Stories without Borders
Eric Newby was eighteen when he signed onto a four-masted sailing ship as an “apprentice seaman.” He spent 1938 to 1939 sailing around the world in the grain trade. When he arrived home in Britain, World War II had started. Commercial sailing ships would never again carry cargo—sail would become a hobby and a sport rather than … Read more
Today’s Google doodle honors writer, adventurer and inventor Nellie Bly. It’s a cute tribute to the nineteenth-century muckraker and women’s advocate. She was best-known for her expose of life in a New York insane asylum and her race around the world (in which she beat her opponent as well as Jules Vernes’ 80 days). This got me … Read more
Today’s Google doodle celebrates the little-known Bartolomeo Cristofori, who invented the piano. He was born today in 1655, and spent two decades developing his new alternative to the harpsichord, the pianoforte. Unfortunately, the piano didn’t catch on in his lifetime. He died in 1731, without fame. Cristofari’s doodle, which plays music and highlights the inner workings of … Read more
I think of writing as an extreme sport. Physically, I might not look like an athlete at the keyboard. But psychologically, writers have a lot in common with athletes. Writing a book requires repetitive daily practice, year after year. Daily practice requires the kind of discipline or obsession that propels people to the Olympics. Overcoming the logistical obstacles … Read more
The first TV show I watched in a serious way was David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. I read the arts section in the newspaper every day when I was a teenager. We lived in the DC suburbs, so the TV critic was the great Tom Shales of the Washington Post. I don’t remember much about his writing, … Read more