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Lessons from Mom

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In 2022 I wrote the perfect note for Mother’s Day. Well, at least it was perfect for me. So rather than agonize over finding some thoughtful new perspective on the topic, I’m simply reposting this in a slightly edited form. *

Mother loved the old-fashioned iris. She had them in our garden patch and when I see them today my thoughts inevitably turn to her. As I passed near the Koiner Urban Farm on one of my recent walks I saw my first irises of the year. During what has been a tough time for anyone who cares about rights and democracy in America, my thoughts of Mom went to how she dealt with similar challenges.

Mom passed away on New Year’s Day in 1998, but her life and the lessons she taught me still provide a helping hand here in the 21st century. Lessons such as:

  • Women are to be respected and valued as people. Mom, the first woman elected as a deacon at First Baptist Church, was a quiet but effective leader who valued other women as leaders. She worked most of her career under a woman, Briley Adcock, our municipal library director. Helen Brown was no radical feminist, but she also did not buy any of the “woman’s place on a pedestal” nonsense. Two of the best bosses in my career were women, and I worked easily in that environment thanks to Mom’s example.
  • Books are meant to be read, not banned and burned. Mom was a lifelong reader and learner. She loved books and as both a mother and a librarian she loved teaching young children about books. I am appalled at the push by right-wing zealots to ban books today, as if we learned nothing from the fight against the fascists in World War II. Our country is filled with problems. Reading too many books isn’t one of them.
  • Vote in every election. Mom and Dad were informed citizens with a strong BS detector when it came to politicians. They also voted in every election. Being independent, I know of more than one occasion when they cancelled each other’s votes. I’ve followed Mom’s lead, voting in every election since 1976 when I supported Jimmy Carter for president.
  • Treat everyone with respect. And that means everyone. We simply were not permitted to be rude to others, no matter how different they were or how marginalized by society. As the country has become more intolerant, I frequently remind myself not to fall into that trap.
  • Be the person you are meant to be. Mom and Dad probably succeeded with this life principle beyond their wildest dreams. Even when it was tough, they stood by their belief that each child has to figure out what is in store for them in this world. I have tried, generally with success, to follow their example with our children.
  • You have no right to complain if you don’t do the service. Mom did not like cynics who complained without making a serious effort to work towards a solution. She took her turn as PTA president, even though it was the year our local schools were being desegregated following the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. She did it because she felt it was the right thing to do. Mom was always “in the arena” as Teddy Roosevelt would say. **

When I see the patch of iris, I am reminded that Mom is still here, helping me see that we are facing another moment in America where we can change our narrative and our future for the better. It will not be easy, but we need to see everyone — even the marginalized — as humans of value with the same rights we have. We need to educate ourselves so we don’t blindly follow the tribe. We need to do our duty as citizens in a democracy.

It will not be easy, but we have to continue to try, for ourselves, and for our children and grandchildren. Our mothers are calling us.

Happy Mother’s Day.

More to come…

DJB

*In the original post I also linked to a lovely remembrance of Mom by my sister Carol.

**In his famous Citizenship in a Republic speech, Roosevelt railed against cynics who looked down at those who were trying to make the world a better place. “The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer,” he said. “A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities — all these are marks, not … of superiority but of weakness.” It is the person (man in Roosevelt’s day) who is actually in the arena, who comes up short but keeps striving, who counts.

Image by dewdrop157 from Pixabay

Still shocked, despite the regularity

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The BBC “top of the news” reporter said “despite the regularity, people are still shocked” after the May 6th mass shooting at an outlet mall near Dallas, Texas. The observation is right in noting the regularity. But how can anyone still be shocked by this news. If the day has a “y” in it, chances are good that there’s been a mass shooting somewhere in our country.

Somewhat appropriately, the BBC report came on just before the regularly scheduled programming which featured a new report in Reveal entitled, No Retreat: The Dangers of Stand Your Ground. In a string of recent shootings, the report noted, young victims have been killed or seriously injured over innocent mistakes.

In her May 6th Letters from an American newsletter, historian Heather Cox Richardson, who has long focused on the history of the Republican Party in America, began with the following three paragraphs.

For years now, after one massacre or another, I have written some version of the same article, explaining that the nation’s current gun free-for-all is not traditional but, rather, is a symptom of the takeover of our nation by a radical extremist minority. The idea that massacres are “the price of freedom,” as right-wing personality Bill O’Reilly said in 2017 after the Mandalay Bay massacre in Las Vegas, in which a gunman killed 60 people and wounded 411 others, is new, and it is about politics, not our history.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution, on which modern-day arguments for widespread gun ownership rest, is one simple sentence: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” There’s not a lot to go on about what the Framers meant, although in their day, to “bear arms” meant to be part of an organized militia.

