As we debate schools reopening in the midst of a pandemic, this seems like a perfect time to say a few words of praise for teachers who work in our public and private school systems across the country and around the world.
Teachers have been very important in my life. I am married to a retired teacher. One sister is a librarian (another form of teaching) as was my mother, and the other sister trained in education and used those skills in various ways with preschoolers. My sister-in-law is a retired teacher, and I have nieces who are currently public school teachers. In almost 20 years of formal education and 65 years of informal learning in the world, I’ve had many teachers — a number of which I remember very fondly and a few of which changed my life.
Every now and then I find a link that sends me to Twitter and today was one of those days. Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, author, and professor who lives in Cleveland, Ohio.* She recently had a feed that told why teachers matter. You can click on the link above to see her feed (and retweet it if you are on the platform), but I’ll lay it out here for those of us who prefer our thoughts in more than just a handful of characters at a time.
When I was 6 years old, right after first grade had ended, my teacher invited my mother & me to her home. Unthinkable! We wore Sunday clothes. I was so nervous & excited that I sat wedged next to Mom on Mrs. Behrendt’s sofa. I remember two things about what came next.
Mrs. Behrendt gave me this framed Award of Honor, signed by her and the principal — and the superintendent! Mom talked about that for weeks. It was displayed on our dining room wall for years.
As we were preparing to leave that day, Mom walked onto the front porch and Mrs. Behrendt pulled me back for a hug and whispered into my ear, “You are a very smart little girl. Let the grown-ups worry about grown-up problems.”
Her secret message is why this award still hangs in my home. My teacher knew me better than any other person in my life. I learned early why teachers matter. So many parents have learned firsthand during this pandemic how hard it is to teach. Now is the time to advocate.
Most teachers never come close to making what they earn, but they show up anyway, day after day. No teacher should be returning to classrooms in districts that refuse to protect them, and all the staff that keep schools running.
This is a grown-up problem, and it is ours to solve. Our teachers need us.
Connie Schultz
That says it all. Let’s work to support our teachers. Their lives, and the lives of our children, depend upon it.
Daniel Snyder is — with apologies to Judith Viorst — the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad owner of the Washington National Football League (NFL) franchise.
As sports columnist Martin Fennelly chronicled back in 2018, there are many instances one can point to of Snyder’s terrible stewardship of what many foolishly consider to be a community asset. (Those who think this way definitely do not include NFL owners.) With so many to choose from, where does one start? Well, one of the worst examples could be when the team’s cheerleaders said they were used as escorts on a trip to Costa Rica where stadium suite owners and sponsors could “check out” those women topless. Then there is the sycophancy. Like other bosses who thrive on obsequious behavior from their staffs, Snyder hires sycophants in his operation and runs through coaches like — oh, I don’t know — White House chiefs of staff or press secretaries.
But many considered his most egregious behavior to be his defiant refusal to consider the impact of Washington’s stereotyped racial image on the larger community. That is, he defiantly refused until events overwhelmed him. In the midst of Black Lives Matter and a national racial reconsideration, Snyder’s corporate supporters (not to mention the NFL) apparently gave him an ultimatum: change the name or lose millions in our support.
I was speaking with friends who had moved to the Washington area from Atlanta, and one asked about that name change. He assumed the team would talk with the community and get a great deal of input before making the change. I laughed. Snyder has been reported as “bunkered in” as he makes this decision. Hmmm…I think I’ve heard that phrase used recently with another embattled and tiresome “leader.” In any case, Snyder doesn’t really care what the larger community thinks. Daniel Snyder doesn’t listen to many people, but as he showed in giving in to pressure from sponsors like FedEx and to governments like the District of Columbia (where he hopes to locate a new, taxpayer-supported stadium), he does listen to money. From the statements coming out from team headquarters today, Daniel Snyder is clearly going through this process kicking and screaming.
Columnist Colbert I King noted that Snyder’s one consistent success was in leveraging the good of the community to the point where the team, at $3.1 billion, ranks as the NFL’s fourth-most valuable franchise. “The team’s brand equity has fallen, however,” Forbes magazine writes, “because the (insert old name here) have been a train wreck on the football field for much of Snyder’s tenure.”
Does that record of stewardship sound like anyone else we know? Daniel “I will NEVER change the name of the franchise” Snyder and Donald “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” Trump sometimes appear to be twin brothers from different mothers. Both are tone deaf and petulant to a fault. In other words, just plain tiresome.
