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Weekly Reader: Lives well lived

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This Weekly Reader features links to articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy as January turned into February. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry.

Statistics tell us that January and February are the months in the U.S. with the highest death rates per 1,000 people. The pandemic has brought death and loss to the forefront of American life in ways reminiscent of other times of national trauma. In the American Civil War, more than 600,000 soldiers lost their lives. We are not at that scale yet, as an equivalent proportion of today’s population would be six million. However, in This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust reveals the ways that death on such a scale, usually occurring without relatives nearby to help with the nursing and grieving and often happening anonymously in those days before those killed could be easily identified, changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. I suspect the scale and often the loneliness of loss through the pandemic will result in more changes in all our lives.

The pace of loss has been on my mind as I have been reflecting on the number of people who have passed away in recent weeks. This week’s Weekly Reader includes stories and remembrances of several individuals who touched the lives of others in ways known and unknown. All were well known in their fields. So many who died of COVID in the same time period are known only to their families and friends. But so many of those individuals also left remarkable legacies. I wrap it all up with an article that summarizes ten ideas that one person has used to help make a life well lived.

Hank Aaron (credit: Baseball Hall of Fame)

The great baseball columnist of The Washington Post, Thomas Boswell, wrote a heartfelt appreciation for the man who just may have been the greatest baseball player to ever play the game, Henry Aaron. Hank Aaron’s greatness and grace were underappreciated and unmatched makes a strong case for that assessment, and that’s saying something coming from this Willie Mays fan.

“The 1957 and 1958 World Series hooked me on Aaron, who died on Friday at 86, and (Warren) Spahn. Their Milwaukee Braves battled the New York Yankees, whom I already had learned to hold in equal parts awe and hate, on dead-even terms, winning in seven games in their first Series meeting before New York got revenge in seven games in ’58. Aaron hit .364 and slugged .600 in those two World Series.…

There was no conspiracy of silence about Aaron, no plot to keep him underappreciated — which he still is to this day. He was, simply, the greatest attention-deflecting machine the game ever produced. He played with understated grace, swift efficiency and a lizard-tongue wrist-snap of a swing. He tried to hit the ball 400 feet, not 450. That restraint, in an era that adored tape-measure homers, allowed him to blend contact with power; Aaron hit over .320 eight times yet routinely had years with around 40 homers but only 60 strikeouts.…

He had a quiet, utterly composed, almost Buddha-like presence. It was like talking to a bronze statue that suddenly began speaking, slowly and thoughtfully, the least-rushed man alive.“

I had the chance to see Aaron live once in my life, in 1966, the first year the Braves moved to Atlanta. On the last day of the season, our Little League coach told us all to gather around, and then he announced that the coaches and parents were taking us to Atlanta the next Sunday to see an Atlanta Braves game. This 11-year-old was over the top excited! I can’t remember the score, or who they played, but I will always remember seeing graceful Hank Aaron — the real home run champion — play baseball that sunny summer day.

Marcus Hayes, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, tells What legendary Temple basketball coach John Chaney meant to me and the Black community in America.

“I came to Philadelphia in 1995, just a farm boy with a fancy diploma. Within a year of my arrival, I met both Michael Jordan and John Chaney.

“On paper,” writes Hayes, “the coach was far less impressive than the player. In person, it wasn’t even close.”

“Jordan was a brand. Chaney was an institution.

But Chaney wasn’t just an institution. Along with a handful of other Black coaches, Chaney helped change an institution — the insular, powerful world of college basketball coaching. It was a world dominated by Bobby Knights and Dean Smiths; the stately legend of John Wooden; the hoary ghost of Adolph Rupp. It was a world made accessible to people like me by the late John Thompson at Georgetown; by Nolan Richardson at Tulsa and Arkansas; and, in gritty North Philadelphia, by John Chaney, who died Friday. He was 89.

You’ve heard this before, but for Coach Chaney this is true: Like Thompson and Richardson, Chaney will live forever through the lives he so deeply touched; and through lives he never knew he touched.“

I first met the late Barbara Erickson, President and CEO of the Trustees of Reservations who passed away much too early on January 15th, when she visited the National Trust for Historic Preservation. She came soon after taking on her role with the Trustees, the Massachusetts organization that was a precursor to the National Trust in the U.K. It was clear that Barbara was an impressive leader as well as an individual who was generous in spirit. We got to know each other a bit more when she came to the 2015 International National Trust Organisation (INTO) Cambridge conference when I served as an INTO Trustee and we were both speakers. Catherine Leonard, the Secretary-General of INTO, has written Barbara J Erickson, President and CEO of the Trustees of Reservations as an appreciation for Barbara and her work on the international stage. It includes a link to a blog I wrote after Cambridge.

Barbara was a force for preservation and conservation, and she will be missed.

Three generation of Brown men loved the Mel Brooks film Young Frankenstein. To be truthful, Daddy, Andrew, and I could quote multiple lines from several Mel Brooks movies, and when we watched them together the laughter was loud and long. Sadly, most of the main actors from that 1974 mini-masterpiece of a film have now passed away, including last week, the wonderfully talented Cloris Leachman.

Adam Bernstein, in The Washington Post, has a lovely tribute in his obituary Cloris Leachman, Oscar-winning actress who starred in ‘Young Frankenstein,’ dies at 94.

“It was ‘Young Frankenstein,; however, that delivered her enduring place in film history. The movie was bursting with brilliant visual and verbal gags that paid irreverent tribute to Universal Studios horror films such as “Frankenstein” with Boris Karloff and “Dracula” with Bela Lugosi….

To play Frau Blücher, Ms. Leachman tied her hair in a tight bun, affixed a chin mole and gave her skin a sickly pallor with makeup — she was made to resemble Judith Anderson’s severe housekeeper Mrs. Danvers from “Rebecca” (1940). But the pièce de résistance was her German accent and her fearsome glare. Horses whinny in horror at the mention of her name.

Ms. Leachman made the deadpan most of her deliciously cockeyed lines. ‘Stay close to zee candles,’ she says, holding an oversized candelabra with unlit candlesticks as she climbs a shadowy staircase. She overdoes her offer of a nightcap to an increasingly angry Frankenstein, first proffering brandy, then ‘varm milk . . . perhaps?‘ and, finally, the chocolate malted kid’s drink Ovaltine. Later, she confesses to a dark secret: “Yes! Yes!” she shouts of Victor Frankenstein. ‘He voss my boyfriend!’”

