Self, image, self-image

The controversy over the claim that Vermeer used a camera obscura when painting now, with the recent discovery of this image, seems like pretty small potatoes. (Image found here.)

Grades are in (though some stragglers are still out there), my office is tidier than it's been for, well, a while, and the summer stretches ahead. Aside from some work for my school's Online Writing Lab, a trip south in June to see my daughters, getting some long-overdue exercise, and hanging out with the Mrs., my time is pretty much my own. What to do with this gift?

Well, at the top of my list this and every summer is "Get some writing done!!!" (the number of exclamation points increasing in direct proportion to the lack of excuses for not getting it done) This summer, I really have none. And there's that whole turning fifty thing, too. So. One project is to get a couple of chapters of my interminable book project knocked out. The other more directly involves good old Blog Meridian: a pulling-together and editing (and some rearranging) of selections from the Stretch of River pieces, along with some other things from the blog, that will make its appearance as a self-published book. Last year, I did a fair amount of the selecting; what remains, along with some further picking and choosing, is the editing.

 It's a tricky thing, looking into the mirror of one's own prose, but I find I generally like what I see there, allowing for the fact that, as Kurt Vonnegut once said when assessing his own work, there was once a writer named William Shakespeare.

So anyway. Here's hoping that I'll have more to say about that in a couple of weeks, so you'll be able to beat the Christmas rush.