Each weekday from October 5th-9th I’ll be posting a photo from one of the amazing DC-area independent bookshops to highlight Banned Book Week 2026. Today we’ll travel to Old Town in Alexandria.
Old Town Books in Alexandria is a wonderful full-service bookshop in the heart of historic Old Town. I visited the store back in July with my friend and our associate rector at St. Alban’s Parish, The Rev. Sarah Taylor-Miller. My review of the store and the book I purchased there will probably come in November as part of my series on my personal 2026 DC Independent Bookstore Crawl. But I wanted to use today to highlight a photo the store placed on their website to bring attention to Banned Books Week 2026.
Kim holding a stack of banned books from the Old Town Books banned books display (credit: Old Town Books)
To do their part in fighting book banning, each staff member at Old Town Books picked a banned or challenged book that they love for the store display all October long.
“A few highlights are Kim’s pick, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, which has been challenged due to its frank discussions of systemic racism. Fun Home, the graphic novel/memoir by Alison Bechdel that alternates between Bechdel’s upbringing and early adulthood as she navigates dysfunctional family, evolving gender roles, and her own sexuality. And Melissa’s YA choice, Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley that has been banned for its depiction of the historical injustices, including the trauma of Indigenous boarding schools.”
Read more about the work that Old Town Books is doing to support intellectual freedom at their website.
This is a lightly edited and updated version of my post from last year. I’m repeating it because, since knowledge is power, some people are still trying to keep other people from reading.
A twelfth-century Judaic scholar once wrote, “Make books your treasure and bookshelves your gardens of delight.”
October 4-10, 2026 is Banned Books Week, a good time to remember that advice. October 10th is the Freedom to Read Action Day! Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 by the American Library Association in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools. In an update from last year’s post, I’m also linking to the Unite Against Book Bans website.
Book banners target a wide range of titles and subjects. George Orwell’s 1984 is one of the most famous.
“While this groundbreaking novel has a place of honor as a PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick, it also maintains its status as the most banned book of all time in America. Why was it banned? Its social and political themes were found to be too controversial, and its sexual content was deemed inappropriate. In 1981, Jackson County, Florida challenged the book for being pro-communism. Considering large portions of the text are not only anti-communist but in fact anti-government all together, this challenge seems like a bit of a stretch. Furthermore, the book was based on the very real political climate of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, warning against the totalitarianism that caused so much suffering in those countries and the regions over which they had influence.”
My vote for most ridiculous is Hop on Pop. Seriously!
Supporting the freedom to read “can be as simple as just checking out a banned book from your local library (this helps to establish that a banned book is valued by the community).” But there are many other actions that can be helpful to our local libraries and librarians. If you are looking for events to support those who are fighting book bans, your local library or independent bookshop are good places to start. As for steps we each can take, here are a few of my favorites from the American Library Association list:
Write a letter to a favorite banned or challenged author. Take some time to thank a banned or challenged author for their words. Author addresses and Twitter handles can be found on the Dear Banned Author page.
Submit content that address censorship and banned books to the Intellectual Freedom Blog. Posts can be news items, reviews and listicals.
Proclaim Banned Books Week at your local library. Use our proclamation template to announce your library’s dedication to the freedom to read.
Stock up on Banned Books Week materials. Every year there is a new line of Banned Books Week products. Show your literary pride with T-shirts, bookmarks and tote bags.
Write a letter to the editor. Edit and adapt this “Read a Banned Book” opinion column for your local newspaper. Include local Banned Books Week programs so your community can support their right to read.
America’s problem is not that we’re reading too many books. Free people read freely! Minnesota Governor and former Democratic VP candidate Tim Walz phrased it so simply and eloquently during the 2024 campaign:
“I’m surrounded by states who are spending their time figuring out how to ban Charlotte’s Web in their schools while we’re banishing hunger from ours with free breakfast and lunch.
We’re not banning books; we’re banishing hunger. It’s that simple.”
This snazzy reminder from People for the American Way was taken by Andrew. I’m standing alongside my bookshelf that definitely was not created by a designer buying “books by the foot” to provide me with an attractive video background (or “shelfies” as they are known). And yes, there are more than a few “banned books” on those shelves.
Read!
More to come . . .
DJB
UPDATE:My good friend and Brilliant Reader Tom sent me this photo after today’s post went live. It is the “Banned Books” display from Solid State Books at National Airport. I loved this so much it gave me an idea . . . and you may see a similar “Banned Books Photo” each day this week from one of the 30 bookshops I’ve visited in my 2026 DC Independent Bookstore Crawl. For the visit Tom and I made to Solid State Books on 14th and S Streets, check out Installment #21.
Credit: Tom Mayes
For other MTC essays on libraries, bookstores, and banned books, see:
The playoffs have arrived and here’s my non-analytical, highly personal take on who will win it all.
Playoff baseball is here. After a long six-month season where teams play every day and the cream generally rises to the top, we switch to short series that often favor teams who get hot at just the right moment.
The ultimate winner may not be the best team entering the playoffs . . . but that’s the reason my Nationals were 2019 World Series champions. Teams like those Nats which are loose, full of skilled players, yet often underestimated can often win it all. Or not. (I’m looking at the Dodgers and their push for a three-peat.)
What follows is my take on the 2026 playoffs based entirely on personal rooting interests. But before that, let’s begin with my annual rant against gambling in baseball.
“MLB HAS TAKEN OUR BEAUTIFUL GAME AND TURNED IT INTO A TAWDRY, CHEAP, AND CORRUPT SLOT MACHINE.”
During the Wild Card games, Joe Posnanski had a righteous rant about the capitulation of baseball to the gambling mafia. I couldn’t have said it better.
“There was a moment during the White Sox-Astros broadcast that I cannot shake . . .
They came back from a commercial break showing Houston rookie Lucas Spence in the on-deck circle. That alone was weird. Why Lucas Spence? He’s a 23-year-old rookie who has played 19 big-league games. He’s an undrafted free agent out of Black Hawk College in Moline, IL—I guess he’s the first Black Hawk College alum to play in the Major Leagues, which is, you know, kind of cool.