Writing in the New York Times, critic-at-large Wesley Morris has an appraisal of the life and work of the actress Cicely Tyson that is a moving remembrance of yet another giant we lost in recent days: Cicely Tyson Kept It Together So We Didn’t Fall Apart.

“A wonder of poise and punch, the actress dared to declare herself a moral progenitor, taking on roles that reflected the dignity of Black women.“

“Tyson was a peculiar kind of famous. I was never told of her importance. I just knew. Everybody knew. This woman was somebody. She looked sainted, venerated — at 29, 36, 49 and 60. Even in anguish. It’s possible that happens once you’ve played a 110-year-old formerly enslaved woman in ‘The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman’ and after you’ve played Kunta Kinte’s mother. Or maybe those roles happen because you radiate venerability.“

If you want to think about your life and how you live it, take a look at Scott H. Young’s blog post Ten Ideas That Have Shaped My Life.

“Ideas are powerful. Arriving at the right time, they can alter the entire direction of your life.

But ideas also hide in the background, acting as assumptions. Quietly influencing your decisions, whether they’re true or false.“

Number 6 — Fear is overcome through exposure — rings true for me. And Number 10 — Happiness is in the pursuit, not the possession — is always a good reminder.

Rest in peace, Hammering Hank, Coach Chaney, Barbara, Frau Blücher, and Cicely Tyson. Like Marcus Haynes said, you will live forever through the lives you so deeply touched; and through lives you never knew you touched.

More to come…

DJB

Image: Cloris Leachman in her legendary role as Frau Blücher in the Mel Brooks film Young Frankenstein.

Reclaiming our sense of humanity

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The stories we tell, and the ones we absorb, notes writer Steve Almond, “are what allow us to pluck meaning from the rush of experience.” It is why I believe in the power of stories. But power works for good and evil, and every story has a perspective. Not every story is told with the best of intentions.

“We do not tell stories as they are, we tell stories as we are. “

Anaïs Nin

The truth in this quote about stories attributed to French-Cuban American diarist, essayist, novelist and writer Anaïs Nin made me stop and think. We see through our own personal lenses as we tell stories, and there are other stories — sometimes hidden — that are part of the telling. Stories that may be good or bad, true or false.

We all decide if our stories will include a larger sense of humanity as we consider our relationship to others. I saw the quote about stories in a recent enewsletter, and an earlier post from the same organization with the subject matter title of Reclaiming our sense of humanity came to mind as I thought about the telling and absorbing of stories.

Reclaiming our sense of humanity strikes me as a necessary project in these turbulent times. In that work, the stories we tell ourselves and others are key to our growth personally and as a nation.

It is easy to look at the chaotic and never-ending news cycle and lose faith in the future, to question our ability to see each other as humans, worthy of care and love. People tell stories from the horrific and sick to the fantastical and sometime comical. (Jewish lasers in space, anyone?) These are often based on conspiracy theorists repeating baseless claims designed to spread disinformation and distrust. Or sometimes these stories come as part of a worldview from groups who believe that people who don’t practice their form of religion are illegitimate. Those stories tell us who they are. They also make it easy to turn to cynicism and despair.

There are different ways to approach life, to tell our stories, and to reclaim our sense of humanity. We can refuse to be drawn into the false stories and lies that are told to drive us apart. And we can do the work that is before us to remake our relationship to others.

“When you recognize that pain and response to pain is a universal thing, it helps explain so many things about others, just as it explains so much about yourself … It essentially tells you what everybody needs. You know what everybody needs? You want to put it in a single word? Everybody needs to be understood. And out of that comes every form of love.”

Sherwin Nuland

Journalist and broadcaster Krista Tippett shared her thoughts on the reclaiming of our sense of humanity and the need to move beyond all the coverage of the worst of human nature, in an interview with the Poetry Society of America. When asked “If you were to choose one poem or text to inscribe in a public place right now, what would that be?” she responds:

“The last line of a poem called “Vocation,” by William Stafford: “Your job is to find what the world is trying to be.” The language of vocation — calling — is important to me, in civilizational as well as personal terms. Through all of the extraordinary disorientation and tumult of our world right now, I think we are also glimpsing the world that wants to be born — a world in which we center what is essential in human terms — and reimagine and remake our relationship to others and to the natural world.”

Tippet notes that the worst of human nature and action gets all the coverage in our chaotic news cycle, “but it is not the whole story of our time.” I like the idea that our calling in this moment is to look, hear, and work to “center what is essential in human terms” as we reimagine and remake our relationship to others. In short, it is to reclaim our humanity.

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

Helping hands image by James Chan from Pixabay

Yasmin Williams: Not your father’s Takoma Park fingerstyle guitarist

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Yasmin Williams released her second album Urban Driftwood yesterday, with a sound and style that stands as “her challenge to widespread preconceptions about the music made by young Black people or acoustic guitarists. It’s Williams’s achievement that she makes that challenge sound so calming and beautiful.”

Those were the words of writer John Lingan in last Monday’s Washington Post. And it was Lingan’s appreciation for Williams and her music that led me to explore more of the work of this 24-year-old bold acoustic innovator in today’s Saturday Soundtrack.

Williams grew up in Northern Virginia and she recorded Urban Driftwood at studios in Kensington, Silver Spring and Takoma Park, Maryland. As Lingan notes,

Anyone who approaches the acoustic guitar with a thumb pick or their bare fingers in suburban Maryland inevitably invites comparisons to Takoma Park’s John Fahey, whose experiments with country blues made his name in the 1960s and ’70s. After inventing the term “American primitive” to describe his spare style, Fahey founded Takoma Records, which released solo guitar records by such similar visionaries as Leo Kottke and Robbie Basho and influenced generations of younger players, including Jack Rose and William Tyler.

But her music doesn’t sound like Fahey’s, and it is certainly not primitive. She has “an unorthodox, modern style of playing,” notes her website bio. “Her music has been commonly described as refreshing, relaxing, and unique and has been called some of the most imaginative guitar music out today.”

