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Pauli Murray Mural

My name is Pauli Murray

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Perhaps Pauli Murray is finally getting her due.

Murray’s story — that of an African American member of the LGBTQ community, Civil Rights and Women’s Rights activist, the lawyer responsible for producing what Justice Thurgood Marshall called “the Bible of Civil Rights law,” a poet and writer, the first female African American Episcopal priest, and an Episcopal saint — has fascinated me ever since my late colleague Karen Nickless brought the campaign to preserve Pauli Murray’s childhood home in Durham, North Carolina, to our attention while I was at the National Trust. 

Early in 2015 the Trust named the house a National Treasure, which helped inspire the first major gift to support the house’s restoration later that year. The Trust also worked with groups as diverse as the the Pauli Murray Project, the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites, the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice, the National Park Service, and the Episcopal Church to support its 2017 listing as a National Historic Landmark. It ranks high among my preservation memories.

As always, this Weekly Reader features links to recent books and articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy.

In June, we attended a viewing of a new film on Pauli Murray as part of the 2021 AFI Docs Festival. That documentary — My name is Pauli Murray — is being released in general theatres this Friday, September 17th, and will begin streaming on Amazon Prime Video on October 1st.

I had learned important pieces about Murray’s life and influence since my introduction back in 2014. But I was struck by how the filmmakers found new material to fill in the portrait of someone who is one of the most consequential — and least known — people of the 20th century.

As Kelsey Ables writes in a September 11th review of the film for The Washington Post,

“Murray paved the paths that the civil and women’s rights movements would march on and built the legal frameworks we exist inside today. And yet Murray was so ahead of the curve that when history was eventually written, it was often written without mention of Murray.“

Ables notes that Murray’s story is a portrait of U.S. history, with all its omissions.

“Murray’s achievements weren’t the sort of clean victories history gloms onto but a lifelong process of starts and stops. Black in a White-dominated women’s movement and a woman in a male-dominated civil rights movement, Murray slid through the cracks of both. A mixed-race person who was attracted to women and struggled with what we would now call gender dysphoria, Murray’s very existence defied the categories racism and sexism rely on. Murray’s ideas about the arbitrary nature of those categories were so far ahead of the times, they were dismissed or ignored.

The movie’s trailer hints at what the viewer of this masterful film will learn.

Among the previously unknown sources the filmmakers uncovered were audio recordings of Murray reading the posthumously published Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage aloud for a friend.

In effect, Murray is able to tell us her own story, in her own voice.

Song in a Weary Throat is a powerful memoir, told with wit and energy. Murray begins in the floor of her kitchen in Baltimore, entangled in her mother’s billowing white skirts. Her memories of her parents are thin because her beloved mother died when she was four, and she went to segregated Durham, North Carolina, to live with her Aunt Pauline. It moves through her life as a self-described “rebel, instigator, and survivor, at times a nettle in the body politic, an opener-of-doors, and always a devout child of God and friend of mankind.”

As Patricia Scott-Bell writes in a new introduction to the 2018 edition, Murray tried out more than a dozen titles for her work before she settled on a line from her epic poem “Dark Testament.”

“Hope is a song in a weary throat.”

This is autobiography about living with the audacity of hope. She was rejected for admission by the University of North Carolina because of her race, and four years later by Harvard Law School because of her gender. But the audacity of hope led Murray, whose personal motto was “Don’t get mad, get smart” to enter Howard Law School in 1941. She later added degrees from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and Yale Law School. Yale named their newest residential college for Murray in 2016.

Murray notes more than halfway through the memoir that moments of despair were offset with the sustaining knowledge “that the quest for human dignity is part of a continuous movement through time and history linked to a higher force.” She quotes The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., expressing the same concept when he said “that in the struggle for justice one has ‘cosmic companionship.'”

Pauli Murray

Murray’s autobiography is just one of several important books to be written or republished in recent years that deal with different aspects of the life of this remarkable American. In 2016 I wrote a review on this blog of Scott-Bell’s The Firebrand and the First Lady, which chronicles the unlikely friendship of Pauli Murray and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Rich in detail of the relationship built between Murray and ER (as the First Lady is referred to throughout the book), it is also an excellent read. The Firebrand and the First Lady speaks to how we can challenge and support each other in our work toward social justice and human wholeness.  

These three works will help one gain a better portrait of one of America’s most enigmatic heroes. Because her legal, civil rights, and gender-equality work is consequential on so many fronts and levels, we may be tempted to downplay her move, later in life, into the priesthood. But Murray’s words when she left the practice of law in the early 1970s to become an Episcopal priest, describe the stakes.

She noted that most of the questions around inequality that we face as a nation are at their core moral issues that require reconciliation among all people. It is in community where we should affirm “the richness of individual diversity as well as the common human ties that bind us together.”

More to come…

DJB

We won’t last forever

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Some of the best memoirs are meditations.

In recent weeks I’ve been on a Natalie Goldberg reading binge. What started me down the path of taking in the thoughts of this longtime Zen practitioner and world-renowned writing teacher was her powerful 2018 memoir-as-meditation Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home. I had picked it up on a whim at Berkeley’s Pegasus Books but only recently pulled it out to read. It was a revelation.

This is Goldberg’s story of a cancer diagnosis that forever changes the way she looks at life. And death. She was sixty-three and, she writes,

“This cannot be. This is not the way the world is.

And what way, exactly, is the world? The way I wanted it to be. Death a long-distance call. I wanted to deal with death at the proper time — in my eighties or nineties.”

The Stoics suggest that we meditate on our mortality every day. Goldberg’s Zen training helped, in a similar fashion, because it “harped on death. We won’t last forever. Wake up. Don’t waste your life.” But that urging too often seemed “artistic, remote.”

Until she was face-to-face with death.

I read this short but gripping memoir in a day. On page-after-page Goldberg shows how she and her partner — who along the way is diagnosed with breast cancer — grapple with their battles (with the cancers, with their bodies, with the cancer-industrial complex, with their emotions) separately and together. The cancer twins, she calls them. They both have to face the unknown, the void. Cancer forces that type of focus.

