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Exploring the roots and branches of American folk music with Low Lily

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One of the joys of writing Saturday Soundtrack — my weekly music post — is the discovery of new musicians and new bands that pop up unexpectedly in the research. I came across Low Lily last fall while catching up on the music of Matt Flinner, an artist recently featured on Soundtrack. This Vermont-based vocal and string band…

“explores the roots and branches of American folk music with traditional influences and modern inspiration that weaves together a unique brand of acoustic music. Liz Simmons (vocals and guitar), Flynn Cohen (vocals, guitar and mandolin), and Lissa Schneckenburger (vocals and fiddle) are masterful players with deep relationships to traditional music styles ranging from bluegrass to Irish, Scottish, New England and Old Time Appalachian sounds. When you combine this with stellar composition skills and inventive arrangements you get music that is rooted yet contemporary.“

Low Lily | Old Songs, Inc.

The band’s “outstanding and meticulous” vocal blend first drew me to the group. This comes from many years together on the road, both as a band and as key members of projects by other musicians. Hope Lingers On, written by Lissa Schneckenburger with Liz Simmons on the lead, is a wonderful tune in which to hear their beautifully crafted harmonies.

My love, when honor is gone

My love, when honor is gone

In our darkest hour hope lingers on

My country, when justice is gone

My country, when justice is gone

In our darkest hour hope lingers on

I will not hate, and I will not fear

In our darkest hour, hope lingers here

Next let’s explore the band’s instrumental work — featuring fiddle and mandolin leads by Schneckenburger and Cohen — with the lovely tune The Good Part.

10,000 Days Like These was the title track of Low Lily’s 2018 album, featured here in a live version. That’s followed by The Girl’s Not Mine with a lead vocal by fiddler Lissa Schneckenburger.

Matt Flinner joins the band in this 2019 live performance of the bluegrass tune Love of the Mountains.

One of the band’s more recent projects has been a remix of Dark Skies Again from the 10,000 Days album.

“Went real far from home, I didn’t know what I’d find

Things had been tough and I needed some peace of mind

I put miles of ocean between me and it all

Lay down under the stars til I felt real small.

Dark skies again

Dark skies again

I’ve been hanging around that dirty town too long

Sometimes you don’t know where it’ll all come down.“

We’ll end where we began, with another great vocal mix — this time underpinned by a beautiful bass line — on Nobody Knows.

Nobody told me that the road would be easy…but it is nice to have such beautiful music to take us along the path.

Enjoy.

More to come…

DJB

Image of Low Lily from HOME | LOW LILY. I love the Gibson A-4 mandolin Flynn Cohen holds in this picture. I have one from 1921 that features the same red sunburst coloring and similar marks of wear. It is a beautiful instrument.

Cliff Dwellings

Weekly Reader: A groundbreaking moment

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With the issues around social justice, the future of democracy, climate change, and a global health crisis, we are clearly living in a historic point in time in the United States. But one piece of history that may not be fully understood or appreciated by most Americans is the confirmation of a Native American as Secretary of the Interior. As Secretary Deb Haaland’s new boss might say, it is a really, really, really BFD.

As always, this Weekly Reader features links to recent articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry.

Dr. Len Necefer, writing an op-ed for Outside Online, notes that The Department of the Interior Shaped My Life in a moving story about the groundbreaking news of Secretary Haaland’s confirmation and what it means for Native Americans.

“I was raised in Lawrence by my Navajo mother and Scottish and Romanian father. As a child, the juxtaposition between the history of Haskell Indian Nations University and the vibrancy of the young Native people pursuing a college education left me confused about how these two realities could exist on this small plot of land in eastern Kansas. Growing up, I would present my Certificate of Indian Blood to the Indian Health Service clinic on campus for routine dental and medical screenings, as promised in treaties from over a century earlier. 

