All posts filed under: Random DJB Thoughts

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

Wooden Bats and Summer Nights

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One of our joys of summer is watching and supporting college wooden bat baseball.  This is baseball for college players to help them learn to hit with wooden bats after years of hitting with aluminum bats.  (Don’t you just hate the “ping” of the aluminum bat on ball?) We’re lucky to have one of the top wooden bat leagues in the country here in the DC area – the Cal Ripken Sr. Collegiate Baseball League – with two teams within easy driving distance.  We’ve had season passes to the Bethesda Big Train for a number of years and we also catch some games of the Silver Spring-Takoma Thunderbolts. Candice helped organize a special event for her employer – Christ Episcopal School Night – at the Bethesda Big Train game on Friday.  It was great fun.  Some 80 CES parents, staff, and students came out as part of a 700+ crowd on a beautiful summer night to see the Big Train absolutely crush the Alexandria Aces.  When we left after 7 (we had children to collect), …

9:45:00 GMT

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Andrew wrote the following essay for an English class and it was accepted for the literary magazine at his high school.  So – from today’s guest blogger Andrew Brown – I’m proud to present 9:45:00 GMT. * * * * * Today’s society uses time as its matrix. Everything we do commences at time x and concludes at time y. Every person who wants to live in our urban environment needs some way to tell time if they wish to function properly in our world, whether by wristwatch, cell phone, or computer. We use time as the basis for everything we do. My day begins at 5:45 every morning, classes begin at 8:00; lunch is at 1:30 p.m., and sports begin at 3:30; I arrive at home anywhere from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., depending on what I do after school. I eat dinner, finish my homework, and go to bed any time from 9:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. This schedule has become more than a routine: now it’s more a state of existence. I first …

Tiger Stadium Going, Going…

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Yet another baseball icon may soon be history.  The City of Detroit began demolition yesterday on the last remaining – and most historic – parts of Tiger Stadium.  This in spite of the fact that the city had agreed to maintain the stadium until an appropriate adaptive reuse of the stadium or a viable new use of the site was in place.   Neither has happened.  With the city’s commencement of demolition, Detroit is moving towards having yet another vacant piece of land with no plans for redevelopment in place. A court injunction is in place this weekend, stopping the demolition for a short time.  To read the story – and find out how you can contact the City Council and Mayor’s Office in Detroit to oppose the demolition plans – visit PreservationNation’s blog. Tiger Stadium was built in the same year as Fenway Park.  While Boston figured out how to save its iconic ballpark and make it one of the most beloved places in America (except to Yankee fans), Detroit went with the allure of …

My mama done told me – Part II

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My cousin Marcia wrote after reading my original post entitled My mama done told me to pass along some of her favorite sayings of our Grandmother — Mary Dixie Brown. You can only afford what you pay for. You have to suffer to be beautiful. And the Sir Walter Scott quote, “Oh, what tangled webs we weave, when we practice to deceive.” Marcia also reminded me that Grandmother liked to use the Uncle Remus quote when she first saw you in the morning: How’s your copperosity sagaciating? Grandmother loved words and the sound of words. My love of her and my father is the main reason we used her maiden name “Bearden” for Andrew’s middle name, a name he shares with his Grandfather. More to come…DJB Image: My grandmother and grandfather: Mary Dixie Bearden Brown and George Alma Brown

Jazz Brunch

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You gotta love search engines and teenagers. Today is Candice’s birthday.  She loves food and loves listening to jazz.  So I asked Andrew to find us a place for a Sunday jazz brunch. Typing “Jazz Brunch Washington DC” into Google turned up a range of options.  We skimmed them, realized that Chef Geoff’s in Wesley Heights was a five minute drive from the Cathedral, made sure there was something on the menu for everyone, and then Andrew made our online reservations. Just like that we had our birthday plans covered and earlier today were introduced to a new (for us) restaurant in Washington.   The two guitar & bass jazz trio was good.  The food was vary tasty.  And the time to celebrate with Candice couldn’t have been better. All in all, a delightful way to spend a couple of hours on a beautiful spring Sunday. More to come… DJB

