choice lines such as
“I read a sentence | and watch you kick, and I tell your mother | that you are laughing and she tells me you | are trying to let me know that my turtle | voice is subpar.”
Smith also shares the fear of all expectant parents of having a doctor who tells the mother that the problem is all in her head only to discover—when returning to the hospital and demanding a different physician who will run some tests—something that occurs in one out of one thousand pregnancies that could have been fatal to mother and child. Into this period he drops a poem “When People Say ‘We Have Made It Through Worse Before'” that reminds us—as well as the poet—that “We are not all left | standing after the war has ended. Some of us have | become ghosts by the time the dust has settled.”
New birth is a mixture of science and mystery, as Smith reminds us as he writes “What is the difference between science | and a miracle other than discovering new | language for something we don’t understand.”
Something else we don’t understand is how absolutely tiring it can be to raise a child. Smith finds this truth in the delightful “Ode to the Electric Baby Swing.”
Throughout this lovely collection, Smith reminds his children, himself, and his readers of where we come from.
ROOTS
Your great-grandfather was born in 1930 Mississippi
You were born five months ago in Washington, D.C.
Your life is only possible because of his ability
to have walked through this country on fire
without turning into ash.
You come from his deep voice,
you come from his thick bones,
you come from the curl of his Ls
when he says hello.
The first time I handed you to him, I watched
as you settled on his lap. I saw the way your brows
furrowed just like his, how your eyes carry the same
pools of wonder, how when both of you smile it begins
on the left side of the mouth and then blooms
into chrysanthemums at each edge.
I first came to know Smith’s nonfiction work when I read How the Word is Passed. Smith’s masterful book is told with a poet’s ear for the story. Which is as it should be. In that 2021 book he takes the reader to landmarks and monuments all across America, places where guides, local citizens, and activists tell stories to those who visit. Some of the stories are true. Some are willfully false. Others work with less than complete information to try and point towards truth.
As a historian and preservationist, I was exhilarated and challenged by How the Word is Passed. Exhilarated that a writer of Smith’s talent and background would take on public history in such a thoughtful and respectful way, while recognizing the importance in saving the places where history happened. Challenged by the realization yet again of how far we have to go just to a true examination of the past.
As a father, I had similar reactions in reading Above Ground. Smith’s poetry makes the ritual of Sunday morning French toast a marvel. His eye for the absurd leads him to wonder why, on Halloween night, he has chosen to “bundle you into a costume of cured meat.” He doesn’t know, but the scene is creates with the hot dog costume is priceless.
“But your mother | is dressed as a pickle and I am dressed as a bottle | of ketchup and together we make a family of ballpark | delicacies.”
Because “who are we to deny anyone the joy of an infant wrapped in processed meat.”
But Smith can also write about the tragedy of another school shooting and say that “I don’t know how I am ever | supposed to let you | out of my sight.”
Joy and grief. Laughter and sorrow. It is all there in fatherhood. In Above Ground. In life.
More to come . . .
DJB
*To see the most recent installment in my year of visiting the DMV’s independent bookshops, click here. Four down, twenty-one to go!
A new book by Walter Isaacson considers one of the most famous sentences in American history.
The American narrative is not simple, straightforward, and linear. Narratives seldom are.
They often begin with great promise. Or great danger. Sometimes both. They meander and, if the author or authors aren’t careful, the reader becomes lost or disillusioned. At inopportune times—perhaps when the characters are at their weakest—some outside force comes along to throw the whole tale off track. Events hidden at the time they occur can resurface much later and cast the entire enterprise into doubt. Too often the story line is so hard to follow, or becomes so unbelievable, that the reader gives up in frustration.
But when a narrative needs to be told, a core truth or ideal may resurface at key moments to remind us of the value, the necessity even, of this particular story.
