The Weekly Reader is an occasional feature with short descriptions and links to a variety of articles that I found worth considering this week. I hope some of them will interest you as well.
“The language we use to describe political reality can create its own reality so we end up fighting over a fiction, not a fact,” notes Stoehr. “(W)e’ve always been divided in one way or another, because the United States is a federation of different regions and states.” But using the anti-democratic Electoral College to describe our division is using the wrong frame. Remember, Trump could have won the Electoral College but lost by 7.1 million votes.
What each stood for and against matters, too. Biden for order, union and cooperation. Trump for chaos, disunion and negation. Biden stood for equal human rights and against fascist collectivism. Trump stood for inequality in all its forms and against republican democracy. Talking up a divided America is privileging the loser over the winner. The privilege ought to go to the candidate who brought as much unity as it’s possible to bring to a country as heterogeneous as ours. It should go especially to the 81,283,485 people who smashed all the old records to save our democratic republic.
Stroop argues that “the United States, an ostensibly secular country, has a de facto Christian public sphere.”
“If we want to have a serious conversation about Christianity in the United States, we must consider the ways in which Christian hegemony harms others, including through its normalization of Christian extremism. Instead of systematically silencing the voices of leavers, nonbelievers, and religious minorities in discussing Christianity and “religious freedom,” any serious discourse on these matters must include us as stakeholders in hashing out a fair and equitable approach to American pluralism.
Indeed, any serious discussion needs to start from a place of acknowledging the ways in which the often unacknowledged white Christian hegemony in this country harms those who are othered by conservative Christians—not least youth raised in conservative Christian environments who are unable to conform, and LGBTQ youth in particular.“
“After nearly a decade of Auburn fans bouncing between Fire Gus years and Keep Gus years, the Tigers fired coach Gus Malzahn after their regular season–ending win over Mississippi State. Per his contract, Malzahn—who had eight winning seasons in eight years—is now due $21.5 million in severance, half of it within 30 days. That means Alabama’s highest-paid state employee during this fiscal year, a pandemic year, will be an unemployed football coach. (Counting salaries plus buyouts, fired coaches top several state budgets every year, though those funds largely come from athletic department revenue and private boosters.)“
I’m sorry, but no football coach is worth anywhere near that type of money. Ever.
Robert Glazer, in a recent Friday Forward, speaks to what Being Credible means in the real world (and not politics).
“(Former Trump lawyer Sidney) Powell and (Denver Mayor Michael) Hancock’s examples prompted me to consider the importance of credibility in leadership and how it is defined,” writes Glazer. Leaders must show competence and character to be credible, “both of which were absent in these two examples.”
“Competence is demonstrated through expertise, consistency and objective factual evidence. Think about someone in your life who you consider competent. Do they change their story every day? Do they peddle conspiracy theories? Would you give them your life savings to manage or trust them with your kids?
Similarly, demonstrating character requires being trustworthy and authentic. It means a person’s word can be relied upon, and that there is consistency between what they do and say.“
“(S)ome of the most binding rules in English are things that native speakers know but don’t know they know, even though they use them every day. When someone points one out, it’s like a magical little shock.
In 2016, for example, the BBC’s Matthew Anderson pointed out a “rule” about the order in which adjectives have to be put in front of a noun….”
Werber quotes “professional stickler Mark Forsyth” in noting that adjectives…
“absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac.”
Mixing up the above phrase does, as Forsyth writes, feel inexplicably wrong (a rectangular silver French old little lovely whittling green knife…), though nobody can say why. It’s almost like secret knowledge we all share.“
Fascinating.
And in my “graphic language warning section,” I’ll end with the notorious Shower Cap in his American Madness Journal. If you can take the language and the frat house humor directed toward Republicans, you can read the entirety of Please! No More Winning! It’s Like a Goddamn Kesha Song in Here! But the paragraph I really want to highlight deals with the right wing outrage theatre, which is surely going to zoom into high gear now that they no longer hold the presidency.
The weekend provided an insightful little lesson on the mechanisms of Wingnut Outrage Theatre: the Wall Street Journal dug up some crusty old chauvinist to puke out an almost satirically condescending op-ed shi**ing on Dr. Jill Biden, that uppity broad, for having the audacity to use the title she earned through years of hard work. Following the entirely predictable (and deliberately provoked) avalanche of pushback, the editorial page gleefully published a non-apology so cynical they surely had it prepped in advance, bemoaning the thousand tyrannies of “cancel culture,” because the tree of conservative victimhood must be refreshed from time to time with the crocodile tears of mediocre white dudes.
That last line is so delicious, I pulled it out and put it in as this week’s “More to Consider” quote. We need to remind ourselves of this fake outrage at least once per week for the next four (and hopefully more) years of a Democratic administration. Remember the audacity of tan suits?
As 2020 — the year of the coronavirus pandemic — draws to a close, More to Come is the platform for sharing the annual list of books I’ve read over the past twelve months. As regular readers know, since returning from sabbatical early in 2016 I’ve committed to reading more, and to seeking out a wider range of works beyond my favored histories and biographies. But 2020 — with the pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the mass attacks on our democracy — called me to read more about race, social justice, and our democracy than may normally have been the case. With that in mind, here — in the order I read them — are the treasures I found on my reading shelf this past year.
I began the year by re-reading Michelle Alexander’s seminal work The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. It still stands, some ten years later, as a stinging rebuke to those — like Chief Justice John Roberts in his terribly misguided ruling on the Voting Rights Act — who make the case that we are a post-racial society and should quickly move beyond our racist past.* And I read it before the racial justice reckoning that we began facing after the death of George Floyd and others at the hands of the police. Alexander wrote in her essay around the book’s 10th anniversary, that “We are now living in an era not of post-racialism but of unabashed racialism, a time when many white Americans feel free to speak openly of their nostalgia for an age when their cultural, political and economic dominance could be taken for granted — no apologies required.”
The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution is historian Eric Foner’s most recent book, bringing together a lifetime of scholarship around this most contentious era in our nation’s history. In spite of its look at a period some 150 years in the past, this is work with great resonance for this day, this political climate, and the major questions of how we will advance as a nation. As Foner states in his preface, “Key issues confronting American society today are in some ways Reconstruction questions.”
