Bestselling author Brad Thor, who writes a thriller every year, is known to tackle emerging security topics and create novels characterized by assiduous research and imaginative plots—what he calls “faction.” This wasn’t lost on the U.S. government, which tapped him to join its Analytic Red Cell program to come up with plausible scenarios involving threats and attacks on the United States.
With his latest novel, “Dead Fall,” he took a different tack, writing about the Ukraine–Russia conflict—as it was happening. We spoke to Mr. Thor about his recent book as well as his views on America’s role in the world.
“Dead Fall” (Simon & Schuster, 2023) takes place in Ukraine, where a mercenary unit of the Wagner Group has gone rogue.
American Essence: What was your experience writing this book in real time?
Brad Thor: So it was interesting. There was a certain amount of trepidation on my part that the headlines might get out in front of me, as opposed to me being in front of the headlines, which is what I like to do. But I have to be honest with you, I grew up reading fabulous thrillers that were set in World War II. I always wished that there was a similar setting that I could place my hero Scot Harvath in, and when the war in Ukraine broke out, I thought, OK, this is my opportunity to do my own version of some of my favorite movies like “Saving Private Ryan” or “Fury” with Brad Pitt, or the HBO series “Band of Brothers.”
There were very definitive bad guys. There was lots of what we call the fog of war, lots of confusion, lots of difficulties with getting men and matériel to the front lines. It seemed like the perfect setting to put my hero. I like to put him into very difficult situations without a lot of support. I didn’t want to send him into the story with an army right behind him. I wanted to send him in as poorly equipped and undermanned as possible so that that would raise the stakes and the tension. So Harvath had to go by himself. He had to join the Ukrainian international Legion, so that if he got killed or captured, the United States could say, “We have no idea why he was there.” That was the jumping-off point for “Dead Fall.”
What we’re seeing here in Ukraine is very much an echo of the run-up to World War II, particularly when the Republic of France, fascist Italy, and the United Kingdom via Neville Chamberlain decided to allow Hitler to take a piece of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland. [They] thought, “Well, if we let Hitler have this, then that’ll be the end of it.” And what do we all know from history? It wasn’t the end of it. It only encouraged him. And that’s exactly what’s happened with Putin. In his 2014 invasion of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, he said he was there to protect ethnic Russians. With my book, I saw all of these parallels from August to October of 1944. Hitler sent one of his worst SS brigades into Poland, and some of the most horrific, the most terrible war crimes of World War II were committed by the SS brigade, so we were seeing a lot of echoes of that with Russian troops, and particularly the Wagner Group, part of the mercenary force that Putin was using in Ukraine as well.
A young girl holding a Ukrainian flag runs in front of a destroyed cultural center during the graduation ceremony of art students in the town of Derhachi in the Kharkiv region of eastern Ukraine. (SERGEY BOBOK/Contributor/AFP/ Getty Images)
AE: There is a humanitarian aspect to this book. It involves rescuing a U.S. citizen and orphans. But what’s also at stake are Ukrainian cultural treasures and artwork—and as you mentioned in the book, the identity of a nation. How did that idea come about?
Mr. Thor: The Nazis looted treasure throughout Europe. There were only so many things that the Louvre was able to hide and get away before the Nazis came into Paris. A genocide of a culture exists on many different levels. Obviously, when we hear the word genocide, we think of killing people, and that is absolutely the worst. There’s also kidnapping the children and killing the children, consuming them, if you will, pulling them into your culture, which the Russians have done in Ukraine. A final part of genocide is to wipe out any trace of the culture and history, particularly their art. I was inspired by the movie with George Clooney and John Goodman, “The Monuments Men,” where they were trying to rescue pieces of art. That was another pop culture touchstone for me. And I love the book “All the Light We Cannot See,” which was a Pulitzer Prize winner. It starts with a young girl and her father who works at the Louvre and they have to get out of Paris because the Nazis are marching on Paris.
So this idea of art and what the Russians are doing in Ukraine, I read lots of articles leading up to the invasion about how different museums throughout Ukraine were trying to pack away and hide their precious works of art because they knew Putin was going to try to steal them.
A cowgirl at heart, singer and actress Reba McEntire shows off her custom boot closet. (Courtesy of Reba McEntire)
Some would say the McEntires are a very set-in-their-ways, stubborn, hardheaded bunch of people. But I think that hardheadedness is what got Daddy to where he was, Grandpap to where he was, and his father, Pap, to where he was. Some might say it wasn’t all that far—but it was much further than where they started!
None of us McEntires came from money, but each generation’s been a little more prosperous than the one before it. My daddy, Clark, was determined to make a better life for himself than the one he’d been handed. Like Grandpap before him, Daddy had the rodeo bug. He knew that rodeo couldn’t pay all the bills, but it sure helped get him started.
Take, for instance, one time when Daddy won a roping competition. The prize was a new car and 500 dollars cash. He gave it all to Mama and sent her to swap it for 80 acres of land that Uncle Dale, Mama’s brother, owned. That gave Daddy enough space to expand his ranch with more cattle. It was the start he needed. A few years later, in 1957, Daddy and Mama were able to buy a much bigger plot of land in Chockie, so he moved the family and all the cattle over there. Not exactly the land of milk and honey, but little by little, he was moving on up.
Ms. McEntire’s grandfather, John McEntire, competing at Cheyenne Frontier Days in Cheyenne, Wyo., 1934. (Courtesy of Reba McEntire)
Land in Chockie was only $6.40 an acre, and there was good reason for that! A lot of neighbors called it “sorry land,” and they warned Daddy not to buy it. It was rocky, hilly, and didn’t grow much except briars and scrub brush, but he saw something no one else saw in that “sorry land.” He turned a profit selling timber to the paper mill and rocks to the architects in Dallas. Then he struck gas.
That sorry land turned out to be worth more than anyone realized.
Daddy liked the rodeos, but he loved ranching. Rodeoing and selling timber, rocks, and natural gas all helped in the progression of our ranch. Daddy had to travel to compete in rodeos, but he wanted to be home on the ranch.
But ranch life is not an easy life. Maintaining the land and cattle takes time, and you can’t skip a day just because you’re worn out. Working the land was a whole family affair. The only time you wouldn’t find us kids helping out was when we were in school. I thought that going to college would give me a break. Nope. I was wrong. Daddy had leased some land halfway between home and the Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Oklahoma. So every other day, after my classes, I loaded 30 fifty-pound sacks of feed into my pickup truck and fed the 300 head of cattle.
Not quite the college experience everybody else had!
I didn’t really know anything else though. I had started pitching in before I could even sit in a saddle. I don’t remember exactly the first time I was on a horse, but it feels like I was born riding. Us kids spent a lot of time rounding up cattle. It was rough country, and often we’d have to ride through brush and briars taller than we were on the off chance we’d find even one lonely steer. There was always more work than hands to do it. We got cattle in the spring, straightened them up, and shipped them off to the feed lots in the fall.
Reba McEntire (center) rides on the family ranch in Chockie, Okla., alongside her parents and siblings Susie, Alice, and Pake, while filming the “Reba: Starting Over” CBSTV special in 1995. (Courtesy of Reba McEntire)
Daddy always had a plan to get the job done. Problem was, he wasn’t the best at relaying his plan to the rest of us. He was usually looking the other direction or doing three things at once when he was giving us our instructions for the day. Most of the time, we only got a quarter of what he was trying to tell us. We always looked to Grandpap for an interpretation. I’m sure glad we had him to help us out!
The most important thing about helping out on the ranch was getting in line, doing your part, and following instructions. If our instructions were to sit at a gate until Daddy returned, under no circumstances were we going to abandon our posts. You sat at that gate until Daddy came back and told you that you could leave. It could be several hours, but that didn’t matter. Hot or cold, rain or shine, you stayed glued to your saddle.
It was out there in those hills that I first learned that the work is in the waiting.
Fast-forward 15 years, when I got into the music business. I knew less than nothing about how it all worked. I thought that once your record got on the radio, you got a tour bus and a big ol’ check. You’d made it. You were a big star. Wrong!
I remember being so excited when I heard my debut single playing on our staticky, old radio for the very first time. Mama, Susie, and I were all sitting on the floor, crying with joy, thinking, “This is it.”
But then—not much happened. No fancy tour bus or big royalty check appeared. I felt pretty sure that God had called me to the dream of singing, but much like my daddy giving me instructions up in the hills, it felt like I had only gotten a fourth of what God said, and I knew I needed to wait for more information. So just like I learned as a kid, I stayed patient. And I kept working.
“Not That Fancy: Simple Lessons on Living, Loving, Eating, and Dusting Off Your Boots” by Reba McEntire (Harper Celebrate, 2023).
From hearing that first song on the radio, I spent the next seven years traveling around, playing everywhere I could, living on greasy burgers and corn dogs at truck stops and county fairs from Los Angeles to Boston—seven years of performing at fairs, rodeos, and honky-tonks, singing over bar brawls, tractor-pull competitions, and bull sales. Seven years of patience before I had a real hit, “Can’t Even Get the Blues,” in January 1983.
Even with that hit, the first time I headlined my own show, in 1984, only 800 people showed up, and I actually lost money. I had to write a check to get out of town because I didn’t sell enough tickets. And I thought, “Welcome to the big time!” I sure did appreciate the few who did show up, though!
Thank God for that McEntire determination.
When it came my turn to be a parent, I was determined to teach my son, Shelby, how important hard work is too, but I didn’t need to worry. From an early age, Shelby was a very determined young man. He has a great work ethic. When it came time for him to start his own career, he put his nose to the grindstone. When Shelby told me he wanted to be a race car driver, I wanted to help but had no clue where to start. If there had been a “Racing for Dummies”book, I would have bought 10. I asked anyone I could think of for information, but no one I knew had much advice to give. Scott Borchetta, head of Big Machine Records and a former race car driver himself, told me to buy him a go-kart. But Shelby already had a go-kart! So, we bought Shelby a membership to the Skip Barber Racing School. It’s a school that teaches kids the racing business, and it allowed him to race in as many races as possible. You have to pay your dues in racing, just like you do in the rodeo and music businesses. Shelby raced in the Southern and the Western series. He drove eight to nine races a day for three days every weekend. I gave him my airline miles and hotel points from years of touring, and he flew on Southwest and stayed in the cheapest motels to make the most of it. Funny part was, he was too young to rent a car, so he had to get a taxi or bum a ride to the track.