As the Tennessee Supreme Court wrote in 1840, “A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.”

Where did today’s insistence that the Second Amendment gives individuals a broad right to own guns comes from? Richardson highlights two key origins:

  • “One is the establishment of the National Rifle Association in New York in 1871, in part to improve the marksmanship skills of American citizens who might be called on to fight in another war, and in part to promote in America the British sport of elite shooting, complete with hefty cash prizes in newly organized tournaments.” 

But that changed in the mid-1970s when a faction in the NRA forced the organization away from sports and toward opposing “gun control.” 

  • [T]he second thing that led us to where we are today: leaders of the NRA embraced the politics of Movement Conservatism, the political movement that rose to combat the business regulations and social welfare programs that both Democrats and Republicans embraced after World War II.

If you are not familiar with the term, Richardson defines “Movement Conservatives” as those who “embraced the myth of the American cowboy as a white man standing against the ‘socialism’ of the federal government as it sought to level the economic playing field between Black Americans and their white neighbors.”

Richardson lays out the history by noting that until 1959, “every single legal article on the Second Amendment concluded that it was not intended to guarantee individuals the right to own a gun.” However that changed in the 1970s, when “legal scholars funded by the NRA had begun to argue that the Second Amendment did exactly that.”

Awash with funds from gun and ammo manufacturers, the NRA by 2000 was one of the top three lobbying organizations in the country.

Historian of authoritarianism Ruth Ben-Ghiat has also weighed in recently about the unspoken and enormous economic cost of gun violence. If we want to end gun violence, she suggests, we need to let people know that “a different reality is desired by millions of Americans.” As an example she quotes a pitch by communications strategist Anat Shenker-Osorio: “Imagine sending your kid to school, and the biggest worry on their minds is, ‘Where did I put my homework?’ This is the future, and it’s ours for the taking…Losing too many of our loved ones to gun violence is a choice we don’t need to keep making.”

Historians provide important context to critical issues facing the nation today. I encourage you to read Richardson’s entire post, which ends with these two paragraphs:

The unfettered right to own and carry weapons has come to symbolize the Republican Party’s ideology of individual liberty. Lawmakers and activists have not been able to overcome Republican insistence on gun rights despite the mass shootings that have risen since their new emphasis on guns.

Tonight, I am, once again, posting yet another version of this article.

Even with a large majority of Americans supporting common-sense gun laws, the fight to hear their voices, the fight for democracy, never ends.

More to come…

DJB

Image by Julita from Pixabay

Beware the half-truths and false narratives

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Lies have been in the news recently. Not the preferred variety or the everyday ones we all engage in.

We’re hearing more today about those whoppers that belong in the Liars’ Hall of Fame.

We construct false narratives to shape the future toward a personal vision, to survive in a challenging world, or to accumulate power and wealth. If we want to combat the destructive power of lies, individuals, institutions, and countries need to be clear-eyed about what happens when we allow deceits, half-truths, and false narratives to take over our stories.

Let’s start with the lies used to build individual myths.

Personal brands are everywhere in today’s working world, and they can help raise the profile of people and communities who have been traditionally marginalized. Like it or not, nonprofit and for-profit institutions offer little or no job security. For those with a worldview focused on building community, the idea of always focusing on one’s personal brand may seem distasteful. But a changing work environment requires new approaches.

Unfortunately, the lure to create a compelling and engaging story can easily slide over into our very human tendency to build unsustainable myths.

We see it play out daily in the business world, as in the myth of the good and smart billionaire. In America we have created a system that has its foundations in the myth of a meritocracy, one which rewards the few at the cost of the many. So we created another myth — that money makes people smart — to sustain the first.

As Amanda Marcotte wrote in Solon, perhaps we are finally beginning to see the negative impacts of such a corrupted belief system, getting the point that billionaires aren’t any smarter than other people and don’t deserve our praise. “Between Elon Musk, Sam Bankman-Fried, Donald Trump and Elizabeth Holmes,” she asks, “who still believes that money equals brains?”

Elizabeth Holmes remains in the news as she appeals her conviction on multiple charges of defrauding investors while begining a personal rebranding tour. * She is an especially timely reminder of the destructive power of deceit and the false narrative.

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 dropped out of Stanford while still in her teens to focus full-time on the health tech startup which claimed to have invented technology that could accurately test for a range of conditions using just a few drops of blood. Theranos raised $945 million from a well-known list of investors and was valued at $9 billion at its peak. Yet her story began to unravel after a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2015 written by Carreyrou reported that the company had only performed roughly a dozen of the hundreds of tests it offered using its proprietary technology, and even in those few cases the accuracy of the results was questioned. Theranos was relying on third-party manufactured devices from traditional blood testing companies rather than its own technology, as it claimed.