But they weren’t showing him as an homage to Black Hawk—whose most famous alum before Spence might be Richard Kauzlarich, the former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan.
No, it turns out Lucas Spence was the featured player in the Fan Duel Same Day Parlay!
If we hurried, the broadcaster told us, we could still bet on HOW MANY PITCHES LUCAS SPENCE WOULD SEE. Wow! The over/under was 3.5 pitches. So we could bet the over, bet that Spence would make Chicago’s Jordan Hicks work a bit, or we could bet the under, bet that Spence would be aggressive and go after an early pitch.
And then, seconds later, the bet changed because the White Sox pulled Hicks —I guess he’d reached his pitch limit or something—and brought in Sean Newcombe.
Whoa! A whole new scenario for how many pitches rookie Lucas Spence would face!
And I thought to myself, not for the first time but probably the loudest time, that MLB has taken our beautiful game and turned it into a tawdry, cheap, and corrupt slot machine. To think that there were people out there who lost actual money because Lucas Spence faced five pitches in the bottom of the fifth inning of a 5-0 wildcard game before singling off Sean Newcombe makes me so sad.
To think that MLB encourages—practically begs—its fans to make that bet hurts my very soul.”
Preach it, Joe!
WILD CARD SERIES
1888 Philadelphia Quakers (via Wikimedia)
What I liked best about the just completed Wild Card games: The Philadelphia Phillies (not the Quakers) losing (finally) to the Atlanta Braves in a playoff series. Bryce Harper will go yet another year without a World Series ring after jilting the Nationals to chase big money with the Phillies. I’m not bitter or anything (especially after the Nats won the year after Harper left the team).
What saddened me about the Wild Card series: Besides half the games being played on a streaming channel I don’t subscribe to . . . the Cubbies falling out of the playoffs so quickly. I had hopes to see Pete Crow-Armstrong continue his magical year a bit longer than just two games.
WHO I WANT TO SEE WIN IT ALL
I’ve listed the eight teams that start play today in the divisional series in reverse order of my rooting interest to see them win it all.
8. New York Yankees—Unless you live in New York, all baseball fans are contractually obligated to hate the Yankees.
7. Los Angeles Dodgers—Why root for a team that has a bazilliongillion dollars to spend? I wish these guys owned the Nationals.
6. Tampa Bay Rays—I have a personal policy to root against all teams from Florida.
5. Chicago White Sox—I don’t have anything personal against the White Sox, but I’m really a National League guy. Plus their stadium is not very good.
4. Cleveland Guardians—Cleveland is a city I’ve long enjoyed. The Guardians have a nice downtown stadium and a long-suffering yet loyal fan base (still hoping to finally win a World Series since their last one in 1948).
3. Atlanta Braves—I would have the team I rooted for in my teenage and young adult years higher on the list. They have a great team and Chris Sale is a monster of an ace. (Loved the way he struck out Harper in the 8th inning of the third game of the Wild Card series.) However, the owners of the Braves moved their stadium away from easy transit access, away from their traditional fan base (and the Black neighborhoods in downtown Atlanta), and built a theme park masquerading as a baseball stadium that is only accessible by car. None of those things are good for baseball.
2. San Diego Padres—As compared to the Braves, the Padres have a wonderful stadium situated right in downtown San Diego. Plus, their team is a lot of fun to watch. They are also pretty hot at the moment.
1. Milwaukee Brewers—Milwaukee is the only team hotter than the Padres as they’ve been playing great baseball all year. Plus, they are a small market team, and I instinctively root for these guys. As an added bonus, they have the second best mascot race in all MLB.*
So in my ideal world, it would be Milwaukee vs. Cleveland in the World Series. Small market, Midwest baseball! That would be classic!
As my good friend and Brilliant Reader John says, ABTY (anyone but the . . .).
This is one of about twenty clips from the movie I could show to prove my point:
I wrote an entire post earlier this year about baseball songs, so if you want to dive deep into music about the national pastime, check this out. For now, I’ll simply send you to John Fogerty’s Centerfield. It 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 (I’m not giving up on this!). 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!
But we still have a month of baseball left before the season ends and it breaks your heart. So let’s play ball!
More to come . . .
DJB
UPDATE: I’ll stop adding comments and updates with this one, but game two of the Padres/Brewers series had an ending for the ages: down to the last strike with two outs and the game on the line.
This summary of the September posts from the MORE TO COME newsletter focuses on the curiosity that is at the heart of the well-lived life.
In the past month I’ve attended a retirement party and a 90th birthday party. They were not for the same individual but the honorees—long-time and dear friends—have similar temperaments. Tom (the recent retiree) and George (the nonagenarian) both live in a state of continuous curiosity, are deeply thoughtful, and lead by example. In the spirit of my end-of-summer meditation Listen with more than your ears and see with more than your eyes, both have more expansive ways of listening and seeing. When they speak, others listen and are frequently moved.
There is a curiosity and sense of wonder at the heart of a life well-lived. In his book The Wisdom of Ignorance, my friend Alan Gregerman—author, community volunteer, speaker, and teacher—notes that curiosity is a skill we are all born with and that has guided innovation since the beginning of time. But “somewhere between the school bus and today’s meeting at work” most people lose the knack for exploring, putting things together in new ways, and asking “What if?” as a matter of course.
Curiosity plays a key role in many of the September posts in MORE TO COME. If you’re like me, you are curious to know what stories resonate with others. So let’s jump into this summary, beginning with the posts that topped the list of reader views in September.
READER FAVORITES
I have always enjoyed my conversations with the Jewish biblical scholar Amy-Jill Levine. With her deep theological insight, broad cultural knowledge, curiosity about the multiple meanings texts invite, and accessible writing, Levine (known as AJ to friends) leads readers on an exploration of stories we all think we know. In the beginning is the latest installment in my Author Q&A series, as AJ and I discuss her most recent book Genesis: A Beginner’s Guide to the Beginning. Our conversation was the top reader favorite this September.
