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Our imperfect union

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Richard Kreitner’s fascinating 2020 book Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union begins by reminding us that the passengers on the Mayflower were not the Pilgrims of myth, but Separatists who wanted to break off from the Church of England. Once they landed in the New World they began doing what they did best, separating into multiple sects and small, isolated communities.

They set off a “perpetual war for the soul of America,” Kreitner writes, “an ever-present battle over the past and for the future — usually metaphorical but constantly threatening to turn into fact.”

For those who do not explore the depths of our nation’s history, the idea that the “United States of America” is perpetually roiled in turmoil and in danger of breaking apart is ludicrous. To those who study and understand our past and what it means for the present and future, that narrative is there for all to see. Kreitner has performed a great service in bringing so many of the individual parts of the story of our imperfect union to light.

Contrary to our national myth, disunion was not something undertaken just once by a group of disgruntled Southern slave-owners. Kreitner shows time and again how different segments of our country were brought kicking-and-screaming into the Union (e.g., Rhode Island’s admission was more like a “forced annexation”); and how so many others see break-up as the best way forward to resolve long-standing and seemingly intractable conflicts (e.g., those who point out that today California has sixty seven times more people than Wyoming, yet both have just two Senators). Secessionist movements from New England to California, and virtually everywhere in between, are examined with Kreitner’s skillful knack for scholarship and storytelling.

Compromise is at the heart of the nation’s obsession with unity, and Kreitner makes this point in different ways throughout this work. Many would suggest rightly that compromise is required for a democracy to function. But Kreitner’s thesis — supported with in-depth accounts of the backstory to this history — is that the compromise we have accepted to keep the country unified in name if not in spirit is a compromise too far.

“The compromise tradition — the fetishization of consensus, the national obsession with unity — had always been predicated on violence against marginalized groups, especially people of color.”

Nowhere is this seen better than in the approach to, and in the aftermath of, the Civil War. Frederick Douglass famously asked at the end of Reconstruction, “If war among the whites brought peace and liberty to blacks, what will peace among the whites bring?” We found out the answer to that question in the KKK and Jim Crow. Southerners who believed in white supremacy realized that whites in the North would do almost anything to maintain the Union — including giving those who rebelled against the country virtually everything they wanted. Kreitner describes their revelation this way:

“After Appomattox, Southern whites recognized that rejoining the Union was the surest path to getting back their prewar privileges. They rediscovered what generations of their forebears had known: the Union offered the best possible protection for the racist political and economic system they cherished and sought to reestablish in all but name.”

Kreitner works his way through all the greatest hits of succession and nullification — the Articles of Confederation, Aaron Burr, the State of Franklin, John C. Calhoun, the Mexican War, Mormons, West Virginia, the populist revolt of the Gilded Age — and also highlights many lesser known examples. I was especially enlightened by the section on former president John Quincy Adams, who brought a petition for disunion from abolitionists in Haverhill, Massachusetts, to the floor of the House of Representatives, where it inflamed passions across the institution and the country.

“It’s strange the Haverhill petition isn’t better known (writes Kreitner). Here was a group of small-town Americans pleading to destroy their country rather than allow it to continue enslaving their fellow human beings. In a different America, one proud, rather than ashamed, of having fought a war to free people from bondage, it would be on display in some grand building in the capital, a testament to the deeper meanings of patriotism; instead, it is stashed away in the storage room of an obscure local museum, its story seldom told.”

Why is this important? Understanding history gives us a sense of the real challenges we face, instead of relying on pundits “blithely” describing fractured Syria or Sudan’s struggles to maintain arbitrary borders without realizing how “well that description applies to the United States itself.”

Kreitner likes to highlight the “post-Appomattox orthodoxy” often shrouded in “complacent, consensus-minded clichés.” It is only by understanding this history as it really happened that we can be encouraged to think again of our “continent-spanning federation as a means to certain ends — such as those specified in the Declaration of Independence — rather than an end in itself.”

Accepting compromises in 2021 that keep people of color subdued through violence and voter suppression is to many Americans no longer negotiable. Recognizing the breakdown in constitutional government that places almost insurmountable hurdles in front of democracy and majority rule comes when we fully understand the reasons for the compromises made in the past and the horrible consequences of decisions around slavery and wealth. Change will not be easy, and as Kreitner says, even if we can agree “that we want to preserve the Union and sort through our whole collection of gripes and grievances within the current systems,” it will require significant changes in our political and social behavior. We will have to fight against monied interest and foreign powers that benefit from our division. It will not be enough to “overturn the results of unfavorable elections; we must address the underlying causes of our cleavages.”

Kreitner says it clearly: “We need to recreate our country.”

As Abraham Lincoln told Congress at one of the darkest moments of our nation’s most violent period of disunion,

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

At that period of time, abolitionists predicted that either slavery or the Union might endure, but not both. Kreitner, in this highly recommended book, makes the same case today of the Union or minority rule: we can have one or the other, but we cannot have both.