In Bad Blood, Carreyrou takes the reader through this sordid story of how the thirst for money, fame, and control — “Apple envy,” he names it, in honor of Holmes’s pursuit to become the next Steve Jobs — wrecked lives, endangered patients, led to a man’s suicide, and wasted almost a billion dollars of investment. Holmes, along with her COO and secret lover Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, used lies, hubris, obfuscation, influential contacts, PR stunts, nepotism, fraud, bullying, and more to hide the simple fact that the empress had no clothes. Carreyrou is a riveting writer and detailed reporter, producing a book that reads like a crime thriller. It also resembles a fable with a clear moral about the downfall of those who traffic in deceit, lies, hubris, and unexamined blind spots in personal principles.

Cautionary tales about badly skewed moral compasses should lead to introspection, conclusions and responses. On the personal level, we need to understand the reasons why personal myth building can be dangerous. Guidelines for building personal brands usually stress authenticity, integrity, and trustworthiness. My experience in the nonprofit sector suggests it is all too easy for half-truths to creep into personal brand-building when describing fundraising prowess and program impact. Others will eventually discover that you’ve inflated the truth or taken credit for the work of others. It is more accurate and authentic to recognize those contributions. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. It is a lesson worth remembering.

Some observers believe the tables are turning, and that we are finally beginning to see a rise in transparency in America just as happened in the early twentieth century. At that time, reformers expressed concerns about the concentration of wealth and power at the top of American society. But those concerns were ignored until investigative journalists at McClure’s Magazine and elsewhere …

… began to explore the specifics of political corruption and its cost to ordinary Americans. … [Those journalists] helped to shift the weight of social value from keeping secrets to spilling them.

When that shift happened, the walls protecting the country’s entrenched leaders crumbled fast.

Too often we are asked by those in power to look at life with the singular consideration of how much money can be made by those who own our businesses. That worldview ignores the remarkable nature of life and the redemptive power that comes from books, music, art, nature, relationships, and much more. We have dislocated the joy that comes from these treasures and forgotten what really matters.

Stretching the truth in your personal story may never reach the level of Elizabeth Holmes, but her cautionary tale is a good one for all to remember.

More to come…

DJB

* As I was finishing this book, the New York Times (predictably) wrote a piece white-washing Holmes’s white collar crime entitled “Liz Holmes Wants You to Forget About Elizabeth.” The fabulous New York Times Pitchbot parody Twitter account was having none of it:

The Weekly Reader links to written works I’ve enjoyed. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry. 

Preferred lies image by Kevin Phillips from Pixabay

Banish apathy

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Have you ever been tempted to type in the big shrug emoji in response to an email? Give an unenthusiastic “well, OK” to a colleague’s question? Darken your camera so you can doze off in a Zoom meeting? Scan the possibilities and then respond to a supervisor or spouse with “whatever”?

If you’ve ever experienced that “meh” attitude, stop! Kill that impulse!

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. We have a chance to make a big impact in both, but to do so we have to make the numerous daily decisions that everyone faces. The choices we make, even the small ones, help us pivot toward the life and career we want. But that becomes much harder if we tend to rely on “whatever” as a substitute for decision-making. It is a word that “can be a whole sentence, an attitude, an ‘OK,’ or nothing at all.” It can also be habit forming, with disastrous long-term consequences.

An entrepreneur, author, radio host, and former college president, Rich draws on a lifetime of personal experience in this, his tenth book. But he also expands the perspective through interviews with a wide range of corporate decision makers. They all help us see that banishing apathy is a big key to success.

I’ve known Rich and his wife Carol for years. In Never Say Whatever, Rich writes with the honest and humorous style I’ve come to know and appreciate. I was pleased and honored when Rich agreed to share insights he’s uncovered with readers of More to Come.

DJB: Rich, why has the word “whatever” come to be such a toxic response in both our business and personal lives?

RM: The word “whatever” can be both a lazy response and a way to avoid a decision. Both are behaviors that are not going to live a better life or enhance your career. The small decisions are especially susceptible to a “whatever” but it’s all the millions of small decisions that make for a good life and a successful career. Think about your own reaction when you come across someone who says “whatever” all the time. It’s not good. In global surveys about the most annoying words we deal with, “whatever” is always near the top. The simple act of removing that word from your persona will make you a better person. 

A way to think about curing “whatever” is to be intentional. If your intentions are clear, it is always easier to make decisions, especially the small ones. If you intend to lose weight, you act like you are on a diet and make decisions accordingly. Simple.

We’ve all heard that we shouldn’t worry about the small stuff. You disagree. Why are these small decisions so critical to success and happiness and is there a cost to avoiding them?

