14 September 2004: Hurricane Ivan seems to have skipped us, so things here are more or less normal. Except that I still can't get on the Internet from my home due to the continuing lack of phone service. (I don't have hot water or cable tv, either, but don't miss them.)

I've missed so many blog entries, I'm not sure whether to try to make them up or forget about them. My tentative plan is to do two blog entries a day (from a zip disk I write on at home and transmit from the library near the school I sub at). One entry will be my regular one, the other a catch-up one, probably with old essays, or sections of the second volume of my Of Manywhere-at-Once. I had just begun looking over what I had on my computer of that before I went north for my high school class reunion and visiting. I then thought of killing two birds with one stone by working on the book and posting each day's effort on my blog. I have a longish illustrated essay ready for posting except for some minor editing at my blog, too, as I recall. So, it does look like I'll catch up, eventually.

To begin my regular entries, I'm going to be lazy for a while and just post my latest Paint Shop illumages. These are of special interest because, as I hope will be evident, they feature new techniques. One that allows you to make brush strokes that look like you're using oil paint is the chief one (so far). It seems I ordered the latest update of the software back in August, and got it just after my electricity came back. I'm elated with what I can do with it. As before, I can't imagine how anyone could not use Paint Shop to do terrific illumages--as I think mine are. They come so easily. Is my power of self-criticism nil or am I right in liking them? Who knows. All that I'm sure of is that they're are a huge amount of fun to make. And this, even though I don't feel I'm doing, or can do, anything that has not been done a zillion times before by other non-representational painters. So I can empathize with all the knownstream poets I too often disparage for never trying anything new. There is a difference, though: there are plenty of poets using burstnorm techniques that knownstream poets could steal from, but no painters, so far as I know, who are doing anything technically new in two-dimensional painting.

What follows is one of my illumages from my first serious day back at Paint Shop: