The Memory Trap
Fri, 19 Mar 2004
Tue, 04 Dec 2001
Wed, 12 Jul 1995
1975 was the Indian summer of progressive rock. Procol Harum and King Crimson released their respective swan songs. ELP, Yes, Pink Floyd and Genesis were still popular. Younger art rock upstarts like Kansas, 10CC, Supertramp, and Gentle Giant were weighing in with strong new releases. Crack the Sky, from a small steel town 30 minutes west of Pittsburgh, was then one of most promising of these young upshots. Click to Read More...
Fri, 18 Dec 2015
Patsy Cline, in today's parlance, gave zero fucks. I feel a certain kinship to Cline, if only because I attended the same school she did, Gore Elementary, 12 miles west of Winchester, Virginia (though I attended 30 years after she did).
Back up against the Blue Ridge Mountains, Gore is a tiny unincorporated town, mostly a few buildings coalescing around a single road breaking off Route 50.
Many of the refined folk in the nearby metropolis of sorts, Winchester, had looked down on Patsy Cline, as being
from the wrong side of the tracks, even after she became famous. Click to See the Tracks She Was on the Wrong Side Of...
Tue, 20 Nov 2018
Some dirty truths about running a newspaper:I am sorry to hear of the passing of the Village Voice, and for, my own kindred, the Baltimore City Paper, both of which folded last year. But I am pretty cynical about attempts to revive them. Quarter-page ads from the local coffee shops were not what drove those newspapers. My advice for anyone foolhardy to try to start an actual print newspaper or magazine these days? Find a source of dirty money to keep the books healthy.
Click to Read More...
Fri, 06 Apr 2018
I would not recommend driving 1,400 miles in approximately 30 hours. But if you must do it, it helps
to have a speedy set of wheels. Our goal was to experience the eclipse in its entirety,
to get under the path of totality as its darkness cut a swath across the United States mid-day August 21, 2017.
Others had made plans,
procured camping spots and sleeping bags for the night before. We had a
Ford Mustang to get us there, and get us back, through a 30 hour day all in order
to experience the 3 minute micro-day of pure planetary discombobulation within.
Click to See...
Wed, 26 Aug 2015
1984
As a teenage fuck-up who had recently (and barely) graduated high school, I, of limited opportunities,
joined the U.S. Army in the summer of 1983. I had never been outside the northeast U.S., and after advanced
training, was first assigned to Fort Lee, New Jersey. Cool, I thought, I would be close to my
girlfriend, who lived not too far away in Harrisburg, Pa. But then, in would I would later understand to be in
true U.S. Army fashion, a last minute phone call came in: I would be instead be dispatched to South Korea,
a place that seemed for my lovelorn heart to be on the other side of the planet.
Click to See
Thu, 27 Feb 2020
Susan Fowler's "Whistleblower" should be required
reading for any Silicon Valley start-up founder, or any company exec for that matter.
The sexism/misogyny Fowler experienced at Uber and elsewhere derailed her career, multiple times.
But it also damaged these organizations as well,
in terms of lost talent and, later on, public goodwill. Click to Read More...
Wed, 16 Jul 2014
Sometimes a piece of writing so closely describes the truth, that it itself becomes the truth. Charles Darwin's " On the Origin of Species," first published in 1859, made its argument so thoroughly, so absolutely, it literally willed evolution into being in the human consciousness. Click to Read More...