A quick note to start us off: My friend Laura Coffey of the Society of Features Journalism wants any writers in our community to know about the SFJ’s upcoming conference from Oct. 22-24 in Phoenix. I can’t go this year but I really wish I could; the conference lineup includes incredible journalists such as three Pulitzer winners—Robin Givhan, Aaron Parsley and Mitchell S. Jackson—plus James Beard winner Tom Sietsema, Longreads founder Mark Armstrong, my buddy Kurt Streeter, my fellow UGA mentors Jan Winburn and Monimala Basu, and lots more. If you want to get better as a storyteller, I can't think of a better way to spend a few days.
A few months ago we had to cancel one of our credit cards because somebody got ahold of the number. They didn’t spend much—a couple of trips to an Exxon station and one alarmingly large order at Taco Bell. The credit-card company cleared it up right away. But now a few recurring bills are coming due and they’re still under our old credit-card number. So we’ve gotten a couple of notices that payments didn’t go through.
One of those bills was our digital subscription to the Charlotte Observer. So I signed in the other day to change the credit card, and when our account page came up, I saw this:
What it meant, of course, is that our status was pending until we got the payment sorted out. A grace period. But what a lovely way to phrase it. In grace.
Most of us, I suspect, don’t do a very good job of holding the rest of the world in grace.
I’m inclined to flip a switch really quick when the little irritations of life land on my shoulders: yet another person knocking on the door wanting to sell something, yet another incomprehensible medical bill, yet another complication on a day I really needed to be uncomplicated.
And then there are the bigger issues: People I love who hold views I can’t abide, the deaths and illnesses of people I care about, the mile-high stack of problems that seem impossible to solve.
Those are not conditions that lead me to grace.
But what I do find, when I manage to hold onto a little grace, is that it puts a whole new shine on the day.
I never answer the phone these days when I don’t recognize the number. My phone will sometimes tell me if a call is a spam risk. Other times I’ll get calls from random numbers that never leave a message. But every so often I’ll be expecting a call from a doctor or something, not knowing the number they’re calling from, and I’ll pick up only to find that it’s a telemarketer.
When I was younger and dumber, those calls made me furious. I’d bark at the salesperson and slam the phone down. (One drawback of cell phones is that you can’t hang up with AUTHORITY like you could a landline. Mashing the little red button really hard with your thumb is just not the same.)
But one day, I’m not sure why, I started to think about the voices on the other end.
They might have been working for a terrible company, but they probably weren’t terrible people. Most likely they hated the job, too. But they were doing it to pay the bills and put a little food on the table. It did them no good for me to be the 100th person to yell at them the day. It did me no good, either. It was supposed to be cathartic but I always ended up feeling worse.
Now, I just say “no thank you” and quickly hang up. I’m not going to help them make their quota. But I do hope it makes their day just slightly less crappy than it might have been.
Sometimes I think you can boil all of philosophy and theology down into two words: Be decent. Another way to say that, maybe, is: Find grace. It’s way harder than it seems, and way harder than it ought to be. But remember how it felt the last time someone found grace for you?
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10 things I wanted to share this week:
Thanks to everyone for sharing and appreciating the piece I wrote about Dolly Parton the other day. More Dolly on the back end of this list.
My latest column for SouthPark Magazine and its partners is on North Carolina’s unique beauty.
I loved this piece by Hanif Abdurraquib about his group chats. I’m on one with a group of college friends … we post our Wordle scores every day but it’s also a great way to keep up with all the little mundane things in our lives, and of course the big ones too. (New Yorker)
Hrishikesh Hirway’s podcast SONG EXPLODER is one of my favorite podcasts ever … but Hirway started it is a side project. His real goal was to be a professional musician. His perfectionism got in the way. But now he has found a way to make music again. It’s all about letting go. (Bitter Southerner)
My friend Joe Posnanski on the death of brilliant magician Juan Tamariz, and the seven veils of magic. (JoeBlogs)
It’s football season—college football, the sport I love the most, starts in earnest today. But any thinking football fan has to reckon with the mounting evidence that the collisions in football often lead to degenerative brain disease. Parents of players—or kids who want to play—are struggling with the risk. (NYT)
One more sports story, in a way: Young sportswriter Jesse Dougherty gave everything to the job. Then, just before his first child was born, he got laid off. And he had to recalibrate who he really is. (Esquire)
Let’s devote the rest of the list this week to Dolly—specifically, to three of her less famous cuts that mean a lot to me. She put out an amazing bluegrass record called THE GRASS IS BLUE in 1999. It’s all top-shelf stuff, with a backing band of some of the world’s best pickers … the song I keep coming back to is her version of the folk ballad “Silver Dagger.”
If “Silver Dagger” wasn’t tragic enough for you, here’s “Down From Dover,” which sounds like it was written 400 years ago but is a song Dolly wrote for her album THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL back in 1970. You might need to take a walk after this one.
Let’s end on the upbeat. Dolly’s 2001 album LITTLE SPARROW included this gorgeous cover of “Shine,” the Collective Soul hit from the ‘90s. I suppose by now it’s clear: Dolly could sing anything.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
—TT
My books DOGLAND and THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM are available in all formats pretty much everywhere books are sold.
Writing about grace and Dolly is a bit redundant but I love the overlap. One more advantage, among many, of living here in France, 🇫🇷 is that the well educated folk here just passed a law that prohibits telemarketing calls. (They also recently enshrined abortion rights in their constitution and passed right to die legislation so women don’t have to risk their lives in childbirth and terminally ill folk can end their suffering with medical help). For years my husband has graciously dismissed American telemarketers who get through to us on our U.S. mobile numbers; I mostly tell them I’m having a colonoscopy and ask them to call back later. As for Dolly, I cried through breakfast this morning watching an old Letterman video of her singing After the Gold Rush with Linda Ronstadt and Emmy. Lou Harris. It’s what music sounds like in heaven. The Newyorker tribute to Dolly is one of the best I read — brasides your’s of course.
To give grace is a choice. To receive grace is a blessing.