Just in time for Halloween Witchcraft was an extreme clipper ship designed by Samuel Pook (see below) and built in Chelsea, Mass. By Paul Curtis. She was wrecked off Hatteras in 1861. According to Fairburn (p. 3946) this card was produced for her fifth voyage. He calls it a “slow and unfortunate passage and the […] More >>
Archives for October 2015
My Plan for Olson’s Brain
Well, Olson’s Brain is safe and sound in Gloucester Mass. A week ago today my buddy Henry Ferrini flew into Seattle, WA to meet me after the Seattle Book Fair. Next Morning we rented a 16 foot box truck (it looked big to us, but everything’s relative) and drove through the rain to Vancouver, BC, […] More >>
The Name of My Ted Talk is Pink
(Every year for the five years I’ve been blogging I write a post about what a terrific fair the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair is. This year was no different. It was an excellent, well-run event, with good attendance, good buying, and good selling. Rather than bore myself, and probably you, by attempting clever new ways […] More >>
Driving Olson’s Brain
A few years ago a lovely book came out called Driving Mr. Albert. Here’s the blurb: Albert Einstein’s brain floats in a Tupperware bowl in a gray duffel bag in the trunk of a Buick Skylark barreling across America. Driving the car is journalist Michael Paterniti. Sitting next to him is an eighty-four-year-old pathologist named […] More >>