As one can see on the video of Restless Heart and elsewhere, Williams utilizes hammering, bowing, percussion, polyrhythms, and a host of two-handed techniques to achieve this modern sound. As she notes to Lingan, she is not from the Takoma Records tradition of fingerstyle guitar.

“She doesn’t say it defiantly, just as a point of clarification. ‘Both my mom and dad have family from D.C. I am Chocolate City. I grew up with go-go and Earth, Wind and Fire.‘

The latter’s 1974 single Kalimba Story, for example, inspired Williams’s use of the African thumb-piano on the song “Urban Driftwood,” which also features her on the harplike kora. A guest djembe player enlivens the piece as well, and lends it a texture not often heard in the Americana world, where most acoustic-based music like Williams’s still resides. In the last decade or so, Black artists such as Leyla McCalla and Valerie June have opened up the genre to new lyrical perspectives and styles. Rhiannon Giddens, the banjoist and musicologist, has led an effort to educate the genre’s audience about traditional American folk music’s debt to African traditions. Williams admires those artists and many others in the traditional folk world, even if her style and ambitions are a little more flexible.

Williams is listening to her own muse, playing lyrical, technically challenging tunes, with simple beauty and impressive virtuosity, as she does here on Juvenescence.

Next up is the official music video of the title track from Urban Driftwood. I love the scenes from around Washington, DC, and I am enthralled by the music. Here’s how it is described on the music video:

“The narrative plot of Urban Driftwood culminates in the repetitive, meditative sounds of guitar, kora, kalimba, and hand drums on the penultimate title track, creating a sonic landscape that communicates the feeling of movement and evokes images of the natural beauty that persists within urban spaces. As she wrote the song, Williams was reflecting on her personal role in the context of the current societal moment, considering her position as Black female guitarist within a white male dominated field. Yasmin says, ‘There are not many Black guitarists within this genre and particularly with all of the political and social discord that was/is happening in the United States in 2020, I felt it was extremely important to include a song on the album that was inspired by my heritage and paid homage to who I am, the household I grew up in, the music I listened to as a child. ‘Urban Driftwood’ is more like the music I grew up listening to than any other song I’ve released so far.’”

In this video of After the Storm, the final track on Urban Driftwood, she is playing

“…a beautiful, brand new instrument – a Skytop Guitars Grand Concert acoustic guitar. This guitar, built by Eric Weigeshoff of Skytop Guitars in New Paltz, NY, has a Tunnel 14 Redwood top, and the back and sides are made from Quilted Sapele. There are two large side soundports in lieu of a traditional soundhole in the front. These side soundports direct sound upward toward the player and out to the audience, creating an awesome 3D soundscape for the player.“

She wrote the tune after George Floyd’s murder, but — as the listener hears — it is very calming. She told Lingan, “I didn’t want it to sound aggressive, that wasn’t how I was feeling. I wanted to be hopeful, because we could always use more of that.”

Yes indeed, we do need more hope today.

My hope is that we’ll hear a great deal more of Yasmin Williams in the months and years ahead.

Enjoy.

More to come…

DJB

Image from YasminWilliamsMusic.com

Weekly Reader: Help! I’m feeling optimistic

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This Weekly Reader features links to articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy here in the heart of winter. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry.

We will get the laughter part out of the way up front. Janine Annett, writing in McSweeney’s, pleads Doctor, Please Help, I’m Feeling Optimistic.

“Doctor, I’ve been feeling really strange these past few days. I haven’t really felt this way in about four years. My chronic migraines have completely disappeared, and the past few nights I’ve slept like a baby. I have pleasant dreams, sleep for eight hours without interruption, and then wake up feeling refreshed.…

I scrolled through Twitter to try and snap out of it and feel pessimistic again, but all I felt was joy seeing people praise Amanda Gorman and share those kindhearted Bernie memes.“

There’s more, and I promise you that you’ll laugh (if you’re not crying).

Let’s jump into the more serious stuff with two author interviews by writer and editor Anand Giridharadas in The Ink, his newsletter about money and power, politics and culture. 

The first is with policy guru Heather McGhee — the author of a forthcoming book, The Sum of Us, which argues that racism costs everyone, not just people of color. In the post Ending the uncivil war, Giridharadas and McGhee discuss how racism keeps us from having nice things, why the portals of disinformation need to be shut down, and how America can save itself in the Biden era. McGhee begins with “the parable of the pool” that anchors her argument.

“The parable is a story that I grew up learning from family members. It was a very visceral memory for many of them. There was a grand, resort-style public swimming pool in the heart of their community. In fact, in the United States there were more than 2,000 of them that were built with tax dollars over the ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s. In many ways, it was one of the most real, everyday examples of the New Deal consensus of government being a force for the improvement of the everyday quality of life of its citizens.

Yet in so many of these communities, the pools were for whites only or were segregated. In the 1950s and ’60s, as the courts began to knock down these segregation codes in recreational facilities, many towns in virtually every region of the country decided to drain their public swimming pools, rather than integrate them.…

It’s the parable at the heart of “The Sum of Us,” because in many ways the era that I’ve known my whole life, the inequality era, has been defined most dramatically by the hollowing out of the public goods that we share in common, an era of austerity and a lack of investment in public infrastructure.…The opening sentence of my book asks, “Why can’t we have nice things?” And the answer is that racism has drained our pools.“

The second interview I recommend — Love the world anyway — is with Ann Heberlein, author of a new biography of Hannah Arendt.

The “German-born, Jewish, American political philosopher and author of such enduring works as The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is a writer and thinker for our times. Heberlein’s book, On Love and Tyranny: The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt tackles this fascinating subject. Giridharadas’s interview with Heberlein delves into several parts of Arendt’s life and impact.

The next three articles deal with the role of journalism in the rise of Donald Trump, the media bias that you may not have expected, and what needs to come next.

Karen Attiah, writing in The Washington Post, calls out her fellow journalists and those who own media companies in The media had a role to play in the rise of Trump. It is time to hold ourselves accountable.

In Press Run, Eric Boehlert is upset about the way the New York Times characterized Donald Trump for four years verses their treatment of Joe Biden in After touting Trump as “populist,” New York Times paints Biden as elitist. Yes, this is about the Rolex nonsense.

“Reviving a long-running gotcha narrative that portrays wealthy Democrats as hypocrites, the New York Times has been dinging President Joe Biden since Inauguration Day as being out of touch with voters. It’s a dishonest pursuit that looks especially absurd following Trump’s four years of gaudy, country club excess, which the newspaper ridiculously labeled, “populism.”