Alex Krieger’s 2019 book City on a Hill: Urban Idealism in America from the Puritans to the Present examines America’s long history of living with an eye on the horizon, seeking something shiny and new. Krieger, longtime professor in urban design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a practicing urban planner, has written an accessible book about the many strands of utopia that have shaped the American landscape and personality.
In Margaret Renkl’s wonderful debut book Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss, she makes the comment that “It takes a lot of nerve” for someone like herself, who is “so ignorant of true wilderness” to put herself forward as a nature writer. But then she adds, “the flip side of ignorance is astonishment, and I am good at astonishment.” In another passage in this beautiful collection of short essays about nature, family, community, love, and loss, Renkl writes, “Every day the world is teaching me what I need to know to be in the world,” Late Migrations opens the reader to Renkl’s experiences growing up in Lower Alabama and the inevitable imperfections of life. We are all drifting towards death, as Renkl explains so lovingly to her three-year-old in the essay “All Birds?” (As in “All birds die? All dogs die? All teachers die? All mommies die? I will die?”) Yet we are missing why we’re here if we don’t inhabit this imperfect world fully, with astonishment and awe.
The recently released second edition of Giving Preservation a History, edited by Randall Mason and Max Page, is a strong attempt to reverse our trend at historical amnesia in the preservation field. Through seven essays retained from the first edition, six new essays prepared for the 2020 book, and two concluding chapters to wrap both works together, the editors have endeavored to put forward arguments that may rebut old myths around the elite nature of the movement’s founding while also challenging the field to consider how it has fallen short in the embrace of multi-culturalism and issues of social justice. Like much else in life, historic preservation has a mixed, layered history. But Giving Preservation a History reminds us that understanding our own past is worth knowing as we envision the future. With the preservation movement adapting amid significant societal change, those who understand this past are best equipped to use preservation as an effective tool today and tomorrow.
If you are looking for a good sports book to fill up your hours, I wish I could send you to Jane Leavy’s 2018 The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created with more enthusiasm. While there are good parts to this work, Leavy has gone all Ruthian on us with prodigious amounts of material. But, just like the Babe, she plows through almost 500 pages without a sense of discipline in deciding what’s worth keeping and what is best left untouched. In Leavy’s portrait, Babe Ruth comes across as the man who helped shape many facets of modern America that we know today. His love for baseball, food, beer, women, and attention are at the forefront of this work. Unfortunately, the excesses of modern life in the new age of celebrity also come across in ways intended and unintended in The Big Fella.
At the very beginning of 2018’s American Dialogue: The Founders and Us, historian Joseph J. Ellis lays out his personal self-evident truth. The guide star that leads his work is simple yet important: “The study of history is an ongoing conversation between past and present from which we all have much to learn.” Over the book’s 200+ pages, Ellis demonstrates how just such a dialogue takes place in the hands of a talented historian, biographer, writer, and thinker immersed in the study of our nation’s founding. Focusing on key issues of our day — race, inequality, law, and foreign policy — he carries on a rich, thoughtful, and challenging conversation with four founders that helps us go back to the beginning and understand some of their controversial decisions, and how they differ from choices we are making today.
As it became clear that isolationism isn’t an option with a global pandemic taking place, I turned to Robert Kaplan’s Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World. Kaplan argues that America became a great country not just because of our constitution and values, but because it occupies some of the best, most fertile land on the planet that is connected by a river system (running diagonally) that unites the heartland into a strong political unit. “America’s greatness,” in his words, “ultimately, is based on it being a nation, an empire, and a continent rolled into one.” And in taming the frontier, America learned how to be a global power. There’s much to consider here during an age when our role in the world is very much upside down and few countries look to us for leadership during this time.
The “logo” map of the U.S. mainland at the top, and the map showing the full extent of U.S. territories in 1940 to scale. Both Alaska and Hawaii stretch almost coast to coast across the mainland.
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Northwestern University historian Daniel Immerwahr turned out to be among the great surprises of the year for me. The “Greater United States” was a term used by some at the turn of the 20th century to describe the states and territories of the U.S. Immerwahr is standing on the shoulders of many scholars who have focused on aspects of U.S. imperialism in the past. Yet he brings their work together in a narrative of impressive scope and depth, changing the way one thinks about the U.S. The history we’ve learned growing up is that America is a republic, born out of a desire to overthrow an empire. When someone talks about Americans as imperialistic, it raises our hackles. But as Immerwahr writes, “At various times, the inhabitants of the U.S. Empire have been shot, shelled, starved, interned, dispossessed, tortured and experimented on. What they haven’t been, by and large, is seen.” As a lifelong student of history who learned new lessons from virtually every page of this remarkable 2019 work, I am here to say that How to Hide an Empire should be required reading for all Americans.
I read two books about aging well during the first few months of the pandemic. The first, Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Livesby Daniel J. Levitin, is written as an effort to change the status quo about the role older people play in daily life. Levitin examines what happens in the brain as we age and what are the keys to aging well. In 400 pages packed full of the latest science as well as stories from the lives of those who are demonstrating the benefits that can come from getting older, Levitin makes the case that aging is not inevitably a period of decline and loss and irrelevance. The other book in my rite of passage reading was 2002’s Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life by George E. Vaillant, M.D., based on the oldest, most thorough study of aging ever undertaken. Dr. Vaillant’s description of the key findings to emerge from the study include several thoughts that relate to successful aging in a time of turmoil “It is not the bad things that happen to us that doom us,” he notes, “it is the good people who happen to us at any age that facilitate enjoyable old age.”
Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by MacArthur Foundation Fellow Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt, is a look at all the ways we make biased judgements without realizing that we’re even doing so. We are wired for bias, Eberhardt writes, but it is not something we exhibit and act on all the time. Instead, it is conditioned, so we begin to battle bias by understanding the conditions — especially speed and ambiguity — under which bias is likely to come alive.
The hopeful message of this book is that “we all have the capacity to make change — within ourselves, in the world, and in our relationship to that world.”
