Sunday, July 11, 2010
bleeping brothers
I hope Gavin won't mind me sharing this story -- it's one that Andrew and I were remembering on the drive back from Louisville. In 1984 or thereabouts, the four of us (Duncan, Gavin, Andrew and Eric) were listening to the song "The Search Is Over," by Survivor, on the radio. Gavin, who must have been about 7, was listening especially intently, and Duncan seemed to know that this was because the lyrics included a four-letter word, "damn," toward the end of the song. It's always exciting when a cuss word sneaks into a piece of mainstream entertainment. Finally, the long-awaited lyric came around, and at the critical moment -- "So if you ever loved me, show me that you give... a... " -- Duncan gave a loud censorious "BEEEEEP," totally drowning out the "damn." Gavin was absolutely livid, I mean just FURIOUS, but for obvious reasons he couldn't complain to Lexi and Alan that Duncan had ruined his song. Andrew and I needed about half an hour to recover from that one.
Monday, July 5, 2010
wake-up call
I've always been a late riser, and when we would visit Dallas as kids and teenagers Duncan would get frustrated with me for sleeping in. I remember one morning when I was in a sleeping bag on the floor of Duncan's room. I woke up with a start, sat up and looked around confusedly, saying "What happened?" Duncan, who was sitting up on his bed, said, "What do you mean, 'What happened?'" I said, "I was just lying here and then it felt like someone hit me in the face. What happened?" "Nothing," Duncan said. "You just sat up all of a sudden and said 'What happened?'" Years later, in an effort to clear his conscience, I think, Duncan reminded me of this event and admitted that he'd thrown a tennis ball at my head.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Remembering Duncan: Mexico, Summer of 1988
A recollection by Susan Holm:
I am starting this memory piece on Fathers’ Day of 2010, the first Fathers’ Day that Duncan Brown, father of Ella and Charlotte Brown, will not be physically present in his daughters’ lives. Duncan loved his daughters so much. No story, no one story, and not even all the stories in the world, can make up for his absence, but I hope this memory will, in its own way, color his absence enough to make his daughters laugh (he would love that), and make them want to know more about their father, his history, and what sort of a person he was.
In 1988, I was planning to travel to Mexico to do some research. A colleague thought he might go with me, but it turned out he was afraid – afraid of foreign countries and afraid of traveling. I thought my sons might go with me, but they were lining up jobs for the summer. Then Duncan and his mother learned about my trip and it was decided that Duncan would go with me! I was delighted! When my son Eric learned that his cousin and good friend Duncan planned to go, he decided to go, too! I told Duncan and Eric that if they would put up with my researching, if they would help me look for records and sources, and if they could entertain themselves during some occasions while I was interviewing, then I would take them to the beach for several days at the end of the trip. They agreed, and we were off on our adventure.
From the beginning the trip turned out to be more fun than I could have imagined, thanks to Duncan and Eric, and it was also filled with learning in ways I hadn’t foreseen. In our first few minutes on the ground in Mexico, as we were traveling in the taxi from the Mexico City airport to our hotel, Duncan, staring at everything out the window of the cab, said, “Now I know what it feels like to be the minority.” I was stunned, and thrilled at his remark. It was such an open-minded, wise and perceptive observation. Many – maybe most – citizens of the U.S., seeing Mexico for the first time, comment on Mexico’s strangeness, or its poverty. These people are looking at Mexico from a limited point of view – their own. I have been that kind of person. It took me a long time to understand what Duncan’s generous spirit recognized immediately. Duncan saw himself as a small part of a larger reality. The reality was new to him, but already he understood that he had a place within that new context, instead of judging it as if his own life and culture were the center of the world, the norm, the place from which to find other cultural realities strange, and to pity them.
A lot of our adventures that summer grew directly from Duncan’s and Eric’s presence, and their influence. For example, I discovered that two handsome teenage boys trailing me provoked many Mexican mothers to approach me and introduce themselves. “I have daughters,” said one mother. A couple mothers issued invitations to their homes; unfortunately, the invitations came at times we couldn’t accept them (e.g. we were on a bus headed somewhere and couldn’t stop to get off and spend the afternoon with an unknown, albeit hospitable, family).
