[If you are a New Yorker subscriber, you can read it here. For a PDF copy, click here.]
THE NEW YORKER
February 23, 2009
Shoot!
An Appalachian gunsmith’s robot army.
BY EVAN RATLIFF
At the age of seventy-four, Jerry Baber has winnowed his primary interests in life to four subjects: shotguns, robots, women, and cars. When Baber is holding forth—his default mode of communication being the filibuster—his conversation tends to fall somewhere among these categories. Often his passions intersect, as in the question of whether or not a Corvette is an ideal car for picking up women. (It is.) Similarly, Baber might be discussing his love of robots and shotguns, and whether, by combining the two, he is helping to shape the future of warfare from his garage. (He is.)
Baber, an engineer by training, is an expert in investment casting—a method for making small pieces of finely shaped metal. He lives down the road from the Bristol Motor Speedway, in Piney Flats, Tennessee, a hilly town dotted with cattle farms, just south of the Virginia border. There he operates a small foundry, where he manufactures gun parts. Over the years, he has contributed triggers, barrels, hammers, and other components for half a million firearms. “I probably know as much, or more, as any one single person about manufacturing guns,” he told me one afternoon, while driving through the Appalachian foothills in his cherry-red Chevy Impala. (”The best buy on the road today, barring none.”) Post continued…
Posted at 6:01 pm | 7 Comments | Filed under Recent stories |
UPDATE 2: Thanks to everyone who attended, and also to all the contributors for their truly fantastic pieces. The whole thing surpassed our wildest expectations. If you couldn’t make it, you can check out the Chronicle’s write-up here. And for those curious about the final lineup, here was the Table of Contents. And keep watching the Pop-Up site!
SHORTS:
DESIGN
What the World Needs Now
By Allison Arieff
MUSIC
Psych Garage Rock
By Jennifer Maerz
FOOD
Chinese Food And The Economy
By Andrew Lam
TRAVEL
Airsickness
By Joshua Davis
FAITH
Awesome Pope
By Roman Mars
PRODUCTS
Mobility
By Steven Leckart
FEATURES
LITERATURE
This Grubbing Art
By Jon Mooallem
MUSIC
Doom Versus Lil Wayne
By Brandon Mcfarland
SOCIETY
Foreclosure
By Todd Hido
SPORTS
Fear
By Jennifer Kahn
HISTORY
A Delta Town
By Sandy Tolan
CULTURE
Pink By Peggy Orenstein
SCIENCE AND NATURE
The World at Night
By Christina Seely
CULTURE
STRAND: A Natural History Of Cinema
By Christian Bruno
SOCIETY
Born By Tania Ketenjian And Ahri Golden
SCIENCE AND NATURE
Termites By Lisa Margonelli
BIOGRAPHY
A Soldier’s Tale
By Larry Sultan
SOCIETY
Health Care
By Alex Gibney
Q&A
Megan Prelinger
With Todd Lappin
THE CITY
The Commissioner
By Nathanael Johnson
SCIENCE AND NATURE
Botany, The Movie
By Michael Pollan
THE ARTS
One Big Soul
By The Kitchen Sisters
MEMOIR
The Devil’s Water
By Glynn Washington
Post continued…
Posted at 9:10 am | 2 Comments | Filed under PopUp magazine |
It’s difficult to say for certain, but if you look closely at the illustration immediately to the left, you might conclude that it is a rendering of a man, in silhouette, bent over and having just vomited (and quite possibly standing in the results). That man is me. The fact that this is an apt illustration for the story to which it is attached is unlikely to encourage you to read the story. But so it is.
A while back, Outside GO magazine asked me if I had any travel philosophy that I might spin into an essay for their “Ready to Go” column. It turns out that I do have one, of sorts, and you can read about it in their Spring 2009 issue, or online here. To be honest I hadn’t grandiloquently referred to it as the One Great Thing(tm) philosophy before, and I often wondered whether it was driven more by laziness than wisdom. But I do practice it, and it works for me.
Lost in the editing was my disclaimer/hedge that while I have been on some rough trips, I haven’t been to any truly horrible places nor witnessed truly horrible things. I’m not, for instance, a war reporter. So take my travel wisdom, such as it is, as the musings of only a pseudo-professional journeyman.
Posted at 5:02 pm | 2 Comments | Filed under Outside, Travel |
On the heels of the stunning success of Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog and Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, comes a new tale of an animal connection, a gossamer love, and a lesson you thought you’d never have to learn, in:
Mongo: The Animal that Taught Me Things and Changed Lives