In her telling of this story, there is laughter. She hears the name of the medication she is taking at one point — ofatumumab — and decides that it sounds like “Oh Fat Tuna Man.”

There is food, more than one person can eat, thanks to their friends. But her lithe partner chows down with the best of them.

There are new perceptions, such as the following about those friends.

“I did notice, when friends visited, subtle differences. Yes, they had more energy, more mobility than I did. They were still busy in the world with the routines…But there was something much more subtle, something I don’t often catch until after they left: They don’t know they will die. It was constantly with me now, my mortality. It hung out on my right shoulder like an animal, patient yet hungry. It wanted me, and I knew that eventually it would have me.”

There is despair, when she realizes that Oh Fat Tuna Man hasn’t worked, and all the while the cancer has, worming its way into her bones. This person who for years has used natural medicines now, in desperation, shifts to an experimental drug…which works, beating the cancer.

And there is some sort of elation. “I was supposedly normal again, as if no hole had been blown through the center of my life.”

Goldberg’s path through is based on a commitment to embrace the suffering directly. She ends with a moving poem and thoughts on a favorite painting. The poem is from her visit to a remarkable place — the non-Catholic cemetery in Rome — where she visits John Keats’ grave and meets “not only Keats but young Natalie again.” But the poem she quotes is from the grave of Gregory Corso.

Spirit

is Life

it flows thru

the death of me

endlessly

like a river

unafraid

of becoming

the sea

This is a meditation on finding a path, finding a place, “to set one foot after another. To come inside out; to show your guts, everything that you are made of.” And the path brings her to a painting by Pierre Bonnard, who “silently grieves” about the emotional absence of human fulfillment through the medium of paint.

“I viewed the last piece he painted, a week before his death in 1947. Almond Tree in Blossom. Full of light. The tree in white takes over most of the canvas, and it feels as though it were about to ascend….

When Japanese Zen masters approach death, they write a poem to reveal their mind at the final moment. In this final painting, Bonnard does something similar, displays his lightening heart. Before the great question — How is it to live with eternity at your door? — Bonnard answers: In full bloom.”

More to come…

DJB

Image of almond blossoms by Beverly Buckley from Pixabay

Rest in peace, beautiful singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith

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One of my favorite singer-songwriters, Nanci Griffith, passed away in August at the much-too-early age of 68. This first Saturday Soundtrack after a summer hiatus is my recognition of this singular talent with the simple yet memorable writing and singing voice.

Griffith began her career in the late 1970s and gained prominence after a move to Nashville in the mid-1980s. At a time of electronic dance music, new wave, and grunge rock, she made it cool to like folk music again. Born near San Antonio and raised in Austin, Griffith’s Texas twang was authentic…and an acquired taste. Her mother was a real estate agent and her father was a bookseller and a fan of folk music. With his encouragement she listened to and was influenced from an early age by Odetta, Woody Guthrie, and singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt, a fellow Texan. She once described her work — which she called folkabilly — by saying: “You take a whole lot of Woody Guthrie and a whole lot of Loretta Lynn, swoosh it around and it comes out as Nanci Griffith.”

An exceptional songwriter, Griffith spun narratives about small-town life and love as well as her social and political concerns. She is best known for her Love at the Five and Dime — a big hit for Kathy Mattea — with my favorite version being from Griffith’s 1988 live offering One Fair Summer Evening. The introduction alone is worth the price of the album.

It’s a Hard Life Wherever You Go is an excellent example of Nanci’s more social songs, weaving three small vignettes into a powerful statement. And Lookin’ for the Time (Working Girl) is her take on an often hidden and forgotten part of the human experience.

Besides Mattea, other artists also had successful covers of Griffith’s songs. Her Outbound Plane, from the Little Love Affairs album, was a big hit for Suzy Bogguss. The Irish song interpreter Maura O’Connell sang a memorable version of Trouble in the Fields (heard here with Griffith singing harmony).

Griffith was known as a talented interpreter of others’ songs, such as with her beautiful take on the Tom Waits tune about recognizing what we have, while we still have it — San Diego Serenade — from the Late Night Grande Hotel album. Those sentiments seem so appropriate today.

“I never saw the east coast until I moved to the west

I never saw the moonlight until it shone off of your breast

I never saw your heart until someone tried to steal it away

I never saw your tears until they rolled down your face“

Her Other Voices, Other Rooms album — the Grammy-winning 1993 compilation of songs by her folk mentors and heroes — showed off those interpretive sensibilities to great effect. On this album alone she pulls off Woody Guthrie’s Do-Ri-Me — with an assist from Guy Clark on vocals and the New Grass Revival’s Pat Flynn on lead flatpicked guitar — with a flair that is pure Griffith. I always felt that her interpretation of John Prine’s aching Speed of the Sound of Loneliness was the definitive one for this classic. She performs a heartfelt version of Dylan’s Boots of Spanish Leather, and provides a very personal touch to Townes Van Zandt’s Tecumseh Valley. And her simple version of the Carter Family’s Are You Tired of Me, My Darling? — with Iris Dement and Emmylou Harris on the harmony vocals — has always been my preferred interpretation of this very sad tune. The haunting line that ends each chorus reaches into the self-doubt that we all feel in one way or the other:

“Tell me, would you live life over, could you make another wife?

Are you tired of me, my darling? Answer only with your eyes.”

Nanci didn’t always sing from the folkie songbook. Give a listen to her cover of the Rolling Stones’ No Expectations from a 1991 Austin City Limits show with Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Gold, and the Indigo Girls.

Griffith suffered from two bouts with cancer and other health issues in later years. As she performed fewer dates, many younger music fans would only know her music through covers by other artists. Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson had a hit with the lovely country duet Gulf Coast Highway, co-written by Griffith and bandmate James Hooker, who sang the duet on the original. It has the line that seems so appropriate today:

“And when she dies, she says she’ll catch some blackbird’s wing,

and she will fly away to heaven, come some sweet Blue Bonnet spring.”