Barbara Brown Taylor’s latest book, Holy Envy; Finding God in the Faith of Others, turns to the questions, worries, and concerns that arise in most of us when we encounter “difference” and “others.” As an Episcopal priest, her focus is on spiritual riches. But we can all look at how our minds and worldview are expanded when we are open to the wonder that is all around us. Taylor’s encouragement to not only think deeply about our beliefs, but to look to others outside our tribe and traditions for the many truths they tell, extends to areas far beyond the spiritual. I recommend this book because we are at a moment in history where so many people are having their “truth” upended.
Edward Achorn’s 2020 work Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln is a fascinating book that looks at March 3rd and 4th, 1865 and the cast of characters — including Walt Whitman, Clara Barton, Frederick Douglass, and John Wilkes Booth — who gathered in Washington as Lincoln began his second term. Achorn illuminates all the capitol’s “mud, sewage, and saloons, its prostitutes, spies, reporters, social-climbing spouses and power-hungry politicians” and then showcases the activities of these two days “as a microcosm of all the opposing forces that had driven the country apart.” With a journalist’s eye and a storyteller’s skill, Achorn captures the frenzy, the turmoil, the excitement, and the despair of that time in a remarkable work.
I picked up Patti Smith’s Devotion because, in my push to write well, I often look to what others have to say on the subject. Smith’s slender volume is part of Yale’s Why I Write series. But as I note in my review, this three-part book — consisting of a look at Smith’s creative process, a shallow and creepy short story, and a final segment written from Camus’ villa — has a great deal of what one reviewer described as “overblown language, artistic reverence, and pseudo-revelatory style.” I do use the post to send readers in what I consider better directions to answer questions about why and how to write, including Paul Graham, John McPhee, and Annie Dillard.
Our Towns: A 100,000 Mile Journey into the Heart of America is the story of a five-year journey across the country, most of it taken at low altitude in a propeller airplane. Along the way, journalists James and Deborah Fallows saw small and mid-sized towns that had faced economic hardship, political crises, and job losses. They also saw “the emerging pattern of American reinvention.” One of the first places they stopped in each town to gather local information and to gauge the character of the community was the public library, a fact I build upon in my post about the book. Since the book was published in 2018, I came away thinking that much of what they found would require some type of 2020 reality check. Thankfully, their Our Towns website has stories that deal with this most challenging of years, produced with the same straightforward, non-judgmental approach that does not gloss over the issues but speaks to the energy and renewal possible across the country.
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X.Kendi is usually found right at the top of the list of recommended works to read in order to understand the systemic racism in our country and how best to respond. Kendi has written a work that challenges assumptions and rationalizations we all make to assure ourselves and others that we are “not racist.” What could be wrong with not being a racist? Kendi makes the argument right up front that there is “no neutrality in the racism struggle.” After 2020, I believe we all have to acknowledge that perspective as we consider how best to fight the scourge of white supremacy. Highly recommended.
Frederick Douglass
As I finished reading the monumental 2018 biography Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, the first on Douglass in a quarter century, I came away humbled, enlightened, and inspired. By Douglass’s life and work, certainly. But also by Blight’s efforts to capture, in very human form, the essence of his most extraordinary subject.
While he tries to balance the narrative of Douglass’s life with “analyses of his evolving mind,” Blight writes of how he returns to that narrative, because…
“It is Douglass’s story, though, that lasts and gives and instructs. There is no greater voice of America’s terrible transformation from slavery to freedom than Douglass’s. For all who wish to escape from outward or inward captivity, they would do well to feel the pulses of this life, and to read the words of this voice. And then go act in the world.”
Blight is not afraid to bring Douglass’s prophetic voice into today’s world as he analyzes his words and evolving mind. As he was drawing closer to death in 1893 and 1894, Douglass found his old voice and, as Blight phrases it, “preached an old creed.”
“Men talk of the Negro problem. There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have honesty enough, loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their Constitution.”
And so the question from the prophet remains today: are we willing to change in order to live up to the ideals of the constitution? Douglass is a 19th century prophet, but like most great prophets, his words still ring true in the 21st century, if we’ll only listen.
Historic Cities: Issues in Urban Conservation is co-edited by my friend Jeff Cody at the Getty Conservation Institute. Published in 2019, this masterly survey brings together 67 different articles and groups them into eight sections covering topics such as the shared nature of the historic city, significant values, sustainability, and managing the historic city.
This is a richly illustrated book with a range of writings sure to interest both practitioners and the curious layperson who cares about past efforts and current concerns and work to maintain historic cities and their buildings that, as noted by architect Marwa Al-Sabouni, hold the “values — the aesthetic values, the moral values — of the place.”
As the turmoil of Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the country was playing out in the news, I was reading Nancy MacLean’s 2017 book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. This award-winning and well-researched intellectual history of the radical right demonstrates that Trump is just a noisy distraction in a sixty-year effort to undermine America’s democracy. And while he did not succeed at getting “his” Supreme Court to throw out millions of valid votes, the work to make the people who cast those 81.2 million votes against Donald Trump irrelevant in future elections continues apace.
MacLean’s well written narrative tells the story of James McGill Buchanan, a Tennessee boy who went to my alma mater and then used his considerable intellect to earn his doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago. Buchanan came to the University of Virginia in the midst of the state’s turmoil over the massive resistance to the Brown v. Board of Education ruling on school desegregation. He arrived to set up an economics policy center that would, in MacLean’s words, develop the intellectual underpinning for an ideological “stealth bid to reverse-engineer all of America, at both the state and the national levels, back to the political economy and oligarchic governance of midcentury Virginia, minus the segregation.” This is…
“…the utterly chilling story of the ideological origins of the single most powerful and least understood threat to democracy today: the attempt by the billionaire-backed radical right to undo democratic governance.”
It may scare you, but it should, which is why it is highly recommended.
So what’s on the bookshelf for 2021? I am getting ready to begin Purposeful Retirement, then I have Pete Buttigieg’s Trust up next, followed by the first volume of President Obama’s memoir, A Promised Land. I’m reading the last two as part of the work to restore some of my faith in our government as we transfer to new leadership. I’m reading the first one well…because I’m semi-retired and learning how to “do something different” from what I’ve done over the past four decades.