I no longer follow pro football, for a variety of reasons. But I do know that the Washington football team will soon get a new name. It may actually be a decent one. But — like our country — the team will never get out of the morass of its current state until it gets rid of the current tiresome leader who tries, without much success, to run the show by the old “my way or the highway” adage. At least for the country, we get to vote on our leadership this November. Washington football fans can only look at the actuarial tables to address their problem. Daniel Snyder is 55 years old. Good luck with that.
More to come…
DJB
UPDATE: And in the category of you can’t make up stuff about how bad Snyder runs his organization, the Washington Post had an exclusive saying 15 women were accusing former employees of the club of sexual harassment. The team had one full-time human resource staff person who also performed other administrative duties — for an organization of more than 200 employees — so it was difficult for the women to call on HR with their complaints. One quote from the story sums up Snyder’s approach to management:
“I have never been in a more hostile, manipulative, passive-aggressive environment … and I worked in politics,” said Julia Payne, former assistant press secretary in the Clinton administration who briefly served as vice president of communications for the team in 2003.
Late last year I showcased a series of pithy proverbs — those bursts of truth in 20 words or so — in a new blog feature entitled More to Consider.* Six months later, I’m back with the ones I’ve highlighted since that original post.
My love for the short and to-the-point adage comes from my Grandmother Brown, who was known to say things such as, “Some folks are born in the objective mood.” Grandmother did not have a lot of patience with folks who were always complaining and objecting to what others did. Both my grandparents, as well as my father, always had a positive outlook and attitude toward people. I wonder what they would think of our president?
Well, let’s don’t go down that rabbit hole! Instead, here are the More to Consider proverbs, quotes, adages, and sayings from the last six months, beginning with the one that is on the blog at this moment, from African American poet Langston Hughes. In this time of reconsideration of our nation’s direction, it seemed especially appropriate for the July 4th holiday:
“Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— / Let it be that great strong land of love / Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme / That any man be crushed by one above.”
Langston Hughes from “Let America Be America Again”
Dutch journalist and historian Rutger Bregman is having a moment these days, speaking truth to power. I chose a passage from his most recent book after reading several articles about his work.
“An old man says to his grandson: ‘There’s a fight going on inside me. It’s a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil – angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant, and cowardly. The other is good – peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest, and trustworthy. These two wolves are also fighting within you, and inside every other person too.’ After a moment, the boy asks, ‘Which wolf will win?’ The old man smiles. ‘The one you feed.'”
Rutger Bregman, “Humankind: A Hopeful History”
The quote from Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh came to me when reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s most recent book, Holy Envy. I thought it was especially illustrative in helping us see how our view is only one small part of a much larger landscape.
“While living the life of a wave, the wave also lives the life of water. It would be sad if the wave did not know that it is water.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
Author James Baldwin’s life and work has never been more necessary than in this time of upheaval around social injustice and the racial profiling of African Americans by the police. In the book Biased, I came across this quote which struck me as helpful to remember as we each undertake our journeys in life:
“A journey is called that because you cannot know what you will…do with what you find, or what you find will do with you.”
James Baldwin
While undertaking some research for another post, I came across this gem from the running guru George Sheehan. It seemed a good reminder as we sit in our sheltered places in the midst of a pandemic, perhaps eating and drinking too much.
“Don’t be concerned if running or exercise will add years to your life, be concerned with adding life to your years.”
Dr. George Sheehan
Speaking of global pandemics — and our country’s absolutely idiotic response to a virus that doesn’t care about political ideology, re-election timelines, anti-science tomfoolery, or much else — I thought columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. hit the nail on the head when he wrote in an April 24th column:
“(W)e seemed to have tapped the U.S. Strategic Stupid Reserve. The result has been a truly awe-inspiring display of America’s matchless capacity for mental mediocrity.”
Leonard Pitts, Jr.
One of the wonderful people we lost as a result of our nation’s horrific response to COVID-19 was the singer/songwriter John Prine. In April I used More to Consider to quote a favorite Prine song, which he sings with the incomparable Iris DeMent.
“In spite of ourselves, we’ll end up sitting on a rainbow / Against all odds, honey we’re the big door prize / We’re gonna spite our noses right off our faces / There won’t be nothing but big old hearts dancing in our eyes.”