The Greatest Sentence Ever Written (2025) by Walter Isaacson examines the narrative of America through the lens of the second sentence in the Declaration of Independence. In 67 short pages, Isaacson begins by making it clear that while we think of Thomas Jefferson as the author of one of the world’s most famous documents, he really just wrote the first draft which was then edited and changed multiple times. The drafting committee, including Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, made substantial alterations, including to the first phrase, which Jefferson penned as “We hold these truths to be sacred . . . .” It was Franklin who crossed out “sacred” and inserted “self-evident.” From there, Isaacson takes us through what the men (and they were all men) were thinking, and the cultural and intellectual influences that swirled around them when they drafted, reworked, and ultimately signed their names to the document that rings with these words:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
This is a book that can be read in one setting, yet one to be savored and referenced again and again. Isaacson is a gifted writer with a deep love for history and biography. He notes that the phrase “self-evident” has a very specific meaning in analytic philosophy, “more than just a fancy way to say ‘obvious.'” The concept was developed by Franklin’s close friend David Hume. By labeling as self-evident the truths in their sentence, “Franklin and the drafting committee implied that they were true by definition, ‘discoverable by the mere operation of thought,’ not contingent on observations.”
“But let’s be honest,” Isaacson writes. “Labeling their assertions of ‘these truths’ as ‘self-evident’ was not entirely correct. They were, in fact, quite controversial, even revolutionary.”
In a similar fashion Isaacson takes us through the background and decision-making around the use of the well known phrases “all men,” “created equal,” “endowed by their creator.”
These truths became the “creed that bound a diverse group of pilgrims and immigrants into one nation.” The Declaration of Independence, as written in 1776 and then reinforced “four score and seven years” later at Gettysburg by Abraham Lincoln, defined both our common ground and our aspirations.
And it is in the exploration of what constitutes that common ground and how we continue to hold on to it in perilous times where Isaacson makes his case. We must seek those truths once again if we are to survive as a democracy. We need to refocus on the idea of the commons, where people treat each other with equal dignity. Americans—at their best—have shown how to be fiercely independent individuals who are equally fiercely devoted to their community and its commons.
Both Jefferson and Franklin, writes Isaacson, studied Isaac Newton “whose mechanics explained how contending forces could be brought into equilibrium. Their goal on contentious issues was not to triumph but to find the right balance.”
“Compromisers may not make great heroes, Franklin like to say, but they do make great democracies.”
But in today’s world the commons is shrinking. Isaacson quotes the philosopher Michael Sandel’s concept of the “skyboxification” of America, whereby places and practices that used to be in commons are now roped off. We used to sit in the same stands, come in through the same entrances, and share a common experience. But now there are VIP entrances and skyboxes. Gated neighborhoods. Separate lines at airports. Different types of schools. And this fracturing of our community is also seen in technology. What once promised to connect us “found a better business model in dividing us.”
America’s core principle, that this is a land of opportunity for all, is under attack. In the end Isaacson asks the reader to return to Franklin’s question about the purpose of an economy. Sure it exists to create wealth and growth. But the deeper purpose, Isaacson and Franklin would argue, is to create a good society. “A good, stable society where individuals can be free and flourish and live together in harmony.”
Our narratives and myths are always changing, and are often fractured. How can we move forward? Isaacson urges us to “be more like Franklin. He not only helped craft the sentence that defines our common ground. He lived it.
Franklin organized police, fire, and street-sweeping corps; a public library, hospital, and school; pension funds for widowers; and mutual insurance cooperatives. He ran a newspaper and publishing house that followed no party line. He gave money to a wide range of causes. Franklin set up a revolving fund for young entrepreneurs. When he died he was the largest individual donor to the Congregation Mikveh Israel, the first synagogue in Philadelphia. 20,000 mourners watched his funeral procession, “which was led by all the clergymen of every faith, including the local rabbi, walking arm-in-arm.”
In a recent newsletter, the historian and activist Rebecca Solnit wrote about the way that the wealthy and elites have destroyed the commons in our time to enrich their own wallets.