No matter your career status or state-of-mind as this most challenging of years comes to an end, my advice is to keep on reading!
More to come…
DJB
*Chief Justice Roberts really does not believe that we are a post-racial society. If you read the last book in my list, you’ll see that his work is part of a 60-year-old stealth plan to keep people from voting based on those old American issues of power, money, and race.
I recently asked a friend and one of my regular Saturday Soundtrack readers what music he was listening to these days. He replied, “I sure am missing the annual Celtic Christmas concert by Linn Barnes and Allison Hampton” at Dumbarton United Methodist Church. Tell me more, I said, and soon I was online, listening to delightful duets between the Celtic harp of Linn Barnes and the guitar or lute played by Allison Hampton. Perfect music for the season, as heard in the classic In the Bleak Midwinter.
Linn Barnes and Allison Hampton have played for thirty-five years as part of the acclaimed Dumbarton Concert series, where their annual Christmas program, A Celtic Christmas was described by The Washington Post as “a Washington institution.” In 2015 they released a compilation of the same name comprised of favorite tunes recorded from 1995 to 2011 and performed annually at the Christmas concerts. Here’s a lovely version of the Sussex Carol.
The duo have played at stages across the country and in Europe, appearing in 1988, 1990, and 1996 at the prestigious Inter-Celtic Festival in Lorient, Brittany, France. They have made frequent appearances on both Washington and national radio and television. For something outside the holiday realm, I enjoyed their version of the medley Fraher’s Jig and Garret Barry’s Jig. The interplay of the harp and Descant lute is arresting and lovely. From the same recording session comes I Lost My Love with Hampton on the Terz guitar, a small 19th century instrument tuned a minor third higher than a regular guitar (i.e., the same tuning as if you put a capo at the third fret of a normal guitar).
Barnes and Hamilton have also played in larger groups, as heard in this recording of Madame Maxwell by The Celtic Consort.
I’ll end this exploration with the beautiful mix of Celtic and Renaissance music from Spain in Espanoleta, which is included in their Galicia CD as well as on A Celtic Christmas.
Enjoy!
More to come…
DJB
Correction: An earlier version of this post had the Dumbarton Concert series as being held at Dumbarton Oaks. My apologies for the error.
Yes, even when Harold Stassen’s record nine defeats while running for president is under threat of being broken by Donald Trump in just one year, as he loses state after state again and again with his meaningless recounts, we need to worry.
The reason is that Donald Trump is not the biggest threat to democracy. He’s just the loudest.
All of this turmoil has been playing out in the news as I have been reading Nancy MacLean’s 2017 book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. This award-winning and well-researched intellectual history of the radical right demonstrates that Trump is just a noisy distraction in a sixty-year effort to undermine America’s democracy. And while he won’t succeed at getting “his” Supreme Court to throw out millions of valid votes, the work to make the people who cast those 81.2 million votes against Donald Trump irrelevant in future elections continues apace.
MacLean’s well written narrative tells the story of James McGill Buchanan, a Tennessee boy from my home county who went to my alma mater — known as Middle Tennessee State Teachers College at the time — and then used his considerable intellect to go to graduate school (paid for with, irony of ironies, the G.I. Bill) and earn his doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago. Buchanan came to the University of Virginia in the midst of the state’s turmoil over the Brown v. Board of Education ruling on school desegregation to set up an economics policy center that would, in MacLean’s words, develop the intellectual underpinning for an ideological “stealth bid to reverse-engineer all of America, at both the state and the national levels, back to the political economy and oligarchic governance of midcentury Virginia, minus the segregation.” This is…
“…the utterly chilling story of the ideological origins of the single most powerful and least understood threat to democracy today: the attempt by the billionaire-backed radical right to undo democratic governance.”
It took Buchannan and his backers, especially billionaires Charles and David Koch, some sixty years to gain traction, but in the 2010s we saw the incredible reach of the network they built to disenfranchise all those who do not believe that unfettered capitalism is more sacrosanct than democracy. All of a sudden, it seemed, America was blindsided with efforts across the board to either destroy our institutions or change them so radically that they were ineffective in halting the return to unbound oligarchy. We saw it…
in Governor Scott Walker’s attacks in Wisconsin on unions;
in New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s attacks on public education, soon duplicated in state-after-state controlled by Republicans;
in gerrymandered legislative districts in states like Wisconsin and North Carolina, where a minority of voters were able to elect super-majorities in state legislatures that even tried to cut the power of elected statewide officials not from the G.O.P.;
in the all-out campaign to defeat the Affordable Care Act; and
in the 2016 move by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to block President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to a vacant Supreme Court seat eight months before an election.
If you have wondered how we got to the point where the Supreme Court defined money as speech and corporations as people, MacLean’s book offers up the frightening story of the attack on America. “Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into ‘makers’ and ‘takers'” and to privatize everything from schools to health care to Social Security. Buchanan’s ideas and Koch’s money worked to make libertarianism mainstream and to take over the Republican Party, and they generally succeeded. Today, more than half the Republican members of the House of Representatives are supporting a totally bogus lawsuit filed by the indicted Attorney General of Texas (probably seeking a Trump pardon) to throw out millions of legal votes that have been reviewed and certified in order to have the Supreme Court declare Donald Trump president.
This isn’t just insane. This is beyond a scandal. This is a deliberate and blatant attempt to overthrow democracy and our form of government.
And, as it generally does in America, it comes down to power, money and race.
The oligarchs in America, beginning with John C. Calhoun and working forward to Charles Koch, have made the case throughout history that they should be the ones with the power to decide where the government spends what little money they agree to provide in taxes for the maintenance of order and the public defense. And their prescription for how government should work “notably resembled the old dogma of the southern-state ‘Redeemer’ governments that had put an end to Reconstruction.” I grew up in the South of the 1950s and 60s, and I remember how little those oligarchs would give up to support others not like them.
The racism at the heart of Buchanan’s ideology is supported by his own words.