John Prine from “In Spite of Ourselves”
One of the more thoughtful people I know is my friend Deborah Meister. As the full extent of the challenges we find ourselves in as a country came into (even) clearer view this spring, I thought her take on the subject was spot on. And I’m always looking for quotes from people — like Deborah — who have thought deeply about a variety of topics, which is why I decided to highlight two in March from economist Albert Hirschman and President Theodore Roosevelt:
“The good things in our nation did not come about by chance, and they will not be preserved by indifference.”
The Rev. Dr. Deborah Meister
“This is probably all one can ask of history, and the history of ideas in particular: not to resolve issues, but to raise the level of the debate.”
Albert O. Hirschman
“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Before the pandemic slowed everything to a standstill and led to a reckoning with multiple crises at once, I was considering the question of potential in a rather simplistic fashion. Today, this Angela Duckworth line still rings true, but perhaps in a much deeper and broader way.
“Our potential is one thing, what we do with it is quite another.”
Angela Duckworth, from “Grit”
And to begin the year, I selected three quotes from three very different individuals: a relatively young American novelist, one of the 20th century’s most important African American voices, and a world-renowned theologian. In different ways, they were setting me up for the year that we’re in without even knowing it.
“When we accept diminished substitutes, we become diminished substitutes.”
Jonathan Safran Foer
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”
James Baldwin
“What power people always discover is that you cannot finally silence poets. They just keep coming at you in threatening and transformative ways.”
Walter Brueggermann
Listen to the poets, read widely and deeply, and strive for quality in our work and in our leaders. Those all seem like good thoughts to remember here in 2020. I hope you found something to make you stop and consider, if even for just a minute.
*As a reminder, to capture some of my favorite sayings without having to write an entire blog post about them, I created a feature on More to Come that I labeled More to Consider. Every other week or so I update these quick bursts of truth. This section of the website is easiest to see on a laptop, where it resides near the top of the right hand column. But most people read my posts from their phones, where you have to scroll almost to the bottom before finding the saying for the week.
Billy Strings was born William Apostol on October 3, 1992, and grew up listening to his stepfather’s bluegrass music as well as the more broadly popular rock and metal genres. As he started playing music, all those influences come tumbling out of his guitar in ways surprising and often refreshing. His aunt gave him the moniker Billy Strings after recognizing his talent as a multi-instrumentalist.
I’d say she hit the nail on the head.
In 2016’s Meet Me At the Creek, Strings and his band head off on an extended jam that sounds like bluegrass meeting indie rock. One of the funniest online comments (apropos of nothing) makes the observation: “Forest Gump 3 months into his run on the upright bass…” but the music is great.
With this 2017 version of Turmoil and Tinfoil, Strings and his band head off down a path of bluegrass metal music.
Two of the best next generation bluegrass guitar players — Strings and Molly Tuttle — play the old chestnut Sittin’ On Top of the World at the 2019 Grey Fox festival, and the guitar interplay and fireworks are terrific.
Bluegrass fans will be glad to know Strings can also go back into the tradition and sing a chilling acapella version of the Charles Wesley hymn And Am I Born to Die.
Billy isn’t your normal play-it-safe country star, as seen when he uses his Grand Ole Opry debut in 2019 to sing about a life of sin in Dust in a Baggie. Yes, reflecting on one’s misdeeds is pretty standard fare with country singers. What’s not is the direct reference to methamphetamine, played with a blazing bluegrass backing.
“This life of sin / has got me in / got me back in prison once again / I used my only phone call to contact my Daddy / Got 20 long years / for some dust in a baggie.”
Strings was to be at the Red Wing Roots Music Festival this weekend, before the event was cancelled for 2020. He is scheduled to play a series of streaming concerts online from Nashville and other cities this month and into the fall, so if you are interested and want to see the artist that Rolling Stone named as the “Bluegrass star you don’t want to miss,” check out one or more of these offerings.
How did you respond when you first discovered the many ways there are to view the world?
For some, this isn’t a problem. From an early age they have looked at the world through a particular set of glasses, assuming that their view is the correct one. They learn how to describe what they see in terms that others who wear the same glasses understand. And unless they have some life-changing jolt — perhaps a worldwide pandemic that doesn’t care about their nationality, religion or political ideology; or an especially graphic picture of systemic racism that refuses to be ignored — they never ask questions about the things that are not clear.
But for those who see another perspective or choose to try on different pairs of glasses, all of a sudden they realize that their world view is not the only one. They have to choose how to respond. Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh describes this broader existence when he notes, “While living the life of a wave, the wave also lives the life of water. It would be sad if the wave did not know that it is water.”
