Long among my favorites, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Brien is a mainstay on the acoustic, bluegrass, and roots music scene. This Saturday Soundtrack celebrates the music and ongoing influence of this talented performer.
Born in Wheeling, WV in 1954, O’Brien first came to prominence with the bluegrass band Hot Rize which played regularly from 1978 to 1990, was resurrected in 2014, and which continues to have an outsized influence on the acoustic music world.
“Steeped in bluegrass tradition…Hot Rize’s music was and is equally informed by a taste for the music of Leadbelly and Freddie King, swing, old-time Appalachia and more in ways that mirror the broad sweep of Bill Monroe’s influences.“
From the band’s 40th anniversary bash — joined by friends Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, and Stuart Duncan — Hot Rize performs Radio Boogie with O’Brien on the lead vocals.
Like many of us, O’Brien listened to a wide range of music growing up. And then he heard Doc Watson.
“O’Brien…absorbed a broad range of American music growing up, from country and rockabilly icons like Jerry Reed and Jerry Lee Lewis backed by local ringers at the famous Grand Ole Opry-style Wheeling Radio Jamboree to Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Dave Brubeck at summer concerts in the park. His parents had season tickets to the Wheeling Symphony and brought along the young O’Brien and his sister Mollie, who would become his first band mate; they also saw Ray Charles and the Beatles when they came through town. O’Brien took it all in, but something clicked when he first caught Doc Watson on TV as a teenager: that versatility, and the distillation of so much into the framework of traditional sounds, would be one of his biggest inspirations. ‘Doc Watson’s a great roadmap for anybody, really, because he played all kinds of music and made it sound like Doc Watson music,’ said O’Brien. ‘Of course, people put him in a bluegrass-folk music pigeonhole, but he really brought all of it together, and that’s kind of what I was interested in.'”
One of the loveliest remembrances of Doc Watson was one O’Brien recorded at the Kennedy Center shortly after Doc’s death.
After Hot Rize retired from the road, O’Brien became a sought after session musician; a songwriter with hits covered by Kathy Mattea, Garth Brooks and the Chicks; and a musical collaborator with a range of talented individuals including Darrell Scott. Always ready to use music to make a point, Keep Your Dirty Lights On is about mountaintop removal, something very important to two men from West Virginia and Kentucky.
“If you’ve got money in your pocket and a switch on the wall / we’ll keep your dirty lights on.”
One of my favorite O’Brien albums is 1996’s Red on Blond, featuring string band covers of Bob Dylan songs. This live version of Tombstone Blues, played with an all-star band, burns down the house! The O’Brien version of Maggie’s Farm is also a stellar remake of a Dylan classic.
O’Brien has always enjoyed exploring his Irish heritage as found on both sides of the Atlantic in albums such as The Crossing and Fiddler’s Green. From that second album, Look Down that Lonesome Road, heard here with a Transatlantic band, is a good example of this part of his catalog.
During the pandemic, O’Brien joined a group of Nashville pickers to back up Sturgill Simpson in his hit two-volume bluegrass album Cuttin’ Grass.
O’Brien has a new album coming out this month entitled He Walked On. It is a deeply personal look at getting through our trying times.
“‘He Walked On’ is an expansive portrayal of the nation from its beginnings to the present day through a series of musical snapshots, each training its lens from a different angle: humor, humanity, solidarity, grace. The Latin-tinged “El Comedor,” co-written with O’Brien’s fiancée Jan Fabricius, reflects on time the couple spent last year at the Mexican border near Tucson, visiting with a grassroots humanitarian group that offered water and food to hopeful immigrants waiting for asylum. With ‘We’re In The Same Boat, Brother,’ written by ‘Brother, Can You Spare A Dime’ lyricist Yip Harburg, O’Brien reaches back nearly 80 years for a call to solidarity that still feels timely today.“
That’s How Every Empire Falls is also from He Walked On, and here O’Brien is not only covering an important tune for our times, but he is also recognizing his friend, the late John Prine, who had a famous cover of this song.
The Tim O’Brien Band is on tour this summer. They’ll be in Baltimore on July 9th and at the Red Wing Roots Music Festival in Mount Solon, VA on July 10th, before heading out to Colorado.