Exploring DC’s independent bookshops: A Labor Day update was the other reader favorite. My decision to use this year to visit all the indie bookshops in the DC region—a quest central to the four pieces that follow—came out of my curiosity to know more about the people who have made reading and knowledge key to their lives and who want to build places for others to share their enthusiasm and love for books.
ROUNDING THE FINAL TURN ON THE INDEPENDENT BOOKSHOP TOUR
I’ve now visited all of the DC region’s 30 independent bookstores and in September passed the two-thirds mark in writing about my discoveries from the journey.
I’ll cover the other nine stores in the coming months then in December we’ll wrap this all up with a post on what I saw, learned, and loved from visiting all 30 of DC’s independent bookshops.
MUSIC AND MUSICIANS
Fall 2026 highlights the upcoming concert schedule of our son, the tenor Andrew Bearden Brown. Solo appearances (see the listings above) include Washington Bach Consort (Bach cantatas) and St. Thomas Fifth Avenue & New York Baroque (Messiah). The St. Thomas Fifth Avenue performance has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most prominent and special [Messiahs] of the city.”
His full solo and ensemble schedule for this fall (along with ticket information) can be found at AndrewBeardenBrown.com.
And for something completely different: I love the pithy proverb: Volume 13 (The Dolly Parton edition) is the most recent in my series of aphorisms that have captured my attention. This post is a special tribute with music on 9-2-5, Dolly Parton Day. The Goddess of Kindness had such great sayings and advice, such as: “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
OTHER CURIOSITIES AND OBSERVATIONS
Three September posts clearly fall into the “observations from the slow lane of life” category.
October promises to be a pretty busy month on MORE TO COME. To stay on track for a year-end completion of my independent bookstore crawl, I’ll be reading and reviewing three books while highlighting the shops where I found these treasures.
Most importantly, however . . . October is the month for spooks and goblins, so I hope to read at least five murder mysteries before the 31st to celebrate Halloween. I have nine to choose from, which I’ll preview in the next From the bookshelf post.
And if that’s not scary enough for you, we have midterm elections coming up on November 3rd. I am sure I’ll have at least one post that considers why polling continues to show an “electorate curiously unimpressed with the administration’s ongoing efforts to rename theatre buildings” after “the world’s most obnoxious person.”
Stay tuned!
DON’T POSTPONE JOY
Thanks, as always, for reading. Your friendship, 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, public servants, and others can feel especially vulnerable . . . because they are. Work hard for justice and democracy as the fight never ends.
But also keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable. Take time to dawdle and dream. Let yourself be bewildered!
Leave enough empty space to feel and experience life. Those gaps are where the magic begins. 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.
Be comfortable in the mystery. Seek the uplifting spirit that leads to a life of grace and wonder.
Grace to help us remember that we can do hard things. “Grace to never sell yourself short; Grace to risk something big for something good; and Grace to remember the world is now too dangerous for anything but the truth and too small for anything but love . . .”
Wonder to help us 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.
You can subscribe to 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.
Nancy Lemann’s debut novel from 1985 is, to quote Walker Percy, “hilarious, haunting, poignant.” I laughed ’til I cried.
Installment #21 in my series on the region’s independent bookshops.
My long-time friend, former colleague, and Brilliant Reader Tom was introducing me to Solid State Books, his favorite DC-area bookstore. As we were perusing the staff recommendations we both saw the following:
“Lives of the Saints: I dare you to read the first page of this novel and not be drawn into its singular story. So good I had a breakdown.”
Sarah B.
We both immediately hooted out loud (you have to know Tom to understand how easily that sound came out of our mouths). Turning to the nearby staff member, we could only point at the small sign because it was so uniquely absurd. It turns out we were talking with the infamous Sarah B. She promised us we’d love the novel. I bought it. And I did.
With my dear friend Tom on our visit to Solid State Books
Solid State (we visited the 14th and S Streets location) is now one of my favorite new finds from this year of visiting the 30 independent bookstores in the DC region. I’ve returned again to spend more time in the shop where a warm, welcoming feeling exudes from the shelves and the staff. A full-service, Black-owned general interest bookstore, Solid State Books has a wide selection of fiction and non-fiction titles, a generous children’s area, great gifts, and more. Tom and I both spoke of the thoughtfulness of the curation. Plus, it is smack in the middle of the wonderful 14th Street neighborhood, with great restaurants, stores, and local icons (Ben’s Chili Bowl, anyone) just a few steps away.
And with killer staff recommendations that grab you by the collar until you have a breakdown, what’s not to love.
Here are the first two paragraphs from that recommended first page:
“All in all, Henry Laines’ wedding was one of the worst events in my experience, tragic in society. Everyone that I have ever known was there, plus a party of out-of-towners whose broad Memphis and Charleston accents shocked me, although we were the same, Americans far from that hub of the universe along the East Coast.
Everyone had breakdowns at this wedding. Including the bridge and groom. Especially the bride and groom. Crowded parties like at the Stewarts’ often can be known to Bring on Breakdowns. Especially if the Stewarts are the hosts.”
Lives of the Saints (1985; republished in 2026 by the New York Review of Books) by Nancy Lemann is unique in its voice; in its digressions; in its look at life in New Orleans, the deep South, and America. Louise Brown—the narrator who stands in for the author and an “exquisitely rendered basket case”—has just returned from four years in a New England college and finds herself immersed once again in “New Orleans society’s ‘wastrel-youth contingent.'” Her focus is on Claude Collier, a son of one of the city’s old families who is deep into his personal period of wasted youth. His father—a prominent attorney who loves classical Greek, opera, and his son “to a degree approaching beatitude”—simply says that “Claude is not using his abilities.” Yet Louise tells us that he makes the world seem kind. “He had the indiscriminate kindness that is the meaning of generosity. But he was also wild.”
As the story begins at that infamous wedding between Henry Laines and Mary Grace Stewart, Louise fills us in on both members of the wedding party. Laines, who is thirty-five and looks older than his years, was to her “the perfect bachelor.” The bride’s mother and grandmother are “probably recalling the famous pink kid evening bag [the elder Mrs. Stewart] used to carry in 1915.” The bride, notes one of her several former flames at the wedding, is “probably in the bamboo grove having sex.”
