Peace in the chaos

The monks walk through Charlotte, plus my shareables: MTV classics, the Dead, and swamp puppies

A scheduling note: I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago that I’m getting a knee replacement … that’s happening this coming week, and I expect to be on serious painkillers for a few days afterward. I’ll drop a note in here as soon as I’m able, but my writing schedule might be a little irregular while I recover. (If I write anything exceptionally dumb over the next few weeks, blame the painkillers.)

In the meantime, you’ll be seeing two posts on Tuesday that I’ve already scheduled. They’re both Pub Day posts, celebrating the birth of new books from two friends—Alison Lyn Miller’s ROUGH HOUSE, and Danny Funt’s EVERYBODY LOSES. You should get a post about Alison’s book Tuesday morning and one about Danny’s book Tuesday afternoon. Both books are excellent and they had great answers in our Q&As.

Now, as always, a few words … and a few things to share.

***

The monks just about walked right past our house.

It’s two blocks as the crow flies from our front porch to Hawthorne Avenue—a few blocks longer if you take the streets instead of cutting through the woods. We found out the monks were coming close on Thursday morning. I decided not to go because of my balky knee, but Alix went and stood in the cold and watched them pass. Here’s a short video she took.

You probably know the basics, but just in case: About two dozen Buddhist monks (plus their dog, Aloka) are in the midst of a 2,300-mile Walk For Peace from their home in Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, DC. Thousands upon thousands of people have lined their routes as they walk, handing them gifts, kneeling in their presence.

Alix noticed two things in particular. One was the large contingent of police—officers, most on bikes, clearing the way for the monks and following beside and behind. The other thing was the quiet. Some people said thank you as the monks passed by. But mostly, there was silence.

It strikes me how different it was on some of these same Charlotte streets just two months ago.

Back then, ICE and Border Patrol agents brought chaos to our town. They arrested hundreds of immigrants—most of whom had no prior criminal records. They harassed and intimidated US citizens and non-citizens alike. Just a couple blocks from where the monks walked, the agents shattered the car window of a neighbor who dared to warn people that the agents were coming. Children stayed home from school. Businesses closed. Charlotte was strong and resilient, but that overlaid the fear underneath. And of course, the fear was the whole point.

What happened in Charlotte, what is happening in Minneapolis, what happened in Chicago—it’s not about illegal immigration. It’s not even really about politics. It’s about fear and power and domination. It’s about trying to scare people into believing that only a ruthless dictator can save them. It’s anti-American, anti-Christian, and indecent. These are indecent people. And in the moment, it might feel like they are winning.

But fundamentally, at the absolute core of their being, they are losers.

My friend Spencer Hall said this on Bluesky the other day:

Here’s another way of thinking about it. The writer Anne Lamott coined one of my favorite sayings: Grace bats last.

We saw that in Charlotte this week.

Those monks walked in the cold because sometimes that’s what you have to do to get to a better place. They ran up the score on those who want to put fear in our hearts.

All those armed men with masks could never match the power and authority of two dozen monks and a dog.

10 things I wanted to share this week:

1. For more on the monks’ walk through Charlotte, read my bud Michael Graff in the Charlotte Optimist, and my pastor, the Rev. Christopher Czarnecki, in his newsletter.

2. My friend Kim Cross has a beautiful piece in a new magazine called Southlands on her grandmother, the Alabama farmland she loved, and the complications of being Japanese-American in the South. (Kim, who is one of the kindest people I know, also recently lost her mom. Send peaceful thoughts her way.)

3. A life that should be a movie: Here’s the obit for Renfrew Christie, who spent years in jail for sabotaging the racist South Africa regime’s nuclear program. The details here are just amazing. (NYT)

4. My friend Alex Podlogar has been telling stories from his days as a small-town sports reporter in his newsletter … here’s a good one about finding out that a coach was not who he said he was. (I Don’t Know What This Thing Is)

5. If you’re an MTV kid like I was, MTV Rewind is a gold mine—you can go back and watch music videos by decade, by show, or just by random shuffle. I clicked on the ‘80s channel just now and the first thing that came on was Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” YEAH BABY.

6. Photographer David Walter Banks spent more than 70 nights in the Okefenokee Swamp taking pictures of alligators, or as he came to call them, “swamp puppies.” I grew up in gator country, but Banks got some shots that showed me gators in a way I’d never seen before. (Washington Post)

7. RIP Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead … I don’t love the Dead like so many others do, but I love how much others love them, if that makes sense. And I do respect how Weir’s slinky guitar lines defined their sound. Plus, nobody wore short-shorts better. (The Ringer, NYT)

8. I saw the Dead once—they played two shows at the Charlotte Coliseum on their final tour with Jerry Garcia in 1995. You probably know that recordings of just about every Dead show are available online. Here’s the show I saw. I listen to bits of it from time to time, just to remember.

9. Some more music I loved this week: I learned from the great newsletter Don’t Rock the Inbox that Emma Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” is not only a crossover pop hit but one of the few hits by a woman to top the country charts this century. (Too many bros on the country charts for my taste.) It also happens to be a really good song.

10. But the best thing I heard this week was courtesy of my friend Barry Yeoman’s newsletter, UNABRIDGED. He featured this collaboration between legendary New Orleans singer Irma Thomas and the band Galactic. You might have seen Irma a couple of weeks ago, giving an unhurried and beautiful rendition of the national anthem at the Sugar Bowl … here she is, still in command at age 84, doing “Puppet on a String.”

Upcoming events

Nothing scheduled at the moment. But soon!

Have a great weekend, everybody.

—TT