Would you like to improve your life? Lucky you…because you’ve come to the right place!
As always, this Weekly Reader features links to recent articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry.
All eight have something to offer, but I found this one especially helpful.
“Make the Hard Thing Easier — Willpower is overrated. Rather than relying completely on self-control, intentionally design your environment to make the hard thing easier. For example, if you (like everyone) are constantly distracted by your smartphone, don’t just turn it off — remove it altogether from where you’re trying to concentrate. If your challenge is eating healthy, instead of relying on your willpower at 9 p.m. after a glass of wine, simply keep the brownies out of the house. This applies to everything. Don’t just think about how you’re going to accomplish your goals; think about how you’re going to design for them.“
Cal Newport writing on his Study Hacks blog, quotes C.S. Lewis during World War II in suggesting that if you want to improve your life, get on with it because Favorable Conditions Never Come.
“We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”
“Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone knew how to apologize? Luckily, this humorous guidebook is full of practical tips about when, why, and how to say you’re sorry. From a porcupine who accidentally popped his friend’s balloon to a snail who was running so fast he stepped on a sloth’s toes, hilarious examples and sweet illustrations abound. For both listeners who are just learning and older readers who need a refresher, this book will come as a welcome reminder that even though apologizing can be hard, it doesn’t have to be complicated.“
“After the Modern American Empire falls to the People’s Republic of China, and the Chinese Communist Party wields control of our country from sea to shining sea, we’ll only have ourselves to blame — and our adjectives.
Last month, China took a great leap forward. The Washington Post recently reported that Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of Huawei, told the company’s 197,000 employees to write shorter memos with fewer adjectives. At the world’s 49th-largest company, concise writing is now corporate dictum.
Excuse me while I go buy a plane ticket.“
Ren believes that his employees’ writing needs more discipline. Yes, I resemble that remark. Time to cut some adjectives.
An oft-heard response to calls for addressing the impacts of inequality is that slavery and racial segregation have ended, things have reverted to some benign mean, so “now we must all stop asking for special dispensation.”*
The Homestead Act of 1862 was a free grant of 160 acres of land, where some 1.6 million landowners gained deeds. Only six thousand Black families were able to participate. Today an estimated 46 million people — the overwhelming majority white — are propertied descendants of Homestead Act beneficiaries.
During the Great Depression, the government insured mortgages on real estate and offered tax deductions on interest, creating a new class of homeowners. But the government drew red “do not lend” lines around virtually all Black neighborhoods, excluding them from this benefit.
The New Deal brought minimum wage and overtime laws that transformed the lives of workers. Compromises with southern Democrats excluded the job categories held by most Blacks.
The GI Bill paid the college tuition of hundreds of thousands of WWII veterans — including my father — “catapulting a generation of men into professional careers.” But local administrators funneled Black servicemen to segregated vocational schools, when they could get the benefits at all.
From the creation of white suburbs through the use of highway construction dollars and subsidized housing to Social Security benefits that excluded job categories where most of the workers were Black, many government policies “worked to ensure a large, secure, and white middle class.”
“The advantages white people had accumulated were free and usually invisible and so conferred an elevated status that seemed natural and almost innate. White society had repeatedly denied people of color economic benefits on the premise that they were inferior; those unequal benefits then reified the hierarchy, making whites actually economically superior.”
This is where McGhee’s groundbreaking work makes its key point. These programs had worked. Spectacularly well in many cases. But when faced with sharing those benefits and the same treatment from the government with people of color, white Americans — to use an old adage — decided to cut off their nose to spite their face.
McGhee has a better metaphor: they drained the swimming pool.
As one telling example, white communities decided to drain their beautiful public swimming pools in the 1950s and 1960s rather than share them with Black people. More than a thousand public pools were closed due to racial hatred, and “millions of white Americans who once swam in public for free began to pay rather than swim for free with Black people.” In the 1990s, my children learned to swim in a private neighborhood pool. Now integrated for those who can afford the fee, it nonetheless was part of this historic shift.
By advancing a zero-sum economic model — where if you win, then I lose — those with power and wealth have hollowed out public goods and denigrated government programs that were once supported by wide majorities of Americans. McGhee explains how that campaign has hurt us all. Let’s be clear: people of color have suffered disproportionately from racism. But there is also a financial cost — as well as what writer Wendell Berry calls a deep, hidden moral cost — of racism to white Americans.