Writer Barbara Brown Taylor puts it simply as, “The lens is not the landscape.”
I recently finished reading Taylor’s latest book, Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others, where she writes about the questions, worries, and concerns that arise in most of us when we encounter “difference” and “others.” 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.
We are living in a time when many ask us to look at world events or religious belief through only one set of glasses. This is a perspective lacking complexity and nuance, and often seen, as the writer Robin Givhan describes it, “in gloriously righteous white and suspicious, dangerous black.” Having our worldview handed to us by our family, friends, political party, church, temple, mosque, or choice of media is certainly easier. It doesn’t require much thought. And even for those who do work at understanding the broader nature of the world, it is natural to try and translate everything into our own language or frame of reference. Unfortunately we miss a lot in the process.
A closed mind leads us to accept something as reality without asking the deep questions required to experience a thoughtful, wonder-filled life. Those questions open us up to the discovery that what we think we know can be very different from the realities in front of us. “While we spin our wheels trying to control things beyond our control,” Taylor writes, “we ignore the one thing that is within our power to change: our way of seeing things.”
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 her book because we are at a moment in history where so many people are having their “truth” upended.
Their economic worldview is failing.
People we know and love are sick and dying because of a virus that doesn’t care about nationality or political ideology or incompetence.
For some traditions, political and religious leaders seem more focused on hate, power, and “otherness” than many in those traditions want to see in their search for truth.
We are all separated at a time when we want nothing more than to hold and hug and laugh and cry and eat and drink with those we know and with strangers we meet.
The truths we have believed — often uncritically — are upended and so many of us don’t know what to do about it.
Taylor has a suggestion. In her telling, many who never venture beyond their own spiritual traditions not only miss what lies in front of them but often fail to notice unconscious language of contempt and exclusivity. When we become aware of this tendency and begin to see language of this type, or come up against condescension toward others who are not of the same worldview, she encourages us to look in the opposite direction. In her experience, “There is almost always a counternarrative in scripture just waiting for someone to notice it.” For example, when discussing a condescending attitude toward those who are not Christian, Taylor — an Episcopal priest — discusses the Persian magi and their role as “agents of the God who transcends religion and never met a stranger.”
“In the case of the Persian magi, their appearance in Bethlehem is as surprising as a delegation of Methodist bishops arriving in Dharamasala to recognize the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama. Once they deliver their gifts to the starlit Hebrew baby, they go back to where they came from, presumably to resume their vocations as Zoroastrian priests. Yet every Christmas we sing of them in church, as if they had never left.”
Having a problem with their otherness, many Christians fix that by baptizing them “as anonymous Christians.”
We may ask for certainty, but instead we are given relationships. We may ask for solid ground and instead are given human beings — “strange, funny, compelling, complicated human beings — who keep puncturing my stereotypes, challenging my ideas….” Taylor turns to a story from her Christian tradition that Jesus told about how we will be judged. It is clear that what is more important than what we believe is how we live. Matthew 25:34-37 recounts all the disguises for “the king” who rules at the end: hungry person, thirsty person, strange person, naked person, sick person, imprisoned person. They show up in our midst in need of welcome. “Welcome is the king’s solution to the problem of the stranger,” Taylor notes. “Always has been, always will be.”
Instead of trying to convince someone to believe as we do — because we forget (or never considered) that our religious experience and worldview is not singular but plural — we do best to welcome those who are different and in need. We can certainly learn from them. And who knows who they will be.
“You can choose your friends but you sho’ can’t choose your family, an’ they’re still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge ’em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don’t.”
In this time of global pandemic, many of us find long distances and time zones separate us from our families. We don’t have the opportunity to see our kin face-to-face. Instead we rely on technology to connect and share the stories, meals, game nights, music, and long conversations that support those familial ties and weave together the family tapestry over years.
Tom Brown (yes, the one with the suspenders) gathers with his five children and all his family members to celebrate his 90th birthday on July 5, 2015
I’ve been thinking about my family in recent weeks. Ninety-five years ago today Tom Brown entered this world. Born July 5, 1925, Daddy lived a full and rich life, staying on this earth long enough to have his five children — a small part of his expansive and loving family — join together to celebrate his 90th birthday in 2015. He passed away the following spring, just weeks short of reaching his 91st birthday.
Tom Brown is easy for me to acknowledge, as I learned so much from my father’s example about how to live in this world. When it comes to family, I have more than acknowledged them, having written a great deal about my parents, my wife, and my children over the years. But I’ve only skimmed the surface when talking about my four brothers and sisters.
