All posts filed under: Random DJB Thoughts

This is where I put anything that is not easily categorized…

Sierra Hull

Red Wing Roots Music Festival 2016 (Or “Thank God for Sierra Hull”)

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Everybody experiences growing pains.  Even music festivals. 2016 was the fourth year for the Red Wings Roots Music Festival held in the beautiful Natural Chimneys Park in Mt. Solon, Virginia.  Hosted by the Steel Wheels, this regional Americana and roots music gathering in the Shenandoah Valley has been eclectic from the beginning, and not all the musical acts have been of the same quality.  But the festival had maintained a nice balance between audiences that were there to party and have a good time and for those who came to listen to some of the country’s best acoustic musicians. (Chris Thile, Sam Bush, I’m With Her, Tim O’Brien, Jon Jorgenson, Claire Lynch, Sarah Jarosz, Del McCoury, and Darrell Scott all showed up over the first three years.) But with the ominous warning on the front page of this year’s festival guide that there would be more “plugged in and turned up” bands, a shift was clearly underway.  Friday’s lineup confirmed that approach…and the balance between the different audience shifted.  Not for the better. I can …

Kefa Cafe

Gratitude turns what we have into enough

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Among the institutions in our community of Silver Spring, few are beloved as much as a small coffee shop run by two sisters who left Ethiopia in the 1980s to escape violence and political upheaval.  Lene and Abeba Tsegaye – with the help of their brother – established Kefa Café in 1996.  In a recent Washington Post article celebrating the reopening of the shop after a fire, Lena said the two sisters, “…wanted their independent coffee shop to be a place where people talked to each other, not just another cafe where people buried their noses in laptops.” There is no WiFi at Kefa, named for the southwestern Ethiopia province where, the 9th-century legend goes, a goat herder named Kaldi saw his animals become so energized after eating coffee beans they couldn’t sleep.  “There is a history about coffee,” Abeba said. “It’s not just about getting caffeinated. People make big decisions around coffee.” The title comes from a sign they recently posted in their window, in celebration of their 20th anniversary in Silver Spring.  I …

Christ Thile

Acoustic music is alive and well

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“When you go to heaven and hear singing, it will sound like these three women.” So opined Chris Thile after the Americana trio I’m With Her finished a short yet moving set in the first half of an incredible three hours of music last evening at the Kennedy Center.  The concert hall’s acoustics were ringing all evening as the sold out crowd not only enjoyed the beautiful harmonies from I’m With Her’s Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O’Donovan, but also the instrumental talents and music-making of mandolinist extraordinaire Thile and the Punch Brothers, along with Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyers, virtuosi of the banjo and upright bass respectively. The Kennedy’s Center policy against photography leaves me using old photos from other concerts, but that hardly matters. The music was the focus last evening. Thile was invited to curate a four-day American Acoustic Music Festival, and Friday evening’s show was clearly the headliner.  The Punch Brothers  opened the first half of the show with a tight set capped by the raucous Rye Whiskey.  I’m With Her followed, with …

A Philly Family Weekend

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Candice, Claire, Andrew and I gathered this weekend in Philadelphia to celebrate the wedding of Julia Pentz and Barry Katz.  It was a special time for us all. Gathering with friends from our fifteen years when we lived in the Shenandoah Valley community of Staunton, Virginia (and with their children – who now live around the world) was a special treat.  Candice and I remember when Julia was born. Over the years we have seen Julia and her parents at least once a year and we are delighted that she has found such a wonderful life partner in Barry.  The setting at the Curtis Arboretum was beautiful, the new friends we made were delightful (good people attract good people), and the threat of summer thunderstorms never materialized. We also had a great time getting acquainted with parts of the city.  As I posted earlier, Candice and I arrived first and explored some of the Philadelphia food scene at Amada on Friday evening.  By Saturday morning Claire had joined us as we wandered through the multitude …

The Value of Six

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Leonard Pitts, columnist for the Miami Herald, has written a sobering column this morning entitled “Trust me, you know someone who has been raped.” “The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network says that one woman in every six has been the victim of an attempted or completed sexual assault. It’s an awesome, awful number. Think about it in terms of women you know. Think about Bonnie, Kadijah, Heather, Consuela, Sarah and Kim. One, two, three, four, five … Six. Maybe she’s never told you, so maybe you think it didn’t — couldn’t — have happened, not to one of your six. But the numbers are what the numbers are. Maryum, Stephanie, Yumiko, Keshia, Laurie … and Pam. One, two, three, four, five … And six. It’s not a big number. You were counting past it in kindergarten.” Of course he’s right.  We all know someone who has been the victim of sexual assault. And we all know people – from work, social circles, extended family, really anywhere – who have been raped and never talk …