R.I.P. Nanci Griffith. You left us much too soon.

More to come…

DJB

Image: Cover of Nanci Griffith’s 1987 album Lone Star State of Mind

National interests vs. partisan interests

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“Researchers estimate that the war in Afghanistan has cost more than 171,000 lives. It has wounded more than 20,700 U.S. service members and taken the lives of 2461 more. It has cost more than $2 trillion, which adds up to about $300 million a day for twenty years.“

Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, August 31, 2021

Tomorrow’s twentieth anniversary of the attacks of 9/11* should lead us to step back from the failed policies of the endless war on terror and use fact-based evidence to think through the many challenges we face, which extend well beyond jihadist terror. It is past time to sort out national interests vs. partisan interests.

And it would be nice if the major news outlets would help. But as PressRun.Media founder Eric Boehlert recently pointed out, “the same press corps that said DeSantis ‘won’ the pandemic is now sure Biden ‘lost’ Afghanistan.”

So I have my doubts.

I asked a friend — a professional journalist who teaches journalism — about the media today. She shook her head and simply said, “They never learn.” Throughout August, many who write about the media for major news outlets expressed frustration with the way the issues we face are covered.

Jon Allsop in the Columbia Journalism Review contrasts the hawkish coverage of the media in Afghanistan to the overall lack of coverage about recent events in Haiti, both places where the U.S. has a history of complicity in creating crises. Much of the outrage is driven by “Washington-based politicians and national-security pundits with well-established hawkish views — and in some cases, as The Intercept has reported, ongoing professional and financial ties to the military-industrial complex.”

Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan wrote in August that “The Afghan debacle lasted two decades. The media spent two hours deciding whom to blame.“

Throughout, the American government has lied to the American people about how well things were going in America’s longest war, as The Washington Post’s important 2019 project, “The Afghanistan Papers,” made abundantly clear….’Senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.’”

Political scientist Larry Sabato suggested that much of the slant to the Afghanistan coverage came about because the media has “been waiting for an opportunity to harshly go after Biden to prove anew how ‘balanced’ they are.”

The stakes in these decisions are incredibly high, as Heather Cox Richardson outlined in writing on national vs. partisan interests. There are important questions of when it is in America’s interest to fight a ground war. They are not easy questions, and reasonable people can disagree.

“But none of them is about partisan politics, either; they are about defining our national interest. 

It strikes me that some of the same people currently expressing concern over the fate of Afghanistan’s women and girls work quite happily with Saudi Arabia, which has its own repressive government, and have voted against reauthorizing our own Violence Against Women Act. Some of the same people worrying about the slowness of our evacuation of our Afghan allies voted just last month against providing more visas for them, and others seemed to worry very little about our utter abandonment of our Kurdish allies when we withdrew from northern Syria in 2019. And those worrying about democracy in Afghanistan seem to be largely unconcerned about protecting voting rights here at home.“

Not to mention that many of those wanting to protect Americans in Afghanistan seem uninterested in stopping the spread of a disease that has already killed more than 650,000 of us.

Richardson’s Letters from an American series is a good place to get the historical backstory to a range of challenges we face, such as minority rule over the majority, the growth of domestic terrorism, the Supreme Court’s turning a blind eye to unconstitutional state laws, the racists origins of the Senate filibuster, and the conflict between individualism and society.

The twentieth anniversary of 9/11 is a good time to invest in evidence-based solutions to our nation’s biggest problems which, as Michael German, Elizabeth Goitein and Faiza Patel have written, isn’t jihadist terrorism any more.

“When something is labeled a “national security” threat, it is often assumed that the response will require extraordinary assertions of executive power and diminished protections for civil rights and civil liberties. This assumption has dominated our government’s response to 9/11. Yet it is rarely tested, as few counter-terrorism tactics have been evaluated for effectiveness using scientific, evidence-based methods. Indeed, in many instances, there is reason to believe these heavy-handed responses have been ineffective or even harmful.…”

And their conclusion nails it for me.

“The billions wasted on military and intelligence programs that do not demonstrably make Americans safer need to be reinvested in evidence-based solutions to our nation’s biggest problems.”

More to come…

DJB

*My post Isolated mind. Dead hearts from last Thanksgiving builds on a sermon given the Sunday after 9/11 by one of my mentors, The Rev. Dr. Frank Wade.

Image by USA from Pixabay.

Summer games

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Oscar Charleston is the best baseball player you’ve never heard of. Don’t believe me? Bill James, the father of baseball analytics, rated Charleston as not only the greatest Negro Leagues player of them all, but as the fourth greatest baseball player of all time. According to the stats that James uses to rank player value from different eras, only Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, and Willie Mays were greater than Charleston, who was slotted just above Ty Cobb.

As always, this Weekly Reader features links to recent books and articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy.

Jeremy Beer writes in his fascinating 2019 biography Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball’s Greatest Forgotten Player that Charleston was not only an outstanding player, but a fascinating individual.

Charleston put together an other-worldly career in the Negro and Cuban leagues decades before white major league baseball decided to integrate.* A centerfielder with the range and smarts of Willie Mays, a hitter with as fearsome a stroke as Babe Ruth, and a baserunner built like a linebacker with the fast fearlessness of Ty Cobb, Charleston was the whole package. Yet in the era when he was at his best, from the late-1910s to the mid-1930s, the Negro Leagues were little noticed outside the Black community and seldom appreciated by those who ran the white leagues. That didn’t, however, keep Charleston’s fame from growing.

Negro Leagues players and sportswriters from Satchel Paige to Buck O’Neil to Turkey Stearnes said he was the best player they had ever seen. Former white baseball commissioner Happy Chandler said that Charleston and Cobb were the “greatest ballplayers he had ever laid eyes on.” Dizzy Dean said of Oscar, “He could hit a ball a mile….he didn’t have a weakness. We just threw and hoped like hell he didn’t send it out of the park.” And the great Honus Wagner, two months before Charleston’s death, said, “I’ve seen all the great players in the many years I’ve been around, and have yet to see one any greater than Charleston.” Oscar Charleston was inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in 1976, and yet his reputation was still largely hidden due to his race, the era he played in, and the lack of biographical material written about him as compared with other Negro Leagues players.

