This is one of the most well-written obituaries of an incredible life ever published. Rick Rescorla was English by birth, fought in the Vietnam War for the U.S. Army in a pivotal early battle, and later became a writer and lawyer. He was the chief of security for Morgan Stanley at the World Trade Center on September 11, and died getting his personnel out of the building. Recommended reading: We Were Soldiers Once…And Young.

Date posted: September 12, 2020 | Filed under books, shortlinks | Leave a Comment »

I’ve been reading a book on the train to work since the middle of last week, and it was fitting that I finished it in New York: Meet Me In The Bathroom is an oral history of the NYC rock scene at the turn of the century when the Strokes, Interpol, TV On the Radio and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs all blew up. I was reading the first music blogs at this point and sort of liked the Strokes but Interpol resonated more with me at that time; it was unlike anything I’d heard before. The book paints a picture of New York that sounds dirty and glamorous and goes a long way to explain where these artists had come from and who they were. Much like fine art, I appreciate music more with context and personal experience, so I started digging back into these and other affiliated bands on Spotify today and found a new appreciation for some bands and some songs that I didn’t have before.

Another book the family just finished this evening: The Mysterious Benedict Society, a young adult book that was recommended for kids who enjoyed the Harry Potter series. It’s a big one that begins slowly, and is written in a way that is challenging to read out loud. But the ending paid off and Finn wants to move on to the next book in the series, so I’ll be placing an order on Amazon tonight.

At the event yesterday, I was using a new Canon 5D MkIV, which is the fancy new update of the MkII I inherited when I came to WRI. It’s a fantastic camera in all respects–focus, speed, ISO depth, a touchscreen interface, 4K video, and wireless connectivity. But the wireless fell flat on its face yesterday as several people asked me to send them photos directly from the event; I’d followed Canon’s instructions and paired the camera with my app at the hotel the night before the gig (it’s where I got this shot of NYC from) like a good little monkey. But try as I might between photo ops yesterday, the fucking camera forgot how to work and wouldn’t broadcast WiFi for shit, and I didn’t have the proper cable to pull them onto my laptop at the venue–nor did I really want to. My Fuji does this in three steps, and it’s worked flawlessly. I wonder why Canon couldn’t get this right? I’ll have to do some more digging to figure that out. I got some good shots, though, and even set up a timelapse with my GoPro perched on an exit sign for giggles.

Date posted: September 26, 2018 | Filed under books, photography, WRI | Leave a Comment »

I’m officially signed up to teach a class this fall at UMBC, which makes me happy. It’s not one of the senior-level courses I had the last two semesters but it’s one I’ve taught before and should be pretty easy to pick up. At one point I was interested in updating the syllabus for this class but given that it starts at the end of August and I’m otherwise occupied with getting healthy I think I’ll just roll with the 10-year-old syllabus they’ve been using.

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I stopped in to a new Harbor Freight store here in town to look over the merchandise and immediately felt overwhelmed. It’s a bigger store than the one I used to go to in Glen Burnie, and the people working there were all friendly and helpful. The shelves were neat and tidy and the place was clean as a whistle. In other words, I didn’t recognize it. I’m looking at sandblasting equipment to start working on my car parts, and after looking over all of the available options I decided I needed to do a lot more research before I made a purchase. Not that I can carry the equipment, or a 50-lb. bag of blasting media right now anyway.

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In the initial days of our vacation I started reading Barbarian Days, a memoir written by William Finnegan, a staff reporter for the New Yorker. It’s a book about surfing, how the author started early when his family moved to Hawaii, and how it shaped the course of his life as he followed waves from California across the ocean to Fiji and Australia. What sets it apart from an average column in Surfer magazine is his prose, which earned the book a Pulitzer in 2016. It’s the kind of writing that reads effortlessly but is obviously the product of decades of craft, and it was a pleasure to finally finish the book this morning.

Date posted: August 5, 2018 | Filed under books, teaching | Leave a Comment »

This week’s reading: Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock’s Darkest Day. It tells the story of how a bunch of hippies and hustlers convinced the Stones to hire the Hell’s Angels to provide security for a free concert in the middle of nowhere.

For further consideration: Albert and David Maysles’ documentary Gimme Shelter, which begins with their Madison Square Garden show and ends with footage shot from the stage and in the crowd.

Date posted: October 12, 2017 | Filed under books, music | Leave a Comment »

I’m currently reading Here Comes Everybody, written by James Fearnley, the accordionist of the Pogues. It starts out with a little of his background before the band formed, how he met Shane MacGowan, and how the band went from tiny gigs in run-down London pubs to breaking out and being an international hit. Fun fact: Before the Pogues broke, Fearnley was asked to play guitar in Culture Club. (previously, previously)

Date posted: September 28, 2017 | Filed under books, music | Leave a Comment »

I read an article last week ranking the best entries in a book series about seminal albums in music history, and I got curious. The series is called 33 1/3 (RPM for LP vinyl, you whippersnappers) and it covers everything from the Rolling Stones to Public Enemy. The authors are different for each volume, and there are (as of this writing) 120 books in total. Intrigued, I looked through Amazon’s listings, found that Paul’s Boutique was rated highly, and bought a used copy.