“In the 1990s I watched San Francisco-based Craigslist undermine newspaper want ads—what we called the classified section—as it expanded. There’s an argument to be made that Craigslist was a more convenient service, but the want ads in newspapers subsidized journalism. The revenue from Craigslist just subsidized Craig Newmark, who became a billionaire. It’s ironic that what was once Columbia Graduate School of Journalism is now the Craig Newmark School of Journalism; it’s a bit like a fox endowing an orphanage for motherless eggs. (He could have at least given the money directly to news reporting.)”
Isaacson maintains that Franklin’s example is the ideal of living in support of common ground and the American Dream. When I think of billionaires today hoarding their money made off the backs of workers and taxpayers, destroying our newspapers and social media, openly suggesting that democracy no longer works, I believe we need to do all we can to rein them in and rebuild the commons. And the American Dream.
More to come . . .
DJB
John Trumbull’s famous painting of the committee sharing its draft of the Declaration of Independence with the Second Continental Congress in the Public Domain from Wikimedia.
Five books. Every month. A variety of topics from different genres. Here is the list from February 2026.
Water, Water: Poems (2024) by Billy Collins is a collection of 60 new poems that looks at life with his typical informality and attention to the commonplace and all that’s around us. The topics Collins considers are serious—being counted, getting older, connecting with others—but he addresses them in a lighthearted way that asks us see the humor and occasional absurdity in life. There is beauty in the everyday, even in getting older, and Collins helps us see and appreciate it. And he’ll write about the everyday parts of life we encounter as we stroll down the street, sit down to a bowl of cereal, watch a cat drink from a swimming pool, turn our attention to the nurse in a doctor’s waiting room. There is a reason Collins is one of America’s favorite poets.
Ways of Walking (2022) edited by Ann de Forest is a collection of 26 wide-ranging essays whose writers reflect on where they have walked and what they have discovered. Exuberant, troubled, surprised, and reflective—often as part of the same journey—these authors are always thoughtful and observant. They grapple with a multitude of questions, the most basic one being, “Why did you start to walk?” Once one makes the decision to reach out and grab life, walking at a human pace is a decision to encounter it intimately. In their walking these writers are sometimes crossing forbidden lines and breaking boundaries. Some are walking for social justice and peace. Others are pushing themselves to deeply explore their immediate environment in order to understand the challenges to our lives on this planet. Throughout there are discoveries, both small and large. The collection has been described as “a moving, endlessly stimulating invitation to walk, to think, and to rethink walking.”
Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment (2024) by Allen Guelzo is written for those “who have despaired of the future or whose lives have been ruined by the failures of the present.” Lincoln came along in his time to rescue our democracy on its last gasp. His was an intervention “so unlooked for as to defy hope.” Guelzo, who is a lover of democracy “as only the descendant of immigrants can love it,” focuses on Lincoln’s principles with both the skill and passion of someone who yearns that “this last, best hope of earth may yet have a new birth of freedom.” This is a story that, as one reviewer notes, is for those short on hope and—just as important and just as troubling—perspective. Guelzo reminds us, as all good historians do, that while we live in difficult, uncertain times and have worries about our future, so it has nearly always been.
Coffee(2020) by Dinah Lenney is part of Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons—a series of short books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. And what could be more ordinary, perhaps even ubiquitous, than a cup of coffee? We turn to coffee to get us through our waking hour, the morning, the meeting, the day. We have coffee breaks and coffee shops and some of us, with our grinders and slow-drip brewers in our home kitchens, have coffee rituals. Coffee can be used to slow ourselves down or speed ourselves up. There is so much that could be said about coffee’s place in our lives and in our culture. And if you aren’t careful, one can try and explore all those possible avenues and come off appearing if you wrote this extended essay while being overcaffeinated. Lenney, unfortunately, falls in that category. She needed to skip a cup (or pot) each day and decide what this book wants to be when it grows up.
The Late Monsieur Gallet (1931) by Georges Simenon, an early work in the Inspector Maigret series, is a tale of misdirection, betrayal, and misfortune. Called to the crime scene in a small hotel outside Paris, Maigret is immediately struck by the fact that so much about the case seems fake. The grieving relatives don’t exactly grieve. The dead man used an alias and had not worked at his stated place of business for 18 years. He traveled extensively throughout the country although his health was poor. Monsieur Gallet had been shot in the head, but it was a knife stabbed in the heart, administered almost immediately after the gun wound, that killed him. And was the dead man right or left-handed? Maigret delves into the contradictions that are all around him, trying desperately to sort out the facts from fiction.