Oscar Charleston played for and managed what many consider to be one of the top Negro Leagues teams of all time, the Pittsburgh Crawfords of the early 1930s. He also played for the other great team of that era, the Homestead Grays. Besides Charleston, those two teams featured Hall-of-Famers Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, Willie Foster, Judy Johnson, Smokey Joe Williams, and Jud “Boojum” Wilson. As his playing days drew to a close, he built a reputation as a talented manager. Branch Rickey — who broke baseball’s color barrier when he signed Jackie Robinson — hired Charleston as the first African American scout for major league baseball.

All of this and much more comes out in Beer’s fascinating book. Using previously unknown sources, he has brought forward the forgotten history of a man who, although he was the best known player of the Negro Leagues, was identified by the occupation “baggage handler” on his death certificate. Beer’s work helps illuminate the history of this important American, who deserved so much more in life and death.

Kevin Blackistone, writing in the Washington Post, also addresses the delegitimization of Negro Leagues baseball in Shohei Ohtani and the Negro Leagues’ two-way stars. In writing of how two-way phenom Ohtani is often compared to Babe Ruth, who pitched early in his career, Blackistone makes the case that the better comparison is Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe. It was New York baseball columnist Damon Runyon who gave Radcliffe that name.

Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe

During a 1932 doubleheader that pitted Radcliffe’s Pittsburgh Crawfords against the New York Black Yankees at Yankee Stadium, Runyon witnessed Radcliffe hit a grand slam and catch Satchel Paige’s shutout in the twi-night opener, only to turn around and throw a shutout of his own in the second game.“

Radcliffe did double duty as a pitcher and catcher from 1930 to 1946. Only he did them in the Negro Leagues.

“But that Ohtani would be compared reflexively by most of us in the media to Ruth — skipping over the career not only of Radcliffe but of other Negro Leagues stars who routinely pitched and played the field, such as Hall of Famer “Bullet” Joe Rogan — reminds how baked-in the continued delegitimization of Negro Leaguers’ accomplishments is. An asterisk still hovers over their achievements, while none does for White players who also played only among themselves and not against all of the best players of their time….Negro Leagues ballplayers continue to deserve better.“

Blackistone could have called out his fellow Washington Post columnist, the recently retired Tom Boswell, over the same issue. I love Boswell’s work and encourage you to read Thomas Boswell’s best Washington Post sportswriting. However, as Beer points out, Boswell criticized the Sporting News in 1999 for listing Charleston as the sixty-seventh best player of all time, pouring on sarcasm (Was he a nineteenth-century player? A Negro Leagues star? A legend in Antarctic sandlot ball?) that makes one cringe at the white privilege and ignorance of his statements. Even the great ones swing and miss on occasion.

And check out Are You Allowed to Criticize Simone Biles?: A Decision Tree from McSweeney’s before you make your opinion known.

More to come.

DJB

Image: Oscar Charleston

*Charleston’s slash line over 27 years was .350/.430/.573. His OPS was 1.003 and his OPS+ was 173. As a comparison, Babe Ruth’s career slash line was .342/.474/.690 with an OPS + of 197.

For those who labor

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With a hint of fall in the cooler air, let’s rise early for our daily walk.

Coming by my love of the morning naturally, I gravitate to others who are facing the day at sunrise, getting an early start. Even with traditional work responsibilities in the rear view mirror, I still choose to begin the day with a walk when much of the world is throwing off its bedcovers and throwing open the windows. The possibilities for the moment, for the day, for life are clearer as I put one foot in front of the other, over and over again.

I see others up with the sun, including some familiar faces. Like Carter, the 68-year-old gentleman sitting in his wheelchair outside Ace Hardware. With his radio playing and Carter spreading smiles and sunshine, he is ready to get his Covid booster shot and do his part to help the community. There is the young man striding through downtown, listening to a podcast on his headphones while sporting stylish shorts made from the much-loved design of the Maryland flag. Or our neighbor Ed, who — as his retirement project — is training a young English Labrador on various aspects of good dog behavior. The lab also looks sharp, sporting a well-groomed pale yellow coat.

First encounters when stepping off the stoop will invariably be with those, like Ed, on labors of love: dog walkers, for instance, or parents strolling their children to the day care center. While their canine and human charges are eager to meet the day, the adult parts of the tandem display every state of being from catatonic to highly caffeinated.

Several city blocks separate me from my morning shot of caffeine. At Kaldi’s Social House there’s a warm and welcoming “hello David” waiting as Betty, Jo, Kadiato, Rayyana, and Sahr begin to make my favorite summer drink (cold brew with oat milk) before I’m ten steps into the shop. The conversation ranges from the changing seasons (Rayyana, from Saudi Arabia, has never adjusted to the cold of winter) to fashionable glasses (Betty owns more pairs than I do). From school (“Whatever possessed me to sign up for a class that ends at 9:40 at night when I have to be up and out to work at 6!”) to smiles (Jo says she can see them through the masks by looking at the eyes). From health care (dental coverage seems to be a luxury for many) to sleep (no one ever gets enough).

One of the hardest jobs I ever had was waiting tables, so their cheerfulness early in the morning while serving a steady stream of customers is a treat I cherish. Labor Day is an especially good day to acknowledge, appreciate, and admire all those who make our day better.

Penguin Rush Hour (Credit: WMATA)

Face-to-face with the 21st century labor force

Living across the street from the Metro station, I encounter people heading to their labors. Prior to the pandemic, many would be dressed alike in the professional Washington uniform — which is key context in making the 100-foot-long Penguin Rush Hour mural at the station so deliciously delightful.

