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The consequences of complicity in an “I don’t take responsibility” world

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When a president who routinely claimed absolute authority over, well, everything, famously washed his hands of the mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, he said, “I don’t take responsibility at all.” Writer David Frum concluded that those words “are likely to be history’s epitaph on his presidency.”

“And an epitaph for those who nodded in assent”, adds Carlos Lozada.

Lozada’s 2020 book What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era (2020) is the Trump book you didn’t know you needed to read. As the nonfiction book critic of the Washington Post since 2015, Lozada read upwards of 150 works on “the Trump era” — a period “suffused with conflict, crudeness, and mistrust” — and then created this wide-ranging, sobering, at times funny, and always insightful work focused not so much on Donald J. Trump, but on how we see ourselves in this moment.

Yes, it is ironic that a man who never reads and who speaks at the level of a fourth grader has generated so many words and so many volumes that try to define, understand, and address the state in which we now find ourselves. Ironic, weird, and — to use a favorite word of the former president — sad.

Lozado first read the ghost-written Trump: The Art of the Deal (1987), which he calls the “foundational text” of Trump Studies. This and other “Trump-authored” books (fake news if ever there was such a thing) offered a preview of “a world where bragging is breathing and insulting is talking, where repetition and contradiction come standard, where vengefulness and insecurity erupt at random.” But Lozado is primarily interested in the works of journalists, government officials, authors, and scholars who take on the task of figuring out how we got here, and what thinking (or not) went into that journey.

He leads us on his literary journey through ten chapters, with titles such as Heartlandia, Resistible, True Enough, See Some I.D., The Chaos Chronicles, and Russian Lit. In each he considers 10-15 books that address a common theme. A couple of the works are silly; others come very early in, or even predate, the Trump era; most identify the challenges of our times without much thought on solutions. Lozado helpfully identifies books that “challenge entrenched assumptions and shift our vantage points, the books that best help us make sense of this era.”

The most important, often written by historians and scholars, “enable and ennoble a national reexamination … They are the books that show how our current conflicts fit into the nation’s story, that hold fast to the American tradition of always seeing ourselves anew.”

They are the volumes on democracy that identify today’s battles as part of that endless fight to live up to our self-professed, self-evident truths, and that show that striving, while failing, to reach them is not just a feature of our system but its definition.

Lozado tackles each of the key issues of the Trump era with care and thoughtfulness. It isn’t a perfect book, as he sometimes exhibits flashes of the cynicism of the Washington insider. He also tends to read a lot of books by establishment types (e.g., David Frum), although he does introduce us to less-well-known authors as well. Corporations, oligarchs, and their impact in destroying democracy are generally missing in his review (perhaps because Lozado felt the need to thank Jeff Bezos in the acknowledgements for “keeping the lights on” at the Post). Nonetheless, it is book that moves beyond the soul-crushing daily headlines to take a longer look. With its publication coming just before the 2020 election, I quickly found myself hoping that Lozado is already at work on the second edition.

Understanding immigration and gender wars

There are several chapters that, to me, stood out above the others, beginning with Beyond the Wall on immigration. As an immigrant from Lima, Peru, Lozado brings personal insights into the discussion that strike this reader as especially useful. America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States by award-winning historian Erika Lee comes in for special praise in showing us how primed the country is for Trump’s message. (It is included among the “twelve books he’ll return to” that Lozado cites at the end of What Were We Thinking.) He also speaks as to how family separation, recounted in countless memoirs, is “already intrinsic to the immigrant experience, occurring long before anyone reaches America’s borders.”

Him, Too — Lozado’s chapter on gender and the Me, Too, movement — begins with the laughable account, told in one of the many sequels to The Art of the Deal, of the time Donald Trump was groped at a dinner party. “(W)omen accosting him with pulp-fiction come-ons are a recurring problem. That’s just life as The Donald.” But the chapter quickly turns serious, and Lozado handles it with appropriate care, in part because he is not a woman and is surprised by what he reads. There is a passage from Soraya Chemaly‘s Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger that clearly hit Lozado as hard as it hit me in reading it. “I hadn’t fathomed quite how much time, money, and mental energy women spend avoiding and fearing rape,” Lozado notes. But Chemaly lays it out in a chilling two sentences.

Ask a man what his greatest fear is about serving jail time, and he will almost inevitably say he fears being raped. What can we deduce from the fact that jail is to men what life is to so many women?

Chaos becomes him

In the chapter entitled The Chaos Chronicles Lozado blames Michael Wolff and his early 2018 bestseller Fire and Fury for setting the tone that the chaos in the White House is the true story. As Lozado writes, the trouble with writing about the Trump White House, and reading about it, too, is that “the lunacy is appalling yet unsurprising, wholly unpresidential yet entirely on-brand.”

The larger story, which often gets missed, is what the chaos means and why it matters. I’ve written about The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis, which comes in for special praise here (another of his 12 books), as a work that describes the true American carnage wrought by Trump and his White House, including “the decline of America’s preparedness for truly complex crises.” Lewis wrote his book prior to the pandemic but was prescient in foreshadowing its consequences.

Consequences of complicity

The Chaos Chronicles is the first of several chapters that demonstrate the tragedy and consequences that arise when the “adults in the room” are complicit with Trump’s inappropriate and illegal actions. As Lozado notes, “so much is happening in this administration that gets lost in the Trump glare.” In Russian Lit, he reviews Greg Miller‘s The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy. Miller notes that because Trump appears “beyond shame” when it comes to sex or money, Putin’s leverage on Trump is probably not found in the infamous Steele dossier, but in the simple fact that Trump needs Russia to deny the reality of Russian interference in the 2016 election order to keep his “last hold on that lie. Trump, obsessed with safeguarding the legitimacy of his election and his office, needs that story to persist.” Lozado adds: “As always, the scandal with Trump happens out in the open.”

And the Republican Party is complicit in supporting that lie.

The press comes in for harsh criticism as well for — among many other things — their handling of the Clinton email hack by Russia. In her book Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President, journalism expert and scholar Kathleen Hall Jamieson makes the forceful case that foreign interference was indeed a major factor during the 2016 election. “Too often,” she notes, “the press served as a conveyor belt of stolen content instead of a gatekeeper.”