McGhee is hopeful as she suggests we have “reached the productive and moral limit of the zero-sum economic model.” She appeals to concrete self-interest in order to show how our fortunes are tied up with the fortunes of others. “We suffer because our society was raised deficient in social solidarity,” she writes. In example-after-example she points toward the benefits to whites and people of color from a Solidarity Dividend that helps us refill the pool of public goods for everyone.
“(W)e’ve got to get on the same page before we can turn it. We’ve tried a do-it-yourself approach to writing the racial narrative about America, but the 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.”
This is a remarkable book written with striking clarity and deep kindness. It is worth your while as a key piece in understanding the puzzle of our current moment and our potential pathway forward.
As music festivals begin to return this summer, let’s take a Saturday Soundtrack look at one of the favorites of the bluegrass circuit: Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen.
About that band name. Solivan is a gourmet chef, and he often prepared meals for friends and — on occasion — for the fans who came to his shows. Thus the “dirty kitchen” moniker (although he makes the point that he always cooks in clean kitchens).
Solivan is from California and spent time in Alaska as the first chair violin in the University of Alaska orchestra. From there he joined the Navy’s service band, Country Current, where he played electric guitar in their country outfit and mandolin and fiddle in the bluegrass unit. After that gig, Solivan formed his current band, which has won numerous awards and world-wide acclaim.
Having heard this band live three or four times, I can attest to the fact that their instrumental chops are superb. Solivan handles the lead vocals, mandolin, and fiddle. IBMA 2013 Banjo Player of the year Mike Munford plays fluid, other-worldly melodies on the five-string. IBMA 2013 Momentum Award winner Chris Luquetteholds down the guitar chair, moving between traditional flatpicking and jazzier stylings. Jeremy Middleton provides the foundation for the band on the bass.
To showcase those instrumental chops, we’ll begin with M80, a tune Munford named for a firecracker after he spent a July 4th night on the national mall. While there are live examples on YouTube, I like the original from the On the Edge album because of the stellar dobro work Rob Ickes brings to the tune.
On the Edge was the breakthrough album for the Dirty Kitchen band, and it was their first on Compass Records. The album begins with some classic bluegrass with I Fell Short (on Standing Tall). Check out the nice interplay halfway through between Solivan and Munford.
But that classic bluegrass sound soon takes a diversion into 1960s rock…with the Box Tops!
If the Box Tops don’t rock you, how about some Roy Orbison…with a little Day Tripper thrown in for good measure. Munford’s break on Pretty Woman, from the Family, Friends, and Heroes album, is a gem.
The follow-up album to On the Edge was Cold Spell, which includes the tongue twister She Said She Will. It features great breaks by Luquette and Munford.
In a nice juxtaposition of desires, the music video for Crave, the first tune from 2019’s If You Can’t Stand the Heat, was filmed amidst the beautiful instruments of Carter Vintage Guitars in Nashville. Yes, so many gorgeous instruments…so little money.
And if you think The Letter was a one-off, well…you clearly haven’t heard the bluegrass version of Whipping Post!
Let’s end this Soundtrack where we began, with a great Mike Munford instrumental, Line Drive.
Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen are playing in the Maryland area (and around the country) this summer, so catch them — or your favorite band — and enjoy some live music!
Today’s offering was entitled “Just don’t make things worse.” After a rather stiff and formal quote from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Holiday begins with that opening line above, and then continues.
“This might be the most violated piece of commonsense wisdom in the world. Because what most of us do when something happens, goes wrong, or is inflicted on us is make it worse — first, by getting angry or feeling aggrieved, and next, by flailing around before we have much in the way of a plan.
Today, give yourself the most simple and doable of tasks: just don’t make stuff worse. Whatever happens, don’t add angry or negative emotions to the equation. Don’t react for the sake of reacting. Leave it as it is. Stop digging. Then plan your way out.”
Reminders worth repeating. Don’t add negative emotions to the equation. Stop digging. Plan your way out.
It is no coincidence that these were words I needed to hear. Perhaps they will resonate with you.
As always, this Weekly Reader features links to recent articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry.