Fine Food in Philly

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The Browns are gathering in Philadelphia this weekend to celebrate the wedding of Julia – the daughter of our dear friends Ellen and Lundy Pentz –  and Barry Katz.  Claire arrives from the west coast late tonight, while Andrew arrives mid-day tomorrow, after recovering from the adrenaline rush of attending tonight’s Beyoncé concert in Baltimore.  (Can we say “excited?!”) That left Candice and me to our own devices today.  Naturally, we found some fine Philadelphia food. Julia and Barry had included Chef Jose Garces’ Amada restaurant in their list of recommended places to eat near the hotel.  We checked out the web site and jumped on it.  Here’s the site’s description of Chef Garces: “Since opening Amada in Philadelphia in 2005, Chef Jose Garces has emerged as an enormous talent and one of the nation’s most gifted chefs and restaurateurs. Today, he is the owner and operator of more than a dozen restaurants across the country, plus a thriving event planning division and 40-acre Luna Farm. He is a 2009 winner of the James Beard …

I Do Love a Good Historic Hotel!

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After a long week of travel, it is good to land in a wonderful historic hotel for a couple of days of family time with Claire.  This beauty is the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, one of my personal favorites where I’ve stayed in the past when in Southern California. Have a great Memorial Day weekend.  As you kick off the summer, take the time to remember those who have sacrificed for our country. More to come… DJB

Look Beyond Borders

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Amnesty International has posted a powerful video experiment to help all of us think about refugees as people, and not just as someone different from us. The video “is based on a theory that four minutes of uninterrupted eye contact increases intimacy.”  The theory, developed by psychologist Arthur Aron in 1997, was applied by Amnesty International to the refugee crisis, sitting refugees from Syria and Somalia opposite people from Belgium, Italy, Germany, Poland and the UK, with overwhelmingly positive results.  Here’s how the group describes its work: We decided to conduct a simple experiment during which refugees and Europeans sat across from each other and looked each other in the eyes. We recorded these very human encounters and the short film speaks for itself. Indeed it does speak powerfully for itself.  Do yourself a favor and watch these four minutes.  It is a good reminder of our common humanity, which seems to be in short supply in this political season. More to come… DJB

Cheerfulness revisited

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I was thinking (again) about cheerfulness recently while putting together a long to-do list — which is how I feel prepared, if not always cheerful. Garrison Keillor — the soon-to-be-retired host of A Prairie Home Companion — has written that, “Cheerfulness is a choice, like choosing what color socks to wear, the black or the red. Happiness is something that occurs, or it doesn’t, and don’t hold your breath. Joy is a theological idea, pretty rare among us mortals and what many people refer to as “joy” is what I would call ‘bragging.’…Euphoria is a drug.”  Keillor suggests that cheerfulness is a…“habit you assume in the morning and hang on to as best you can for the rest of the day….that spiritual awareness that Buddhism holds up as enlightenment, in which one does not covet more than one’s small lot, one is free of animosity, and one lives in the immediate present, day by day, without dread of what might befall.” That sounds about right to me.  And while I’ve written this as a reminder …

A Blessing for our Children

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It was Thanksgiving Day, 1982. Candice and I were spending our first married Thanksgiving with my parents. After the meal, Dad gathered us all together and gave the following blessing to his children, daughters-in-law and son-in-law.  (He later expanded it to include his grandchildren.) The blessing was read at his funeral last Wednesday, and it was hand-written in my father’s Bible that we brought home with us. It says all you need to know about how my parents thought about their responsibility in raising children and their release of us as adults to find our own path to grow into the people we are. Blessing for our Children Your mother and I give you: Unconditional love, and to each one of you we give all our love.  Love expands to meet the need. Unconditional acceptance based on who you are – our sons and our daughters – our sons-in-law and our daughters-in-law and our grandchildren. Not on what you do or don’t do. Release to be the person God intends for you to be.  Release …