In the chapter In Plain View, Lozado writes,

(T)he authors of the democracy volumes focus on a different group that could have reconsidered Trump long before his name appeared on a ballot. It is a group whose leaders, initially alarmed by a populist and nativist candidate, opted to collude with him rather than shun or restrain him.

That is the Republican Party.

The consequences of complicity are wide-ranging and potentially long-lasting, and they show up with regularity in our daily news reports.

  • When the press is complicit in dancing around the truth, we end up seeing that Trump’s lies were intentional, but we lack reporters who will press him to explain why he was lying.
  • When the country’s so-called leaders are complicit in the never-ending calls for violence, we end up with the cautionary tale of Ray Epps, targeted by the very hate cult he joined.
  • Complicity in not calling out uncivil discourse, the attacking of women, and climate denial can have international implications, as is the case with an acquaintance of mine — a farmer and a smart, passionate, effective environmental activist from Australia who posted a note about how a simple tweet she sent out last week had led to extensive online bullying, harassment, trolling, and cyber stalking. (Strong trigger warning: these images and words are disturbing.)
  • Finally, one reason for the complicity by the wealthy is to avoid paying taxes to support our government. The tale of billionaire Ken Griffin, owner of the hedge fund Citadel, is instructive. He is donating tens of millions of dollars for the midterms in 2022 to avoid taxes and regulations. But in 2008, when his fund had lost 55% of its value and was in danger of going under in the AIG scandal/collapse, Griffin was all too willing to take his part of the $182 billion taxpayer bailout. Corporate bailouts for the “worthy” but with no help for the truly needy are part of our lives, both before and during the Trump era.

Lozado turns to The Soul of America by historian Jon Meacham to make the point that what we are seeing is normal for America. We feel a daily and constant tension between the pull of “all men are created equal” and the push to restrict life and liberty from others who are deemed undeserving, untrustworthy, and unequal.

Slavery. The Klan. Jim Crow. The Klan again. The internment of Japanese Americans and the expulsion of Mexians and Mexican Americans. Gender discrimination and scientific racism. The Southern Strategy. Mass incarceration. All this leads to a president whom Meacham considers “an heir to the white populist tradition,” a president whose only abnormality is that he manages to embody so many recurring maladies of American public life“ (emphasis added).

Books to help make sense of our times

Of the 150 books Lozado read in five years, he chooses twelve for his final chapter that have helped him make sense of this time. I’ll provide you with five…and encourage you to buy the book and read the whole thing!

We’re Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America, by Jennifer Silva. “This book expands my notion of who belongs to the heartland, and of the obstacles to belonging in our national politics.”

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder. “It draws on the author’s scholarship to warn of post-truth, heedless conformity, and institutional abdication.”

When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele. “(This book) beautifully captures the tensions between individual and group identities, the power of marrying personal turmoil to collective struggle.”

Know My Name: A Memoir, by Chanel Miller. “Miller’s account of pain, law, and daily survival after a sexual assault outside a college dorm party in 2015 stands with the most unforgettable memoirs of trauma and loss.”

One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy, by Carol Anderson. “Anderson underscores the ‘feigned legal innocence’ that always accompanies voter suppression, as its architects cloak their designs in benign-sounding justifications, especially the always popular crusade to prevent alleged (and largely nonexistent) voter fraud.”

Leaving an abusive relationship

I’ll close with this incredibly prescient section from the end of the chapter entitled Him, Too:

“Nearly everything strange and disquieting about Trump — his punitive response to even mild criticism, his viscerally personal insults disguised as ‘jokes,’ his willingness to spread wild rumors about his targets in order to discredit or shame them, his inability to stop lashing out or degrading certain women years after they’d left his life — was also a commonly reported behavior of domestic abusers,” Sady Doyle writes in Nasty Women. The only difference, she explains, is that Trump deploys those tactics not to wield power over one single person but to manipulate the entire nation.

That’s worth remembering on the eve of the 2020 election. As (Brittney) Cooper writes in Eloquent Rage, “the deadliest time for a woman in an abusive relationship is when she decides to leave.”

I cannot image a better, or more chilling description of what we’ve been through over the past six years, and the challenges we face in 2022. In light of that, we do well to remember the words of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

More to come…

DJB

Image of Pilate washing his hands by Hendrick ter Brugghen (credit Shipley Art Gallery via Wikimedia Commons). Politicians have “washed their hands” and blamed others since Jesus’s crucifixion.

I love the pithy proverb – Volume 6

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My love for the short and to-the-point adage comes from my grandmother. Known to favor sayings such as “Make yourself useful as well as ornamental,” Grandmother Brown had a big influence on my life as well as my love for words.

Late in 2019, a series of pithy proverbs — those bursts of truth in 20 words or so — debuted on the blog and were brought together in a post entitled More to Consider. * Four years later I’m still at it, so let’s look at I love the pithy proverb — Volume 6 to see what made it to the More to Consider segment over the past six months.

Stand for the hard right against the easy wrong

Grandmother was a believer in standing for the “hard right” against the “easy wrong.” She understood that doing what is right comes from what we repeatedly do, so she would have approved of this timeless quote from the ancient Greek philosopher.

“We are what we repeatedly do, therefore excellence is not an act but a habit.”

Aristotle

The world lost one of its moral leaders when Archbishop Desmond Tutu passed away on the day after Christmas in 2021. His quote about taking a stand seems appropriate in these times.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

Desmond Tutu

Madeleine K. Albright, whose parents were Czech refugees from the Nazis and the Communists, passed away on March 23rd at the age of 84. Albright served the United States as a diplomat and then as Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, the first woman to hold that position. In honor of Dr. Albright’s career, I posted some of her words, which are a great reminder of how to proceed in the midst of darkness and fear.

“The act of striving is in itself the only way to keep faith with life.”

Madeleine K. Albright

Our congressman, Jamie Raskin, has been in the news over the past year, showing courageous leadership even in the face of deep personal loss. Like many of us, he learned lessons from his elders, in this case his father, Marcus Raskin.

“When a situation seems hopeless, then you are the hope.  When everything looks dark, you must be the light.”

Marcus Raskin, as quoted by his son, Rep. Jamie Raskin

Even if doing right is hard, we have one, precious chance to be kind, as the poet Mary Oliver reminds us.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Mary Oliver

Manage your expectations

I have a friend who likes to say that “low expectations are the key to happiness.” Author Anne Lamott has a slightly different take to remind us that it is much too easy to assume that what we want is what is going to happen.