Grober begins with the set-up:
“’We were taught from day one to respect the game, respect the competition, respect the opponent… You don’t swing 3-0 when you’re up by that big a lead.’ — White Sox manager Tony La Russa, expressing disappointment in star rookie Yermin Mercedes for hitting a home run when his team was winning, 5/18/21“
And then he helps explain it all for you by writing out those unwritten rules, beginning with Rule #1:
“If a team is down by a lot of runs, they should stop trying to win. And the other team should stop trying to score. And the fans should fall into a deep, awful sleep….
We’ll be back in a minute to Rule #8:
“Don’t do anything new….If you figure out a novel way to score or win or whatever, you’re just making everyone who used to play and never thought to do that feel bad.“
And finally, Rule #10:
“If a player breaks any one of these rules, someone else should throw a hard baseball 90 miles per hour at their head. This is completely reasonable and totally normal.“
Javy Báez DEFINITELY violated Rule #8 last week.
With two outs, the first baseman simply had to touch the bag for the inning to end. Instead, he had a brain lock when the baserunner began running BACKWARDS! However, if he had tagged Báez BEFORE he reached first — even after the runner touched home — the inning would have been over and the run would not have counted.
But he didn’t. This became many fans’ instant candidate for wackiest baseball play ever. It shows the value of perseverance: don’t ever stop trying, because you never know when the other guy’s brain will lock up.
Every time I go to the ballpark I see something I’ve never seen before. This definitely qualifies.
“The world of sports media is basically where American men go to avoid therapy, where they can project their wounds and failings onto strangers and referees,” writes Sam Anderson in an insightful piece in the New York Times Magazine. Kevin Durant and (Possibly) the Greatest Basketball Team of All Timeis full of gems about this most graceful of players and the changing nature of the NBA.
With superteams constructed largely by the best players the changes to the game haven’t been well received by some fans. LeBron James started this trend with his “decision” to “take my talents to South Beach” from Cleveland.
“This inspired exactly the kind of panic you might expect in certain quarters of America, given the racial dynamics involved: a redistribution of power from (mostly) old white executives to (mostly) young black players.“
After playing with his original team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, for longer than most superstars, Durant decided to test the free agent market in 2016.
“He conducted his free agency like the superstar that he was: He rented a mansion in the Hamptons, where he hosted waves of N.B.A. suitors…in the end, Durant made a choice that just about ripped the basketball world in half. He left OKC to join the Golden State Warriors, the best team in the league, one of the greatest teams in history and the team that just barely knocked the Thunder out of the playoffs five weeks earlier. It would have been like Jimi Hendrix, after narrowly losing a battle of the bands to the Rolling Stones, signing on as their new lead guitarist. To many sports fans, Durant, like LeBron James before him, became an absolute villain. He had taken player empowerment too far, critics said, violated a sacred code of competitive pride. Also, he hurt their feelings. ESPN’s most famous bloviator, Stephen A. Smith, called it ‘the weakest move I’ve ever seen from a superstar.’”
Calling out Stephen A. as a bloviator won me over. If you can get past the paywall, this long piece is worth the read.
NOTE: This post originally began with the Durant piece in the lead, but after major injuries to Harden and Irving, the Nets lost in the Eastern Conference semifinal, making this much less relevant. So I moved the baseball stories to the top.
Recently, while considering ways to use focus to enrich my life, another f-word kept appearing in the works I was reading: forgiveness.* Being better at focusing than forgiving, I suspect this is no coincidence.
“Problems among people are solved by forgiveness, not force. It is generosity that heals and cleanses, not genocide. Mutual hope is what makes us safe. Trust is what we need, and we will never, ever get it through triumph in any form.“
In 50 very short rules for a good life, number 34 is: forgive, forgive, forgive. The repetition suggests we should apply it on a daily basis.
These two passages from different traditions spurred the thought that perhaps we do not conceive of forgiveness as a solution for horrific tragedies such as mass shootings because we so seldom consider forgiveness as part of our response to the challenges in our day-to-day lives.
