Author Archives: Sam L. Richards

I’m fairly certain that any valuable artistic work or insightful idea I’ve ever come up with is the result of understanding one thing—sometimes naively, sometimes intentionally—in terms of another. It is as if conceptual metaphors are the basis of (all?) creativity (if creativity is defined as being the construction of original ideas that are of [...]

I’m fascinated with, and entirely dependent on, understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. (A big thanks goes out to Lakoff and Johnson for the insight required to generate this rather concise and potent definition). We tell ourselves stories in order to make sense of and ultimately improvise and live with [...]

In 1897 a man by the name of Ransom E. Olds embraced the concept of the horseless carriage, and decided to invest a substantial amount of his funds into founding a company that he decided would proudly bear his name: Old Motor Works General Motors purchased the company in 1908 and after taking a branding [...]

On Guy Fawkes day, we had no furniture To burn. Nothing but an old piano That we found beneath the old rock church. We lifted it, the four of us, groaning From the mildewed weight, and placed it in The parking lot. Bill went for papers. I trumped upon the keys. He was four Tones [...]