“Expectations are resentments under construction.”

Anne Lamott

I always appreciated this reminder from Dr. Paul Kalanithi about the interrelatedness of human life and knowledge, especially in the face of uncertainty.

“Human knowledge is never contained in one person.  It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.”

Paul Kalanithi

Ben Dolnick, in his blog One Sentence, shows his fondness for William James as someone “who belongs to a narrow class of philosophers who refuse to stay put in the philosophy building; he accompanies you to the bar, to the supermarket, to the gym. He writes not for his fellow professors and not for posterity but for you. You know those notes you write to the dog-sitter before you race off to the airport — hurried, candid, useful, brimming with emendations in the margins and multiple postscripts … That’s how William James writes about everything. He’s leaving you in charge of a human body — a human life — and he needs to be sure, before he goes, that you know how this stuff works. … And that final clause ( — or slender!), with its confessionally candid exclamation point, reads like a helpless and live realization. I am not exempt!, James seems always to be reminding us. He gave up recently on being slender, and, after years of unhappy sucking in, it brought him joy.”

“How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young, — or slender!”

William James

Get a grip on our real problems

The country has been facing a rash of calls to ban books. Author and bookstore owner Ryan Holiday nails the correct response.

“America has many problems. Reading too many books is not one of them.”

Ryan Holiday

Too many commentators spout off on the “problems” facing the country without providing any context. Amy-Jill Levine, a self-described “Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches in a predominantly Christian divinity school in the buckle of the Bible Belt,” spoke to the all-important role of context in a variety of settings when she quoted scholar Ben Witherington, III. Hmmm…I wonder if our Supreme Court could use this bit of advice?

“A text without a context is just a pretext for making it say anything one wants.”

Ben Witherington III

This reminder from the Stoic philosopher Seneca (via Ryan Holiday) helps me think about real problems and real priorities.

“We’re tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.”

Seneca

On my morning walk, I usually see two gentlemen — about my age — who have found themselves in tough circumstances, yet still keep a bright outlook on life and the things that matter. Gilbert America Carter (who goes by Carter) and Barrington Harold Fair (who goes by Barry), often have quips to share with those around them. One day Carter and I were talking about the “shoe being on the other foot” in some situation, and Carter came out with a saying that speaks volumes. Remember that you won’t always be on top!

“Ain’t no fun when the rabbit’s got the gun.”

Gilbert America Carter

Memories and love

I am fond of Marie Howe‘s saying that memory is a poet, not a historian. Author Clint Smith has a similar take.

“Memory, for me, is often a home where the furniture has been rearranged one too many times.”

Clint Smith
Celebrating birthdays and anniversaries with Candice and the twins in Paris

Finally, Candice and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary earlier this year. In honor of that occasion, I posted this quote from Conrad Aiken as recounted by author Madeleine L’Engle.

“Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you was more than bread.”

Conrad Aiken

More to come…

DJB

*To capture some of my favorite sayings without having to write an entire blog post, I created a feature on More to Come that I labeled “More to Consider.” I update these quick bursts of truth every couple of weeks. After the initial More to Consider post pulling together the first ones I highlight, I brought out Volume 2: A plethora of pithy proverbs followed with Volume 3: A profusion of pithy proverbs and Volume 4: A plentitude of pithy proverbs. I finally turned to the Super Bowl system (minus the pretentious Roman numerals) with I love the pithy proverb — Volume 5.

Image of Proverbs from Pixabay

Expertise, curiosity, mistakes … and teamwork

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I am gobsmacked by all the NASA scientists are showing us with the first set of pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope. Mind-blowing is not an overstatement.

The initial JWST Deep Field Image

As the news has rippled through our consciousness, I’ve also read the reactions of others on social media, blogs, and mass media sites. I watched last evening’s extraordinary NOVA documentary on PBS, Ultimate Space Telescope, which took the story of the telescope, nicknamed JWST, from inception up until the first release of images earlier this week on Tuesday, July 12th.

While the NOVA documentary featured NASA engineers who could explain complicated scientific concepts for the layperson, many of the descriptions and stories I read are more technical than my brain can handle at the moment. But my friend — innovation consultant and author Alan Gregerman — hit the nail on the head for me with his short LinkedIn post on what struck him as extraordinary about JWST. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I thought I’d just share Alan’s thoughts.

Like many of you I am in awe of the pictures coming from the James Webb telescope. The development of the telescope itself is a lesson in the importance of expertise, curiosity, open-mindedness, learning from tests and mistakes, and teamwork. And the new discoveries are already providing a remarkable source of data for improving our understanding of the universe, its history, and our place in it. As an innovation consultant it also reinforces the importance of exploring worlds near and far as a key to learning and creating breakthroughs in the things that matter most. Let’s hope that this positive and inspiring news can energize all of us, and especially young people, in these challenging times to stretch our thinking about what is possible and to never stop exploring.

Alan’s thoughts on teamwork reminded me of the 2018 Michael Lewis book The Fifth Risk, and the comment in that work that has stuck with me to this day:

The only thing any of us can do completely on our own is to have the start of a good idea.

Simple on its face yet it captures so much of the spirit that is needed today in America, from our leaders and from us, as citizens. Kathryn Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space and later the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), heard the “start of a good idea” line once and it stayed with her. The message she took from it was that exchanges of information from “odd groups, outsiders to the program under study,” were how people learn, adapt, and build exciting new tools and programs to serve humankind. Individuals seldom add value when they come into those conversations with strong agendas built on furthering their professional practice, a rigid ideology, or personal greed.

JWST was the result, in many ways, of a compact underpinned by strong bipartisan support in government that worked for the good of the community. The absolute necessity of our need to nurture and maintain the social compact for a country built on ideas and ideals is among my core beliefs.

Stephan’s Quintet captured by the James Webb Space Telescope and released on Tuesday.

Alan’s thoughts on the possibilities that come from wonder and exploration are very much in line with those expressed by Kathryn Sullivan. In these challenging times, I celebrate Alan’s optimism and look for the energy that results from this innovation. Expertise, curiosity, open-mindedness, learning from tests and mistakes, and teamwork among friends and strangers really does lead to brilliance and genius.

More to come…

DJB

All images from the James Webb Space Telescope (credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI.) The landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars in the top image is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.

