My apologies: I discussed your comment in the Gloaming post without answering you directly.

McLoughlin represents a set of historical confluences that is quite common in Pa. where we grew up.

There are some spots in my hometown - log houses, wide spots that were market squares - that resonate. One of my favorites is Rt.230 as it crosses the Swatara Creek. There you will find an old grain mill that was powered by an adjacent canal that served other mills down the way and was likely linked into the Union Canal. Up the hill is a housing development that replaced one, designed by Louis Kahn during WWII and across the road a bungalow that was home to a soothsayer. Running alongside the canal is an old railroad that once connected Middletown and Hershey, but now hosts the occasional tourist train. Stand by the mill and one is in the Harrisburg metro area with its upriver progression of rusted industry; cross the bridge and one is immediately in the farm country of Lancaster County which finds its greatest expression down among the Amish. Unfortunately this is more to be written about than painted.

Stories, being made up of words, are generally linear — in the way that Melanie explains so clearly in Steve’s post. But something like the instant of vision of a painting or photograph might put you smack in the middle of a story but you have to make up the rest. The Gloaming photos are interesting not just because of their visual qualities, but because we all have perhaps had moments of voyeurism, evenings when we spy into windows before the curtains are drawn. Likewise the muddle that SE McLoughlin presents — the tidy cottage between the cement warehouses next to the derelict bar beside the 8 lanes of indifferent traffic — this plunks me down in the middle of a story, one that I have to make up with nothing but visual clues to go on.

I sense something wonderfully simple: I am who I am and this is my world and I will act.

Thanks.

On the other hand,”Street from the Springwater Trail” is also my favorite, with it’s neutrals and earth colors. I could see how both of these palettes have lots of potential for future paintings of the area.

I also like the last painting, in that I really feel the light hitting the yellow building and the building to its right.

How much do you want for McLoughlin at Midday? Along with Melanie’s pieces that’s one whale of a work of art.

There’s something storytelling about my map paintings. Any connector has a tale to tell. That gloaming image presents a feeling for me; a cozy busy light set against pervasive blues.

I know that I would make a lousy cartoonist as action sequences don’t come readily to mind. Maybe that’s why I feel as I do about the linkage theme - a way around a creative block.

June: I am taken by the various positions of the yellow building in your sequence.

Now Dickens, though, is lots lots lots easier than Melville — I mean, he writes plots. And he has a great moral sense that shocks students who are accustomed to cool irony. It was always fun to read aloud the chapter in Bleak House where he shoves the body of the young street sweeper (who dies of typhoid) under the noses of the aristocracy “Dead, my lords and ladies. And dying thus around you, every day.” Well, the original goes on much longer…

Woolf I dip into once in a while, again. I still like “A Room of One’s Own” (which has another peroration I loved to read aloud).

As for photographing your work — well, breaking it into smaller parts helps. If you learn to offload from your camera (and that’s not too hard), you’ll feel so empowered the next step won’t be as difficult. And “histograms” I leave to the professionals. I just use the automatic changes in Photoshop — and if they turn all the reds into blues, I Undo and play with the little manual lever for dark and light. Oh and Jay taught me a wonderful trick about the distortion caused by the lens bending, which I invariably get when I’m photographing rectangles. For that I will be eternally grateful — or at least for the next ten years.

I think you don’t dare think of everything you don’t know all at once. That way lies paralysis. Which reminds me of John Barth’s riff on trying to leave home. He gets stuck in a bus station, after he has asked the clerk where he can go for $47.52 (I’ve made up that amount). He can’t figure out whether to go to Athens or Cleveland or Columbus or Cincinnati, or whether to go anywhere at all. So he sits, struck motionless by indecision, until rescued by a kindly passerby (who is, of course, central to the plot, although don’t ask me how….)

And indeed, I liked Jane a lot. Wish I could have spent more time with her.