NORTH of the JAMES Thirty Years Later

by Charles McGuigan 11.2024

Look for our commemorative edition coming out January/February 2025. It will be our biggest issue ever, and will include 30 of our cover stories, one from each year we have published 1994-2024

“This November NORTH of the JAMES will be thirty years old.”

That’s what I told a long-time friend this past summer.

“Wow, talk about a stroll down memory lane,” she said.

I smiled and nodded. But here’s what I was thinking: This isn’t going to be a quiet stroll down some country lane. I was headed on an extended road trip down Route 1, from Maine to Florida, with breakdowns and detours, and countless stopovers along the way. 

Tonight, staring at the thirty stacks of magazines scattered on table tops and a church pew in the living room and dining room fills me with a sort of dread.  There are hundreds of stories in more than three hundred issues. And here’s the thing: beginning with that very first issue I thumbed through—scanning headlines, examining photos—I found that I could recall in detail every single person I had ever interviewed. I could hear their voices, even their nuances of speech, accents if they had them. It was as if I was back with them in this present moment, that no time at all had passed, even though some of those people are now dead. 

And whether I like it or not my personal history is somehow united with the stories I wrote at the time. My father’s death just three weeks after the first issue hit the streets, the birth of my daughter Catherine and my son Charles—the rough spots and the profound joys.

In the course of three decades I have written more than two million words for NORTH of the JAMES (to give that context, the total word count for all seven volumes of the Harry Potter series comes in at a little over one million words), interviewed over a thousand people, and have worked alongside some of the finest writers, photographers, and graphic designers anywhere. And I mean anywhere.  What’s more we have a slew of advertisers who have been with us since our inception, and many others who have joined us along the way. And these men and women who supply the fuel that makes our magazine run are my friends. All of them have locally owned businesses: we do not accept advertising from corporate giants or chain restaurants, and never have.  That was part of our policy when the publication first hit the streets. And thanks to our various account executives—Ellen Zagorin (also the magazine’s first publisher), Anne Jones (also a contributing writer whose prose is as good as any you’d find on the pages of The New Yorker), Herbert Jones, and others (myself included)—we have strong bonds with the local business community and have always highlighted them in some shape or form, often telling their stories and using them as authoritative sources in their respective areas of expertise. In an era that has become increasingly dominated by corporate media, which gobbles up independent publications and regurgitates them as shells of their former selves, we not only survived, we thrived. 

None of any of this would have been possible without our writers. Even in those early days we attracted some of the best scribes in the city. A partial list would include Nick Sharp, Stephanie Joyce, Rob Schultz, Eliza Overhill, and several others. Over the years our pool of writers increased. There was John Wright, Ames Arnold, Christie Yesolitis (who started out as an intern), Anne Carlson, Brian Burns, Kathy Butler Springston, Roy Proctor, Rebecca Moon, Rex Springston, Anne Johnson, Julie Jenkins, Dale Brumfield, Alane Ford, Daniel Payne. And, of course, Jack R Johnson, Frances Temme, Fran Withrow, Anne Jones and Fayeruz Regan. 

And even from the start we had folks who could tell the stories through photographs. Jeff Bidewell was our first shooter. He created the first cover which was a hand-tinted black-and-white photograph of the Bryan Park Arch with a full color photo of golfers playing on an imaginary course through the archway. Later there was Todd Morelle and Joan Jernigan and Chris Smith. And then in 2001, one of the best photographers I have ever worked with, joined us. John MacLellan would continue as photographer and later as creative director through 2011. For the last ten years, Rebecca D’Angelo, who worked for The Washington Post for several years, has filled John’s shoes admirably.

The look of NORTH of the JAMES (originally called NORTHSIDE magazine) was created by Joany Flick, my former wife. She worked non-stop developing our signature look and for the first fours years as creative director she drew in pen-and-ink hundreds of drawings that accompanied articles along with photographs. Our other creative directors included Todd Liverman and Bob Saydlowski. From 2003 until 2011, John MacLellan held the creative reins on our visual design. 

