Creation vs. Consumption.

More and more my thoughts turn to the inertia I feel and the nearest I can put a finger on it beyond a wee bit of burnout is the lack of a creative community with which to interact. To the best of my knowledge, practically everyone I know, save for a couple of family members, are consumers, and create virtually nothing.

This rather depresses me.

I need creative people around me to feel energized. Not consumers who are taken in and consumed themselves by their chosen activities (most everyone in modern society absorbed in X new series on HBO or Y new MMORPG), and not re-enactors who take old material and relive it (community theater, Ren Faire folks and related). Where are all the people making new things, creating new ideas, and not just rotating around someone else's?

Sigh.

The New Used Book.

It's always fun to get a new used book from somewhere. In this case, it was a library hardcover copy of the most well-researched book to date on my subject...

What's most delightful is when a previous owner or user of a book has left little notes written in the margins. They give you clues to the inner workings of their mind. Whoever wrote in this once-library volume seemed to have designs on writing something herself about the subject (the handwriting is characteristically female), and turned up a little bit of speculation that is only spoken of a few places, so I'm kind of impressed... Granted, they don't have the research I've done which makes pretty clear that particular bit of speculation about the ethnic origins of my subject's father are false. Still, it was nice to see someone else digging away.

I've been feeling just a shade lonely in my own peculiar way lately, and this song's been on my mind a lot... Thought I'd share.

Bear's Mill

Wild. I visited this mill last year, and walked back to the Vietnam memorial and paid my respects, but I didn't know the manager's connection, nor the fact that the gazebo was made from the dome of the old Darke County Court House...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsZUdXRLZHU

Fancy that...

There are more blogger blokes on blogspot that I know than I knew. Sweet. If you should happen to stumble over here, I bid you all hail and welcome. This is just a little place to organize some thoughts and findings of mine pertaining to a project that has absorbed me for two years now, and for occasional interjections of things that evoke a "feel" I'm shooting for with some upcoming work as the story (or stories) emerge. Not exactly exciting for most, but it's part of what I'm working on. Hopefully end projects will prove more interesting. Be well.

Darke County Infirmary...

This is a picture of Darke County Infirmary as it looked when Annie stayed there, years before it burnt down and they replaced it with the one identified in a postcard in a previous posting.