The research shows that we make about 35,000 decisions in a day. That is an incredible number. The same research found we make over 300 decisions in the act of going out to lunch. Think of lunch as a metaphor: where to sit? turkey? rye? sourdough? mustard? lettuce? You get the idea. Giving a “whatever” answer to any of those simple questions will likely result in a sandwich you don’t want. I think if you make decisions about the small stuff you won’t worry about it as much.

Many of your examples are for those working in the business sector, so how do the lessons you bring to light apply to the nonprofit world, and how might they differ between those two sectors?

The nonprofit world can fall victim to “whatever” too. I found that when people give up or feel that their efforts won’t make a difference, a “whatever” attitude can settle in to the organization and the individual. When the problems that the nonprofit are trying to solve are so big, the needle of success might not move every day. Think climate change or hunger. Breaking down missions into bite-size projects with bite-size decisions might be a better way to go. It’s important to recognize when a “whatever” attitude is creeping in and kill it before it can spread. I found no difference between any demographic or organization about how “whatever” can be toxic.

Rich Moran

Each chapter includes “Tools and Hacks” to help apply the lessons being shared as well as a perspective on “Whatever” from a range of successful leaders. Can you share a favorite of each that especially resonates with you?

Decision making need not be complicated. Too often the approach to decision making can get in the way of the actual decision. Spreadsheets and pivot tables are not always the answer. Everyone has their go-to tools including listing pros and cons or relying on the gut. My favorite tools that were mentioned was the “Magic 8 Ball”. Someone else asks SIRI on their iPhone about decisions. Successful leaders can process decisions quickly based on listening, data, examining the options and choosing one. All the leaders I spoke to sort of have the same approach. But remember, we are all leaders of something. At the most basic level we are the leader of our own life.

Finally, Rich, what is the successful business consultant and entrepreneur reading these days?

I tend to listen to wise advisors like you, David. You recommended Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman and it changed my perspective about time. Another favorite is This is Happiness by Niall Williams. Recommendations come in all genres and I like them all. I tend to use reading as a time to learn about writing as well as the subject matter. The table next to my bed is full of books from my favorite recommenders. The latest additions are:

Many thanks, Rich, for taking the time to share your insights.

Thanks so much David. I appreciate it.

More to come…

DJB

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Gordon Lightfoot, R.I.P.

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Canadian folksinger and songwriter Gordon Lightfoot — another voice from my 20s and 30s — passed away on May 1st. I first heard the news from Walter Tunis who writes The Musical Box, an informative and delightful WordPress newsletter with a decidedly personal perspective on music and musicians he has enjoyed through the years. Tunis’s opening paragraph following Lightfoot’s death is a good place to start this tribute.

He sang about hitchhikers and loners, railroads and highways, shipwrecks and heart strings. In a career than spanned over 60 years, Gordon Lightfoot gave voice to some of the most remarkable story-songs ever to hit America from the Great White North. While the subject matter of his compositions regularly shifted, his allegiance to the folk inspirations that took hold as a youth in his native Ontario was never broken. A Lightfoot song was as light as a feather but solid as oak.

Lightfoot had a warm baritone voice that welcomed the listener into the song. The subjects might change, but the sound stayed remarkable consistent: rich and mellow.

The singer described Early Morning Rain as his “first good song” and the one that got him started in the music business after it was recorded by Peter, Paul, and Mary. Not surprisingly, it also resonated with the editorial cartoonist for the Montreal Gazette.

If You Could Read My Mind showcases Lightfoot’s storytelling craft, beginning with those memorable first two lines:

If you could read my mind, love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old time movie
‘Bout a ghost from a wishing well

Written to someone he once loved but is now losing, the song is one of Lightfoot’s most personal. It was written about his deteriorating marriage to his first wife Brita Ingegerd Olaisson, and he “moves from ruminating to his own reflections on the relationship to feelings of loneliness and grief.”

One of my favorite Lightfoot tunes is Song for a Winter’s Night. Here’s a great live version with an introduction that speaks to the inspiration for the story — a friend who lost his girlfriend and heads up to the chalet to drink away the winter night.

Steel Rail Blues, heard in the video below from a 1972 concert, was described as “the kind of song you write after you’ve been robbed, stepped on, and somebody’s done the rain dance all over your head.”

Well I been out here many a long day
I haven’t found a place that I could call my own
Not a two bit bed to lay my body on
I been stood up I been shook down
I been dragged into the sand
And the big steel rail
Gonna carry me home to the one I love

Another of his big hits was the aptly titled Beautiful, which is just that. Artists and reviewers from all different musical genres loved Gordon’s songs. That’s followed by another Lightfoot classic, That’s What You Get for Lovin’ Me.