“The bamboo grove?
Well, you know, that’s the type of person she is. She’s the type of person who would just go out to the bamboo grove during the middle of a party or during her own wedding and have sex.
She is? What? But—but—why the bamboo grove, though?
It’s racy out there, Louise. It’s sexy. Out in the bamboo grove.
‘God,’ I said, stunned, wishing I were that type of person.”
Mary Grace Stewart “had the spark of divine fire, which you find in a face not quite pretty enough.”
Twenty pages in and readers have met the main characters in this “tale of Violent Love, Breakdowns, Moods, and Felonious Drunkenness that floats from one lush, green, sweltering New Orleans evening to another.” They have also been introduced to Lemann’s writing style: “unabashedly digressive, weirdly and wonderfully confiding, as witty as it is melancholy.” A style with the random, quirky use of Capital Letters when you don’t expect them: “Mrs. Collier’s attitude toward Claude was that he was in a Huge Crisis that could only be resolved by law school.”
As Geoff Dyer writes in a loving and thoughtful introduction to this reissuing of a long lost classic, Lemann is also “the type of writer who is forever introducing a character as ‘the type of person who . . .’ followed by specifics reducing that to a category with a maximum occupancy of one. ‘Earl was the kind of person who, when you were with him in a restaurant, would start drawing his family tree on a napkin.’ That’s a brief example.” Mary Grace Stewart is the type of person “who would just go out to the bamboo grove during the middle of a party or during her own wedding and have sex” is another.
Claude and Louise are the focus of this tale, two people who—as Mrs. Collier describes them—“are always yearning after vague things. You cherish illusions.” For Claude, Louise is his steadying focus; for Louise, Claude is the only man who can cause her heart to “break into a million pieces on the floor.”
There are parties, a death and funeral, and endless days and nights of saxophones. Of gin and tonics. Claude and Louise go to the bamboo grove. They go to the broom closet. Claude decides he must leave and travels to New York City. Louise deteriorates and returns to the Lafayette Hotel to pay her debt to society. A place whose moment of glory had long since faded from the world. Where the decor “was red plush and cobweb.”
“Nuts made life worth living,” Louise asserts in Lives of the Saints. This lovely, nutty book (Walker Percy again) is proof of that maxim.
The insightful Sarah B. had the perfect description: So good you’ll have a breakdown.
More to come . . .
DJB
NOTE: Nancy Lemann is having a renaissance some 40 years after her debut. You’ll hear more from me about Lemann (pronounced like the cocktail garnish) in the coming months, as I have recently purchased the 40th anniversary edition of The Ritz of the Bayou as well as her latest novel, The Oyster Diaries.
The most recent in my series of aphorisms that have captured my attention, with a special tribute on Dolly Parton Day.
Regular readers know that I’ve long been a fan of the pithy proverb—a quote or bit of advice that contains truth in 20 words or less. My love for the short and to-the-point adage comes from my Grandmother Brown who was known to say things such as: “Some folks are born in the objective mood.”
Grandmother and Granddaddy Brown as young newlyweds. Yes, my ears came from the Brown side of the family.
Grandmother did not have a lot of patience with folks who were always complaining and objecting to what others did. According to my father, both she and my Granddaddy—who I barely knew—always had a positive outlook and attitude toward people. Grandmother, who passed away in January of 1981, had a great impact on my life.
September 25th (or 9/25 . . . 9-2-5) is Dolly Parton Day, so while I’ll get back to the 250th anniversary quotes next month, what follows are some of the short, astute, and sometimes laugh-out-loud sayings of our Goddess of Kindness.
Dolly Parton
“I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb . . . and I also know that I’m not blonde.”
Dolly Parton
“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”
Dolly Parton
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
Dolly Parton
“I was the first woman to burn my bra—it took the fire department four days to put it out.”
Dolly Parton
“I make a point to appreciate all the little things in my life. I go out and smell the air after a good, hard rain. I re-read emoticons from my friends. I buy the good toilet paper.”
Dolly Parton
“I’m not going to limit myself just because people won’t accept the fact that I can do something else.”
Dolly Parton
“Smile—it increases your face value.”
Dolly Parton
You can find more legendary quotes from Dolly Parton here.
And because it all began with the music, let’s hear a few more Dolly songs, beginning with the recent tribute at the Emmy awards.
Then this version of Jolene is worth it just for the introduction.
And we’ll end with a few from The Trio—Dolly, Emmylou, and Linda. It was Ronstadt who once said, “we never have any ego problems, we just all do whatever Dolly tells us to do.”
Linda Ronstadt is 80 years old and lives with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare neurodegenerative brain disorder initially misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s disease. The condition severely limits her mobility, requiring her to use a wheelchair and restricting her ability to walk or travel, while permanently robbing her of her legendary singing voice. She recently wrote on Facebook of her sadness at the passing of her friend Dolly Parton.
Three beautiful voices gifted to us from heaven. Ah, those memories.
In the latest installment in my Author Q&A series, I talk with Biblical scholar Amy-Jill (AJ) Levine about her newest book, the value of different interpretations, the lack of female perspectives in Genesis, the importance of asking questions, and more.
Few stories cut across time like those found in the Biblical book of Genesis: Adam and Eve (and the snake!) in the Garden of Eden. The world’s first brotherly argument (and murder) between Cain and Abel. Noah’s ark. Jacob’s dream and the stairway to heaven (Led Zeppelin was correct). These are the stories that generations have been taught to help make sense of creation, God, human nature, the world, and our place in it. Yet because they are so much a part of the cultural air we breathe, they are often remembered at a very rudimentary level. Our interpretations of these stories are too often stuck in our minds from our third-grade Sunday School class (to use my Baptist-to-Episcopalian Christian spiritual tradition as a marker).
A new work released in August offers interpretations of these seminal stories that concern history, literature, and theology. The book invites readers to share their own interpretations and enter conversations that not only go back centuries but also are as fresh as today’s news.