But it was Doug Dobey who acted as our creative director for most of our life, and he was a friend of many years. He was instrumental in changing our look by reworking our flag in the same typeface we use today. Doug brought a uniformity with standing heads for both columns and features, and had the uncanny ability of knowing exactly what I was looking for in the presentation of a cover story. We met monthly, generally in his living room, where he put finishing touches on “the book” and at last put it to bed. Over the course of his career, Doug worked as a graphic artist and designer, and was probably the most widely respected graphic artist and designer in Richmond. “I’m proud of all the publication work I’ve done over the years,” he told me a few years ago. “Besides NORTH of the JAMES, there was Throttle in the eighties, all the pubs I got to work on at the VMFA when I was just starting out, Style Weekly, and my stint as art director at Richmond Magazine.” He served as our creative director for more than a dozen years, and then back in April of 2022, Doug had a stroke, and is still in recovery.  Since that time, my daughter Catherine has been our creative director, and her work, like her mother’s, is stunning. 

Here’s how it all began way back in the summer of 1994.

Joany and I, both long-time Fan dwellers, had moved into Bellevue a year earlier.  Things in the Fan had gotten pretty yuppified and more and more homogeneous, and housing prices were well out of our range. Late in the afternoons we would ride our bikes around the city exploring different neighborhoods, and when we began riding along the streets of Bellevue we were immediately sold. There were a lot of trees and well-maintained gardens in sizable backyards. Plus, there were the Arts and Crafts cottages and American Four Squares. This, too: housing here was affordable. We found a ramshackle craftsman bungalow, purchased it for a song and began renovating it from floor joists to roof rafters. In early January we were married and six months later my father’s cancer returned with a vengeance. A few years before he had survived cancer of the bile duct in his biliary tract.

That July, Joany and I made several trips to my parent’s beach house in South Bethany to visit my father. He seemed to be shrinking right before our eyes, the weight loss was perceptible each time we dropped in. The words “wasting disease” formed in my mind every time I looked at my dad.  

Back in Richmond, Joany and I began tossing around the idea of creating a regional magazine. We wanted it to be utterly unique both in appearance and editorial content. Stories would always be told in a narrative style. Our desire was to transport our readers to wherever our writers took them. The periodicals we emulated were The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s. Along with features and profiles we would always highlight the local art and music scene, and carry reviews of books, movies, local theatre, and restaurants. We would also print profiles of locally owned businesses—never on corporate enterprises.

We mentioned the idea to our friend and new Bellevue neighbor Ellen Zagorin. Almost immediately she was on board with the idea. And so the three of us went to work and by the late summer Joany had created a mockup of the magazine that Ellen could use while soliciting ads for the inaugural issue. Our very first cover story was about Bryan Park and plans by the city manager of the time to build a golf course there, taking over between fifty and seventy-five percent of one of Richmond’s most pristine public green spaces. It was as poorly thought out a proposal as the Redskins training camp, which became a reality that continues to drain city resources, and the equally misguided Navy Hill project, which was fortunately aborted. 

A group of local activists who called themselves Friends of Bryan Park was instrumental in derailing the plan. One of its founding members, and its president, was a man named Chuck Epes, who still lives in the Northside. I’d met Chuck a couple years before when he worked as a reporter and editor for The Richmond News-Leader, the defunct afternoon daily newspaper. But then he switched career paths and began working with organizations whose mission is to save the planet. He worked for a time as spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, and then settled into the position of Virginia communications director at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Through the years Chuck Epes educated me on the environment and how industries, some of which have known for years about the ramifications of their actions, have continued their unrelenting assault on the biosphere, literally killing life on the only planet we will ever call home. He also instructed me on how important green spaces are for the health of an urban environment. 

And that’s the thing about NORTH of the JAMES: it has always acted as a sort of continuing education for me. I have had the privilege of interacting with some of the most erudite and creative minds in our community, and each one has exposed me to new ideas and different ways of looking at things. So a piece of all them resides within me, and sometimes it gets a little crowded in there.

Our fourth issue featured L. Douglas Wilder on the cover. I spent hours with this man who was the very first Black governor ever elected in this country. His story was fascinating, and just after it ran, it taught me something else about racism. Not two days after delivery began, I received a telephone call from a man who had just received the issue on his front porch. He lived in a neighborhood in Henrico County adjacent to Bryan Park. Here’s what he screamed into the receiver (this was in pre-cell phone days) in a quaking voice: “I don’t want that trash on my property ever again. You got a n***** on the cover. I’m gonna contact the county and let ‘em know you littering.”

