I suspect any serious lover of music has a mental checklist of musical artists who deserve a much larger audience than they have garnered. Neko Case—who will begin her next tour in St. Louis at The Sheldon on September 18—stands near the top of my list. I first heard her as a […]
Often we think that the paths we choose are straight—northerly from Florida to Maryland, in the case of the transit of my friend’s boat, Castaway—but in reality our lives are made of arcs, loops, and retracings. Chris and I often veered off course, lengthening the trip significantly, to get fuel, reach […]
An exchange at the start of Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song portrays the comedy of surprise at learning something that changes the landscape we thought we knew. Brenda Nicols and her husband Johnny are driving to pick up her cousin Gary Gilmore, who has just been released from prison for armed robbery […]
Having the boat lifted out of the water and inspecting her props, rudder, and trim tabs took no more than 30 minutes. It cost the same as my monthly rent. Everything there was fine though, so Chris asked the marine mechanics to search until they found why Castaway was unable to get […]
Chris invited me to help transit his new boat, Castaway, a thousand miles from Fort Pierce, Florida, to Havre de Grace, Maryland. We ran offshore for several days then took the Intracoastal Waterway north, on average. The coast was beautiful, varied, and often deserted. But there were also mechanical and electrical breakdowns, […]
Things can go swimmingly for so long that they seem to be proof you will make it. Success by sunk cost! Then, smack in the middle of a shouted discussion about politics, alcoholism, and past lovers, you run aground at full speed off some unnamed headland. Is that not always the way? […]
Being too cool for the Los Angeles rock band the Eagles was enshrined in the Coen Brothers’ classic film The Big Lebowski (1998). The Dude (Jeff Bridges) has been doped by a pornographer and brained in the forehead with a coffee mug by the Malibu Police chief, yet he still retains the […]
“I didn’t think I’d learn so much,” my friend Chris said. We had been in the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) all day, headed from Southport, North Carolina, toward Belhaven Marina, up the Pungo River in North Carolina. Our first four days up the East Coast from Florida had been offshore. This was our […]
People have been saying they would have liked to go on this trip, or wish we would pick them up in Charleston, or they tell me good-naturedly they are jealous, etc. Believe me, I understand. It is an opportunity of a lifetime, and it is my great good fortune to know Chris, […]
My friend Chris is good at fixing mechanical things, which is good because he has a tendency to poke at them to see if they will continue to work, even if they are vital. As he learns the navigation system on his new boat he likes to poke at the screens to […]