Because of the unique relationship that the federal government has with American Indian tribes, and the fact that American Indians have a unique political and legal identity in addition to race, my healthcare and education were controlled by the policies of the Department of the Interior. The policies of Congress, the Department of the Interior, and consequently those of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, over the past century have defined Haskell and the many Native people within it by the (failed) policies, (lack of) funding, and multitude of (broken) treaty obligations.“

As Dr. Necefer notes, “a number of secretaries of the interior in recent decades have been more supportive of tribes and advanced beneficial policies.” However, not a single one of those secretaries has “had to live with the effects of these policies after their tenure.” Until now.

There is no one size fits all for Native Nations when it comes to economic development, energy, and climate policy….The challenge of this position, in this time, is significant. Secretary Haaland not only inherits the long and tumultuous history of the position she has been appointed to, but also the uncertain questions of the role of federal lands in climate policy….Auntie Deb, as she is known endearingly within many Native communities, is well aware of how her tenure will affect her life, those of her community, and Native people throughout this country. She has a stake in the game, and her future success will open the door for many other Native people after her.

This is truly a BFD.

History is also being made in the response to the coronavirus, as the administration works to clean up the mess made by the former denier-in-chief. While most of the nation recently watched President Joe Biden’s thoughtful, sober, and hopeful speech concerning the response to a deadly, worldwide pandemic with the gravity it deserved, Mark Sumner, writing at The Daily Kos, let us know that those who chose to turn to conservative media sites for information found something…how shall we say it…different. He observes that Fox News’ coverage of Biden speech underscores the total disintegration of conservative news.

“Meanwhile, on Fox News, viewers saw a presidential address as they never had before — with a real-time box allowing Tucker Carlson to mug for the camera in response to everything Biden said. Under the banner “Live Tucker Reaction,” Carlson did his best to demonstrate outrage and disgust with expressions large enough to overcome the relatively small size of his on-screen box. Meanwhile, the shifting Fox chyron offered its own commentary, including reminding viewers repeatedly in the last 10 minutes that “Biden speech nearly finished; Tucker will respond.” And spending the last couple of minutes pouting that “Biden should be finished.”

On the one hand, it may seem a wonder that Fox News decided to air the speech in any form. After all, since President Biden moved into the Oval Office, Fox has determined that it would be much better to cover anything — including devoting a full day to a misread press release about a plastic toy potato — rather than deal with the issues facing the nation. But the Carlson-in-a-box episode may serve to underscore something that’s been obvious for months: Fox News is dead.“

John Stoehr, writing for The Editorial Board, looked at Mitch McConnell’s hissy-fit about getting rid of the filibuster and writes, Actually, McConnell has always been bad at his job, and nuking the filibuster will prove it.

“It didn’t have to be this way — and it might not have been this way had Mitch McConnell lived up to his reputation as a master tactician. Think about it. If you don’t want the majority to emasculate you, and you don’t have a tool for stopping the majority from emasculating you, there’s only one thing to do: stop giving the majority reasons for emasculating you. Mitch McConnell could have vowed not to abuse the filibuster, as he has so many times before, in the hope that the Democrats don’t take it away. Instead, he vowed to block everything if the Democrats take away his favorite tool for blocking everything. I can’t imagine Nancy Pelosi doing something so dumb.

Of course, this is the man who stole a Supreme Court seat before looking the other way while the Russians sabotaged a Democratic presidential candidate. This same man rammed through another Supreme Court justice by breaking the rule he totally made up to prevent a former Democratic president from naming a Supreme Court justice. To prevent the Democrats from nuking the filibuster, he would have to keep his promise not to abuse it, but honestly, after all this time, why would the Democrats trust him?“

Stoehr has another important Editorial Board piece, this time about the really bad coverage of the border situation, in Chuck Todd and the anti-moral press.

Reporters prefer covering partisan conflict, especially conflict that has no foreseeable way of being resolved. Conflict begets attention begets profits—or just a feeling of being pivotal to the country’s destiny. The press corps will be at the heart of the action even if its members have to invent the action.…

“The border is an old mess the new administration must clean up. But it is not a ‘political crisis’ unless Chuck Todd and others think decency and law constitute political crises.“

I’ll end with links to four articles you should really, really, really read.