More to come…

DJB

John Doyle and the modern Irish soundtrack

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Multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter John Doyle is — for my money — the most exciting guitarist playing in Irish music today. As we head toward St. Patrick’s Day and all things Irish, let’s celebrate his music and work in today’s Saturday Soundtrack.

I first heard Doyle as one of the founding members of Solas, my favorite Irish band. As I wrote in last fall’s Soundtrack post, Doyle — like all the original members of the band — is worthy of his own feature in this section.

Doyle is renowned as one of the most talented guitarists performing in either the Irish or Appalachian traditions. As an accompanist, he adapts to and compliments the style of those he plays with, but his rhythmic and melodic contributions do much more than simply provide a background, creating complex, fascinating layers within the tunes without ever overshadowing the principal performer.

Institute of Musical Traditions

Doyle — a Compass Records artist — has played with a wide variety of musicians in various settings over the years. He has continued to perform with various members of Solas, as seen in the terrific Silver Spear Set with Mick McAuley and with Karan Casey in Sailing Off to Yankeeland.

For a number of years Doyle played in a duo with Irish fiddler Liz Carroll. Their album Double Play received a 2010 Grammy nomination for “Best Traditional World Album.” The Blast of Reels video below is guaranteed to get you up and dancing.

Doyle’s guitar, singing, and songwriting skills really came to the fore as he performed solo. We’ll begin with the traditional Bound for Botany Bay, followed by Elevenses, which is a showcase for his flatpicking skills and is included on his most recent album.

“In recent years, John has focused primarily on writing songs based on the varied experiences of Irish immigrants – his great grandfather on the torpedoed S.S. Arabic in 1915; famine victims on the coffin ships to Quebec; Confederate and Union Irish fighting against one another at Fredericksburg; an Irishman’s journey through the First World War. In reviews, these songs on Doyle’s 2012 release, “Shadow and Light” have been said “to be destined to be classics in the Irish folk music songbook. His talents as songwriter are rare and exquisite.” 

John Doyle – About (johndoylemusic.com)

To showcase his songwriting skills, here is a version of The Arabic from his 2011 IMT concert; Clear the Way, about the Civil War battle of Fredericksburg and long a personal favorite; and Little Sparrow, written for his daughter.

We’ll end where my connection with Doyle began, as a member of Solas playing some of the best Irish music around on Timmy Cliffords.

Enjoy, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

More to come…

DJB

Image of John Doyle credit: John Doyle – Compass Records

Weekly Reader: Words matter

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“The struggle over the lexicon is actually the essential struggle.” So spoke the “puppet master behind many of Donald Trump’s cruelest policies.” Unfortunately, Stephen Miller is correct. So I’m beginning this weekly look at articles by other writers with a special focus on why words matter.

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.

In The Angry Grammarian‘s article Biden administration is undoing Trump’s legacy of hate, one word at a time, from the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeffrey Barg leads his list of notable changes made in government documents since the inauguration with the fact that the Department of Homeland Security now refers to noncitizens instead of illegal aliens and criminal aliens. These were go-to phrases for the Trump administration, used to “literally alienate those from another country — even in reference to, say, a 6-year-old Costa Rican.”

“Language of persecution and hate permeated government websites, press releases, and laws for much of the last four years….Take, for example, the abandonment of illegal alien: The word alien, which dates back to the 14th century, is laden with negative connotations. The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of alien includes the clarifiers ‘hostile, repugnant.’ And the word illegal, when paired with immigrant, has anti-Semitic roots: Before World War II, the term illegal immigrant originally referred to ‘a Jew who entered or attempted to enter Palestine without official permission during the later years of the British mandate.’

Moreover, when used properly, the adjective illegal refers to an act, not a person. Defenders of the term illegal argue that it’s appropriate because it’s used to describe people who have crossed a border unlawfully. But you don’t refer to a murderer as an ‘illegal,’ despite the fact that they’ve committed an illegal act. Yet decades of xenophobia have designated immigrants as the only people who could be considered ‘illegal’ themselves. This warping of language stigmatizes foreigners in a way that we don’t employ even for those who commit the most heinous acts.”

Another way we misconstrue words is by improper framing. Renée Graham, writing for The Boston Globe, cautions her readers that Derek Chauvin is the murder defendant. Don’t put George Floyd on trial.

“On Monday, jury selection begins in Chauvin’s murder trial. Yet some media outlets have already dubbed it ‘the George Floyd trial.”’For those of us with more of a sense of dread than a sense of justice in America, this is not an accident. It’s not even subtle.

‘That is how the underpinning of white supremacist ideology, and its progeny racism, works in these subtle ways to subvert the narrative,’ said the Rev. Emmett G. Price III, pastor of Community of Love Christian Fellowship in Boston. ‘By calling it ‘the George Floyd trial,’ you swap the seats in the courtroom. That’s very intentional.”’

