All posts filed under: Random DJB Thoughts

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

Merry Christmas

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Merry Christmas from More to Come… to all our regular readers and to those who find us by accident on that great information highway.  We’re with family this year, which is always a bonus since we don’ t have immediate family in the Washington area.  The presents are out, the calls from all parts of the country have already started, and we’re working on a great Christmas morning breakfast. As a Christmas gift, here’s a video of Canadian singer-songwriter Allison Crowe singing one of our favorite seasonal hymns, In the Bleak Midwinter.  Enjoy, and best wishes for the holiday season. More to come… DJB

16 Wonderful Years

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Time passes too quickly.  Sixteen years ago our twins were born and life in our family changed forever.  I have been enriched by their beauty, inquisitiveness, talent, laughter, tears, art, openness, and love.  Having just spent yesterday afternoon with the two of them, I was reminded of why the last 16 years have been such a joy.  I posted three of my favorite pictures from when they were young. But the day was also a reminder of why we strive to live in the moment.  Long-time friends spent the weekend with us.  We shared stories, jokes, and laughter and made new memories.  We talked about the upcoming birth of their first grandchild.  But as they were leaving, they received news of the death of a dear friend.  At about the same time, an email from work told me that a colleague’s sister had taken a turn for the worse and was very ill.  We also had a lovely visit with a classmate of Andrew and Claire’s who stopped by with her Mom to surprise the twins with 16th …

Save Mid-City New Orleans

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The National Trust for Historic Preservation is working with the Foundation for Historical Louisiana and other partners to try and stop the demolition of significant portions of the historic Mid-City neighborhood in New Orleans.  The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Louisiana State University recently announced the selection of the Mid-City neighborhood for the site of their new hospitals. As the National Trust website PreservationNation.org states: The new hospitals would needlessly destroy the historic neighborhood around Charity Hospital where residents have been rebuilding and restoring their community since Hurricane Katrina. We believe this decision was a serious error and urge LSU and the VA to explore the alternative sites that would restore needed health care facilities faster and at less cost, while preserving much more of the historic Mid-City neighborhood. The video below is just one of several prepared by the Foundation for Historical Louisiana where the affected residents talk about the decision to demolish their neighborhood.  Click on the link above to see more videos and learn what you can do to try and reverse this …

For Mom, on what would have been her 78th birthday

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Mother was born on December 9, 1930.  Today would have been her 78th birthday, had cancer not claimed her on New Year’s Day 1998.  For the past ten years there’s seldom a day that passes without something happening that reminds me of her.  She was a remarkable woman with a large circle of friends and an even larger capacity for love and service. After I graduated from college and left home, Mother and I maintained a weekly correspondence for many years.  She was a “newsy” letter writer, with information about the family mixed in with items from town, updates on old friends, tidbits about both our careers, and extensive sports news.  (Mother was my loyal co-spectator for games on television.) Several years after she died, I published a collection of her letters from 1980 – 1997 entitled Rich in Love.  Over the course of those 17 years she wrote about love, death, babies, pets, advice, and family.  Her letters included a four-page typewritten description of our wedding she prepared for family members who couldn’t attend.  She wrote one of …

Playing Music

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Playing music with friends over Thanksgiving has pushed me to reorder my schedule to find even more time to play.  And – no surprise here – I’ve loved it.  I’m reacquainting myself with some of the playing of Norman Blake (check out the Nashville Blues video below of Norman and the Rising Fawn String Ensemble) and other musicians I admire. In the delightful book Practicing, author and musician Glenn Kurtz says, For me, sitting down to play has very little to do with discipline.  “It isn’t just education and discipline that makes one so devoted to work…it is simple joy.  It is one’s natural sense of well-being, to which nothing else can compare.”  Love of music brings me to the practice room. I am finding that joy in playing again and it is a wonderful feeling. So I’m off to play a bit now, and then tomorrow evening I’ll be at the Celtic Christmas concert of the Institute of Musical Traditions for some great acoustic guitar by Al Petteway and Robin Bullock.  If you’re in the Washington, …

St. Nicholas Day and a love of childhood

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I awoke early this morning and came downstairs while everyone is still asleep.  It is St. Nicholas Day, and I had to smile at the sight of two rather large teenage shoes — one from each child — sitting expectantly on the landing.  The memories came rushing back. We’re not German and I didn’t grow up celebrating St. Nicholas Day, but Candice loves a good holiday — especially one associated with a saint that could help counterbalance the commercialization of Christmas.  So soon after the twins arrived we decided we’d celebrate St. Nicholas Day and it became a tradition.  The gifts are similar year to year.  Candice always finds the gold coin chocolates.  The gifts are modest.  This year they include something for Claire’s hair and a “Bush countdown calendar” for our progressive teenage son.  With St. Nicholas Day, the twins birthday, and Christmas all coming within a three week period, we have to be prudent on the gift buying front. That’s what I like most about our St. Nicholas Day celebrations:  the simple nature of the children’s …

I Believe Thanksgiving is my New Favorite Holiday

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I’m not sure what has been my favorite holiday, but I think Thanksgiving has now taken over the top rung on the ladder.  I think it may be the fact that big business hasn’t yet figured out a way to commercialize it.  Or perhaps it is the fact that food plays a big role.  I like the focus on the act of being thankful for all we have in a country that’s been abundantly blessed. Then again, maybe it is just that we’ve figured out how to get together with people we really enjoy and have a very relaxing time.  Whatever the reason, it is my new favorite holiday. Candice and I have always enjoyed Thanksgiving.  For many years we traveled over the mountain from Staunton to a wonderful inn, Prospect Hill, for a bountiful Thanksgiving dinner.  It was especially meaningful to us because we honeymooned at Prospect Hill while we were very poor graduate students.  Little did we realize that just a year after our wedding we’d move to Virginia and be an hour away.  With …

Slow Blogging

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The Sunday New York Times included a story on “Slow Blogging.”  I had never heard of the term (although I am aware of the slow food movement), but I found myself agreeing with the rejection of immediacy, the thought of blogging as meditation, and the precept that not all things worth reading are written quickly.  This approach is a deliberate smack at the popular group blogs like Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Valleywag and boing-bong, which can crank out as many as 50 items a day.  On those sites, readers flood in and advertisers sign on.  Spin and snark abound.  Earnest descriptions of the first frost of the season are nowhere to be found. In between the slow bloggers and the rapid-fire ones, there is a vast middle, hundreds of thousands of writers who are not trying to attract advertising or buzz but do want to reach like-minded colleagues and friends.  These people have been the bedrock of the genre since its start, yet recently there has been a sea change in their output:  They are increasingly …

Searching the Internet and Finding…The Edge of the American West

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In yet another of my posts on very interesting web sites found while searching the Internet, I bring you today The Edge of the American West.  This is a site that contains writings by historians and philosophers, leading the site to suggest that “History is Philosophy teaching by examples. ” The interests of these men and women run the gamut, if recent posts are any example.  They do a regular This Day in History type of post, one of the most recent being about the day that Richard Nixon declared he wasn’t a crook.  To give  you a sense of the politics here, the post is entitled “Yes You Are.  And Also a Liar.”   There are posts on camel metaphors (having to do with choosing cabinet members), and the day in 1972 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average first closed above 1,000.  (We may be headed back there!) But I knew this was a website worth checking when I read Aw, that could have been MY head.  Here the writer tells the story of how he …