First up, my friend and former colleague Tom Mayes interviews Empire State Development EVP Holly Leicht for Preservation Magazine in Loss, Redemption, Renewal: The Moynihan Train Hall. While the transportation solution isn’t perfect by any means (that would require demolishing Madison Square Garden), the design work on the James A. Farley Post Office Building in Manhattan is beautiful in helping bring back memories of old Penn Station in New York.

Cory Albertson, writing in The Bitter Southerner, has a deeply personal article entitled The Radical Queerness of Dolly Parton. This thoughtful essay by the Georgia-born Albertson offers thanks for the ways Dolly’s music, stage presence, and insistence on being different spurred him to “hitch a ride with the wind.”

If, like me, you’ve laughed at the Progressive insurance commercials about how to avoid becoming your parents, you’ll enjoy the report by Ashley Fetters in The Washington Post entitled, The story behind Dr. Rick of the Progressive insurance ads.

“It doesn’t hurt that when Progressive introduced the Dr. Rick ads in April 2020, they quickly became a warm, sunny island of gentle observational humor in a vast sea of grim commercials murmuring about “these uncertain times.” Or that they’re performed by a cast of veteran improv actors recruited from the Groundlings and Second City. (In one roundly beloved bit, two of Dr. Rick’s patients struggle not to stare at a stranger with blue hair. ‘We all see it,’ Dr. Rick tells them under his breath, as they continue to gape. ‘We all-l-l see it.’ That bit was largely improvised.)“

And for something you never expected, take a look at Liz Alterman’s post in McSweeney’s entitled 24 Surprising Ways to Injure Yourself When You’re Over 50. I laughed especially hard at numbers 10 (opening a jar}, 11 (moving that jar back and forth as you squint to decipher its expiration date) and 15 (reaching into the backseat of your car for an umbrella). I’ve come dangerously close to injuring myself with all three!

Stay safe out there and have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

Image: Bears Ears National Monument by DJB

Thinking while male

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After a recent and particularly egregious blunder, my apology was accepted, accompanied by the comment that, “I knew you were just thinking like a male.”

In the context, it sure sounded like an oxymoron.

There are studies showing how men and women think differently, but that’s not what happened in this instance. My actions were the result of not really thinking at all. After misreading an email and misremembering something from the past, I proceeded to push ahead without listening to suggestions that I could be wrong.

In the end things worked out fine. However, my unwillingness to stop and ask for help put me squarely in the mindset of “thinking while male.” I wasn’t really thinking deeply about what I was doing. Unfortunately, I do it often enough to recognize the signs.

Stereotypes can be harmful and are often used to avoid getting to know people as individuals in order to look down on them as a group. They also describe behavior, roles, and preconceived notions we absorb from an early age as appropriate for our gender or social class. One of the best known stereotypes of the male mindset is the willingness to drive for long periods of time rather than stop and ask for directions. In this case, it becomes a stereotype because so many of us have adopted this behavior without giving a great deal of thought as to the reasons for our actions. But these routines don’t have to be self-fulfilling prophecies in our own lives. We can defy convention. Habits do not have to become destiny.

In our family discussions, we’ve now reflected over which past factors may have contributed to an increase in my oh-so-self-assured lack of judgment. Identifying the problem and calling something by name is a first step in making the conscious decision to break the routine that leads to bad habits. We discussed things I could do to be more present and mindful. I was also gifted a little book by Lee Coit, Listening, where I’ve been reading about the difference between the limitations of ego and the understanding that comes from following an inner guide that is deeper and connected to a truer vision of the world. Listening to that guide requires stillness, avoiding the tendency to pre-plan, and having no investment in the answer to the questions other than wanting to follow what is true. I don’t have to always be “right.”

Shifting from a busy job filled with tasks and challenges to the different pace of the next third of my life is not a simple step. Even after taking a gap year and then enduring — along with the rest of the world — pandemic lock-down, I still find I rely too much on the old habits. Yet as one of my mentors suggested, this time in life can be so much more meaningful if I will slow down, be present, listen, and think deeply about what is before me.