When the dog catches the car

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In some tellings, the old phrase “when the dog catches the car” refers to situations where people work so hard to achieve a goal that they don’t know what to do next once they’ve acquired their trophy. But as a young child growing up on the fringes of rural America, I heard people end that phrase with, “the car always wins.” Early in my life we had a few dogs that chased cars. That latter interpretation is, sadly, accurate.

There is another old saying, this one made popular by American actor and social commentator Will Rogers: “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”

Both of those short bursts of truth have been on my mind as I have considered our turbulent life in America in 2022.

First, some background

As I’ve written before, a minority of Americans have sought for decades to turn back the clock, frustrated that their traditional vision for the country was slipping further into the rearview mirror as the rising immigration supporting the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century, the New Deal of the 1930s, and the Civil Rights advances of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s shaped a nation headed in a new direction. Historians have written of how the oligarchs in America, beginning with John C. Calhoun and working forward to Charles Koch, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and others, have made the case throughout history that they should be the ones with the power to decide where the government spends what little money they agree to provide in taxes for the maintenance of order and the public defense. And as Anthea Butler has so powerfully written, for a number of reasons they found a willing partner in their efforts in America’s evangelical tradition.

Those supporting a modern vision sought, with some success, to build an America that was more economically and socially equitable and just. New opportunities for those traditionally on the margins of American life meant that women, people of color, LGBTQ individuals, and immigrants could contribute more substantially to our common life.

The power of myths

Yet that minority which benefits from a centuries-old hierarchy that is paying dividends for fewer and fewer people has looked for ways to divide the majority of Americans. As journalist Nesrine Malik wrote in the 2021 U.S. edition of her powerful first book We Need New Stories: The Myths that Subvert Freedom, this minority used a malignant thread of myths to achieve its purpose.

These are not myths that animate believers into a shared sense of camaraderie and direction. They are myths that divide and instill a sense of superiority over others.

Those myths were put to use in support of an ideological “stealth bid to reverse-engineer all of America, at both the state and the national levels, back to the political economy and oligarchic governance of midcentury Virginia, minus the segregation,” as documented by historian Nancy MacLean.

Working to divide, not unite

Race always plays a factor in American history, but these oligarchs also worked hard to find wedge issues where they could use their myths to divide Americans. Three issues where they have been the most effective revolve around:

  • Who gets to control those who have long been on the margins of society — A rouge Supreme Court, using bad history and worse logic, took away a constitutional right for American women, stripping them of their bodily autonomy. Forgoing precedent, that same court is going after other rights of women and marginalized communities in America, using the same fact-free analysis to reach a pre-determined conclusion.

Those oligarchs, along with many who have led corporations over the past half century (*), have paid to enlist and support the foot soldiers in their efforts, small minorities that have been single-minded in pursuing their own goals: enshrining white Christian male rule in a country that is growing in diversity, outlawing abortion while making the actions of those who support it illegal, and equating gun ownership with freedom at the expense of all other freedoms, including life itself.

Now that the dog has caught the car, is there a way forward?

This is where those two old sayings become relevant. In an insightful article in The Atlantic entitled Roe is the New Prohibition David Frum suggests that the minority that has focused on outlawing abortion so fervently should be careful of what they wish for. Looking at the history of prohibition during the Industrial Revolution, he sees parallels with our times. In this analysis, Frum envisions a hopeful outcome as people across the political spectrum realize what they have lost through minority rule and come together to reassert their rights. Frum even uses the language of the dog catching the car when he compares our time to the tumult of the 1880s through the 1930s.

So welcome to the Roaring Twenties. The pro-life dog has at last caught up with the Roe v. Wade car. Now it has to chew on its prey. And it’s about to discover that the prey in its jaws is a lot bigger and stronger than it looked when the dog started its chase.

Frum makes the point that while those focused on turning back democracy through fights over abortion, or voter suppression, or gun rights have been singularly focused, the opposition — largely today’s Democratic Party — has been much less organized. Which is where Will Rogers’ insight comes into play. Democrats aren’t generally as organized as Republicans because they represent a much wider ideological swath of the American population.

“Democrats in disarray” is a cheap, easy catchphrase often used by the media, even when the story isn’t true. And when the media writes about Biden’s leadership weakness, they seldom compare it to the alternative. It may help to recall that only one Republican president has won the popular vote in the last 30 years, yet Republican presidents have appointed six of the nine justices on the Supreme Court. (Thank you, Electoral College, for that bit of minority rule, as well as Mitch McConnell’s willingness to lie to achieve and maintain power.)

But when the majority is aroused and sees their rights disappearing because a minority wants to control how we live, watch out. Frum shows how swiftly things changed after national prohibition. FDR through his New Deal showed how significant change can come quickly when people are pushed to the edge economically. We forget about the large, bipartisan majorities in Congress who came to support voting rights until Chief Justice John Roberts achieved his life-long goal of eviscerating the Voting Rights Act with a dishonest grab at power as an unelected jurist with lifetime tenure.

When the minority over-reaches, as they are doing now, the majority will push back. It takes work. It won’t be easy. The oligarchs, the racists, the authoritarians, the Christian nationalists, the politicians who benefit from minority rule (**) will all cling to power in any way possible. As historians have been writing throughout the Trump era, we’ve seen this all before. But we have also seen that democracy can prevail.

In his short but vital book On Tyranny, historian of the Holocaust Timothy Snyder has given us twenty lessons as to how to fight back against authoritarianism. There are lessons dealing with the need to defend institutions, think for ourselves, and take responsibility for our actions in the civic sphere. Other lessons and suggestions are focused more on the individual choices we make to stay active and alive in a civil society, such as joining and supporting causes; reading more books and spending less time on the internet; making eye contact and small talk. He ends with the critical need to study history. He notes that “the habit of dwelling on victimhood,” the province of the nationalist, “dulls the impulse of self-correction.” History, on the other hand, “gives us the company of those who have done and suffered more than we have.”

Muscular hope

Krista Tippett, of the On Being project, spoke about the muscular hope we will need in the coming years during a recent New York Times interview.

Part of my role is drawing out voices that deserve to be heard and shedding light on generative possibilities and robust goodness. Not goodness on a pedestal but the messy drama of goodness that makes it riveting and also means it’s not just for saints. I talk about hope being a muscle. It’s not wishful thinking, and it’s not idealism. It’s not even a belief that everything will turn out OK. It’s an imaginative leap, which is what I’ve seen in people like John Lewis and Jane Goodall. These are people who said: “I refuse to accept that the world has to be this way. I am going to throw my life and my pragmatism and my intelligence at this insistence that it could be different and put that into practice.” That’s a muscular hope. 