At the swearing, the Times reported Biden wore, ‘a stainless steel Rolex Datejust watch with a blue dial, a model that retails for more than $7,000,” and noted the handsome piece “costs the equivalent of dozen or so stimulus checks.’…In the same article detailing the price of Biden’s Rolex ($7,000), the Times omitted any references to the cost of the gold Rolex Trump wore as president. ($36,000.)

The urgent wristwatch update came three days after the Times delivered a reported piece on Biden’s exercise bike of choice, Peloton, noting the high-end workout machine, “does not exactly comport with Mr. Biden’s “regular guy from Scranton” political persona.”

Instead of focusing on what’s on Biden’s wrist or in his exercise room, the better way to determine his “Everyman” agenda is to look at his earliest policy initiatives.

Also in The Washington Post, media critic Margaret Sullivan takes on the right wing media in Fox News is a hazard to our democracy. It’s time to take the fight to the Murdochs. Here’s how.

“Even James Murdoch, while not naming names, blasted the harm that his family’s media empire has done. “The sacking of the Capitol is proof positive that what we thought was dangerous is indeed very much so,’ he told the Financial Times. ‘Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years.’

But it’s his father and his brother, Lachlan, who run Fox, not James.“

Let’s end with two history-related articles. First, Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky has a piece at her blog on Historians Contextualizing the Political Chaos: A Roundup. After the January 6th insurrection, she noted that…

“Right away, historians recognized the unprecedented aspects of these events, as well as their deep historical roots. They’ve written blog posts, op-eds, and columns helping us to understand the political developments following the insurrection, including discussions of impeachment, the 14th amendment, the 25th amendment, and D.C. statehood.“

Patsy Cline Historic Home in Winchester, VA

Brian Breham in the Winchester (Virginia) Star has the good news that the Patsy Cline House is now a national landmark.

“Cline was a Winchester native who went on to become one of the most highly regarded country music singers of all time. She lived at several addresses throughout her life, but the two-story, single-family home she shared with her mother, Hilda Hensley, on South Kent Street was where she stayed the longest.

According to information contained in the house’s National Historic Landmark nomination form, “it was her home when she started singing professionally, signed her first recording contract and made a name for herself in regional country music circles.”

Patsy Cline was a country music trailblazer and a woman who led the way for a whole generation of female performers in an industry long dominated by men. She was among the first to headline concerts and she became the first female to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 1991, MCA records issued her first box set entitled The Patsy Cline Collection, which was subsequently named by Rolling Stone magazine as among their “50 Greatest Albums of All-Time”.

Enjoy a bit of Walkin’ After Midnight.

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

Image: The iconic “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” photo by Charles C. Ebbets, taken in 1932 as workers sat on an iron crossbeam high above New York City, got a new addition on Wednesday: Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. It was just one of many memes to feature the lawmaker in his mittens on Inauguration Day. (Bernie photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP, skyscraper photo by Charles C. Ebbets via Yahoo)

Turning back to what matters

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As our emotions ranged from exuberant and poignant highs to harrowing and tragic lows, a wise observer sent out a reminder of how the world works.

“One of the most painful things for me to watch in the frenzy of our life together in recent years was the loss of any capacity to remember that essential contradictions run wild in each of us and are real, too, in whoever our ‘others’ have become. There is a terrible but also a beautiful, and potentially redemptive, complexity at play whenever human beings are involved.”

We have all been through great leaps of emotion just over the past seven days. There was a transition of power in the U.S., although it was less than fully peaceful and featured pettiness and spitefulness right up to the end. Two recent occurrences took me back to last Monday’s More to Come post and thoughts of how far we have to travel to rebuild trust when we have political leaders in one party who are not serious. And yet we also saw historical firsts and great moments of grace and eloquence.

Let’s begin with two events — the firing of a truth-teller and the faux outrage over a decent and moral speech — that show how far we stand from transparency, truth, civility, and trust.

First, Fox News announced that it had fired Chris Stirewalt, the veteran politics editor who was an onscreen face of the network’s election night projection that Joe Biden had defeated Donald Trump in Arizona. Later Fox News’s longtime Washington bureau chief announced his retirement after facing criticism from network executives as well.

Fox — which bills itself as a news network — was the first network to call Arizona for Biden, and they got the call right! But instead of sending kudos to the news division and decision desk, the owners and top executives at the network decided to punish those who told the truth. Their viewers, most especially Donald Trump, didn’t like truth mixed in with their “news.”*

Beyond firing the individual who was right, Fox also responded to this turn of events by cutting more news positions and hiring more opinion pundits. Just one day after Biden was inaugurated Fox had a “Breaking News” chyron that read: “Biden’s Disastrous First Week.” Clearly Fox’s business model of telling lies and tricking its viewers makes more money than telling objective facts and news, which is the point made in last Monday’s post:

“We cannot build a more trusting time…unless we also recognize that there are those who benefit from the discord and distrust, and who will work hard to undermine any efforts to reduce their influence over others. Their role in our society needs to be diminished and controlled.”

That news item was followed by faux outrage to President Biden’s call for national unity. We all expected Biden to urge a coming together in his inaugural address, as he’s been talking about it for two years. What surprised many of us was how he moved beyond feel-good language to note that “our prospects for much-needed ‘unity’ are threatened by various political forces. Among them, he said, are racism, nativism, political extremism, white supremacy and domestic terrorism.”

President Biden looked at the 2017 events in Charlottesville and the insurrection of January 6th and saw what any objective viewer saw.

Unfortunately, objectivity wasn’t the goal in the reaction by the professional political class on the right. As Greg Sargent notes in the Washington Post, “Republican officials and their media allies are now widely condemning these words as an attack on themselves and their voters. The obvious trick,” Sargent noted, “is to game the media into saying Biden is already reneging on his unity promise by being divisive. Republicans,” he added, are also “working to reframe the national debate over how to repair the damage done during Donald Trump’s presidency on terms favorable to them.”

The faux outrage, just like Republicans pretending to care about the deficit again**, was widely anticipated.

