Welcome to the Plug-in California
In the spectrum between the Dude too cool for the Eagles and the cabbie riding to Bill Szymczyk’s final mixes from Studio C, Lij Shaw was riding shotgun and saying: Turn it up!
Arts & Letters
Making Contact
To print traditionally, you have to convert your image into something that can be felt. You must give it a pattern of grooves, ridges, or adhesions. And when you begin to print, your ink, paper, and plate must all be in physical contact, with pressure coming from above and resistance from the print bed below. A print “is an object that has been pushed, and pushes back.”
Aground: TCR at Sea
We headed up the Pungo and quickly ran into the line of thunderstorms we had been trying to beat. Visibility was zero, and the wind high enough that we had to retreat from the river to wait it out.
Choose Your Trip: TCR at Sea
Chris paid a lot of money for the boat. It was the trip he wanted to take, a way of life. So far, over several weeks of hard work, first high and dry in a boatyard in a Florida summer, then on this “shakedown cruise,” he has gotten everything coming to him.
The Photography of Gaucha Berlin
Gaucha Berlin's photography is more than beautiful. It is gentle and honest and shows you the tiniest bits of beauty on the planet in ways you have never troubled to see them.
Apocalypse Another Day: TCR at Sea
I tried to imagine what I would do if I was suddenly alone, since I do not have the experience to dock this boat in a falling tide among 80-foot yachts tight in their slips. If it was the apocalypse I could figure the range based on fuel in the tanks and choose where to ground it. The boat did not cost me anything, and after all it would be the apocalypse.
Do Not Tempt the Universe: TCR at Sea
The bigger the venture, the more the universe messes with you.
Transiting The Ditch: The Common Reader at Sea
A friend texted recently to say he had bought a new yacht. He asked if I would like to help him transit it from Fort Pierce, Florida, to his home port in Maryland, a trip of about a thousand miles up the East Coast. “I can probably do that,” I said, spilling my coffee.
Can You Diagram That Sentence?
“I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences,” announced the formidable Gertrude Stein, though her own sentences would defy the art.
Kinky Friedman, Charles Manson and Fruit of the Tune Records Are Dead
I never met or shared a stage with Kinky Friedman, but we were label mates in the 1990s along with none other than Charles Manson, who had more news obituaries (in 2017) than just about anybody, but was still, of course, a profoundly unenviable man.