Ms. McEntire with her son, Shelby, at the race car track. (Courtesy of Reba McEntire)
Shelby could have followed his daddy’s, Narvel Blackstock’s, footsteps into music management, but he chose to chart his own course. He’s now into real estate and developing property. You don’t think your kids listen to half of what you tell them, but Shelby did. I’m so proud of him. He’s kind and confident and is building a life that he’s proud of and that makes him happy. And he still wants me to be a big part of that. I am so grateful.
Most of what you hope for in this life takes time and some old-fashioned stick-to-itiveness. None of us in the McEntire family were overnight successes. From generation to generation, we just keep learning, dreaming, and working hard.
One thing I’m sure of: Good things won’t come if you give up and go home.
The Victoria crowned pigeon, photographed by Joel Sartore for the National Geographic Photo Ark project. (Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark natgeophotoark.org)
During the pandemic, when we were denied access to the world and were left only with our personal spaces—our homes, our backyards, at most our neighborhoods—photographer Joel Sartore, recipient of this year’s Indianapolis Prize Jane Alexander Global Wildlife Ambassador Award, found some comfort in the fact that people were finally finding joy in the small things.
Undistracted by big jobs, big journeys, or big plans, people started focusing on their inner lives, their families, and their communities. Some took up gardening, bird-watching, or drawing. They saw the detail, they appreciated the quiet. They seemed to have grasped that the small things in life mattered hugely. For a while, at least, they gave the small things the recognition they deserved.
Mr. Sartore was pleased to see this because, for more than a decade and a half, he had been beating the drum for the tiny creatures we rarely find the time to notice. “I’m the person who captures the insects and amphibians, the mollusks and minnows, and all the other creatures that get no airtime in debates about the catastrophic extinctions that are happening on our planet. I hope my photographs give a voice to the flying, crawling, swimming, walking, wading, breathing beings that live and die unseen and unheard.”
Portrait of Joel Sartore. (Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark natgeophotoark.org)
A Mammoth Task
In truth, Mr. Sartore, a career photographer who has won the world’s largest prize honoring animal conservation efforts, is in the process of photographing all manner of animals—great and small—for his remarkable National Geographic Photo Ark project. His plan is to eventually document every species in human care—that is, in zoos, sanctuaries, aquariums and the like—as a way of highlighting what we stand to lose if we do not wake up to the damage we are doing to our planet. As of the time of writing, he has documented 14,702 out of an estimated 25,000 in human care, and he has no intention of stopping. “The fact is, we actually don’t know how many species there are,” he said, “but if we do not change our behaviors, there will certainly be far, far fewer by the end of the century.” The Photo Ark is his way of trying to prevent that catastrophe from happening. “We are destroying oceans, prairies, marshes, forests, and in doing so, we are making so many animals extinct. Just wiping them out. We ignore their loss at our peril.”
Mr. Sartore draws an excellent analogy to illustrate his point that every species we drive to extinction brings us one step closer to our own destruction. “Our ecosystem is like a beautifully balanced Jenga tower. Removing even a single piece could destabilize it. And yet here we are, taking out one block after another. If we don’t stop, we’ll reach the tipping point, after which—well, after which, the whole lot will come crashing down, taking us down with it.”
Close Encounters, of the Wild Kind
He started the Photo Ark in 2006, after his wife, Kathy, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Before that, he’d been out in the field almost constantly on assignments for National Geographic, traveling from pole to pole, from sunrise to sunset, in freezing temperatures and baking ones. He has a talent for taking once-seen, never-forgotten images: shots that sear themselves onto the mind and which inspire wonder at the sheer miracle of nature. It’s impossible to grow tired of looking at the spellbinding picture of a golden lion, high in a tree, all aglow against a midnight sky; or a bloodied polar bear, peering through the window of Mr. Sartore’s truck, minutes after having put its face into what remained of a whale carcass. And then there is the extraordinary shot of a grizzly bear, jaws flung wide open in anticipation as a salmon flies straight toward it.
Mr. Sartore photographs Johnny, a serval, at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo in Lincoln, Neb. (Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark natgeophotoark.org)
In others, it is the interaction between him and the animals that arrests. Butterflies dance on his face, mosquitoes drain his feet of blood, walruses bask alongside him as he snatches a nap. Each one has a story; each one is a story. “Ah, the mosquito one—that was something. It was taken on the North Slope of Alaska, an area renowned for its mosquitoes. I’d been there for a few days, but wasn’t thrilled with anything I’d done, so I took off my shoes and socks and let them at me for about 20 minutes. I can still hear the noise of them—crackling, taking their fill. I scratched my feet raw, but I got one of the most talked-about pictures of my career.”
He’s also been charged by grizzly bears and musk oxen, been pooped on by Marburg virus-carrying fruit bats in Uganda, and survived leishmaniasis, which he developed after being bitten by a parasite-infected sandfly in Bolivia. The infection spread to his lymph system, destroying the flesh on his leg. It took surgery and chemotherapy to help him beat it.
None of this deterred him from shooting out in the wild. It was only his wife’s illness that grounded him, literally and metaphorically. “I wanted to stay home in Nebraska with Kathy,” he said. “Even after she recovered, I decided the time had come to draw a line under my field work. My focus had changed, plus I realized that the big picture—creating compelling images that might encourage people to consider the impact of their actions on wildlife—might be served by the small picture, that is, a portrait of an animal, with captions that told you all about it, and whether it was in danger or not.”
A koala with her babies at the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital. (Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark natgeophotoark.org)
Animal Close-Ups
Each creature is photographed against a stark black or white background, and, whenever possible, looking out at the viewer. Eye contact is key, said Mr. Sartore. “It brings immediacy, it brings intimacy, it brings empathy. I hope it brings understanding and awareness.”
In some cases, people are looking straight into the abyss of extinction. In 2015, he photographed Nabire, a northern white rhino, at Safari Park Dvur Kralove, in the Czech Republic. She died one week later, which means there are now only two of her species—both females—left. Mr. Sartore tries to keep his emotions under control when working, but he admits that photographing Nabire was profoundly moving. “I felt I owed her an apology, on behalf of the human race,” he said.
As such an impassioned animal lover and conservationist, does he feel in any way conflicted or saddened about seeing and photographing animals in zoos? “No, not at all. Zoos and sanctuaries preserve and conserve species, and they aim to educate millions of visitors every year.”
It was on trips to the zoo with his parents as a child that his passion for wildlife began. “Those visits, and the books we read as a family, shaped my path. I remember finding out about the extinction of the passenger pigeon, and feeling so sad that that had been allowed to happen. And yet here we are, all these decades later, still losing species. I hope people will look at all the animals in the [Photo] Ark, from the largest to the tiniest and from the ones we coo over to the ones that we recoil from and realize that they all have their place in the world, and that humankind should do its best to protect them all.”
An endangered Coquerel’s sifaka, a species of lemur. (Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark natgeophotoark.org)
What We Can Do To Help
If there is one message Joel Sartore would like to communicate, it is that each and every one of us can do something to help preserve our planet’s incredible diversity. Here are five foundational tips he says we can all follow:
1. Consume less. Whether it’s food, clothing, water, or utilities, try to reduce your usage. Buy from thrift stores, swap clothes and books with friends, and shave 30 seconds off the time you spend in the shower. Tiny changes to your daily routine will have a big impact.
2. Think before you eat. Cutting down on meat is good for your own health as well as that of the planet, but try to make informed choices about the rest of your groceries. Many processed food products contain palm oil. Conversion of tropical forests to oil palm plantations devastates plants and animal species and increases human-wildlife conflict as animal populations have their natural habitats destroyed.
3. Flick the switch or unplug your electrical equipment and devices when you’re not using them.
4. Ditch single-use plastic. Always pack your water bottle and coffee cup with you, and avoid products that come in plastic, such as potato chips. Try to save any plastics you have accumulated and take them to a recycling point if your curb-side collection doesn’t include them.
5. Quit pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Plant nectar-bearing plants and milkweed to attract monarch butterflies and other insects. Let parts of your garden go wild. You might be amazed at the creatures that move in.
Trace Adkins is a prolific artist, having recorded 12 studio albums and six greatest hits albums. (Kristin Barlowe)
Somewhere in America, Trace Adkins is singing. Over the airwaves, through the internet, live and in person, or in the heads of millions of fans, his songs tell the stories of the land. He sings:
There ain’t no good news on the 6 o’clock news these days,
But don’t you get down, take a look around,
It’s all over the place.
It could be Carolina, could be California,
There’s a dirt road class with a shirt on their back;
If you ask, they’ll put it right on ya.
They say the world is endin’,
But from where I’m standin’, there’s still a jug to share,
Couple bucks to spare, still got a prayer,
Somewhere in America,
Somewhere in America.
The song, titled “Somewhere in America,” from Mr. Adkins’s 2021 double album “The Way I Wanna Go,” is an anthem to the endurance of ordinary men and women in the face of upheaval.
“For me, it was a message of hope. With all the insanity we seem to be exposed to on a daily basis, there’s still good common-sense people out there doing the right thing, helping a neighbor out when they need help, giving you the shirt off their back if you need it,” said Mr. Adkins by phone from his home in Nashville.
Though you can’t tell from their outer appearance, there are heroes among those common-sense folk: our country’s military veterans. “I believe the word hero gets thrown round too often, but these veterans are actually heroes, and if you have the chance to associate with heroes, you should do that. Maybe some of it will rub off on you.”
Mr. Adkins shakes hands with a Marine prior to a football game at the Nissan Stadium in Nashville, Tenn., 2019. (Frederick Breedon/Stringer/Getty Images Sport)
Honoring the Military
A lot of it must have rubbed off on Mr. Adkins by now. Over the years, the 61-year-old country music star has devoted a great deal of time and energy to military and veteran causes. Through the United Service Organizations (USO), he has performed for troops around the globe. In 2010, …
Lindsey Jacobellis performs a jump while snowboarding in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. (Courtesy of Lindsey Jacobellis)
Sports, like life, can be unforgiving. If anyone in the world of sports knows what that is like, it would be Lindsey Jacobellis.
Ms. Jacobellis is the most decorated snowboard cross athlete of all time (snowboard cross is a competition involving going downhill among turns and jumps). Her longevity and continued success is a testament to her work ethic and her natural talent. But, as is too often the case in the world of public opinion, a single misstep that accounted for mere milliseconds has long been the haunting taunt of her career.
In 2006, during the snowboard cross event at the Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, Ms. Jacobellis had a commanding lead over the three other contestants. The speed and turns had thrown two off the track, and Swiss snowboarder Tanja Frieden lagged behind in second. But in the second to last jump, only seconds from the finish line, the inexplicable happened.