It strikes me that Tom Brown’s birthday is a good time to rectify that situation. This is an acknowledgement of my family, a note of thanksgiving for my brothers and sisters.
Our parents encouraged each one of us to find and become the person we were meant to be. At the same time they taught us to respect and love the other members of the family for the perspective and individuality they brought to life. As a result, the five children of Tom and Helen Brown are very different. Each of us more than followed our own path. Between us we have an arts administrator who has worked for opera companies and symphonies around the country, a preservationist, a civil servant who kept the water department running smoothly for years, a blacksmith artist and part-time preacher, and a missionary/librarian. All five of us embraced mother’s love of music. Four play piano, we have three guitarists, two play bass, and one plays banjo while another one picks at the mandolin. (I may have missed an instrument or two.) There is one published author, but most of us read extensively, following the example of both parents. Between the five of us we have thirteen children and a number of sons-and-daughters-in-laws and grandchildren.
We don’t see eye to eye on politics, religion, food, sports, and probably a dozen other areas. And that’s okay. We more than acknowledge each other, we love each other either in spite of, or perhaps because of, our differences.
A friend and former colleague shared an article with me some time ago about how different generations view the world. It helped me to focus (again) on the fact that my worldview isn’t the only one. The lens is not the landscape. Perhaps I’m mellowing as I age, but I have come to appreciate — if not totally agree with — the viewpoints of my brothers and sisters who were influenced by different events in their lives. I listen to their perspectives now and for the most part let the differences slide off my back when we disagree.
There is much to love and admire in each of my siblings, so I’ll just touch the tip of the iceberg.
Steve is three years older than I am, and we probably spent the most time together growing up. He has a wide variety of interests and is a talented musician who has that classic “math/music” brain. (I missed out completely on the “math” part of that equation.) I don’t know how much self-motivation I possessed at an early age, but it really didn’t matter. As I came along in school and the teachers learned I was “Steve Brown’s brother,” the bar was already set pretty high and they pushed me to reach it. Plus, I always wanted to be smart enough to be able to carry on a conversation with him. We’ve shared many of the same perspectives on culture, politics, and life through the years, and I can say Steve has expanded my worldview and enriched my knowledge in a number of areas. His career in arts and stage management is a good fit for his many interests and talents, and I’ve appreciated his support of my professional career. Through the years he’s become a thoughtful “big brother.”
Debbie was born 16 months after me, so we are the closest in age among the five children. We spent a lot of time together growing up, since we were only one year apart in school. Ever since I can remember, Debbie has been generous with praise. It is probably one of the reasons she was such a good fit during her years in the city’s water department, as she works well with a wide variety of people, no matter their concerns or personalities. I so appreciate her example of looking on the positive side of life. Grandmother and Daddy always said, “If you don’t have something nice to say, then don’t say anything.” Debbie absorbed their lessons and lives them through her faith and actions every day. Finally, Debbie is the “glue” in our family. When mom died too early, she was ready to step into her shoes as the matriarch, seeing everyone’s gifts and keeping us all together, while still nurturing her own beautiful (and growing) family. Joe and Carol also played key roles in this regard, but Debbie is most like our mom…and that’s high praise!
Some five years my junior, Joe has never met a stranger. I marvel at how easily he moves among people — he is truly Tom Brown’s son in that respect. For some of us it isn’t that easy to be so open with others. Joe’s is a great gift, and I’m thankful that I’ve seen and learned from his example. Joe — like my sister Carol — has always been willing to try new things. After a stint in the Navy and work as a mechanic and manager at the Nissan automobile plant, he stepped out on his own to become a talented and sought-after blacksmith artist. Joe also designed and built his own home! (How did my two brothers get those DIY genes, when I can barely screw in a lightbulb!) I love seeing where his creative energy will take him next. Every single morning I am privileged to look at some of Joe’s utilitarian artwork, when I remove our skillet from the beautiful Dutch Crown he designed and custom built for our kitchen. So much of what Joe does shows a spirit of wonder that is a reminder of what we can do if we just accept the newness in life.
