All posts tagged: Random DJB Thoughts

No WiFi

Be civil, be urban

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Each morning on my walk to our offices at the Watergate, I stop off at Filter coffeehouse for a coffee to begin the work day.  What first drew me to this particular coffee shop on I Street, NW between 19th and 20th (as opposed to the 15 others I pass in my 25 minute walk) is the sign on the door.  It reads, simply, “Be Civil, Be Urban.” I was intrigued.  My interest was really piqued when I stepped inside and found urban planning books and architectural models on the bookshelf, a prominent “Nope, No WiFi” sign, and a quote on the wall from architectural historian Spiro Kostof that reads, “Civilization, in this strict sense, is the art of living in towns.” Living and working in groups – in towns, cities, and organizations – led us to move toward a civilized society.  But civilization is not guaranteed. How we live and work together is a key to productivity, learning, growth, and happiness.  Civility is — unfortunately — in short supply in much of our national …

Duffle bag

The real voyage of discovery

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I was in college before I took my first airplane ride – a trip from Nashville to Philadelphia for (no surprise here) the 1976 National Trust Preservation Conference.  It was probably another ten-to-fifteen years after that before I traveled outside the U.S. Growing up in a large, middle-class family in Tennessee in the 1950s and 1960s, we didn’t just jump on an airplane when we felt the urge. My children find this difficult to comprehend, since they took their first flight at 6 months of age, and by the time they were in college the number of countries they had visited required both hands to count.  When I tell them that my grandparents probably stayed in Tennessee their entire lifetimes, they begin to recognize the dramatic changes that take place from one generation to the next. I’ve been working to make up for lost time when it comes to travel.  Both personally and professionally, I have the opportunity and privilege to travel to many places both in the U.S. and around the world.  I was thinking …

Ants Don’t Get Stuck in Traffic Jams

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The Next City website had a recent post by a physicist, Laurie Winkless, entitled 7 Things I Learned While Trying to Figure Out How Cities Work.  Number 3 jumped out at me, and I’ll quote it here: “We’ve all been caught up in phantom traffic jams, where for no discernible reason, traffic builds up and then eases. These traffic shockwaves are officially known as “jamitons,” and they can arise even if everyone is driving perfectly. But ants don’t have the same issue: Even when their highways are packed, they don’t get gridlocked. It seems that it’s because ants self-organize into lanes, and give each other a lot of headway, which buys them more time to react to any incidents up ahead … maybe a lesson in there for us all.” Maybe a lesson indeed!  I looked up from my book on a recent commute on the Metro, when I felt several people rush by my seat.  What was the hurry?  It turns out that they had entered at Gallery Place and were all pushing to …

Reflection. Meekness. Responsibility.

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In February 1990, Václav Havel – the great Czech playwright, intellectual, and dissident – made an address to the United States Congress.  Havel had been president of Czechoslovakia for only two months when he made his speech.  However, he had a lifetime of experience in living through, and responding to, different political systems. Among his thoughts that day was the following: “…the salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness, and in human responsibility.” Havel’s words are as important today as ever. Have a good week. More to come… DJB

Six (or Less) Degrees of Separation

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My father stayed in touch with people all over the world.  But I was still surprised earlier this week when the Senior Minister of First Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia – where I was speaking – quickly made the association between me and my hyper-connected father. Historic Savannah Foundation invited me to be the guest speaker at their annual meeting, which was being held in the historic sanctuary of First Baptist Church.  In a bit of chit-chat before the meeting began with their senior minister, Dr. John Finley, I mentioned that I grew up attending First Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. That’s when Dr. Finley looked at me and asked, “Are you Tom’s son?” I must have looked pretty dumb-founded, because he quickly added, “My first job out of college at Vanderbilt was as a youth minister in First Baptist in Murfreesboro.”  Dr. Finley was there in the mid-1970s for three months, and became friends with my mom and dad, as well as the staff and others.  Daddy kept in touch and even visited Savannah …

All Souls

Going out in a blaze of glory

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Last evening’s Commemoration of All Faithful Departed service at our church was beautiful and personally meaningful.  I had it marked on my calendar for some time, as I wanted to attend to remember my father, who passed away earlier this year. The choir’s music was beautiful, with Mozart’s Requiem interspersed between the readings.  The first of those readings is from the Book of Wisdom and begins, “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall ever touch them.” We put the names of loved ones departed into a basket, and during the prayers of the people each name was read while members of the congregation could come forward and light a candle. (As an aside, I loved hearing baseball legend Monte Irvin remembered among the departed.) Lovely. Thoughtful. Deeply moving. And when I saw that The Rev. Emily Griffin was the evening’s preacher, I knew all three of those feelings would continue.  We have three very insightful and thoughtful priests who enlighten us each in their own way with …

Cultivating a (wise) sense of humor

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We are made by what would break us.  In every life, inexplicable things happen. It is difficult to respond to these challenges, but I’ve noted before that we learn to walk by falling down. The beginning of wisdom often results from “the dramatic and more ordinary moments where what has gone wrong becomes an opening to more of yourself and part of your gift to the world.” Those words were written by Krista Tippett, the Peabody Award-winning broadcaster of On Being and a 2014 recipient of the National Humanities Medal from President Obama.  She has published a new work based in part on her years of conversation with poets, scientists, philosophers, theologians, and activists.  Becoming Wise:  An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, is a thoughtful book, full of insight. Tippett indicates she wrote about wisdom because “one of its qualities…is about joining inner life with our outer presence in the world. The litmus test of wisdom is the imprint it makes on the world around it…” In this new work, Tippett writes …