One of my favorite reference books is The Dictionary Of Clichés, a mass-market volume that I found for a dollar at some store somewhere. It claims that the phrase “hook, line, and sinker” implies gullibility, although I like to think of it implying totality, utter wholeness. This could be because in ninth grade I fell for the old “gullible isn’t in the dictionary” trick, which was perpetrated on me by my biology teacher. Oh, how everyone laughed at me believing in authority. It was a lesson. Either way, the phrase apparently dates all the way back to the mid-19th century, which makes it appropriate for this issue about finding answers in the past.

This is Maura Magazine’s 20th issue! It’s been a fun road and one not without its bumps along the way, and I am so grateful that you are reading this right now. This issue is also pretty special to me because it marks the first time I’m publishing Tom Ewing, whose early-millennium thoughts on pop music helped shape my critical outlook more than any other writer out there, and whose unwavering support of me once led to us having a Transatlantic phone conversation about us starting a magazine—a seed that took more than a decade to flower, but one that I am forever grateful to him for planting in the first place.

This issue marks the debut of our pinball columnist—the wonderful Miles Raymer, whose acquaintance I made while editing at the Chicago Reader and whose passion for flippered frippery is astonishing. A long time ago a friend called my bowling technique “enthusiastic but mediocre,” and that description could also apply to my pinball aptitude as well. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t get enough practice at the Mid-Island Plaza—the Long Island shopping center later rechristened the Broadway Mall, which had a seedy, smoky arcade during my youth. It doesn’t have one any longer—the only store that’s stayed intact, with the same name and same location since I was a kid, is, I swear, Fredrick’s of Hollywood—but Michele Catalano’s tale of teenaged debauchery that took place under its roof (it involves Leo Sayer and some strategically pulled plugs) brings to mind memories of those shabbier, if slightly more fun, days.