WHAT’S ON THE NIGHTSTAND FOR MARCH (Subject to change at the whims of the reader)
But birthdays that don’t end in 0 or 5 are often treated as lesser events. We should simply nod at the passage of time and move on. I get the sentiment. We can only gear up for big ones every so often, I tell myself. If every day is a big celebration . . . well, I’m not going down that philosophical road. Not on my birthday.
But I’ve always liked birthday celebrations. This year I’m using mine to explore parts of this wonderful world we live in. Let’s celebrate with a poem for the occasion by Billy Collins.
Once in a Dog’s Age
Just because a dog or a cat or even a hen
doesn’t know how old it is
doesn’t mean it’s not that old.
Every creature moves along
the treadmill of time at its own pace,
most insects hurrying along,
while the tortoise lumbers under its armor.
Many do not look their age
but sometimes you can tell—
take that ancient sparrow
barely moving along as if on crutches.
But what about this crow
on a fence post by the roadside?
No telling how old he is.
Today could be his birthday
for all we know, and who’s to say
that perching on a fence post
is not a fine way to celebrate a special day?
My next one’s still months away
but when it finally rolls up to the door,
I will remember that crow
of a certain age and join him
on another fence post down the road,
showing off my blue-black feathers,
my shiny head always swiveling
over a field of flowering potatoes
and under an immense silvery sky,
as one car comes and goes,
then another from the other direction.
More to come . . .
DJB
Once in a Dog’s Age from the book Water, Water: Poems.
Photo of an American Crow by Henry Burton in All About Birds. Photo of Giant Tortoise on Seychelles by Dan Maisey on Unsplash. I have been visiting Seychelles this past week and have marveled at these ancient giants in the wild.
Eric Foner’s new book of essays from the last 30 years helps us understand that “the past is the key of the present and the mirror of the future.”
Historians and history are very much a part of today’s news. There is a war on history that has about as much to do with history as the “occupation” of Washington or Minneapolis has to do with crime. A new book of essays written by one of our country’s most distinguished historians arrives into this moment like a bracing breath of fresh air.
Our Fragile Freedoms: Essays (2025) by Eric Foner makes it clear that while there is no single “correct” way to study history, we must engage seriously with that past if we are to unlock and confront some of the most difficult challenges we face today. In a little under 60 essays, Foner looks at history through the lens of his own groundbreaking work around the Civil War and Reconstruction as well as from the perspective of a wide range of professional historians working in the field. The latter comes primarily from book reviews that provide the reader with context and new insights. Foner views the horrors of slavery and the violent return to white rule that came at the end of Reconstruction with his eyes wide open. Many of the essays and reviews seek to move us past the “consensus” of the Jim Crow era that the “Negro Rule” of Reconstruction was corrupt and ineffective while praising the white “redeemers” who used violence to stop Blacks from voting, holding office and owning property. It is a consensus that has been repudiated by professional historians but that is still a widely-held belief by large portions of the American public. And while Foner’s work builds on his own time in academia as well as dozens of other historians from the academy, his clear and cogent writing is easily accessible to a much wider mass audience. He is writing now to help us address the question of whether America can ever escape the legacy of slavery without a much more honest examination of the past.
In a theme-setting introduction, Foner reminds his readers to avoid reading history as a linear narrative of progress. And just to prove the point, he begins with two powerful essays—both book reviews—about how little we still know and understand the slave trade and slavery in this country. A review of Robin Blackburn’s The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights tells us that among the book’s many virtues is the fact that it moves slavery from the periphery to the center of any account of western ascendancy. “Between 1500 and 1820, African slaves constituted about 80 percent of those who crossed the Atlantic from east to west.” Slave plantations, more than any other institution, “underpinned the extraordinary expansion of western power and the region’s prosperity in relation to the rest of the world.” Even after emancipation, Americans refused to grapple with the impact of slavery on the nation, a refusal that continues to this day.