The professional classes and knowledge workers have their own set of issues, but Labor Day is a celebration of those who work with their hands, their backs, their full bodies, and — yes — their brains. Among those millions of workers are the morning people I see on my walks — those of the underpaid labor class who are up early to make sure the rest of us can function.

Besides the crew at Kaldi, I see a range of those working early and long hours for much less pay than the men and women heading to Washington’s gleaming office buildings. People with names and jobs that matter.

Like Jorge, one of the numerous street sweepers and trash collectors who turn the space in front of Georgia Avenue’s bars and clubs from a mini-version of New Orleans the morning after Fat Tuesday into a welcoming space for the day.

Plant whisperers like Raphael, who move heavy hoses, watering trucks, and wheelbarrows full of mulch around to keep downtown lush and blooming.

Farmers like Elda and George from Barajas Produce who work seven days a week and drive up to two hours on a Saturday morning to bring juicy peaches, striking red and yellow sweet peppers, creamy milk, eggs with yolks bursting with flavor, delectable honey, and rich goat’s milk cheese to fill our refrigerators and freezers.

Small business owners like Kim and Young, who open their dry cleaners at 7 a.m. with a smile (Kim) and a quip (Young) to ensure that on the increasingly rare days when I need a suit and dress shirt, mine are cleaned and pressed.

Recognize the humanity

Inevitably old school in nature, I always try — at a minimum — to smile and say hello when I pass the people who inhabit my mornings. I thank the street sweepers and plant whisperers. I say a word to admire the handiwork of the construction crews. I connect when the Ethiopian immigrant setting up the outside tables at Whole Foods urges me to “seize the day!”

Silver Spring is enriched with one of the largest Ethiopian communities in the DMV.

Many of those I meet are immigrants, and as I learned from my barber — a registered nurse before coming to the U.S. from the Republic of Georgia — they have often taken less “professional” jobs than their training and backgrounds would suggest. As Anand Giridharadas wrote in his book The True American,

“Selling Americans three tamales for a dollar was a strange landing for a twenty-seven-year-old who had trained to command fighter jets and qualified as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. But so it is with the many who leave their native soil and find that to rise, they must first sink into the fresh earth below. Rais was no longer a Bangladesh Air Force man. He was a Buckner Food Mart man.“

They are the ones doing work that many of us don’t want to do. They have the names that many of us mispronounce — or, in fact, dispronounce — which is a term for people saying names incorrectly on purpose, to ensure that immigrants know whose country this really is. Natalie Goldberg reminds us of the importance of names. They tell us that people exist. “Seeing names makes us remember. A name is what we carry all our life, and we respond to its call in a classroom, to its pronunciation at a graduation, or to our name whispered in the night.”

Those with names we forget or mispronounce are too often being used by our capitalistic system for our benefit, and we much too frequently overlook them in our rush to get through the day.

I see people every morning who remind me how much the quality of my life is enhanced by their willingness to sink themselves into the fresh earth of a new country, get up very early even if they are hurting, face the sunrise, and get to work. I think about the millions in factories, driving trucks, in hospitals, in Amazon warehouses, on high-rise construction projects I don’t see, who do the same. Rather than push back against people of color and immigrants, perhaps we could focus on all they have done for this country, welcome them, and help them realize their part of the American dream. We are all, in a fashion, immigrants.

Oligarchy and the American way

To see a way forward, we must first take a brief look back at America’s relationship to the people who build and take care of the things and people in our country.

For most of its existence, American capitalism has grown on the backs of cheap, disposable labor.

  • Southern slaveowners ruled the country from its founding to 1860, supported by major commercial interests in the North.* To break the hold of chattel slavery it took the creation of an anti-slavery, pro-business Republican party and a civil war.
  • Robber barons ruled the country from the 1870s to the 1930s with their repressive labor practices and outright theft of land, minerals, and life. To break their hold on power it took a country overwhelmed by the needs of the Great Depression, the creation of a progressive wing of the Democratic party, and leaders like Frances Perkins. It took the election of an administration and Congress that passed federal legislation in the form of the New Deal. Strong unions gave us the weekend, the 8-hour work day, the 40-hour work week, paid vacations, sick leave, and more. The New Deal and unions — though far from perfect and far from all-inclusive — nonetheless produced the country’s first true middle class. In the 1970s, we had no billionaires.
  • That lasted until 1980 and the ascension of an anti-regulatory, anti-civil rights, anti-union, anti-voting rights, pro-corporate Republican party and the election of Ronald Reagan, supported by the conservative Supreme Courts of Chief Justice William Rehnquist and especially Chief Justice John Roberts. Regulations on business were slashed, taxes were cut, protections for the working class were weakened, access to the polls for people who did not vote Republican was limited, and income inequality soared. We are now in our third period of oligarchy, this time led by Wall Street, Silicon Valley, multinational business interests, and a corporate media. Income inequality has reached Gilded Age levels, with the top 0.1% of Americans taking in more than 196 times the income of the bottom 90 percent.

As in the previous two periods, this unfettered capitalism is built on cheap, disposable labor and the fostering of hatred between working classes.

A way forward

The top 0.1% is working hard to obscure the fact that it is in the best interest of 90% of Americans to seek out what Heather McGhee has called a solidarity dividend. To achieve their goal, those at the top want us to forget that labor is composed of human beings: real, breathing, loving people, striving to advance and meet their own American dream. But the deck is stacked against them as long as the top 0.1% hold the power of government.

Teri Kanefield has written that we have the power to change. “What we learned from getting out of our second oligarchy, the age of robber barons, is that federal legislation can solve the dark money problem and move us toward a fully functioning multi-racial democracy.”

We need to elect people to office who believe in the project to — in the unforgettable words of Langston Hughes — “Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed.” We need to push Congress hard to pass laws to protect our democracy against the oligarchs and approve legislation so everyone can make a decent living. We need to tax those who for too long have taken a free ride on our backs and on our time and wealth. We need to make sure everyone can vote.

