Sam Stephenson

Stu Sternberg awarded Rays employees with significant bonuses after selling the team: Sources Sternberg sold the Rays in late September and issued significant bonuses to all full-time employees of the team.

This is why the Rays have the 3rd most wins in MLB since 2008, in a metaphoric nutshell:

www.nytimes.com/athletic/670...

In car in College Station TX this morning, listening to radio, a PSA for event at George H.W. Bush Presidential Library. 35th anniversary of Bush 41 signing Americans with Disabilities Act, led by GOP Sen. Bob Dole. Can you Imagine Trump/GOP today supporting a big bill to help handicapped people?

My favorite bookstore in Houston this morning.

Love and Work: Lyric Research on Jason Molina — The Brother In Elysium Sam Stephenson 2019 / 2025 Love and Work is a meditation on the life and music of the Ohio-born musician Jason Molina (1973–2013). In this work, Stephenson uses his wandering, associative, perhap...

New letterpress edition of my 2018 Jason Molina essay being published in December by The Brother in Elysium of Holyoke, MA. This collaboration (first printing of 200 copies in 2019) is a favorite collaborations I've been lucky to have. Pre-sale available here

thebrotherinelysium.com/shop/love-an...

I hope you do a book of your photos one day

Nixon carried 49 states (!) in November 1972 with historically low voter turnout. Playboy magazine's November 1972 issue sold 7.2M copies, the peak monthly circulation in their history. (I love research).

Our first and only was 10 days early. The biggest thing we hadn’t done was think about preparing our dog for incoming new being. It worked out, ultimately. Sending best well wishes to you and yours.

I wonder what Jeff was doing in town. A month later he was put in the pen in Virginia.

Yes. Red Sox did it with great sustained front office and field management with emphasis on pitching and catching and character and team chemistry. Mets and Clips aren’t doing that.

Thank you for sharing this, Joanna. It’s so good.

Bendowa Books Bendowa Books is a bookstore specializing in used, out of print, and new books. Areas of focus include Poetry, Literature, Art, Architecture, Photography, Counterculture, Chinese and Japanese Art and ...

I want to put in a word for Bendowa Books, a wonderful online seller of carefully curated rare books based in Holyoke, MA. The owner of Bendowa, Jon Beacham, is also a world class letterpress printer.

bendowabooks.com

My wife is a biologist at Texas A&M and she loves her undergrad students and is impressed by them. The idiot A&M first year that recently got everyone fired is an anomaly.

Fantastic photo. Congrats on the launch. Your book is so good.

When identity politics Trumps the Constitution The First Amendment is the latest casualty of the Republican Party's identity politics, and Trump's cult of personality. What can stop him?

“I am not a partisan for any party, but I am a partisan for democracy. When something or someone threatens free and fair elections or fundamental rights, I will not shy away from coverage even if it means coming off as a partisan.”

open.substack.com/pub/gelliott...

My latest Interlibrary Loan caper. Free, I have this book for 6 weeks. One of the great services our culture provides. Book came from a library in Corpus Christi, 204 miles from my house. If MAGA new about this service, they would seek to do abolish it, and call it socialist.

This is one of few books I still have from high school. Public school in town of 10K people in coastal N.C. My great English teacher assigned me this book to read before watching movie (book sadder, deeper). He next assigned me The Magic Barrel and was forever hooked on Malamud.

+1

This 2005 book, "Findings" by photographer Hiroshi Watanabe, is spellbinding. I can't stop looking at it. 61 square, black and white images spanning the globe from the US (mainland plus Alaska and Hawaii), Japan, Ecuador, Iceland, Burma, Spain, Tahiti, India.

YouTube video by Front Row Music Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: Live in New York City | Full Concert

Springsteen NYC 2000 is back on Youtube which I appreciate. But gives me new opportunity to feel deep remorse at incessant close-ups & cute over-editing of 99% of concert videos. Please let some images breathe. I'd love to get hold of raw footage and oversee a recut.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1USJ...

White supremacy in a nutshell.
www.qasimrashid.com/p/a-white-ma...

I want you all to just watch how quickly mainstream media moves on from this story now.

GOD GOLD GUNS. And hair style. That pretty much covers it. Texas!

The process of art must always go where the most uncertainty lies. So that beauty when its found, as it rarely is, has a touch of the marvelous about it, the unknown. Masterpieces are only beautiful in a tragic sense, like a starfish lying stretched dead on a beach in the sun - Wm Carlos Williams

Agree. There is so much obscure and tremendous acting and singing talent in the theater world. Find one of them for this role.

Been cranking this CD in my car this week. Holy interplay between piano (Angelica Sanchez) and drums (Chad Taylor). Subtle and sizzling music.

It's Friday! Your assignment this weekend: Hang out in a bookstore or library. Spend time with the books. Chat with the booksellers & librarians. Enjoy the community. This is activism. Your presence energizes these spaces & these spaces need energy. Have a great weekend!

Dear World, if you've never streamed WKCR out of NYC before, the next three days are a good time to do it. 72 hours of the music of Charlie Parker and Lester Young. Special note for the posthumous shows of Phil Schaap, who was one of a kind, a true American and NYC original.

Facebook just reminded me of this photo I posted 9 years ago today, rendering an epic edit of my book, Gene Smith’s Sink, in which I carved a more/less conventional biography - 20 years of work - down into something I love more, cutting more than half. (The conventional one would have sold more).

Lots older directions I could go, but Malick's Thin Red Line. I was late 20s, bookstore clerk, trying get act together as writer and project director, pored over Jones' novel preparing for Malick's first movie in 20 year, then experienced profound demonstration of narrative / plot meaning little.