He followed through (and we never delivered to his house again, until he died) and Henrico County contacted us and suggested we might be in violation of county code. I called the Brookland District supervisor—a Republican by the name of Dick Glover. He immediately spoke with County Manager Virgil Hazelett and told him that any interference by the county in our distribution of the magazine could well be a violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press. The county backed off, and became one of our biggest supporters.

On the cover we periodically featured politicians—Tim Kaine (on three occasions), Viola Baskerville (twice), Bill Bolling (who later served as lieutenant governor of Virginia), Frank Thornton, Norma Murdoch-Kitt, Frank Hargrove, Nina Peace, Hunter McGuire, Kenya Gibson, Dick Glover, Bill Johnson, Carol A.O. Wolf, Don McEachin, Eric Cantor, David Baugh, Chris Peace, Abigail Spanberger, and a couple others. 

The vast majority of our profile covers were about artists and musicians. 

Among the many artists we wrote about were Clifford Earle, Heidi Rugg, Bill Kendrick, Richard Bland, Matt Cross, Rolanda Scott, Rob Ullman, Nicole Renee Randall, Tom Chambers, Nico Cathcart, Doug Dobey (who was also our graphic designer and creative director for a total of about twelve years), Tim Harriss, Diane Clement, Ed Trask, Julie Elkins, Noah Scalin, and at least a dozen others.

The profiles of the musicians and songwriters we ran included Page Wilson, Melanie Day, The Gospel Chicken House, Amy Henderson, Craig Evans and The Taters, Janet Martin, Susan Greenbaum, Tommy Rodriguez, Lady E, Laura Ann Singh, Charles and Sara Arthur, Mike Lucas, and JOBIE, to name a few.

But there were certain cover profiles that resonated unlike any others. Early on we featured a man named George Spagna who also wrote a column for us titled NightLights, which was a monthly guide to celestial light shows. George was a professor of physics at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, and was director of the Keeble Observatory there. He taught astrophysics and absolutely loved studying all the wonders of the universe. George was also a Eucharistic minister at his church, and understood how science and faith could co-exist in the heart and soul and mind of a human being. When a colleague needed a kidney, George gave him one of his own. Without batting an eye. He embodied the best of what it is to be human, and could not understand how people rejected science, particularly those who turned their noses up at it out of willful ignorance.

To this day, the interview I did with Olive White Hill, Sr. back in 2003 stands out foremost in my memory. Over the course of two days, I spent a total of four hours with this giant of a man in his home on Noble Avenue in Ginter Park. His story from boyhood onward was more than compelling, and being in his presence was akin to what I suspect interviewing James Madison or Abraham Lincoln would have been like, for he was one of the Founding Fathers of the Second American Revolution. Mr. Hill was a patriot of the first magnitude, a freedom fighter who used words to make good on the U.S. Constitution’s promise of justice and equality for all Americans.   

There were hundreds of other people I interviewed who changed my life in small ways and large ways. Back in the spring of 2012, we ran a cover story on Abbie Waters, a nine-year old girl who died, after a long battle with stage IV rhabdomyosarcoma. She was one of my son’s classmates at Holton Elementary and I spoke with Abbie’s parents, Jeff and Mary Ann, and in a way began to fully understand what this family had gone through. To this day I think of them and their daughter often.

Just a couple years ago I had the privilege of interviewing Areina Hensley who shared with me the story of her daughter Jordan who was killed instantly when she was just 26 years old. The depth of pain a parent experiences after the death of a child is unlike any other, and Areina has helped others deal with that pain.

Every single time I did an interview for a profile I was all ears, and wanted every detail, no matter how seemingly insignificant. It was akin to grokking in the Heinlein sense, a merging of minds and emotions. I learned that listening is an act of love, and I would carry these interviews in my head for days on end until I finally wrote the story, and then things eased up a bit. But I will tell you this: it would often take me several weeks before I could handle another interview. 

Primarily for the sake of accuracy, I recorded virtually every interview I ever conducted. In the pre-digital age I used a palm-sized Pansonic cassette recorder, and as soon as digital recorders were available I switched to a Marantz PMD660, which I was also able to gather sound with for my audio documentaries on Public Radio Exchange. I saved all of those recordings—digital as well as those recorded on magnetic tape. And I personally transcribed every one of the raw tracks without the aid of an audio-to-text converter. I did this for two reasons: It forced me to listen to the entire conversations—two, three, even four times; what’s more I could hear every single inflection in the subject’s voice. I knew exactly when someone was on the verge of tears, when someone was about to explode in anger, when someone lowered their voice almost reverentially. It was part of my job to recreate everything I had gleaned during the interviews.

Many of our cover stories have been about exploration, either of the city (whether it’s neighborhoods or alleyways or historic districts) or of the natural world. To construct the stories about these natural wonders I visited them and spoke with various sources. Back in 1999, even before I canoed the Chickahominy River from its headwaters near Wyndham all the way down to New Kent County, I interviewed Dan Mouer, a professor of archaeology at VCU; Bryan Watts, who was director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Willim & Mary; Diane Dunaway, who worked for the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay; Gary Speiran, of the U.S. Geological Survery, Greg Garman, who was director of the Center for Environmental Studies at VCU; and others. I canoed the Pamunkey from its source at the confluence of the North Anna and South Anna rivers all the way down to Old Church where the river veers into King William County. 

Back in 2007, as Virginia celebrated the 400th anniversary of the founding of the first permanent English settlement in the North America, I paddled from Richmond to Jamestown. It took four days to reach the final destination. My children Catherine and Charles accompanied me on the first leg of the trip from Rockett’s Landing to Osbourne Landing. The next section from Osbourne to Turkey Island I paddled with Anya, an old friend. The third day Anya and I paddled from Turkey Island all the way down to the mouth of the Chickahominy River. On the final day, my daughter and her friend Selena paddled from the Chick down to Jamestown. 

Along with the cover stories, thousands of other stories have appeared on our pages since the first issue was published. You can find every edition of NORTHSIDE magazine and NORTH of the JAMES at the Library of Virginia’s virginiachronicle website. For NORTHSIDE, visit https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=cl&cl=CL1&sp=NTSD&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------- For NORTH of the JAMES, visit https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=cl&cl=CL1&sp=NOTJ&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------- 

Here are a few memories from people who have been an integral part of NORTH of the JAMES for many years now. They are friends and family and colleagues.

Joany Flick Flynn

My memories of NORTH of the JAMES magazine began as a dream that became a reality with my then husband, Charles McGuigan. Writing was his craft and mine was in the visual arts as a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Painting and Printmaking. Together, Charles had the grand idea to create a free tabloid that featured local events and people. 

Our dear friend Ellen Zagorin became interested and a voice of reason to the endeavor. At first it was too hard to imagine how this was going to work. As partners Ellen, Charles and I held multiple meetings to organize tasks and work out the details. I put my faith in our abilities and together, we launched Northside Magazine. 

We each had specific areas of expertise and wore many hats. I did not know the first thing about pasting up a magazine and there was no Youtube or internet to rely on in those days, but we were committed and determined. At that point, my experience in typesetting was limited to font sheets in a variety of sizes—the rub off type—Kinkos copy machines, an exacto blade, glue sticks and a ruler. Our first office was a carpeted garage in Bellevue that we transformed into an office. On an old wooden drafting table Charles and I came up with the layout of the cover. We wanted a distinctive look. Charles loved the idea of starting the first paragraph of the featured article in a small box on the bottom of the cover. I searched fonts, gathered as many area tabloids as I could to get ideas and fell in love with University Roman for the word NORTHSIDE across the top of the cover page, and Garamond for the body text in articles. 

Together the three of us brainstormed, adjusted and agreed on a layout until it felt right. Our first cover story would be about Bryan Park. To give the magazine visual appeal, I drew the entry arch and gate of the park’s entrance to use with the featured article, and from then on, included a pen drawing in each issue to enhance the article.

To catch me up to speed, Charles set me up with an acquaintance at the Herald Progress, Steve Pace, to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude. Steve taught me how to use blue line paper, to create a proof for each page of the magazine. This archaic method was very time consuming and preceded the days of the Macintosh for typesetting in-house. The method was to receive articles from the various writers on floppy disks, then give the disk and hard copy to a local typesetter. I would spec out the articles by writing font names and sizes on the hardcopy which I got back within a day, ready to use. Then, using a rule an Exacto blade I cut out the articles, ads and photographs laid out the page blue line paper over a large light table like an intricate puzzle. Once I cut and fit the layout, I used a hot wax machine and waxed each piece to set it perfectly in place. All in time to get it to press by 7am, then to work my full-time job as a floral designer at 8am. This became my monthly ritual. One night per month I would stay up all night to paste up the magazine.