We also need to recognize the humanity of those who toil for our benefit. It becomes much harder to demonize someone you know. In addition to taking steps to make government fairer for all, Labor Day is as good a day as any to begin to take the time to stop, smile, talk, learn their stories, and thank the morning people in your life. You may be amazed at what you learn.

More to come…

DJB

*Almost two-thirds of the presidents before the civil war were slave-owning southerners — nine of the first fifteen presidents — and one more had strong southern leanings. Of the 21 four-year terms during that period, this southern group held office during 16 of those terms.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Travel in order to be moved

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Next week More to Come will awaken from its summer slumber with posts on a range of current issues, places that matter, roots musicians, and occasional bursts of radical common sense. But before we get back into the thick of things, let’s take the time to honor that great tradition of the August holiday.

In 2016 I quoted the travel writer Pico Iyer in a post entitled The real voyage of discovery. Iyer noted,

“…anybody who travels knows that you’re not really doing so in order to move around – you’re traveling in order to be moved.  And really what you’re seeing is not just the Grand Canyon or the Great Wall but some moods or intimations or places inside yourself that you never ordinarily see when you’re sleepwalking through your daily life.”

To get back into the swing of blogging, and — more importantly — to celebrate current trips and anticipate future adventures, here are links to a bakers dozen old MTC favorites from places I’ve visited since this blog began in 2008 as a way to capture a family trip to the Four Corners. If you want to see more, check out the Heritage Travel section of the blog.

Enjoy!

Acoma Pueblo Detail, photo by Claire
  • A few “classic” photos features a small collection of the 140 black-and-white photographs Claire took and developed in her high school dark room from that same trip.
  • Beautiful Stockholm captures several days out of our March 2014 family trip to see Andrew, who was studying abroad.
Glacier panorama at Logan Pass

In 2014, Claire and I took a 22-day cross-country trip that I dubbed the Not All Who Wander Are Lost tour. There are posts and pictures from each day on that wonderful experience, if you want to explore. I’ll just say that every dad should have the opportunity to explore the riches of our country for three weeks with his daughter.

  • Going to the sun is a nice sample from that trip, capturing our day in Glacier National Park.
King's College Courtyard
King’s College Courtyard, Cambridge
Duomo Dome
Glimpse of the Duomo (Cathedral) dome in Florence
  • 48 hours in Tuscany is just one of many posts from our lifetime-changing six weeks in Rome in 2016, for my sabbatical.
  • These Observations from Rome wrapped up those six weeks. You can get a sense of what we did and find links to specific posts. (There were many.)

I took a gap year in 2019 after retiring from the National Trust, and the first thing on the agenda was travel. I’ll end this post with three links to my time in Japan, followed by one post from our visit to England.

Buddhist statues at Daisho-in Temple
Buddhist statues, decorated to protect children and travelers, at Daisho-in Temple, Miyajima, Japan
  • Eight days before the architect I.M. Pei passed away at the age of 102, we visited his Miho Museum in Japan. I wrote about it in I.M. Pei, Rest in Peace.
  • Children of the drum was written from Japan as a reminder that we need to remember the basic things that make us human, helping us work together in community. We need to get to the heartbeat.
  • Japan by sea is the wrap-up to that wonderful two-week tour.
  • We were in England for the 75th anniversary of D-Day. One of the reasons we travel is to understand that our perspective isn’t the only one when it comes to historical events. I wrote about this in Remembering D-Day.

Happy travels, whenever you have the opportunity to see distant places.

More to come…

DJB

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

The 2021 summer break

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Early in this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs, a 40-year-old backup goaltender for the Washington Capitals filled in admirably for two games in an emergency, but was unable to play for the rest of the series. Hockey teams, it turns out, are notoriously opaque when it comes to injuries, preferring euphemisms to transparency. No one tweaks a groin or pinches a nerve. Instead, they have a “lower body” or an “upper body” injury. Craig Anderson, the old man in goal, was out because of something called body maintenance.

Quickly latching on to this genteel way of describing recovery work in progress, I decided to let you know that More to Come is taking a summer break for body maintenance. Or perhaps the better way to phrase it in my case would be body, mind, and soul maintenance.

Taking time for body, mind, and soul maintenance

There is no injury involved with the staff at More to Come, but a sabbath respite is both biblical and practical.* As you can see below, I’ve been doing it all my life!

Taking my summer break as a two-year old

Last year’s summer hiatus from blogging worked out so well that I decided to extend the 2021 break over July and August to rest, reset, and focus on other projects, including some special attention on those pandemic pounds. This is it until the Tuesday after Labor Day (7 September for the international readers) unless something momentous comes along.**

Should you want to take this time and explore what you may have missed on the blog, what follows are the top reader favorites from 2021 (so far).

Three of the top posts came from the less than smooth transition of power in the U.S.

Two other highly-rated posts were more personal in nature.

  • Tending the heart — The family celebrated a significant birthday for my wife this year, who is, in the words of a friend and former colleague, “fantastically lovely in every way.”
  • Reminders — New Year’s Day seemed an appropriate time to consider how personal reminders of what matters can help us regain equilibrium after a tumultuous year.

Continuing with the family theme, fathers often provide guidance as we seek a way forward. These two posts are about lessons learned from two extraordinary fathers.

Two of this year’s top posts dealt with the return of optimism.

  • Les Colombes — Visit the beautiful photographs from an art installation in the National Cathedral.
  • Time to reinvigorate the bucket list — As winter departed and we discovered newfound optimism, perhaps it is time to revisit what we “really” want to do.

And finally, I found myself writing a good deal this year about our need to depend on others.

  • Assisted living — I have a confession to make. I have lived in assisted living my entire life.
Beach Reading
Beach Reading – the best kind

Summer is also a great time to catch up on your reading. Some of the best books I’ve read this year include:

The top two Saturday Soundtrack posts by reader views featured the musical artists Low Lily and The Avalon Jazz Band.

If these don’t interest you, check out the top 10 posts in terms of reader views from the time the blog began, or simply rummage around in the archives. In any event, have a great rest of the summer.

More to come…

DJB

Image of the pier from free photos on Pixabay.