In a recent article on memoir writing, Lisa Cooper Ellison begins with a story where a writing instructor asked the students to bring in a scene from their memoir-in-progress that included the character who challenged them the most. The scene Ellison chose could’ve been titled “The Reason I Hate My Mother.” As Ellison read the assignment on the board she saw:
“Write the scene from your antagonist’s perspective.“
Ellison bit the inside of her cheek to keep from saying, “Do you know what she’s effing done?” In too many of life’s troubled experiences, that’s our response: do you know how I’ve been hurt? By this jerk?! And I’m suppose to forgive them?!!
In my experience, forgiveness, like focus, is hard and requires bravery.
It is hard in part because we misunderstand it, assuming that when we forgive we bury our feelings, forget what happened, and stay friends with one who has hurt us. It requires bravery because it is far easier to have a rehearsed story that may begin with “let me tell you what he did” and inevitably produces gasps from friends. Those rehearsed stories are usually “what forgiveness specialist Fred Luskin calls a grievance story.” While the responses Ellison received to her rehearsed story were highly satisfying, each rendition kept her in the role of victim without any power.
Grievances, like force, never solve problems among people. We don’t understand that forgiveness empowers. We should forgive because it is only then that our personal healing can begin.
And we should forgive even if the other person is not ready to receive it.
I can think of no better example of forgiving even when the recipient is not prepared to be forgiven than one we saw in 2015. A 21-year-old white supremacist had just murdered nine innocent people in a venerable Black church in Charleston. Time and again at the bail hearing, the family members of those murdered simply said, “I forgive you” to the angry young man who found it appropriate to kill their mothers, aunts, brothers, and children because he — in his own misguided way and spurred by the hatred so often found in our public discourse — felt his world was threatened. It was a moving and deep faith-based response in contrast to those who quickly call for violence as a response to violence.
When painful events hold power over us, we give in to the mythologies of separation and violence. When that power overtakes me, I am certain about how things really happened, limiting the frames by which I see the world.
Forgiveness not only helps us write a better memoir, it gives us a power that is stronger than the power of hate. A power that builds instead of divides and denies.
In the midst of growing grievance fueled by those who benefit from our isolation, it is time to give forgiveness a chance to demonstrate its power in the world.
More to come…
DJB
*What? Your mind went elsewhere? I forgive you. Hat tip to Lisa Ellison for the idea.
Guitarist Charlie Rauh, — featured in this week’s Saturday Soundtrack — grew up in Huntsville, Alabama and now lives in New York City. Rauh began playing clarinet and saxophone at age 13, and then began to learn the guitar. “Playing guitar really opened up a lot of creative momentum for me,” Rauh notes, “as I could play chords as well as melodies and form more developed ideas. I was (and still am) very influenced by Duke Ellington. I’d say that he and his music first inspired me to want to be a composer due to his wonderfully lyrical melodic sense intertwined with dense, idiosyncratic harmony.”
Rauh’s quiet but moving solo guitar work, inspired “from folk lullabies, plainchant, and the imagery of various poets ranging from the Brontës to Anna Akhmatova,” is a balm for the soul.
“Acoustic Guitar Magazine notes that ‘Charlie Rauh plays guitar with a quiet intensity, each note and chord ringing with purpose…With these lullabies Rauh gives a gentle reminder that playing soft and slow can be more impactful than loud and fast.'”
To demonstrate that soft and slow compositional style, this first video is of Rauh playing his original composition Arolen from the 2017 release Viriditas. For the guitar geeks reading, Rauh is playing a Waterloo WL-14. The song was named after the street Rauh grew up on in Huntsville and contains the melody from his first “song” written as a child.
Ethereal Lullabies is another gorgeous composition from Rauh, played on a small Collings guitar.
The Fretboard Journal posted a recent video of Rauh, and because this is the Fretboard Journal, they tell you more about the guitar than the composition. Both are lovely.
“The song is ‘Watch Through the Darkest Hours of Night,’ from the album ‘The Bluebell,’ on Destiny Records. The guitar is a custom Collings Parlor he recently acquired — it’s essentially a Parlor 1 T (Mahogany back and sides, Sitka spruce top), with a satin finish, no fretboard markers, ivoroid trim (bindings, tuners, bridge pins and logo) and no endpin.“
I’ll end this Soundtrack with two duets, the first an improvisation with Rauh and Mark Goldenberg where together they weave some beautiful strands of sound. The second is a special duo arrangement of Rauh’s song, Observer, with Eric Skye (previously featured on Saturday Soundtrack). The original solo version was recorded on Rauh’s album, Hiraeth. The two musicians — obvious aficionados of the luscious sounds they can coax from the small-bodied guitar — pair nicely on this tune.