The predictability of these responses shows why we need to stop listening to this professional political class on the right as if they are part of a rational, functioning political party that cares about the future of democracy and America. After four years of supporting every whim Donald Trump wanted to inflict on America while turning a blind eye to the unnecessary deaths of 1 in every 1,000 Americans under his mismanaged coronavirus response, they have lost their chance to be taken seriously until they clean house.

I generally do not read the conservative columnist George Will. As noted in other posts, I won’t buy books — even books on baseball — where Will has written a jacket blurb. But part of the title to a recent column grabbed me. The snippet was, “So the people need to grow up.”

When I was a young boy in Tennessee, I would, on occasion, do something foolish or moronic, leading my father to say, “It is time to grow up!” I know that reprimand from personal experience.

Will wrote in his column, “Five days before becoming president, (Biden) spoke five blunt words that would have been discordant in an inaugural address but that the entire nation needs to take to heart. Commenting on Republican members of Congress who refused to wear masks while crowded into protected rooms during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Biden said: ‘It’s time to grow up.'” Charlie Sykes, another conservative who has also had enough, agrees with Will and calls out the GOP as an unserious party.

Writer Anand Giridharadas looks at the events around us and has suggested that we are “living through a revolt against the future. The future,” he insists, “will prevail.”

Which brings me back to hope, potential redemption, and the things that matter. In her weekly note to readers of the On Being project, it was that wise observer Krista Tippett who noted that we all fall short in this life. “This is an uncomfortable truth to take in, a fact not about life as we wish it to be but about life as it is,” she begins. And then she continues with the thought that began this post, a thought that has been turning in my mind since it came across my screen.

“One of the most painful things for me to watch in the frenzy of our life together in recent years was the loss of any capacity to remember that essential contradictions run wild in each of us and are real, too, in whoever our ‘others’ have become.” Yes, we all strive. We all fall short. We are full of contradictions.

And yes, there is “a terrible but also a beautiful, and potentially redemptive, complexity at play whenever human beings are involved.”

There is hope and there is potential redemption. While a great many of these people who need to grow up are middle age or older, many of us met a 22-year-old young woman for the first time last Wednesday who is clearly a grown-up and who speaks in serious, yet lofty language. Amanda Gorman reminds us of what’s at stake if we give in to those who…

“…would shatter our nation rather than share it,

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.“

Much has changed for the good. When a woman of Black and Indian parents can be sworn in as the nation’s first female Vice President by the nation’s first female Latina Supreme Court Justice just before hearing another woman of color, the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, lift our hearts with her soaring words and images, we know that things have changed. As Amanda Gorman said, “We lift our gazes not to what stands between us but what stands before us.”

The future will prevail.

Young people, women, people of color, immigrants, and many others not in the traditional corridors of power are showing us what matters. How to be our best selves. Yes, we need the public to get serious, recognize what we almost lost on January 6th, and grow up. But that will only happen as we see the essential contradictions in ourselves that we so easily see in others and work toward a reconciliation with those who are willing to be serious about what matters.

It is past time to get to work.

More to come…

DJB

*Here’s the reason why.

**The Nobel laureate in economics Paul Krugman sets them straight.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Taking a viscerally emotional journey with guitarist and singer John Smith

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British born and based guitarist, singer, and songwriter John Smith hits so many right notes for me. His guitar work is novel and fresh, yet rooted in the fingerstyle tradition of British folk, while his singing is warm and welcoming. His website tells a bit about his background.

Steeped in the lineage of British folk, taking his cue from Richard Thompson and John Martyn, Smith has evolved a transatlantic blend of fingerstyle and slide guitar techniques. John’s intimate takes on love, loss and the journey we make, combined with his innovative guitar work, have won him a loyal following.  His honey-on-gravel voice and mesmerizing fingerstyle guitar are undeniable. Sometimes using a slide, sometimes with guitar on his lap, sometimes detuning mid-song, Smith’s obsession with the instrument has made a master of him. Whether by way of album or concert, he leads the listener, enthralled in his presence, on a viscerally emotional journey.

Let’s begin this Saturday Soundtrack with an optimistic look ahead. From the 2017 album Headlong comes the tune Far Too Good, heard in the live version from the eTown show. The sentiment that “you’re far too good for keeping down” is one I like to hear these days.

“Tell me your dream
Somewhere you wanna go or someone to be
What of those desires?
What hunger to sate, how high the fire?

Are you gonna make yourself unhappy? 
Are you gonna let it run you around? 
Have a little faith, we can pull it together 
You’re far too good for keeping down“

Salty and sweet from the 2013 album Great Lakes calls upon Smith’s childhood growing up in a seaside village. Here are two versions – a solo one followed by a duet with Irish singer Lisa Hannigan. Both are worth a listen.

Also from the Headlong album, this backstage video of Save My Life gives you the chance to hear Smith in a band setting.

Smith plays electric guitar, but you won’t be surprised to know that I gravitate toward his acoustic work. From the Fretboard Journal You Tube site, Smith performs Hummingbird. This is the title track off his excellent 2018 album.

There is beautiful fingerstyle guitar backing his vocals throughout, but at about the 2:30 mark you can hear a bit without the overlay of the vocals. I believe Smith is playing in a DADGAD tuning — sometimes known as the “grown man’s (or woman’s) tuning” — and it is simply lovely. (Click on the link and learn more about the tuning and how Smith came to live in that space.)

“For this track, John is playing his long-scale Fylde Alexander, an instrument with rosewood back and sides, a highly-figured Sitka spruce top and Yew binding. Though not plugged-in for this session, it’s equipped with a vintage DeArmond soundhole pickup that came to Smith via musician/producer Joe Henry.“

We’ll end with his most recent single, Friends, another tune of optimism for our times.

Enjoy!

More to come…

DJB

The Hill We Climb

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In an inaugural ceremony full of wonderful moments and historic firsts, this was among the best.

Like so many, I was mesmerized by Amanda Gorman‘s six minutes of poetry in The Hill We Climb at the end of the ceremony for the Inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of United States.

“We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

And this effort very nearly succeeded.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed,

It can never be permanently defeated.

In this truth, in this faith we trust.

For while we have our eyes on the future,

History has its eyes on us.“

Yes, history has its eyes on us. But as Gorman ended her powerful call, it requires bravery for “our people diverse and beautiful” to “emerge battered and beautiful.”