That means I will need to stop “thinking while male.”

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

The distinctive, raspy vocal stylings of Elise LeGrow grab hold and won’t let go

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Canadian singer and songwriter Elise LeGrow grabbed my attention with her vibe on Who Do You Love, breaking the Bo Diddley classic down to a new set of bare bones for my Halloween version of Soundtrack. Her rasping howl brought ‘a tombstone hand and a graveyard mind’ to life and I was immediately determined to hear more. So here we are with a full-length treatment on Saturday Soundtrack.

LeGrow was signed to a publishing deal in 2009 after a live performance at the NXNE festival in Toronto. And while many of her early efforts on YouTube are covers, you can immediately hear the distinctive voice and musical sensibilities on tunes such as Bill Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine.

The beautiful Anymore, also from 2014, displays an ease and control with her voice that can be mesmerizing.

LeGrow has a wonderfully “raspy” voice that takes over no matter the spirit of the tune. She explained it this way to American Songwriter.

“I’m told that I have a lot of ‘sound.’ One of the challenges that I’ve encountered again and again is finding the right sound for the song. Ultimately, the song is the most important thing to me. It’s more important than the production, it’s more important than the show — it’s all about the song. So, for me, the vocal tone is there to serve the song. It’s one of many tools that tells the story. So, my vocal tone on this song (Evan) is really broken up, and I think that fits the sentiment of the song. Whereas, some of the other songs on the record have a completely different vibe, so you’re going to hear a lot of different tones coming out of me in the future. They’re all a little raspy! But, this song was much more intimate, it has a more intimate tone than you’ll hear on other songs of mine.

Her first full-length debut album, Playing Chess, was drawn entirely from the catalog of Chicago’s iconic Chess label, home to Muddy Waters, Etta James, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and so many more. While her grandfather was a drummer and trumpeter active in Chicago’s jazz scene in the 1950s, LeGrow had only a passing familiarity with the history of Chess. But after realizing that many of the artists she admired had recorded for the label, she decided to make their music her own. 

LeGrow didn’t faithfully recreate this material. Her interpretations, as one reviewer notes, “strip the tracks of their previous identities, transporting them to a world where the past and present are inextricably intertwined.” I am especially fond of the live acoustic versions she has posted of several of the tunes.

The album begins with the aforementioned Who Do You Love. Other favorites from the album include You Never Can Tell, and Rescue Me. LeGrow takes these familiar songs and — with her inimitable style, phrasing, and arrangements — makes them her own.

In one of her more recent releases, she sings of the loss of a young friend, a song she wrote over several years.

What inspired this song was a friendship with a boy named Evan. We met in high school — he was actually my then-boyfriend’s best friend. When I met Evan, we instantly became friends and we shared this crazy time. We had a whole group of friends that all lived in this neighborhood together and we used to party a lot… we were teenagers, we were kids. When I look back on those years, it really feels like it was a ‘golden age.’ This song is the culmination of 10 years of grappling with the loss of my friend Evan and the emotions that came with that. That’s why it took so long to write it — I’d sit down and try to write, but I’d just get overcome with sadness. I think what allowed me to finally put pen to page was focusing on the good memories we shared. That’s what I talk about in this song; the music we listened to, the TV we used to watch, the joyful moments. 

Let’s end with Drinking in the Day, another LeGrow tune that showcases both her singing and songwriting skills.

“Oh babe, don’t say you’re doing fine
Don’t hide yourself away, something on your mind
You’re drinking in the day, coming from the way
Sometimes it’s good to cry, cry cry cry cry“

Enjoy!

More to come…

DJB

A vote is a kind of prayer

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On Wednesday, March 17th, Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia gave his initial speech on the Senate floor.* Coming from the first African American senator from Georgia, it was a historic occasion.

Warnock met the moment, delivering a powerful and moving statement about past injustices, present work to save the right to vote in our democracy, and the future of the nation that rests upon that right. 