As always, this Weekly Reader features links to recent articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry.
As we face our racist past, many are just discovering the troubling ties between Nazi Germany and the United States.
“‘The U.S. led the world in eugenic thinking in the 1930s,’ said John Treat, a historian who teaches an honors humanities seminar at the University of Arkansas that covers Krieger. ‘We were the model for the Nazis.’…
Not much is known about Heinrich Krieger. He was a German lawyer who attended the University of Arkansas in 1933 and 1934 to study business and American race law — particularly laws regarding Indigenous Americans. The Nazis had long been interested in American race law; in his book ‘Mein Kampf,’ Nazi leader Adolf Hitler said the U.S. was ‘the one state’ in the world creating the kind of racist society the Nazi regime wanted.“
In the battle with home-grown fascism in America in 2021, this is a history that needs to be understood, not swept under the rug.
“Mr. Biden is currently the subject of some bishops’ braying and bleating about his fitness to receive communion. From the time of his election, through the upcoming annual June meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the right flank of the Conference has been rehearsing its old songs…(and) set up a committee to consider how to respond to a Catholic president who doesn’t interfere with the law of the land when it comes to abortion. How do you solve a problem like Joe Biden? was their hit tune.“
“stood in sharp contrast to Pope Francis’ kind, diplomatic words of welcome to the second Catholic president of the United States. The Bishops acknowledged Mr. Biden’s personal piety, but charged that he “has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity…” They weren’t referring to building walls, supporting the death penalty, interfering with voting rights, and/or withholding healthcare from those made poor. The chorus was a tired refrain: “abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender.” It was as if Catholics cared about nothing else during a global pandemic when systemic racism and economic inequality reign. The timing was rude, the content familiar, the impact minimal.” (emphasis added)
With the archbishop who chairs the Conference’s Pro-Life Activities Committee, “we have a bishop, not of the president’s diocese, who tells a practicing Catholic that he is not devout.” In terms of hidden agendas, Hunt suggests that the most vociferous bishops on these questions “tend to be the ones who’ve had their heads measured for new regalia because they’re banking on being named cardinals, especially after Pope Francis is conveniently, for them, out of the picture.”
The radicalization of politics
Ted Cruz’s agenda is never hidden.
Author and lawyer Teri Kanefield has an interesting piece on her blog entitled The Radicalization of the Republican Party. She begins with a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Cruz where the Texas Senator calls out corporate America for pushing back against the Republican party’s radical politics, and he ends by posting his conclusion, which he also tweeted:
“Social media understood right away this was a stunning admission that Ted Cruz takes corporate money in exchange for doing their bidding. But of course we know that. The other reaction on social media was, ‘Ted Cruz turn away corporate money? Don’t make me laugh.‘
…Are the right wing extremists and Corporate America on a verge of divorce? Is Ted Cruz singing, ‘You’ll be back?’…Will the Republican Party, which started as the party of business and industry, jettison the industry and business portion and become purely the Party of White Grievance and extremists?“
The party that began as the anti-slavery pro-business party would end up, Kanefield notes, as the party of white supremacists and insurrectionists.
This weekend our family has been celebrating what I will call a “significant” birthday for my wife.
When Andrew, Claire, and I began to think of ways to recognize this milestone, we settled on something called a Boombox.* Through the wonders of the internet, we invited others to join us in sending best wishes. More than 100 of Candice’s friends and family members responded with cards, notes, poems, photos, newspaper clippings, and anecdotes.
Candice’s Big Birthday Boombox
In our combination in-person/Zoom celebration on Saturday, Andrew, Claire, Blair, and I gave the gift and — knowing the good wishes she would discover — sat back to enjoy the reaction.
Candice opens her Boombox as Claire and Blair join in from California.
Candice has touched many lives in so many positive ways that this project was an easy sell. Today I’m sharing how a sampling of those who have been part of Candice’s life expressed their appreciation for, as one person described it, the “blessing of our friendship.”