John Stoehr, writing for The Editorial Board, wants us to understand how game-changing the bill that Biden will sign this week is for the country. Unfortunately, as he notes in American Rescue Act is the BFD that we’ve been waiting for but that everyone misunderstands, people don’t understand that fact because progressives like Robert Reich wants to tell a narrative about Joe Manchin instead. Words, and how we use them, matter.

“In the end, Manchin looked like the Rebellious Democrat he bills himself as—while leaving Biden’s proposals pretty much intact.

Reich’s narrative of politics isn’t based on facts. (He would be celebrating instead of complaining if it were.) His narrative is about narratives, his story is about stories — stories that are no longer relevant to, or increasingly out of step with, the facts. The longer Reich and others tell this story about stories, the more they actually threaten to undermine the public’s understanding of this paradigm-shifting new law. Many people now believe the Democrats caved again. In fact, they have begun changing the world.” ‘

For Stoehr’s take on what Manchin is doing when he throws a bit of a monkey wrench into the works, check out Actually, conservative Senate Democrats are doing exactly what they are supposed to. Playing ball, also from The Editorial Board.

Liz Dye, writing in Wonkette, notes that In The Republican Grift-o-Sphere, There Are No Patsies. Lies are great examples to show why words matter. How the press covers those lies also matters. A great deal.

To end on two totally different pieces, Kevin Blackistone, writing in the Washington Post sports section, lets us know that Kyrie Irving is wrong about making Kobe Bryant the NBA’s logo. When I heard about this suggestion I had the exact same reaction that Blackistone lays out so eloquently in this column.

And I cannot end this week without some reference to the ridiculous faux outrage over the (non) cancellation of Dr. Seuss. In a “not safe for work and/or young children” post on his blog, Shower Cap writes about the faux controversy in Oh, the Sharts You Can Shart, and Other Cancelled Dr. Seuss Books.

“Of course, outside the Fux Nooz fever swamps, in a magical kingdom some call ‘reality,’ a handful of Mr. Geisel’s minor works have been pulled from publication, by his estate, because they contain (to put it mildly) racially insensitive imagery which is pretty darn difficult to defend, here in the 21st century. Nothing is cancelled, or, as Minority Leader McCarthy mendaciously claimed, ‘outlawed.‘ The Grinch’s efforts to steal Xmas are, as ever, ongoing; the controversy over the desirability of consuming green eggs and/or ham endures; Pop remains hopped upon.

Still, determined to overthrow cancel culture like a common presidential election, wingnuts began frantically buying up every Seuss book that wasn’t nailed down, rocketing the good Dr. straight to the top of the Amazon bestseller list, and steering a massive financial windfall to…the very estate they’re allegedly furious with. If you’re wondering why conservatives are so susceptible to propaganda that strikes you as My God This Wouldn’t Fool a Yak, I humbly offer up the decision-making process outlined in this paragraph.“

Have a good week of reading (perhaps some Dr. Seuss!).

More to come…

DJB

Image by USA-Reiseblogger from Pixabay

Assisted living

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A small group of my friends gather to discuss various paths into the next third of life, to read and consider books, and to talk about living in today’s world. The first book we selected, Purposeful Retirement by Hyrum W. Smith, will not be mistaken for one of the great works of literature. In fact, I suspect that for many individuals it won’t resonate as a guide for ways to live after stopping full-time work. There are bits and pieces that are insightful, and Smith’s stories are usually humorous and illustrative in their own way. I’ve written about other books which were also useful in helping me think through the aging process. Nonetheless, Purposeful Retirement has served its purpose in that it gets the group to talk.

In one recent conversation, we found ourselves relating experiences in moving parents into assisted living facilities. One member told the story of how his predecessor, upon his retirement, mentioned to his wife that he wasn’t ready to move into assisted living.

“Harry,” she replied. “You’ve been in assisted living for a long time.”

I’ve now told that story on multiple occasions (another sign that you’ve moved into the next third of life), and it certainly struck a nerve. Beyond the many ways long-time partners and spouses assist us through life, don’t we all really exist in assisted living our entire lives?

Let’s be honest. We wouldn’t be here if our parents hadn’t assisted us through the toddler years. But beyond basic survival, there are so many others who provide assists along the way. Teachers assist in our studies. Meteorologists assist in considering what clothes to wear as we walk out the door. Engineers assist by ensuring that as we flick the light switch on the wall or push the computer’s on/off button they will work. Friends assist as we develop social skills. Bosses and mentors assist in sharing lessons on how to thrive in the professional world. Mail carriers assist in bringing checks, medications, love letters, and magazines. Colleagues assist in everything from major projects to the day-to-day navigation of our work environments. Lawmakers and judges assist in providing the civil framework for our legal system. Farmers assist in putting food on the table. Partners and spouses assist in understanding the ways of love.

