And Blog Begat Blog

I’m not really quite sure why I do it. Sometimes I think my ego has just totally taken over. And too often, my self-absorption reminds me of those annoyingly precocious tykes one sees on TV, ozzing “cute” from every pore.

I honestly would have to sit down with an abacus to figure out exactly how many blogs I have going. I have one devil of a time trying to keep up with them all. And so what do I do? Why, I start another blog, of course.

To tear my mind away from the fact that the pipeline for publishing my already finished books is frustratingly clogged and seemingly getting more so every day, I decided to take on a non-writing project I’ve had sitting patiently on the back burner: scanning hundreds of old personal and family photographs dating back more than 100 years (I’m not in quite all of them), and sorting them out into some sort of a thread. I’ve divided them into categories—mom and dad, Fearns (mom’s side of the family), photos from my folks’ cottege, college photos, friends…and “friends”…my navy years, photos of Ray, my time in Los Angeles, my time in Pence, and individual photos of me from zygote to the present . Again, egotism run amok.

And I fall back yet again on the flimsy reasoning that you might have even the most remote interest in any of this because it goes to prove that we are all far more alike than we are different.

So, having scanned and sorted and categorized, I heard the far-off voices of Judy Garland and Andy Rooney chirping “Hey, gang, let’s put on a show!” And I thought that since I spend so much of my time laying myself out before you, warts and all, in my various forms of writing, why not do so visually, too?

And thus was Dorien Grey: A Life in Photos born. The object is to post at least one photo every day or so, accompanying it with a short paragraph of explanation. I have no idea how successful this little experiment will be and can readily foresee that, like life, there are so very many overlaps and interrelations and visual digressions that it may all fall down like a house of cards. But we’ll give it the old college try, and hope you might come along for the ride. I really do enjoy and appreciate your company.

The “warts and all” aspect, for example, might be a bit difficult. One seldom has photos taken under other-than-pleasant circumstances. None taken of all those embarrassing or shameful or seamy episodes that clutter everyone’s life, and my increasing reluctance, as Time began playing her mean-spirited tricks, to have my photo taken at all. And none at all, of course, taken when no one else was around. One tends to be on one’s better behavior when someone is standing there with a loaded camera. So there’s mostly happiness or contentment and good times reflected in these photos, which, after all, is what all of life should be about.

Oh, and I might point out in my own defense that I use “Dorien Grey” in the title of all the blogs not quite so much for the joy of seeing my own name repeated yet again…which of course I do…but for the sake of Google and other search engines, in the remote chance that someone might be trying to look me up. I wouldn’t want them to miss anything.

If you might want to take a look, you'll find the new blog at http://www.doriengreyphotolife.blogspot.com

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