“Rather than sympathize with the plight of black Americans, Buchanan later argued that the failure of the black community to thrive after emancipation was not the result of barriers put in their way, but rather proof that ‘the thirst for freedom, and responsibility, is perhaps not nearly so universal as so many post-Enlightenment philosophers have assumed.’ It was a breathtakingly ignorant claim, a sign of a willful failure to see what his paradigm would not allow him to. Both Koch and Buchanan would make similarly blind and insulting claims about others who did not do well in the labor market these men chose to believe was free and fair.”
Author, Columbia University professor, and former president of the Organization of American Historians Alice Kessler-Harris has said of Democracy in Chains,
“This book is mesmerizing. Rarely have I encountered a work that speaks to such significant issues, with evidence rooted in conclusive new sources. In clear prose, MacLean reveals how a public once committed to social responsibility and egalitarian values became persuaded that only an unregulated free market could protect ‘liberty’ and ‘choice.’ Because of this, our once cherished democracy is now subject to attack. Everyone who wants to understand today’s confrontational politics should read this important book, now.”
I knew MacLean had hit a nerve when I saw some of the ferocious pushback to her book from conservative pundits, right wing think tanks, and academics funded by the Kochs and others at places such as George Mason University, where Buchanan relocated his center and where MacLean found his archives in 2013, the year of his death, sitting alone and unattended in a university building. They tried to attack her research, her credentials, and even the people who reviewed the book favorably.*
But if you have been paying attention to what’s been happening in this country, you will see that MacLean’s thesis hits the mark. Listen to the people who have been through coups before and read their accounts, such as Zeynep Tufekci‘s excellent article, This Must Be Your First, in the December 7th online edition of The Atlantic. Review the lists of what has happened in the past five years as Republicans have threatened our government and understand the nature of this attack on democracy.
If you may have thought we lived in the greatest country on earth, nothing shows how far we have fallen under regimes that wantgovernment tofail as the fact that we keep hitting daily and weekly records in COVID cases and death while England, Canada, and other first world countries are either administering or set to administer vaccines.
If you still believe that the election was stolen from Donald Trump, turn off Fox News and read some reality-based accounts for awhile. You could begin with Democracy in Chains.
More to come…
DJB
*There were a great number of favorable reviews, as seen by the book’s awards: Winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award; Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Finalist for the National Book Award; and The Nation‘s “Most Valuable Book”
Image by Prettysleepy from Pixabay of a poster from 1917. After two and a half years of neutrality, the United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917. James Montgomery Flagg created this poster, which was featured in “Wake Up, America” Day in New York City just 13 days later on April 19, 1917.
The eighth volume in the Getty Conservation Institute‘s Readings in Conservation series is focused on studies and writings around issues in historic cities and urban conservation. In 2016, one of the book’s editors, Jeff Cody, began to tell me about his work — along with that of his co-editor Francesco Siravo — to gather both historical and recent scholarship around the conservation of urban settlements, as opposed to heritage conservation of individual buildings or urban planning. Jeff was a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome that year, and during my stint as an Affiliate Fellow we came to know each other and — along with my wife — spent considerable time together both in conversation and in visiting some of the city’s many treasures.
Having stayed in touch with Jeff since our time in Rome, I was delighted earlier this year when Historic Cities: Issues in Urban Conservationshowed up in my mailbox. Published in 2019, this masterly survey brings together 67 different articles and groups them into eight sections covering topics such as the shared nature of the historic city, significant values, sustainability, and managing the historic city.
This is a richly illustrated book with a range of writings sure to interest both practitioners and the merely curious layperson who cares about past efforts and current concerns and work to maintain historic cities and their buildings that, as noted by architect Marwa Al-Sabouni, hold the “values — the aesthetic values, the moral values — of the place.”
The editors state one of the key rationales underlying their text:
“…as global urbanization runs rampant, architectural heritage becomes more imperiled, fragile and expedient… Few historic places survive the onslaught of poorly coordinated mal-development, an artifact of harmful planning practices related to so-called urban renewal that have rewarded investors while ignoring less wealthy and less powerful residents from North American cities in the 1960s to Chinese (and other) cities more recently.”
More than one reviewer has noted that it is “refreshing to read papers that focus away from more traditional geographical foci for built heritage conservation.” Instead, the editors have assembled writings which “address modern urban heritage issues in locations including the Middle East, Africa, India and Japan, among others.” I found this wide net equal parts helpful and evocative. Helpful in that while diving into different readings I found my perspective widened. Evocative in the sense that the vivid stories and photographs of work from places unfamiliar or faintly known from my personal experience were a constant reminder of the shared challenges faced by humanity’s global cultures.
Historic Cities arrived as I was working on a sustainable tourism project for an international conservation organization. The happy confluence of those two actions provided the incentive to dive deeply into the book’s writings on the topic to see how this new survey served as a reference work in a segment of the field changing quickly due to the global pandemic. It more than met the challenge.
The editors write in their preface that tourism, “as beneficial as it might be for economic and cultural reasons, has contributed to the crass commercialization of historic places.” The writings they include in the section on sustainability by such disparate scholars as economist David Throsby, economic revitalization consultant Donovan Rypkema, and architect and urban planner Noha Nasser, among others, provide both historical context and current pathways forward in the study of sustainable tourism. Nasser’s argument that “Sustainable tourism is rooted in sustainable development, in the sense that if tourism is to contribute to sustainable development, it must be economically viable, environmentally sensitive, and culturally appropriate” in a way that increases “local involvement” sums up what is faced by those seeking to support tourism efforts that move from crass commercialization to a more locally-focused, sustainable model.
Ian Wray notes in his review of Historic Citiesthat the book does a masterful job of showing how rather recent fundamental values of conservation have become ascendant at one level, so that a 1965 master plan to demolish much of the 19th century center city of Liverpool for highways and mega-buildings has been scrapped, replaced in part by a World Heritage Site and buffer zone. The answers to this change in values, as well as studies of the new challenges we face today, can be found in the readings collected by Jeff Cody and Francesco Siravo in this important new work.
Highly recommended.
More to come…
DJB
Image: Jodhpur, India, as seen from Mehrangarh Fort by DJB (2007)
After reaching out to two friends recently, the similarities of their replies was surprising. The first said that my message arrived “during a particularly challenging week” and the note “completely turned my mood around!” The second friend wrote to say that my thoughts had reached her “at a time when they were sorely needed,” helping pull her through some moments of self-doubt and family responsibilities.