Early voting center in Silver Spring. Elections remain an important way for the majority to combat the tyranny of the minority.

Now that the dog has caught the car, we need to demonstrate how organized and powerful the majority can be in America through hard work, voting in every election, focus on what really matters, and muscular hope that says, “I refuse to accept that the world has to be this way.“

More to come…

DJB

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. To read the other More to Come posts cited here, click on:

*Judd Legum at Popular Information has an interesting interview with the New York Times business reporter David Gelles on his new book The Man Who Broke Capitalism, about Jack Welch. It is worth a read.

**Also, if you can get past the paywall, please read Mark Lebovitch’s article in The Atlantic entitled The Most Pathetic Men in America, which is an excerpt from his new book Thank You for Your Servitude. If you cannot get through, Diane Ravitch has a good summary on her blog.

Image of dog running by Audrius Vizbaras from Pixabay

The lessons of the road

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Stories about road trips are found throughout history. Many book sites highlight more recent autobiographical examples of the genre, such as On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon, Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found by Cheryl Strayed, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. However, the most recent novel by Amor Towles brings not only those works to mind, but also more historical examples, classics like Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and, yes, perhaps even Homer’s Odyssey, which has a role in a subplot in this new work.

Road trip books are not solely American in nature, but they have been part of our culture for a long time, probably beginning with the stories of wagon trains heading west. The typical road trip narrative is built around a character or characters trying to figure themselves out, on a personal quest, or seeking to discover something about the country. Those aims are all relevant in the third decade of the twenty-first century, which may have led me to pull this book out of the TBR pile for some summer reading. (*)

The Lincoln Highway (2021), the most recent book by Amor Towles, has many features of the American road trip novel, but it doesn’t become mired in the expectations of the genre. Set in ten days in 1954, it begins when eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm in Salina, Kansas, where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. Emmett and his precocious eight-year-old brother Billy are the two characters who set out on the road, with the intention of going to California to begin their lives over after their mother deserted her husband and children, their father’s recent death, and the bank’s foreclosure on the family farm. But other characters quickly insert themselves into the trip, each providing a different perspective as to its purpose and its effect on those involved.

Unbeknownst to the warden, two of Emmett’s friends from the work farm have tagged along in the trunk, “the wily, charismatic Duchess and earnest, offbeat Woolly.” They have a different destination in mind for their road trip and “enlist” Emmett and Billy in their plans…by “borrowing” Emmett’s car while he steps away for a few minutes. Duchess and Woolly head to New York in Emmett’s light blue Studebaker that he had planned to take west, and so he and Billy hop a freight train to New York to reclaim their car, the money that his father left in the trunk as a token inheritance, and their trip. We also meet the Watson’s hard-working neighbor Sally, who has cared for Billy in his brother’s absence and who has a fondness for Emmett; Pastor John, a con man riding the rails who attempts to steal Billy’s silver coin collection; a former veteran, Ulysses, who is wandering the country like his Greek namesake looking for home; and more.

Towles is a superb writer who fills in the characters with style and wisdom. Early on Sally recounts the Biblical story of Martha (the worker) and Mary (the dreamer) when Jesus says, “Mary has chosen the better way.” Sally states simply that “if you ever needed proof that the Bible was written by a man, there you have it.” All of a sudden, you understand who Sally is and what she is seeking to leave. Towles also knows how to bring the reader forward. No one writes a better last sentence in a chapter than Amor Towles.

You simply have to turn the page.

The Lincoln Highway, Towles’ third novel, is a self-described “multilayered tale of misadventure and self-discovery.” The characters end up going in the opposite direction from Emmett’s original intentions, finding themselves in New York City and the Adirondacks. Towles’ much-beloved second novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, demonstrated his writing and storytelling skills, but I was disappointed in his avoidance of real tension and tragedy in that book. That is not a problem with this newest work. The tension is real, and the story takes something of a dark turn near the end.

Even at a hefty 600 pages, I found The Lincoln Highway to be a very satisfying read. Multiple reviewers have noted that Towles once again explores how “evil can be offset by decency and kindness on any rung of the socio-economic ladder.” We learn how a single wrong turn on the highway of life can set you off course for years, but that this misdirection doesn’t have to be forever. We also learn that balancing accounts can be a messy business.

One favorable reviewer makes the following observation:

“How easily we forget — we in the business of storytelling — that life was the point all along,” Towles’ oldest character comments as he heads off on an unexpected adventure. It’s something Towles never forgets.

All of the main characters discover truths about themselves and the world that ring true. What more can you ask of an American road trip novel.

A terrific summer reading choice!

More to come…

DJB

Check out these More to Come blog posts on other road trips.

*TBR = To be read

Image by Joshua Woroniecki from Pixabay.

Drinking in the music of the Stillhouse Junkies

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“Born in a distillery in Durango, Colorado,” is the opening line of the band bio for the Stillhouse Junkies, providing a sense of what’s to come. Alissa Wolf (fiddle and vocals), Cody Tinnan (bass and vocals), and Fred Kosak (mandolin, guitar, and vocals) mix a heady brew of roots, blues, funk, swing, and bluegrass music into an original sound that has won the band numerous awards and attracted a growing number of fans.

My first introduction came through the Bluegrass Situation newsletter when they featured this video of the “rip-roaring old-timey instrumental, Jonny Mac.” All three members were smoking on their solos, leading me to sit up and take notice.

As winners of the 2021 IBMA Momentum Band of the Year award, this is clearly a young group of musicians on the rise. Now in 2022 they have a new album on the way and are currently touring up and down the east coast. Staying true to their roots, some of the band’s videos — such as for the tunes Whiskey Prison and (Mancos Kind of) Saturday Night — are filmed in Colorado bars and distilleries. Both songs provide a glimpse into the string-band style roots music the band has played together since their inception.

Heat of the Moment gives the Junkies a chance to shine with some music that’s a bit further away from the bluegrass-infused tunes in the first few videos. This is also a group which clearly enjoys a good laugh, from their music to the website invitation to sign up for some “Junkie Mail.”

