I don’t make resolutions but I do make plans. Recently, Candice and I had a conversation on how we needed to get serious about de-cluttering our house in anticipation of whatever comes next in our third stage of life.
Receiving some of Andrew’s belongings from his former Washington apartment caused us to realize how crowded the garage has become. Recent work to help Andrew and Claire declutter their memory boxes spurred some of our renewed focus.
And yes, the fact that we have now packed almost a dozen boxes of books to donate to the Friends of the Library, and yet our bookcases look essentially untouched, speaks to the challenge before us.
After a conversation over dinner, I was reminded that a good friend co-authored a book on de-cluttering the family home, and so I ordered the e-version. Moving On: A Practical Guide to Downsizing the Family Home (2013) by Janet Hulstrandand Linda Hetzer is “a downsizing bible” which includes some of the lessons they have learned in helping others with this task we all seem to face. It immediately helped me think about what personality I exhibit in this process. Was I a thrower or a keeper?
“Throwers” relish clearing out and will empty a house quickly; “keepers” want to preserve special things as well as memories and will linger over the process. People who balance these attributes have come to the realization that the most valuable thing in a house is the life that has been lived there . . . “keepers” and “throwers” (can) work together to downsize and declutter.
I’m generally more of a “thrower” by nature, while I would identify Candice as more of a “keeper.” The two of us can, however, display both sides of our downsizing personalities.
As our discussion turned to specifics, Candice said — in the midst of much laughter — “So, David, just what are you going to do with all those bobbleheads?”
Ouch.
Truth be told, I didn’t know how many bobbleheads of former Washington Nationals players I had. I remembered that I had the “Dr. Anthony Fauci throws out the first pitch in 2020” bobblehead. I suspected there were a couple of duplicates, such as of the “Max Scherzer snow globe” (the snowflakes are ‘Ks” — the scoring symbol for strikeouts.) But I’d basically forgotten about Josh Bell (both as a player and as a bobblehead.)
One recent Saturday I took them all down, boxed them up (for those that had boxes), and discovered 25 in my collection. I went into my “thrower” mode, and 21 of them will soon go to the “Opportunity Shop” at St. Alban’s, where Candice assures me they will make someone very happy.
21 Nationals Bobbleheads from seasons past . . . Dave Martinez is the only one still on the team!
However, I do have a “keeper” side as well. I’m not letting go of the “Mount Rushmore Racing Presidents” bobbleheads. Hey, they are still on the team! The only player/manager still on the Nats out of the 21 other bobbleheads? Current manager (and World Series champion) Dave Martinez. Don’t get me started on what the Lerners have done to this franchise in recent years.
The “Mount Rushmore” Racing Presidents Bobbleheads . . . the only ones I’m keeping. They now sit just below the wonderful “Main Street” Lego collection, given to me upon my retirement by the National Main Street staff.
But as we become more serious I also want to be intentional. Take the two items on top of the bookcase by the front door. When I retired from the National Trust, the trustees and staff at Filoli, a Trust site where I had served on the board, presented me with a beautiful work of art carved from a fallen tree on the property. Our daughter Claire is now a member at Filoli (it is about an hour south of Alameda), and she goes 2-3 times a year to take friends and enjoy the gardens, special events, and holiday lights. I want to make sure that she gets this piece at some point, so that she can remember our shared love for that vibrant landscape.
Right next to it sits a clock, that it one of my earliest memories from Grandmother Brown’s house in Franklin. It was on the mantlepiece in her front bedroom, and I still remember the chimes. Grandmother (whose maiden name was Bearden) gave it to my father (Thomas Bearden Brown) who gave it to me. Andrew has already asked if he could have it when I’m ready to pass it along, which only seems fitting since his name is Andrew Bearden Brown. We recently had it restored and the clockworks repaired. It is now ready for another 100 years.
I think about these two items — plus the chairs built by African American craftsmen in Franklin that we brought home after my father passed away because he attached a note saying, “keep them in the family” — and perhaps I am as much a “keeper” as “thrower.”
Janet and Linda ask if it’s better to be a “keeper” or a “thrower” when it comes to downsizing. Quess what? We need both types to get the job done.
(I)t takes a combination of these attributes to successfully downsize a family home. Sometimes that combination comes from various family members; it helps to be tolerant of attitudes different than your own, especially the attitudes of your spouse or your siblings, and to strive to find a balance between those who want to throw out everything and those who need to mull over the many decisions involved.
Slow but steady wins the race, as they say. That’s my new motto for our decluttering project. I’ll keep you posted, because — as I’m always saying — there’s more to come . . .
In the words of that great Italian-American philosopher Jimmy Valvano:
“If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.“
This is a grab bag of recent experiences that moved me to laugh, think, or cry.
Who knew a four-hour movie could be so riveting?
Candice and I recently saw the documentary Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros at Silver Spring’s AFI Silver Theatre. At its most basic, this is a film where 93-year-old director Frederick Wiseman embeds himself and his team inside a French restaurant that’s held three Michelin stars for more than 50 years. But that doesn’t do it justice. This four-hour film was a remarkable work of art and storytelling in so many ways. We simply were mesmerized and in truth didn’t want it to end.
The love that goes into the film and the food can’t truly be captured in a trailer, but there are good reviews online (see here and here) to give other perspectives. The movie touched a variety of emotions and I’ve thought about it every day since first seeing it early in December. There is a poignancy in watching the father in the process of turning over the family business to his sons and daughter that unfolds slowly yet consistently over the body of the film. The meditations of Menus-Plaisirs around what matters — a devotion to craft, the beauty of nature, the love of food, and familial bonds — touched me deeply in places too little explored in everyday life.
Watch this movie if you get a chance.
Joke #1
The Gospel reading on the first Sunday after Christmas was from the famous first chapter of John. Shortly after church the following showed up in my email inbox:
Q. How do we know that God is a baseball fan?
A: ‘Cause he wrote “In the big inning . . .”
H/T to my friends Ted for the joke and George who quickly responded, “At last, all is made clear . . . “
Memories
Shortly after Andrew and Claire were born we (well, mostly Candice) began putting programs, school art projects, birthday cards, photographs, and much more into a “memory box” for each one. On the recent night before Claire headed home to California, we began to weed through the now 10 memory boxes (five apiece) to see what they wanted to keep. This was our first baby steps in a much-delayed house cleansing to get ready for whatever the next stage brings.
Andrew began reading from his pre-school and kindergarten “report cards” (you’ll have to ask them about which one was better at clean-up), while Claire read the stories from the journals she wrote in kindergarten and first grade. We laughed over the number of times her “what I did this weekend” entry began with “we went house-hunting.” I teared up when Claire brought out her art project: a handmade birthday “card” to the “greatest dad on earth” — complete with a drawing of me sitting on a globe.