Ms. Jacobellis grabbed her board to perform a move called a method. It is a relatively simple and common trick. But she hadn’t planned for it. It was muscle memory taking over, and she fell. As reliable and absolutely necessary as muscle memory is in sports, in that moment, it failed her.
“I spent a lot of time in therapy trying to find out the root cause of what really happened, and I couldn’t come up with anything other than it was that lapse in judgment—just dropping the ball, whatever sports metaphor there is,” Ms. Jacobellis said in an interview. “It was just something that happened that I can’t actually look back and understand why.” At the time, the general consensus in the sports world was that it was showboating gone horribly wrong. But for anyone with a keen eye, it appeared as if she tried to restrain the move while performing it: a decisive moment filled with indecision.
For athletes competing at the highest levels—and one cannot reach higher than the Olympics—a misstep, an injury, a malfunction can leave a searing mark that may never heal. When that mark is self-inflicted, the healing process becomes even more difficult. These are traumatic moments that leave athletes haunted by what-ifs. Ms. Jacobellis, then 20 years old, was not given a moment to gather her thoughts. Reeling from the disaster, trying to understand the moment while still in it, she was bombarded by journalists with probing questions.
“I had media training, and they want you to be articulate and to make sure you are representing your country well and are being a good sport,” she recalled. “So I’m proceeding through this procession of one after another. You’re trying to be a good sport while at the same time trying to understand what actually happened. [In those interviews,] you can see that I’m sort of all over the place. I was not giving a different excuse, but a different response with each interview, which only opened me up for more ridicule.”
Ms. Jacobellis in the lead, during the FIS Snowboard World Championships held in Utah, 2019. (Ezra Shaw/Staff/Getty Images Sport)
In her new book scheduled for release in October, …
Josef Newgarden
said his team is
comprised of 80 to
100 people working
to optimize his race
car. (LAT)
Being a professional adrenaline junkie requires a cool head, according to Josef Newgarden, the newest Indy 500 champion. The open-wheel car racer had run the race 11 times prior, and he said the only difference between the 11th and 12th times was the fact that, as this latest attempt drew to a close, he saw he had the opportunity to fight for the finish, and he did.
“I think you just have to be prepared for the opportunity to win the race,” said Mr. Newgarden, who has been racing the IndyCar Series for 12 years and joined Team Penske in 2017. There was a tremendous moment of recognition, he acknowledged, but the very next weekend, they had a race in Detroit—the Indy 500 is only the sixth race of the season, after all.
The Indianapolis 500-Mile Race is the premier race of the top-level IndyCar (American open-wheeled car) race series. Traditionally, 33 drivers speed around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway 200 laps on Memorial Day weekend with nearly 300,000 spectators and crew packed into the space. “It’s the Super Bowl of our sport, if you will,” Mr. Newgarden explained. And the energy there is palpable.
“It’s really a sight to behold.” His first race, he felt engulfed in something extraordinary. “I remember feeling in awe of what the event represented and the magnitude of it, it’s really what you feel, the enormity of what the Indianapolis 500 is. That always sticks with you—certainly the first one, but all the way up to my 12th.”
The energy of the crowd so inspired Mr. Newgarden that moments after winning, he took off through a hole in the fence to spend the first moments of victory with fans before returning to the traditional ceremonies.
Josef Newgarden emerges victorious from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Ind., May 28, 2023. (LAT)
Hard Work and Belief
For Mr. Newgarden, the word success brings to mind the idea of hard work.
Mr. Newgarden grew up watching racing on TV, introduced to it by his father and grandfather, both great fans of the sport. From as early as he can remember, Mr. Newgarden said he begged his father for a kart, and it wasn’t until he was 13 that his father relented. Professional go-karts are far from the amusement park vehicles that come to mind for most. They are used for racing and look like smaller versions of Indy cars. Mr. Newgarden played other sports, like baseball and basketball, but he had a passion for racing that far exceeded a hobby.
The family lived in Tennessee and traveled weekly to Indianapolis in order to compete.
“[My father is] certainly someone who has the belief of: If we’re going to try to pursue something, we’re going to pursue it to the very end,” Mr. Newgarden said.
He modeled the ability of being able to stay positive and motivated no matter the external circumstances, and it would prove invaluable for Mr. Newgarden. Between ages 16 and 17, Mr. Newgarden was out of school regularly for competitions, wondering if he would be able to make it professionally. Many, many other aspiring racers have this story, he added, dealing with the constant struggle of securing sponsorships and planning the next move. At times, it was demoralizing and demotivating. But his father’s steady approach taught him the art of “great perseverance.”
“He was the ultimate believer that we could do anything or figure any situation out. You have to be realistic but you also have to have that unwavering belief that you can continue to work hard and figure any situation out, or any challenge out,” Mr. Newgarden said. If there was no sponsorship, maybe it meant passing on the immediate race and putting together a business plan for the next. There was always a path forward.
“That, to me, is the biggest gift that you can give to someone who’s young,” he said. Mr. Newgarden and his wife welcomed their newborn son last year, and he looks forward to imparting the same gifts and lessons that his father taught him.
Race day on May 28, 2023, was much the same. The win was the result of steady, hard work, Mr. Newgarden said, and brilliant teamwork.
Mr. Newgarden (#2 Team Penske Chevrolet) and other drivers in a tight race during the NTT IndyCar Series at the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, April 2023. (Sean Gardner/Stringer/Getty Images Sport)
The Perfect Race
“I’m a very competitive person, it really drives my life and I have to be competing at something,” said Mr. Newgarden. A driver has to enter each race believing in the opportunity to win, he said, but the Indy 500 is a kind of exception.
“It’s the hardest race to put together. Even if you were a great driver on the day, or you have the fastest car on the day, it just does not guarantee a victory. There’s just so much that has to go right,” Mr. Newgarden said. The Indy 500 is a race you may never win. “I know a lot of drivers that probably deserved to win the race that never won it.” Understanding that is freeing, in a way.
From the outside, racing may seem like a solo sport—much of the attention falls on the driver. In reality, Mr. Newgarden said, it’s not so different from football or a high-achieving company.
“There’s a whole team that is built around optimizing that race car and making it as fast as possible and trying to execute a perfect race,” he said. “I love that. I love the engineering that goes into it, the team dynamic. … We’ll have 80 to 100 people there across the month working on three cars, and we’re all pulling in the same direction.”
All races are team-intensive, but none so much as the Indy 500. Everyone has to execute perfectly down to fractions of seconds, and there are numerous variables beyond the control of any one person. “I’ve got to be perfect on that day, but if we’re not perfect as a team, we just will not win the race. It takes a big effort from everybody,” Mr. Newgarden said.
“It’s impossible to do almost anything in this world alone,” he said.
Mariel Hemingway was born four months after her famous grandfather, Ernest Hemingway, committed suicide with a shotgun. Growing up in a family blessed with creative passion and shadowed by mental health crises was a balancing act if ever there was one.
“There have been seven suicides in my family. While it is amazing to be Ernest Hemingway’s granddaughter, there were moments when I thought, ‘Oh no. Does this mean I’m next?’” Hemingway said.
As a child and young adult, she watched the members of her family struggle with their passions and their pain, and she felt her own lack of balance threatening to derail her. The so-called “Hemingway curse” weighed down on her. Until she decided to fight back.
“Sometimes we put meaning to something that happened in the past and think it’s a curse. We have the ability, though, to change how we think,” Hemingway said. “The way to create a world where you’re not a victim of where you came from is to define your story. Awareness is everything. Once you become aware of the story, you don’t have to be its victim.”
Now, the actress—who began acting at age 14—is also a writer, public speaker, and outspoken mental health advocate. She’s passionate about encouraging others along their own mental health journeys, and sharing how her holistic lifestyle is central to her happiness and well-being.
American Essence spoke with Hemingway from her home in Venice, California, about her childhood, a life-changing experience with the Dalai Lama, and her routines and rituals for wellness and balance.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
American Essence: What were the steps of your own mental health journey, from the time you were a child until you started to find your own balance?
Mariel Hemingway: I grew up in this amazing, creative family. However, my father suffered because his father, a great man, was probably not a great father. My father drank a lot. My mother also drank. She had lost her first husband, the love of her life, in World War II. They’d only been married for nine months, and he was shot out of the sky. There was a tremendous amount of tension between my father and my mother.
I spent a lot of time as a child trying to make myself invisible, at the same time wanting to be noticed. I used to go outside and hope that somebody would notice I was gone. I’d come back after hours had passed and nobody had realized I wasn’t there.
When I was about 10, I decided I was going to fix them all. I was going to pick up the wine glasses and broken bottles after they’d had a fight. I really believed it was my role. I feel for my parents because my two older sisters both had mental illness. And me, I was the good girl, doing everything right and helping Mom and cleaning the house, thinking that I could be the savior.
At the back of my mind was always the fear that I might end up like my mom or dad or my sisters. I started to think the way to control myself was to control what I ate, my exercise—I overdid everything in order to try to find balance.
Over time, and trying to follow gurus and diets and exercise routines, I realized that my solution was within me. I spent countless years giving my power to everybody else and thinking that somebody had an answer for me until I realized it was me.
AE: How did you come to realize that you already held the answers?
Ms. Hemingway: I had an experience in India with his holiness the Dalai Lama. It was in a small group of people and he was listening. I sat next to him. He kept looking at me—he has this wonderful smile. The other people were asking important questions and I was just sitting there. But as I stood up to go, he put his hand on my hand and he looked me in the eye and he said, “You’re OK.” And he took my breath away.
Over the next couple of years, day by day, I understood it more: “Oh, I am OK!” Now that’s my message to others: You’re already OK. Let’s find the tools that work for you to chip away at habits of mind or body that interfere with you being OK. I want to help people break free of belief systems that tell them they’re not OK, they’re broken. I don’t believe anybody’s broken.
Mental health is an ongoing journey. Every day I’m finding my balance. You need to find peace within the choices that you make, or you will be chaotic. We need to find our balance every single day.
AE: What are your tools for finding your balance every day?
Ms. Hemingway: My tools are my lifestyle, which is simple and ritualistic. My lifestyle is the only reason that I am feeling happy, healthy, and better about my life than I ever have.
Morning is a very important time for me. How you start your day is how the day will unfold. I start my mornings with a prayer, by being grateful, and by paying attention to my breath.
One of my tools is belief in something greater than myself: I believe in God and that belief is strong in my character, and it is a connection to earth and all that is beautiful. Nature was always the thing that literally grounded me when I was a child. I didn’t know that the fact that I loved being barefoot was actually helping me.
Being intentional is an important tool. Making deliberate choices about food, being aware of my breath, my thoughts, aware that I drink water. We take these things for granted, but if we start to pay attention to them, we start to live in the present.
