Tag Archives: ken burns

Three Gifts America Has Given the World

“… when they study our civilization two thousand years from now, there will only be three things that Americans will be known for: the Constitution, baseball and jazz music.  They’re the three most beautiful things Americans have ever created.” – writer and essayist Gerald Early, interviewed in Ken Burns’ documentary, Baseball

                  Having just endured an incredible World Series amid our current cultural and political climate, I will comment first on baseball.

                  Baseball may have roots in the English games of cricket and rounders, but by 1900 it had become 100% an American creation.  125 years later, it may not be a universal sport like soccer or basketball.  But it has a passionate following in certain parts of Asia – particularly Japan and Korea – and in the Latin American countries that surround the Gulf of Mexico.  At a time in our history in which “immigrants” are seen as “other,” the recent series included three superstars from Japan (Ohtani, Yamamoto, and Sasaki), a terrific first baseman from Tijuana (Alejandro Kirk), a Canadian playing for Los Angeles (Freddie Freeman), a star from the Dominican Republic (Vladimir Guerrero), a Puerto Rican (Kike Hernandez), a refugee from Cuba (Andy Pages), a Venezuelan (Miguel Rojas), and an African-American from Nashville (Mookie Betts), among others. The Dodger manager Dave Roberts was born in Okinawa to a Japanese mother and an active-duty African American Marine.

                  This American game has become a showcase for talented players from many backgrounds and cultures.  It’s a game of opportunity, celebrating players no matter where they come from.  It’s a game that can focus moment to moment on a particular individual player, but it’s a great team that wins and inspires.  It’s a beautiful thing.

                  And then there’s jazz.  One person who has helped me understand the deeper meaning of jazz is Wynton Marsalis.  Ken Burns turned to Marsalis often in his Jazz documentary series, and everything he said struck me as revelatory.  I saw him in concert several years ago and was again grateful for the insights he shared with the audience.  Here is one of his observations:

As long as there is democracy, there will be people wanting to play jazz because nothing else will ever so perfectly capture the democratic process in sound. Jazz means working things out musically with other people. You have to listen to other musicians and play with them even if you don’t agree with what they’re playing. It teaches you the very opposite of racism and anti-Semitism. It teaches you that the world is big enough to accommodate us all.

Seeing and hearing gifted musicians express their individual gifts and voices while being a part of a larger group and delighting in the give and take with one another creates an experience in which the whole becomes greater than the parts. That’s jazz.  When we experience it, it’s a beautiful thing.

                  And so is the Constitution.

                  Years ago, I was having lunch with a young Muslim grad student from Egypt as part of my community interfaith project.  He told me he first learned about American culture while watching “Mighty Mouse” cartoons as a child.  He shared favorite stories about growing up in Egypt, including how, during Ramadan, he and his childhood friends would wait for the signal that the time of daily fasting was over, then race from home to home enjoying the food set out by neighbors.  He had come to appreciate all that America offers — particularly the constitution.  “Do Americans realize how amazing it is that your country is ruled by a constitution instead of a dictator?” he once asked me.

                  The constitution was created by people who did not want to live in a political system like they had known in Europe – one in which some people would dominate others based on family ancestry, social position or a state-sponsored religion. The founders wanted to create a society in which people would experience a new level of freedom and opportunity. They worked long and hard to create the legal framework.  It assumes people will let their deep passions be balanced by mutual respect and personal restraint.  Like baseball, it assumes people will understand that to participate, everyone must follow established rules and customs until they are changed by due process.  Like jazz, it teaches you this country is big enough to accommodate us all.  When it is disrespected, it’s an offense to our ancestors who have given so much to honor and preserve it.  When it is honored, it’s a beautiful thing.

                  America may leave the world more treasures – after all, there’s Broadway, rap, country music and Hollywood.  But I will always celebrate baseball, jazz and the Constitution for what they offer and what they mean.

Wynton Marsalis

Lead image: “The raising of the American flag as the composer-conductor John Philip Sousa leads the Seventh (“Silk-Stocking”) Regiment Band in playing The Star-Spangled Banner during Opening Day of Yankee Stadium  with the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees on April 18, 1923 at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York.“

Waking The Dead

The documentary filmmaker Ken Burns was raised in a small, 2-bedroom home in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  A recent article[i] describes his personal journey, which began with a traumatic childhood:

Ken was 11 and his brother, Ric, was 10, when their mother was on her deathbed. Their father, Robert Kyle Burns Jr., an anthropologist, was mentally ill.

As his mother’s cancer metastasized, Ken overheard conversations — his mother pleading with relatives, asking for someone, anyone, to take her boys in the event of her death. “I remember being scared — scared all the time,” he said.

With their mother in the hospital, the boys were left to wait at home for the inevitable. On the night of April 28, 1965, Ken went to bed with one of the worst stomachaches he had ever had — his body registering what none of the adults would speak about.

The pain disappeared suddenly. The phone rang. His mother was gone.

Following his mother’s death, his father would disappear “for hours and then days at a time” and sometimes be gone for months.

There is a saying I learned when I was at Hospice of Santa Barbara: “Pain that is not transformed is often transferred” — meaning if we don’t’ find a way to channel personal hurt and anguish into something positive, we can end up inflicting that pain on ourselves or others.  In his grief and confusion, Burns found such a path:

The filmmaker remembers the exact moment when he decided what he wanted to do with his life: He had never seen his father cry — not in all the years his mother had fought an excruciating illness, not even at the funeral — until one night after her death. His family was in the living room in front of their black-and-white TV, watching a movie, and suddenly his father began weeping.

“I just understood that nothing gave him any safe harbor — nothing,” Ken Burns said, except the film, which had created the space for a bereaved widower to express the fraught emotions he had suppressed.

Burns began creating historical films that would present the past as something much more personal than just a series of facts. Through stories, letters, photographs, and music, he has been able to bring real people to life, whether the topic is baseball, music (jazz and country), war (World War 2 and Vietnam) or any other topic.

The article ends with this:

Years ago, a psychologist finally gave him an answer to the meaning of his work. “Look what you do for a living — you wake the dead,” the psychologist told him.

When I finished the article, I realized much of my life has been about “waking the dead.”   I’ve been reading history and biographies since grammar school, constantly looking for how real people endured hardship and crises.  I love listening to music that can seem to bring the composer’s lived experience accross time and directly into my heart and mind.  I gaze at works of art hoping to time-travel into someone else’s world and imagination. I turn to the great spiritual traditions to listen to their wisdom and insights. I never thought of it as “waking the dead” but maybe that’s what I’m seeking – and not just to “wake” them but to be in a living and learning relationship with them.

Some years ago, I heard the writer, activist and defender of rural values Wendell Berry speak at UCSB as part of a series on environmental poets.  In the question-and-answer period, someone asked if, given his dedication to family farms, gardening should be a required subject in high school.  Berry paused for a minute, then said, “No, students should read Homer and the Bible, because they need to know they problems they are facing are not new.”  Our world has changed a great deal in terms of technology and science, but the challenges of being a responsible and resilient human being have not. I’m grateful for those who can wake the dead so we can learn from them.

“As a baby, Ken Burns appeared in this photo showing his mother spoon feeding him.” (NY Times)

[i] “The Land That Allowed Ken Burns to Raise the Dead,” New York Times, Nov 27, 2024

Lead image: “Burns in the mid-1970s, just as he was starting to create his film studio”  (from the Times article.)