It strikes me that so much of what bothers the nation today is that we don’t want to admit that we rely on other people. It is especially difficult for some to admit this when those other people don’t look like them. And too often we don’t want to admit that others rely on our actions and support. When we refuse to assist others, we fail to do our part in upholding the unwritten bargain of civilization.

The author and social critic Stephen Carter, in his book Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy, blames this on an over-reliance on markets, a forgetfulness of the obligations we owe each other, and a lack of a moral compass in decisionmaking.  He says,

“…the language of the marketplace, the language of wanting, of winning, of simply taking – the language of self – is supplanting the language of community, of sharing, of fairness, of riding politely alongside our fellow citizens…”

When we realize we all live in assisted living, we begin to think about community, sharing, and fairness. When we think we are independent, superior, and self-reliant, we refuse to attach our electrical grid to systems in other states that could provide back-up power in cold weather, and then we lie and blame others when it fails. *

I’m proud to say that I live in assisted living. Yes, I have been there for a long time, and it is where I expect to end my days.

And if I see you sometime in the future and tell you of the conversation between Harry and his wife, humor me and just pretend I haven’t already told you the same thing three times.

Have a great week.

More to come…

DJB

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

*My father was a life-long electrical engineer for TVA. He would have thought the idea of having a separate electrical grid without any backup the height of foolishness. But then, he believed in the power of community.

The hot and sassy swing of the Avalon Jazz Band

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As a long-time fan of the gypsy jazz made popular by the Hot Club de France, I am always pleased to find new (and not-so-new) groups playing in the swing jazz style of 1930s and 1940s Paris. One such group is the Avalon Jazz Band. If you don’t know their work let’s use this Saturday Soundtrack as an introduction.

The Avalon Jazz Band is fronted by Tatiana Eva-Marie, a Swiss-born and Brooklyn-based singer who grew up in an eclectic musical family and used the variety of musical styles she heard as a child to move toward swing jazz. She has a wonderful voice and captures the spirit of the Zazous, the “swing kids” of Paris, albeit with an American twist. An interviewer for the New School said she is “what many people would call a ‘triple threat.’ She’s brilliant, beautiful, and talented. She’s basically a Swiss fairy princess, with soul.”

To whet your appetite, let’s begin with Fit as a Fiddle followed by Ah, dis! Ah, bonjour!, written by French poet and songwriter Charles Trenet in 1939.

Besides the vocals of Eva-Marie, another key element of the Avalon Jazz Band sound is the violin, played in most of these recordings by co-founder Adrien Chevalier.

“The musical style presented by Avalon Jazz Band is inspired by the sort of jazz played in Paris in the 1930s and 40s, especially by the Hot Club de France (founded by guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli) whose repertoire consisted of original music and jazz standards. This French style of hot jazz then became what we now know as “Gypsy jazz” or “Jazz Manouche”, with its technical bravadoes and virtuoso skills, embodied by the quick fingers of violinist Adrien Chevalier. The delicate voice and swing phrasing of Tatiana Eva-Marie bring the zazou element to the mix: an ingenuous and mischievous joie-de-vivre, which she incarnates to perfection.“

Avalon Jazz Band official website

To give you a sense of the antecedents, here are Reinhardt and Grappelli playing The Sheik of Araby.

I became especially interested in jazz played on acoustic stringed instruments in the 1970s when David Grisman, introducing his new style of bluegrass and jazz-infused Dawg Music, credited the Hot Club as one of his major influences. A remarkable album from this period is 1981’s Stephane Grappelli/David Grisman Live, from which I’ve posted the twin-violin version of Tiger Rag — the first song played by the Hot Club of France — with Grappelli and a young Mark O’Connor.

We are in a period of time where we can use some happiness. As Eva-Marie explains in this delightful interview, that’s why this music was created in the first place and why it has such resonance today.

Runnin’ Wild is an especially good example of the uplifting spirit the band’s music inspires. Make sure you check out the break by the guy on the washboard rhythm section at the 1:35 mark.

Many listeners will also enjoy the band’s take on the Cole Porter classic I Love Paris.

“Ménilmontant” was written by Trenet in 1938 as a tribute to the famous Parisian neighborhood. Eva-Marie’s band mates playing the hot solos are Kate Dunphy on the accordion, violinist Adrien Chevalier, Koran Agan on the guitar, and Eduardo Belo on the bass.

And to send you off, enjoy some Sunshine and get those cobwebs out of your head!

Enjoy!

More to come…
DJB

Image: Cover of the Album Paris from Avalon Jazz Band | New York Jazz Band

Weekly Reader: Seeing with bifocals

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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.

I considered the special nature of bifocals — seeing things up close and as part of a pattern — as I was reading historian Ed Ayers most recent essay in Medium. In the tale of his life’s scholarship, I began to see similar relationships between being grounded in place and yet being global in scope beyond the study of history. As we look and work locally, it is easy to get caught up in the minutia and forget the larger picture. There is also the temptation to see patterns in data and global actions and lose sight of the connections to the intimate, the local. We can, however, be guided by the saying, “Think globally, act locally.” As Ed suggests, we have to use our bifocals and try to see — and work within — both. Let’s take a look at how this plays out in this week’s articles.