“The new dawn blooms as we free it

for there is always light

if only we’re brave enough to see it,

if only we’re brave enough to be it.“

More to come…

DJB

Full text available at Poetry.com.

Weekly Reader: Facing the rising sun

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This Weekly Reader features links to articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy as we move into the beginnings of the Biden Administration. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry.

Lift Every Voice and Sing is the sine qua non each year in our parish celebration of the life and work of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I’ve written about how I came to respect and, yes, love this song, which is also known as the Black National Anthem. This past Sunday, as I thought about how African Americans turned out to vote in 2020 in ways that saved our democracy, I cried. The song’s second verse — and the thought of the weary feet of millions of voters — especially gripped me. What follows is my favorite 2020 rendition of Lift Every Voice and Sing.

“Stony the road we trod

Bitter the chastening rod

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died

Yet with a steady beat

Have not our weary feet

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered

Out from the gloomy past

‘Til now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast“

This Weekly Reader will begin the pivot beyond a singular focus on the atrocities of the past four years. Unfortunately many of the issues that rose to the surface of our civic life during the turmoil will remain for us to grapple with in the years ahead. Several are covered in this week’s post.

Axios has in-depth reporting in a multi-part series entitled Off the rails: Behind Trump’s post-election meltdown that is very much worth a read.

“Beginning on election night 2020 and continuing through his final days in office, Donald Trump unraveled and dragged America with him, to the point that his followers sacked the U.S. Capitol with two weeks left in his term. This Axios special series takes you inside the collapse of a president.“

If you haven’t watched the video put together by Washington Post reporters Dalton Bennett, Emma Brown, Sarah Cahlan, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Meg Kelly, Elyse Samuels, and Jon Swaine entitled 41 minutes of fear: A video timeline from inside the Capitol siege please do so.

“At 2:12 p.m. on Jan. 6, supporters of President Trump began climbing through a window they had smashed on the northwest side of the U.S. Capitol. “Go! Go! Go!” someone shouted as the rioters, some in military gear, streamed in.

It was the start of the most serious attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812. The mob coursed through the building, enraged that Congress was preparing to make Trump’s electoral defeat official. “Drag them out! … Hang them out!” rioters yelled at one point, as they gathered near the House chamber.“

You will see how close we came to losing our government on January 6th. All because of a premeditated and delusional lie.

Cristina Beltrán, an associate professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University, writes a thoughtful piece in the New York Times about the idea of multiracial whiteness and how that concept helped support the racism of the past administration.

“Rooted in America’s ugly history of white supremacy, indigenous dispossession and anti-blackness, multiracial whiteness is an ideology invested in the unequal distribution of land, wealth, power and privilege — a form of hierarchy in which the standing of one section of the population is premised on the debasement of others. Multiracial whiteness reflects an understanding of whiteness as a political color and not simply a racial identity — a discriminatory worldview in which feelings of freedom and belonging are produced through the persecution and dehumanization of others.”

“In the politics of multiracial whiteness,” writes Beltrán, “anyone can join the MAGA movement and engage in the wild freedom of unbridled rage and conspiracy theories.”

Leonard Pitts, Jr., in his column in the Miami Herald, looks at the last four years from the perspective of a person of color and writes that President Trump is one lucky guy. He wasn’t born Black, otherwise, well, you know … 

“As the Trump administration stumbles through its final hours, it seems a proper time to offer a summation of the era just past. Ordinarily, this calls for analytical heavy lifting. One seeks to reconcile a mosaic of accomplishments, failures and compromises into a single coherent portrait.…

Unlike his predecessor, whom (Republicans) so extravagantly loathed, the decent family man who didn’t embarrass himself and his country every time he opened his mouth, Donald Trump had the foresight to not be Black.“

Pitts outlines the many shortcomings of Donald Trump, and then ends with this.

“After exhorting the rioters to action, he watched the melee on television. Seeing an assault on government, knowing lawmakers from his own party were in harm’s way, he did not send help and later told the rioters he loved them. It was an unspeakable betrayal of his country, his office and his duty. In other words, it was a Wednesday.

Trump leaves behind him an America in chaos, divisions deeper than living eyes have ever seen. But he was not Black. So one presumes you’re satisfied.“

As historians begin to assses the outgoing administration, you may be interested in this long and thoughtful piece by Tim Naftali ,a clinical associate professor of history at NYU who served as the first director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Natfali writes in The Atlantic that Trump is the worst president in history.

Just in time for Black History Month, Travel + Leisure magazine’s Jessica Poitevien notes that The First-ever Museum Dedicated to African American Music Will Soon Open in Nashville.

“Nashville is already known as a country music destination, but now it’s getting a bit more soul, gospel, and R&B, thanks to the addition of a new museum focusing on African American music. The National Museum of African American Music will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Jan. 18, 2021, with the space officially opening to the public on the 30th of that month.“

What may not be apparent to many is that African American music is not limited to areas we all recognize, such as soul, gospel, and R&B. African Americans were part of early bluegrass and country music, for instance, where their impact is not well known or recognized.

As banjo player Rhiannon Giddens told the International Bluegrass Music Association, “The question isn’t ‘How do we get diversity into bluegrass?’ The question is, ‘How do we get diversity back into bluegrass?’” That’s the challenge for the National Museum of African American Music, which seems to be off to a good start with its dedication to educating, preserving, and celebrating more than “50 music genres and styles that were created, influenced, and/or inspired by African Americans.”

On the same topic, you may wish to check out Margaret Renkl’s piece in Monday’s New York Times, Black music has a new home in Nashville.

And to end with something completely different, Bill Murphy, Jr., writing for Inc.com, suggests that People Who Adopt These 7 Verbal Habits in 2021 Have Very High Emotional Intelligence.

“Did you ever realize the perfect thing to say to somebody — only it’s too late, because you already said something less effective?

I hate when that happens. One way to have it happen less often is not to rush into saying things before you have to. A short pause can be sufficient — even just counting to five before replying. 

I’d recommend saying this quietly to yourself — although if you do it out loud intentionally, you’ll certainly send a message to the other person in your conversation.

In short, silence speaks volumes, and when you’re not talking, you’re most likely thinking or even listening. You’re also not digging rhetorical holes. So the five-second pause can be a powerful tool.“

Enjoy the readings this week.