Then there was the boat trip down the Grijalva River in the Sumidero Canyon in Chiapas. The Grijalva, part of the larger Usumacinta watercourse that flows both between and in Guatemala and Mexico, had recently been dammed, making the turbulent river much deeper and more safely navigable for small boats from Chiapa de Corzo down to the dam. As we walked along the riverside in the small village of Chiapa de Corzo, several boatmen offered to sell us boat rides down to the dam and back. “Ni manera (no way),” I said. There were no life jackets, and I wasn’t risking my son’s and my nephew’s lives (not to mention my own life) on a boat trip without life jackets. Eric and Duncan began working on me, trying to persuade me that it was the chance of a lifetime. They could both swim. They wouldn’t rock the boat. It was a river, not an ocean. On and on. We ate lunch outside under an umbrella at a small riverside restaurant while they pleaded and cajoled. At the outdoor restaurant we were sitting ducks for the boatmen. Finally I relented. The boys were right. It was the adventure of a lifetime. The jungle spread out on either side of the river, and we could glimpse smaller streams flowing into the main watercourse. Indian children swam and bathed and fished on these smaller streams. On one riverbank we saw a couple caymans, which, our guide told us, were disappearing because their habitat, the river banks, were disappearing in the flooding caused by the dam. As we progressed, canyon walls grew above us, thousands of feet high, with waterfalls, trees, and mossy formations growing from the rock surfaces. It was an unforgettable adventure, and I would never have embarked on such an opportunity without the persuasive powers of Duncan and Eric.
We were all presented with many challenges – physical, emotional, and intellectual – the day we journeyed up the mountain from San Cristobal de las Casas to the indigenous village of San Juan Chamula. The Chamulans had been so abused by European-descended invaders and others that visits by outsiders to the village were strictly regulated and limited by the villagers themselves. Even Roman Catholic priests were no longer allowed into the village to conduct any religious ceremonies. Photographs were absolutely forbidden. “We’re not even taking our cameras,” I warned the boys. “Tourists have been killed for trying to sneak a photograph,” I cited the guidebook.
We traveled to the village on a minibus from San Cristobal. These vehicles were plentiful and made the trip frequently. We stayed in the village several hours, starting at the municipal office where we got permission to visit the church and environs, then visiting the church, and the village garden plots, and the cemetery. But getting a return minibus with room for all three of us at once proved to be almost impossible. All the minibuses back to San Cristobal seemed to be filled to capacity with Chamulans going into the city to buy and sell at the market there. Two or more hours of looking went by without our securing transport. As it got to be later and later, I couldn’t figure out why the villagers would still be going to the city. The sun began to descend toward the horizon, and I got more and more worried. Only because I insisted on it did we finally get into a minibus for the return trip. But Duncan had to ride in the back section (no seats) with a whole group of Chamulan men, while Eric and I rode squeezed into the seats. This arrangement occurred, if I remember correctly, because I was older and a woman, and Eric’s legs were exceedingly long and took up too much room in the back. So Duncan was called upon to endure the down-the-mountain ride with not a few others. He crawled out at the end of the trip, and stretched his cramped limbs. It was the only time on that trip that I knew he was not happy, but he didn’t grouse or complain at length. After a few sardonic observations (I believe he had been offered something – tobacco? homebrew? – which he’d refused), he settled into a stride as we walked back to our hotel.
Three or four years later, in his college application essay, Duncan recalled the visit to San Juan Chamula, and especially the visit to the church. Reading the essay, I was again struck by Duncan’s capacity for open-minded processing of everything that he observed, and he observed in great detail.
From Duncan’s essay:
As I moved through the church I noticed I was walking on a blanket of pine needles covering the floor. There were no pews and no priests, only a congregation of villagers kneeling on the ground, some bowing their heads, others reaching upward. The space was silent except for the low murmur of prayers. Every villager who kneeled lit a handful of candles in front of him, creating a layer of light along the floor which allowed me to see the funniest thing in the world. The Indians were offering Pepsi to their God. ... How convenient, I thought, for any thirsty deity to have easy access to the soft drink preferred by 76% of all gods! ... In the following years I often thought back to that incident in the cathedral, and tried to make sense of it. ... Three and a half years later I think I am beginning to understand: now that I better see my position in the world and the world’s position in the universe, that little village doesn’t seem so far away, and the villagers with their Pepsis don’t seem so distant. If they are crazy, then they are only crazy in a crazy world. I have read and enjoyed Arthur Miller’s The Crucible; not once did I find it odd that Paris, the deceitful town minister, demanded gold candlesticks from the townspeople – more to glorify himself than God. Why, then, should it seem so odd that a group of villagers, in honest devotion, sought to honor their God with soft drinks? Why should wine be an acceptable form of libation but not Pepsi? I guess it took me a while to get over my impulsive judgements and discover that people are only as strange as we make them. ... It is this understanding that I am trying to explain – the understanding that there are as many realities as there are people in the world. There is as much to learn within every single person you meet as there is in all the books you could ever read. Whether it is my father, my mother, my best friend, or a villager in San Juan Chamula with his offering of Pepsi, I will never again laugh at that which I don’t, at first, understand.