When writing to these two friends, I was unaware of their moods or needs. It just felt right to be there with them, if only through a letter, with a few thoughts and kind words.
You never know when someone needs you to be there, to be your best.
This is a recurring lesson during this year of the pandemic. It came up again last Saturday, at a place I’ve mentioned before.
Lene and Abeba Tsegaye are two sisters who left Ethiopia in the 1980s to escape violence and political upheaval. With the help of their brother they established Kefa Café in Silver Spring in 1996. The story of how they endured 200-mile treks across deserts and waist-high grass to escape political violence, entered into a new country as immigrants, and then established a haven where people talk to each other — not just another café where people bury their noses in laptops — is an amazing story in its own right.
But it is their gratitude and willingness to be there for others, even when they are going through their own challenges, that makes their stories and lives so meaningful to so many people. I have taken up the habit of stopping by Kefa for a coffee, bagel, or cookie a few times each week during the pandemic, because I can only imagine the difficulties in keeping a small business alive in these times. Last Saturday, because it was blustery, I had all the outdoor tables to myself as I drank my latte and nibbled on my treat.
Abeba stepped outside and we began to talk. Where the inside of the café is normally filled with light, art, and people, now all the chairs and tables are pulled together and the hand sanitizer is in a prominent place by the door. Like so much else during this year, I miss that welcoming space and I miss the human contact. I was glad Abeba was able to step from behind the counter for a few minutes.
Abeba’s welcoming smile in pre-pandemic times at Kefa Cafe
She told me these were challenging times, but she and her sister have seen challenges before. I was able to tell her how much the café meant to us, and how much I appreciated the sign they had placed in their window which read, “Gratitude turns what we have into enough.” She replied that they really meant it. For me, it is a constant reminder to be grateful and thankful during one of the most difficult years most of us have ever had to live through. Most of us, but some have endured much worse.
Lene and Abeba never know when one of their customers, or a street-dependent visitor, or a neighboring business owner needs them to be their best. They never know when I’m going to come by, concerned about the future of our country, and leave feeling better after our conversation and coffee. But somehow they have found their own happiness and can share it with others.
Robert Glazer recently made this same point in a Friday Forward entitled Simple Gestures. And, to keep with the coffee theme, he began his post by referencing this video by Ryan Estis, where he discusses a cup of coffee he purchased in the Minneapolis airport on Christmas Eve.
Years later, Estis is still telling the story of buying that cup of coffee on Christmas Eve from Lilly Olsen. “Their short interaction had a permanent impact on him,” writes Glazer, “and made him realize the power each of us has to make others’ lives better, in the same amount of time it takes to send an angry email or a bitter social media post.”
Estis relays that he was in the airport on Christmas Eve to fly home to be with his father, who had a terminal illness. Estis’s video ends with the words, “You never know when someone needs you to be your best.”
Over and over again we see that we are our best when we think beyond ourselves. When we are there for others. Especially in hard times, we should consider what others are facing. Our effort to recognize someone else’s presence, their work, and their lives is (almost) always appreciated. In those few instances where people don’t appreciate the gesture, then recognize that being there, saying thank you in whatever way you choose, is good for you.
Like gratefulness, being there and being our best is a recognition that we all count on the kindness of others: friends and strangers alike. No one got to where they are by themselves. Recognizing this basic fact of life is key to building circles of friends, networks of support, and real self-esteem. It is also key to a deeper understanding of grace.
My natural tendency is that of an introvert, who needs to withdraw and recharge. But when you are around others, that can be misread as aloofness or having a lack of concern. While recharging is important, I have to remind myself that connecting and being there for others is also part of the well-lived life. In addition to needing private times to recharge, I also need a greater mindfulness to think beyond myself.
You never know when someone needs you to be your best. Be there.
Tomorrow, December 7th, is the 79th anniversary of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. An attack that led to the U.S. entrance into World War II. A date that President Franklin D. Roosevelt memorably described as one “which will live in infamy.”
Fewer and fewer people are alive who have personal memories of the attack on Pearl Harbor. My father and his sister — my Aunt Mary Dixie — were at Peabody College in Nashville listening to a performance of Messiah. When they came out, they learned about the attack at Pearl Harbor and their lives were changed forever. Both were WWII veterans. Both — like most in their generation — have passed. The Veteran’s Administration calculates that slightly more than 325,000 of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II are alive in 2020.
But the memory of Pearl Harbor remains. On December 7, 2014, Tom Coffey, a staff editor in the New York Times sports department, suggested that fans skip that day’s football games and use the time to remember the importance of Pearl Harbor. I loved his last line:
“Sunday afternoon seems like a good time to think about the sacrifices made by the men and women who died that day, and to reflect upon the wisdom of a statement that originated with Marv Levy, the longtime Buffalo Bills coach, that is still uttered in the sports world, albeit far too infrequently: No game is a must-win. World War II was a must-win.“
Pearl Harbor remains both a place and a response that is fused in our collective national memories. As my friend and colleague Tom Mayes writes in Why Old Places Matter, “The sense of identity provided by memory is largely what defines us as individuals and as a society.” Memories are often tied to place. And memories and identities are often contested, Tom notes, but “the fact that these arguments occur highlights the importance of the place. Regardless of conflicting points of view, the place itself transcends a specific interpretation….The continued existence of the place permits the revision, reevaluation, and reinterpretation of memories over time.” As former New York Times architectural critic Herbert Muschamp has said, “The essential feature of a landmark is not its design, but the place it holds in a city’s memory.”
Memory is also essential to hope, which is grounded in our knowledge of what has gone before. Hope as a sense of uncertainty and coming to terms with the fact that we don’t know what will happen, but we have memories that show us that good things — powerful things — can happen. Pearl Harbor is not just a place, but it is a reminder of a national response, when the nation and all its people became much more important than the tribe, political party, religious affiliation, or individual. When country, a caring for humanity, and a desire to defeat fascism and bigotry took precedence over personal achievement, power, and greed.