The books themselves are small, but there’s a pleasing amount of information per page. Dan Le Roy, the author, starts out at the launch party for the album and then resets the clock to the end of the Licensed to Ill tour, explaining where the band was creatively, why they moved to L.A., how they eventually met the Dust Brothers and a man named Matt Dike (the unsung third producer of the album), smoked a mountain of weed, somehow recorded the album, and details the aftermath of the release (which bombed). The end of the book is a track-by-track runthrough of the album which goes into short detail about the stories, samples, and background of each.

I was not a fan of Licensed to Ill when it was released; all the proto-bros in my high school loved it, which didn’t compute (these were the same casual racists who hated rap and loved Slayer) and I couldn’t stand the nasal whine of their delivery.

Paul’s Boutique is a touchstone from my college years, after I’d been exposed to De La Soul, Tribe, and Jungle Brothers, and found that I did, in fact, like hip hop. The first time I heard it I was blown away by how different it was from what had come before. It was the soundtrack of most of the parties I was at in the latter half of college. It stands as a monument in my life for a time of optimism, poverty, boundless creative energy, and a sudden discovery of who I was and what I was good at for the first time in my life.

I just put Endtroducing, Spiderland, and Exile on Main Street in my Amazon cart. Here’s to hoping they are as good.

Date posted: May 11, 2017 | Filed under books, music | Leave a Comment »

We went up to Syracuse to visit my folks last weekend and check out their new house, which is lovely. It’s the first time we’ve seen them since Finn’s christening. They bought in a 20-year-old development, so everything is modern, well-kept, and easily accessible, both in the house and in the town. The house itself isn’t huge but the floorplan makes it larger than it is. The basement is easily twice the size of ours. They are happy and comfortable, and that’s the best thing that could have ever happened to them.

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The weather has finally broken from Seattle-like rainfall and temperatures to a balmy mid-80’s heat, and the Mid-Atlantic humidity is creeping in as I write this. I’ve got a list of summer prep chores to get to over the long weekend–A/C units in the windows, humping summer clothes around the house, setting up an attic fan–and pulling the top off the truck, which I’m looking forward to.

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I’m about 300+ pages into The City Of Mirrors, the final book in the Passage trilogy, and I’m enjoying it so far. The first two books were engrossing and written much better than the standard post-apocalyptic/vampire novel, and I savored re-reading them slowly last month to prepare for this book. That’s about all I’ll say without getting spoilery.

I’m beginning to write down syllabus ideas for next semester’s class, and basing the structure on a couple of books: Alina Wheeler’s Brand Identity, David Airey’s Logo Design Love, and Debbie Millman’s Brand Bible. I’ve got a couple of old syllabi from previous classes and a handful of notes and ideas I’ve written down during the last year. This semester is going to involve a lot more workshop-style learning and hands-on work, which seemed to be the thing that made the light bulbs go on.

Date posted: May 26, 2016 | Filed under books, family, teaching | Leave a Comment »

I’ve been speed-reading a lot of detective fiction on the train over the last year, but I took a break this week to crack open Allen Guelzo’s Gettysburg, the Last Invasion. It’s a thick, scholarly tome which takes the first 250 pages (of my e-book version) to set the stage before the first shot is fired along the Cashtown Pike. It’s a good read, although I got weary of the buildup after a while and skipped to the opening skirmishes. I’ve got two volumes of Edmund Morris’ biography of Theodore Roosevelt standing by; if I can downshift into history for a while, perhaps I can dig into these too.


Scales of Justice Dept.: A jury convicted all four Blackwater operatives of the Nisour Square shooting back in 2007. This is good news, but it should have happened seven years ago. The fact that it took this long to come to its conclusion is another sad postscript to the shit foreign policy of a shit Presidency.

Also, it was great to see they convicted this asshole too.


I’ve got another month or so of class left before the semester is over, and I have to admit I’m looking forward to getting back to a normal schedule. Getting up at 5:30 to be in Washington by 7:15 two days out of the week has my sleep schedule completely out of whack. With all that’s going on at work, I need the time I spend traveling back to stay ahead.

Date posted: April 15, 2015 | Filed under books | Leave a Comment »

There’s not much to report around here. I spent the majority of the weekend behind a desk working on an illustration, but we were able to get out a bit on Saturday to run errands with the girls and visit the Hoerrs’ barbecue in the evening. Sunday I ran the Scout up for the first time in two weeks and took her for a quick drive to the hardware store in beautiful fall weather.