More to come…

DJB

Sunrise Image by Franz Roos from Pixabay

A more trusting time

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Trust. It is crucial to getting things done. Collaboration moves at the speed of trust.

In his newest book, former South Bend Mayor and presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg writes that trust is foundational to the success of American democracy. Speaking to the New York Times last October, Buttigieg said,

“There is unquestionably a crisis of trust and trustworthiness in our country — trust in our institutions, trust in each other, global trust in America as a whole….What I was trying to do was both shine a light on the ways routine cooperation requires trust — whether you’re eating at a restaurant or driving a car — and also show what’s at stake in the biggest public health crisis of our time. I wanted to do it in a way that lets people hear the phrase ‘a more trusting time’ and think about what we’re building instead of what we’ve lost.” (emphasis added)

Buttigieg calls his “modest contribution” a signpost more than a road map, which is a fair assessment. Nonetheless, signposts can be very instructive. It is important to remember in this time of great political discord and paranoid thinking how much we lose when we give up on trust. While often unseen, Buttigieg writes, “trust is indispensable for a healthy, functioning society. And in the absence of trust, nothing that works can work well.”

In this recommended book, Buttigieg, who is President-elect Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Transportation, walks through the necessity of trust, the toxic roots of the recent loss of trust in America, why he believes we are at an inflection point, and ways to rebuild trust. He tells several personal stories about the loss of innocence which comes to all of us when we realize the “tension that exists between the necessity of trust and the reality that people are not always trustworthy.”

There are a number of reasons we are facing a crisis of trust in America, not the least of which is the deliberate and decades-long effort by corporations and wealthy oligarchs to fund politicians who seek power above trust and who will enact policies that favor money over democracy. These are people, as historian Nancy MacLean has shown, who are not trustworthy and who have hidden their true agenda behind a wall of lies. Attacks to destroy the trust and credibility of unions, public schools, climate science, and the very role of government have taken their toll.

“Getting people to trust you through consistent, hard-won credibility is difficult and time consuming,” Buttigieg writes. But, and this is critical, “a shortcut to gaining trust is to simply ask people to join you in distrusting someone else.” (emphasis added)

“And so today we find ourselves in a kind of multi-direction tug-of-war with fellow Americans, all while edging nearer to the cliff. Across fifty years, through a combination of failed policies, amoral technologies, and concerted, deliberate attacks, foreign and domestic, we have lost access to the basic levels of trust that democracy demands.”

This is where we find ourselves two days before the first inauguration in U.S. history that is not based on the peaceful transfer of power. Donald Trump, after years of spreading baseless lies and being supported by enablers in politics, the media, and technology, will leave office without conceding that he lost the election. This is all based on Trump’s biggest lie to date, claiming that the presidential election was rigged but that the down-ballot races somehow were not rigged. That lie is evil, certainly, but as many have written it is also unbelievably dumb. 

He did lose. In a landslide, no less. His supporters, incited by his words and actions, attacked the citadel of democracy at the U.S. Capitol and tried to halt the certification of the vote. Even though the insurrection failed, many enablers of Donald Trump continue to lie about the election outcome and that attack.

Those lies started well before January 6th, of course. Lying, gaslighting, double standards, faux outrage, and projection are all tricks of the trade to build distrust in government and to ask one group of Americans to join in distrusting other Americans. Those political leaders, their financial supporters, and their enablers in technology and the media have been using those tools ever since they decided to try to hold onto power as an extreme-right minority rather than change their positions and expand their base to attract more voters as is generally done in healthy democratic systems.

Those who care about democracy, the rule of law, fairness, social justice, and truth must understand the situation we are in and respond accordingly. There are ways to build trust back into our system. We can begin by remembering what it feels like to really see people beyond their tribe or ideology. We do that when we “come into the presence of one another” in the words of Whitney Kimbell Coe of the Center for Rural Strategies.

We cannot build a more trusting time, however, unless we also recognize that there are those who benefit from the discord and distrust, and who will work hard to undermine any efforts to reduce their influence over others. Their role in our society needs to be diminished and controlled. We need to realize, in Buttigieg’s words, the “tension that exists between the necessity of trust and the reality that people are not always trustworthy.” In this moment, when those who want to undermine democracy react with more lies, gaslighting, and faux outrage, just remember their now 50-year pattern of deceit and don’t get fooled again. Because they will continue in an attempt to overwhelm the truth.

Why? Because we have a not insignificant group of political elites who stopped caring about good governance and are focused instead on holding onto power using whatever means necessary, including it seems for some of them, openly embracing white supremacy, armed insurrection, and the delusions of a farcically transparent con man.

Very few have taken the courageous step of former Republican operative Stuart Stevens who delivered a blistering mea culpa and admitted his personal role in building the party on racism and lies. When a party stands for nothing, Stevens argues, “it is only natural that it will be taken over by the loudest and angriest voices in the room.”

So why do so many people believe these politicians and their enablers in technology and the media who stand for nothing but maintaining their own power? Because it is the “nature of the human condition” writes Buttigieg “that we are inclined to deny the truth of things that would be painful to face.” Things like our role in supporting white privilege, for instance.

It isn’t clear if these politicians, commentators, and bad actors think Americans are stupid, or if they themselves are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, or if they don’t care. Rudy Giuliani may fall into all three categories. But my larger point is we need to stop listening to these people as if they are part of a rational, functioning political party that cares about the future of democracy and America. After four years of supporting every whim Donald Trump wanted to inflict on America while turning a blind eye to the unnecessary deaths of 1 in every 1,000 Americans under his mismanaged coronavirus response, they have lost their chance to be taken seriously until they clean house.

We need to stop giving them any type of trust, because they have worked overtime to destroy our trust.

Paul Waldman wrote a piece in the Washington Post in October in which he looked into a future with a Democratic president and vice president, House of Representatives, and Senate and predicted the lies we would hear in 2021. And so many of the lies are such tried and true tropes that to those who will be telling them it must feel like the Blues Brothers rescuing their friends from soul-crushing jobs (or four years of supporting Trump) as they put the band back together and play the tunes they really enjoy. What are some of the lies Waldman highlighted?