Amidst the chatter and excitement, I sat back and thought about all the stories we were uncovering in a whole new time and space. What a beautiful experience together.
Joke #2
Mike Luckovich’s great take on Nikki “I don’t know ‘nothing about slavery” Haley works perfectly when one thinks of this vintage TV sketch. One online wag suggested that after this episode, Haley’s no longer measuring the drapery in the White House! (I’ll stop there.)
Speaking of good food . . .
La Piquette dining room
The Washington region has only one three-star Michelin restaurant, but it has a number of excellent establishments that have become family favorites. Over the past month, I’ve enjoyed the simple yet satisfying bistro experience at La Piquette, a masterful Feast of Seven Fishes at Iron Gate, and a delayed birthday celebration at Cranes. Each touched my emotions in different ways.
Francis Layrle, the long-time chef at the French embassy, never disappoints when in the kitchen at La Piquette. And yes, the Trout Meunière Arc-en-ciel is just sublime.
Coming from a family with strong Italian roots, Candice is always on the lookout for a good Feast of Seven Fishes experience for Christmas Eve. Claire joined us this year, when we may have just established a new family tradition.
Chef Anthony Chittum, a native of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and his team at the Iron Gate Restaurant in the Dupont Circle neighborhood created an artistic and delightful Feast of Seven Fishes with a few twists. * The offerings were both traditional and adventurous, yet they all satisfied.
Ready to enjoy a dinner at the Michelin-rated Cranes
Finally, Cranes — a Michelin-rated restaurant in DC — was the setting for our annual birthday dinner with the twins. Everyone helped choose our shared plates, which we then enjoyed over good wine, laughter, memories, and thoughtful discussions about past, present, and future.
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore we must be saved by love.
May you laugh, think, and cry every day, for the rest of your life . . . preferably over a good meal.
Each morning I join billions of people around the world in reaching for my favorite drug. Coffee is an indispensable part of daily life. But few of us know much about its history, much less the impacts on workers and countries that are part of that past and that are still reflected in life today.
Coffeeland: One Man’s Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug (2020) by Augustine Sedgewick is a compelling look at the volcanic highlands of El Salvador and the story of James Hill. In 1889, the 18-year-old Hill disembarked in El Salvador to sell textiles from Manchester, England. He wound up “bringing the industrial mentality of his native city to coffee cultivation in his adopted country,” in the process turning El Salvador into perhaps the most “intensive monoculture in modern history — a place of extraordinary productivity, inequality, and violence.”
Sedgewick is a Harvard-trained historian teaching at City University in New York whose research is focused on the global history of food, work, and capitalism. As Lisbeth Cohen wrote in a New York Times review, instead of taking the traditional approach of historians and looking at coffee as a commodity, Sedgewick focuses on stories to weave a vibrant fabric that displays the impact of this particular food on real people.
His approach helps the reader consider “the actual choices made by the producers and importers and advertisers who merchandised the goods, the economic and political alliances they forged in the process and the often harsh local consequences of their actions.”
It makes for a sweeping and fascinating tale.
Sedgewick begins four hundred years ago, when coffee was a mysterious Ottoman custom and “the perfect symbol of Islam.” Now, he suggests, “coffee” is perhaps the most widespread word on the planet. He traces the route through tightly controlled markets in the Middle East to a luxury drink for Europe’s privileged classes, to its position as an unrivaled work drug. San Francisco becomes a key point of entry and marketing innovation hub for coffee from Central America while “rations to soldiers during World War II and the invention of the postwar ‘coffee break’ helped feed America’s growing habit.”
Throughout the book Sedgewick returns to Hill, his children and grandchildren, and their growth into one of the “Fourteen Families” who controlled El Salvador’s export coffee industry. Over 100 years they consume land and acquire power, leading to the loss of agricultural options for the country’s working class. As they do so, they demand more political control of the military dictatorship to protect their businesses. In 1979, on the eve of full-scale revolution in El Salvador, James Hill’s grandson Jaime Hill was “kidnapped by rebels for a ransom they hoped would help finance a revolt against wealthy planters like the Hills, who had economically and politically dominated the country for decades.”
El Salvador now has a tenuous democratic government and is no longer the monolithic coffee country it was in the 20th century. Yet the story still resonates. Sedgewick’s work — a very satisfying brew — helps the reader reconsider “what it means to be connected to faraway people and places.” In doing so, “Coffeeland tells the hidden and surprising story of one of the most valuable commodities in the history of global capitalism.”
To demonstrate the pervasiveness of coffee in our culture, I typed “songs about coffee” into the search engine. Google came up with 205 million options. A couple of fun listings among the group were 21 Songs About Coffee (Caffeinated Tracks List) and — for the more punk-inclined — Coffee Songs: The Definitive All-Time Greatest Ultimate List. From those two alone I pulled up five of my favorites. Grab a cup of fair-trade Java and have a listen.
9 To 5 by Dolly Parton
We don’t really do royalty in America, or sainthood for that matter. But the closest living example in American public life today is Dolly Parton . . . it’s not a surprise that she would be responsible for crafting the Mt. Olympus of coffee as a metaphor. It appears on the global smash hit single “9 To 5”, from the soundtrack to the 1980 film of the same name, in which Parton also stars, and it begins with the untoppable couplet . . . “Tumble outta bed and I stumble to the kitchen / Pour myself a cup of ambition”
Cup of Coffee by Johnny Cash
This tune was written by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and he puts in an appearance here to yodel. While the lyrics are about a truck driver protesting that he doesn’t want anything stronger than coffee because he has to get back on the road, Cash sounds like he’s drunk, or perhaps smoking something. This was made during Cash’s rowdy days before he sobered up, and it shows.
One More Cup of Coffee by Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan’s One More Cup of Coffee has two former lovers saying farewell for the last time.
On its surface, it seems like a simple breakup track, but the lyrics interweave fantastical imagery of a royal father and a sister who can predict the future.
He has said that the song was inspired by his experiences of celebrations with the Roma people in France in the 1970s. Country star Emmylou Harris provided the track’s sweet backup vocals.
Black Coffee by Ella Fitzgerald
A classic blues song composed in the 1940s, Black Coffee describes a woman waiting for her lover to come back.
I walk the floor and watch the door / And in between I drink black coffee / Love’s a hand-me-down brew
And now for something completely different: Coffee Mug by The Descendents
Of all the songs about coffee, this 1996 track from The Descendents certainly leaves an impression — and all in less than 30 seconds. The track is a rapid-fire ode to coffee, perhaps emulating the caffeine jolt it provides.
