A poignant view of the personal side of filmmaker Ken Burns, pioneer of the “Ken Burns Effect,” the panning and zooming of still photos to create a sense of movement.

His mother died of cancer when he was 11. 

“It might be that what I’m engaged in, in an historical pursuit, is a thin layer of perhaps a thickly disguised waking of the dead…that I try to make Abraham Lincoln, and Jackie Robinson, and Louis Armstrong come alive. And it may be very obvious and very close to home who I’m actually trying to wake up.”

Curt and I just finished watching Chuck Colson’s Memorial Service held in the Washington Cathedral, on May 16th, 2012. It is close to 2 hours, but time well spent. You can scan the program to see the musical selections and the order of service.

His daughter Emily’s remarks were awesome. Any father would want his daughter to be able to say what she said. The music was over-the-top wonderful. We need to be nourished by the words of the Bible spoken. There was a joyful solemnity infused into the whole service.

I love a good funeral.

Heading out the door, remembering that my iPod needed to be re-charged, I swung by the library to pick up audiobook. As I scanned the shelves, someone bumped into me and apologized. “Oh, it’s you!” my dear friend Jan said. We were both in the same lane: looking for a good listen on a long, solo driving trip. In her hand was The Heart of a Soldier, which she pressed into mine. “I just finished this: it’s quite good, you’ll appreciate it,” she assured me.

That’s how I came to listen to Kate Blaise’s memoir of a military marriage. The first half could be the story of any bright-eyed spunky grand-daughter of a Lutheran minister raised in a small town. I had read David McCullough’s Truman last summer, so I connected with the flavor of Missouri.

My interest was peaked after Kate and Mike—high-school sweethearts—combine marriage and the military. I am neither a fan of women in combat positions nor of married couples living in separate quarters; yet I found Kate’s story compelling. She is honest about the stress of dual military careers. Because she held a higher rank than her husband, he saluted her in public. They were stationed in Korea when the 9-11 attack was made; later they were deployed in Iraq. I had just started the last disc when I arrived home. The next morning I sat down and wept—unable to combine listening with cooking or housework—as I came to the heart-breaking conclusion. Like all good stories, this one stuck with me long after I had finished it.

When Mike and I did manage to squeeze in a weekend together, we fought over even the smallest things: where to eat, what movie to see. We had fallen out of the habit of being together. Our visits, thought short, were extremely stressful. There was the pressure to get along because we didn’t know when we would see each other again; the pressure of squeezing a month’s worth of good times into a weekend when what we needed to do was resolve countless problems and issues. There was simply too much catching up to do and too little time to do it. We were fighting and clawing to feel needed in each other’s lives. 125

You won’t find a gushy, sentimental story: Kate strikes me as a stoic. You won’t agree with all her opinions. But if you are interested in a military memoir that isn’t so edgy that you might lose your lunch (there is mild profanity), if you are curious about a life as a woman in the military, if you are interested in a ground-level view of Iraq, I would recommend The Heart of a Soldier. Reading it was a vivid reminder to me of the risks our soldiers take and the sacrifices they make.   

Here is the loot I brought home from my brother’s house. He must love me: he let me borrow anything from his vast Teaching Company library.

David and I share a thirst for learning. Several years back, I bought a suitcase in Pennsylvania and filled it with bulky Teaching Company courses—mostly Medieval studies and music history—on cassette. Did you know that you can replace the cassettes with CDs for $10?

Luther, Literature and Lee. How is that for good stuff?

Color me happy.

Label me loved.

Thank you, David.

Forget Facebook.

There is a new trend. It is rapidly rising within airport bathrooms. I blush to tell you that many do not flush the toilet.

It is anecdotal evidence, but on Monday—across the country—four out of four toilets needed a cleansing flush before use. Ever the cultural analyst, I’ve been swishing this trend around my head. Why no flush?

1. No time.  Not one second to lose! Onward! She wants the front of the line at the baggage carousel, the prime seat at the gate…to hurry up and wait.

2. Conscientious objector. Some folks oppose the draft. Others oppose the drift of water down the pipes. It is the public expression of this conviction to which I object.

3. Dayists. They believe you should only flush on Thursdays.

4. Phobias. There is a fear of flushing. A fear of centrifugal force. The fear of drought. Fear of sudden loud noises. Fear of tight places. There is a lion in the pipes.

5. Temporary blindness. None is so blind who will not see. Have you ever heard of acute-onset macular degeneration? There is no looking back.