Genesis: A Beginner’s Guide to the Beginning (2026) by Amy-Jill Levine is the tenth in her series of “Beginner’s Guides” that examine Biblical stories, liturgical seasons, miracles, and specific books of the Bible. With her typical deep theological insight, broad cultural knowledge, curiosity about the multiple meanings texts invite, and accessible writing, Levine (known as AJ to friends) leads readers on an exploration of stories we all think we know. She finds herself in conversation with God “from the affirmative ‘love the creation, with everything very good’ to the questions: Why put temptation in the garden? Why not accept Cain’s offering? Why flood the world?” Her conversations lead to more questions, both hers and ours. This short work is easy to digest but its good taste and satisfying feeling linger long after the meal is complete.
A Jewish biblical scholar who is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies Emerita at Vanderbilt University and the Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, AJ asks us to take the stories in Genesis, and what they tell us about our relationship to God and to our fellow humans, seriously. To do so will guide many readers beyond a childhood level of understanding that long-ago either shut down the brain or depended upon agreement with someone else’s interpretation.
And it is an important time to take these stories seriously. We are in a period of culture wars, authoritarian grabs for power, and attacks on a broad and inclusive interpretation of religion by right-wing agitators and Christian nationalists that use simplistic interpretations and demands for obedience to advance their agenda. At the same time, we face left-wing pressures to make everything conform to particular agendas and so impose interpretations rather than invite conversation. AJ’s appointment in August 2026 as the first Jewish president of the Catholic Biblical Association has brought online antisemitic backlash, a significant portion of which is coordinated—and even monetized—to advance several narratives, including anti-Israel sentiment amid the Israel-Hamas war. OSV News, a Catholic news and information service, recently reported on these attacks.
Christopher Hale has been reporting on similar right-wing backlash against Pope Leo XIV, as happened recently when a new document quoted the Vatican as saying that interfaith dialogue is critical to the Catholic faith. So many on the right, in their attempts to dominate the conversation about religion, have lost the trees for the forest. Love your neighbor as yourself is a summary of the law. But no summary replaces what it summarizes: “The details are commentary; go and learn them.”
In this era of culture wars, hubris, and attacks, I was delighted when AJ agreed to chat with me about her newest work—our third conversation together in my Author Q&A series—and delve into a few of the details of Genesis.
DJB:AJ, in the Introduction you state that “one of the glorious aspects of studying biblical stories is that mutually exclusive interpretations of the same text can both be right.” Some religious traditions (or traditionalists) would disagree. Why is it important to consider different interpretations, and what are some of the key examples from Genesis which are ripe for multiple interpretations?
Amy-Jill Levine
AJ: I have met numerous Christians who think the only purpose of the Old Testament (to use Christian terminology) is to point to Jesus. This approach misses not only the richness of the text; it also misreads how Jesus himself understands the text and how the New Testament writers use it. When 2 Timothy 3.16 states that “all scripture is inspired by God [lit. ‘God-breathed’] and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” the term “scripture” means the Old Testament. Indeed, if a scriptural text only means one thing, then we can stop listening to sermons, writing Bible studies, doing personal devotion, because the text has nothing more to say and the Holy Spirit has been put out of business.
Christians may well find Jesus on every page of the Old Testament — there is nothing wrong with this reading. But there is no good reason to limit those pages to a “find Jesus” moment. The text poses questions to us, and the answers will differ depending on the perspectives and experiences, and sometimes religious affiliations, of the readers. Here are just a few questions that have yielded multiple, and sometimes contradictory answers: Is the story of Adam and Eve about original sin or is it about the importance of repentance? Is Eve the hero or the villain? Is God at fault for provoking and for not preventing Abel’s murder? Is Noah a hero, or is “most righteous in his generation” at best a back-handed complement? God decides to test Abraham by commanding him to kill his son — did Abraham pass the test? Is Potiphar’s wife a sympathetic figure? Is Joseph…. ?
In the creation stories, you write about Adam and Eve’s movement from innocence to maturity and even suggest that one interpretation of the existence of both the forbidden fruit and the snake in the garden is that God wants humans to make that move. What insights come from looking at the story of the Garden of Eden not as a “fall” and sinful―exile if you will―but as God’s way of emancipating humans, moving us from the realm of nature to the realm of culture?
Adam and Eve, naked and unashamed, are like toddlers with no sense of modesty. They have no sense of the world, or of their potential for creativity; they do not know what it is like to work for a living, whether it be the struggle to make ends meet or the satisfaction of a job well done. Expelled from the garden, they can begin to fulfill the first commandment: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” At the same time, they can better appreciate the love they have for each other. If they stand in front of each other, naked and not ashamed, then they are, for a while, back in Eden.
You note that in so much of Genesis we miss out on the female’s point of view, from Eve to Mrs. Noah to Sarah to Leah and Rachel and more. What questions should those of us who want to explore life and meaning beyond the patriarchal text be asking of these stories?
We can always expand the text, since good stories can beget more stories. We can speculate what Mrs. Noah thought as her husband was building a boat and collecting animals (my friend Sandy Eisenberg Sasso wrote a children’s book about how Mrs. Noah saved all the seeds while Noah was busy collecting the animals). We also might query what the animals were thinking and feeling. Nor do we know what God or the angels were thinking during the days and nights of the flood. More, we can wonder, as did the early rabbis, what Sarah was thinking when Abraham took her precious Isaac away from home, and then when, apparently, Abraham returns without Isaac. Jewish interpretation fills in these gaps by giving voice to the women, but it never says, “these are the only readings.” It invites us to add our own interpretations.
Why is it important to stop and consider the geographical markers mentioned by the narrator in Genesis―places such as Beer-sheba―when we read the text? In a similar vein, what do we miss when Christian writers about the Old Testament refer to those in the stories as “God’s people” as opposed to Hebrews, Israelites, or Jews?
Location names give us a sense of both place — these are stories set in the real world, our world — and they also give us a sense of history: what happened here before may repeat, or rhyme, or contradict. We can build on history, or correct it, or seek to replace it. We can query how place names came about, which names were replaced, or erased. After whom or what was a place named?
