All posts tagged: Random DJB Thoughts

Remembering Don

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  It is the kind of email you never want to receive: a long-time friend was injured in a serious car accident on Monday. Wednesday he was taken off life support. Funeral on Friday. So Candice and I left early this morning to drive the three hours to our old Shenandoah Valley home of Staunton to remember Don, mourn his death which came too early, and celebrate his life with his wife Ruth, son Philip, and many other friends. The service began in the beautiful Temple House of Israel, designed in 1925 by Staunton architect Sam Collins in the Moorish Revival Style. The haunting Jewish melodies sung by a trio of women rolled around the wood, plaster, and tile interior. Rabbi Joe Blair nailed Don in the eulogy.  There was much laughter and more than a few tears. Don was one-of-a-kind.  He loved telling jokes while sitting around a table filled with wine, food he had cooked, family, and friends. I had my first pomegranate one evening after Don sliced the fruit and passed it …

Earl Scruggs, R.I.P.

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Earl. That’s the only name you had to say in bluegrass circles and everyone immediately knew the subject.  Jimmy Martin could open the seminal Will the Circle Be Unbroken album by saying “Earl never did do that,” and you knew exactly what he meant. Few people define an instrument and a musical style so completely as Earl Scruggs, who passed away today at age 88, did for bluegrass banjo.  Bill Monroe will forever be known as the Father of Bluegrass, but it wasn’t until he brought a young Earl Scruggs on the stage of the Ryman Auditorium for a Grand Ole Opry show in 1945 that the full sound of bluegrass was realized.  I’ll let Richard Smith, author of Can’t You Hear Me Calling:  The Life of Bill Monroe, pick up the story from here. “For Earl’s first night on the Opry, Monroe picked out a fast number that would show off the newcomer’s dazzling style — “White House Blues,” an old song recounting the 1901 William McKinley assassination.  It was a perfect selection.  Scruggs …

Changing Seasons

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I love March Madness.  After a boring set of games on Thursday (although I’m glad Vanderbilt’s game was somewhat pedestrian), Friday finally got us in to the “madness” part of the event.  Two 15s beating number 2 seeds on the same day – that’s as good as it gets! But as much as I enjoy these weeks of one-and-done basketball, I had an experience this afternoon that really gets me excited – sitting down with a friend over a glass of wine and choosing games out of the Washington Nationals season ticket package we’d purchased together.  Now I’m pumped! Basketball is fun, but baseball is on another plane.  So in honor of the distribution of the season tickets, I give you a smattering of baseball quotations to bring a smile to your face and anticipation to your heart: There are two theories on hitting the knuckleball.  Unfortunately, neither of them works.  (Legendary hitting coach Charlie Lau) It doesn’t take much to get me up for baseball.  Once the National Anthem plays, I get chills.  I …

DJB is listening to…

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Many of my younger (read “hipper”) Facebook friends have regular status updates that read, “Joe Cool is listening to Still Sound by Toro Y Moi  on Spotify.”  Or something similar. I’m behind the times (what else is new), so somehow I haven’t gotten around to letting everyone know what I’m listening to at any time.  Plus, my children would be mortified.  They run from the room when my iPod is in the dock. But every now and then I listen to something and want to tell someone.  I have to do it the old-fashioned way:  through my blog. I don’t usually drive in to work, but today was different.  And so instead of the iPod, I picked up a couple of CDs (you remember them) – Norman Blake’s Live at McCabe’s (which I’ve written about before) and the Tony Rice/Norman Blake duet album.  These are two beautifully simple albums that are anything but simple musically. Blake and Rice are in the upper pantheon of acoustic country/bluegrass/newgrass guitarists.  They’ve both played on seminal albums that set …