My sister Carol is nine years younger than me. As the “baby” in the family, she had a fearlessness that comes, I suspect, from trying to keep up with her brothers and sisters. From an early age she was willing to try just about anything. Carol went into Baptist mission work after college. She took off to the Ivory Coast by herself and later lived with her husband and boys in several countries in one of the world’s great hot spots, the Middle East. After moving home Carol followed Mom’s footsteps and became the branch manager at Linebaugh Public Library. Nothing fazes her. When she was younger, Carol took my ribbing and gave it back as good as she got it. As life threw challenges her way, she made sure that her family was loved and cared for. And Carol and I seem to be the two in the family who most often scratch the itch passed along by both parents to put pen to paper. As I work to finish a book, I am inspired by her life as a writer and author. Carol’s eagerness to put forward her views for consideration in the public square is admirable.
As you can tell, I’m proud of each of my brothers and sisters. My mother and father could not have imagined the family they would bring into the world when they married some 70 years ago. But here we are — still together as we find ourselves smack in the middle of our global pandemic, economic recession, fights against racial injustice, and threats against democracy! Even with all our differences, I’m not sure I could have chosen a better family, even if that were possible.
Love to you all on this special day in Brown family history.
More to come…
DJB
Picture of DJB (left) with my sisters and brothers: Debbie, Steve, Carol, and Joe (l-r) in December 2015
In the spirit of the day, let’s celebrate the Woody Guthrie 1940 classic This Land is Your Land. Many of us believe, for a variety of reasons, that it should be the national anthem. No less an authority than Bruce Springsteen has said, it is “one of the most beautiful songs ever written about America.”
Guthrie wrote This Land is Your Land during the Great Depression in response to Irving Berlin’s God Bless America. There’s a wonderful book by John Shaw entitled This Land That I Love: Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and the Story of Two American Anthems. As Shaw describes it, Guthrie was hitchhiking his way to New York City when he became upset over hearing the Kate Smith version of Berlin’s song over and over again during the trip. Guthrie sat down and wrote a song in anger, but his revisions over time turned it into one of the most shared and beloved songs in our nation’s history. Here’s the unvarnished recording from Woody, with the bonus of a picture of him playing his famous “This machine kills fascists” guitar. (Note: The song ends about the 2:40 mark in the video)
As with most folk songs, This Land is Your Land has a complicated and convoluted history. Verses were added along the way that fit with Woody’s belief that the vast income inequalities in America repressed the working class and kept the country from reaching its promise. And those verses were changed, sometimes by Woody, sometimes by other singers, over the course of the decades.
“There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing;
This land was made for you and me”
Most of these verses (such as the one about private property) are omitted in the versions sung at school functions and other community gatherings, but singers such as Pete Seeger and Woody’s son Arlo have retained at least some of those verses to ensure the song’s true meaning is understood. Here’s Arlo singing the song with an all-star supporting cast at the 1987 Farm Aid concert.
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings have a wonderfully up-tempo soul version that goes all the way with the inclusion of the verses usually left out. Jones commands the stage, and I could listen to this celebration of America over and over again.
To my mind, one of the most moving versions — with an emotion that cuts to the heart of what Woody was saying — is the one by Bruce Springsteen, which he began adding to his live shows in 1980. In this deeply felt and chilling version from a 1985 concert at LA’s Memorial Coliseum, Springsteen notes in his intro that, “What’s so great about (the song) is that it gets right to the heart of the promise of what our country was suppose to be about.” He adds that he sings it with the reminder that “with countries, just like with people, it’s easy to let the best of yourself slip away.”
“As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.”
“One Sunday morning, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I’d seen the people.
And they were hungry, and they were wondering,
If this land was made for you and me?”
“This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.”
In this year of turmoil and challenge, let’s go back to that promise of what America is all about, and work to make it a land for everyone.
Some carry a soul-stirring strength that extends across time and space. They may be so powerful that they aid in protecting the setting, preserving the very places where the story originates. While watching a repeat of the Ken Burns film The National Parks: America’s Best Idea on my local PBS station, I am reminded of how many of our parks include mountains, lakes, and meadows that are part of the origin story for Native Americans. Places that have deep meaning for the soul. Sacred places.
Other origin stories evolve, as the nation, group, or individual comes to a fuller understanding of who and what they are. As is appropriate for a nation built on the shared work of the imagination, the complex American origin story continues to unfold, especially during this era of turmoil and change.
“All of us tell stories about ourselves,” write Herminia Ibarra and Kent Lineback in the Harvard Business Review. “Stories define us. To know someone well is to know her story — the experiences that have shaped her, the trials and turning points that have tested her.”
Individuals use origin stories to define the people and places that have shaped them from the beginning. Part of mine involves tomorrow’s date, June 30th, when we would celebrate my parents 70th wedding anniversary, were they still alive. And it involves a place near to me that I last visited a little over ten years ago.