Lightfoot’s music was accessible and beautifully crafted, and a wide range of musical artists covered his tunes. As Walter Tunis notes in his appreciation, these included “Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Neil Young, Nanci Griffith, Eric Clapton, Alison Krauss, Paul Weller, The Replacements and the Grateful Dead.”

Bluegrass musicians also loved Gordon’s music, none more so than the late Tony Rice. Perhaps the earliest Lightfoot tune he recorded was Ten Degrees and Getting Colder during his years with J.D. Crowe and the New South.

Over the years, Rice would drop a Lightfoot tune or two into his solo projects, and in 1996, after he had lost his voice, Rounder released a compilation album entitled Tony Rice Sings Gordon Lightfoot. One of Tony’s signature tunes was Cold on the Shoulder, heard here with Sam Bush, Mark O’Connor, Jerry Douglas, Bela Fleck, and Mark Schatz in a classic Merlefest performance. That’s followed by the newer generation of newgrassers — Punch Brothers — playing The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The line “Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?” is haunting.

Canadians loved having Lightfoot as one of their own. I cannot recall seeing editorial cartoons drawn for other folksingers upon their passing, much less tributes in the Canadian House of Commons and by the Toronto Maple Leaves, a hockey team, before their second round Stanley Cup game.

Tunis returned to Lightfoot later in the week on The Musical Box with his 10 Favorite Songs by Gordon Lightfoot. Everyone’s list will differ, but Walter has some excellent selections among his choices.

Carefree Highway, with images of highways and byways of western Canada, seems an appropriate tune on which to end this appreciation.

Rest in peace, Gordon Lightfoot. Your music will live on.

More to come…

DJB

Why I love baseball

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As noted on Opening Day, my expectations for baseball were modest this year. In fact, I didn’t make it to a live game until just a week ago. But the baseball I’ve seen over the last seven days is a great reminder of why I love baseball, no matter what the wealthy owners and the sports industrial complex do to undermine our trust and loyalty.

First, it helps to kick off your season with great seats behind home plate (thanks Gus!) with a warm and generous friend. While in Boston last week, Ed Quattlebaum and I conspired to catch the Red Sox at Fenway. As in all things at this historic park, it was special.

Nothing could be better than to watch a game at Fenway with my long-time friend Ed Quattlebaum

Catching up with Ed on a cool spring evening; being carded to get a beer (hey, Massachusetts has Puritanical liquor laws); seeing the Sox and the Guardians up close; watching as a dinger sailed over the Green Monster … priceless! Ed and I had a wonderful time in spite of the Red Sox loss.

Great seats to watch a game at historic Fenway Park

Then yesterday was the first game in my reduced six-game package for the Washington Nationals. For reasons mentioned elsewhere, our group took out a half-season plan for 2023. In response, the Nats shifted our seats a bit and, lo-and-behold, they are actually better. We’re now right behind home plate. Our new seats are literally two rows below the television camera at the press-box level that shows the full field action.

Our new Section 313 seats are even better than in previous years

My backdoor neighbor Mark and I enjoyed a delicious Jammin’ Island BBQ platter with rice and beans and cole slaw, topped by a delicious IPA. Patrick Corbin — who hadn’t pitched well since the 2019 World Series — surprised us all and pitched a helluva seven innings, allowing only one hit to the Cubs until Davy left him in too long and he gave up two more hits (and was saddled with two runs) in the eighth. When the Cubs came back to tie it 3-3, our entire section could feel a letdown coming.

And then before the bottom of the ninth, Mark said, “Well, let’s just hit a dinger and get it over with.” The words were barely out of his mouth when Alex Call did just that, swinging at the first pitch and getting his first career walk-off home run.

A walk off!

Oh, and the whole thing took a brisk one hour and 55 minutes. Did you recall that I said I love the pitch clock? The baseball of my youth has returned!

The Nats have now won three of their last four series, and as Barry Svrluga wrote recently in the Post, the team is finally doing things right: Catch the ball, throw the ball: Nats finally following baseball’s truths.

Will miracles never cease?

This is why I love the game. Let’s play ball!

More to come…

DJB

All photos by DJB

From the bookshelf: April 2023

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Each month my goal is to read five books on a variety of topics and from different genres. Here are the books I read in April 2023. If you click on the title, you’ll go to the longer post on More to Come. Enjoy.

The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors (2017) by David George Haskell is a fascinating book in its subject matter, scope, and approach. Yes, this is a book of science, but it is also a book of contemplative studies. And philosophy. And modern cultural studies. And yes, even history. Haskell, in repeated visits to twelve individual trees in different settings all around the world, dives deeply into their biology and evolution. But some of the more intriguing perspectives shared by this lyrical writer are centered around the networks that trees depend on and provide to the wider world, including humans. The twelve trees that are the stars of Haskell’s book symbolize the key theme that comes through all his work: “life is about relationships [and} we can find salvation in this view of life as a community.”