A Note of Thanksgiving As I Enter My 58th Year

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I had difficulty getting out of bed today…the last morning wake up of my 57th year. For some inexplicable reason my life is full – on the verge of overflowing – on the eve of my 57th birthday.  (I had to ask Candice, and she confirmed – when you turn 57 you are beginning your 58th year.  I never was great at math.)  First and foremost, Candice is wrapping up her stay in the hospital after successful hip replacement surgery on Wednesday.  We head home today to continue the recovery.  Both children are getting ready to go overseas (Claire by herself to Sweden; Andrew to Costa Rica) over spring break. Yikes!  How did that happen? My sister texted me last night to say my father went to the emergency room with a lung infection, high enzymes, and low sodium…and the news got worse when she called to say he had a mild heart attack this morning. I just spoke with my brother and Dad just came out of surgery where they found 95% blockage in one …

If I Had a Vote (Or “Quest for the Best, The Final Chapter”)

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Tonight is when the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announce their awards, and for once I’m ready! Friends who have known me for a long time will find it impossible to believe that I’ve seen eight of the nine Best Picture nominees BEFORE the Oscars are awarded…much less that I have an opinion on them.  I’m just not a film junkie. But empty nestdom brought a change in habits, and Candice and I made a pledge to see all the nominees.  We made it through eight before life, health and work kept us from closing out our pledge…but since Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is NEVER mentioned in all the pre-Oscar write-ups as having a chance of winning, I think we’re on safe ground here. Number eight in our marathon was The Tree of Life – which we watched today thanks to iTunes.  Easily the most complex of the nominees, Terrence Malick’s film was not among my favorites even though it attempted to explore greater depths on issues of life …

A Day at Joshua Tree

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National Parks are all unique.  They have different histories, different stories of how they were saved, different challenges in today’s world. I was fortunate today to be introduced to one of the most unusual:  the Joshua Tree National Park in California.  With a half-day to myself, I stuck my toe into the vast park where the Mojave and Colorado deserts converge and was fascinated with what I saw. What follows are photos from the northwestern edge of the park – from the village of Joshua Tree down to Key’s View, where one gets a remarkable panorama of the San Andreas Fault.  Here’s a bit from the park’s brochure about what one sees in this part of Joshua Tree: Amid the boulder stacks are pinyon pines, junipers, scrub oaks, Mojave yuccas, and Mojave prickly pear cacti….What tells you most you are truly in the Mojave Desert is the wild-armed Joshua tree.  It isn’t really a tree but a species of yucca….Joshua trees can grow over 40 feet tall – at the leisurely rate of an inch …

Baseball in America (Academic Edition)

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I have found a place in America where February baseball lives! For the Presidents Day holiday, I’m in Southern California for Family Weekend at Claire’s college.  We’re new to this whole Parents/Family Weekend deal, but if today is any indication I could definitely get use to these trips! This morning, I visited two political science classes that were very interesting.  One compared the works of Luther and Calvin; the other focused on the U.S. Congress.  Claire joined me for lunch at her favorite dining hall  (most of her classes – of the science variety – weren’t open to parents).  But as she prepares for the conference championships this weekend for her swim team, I’ve found myself with choices for how to spend my time that are entirely up to me. Which takes me to Baseball in America. That’s the title of the class I attended after lunch.  It was a synopsis of a fall semester interdisciplinary class that was designed to introduce freshmen to the rigors of college-level writing.  Taught by a life-long Dodgers fan …

A Quest for the Best (Picture, That Is)

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Never in a single one of my 56 (almost 57) years have I seen all the films nominated for the Academy Awards Best Picture category.  Heck, most years I’m lucky to have seen one! This year will be different. What’s the use of having an empty nest if you don’t do things differently now that the kids are away, right? When the Academy announced its nominees for 2011 earlier this week, a light went off in my head.  Heck, I’d already seen two of the films:  War Horse and The Descendants.  How difficult could it be to see the others before the Academy Awards show late in February? How many do they nominate anyway, five? So I shot an email off to Candice and suggested we try to catch all the nominees before the show.  Candice – who would say my major failing as a human being is the fact that I seldom (read almost never) go to the movies – eagerly accepted. Okay, we’re on!  So let’s go to the Oscar website and make …