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Joan Rivers: Let’s tawk
Can we talk? I must admit I’ve never been drawn to Joan Rivers as I have to comics like George Carlin or Richard Pryor. But after interviewing, I came to appreciate her fierce honesty and incisive...
View ArticleBookTV telecast w/ Cahill, Allende et al
In 2004, the launch event for my book “A Sense of Place” was a conversation in San Francisco with Isabel Allende, Tim Cahill, Jeff Greenwald and Jan Morris. It’s 90 minute long but you can watch it in...
View ArticleVideo: Yellowstone with Tim Cahill
A few years ago a producer asked Tim Cahill and me to record an interview at Yellowstone. Here’s the 10-minute pilot that came from that weekend in the snow.
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Leo Kottke: How the guitar saved my life
Leo Kottke is a quirky and genuine as you’d guess from his music – here’s an excerpt from our interview which ends with him talking about music being a type of home for him: Renowned acoustic...
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Heavenly voices: How Ladysmith Black Mambazo went from dream to fame
I recently interviewed a founding member of the South African vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo who told me the band started as a dream – see excerpt below. The band plays March 2 at Napa’s Uptown...
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Anne Lamott on her baby having a baby
When my book A Sense of Place came out a few years ago I got compliments about being a good interviewer. But here’s the secret: I interviewed people — the world’s leading travel writers — who had...
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Frank Lloyd Wright’s humble experiment in Scottsdale, Ariz.
After seeing what FLW did with the Guggenheim, I expected his desert home to be outrageous and astonishing. Of course it wasn’t – the low-slung building fit perfectly with their desert surroundings....
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Somewhere Beyond Time: Jan Morris’s Wales in National Geographic Traveler
Jan Morris has been my mentor and a muse. When National Geographic Traveler asked me to travel to Wales to interview her and write about her corner of her beloved homeland, I leapt at the chance. I...
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Cowboy Junkies keep it fresh
In the early 1990s, Cowboy Junkies lead vocalist Margo Timmins performed just for me. I sat about 30 feet away from her and she sang one of her favorites, “Misguided Angel” to an audience of one. But...
View ArticleThe Bird Men of Mazatlan: Cliff divers wait for tide to come in, Mariner
In the fall of 2009, Mariner magazine asked if I’d go to Mazatlan to write about the cliff divers there. I’d watched cliff divers in Acapulco during the ’70s on ABC’s Wide World of Sports but didn’t...
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Wash Post: Dylan Thomas’s Wales
I’ve long felt a kinship with Wales, perhaps because it’s where one of my favorite writers, Jan Morris, lives. Recently I had the chance to stay overnight and tour Dylan Thomas’s boyhood home in...
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Pete Seeger: 3 stories you’ve never heard
By Michael Shapiro Was sad to hear about the death of folk legend Pete Seeger today – here are three stories you won’t read in his obits. 1. Decades ago, Warren Hellman, then a NY investment banker (he...
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Lily Tomlin rocks the house
These days Lily Tomlin’s character Ernestine, the gossipy telephone operator who used to parody the AT&T monopoly, works for an insurance firm, “denying health care to everybody.” She told me this...
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Art collector Jack Leissring: Eyes need to see this stuff
One thing I love about my job is that sometimes I have no idea where my day will lead. In early 2014 an editor emailed me on a chilly morning and that afternoon I was surrounded by the spirit-lifting...
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Islands magazine: Last of the Moken, June 2014
En route to Thailand last year, I saw a short video about the Moken, a Polynesian who traditionally have drifted among the islands and coasts of Thailand and Burma. Inspired to see them, we found a...
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Patrick Amiot’s magical carousel, Sonoma magazine, July-Aug. 2014
Patrick Amiot’s carousel in Sebastopol, Calif., where he built it in during late 2013 and early 2014. He recently dismantled it for shipping to a suburb of Toronto. Photo courtesy of Sonoma magazine. I...
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Grateful Dead documentary: North Bay has starring role (May 2015)
Martin Scorsese is the executive producer of a forthcoming doc about the Dead, but it may not be released for a while. To read the story online, click here. BY MICHAEL SHAPIRO FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT...
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Yosemite with Ansel Adams, Press Democrat (Aug. 2015)
Went to Yosemite in July with my wife to visit a photographer friend who introduced me to Evan Russel, the curator of the Ansel Adams gallery. Our visit with Russel and the gallery became the...
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Winged Wonders: Great migrations of sandhill cranes (Horizons)
One of the most remarkable migrations on our planet is the journey of the sandhill cranes. Some fly all the way from Siberia to Texas. And they’re remarkable for all sorts of other reasons. This is one...
View ArticleEsalen: Retreat on Big Sur Coast
After failing to get through the gates to paradise years ago, I finally made it to Esalen. To see the story on The Press Democrat’s site with some pictures, click here. By MICHAEL SHAPIRO I couldn’t...
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