“He had never been completely unembarrassed while speaking on the radio; this was a fact (his mike fright was something else). He had always felt just a little silly announcing, introducing, selling, describing, interviewing, giving the time and telling the weather, doing local color, acting and reciting bed-time stories, holding up his spokesman’s end of the conversation — which in radio was the only end there was. For the truth of the matter was that radio was silence as well as sound; the unrelenting premise was that the announcer’s voice occurred in silence, in the heart of an attentive vacuum … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

As with many households, the start of a new years is bringing all sorts of ambitious sorting and reorganizing projects. In our domicile, one of the places that manifests is with a fresh pass at the music collection, specifically the weight shelf of CDs that now occupies a corner of the living room. We got a custom-built CD shelf years and years ago, and there’s long been a general understanding that we’d try to keep the accumulated discs to a number that could fit into that unit. That means it’s time for a little purging. To facilitate this — and, … Continue reading One for Friday: Apollo Smile, “Thunderbox”