So it's been over a year since I've been here. Many familiar names are still around, I see, and it's good to see you and remember the good times and reads past.  I'm sorry I've been absent.  I have a plausible, if not wholly exonerating excuse.

Over a year and some are gone, I understand, now forever. I am the same, and yet I am not the same.  The things I wanted, that I was clear about seeing in the future, like finishing things I started, that dread n-o-v-e-l, they all got…

Gosh, a year or so since I've been here.  I just came from a book party for a friend that wrote a book on Theatrical Jazz...I'm actually in there, but the more important thing is that she wrote it, and people can learn about an important piece of history, of culture, some amazing people, and it got published by a university press so now it will live as long as the institutions live.  It's pricey but you can see a picture of me sitting in a bed in negligee if you buy it.  Seriously.…

Dear OS friends:

I've been doing some research about virtual communities and online sharing as part of my graduate school program.   One of the things that I've been trying to argue is that social networked blogging sites, like Open Salon and Our Salon and any of the “over 2 million” communities now hosted by the Ning platform or other interactive websites, are by in large, benign and honorable presences.  Think about cancer support sites, or diet sites, or dating sites.  Yes, there…

A few years ago, I was driving back from a workshop I taught on how to do art with kids with disabilities in Temple, Texas. It was a beautiful, big-skied, sunny afternoon, and I was looking forward to the drive.

I was stopped at an intersection about to get on I-35 back to Austin, and there was, in the median, a man, under a six foot red and black swastika poster, and a woman holding a huge color photograph of a horribly aborted fetus. A small sign stuck in the ground near them read,…