Today when 88% of the Republican members of Congress are either cowed by or purposely aligned with a weak and defeated bully, we need those memories of a strong and effective national response. When those members of Congress refuse to say that President-elect Joe Biden’s win — with 81.2 million individual votes, 306 electoral votes, more than 51% of the electorate, and a national lead of more than 7 million individual votes — was clear, decisive, and final, we need those memories of a strong and collective response to not only hope for a better future, but to give us the strength to work every day to make that future a reality.
We should never forget what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. And the memory of that date, that place, and our response should support us in the difficult times ahead, through the shared work of the imagination. to remake our democracy.
More to come…
DJB
Image: The U.S.S. Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by DJB
In the Christian liturgical tradition, the first Sunday of the season of Advent is the beginning of the New Year. In 2020, that day fell earlier this week, on November 29th.
So, once again, Happy New Year! Oh, and Advent is definitely not Christmas.*
As Frank Wade, one of my priests and mentors, wrote in a long-ago Advent sermon, the season begins with a call for repentance and with the prophet Isaiah, who gives us “the enduring image of the lion and the lamb.” Frank asks us to think about ourselves and the part that is “down behind the civilized surface.” He notes that in that part of our soul, we each have a lion and a lamb. When we are being called to repent, Frank suggests that we are “being called to enter into our own interior wild to face the lion and to call out the lamb. To challenge all that would hurt or destroy. To risk that which is vulnerable.” That’s what Advent is about, not Christmas trees and Santa Claus.**
But this is not a sermon, it is a Saturday Soundtrack post about music!
One of the reasons that Advent may get short shrift is that Christmas has the better music, or at least the better known music. But there are some lovely Advent songs which deserve greater exposure. Probably the best known is the haunting tune O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, heard here first in an English traditional setting by a choir of young boy choristers.
There are a host of versions and takes on this tune. Here are a few you may enjoy, beginning with Veni, Veni Emmauel by The Gesualdo Six.
We’ll follow with two “less traditional” versions, the first by the Nashville acapella group Forte Femme (where about halfway through they fall down the “Christmas rabbit hole”), and the second a more New Age/Celtic version from the Celtic Angels.
But there are more songs of the Advent season, and I especially enjoy those heard on Advent 4 when the focus really does shift toward the nativity. The talented group VOCES8 sings the traditional German Advent/Christmas carol, Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (Lo’, How a Rose E’er Blooming) as only they can. Soprano Eleonore Cockerham’s ethereal solo is beautiful. This would be my favorite of the season…
…except for the fact that I was singing a duet of the ancient Advent carol There is No Rose of Such Virtue on the Fourth Sunday of Advent in 1992 at the exact time that Claire and Andrew were entering the world. Again, there are many different versions of this carol, including one by Sting, but I prefer the traditional Chanticleer rendition.
Finally, I want to highlight a video by Ensemble Altera, a group which includes the tenor — who happens to be my son — Andrew Bearden Brown. This video was recorded just last month in Providence, Rhode Island, and is the first in a series of seasonal videos by the group. While the songs blend over into the Christmas season, conductor Christopher Lowery has labeled this episode The Promise and writes that this is “music that explores the individual’s relationship to the season of Advent, reflecting on the mystery of the coming nativity, the foretelling of the season’s promise, the role of the Virgin Mary, and contemplating our own finitude in this vast story.” The singing is lovely throughout, and the program includes some of my favorite songs of the season such as In the Bleak Midwinter.
No matter our faith tradition, we all grapple with the lion and lamb, those parts within us that are so difficult to face. I hope you find music of the season — whether it be Advent, Wintertide, or something else — to help you in that interior work.
More to come…
DJB
Image at the top for the Second Sunday in Advent (December 5, 2020) by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay. Image at the bottom of the Brown 2020 Advent wreath by DJB.
*And I’m sorry, but Emmylou Harris’s version of Christmas Times A-Coming is definitely not an Advent song.
One of my favorite historic sites in the world began life in the 19th century as a tenement house on New York’s Lower East Side.
Historians Ruth Abram and Anita Jacobson co-founded the Tenement Museum in 1988…
…to honor, preserve, and interpret the stories of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the neighborhood that was, at the turn of the 20th century, the country’s most densely populated area. They began with educational programs and walking tours, and in the mid-1990s they purchased a former tenement building at 97 Orchard Street. It had housed nearly 7,000 people between its construction in 1863 and its conversion to a commercial building in 1935.
There they restored the apartments of seven families, including Irish, Italian, German, and Eastern European–Jewish immigrants. Visitors got an immersive, experiential window into the residents’ lives, as educators gave interactive tours. The museum became both a National Historic Site and a National Trust Historic Site in 1998.
Preservation Magazine, Winter 2018
Ruth served as the Tenement Museum’s president for twenty years and was recognized last year for her lifetime of vision and work with preservation’s highest award, the Louise duPont Crowninshield Award from the National Trust. Ruth is, to put it simply, a national treasure. She was followed as president at the museum by Morris Vogel, who filled that position two different times beginning in 2008 and, to put it simply once again, is also a treasure and one of my favorite people.
Morris took the impossible task of following a visionary founder of one of the country’s most unique cultural institutions and not only ensured its survival, but helped it thrive through good times and bad. That is no easy job, but his success ranks him, in my estimation, as a great leader.
His second go-round as Tenement Museum president is nearing its close, as he moves (again) into retirement. But I was delighted to receive a note from Morris earlier this week with his thoughts about some of the things he’ll miss. He mentions the Lower East Side neighborhood walking tours and the in-building “meta-tour” overviews of the two National Historic Sites that he has given since 2008; tours which allowed him to set the stories the museum tells against the larger backdrops of American history.
That’s Morris at his core: a teacher. He writes some of the best monthly updates to his board and supporters that I’ve ever read. And they are so good in part because he uses those opportunities to teach those of us who provide financial and other backing to the museum about why this place, and the immigrant stories it embodies, is so important in telling us today who we are as a people.
Morris has said that there is no more professorial a habit than sharing the books that have shaped his thinking. And then, in his most recent note, he recommends a thoughtful list of books “that might occupy, inform, and perhaps even delight you as we wait out the last stages of the pandemic.”