Candice with her parents, Dr. and Mrs. Andrew C. Colando, 1955
Forever friends…for friends around the world
Childhood friends, siblings, and cousins reached out with the perspective that more than one individual described as, “I knew you when…” and then proceeded to use a childhood nickname (that we don’t mention!). These “almost forever friends” had stories of birthday parties, Girl Scout cookies, measles outbreaks, and more for someone who has “such a warm and good soul.”
One reason she has so many friends from every part of her life is that Candice stays in touch. “I remember I always looked forward to the cards from Uncle David and Aunt Candice growing up,” wrote one niece. Then she added a line that was mentioned again and again: “The great handwriting always inspired me.”
“Your warmth and humility shine through your eyes and your smile and it’s a magnet,” wrote a friend from the World Bank.
Amazement at the calm in the middle of a (twin) storm
Several friends reached out with stories from when our children were young and as they grew into — in the words of their first grade teacher — “two adorable, talented, and thoughtful young people.” But man, were they a handful when they were little!
“I realised how challenging it was to be the mother of twin toddlers when one day you asked me to watch Andrew and Claire in the children’s library while you popped upstairs to the adult section,” wrote a friend who now lives in Europe but whose children shared play dates with the twins in the early 1990s in Staunton.
“‘Sure!’ I answered, without a second thought. Within two minutes, I had no idea where either of them were! Fortunately, they couldn’t go too far in that safe environment, but I felt tremendous respect for the energy you had to keep up with your busy little two!”
“Although we haven’t lived in the same place for many years, you and your family have had such an influence on me,” wrote a young friend who now has a family of her own. “You and David trusted me with your BABIES, even though they could outsmart me even back then!” Another friend we’ve known since her birth mentioned the time that she “stayed” with Andrew and Claire…when she was five years old. “Thanks for letting me ‘babysit’ your twins so many years ago — didn’t know then it was training for my future!”
Did I mention that this young woman now has twins of her own?
“Your unconditional love,” wrote one of my brothers, “has found its finest expression in the lives of Andrew and Claire.”
Flowers for a special birthday
One who lives as if what we give is more important than what we get
Candice was a Bible & Religion major at Agnes Scott College, and she has forgotten more scripture than I ever knew (and I was raised a Baptist, where quoting scripture is what it takes to get into the dining hall at summer camp!) But she has gone well beyond the simple memorization of text to living her faith in a way that is recognized and appreciated by a wide circle of friends. Not with a certainty of what scripture says and certainly not bound up in a cultural Christianity, but with a seeking mind and loving heart. A wise person “of intelligence and discernment and faith” as a dear friend/priest wrote.
Candice happens to havea number of friends who are in the priesthood, permanent diaconate, or work professionally in spiritual formation. Many of those priests/friends are female. One with a good sense of humor wrote,
“’Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that people who have the most live the longest.’ I am grateful (understatement) to have been around for at least two decades worth of yours. That gratitude is evoked by things like countless occasions of worshipping with you, watching you mother — and listening to your stories of mothering — two wondrous children (now adults themselves!); sharing vicariously in the kind of joy you express over delights of family time, of travel, of deep wisdom; of giving of yourself so generously to church, community, school, friends; being beneficiary of having a bird’s eye view of your gifted ways of moving through challenges of health, disappointments, and more. Much more.“
When the twins were still toddlers, Candice undertook a four-year Education for Ministry(EFM) class through the University of the South. I said she took it because it required that I watch Andrew and Claire one night at home each week while she went to class. That, of course, wasn’t anywhere near the truth.
EFM required extensive reading and study. One of her classmates wrote, “Candice, you are one who loves to be engaged in serious things, and you take them on with enthusiasm and vigor….You were always prepared in EFM for anything the mentor threw our way.” Another long-time friend who is also a priest wrote, “I am blessed with your friendship, a friendship spanning many years and much of life….I have learned so much from you. You inspire me and are an amazing, wise, and delightful woman.”
Reading with her great niece and great nephew
Time to listen, with respect, empathy, and love
Over and over again, Candice’s friends mentioned her willingness to stop what she is doing and talk with anyone, anywhere, for any length of time.