As the name would suggest, Two-Steppin’ on My Heart (Again) gives the band a chance to scratch their swing itch. Music like this may have helped make Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel a fan.

Colorado Bound is the first single from the upcoming Stillhouse Junkies album Small Town. The octave mandolin played by Fred Kosak adds a lower timbre to their music.

This is a band that is having a good time sharing their music with their fans. They are currently playing in the Maryland, DC, and Virginia areas, as well as New York, Delaware, Georgia and beyond in July and August. Consider taking a drink of the music of the Stillhouse Junkies at a venue near you.

Enjoy!

More to come…

DJB

Image of Stillhouse Junkies (credit: StillhouseJunkies.com)

The books I read in June 2022

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Each month I have a goal to read five books on a variety of topics and from different genres in order to learn and to start conversations with readers and others I encounter along the way. Here are the books I read in June 2022. If you click on the title, you’ll go to the longer post on More to Come. Enjoy!

Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris (1959), a memoir by the well-known New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling, captures his love for Paris, food, “and for pleasure itself” in this last book before his death in 1963. While definitely a piece of its time, Liebling’s writing remains juicy and irresistible even today. He first came to Paris as a student in the 1920s and, as James Salter writes in the introduction, “the frankness and sexuality of the city were dazzling, especially to Americans who had known only the Puritanism of their own country, its materialism, indifference to art, and ignorance of history.” Liebling joined those who “came to France to breathe new air” and he breathed it deeper than most. As one reviewer of his body of work put it, “Every sentence he wrote contains a kick, a bounce, and a leap.”

Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961), James Baldwin’s powerful collection of thirteen essays written during the 1950s, bears “witness to the unhappy consequences of American racial strife” as one observer stated. Baldwin writes of “blacks’ aspirations, disappointments, and coping strategies in a hostile society,” all in a very personal way that convicts the reader. In the introduction he writes that “Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.” He knows we, as Americans, both seek that release and hang on to the crutch.

Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers (2022) is Professor Emma Smith‘s delightfully written and thought-provoking work on the history of books as books. Smith wants us to consider the “bookhood” of books — a “nineteenth century coinage on the model of more familiar forms such as ‘childhood’ or ‘brotherhood’ … Bookhood includes the impact of touch, smell, and hearing on the experience of books.” There are fascinating chapters on the “Editions of the Armed Services” from World War II, the making of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring into a classic, digital books, and the way that a 1955 photo of Marilyn Monroe reading James Joyce’s Ulysses changed thoughts about the actress and the novel. Book-burnings, censoring, a full chapter on Mein Kampf, and bookbinding all come in for study as well in this engaging look at some of our most treasured personal possessions.

Biblical Fracking: Midrash for the Modern Christian (2019) by Francis H. Wade encourages the reader to explore meaning beyond the literal text and traditional interpretations of the Bible, building off the Jewish idea of midrash (to “inquire” or “expound”). As Frank writes in the introduction, “Biblical fracking, in the spirit of its historical roots and its geological namesake, means reaching into the cracks and crevices of the biblical narrative to extract the richness that lurks there.” In 20 short chapters, Frank explores questions that lie on the edges of the literal texts, encouraging us to wonder about things that have no authoritative answer in a way that leads to a faith-based reflection on the human experience.

FJ50, the 50th edition of the Fretboard Journal, may not count as a book in your mind, but this high-quality quarterly — which is “chock full of the wild, weird and wonderful from the world of fretted instruments” — gets special consideration. To have reached the 50th issue is something to be celebrated in a world where care and craftsmanship for one’s profession is often abandoned in the pursuit of fame, money, and power. The Fretboard Journal survives and thrives, content to bore in and focus on “the varied talents found in our little universe.” This issue has articles on Bela Fleck, Yasmin Williams, the instrument company that was Leo Fender’s first venture before he became a household name, luthier Michael Lewis, Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo and so much more. Give it a “listen.”

More to come…

DJB

NOTE: To see which books I read in January, February, March, April, and May click on the links. You can also read my Ten tips for reading five books a month online.

Image of library from Pixabay.

The radical idea that set the stage for a struggle that has lasted almost 250 years

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July 4th means different things to so many people. That’s as it should be. Fireworks, cookouts, and parades are traditional ways of honoring the 4th, even if some of those celebrations include a bit of the nontraditional. Take the Scottish Reels Precision Push Mower Drill Team executing intricate drill patterns with their non-motorized mowers in Takoma Park’s quirky Independence Day celebration, for example. Decidedly nontraditional.

Scottish Reels Precision Push Mower Drill Team with their piper

No matter how one celebrates, the importance of the day in American history all began on July 4, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, declaring: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Yes, the Founders who signed the Declaration understood “men” to mean “white men.” Black and indigenous men and women of all races were not included at the time. Nonetheless, in an era of monarchies it was pretty radical to suggest that everyone from the king down to the lowliest farmer was created equal. That self-evident truth set the stage for a struggle that has now endured for almost 250 years. A struggle, as Abraham Lincoln so memorably phrased it at Gettysburg 87 years later, to see “whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

America survived the attempt by Southern oligarchs during the Civil War to restructure the nation so that some people would be seen as better than others. Rights were expanded over time to include Black men, other men of color, and women. Two steps forward were often followed by one (or more) steps back.

This July 4th we are still fighting battles with people who believe they are superior to their fellow citizens and should be allowed to live with a different set of laws. Or above the law. To me, July 4th is about battling oppression and tyranny, and honoring the truth that all people are created equal.

A democracy is messy. It can take time to get things right. Yet eventually we usually make progress towards that goal. In this day and age, we are slowly working to find the truth about the attempts to overturn the results of a fair election and overthrow a fairly elected government in 2020 and 2021. One of the individuals at the heart of that work is my Congressman, Jamie Raskin.

Congressman Jamie Raskin

As he does every year, Congressman Raskin was marching in today’s Takoma Park July 4th parade. He was there in spite of threats made to members of the House Select Committee on January 6th. Why are the members being threatened? Because the January 6 committee has made the work of uncovering truth “the lodestar of its public hearings.” As Quinta Jurecic wrote recently in The Atlantic,

And as a committee established to uncover what happened on January 6, naturally the panel would be focused on the truth of the matter. But the January 6 committee’s hearings have so far been unusually powerful as a paean to the value of facts. The committee seems to take seriously its responsibility to establish an official record of the insurrection, and to communicate that record to the public in as accessible a manner as possible. That clarity is bracing in a political moment fogged with lies.

