To blog or not to blog? that is the question. "Et tu Blei" So it’s come to this. And you thought writing for a local shopper at one point in your life was about as low as you could go. But no, there’s yet another step down into Dante’s circular inferno! Blei-the -blogger! We’ve reserved a special place in hell for you. But, as some wise bloggerist once said: "A blog is just a writer doing his journal on the web." Understandably so. But where the hell’s the privacy in cyberspace? Writers work best (first) in the dark. (You can quote me on that.) It’s only later, on paper, between covers, when they expose themselves to all the world. To think I opened the door of this abandoned chicken coop (and myself) to the rural light-of-day back in 1976! Pulled my grandfather’s old kitchen chair up to a big wooden table with a long history of Chicago neighborhood basements (where I first began to write). Turned on the desk lamp. Looked out upon the woods, lucky to be alive, here and now. Grabbed a legal pad, a yellow Dixon Ticonderoga #2 Soft pencil, and began (again) to try and make sense of things both inside and outside the coop. From pencils and pens to legal pads and spiral notebooks; to a long odyssey of manual typewriters of every make and shape (never the mind-numbing hum of an electric typewriter). To a first, second, third, fourth computer…all for the sake of putting it all down, spreading the word in stories, poems, essays, columns and books. Enter the writer in touch in cyberspace. Welcome to my blogging world. The journey continues. June 29, 2004