Having just arrived after a morning flight in the fall of 2009, I found myself in the lobby of Nashville’s Union Station Hotel waiting for a room and for my meetings to begin. That left me with time to think. And remember.
Union Station is a Nashville landmark. As one approaches on Broadway, it looms alone on the landscape, like Mount Monadnock or a butte in Monument Valley. It is a beautiful old pile of a building in what is known as the Romanesque Revival style, with heavy cut stone, rounded arched windows, and high towers and turrets. With its Italian marble floors, decorative wrought iron, crystal chandeliers, oak-accented doors, three outsized limestone fireplaces, and a 65-foot, barrel-vaulted, stained glass ceiling, the lobby is designed to showcase the power and opulence of the railroads at the turn-of-the-twentieth century.
After settling in to one of those large, overstuffed chairs that are ubiquitous in university and city clubs throughout the country, I took it all in. The building’s history as a key Louisville & Nashville Railroad station is worth remembering. Its architectural and decorative features add to what makes it important. Yet all of that wasn’t enough. By the early 1980s, the building was threatened with demolition. Abandoned and deteriorating, Union Station was just another eyesore from a bygone era.
Places with imposing presence, with designs built for the ages, places that once served noble purposes, are — from my perspective — worth the effort to find a new use in today’s world. But for some, especially among those who control the money and political power, what is seen as the push for progress is worth the loss of the buildings and landscapes that provide continuity with the past. No, Union Station wasn’t going to be saved because of its railroad history and grand architecture alone. It became a landmark in so many minds — providing the motivation behind the effort to save it from the wrecking ball, even in the midst of decay and deterioration — because of the building’s innumerable, varied, and deeply personal connections to people in Middle Tennessee.
Emotions, stories, and memories flow through Union Station like so many trains. Emotions, stories, and memories like mine, for instance, that help tell how I grew to care about the importance of history and place in modern life.
Union Station was incredibly busy in the years before the advent of the automobile, taking men, women, and children to places near and far, creating memories on a daily basis. Many were traveling for pleasure. But others — like African Americans riding in segregated cars during the Great Migration of the 20th century — were looking for a better life or, at least, a different life from the stifling restrictions of the Jim Crow South.
My father had an early encounter with Union Station when he joined the Navy during World War II. The station was never as busy as it was in those years, shipping young men and women like Tom Brown to bases and ultimately battlefields all across the globe. Before the train shed was lost to fire and lack of imagination in 2000, my father and I walked the platforms and studied this engineering marvel as my insatiable interest in history began to morph into a career path in historic preservation.
My parents were part of the post-World War II marriage boom that begat the well-documented baby boom. Both were from the small town of Franklin, a rural farming and commercial center south of Nashville that grew in the early 20th century thanks to the connections made possible by the Interurban Railway, where Granddaddy Brown served a stint as a conductor. My father had just graduated with his engineering degree from Vanderbilt and was enrolled in a training program that led to his life-long career with the Tennessee Valley Authority. Mom, then a couple of years beyond her high school graduation, married my father on June 30, 1950, in downtown Franklin’s First Baptist Church just blocks away from their family homes. Before moving first to Columbia and soon thereafter to Cookeville for my father’s first major position with TVA, Tom and Helen Brown had a honeymoon to take.
Luckily for them, Mary Dixie, my father’s sister who was named after her mother, lived in Chicago. That meant that my parents came to Union Station — like so many honeymooners, soldiers, professionals, laborers, and families before them — and boarded a train bound for the Windy City. There’s a signboard behind the hotel check-in desk today that is from this era. I look up and see the same schedule that my parents saw as excited newlyweds, ready to begin their life’s journey together. The same schedule with those evocative Southern train names: The Azalean, The Humming Bird, Pan-American, The Georgian, Dixie Flyer.
Historic Train Schedule from Nashville’s Union Station
I’ve heard stories my entire life about the theatre shows they saw in the city, the food they ate at the ethnic restaurants that was so foreign to their Southern palates, and their visit to Comiskey Park to see the White Sox. My baseball genes apparently come naturally. Uncle Howard and Aunt Mary Dixie’s next-door neighbors, the Standards, took Mom and Daddy to Comiskey Park to see the White Sox play the St. Louis Browns. Daddy recalled that it was windy and cold, and that Mrs. Standard made newspaper capes to break the wind. The St. Louis players included a few with immortal baseball nicknames from an earlier era. Names like Ribs, Snuffy, Cuddles, and Stubby. What they didn’t see were many of the best players in the game. For while St. Louis had been the third team to integrate Major League Baseball in 1947 with the signing of Hank Thompson and the first team ever to play two black ballplayers in the same game in that same year, the White Sox were not integrated until 1951, when the famous Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso joined the ballclub. The vast majority of teams still had only one or, at the most, two black ballplayers throughout the early 1950s. Many of the game’s finest players were still relegated to the Negro Leagues.