Those who traffic in lies, deceit, discord, and distrust fear the truth and the value of facts. In response, they make threats of violence. Congressman Raskin and Representative Stephanie Murphy of Florida are set to co-lead a hearing by the Special Committee that explores the path to extremism that spurred insurrectionists to attack the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Jamie Raskin has been a very accessible Congressman at a time when many of his colleagues are seeking to stage performative tantrums and check their trending status on twitter during hearings. He holds public meetings and attends public events. He promotes legislation designed to help Americans. He’ll stop and chat when you reach out to him. Heck, he’ll even wave and give you a friendly smile as he’s pulling out of the Whole Foods Market parking lot with his ballcap on backwards. Congressman Raskin has had a very difficult two years personally, but he is still there. He is still living the lessons learned from his father, Marcus Raskin, beginning with “when a situation seems hopeless, then you are the hope.  When everything looks dark, you must be the light.“

I picked up a button today calling for a more humane America, not realizing that about the same time a gunman decided to open fire at a July 4th parade in Highland Park, Illinois, killing at least six people. Even our major holidays are not immune from mass shootings. It’s just another day in America. *

Clearly too large of a portion of our population have come to the belief that lies, violence, and authoritarianism are the answer for America today. In spite of the darkness, people like Jamie Raskin give me hope that we will also have leaders who will continue to battle oppression and tyranny while honoring the truth that all people are created equal.

DJB taking in the 2022 July 4th parade in Takoma Park
Vanadu at 2022 Takoma Park July 4th parade
Winging It
Panquility
Getting into Good Trouble with the Anti-Trumpism Bandwagon

More to come…

DJB

*We are so confused about what makes us free that we have reached the point where a Supreme Court majority opinion striking down a New York state gun law — written by a justice who probably lied to get on the court and whose wife appears to be deeply involved in the insurrection to overthrow the election — is seen as one of the most intellectually dishonest and poorly argued decisions in American judicial history. When you quote Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s infamous opinion in Dred Scott approvingly, as Clarence Thomas did, it is time to step down from the bench.

Image: Congressman Jamie Raskin marches with the Democracy Summer Fellows at the Takoma Park July 4th parade (photo by DJB).

Celebrating the idea of America when the reality falls short

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We face a choice when we wake up this July 4th.

Having just gone through a week that at least one historian has noted “will certainly show up in the history books,” it is tempting to give up and crawl back under the covers from the mental exhaustion of simply living through this time. One wag on twitter said that this July 4th felt like attending a birthday party where the honoree was in hospice.

So there is that choice.

Or we can take a different route to celebrate the idea of America even when (or especially when) the reality falls short. It is that second road I’ve chosen, carrying on a family tradition by attending the annual July 4th parade in Takoma Park.

My reason is simple. Giving up on democracy should not be an option, given what so many have done before in the face of similar, or sometimes worse, challenges. Yes, many Americans were not free on July 4, 1776. Many others are losing their freedoms today. Yet for me, attending a community Independence Day parade to celebrate the idea of America, as well as to recognize the many examples of our country working together that we still see all around us, is a simple way to take a stand not to give up on democracy. Not on this July 4th.

And who knows, I may get a chance to see Vanadu.

Vanadu
Vanadu from the 2019 Takoma Park parade by DJB

We are facing a crisis in democracy in the United States. There are many reasons, and the following strike me as especially urgent (*skip below for more details):

It is possible to look at that list and become exhausted and discouraged. But when that feeling overwhelms you, think of those who fought the fight before, often against much longer odds.

  • Think of young Fannie Lou Hamer, who said, “That’s why I want to change Mississippi. You don’t run away from problems — you just face them.”
  • Think of twenty-year-old Andrew Goodman; Michael Schwerner, a 24-year-old former New York social worker; and James Chaney, a 21-year-old Black man, who worked to register Black voters in Meridian, Mississippi. On June 21, 1964, the local deputy sheriff stopped them, took them down a deserted road, and “turned them over to two carloads of his fellow terrorists. They beat and murdered the men and buried them at an earthen dam that was under construction.” It wasn’t until two members of the KKK cracked that federal officials were able to solve the case.
  • Think of House Select Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a man who has spent his career fighting to protect the right to vote in the most difficult areas of Mississippi. As Robin Givhan writes, “The Jan. 6 hearings have been for the benefit of the American public and Thompson has been the dignified host inviting folks in. His tone is calm and slightly melancholy. But he never gives off even a whiff of resignation. He has been resolute in his belief that America is the greatest country in the world and that the insurrection was “a hiccup” in our history. For Thompson, democracy isn’t shattered beyond repair; it’s damaged, but fixable.“

And somehow, Givhan adds, Thompson is convincing.

So, when we wake up this morning, we have that choice. To my mind, too many people have given their all — the “last full measure of devotion” as Lincoln so memorably phrased it — to see that democracy has a chance in America for us to turn back now.

Wealthy oligarchs, white supremacists, religious nationalists, and others have always been here to try and stop us. We have to recognize that there are those who benefit from discord and distrust, and who will work hard to undermine any efforts to reduce their influence over others. Their role in our society needs to be diminished and controlled, but it takes sustained work.

It is easy to think that our reality is all that matters. It is easy to decide that the hard work is not worth doing, as nothing will change. However, if we look beyond ourselves to see the interdependence of all, we can see how that long arc of the moral universe bends — yes, ever so slowly at times — toward justice.

Interdependence means finding “a unifying message of community and love,” as Andrea Mazzarino writes. Americans should work towards a solidarity dividend found when we connect across racial and class lines in interdependence. Author Heather McGhee notes we first need to get on the same page to achieve that dividend.

(T)he forces selling denial, ignorance, and projection have succeeded in robbing us of our own shared history — both the pain and the resilience. It’s time to tell the truth, with a nationwide process that enrolls all of us in setting the facts straight so that we can move forward with a new story, together.”

That won’t be easy. Unfortunately, Mazzarino notes, “occupying the hearts of many Americans today is Donald Trump, a damaged man who personifies our basest instincts. He needs to be identified forcefully by leaders of all stripes as the threat to democracy he is.”