This last one isn’t really my cup of coffee (or tea), but if I’ve missed your favorite song about coffee, please share that in the comments.
Each month my goal is to read a minimum of five books on a variety of topics from different genres. Here are the books I read in December 2023. If you click on the title, you’ll go to the longer post on More to Come. Enjoy.
The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future (2023) by Robert P. Jones begins with several clear and powerful stories and ends with a question that, though difficult, must be answered if we are to illuminate the path forward. Jones has crafted a searing yet courageous look at contemporary issues around race set within the context of a 15th century church doctrine. “The spirit of the Doctrine of Discovery continues to haunt us today. We remain torn by two mutually incompatible visions of the country. Are we a pluralistic democracy where all, regardless of race or religion, are equal citizens? Or are we a divinely ordained promised land for European Christians?”
Church State Corporation: Construing Religion in US Law (2020) by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan takes a deep dive into several Supreme Court decisions to argue that “American law has shown that it cannot think religion without the church.” The Supreme Court — especially under Chief Justice John Roberts — has favored “the Church” over individuals with religious beliefs. This bias towards “the Church” is carried even further in that the decisions by the Roberts Court to preference corporations over individuals in a variety of areas of law extends to the corporations that are also churches. Sullivan makes the strong case that the Court “has misinterpreted the separation of church and state to mean that the state must cede sovereignty to any corporate body claiming exemption from generally applicable laws for reasons of faith.”
To Speak a Defiant Word: Sermons and Speeches on Justice and Transformation (2023) by Pauli Murray; edited by Anthony B. Pinn brings together the most important sermons, lectures, and speeches from 1960 through 1985 written by one of the most consequential and hopeful of 20th century Americans. Murray was a nonbinary African American member of the LGBTQ community, a civil rights and women’s rights activist, an author and poet, and a brilliant legal scholar who became the first female African American Episcopal priest in the United States, and a saint in the Episcopal Church. In this work one sees how Murray’s religious ideas and her sense of ministry evolved over a period that became one of the most tumultuous in American history, not unlike the one we are living in today. Yet through it all, she remained struck by a sense of wonder and hopefulness.
The Thursday Murder Club (2020) by Richard Osman takes us to Coopers Chase, a high-end and peaceful British retirement village on the grounds of a former convent where four residents meet weekly to discuss unsolved crimes. We soon discover that Coopers Chase was built with drug money by the “loathsome” Ian Ventham and maintained by his dangerous associate, Tony Curran. When first Curran and then Ventham are murdered, the septuagenarian sleuths have real-life cases to solve in this light, witty, and big-hearted mystery novel.
Playing Authors: An Anthology (2023) is a collection by 18 writers asked to consider the question of authorship. The creative act of writing in today’s world is at the heart of this newest release from Old Iron Press, a female-led, small independent press in Indianapolis. “Literary mashups, personal essays, alternative history, and other disobedient forms” are included in this work, which begins with the sad and insightful and laugh-out-loud funny “Hemingway Goes on Book Tour.” In this post, I chat with that story’s author, Robyn Ryle, about inspiration, the challenges of modern publishing, the need for more diverse voices, and imagining other famous authors in the rat race of today’s book tour.
The Four Loves (1960) by C.S. Lewis has been described as a “classic” of the British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author. In this work, Lewis takes the reader through a description of four different types of love: “affection, the most basic form; friendship, the rarest and perhaps most insightful; Eros, passionate love; charity, the greatest and least selfish.” Lewis reminds us that God is love, and that love is the divine energy. But because none of us has direct knowledge about the ultimate Being, we are forced to use analogies. “We cannot see light, though by light we see things.” So is it with love.
What’s on the nightstand for January (subject to change at the whims of the reader):
The New Year is a time when many begin thinking of resolutions, perhaps focused on personal ways to respond to our current reality. I have come to believe that our vision needs to grow. “Our human task” suggests poet and essayist Jane Hirshfield, is to acknowledge “the fullness of things.”
Writer Kathryn Schulz reminds us that “We live remarkable lives because life itself is remarkable.” She counts her days as exceptional even when they are ordinary. And in that spirit Mary Oliver‘s “paradoxical resolution” remains a timely reminder.
To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
“Here is the world,” Frederick Buechner wrote. “Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
Since 2013, I have taken a different route away from annual resolutions. That year I established several rules of how I want to live day-to-day. Essayist Maria Popovacalls her similar list “life learnings” and she begins her excellent choices with one that I’ve also discovered over time: “Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind.“
Computer wallpaper with DJB’s life rules
Designed to help direct me during both good and difficult times, my rules came as the result of a more intentional focus on life’s journey rather than relying on a changing list of resolutions to respond to the challenges of the moment. These personal guidelines are not quite principles but rather serve as reminders of how I want to live over time.
As has been the case in recent years, I highlight each rule followed by a reference to a MORE TO COME essay providing context and examples for these personal rules. They are given to provide hope in the remarkable nature of life, even in the midst of trying, liminal times.
Rule #1. Be grateful. Be thankful. Be compassionate. Every day.
I came across an online post written by a fan of author acknowledgements. She encouraged others to read them in order to learn language that gifted writers use to thank others, to the benefit of our own gratitude practice. Turning gratitude into thankfulness (March 13th) spoke to the importance of thanking others and provided four tips to lead toward being “radically grateful.”
Rule #2. Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life.
Building movement into each day doesn’t mean we have to endure joyless stints at the gym. Walking as an act of citizenship (January 26, 2016) is a reminder that one of the best benefits for your health is also beneficial for your life in community. “Walking is only the beginning of citizenship,” writes Rebecca Solnit, “but through it the citizen knows his or her city and fellow citizens . . . Walking the streets is what links up reading the map with living one’s life.”
Don’t be this guy
Rule #3. Listen more than you talk.
I’ve mentioned before how much work remains for me in the context of this life goal. Nonetheless, I keep trying. Singer, songwriter, and poet Carrie Newcomer suggested a good way to get others to open up, so you can simply listen, which I recounted in Simple but not easy (November 11th).
An open-hearted question is a beautiful way to get to know another person. When I’m at a gathering and meeting new people I often like to ask opening questions that go beyond the usual “what do you do”. I often ask questions like “what gave you life this year” or “What were you grateful for this week”. People will sometimes look at me like I have seven heads, but then they will launch into the most wonderful stories. I always feel grateful for the story and feel I got to know the person much better than if I had asked the usual fare.
Rule #4. Spend less than you make.
