It's been a busy and taxing month for me since I last put up an Electron Entry. But I can now happily announce to Electron readers that the Blue is back in business. The upgrade is complete for now and you can see that this Weblog now has a new header logo and new sets of links. I hope that more improvements will follow.

The "calendar scene" in the photo above comes from Wayland, Massachusetts, where there are still rural estates among the housing developments. "October Colors," it might be called, where the cliche is the reality. In mid-October I was in my home state for a week, visiting the parents and attending a concert of my father's music. The concert was held in a church in North Andover, Mass. The church was founded in 1645, and had a collection of colonial-era silver, including a tankard made and signed by Paul Revere (yes, that Paul Revere of the midnight ride.). My father set to music poems by Quaker abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier, who lived in that New England area back in the nineteenth century. The music was pure and clean Americana, but mixed with a more modern social and political edge following Whittier's deceptively simple verse.

I am always on the lookout for "authenticity," which is probably impossible in a globalized culture. This event in North Andover, in a white wood church surrounded by a classic New England townscape and brightened by blazing colors of autumn leaves under a brilliant blue sky, was as "authentic" as I will ever get here in America. And here I am writing about it back in inauthentic Northern Virginia on an authentic Macintosh, while drinking questionably authentic but tasty ginger tea.

I apologize for a post-less October, but there were many things I had to attend to which prevented me from giving this journal its proper due. Now October is over and the pre-holiday franticness is upon me at work. There is nothing, in my opinion, less authentic than the holiday and Christmas season, where our country and increasingly the rest of the world drowns itself in a vat of sugar and fat-loaded artificial snow.

The status of my math and science quest is still suspended. I am re-evaluating it. as I said before I put the blog on hiatus. I am similarly dragged out in the middle of doing a painting in my "Persian holy beings" series. This happened once before, when it took me almost a year to complete the Persian Angel "Haurvatat," because I had so much else to do. But it will be done, and you'll see it here.

If I had to claim anything of achievement over this year for myself, it would be that I have learned to be fairly proficient at both Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, at least for purposes of graphic design, illustration, and even "fine arts." There is a lot of Photoshop which I have not chosen to learn just now, namely manipulating photographs and creating slick advertising graphics and textures. Photoshop is loaded with pre-made concepts which are already dated, and as a graphic designer I would never use them unless the client demanded it. Looking at graphics from magazines to print ads to logos and more, I can see just how some unimaginative hack poked it out on Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator using this or that pre-set. I refuse to do that, but that means I will actually have to spend hours doing real work, even creating line or greyscale drawings by hand before entrusting them to the grind of Photoshop. You have to fight the program constantly to get it to render something that doesn't look too slick. And Trader Joe's simply won't let me use it at all.

When I'm not fighting with Photoshop, I am listening to the ambient music created by my virtual circle of friends on "Stillstream" (see the music links to your left and downward) and corresponding with them online. There is also other art to be done, because I have to prepare some small sale-ables for my yearly exhibit at a fantasy convention later this month.

These things haven't been my only concerns this October. I and the rest of "Red Sox Nation" watched with incredulity as our team barreled through the playoffs (thank you, Cleveland Indians, for beating the Yankees) and then crushed the hapless Colorado Rockies in a four-game World Series sweep. Huh? TWO Series championships in four years? Where are the heartbreaking, angst-ridden Red Sox of old? Where are the misplays and blown saves and failed rallies that drove Boston to drink and tears? I am not the only Boston fan to have the horrible thought that "we" are becoming like…another overly successful team which we once referred to as the "Evil Empire." Red Sox! Don't be Evil!

I leave you with another dose of New England authenticity. Check out that rustic stone wall. It's so characteristic that I feel the need to go do some pointless websurfing in a competely prepared and artificial world. Thank you for your patience. Regular blog posting will now resume.

Posted at 3:29 am | link