I bought a book on the typesetting software Quark Express, learned it quickly, and became a regular at Kinkos where I paid to use their MacIntosh to typeset and create the hard copy myself. Eventually, we purchased our own MacIntosh and a printer, and my part of the work evolved. This was a true labor of love that we were devoted to and believed in. 

I’m convinced it was a stubborn nature in each of us that absolutely refused to let it fail. We did what it took, and it worked.

Unlike other free tabloids, our magazine has been home-delivered since the very first issue. Each month, in those early years, we found ourselves delivering a few routes that we could not find drivers to fill, adding to the fun of it all. The amount of work it took to ensure every detail of the business was accounted for could not be measured, until we were able to hire people to actually do some of this work.

The magazine grew and the office moved out of Ellen’s garage into an office suite in Henrico. It continued to thrive despite many heated discussions that challenged its existence. Charles’ articles continued to gain and hold the attention of its readers. It is amazing to have watched the evolution of NORTH of the JAMES from its inception to what it has become. Thirty years later, our daughter Catherine holds the reins of the design of the magazine, sharing the commitment of a dream that made it to fruition.

Ellen Zagorin

In 1994, when my writer and artist friends Charles and Joany floated the idea of starting a regional magazine, it sounded kind of crazy. Still, I jumped at the chance to join them. I had faith in the possibilities of the idea, and the talents of my friends and their vision. 

The idea was to be a magazine format of mostly feature stories. Our mainstays—the people who let us tell their stories, our readers, and the businesses who advertised with us. That first year Charles won the first place prize for feature story writing at the Virginia Press Association’s statewide annual award ceremony. It was thrilling, and a validation of all our long days and hard work.

There were a lot of parts to assemble to make the business work and we had a steep learning curve. This wasn’t turnkey and we were novices at running a business like this. My partners handled the creative side—Joany did the design, layout and artwork; and Charles did the writing and editorial work, along with the distribution. I handled the business and advertising. Meeting advertisers and learning the story of their businesses was fascinating and something I enjoyed tremendously. There are advertisers who have been with the magazine for almost three decades now: Arthur’s Electric, The Hermitage, Lakeside Appliance (now Appliances on Lakeside), Fin & Feather, Dot’s Back Inn, Scott Boyer, to name a few. 

Back then, the internet was primitive by comparison to today. Joany would design the layout on the computer, then physically cut and paste text and ads onto boards which we would then drive to the printer. It was time-consuming and cumbersome, and seems very archaic now.

But it worked and we grew, added staff, went from our small garage office to a space in an historic building in Henrico County.

That first year Charles won first place for the best feature story at the Virginia Press Association’s annual statewide award ceremony. It was a thrilling validation of all our long days and hard work. We were still relatively unknown and I remember the people from other publications looking around the room trying to figure out who we were. It was a funny and proud moment.

Even with the strains of starting a new business, the rewards were always there. From the beginning we received amazing goodwill, and people offered support generously. Readers talked to us, read us, encouraged us. So many people—readers, friends, the advertisers who became friends, colleagues—helped us along the way. 

We were also incredibly fortunate from the beginning to be able to call on a community of gifted writers. Nick, an English professor at VCU and old friend of Charles, wrote whimsical essays about family and life. Stephanie wrote book reviews. Rob was a wonderful writer too, and Ames brought his love of music to the articles he wrote for us. Other writers came on. Joan did photography and won awards. Doug later came on to design the magazine, including the North of the James masthead. It was a busy and good time.

Thirty years—it’s a happy and humbling anniversary. Charles has led the magazine for many years now and it has flourished under his watch. I’m very proud to have been a part of starting what’s become, in the best sense, a Northside institution. As a reader now, I hope for many, many more years to come.

Anne Jones

One of life's greatest truths is that we take the things we love for granted, if we're lucky. And that's okay. I think we Northside residents have gotten so used to seeing those folded papers on our doorsteps  every month for the last 30 years that we don't think about how lucky we are. NORTH of the JAMES is an unfailingly rare gem in a world that can't always be trusted. Right now it's time to appreciate it.