To be present is to know where you are in the moment. Multitasking is really just an inability to stay here. If we aren’t present, we can get wrapped up in what has happened or what’s going to happen and we forget about the importance of this moment, right now.
AE: What advice do you have for someone who is struggling?
Ms. Hemingway: Talk to somebody right away. Don’t let it fester inside and become bigger than it needs to be.
Then, try to look at your lifestyle and habits and see where you could make some shifts. Lifestyle is powerful. Food is really significant: If you’re eating too much sugar or processed food, it all has an effect. Stick with simple, real foods.
Try to form habits of being outside and getting connected with the earth. A while ago, I had a friend who was really struggling. I phoned him and recommended that he go outside. I said, “I want you to look up at the sun. Take your shoes off, even if you’re in the city. Sit there, stand there, walk, whatever. Take at least 20 minutes and then call me back.” He called me in about an hour and a half and said he couldn’t believe how different he felt. When you change your energy by going outside, it’s going to shift things.
Laugh, play. I remember when my kids were young, I would watch them play and feel jealous. I grew up in a family where I became an adult too fast, and I didn’t know how to play. But if you think about it, play is instinctive to children. Why shouldn’t we adults also have fun and play?
AE: What can people do to help when someone they love is struggling?
Ms. Hemingway: Listen. Don’t say anything. Anybody who is struggling needs to be heard. Learn to be a good listener. Most people don’t know how to listen because they’re thinking about what they want to say. If somebody’s in pain, they probably feel isolated, lonely, unheard, and unseen. For you to witness them in their pain is the most powerful thing you can do to help.
At a Glance
Lives in: Sun Valley, Ida. and Venice, Calif.
Notable Films: “Lipstick” (1976); “Manhattan” (1979); “Running From Crazy” (2013), a television documentary about her family; “God’s Country Song” (2023)
Notable Books: “Finding My Balance: A Memoir” (2001), “Out Came the Sun: Overcoming the Legacy of Mental Illness, Addiction, and Suicide in My Family” (2015)
David Bean and his wife Jean. (Courtesy of David Bean)
David Bean has been a teenage gangster, a lost boy, a farmer, and an author—the first two on stage and screen, the latter two in real life. Real life and the actor’s life flow together in his 2021 memoir, the subtitle of which is apt: “The Story of a Dancer’s Extraordinary, Ordinary Life.”
The title of his book, “When You’re a Jet,” gives away the gangster identity. Bean played Tiger, one of the Jets in the 1961 film of “West Side Story,” as well as other Jet roles in the London and British touring productions of the celebrated musical. As his biggest claim to fame, the movie role occupies the biggest chunk of the book. In an interview, Bean explained why he believes “West Side Story” was one of the most important musicals of the 20th century: “The genius of the men who created ‘West Side Story’ will never be equaled. The passion of Leonard Bernstein’s music, the passion that [choreographer] Jerry Robbins instilled in each of us to tell the story in dance, and the lyrics of Stephen Sondheim that were real and effortless to perform.”
Bean spoke from his home in Clifton Corners in upstate New York, where, at 83, he lives the placid life of a farmer, doubling as an assistant at his daughter’s place of business, the Jeanie Bean & Family Deli & Café. After the 1970’s and leaving show business, Bean and his wife explored a number of post-dance businesses, including real estate sales, art restoration, construction, picture framing, and, most prominently, farming and the restaurant business.
David Bean at his home in Clinton Corners, N.Y. (Samira Bouaou for American Essence)
It’s an amazing contrast to the visceral, dynamic, peripatetic life of a Broadway and Hollywood dancer-actor that he led in his younger years. In those halcyon days, he met and rubbed shoulders with the likes of Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, and Richard Nixon. Today, he supervises the frozen food selections at his daughter’s deli. The ordinary indeed meets the extraordinary in the life of David Bean.
Starting Out
“When You’re a Jet” is a time capsule of what it was like to work as a dancer in theater and film during the 1950s and ’60s. Bean entered that world as a 14-year-old when he won an audition to play one of the “Lost Boys” in the 1954 Broadway musical adaptation of “Peter Pan.” Its star was Broadway legend Mary Martin, but it was two men associated with “Peter Pan” who became important figures in Bean’s life. One was the choreographer Jerome “Jerry” Robbins, the other was actor Cyril Ritchard.
Robbins was one of the most important dance creators in Broadway history. As of 1954, his biggest credit was the choreography for Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “The King and I.” He had also choreographed ballets, including “Fancy Free,” to music by Leonard Bernstein. With “Peter Pan,” he entered the challenging arena of creating dances for characters who flew and whose numbers included seven young teenage boys. Bean came to admire Robbins as an exemplar of what he calls “the 180 rule”—an attitude that demands 180 percent from oneself. Bean explains in the book: “As a young boy, whenever Dad would offer me an important job, I would eagerly accept. … Before he would tell me what the job was, Dad would typically remind me, ‘Now this job is really important, and I know you’ll give me 100 percent.’”
(Courtesy of David Bean)
Bean offered to give 125 percent, and his dad, nicknamed “Beanie,” would come back with 150 percent. Bean came back with “I’ll give you 180 percent!” and the number stuck. The “180 percent rule” became a lifelong motto for the younger Bean. “To this day, my wife Jean and I credit our ‘extraordinary, ordinary life’ in good measure to living out the 180 percent rule.”
Robbins demanded the same extreme dedication from his dancers. The choreographer was known throughout his life as a difficult taskmaster who could, when the occasion called for it, grow red with anger at incompetent performers. Bean saw only the positive side of Robbins, whose laugh he recalls was a “delightful giggle,” save one memorable incident. Bean had messed up a line in a dress rehearsal for an invited audience, and instead of letting it go had grimaced in self-deprecation in full view of the crowd. Bean recalled: “Jerry came backstage and I thought he was going to freakin’ kill me. He said, ‘If you ever do that again, I’m going to throw you in the pit.’” Needless to say, Bean never did that again.
Theater Adventures
Cyril Ritchard played Captain Hook in “Peter Pan” alongside Bean’s “Lost Boy” role, shaping that part into an iconic portrayal that captured the imagination of millions on stage and in two television broadcasts. Ritchard became a “theater father” to young Bean during the run of “Peter Pan,” establishing a lifelong friendship both with Bean and his family. While “Peter Pan” was on Broadway, 1954 and 1955, Ritchard hired the elder Bean as his backstage dresser—the man responsible before each show for making Captain Hook look lovably scary.
“Cyril became my theater father,” Bean said. An Australian actor born to wealth, Ritchard projected a breezily aristocratic air, contrasted with Bean’s all-American brashness. But they had something deeper in common, albeit expressed differently: Ritchard boasted the Latin motto, “Optimum Semper,” translated as “Only the Best,” an echo of Bean’s “180 percent.”
Bean’s collection of stills from the 1961 “West Side Story,” alongside a snapshot of himself and director Steven Spielberg (bottom right) at the world premiere of the 2021 remake of the film. (Samira Bouaou for American Essence)
When Ritchard’s wife died in August 1955, the actor decided to leave New York for Los Angeles. By that time, “Peter Pan” had closed, and Bean had relocated back to California. Ritchard opted to drive from New York to LA in his 1941 Chrysler but didn’t wish to do so alone. So Bean, now 16, flew to New York to join his theatrical father in the coast-to-coast drive. Therein lies one of the funniest stories in Bean’s book.
Most of the drive was uneventful. Somehow, they found a Catholic church every morning in order that Ritchard, a daily communicant in the Catholic faith, could attend mass. Then, somewhere west of Phoenix, a tire blew. No big deal at first. Ritchard had had the spare checked out before hitting the road and Bean was, like his (non-theatrical) dad, a natural mechanic.
“Mechanically I’m pretty good, so when that tire blew, I had the car jacked up and the tire off in about 10 minutes,” Bean recalls. But when he pulled the spare from the trunk, Bean found that one of the lug nuts securing the spare had been tightened with a pneumatic wrench.
“I tried and tried with the tire iron, but it was clear that lug nut wasn’t coming off manually.”Bean left Ritchard in the car and hitched to the nearest town to hire a mechanic to drive him back with what should have been a truck full of tools—except that the mechanic forgot to bring his tool box. Quoting from Bean’s book:
“In the front seat of his truck, he found a hammer and chisel. ‘I can knock those nuts off with the chisel and you’ll be off and running.’ He climbed into the trunk with his hammer and chisel. Placing the chisel behind the base of the lug nut, he swung his hammer as hard as he could. The hammer hit the tire and bounced back like a shot, hitting our rescuer in the forehead, knocking him out cold! There we were, in the middle of the desert with a disabled vehicle on the side of the road and a disabled mechanic out cold in our trunk.”
Bean and his wife, Jean, at their daughter’s cafe. (Samira Bouaou for American Essence)
After a tense interval, the mechanic came to. Ritchard had until now sat gallantly in the car, sweating in the 105-degree heat but with his iconic cravat still around his neck. In an act of genuine image-sacrifice, Ritchard removed the cravat to help staunch the mechanic’s bleeding. At length, the plan was launched to pile into the mechanic’s truck and drive back to his garage, spend the night at a motel, and then head back to the Chrysler with a completely new spare. Such were the ordinary trials of an extraordinary life.
While Bean was finishing high school in California, his old boss Jerry Robbins was creating a masterpiece in New York. “West Side Story,” conceived and choreographed by Robbins as a contemporary take on “Romeo and Juliet,” opened in 1957 and sent shock waves through the theater world. Here was a musical that addressed gang violence and ethnic division while radiating hope through athletic dance and a soaring score of songs such as “Somewhere” and “Maria.” When a London production was announced, Bean auditioned and was cast as one of the “Jets,” the Anglo rival gang to the Puerto Rican “Sharks.” Thus began several years of being a Jet, as Bean was cast as “Big Deal” in the London production in 1958, as “Tiger” in the Oscar-winning 1961 film, and as “Action” in the British tour of the early ’60s. In the film, Bean can be seen threatening the Bernardo character with his fist in the Prologue and pretending to be Officer Krupke while the other Jets sing to him in “Gee, Officer Krupke.”
Loving Life
During the London production, Bean met his match: a slender young English dancer named Jean. They enjoyed what Hollywood calls “a cute meet.”
“We danced opposite each other in the ‘Dance at the Gym,’ and she made a wrong move, causing me to twist my ankle. I didn’t talk to her for six weeks.”
When six weeks were up, the romance began. Almost as soon as it started, Bean was called back to America to perform in the film. Their love survived a year of long-distance, and they went on to become a married couple and the parents of a daughter, Jennifer.
