Author: ruhlwrite

There’s no seatbelt. Pete D’Andrea throws back his head and laughs. It’s going to be a loud, rough ride. He can’t wait to rev up the engine. Pete’s crazy for classic cars. When he does, the 1955 Chevy roars like a jet taking off from LaGuardia with Pete bouncing along for the ride. “These cars are masters of the racetrack,” he yells above the deafening noise. Pete, a lean mustached man with sad brown eyes, has been the owner of the Regal Turquoise and India…

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Sooyah Jun must get off the bed — now! It’s big and white and puffy like a cloud, and it’s so comfortable that she’s in danger of nodding off in mid-sentence. She was out late last night and the night before that and the night before that … Sooyah works in a law office. This has pretty much been going on for the last three years, ever since she started doing stand-up routines after work, and her lack of sleep is starting to catch up with her big time. Ah, the big…

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Words, words, words. When they flow from Ron Kolm‘s mouth, they are not so much a stream of consciousness as a river of remembrance. Ron — poet, editor, activist and bookseller. They twist and turn with the tides of time, swirling and rippling through the nearly seven decades of his life before he can stop them. There have been many words used to describe Ron, but poet, editor, activist and bookseller are the ones that will have to suffice. Ron, a ginger-haired giant with golden goggle…

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Ellen Evans climbs the three flights of stairs to Terrafirma, her pottery studio, balancing four cups of steaming coffee and a brown paper bag of doughnuts. Ellen opened the Terrafirma pottery in 1980. As she has done every day for the last dozen years, Ellen, a woman of slight stature and sturdy hands, unlocks the metal gate and rolls it up like a window shade, revealing the 5,000-square-foot work space that has come to be her second home. It is not a pretty place. For this, Ellen makes no apology.…

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Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you the one and only Brian Golub. He can talk like a real trooper (in a BBC British, Cockney, East Asian, French, Irish, Italian, New York, Russian, Scottish, Southern or Spanish accent). He can swim like a swan (butterfly, breaststroke or freestyle, your choice). He can juggle like a circus clown (yes, he does do schedules, too). And he can balance like an acrobat (time him holding tree pose, flying crow or full lotus handstand). Brian’s a song and…

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