In Margareta Magnusson’s witty look at how to age gracefully she encourages us to live within our means . . . always good advice no matter our stage along the journey. Magnusson’s book is full of great suggestions for a happier next third of life, which I explore in Living exuberantly (September 25th).
Rule #5. Quit eating crap! Eat less of everything else.
I thought a great deal about this rule, from both a health and values point of view, in 2023. Aligning the way we eat with our values (April 13th) speaks to the latter, as I preview a lecture around faith, food, and ethics.
Playing one of my Running Dog guitars in 2010
Rule #6. Play music.
This fall I wrote of a song that I play at least once a week while practicing in our den/music room. For decades I played Sittin’ on Top of the World (November 25th) as a bluegrass tune, but over the past few years, I’ve pretty much turned to the bluesy finger-style version that I learned from Chris Smither. It gave me another perspective on the music.
Rule #7. Connect and commit.
In From certainty to mystery (March 4, 2023), I used the occasion of my birthday to consider a few things I still wanted to accomplish, two of which relate to this life rule. First, make sure that the people I love and care about know that without question. Second, be gratefully aware, not just every day but every hour in a way that leads to true thankfulness.
And that’s it! As you can see, I’m working to live into Kathryn Schulz’s admonition to treat each day as the exceptional experience it is while doing my best to bash into some joy along the way.
Best wishes for a wonder-filled and remarkable 2024. As you welcome the New Year, consider making gratefulness, thankfulness, and compassion an everyday practice. I can recommend the effort!
A summary of the December posts from the MORE TO COME newsletter.
Holiday greetings this Christmastide where today our family is celebrating the 5th day of Christmas! No golden rings are involved (especially since some historians believe that the “five golden rings” may actually be a reference to the rings around a pheasant’s neck), but all the Browns are home enjoying the season. We send our best wishes to you.
December’s MORE TO COMEofferings were a mixture of seasonal celebrations, “best-of” lists for the year, and my regular takes on books and music. Let’s dive in to see what tickled my fancy. Hopefully some will pique your interest as well.
TOP READER VIEWS: WHAT OUR BOOKS REVEAL ABOUT US
Eight totally subjective observations on what the 65 books I read in 2023 reveal about me topped the reader views this month.
Seeing myself in the books I readwas an especially big hit in the “Writers and Authors” group on LinkedIn. Check it out to see if any of these observations ring true with you.
Of course, the post was referencing the books I read this year, which you can find in The 2023 year-end reading list. Note: this post is long but is meant to be skimmed. I’ve encouraged readers and friends to tell me which books they most enjoyed in 2023, so feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.
I LOVE A GOOD “BEST OF” LIST
Long-time readers know that I’m a sucker for a good “best of” list this time of year. Here are three takes on these lists from the newsletter.
Best of the MTC newsletter: 2023highlights your choices for which posts grabbed your attention over the past twelve months. The top reader views spotlighted some excellent pieces: the photographs of Carol Highsmith as well as my Q&A with authors Janet Hulstrand, Joseph McGill, Julia Rocchi, and Lisa Ramsay. Essays on the liminal passages through birthdays, retirement, and death were also reader favorites. Finally, thoughts on the meaning of home topped the list, which is a good place to land this holiday season.
Some essays I especially enjoyed writing or that conveyed thoughts which I felt the readers of MTC would appreciate didn’t make the top reader-views lists. ICYMI: A few personal favorites from 2023highlights those choices.
The Saturday Soundtrack 2023 top tenfeatured the top reader views from this year’s posts on music. I’m not spilling the beans, but one of our family’s tenors (and it isn’t the author) rates a spot on the 2023 list.
WRITING ABOUT BOOKS
There was a lot to consider in the books I read during the month of December.
Fittingly, a bookstore (and coffee shop) does business inside the Storyteller Building in Thermopolis, Wyoming (credit: Carol Highsmith)
My review of one of the most important books I read in 2023 can be found in The search for hope in history. To understand the origins of modern America, author Robert P. Jones suggests we look at 1452 and the Doctrine of Discovery.
Writer Robyn Ryle goes on book tour with Ernest Hemingway in a new anthology on playing authors. Who gets to tell the stories? is my review of the book, plus a Q&A with Robyn about her sad, insightful, and laugh-out-loud funny story imagining the great Hemingway in the rat race that is the modern book tour world.
I’ve often said that I am the son of a “Roger Williams Baptist.” Concerns about the separation of church and state come easily to me. Corporate churches and freedom of religion was a deep dive into the study of American law, which has shown that it cannot think religion without the church. And that’s a problem.
As I write in Love as the divine energy, some things cannot be described, even by the most celebrated of writers. C.S. Lewis and his take on love didn’t do it for me. I’ll accept that the fault may be with the reader.
Talking with writers is a summary of my 2023 discussions with seven different authors about their most recent works.
A Christmas full of wonderment and awefeatures excerpts from a Christmas sermon by the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, a nonbinary African American member of the LGBTQ community, a civil rights and women’s rights activist, the brilliant legal scholar who influenced Ruth Bader Ginsberg and who is responsible for producing what Justice Thurgood Marshall called “the Bible of Civil Rights law,” a poet and writer, the first female African American Episcopal priest in the United States, and a saint in the Episcopal Church. As one of the most consequential and hopeful figures of the 20th century, her message still resonates today.
In addition to the yearly wrap-up noted above, this month I highlighted the work of Karen Ashbrook and Paul Oorts in A Celtic celebrationas well as traditional carols performed by several of my favorite vocal ensembles in the seasonal Yuletide musical gifts.
CONCLUSION
Thanks, as always, for reading. Your support and feedback mean more than I can ever express.
As you travel life’s highways be open to love, thirst for wonder, undertake some mindful walking every day, recognize the incredible privilege that most of us have, and think about how to put that privilege to use for good. Women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants, and others can feel especially vulnerable . . . because they are. Work hard for justice and democracy as the fight never ends.
You can follow MORE TO COME by going to the small “Follow” box that is on the right-hand column of the site (on the desktop version) or at the bottom right on your mobile device. It is great to hear from readers, and if you like them feel free to share these posts on your own social media platforms.
NOTE: This post is long but is written to be skimmed. Scroll through and see what piques your interest.
With 2023 drawing to a close, I’m delighted to share the annual list of books I’ve (mostly) enjoyed over the past twelve months.* I’ve grouped these 65 books into broad categories, to help you find those of special interest.