Bean and his wife, Jean, got married in London. Years later, they welcomed a baby girl, Jennifer. (Courtesy of David Bean)
During the London run, Bean also made a lifelong friend in George Chakiris, who would go on to win an Oscar for his portrayal of Bernardo in the movie. In London, however, Chakiris played one of the Jets. This had made it possible for him and Bean to become friends. If one of them had been a Shark, it wouldn’t have happened, for Robbins imposed a strict rule that kept Jets and Sharks from seeing each other socially. He was serious about it and promised that any Jet who palled around with a Shark (or vice-versa) would be fined. It was part of Robbins’s method-acting approach to creating emotional tension between the gangs. That didn’t affect Chakiris and Bean in London, but when Chakiris was cast as head Shark Bernardo in the movie, it meant that these two good friends had to stay apart.
One day Chakiris phoned Bean and said, “You have to come over and have spaghetti with me and Rita Moreno (who was playing Bernardo’s girl Anita) and her boyfriend.” After weighing the odds of getting caught fraternizing with “the enemy,” Bean showed up for the spaghetti, and he met Moreno’s boyfriend, an actor by the name of Marlon Brando. (He wasn’t caught.)
Bean’s association with “West Side Story” didn’t stop with the British tour. In 2019, Steven Spielberg invited him to make a cameo appearance in Spielberg’s remake. Bean can be seen in one of the storefronts during the “America” number.
Bean wrote his book to savor the past and speak to the future. “The values we were brought up with by our parents were gold. It was a golden time,” he said. And to today’s young, he advised: “If you have a passion for something and you put 180 percent into that passion, I guarantee your success.”
Tebow is also passionate about faith-based content for children and has invested in different media projects. (Tim Tebow Foundation)
For Tim Tebow, “MVP” has a whole different meaning. Far from the limelight of the sports field, the 36-year-old Heisman Trophy winner and former NFL quarterback has long set his sights on helping the world’s “Most Vulnerable People.” The Tim Tebow Foundation, founded in 2010, works in 86 countries to transform the lives of orphans, people with special needs or significant medical needs, and those caught in the snare of human traffickers.
His favorite night of the year, Night to Shine, celebrates people with special needs, offering them a prom night experience, and takes place simultaneously around the world—in over 1,000 cities and 56 countries. (Next year, it will be held on February 9, 2024.)
The timing, the Friday before Valentine’s Day, is no accident.
“We wanted this to be a night where every person with special needs ‘Shines,’ and we wanted our love and God’s love for them to shine through,” Tebow said.
American Essence had the chance to ask Tebow about Night to Shine, what drives him in life, and the best advice he’s ever been given.
Tebow is also passionate about faith-based content for children and has invested in different media projects. (Hannah Janoe)
American Essence: Please tell us about an inspiring moment or person at Night to Shine that will stay with you forever.
Tim Tebow: I could tell you thousands and thousands of stories just from our first Night to Shine! One that really stands out to me is a mom coming up to me and telling me that her daughter will never get married. She will never have kids. But tonight, at Night to Shine, she felt like she was a princess. Another is the first time we ever hosted a Night to Shine, one sweet girl came down the red carpet in a wheelchair with everyone cheering her on. She had so much fun and loved the experience so much that she came back down again, this time walking with assistance! It was such an inspiring moment.
Another impactful moment was when I got to meet an incredible young boy at a Night to Shine in Haiti. Frantzky had the biggest, sweetest smile, and he danced with so many friends and family that night. Unfortunately, not long after that, he got very sick. Hospitals in Haiti had turned him away before due to him having special needs or simply perceiving him as too complicated to care for. At the third hospital he ended up at, he did not receive the level of care he needed and unfortunately passed away. It was such a shocking reality that it’s our job to love people no matter their circumstances, and that it’s up to us to help other people see the God-given worth and value of every life. I have a painting of Frantzky in a room in my house where I watch movies and football games. That room is somewhat of a break where I can relax for a moment or get caught up in sports, but Frantzky’s picture is displayed as you exit the room as an instant reminder to keep the perspective that there is so much more significance in life than just games and movies.
AE: How has the idea of prom—a quintessentially American tradition—translated to the many different countries where Night to Shine is held?
Mr. Tebow: That’s a great question. One of the ways we’ve described Night to Shine is as a worldwide prom for people with special needs. A lot of countries aren’t familiar with the term “prom,” so we also call it a worldwide celebration for people with special needs. Even though other countries might not be familiar with the idea of a prom, walking down a red carpet, or being crowned as kings and queens, what’s really cool is that once they see it in action, they totally get it—regardless of where they are. A lot of that has to do with our awesome Night to Shine team that walks alongside churches every step of the way. It’s also really neat to see different countries and cultures embrace Night to Shine by bringing in traditions and experiences that are culturally relevant to them, too.
(Tim Tebow Foundation)
AE: You have a great sense of urgency about the causes that your foundation supports. What drives you in life? What gets you up in the morning, ready to take on the world?
Mr. Tebow:I love using the word urgency. I want to be someone that lives with a sense of urgency because we don’t know how many days we have. But, while we have time on this Earth, it’s our only chance to affect eternity. For that reason, we need to be truly focused on what really matters, and that’s God and impacting people. I want to live with a sense of urgency by running hard toward what God is calling me to do because who knows when I’ll lose the chance to? That’s what gets me up every morning.
AE: You and your wife Demi partner on many endeavors. Please tell us what it’s like to work with your spouse, and what you value most about her.
Mr. Tebow: One of the most special things about Demi and I’s relationship is that we get to travel all over the world and serve together. It’s amazing to see her love on survivors of human trafficking, love on babies that have been thrown away, and fight with such fierceness for some of the world’s most vulnerable people. As I’m answering these questions right now, she’s getting ready to launch her Tim Tebow Foundation birthday campaign, which will directly impact children and families in her home country of South Africa, specifically babies that have been abandoned because their parents don’t have the means or resources to care for them. Something else I really value about Demi is her drive and competitiveness. She was Miss Universe 2017, she’s an entrepreneur, a motivational speaker—all of that amazes me about her, but it’s not nearly as special as watching her heart for others in action.
Tebow and his wife, Demi-Leigh, work together closely on the foundation’s charity work. (John Hillin Photo)
AE: Considering the intense fame that you have experienced, how have you overcome any struggles that have come with the scrutiny, and how do you think that experience has served you in your life?
Mr. Tebow: Growing up, I was definitely a people pleaser and wanted people to like me. When I started playing sports and getting recognized by the public and the media, of course there were people who didn’t like me. I struggled with that at first, and I remember telling my dad, “Dad, if people just got to know me, I think they would like me!” And I remember him telling me, “Timmy, you’re right. But some people aren’t going to want to get to know you or like you.” That was a harsh reality to make terms with, but he was right. To this day, whenever I face scrutiny, I reflect on a quote from Winston Churchill that says, “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” I’ve come to realize that I’d rather be respected than liked. And I think that’s a good lesson for other young people to remember as they go through life, too. You can get a lot of “likes” on social media, but being respected by people—even if they aren’t your biggest fan—means so much more.
AE: What life advice do you have for young people who may be reading this?
Mr. Tebow: My advice for young people reading this is to really believe that God loves you, to really believe that what He did on the cross counted for you, and to really believe that He has a plan and purpose for your life. Because when you believe all of that, you’re going to know that every day is created by God on purpose for a purpose. And when you live that way, not just taking in life as happenstance, but actually believing that this is the day the Lord has made for you, you’ll begin to see life and yourself a whole lot differently.
“Night to Shine,” Tebow’s annual prom event for children with special needs, is held in over 1,000 cities in 56 countries. (Tim Tebow Foundation)
AE: Many of our readers have children or grandchildren who are homeschooled. What was that experience like for you?
Mr. Tebow: I really enjoyed being homeschooled, and it felt right for our family situation as my parents were missionaries and we were transitioning between the Philippines and the United States. I am the baby of five children, so my siblings and I were so fortunate to have flexibility and opportunities to serve on the mission field, learning what our parents believed in and watching them serve firsthand during our homeschooling days. Our parents of course wanted us to learn to read and write, but more importantly, they wanted to instill in me and my siblings a love for God and one another and a strong work ethic.
Our school days started with chores on our parents’ farm before Bible study, and then we’d get into school and study sessions. What was cool about being homeschooled was that my parents gave me the freedom to choose topics I was naturally interested in when working on school projects. I would write papers about Jackie Robinson or Jesse Owens. One time, I did a science project about protein shakes, trying to get my parents to let me drink them because I’ve always been passionate about health and fitness. There were times—being homeschooled—when I felt a little different and maybe even a little lonely, but I came to realize that you can be homeschooled and be unique and different, but in a good way! I also still got to play sports during that time, and that was such a fun experience.
AE: What’s the best advice anyone has ever given you?
Mr. Tebow: To know the person of God, to trust the plan of God, and to say yes to the purpose of God.
AE: What do you consider your proudest achievement off the field to be?
Mr. Tebow: I don’t know if I would consider it an achievement, but I do consider it a blessing that the Tim Tebow Foundation gets to serve some of the world’s most vulnerable people in 86 countries and counting. From orphans that have been thrown away to survivors of human trafficking, we love those that we serve so much and, almost on a daily basis, I’m inspired by another boy or girl that we’re fortunate to serve. They are such a driving force for me.
(Tim Tebow Foundation)
AE: What project are you most excited about (philanthropic, entrepreneurial, or both)?
Mr. Tebow: I love all of the partners that I’m so fortunate to work with. There’s so much in the world calling for this next generation’s attention, so I am really excited to be a small part of some projects that are telling God-sized stories and providing educational entertainment that is safe for kids. I’m so grateful to be an executive producer for “The David Movie,” an animated film about the inspiring story of King David. The creators are incredibly talented, and they’re striving to tell the story with authenticity (like “The Prince of Egypt” but with animation quality like in “Tangled” and “Frozen”). “The David Movie” also recently became the largest crowdfunded entertainment project ever and is expected to be released in 2024! It’s so fun seeing the momentum build around a movie that could possibly impact generations to come.
I’m also excited to be an investor, board member, and brand ambassador for Minno, the number one source of Christian content for kids that gives parents resources they can trust that their kids will love. The platform has over 2,500 episodes and more than 125 shows, and it is growing! It’s a blessing to get to spend time trying to support families in this way so we can help teach the next generation about the love of Jesus.
Ultimately, I’m overwhelmed thinking about how God has allowed our foundation to reach people in 86 countries now, and I’m most excited about seeing how we can work to bring faith, hope and love to the next 86.
