My Blog and Hard Times

I started this blog one year ago, as a vehicle for playlists and mp3 archives of my weekly radio show.  I had intended also to write other pieces when inspiration struck; I remained unstruck.  I admit to having had some ambivalence about creating yet another blog.  I do enjoy reading friends' blogs and stumbling across stranger's sites now and then.  But, I asked myself, what do I have to say; what's my motivation?  So I let it go.  Something I came across the other night, however, has finally persuaded me to overcome my reticence. 

I was rereading James Thurber's 1933 collection of autobiographical sketches of his childhood and young adult years, My Life and Hard Times, when I was struck (finally!) by this passage that introduces his preface: 

Benvenuto Cellini said that a man should be at least forty years old before he undertakes so fine an enterprise as that of setting down the story of his life.  He also said that an autobiographer should have accomplished something of excellence.  Nowadays nobody who has a typewriter pays any attention to the old master's quaint rules.