The top reads (I’ll revisit these over the years)
Author interviews (talking with writers)
History and biography (and all that entails)
The places where we live (natural and man-made)
The times we live in(politics and civic life)
Memoir and story (tell me your story)
Murder mysteries (my year of reading dangerously)
Fiction (novels, short stories, poetry)
Theology and more (thinking about purpose and mindfulness)
Sports (really just baseball)
Outbursts of radical common sense and whatever else tickled my fancy (otherwise known as the miscellaneous section)
I hope you enjoy learning about the treasures I pulled from my reading shelf this past year. Clicking on the link under the book title will take you to my original review. And please feel free to use the comments to tell me which books most touched you in 2023.
Now, let’s jump in and see what was on the list.
The top reads (I’ll revisit these over the years). . . in alphabetical order by author
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (2021) by Oliver Burkeman begins with the simple fact that we won’t live forever; 4,000 weeks, in fact, if we make it to 80. Burkeman, the self-described “recovering productivity geek,” reminds us of the truth behind the paradox of limitations: the more one confronts the facts of our limits — and works with them, rather than against them — the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes.
The Sense of Wonder: A Celebration of Nature for Parents and Children (1965) by Rachel Carson begins as the famed naturalist takes her twenty-month-old nephew Roger down to the beach on a rainy night, where they laughed for pure joy. It was clearly, she notes, “a time and place where great and elemental things prevailed,” and it is in both their reactions that Carson draws the inspiration for her heartfelt call to contemplate the awe and beauty of nature.
Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America (2020) by Adam Cohen is a devastating and damning argument against today’s extremist Supreme Court and the Republican party’s fifty-year plan to circumvent the constitution, overturn the gains of the New Deal and Civil Rights eras, and cement inequality into American law and life, all while pushing an agenda that most Americans don’t share.
The Cross and the Lynching Tree (2011) by James H. Cone invites us to see the world through the eyes of the marginalized and oppressed, taking us into this place through one of our most recognized religious symbols, the cross, and through one of America’s most terrible national sins, lynching. Both had the same purpose: to strike terror in the subject community. They both also reveal “a thirst for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning and demonstrate that God can transform ugliness into beauty, into God’s liberating presence.”
The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future (2023) by Robert P. Jones is a searing yet courageous look at contemporary issues around race set within the context of a 15th century church doctrine. “We remain torn by two mutually incompatible visions of the country. Are we a pluralistic democracy where all, regardless of race or religion, are equal citizens? Or are we a divinely ordained promised land for European Christians?”
Upstream: Selected Essays (2016) by Mary Oliver is a beautiful and moving set of essays where the author describes how she discovered her life as a writer. Oliver writes in a way that suggests, but these are suggestions that compel the reader to go to the source of their own lives. Nature — and other writers — are both keys to Oliver’s self-discovery and she writes about them simply yet eloquently.
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (2022) by Imani Perry is a revelatory journey by a Black daughter of the South that both recognizes and comes to grips with the complexity of the Southern experience, history, and culture. In South to America Perry is traveling home to “help the reader dig deep enough to discover the truth,” and to help us “gain a more honest rendering of the country.”
Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments (2023) by Joe Posnanski may not be the most important book you’ll read this year, but if you care at all about the game this will be the book you’ll cherish. This is a love letter of the best kind, bringing together the long history of the game with the uniqueness of the moment, all told with Posnanski’s “trademark wit, encyclopedic knowledge, and acute observations.”
Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America (2023) by Heather Cox Richardson is an accessible, engaging, and important work that tells how America got to this difficult moment in time. Richardson’s newest volume shows that there has always been a small group of wealthy people who have made war on American ideals, using language and false history as their tools of choice. But we also have a history of those on the margins — women, people of color, immigrants — who have fought equally hard to push America to live up to its ideals.
The Cruelty is the Point: Why Trump’s America Endures (2022) by journalist Adam Serwertakes the reader back through the unvarnished history that made Donald Trump and today’s cruelty possible. Serwer repeatedly shows how white Americans have professed a belief in racial equality while pointedly declining to put the necessary laws and policies in place to see it to fruition.
Caste: The Origins of our Discontent (2020) by Isabel Wilkerson is the latest work by a writer who takes stories we thought we knew and pushes us to look at them through a different lens. Wilkerson writes persuasively, clearly, and honestly about the American failure of character and our unwillingness to see that the hierarchy built only on skin color — the “infrastructure of our divisions” — has been in place since our founding as a nation.
Author interviews (talking with writers) . . . in alphabetical order by author
A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France (2023) by Janet Hulstrand is a delightful memoir that takes the reader from a grandmother’s hometown in Iowa to the author’s home in the French countryside. Along the way we learn much about Janet’s journey, including the complicated relationship with the two women who fueled her love for learning, exploration, and writing.
Never Say Whatever: How Small Decisions Make a Big Difference (2023) by Dr. Richard A. Moran reveals how the W-word is a career — and life — killer. The choices we make, even the small ones, help us pivot toward the life and career we want. Rich shares insights he’s uncovered, including how it becomes much harder to find the life we want if we tend to rely on “whatever” as a substitute for decision-making.
Books and Our Town: The History of the Rutherford County Library System (2023) by Lisa R. Ramsay is a wonderful addition to the story of America’s love affair with public libraries. After a newspaper editorial encouraged the citizens of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to create a public library, Henry T. Linebaugh answered the call. For its 75th anniversary, Ramsay has gathered a rich array of stories that tell how Linebaugh Library and its branches became essential parts of my hometown.
AMEN? Questions for a God I Hope Exists (2022) by Julia Rocchi is full of wisdom, vulnerability, and questions asked in an open and seeking spirit. Essays, quotations, poems, and prayers probe the mysteries that make up life in what one reviewer sees as, “a psalter for the post-modern, exhausted age.”
Playing Authors: An Anthology (2023) is a collection by 18 writers asked to consider the question of authorship. “Literary mashups, personal essays, alternative history, and other disobedient forms” are included in this work, beginning with the sad and insightful and laugh-out-loud funny “Hemingway Goes on Book Tour.” I chat with Robyn Ryle about inspiration, the challenges of modern publishing, and imagining other famous authors in the rat race of today’s book tour.
Your City is Sick (2023) by Jeff Siegler is a deep dive into how the various causes of community malaise have led to the dysfunction we see today. Like a blunt yet perceptive doctor, Jeff first helps us understand the disease and then — in straightforward, no-holds-barred language — he prescribes treatments to push his readers to transform their cities through relentless, incremental improvements.
History and biography (and all that entails)
A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them (2023) by Timothy Egan is a page-turning true-life historical thriller of the rise and fall of the powerful Indiana chapter of Ku Klux Klan and D.C. Stephenson, the charismatic, ethically unmoored con man at its helm. “A man who didn’t care about shattering every convention, and then found new ways to vandalize the contract that allowed free people to govern themselves, could do unthinkable damage,” writes Egan. Sound familiar?