We will begin with Ed’s piece: All History Is Local. But it can’t stop there.

“I’ve come to the inconvenient conclusion that we need to see history with bifocals — up close and as part of a pattern.

Just as all history is local, so is all history regional, national, and international. Every county is unique, but every county is part of a pattern. It’s the interplay between those two truths that make the most use of local research, archives, and passion. And it’s the interplay among those patterns that we can now see in new and exciting ways.

Local history, then, serves us best when it is woven into the larger patterns of history. 

Ed takes the reader through his evolution as a historian and speaks eloquently about how history is grounded in place. “I was quite interested in cultural history,” he writes, “but couldn’t abandon the idea that history is best explained in the lives of people confronting challenges in real time and real place.”

And the essential tools for this work? Empathy and imagination.

When the founder of the iconic San Francisco book store City Lights Books died recently at age 101, it reminds us that there was a real person, grounded in place, who had impacts across the world. Gabe Meline of station KQED, curated a series of photos from the impromptu vigil that was held in honor of beat poet, book store owner, and defender of the First Amendment Lawrence Ferlinghetti. As if to prove the point about connecting local people with large patterns and effects, I came across PHOTOS: Lawrence Ferlinghetti Sidewalk Memorial at City Lights Books while reading the Chapter 16 newsletter from the Tennessee Humanities Foundation. The editor wrote that she included this story because as “a young bookish person growing up in Tennessee, City Lights was a sort of mythical place to me — in my mind, an extraordinary place where the bookish, the radical, and the weird were welcome.”

These next articles show both the local detail and the national pattern in the fight over voting rights, and why Republicans — in places where they are beginning to lose statewide elections to Democrats — are working overtime to suppress votes from citizens they don’t want to vote in local, state, and national elections.

  • First the local. Steve Inskeep from National Public Radio examines cases in Georgia and Arizona, among others, in the story Why Republicans Are Moving To Fix Elections That Weren’t Broken. The short answer is, they don’t like the outcome. Rather than change their policies to fall in line with what’s popular with the majority of their citizens, they work to keep those who don’t look and think like them from voting.
  • In Why We Should Rethink Voting Rights from the Ground Up, Amel Ahmed argues in the Washington Monthly that we should push to think of voting as an affirmative right. Taking the great work of Stacey Abrams in Georgia (there’s that local again) as an example, Ahmed asserts that “it is time to shift the frame. While the prevention of discrimination is worthy and noble, it cannot limit our political imagination, especially with so many increasing challenges to voting access by those claiming irregularities and fraud. Right now, our best defense is a more robust offense.”
  • And if you want to go down a very deep rabbit hole on this question, check out the Brennan Center for Justice‘s Annotated Guide to the For the People Act of 2021 which is the Democratic majority’s national response to these local and statewide challenges to voting rights.

We have a problem with cynicism in America. Locally and globally. As Megan Garber writes in The Atlantic, From Tucker Carlson to ‘Cancel Culture,’ Cynicism Is Winning.

“Cynicism is, among other things, a habit of disordered vision: It looks at friends and sees foes. It looks at truth and sees deceit. Cynicism, at scale, makes democracy’s most basic demand—seeing one another as we are—impossible. And America, at the moment, is saturated with it. Cynicism makes daily appearances on Fox (and on Newsmax, and on One America News Network). It was the molten core of Donald Trump’s presidency, and the only real message Rush Limbaugh had to give. It lurks in the language of QAnon. It lives in the Big Lie. It seethed in the violence of the Capitol insurrection. It has made suspicion an easy sell. “From falsehood, anything follows,” posits a law of classical logic. It is called the principle of explosion.“

Cynicism is easy. Hope is hard. Yet as Teri Kanefield recently wrote on her blog, everyone has to Hold on to Your Ideals to save democracy. Think globally. Work very hard locally.

And to end on the brightest of notes about someone who is very much grounded in a local place but who is loved worldwide, here is a story of our national treasure getting her COVID vaccine in Dolly Parton gets Moderna coronavirus vaccine.

As Herman Wong writes in The Washington Post, Parton — who famously donated $1 million early in the search for a vaccine against the coronavirus — didn’t jump line to get her shot. Because that’s who she is.

“On Tuesday, it was Parton’s turn, and she had a message for others.

“I just want to say to all of you cowards out there, don’t be such a chicken squat. Get out there and get your shot,” the 75-year-old said in the video.“

How can you not love this woman? She acts local yet thinks global.

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

Image by Printeboek from Pixabay

Time to reinvigorate the bucket list

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As the harshness of winter is moving into the rearview mirror, we look ahead not only to spring but with newfound optimism toward the end of a pandemic.