While working, I’ve been doing a lot of research online about the battle of Gettysburg. My Dad has been talking about coming down to visit the battlefield, and this coming Friday we have plans to drive out there and see it. In preparation, I figured I’d find a copy of the Killer Angels, a historical novel based on the battle–something I’ve been meaning to check out for a while now. I got it on Amazon and started listening to it while at work, and it’s very good. I also had Netflix send me Gettysburg, which was made in 1993 and based on the novel. Certain parts of the film feel very dated (the production started out as a miniseries and from an aesthetic point of view it still feels very much like one) but the battle scenes are breathtaking and it definitely helped put faces to names and places (now I can only see Tom Berenger sporting a huge set of muttonchops when I hear of General Longstreet).

The novel focuses on several characters instead of jumping all over the battlefield, so it does a great job of personalizing the experience, but it fails to give a clear overall picture. I  found several programs on Youtube dedicated to the overall battle, one of which was produced by the History Channel and which provides a broader view, and goes into detail about the technology and backstory. The show explains the design of the minié ball, different types of cannon ammunition, and reliance on Napoleonic tactics in the face of modern ballistics, helping make sense of the battle and why it was fought a certain way. It also sheds light on the incredible courage and waste of famous maneuvers like Pickett’s Charge; why else would thousands of men line up in neat rows and march straight into cannister fire from massed artillery?

There are also some podcasts available to help tour the battlefield, which I downloaded and put on my old iPhone for our trip. By the end of the week, I won’t be an expert on the subject, but I’ll at least know enough to be informed.

Monday we have plans to see Antietam, in Sharpsburg, which is another story entirely. I’ve done some preliminary research on this battle, but we’ll be joined by my cousin Brad, who I’m told is well schooled on the subject and willing to take us on a tour.

Date posted: October 15, 2012 | Filed under books, family | Leave a Comment »

As noted earlier, we took advantage of mostly decent weather on Saturday to trim all of the branches off each of the shrubs flanking our front door. I spent about two hours digging out as much of the root structure as possible, but due to hard-packed clay 3″ below surface, I couldn’t get the first one to budge. I took some breaks to haul two loads of brush off to the dump and got a third load into the back of the Scout before calling it a day, but we still have ugly stumps to deal with. The plan is to rent a jackhammer next weekend and try to dig them out with brute force.

Tubing, without water

Sunday was cold, wet, and gray, so we made ourselves a hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon, packed ourselves into the car, and drove to IKEA. There we found a shelving unit the perfect size for tucking into the wall between the back door and chimney, and bought eight wicker bins to go inside. The afternoon and evening were spent moving furniture to make way for a new arrangement; there’s a big shelf in the living room filled with toys and some long-hibernating books (stuff I’d forgotten I even had) across from the couch. The library table is now up against a wall with the carpenter’s chest tucked underneath. The den has a big empty wall waiting for some kind of decoration, and the new shelf holds a good portion of Finn’s toys with all the A/V equipment on top.

A conversation with my neighbor confirmed my suspicion that we’ll need a new head unit that will accept multiple inputs and upconvert all of them over one HDMI cable to the TV. I’m also going to have to bite the bullet and replace my speakers, a pair of Baby Advents that I bought before shipping off to college; the foam of the woofers has dried and degraded to dust in places. Either way, I’d like to get some unobtrusive surround speakers with a subwoofer and hide as much as possible instead of staring at two big cabinets on the floor.

Unpacking, I uncovered two dogeared books from my past that made me smile. The first is Building Speaker Enclosures, published by Radio Shack sometime in the middle 80’s. I bought this before college, and sourced all of the speaker components in the days before the internet, which dictated several trips to Canal Street in NYC to visit car audio outlets for 8ohm woofers, crossovers, and other electronic components. (Lugging two 15″ woofers through the subway and home on the Metro North was quite an experience.) Much of my current tool collection was started when I brought the materials down to my apartment and assembled the boxes on the dining room table. The speakers are still sitting in the basement, water-stained and yellowing, waiting for me to buy new birch plywood and cut clean new boxes to transplant the electronics into. Tucked into the pages are the handwritten notes and calculations I used to design and build the boxes, scrawled on the backs of scrap paper and envelopes.

The second book was stored in the carpenter’s chest under all our A/V equipment. It’s a blue sketchbook with a picture of Elvis duct-taped to the cover, and it’s a record of a trip to Graceland my buddy Pat and I took in March of 1992. We made it to Elvis’ house, then continued westward as far as Paris, Texas before swinging north and heading for home, for a total of 3,346 miles. It’s a rambling diary written by two guys stuck in a compact pickup truck for seven days, and as any diary should, my writing makes me cringe. Pat’s writing is funny and direct. The pictures we took are taped in and annotated as best we could, including stops at Manassas, the Waffle House, the St. Louis Arch, a land-locked submarine, and the Flying Tigers Museum. It contains some of the only documentation I have of that pickup and time period. I’m going to put it up on my shelf in a place of honor.

Date posted: April 23, 2012 | Filed under books, house | Leave a Comment »