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (2017) by David Grann takes the reader through an evil crime spree arising from white settlers’ attempted dispossession of the Osage Indian’s Oklahoma lands and oil riches, exposing once again the dark and odious underbelly of race and greed in America.
The Alaska Native Reader: History, Culture, Politics (2009) edited by Maria Sháa Tláa Williams is a good place to seek understanding of the Indigenous history and perspective in our 49th state, as opposed to the Alaska history often told through the stories of “Russian fur hunters and American gold miners, of salmon canneries and oil pipelines.”
Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure (2022) by Rinker Buck tells of the author’s 2016 quest to take a flatboat from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, recreating the approximate route traveled by millions of Americans in the early 19th century and an adventure undertaken to set the history straight.
Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America(2022) by Leila Philip is a fascinating look at the one animal, besides humans, that has an inordinate impact on their environment. A delightful storyteller, Philip came to her fascination with the weird rodent that scientists dub “ecosystem engineers” when she discovered a group of beavers in a pond near her home. When they disappeared, she was determined to find out more about these creatures.
Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity (2023) by Leah Myers is one young Native American’s fierce piece of personal history. Myers, who may be the last member of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in her family line due to strict blood quantum laws, is searching for ways to ensure that her identity, her family’s story, and the tribe’s history in the Pacific Northwest’s Olympic Peninsula is not lost forever.
The Young Man (2022) by Annie Ernaux is an account by the 2022 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature of her love affair with A., a man some 30 years younger, and Ernaux’s exploration of themes of the movement back and forth between youth and age, of memory and time, of misogyny and class, of life’s pitfalls and pleasures.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2018 with a 2020 afterword) by John Carreyrou is the story of the building of the myth and the ultimate disgrace of Elizabeth Holmes. The Theranos founder claimed to have invented technology that could accurately test for a range of conditions using just a few drops of blood, ultimately raising $945 million from a well-known list of investors. Yet her story began to unravel in 2015 after a Wall Street Journal investigation written by Carreyrou.
How to Resist Amazon and Why (2022) by Danny Caine makes the case for resisting what at times seems to be the takeover of the world by this corporate behemoth.
Murder mysteries (my year of reading dangerously)
And Then There Were None (1939), the classic Agatha Christie mystery, is the book that made Christie the best-selling novelist of all time, and it is a fitting work to feature for my year of reading murder mysteries. The plot is a delicious puzzle as ten strangers arrive on an island only to be picked off one by one. Copies of an ominous nursery rhyme hanging in each room suggests the awful fates of those who are left. There is no one else on the island, so who, exactly, is the murderer?
The Murder on the Links (1923) by Agatha Christie begins with the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot finding his client stabbed to death, lying in a shallow grave on a golf course, wearing only an overcoat and his underwear. Poirot has a nagging suspicion that he’s seen this crime before.
Funerals are Fatal (1953) by Agatha Christie opens as the wealthy head of the family fortune dies suddenly in his Victorian mansion, followed quickly by the savage murder of his sister the next day in her home. Her remark at the funeral, suggesting her brother was murdered, suddenly takes on a chilling significance.
Dead Man’s Folly (1956) by Agatha Christie finds the famous crime writer, Ariadne Oliver organizing a mock murder for a party, and calling her old friend, the world-renowned detective Hercule Poirot, to join her because she feels something sinister is afoot.
Eight Perfect Murders (2020) by Peter Swanson begins as we learn that bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw once wrote a blog post titled Eight Perfect Murders that listed the genre’s most unsolvable murders. An FBI agent has studied a number of unsolved crimes and has a hunch that someone is working their way through the list and leaving dead bodies in their wake.
Maigret and the Lazy Burglar (1961) by Georges Simenon finds detective chief inspector Jules Maigret investigating a woman and her son-in-law who were lovers, just as her husband and their daughter-in-law were lovers; a mother who doesn’t seem too concerned to be left without any means of support when her son is found dead; and a bar/brothel owner — the “lovely Rosalie” — who has an “obscenely picturesque way of expressing herself.”
The Fourth Man (2005) by K.O. Dahl is a smart, dark, complex, and ultimately very satisfying crime novel. Detective Inspector Frank Frølich of the Oslo Police falls in love with a woman who had inadvertently endangered both his police raid and her own life, only to discover that Elisabeth Faremo is the sister of a hardened and wanted member of a local crime gang.
Death in a Strange Country (1993) by Donna Leon is the second in what has become a 32-book series featuring the Venetian detective Guido Brunetti in a story where we fear that Brunetti’s great detective work will come to naught until a distraught and vengeful Sicilian mother provides some small sense of justice in this world of deceit and destruction of things beautiful and meaningful.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963) by John le Carré begins as Alec Leamas, the head of the West Berlin Station for British Intelligence, watches as his last undercover agent is shot down trying to cross the Berlin Wall by East German sentries. Leamas is recalled to London where he is given `a chance for revenge, but at the end of a number of twists and turns he has a choice to make, one where following his heart means certain death.
Whose Body? (1923) by Dorothy L. Sayers is a delightful period puzzle which opens as Lord Peter Wimsey receives a call from his mother asking for his assistance in helping clear her architect of suspicion of murder. It seems that overnight a body, clad only with a pair of fashionable pince-nez, has appeared in his bathtub.
The Thursday Murder Club (2020) by Richard Osman takes us to Coopers Chase, a high-end and peaceful British retirement village where four residents meet weekly to discuss unsolved crimes. When the developer and his lieutenant are murdered, the septuagenarian sleuths have real-life cases to solve in this light, witty, and big-hearted mystery novel.
Fiction (novels, short stories, poetry)
Small Things Like These (2021) by Claire Keegan is a short yet deeply moving novel set in small-town Ireland during the Christmas season of 1985. Bill Furlong is a coal and timber merchant who, while delivering a load to the local convent, makes a discovery that forces him to consider his past and the choices he must make. This little gem of a book brings us face-to-face, in a simple yet memorable story, with how we confront our past while also serving as a deeply moving story of “hope, quiet heroism, and empathy.”
Blue Iris: Poems and Essays (2004) by Mary Oliver is a collection of ten new poems at the time of publication, two dozen of her poems written over the prior two decades, and two previously unpublished essays on the beauty and wonder of plants.
Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch (1991) by Eileen Spinelli is — to put it simply — the best Valentine’s Day book ever. The lonely Mr. Hatch discovers that he has a secret admirer, and — as he learns who loves him — the answer is more wonderful than he ever imagined.