It strikes me as a good time to revisit the bucket list.

At its core, a bucket list is an inventory of things to do before you die (or “kick the bucket”). The key is that your list should be things that you want to accomplish and would love to do. Basically that’s all there is to it.*

Sometime in the 1990s when I was in my late 30s I put together my first bucket list. The approach of “big” birthdays tend to have that effect on people. At the time our family didn’t have a lot of money, but we did have access each summer to a wonderful house on Island Creek off the Pawtuxet River in Southern Maryland. During those two weeks each year, the four of us would read, trap crabs, spend time roaming the yard with the dog, ride our bikes, catch up on sleep, play games of croquet, and — most importantly for this topic — talk about our goals for the year ahead.

That last item became a staple of our dinner conversations while at the river. Each year, as one example, we listed all the things we wanted to do to make our home more comfortable. Some ten years later we looked back at that list and we’d checked off every single item. These two weeks were like a mini-sabbatical for our family, where we stepped off the treadmill to rest and think. We each treasure those times in our memories.

One year I started a personal bucket list while at the river house.

Bucket lists are a work in progress. Don’t try and capture everything all at once. Some begin with very personal items that you are giving yourself permission to pursue. Some morph into lists of ways to help others and make a difference. The point is that expectations and situations will change. Take 2020, for instance.

We’re coming out of a year when it may have been hard to think about the future, much less items on a bucket list. We’ve found ourselves in lockdown with the heavy weight of the impacts of a pandemic. We have faced challenges — personal and as a community — with health concerns, political unrest, and social justice issues. While I was able to complete one bucket list project in writing thank you notes to the people who have shaped my life, overall I found it hard to focus on a life list in the midst of so much turmoil and tragedy. Perhaps you share a similar experience of the year we’ve just navigated.

It was a recent conversation with a friend and former colleague that inspired me to think that the time was right to reinvigorate my list. We were discussing visits to baseball ballparks (one of my longtime goals) and he mentioned friends that had visited every presidential home, every congressional district in the U.S. (he is a lobbyist), and even presidential gravesites. I know someone who has visited every state capitol. As we finished, I was invigorated with the idea of jumping back into my personal list.

Bucket lists give us permission and are optimistic, by nature. I like the idea of turning from cynicism to optimism this year as we’ve got way too much of the former in the world right now. Cynicism is easy, while hope is risky and hard. A bucket list says, “I’m going to be out in the world, I’m going to make a difference, and I’m going to love what I’m doing.” A bucket list should include things you can do in an afternoon and things that will take the rest of your life.

So yes, I’m going to start planning to make trips to knock off the two remaining states I need to visit to get to all 50 — Nevada and Alaska, here I come! — and to finish out the last eight baseball stadiums I need to get through that list (anyone want to catch a game?). I’m going to look through my list to see what I might be able to do in a day, what is going to take time, and what’s missing that I want to add.

I love hearing about items on a bucket list, so feel free to write about yours in the comments or send me an email. Perhaps we can support each other in doing the risky, hard, and ultimately oh-so-satisfying work of hope.

More to come…

DJB

*Some people hate the term “bucket list” because it has the element of rushing to beat death. Sebastian Terry is one of those people. He talks about doing things for purpose, growth, and connection. That’s fine. You can check out his Tedx talk entitled 100 Things – What’s on Your List? to get his point of view. It is your list…do with it what you wish.

Image by Daniel Byram from Pixabay

Classic bluegrass delivered in royal style by the Earls of Leicester

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Time for a little classic bluegrass on the Saturday Soundtrack, brought to you today by the Earls of Leicester.* This wonderful tribute band, formed by Jerry Douglas in 2013 with five of his friends who love the music of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, plays the classic music of the Foggy Mountain Boys pretty much straight up and with a real affection for these pioneers of bluegrass.

I used to listen to Flatt and Scruggs in the mornings on WSM radio as we were getting ready to go to school. So to kick off this Soundtrack, let’s go back to my younger days and listen to the song that was written for their sponsor of those shows, the Martha White Theme.

When the Earls of Leicester formed in 2013, their mission was ambitious but exact: to preserve and promote the legacy of bluegrass legends Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, in hopes of reviving the duo’s music for longtime admirers and introducing a new generation to their genre-defining sound. Within a year of releasing their self-titled debut, the Nashville-based six-piece far surpassed their own expectations, winning a Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album and earning six awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association. Now, with their first live album, Earls of Leicester offer up a selection of songs that fully capture the pure joy and supreme musicianship that propel their every performance.

Earls of Leicester | Official Site

A classic Flatt and Scruggs tune is Roll in my Sweet Baby’s Arms. Even singing in a cave, the Earls of Leicester do a great job.

This next song, as Douglas explains in the intro, was famously banned by the Grand Ole Opry after Flatt and Scruggs played it one Saturday evening.