A few years ago, I wrote an article on story Bibles containing both Testaments: for most, Christian readers would have no idea of any connection between Hebrews/Israelites/Jews and the stories in the “Old Testament” (to use Christian terminology). Nor would they have any idea that Jesus, Peter, Paul, etc., were also Jews. For these Bibles, the Jews are the ones who kill Jesus and persecute his followers. For children exposed to these Bibles, Jew-hatred starts early, whether by omission (neglecting the connections of the Old Testament to Jews; omitting the connection of Jesus to Jewish identity) or commission (setting up “the Jews” as Jesus’s opponents). For a good children’s Bible, I recommend Elizabeth F. Caldwell and Carol A. Wehrheim (eds.), Growing in God’s Love: A Story Bible.
The people in Genesis have a lot to answer for, from Adam and Eve shirking the blame for what they did all the way to Joseph with his multiple tricks and deceptions. What lessons can we learn today from reading about these very imperfect people?
The Bible is less an answer book (as if it were the ‘magic 8-ball’) and more a book that helps us to ask the right questions. In seeking answers, we realize that our judgments are conditioned by our own experience (people who have committed murder, or friends and family of the victims; people who survive disasters and people who have never been endangered; people who have mystical experiences and people who find mysticism too woo woo; people who have seen their children sacrificed whether in war or at the hands of terrorists or by protesting injustice; people who have been sexually harassed or assaulted, and the people who harass or assault). The stories in Genesis, although ancient, are also our stories. Human imperfection continues, but so do perseverance, resilience, and faith.
Thank you, AJ.
Thank you, again, for taking the time to ask such good questions.
The musical performances of our son, the tenor Andrew Bearden Brown, set for this fall.
Coming off of a very busy spring and summer schedule highlighted by his work as a soloist in two separate stagings of the transformative work Considering Matthew Shepard, a month of performances with the Carmel Bach Festival, and a Florida tour with Ensemble Altera, our son—Andrew Bearden Brown—returns to the concert stage this fall.
Lauded by The Washington Post for his “pure” and “poignant” sound, Andrew is “equally at home on operatic and concert stages.”
As an oratorio soloist, he regularly performs works by Bach (St. John Passion, St. Matthew Passion, Mass in B Minor, Christmas Oratorio), Handel (Messiah), Haydn (Creation), and Mendelssohn (Elijah), having soloed with groups such as Academy of Ancient Music, Voces8, Tempesta di Mare, the Washington National Cathedral Choir, Washington Bach Consort, and with Ashmont Hill Chamber Music in a performance praised by The Boston Musical Intelligencer as a “carefully balanced interpretation of the Evangelist with deep expression and gravitas.”
Upcoming solo appearances (see the listings above) include Washington Bach Consort (Bach cantatas) and St. Thomas Fifth Avenue & New York Baroque (Messiah). The St. Thomas Fifth Avenue performance has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most prominent and special [Messiahs] of the city.”
Recent operatic appearances include with Louisville Orchestra as Soldat in Der Kaiser von Atlantis, as well as The Santa Fe Opera, where he performed as Don Curzio in Le nozze di Figaro as a member of the Apprentice Program for Singers. As an operatic soloist, Andrew regularly performs works by Handel (Alcina), Mozart (Mitridate, Così fan tutte, La clemenza di Tito), and various 20th and 21st Century composers (L’heure espagnole, Our Town, Hydrogen Jukebox, Little Women). In 2024, he also covered the role of John Singer Sargent in the world premiere of Geter and Palmer’s American Apollo with Des Moines Metro Opera.
His full solo and ensemble schedule for this fall (along with ticket information) can be found on his website AndrewBeardenBrown.com.
When he is not performing on the road, Andrew is a member of the professional choir at Christ Church, Georgetown, which has a rich musical tradition under the direction of Organist and Choirmaster Thomas P. Smith.
For a sampling of Andrew’s music enjoy his performances of
Handel’s “Comfort Ye/Every Valley” from Messiah,
Mozart’s Ich baue ganz, recorded from the stage of the Santa Fe Opera, and
Bach’s Kommt, eilet, stimmet Sait und Lieder (BWV 74) recorded last September with the Washington Bach Consort under the direction of Dana Marsh.
Links to stories from a few writers I follow who have important things to say. With a few musical interludes thrown in for good measure.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac tells us that the days that marked the four major divisions of the year were called quarter days; they marked the solstice (when the Sun sets at its most northern or southern point on the horizon) and equinoxes (when the Sun sets due west). This fit readily into the rhythm of the ways people farmed.
The fall equinox and the first day of autumn arrive on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, at 8:04 P.M. EDT in the Northern Hemisphere. The word “equinox” comes from the Latin aequus, meaning “equal,” and nox, “night.” On the equinox, day and night are roughly equal in length.
The Almanac has an interesting note about the Harvest Moon and its connection to Fall.
“One of our favorite pieces of trivia surrounding the autumnal equinox involves its relationship with the full Moon. Curiously, the full Moon that occurs nearest to the autumnal equinox is always called the Harvest Moon. Why is that?
Surprise, surprise: the name has to do with farming! Around the fall equinox, the full Moon rises around sunset for several nights in a row, traditionally providing farmers with just enough light to finish their harvests before the killing hard frosts of fall set in.
Typically, the Moon rises about an hour later each night, but around the time of the fall equinox, the angle of the Moon’s orbit and the tilt of the Earth line up just right and cause the Moon to rise only about 20 to 30 minutes later each night for several nights in a row!”
In 1992 Neil Young had a hit with the beautiful love song Harvest Moon.
“Because I’m still in love with you I want to see you dance again Because I’m still in love with you On this harvest moon”
Those of a certain age will remember another song about the Harvest Moon. No one does this old classic better than the late Leon Redbone.
To celebrate this day of transition, I thought I’d share offerings from writers and musicians who help me move through liminal times of change. I hope you’ll find something of interest among this eclectic mix.
MYTH IS NOT A SYNONYM FOR UNTRUTH
In my wrap of August MTC posts, I wrote about myths. Some can be illuminating and positive; others are powerfully destructive. Brilliant Reader Merrill sent me a link to a post by the poet and author Pádraig Ó Tuama entitled London and the underworld. In it, he recounts the story of being in a London cafe listening to a grandmother and her grandson at the next table. There was a Hadestown poster in the café. “Do you know what that is?” she asked the boy. He didn’t. So she told him the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, “the musician who ventured to Hades to find his lover, and the tragedy that unfolded as he lost her, just at the cusp of exiting the underworld.”
