Must all things pass?

Closing: “mustang-highways” (also “mustanghighways”) — the dot-com domains I thought I’d have a good time filling with Mustang mileage and apple pie and coffee tales.

Didn’t happen.

What was I thinking?

Where was I going to go?

If I do get it together to get down the highway — there’s a surprising lot of gear devoted to that around here — I’ll be sure to share that adventure with you.

As regards this blog, I’ll keep my name, thank you, to the bitter end.

Also disappearing from my webestate: my Fine Art America account.

I had thought at least a few prints would be picked up for commercial or private decor at respectable prices.

Indeed, this one piece sold.

To a brother long settled elsewhere.

In the course of a short visit here, he had seen a small print set aside on a bookcase, and when he returned home, he looked it up online.

Profit: $14.

For any interested in prints appearing here or on the studio’s blog, I’m thinking $95 (using archival art papers and inks and signed) plus shipping: inquiries welcomed; cleared checks and completed Paypal transactions work; Maryland buyers pay six percent sales tax; no returns.

In magazines, I’ve already given up Black and White, Color, and Communication Arts.

Next to cancel: Playboy?  Town and Country?  Vanity Fair?

You tell me.

And should I carry the collections down to book boxes stacked in the basement storage cage, give them away (any takers?), or simply trash all?

While I’m at it, I’ve got a complete set (minus one beach-destroyed issue) of Talk Magazine.  Anyone interest in that treat from publishing history, feel welcome to inquire and acquire.

I’m less tortured about the Esquire magazines and assorted others — their end will be the stinky big green bin — but I’ll probably keep the Outside collection from my younger days (and perhaps the magazine’s own less “small bite” journalism and advertorial days).

Finally, for this quiet hour, a long goodbye it will be to the “small” and “size 38” items I’d thought I’d own to my dying day (may it not be this one):

• L. L. Bean warmup jackets, one yellow (for sailing) and the other moss (for driving);
• Baxter State Park Warden’s Parka (old item — it looks like the concept has been split into two new evolutionary lines, a simple parka using “Tek2” cloth and a systems parka with a Gore-Tex shell: the one hanging in the closet is down-filled with a Gore-Tex shell (no separate interior jacket);
• Barbour Border (men’s 38), hunted a few times, worn a few times in the rain, a bit affected for U.S. town wear but quite at home in rural parts (it’s a terrific hunting jacket, albeit with a cachet that has not translated well across the pond, and even “across the pond” may have some social issues) and light outdoor industry (e.g., horticulture) around the Atlantic seaboard states;
• a “Green Mountain Threadworks” down vest (Hudson Trails Outfitters from about the day it opened on the edge of the District as “Hudson Bay” and ran into the necessary brand name switch) — dark blue, and, despite some backpacking use — after camp was made — in excellent condition.

We’re funny trees, we men: some of us grow thinner with age, balding rails from tip to toe; and some, like myself, a little shorter and significantly wider, enough so to not only wipe out an entire closet but to set off a foul mood and a nasty Battle of the Bulge.

As Dorian Gray never aged until he did in the most dramatic way, I’ve skipped from “S” to “L” but have been fighting to stay “M” and losing the battle.

Nonetheless, I’ve a new “base layer”, a pair of cheap sweatpants, and my old Saucony’s and altogether, at the moment, more hope than energy, but hope nonetheless!

I’ve taken myself with a camera out for walks around “Fairgrounds Park” quite a bit — I suppose I can just take myself out there too and remain “medium” or become a healthier “large”, a size for me in which outerwear feels more comfortable, but none of it fits: the hems are down to my thighs and the sleeves end at my fingertips.  Then too with the leukemia doing its nasty thing, I’ve no idea whether carrying a few extra pounds — say about 20 for starters — will have any effect on my feeling less tired.