Theology and more (thinking about purpose and mindfulness)
To Speak a Defiant Word: Sermons and Speeches on Justice and Transformation(2023)by Pauli Murray; edited by Anthony B. Pinn brings together the most important sermons, lectures, and speeches from 1960 through 1985 written by one of the most consequential and hopeful of 20th century Americans. Murray was a nonbinary African American member of the LGBTQ community, a civil rights and women’s rights activist, an author and poet, and a brilliant legal scholar who became the first female African American Episcopal priest in the United States and a saint in the Episcopal Church. Murray’s religious ideas and her sense of ministry evolved over a period that became one of the most tumultuous in American history.
The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise (2023) by Pico Iyer leads us on an external odyssey and an internal journey to paradise where Iyer shows us unimaginably beautiful landscapes that, in many instances, have also seen incalculable suffering.
The Four Loves (1960) by C.S. Lewis takes the reader through a description of four different types of love: “affection, the most basic form; friendship, the rarest and perhaps most insightful; Eros, passionate love; charity, the greatest and least selfish.”
Sports (really just baseball)
The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham (2022) by Ron Shelton is a gem of a book on multiple levels. Full disclosure: I love Bull Durham. Shelton, a former minor league baseball player turned writer and director, has a passion for this multi-faceted story that still shines through 35 years after the film was released. And the tale of how Shelton — along with Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon — pursued every angle to make this film — in spite of great odds and with challenges arising around every corner — is worth knowing as well.
Outbursts of radical common sense and whatever else tickled my fancy (otherwise known as the miscellaneous section)
Masters of Tonewood: The Hidden Art of Fine Stringed-Instrument Making(2022) by poet and author Jeffrey Greene is dedicated to exploring how the mysterious personalities of fine stringed instrument are acquired. Greene takes us on a delightful tour of the seven key European “musical forests” where the conditions are such that the Norway spruce — a key tonewood used in instrument making — can thrive. He visits with musicians, luthiers, millers, and foresters in this pleasing and illuminating deep dive into a fascinating world.
Rethink: The Surprising History of New Ideas (2016) by Steven Poole is an insightful work around the story of how many of our new and seemingly innovative ideas are actually based on old ideas that were mocked or ignored for decades if not centuries.
Enjoy!
More to come…
DJB
*To check out previous lists, click here for the posts from
“One of the most precious gifts of life is a sense of wonderment, a sense of awe, a sense of the holy.”
These are the first words of a Christmas sermon delivered in Washington, D.C. by the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray on December 25, 1977. Pauli Murray — born in Baltimore in 1910 and raised during the Jim Crow era in the segregated Southern community of Durham, North Carolina, with all that entails — was a nonbinary African American member of the LGBTQ community, a civil rights and women’s rights activist, the brilliant legal scholar who influenced Ruth Bader Ginsberg and who is responsible for producing what Justice Thurgood Marshall called “the Bible of Civil Rights law,” a poet and writer, the first female African American Episcopal priest in the United States, and a saint in the Episcopal Church. Murray offered communion for the first time in 1977 at Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where her grandmother had been baptized 123 years earlier as a slave.
To Speak a Defiant Word: Sermons and Speeches on Justice and Transformation (2023) by Pauli Murray; edited by Anthony B. Pinn brings together the most important sermons, lectures, and speeches from 1960 through 1985 written by one of the most consequential and hopeful of 20th century Americans. In this work one sees how Murray’s religious ideas and her sense of ministry evolved over a period that became one of the most tumultuous in American history, not unlike the one we are living in today. Yet through it all, she remained struck by a sense of wonder and hopefulness, which makes her Christmas message an appropriate one to hear again this year, on this Christmas Day. Here is an excerpt from that sermon.
One of the most precious gifts of life is a sense of wonderment, a sense of awe, a sense of the holy. Yet often we are so consumed by our own troubles or we become so conditioned to extravagance in modern living that we are in danger of losing this gift. We are assaulted by constant images, instant coverage by on-the-spot-television of today’s significant events, which are soon crowded out of memory by the next day’s news . . . As the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. commented a few days ago . . . the insatiable consumption of novelty by our high-velocity age has enfeebled our capacity for wonder.” The wonder of Christmas is often overshadowed by the bustling preparations for the holiday season . . .
But if we take the time to listen to Luke’s beautiful Gospel narrative of the birth of Christ, we cannot help but be filled with wonderment — not so much because of an angelic host singing “Glory to God in the Highest” but because of the utter simplicity and unpretentiousness of that heavenly event in Bethlehem. As one biblical scholar has said, “God, who is the source and meaning of all life, reveals himself in a little child coming unnoticed in the stable of an unregarded town,” as if to say to us, “here in this lowly place in the most ordinary circumstances, I have come to dwell with you.”
For what could have been more ordinary — and yet more amazing — than the Prince of Peace being born among animals? What could be more astonishing by today’s standards than the fact that the universal Savior who came to demonstrate God’s great love for all human beings appeared among the poor and needy, his coming first announced to lowly shepherds out in the field?
And what is more remarkable in a commercialized society than the simple truth that the greatest gift of Christmas is the gift of oneself? . . .
The wonder of Christmas is that the greatest event in the history of humanity came silently in the night . . . The wonder of Christmas is that in the darkest hour of loneliness and despair, new hope is born if we have faith. . . .
The wonder of Christmas is that suffering and death are not the last word. Emmanuel — God — is with us in every human situation. The little unprotected baby in the manger and the desolate man on the cross revealed that where God is least expected, in the most unlikely times and places — whether at the beginning of life or in the emptiness of death — God is at hand! In every agony, every crisis we are not alone. The light of God’s eternal love shines in the darkness and we shall be safe.
Wishing you a Christmas season filled with wonderment, awe, holiness, and happiness.
With this Saturday Soundtrackfalling just before Christmas Eve, I am sending a gift to readers of some of my favorite vocal ensembles singing several well-loved Yuletide tunes.
We have been hearing O Come, O Come, Emmanuel throughout Advent. Here VOCES8 is joined by members of Apollo5 and The VOCES8 Foundation Choir and Orchestra to perform Taylor Scott Davis’s beautiful arrangement of the tune.
Jesus Christ the Apple Tree is another pre-Christmas Day piece, as Christ speaks from Mary’s womb in this well-loved and familiar tune. It is performed here by Ensemble Altera (including our son, Andrew Bearden Brown) from a 2020 pandemic-era recording (thus the spacing of the singers).
The text of this carol, ‘Jesus Christ the Apple Tree’ is a poem first published in 1784 New Hampshire in a collection prosaically titled ‘Divine Hymns, or Spiritual Songs: for the use of Religious Assemblies and Private Christians’, compiled by Baptist minister Joshua Smith. Whether its provenance is English or American is still the subject of debate, but the transcendentalist beauty of its narrator communing with the divine through nature is not. Elizabeth Poston sets the deeply personal text without affectation in a quiet, almost shape-note hymn style.