I love this myth, which was also central to the stunning movie Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Pádraig continues the telling of his morning encounter:
“I loved hearing the casual, fluent, loving rendition of the myth, in a café in London that was gradually filling up with lunchtime customers—the clink of knives and forks on plates, the whoosh of kettles and coffee machines, the hum of conversation, the telling of a myth that keeps on happening and rehappening. We love each other, we lose each other, we go in search of one another, love takes us into other worlds, we change, we find music for grief, we are marked and moved by love, we start again, we tell the story again.”
Edward Poynter’s Orpheus and Eurydice (via Wikimedia)
Myths are important, and as I wrote last month their strength is not in facts but in narratives. They help us make sense of the world and our lives. Ó Tuama notes this near the end of his post:
“I get annoyed sometimes when I hear ‘myth’ used synonymously with ‘untruth.’ A myth is something that is so true we have to construct a container of fantasy to hold it: A lover goes to hell because he cannot imagine living without a beloved; a character flies too close to the sun; a world is made and with complicated trees who import information we do not know yet know how to live with; a young person uses the only tools he has—pebbles and a harp—to stand in the face of exploitation …”
[M}ost people should consume less news and read more books. Less news, more books. More history. More poetry. More literature. More philosophy. More myths. Because you know what those stories are about? They’re about what’s happening now!
WILL THERE BE HISTORY IN THE FUTURE?
Joseph Keppler, “Looking Backward,” Puck (1893)
Two recent posts stood out among those I read focused on history. Leonard Pitts, Jr. wrote about the departure of Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch and the right wing war on memory in an article entitled Will There Be History in the Future?
“In the future they will wonder what in the hell we were thinking.
And while that’s not flattering it is also, in a sense, the best case scenario. If our progeny are able to ask that pointed question twenty, thirty or more years from now, it would at least mean they had been accurately taught about the dumpster fire in a train wreck that we are now living through. It would mean they had been told how we somehow managed to elect – not once, but twice – the most corrupt, incompetent and stupid president in history. It would mean they learned how we blew off an insurrection, welcomed back measles, tanked our own economy on a fool’s whim, started a war for the same reason, and watched as the richest man who ever lived took food and medicine from the poorest children on earth.”
Read Leonard’s entire piece. It is worth it.
The second post I want to promote comes from historian Kevin Kruse. In Pulling Up the Ladder, Kruse writes about recent statements by Rep. Michael Rulli (R-OH) and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) encouraging the deportation of Haitians and Somali immigrants.
“I’m not a genealogist by any means, but Rulli is an Italian surname and Emmer a German one. I am a historian, so I can tell you that the exact same kind of nativist nonsense was spewed by earlier generations of Americans towards people who had last names like Emmer and Rulli.”
So much of the self-inflicted damage we are doing to our country comes about from the actions of people who do not know their history or who don’t care to learn from history’s lessons. Here are a few other snippets from the past that could help us today.
On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Rebecca Solnit wrote that only we can terrorize ourselves. “A quarter century ago, 2,600 people lost their lives in Manhattan, and then several million people lost their story.”
On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump’s attempt to unilaterally amend the Constitution. “The true significance of this decision . . . is to be found in the principal dissent” by Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, a dissent that marks a war on Reconstruction.
Kevin Kruse has another good article online about denouncing extremists. One of the media’s favorite activities is demanding that Democratic politicians denounce individuals on their side who have made extreme statements. And yet they never call for Republicans to denounce Elon Musk, who is obsessed with race, is an ardent proponent of racial pseudo-science, is a promoter of the so-called Great Replacement Theory, and so much more. But the media has barely a question to Republicans who are receiving massive amounts of money and even more free publicity from their top donor Elon Musk. I wonder why.
Leonard Pitts, Jr. writes in They just don’t know when to quit that we increasingly find ourselves living in what has been described as an American gerontocracy. “As of last year, the average representative was about 58 years old, the average senator, 64. By way of comparison, the average American is 39. That gap matters.”
I can only say “here, here” to the argument to leave your airplane window shades open from The Atlantic. “When the shades are drawn so quickly [so flyers can get their digital fix from the in-flight entertainment], passengers miss out on both the fascinating machinations of infrastructure—the strange vehicles, markers, and signs that make airports work—and the natural beauty of the landscape . . . as my colleague Henry Grabar wrote for Slate a couple of years ago, ‘you will see the ballet of the tarmac workers, parks and lakes you never knew existed, patterns of development and infrastructure, customs of land ownership, and finally, the lines of the earth itself.'”
THINGS I’M GLAD TO SEE
If David Brooks says it, I tend to think the exact opposite. I’m glad historian Kevin Kruse has the same outlook in a post entitled Punching Left.
A commentator had a wonderful reaction to Kruse’s column:
“I don’t think one can ever go wrong by ignoring or doing the opposite of what David Brooks recommends (which also applies to Matthew Yglesias). Brooks has tried to reinvent himself as a Wise Elder, a non-ideological chap (a word I’m sure he uses with no sense of irony) whose only interest is in saving Amurrica. It’s a disingenuous and dishonest effort that has also and unfortunately been pretty successful, as he, along with Arthur Brooks et al., attempts to make us forget that he was a conventional true believer Republican and lover of all things GWB, McCain, and Romney back in the day. He is to domestic politics what Tom Friedman is to global affairs—a tiresome hack long past relevance.”
FINALLY, TEST YOUR ASSUMPTIONS
If you see a large, red pickup truck in today’s polarized political environment, you may quickly assume that some right-wing conservative is out for a spin. But as the bumper stickers on this Silver Spring-area vehicle attest, sometimes our assumptions are just plain wrong. I really liked seeing the Marine’s “Semper Fi” alongside the “No Wetlands No Seafood” sticker. Besides those two, my favorites, in no particular order, were:
Trust Science Not Morons
Make Lying Wrong Again
Immigrants Make America Great
Real patriots come in all shapes and sizes. With a wide variety of interests and pickup trucks.