*There is no staff at More to Come. Just DJB.

**I won’t have to worry about covering Donald Trump’s fantasy of being reinstalled to office in August. As we used to say in the South, it ain’t gonna happen.

Festival favorites

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Summer is the time of outdoor music festivals. Following a year of coronavirus lockdown, many musicians are able to return to the road and play in front of fans for the first time in months.

Just a short note added at the first of August: Some of the summer music festivals, especially in areas with low vaccine rates and high anti-vax sentiment, are likely to turn into super spreader events with the Delta variant of Covid on the rise. Be smart and be safe in choosing which festivals/events to attend.

As More to Come heads into our summer hiatus, we’ll highlight several of the festivals I’ve attended through the years along with the songs from favorite bands that are guaranteed to set off a buzz in the crowds on this edition of Saturday Soundtrack. Perhaps one or more will encourage you to find a nearby festival to attend.

In the beginning

Parking Lot Picking
Parking Lot Picking by John Balch (l), Jody Kammerud, and DJB in Athens, AL 1976

My first music festivals were Mac Wiseman’s Renfro Valley Blue Grass Music Festival in Kentucky and the Tennessee Valley Old-Time Fiddlers Convention in Athens, Alabama. Wiseman had one of the smoothest voices in early bluegrass, and I drove up from Tennessee to Renfro Valley in the mid-1970s and camped in an open field just so I could hear tunes like Wabash Cannonball.

During the 1970s, I saw the Earl Scruggs Revue — the band formed by the banjo legend with his sons following the breakup of Flatt and Scruggs — at multiple festivals. No matter the venue or audience, the final tune was always the Scruggs classic, Foggy Mountain Breakdown, performed here with Gary and Randy Scruggs, fiddler Vassar Clements, and dobro master Josh Graves.

Oak Grove Folk Music Festival

During our fifteen years in Staunton, I often attended the local Oak Grove festival. There we heard a number of wonderful musicians — Guy Clark, Bryan Bowers, Stephen Bennett, Claire Lynch, Trapezoid, Bill Staines — in this intimate, wooded setting. For many of those years local favorites Robin and Linda Williams were the hosts, and their song (co-written with Jerome Clark) Rolling and Rambling (The Death of Hank Williams), is always a favorite.

Robin and Linda Williams at Red Wing

Oak Grove 2021 is scheduled for August 27-29 and will feature Robin and Linda Williams, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, and others.

Merlefest

The tradition-plus festival begun in 1988 by Doc Watson following the death of his son and long-time musical partner Merle was my festival of choice for many years beginning in the early 2000s. I’ve heard countless bands and unexpected collaborations there through the years, but the 2012 festival really stands out for me.

The Steel Wheels set the tone for a great 2012 Merlefest with their opening tune on Thursday night.

The Steel Wheels were Thursday’s bridge on the Cabin Stage between two more famous main stage artists. The crowds were headed for the food tents when lead singer Trent Wagler slammed his cymbal stick into the floor and the band went into Rain in the Valley. People literally turned around in the aisle and went back to their seats to hear the 30-minute set that led to full crowds at other venues whenever they performed throughout the weekend.

Merlefest 2012 was also the final one for the 89-year-old festival patriarch Doc Watson, who passed away a month after the event. Beginning with a 1974 performance at the old Exit/In in Nashville, I saw Doc live more times than any other performer in traditional and acoustic roots music. This video from 1979 of his signature Tennessee Stud — with Merle on guitar, T. Michael Coleman on bass, and Marty Stuart on mandolin — is the Doc I remember from my younger days. Tennessee Stud, which he made famous on the Will the Circle Be Unbroken album, often closed out his show in those years.

Finally, Sam Bush had played at each of the 24 previous Merlefests before 2012, and you figured he had something up his sleeve for the 25th anniversary.  The Sam Bush Band opened the final set on Friday evening with John Hartford’s Vamp in the Middle. After a few more songs, Sam introduced Derek Trucks and his wife Susan Tedeschi of the Tedeschi Trucks Band — Saturday evening’s headliner.  They kicked off Bell Bottom Blues and the night, which was already special, turned magical. Next came Gimme Shelter, followed by Bush bringing out his former New Grass Revival band mates Bela Fleck and John Cowan for a tribute to the late Levon Helm. When the music morphed into the old standard Cripple Creek, banjo wizards Fleck and Scott Vestal traded licks and choruses. The crowd was buzzing about the show the rest of the weekend.

Susan Tedeschi, Sam Bush, Derek Trucks, and John Cowan (l to r) onstage at Merlefest 2012
Bela Fleck (l) and Scott Vestal

Merlefest 2021 is set for September 16-19 with Sturgill Simpson, Margo Price, Tedeschi Trucks, Melissa Ethridge, Sam Bush, Amythyst Kiah, Yasmin Williams, The Waybacks, and the incomparable Mavis Staples among the headliners.

Red Wing Roots Music Festival

Steel Wheels 2015
The Steel Wheels – hosts for the Red Wing Roots Music Festival

Red Wing, held in Mount Solon in the splendor of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, is another festival I’ve attended on multiple occasions. The event is hosted by The Steel Wheels, and they always have a great set. One of the fan favorites is Long Way to Go, with their extended jam in the middle that takes a ride into the frenetic finish.

Red Wing Festival Sarah Jarosz 07 12 14
Sarah Jarosz at the 2014 Red Wing Roots Music Festival

Sarah Jarosz has played Red Wing on several occasions, both as a solo act and as part of I’m With Her. A masterful song interpreter, I’ve always favored her version of Dylan’s Ring Them Bells.

Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen gave a spirited performance late one evening at Red Wing. I enjoy the energy in their instrumental M80, which they played that evening to the delight of the festival’s night owls.

Frank Solivan
Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen at Red Wing III

The incomparable Claire Lynch has played Oak Grove, Merlefest, Red Wing, and the Institute of Musical Traditions shows here in the Washington area. I’ve attended them all and can say that she never disappoints. Claire will often end her performances with one of her fan favorites, the extended version of Wabash Cannonball, with an encore that was written by my cousin Hershey Reeves, Your Presence is My Favorite Gift.