Hailed as the leading professional chamber choir in the United States, Ensemble Altera brings beautiful and thoughtful music to every performance. Earlier this month, the group presented a concert of seasonal music in Boston and Providence. Andrew so enjoyed singing this music, including the arresting Michael Garrepy arrangement of O Holy Night which the group just released as a video.
Kenneth Leighton’s The Christ-Child Lay on Mary’s Lap is beautifully performed in this 2016 recording by The Queen’s Six. Based at Windsor Castle, members of The Queen’s Six “make up part of the Lay Clerks of St George’s Chapel, whose homes lie within the Castle walls.”
The lyrics for this piece are from a poem by G.K. Chesterton.
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap, His hair was like a light. (O weary, weary were the world, But here is all aright.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s breast, His hair was like a star. (O stern and cunning are the kings, But here the true hearts are.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s heart, His hair was like a fire. (O weary, weary is the world, But here the world’s desire.)
The Christ-child stood at Mary’s knee, His hair was like a crown. And all the flowers looked up at Him, And all the stars looked down.
VOCES8 has a hauntingly beautiful take on the Ola Gjeilo’s arrangement of Gustav Holst’s In the Bleak Midwinter, based on the well-loved poem by Christina Rossetti.
I love this VOCES8 rendition of the Philip Stopford setting of the Coventry Carol, the traditional English tune dating from the 16th century. Stopford’s Lully, Lulla, Lullay — filmed by VOCES8 in St. Stephen’s Walbrook Church, London — is so haunting, and soprano Eleonore Cockerham’s soft, clear, yet ethereal voice is a treasure.
Finally, we’ll end with a 2021 recording by the sopranos, altos, and countertenors of Ensemble Altera as they sing the traditional English carol Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day in an arrangement by John Rutter. While it first appeared in written form in 1833, the carol is undoubtedly older. “The verses of the hymn progress through the story of Jesus told in his own voice. An innovative feature of the telling is that Jesus’ life is repeatedly characterized as a dance.”
However you celebrate the season, Happy Yuletide to one and all!
December is when “Best of” and “Top Ten” lists spring up in all sorts of places, including More to Come.
This list is your selection of the top posts for the year. Because MTC is not your typical single-focus newsletter, I want to thank you once again for reading this eclectic mix of observations, recollections, and occasional bursts of radical common sense about places that matter, books worth reading, roots music to nourish the soul, the times we live in, and whatever else tickles my fancy. I am so grateful that readers keep checking in, providing feedback through their choices of what’s of interest.
Here’s a baker’s dozen of the top stories from the past year, as selected by the readers of More to Come. And yes you have to go all the way to the end to see what’s #1.
LIMINAL PASSAGES
Three top posts from this year explored passages in life, from birthdays, to retirement, to death.
From certainty to mystery is a perfect description for my life’s history. It is surprising just how much I’ve forgotten since I was sixteen and knew everything. On my sixty-eighth birthday I reflect on a few things I want to accomplish in whatever time is left — most especially to be gratefully aware, not just every day but every hour in a way that leads to true thankfulness.
No longer semi-retired, I have a new life description: Bashing into joy. I’m discovering new worlds while diving deeper into things I love. There is joy in sharing these personal and collective explorations through essays and lectures. Letting go in retirement, relationships, and with long-held expectations can involve disappearance along with a sense of transience and fragility. Disappearance, Kathryn Schulz writes, reminds us to notice, transience to cherish, fragility to defend. “We are here to keep watch, not to keep.”
Letting go of control is hard. Really hard. With all the anxiety and pressure in today’s world, the tendency is to gather all we think we must do and hold on tight. But the fact is that we don’t have that much control, as I learned once again at the funeral of a dear friend. When we open our eyes to how life really works — when we pay attention, in other words — we come to at least see, if not fully accept, the paradox of limitations.
AUTHORS TELL THEIR STORIES
In a series of questions & answers, seven authors graced More to Come this year with their presence. Four of those conversations were among this list of top reader views.
Janet Hulstrand has written a delightful memoir that takes us from her grandmother’s hometown in Iowa to her current home in the French countryside. Along the way we hear much about Janet’s journey. The best journeys are the long ones is the place where Janet and I discuss this testament to family and the writing life.
A 1942 editorial in the Rutherford Courier encouraged the citizens of my hometown to create a public library. Henry T. Linebaugh answered the call. For its 75th anniversary, Lisa Ramsay gathered a rich array of stories that tell how Murfreesboro’s library became an essential part of the community. Lisa and I discuss her work in the post Books for the people.
Sleeping With the Ancestors by Joseph McGill, Jr. and Herb Frazier is a compelling work about a crusading effort to draw attention to the preservation of dwellings where enslaved people lived, worked, and raised their families. A former National Trust colleague, Joe is Changing the narrative one slave dwelling at a time. Joe and I talked about his book and the work to broaden what began as a modest regional effort into a national force.
Julia Rocchi’s is a questioning faith, and in her new book she invites the reader to join in her journey. Essays, quotations, poems, and prayers probe the mysteries that make up life. I was delighted when Julia, a long-time friend, allowed me to ask questions that we explored in A questioning faith.
LIVING A WONDER-SMITTEN LIFE
Throughout the year, I wrote about living with a sense of wonder. Two of those posts rose to this list.
In a remarkable 43-year project, Carol Highsmith has visited all 50 states and photographed the people and places of this incredible country. Hundreds of thousands of these images will eventually be donated copyright free to the American people via the Library of Congress, a project I celebrated in A gift to America.
The New Year is a time when many begin thinking of resolutions. Ten years ago, I established several rules of how I want to live day-to-day. In We live remarkable lives, I review those rules through a summary of eight different posts from the previous year.
FAMILY
I’ve always included family stories as part of this newsletter. Three of those posts from 2023 made this list.
Journeys are often about finding either something we’ve lost or discovery of something we’ve never seen before. And when we’re lucky, a journey with a lifetime partner is one of extraordinary discovery. I’ve been very lucky, as I write on this post for our 41st anniversary.
Andrew was a finalist in the 10th annual Handel Aria Competition in Madison, Wisconsin. I posted videos and photos in A memorable evening of Handel.
Our year in photos — 2023 is the latest in an annual collection of family photographs that began in 2008.
AND THE WINNER IS . . .
Everyone has someplace they call home. Which may be the reason that my thoughts on what home means to me — as found in the essay Home is . . . — resonated with so many of you.
MORE TO COME... 