And just because you can never have enough Leon Redbone . . .
Enjoy the nice fall weather.
More to come . . .
DJB
NOTE: Click hereto read the grab bag from the 2026 Ides of March edition and hereto read the grab bag from the 2026 Summer Solstice edition.
The only way to make sense of the fact that every advance in equality in America must contend with forces of reaction is to recognize that it is an eternal struggle.
In an essay for Harper’s Magazine in 1992* the writer, editor, and cultural critic Lewis Lapham examined the question of “who and what is American?” The context was the ending of the Cold War, where the “image of the Soviet Union as monolithic evil held in place the image of the United States as monolithic virtue.” With that certainty uprooted, all bets were off.
THE PLEASURES OF TELLING LIES
Here and in other essays Lapham addresses the many ways we lost our way as a country and works to highlight what he sees as our core virtues of citizenship in a democracy: mutual respect, helpfulness, forgiveness, kindliness, and, above all, tolerance.
“The American equation rests on the habit of holding our fellow citizens in thoughtful regard not because they are exceptional (or famous, or beautiful, or rich) but simply because they are our fellow citizens. If we abandon the sense of mutual respect, we abandon the premise as well as the machinery of the American enterprise.
What joins the Americans one to another is not a common nationality, language, race, or ancestry (all of which testify to the burdens of the past) but rather their complicity in a shared work of the imagination. My love of country follows from my love of its freedoms, not from my pride in its fleets or its armies or its gross national product. Construed as a means and not an end, the Constitution stands as the premise for a narrative rather than a plan for an invasion or a monument. The narrative was always plural—not one story but many stories….
If we indulge ourselves with evasions and the pleasures of telling lies, we speak to our fears and our weaknesses instead of to our courage and our strength. We can speak plainly about our differences only if we know and value what we hold in common.”
America in both presidential terms of Donald Trump has more than indulged itself with the “pleasures of telling lies.” Much like Lapham, activist and author Parker J. Palmer makes the strong case that lying to ourselves goes back well before 2016. Palmer asserts that in the quarter-century since the horrors of 9/11, we have lived in a state of denial. “Denialism has metastasized in our body politic, contributing to the way MAGA lies now have our democracy on the ropes. When denial is on the rise, democracy begins to die.”
Nancy MacLean’s 2017 National Book Award finalist Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America takes it back even further, as she outlines the deliberate and blatant attempt, over more than 60 years, to overthrow democracy and our form of government. As it generally does in America, it comes down to power, money and race..
THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE
The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels (2018) by Jon Meacham was written to help us navigate the current divisiveness that speaks to our fears by looking back into American history at other times of conflict and political warfare. The book was conceived and created following the alt-right march in Charlottesville in August of 2017, an event that shook the nation and exposed the ugly stain of racism that has always hovered, in the best of times, just below the surface in America. A believer in the great truth found in William Faulkner’s observation in Requiem for a Nun that “The past is never dead; it’s not even past,” Meacham asks his readers to look at the ongoing American battles over power and race and history to put today’s events in context. This history, Meacham argues, provides guidance on ways to respond to the reactionary forces that would turn back the clock on the promise of the Declaration of Independence.
Meacham looks at seven key eras in American history, from the Civil War and Reconstruction to women’s suffrage and the Red Scare to McCarthyism and the modern civil rights movement. In each he focuses on presidential leadership—noting its imperfections in every instance—and the role played by influential citizen activists.
There is much to like in Meacham’s book. But the work also raises points and perspectives that beg deeper questions. A talented writer, his faith in America comes through on every page. He sees possibility in trial. He understands that progress in America has always been slow, painful, bloody, and tragic. Much like Lapham, David McCullough, and others, Meacham sees history as the way to arm against despair. As the “antidote to folly” in Lapham’s phrasing.
I do not have a problem with the fact that many of Meacham’s illustrations of progress align with the progressive perspective of today’s Democratic party. Some will find that troubling. There is, however, a challenge of timing. The work already seems a little dated. It would be interesting to hear Meacham’s revisions to this work in light of the second Trump administration and the all-out attack on the Constitution by the Republican party and its judicial wing (aka the Supreme Court). This interview from 2026 gives us a glimpse of where such a revision would go.
ENTER THE ARENA
Meacham’s work does not come in a vacuum. Going back to Lapham’s 1992 Harper’s essay, we are reminded that when our star should be ascendent, as in the fall of the Soviet Union, we as a nation often lose sight of who and what we can be. Even with the dated references to politicians from that era, Lapham’s final paragraphs—like Meacham’s concluding calls for us to enter the arena, resist tribalism, and find a critical balance—are calls for us roll up our sleeves and work together.
“Among all the nations of the earth, America is the one that has come most triumphantly to terms with the mixtures of blood and caste, and maybe it is another of history’s ironic jokes that we should wish to repudiate our talent for assimilation at precisely the moment in time when so many other nations in the world (in Africa and Western Europe as well as the Soviet Union) took to the promise of the American example. The jumble of confused or mistaken identities that was the story of nineteenth-century America has become the story of a late-twentieth-century world defined by a vast migration of peoples across seven continents and as many oceans. Why, then, do we lose confidence in ourselves and grow fearful of our mongrel freedoms?
The politician who would lift us to a more courageous understanding of ourselves might begin by saying that we are all, each and every one of us, as much at fault as anybody else, that no matter whom we blame for our troubles (whether George Bush, or Al Sharpton, or David Duke) or how pleasant the invective (racist, sexist, imperialist pig), we still have to rebuild our cities and revise our laws. We can do the work together, or we can stand around making strong statements about each other’s clothes.”
Image of “Wake Up, America” by Prettysleepy is from Pixabay of a poster from 1917. After two and a half years of neutrality, the United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917. James Montgomery Flagg created this poster, which was featured in “Wake Up, America” Day in New York City just 13 days later on April 19, 1917.
Photo of protest of segregation in the streets of Farmville VA 1963 from Queens College collection