Most are old—classics, even—and reveal lots about our current circumstances; some are new, but with enough of a nod to the past to suggest how we’ve come to where we are now. All are available through online orders at the Museum’s independent bookstore, and you can purchase them here. As an added bonus, all shop purchases support the Museum.
I think seeing the books someone recommends opens a small window into their mind and heart. Here’s just a small sampling of Morris’s list that he provided, along with his comments on their importance. If you click the link to go to the museum bookstore (which you should) you’ll see more of “Morris’s Reading List.”
Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans, Vol. 1: The Colonial Experience, 1958; The Americans, Vol. 2: The National Experience, 1967; The Americans, Vol. 3: The Democratic Experience, 1973. Brilliant panoramic overview of the full sweep of American history — as least as it was defined in the premodern period. Boorstin was Director of the (Smithsonian) National Museum of American History and later Librarian of Congress — and before that my professor at the University of Chicago. Another of his books, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, 1962, explains everything you need to know about Donald Trump (emphasis added).
Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People, 1951. The classic overview of immigration history: scholars have been disputing its interpretation since it appeared. Pulitzer Prize in History — and Handlin trained the generation of scholars who created immigration history as a field.
John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925, 1955. The best overview of American nativism.
Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century, 2001. Good contemporary scholarship on the subject.
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, 2020. Oprah’s Book Club and Pulitzer Prize in Journalism. Wonderful contemporary overview about the intersection of race and class in American history.
Tyler Anbinder, City of Dreams: The Epic History of Immigrant New York, 2016. Smart and novellic.
Annie Polland and Daniel Soyer, The Emerging Metropolis: New York Jews in the Age of Immigration, 2012. Annie, formerly the Museum’s executive vice president for programs and interpretation, is the most creative historian with whom I’ve ever worked.
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, 1890. Powerful journalistic expose of conditions on the Lower East Side. With the author’s photographs.
Andrew S. Dolkart, Biography of a Tenement House in New York City: An Architectural History of 97 Orchard Street. Our story, by the scholar who did so much to preserve 97 Orchard Street.
And, from the history of medicine (Morris’s own field):
Charles E. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849 and 1866, 1962. Rosenberg wrote or edited more than a dozen books (including one we did together) and nearly 100 articles. The Cholera Years, his first book, focuses on New York City’s tenements to explore how epidemics shifted from being understood as God’s judgment against the poor and socially marginal to disorders amenable to government intervention.
Judith W. Leavitt, Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health, 1996. How far can government go in restraining an asymptomatic carrier to protect the public? A great early 20th-century New York story about an Irish immigrant cook in a world of class divisions and prejudice against immigrants and women.
I’ve read about one-tenth of this list, but find Morris’s pithy descriptions so evocative in helping understand their impact on his work that they encourage me to go online and buy the whole lot. (I’m not, but I’m tempted.)
Morris, thank you. What Ruth, Anita, Annie, you and others have done is to remind us that in America, just about all of us came from somewhere else. The Tenement Museum and other places where we came together — places where, as the poet Remo Fasani phrased it, we see “the past live in the present and in the future both, to have time again vibrate as one” — are worth saving. And our stories — all our stories — are worth remembering, honoring, and cherishing in the years ahead.
All the best, my friend, as you head into your next retirement.
More to come…
DJB
Image: 97 Orchard Street (credit: Tenement Museum)
This special Wednesday edition of the Saturday Soundtrackfeatures our own Andrew Bearden Brown as part of the concert series Music at Emmanuel in the program Dream & Escape. Featuring works by Samuel Barber, Mozart, and Gerald Finzi, the program was inspired by the vivid and strange dreams many of us were experiencing at the beginning of the lockdown. Christian Lane is the pianist, and the concert was beautifully edited by Max Kuzmyak. The recital was taped in lovely Emmanuel Episcopal Church in downtown Baltimore and premiered earlier this evening.
We, of course, know and love Andrew as our son. But we have also been thrilled to watch and support his professional singing career over these past twenty years. Having a chance to attend the taping of the concert last month was just the latest highlight in our two decades of marveling at his talent and dedication. Yes, in baseball parlance, I’m proud to be a “homer” when it comes to Andrew.
For those looking for more information than my familial bragging, here’s the link to the program information, text translations, and professional bio. I’ve highlighted Andrew’s bio here:
Andrew Bearden Brown is a new resident of Baltimore and recent graduate of the Royal College of Music, where he was awarded a Masters of Music in Vocal Performance under the tutelage of Justin Lavender. His studies were further supported by the Their Serene Highnesses Dr Prince Donatus and Princess Heidi Von Hohenzollern Scholarship and the Mason Scholarship. Lauded by The Washington Post for his “pure” and “poignant” sound, he began his singing career as a treble in the Washington National Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys under the direction of Michael McCarthy. At the Cathedral he sang for services of national importance, including the state funerals of President Ronald Reagan, President Gerald Ford, and most recently John McCain. During this time he also soloed at the Kennedy Center and with Leonard Slatkin in acclaimed performances of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms.
Following his undergraduate years at Brown University, Andrew Bearden Brown returned to Washington, where he developed a career as a Baroque soloist, specializing in Handel (Messiah – Providence Baroque/Brown University) and Bach (St. John Passion (solo) – Academy of Ancient Music & Voces8, Mass in B Minor – American Bach Soloists Academy, St. Matthew Passion – Providence/Brown (solo) & Buckingham Choral Society (Evangelist), Christmas Oratorio – Providence/Brown).
Andrew Bearden Brown’s operatic roles include Ernesto in Brown Opera Production’s Don Pasquale, Torquemada in RCM International Opera Studio’s L’heure espagnole, Ferrando in Felici Opera’s Così fan tutte, and Adolfo Pirelli in RCM’s Sweeney Todd.
After the concert, Christian interviewed Andrew, where they discuss singing Messiah in the pandemic, the influences of London on his interpretation of art song, and why he loves the Maryland flag among other topics. We get to hear two very interesting gentlemen with a great passion for music.
Thanks, Andrew and Christian, for the beautiful evening.
MORE TO COME... 