The Cross and the Lynching Tree (2011) by James H. Cone invites us to see the world through the eyes of the world’s marginalized and oppressed. It takes us into this world through one of our most recognized religious symbols, the cross, and through one of America’s most terrible national sins, lynching. The cross and the lynching tree are separated by nearly 2,000 years, and though both are symbols of death, one represents a message of hope and salvation, while the other signifies the negation of that message by white supremacy. Both had the same purpose: to strike terror in the subject community. “The crucifixion was clearly a first-century lynching. Both are symbols of the death of the innocent, mob hysteria, humiliation, and terror. 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.” This is a deep, penetrating exploration of these symbols and their “interconnection in the history and souls of black folk.” 

The Wake of the Unseen Object: Travels Through Alaska’s Native Landscapes (1991; classic reprint edition 2020) by Tom Kizzia is one man’s exploration of Alaska’s ancestral landscapes and contemporary life in bush country. Kizzia, who wrote some 80 stories in the 1980s for the Anchorage Daily News that became the basis for this work, lets the native Alaskans tell their story. He went beyond the road system to visit villages and people who are working to maintain their balance and connections with the past while still living in the present. As Kizzia says in the new introduction to the University of Alaska’s classic reprint edition, “the great dramas of Alaska Native life revolve around efforts to adapt and resist, to preserve hunting and fishing and sharing traditions for future generations, to balance self-government and corporate capitalism, to overcome traumas that followed subjugation by colonial powers.”

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. A 1942 editorial in the Rutherford Courier entitled Books and Our Town encouraged the citizens of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to create a public library. Henry T. Linebaugh answered the call, although it took several years for the community to respond to his generosity and open its first public library, named after the benefactor’s mother. For its 75th anniversary, Ramsay has gathered a rich array of stories that tell how the library became an essential part of the community. She also tells of the very real people who make it all work, including the “much beloved Helen Brown” — my mother — and current Linebaugh Branch Librarian Carol Brown Ghattas, my sister. In the post, I have a Q&A with the author about civic engagement, strong female leadership, and New Deal bookmobiles.

Funerals are Fatal (1953) by Agatha Christie opens as Richard Abernethie, the wealthy head of the family fortune dies suddenly in his Victorian mansion. When a sister is savagely murdered with a hatchet the next day in her home, the extraordinary remark she made at her brother’s funeral, suggesting he was murdered, suddenly takes on a chilling significance. The family solicitor probes the mystery and uncovers a great deal that was unknown. Ultimately he turns to his old friend Hercule Poirot for help. Classic Agatha Christie themes are evident throughout the book: “a healthy inheritance casts suspicion on the family, but as ever, nothing is quite as it seems.”

More to come…

DJB

NOTE: Click to see the books I read in January, February, and March. Also check out Ten tips for reading five books a month.

This Weekly Reader features links to recent articles, blog posts, or books that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry. 

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

When we can’t be bothered to love

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Conversations and sermons in the Episcopal church rarely mention sin. To many it may feel like an old-fashioned notion and not appropriate for a progressive faith tradition. Or we may simply be too polite. But the topic wasn’t a problem in the Baptist church of my youth. I was up to my eyeballs in sermons that called me to repent of my sins. And they were many. Sins were understood to be personal failings; struggles that arise when one is too weak to stand up to temptation. The outcome is that we are separated from the divine.

We all take personal actions that lead to estrangement. It may come for the nonbeliever in the form of separation from other individuals, or the community, or nature. However, if one is raised in certain religious traditions — such as those that specialize in awarding what Soupergirl co-founder and Orthodox Jew Sara Polon calls a “PhD in guilt” — the introduction of the notion of sin “brings us into contact with what philosophers call ‘existential anxiety.'”

On a recent Saturday morning I found myself in the midst of a strange and perhaps unique confluence of cultures. This four-decade Episcopalian who nonetheless still finds elements of his Baptist upbringing lurking somewhere deep in his soul was sitting in his current church listening to a black Methodist minister speak words from a Jesuit theologian which made so much sense that I couldn’t get them out of my mind.

We were delving into the topic of racism and food injustice. And the speaker stopped me cold when he said,

Sin is the failure to bother to love.

The words came from James F. Keenan, S.J. He is the Catholic theologian being quoted by the Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter (the Methodist minister) at the recent seminar of St. Alban’s Parish (the Episcopal church) on Faith and Food: A Christian Ethical Response to Food Injustice.

As Keenen proposes, and Christopher explained on that Saturday morning, we actually sin out of our strengths, not our weaknesses.