AE: Since this is American Essence magazine, we would love to ask: What do you love and value most about America?
Mr. Tebow: “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Arborist and master
gardener Paul Gautschi at his orchard on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. (Jennifer Schneider for American Essence)
Paul Gautschi would be the first to tell you that the food from his garden is the best in the world.
To prove it, he’d point to his apple trees. Unlike upright trees grown in commercial orchards, the branches of Mr. Gautschi’s trees bend so low they seem to scrape the earth in a submissive bow.
“When you buy an apple in the store, they’re featherweight. When I hand you an apple from one of my trees, your hand drops. They’re so heavy with water and minerals,” said Mr. Gautschi. “The weight of the fruit bent those trees like that. I had nothing to do with it.”
While Mr. Gautschi’s natural humility compels him to downplay his involvement in the quality of his garden, the fact is that the remarkable soil beneath his feet is the result of decades of dedication, observation, and faith.
And it all began with a lousy well.
Sacred Cover
Mr. Gautschi has always been a gardener. Growing up in Los Angeles during the 1950s, he and his brothers wore out shovels breaking up the heavy desert clay in their yard. This grunt work yielded plenty of vegetables and fruit for the family—and created a mindset in Mr. Gautschi that proper gardening meant lots of backbreaking labor.
In the late 1970s, Mr. Gautschi moved his young family to Sequim, a small city on the Olympic Peninsula in northwestern Washington state, with the goal of growing a garden large enough to feed the whole family. An arborist by trade, Mr. Gautschi found work pruning the region’s tree-filled neighborhoods and woodlots.
Mr. Gautschi’s apple orchard. (Jennifer Schneider for American Essence)
While building his home during the rainless summer of 1979, Mr. Gautschi discovered that his new, 213-foot deep well posed a problem. It produced only half a gallon of water per minute. That wasn’t enough water to irrigate a garden, let alone water his newly planted fruit trees. So, he turned to God.
He asked: “God, how am I going to grow anything without water?”
According to Mr. Gautschi, God instructed him to look around his property. He noticed that while his lawn was parched and yellow, the surrounding cedar trees were bright green.
“I went out to look at how everything in the forest was growing with no water. I realized it was all about covering,” said Mr. Gautschi.
The ground cover he saw on the forest floor was composed of the leaves and needles that had fallen from the trees during the fall. As the material settled into layers as the seasons passed, the lower tiers broke down into nutrient-dense compost. When it rained, water was retained in the compost and became inoculated with nutrients to feed the trees. Just as humans have skin, fish scales, and animals fur, so too does the earth have a protective and nourishing covering.
“By having cover on the ground, you have a constant source of [plant] food,” said Mr. Gautschi. “It turns out that poor well was one of the greatest gifts I ever got, because it opened me up to how nature works.”
With his trees landscaped low to the ground and the ground cover being so soft, Mr. Gautschi can collect the ripened apples after they fall from the tree naturally. (Jennifer Schneider for American Essence)
Changing Habits
Inspired by this divine guidance, Mr. Gautschi mimicked the forest covering by shoveling a thick coating of wood chips around his fruit trees. He didn’t yet think to apply the same principle to his garden.
As he had done in Los Angeles, Mr. Gautschi spent the next 17 years breaking his back to maintain his garden. Thick beds of weeds appeared days after tilling in organic fertilizer, and the compacted dirt quickly turned to mud in the rainy season. He wondered how he was going to keep up.
The orchard, meanwhile, was thriving. This frustrated Mr. Gautschi, since he only pruned the branches and laid down a new bed of wood chips every year. One day, he knelt down and moved the wood chips around with his hand. He was soon up to his elbow in beautifully moist, weed-free soil.
Enraged, Mr. Gautschi again cried out to God. Why had he been killing himself for years just to get a mediocre garden, while the orchard was thriving on no input?
He heard a voice say: “It works in your garden the same way. You just didn’t ask.”
Mr. Gautschi threw away his rototiller and immediately covered his garden with wood chips. In very little time, he began to see that the covering had the same effect on his garden as it had in his orchard. The once hard and compacted soil was now soft and buoyant.
“When I came here, my soil was really deficient, and the wood chips broke down really quickly. I had to keep adding them. Now, after so many years of being here, I’m not adding wood chips anymore because the soil is just beautiful and it’s not breaking down that fast,” he said. “It’s just amazing how nature works. When it’s satisfied, it’s not hungry. It’s really awesome.”
Mr. Gautschi is proud of his orchard, which continues to thrive although he hasn’t watered it for 44 years. (Jennifer Schneider for American Essence)
Thanks to the increased oxygen, nitrogen, and water retention, Mr. Gautschi’s soil had a perfect pH balance of 7, meaning it was neither too acidic nor too alkaline. Plants that traditionally can’t grow together—like lavender, which loves alkaline, and blueberries, which love acid—thrive side by side in Mr. Gautschi’s garden.
“It doesn’t matter what the pH requirement is,” he said. “Root development improves, too, because there is no resistance in the soil. I have dwarf trees with roots that come out in a 35-foot radius from the trunk, which is unheard of.”
Finding Eden
Though his garden’s growth was unprecedented, Mr. Gautschi made no efforts to advertise his success. The plot was, and remains, his personal garden. However, things began to change after his orchard appeared in a short article in a 1990 edition of Sunset Magazine.
From that piece, word of mouth began to spread about this man in Washington State growing enormous, abundantly productive fruit trees, all with no watering, fertilizer, or weeding. Soon, Mr. Gautschi found his property teeming with visitors, all eager to learn what he was doing.
“I was surprised, because it was nothing that I was hoping to do or planning to do. It just happened,” he said.
One of those visitors was a man named Michael Barrett, who had met Mr. Gautschi at a Bible study. Having grown up in a family of farmers, Mr. Barrett was curious to see Mr. Gautschi’s garden for himself. When he returned home and told his family of the amazing abundance he had seen, they encouraged him to preserve it on film. So, Mr. Barrett hired two young college graduates, Dana Richardson and Sarah Zentz, to make the picture. After 11 months of filming and editing, “Back to Eden,” was released for free online. It had an impact Mr. Gautschi never imagined.
To date, the film has been seen by more than 50 million people across 155 countries. Many of those viewers have traveled to Sequim as a kind of pilgrimage. To meet the increased interest, Mr. Gautschi began giving formal guided tours of his garden and orchard on Sunday afternoons.
“It’s incredible to me how far this has reached,” said Mr. Gautschi. He’s received phone calls and written testimonials from viewers in Europe and Asia, many of whom changed their diets and improved their health just by implementing his methods in their own gardens. For Mr. Gautschi, this success is nothing short of God’s favor.
Mr. Gautschi also raises farm animals on his property. (Jennifer Schneider for American Essence)
One early adopter of Mr. Gautschi’s method was Josh Thomas, co-founder of the popular blog and YouTube channel Homesteading Family.
“We came across the Back to Eden film not long after it came out. We became familiar with that quickly and employed the methods within a year of watching it. It was the best garden we ever had,” said Mr. Thomas.
His application isn’t exactly the same, due to the different climate and resources he has available near his homestead in northern Idaho. Mr. Thomas uses wood chips, but also adds animal manure for more nutrients and to recycle the waste from his livestock herds.
Though the lack of input is counterintuitive to everything gardeners are taught, Mr. Thomas’s success speaks to the efficacy of Mr. Gautschi’s methods.
“It really is as simple as he says,” Mr. Thomas said.
In 2021, Mr. Gautschi agreed to be filmed for a Back to Eden gardening class for The School of Traditional Skills, an online learning academy Mr. Thomas co-founded. When he arrived in Sequim, Mr. Gautschi greeted him as an old friend.
“Paul is Paul. You’re not getting one face for the camera and one for the side. We appreciate his heart for working with nature through a Biblical perspective,” said Mr. Thomas.
Easy Yoke, Light Burden
The simplicity of Mr. Gautschi’s garden has served him in ways he couldn’t have foreseen when he set down that first pile of wood chips. For several decades now, he has been losing his ability to walk.
Mr. Gautschi served in the Vietnam War as a soldier from 1968 to 1970. During his service, he was exposed to Agent Orange, a tactical herbicide the Army used to kill vegetation. Though he didn’t know it when he returned home, the chemicals were eating away at the nerves in Mr. Gautschi’s legs.
He can’t remember the exact date he realized. But he recalls he was out in his garden when a neighbor kid fell off his motorbike in front of his house.
“As I’m running across my field to go check on him, my legs start buckling. I’m thinking, ‘What’s this? This has never happened before.’ I realized that something was amiss. It’s just continued ever since,” Mr. Gautschi said.
No-till and no-toil, Mr. Gautschi’s regenerative gardening method has allowed his orchard to become easier to manage as he gets older. (Jennifer Schneider for American Essence)
Today, Mr. Gautschi requires a wheelchair to access his garden and is no longer able to give his long Sunday garden tours—though visitors are still welcome. He can still walk, but his movements are slow, and he requires a staff or cane for support.
From appearances, though, you’d never guess there was anything out of the ordinary with Paul Gautschi.
“You do not see frustration. You don’t see pain. He’s not even wincing when I think there is genuine pain there,” said Mr. Thomas. “I think that’s just a reflection of his attitude and his heart. He can still get out there and run a row with his rake and get some seeds in.”
Those seeds become the “living food” Mr. Gautschi credits with playing a vital role in his good health.
“I haven’t been sick for 35 years. No cold, no flu, nothing,” he said.
He pointed out that vegetables start to lose nutrients as soon as they’re picked. “To go out, pick, and eat, as everything in nature does, is the ideal way to consume food.”
However, what truly amazes Mr. Gautschi is the stories of healing he hears from others. He was recently contacted by a man who had contemplated suicide. After watching the “Back to Eden” film, the man changed his mind. He implemented Mr. Gautschi’s gardening gospel and saved his family’s health.
“It’s amazing,” Mr. Gautschi said. “Gospel is just good news. And this is all good news.”
For more information about Paul Gautschi, and to watch “Back to Eden,” visit BacktoEdenFilm.com
Brothers Lucas (L) and Jesse Browde at home in Upstate New York. (Samira Bouaou for American Essence)
The count was full, the bases loaded. Jesse Browde stepped out of the batter’s box, took a deep breath, and fixed his eyes on center field, like a hunter finding his mark. While his teammates were making a ruckus in the dugout, an eerie quiet fell over the parents on the bleachers. They were nervous—but curious.
Who was this kid?
Jesse had just moved to town the previous week, and since he was an unknown player in his first game with his new team, the Little League coach had slated him last in the lineup. No one knew what to expect.
