touchstone

Cowley worked his magic again in launching Jack Kerouac’s career, spending years talking up and excerpting “On the Road” in magazines before publishing the 1957 Beat touchstone with Viking to immediate acclaim.

He is not only a worthy successor to the legend of Tommy Lasorda, he has won more than Lasorda while serving as the perfect face for the organization and a calming touchstone for its players.

Diaz points to a couple of touchstones for her LP’s bare-bones approach, among them Patty Griffin’s “Living With Ghosts” — “a star in Orion’s Belt,” as she puts it — and “obviously Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue,’ ” she says.

For more than a century, Mexican officials have called the penacho a cultural touchstone and sought its return from Austria — despite no evidence that Moctezuma actually wore it.

But, he added, the challenge was to transform the cultural touchstone into a "recurring comedic gimmick".