Watching the video of Senator Warnock’s maiden effort may be the best 22 minutes you’ll spend today.

“My mother grew up in Waycross, Georgia. You know where that is? It’s way ‘cross Georgia. Like a lot of Black teenagers in the 1950’s she spent her summers picking somebody else’s tobacco and somebody else’s cotton. But because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton went to the polls in January and picked her youngest son to be a United States Senator. Ours is a land where possibility is born of democracy. A vote, a voice, a chance to help determine the direction of the country and one’s own destiny within it. Possibility born of democracy.“

Senator Warnock was focused on voting rights and the attempts of conservatives in Georgia and across the country to suppress the votes of Blacks and other people of color. And he speaks eloquently, from his background as Senior Pastor at historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, about a vote being a prayer for the world we desire.

“I was honored on a few occasions to stand with our hero and my parishioner, John Lewis. I was his pastor but I’m clear he was my mentor. On more than one occasion we boarded buses together after Sunday Church services as part of our Souls To The Polls program, encouraging the Ebenezer Church family and communities of faith to participate in the democratic process. Now just a few months after Congressman Lewis’ death, there are those in the Georgia legislature, some who even dared to praise his name, that are now trying to get rid of Sunday Souls to the Polls, making it a crime for people who pray together to get on a bus together and vote together. I think that’s wrong. In fact, I think a vote is a kind of prayer about the world we desire for ourselves and our children. And our prayers are stronger when we pray together.

These suppression tactics are nothing new. Senator Warnock notes that politicians have often wanted to cherry pick their voters and keep others from voting who don’t agree with their politics. Rather than change their policies to reflect the will of the people, these politicians are working to change who can vote.

“To be sure, we have seen these kinds of voter suppression tactics before. They are a part of a long and shameful history in Georgia and throughout our nation. But refusing to be denied, Georgia citizens and citizens across our country braved the heat and the cold and the rain, some standing in line for 5 hours, 6 hours, 10 hours just to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Young people, old people, sick people, working people, already underpaid, forced to lose wages, to pay a kind of poll tax while standing in line to vote.

“And how did some politicians respond? Well, they are trying to make it a crime to give people water and a snack, as they wait in lines that are obviously being made longer by their draconian actions. Think about that. Think about that. They are the ones making the lines longer — through these draconian actions. Then, they want to make it a crime to bring grandma some water as she is waiting in line they are making longer! Make no mistake. This is democracy in reverse. Rather than voters being able to pick the politicians, the politicians are trying to cherry pick their voters. I say this cannot stand

There is so much to consider in Warnock’s speech. He not only calls out the hypocrisy of those who want to protect minority rights in the Senate through the filibuster but then deny minority rights to Blacks through voter suppression, but he also hits on dark money, corporate support for these tactics, and the shameful Supreme Court decision led by Chief Justice Roberts to gut the protection provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

And like every good preacher, The Reverend Dr. Warnock knows how to close. Read, mark, and inwardly digest these words about democracy being the political enactment of a spiritual idea.

“And so as I close — and nobody believes a preacher when he says “as I close” — as a man of faith, I believe that democracy is a political enactment of a spiritual idea. The sacred worth of all human beings, the notion that we all have within us, a spark of the divine, to participate in the shaping of our own destiny. Reinhold Niebuhr was right: ‘[Humanity’s] capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but [humanity’s] inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.’”

Senator Raphael Warnock received a standing ovation when he finished. He should also receive our thanks and support.

More to come…

DJB

Image by John Mounsey from Pixabay

*Here is the full transcript of Warnock’s historic speech.

On Tyranny

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“History does not repeat, but it does instruct.” So begins Timothy Snyder’s slim yet vital book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Snyder — a historian of the Holocaust who teaches at Yale — has written a guide to resisting tyranny that provides present-day advice in the vein of that used by the Founding Fathers when they sought to build a governmental system of checks and balances that would be resistant to the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy.

To help instruct us in the 21st century, Snyder looks at recent history.