Dearest Duncan, you were a rare and precious person and we were blessed to know you. Your accompanying me to Mexico in 1988 was fortunate for me and for Eric in many ways, and I will always treasure the memories of that adventure. We love you.
Aunt Sue
I am starting this memory piece on Fathers’ Day of 2010, the first Fathers’ Day that Duncan Brown, father of Ella and Charlotte Brown, will not be physically present in his daughters’ lives. Duncan loved his daughters so much. No story, no one story, and not even all the stories in the world, can make up for his absence, but I hope this memory will, in its own way, color his absence enough to make his daughters laugh (he would love that), and make them want to know more about their father, his history, and what sort of a person he was.
In 1988, I was planning to travel to Mexico to do some research. A colleague thought he might go with me, but it turned out he was afraid – afraid of foreign countries and afraid of traveling. I thought my sons might go with me, but they were lining up jobs for the summer. Then Duncan and his mother learned about my trip and it was decided that Duncan would go with me! I was delighted! When my son Eric learned that his cousin and good friend Duncan planned to go, he decided to go, too! I told Duncan and Eric that if they would put up with my researching, if they would help me look for records and sources, and if they could entertain themselves during some occasions while I was interviewing, then I would take them to the beach for several days at the end of the trip. They agreed, and we were off on our adventure.
From the beginning the trip turned out to be more fun than I could have imagined, thanks to Duncan and Eric, and it was also filled with learning in ways I hadn’t foreseen. In our first few minutes on the ground in Mexico, as we were traveling in the taxi from the Mexico City airport to our hotel, Duncan, staring at everything out the window of the cab, said, “Now I know what it feels like to be the minority.” I was stunned, and thrilled at his remark. It was such an open-minded, wise and perceptive observation. Many – maybe most – citizens of the U.S., seeing Mexico for the first time, comment on Mexico’s strangeness, or its poverty. These people are looking at Mexico from a limited point of view – their own. I have been that kind of person. It took me a long time to understand what Duncan’s generous spirit recognized immediately. Duncan saw himself as a small part of a larger reality. The reality was new to him, but already he understood that he had a place within that new context, instead of judging it as if his own life and culture were the center of the world, the norm, the place from which to find other cultural realities strange, and to pity them.
A lot of our adventures that summer grew directly from Duncan’s and Eric’s presence, and their influence. For example, I discovered that two handsome teenage boys trailing me provoked many Mexican mothers to approach me and introduce themselves. “I have daughters,” said one mother. A couple mothers issued invitations to their homes; unfortunately, the invitations came at times we couldn’t accept them (e.g. we were on a bus headed somewhere and couldn’t stop to get off and spend the afternoon with an unknown, albeit hospitable, family).
Then there was the boat trip down the Grijalva River in the Sumidero Canyon in Chiapas. The Grijalva, part of the larger Usumacinta watercourse that flows both between and in Guatemala and Mexico, had recently been dammed, making the turbulent river much deeper and more safely navigable for small boats from Chiapa de Corzo down to the dam. As we walked along the riverside in the small village of Chiapa de Corzo, several boatmen offered to sell us boat rides down to the dam and back. “Ni manera (no way),” I said. There were no life jackets, and I wasn’t risking my son’s and my nephew’s lives (not to mention my own life) on a boat trip without life jackets. Eric and Duncan began working on me, trying to persuade me that it was the chance of a lifetime. They could both swim. They wouldn’t rock the boat. It was a river, not an ocean. On and on. We ate lunch outside under an umbrella at a small riverside restaurant while they pleaded and cajoled. At the outdoor restaurant we were sitting ducks for the boatmen. Finally I relented. The boys were right. It was the adventure of a lifetime. The jungle spread out on either side of the river, and we could glimpse smaller streams flowing into the main watercourse. Indian children swam and bathed and fished on these smaller streams. On one riverbank we saw a couple caymans, which, our guide told us, were disappearing because their habitat, the river banks, were disappearing in the flooding caused by the dam. As we progressed, canyon walls grew above us, thousands of feet high, with waterfalls, trees, and mossy formations growing from the rock surfaces. It was an unforgettable adventure, and I would never have embarked on such an opportunity without the persuasive powers of Duncan and Eric.