He stepped into the batter’s box, tapped home plate, and settled his weight on his back foot. The opposing team’s pitcher was a big, strong kid. The late afternoon sun bore down on the side of his face, forcing him to squint in a way that made him look even more menacing. The next pitch came in fast, and a little high. Jesse stepped in, and with a quick pivot of his hips, he swung the bat.
Crack!
The moment the ball hit his bat, he knew it: It was a laser to dead center field and cleared the fence by more than 20 feet. His teammates went bonkers, and the hush that had settled over the parents erupted into cheers.
Jesse rounded third base heading for home plate, where the entire team had gathered for the age-old ritual of helmet tapping and bear-hugging reserved only for home runs and walk-offs.
After that day, it didn’t take long for Jesse to settle into his new team.
Jesse and Lucas grew up with a deep love for baseball, they played for a local Little League team and a travel baseball team. (Courtesy of Levi Browde)
These were happy times for Jesse and his younger brother, Lucas, who also played baseball. Their new school was great. Their baseball coaches were knowledgeable and dedicated. And despite the frequent protests of their Taiwanese mother, who fervently believed in home-cooked meals, their dad would often take them to Shake Shack or Five Guys after games.
Many burgers and fries were eaten.
At the time, Jesse and his brother felt that they were living the American dream. Later, they would come to realize that was only half true.
“As I grew older and learned more about our country’s founding, I came to realize that the American dream is not only about making a great life for oneself and one’s family,” Jesse said. “It’s about helping to build and create things that can be a force for good in the world and shared with others. It’s about giving back.”
For Jesse and Lucas, it wasn’t until years later when they joined the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company—Shen Yun Performing Arts—that they found their calling.
An Unexpected Path
At the Browde home, conversations at the dinner table often delved into American history—a subject the entire family is passionate about. (Samira Bouaou for American Essence)
Their parents, Levi and Vivian Browde, describe their sons’ upbringing as quintessentially American—Little League baseball; Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Fourth of July with family; and discussions about American history around the dinner table. The family pored over biographies of America’s founders, spurred on by the family patriarch—Levi’s father is a professor who specializes in constitutional law.
Dance was never part of the conversation.
That all changed on a trip to New York City, when Jesse and his family saw a performance of Shen Yun Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Its programs feature classical Chinese dance, a dynamic and expressive art form that’s thousands of years old. What captivated Jesse most, however, was the message of the performance. Drawing upon a wellspring of legends and stories from traditional Chinese culture, Shen Yun performances showcase timeless themes such as loyalty, compassion, resilience, and faith.
“While they take the form of Chinese stories,” Levi said, “these themes are quite universal and not so different from the stories we discuss around the dinner table. The resilience of Washington and his men at Valley Forge, the loyalty of Lafayette, the faith of the pilgrims—these are values that resonate universally.”
For Jesse, the impact was immediate and profound.
“It wasn’t just the choreography or the message that was being conveyed that struck me. It was the passion of the two lead dancers I saw on stage that day,” Jesse said. “I remember very clearly, it was like, ‘That’s what I can do.’”
The future is bright for these two young dancers. (Samira Bouaou for American Essence)
To the surprise of his parents, Jesse sought out an audition at Fei Tian Academy of the Arts, the preparatory school for Shen Yun’s dancers. He had trained in tumbling and some fundamentals in classical Chinese dance for a few years, but the audition was still a long shot.
“I was conflicted,” Levi said.“I appreciated the kid having a dream, but at the same time, it felt like a quarterback from some backwater Division III school trying out for the New England Patriots. … He had a long way to go.”
Jesse’s mother, Vivian, was more specifically skeptical. She believed her son was too bulky from years of baseball and didn’t seem to have the lithe, flexible physique required for classical Chinese dance, and didn’t mince words in telling him so. “I just said I thought he was too old to start professional dance training—and too chubby,” Vivian said, with a laugh.
His parents weren’t the only skeptics. One of Jesse’s dance instructors initially gave him similar feedback, saying he was likely too old and inflexible to ever become an elite dancer.
But Jesse was determined.
“He had that look in his eye,” Levi recalled, “the same one he used to have in the batter’s box when facing a dominant pitcher. Sometimes he wouldn’t even see the pitcher and just focused on the center field fence—where he wanted to go.”
Left: Jesse in the dance “The Immortal Poet” at the 10th NTD International Classical Chinese Dance Competition. Right: Lucas took on the role of the famous Chinese general in “Loyalty of Yue Fei” at the same competition. (Larry Dye)
For the next several months, Jesse painstakingly trained his flexibility, constantly pushing his own limits. Sometimes, he recruited his parents to help him stretch or work on strength conditioning.
“Up until that point, I had never really set my heart on anything in my life before. I never had that drive or passion to push my limits for anything before,” Jesse said.
A little more than a year later, Lucas had his own epiphany while watching Shen Yun. For him, however, it wasn’t due to any one particular dance or story, but rather to the effect the artists created.
“There’s an energy to it, and you feel it when watching the show,” Lucas said. “It doesn’t just entertain people or even just teach about culture; it inspires morality in people and connects them with the divine. If people walk out of the theater with a new sense of virtuousness and faith, I feel this is the greatest gift you can give to people, and I wanted to be a part of that.”
Practice, Practice, Practice
For the next several years, Jesse and Lucas were not only brothers; they were classmates, training partners, and confidants.
“Classical Chinese dance is not easy,” Lucas said. “With the rigorous training, you really have to develop camaraderie with your classmates to help each other through, and you also learn the importance of staying positive.”
“On a typical day, we do three hours [of training] in the morning, a full load of academics, and I’m usually with friends in the training room for another three hours at night,” Jesse said. “And that’s only if there are no extra rehearsals. So, a minimum of six hours a day.”
Left: Jesse (L) and Lucas at a playground in New York City, early 2006. Right: Young Lucas and his grandmother. (Courtesy of Levi Browde)
Despite the rigors of their training, or perhaps because of it, Lucas feels a great satisfaction with his life’s path.
“Sure, at the end of the day, I’m often physically and mentally weary, sometimes literally crawling into bed. But those times are the most fun and give me the best memories and sense of satisfaction,” he said.
And despite the initial skepticism, years of hard work and an affinity for the millennia-old Chinese art form have paid off for both brothers. After winning a gold medal in the junior division of his academy’s dance competition, in 2020, Jesse was invited to join Shen Yun’s annual tour as part of a student practicum. Lucas, who also won gold in the same dance competition, was able to join his brother a year later.
The brothers’ success in such a short time period, however, is not unusual for Shen Yun’s training program. “It normally takes 10 or more years and a grueling schedule for someone to reach a world-class standard, which is why I was initially skeptical about the boys starting when they did,” Vivian said. “But, I have to admit: Shen Yun proved me wrong. They turned my slow, slightly chubby little baseball players into elite dancers. It’s remarkable.”
According to Levi, the success of Shen Yun’s training program is attributable to factors beyond just hard work and dedicated staff. “There’s a special sauce to the Shen Yun recipe that no one else has,” Levi said. “Shen Yun’s artistic director has infused the entire program with a foundation and know-how that had been essentially lost to history.” As an example, Levi points to the twin techniques of “shen dai shou” (the body leads the hands) and “kua dai tui” (the hips lead the legs). Often cited by international dance competition winners as the key ingredient to their success, Levi said these twin techniques have elevated Shen Yun performance art to a whole new level. “No one was even talking about them, let alone able to do them until Shen Yun burst onto the scene,” he added.
“The boys were very fortunate to find an institution that could take their heartfelt aspirations and provide a way to make them reality,” he said. “They are living their dream, and Shen Yun made it possible.”
Today, Jesse and Lucas—now both adults—share the stage together, traveling the world to perform. Yet, as audiences across the globe marvel at the Chinese art form that they exhibit, few may realize that it’s an American enterprise.
An American Company Showcasing Authentic Chinese Culture
Shen Yun Performing Arts was established in New York in 2006 with a mission to revive China’s 5,000 years of traditional culture.
Within a few years, Shen Yun’s shows were routinely sold out wherever they went. Today, the group has eight companies that tour the world simultaneously, performing in more than 200 cities across five continents each season. With groundbreaking innovations in digital stagecraft, the world’s first orchestra to feature both classical Chinese and Western instruments as permanent members, and storylines that draw from the rich tapestry of China’s 5,000-year history, the company quickly raised the bar on what a group of artists could accomplish.
The response from audiences around the world was immediate, and heartwarming.
Lucas says one of the most inspiring things for him is watching the short interviews that people give after watching a Shen Yun performance.
“Although it’s just a performance, you can tell by watching audience reviews that something very different and special happens at a Shen Yun show. It touches people,” he said.
After seeing Shen Yun this past year, world-renowned author and life coach Tony Robbins said: “The stories are amazing, the execution and the dance is amazing. … I think this is beautiful because it’s keeping [Chinese culture] alive, and it’s sharing it with the world.”
(Samira Bouaou for American Essence)
Actor and comedian Tim Allen, who also saw Shen Yun recently, concurred, saying, “I loved it … quite wonderful.”
For U.S. Brig. Gen. Hector Lopez, a former wartime chief of staff, seeing Shen Yun was transformative: “It was a very emotional experience. … It was not just entertaining, but at the same time, it has a message. I believe we become better people just by watching and witnessing this.”
But none of this could be done in China today. For decades, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has sought to eradicate traditions and impose communist ideology on the people. Because Shen Yun showcases authentic Chinese culture from before the rise of communism, and the CCP views that mission as a threat, the dance company cannot be based in China, nor travel there to perform. For more than a decade, the CCP has pressured theaters and local governments around the world to cancel Shen Yun’s shows.
With no safe haven to nurture authentic Chinese culture at home, elite classical Chinese dancers and musicians have turned their sights on America’s shores to establish Shen Yun.
“At first glance, it may seem strange to have a company here in America whose artistry and cultural foundations are more authentically Chinese than anything you can find in China today,” said Shujia Gong, an associate professor at Fei Tian College. “However, America has long been the place where great ideas grow into great enterprises.
“From the Magna Carta to Locke and Montesquieu, those great ideas unfolded in Europe long before the American Revolution, and yet it was in America where these ideas coalesced into a system of government that inspired freedom and democracy around the world. The Industrial Revolution started in England, and yet it was in America where the automobile, manned flight, as well as computers and the Internet really took off.
“America was the ‘Great Experiment’ in self-governance, but it has also become the great incubator for industry, culture, and progress in general. So it’s not at all surprising that the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company is an American company.”
That idea isn’t lost on Jesse and Lucas. In fact, it’s a point of pride.