“Today our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.”

Snyder is no believer in American exceptionalism. Instead, he notes that while we “might be tempted to think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats…this would be a misguided reflex.”

After opening this 126-page book with thoughts on history and tyranny, he moves through twenty short lessons that resonate with the power that comes from long, serious study of the interwar years in Germany and the horrors that came after the rise of fascism, Nazism, and communism. Snyder’s lessons and writings are very accessible, but that doesn’t make them less compelling. His very first lesson is “Do not obey in advance,” followed by a few short pages that show how most power acquired by authoritarians is freely given by citizens of a country. In that act, they are teaching the authoritarians seeking power what they can do.

There are lessons dealing with the need to defend institutions, think for ourselves, and take responsibility for our actions in the civic sphere. As an example, Snyder writes that “you might one day be offered the opportunity to display symbols of loyalty. Make sure that such symbols include your fellow citizens rather than exclude them.” Other lessons and suggestions are focused more on the individual choices we make to stay active and alive in a civil society, such as joining and supporting causes; reading more books and spending less time on the internet; making eye contact and small talk.

Snyder’s book was published in 2017, about a year into Donald Trump’s presidency. So much of what he describes of Trump’s language and actions worsened over the course of his term, culminating in the failed insurrection of January 6th. Lesson #6 — “Be wary of paramilitaries” — discusses actions in the 20th century run-up to World War II that were repeated following Trump’s lies about a stolen election. Lesson #10 — “Believe in truth” — ends with the chilling reminder that “post-truth is pre-fascism.”

Synder is especially aware of the misuse of language, and he has no problem in showing how Trump’s language is very much like Hitler’s in that it only serves the leader.

“Hitler’s language rejected legitimate opposition: The people always meant some people and not others (the president uses the word in this way), encounters were always struggles (the president says winning) and any attempt by free people to understand the world in a different way was defamation of the leader (or, as the president puts it, libel).”

Lesson #19 — “Be a patriot” — begins with two pages of things that a patriot is not, each taken from Donald Trump’s life, campaign, and first year of his presidency. Patriotism, he notes at the end of this long list, “involves serving your own country.” Donald Trump is a nationalist, not a patriot. A nationalist “encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us we are the best.”

“A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which meanas asking us to be our best selves.”

What makes Snyder’s work so important is that he shows a way forward. Each lesson is built on actionable steps we can take. And he returns to the critical need to study history in the epilogue “History and Liberty.” He notes that “the habit of dwelling on victimhood,” the province of the nationalist, “dulls the impulse of self-correction.” History, on the other hand, “gives us the company of those who have done and suffered more than we have.”

This is a work that can be read in a very short sitting. But if you are like me, many of the pages will be underlined and filled with margin notes, and its lessons will stay, hopefully, for a lifetime. For as Snyder notes at the end, “to make history, young Americans will have to know some. This is not the end, but a beginning.”

Writing the preamble for the fall 2020 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly two weeks before the election, Lewis Lapham speaks in Uncivil Liberty of how the labor of democracy never ends. Lapham is a writer of great eloquence and “lethal wit”, both of which come through in this important essay that pairs nicely with Snyder’s book. One of the opening quotes to the preamble is the famous scene from the 1976 film Network featuring the outraged news anchor, Howard Beale.

“I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it and stick your head out and yell, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!‘

While the county has been slow in getting to its feet, Lapham asserts that

“two weeks before the 2020 presidential election, they’re up from their chairs and out in the streets, mad as hell, insisting that their lives — black, white, and brown; young, old, and yet to be born; male, female, transgender, or none of the above — matter. The long-delayed uprising was provoked by the Memorial Day death of George Floyd, unarmed black man, age forty-six, arrested on suspicion of passing a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill in a Minneapolis convenience store. A passerby took note of the incident with a cell-phone camera that sees Floyd in handcuffs lying facedown on the pavement. A police officer pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck holds the position for eight minutes and forty-six seconds; Floyd struggles to breathe until he loses all trace of a pulse.“

As many have written, the officer’s face lacks all trace of human feeling or expression, Survivors of the Holocaust, writes Lapham, “mention similarly empty faces of the Sonderkommando loading Jews into an oven.”