  • Partisanship is bad or the “it is time for unity'” theme is a lie they can wield “because of the naïve but widespread idea that there are bipartisan solutions just waiting to be had.” The truth is that the two parties simply have “fundamentally different agendas.”
  • All of a sudden we’ll be told that America isn’t a democracy, it is a republic and that we have to worry about the tyranny of the majority over the downtrodden, poor minority. The minority, it turns out, has had an outsized role over the past few decades in telling the majority what to do and in restricting their freedoms.

There are other lies, projections, gaslighting, faux outrage, and double standards that we’ll see.

  • Every member of the party coming into power, down to conservative Joe Manchin of West Virginia, will be called a socialist. Because the right today despises programs to help others who are not like them or which might take one dollar out of the pockets of their financial benefactors (including Social Security and the Post Office). Socialism is their catch-all word to brand people who care about the larger community. Many of those making the charge do this while working at government jobs and/or drawing government pensions.
  • After the most immoral, incompetent, and corrupt administration in history, all of a sudden we’ll be asked to believe that the party that enabled Donald Trump cares about truth, standards, family values, religious freedom, and laws!

Paul Waldman captured the correct response.

(H)ere’s the thing about all these lies: We don’t have to take them seriously. When Republicans start squawking about the deficit, we can dismiss it out of hand. When they start crying about tyranny, we can remind them that when you lose an election, the winning side takes power and does things you oppose (emphasis added).

Now that the January 6th insurrection has painted a stark picture of where so much of the party leadership stands, there is a simple response to the lies, gaslighting, faux outrage, and projection that are sure to come. And that response from the majority should be that we won’t get fooled again.

Yes, there are honest, empathetic and loving Republicans. I am related to some of them. Throughout my career, I set aside partisan differences and worked with both Republicans and Democrats to advance causes for which we all felt passionately. I am old enough to have seen Democrats as the party of racial hatred and to have voted for moderate Republicans. But after the last four years I believe all who care about democracy have to call out the cynicism and the willing destruction of trust and truth. The consequences of staying silent are too serious.

America has lived under the tyranny of minority rule for oligarchs for too long, and it is destroying our country.

No, we won’t listen to the lies, projections, and gaslighting. We will trust those people of any party who act out of good will and who are willing to work to save democracy, support all Americans, and build a future that is a more trusting time. At least right now in this country, elections still have consequences.

Don’t get fooled again.

More to come…

DJB

Image by Geralt from Pixabay

I’m on my way: Music for the MLK weekend

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The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend is always a good time to think back and look forward. Here are Saturday Soundtrack thoughts and music to help you do both.

During this time when many feel overwhelmed with grief for where our country stands at the end of four difficult years, I find some strength in recalling an incident that happened just after the 2016 election. I was in a meeting and several white participants were close to apoplectic in their concern over what the country had just done in electing Donald Trump. But two older African American friends had a less emotional reaction. Yes, they were concerned about what was to come but they were not surprised at the white community’s backlash against the nation’s first African American president. They reminded us that their families, and their mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and grandfathers had always dealt with adversity in this land of opportunity. It went along with being black in America. They persevered and they never gave up hope. Their message to us was if they did it in the midst of the oppression they faced, then persevering was the least we could do from our positions of privilege.

Their ancestors had been on the move, part of migrations both involuntary and voluntary. And after involuntary migrations into the cotton plantations of the deep South, some brave ones took a dangerous move north via the Underground Railroad, looking for freedom. I’ve always loved Richie Havens’ version of the 1920s song Follow the Drinking Gourd, the story of the slaves who looked at the Big Dipper and used the North Star to guide them out of captivity to freedom.

The songs of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s — like the Golden Gospel Singers‘ version of Oh Freedom and the incomparable Mavis Staples singing Freedom Highway — are good reminders of how this land of the free has worked to keep one race of people down for more than four centuries. Yet still they have moved forward; moving forward toward freedom.

Now there are new generations, still singing the old songs, as with Rhiannon Giddens version of Freedom Highway…

…but they are also showing us that they are not only looking back to honor the heroes, but they are moving forward in this place and time. Shortly after the election this fall, I wrote, “People of color saved democracy, so the least white people can do is work to end white supremacy.” That’s even clearer after the special elections in Georgia on January 5th.

President-elect Biden has said that even in those moments when his campaign was at its lowest, the African American community stood up for him. He’s right, of course. But I’d like to respectfully suggest that Black Americans in particular, all people of color in general, and a large younger, multicultural generation of citizens, many casting a ballot for the first time, stepped up to save our democracy. In the process, they helped elect the first woman of color as our nation’s Vice President. They did so by voting overwhelmingly against the racism, misogyny, incompetence, and voter suppression that defines today’s Trump-led Republicans.

If we want to keep moving in the direction of democracy, it is time for white Americans to join with all people of good intentions and fully commit to the hard, antiracist work to repudiate white supremacy and the corresponding minority rule that is a feature of that vile belief system. As Rhiannon Giddens sings in the powerful I’m On My Way, “I don’t know where I’m going, but I know what to do.”

On the Throw the Dice & Place Nice website, writer  Kira Grunenberg has this to say about the song:

“This single is straightforward in some respects, like its classic blues chord structure, its verse-verse-chorus-verse flow, and its minimally adorned production approach. But don’t mistake that preference for compositional fundamentals as Giddens or Turrisi presenting disinterest in letting expression flourish. In fact, one could argue that the choice to exercise some restraint around the writing element makes it that much easier for listeners to not have to think about where the song is taking them and to allow for better attention on the two performers at hand – enjoying the journey more than the destination, if you will. And though Giddens says “Don’t know where I’m going,” it’s a statement made with nothing but confidence that shakes any shred of doubt when she leaves off with the declaration, “But I know what to do.”

“I don’t know the hour that finds me in this room

Dust around my feet and still no sugar in my spoon

But I’ve only got the taste for something sweet as time

Not bottled on the table but still hanging on the vine

I don’t know where I’m going But I’m on my way

Lord if you love me Keep me I pray

A little bird is stretching out to the shimmering, shaking blue

Don’t know where I’m going But I know what to do

Don’t know where I’m going But I know what to do“

After a sledgehammer has been taken to our democracy over the past four years, there is much work to be done. Even if we don’t know where we’re going or what we’ll encounter, I think in our hearts we know what to do.

With gratefulness for the life and legacy of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who we honor this weekend.

More to come…

DJB

Image of MLK Memorial by Michael Wilson from Pixabay