Listening is an act of love. Time and again individuals mentioned the way Candice makes herself accessible and vulnerable in a most direct and powerful way: by listening.
“I think we first met in the Nave of the Cathedral on some music-oriented occasion where 10-year-old Andrew and our daughter were performing,” wrote another friend. “You were instantly warm, friendly, and inclusive, qualities I saw in abundance over the next fifteen-plus years with many others.”
“You have a wonderful way of making me, and others, I am sure, feel as if you have all the time in the world to have a conversation. I have enjoyed our wide-ranging chats about our children, our lives, big ideas, and art.”
“Your ability to genuinely care and a willingness to listen to and not be afraid of the burden of others’ pain is extraordinary. It is a courage that I envy and admire,” wrote another friend. “Once…I was overwhelmed with single motherhood and sobbing in a church pew. You found me and told me what a good job I was doing. Your reassurance was repeated often in the following years, and it nurtured me.”
Several friends also mentioned Candice’s ways of connecting with children. “I have learned so much from you about how to honor and support children, particularly in their lives of faith,” wrote a priest/friend. “I love how you notice the details with the kids in our Sunday School — their talents, their questions, the things they love and the things they pray for. They’re blessed to have you as a mentor.”
“Love is both presence and action,” wrote a family member, “and I can’t tell you how grateful I am that I’ve always felt both throughout my life, at peaks and valleys alike.” That presence at all stages of life came through time and again.
Food, a thirst for travel, more conversation, and love
We made several new and life-long friends during our six weeks at the American Academy in Rome in 2016, where we got to know people from around the world over those amazing dinners of food and wine from the Rome Sustainable Food Project. One of those friends knew instinctively that Candice would hear from a large number of individuals, given “the gentle, insightful, and nurturing kind of person you are.” A priest/friend added the hope “that you know beyond words just how deeply and truly you are loved.”
Candice and Margaret – two thirds of the catering team at Table Grace
Longtime friends from our life in Staunton wrote, “We treasure the shared history and long easy conversation, the pleasures of preparing and eating superb food together, the comfort and inspiration of your spirituality and your loving concern for others.”
And another friend from that time told of a “fabulous contribution” made to her family’s culinary repertoire.
“One summer you tutored our son, who was struggling in school after a year with a hard-nosed and unsympathetic teacher. In the course of the fun ways of learning you showed him, you provided a recipe for shortbread that a young child could make successfully. He took to it and made a pie-pan of it for every big family and church occasion the rest of his years at home. I took it up from there and over three decades must have made hundreds of pans of shortbread for entertaining friends, for gifts, and in huge numbers by popular demand for church bazaars and bake sales that have raised hundreds of dollars for good works….Wherever you go you become a blessing to those whom you meet.“
Candice enjoys a morning coffee at the Marcel Breuer House, a National Trust Historic Site
Role model
“You have been a role model to me as I’ve grown into a woman and mother. You’re a phenomenal mother and wife, yet you have maintained your own identity as you’ve supported your family,” wrote a friend we’ve known for decades. “I admire your values and the way that you have remained true to yourself over the years.”
Another friend also spoke of her presence and thoughtfulness.
“You are such a positive influence on those around you that my goal is to think of others and chart my own path as thoughtfully as you have done. All our lives are all greatly enhanced by your extraordinary love and care.“
A friend who has been through a difficult time recently with the loss of a spouse wrote, “You have been such a wonderful friend: kind, considerate, encouraging, spiritual, compassionate, a fabulous mother, and an amazing cook. Your thoughtfulness about life, friends, family and the world are an example for us all.”
Another friend who is a priest (see the pattern here) wrote that “The first time I heard your name, it was on a sick list. They told me you’d been badly hurt. That you had a long recovery.” (Candice had fallen and suffered a serious concussion where the recovery took 12 months.) “But when you came back to church, you had a smile on your face and in your heart — because nothing can keep you down.” This friend has seen Candice as a mother and wife and much more “but above all, as a person who knows how to love well, and to tend the hearts of all those around her.”
A dear friend and former colleague of mine summed up Candice’s impact on the world very well when he wrote, “She is fantastically lovely in every way!”
Happiest of birthdays and much love, dearest Candice, from all your family and friends.
MORE TO COME... 