One of Lapham’s great strengths is his call on history to help us understand those lessons we need to apply to today’s events. And he understands and does not underestimate the authoritarianism of Donald Trump and today’s Republican Party.

“On the day that George Floyd died, the American people had been locked down for three months, sheltering in place from the storm of the coronavirus spreading into all fifty states. The death toll was moving steadily up (100,000 on June 1; 200,000 as of October 1); the economy slowing to almost full stop; 22 million people summarily unemployed; the nation’s churches and schools shut down; sports events, funerals, and weddings canceled; bars, restaurants, public parks, and movie theaters closed.

Liberty, equality, and fraternity being suspended until further notice, citizens of all ages and colors were given the opportunity to feel the loss of their freedoms of movement and thought, the chance to realize that black persons live every day of their lives fearful of venturing into an environment known to be armed and dangerous. Given time for further reflection, the home viewers awakened to the fact of their having been locked down not just for three months but for fifty years — not only under heavy government and Silicon Valley surveillance but also by the colossal capitalist cash machine under the knee of which freedom is a privilege fully available only to those who can pay the going price.…

The capitalist subjugation of democracy makes money the measure of all things, sets the exchange rate for our value as human beings. The terms and conditions of the two witness-protection programs build up in the citizenry a stockpile of fear and resentment akin to the dead trees in a mismanaged California forest. The sight of George Floyd dying in Minneapolis touched off the wildfire of nationwide protest on May 25, 2020. Donald Trump’s tossing a rhetorical match into the same compost heap of fear and resentment elected him president of the United States on November 8, 2016.”

As he often does, Lapham turns to Thomas Paine as the voice of democracy that we need to recover. Even the Founding Fathers found Paine’s rhetoric both too simple and too radical for their purposes once he helped inflame the revolution with his Common Sense. But Paine’s vision of

“America’s democracy is geared to the hope of the future….We protect the other person’s liberty in the interest of protecting our own, and our virtues accord with the terms and conditions of an arduous and speculative journey. It isn’t easy to be an American, and if we look into the mirrors held up by our prime-time situation comedies and our best-seller lists (invariably topped by memoirs and travelers’ tales), we see that we value the companionable virtues — helpfulness, forgiveness, kindliness, above all tolerance.

If democracy means anything at all, it is the holding of one’s fellow citizens in thoughtful regard not because they are beautiful or rich or famous but because they are one’s fellow citizens, and to know what they say and do is taking part in the shared work of the imagination among a multitude of voices, talents, quirks, colors, interests, and generations. The labor never ends, entails the ceaseless making and remaking of customs and laws, of matinee idols, equations, and songs.“

Democracy, in both Snyder and Lapham’s view, allies itself with change. The labor never ends. Nothing is final.

“Freedom of thought brings to society the unwelcome news that it is in trouble, but because all societies, like all human beings, are always in some sort of trouble, the news doesn’t cause them to perish. They die instead from the fear of thought and the paralysis that accompanies the wish to make time stand still.“

Snyder and Lapham, important voices for our time, would have us read, and them make, some history.

More to come…

DJB

As always, this Weekly Reader features links to recent articles (or in this case, a short book) that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. This week, my fervent hope is that you find something that makes you think and act.

Graves of those who fell at Normandy fighting fascism in World War II by DJB

Our imperfect union

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More to come…

DJB

John Doyle and the modern Irish soundtrack

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

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

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

Institute of Musical Traditions

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

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

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

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

John Doyle – About (johndoylemusic.com)

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

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

Enjoy, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

More to come…

DJB

Image of John Doyle credit: John Doyle – Compass Records

Weekly Reader: Words matter

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

As always, this Weekly Reader features links to recent articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More to come…

DJB

Image by USA-Reiseblogger from Pixabay

Assisted living

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great week.

More to come…

DJB

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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