Our sin is usually not in what we did, not in what we could not avoid, not in what we tried not to do. Our sin is usually where you and I are comfortable, where we do not feel the need to bother … where we have found complacency, a complacency not where we rest in being loved, but where we rest in our delusional self-understanding of how much better we are than others. It is at that point of self-satisfaction that … we usually do not bother to love.

Sinning out of our strengths? Oh my! This was a concept of wrongdoing, of estrangement, of sin that had somehow never permeated my cocooned worldview.

I had to wrestle with that one.

Christopher reminded us that in the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus tells how first a priest and then a Levite came along and saw the man who had been beaten and left for dead by robbers. Neither could be bothered to stop, so they crossed to the other side of the road and kept on walking. However, it is the Samaritan — a man from another country, an enemy if you will — who takes pity on the victim, binds his wounds, and carries him to the inn for care.

There are many examples in the scriptures — and even more in our current polarized world too easily prone to fear and hatred — of people who could have done something and did not. They could not bother to stop.

I find myself in that group virtually every day.

If you don’t buy a theological approach to sin, think of the actions we take that willingly separate us from other humans or from all creation. When we think in those terms, seeing that estrangement as coming out of our weaknesses allows us to gloss over our responsibility. It becomes trivial. It also becomes prone to easy manipulation.

But when we see estrangement as coming out of our strength, as love we can and should share but choose not to because we cannot be bothered, then it seems that the true nature and consequences of our separation from the community of our fellow creatures and the divine becomes real.

Photo by Dan DeAlmeida on Unsplash

As Christopher said in his sermon the following day in the context of both the lectionary’s reading about the road to Emmaus and our weekend topic of food, we learn about others, and our frame of reference is changed, when we break bread with those we don’t know. We learn other stories, we learn to empathize with others, and we learn to love when we eat together. So the questions he asks are, “Who do you need to break bread with, and what story do you want your food choices to tell?”

Asking where, in the busyness of our lives, we need to stop and find the time to love is not a question that is easily dismissed. I’m wrestling with it still.

More to come…

DJB

Image of window from Good Samaritan Hospital, New York.

Observations from … April 2023

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A summary of posts included on More to Come in April 2023. If you receive my monthly email update, you can skip this one.

During a recent seminar on food injustice, one of our speakers suggested that by clearly articulating our values we can identify ― and hopefully begin to close ― the gap between what we say we believe and how we actually live out those values. For instance, who do we say is of value and who do we actually include at the table when we break bread together? Or more broadly, what do we say we value as a nation and what do our actions show?

In April, More to Come considered these gaps between professions of belief and actions as I explored the intersections of history, community, and current events.

ANOTHER AUTHOR INTERVIEW TOPS THE LIST OF READER FAVORITES

Public libraries tell us a great deal about a community’s civic health, showing the link between what we say we value (children and education) and how we live out that value. In what is becoming a habit, my most recent author interview has topped the list of most-viewed posts. Books for the people is my interview with author Lisa R. Ramsay about her new work — published on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the public library in my hometown — entitled Books and Our Town: A History of the Rutherford County Library System.

In our conversation we explore civic engagement, strong female leadership, and TVA’s early involvement in getting books to rural communities. My mother was a long-time librarian in Murfreesboro and my sister is the current Linebaugh Branch Librarian, so I am pleased to have a Q&A to get this story to readers of More to Come. If you love libraries and local histories, I think you’ll enjoy this post.

HISTORY HELPS US UNDERSTAND THE PRESENT MOMENT

In the midst of upheaval, we throw out the word “unprecedented” a great deal. Yes, there are things that haven’t happened before. But even those events can be set in a proper context by understanding history. This month, there were four times I turned to the past ― and those who write about the past ― for help in understanding events swirling around us today.

  • The tragic mass shooting in Nashville, the protests that followed, and the expulsion of two black legislators from Tennessee’s House of Representatives in the wake of their support for the protestors was on my mind in A country that was built on a protest. My native state is one of paradox, and these actions made me very sad for how a minority has resorted to authoritarianism to hold on to power. This all played out on Maundy Thursday, and as one Tennessee resident noted it was beyond ironic “that the Republicans produced a trial that felt rigged to give a foregone conclusion on this day of all days.”
  • Aligning the way we eat with our values is a two-part post, the first of which previews the 2023 St. Alban’s Memorial Lecture Series focusing on how the ways we eat could better align with our social and theological values. There is an important historical narrative describing how our present inequitable food system developed, and that story came through during the seminar. After the series was complete, I posted the videos of those talks to the original post.
  • That discussion on food and faith took place on Earth Day, so it seemed appropriate to repost historian Heather Cox Richardson’s look at its history. Earth Day 2023 is her thoughtful and informative reminder of “an earlier era, one in which Americans recognized a crisis that transcended partisanship and came together to fix it.”
  • Finally, when you feel that all the world “is uniformly a disaster-zone, run by malicious idiots,” read Bad events, good trends. The world is not as bad as we think.

