Author Archives: tris

For four and a half decades, I’ve been watching American society, closely and warily. Though I’ve sometimes written hard words about my country, I try not to be hyperbolic about it. So when I say that I believe that America is, in February 2018, more susceptible to fascism than it ever has been in my […]

In October 2002, then-Senator Hillary Clinton voted to authorize the use of military force in Iraq. The prior year, she’d been in favor of the USA Patriot act; in 2006, she voted to renew it. As Secretary of State, she was one of the loudest and most influential voices advocating intervention and regime change in […]

Last year at this time, I ran down a list of the ten boardgames I’d played most frequently in 2016.  It was not, to put it bluntly, the most well-read piece in the history of this site.  But a few of my pals with similar affections for cardboard bits and wooden pawns did write in […]

George Washington called the American political idea a grand experiment, and for three hundred years, we’ve run with that self-concept. America tries things that other countries won’t — and it’s worth remembering that our willingness to take chances has served us pretty well. Last January, our latest and most dangerous experiment began. Though we’d been […]

I’ve been writing and mixing nonstop since February. No complaints — it’s been nothing but fun. But I have to take a moment here to reload: come up with a few new stories, finish a couple more songs and rebuild the buffer, get some new art, all of that. So: tiny July break while we […]

When I first met Michael Flannery, he was a local rock star, and that’s no hyperbole. In 2000, he was one half of an act that was, albeit briefly, about as popular an attraction as a band on the Jersey club circuit ever could be. I’ve seen the Feelies at Maxwell’s many times, Bob Mould […]

  While an armistice was signed at Appomattox in April 1865, the Civil War never really ended. The shooting stopped, mostly, but fighting continued by other means, and on other battlefields: in the courts, in newspapers, in popular culture, in flag controversies and statue-erections and statue-removals, and and, most of all, within the institutions of […]

Sometimes Steven captures audio of random bands he’s booked at the club and sends it to us at home. We’ll be playing a boardgame or skidding around on the floor in our socks, and there in our mail will be a clip from Pianos. I think it’s just meant to be a representational sampling — […]

You said that you were born here/but you haven’t found it yet: Graham Parker sang it in 2007 on a song called “I Discovered America.” He was describing the confusion of millions of people whose encounters with national identity have always been vexed and incomplete. Everybody must discover America, Parker (an Englishman who now lives […]

Probably you know I wrote a book called The Trespassers.  I like it a lot, but it’s nobody’s idea of a crowd-pleaser. What you don’t know, though, is that I’ve got another finished novel on this computer, and, alas, it makes The Trespassers seem like Michael Crichton by comparison. It’s pretty brutal. All writers have […]