We were all presented with many challenges – physical, emotional, and intellectual – the day we journeyed up the mountain from San Cristobal de las Casas to the indigenous village of San Juan Chamula. The Chamulans had been so abused by European-descended invaders and others that visits by outsiders to the village were strictly regulated and limited by the villagers themselves. Even Roman Catholic priests were no longer allowed into the village to conduct any religious ceremonies. Photographs were absolutely forbidden. “We’re not even taking our cameras,” I warned the boys. “Tourists have been killed for trying to sneak a photograph,” I cited the guidebook.
We traveled to the village on a minibus from San Cristobal. These vehicles were plentiful and made the trip frequently. We stayed in the village several hours, starting at the municipal office where we got permission to visit the church and environs, then visiting the church, and the village garden plots, and the cemetery. But getting a return minibus with room for all three of us at once proved to be almost impossible. All the minibuses back to San Cristobal seemed to be filled to capacity with Chamulans going into the city to buy and sell at the market there. Two or more hours of looking went by without our securing transport. As it got to be later and later, I couldn’t figure out why the villagers would still be going to the city. The sun began to descend toward the horizon, and I got more and more worried. Only because I insisted on it did we finally get into a minibus for the return trip. But Duncan had to ride in the back section (no seats) with a whole group of Chamulan men, while Eric and I rode squeezed into the seats. This arrangement occurred, if I remember correctly, because I was older and a woman, and Eric’s legs were exceedingly long and took up too much room in the back. So Duncan was called upon to endure the down-the-mountain ride with not a few others. He crawled out at the end of the trip, and stretched his cramped limbs. It was the only time on that trip that I knew he was not happy, but he didn’t grouse or complain at length. After a few sardonic observations (I believe he had been offered something – tobacco? homebrew? – which he’d refused), he settled into a stride as we walked back to our hotel.
Three or four years later, in his college application essay, Duncan recalled the visit to San Juan Chamula, and especially the visit to the church. Reading the essay, I was again struck by Duncan’s capacity for open-minded processing of everything that he observed, and he observed in great detail.
From Duncan’s essay:
As I moved through the church I noticed I was walking on a blanket of pine needles covering the floor. There were no pews and no priests, only a congregation of villagers kneeling on the ground, some bowing their heads, others reaching upward. The space was silent except for the low murmur of prayers. Every villager who kneeled lit a handful of candles in front of him, creating a layer of light along the floor which allowed me to see the funniest thing in the world. The Indians were offering Pepsi to their God. ... How convenient, I thought, for any thirsty deity to have easy access to the soft drink preferred by 76% of all gods! ... In the following years I often thought back to that incident in the cathedral, and tried to make sense of it. ... Three and a half years later I think I am beginning to understand: now that I better see my position in the world and the world’s position in the universe, that little village doesn’t seem so far away, and the villagers with their Pepsis don’t seem so distant. If they are crazy, then they are only crazy in a crazy world. I have read and enjoyed Arthur Miller’s The Crucible; not once did I find it odd that Paris, the deceitful town minister, demanded gold candlesticks from the townspeople – more to glorify himself than God. Why, then, should it seem so odd that a group of villagers, in honest devotion, sought to honor their God with soft drinks? Why should wine be an acceptable form of libation but not Pepsi? I guess it took me a while to get over my impulsive judgements and discover that people are only as strange as we make them. ... It is this understanding that I am trying to explain – the understanding that there are as many realities as there are people in the world. There is as much to learn within every single person you meet as there is in all the books you could ever read. Whether it is my father, my mother, my best friend, or a villager in San Juan Chamula with his offering of Pepsi, I will never again laugh at that which I don’t, at first, understand.