The facts from the trip have been filled in through the years, but the memories always originate with that train ride from Union Station. It is what makes it such a vivid part of my origin story.
Old places matter because their materials and appearances connect with human souls through emotions and memories. For some, those places may be mountains or streams. For others, buildings, neighborhoods, and streetscapes are involved.
The story of the saving of Union Station, like similar accounts of preservation successes in communities big and small, has thousands upon thousands of personal stories intertwined with the brick, stone, marble, and mortar. Stories hold these places up, literally and figuratively, embedding the connections from the past into our lives today and in the future.
Everyone has an origin story and many revolve around places. On that October day in 2009, I just happened to be sitting in the lobby of the place that launched my personal history. Because of the power of stories, this place remains today as a touchstone for innumerable individuals and families.
Emotions and stories flow through places, like the train leaving Union Station with two newlyweds bound for Chicago and a life unimagined ahead.
More to come…
DJB
Image: Ceiling at the restored Union Station Hotel in Nashville by DJB
Composer, fingerstyle guitarist, and harp guitarist extraordinarie Muriel Anderson celebrated a major birthday earlier this month with a live birthday party / concert…and it was a blast! Along with hundreds of other fans listening to the event, I heard wonderful music, had a tour of Muriel and partner Bryan Allen’s Long Island summer home, and watched the guest of honor open presents.
Muriel is one of my guitar heroes, and I’ve written about her work several times in the past. Like here. And here, when I tell the world that I’m in love. And here, when I tell the story of sitting in the baggage claim area at BWI airport so I could here her play a brief concert.
And one of my posts with the most views — Be Present When Serendipity Strikes — was about finally waking up on a flight home from Nashville one summer evening, only to realize that I was sitting next to Muriel and Bryan. From that point on, it was a magical flight.
Muriel Anderson (photo credit: Bryan Allen)
I had hopes of hearing Muriel play live at a house concert this summer, but her tour — like those of all musicians — was cancelled. However, she has been on Facebook Live each Monday with a short concert (because, she said, Chet Atkins and Les Paul used to play on Monday evenings). And that Wednesday evening birthday concert was an extra special treat which is still available for viewing.
Her website bio reminds us that Muriel is the first woman to have won the National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship. Her CD, Nightlight Daylight — with its wonderful cover artwork by Bryan — was chosen as one of the top 10 CDs of the decade by Guitar Player Magazine, and her “Heartstrings” recording accompanied the astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery. She has performed/recorded with Chet Atkins, Les Paul, Victor Wooten, Tommy Emmanuel and the Nashville Chamber Orchestra.
So let’s listen to some music! Muriel played her beautiful composition Two Shores during her birthday concert, noting the appropriateness given their location on Long Island.
A live version of George Harrison’s Here Comes the Sun from the Eclipse CD is certainly worth a listen. And let me encourage you to dive into the song Dandelions, which Muriel wrote for the Nightlight Daylight CD. Last month she posted this video which gives some of the context behind the tune. It is a beautiful story, based on her childhood, that reminds us not to worry about the whole world, but instead encourages each of us to do something good for one person today. That is a timely lesson in our year of pandemic and political chaos.
And we’ll end with another tune played for the birthday concert, the Greek-flavored 13/8 time tune A Baker’s Dozen played on harp guitar and sure to get your blood moving! Bravo!
Happy birthday, Muriel! May you enjoy many more in the years to come.
More to come…
DJB
P.S. – Aw shucks, I couldn’t pass it up, because I love this version so much…so I’ll really end with Muriel explaining the thought process behind how she put the arrangement together while she plays her wonderful version of the Beatles song Day Tripper.
It doesn’t get any better than the Muppets — with help from the Beatles (the song) and Joe Cocker (the arrangement) and Reggie Watts (the singer) and the Late Late Show Band (the music) and James Corden (the show). At this time we live in, we all definitely need a little help from our friends.
MORE TO COME... 