My signed copy of the great Claire Lynch album “Dear Sister”

Besides The Steel Wheels and Sarah Jarosz, other headliners at this year’s festival on July 9-11 include The Tim O’Brien Band, and the amazing instrumental group Hawktail.

Let’s take it home

Based on the east coast, I haven’t had the pleasure of attending the iconic festivals in the west, such as Telluride and San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Nonetheless, I’ve heard great acoustic music through the years at venues from Annapolis to Charlottesville, Nashville to Claremont (California). Among those musicians who always pleases, Jerry Douglas is one of my personal favorites, especially when he rips into Who’s Your Uncle, the closing song of one of his recent sets in Annapolis and heard here live in the Bluegrass Underground show on PBS.

Darrell Scott and Tim O’Brien display incredible songwriting talent, improvisational genius, and vocal chops in all their performances. Long Time Gone, which the Chicks made a hit, was written by Scott. This live version from Raleigh has some tasty interplay of mandolin and guitar beginning at the 3:33 mark.

Tony Rice is another musician I enjoyed watching countless times in multiple venues before his death last Christmas Day. One of his most memorable shows for me was at the old Lime Kiln Theatre in Lexington, Virginia. While the Tony Rice Unit often closed their show by playing the fiddle tune Sally Goodin, it is hard to get more of a crowd favorite than Freeborn Man as played by Rice at Merlefest 1991 with Mark O’Connor, Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, and Mark Schatz

Another festival favorite from that same performance is Sam Bush, singing of the demise of William McKinley, in the White House Blues. Fun historical fact: this was the song Bill Monroe chose to have Earl Scruggs play on his debut with Monroe’s band on the Grand Ole Opry. Many musical historians point to that event as when bluegrass music was founded.

Nikckel Creek Reunion Tour in Charlottesville
Nickel Creek 25th reunion tour in Charlottesville, VA

It may be difficult to find a better festival favorite than Nickel Creek’s The Fox, which closed all their shows (and their reunion show) for years. Depending on how they were feeling, the mid-song jam could go on for a looong time. My daughter Claire and I heard this version at Merlefest 2006*, when they only did a “modified” jam (i.e., under 10 minutes). Check out Thile’s mandolin solo beginning at 4:04. I remember it well. I remember it when they closed out the show in Charlottesville from the Farewell for Now tour in 2007. And I remember it as they closed their 25th Reunion Tour shows in 2014. A true signature tune, The Fox is a festival favorite that never grows old.

Enjoy some live music this summer.

More to come…

DJB

Image: The Hillside Stage — ready for another Album Hour with the Waybacks and friends — at Merlefest, by DJB.

*No matter what the description says below the video, this was from Merlefest. Just look at the signage on the stage.

A plenitude of pithy proverbs

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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.* Six months later we had A plethora of pithy proverbs followed — as 2020 turned into 2021 — with A profusion of pithy proverbs. So as long as this segment is sponsored by the letter P, we’ll take a look at A plenitude of pithy proverbs for the first half of 2021.

My love for the short and to-the-point adage comes from my Grandmother Brown, who was known to say things such as, “The graveyard is full of folks who thought the world couldn’t get along without them.” Good advice for those of us who like to share our opinions. Speaking of which, Ryan Holiday, who writes about the philosophy of the Stoics, reminds us that we don’t have to opine about everything we notice.

“Remember you have the power to have no opinion.”

Ryan Holiday

The next two quotes came during the rather difficult (to state it mildly) transition of power in Washington. Journalist and writer Anand Giridharadas reminded us that there are progressives and there are reactionaries. Writer John Stoehr framed this battle as one in which different groups have different relationships to the law.

“We are living through a revolt against the future. The future will prevail.” 

Anand Giridharadas

“In defending Trump, (the Senate Republicans) are declaring loyalty not to America as it stands, but to an imaginary nation-within-a-nation, a white-power confederacy of the mind and spirit seeking to carve out a country where a minority is protected but not bound by the law while a majority is bound but not protected by it.“

John Stoehr

As the Biden administration took office, we began to see the difficult but doable path forward. The quote from President Kennedy was a reminder that almost all good things are hard. American poet and activist Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who died in February, had a beautiful reminder of what love can bring to a country and a civilization, if we allow it to bloom.

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win…”

President John F. Kennedy

“There’s always hope in love. Love and hate are viruses. Love can make a civilization bloom and hate can kill a civilization.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Both Ella Baker and Frank Wade had pithy reminders that we have to work to see a better future.

“People have to be made to understand that they cannot look for salvation anywhere but to themselves.”

Ella Baker

“Hope is hearing the music of the future; belief is dancing to it.”

The Rev. Dr. Francis Wade

In reading how the Germans have dealt with their history of Nazism much better than the U.S. has dealt with slavery and racism, I came across this important quote from 1985 by the president of West Germany. It reminded me of the continued danger in our country.

“Anyone who closes his eyes to the past is blind to the present. Whoever refuses to remember the inhumanity is prone to new risk of infection.“

Richard von Weizsäcker, President of West Germany

Poet, Emily Dickinson scholar, and friend Judith Farr passed away in June of this year. At her funeral the last page of the service leaflet had her 2019 poem What Lies Beyond, which ends with the following lines:

“To live with ugliness, we must hallow loveliness / the more, remembering that it often springs / from mud into light-filled air.”

Judith Farr from “What Lies Beyond”

Click on the link to read her obituary. Judith Farr was a remarkable woman.

Jazz great Miles Davis, who adopted a variety of musical directions in the 20th century, had a great quote about the need to “just do it.”

“Do not fear mistakes. There are none.”

Miles Davis

And finally, another good bit of advice from a Stoic philosopher.

“The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth is so we might listen more and talk less.”

Zeno

More to come…

DJB

Image of drinking glasses from Pixabay

*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.