The Train that Carried My Girl From Town and Dim Lights, Thick Smoke are classics of the bluegrass canon.

Several of these videos are from the Earls of Leicester Live album from 2019.

Recorded over two nights at Nashville’s CMA Theater, The Earls of Leicester Live at The CMA Theater in The Country Music Hall of Fame bears a boundless vitality that makes songs from over a half-century ago feel irresistibly fresh. Despite the band’s painstaking precision in recreating the catalog of Flatt and Scruggs’s Foggy Mountain Boys, the album unfolds with an easy warmth that honors the essence of traditional bluegrass, which Douglas describes as “music that was meant to be played on back porches.” Earls of Leicester Live is also accompanied by a DVD that shows the complete splendor of their live set: the throwback attire, the off-the-cuff but illuminating between-song banter, the relentless hotfooting required of their stage setup. “Our goal is to go out and reacquaint everybody with the music of Flatt and Scruggs just the way they did it, which means fewer microphones and a good amount of choreography,” says Douglas. “We’re trying to put as much as we can into the music before it even reaches the speakers.”

Earls of Leicester | Official Site

We’ll end up with a sizzling version of White House Blues. Let’s hear McKinley holler one more time!

Enjoy!

More to come…
DJB

*Check out the comments if you are puzzled by the name.

Image: Home | The Earls Of Leicester

Weekly Reader: Be fair and prosper

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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.

Americans need to rethink taxes and the public good if we are to reverse our income inequality and overcome the lack of fairness that games our system for those with money. Writing in The Ink, Anand Giridharadas has a conversation with Danish businessman and founder of Human Act Djaffar Shalchi about why he wants to make rich people like himself pay more in taxes. In The American dream is now in Denmark, Giridharadas and Shalchi make the case that people in Denmark are doing better by being fairer.

“If we millionaires are going to be “for humanity,” we have got to go beyond philanthropy and recognize that we need to be taxed. No matter how generous and smart we think we are in our private giving, unless we shift from trying to minimize our taxes to advocating to be taxed more, we are not living up to being “for humanity.” Are most millionaires there yet? No. I do feel a shift is starting, though. Please keep encouraging us — and keep pressuring us, too.“

Of course, most rich people in America believe that if we adopted policies like those in Denmark, then capitalism would die. The unquestioned goodness of capitalism is just another false American myth.

“In real life, contrary to the Hollywood tale, kids are more likely to achieve the American dream in Denmark than in America. America is not a beacon to the world on how to run an economy. Scandinavia has a much more impressive economic record than the US and is much more innovative. Sorry, my American friends — we’re not just fairer than you. We’re doing better by being so.“

One reason we don’t have a fair and equitable system in the U.S. is that such a small percentage of the population can control the government. Writing in Forbes, Steven Salzberg asks and answers the question What Do You Call A Country Where 5.6% Of The People Can Control The Government? The United States.

“Many people living in the U.S. don’t realize how truly undemocratic our current system of government is. By my calculation, 5.6% of the people can hold the entire government hostage, preventing any substantive legislation from passing.

This isn’t my opinion: it’s simply math. What’s more, it’s completely legal, made possible by the U.S. Senate–and made worse by its ridiculous filibuster rule.“

When monied interest can control our government by controlling such a small percentage of the population, then they have no incentive to pay more taxes or treat people more fairly.

Image by Jorge Guillen from Pixabay

I doubt it will surprise you if you give it some thought, but 46,218 news transcripts show ideologically extreme politicians get more airtime on talk shows. That’s the point of this piece in The Conversation by communications professors and researchers Joshua Darr, Jeremy Padgett, and Johanna Dunaway.

Committee assignments are normally a blessing for new House members. But some of today’s newer members, like freshmen Republican representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn, seem to be more interested in punditry than policy.

Governing isn’t the point. “Owning the libs” is what they live for (and getting rich in the process). Is there any surprise that we have one party that simply isn’t interested in governing or representative government? Speaking of which…

John Stoehr in The Editorial Board says it is time to Stop calling the GOP ‘conservative.’ Even the the late Rush Limbaugh said that if conservatism animated the Republican Party, there would be no President Donald Trump.

“Fascism is all-American. It’s native-born. And it describes the politics of the Republican Party more accurately than “conservatism” does. Sure, there are conservatives in the GOP (Mitt Romney comes to mind). There are conservative think-tanks, conservative policies, conservative legal theorists. But none of that captures the character of today’s Republican Party, which combines, in its never-ending search for enemies to punish, the elements of sadism and masochism.“

Oh yes. Although they show up all over talk shows and on op-ed pages, Jill Lawrence, writing in U.S.A. Today, reminds us that After Trump, Republicans have no standing to pontificate on anything. Period. (And yes, that especially goes for silly op-eds like the one in yesterday’s Washington Post. Don’t tell me about bi-partisanship after supporting virtually everything Donald Trump did for 4 years, including voting for that fig leaf fake constitutional argument in the second impeachment trial to get him off the hook. What hypocrites.)