There are a million different little things that make it special, and one big thing: the writing of Charles McGuigan. In my book, it takes three things to be a great writer: 1) a love of the language and a way with words; 2) not only a deep knowledge of the subject matter, but the intelligence to see how it relates to the world around us—a  recognition of life’s symmetry and connections; and 3) a drive to understand our beautifully flawed humanity, and to illuminate that quest through stories. That's what sets the cover stories in NORTH of the JAMES apart from other publications: they have a soul, they have a heart, and sometimes they even have a little magic.

There are art and culture publications, lit mags,  glossy magazines with big, glossy ads on every other page, newsletters, county news rags, corporate-owned daily local newspapers getting skinnier and skinnier, and on-line magazines galore. And then…there’s NORTH of the JAMES: independent, part culture, part art, part nature, part human interest, part public figures, and always relevant to our lives. And in-print, tangible, readable, and 30 years old! I’m proud to have been tangentially connected to it for at least 20 of those years through ad sales, silly restaurant reviews, and some light proofing. Congratulations, Charles and keep doing what you’re doing.

Charles Brandon Rapp McGuigan

NORTH of the JAMES magazine is one of the most well-written magazines I have ever read. My dad is an extremely talented writer who writes stories about unique individuals, among them visual artists and songwriters. 

When I deliver the magazine door to door, I sometimes meet neighbors who are extremely fond of the magazine. Delivering commercial dropoffs with my dad over the years has given me fond memories because of the people we encounter—local business owners within the Richmond community. And they’re all friends.

When I wrote an article for the NORTH of the JAMES I felt proud and was delighted to be part of it, and I enjoyed doing the interviews with young people who told me about their experiences with Covid-19.

I think that this magazine deserves a 30th  anniversary celebration. Thanks to my dad and all his colleagues that made this publication what it is.

Catherine McGuigan

I don't think I've necessarily taken it for granted, that my dad has always had this unique profession that had him working weird hours, often calling the dining room or Stir Crazy Cafe his “office,” and getting dozens of phone calls all through the day. It would get hectic come the second week of every month. When I was younger, I don’t think I quite had a grasp on what a “deadline” was, but I knew it meant Dad would be up until the wee hours of the morning, usually without a wink of sleep. 

The chaos only began there. The magazine would come in from the press, he’d run around doing dropoffs to all the advertising businesses, stopping only to pick myself and my brother up from school. We’d climb into a car bursting at the seams with bundles of papers, the smell of newsprint and soy ink so thick it never left. I catch a whiff of it sometimes and it puts a smile on my face. 

I first worked for the magazine in grade school. My best buddy growing up and I were enlisted, enticed via rented Blockbuster videos and candy from Once Upon a Vine, to help deliver Bellevue every month. We’d sit in a sea of papers and rubber bands, folding what always felt like an infinite amount of papers until at last the last rubber band was snapped in place. Hands smudged black from the ink, we’d pass out where we sat. Dad taught us how to methodically work through the neighborhood. He’d drop the bagged papers off at key corners, and we’d make our way through the neighborhood. I’ve slung papers onto many of your doorsteps over the years.

In 2022, the magazine’s former art director, Doug Dobey, suffered a stroke. I more or less knew how to use InDesign to piece things together and taught myself the ropes as best I could. It felt like a rocky start, particularly learning how to work with my dad in this capacity and juggling it with my day job. But I wouldn’t give it up for the world, at this point. Having this opportunity to do what I get to do with Dad and the magazine now is incredibly rewarding.

I say I don’t take Dad’s line of work for granted despite some of its challenges because it allowed him to be incredibly present in mine and my brother’s lives growing up. He’d come to every birthday I had at school, was regularly there having lunch with me in the school cafeteria, went on every field trip and came to every choir performance, lacrosse game, and cross country meet. For all the stress I know it’s sometimes been, I count my blessings that it gave him that flexibility.

Every conversation with my dad is going to teach you something, and, while I do think a good majority of the knowledge he holds in his head comes from the infinite amount of literature he’s consumed, so much of it must also come from the people whose stories he’s told. My mom and dad initially set out to create something in which they could share stories. Thirty years in, I think they held true to that.