Dearest Duncan, you were a rare and precious person and we were blessed to know you. Your accompanying me to Mexico in 1988 was fortunate for me and for Eric in many ways, and I will always treasure the memories of that adventure. We love you.
Aunt Sue
Sunday, June 27, 2010
A few words...
My name is Michael or as Duncan dubbed me many years ago "Peg Leg." Duncan was my dear friend who I happened to become his brother-in-law. Aimee had asked me to speak briefly about who he was. I have so many fond memories of Duncan:
-Fishing down on the river
-Enjoying summertime picnics
-Going to concerts
-Cooking
-Working on various projects at someone's house or cabin
-Melting cheese
-Discussing anything from politics to David Hasslehoff
-Building sand castles and water canyons
-Playing with the girls
-Gardening
-Discussing Kenny's penchant for dusting under the rocks of his front yard
-Texas
-Sitting around a campfire
-Partying
-Riding in police cars
-Blowing out birthday candles
One thing in particular that I will always miss is what had become a Christmas tradition. After all the buckeyes were made, me and Aimee and Brett and Erin would take the leftover chocolate and begin dipping and covering various items for Duncan to taste, eat and then guess the identity. Those items over the years included: brussel sprouts, olives, sardines, coctail onions, horseradish balls, jalepenos, pickles, capers and Vienna sausage. As gross as I'm sure it was, he was always willing and smiling at the end as he would inevitably have everyone laughing out loud. That was Duncan to me, the truest of gentlemen, always willing to sacrifice himself for another person's joy or comfort.
It is impossible for me to pick just a couple stories to describe Duncan, so in his own words, I would like to read about him from his Info tab on Facebook...
Erin and I have a wedding photograph hanging in our dining room that was signed by people who attended our wedding. There is a quotation from Sophocles written small in the bottom right corner and I know for a fact that Duncan put it there. I have recited these words over and over in my head since Saturday night and they seem so fitting now.
"One word frees us of all the weight and pain in the world; and that word is Love."
We all love you and miss you Duncan Stewart Brown. Godspeed my friend and R.I.P.
-Fishing down on the river
-Enjoying summertime picnics
-Going to concerts
-Cooking
-Working on various projects at someone's house or cabin
-Melting cheese
-Discussing anything from politics to David Hasslehoff
-Building sand castles and water canyons
-Playing with the girls
-Gardening
-Discussing Kenny's penchant for dusting under the rocks of his front yard
-Texas
-Sitting around a campfire
-Partying
-Riding in police cars
-Blowing out birthday candles
One thing in particular that I will always miss is what had become a Christmas tradition. After all the buckeyes were made, me and Aimee and Brett and Erin would take the leftover chocolate and begin dipping and covering various items for Duncan to taste, eat and then guess the identity. Those items over the years included: brussel sprouts, olives, sardines, coctail onions, horseradish balls, jalepenos, pickles, capers and Vienna sausage. As gross as I'm sure it was, he was always willing and smiling at the end as he would inevitably have everyone laughing out loud. That was Duncan to me, the truest of gentlemen, always willing to sacrifice himself for another person's joy or comfort.
It is impossible for me to pick just a couple stories to describe Duncan, so in his own words, I would like to read about him from his Info tab on Facebook...
Erin and I have a wedding photograph hanging in our dining room that was signed by people who attended our wedding. There is a quotation from Sophocles written small in the bottom right corner and I know for a fact that Duncan put it there. I have recited these words over and over in my head since Saturday night and they seem so fitting now.
"One word frees us of all the weight and pain in the world; and that word is Love."
We all love you and miss you Duncan Stewart Brown. Godspeed my friend and R.I.P.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Witchy Woman
Among the songs Duncan loved to dance to as a small lad was the Eagles delightfully devilishly enticing "Witchy Woman." I wonder if that is what is playing in that photo where Duncan and I have our hands are in the air and some dance is going on. Duncan chose that photo for his senior page at Greenhill. Interestingly, Don Henley is now a Greenhill dad.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
trivia quiz
I was thinking about the sign that was on Duncan's bedroom door back in the mid-'80s. It said, "Welcome to the Domain of Duncan Stewart Brown," and then there were several descriptors under that, including "where OP's are in style" and (I think) "Home of the Whopper." Does anyone else remember anything about that sign?
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