“It’s people from all around the world, America, Korea, Japan, Europe—we are from all over the place,” Lucas said. “People come to America to expand what it is they want to do, to make dreams happen.”
“These artists at Shen Yun are people who want to showcase the truth [of real Chinese culture], and they are from all around the world,” Jesse added.
(Samira Bouaou for American Essence)
A Foundation of Freedom, a Global Reach
With Shen Yun, Jesse and Lucas have traveled around the world, as the company routinely takes to the stage on five continents. This past season, their group ventured into new markets, performing 63 shows in eight European countries, as Shen Yun has become a phenomenon across the Atlantic in recent years.
While the experience has exposed the brothers to a broader range of peoples and cultures, it has also given them a newfound appreciation for America.
Recently, on a rare day off, Jesse and Lucas sat in their living room and reflected on this idea.
“Being American is about contributing to our country in a way that allows many different opinions and perspectives to flourish,” Jesse said. “I draw strength and inspiration from knowing that I come from a country whose principles dictate that everyone should be treated as human beings blessed with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, no matter who they are.”
“For me,” Lucas added, “it’s about embracing the liberty we have here that allows us to not only pursue our own happiness, but also have the freedom to share culture and ideas with others. In a way, it’s about having the strength to spread my wings beyond America’s borders. I feel confident and fulfilled traveling the world, partially because I know my home is in America—and that gives me a sense of a foundation to do so much.”
For all of society’s new tech-driven shortcuts, are we more relaxed and in control of our time? On the contrary, life seems to be speeding out of control, and our personal lives bear the brunt of the ensuing chaos and clutter.
One American found an antidote to the modern frenzy in France. After growing up in casual Southern California, Jennifer L. Scott discovered wisdom in Old World etiquette and the traditional Parisian way of dressing, dining, communicating, and living beautifully at home—a higher standard of living. She shares her advice and inspiration on her blog and YouTube channel, The Daily Connoisseur, and in her best-selling books.
“We, especially as Americans, can really get swept up in the rat race,” Scott said. “But I think that we miss something when we do that: We miss a lot about the beauty of everyday life.”
That’s why, she said, “one of my missions in life is to encourage people to live a beautiful life at home, and to live life as a formal affair. I do think that the home is a sacred space; it’s our most important space. It’s where we spend the most time and our environment affects us. … We have a life at home—and for many people that life is in chaos.”
Fish Out of Water
Scott’s slower living approach is a way that Americans used to follow but that she hadn’t encountered while growing up. All that changed the year she went to Paris on a study abroad program.
“Suddenly, I found myself living with this very formal, traditional Parisian family in the 16th arrondissement in Paris,” Scott said. “It’s a fish-out-of-water experience for me.” Her books—“Lessons from Madame Chic,” “At Home with Madame Chic,” “Polish Your Poise with Madame Chic,” and “Connoisseur Kids”—are full of stories about what she learned from her host family, including “Madame Chic”—her nickname for her host mother—and Parisian culture in general.
On one of her first nights there, for instance, she learned a sartorial lesson she’ll never forget. Scott’s host mother spotted her in the pajamas she had brought from California, an ancient pair of sweatpants with a hole in them. Madame Chic was in disbelief. She let Scott know that there was no need to dispense with self-respecting standards just because you’re at home or the sun’s gone down.
“I think, ultimately, the thread of the books is how I meld both what I learned living with this formal French family with my casual American lifestyle, and make it modern and make it significant to me,” Scott said. Since then, she’s discovered even more wisdom and beauty in everyday living, from her personal experiences as a conscientious homemaker and homeschooling mother of four children, ages 4 to 12. She shares her advice with her followers in videos every week.
A Path Through the Noise
The Daily Connoisseur’s slogan is “Keep calm and remain classy.” But as a busy working and homeschooling mom, how exactly does Scott keep calm? “I have to constantly remind myself of it,” she said. “I frequently find myself operating on low levels of stress, sometimes high levels. … I have to consciously step out of that.”
One grounding pillar she always returns to is faith. Scott is Christian, but on her channel, she keeps the tone comfortable for people of any belief system and freely discusses “the major role that prayer and meditation plays in my life,” she said. “[It’s] the thread that kind of gets me through every single day.”
The “noise” on social media and in the news can be an obstacle. Quiet that down, Scott advises, and think about how you truly want to live your life.
“Living beautifully at home is about expressing your style,” according to Scott, who said that her goal is to open people’s eyes to what a fulfilling journey that is. “I just can’t stress enough that it is a beautiful adventure, and that people should wholeheartedly embrace it, even if you are a woman in her 40s who just thinks, ‘Well, I’m not going on an adventure.’ Yes, you can go on an adventure!
“I think it’s exciting when you embark on the journey to improve yourself. And so just enjoy it.”
Tips for Beautiful Living From Jennifer Scott
Scott is not afraid to point out “not-so-chic” choices her fellow Americans make from time to time; she does it with charm, kindness, and humor. But the power of her advice lies in the practical examples of what to do instead. Here are some ways to start living a more beautiful, formal life every day.
Schedule Your Days Mindfully
Self-discipline is a cornerstone of a beautiful life, Scott said—not something to be afraid of. “I like to encourage people to use a planner to schedule their day, write to-do lists, have a morning routine where you do the same things every morning. I think a lot of people are afraid of a routine or getting stuck in a rut by doing the same things all the time, but there’s actually a lot of beauty in [discipline].”
Scott is candid about the sacrifices she makes in order to write her books, helm a successful YouTube channel, and raise her children. “I’m a very disciplined person,” she said, and “that’s how I do accomplish what I do.” Case in point: She keeps up to 10 notebooks at a time to organize the different parts of her life.
(Fei Meng for American Essence)
That doesn’t mean packing each day with rigid, strictly-business tasks. Scott stresses the importance of taking intentional pauses for the little rituals that nourish you. “Doing the things I love throughout the day, like a scheduled tea time, is something that I’m really known for promoting, because I think it’s so important for people to take a break from their afternoon,” she said. For her, that means making time for meaningful exercise, gardening or going out into nature, taking a long bath with a good book, or writing letters or postcards to friends—“things that you wouldn’t really find on a to-do list, but that are equally as important as our most important items on that list.”
And if it all starts to get too overwhelming, be in tune with that, and adjust accordingly. When Scott finds herself operating on stress, she said, “I have to consciously step out of that and stop my to-do list and say no to commitments, and that helps me remain calm.”
Break Out the Bone China
Or your fine linens, or the nice wine you’re saving—today. A key theme that runs through Scott’s advice is “always using the best things that you have,” she said. “It’s about adopting that mindset of higher living, of allowing yourself to enjoy beautiful things, not saving your best for later.”
That can start small: “Instead of having your afternoon tea in that cracked old mug that you use every day,” Scott suggested, how about “finding that nice bone china tea cup that maybe your grandmother gave you that you never used, and enjoying it.”
Simplify Your Wardrobe To Amplify Your Style
Scott encourages “dressing well for the day, every day”—whether you’re going out or at home. To put that goal within reach, enter the “10-item wardrobe.” It’s a life-changing lesson Scott picked up from her Parisian mentors who owned, by American standards, very few clothes, but high-quality ones that they wore often and took good care of. Each item fit well, looked great, and was timeless and elegant, and most or all of them were chosen so that they could be mixed and matched seamlessly. This approach is the subject of a chapter in Scott’s book—and a 2014 TEDx talk—that she says has enduring and universal appeal.
“I think a lot of men and women, they have way too many clothes, and because of this, their style is confused,” Scott said. “Personal style is such an important part of our lives, so paring that down and expressing your true style through the 10-item wardrobe is a big one.”
The concept isn’t as extreme as it may sound. For each season, pick a few tops, a few bottoms, and for women, a skirt and dress or two. Not included in the 10 items are your jackets, hats, scarves, gym clothes, pajamas, and so on. Unneeded pieces go into storage. Closet space is freed up. Some people choose 12 items; for others, 20 is more appropriate. This capsule wardrobe stays put for about 12 weeks, then you swap it out to your heart’s content.
Bring Formality Back to the Dinner Table
“My favorite thing about living in France in particular,” Scott said, “was every single meal involved conversation, community, and nice, formal manners.” She pointed out that American families used to sit down together to enjoy their meals, but that the pressure to join the “rat race” may have sabotaged the tradition here. Eating has become a casual affair.
Making mealtimes more formal—not stuffy—is one way to slow down, pay attention to quality of life, and replace chaos with order, which begets beauty. Scott has also found a fulfilling creative outlet in setting a pretty table with fine trimmings for her young family at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
(Fei Meng for American Essence)
There’s a wellness benefit here, too: “If you’re walking down the sidewalk stuffing a sandwich in your face, because you’re late for something, that is not a good way to digest your food,” Scott said. “When you’re sitting down with good posture, a beautifully laid table, and conversation, you’re able to digest your food properly and get that nourishment you need. And it helps with your stress.”
Welcome Whimsy Into the Home
Life is hard, Scott admits, and homemaking can become monotonous. She proposes an antidote: Introduce some whimsy to the everyday. A perfect example is her “Gemstone Homemaking” series, in which she chooses one gemstone at a time as a theme, and allows it to “inspire us at home.” Emerald, for instance, might show up as an accent color in an outfit of the day, the focal point in a bouquet of flowers for the table, and a recipe for a matcha-flavored hot drink or delicious pesto pasta dinner.
Scott said she believes this is her signature characteristic. There is no shortage of homemaking YouTube channels, for example, that cover nitty-gritty tips for cleaning, decluttering, meal planning, or etiquette basics. “But I like to explore a more whimsical, different dynamic,” Scott said.
Pursue the Arts and Learning
Scott understands the power of looking good, and she shares plenty of style tips from her wardrobe and home decor, but she always emphasizes that our cultivated inner worlds are what truly make us elegant, beautiful, and attractive.
Art appreciation plays a big role in that for Scott. She studied theater in university, and while studying abroad in Paris, she took an art history class that included weekly trips to museums like the Louvre. The class “totally transformed my life,” she said. “I fell in love with these paintings, because not only are you seeing the painting, but you know the story behind it, about the artist and the time period. There’s history—there’s so much.”
Her video series “Seek Out the Arts” is a monthly appointment with a curated selection of paintings, poems, music, and more. In adulthood, she’d longed for the fine arts again in her life but found few opportunities to include it; she created the series to give herself and others the chance to return to some of their most fulfilling pursuits.
“I love embarking on new ideas and implementing them into my life,” she said. “I’m constantly reading, I’m constantly listening to audiobooks, constantly watching YouTube channels, trying to improve myself, and I’m still learning things every single day of my life.”
