I’m back, but how to explain my absence? I thought this blog died a technical death in 2023, victim of WordPress code malfunctions I couldn’t fix. But with an externally imposed site update from GoDaddy hosting, this blog is doing a Lazarus thing.

During the past two years, I’ve fully retired from my career in academic medicine and am more than halfway through a Masters of Fine Arts working in photography and hand-built books of all kinds. But the MFA program is above all an excuse and a means for making sense of all that I’ve done, all that I haven’t done and all that I hope yet to do.

This photograph is from the Val Gardena region of Italian Alps, aka the Dolomites, the southeastern edge of the Alps created from the collision of Africa and Southern Europe millions of years past. Mostly limestone from ancient sea beds, the Dolomites have been uplifted and then weathered into a land of spectacular spires and towers. On this late October day a few weeks ago, the weather was rainy, intermittently fogged out and always cold. But the worst weather sometimes makes the best photographs!