Introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog.

I've resisted this move for a very long time. It seems everyone I know has a blog. In fact, many friends refuse to write individual emails anymore, preferring to direct all and sundry to their blog. And this I resent. But the purpose of this blog isn't to let others know what I've been up to (although some sort of online calendar would be a useful aide memoire at times).

I've finally made this move because from time to time I get these essays playing themselves out in my head, and there they tend to stay, unchallenged. Or worse, they come out in poorly constructed sentences and fail to make a coherent stance.

This isn't going to be a daily blog. It may not even be a monthly blog. But I will give it a chance. And I'll have at least one reader (Hi, Mom!).

If you agree with anything I say, please speak up. And if you disagree, I hope my point of view serves to sharpen your own. If your experience differs from mine, please share it. Each of us has a singular reality based on the perception of a sliver of what is really going on. The only way we can learn and grow is to partake of one another's slivers. It isn't that one of us is right and one of us is wrong - it is never that simple. It is that reality is far larger than you or I can possibly know.

And that, perhaps, is an essay for another day. But not today. For I have chosen as my inaugural blog the controversial question of "what is art?" A question which perhaps has been brought to the fore by the memory of a West Wing rerun where the actress who used to play Eve on Northern Exposure was objecting to the art which had been funded by the NEA. This scene, of course, was inspired by the Mapplethorpe debate. And while I have no idea of the current status of the NEA, I do know that the question of what constitutes art is no nearer a solution. I don't pretend to have the definitive answer either. What I hope to provide is one defensible position.

Please read on .......