6. Mild dementia. An entire generation of boomers find the sequence of sit-stand-flush-leave confusing. These are the gentle souls who gaze at the mirror wondering why they came to this spot, with a strong suspicion  there is something they forgot. Yes, darling, there is.

7. Technical assumptions. Not every potty is a smart potty. Not every smart potty is that smart.

8. Pigishness. Not to put down swine, but some folk are that way.

There is no easy way to arrest this stagnation. If love covers a multitude of sins, then courtesy flushes when others don’t.

Dear Mom,

We love you. We miss you. We remember you.

Even though we are separated by that grand canyon between mortality and immortality, our love for you continues. You left an enduring imprint on us. We all have ways that embody Nellie Harper. Your kindness is part of each of our DNA. It would be fun to tell you about the kindness of your children, exhibited just this year. That quiet kindness abides in each of your grandchildren, too. It isn’t always evident between siblings (wry grin), but they are kind people.

We all have wishes.

We wish we could honor you, our mom, face to face. As the years accumulate, we see with greater clarity what we owe you. What was a given—your smile, your excellence, your steadfastness, your encouragement—when we were kids, we now know was such an immense gift. You shaped us into who we are. We all would love to ‘praise you in the gates’. To have you hear our gratitude, feel our hugs.

We wish our kids knew you…beyond the stories we tell. Ditto, for the husbands and wives who never met you. They get the trace elements of you through us, but we’d love them to know the real you.

And Mom? We all wish we were more like you. Sometimes that is the grief we silently share, more than missing you. Your wisdom: your sweet, practical wisdom. Your generosity. Your faith. You made such an impact on more than one community. You were extraordinary in such an ordinary way. 

We’re getting together for Anne’s wedding soon. A large, unruly, talkative, loud crowd of relatives. It will be a great time.

It always comes round to thanksgiving. The hollow years without you can’t compare to the full years of having you. You filled us up; you fed us; you nurtured us; you made each of us know how special we were to you. The tears have slowed to a tiny trickle. We all get throat-lumpy in May. But it is thanksgiving that we feel in the end. Another of your legacies is the lack of bitterness in your children.

Mom. We love you. We miss you. We remember you.

Carol, for all of us

Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software engineers appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don’t. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky—but all critical to making them who they are.

Malcolm Gladwell, in Outliers, strikes a blow against individualism. When he looks carefully at the super successful—outliers—he examines the generation, class, ethnicity, and culture of the outlier. Granted, an outlier like Bill Gates has genius.  But that alone cannot explain Gates’ success. Gladwell tells us why. This engaging book is a string of stories illustrating both the opportunities and the legacies given to many outliers, some whose names are household words, others more obscure. Gladwell discusses the 10,000 hour rule: that to excel at anything you must spend at least 10,000 hours working at it. In the story of Korean pilots, Gladwell discusses frankly how our ethnicity affects our success and/or failure.

While I’ve been digesting this book, I thought of an outlier in the blogging world: Ree Drummond of The Pioneer Woman. Many of you knew her as a homeschool mom on the Well-Trained Mind forum. She started a blog in 2006 that quickly exploded into a Big Deal. If you look at Ree’s gifts, you will find a writer whose appeal crosses cultural lines, a little naughty for some and wickedly funny to the rest. She parlayed her story of city girl transplanted to a cattle ranch into an entertaining story compete with cliff hangers. But Gladwell would urge us to look at where Ree is from, what opportunities she was given. My theory is that she is a marketing genius. In one sense she bought her audience, offering regular giveaways for high-ticket items. She had the capital to give away Nikon cameras and $500 Amazon gift cards, converting the number of clicks into advertising revenue. That alone would not have been enough to keep her audience, but it attracted them in the first place. The daughter of a surgeon, she was raised with the expectation of hard work and excellence. This does not  diminish Ree’s writing, Ree’s photography, Ree’s cooking, Ree’s everything: she just didn’t do it alone.

Happily, my favorite part of this book is the introduction. Happily? Yes! Because you can go Amazon click on Look Inside! and read it yourself. It tells the story of Roseto, PA, a community whose medical history is so much better than the norm that researches spent years working to crack open its secret. The answer, revealed in the eleven page introduction, is profound. I urge you to read it.

In the continuing saga of synchronicity, in one of my current reads, The Creative Habit, which predates Outliers, Twyla Tharp employs the same reasoning of Outliers to explain Mozart’s success. You can also read this by following the link, clicking Look Inside!, and entering Mozart in the search box.