But today I can look at the interdependence of life and the fact, as Fannie Lou Hamer framed it, that “nobody’s free until everybody’s free” and joyfully attend a July 4th celebration. I can honestly believe that although the country has taken a few hard blows recently, the patient isn’t anywhere near hospice care.

It will take voting and doing the never-ending work of building democracy day-after-day to keep the country out of the ICU, but we can win and see the American experiment continue.

Join me in that commitment — in whatever way works for you — and in celebrating a happy and hopeful July 4th!

More to come…

DJB

*Here is more of the backstory on the elements of the American crisis in democracy:

  • We made it legal to bribe politicians when the Supreme Court decided that corporations were people and that campaign spending (i.e., money) was free speech. Both decisions were insane on the face of it, yet both were strongly supported by wealthy oligarchs and business interests. As former president Jimmy Carter pointed out, “As the rich people finance the campaigns, when candidates get in office they do what the rich people want. And that’s to let the rich people get richer and richer and the middle class get left out.“
  • We limited access to the polls for many of our citizens, most especially after 2013 when, in the Shelby County v. Holder decision, the Supreme Court ignored the will of overwhelming majorities in Congress and gutted the provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that required the Department of Justice to sign off on changes to voting in states with histories of racial discrimination. Chief Justice Roberts — who has worked to achieve this goal since his time in the Reagan administration — claimed we were a post-racial society. The flood of voter-suppression laws enacted against communities of color proved otherwise.

Image: Marchers in the 2010 Takoma Park July 4th parade by DJB

Our little universe

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Last week, a plain but sturdy white mailer showed up in my mailbox. I knew immediately that inside this protective covering was the latest issue of the Fretboard Journal. What was not readily apparent was the special nature of this particular issue.

That became obvious as soon as I saw the cover. FJ50 was in the corner, beautifully positioned so as not to obstruct the view of the tuning pegs of the headstock of a vintage K&F electric guitar.

FJ50 — the 50th edition of the Fretboard Journal — had arrived unharmed, thanks to that extra touch of the protective mailer, and was ready to be consumed. Every issue is “chock full of the wild, weird and wonderful from the world of fretted instruments.” For this high-quality quarterly — which is supported by subscriptions and music-related ads — to have reached the 50th issue milestone is something to be celebrated in a world where care and craftsmanship for one’s profession is often abandoned in the pursuit of fame, money, and power. The Fretboard Journal survives and thrives, content to bore in and focus on “the varied talents found in our little universe.”

That line was written by publisher Jason Verlinde, the guiding light of this magazine which is “owned and operated by music fanatics for fellow music fanatics.” Verlinde was introducing the still photographs of pedal maker Josh Scott, a side project of a fellow fanatic. On occasion the magazine will feature stories such as this, to flesh out the full dimensions of those in this universe.

However, the main thrust of FJ50, like the 49 issues that came before it, are acoustic and electric fretted instruments and the people who make them, play them, repair them, and love them. All 50 issues are on my bookshelf, where they’ve been since I first discovered this treasure in 2005 on a magazine rack at a now-shuttered Barnes & Noble. After one or two over-the-counter purchases, I knew I had to take out a subscription to ensure that this drug arrived immediately upon publication.

And it has worked. The arrival in the mail brings instant and lasting pleasure. I always find an old friend or two. I always meet a new musician I’ve never encountered before, which leads me to the rabbit hole of YouTube to explore new sounds and talents. I always read about luthiers and repair technicians from across the world who care about their craft. I always salivate over the beautiful pictures of vintage instruments and new, hand-crafted guitars, mandolins, and banjos. More than one person has heard me describe FJ as guitar porn.

I sat down one evening soon after its arrival and read FJ50 cover-to-cover. As one would expect from a milestone issue, this one had it all. Right up front there is a lovely first-person story of how the writer, a Canadian named Stuart MacDougall, came to acquire a used 1970s Martin D-18 guitar from a resident “way up north” in the Arctic, who clearly didn’t want to let it go but who needed the money…to buy a more expensive guitar he’d fallen in love with. Their last email exchange ended with the original owner saying, “if you ever decide to sell it again….” Thirteen years later, MacDougall remembered the email and reached out, only to find that the seller had recently died, by his own hand. Suicide and tragedy can be common in Canada’s northern and indigenous communities, and MacDougall doesn’t discuss motivations. But he did some research, found parts of the life story of another resident of our little universe, and honors his presence on earth and his making of music while he was here.

I met old friends through FJ50, most especially through a wonderful interview with banjoist Bela Fleck and the making of his My Bluegrass Heart album. And there’s an insightful piece on the young, trailblazing fingerstyle guitarist Yasmin Williams, who is from the DC region. Since this is the Fretboard Journal, we also learn about Bela’s Gold Tone Signature Model banjo, made by Wayne Rogers, and Yasmin’s innovative Skytop Grand Concert guitar, which was made by New York-based luthier Eric Weigeshoff. The Swiss cheese-looking Sitka spruce top (as seen in the Sunshowers video) was actually “created by nature. This wood was once part of a logging raft in the Pacific Northwest, where it was invaded by shipworms.”

Another real treat in this issue is the story by eTown’s Nick Forster, writing about the album, Life Lessons which features a collaboration of roots musician Tim O’Brien, jazz master Bill Frissell, and their teacher in Denver from the 1970s, jazz guitarist Dale Bruning. All the Things You Are, played as a trio on the new recording, is seen here as a solo version by Frisell. The storytelling and conversation between the three musicians in Forster’s piece shows love and respect all around.

And there’s so much more. A profile of luthier Michael Lewis includes an appreciation of the instruments and the man by mandolinist Frank Solivan. We learn about the company that was the forerunner of Fender, K&F. FJ50 tells us the story of how Southern California jazz musician Bruce Forman ended up with the iconic Gibson guitar of his hero, Barney Kessel. Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo‘s acoustic side is featured in a review of In Virus Times, a set of reflective acoustic music coming out of the pandemic.

The Fretboard Journal has been a part of my life since 2005. In those 17 years I’ve come to appreciate how it opens up my musical world, four times a year, when that simple white protective mailer shows up in the mailbox.

Let’s see what the next 50 issues bring!

More to come…

DJB

P.S. – Here’s a little bonus from the My Bluegrass Heart band:

And here are some of the More to Come stories featuring the Fretboard Journal since the blog began in 2008:

Image: Fifty issues of Fretboard Journal on the DJB bookcase (credit DJB)