Bluegrass Hair and Obscene Solos

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The bluegrass world’s answer to the satirical paper The Onion – the always off-kilter Bluegrass Intelligencer – is at it again with several not-to-be-believed posts from the world of roots music. In the wake of last weekend’s DelFest Bluegrass Festival and bad weather in the mid-Atlantic region, BI’s intrepid staff reports on how rain, hail, and gale-force winds could not dislodge the “bluegrass hair” of the host Del McCoury band. As reported by BI online: On Saturday, an unfortunate combination of gale force wind, torrential rain, powerful lightning, and crushing downfalls of hail rocked DelFest, the popular musical event hosted by the Del McCoury Band. Importantly, the relentless onslaught of life-threatening weather was not sufficient to disturb the hair of anyone in the McCoury family. Another BI post reported on the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that a solo by  guitarist extraordinarie Bryan Sutton was “pornographic and obscene.”   What, you didn’t hear about that one from Nina Totenberg?  Well, the NPR legal affairs reporter can’t be expected to catch everything.  That’s why we depend on the …

My mama done told me

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Yesterday’s mail included a package from my father with a note and three CDs.   My father likes to make “remarks” at family gatherings, and so recently he compiled a number of those comments, plus other letters and notes of personal meaning to him, and sent them all on CDs to his children, grandchildren, and close friends.  I’ve spent more than a few minutes crying this morning as I’ve read through remembrances he wrote of my mother. One of the things he passed along on the CD was a compilation of things his mother — my grandmother — told him through the years.  He titled it My Mama Done Told Me after the line from the great Ella Fitzgerald’s Blues in the Night. My grandmother, Mary Dixie Bearden Brown (pictured as a young bride with my grandfather, George Brown), was a wise woman, and I remember so many things about her.  She lived with us the last 10 years of her life, but she was always one of my favorite people from the time I was a little …

Restored Midland Theatre Among Kansas City’s Gems

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It is always a treat to travel to a city and find an unexpected gem.  That was the case this past week in Kansas City. While on a tour of Main Street in downtown KC, we stopped in to see the magnificent Midland Theatre.  The historic photo at left comes from the website Cinema Treasures, which catalogs great historic theatres and gives you a sense of the beauty of this amazing place. The Midland was built in 1927 for $4 million – a huge number for the period.  But once you step inside and see the restored and opulent interior, you’ll know where the money went.  Once a movie palace, the Midland is now home to live events.  It was easy to see the role this landmark plays in the downtown’s renaissance.   Do yourself a favor the next time you’re in Kansas City and find a way to visit this beautiful place on Main Street. More to come… DJB

Great Day for a Ballgame

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Check one more off the list of MLB ballparks visited as I joined several friends and colleagues to take advantage of our work trip to Kansas City and catch the Royals at Kauffman Stadium on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  Barb, Dolores (pictured with DJB at left), Barb’s husband Rob, and Royce joined our hosts the Kempers for a great day at the ballpark.  Kauffman, built in 1973, is one of the earliest of the new modern baseball-only stadiums that helped turned Kansas City into a mecca for sports architects.  They just completed a major $250 million renovation before the start of this season.  The clean, modernist design has held up well and helped end the era of cookie-cutter multi-purpose stadiums. With two architects and the rest preservationists in our group, we spent a lot of time talking about the architecture.   But we primarily spent the day having a great deal of fun.  From the beginning, the Royals have come up with some great activities that make you smile.  It was Kids Day at the ballpark and kids …

Searching and Finding More to Come…

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So you went to Google, typed in a search term and found this blog called More to Come…  Here, dear readers, are the most popular terms that have brought visitors to this corner of the blogosphere. Farnsworth House – Virtually every day I have at least one visitor seeking out information about this architectural icon.  Back in 2008, I wrote a post based on my day job where I updated friends and family on the flooding at the world famous Farnsworth House.  Since my employer – the National Trust for Historic Preservation – has owned the Farnsworth House (operated by our partners at Landmarks Illinois) it has had two major floods.  Seems those 100-year floods come more frequently than they use to!  If you want to read more about the flooding at the house – or just learn more about this architectural masterpiece – check out the PreservationNation.org site. Good Places to Raise Children – Six months ago, Business Week magazine named my home town – Murfreesboro, Tennessee – as one of the top places …