Foner’s review of Marcus Rediker’s book The Slave Ship: A Human History reminds readers about history’s greatest forced migration. Over the course of four hundred years “eleven million Africans were transported involuntarily to the New World. About three million more perished onboard the ships or in the process of capture and enslavement in Africa.” To forget that scale of human trafficking—and the complicity it required—thwarts our ability to address the long tail of the aftermath.
When he turns to the section on Civil War and Reconstruction, Foner begins with a review of historian Drew Gilpin Faust’s book This Republic of Suffering, an insightful work that looks at how death on a massive scale changed the life of the nation. Foner writes that Faust’s task is to strip from war any lingering romanticism, nobility, or social purpose. In another essay, published in 2011 in The Nation, Foner reminds readers that the Civil War changed the nature of warfare, created an empowered nation-state, vindicated the idea of free labor, and destroyed the modern world’s greatest slave society. Each of these outcomes, as from all great historical events, carried with them ambiguous, even contradictory, consequences. We are grappling with those today.
In that same essay, Foner identifies the gap that exists between historical scholarship and popular understanding of history.
“In April 1961, when Charleston, South Carolina, marked the anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter, the city was bedecked with Confederate flags and the commemorations made no mention of slavery. Fifty years later, in April 2011, the city fathers and National Park Service sponsored a gathering that included reflections on slavery’s role in the war and on post-slavery race relations. As in 1961, a band played ‘Dixie,’ but now it was accompanied by ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic,’ recognition that a majority of South Carolina’s population (the slaves) sided with the Union, not the Confederacy. But the event attracted far smaller crowds than the first time around.”
In other insightful essays and reviews, Foner moves through Jim Crow America, the Gilded Age, and our struggles in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century to move past the legacy of slavery that has always been, as President U.S. Grant told German Emperor Bismarck, “a stain on our Union.” I was fascinated by the final section on historians and myth, where Foner reviews the work of such pathbreakers as W.E.B. Du Bois, C. Vann Woodward, and Richard Hofstadter. A final, bracing essay looks at historians and the role of myth in American life. In pushing back against the view that Americans need new myths, Foner argues that the role of the historian today “is not so much to devise new myths as to piece together a candid appraisal, no matter how alarming, of the fraught moment in which we live.”
Foner has won the Bancroft Prize, the Lincoln Prize, and the Pulitzer. His most famous book is Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 published in 1988. It set the standard for modern histories of Reconstruction. One of his most important, from my point of view, is The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution which brought together a lifetime of scholarship around this most contentious era in our nation’s history. And in spite of its look at a period some 150 years in the past, it is work with great resonance for this day, this political climate, and the major questions of how we will advance as a nation.
Foner makes the point that “the past is the key of the present and the mirror of the future” as he opens Our Fragile Freedoms.
“The pieces reproduced here also remind us of the current crisis of American democracy, reflected in intense political polarization, the weaponizing of base prejudice, and refusal to accept the outcomes of elections. This situation is not unprecedented. American democracy has always been a terrain of conflict. Our politics have always included those who believe that too many people, or people of the ‘wrong’ kind, are voting and taking part in public debate. Various forms of violence—war, assassination, mob actions, political repression, the brutality intrinsic to slavery—have played more of a role in our history than is often recognized. I vividly recall watching televised images of the Capitol riot as it unfolded on January 6, 2021, and hearing a commentator declare that ‘nothing like this’ has happened before in the United States. ‘That’s wrong,’ I remarked to no one in particular. ‘What about the Battle of Liberty Place or the Colfax Massacre—violent uprisings a century and a half ago that sought to oust democratically elected state and local governments in Reconstruction Louisiana—or the 1898 coup d’etat in Wilmington, North Carolina, that marked the end of biracial government in that state?”
History, Foner writes, was visible at that riot. It remains visible today. We forget it, ignore it, or sanitize it at our peril.
MORE TO COME... 