ALL BOOKS ALL THE TIME (OR SO IT SEEMS)

In addition to Lisa Ramsay’s history of my hometown library, I read my usual wide range of books in April.

  • James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree, which I review in Faith, race, and the American experience, will upset your equilibrium in all the best ways. This is a revelation of a book that invites us to see the world through different eyes, those of the world’s marginalized and oppressed. 
  • The networks that sustain and shape us is a review of David George Haskell’s “noisy” 2017 book, The Songs of Trees. This is a book of science, but it is also a book of contemplative studies. And philosophy. And modern cultural studies. And yes, even history. Haskell, in repeated visits to twelve individual trees in different settings all around the world, dives deeply into their biology and evolution, as well as the networks that trees depend on and provide to the wider world, including humans.
  • In preparing for an upcoming trip and lectures in Alaska, I read a classic study of Life beyond the road system. Tom Kizza’s book The Wake of the Unseen Object examines native Alaskans life in the back country.

MUSIC FOR THE SOUL

It really wasn’t planned this way, but the Saturday Soundtrack features for April carried forward similar themes. Folksinger Carrie Newcomer’s music at the intersection of the sacred and the ordinary, which I highlight in Room at the table, is so vital today.

  • An invitation to journey and wonder introduces readers to The Arcadian Wild. The young band from Nashville plays progressive folk and bluegrass in the style of Nickel Creek. Their music is an invitation to find rest, to journey, to wonder.
  • In the midst of the pandemic, I asked my son — Andrew Bearden Brown — to curate a soundtrack of his favorite Music for Holy Week. I reposted it here, three years later, because this is timeless music by amazing artists.

CONCLUSION

Thanks, as always, for reading. As you travel life’s highways, do your best to treat others with kindness, 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 because the fight never ends.

Finally, try to be nice, always be kind.

More to come…

DJB

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.

For the March 2023 summary, click here.

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

Things are not always what they seem

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One of the traditional tools of the trade of the crime novelist is the killer who isn’t what they seem to be. Because these are murder mysteries it usually takes a great detective like Hercule Poirot to uncover the deception, especially when the murder is first announced at the funeral.

The classic with the clever alliterative title was the April choice in my year of reading mystery novels.

Funerals are Fatal (1953) by Agatha Christie was published in the U.K. as After the Funeral. The book opens as Richard Abernethie, the wealthy head of the family fortune dies suddenly in his Victorian mansion. One sister is convinced it was murder. When that same sister, Cora, is savagely murdered with a hatchet the next day in her home, the extraordinary remark she made at her brother’s funeral suddenly takes on a chilling significance.

At the reading of Richard’s will, all those present saw Cora — the family member given to blurting out unpleasant truths — tilt her head on one side “with a bird-like movement” and say: “It’s been hushed up very nicely, hasn’t it … But he was murdered, wasn’t he?”

The attorney handling Abernethie’s estate probes the mystery and uncovers a great deal that was previously unknown. However, this one seems unsolvable, even to a wise and very observant solicitor. In desperation, Mr. Entwhistle turns to his old friend Hercule Poirot to unravel the mystery.

And Poirot has a great deal to unravel.

A bloody hatchet. A piece of poisoned wedding cake. The corpse of an eccentric widow whose face had been smashed beyond recognition. A housekeeper who listened at keyholes. Two nieces greedy for money and men. And a bunch of quarrelsome relatives who needed cash and weren’t fussy about how to get it.

The entire family had come together after the funeral to hear the reading of the will. Richard’s favorite sister-in-law, Helen Abernethie, had this nagging doubt that something was off — wrong — as they sat in a room in Richard’s mansion. Yet she couldn’t place her finger on it. Poirot follows his usual approach of holding conversations with all those involved. He was “a man of curves, like the kind he threw at unwary suspects when they were off guard.”

Classic Agatha Christie themes are evident in Funerals are Fatal: “a healthy inheritance casts suspicion on the family, but as ever, nothing is quite as it seems.” Richard has died and his sister Cora had been brutally murdered. But as he homes in on the killer, he has the family reassemble several weeks later and asks them, “How well did you all know Cora Lansquenet?” When another sister says, sharply, “What did you mean?” we know that Poirot has figured out what was behind Helen’s doubt after the funeral. The journey to get there is one more delightful Agatha Christie tale.

More to come…

DJB

To see reviews of the other books in my year of reading mystery novels, click here for January, February, and March.

The Weekly Reader links to written works I’ve enjoyed. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry. 

Image by Dorothée QUENNESSON from Pixabay