As I’ve noted before, Chief Justice John Roberts has long had it in for the protection of the expansion of voting rights that helped end the Jim Crow era. In Vox, senior correspondent Ian Millhiser writes Supreme Court: Two cases could destroy the Voting Rights Act. It may happen, but Congress has the power to approve an updated act and ensure the safety of our elections no matter what John Roberts and his ilk on the Supreme Court do. Fighting for democracy is hard, never ending, and worth the effort.

We will end with two music-theme pieces. The New York Times featured an article by Jennifer Moore entitled In the Ozarks, the Pandemic Threatens a Fragile Musical Tradition. “The older fiddlers and rhythm guitar players don’t rely on sheet music, so their weekly jam sessions — now on hiatus — are critical to passing their technique to the next generation.”

Marty Stuart

The Bitter Southerner features an informative and fun interview between music journalist and critic Peter Guralnick and roots and country musician (and music historian) Marty Stuart. Getting Caught Up: Peter Guralnick and Marty Stuart is worth the read, if only to hear them talk about Dick Curless and the Maine truck-driving classic Tombstone Every Mile.

Enjoy and have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

Image of Denmark by David Mark from Pixabay

Mind the gap

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Gaps and distance. Two words with various meanings, but both can point to breaks, differences, and separation. A divide between places on a map, yes; but also the gulf we find between people.

It was the unfolding disaster we watched in horror last week that took my mind from the wide physical distances in Texas to the emotional and political distances that led to, and ultimately compounded, the state’s devastation.

Emotional and political gaps are easier to manage if we maintain a safe psychological and physical distance from those we dislike or who are in pain. Safe, I should say, for the one doing the distancing, but not for the individuals being left behind.

Several years ago I attended a Sunday service in London at St. Martin in the Fields. It was September, and the Vicar, the Rev. Dr. Sam Wells, had written a short meditation for the bulletin entitled From a Distance.

In Ernest Hemingway’s novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” set during the Spanish Civil War, a republican guerilla spots a nationalist cavalryman from a distance and kills him.  He raids the man’s purse, and inside finds a photograph of the soldier’s wife, intimate letters, and items of intense personal faith. Suddenly the cold act of war is revealed for what it was, and a feeling of revulsion creeps over the reader.  This is no longer an ideological struggle; it is the ghastly abrupt shattering of a beautiful set of relationships and loves.

I’m writing this on 11 September: a momentous day.  Rowan Williams described a suicide bomber as someone who can only see from a distance.  All violence requires distance; it depends on not seeing, not hearing, not sensing certain things.

When we build emotional and psychological gaps between ourselves and others we make decisions that run the gamut from tone deaf and stupid (e.g., Cruz, Ted) to unspeakable tragedies such as September 11th that destroy the lives of our fellow travelers on earth. When we operate from an emotional distance, all those who don’t think like us are seen as fair game for everything from mockery to scorn. And when we turn over our brains and our principles to those in the media who are paid big money to divide us, their mockery and scorn becomes ours.

Sam Wells ended his meditation with thoughts on the life of his parish. He called it “life close up,” and in his religious worldview he suggests that keeping the needs of others close imitates the life of God, “close up and giving full attention to the world’s intimate detail.” 

So much of the suffering we have seen in Texas is a result of political decisions to build a gap between those in power and those who do not share the same ideological beliefs and are perceived as outside the tribe. Those decisions don’t allow for a “life close up.” As Ryan Cooper wrote in The Week, the Republican party that has controlled all three branches of government in Texas for two decades is a reflection of the national party, one “in which catering to the welfare of one’s constituents, or indeed any kind of substantive political agenda, has been supplanted by propaganda, culture war grievance, and media theatrics.” Speaking specifically of Ted Cruz, he notes that leaving his freezing constituents to fend for themselves in Texas while he fled for the warmth of Cancun was emblematic of the party’s mode of governance. “Neither he nor anybody else in a leadership position in the party knows or cares about how to build a reliable power grid. They just want to get rich owning the libs.”

Thankfully, there are many fellow citizens and those in power — even from out-of-state and in the opposing political party — who turned toward each other with assistance and love as the state government turned away.

As one travels the Tube and other forms of transportation in the United Kingdom, “mind the gap” signs and announcements are everywhere. They serve as a reminder to be careful in crossing the space between the edge of the train and the platform. But they can also serve as a metaphorical reminder to carefully tend to the distances we find — and sometimes erect — between ourselves and others, working to keep them as small as possible. Working to maintain a human touch. Sam Wells, in closing his meditation, called on his community to:

“…renew our commitment in loving attention to details that matter. And so let us defy those who harden their hearts to bring about savage destruction through seeing merely from a distance.

Have a good week.

More to come…
DJB

Image by Greg Plominski from Pixabay